Peter looked at these things; and, it is to be presumed, he saw them. But, for all the joy they gave him, he, this cultivator of the sense of beauty, might have been the basest unit of his own purblind Anglo-Saxon public. They were the background for an absent figure. They were the stage-accessories of a drama whose action was arrested. They were an empty theatre.
He tried to read. He had brought a trunkful of books to Villa Floriano; but that book had been left behind which could fix his interest now.
He tried to write--and wondered, in a kind of daze, that any man should ever have felt the faintest ambition to do a thing so thankless and so futile.
“I shall never write again. Writing,” he generalised, and possibly not without some reason, “when it is n't the sordidest of trades, is a mere fatuous assertion of one's egotism. Breaking stones in the street were a nobler occupation; weaving ropes of sand were better sport. The only things that are worth writing are inexpressible, and can't be written. The only things that can be written are obvious and worthless--the very crackling of thorns under a pot. Oh, why does n't she turn up?”
And the worst of it was that at any moment, for aught he knew, she might turn up. That was the worst of it, and the best. It kept hope alive, only to torture hope. It encouraged him to wait, to watch, to expect; to linger in his garden, gazing hungry-eyed up the lawns of Ventirose, striving to pierce the foliage that embowered the castle; to wander the country round-about, scanning every vista, scrutinising every shape and shadow, a tweed-clad Gastibelza. At any moment, indeed, she might turn up; but the days passed--the hypocritic days--and she did not turn up.
Marietta, the kind soul, noticing his despondency, sought in divers artless ways to cheer him.
One evening she burst into his sitting-room with the effect of a small explosion, excitement in every line of her brown old face and wiry little figure.
“The fireflies! The fireflies, Signorino!” she cried, with strenuous gestures.
“What fireflies?” asked he, with phlegm.
“It is the feast of St. Dominic. The fireflies have arrived. They arrive every year on the feast of St. Dominic. They are the beads of his rosary. They are St. Dominic's Aves. There are thousands of them. Come, Signorino, Come and see.”
Her black eyes snapped. She waved her hands urgently towards the window.
Peter languidly got up, languidly crossed the room, looked out.
There were, in truth, thousands of them, thousands and thousands of tiny primrose flames, circling, fluttering, rising, sinking, in the purple blackness of the night, like snowflakes in a wind, palpitating like hearts of living gold--Jove descending upon Danae invisible.
“Son carin', eh?” cried eager Marietta.
“Hum--yes--pretty enough,” he grudgingly acknowledged. “But even so?” the ingrate added, as he turned away, and let himself drop back into his lounging-chair. “My dear good woman, no amount of prettiness can disguise the fundamental banality of things. Your fireflies--St. Dominic's beads, if you like--and, apropos of that, do you know what they call them in America?--they call them lightning-bugs, if you can believe me--remark the difference between southern euphuism and western bluntness--your fireflies are pretty enough, I grant. But they are tinsel pasted on the Desert of Sahara. They are condiments added to a dinner of dust and ashes. Life, trick it out as you will, is just an incubus--is just the Old Man of the Sea. Language fails me to convey to you any notion how heavily he sits on my poor shoulders. I thought I had suffered from ennui in my youth. But the malady merely plays with the green fruit; it reserves its serious ravages for the ripe. I can promise you 't is not a laughing matter. Have you ever had a fixed idea? Have you ever spent days and nights racking your brain, importuning the unanswering Powers, to learn whether there was--well, whether there was Another Man, for instance? Oh, bring me drink. Bring me Seltzer water and Vermouth. I will seek nepenthe at the bottom of the wine-cup.”
Was there another man? Why should there not be? And yet was there? In her continued absence, the question came back persistently, and scarcely contributed to his peace of mind.
A few days later, nothing discouraged, “Would you like to have a good laugh, Signorino?” Marietta enquired.
“Yes,” he answered, apathetic.
“Then do me the favour to come,” she said.
She led him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful “moo.”
“See her,” said Marietta.
“I see her. Well--?” said Peter.
“This morning they took her calf from her--to wean it,” said Marietta.
“Did they, the cruel things? Well--?” said he.
“And ever since, she has stood there by the gate, looking down the road, waiting, calling.”
“The poor dear. Well--?” said he.
“But do you not see, Signorino? Look at her eyes. She is weeping--weeping like a Christian.”
Peter looked-and, sure enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. “Why have they done this thing to me?” they seemed dumbly to cry.
“Have you ever seen a cow weep before? Is it comical, at least?” demanded Marietta, exultant.
“Comical--?” Peter gasped. “Comical--!” he groaned....
But then he spoke to the cow.
“Poor dear--poor dear,” he repeated. He patted her soft warm neck, and scratched her between the horns and along the dewlap.
“Poor dear--poor dear.”
The cow lifted up her head, and rested her great chin on Peter's shoulder, breathing upon his face.
“Yes, you know that we are companions in misery, don't you?” he said. “They have taken my calf from me too--though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense--and it never was exactly mine, anyhow--I daresay it's belonged from the beginning to another man. You, at least, have n't that gall and wormwood added to your cup. And now you must really try to pull yourself together. It's no good crying. And besides, there are more calves in the sea than have ever been taken from it. You'll have a much handsomer and fatter one next time. And besides, you must remember that your loss subserves someone else's gain--the farmer would never have done it if it hadn't been to his advantage. If you 're an altruist, that should comfort you. And you must n't mind Marietta,--you must n't mind her laughter. Marietta is a Latin. The Latin conception of what is laughable differs by the whole span of heaven from the Teuton. You and I are Teutons.”
“Teutons--?” questioned Marietta wrinkling her brow.
“Yes--Germanic,” said he.
“But I thought the Signorino was English?”
“So he is.”
“But the cow is not Germanic. White, with black horns, that is the purest Roman breed, Signorino.”
“Fa niente,” he instructed her. “Cows and Englishmen, and all such sentimental cattle, including Germans, are Germanic. Italians are Latin--with a touch of the Goth and Vandal. Lions and tigers growl and fight because they're Mohammedans. Dogs still bear without abuse the grand old name of Sycophant. Cats are of the princely line of Persia, and worship fire, fish, and flattery--as you may have noticed. Geese belong indifferently to any race you like--they are cosmopolitans; and I've known here and there a person who, without distinction of nationality, was a duck. In fact, you're rather by way of being a duck yourself: And now,” he perorated, “never deny again that I can talk nonsense with an aching heart.”
“All the same,” insisted Marietta, “it is very comical to see a cow weep.”
“At any rate,” retorted Peter, “it is not in the least comical to hear a hyaena laugh.”
“I have never heard one,” said she.
“Pray that you never may. The sound would make an old woman of you. It's quite blood-curdling.”
“Davvero?” said Marietta.
“Davvero,” he assured her.
And meanwhile the cow stood there, with her head on his shoulder, silently weeping, weeping.
He gave her a farewell rub along the nose.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Your breath is like meadowsweet. So dry your tears, and set your hopes upon the future. I 'll come and see you again to-morrow, and I 'll bring you some nice coarse salt. Good-bye.”
But when he went to see her on the morrow, she was grazing peacefully; and she ate the salt he brought her with heart-whole bovine relish--putting out her soft white pad of a tongue, licking it deliberately from his hand, savouring it tranquilly, and crunching the bigger grains with ruminative enjoyment between her teeth. So soon consoled! They were companions in misery no longer. “I 'm afraid you are a Latin, after all,” he said, and left her with a sense of disappointment.
That afternoon Marietta asked, “Would you care to visit the castle, Signorino?”
He was seated under his willow-tree, by the river, smoking cigarettes--burning superfluous time.