Part 9

Truly the Russian wild sends out strange little emissaries to the cities of civilization. This tiny frail slip of a woman, who looked as though a puff of air from the frozen plain would shrivel her dead, had somehow scrambled across Europe and held her own and lodged herself in a cranny of Rome; and there she had stuck, she had survived, you couldn’t tell how, with a tenacity of slender claws that could grasp and cling where a heavier weight would have found no chance of foothold. She was evidently indestructible. The world, by her account, massed its ponderous strength to crush her; but there was nothing in her that might be crushed, no superfluous sensitive stuff to be caught by a blow; there was nothing but one small central nut or bead of vitality, too hard for the world itself to crack. She thrived upon the conflict; I don’t for a moment suppose that the world was as unkind to her as it was, for example, to poor foolish old Teresa; but she believed herself to be singled out for its crudest attack, and the thought was exquisite and stimulating. She had, moreover, a real artistic passion; her fire and thrill were genuine when she talked of the strange things that were doing among the artists; but I note that it had to be the art of the present, the art of a chattering studio rather than of a hushed museum--she couldn’t have thrilled and fired before the beauty of the past and dead, where there aren’t the same intoxicating revolutions to be planned and exploded upon an unsuspicious age. Drama she needed, and of drama you can always have your fill if you know as well as she did how to make it. Why yes, she created a notion of mysterious conspiracy, somewhere lurking in the background, by her very refusal to explain and apologize when she was late for lunch.

As for her story of the baseness of men, told with extreme earnestness in three languages, she made a very good thing of it and we were all impressed. But much more striking than her story was the picture that rose before me of her establishment, her boarding-house by the Tiber, where a dozen lodgers (she reduced them to a dozen), mostly like herself from the Russian inane, gathered and mingled, quarrelled and stormed at each other, conspired, bribed the cook, made love to the landlady (of course I have only her word for it), eloped without settling their bills, lent her five-franc notes to pay at least for the next meal--but chiefly talked, talked day and night, sat interminably talking, while Olga rated the servants or hunted for the lost key of the larder, while Colomba had hysterics and dropped the soup-tureen, while Mimi killed flies at the window and had her own little crisis of nerves over a disappointment about a box of chocolates. All these visions appeared in the story--which was a story of the monstrous behaviour of one of the lodgers, a young man of whom Olga had tried to make a friend. A friend!--yes, Olga believed in friendship, in spite of a hundred disillusions; she believed in a species of friendship that transcends the material, the physical; but we needn’t go into that, for though she _had_ believed in it, the young man’s behaviour had pretty well killed her faith, once for all, and she now saw that there could be no true friendship in a world where half the world (the brutes of men) have no sense of honour, none of loyalty, none of idealism, transcendentalism, immaterialism; and Teresa still held her lips placidly bunched while Olga circled among these safe abstractions, but the little wretch came presently down with a bump again upon plainer terms, and it behoved Teresa to intervene with all her decision. Olga said that the young man had proved to be not only destitute of these safe vague qualities, but terribly in possession of other qualities, quite of the opposite kind, which she proceeded to name; and their names lacked that soft classical buzz and blur (idealism, materialism, prunes-and-prism--the termination is reassuring), and on the contrary were so crude and clear-cut that Teresa pushed back her chair and suggested another delightful long ramble in the forest, a “country afternoon,” such as we all adored.

There really was no malice in Olga, the little wretch; for to be malicious you must at least have some consciousness of the feelings of other people, you must know what will hurt them; and Olga was aware of no feelings, no subject of sensation, save her own and herself. Imagine all the relations of the world to be arranged like the spokes of a wheel, with no crossing or tangling before they reach the middle; and Olga herself in the middle, with every thread of feeling that exists all radiating away from her into space: that was the order of nature as Olga saw it, that indeed was her fashion of introducing order of any kind into the universe. One must simplify somehow; and if, unlike Olga, you suspect people of thinking and feeling on their own account, all anyhow, turning the cart-wheel into a tangle--well then you must order your private affairs, your habits, your household at least, into some kind of reposeful pattern. Olga had no need of a stupid mechanical pattern, the mere work of her own hands, to be imposed upon the facts around her. Let Colomba rave, let the lodgers hurl their boots among the crockery (she happened to mention it as one of their ways), let the boarding-house seethe and heave like a page of Dostoevsky: no matter, the universe kept its grand simplicity, all lines met at the centre, Olga was there. The story of the base young man had no bearing upon anybody but herself; Teresa was shocked, but Olga didn’t care, didn’t notice, and she went on absorbed in her narrative--or she would have done so if Mimi hadn’t made another diversion (to be frank, she was sick before she could get to the door) in which the young man was finally dropped and forgotten.

Emilio now joined us, very hot and shiny from the train, and as soon as he had refreshed himself we issued forth--an orderly procession, for Mimi clung pensively awhile to her mother’s arm; and it was agreed that we should enjoy ourselves unconventionally, fearlessly, in a walk through the greenwood to Castel Gandolfo. We mustn’t forget, however, that Fräulein Dahl, Berta’s German friend, would be descending from Castel Gandolfo (where she lived) to meet us; and we immediately saw that whichever of the forest-paths we chose we should certainly miss her. “We had better go perhaps no further than this,” said Berta, pausing under the blue posters of the wall we had already studied that morning; and Emilio proposed the amendment that it would be safer still to wait in the middle of the town, by the tram-station, where the lady would be sure to look for us. But Berta yearned for the country; so she and Teresa spread a couple of newspapers upon a dust-heap under the posters, gathered their skirts, deposited themselves with care, and pointed out that one had a charming glimpse of the country from this very spot. A little way up the lane indeed there was leafy shadow and the beginning of a woodland ride; and Olga, restlessly ranging, called to us to come further and take to the forest. But Teresa and Berta were established, and they declared themselves at ease where they were--though I can’t say they looked very easy, with their veils pulled down and their knees drawn neatly together, both clutching the ornate handles of their umbrellas. “People will think we are strange gurls,” said Berta, “sprawling by the road like this!” Emilio had to make the best he could of their wild English ways; he leant with resignation against the picture of a highly developed young woman in evening dress, who held out a box of pills with a confident smile; he sucked at a long cigar in silence. Mimi really did sprawl; she lay where she fell, she slept the sleep in which one repairs the disasters of a recent meal.

I followed her mother up the shadowy path into the woodland, where we were to watch carefully for Berta’s expected friend. When at last you are clear of the pigs and chickens of Albano you plunge immediately into the Virgilian forest that spreads and spreads over the hills, between the two deep bowls of the lakes. The ancient darkness of ilex leads you on, and the darkness changes to hoary sun-sprinkled oak-shadow, to open spaces where the big white rock-rose flowers against the outcrop of the grey stone, and the path stumbles on into damp green tunnels among the chestnut saplings; and a laden mule, driven by a bare-footed boy, appears with a jangle of bells that carry me off and away, deeper and deeper into the time-softened goodness of the wondrous land, the Saturnian land, the great mother of kindly beast and songful man--for the boy sings as he plods up the pathway, with long sweet notes that are caught by a hungry ear, caught and lost, caught again in the far distance with an echo of the years of gold, of the warm young earth in its innocence. How can we praise the land that Virgil praised? Leave the word to Virgil, listen while he repeats it again--again. I can hear nothing else till the last sound of it has died; and my companion, the strange little wild thing from the east, lifts up her finger and is silent and motionless till it ceases. What does Olga know of the golden years and the Saturnian land? Nothing, nothing whatever; but she listens with uplifted finger, entranced by the freedom of the forest, for a few fine moments forgetful of her own existence. Then she is herself again, flitting and scrambling down the path to meet a figure that approaches through the green shadows.

IX. CASTEL GANDOLFO

FRAULEIN DAHL CAME STRIDING UP the woodland path with a free swing of her arms and flourish of her staff--not a Virgilian figure, yet classical too in her way, carrying her head in the manner of a primeval mother-goddess of the tribes. Didn’t the old Mediterranean settler, pushing inland from the coast where he had beached his boat--didn’t he, somewhere in the ilex-solitude of the Italic hills, encounter certain ruder and ruggeder stragglers from the north?--and hadn’t these tall and free-stepping strangers brought with them their matriarch, the genius of their stock, a woman ancient as time and still as young as the morning, with her grey eyes and her broad square brow and her swinging tread? No doubt my ethnology is very wild, but thus it sprang into my mind and took form at the sight of the woman who approached--for whom the name of Fräulein Dahl, so flat and so featureless, seemed absurdly inadequate.

She flopped when she saw us, she stood serene and large while the little Russian dashed about her with cries and pecks. Olga hung upon her with excited endearments, with lithe gesticulations that made the new-comer look entirely like a massive and rough-hewn piece of nature, unmoved by the futile humanity that scrambles upon her breast. I really can’t speak of her by the name of a middle-aged spinster from Dresden (which indeed she was); for I can only think of her as Erda, as the earth-mother of the ancient forest; and when she addressed me in her deep voice and her Saxon speech, brief and full, it was as though she uttered the aboriginal tongue of the northern twilight, the _Ursprache_ of the heroes. I ought to have answered only with some saga-snatch of strong rough syllables, like the clash of shield and spear beneath the spread of the Branstock; and as I couldn’t do this, and my poor little phrases of modern politeness were intolerably thin and mean for such an encounter, I must own that my conversation with Erda didn’t flourish, and I had mainly to look on while Olga, not troubled by my scruples, clawed and dragged her into the fever of our degenerate age. Think of Erda clutched by the skirt, pecked with familiar kisses, haled out of the forest into the presence of Teresa and Berta, where they sit on their dust-heap and wave their black gloves in a voluble argument, the heat and the flies having by this time fretted their tempers and considerably flawed, it would seem, their joy in the freedom of the country. But nothing can disturb the large repose of Erda’s dignity, and the groundlings of the dust recover themselves as she appears, suddenly sweeten their smiles and their voices, advance to meet and greet a middle-aged spinster from Dresden, hard-featured and shabbily clad.

It took a long while to settle how best, how with the greatest propriety and safety, to make the journey of a mile or two from the dust-heap to the height of Castel Gandolfo, where our new friend had her abode. How are we to be perfectly certain that if we drive by the highroad we shan’t wish we had walked through the wood?--but before deciding to walk through the wood, let us remember that since Teresa sprained her ankle at Porto d’Anzio last summer it has never been the ankle that it was before. Emilio eagerly advised caution, caution! “Aha!” said Berta, “he knows he will be forced to carry her all day on his back, as at Porto d’Anzio.” (What a picture!) Emilio felt the heat distressingly, liberally; his gloss was already much bedimmed, he was in no case to shoulder the lovely burden this afternoon. But Erda brandished her staff and struck out for the forest, Olga fluttered after her, Mimi awoke refreshed with a sudden convulsion of black legs and flung herself in pursuit; and Teresa laughed surprisingly on a high reckless note, lunging quite vulgarly at Emilio with her umbrella, and declared herself equal to carrying _him_, if need be, “pig-a-back jolly well all the time!”--such was her phrase. This was the right vein of rollick for the adventure of a country holiday, and in this spirit we accomplished the journey, not a little elated by the sense of our ease and dash. Emilio did his best to reach our level; he stepped out vigorously, mopping his brow, and after some careful cogitation in silence he edged to my side and nudged me, pointing to Teresa and Berta where they breasted the stony path in front of us. “They are verri sporting gurls,” said Emilio.

Erda guided us by winding ways to her abode--which was a great black gaunt old villa, masked by a high wall, muffled by thickets of mystery; she opened a door in the wall, and immediately the place was so grand and sad, so brave and dark, that its influence arose and hushed us as we crowded into the dank courtyard. Me at least it silenced, and I should wish to forget Teresa’s remark when the door closed behind us and she felt the mounting chill of the scarred and stained old pavement beneath her tread. Erda had found the right retreat for the austerity of the poetry of her style; here she lived alone, screened from the world, musing in her big cool mind upon the processes of time. I wanted to tell her that she had no business to admit this party of haphazard starers into her privacy; for Teresa would be certain to make other remarks, like her last, when she tramped under the vaulted entry and climbed the bare stone stairway and beheld the heroic emptiness of the great saloon. She made many indeed; but Erda’s far-away smile passed over our heads, and you could see that it wasn’t a few bits of trash like ourselves, idly invading her sanctuary, that would profane the height of her solitude. For my part I strayed about the great saloon, looked from the windows at the shining view of the broad Campagna, tried not to listen to Olga’s polyglot chatter--and wondered how this singular being occupied herself in her lonely days. For after all she was a German spinster, a stranger and a pilgrim like the rest of us; and one ought to be able to picture the detail of her life as she lived it, between the azure bowl of the Alban lake behind her and the silvery plain in front, instead of surrendering the impression to the romance of the ancient poetry she had brought with her from the north.

She appeared to have brought nothing else. The great room contained no personal trace of her whatever, nothing but a few old chunks of furniture that were evident relics of the noble owners of the house. On the walls there were pale vestiges of festal painting, on the chairs and tables there was a glimmer of exhausted gold; and there was nothing else, not a stick, not a crock, to suggest that a stranger had arrived to take possession of the past. The woman from Germany stood in the middle of the wide floor, distantly smiling; and she filled the space like a monument, with a grand pervasion of her presence, a distribution of her authority--so that she seemed to inhabit the amplitude of her retreat, to populate it, even though she had never sat down in one of the gilded chairs, never written a line or opened a book there, never put the room to any of the common uses of life. If I tried to imagine how she employed herself when she was alone, I could only see her still standing there in the midst, smiling out of her big tolerant serenity, while the evening darkened and the night shut her in with her secret thoughts. I wonder what they were. There seemed to be all the simplicity of the world in her air and poise--and deeps of old wisdom too, full of such long and wild experience as would trouble the repose of most of us; but _she_ didn’t care, the memories of the dark forest and the fighting men and the clashing assemblies had never disturbed her secular dream; and now at last, driven from the haunts of her tribe, she had found a place empty and large enough to contain her for a few centuries more, perhaps, till the vulgar invasion becomes too much for her even here--and I should like to know where she will then betake herself. And what would she think, meanwhile, if she guessed how my fancy had transformed a plain and elderly Saxon, living for her convenience in a fine old villa near Rome?--for she had no romantic view of herself, she saw her own image as unceremoniously, I am sure, as any of the trivial starers might see it, who for the moment were making free with her domain.

She really was, however, more splendid than she knew; and it can’t be denied that a truly intelligent inspiration had brought her to the fine old Roman villa. The empty shell of the grand style, so long abandoned, was the one place in the world for her; for she needed greatness and grandeur, and she couldn’t have found either among the tattle and the comfort and the sentiment from which she had escaped; and she needed desolation, a faded grandeur, a dilapidated greatness, secure from the smart uneasy assertion of our own age’s ridiculous attempt to be magnificent. Erda was surely the most peculiar of all the Roman pilgrims I encountered; she had come to Rome because it is big and bare--and yet not inane, not dumb to reverberating echoes, like the mere virginal monstrosity of untrodden lands. The echoes of the great saloon were innumerable; old festivities, old revelries creaked and croaked in it above a droning and moaning undertone in which I could distinguish, with a very little encouragement, the most awful voices of lust and hate and pride. Erda had only to stand still and silent in the evening gloom to discover that she had the company of all the passions that had clashed about her in the time of the heroes; she felt at home there, no doubt--she couldn’t have endured an atmosphere soaked in the childish spites and jealousies of the present. Yes, she was rightly installed and lodged--and let that be enough for us; I check the trivial curiosity that sets me wondering how she really existed, how she came by the possession of the strange old house, how long she had lived there.

Oddest and unlikeliest of all, if it comes to that, is the fact that Olga and Teresa should have had the entry of her solitude, should be cackling in unconcerned familiarity beneath her smile, should be putting her foolish questions which I try to disregard. I hadn’t the least intention of asking them how they had made the acquaintance of the earth-mother; I didn’t want to know, for example, that when she first came to Rome she had dwelt for a time in Olga’s dishevelled boarding-house; and you never can tell, if I should press too closely I might be met with nonsense of that kind. I much prefer to stand apart, in the embrasure of one of the high windows, and to notice how flat the thin shriek of these women was falling in the vacancy of the saloon. No wonder Erda could afford to smile. With one turn of her hand she could have bundled the whole party out of her sight and her mind; I never so clearly saw the contract between the real person, standing square upon her feet, and the sham, drifting and pitching helplessly because it hasn’t the human weight to hold it to the ground. Even Emilio, who had seemed weighty enough as he trudged and mopped himself in the forest-path, had now shrunk to a ducking deprecating apologizing trifle to whom nobody attended. The women indeed maintained their flutter and gibber unabashed; but their noise didn’t even reach to the great ceiling of the room, it broke up and dropped in mid-air; it utterly failed to mingle with the real echoes of the place, deeply and hoarsely speaking above our heads.

There now, however, when we had quite given up expecting her, arrived Miss Gilpin. She appeared in the doorway and she stopped on the threshold for a moment, collecting the eyes of the company before she made her advance. She was a trim little woman, not very young, but with an extremely pretty head of fox-brown hair; and with a graceful gesture of both hands she sang out a greeting to us all, at a distance, in a small tuneful voice, standing where the light fell upon the bright coils of her hair; and with her arms still wide she tripped along the floor to join our party, giving a hand here and a smile there in a sort of dance-figure of sweetness and amiability--pausing finally, before me the stranger, with a kind little questioning smile, while she waited and looked to Erda for an introduction. You haven’t forgotten, perhaps, that Miss Gilpin had a certain reputation of pride; and indeed she was a public celebrity, for she was the authoress of books, of several books, though she didn’t rely upon these for her effect on entering a room. Her mazy motion and her hair and her gracious ways were enough for a beginning, let alone the flattering charm of her inclination when I was duly presented. She pressed my hand as though to say that already she marked me off from the rest of the company--whose second-rate mixture we could both appreciate, she and I; but for her part she didn’t mean to be wanting in civility to the good souls, and so--“Cara mia!--che piacere!--dopo tanto!”--she warbled her cries and beamed and inclined her head in a manner to make everybody feel exceedingly plain and coarse.