Rose Macaulay

“ Betty had for four days known that Tommy would not die, but live; now the sunshine in the streets brought her to a more vivid realization of it. The sunshine in the streets, the keen smell of the sea that caught her breath as she turned down towards it, the fresh wind from the west, blowing the ashes away from Naples, brought sudden tears to her eyes, sudden, vague thoughts of far-off renewals, of the mending of all broken things. ”

“ That story which Tommy had found so tedious on the beach at Baja had been fulfilling itself of late. Life had truly proved a furnace, whose pitiless flames melted one's bright metal and horribly burnt one's hands.
Those who in the end emerged from that furnace would certainly know their metal for what it was. Betty, still in the flames, could look ahead: she saw with increasing clearness the result of that testing and the gold that would remain—gold that could not, by any alchemy of newly acquired knowledge, be proved base. ”

“ Through the slow days and long nights retrospect gave birth thus to a glimmering perception; perception, its gropings not to be checked, to comprehension.
In the Crevequers' eyes the melancholy pondering grew more noticeable than before. Their brows sometimes drew together suddenly, as if, in the straying of their thoughts, they had lit upon something they did not like.
Of the Venables they spoke to each other less day by day. Each did not know how it fared with the other; each hardly knew how it fared with himself. It was well, perhaps, that during much of the day they had plenty to do. ”

“ Anyhow, the city lying so in the afternoon sunshine had a most sad gaiety. It brought back to Betty how Tommy's smile had to-day flickered out from the bandages, lightening the sad eyes.
She was horribly tired; it seemed that she had been living at high pressure, not only for these past few days—she could not count them—but for days and weeks before that. The time comes when strung nerves break like worn-out fiddle-strings; there is no more strength in them. ”

“ As Betty had said, 'We can help each other, and no one else in the world can help us. Because we know each other so awfully well. Don't you see?'
Prudence had seen—seen, too, that it was the best thing they had—the thing that would in the end matter, however much everything else failed. She had seen the Crevequers cast up, as it were, out of fire, holding this gold to them, when all else—the old and the new things alike—had melted from their hands. ”

“ He was seeing the pinched look round Betty's lips, the strained heaviness of her eyes.
Venables, his quiet face very inexpressive beneath the paper guard, said, 'No, possibly not;' and that again took Tommy by surprise.
His flare of anger flickered down to a sullen smoulder; it seemed to lack fuel. Venables' silence, as they stood together, seemed to put him, as usual, in the right. After all, though 'what one can take' may be the only thing that counts on one side, what has been offered can hardly be left out of a sane vision of the other. ”

“ Tommy slowly opened his notebook, and stared at his half-completed sketch beneath drawn-down brows.
'What rot; what sickening rot,' he murmured, and finished the drawing with quick, skilful strokes.
This was a great time for newspaper men. Leaving the harbour, Tommy strolled into the town, to seek impressions. The most vivid, coming to him unsought, was one of cinders and black dust falling like intermittent rain into his eyes. To protect them he followed Venables' example, and thrust a page from his sketch-book under his hat. ”

“ So, coming to an understanding of its basis, he saw vividly his own hopelessly unachieved intimacy, his attempts so driven back upon themselves, yet gaily denying defeat, his battering at walls which had been built—not at all, as he had supposed, of abstraction, but of entire perception. He saw now more and more each day the impenetrability of those walls; retrospect illumined for him the unheeding detachment, the abrupt swerves from persons to things, so frequent because he had been so indomitable in his return to persons, perceiving them for gates in the impenetrable walls. ”

“ Tommy, catching as he looked up a certain pinched look about Betty's lips, a strain of brows and forehead, a heaviness of lids, speculated again as to the extent of her realization of the things which a girl could not do; speculated also as to what, in the circumstances, would be one's attitude towards Warren Venables. He deduced resentment, and a desire for subsequent aloofness—a desire which might, perhaps, find itself at combat with other things.... Such a combat would hardly be pleasant; it would not conduce to restful nights. Betty did not look as if her nights were restful. ”

“ It grew to be so, more and more, through the day. Tommy met Betty for lunch, then continued his impression-seeking, coated from head to foot in black dust. They arranged to be in for supper at eight. Betty was not surprised when Tommy failed to appear; there was so much of increasing interest going on. Instead, Gina Lunelli came in, seeking cheerful society because she was horribly afraid, with the abandoned physical terror of large, full-blooded people. The Crevequers always cheered one, made one laugh; she sought them, therefore, and found Betty alone, waiting for supper. ”

“ To the further north there lay, in sunshine, a little warm bay of blue sea, and a Ligurian fishing-city, pink and yellow and white and green, was set curving round it—Santa Caterina, of deep stone-paved streets, where odours dwelt of roasting coffee, and drying fish, and cheese, and drains, and tar, and the breath of the brown seaweed, and of the nets that had drawn in shoals of bianchetti at daybreak, and lay through the day drying on the hot sands. ”

“ Beneath the hail of black dust and fiery ashes that blew in gusts from Vesuvius across the bay, Tommy Crevequer screwed his eyes and tilted his straw hat forwards and drew, getting an excellent view, if not of Vesuvius, which was blotted in brown mist, at any rate of the population who thronged the harbour, and of the way in which they received their impressions. Foreigners—never-failing game—were much in evidence, a North German Lloyd having recently arrived; there were also the Sindaco, and various other celebrities. The artist of Marchese Peppino made them seem rather funny. ”

“ The faces grown so long familiar are become as words,
Each one with infinite meanings, a new world.'—Henry Binns.
It was hard to deny Mrs. Venables entrance; her intimacy was so all-reaching. The Crevequers did not see how it was to be done. Betty almost reached the conclusion that it could not be done, and echoed Tommy's question, 'How much longer are they going to be in Naples?' In ignorance of the answer to that, the Crevequers built meanwhile their flimsy, pitiful wall, piling for bricks excuse upon excuse, lie upon lie. ”

“ Retrospect annexed them, and rode them hard. In the nights, at all events, there is no confusing of issues, no foreground to obscure the vision.
It took a succession of nights and days for perception to reach full stature. Each, lying awake, or sitting together through the evenings while Tommy drew pictures for Marchese Peppino, caught new aspects of the things which moved in progression through their memory.
It seemed that each of the Venables family, marching through memory, flung at the Crevequers something which retrospect could turn into a ball for its game. ”

“ There was an intonation of melancholy, however, in general in the Crevequers' stammering speech—a melancholy that was on the borderland of laughter, and stuttered into it as a man stumbles unawares into puddles, walking along a wet path. Miss Crevequer, quite suddenly, stumbled into one now, for no apparent reason, and dragged Tommy after her. 'Well'—Betty regained, as it were, dry ground—'let's give him this week's rent; and by next week something will have turned up. You can win some at cards, can't you? It's a pity I've got no job just now. ”

“ They had all drunk to each other in red Posilipo, and wished themselves and each other good luck, and Gina Lunelli had said, for the twentieth time, 'You won't find any place so good to live in as Naples,' and Tommy had said, 'You must come and stay with us some time at Santa Caterina—all of you,' with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, generous with the large hospitality of red Posilipo. Betty had said how Genoa, too, was a gay place, with plenty doing, only the winds that blew down its streets in winter were certainly evil and bitter, and one had to wear all one's clothes at once. ”

“ Tommy looked at her gloomily, under his brows. Betty never cried; tears no more belonged to her than to him. When they had been children, one had hardly ever cried without the other. Tommy looked at Betty's tears now, speculating on her 'mental standpoint,' and on how far she divined his. ”

“ But this May morning, blown by a light wind that set the blue sea dancing and would soon make them very ill, astir with the thronging of ships in the harbour, and the hooting of voyages begun, was full of unquenchable hopes and unvanquished youth and gay beginnings.
Some one on the launch was playing 'Addio, bella Napoli' on a mandolin; the Crevequers called again 'Good-bye,' and leaned over the rail and watched the sea-face of the city, crowned by Castel St. Elmo on the hill, growing smaller in the distance. So much of life lay there.... ”

“ The Crevequers, lounging about Santa Lucia that evening, had their own comments to make. They were a little puzzled.
'Why not be a Catholic?' Tommy pondered, with knitted forehead. 'What else should a man be? Why is it funnier than to be a heretic, or a Jew, or a Buddhist? Perhaps those things are interesting, though, if once one begins thinking about them. We aren't interested in enough things, Betty. Let's study agnostics, and begin with Mrs. Venables. ”

“ Lunch in England—do you remember, Tommy?'
Tommy was thinking.
'Betty, we don't dress well enough. I want a new hat; so do you. Venables is better dressed than we are. We must be tidy, and cut a dash at lunch. It's a mistake not to be well dressed; people are so prejudiced. I shall wear a collar to-morrow—a quite clean one, like Venables. And we won't have any supper to-night, because we shall have to eat too much at lunch. ”

“ To sit by the harbour and talk, if the day were fine and the company agreeable, was an excellent afternoon's occupation. The streets were always entertaining, and the harbour particularly so, with the thronging of those who go down to the sea in ships, and the gay greetings of friends, and the cheerful shouting of mariners. Neapolitan loafers (and really to loaf, in the highest sense of that agreeable word, one should go to Naples) always like the harbour. ”

“ He had motored over from Naples to find them and bring them back with him.
'Of course we will,' Betty said; 'the road's much nicer, and it will take longer and save us our fares. We never get returns, in case anything should turn up, or we shouldn't be coming back or something. And we'll drive by turns; what fun!'
They stayed on the shore till the sky behind the castle glowed to a soft daffodil colour. Venables was a good companion; his limericks and his riddles and his anecdotes were nearly as silly, nearly as devoid of all point or relevance, as the Crevequers' own. ”

“ Certainly, such ignoring obviated embarrassment. Meanwhile, to entertain a tableful of strangers at lunch is an admirable gift. Mrs. Venables, possibly, did not sufficiently appreciate it; being amused came very much lower down on her scale of pleasures than being interested; it was perhaps fortunate, therefore, that it was a pleasure much rarer of attainment. She did not desire it of the Crevequers; she desired, as she phrased it, to draw them out, to achieve a near and serious intimacy. ”

“ So shallow are the steps that you hardly notice each as you take it. Not until you arrive at the top and look down on the ascending way do you perceive how its climbing was assisted. Of like nature is the ascending alley of human penetration. At the top is the daylight; in the analogy, perceptiveness quite achieved.
In her ascending alley Betty should, by the end of February, have got far enough not to have taken Miranda Venables to lunch at the Trattoria Buonaventura with her friends Gina Lunelli and Morello, the painter. She met Miranda on Santa Lucia. ”

“ And Betty shuddered at this vision of purging by fire, and at the 'mental standpoint' of the man who had conceived life so. One should be allowed to keep one's bright metal—gold or dross, it mattered little; one should be allowed to keep it to play with, not looking into its quality avariciously. ”