Part 9 (2/2)

My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast?

a.s.suredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything required attention.

And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London charwomen--having suffered the torments of h.e.l.l, for more years than I care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies and drunken s.l.u.ts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my money and make me comfortable. ”Don't get your shoes soled there!” she told me two days ago. ”That man is from Viareggio. I know a better place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will pay less and get better work.” With a kind of motherly instinct she forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have known them at the end of a century....

My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings of those who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful landlady, in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself.

On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals.

A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an ”interested” war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which work against peace. There are so many persons ”interested” in keeping up the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart is in his purse.

I asked:

”Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about it?”

Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her.

”I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to march home and say: Basta! We have had enough.”

”Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti?” ”Prepotenti: yes. By all means let us break their heads. And then, caro Lei, let us learn to imitate them....”

That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some s.h.i.+pwrecked archd.u.c.h.ess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings were un.o.bserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot.

Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water; and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in an identical situation, and with far less suns.h.i.+ne for the landscape gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain, now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now stands!

There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name.

They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort.

Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat.

Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half of them ought to be in the trenches, d.a.m.n it, instead of fooling about with a ball.

It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-cla.s.s lads cl.u.s.ter together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of the field and sat down on the gra.s.s. I was beside him before his friends had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration.

”Any damage?”

Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly.

”Hardly fair play,” I commented.

”It was cleverly done.”

”Ah, well,” I said, warming to my English character, ”you may get harder knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?”

Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to him?... To die at his age....

”It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?”

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