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Title:      Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (1924)
Author:     M. M. [Maurice Magnus (1876-1920)]
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (1924)
Author:     M. M. [Maurice Magnus (1876-1920)]





With an Introduction by
D. H. Lawrence
[1885-1930]

First Published. October 1924




INTRODUCTION


On a dark, wet, wintry evening in November, 1919, I arrived in
Florence, having just got back to Italy for the first time since 1914.
My wife was in Germany, gone to see her mother, also for the first
time since that fatal year 1914.  We were poor; who was going to
bother to publish me and to pay for my writings, in 1918 and 1919? I
landed in Italy with nine pounds in my pocket and about twelve pounds
lying in the bank in London. Nothing more. My wife, I hoped, would
arrive in Florence with two or three pounds remaining. We should have
to go very softly, if we were to house ourselves in Italy for the
winter. But after the desperate weariness of the war, one could not
bother.

So I had written to N----D---- [Norman Douglas]; to get me a cheap
room somewhere in Florence, and to leave a note at Cook's. I deposited
my bit of luggage at the station, and walked to Cook's in the Via
Tornabuoni. Florence was strange to me: seemed grim and dark and
rather awful on the cold November evening. There was a note from
D----, who has never left me in the lurch. I went down the Lung' Arno
to the address he gave.

I had just passed the end of the Ponte Vecchio, and was watching the
first lights of evening and the last light of day on the swollen river
as I walked, when I heard D----'s voice:

"Isn't that Lawrence? Why of course it is, of course it is, beard and
all! Well, how are you, eh? You got my note? Well now, my dear boy,
you just go on to the Cavelotti--straight ahead, straight
ahead--you've got the number. There's a room for you there. We shall
be there in half an hour. Oh, let me introduce you to M----"

I had unconsciously seen the two men approaching, D-----tall and
portly, the other man rather short and strutting. They were both
buttoned up in their overcoats, and both had rather curly little hats.
But D----was decidedly shabby and a gentleman, with his wicked red
face and tufted eyebrows. The other man was almost smart, all in grey,
and he looked at first sight like an actor-manager, common. There was
a touch of down-on-his-luck about him too. He looked at me, buttoned
up in my old thick overcoat, and with my beard bushy and raggy because
of my horror of entering a strange barber's shop, and he greeted me in
a rather fastidious voice, and a little patronizingly. I forgot to say
I was carrying a small hand-bag. But I realized at once that I ought,
in this little grey-sparrow man's eyes--he stuck his front out
tubbily, like a bird, and his legs seemed to perch behind him, as a
bird's do--I ought to be in a cab. But I wasn't. He eyed me in that
shrewd and rather impertinent way of the world of actor-managers:
cosmopolitan, knocking shabbily round the world.

He looked a man of about forty, spruce and youngish in his deportment,
very pink-faced, and very clean, very natty, very alert, like a
sparrow painted to resemble a tom-tit. He was just the kind of man I
had never met: little smart man of the shabby world, very much on the
spot, don't you know.

"How much does it cost?" I asked D----, meaning the room.

"Oh, my dear fellow, a trifle. Ten francs a day.  Third rate, tenth
rate, but not bad at the price. Pension terms of course--everything
included--except wine."

"Oh no, not at all bad for the money," said M----.  "Well now, shall
we be moving? You want the post-office, D----?" His voice was precise
and a little mincing, and it had an odd high squeak.

"I do," said D----.

"Well then come down here----" M-----turned to a dark little alley.

"Not at all," said D----. "We turn down by the bridge."

"This is quicker," said M----. He had a twang rather than an accent in
his speech--not definitely American.

He knew all the short cuts of Florence. Afterwards I found that he
knew all the short cuts in all the big towns of Europe.

I went on to the Cavelotti and waited in an awful plush and gilt
drawing-room, and was given at last a cup of weird muddy brown slush
called tea, and a bit of weird brown mush called jam on some bits of
bread.  Then I was taken to my room. It was far off, on the third
floor of the big, ancient, deserted Florentine house.  There I had a
big and lonely, stone-comfortless room looking on to the river.
Fortunately it was not very cold inside, and I didn't care. The
adventure of being back in Florence again after the years of war made
one indifferent.

After an hour or so someone tapped. It was D----coming in with his
grandiose air--now a bit shabby, but still very courtly.

"Why here you are--miles and miles from human habitation! I _told_ her
to put you on the second floor, where we are. What does she mean by
it? Ring that bell. Ring it."

"No," said I, "I'm all right here."

"What!" cried D----. "In this Spitzbergen!  Where's that bell?"

"Don't ring it," said I, who have a horror of chambermaids and
explanations.

"Not ring it! Well you're a man, you are! Come on then. Come on down
to my room. Come on. Have you had some tea--filthy muck they call tea
here? I never drink it."

I went down to D----'s room on the lower floor. It was a littered mass
of books and type-writer and papers: D-----was just finishing his
novel. M-----was resting on the bed, in his shirt sleeves: a tubby,
fresh-faced little man in a suit of grey, faced cloth bound at the
edges with grey silk braid. He had light blue eyes, tired underneath,
and crisp, curly, dark brown hair just grey at the temples. But
everything was neat and even finicking about his person.

"Sit down! Sit down!" said D----, wheeling up a chair. "Have a
whisky?"

"Whisky!" said I.

"Twenty-four francs a bottle--and a find at that," moaned D----. I
must tell that the exchange was then about forty-five lire to the
pound.

"Oh N----," said M----, "I didn't tell you. I was offered a bottle of
1913 Black and White for twenty-eight lire."

"Did you buy it?",

"No. It's your turn to buy a bottle."

"Twenty-eight francs--my dear fellow!" said D----, cocking up his
eyebrows. "I shall have to starve myself to do it."

"Oh no you won't, you'll eat here just the same," said M----.

"Yes, and I'm starved to death. Starved to death by the muck--the
absolute muck they call food here. I can't face twenty-eight francs,
my dear chap--can't be done, on my honour."

"Well look here, N----. We'll both buy a bottle.  And you can get the
one at twenty-two, and I'll buy the one at twenty-eight."

So it always was, M-----indulged D----, and spoilt him in every way.
And of course D-----wasn't grateful.  _Au contraire_! And M----'s pale
blue smallish round eyes, in his cockatoo-pink face, would harden to
indignation occasionally.

The room was dreadful. D-----never opened the windows: didn't believe
in opening windows. He believed that a certain amount of nitrogen--I
should say a great amount--is beneficial. The queer smell of a bedroom
which is slept in, worked in, lived in, smoked in, and in which men
drink their whiskies, was something new to me. But I didn't care. One
had got away from the war.

We drank our whiskies before dinner. M-----was rather yellow under the
eyes, and irritable; even his pink fattish face went yellowish.

"Look here," said D----. "Didn't you say there was a turkey for
dinner? What? Have you been to the kitchen to see what they're doing
to it?"

"Yes," said M-----testily. "I forced them to prepare it to roast."

"With chestnuts--stuffed with chestnuts?" said D----.

"They _said_ so," said M----.

"Oh but go down and see that they're doing it. Yes, you've got to keep
your eye on them, got to. The most awful howlers if you don't. You go
now and see what they're up to." D-----used his most irresistible
grand manner.

"It's too late," persisted M----, testy.

"It's _never_ too late. You just run down and absolutely prevent them
from boiling that bird in the old soup-water," said D----. "If you
need force, fetch me."

M-----went. He was a great epicure, and knew how things should be
cooked. But of course his irruptions into the kitchen roused
considerable resentment, and he was getting quaky. However, he went.
He came back to say the turkey was being roasted, but without
chestnuts.

"What did I tell you! What did I tell you!" cried D----. "They are
absolute----! If you don't hold them by the neck while they peel the
chestnuts, they'll stuff the bird with old boots, to save themselves
trouble.  Of course you should have gone down sooner, M----."

Dinner was always late, so the whisky was usually two whiskies. Then
we went down, and were merry in spite of all things. That is,
D-----always grumbled about the food. There was one unfortunate youth
who was boots and porter and waiter and all. He brought the big dish
to D----, and D-----always poked and pushed among the portions, and
grumbled frantically, sotto voce, in Italian to the youth Beppo,
getting into a nervous frenzy. Then M-------called the waiter to
himself, picked the nicest bits off the dish and gave them to D----,
then helped himself.

The food was not good, but with D-----it was an obsession. With the
waiter he was terrible--"Cos' è?  Zuppa? Grazie. No, niente per me.
_No--No_!--Quest' acqua sporca non bevo io. I don't drink this dirty
water. What-----What's that in it--a piece of dish clout? Oh holy Dio,
I can't eat another thing this evening----"

And he yelled for more bread--bread being war-rations and very limited
in supply--so M-----in nervous distress gave him his piece, and
D-----threw the crumb part on the floor, anywhere, and called for
another litre.  We always drank heavy dark red wine at three francs a
litre. D-----drank two-thirds, M-----drank least. He loved his
liquors, and did not care for wine. We were noisy and unabashed at
table. The old Danish ladies at the other end of the room, and the
rather impecunious young Duca and family not far off were not supposed
to understand English. The Italians rather liked the noise, and the
young signorina with the high-up yellow hair eyed us with profound
interest. On we sailed, gay and noisy, D-----telling witty anecdotes
and grumbling wildly and only half whimsically about the food. We sat
on till most people had finished--then went up to more whisky--one
more perhaps--in M----'s room.

When I came down in the morning I was called into M----'s room. He was
like a little pontiff in a blue kimono-shaped dressing-gown with a
broad border of reddish purple: the blue was a soft mid-blue, the
material a dull silk. So he minced about, in demi-toilette.  His room
was very clean and neat, and slightly perfumed with essences. On his
dressing-table stood many cut-glass bottles and silver-topped bottles
with essences and pomades and powders, and heaven knows what. A very
elegant little prayer book lay by his bed--and a life of St. Benedict.
For M-----was a Roman Catholic convert. All he had was expensive and
finicking: thick leather silver-studded suit-cases standing near the
wall, trouser-stretcher all nice, hair-brushes and clothes-brush with
old ivory backs. I wondered over him and his niceties and little
pomposities. He was a new bird to me.

For he wasn't at all just the common person he looked.  He was queer
and sensitive as a woman with D----, and patient and fastidious. And
yet he _was_ common, his very accent was common, and D-----despised
him.

And M-----rather despised me because I did not spend money. I paid for
a third of the wine we drank at dinner, and bought the third bottle of
whisky we had during M----'s stay. After all, he only stayed three
days. But I would not spend for myself. I had no money to spend, since
I knew I must live and my wife must live.

"Oh," said M----. "Why, that's the very time to spend money, when
you've got none. If you've got none, why try to save it? That's been
my philosophy all my life; when you've got no money, you may just as
well spend it. If you've got a good deal, that's the time to look
after it." Then he laughed his queer little laugh, rather squeaky.
These were his exact words.

"Precisely," said D----. "Spend when you've nothing to spend, my boy.
Spent _hard_ then."

"No," said I. "If I can help it, I will never let myself be penniless
while I live. I mistrust the world too much."

"But if you're going to live in fear of the world," said M----,
"what's the good of living at all? Might as well die."

I think I give his words almost verbatim. He had a certain impatience
of me and of my presence. Yet we had some jolly times--mostly in one
or other of their bedrooms, drinking a whisky and talking. We drank a
bottle a day--I had very little, preferring the wine at lunch and
dinner, which seemed delicious after the war famine. D-----would bring
up the remains of the second litre in the evening, to go on with
before the coffee came.

I arrived in Florence on the Wednesday or Thursday evening; I think
Thursday. M-----was due to leave for Rome on the Saturday. I asked
D-----who M----was.  "Oh, you never know what he's at. He was manager
for Isadora Duncan for a long time--knows all the capitals of Europe:
St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tiflis, Constantinople, Berlin, Paris--knows
them as you and I know Florence. He's been mostly in that
line--theatrical.  Then a journalist. He edited the _Roman Review_
till the war killed it. Oh, a many-sided sort of fellow,"

"But how do you know him?" said I.

"I met him in Capri years and years ago--oh, sixteen years ago--and
clean forgot all about him till somebody came to me one day in Rome
and said: You're N----D----.  _I_ didn't know who he was. But he'd
never forgotten me. Seems to be smitten by me, somehow or other. All
the better for me, ha-ha!--if he _likes_ to run round for me. My dear
fellow, I wouldn't prevent him, if it amuses him. Not for worlds."

And that was how it was. M-----ran D----'s errands, forced the other
man to go to the tailor, to the dentist, and was almost a guardian
angel to him.

"Look here!" cried D----. "I _can't_ go to that damned tailor. Let the
thing wait, I can't go."

"Oh yes. Now look here N------, if you don't get it done now while I'm
here you'll never get it done. I made the appointment for three
o'clock----"

"To hell with you! Details! Details! I can't stand it, I tell you."

D-----chafed and kicked, but went.

"A little fussy fellow," he said. "Oh yes, fussing about like a woman.
Fussy, you know, fussy. I _can't stand_ these fussy----" And
D-----went off into improprieties.

Well, M-----ran round and arranged D----'s affairs and settled his
little bills, and was so benevolent, and so impatient and nettled at
the ungrateful way in which the benevolence was accepted. And
D-----despised him all the time as a little busybody and an inferior.
And I there between them just wondered. It seemed to me M-----would
get very irritable and nervous at midday and before dinner, yellow
round the eyes and played out.  He wanted his whisky. He was tired
after running round on a thousand errands and quests which I never
understood.  He always took his morning coffee at dawn, and was out to
early Mass and pushing his affairs before eight o'clock in the
morning. But what his affairs were I still do not know. Mass is all I
am certain of.

However, it was his birthday on the Sunday, and D-----would not let
him go. He had once said he would give a dinner for his birthday, and
this he was not allowed to forget. It seemed to me M-----rather wanted
to get out of it. But D-----was determined to have that dinner.

"You aren't going before you've given us that hare, don't you imagine
it, my boy. I've got the smell of that hare in my imagination, and
I've damned well got to set my teeth in it. Don't you imagine you're
going without having produced that hare."

So poor M----, rather a victim, had to consent. We discussed what we
should eat. It was decided the hare should have truffles, and a dish
of champignons, and cauliflower, and zabaioni--and I forget what else.
It was to be on Saturday evening. And M-----would leave on Sunday for
Rome.

Early on the Saturday morning he went out, with the first daylight, to
the old market, to get the hare and the mushrooms. He went himself
because he was a connoisseur.

On the Saturday afternoon D-----took me wandering round to buy a
birthday present.

"I shall have to buy him something--have to--have to----" he said
fretfully. He only wanted to spend about five francs. We trailed over
the Ponte Vecchio, looking at the jewellers' booths there. It was
before the foreigners had come back, and things were still rather
dusty and almost at pre-war prices. But we could see nothing for five
francs except the little saint-medals. D-----wanted to buy one of
those. It seemed to me infra dig. So at last coming down to the
Mercato Nuovo we saw little bowls of Volterra marble, a natural amber
colour, for four francs.

"Look, buy one of those," I said to D----, "and he can put his pins or
studs or any trifle in, as he needs."

So we went in and bought one of the little bowls of Volterra marble.

M-----seemed so touched and pleased with the gift.

"Thank you a thousand times, N------," he said.  "That's charming!
That's exactly what I want."

The dinner was quite a success, and, poorly fed as we were at the
pension, we stuffed ourselves tight on the mushrooms and the hare and
the zabaioni, and drank ourselves tight with the good red wine which
swung in its straw flask in the silver swing on the table. A flask has
two and a quarter litres. We were four persons, and we drank almost
two flasks. D-----made the waiter measure the remaining half-litre and
take it off the bill.  But good, good food, and cost about twelve
francs a head the whole dinner.

Well, next day was nothing but bags and suit-cases in M----'s room,
and the misery of departure with luggage.  He went on the midnight
train to Rome: first class.

"I always travel first class," he said, "and I always shall, while I
can buy the ticket. Why should I go second? It's beastly enough to
travel at all."

"My dear fellow, I came up third the last time I came from Rome," said
D----. "Oh, not bad, not bad.  Damned fatiguing journey anyhow."

So the little outsider was gone, and I was rather glad.  I don't think
he liked me. Yet one day he said to me at table:

"How lovely your hair is--such a lovely colour!  What do you dye it
with?"

I laughed, thinking he was laughing too. But no, he meant it.

"It's got no particular colour at all," I said, "so I couldn't dye it
that!"

"It's a lovely colour," he said. And I think he didn't believe me,
that I didn't dye it. It puzzled me, and it puzzles me still.

But he was gone. D-----moved into M----'s room, and asked me to come
down to the room he himself was vacating. But I preferred to stay
upstairs.

M-----was a fervent Catholic, taking the religion alas, rather
unctuously. He had entered the Church only a few years before. But he
had a bishop for a god-father, and seemed to be very intimate with the
upper clergy.  He was very pleased and proud because he was a constant
guest at the famous old monastery south of Rome. He talked of becoming
a monk; a monk in that aristocratic and well-bred order. But he had
not even begun his theological studies: or any studies of any sort.
And D-----said he only chose the Benedictines because they lived
better than any of the others.

But I had said to M----, that when my wife came and we moved south, I
would like to visit the monastery some time, if I might. "Certainly,"
he said. "Come when I am there. I shall be there in about a month's
time.  Do come! Do be sure and come. It's a wonderful place--oh,
wonderful. It will make a great impression on you. Do come. Do come.
And I will tell Don Bernardo, who is my _greatest_ friend, and who is
guest-master, about you. So that if you wish to go when I am not
there, write to Don Bernardo. But do come when I am there."

My wife and I were due to go into the mountains south of Rome, and
stay there some months. Then I was to visit the big, noble monastery
that stands on a bluff hill like a fortress crowning a great
precipice, above the little town and the plain between the mountains.
But it was so icy cold and snowy among the mountains, it was
unbearable.  We fled south again, to Naples, and to, Capri.  Passing,
I saw the monastery crouching there above, world-famous, but it was
impossible to call then.

I wrote and told M-----of my move. In Capri I had an answer from him.
It had a wistful tone--and I don't know what made me think that he was
in trouble, in monetary difficulty. But I felt it acutely--a kind of
appeal. Yet he said nothing direct. And he wrote from an expensive
hotel in Anzio, on the sea near Rome.

At the moment I had just received twenty pounds unexpected and joyful
from America--a gift too. I hesitated for some time, because I felt
unsure. Yet the curious appeal came out of the letter, though nothing
was said. And I felt also I owed M-----that dinner, and I didn't want
to owe him anything, since he despised me a little for being careful.
So partly out of revenge, perhaps, and partly because I felt the
strange wistfulness of him appealing to me, I sent him five pounds,
saying perhaps I was mistaken in imagining him very hard up, but if
so, he wasn't to be offended.

It is strange to me even now, how I knew he was appealing to me.
Because it was all as vague as I say.  Yet I felt it so strongly. He
replied: "Your cheque has saved my life. Since I last saw you I have
fallen down an abyss. But I will tell you when I see you. I shall be
at the monastery in three days. Do come--and come alone." I have
forgotten to say that he was a rabid woman-hater.

This was just after Christmas. I thought his "saved my life" and
"fallen down an abyss" was just the American touch of "very,
very----." I wondered what on earth the abyss could be, and I decided
it must be that he had lost his money or his hopes. It seemed to me
that some of his old buoyant assurance came out again in this letter.
But he was now very friendly, urging me to come to the monastery, and
treating me with a curious little tenderness and protectiveness. He
had a queer delicacy of his own, varying with a bounce and a
commonness.  He was a common little bounder. And then he had this
curious delicacy and tenderness and wistfulness.

I put off going north. I had another letter urging me--and it seemed
to me that, rather assuredly, he was expecting more money. Rather
cockily, as if he had a right to it. And that made me not want to give
him any. Besides, as my wife said, what right had I to give away the
little money we had, and we there stranded in the south of Italy with
no resources if once we were spent up. And I have always been
determined never to come to my last shilling--if I have to reduce my
spending almost to nothingness. I have always been determined to keep
a few pounds between me and the world.

I did not send any money. But I wanted to go to the monastery, so
wrote and said I would come for two days.  I always remember getting
up in the black dark of the January morning, and making a little
coffee on the spirit-lamp, and watching the clock, the big-faced, blue
old clock on the campanile in the piazza in Capri, to see I wasn't
late. The electric light in the piazza lit up the face of the
campanile. And we were then, a stone's throw away, high in the Palazzo
Ferraro, opposite the bubbly roof of the little duomo. Strange dark
winter morning, with the open sea beyond the roofs, seen through the
side window, and the thin line of the lights of Naples twinkling far,
far off.

At ten minutes to six I went down the smelly dark stone stairs of the
old palazzo, out into the street. A few people were already hastening
up the street to the terrace that looks over the sea to the bay of
Naples. It was dark and cold. We slid down in the funicular to the
shore, then in little boats were rowed out over the dark sea to the
steamer that lay there showing her lights and hooting.

It was three long hours across the sea to Naples, with dawn coming
slowly in the east, beyond Ischia, and flushing into lovely colour as
our steamer pottered along the peninsula, calling at Massa and
Sorrento and Piano.  I always loved hanging over the side and watching
the people come out in boats from the little places of the shore, that
rose steep and beautiful. I love the movement of these watery
Neapolitan people, and the naïve trustful way they clamber in and out
the boats, and their softness, and their dark eyes. But when the
steamer leaves the peninsula and begins to make away round Vesuvius to
Naples, one is already tired, and cold, cold, cold in the wind that
comes piercing from the snow-crests away there along Italy. Cold, and
reduced to a kind of stony apathy by the time we come to the mole in
Naples, at ten o'clock--or twenty past ten.

We were rather late, and I missed the train. I had to wait till two
o'clock. And Naples is a hopeless town to spend three hours in.
However, time passes. I remember I was calculating in my mind whether
they had given me the right change at the ticket-window. They
hadn't--and I hadn't counted in time. Thinking of this, I got in the
Rome train. I had been there ten minutes when I heard a trumpet blow.

"Is this the Rome train?" I asked my fellow-traveller.

"Si."

"The express?"

"No, it is the slow train."

"It leaves?"

"At ten past two."

I almost jumped through the window. I flew down the platform.

"The diretto!" I cried to a porter.

"Parte! Eccolo la!" he said, pointing to a big train moving inevitably
away.

I flew with wild feet across the various railway lines and seized the
end of the train as it travelled. I had caught it. Perhaps if I had
missed it fate would have been different. So I sat still for about
three hours. Then I had arrived.

There is a long drive up the hill from the station to the monastery.
The driver talked to me. It was evident he bore the monks no good
will.

"Formerly," he said, "if you went up to the monastery you got a glass
of wine and a plate of maccaroni. But now they kick you out of the
door."

"Do they?" I said. "It is hard to believe."

"They kick you out of the gate," he vociferated.

We twisted up and up the wild hillside, past the old castle of the
town, past the last villa, between trees and rocks. We saw no one. The
whole hill belongs to the monastery. At last at twilight we turned the
corner of the oak wood and saw the monastery like a huge square
fortress-palace of the sixteenth century crowning the near distance.
Yes, and there was M-----just stepping through the huge old gateway
and hastening down the slope to where the carriage must stop. He was
bareheaded, and walking with his perky, busy little stride, seemed
very much at home in the place. He looked up to me with a tender,
intimate look as I got down from the carriage. Then he took my hand.

"So _very_ glad to see you," he said. "I'm so _pleased_ you've come."

And he looked into my eyes with that wistful, watchful tenderness
rather like a woman who isn't quite sure of her lover. He had a
certain charm in his manner; and an odd pompous touch with it at this
moment, welcoming his guest at the gate of the vast monastery which
reared above us from its buttresses in the rock, was rather becoming.
His face was still pink, his eyes pale blue and sharp, but he looked
greyer at the temples.

"Give me your bag," he said. "Yes do--and come along. Don Bernardo is
just at Evensong, but he'll be here in a little while. Well now, tell
me all the news."

"Wait," I said. "Lend me five francs to finish paying the driver--he
has no change."

"Certainly, certainly," he said, giving the five francs.  I had no
news,--so asked him his.

"Oh, I have none either," he said. "Very short of money, that of
course is _no_ news." And he laughed his little laugh. "I'm so glad to
be here," he continued.  "The peace, and the rhythm of the life is so
_beautiful_!  I'm sure you'll love it."

We went up the slope under the big, tunnel-like entrance and were in
the grassy courtyard, with the arched walk on the far sides, and one
or two trees. It was like a grassy cloister, but still busy. Black
monks were standing chatting, an old peasant was just driving two
sheep from the cloister grass, and an old monk was darting into the
little post-office which one recognized by the shield with the
national arms over the doorway. From under the far arches came an old
peasant carrying a two-handed saw.

And there was Don Bernardo, a tall monk in a black, well-shaped gown,
young, good-looking, gentle, hastening forward with a quick smile. He
was about my age, and his manner seemed fresh and subdued, as if he
were still a student. One felt one was at college with one's college
mates.

We went up the narrow stair and into the long, old, naked white
corridor, high and arched. Don Bernardo had got the key of my room:
two keys, one for the dark antechamber, one for the bedroom. A
charming and elegant bedroom, with an engraving of English landscape,
and outside the net curtain a balcony looking down on the garden, a
narrow strip beneath the walls, and beyond, the clustered buildings of
the farm, and the oak woods and arable fields of the hill summit: and
beyond again, the gulf where the world's valley was, and all the
mountains that stand in Italy on the plains as if God had just put
them down ready made. The sun had already sunk, the snow on the
mountains was full of a rosy glow, the valleys were full of shadow.
One heard, far below, the trains shunting, the world clinking in the
cold air.  "Isn't it wonderful! Ah, the most wonderful place on
earth!" said M----. "What now could you wish better than to end your
days here? The peace, the beauty, the eternity of it." He paused and
sighed.  Then he put his hand on Don Bernardo's arm and smiled at him
with that odd, rather wistful smirking tenderness that made him such a
quaint creature in my eyes.

"But I'm going to enter the order. You're going to let me be a monk
and be one of you, aren't you, Don Bernardo?"

"We will see," smiled Don Bernardo. "When you have begun your
studies."

"It will take me two years," said M----. "I shall have to go to the
college in Rome. When I have got the money for the fees------" He
talked away, like a boy planning a new rôle.

"But I'm sure Lawrence would like to drink a cup of tea," said Don
Bernardo. He spoke English as if it were his native language. "Shall I
tell them to make it in the kitchen, or shall we go to your room?"

"Oh, we'll go to my room. How thoughtless of me!  Do forgive me, won't
you?" said M------, laying his hand gently on my arm. "I'm so awfully
sorry, you know. But we get so excited and enchanted when we talk of
the monastery. But come along, come along, it will be ready in a
moment on the spirit-lamp."

We went down to the end of the high, white, naked corridor. M-----had
a quite sumptuous room, with a curtained bed in one part, and under
the window his writing-desk with papers and photographs, and nearby a
sofa and an easy table, making a little sitting-room, while the bed
and toilet things, pomades and bottles were all in the distance, in
the shadow. Night was fallen. From the window one saw the world far
below, like a pool the flat plain, a deep pool of darkness with little
twinkling lights, and rows and bunches of light that were the railway
station.

I drank my tea, M-----drank a little liqueur, Don Bernardo in his
black winter robe sat and talked with us.  At least he did very little
talking. But he listened and smiled and put in a word or two as we
talked, seated round the table on which stood the green-shaded
electric lamp.

The monastery was cold as the tomb. Couched there on the top of its
hill, it is not much below the winter snow-line. Now by the end of
January all the summer heat is soaked out of the vast, ponderous stone
walls, and they become masses of coldness cloaking around. There is no
heating apparatus whatsoever--none. Save the fire in the kitchen, for
cooking, nothing. Dead, silent, stone cold everywhere.

At seven we went down to dinner. Capri in the daytime was hot, so I
had brought only a thin old dust-coat.  M-----therefore made me wear a
big coat of his own, a coat made of thick, smooth black cloth, and
lined with black sealskin, and having a collar of silky black
sealskin.  I can still remember the feel of the silky fur. It was
queer to have him helping me solicitously into this coat, and
buttoning it at the throat for me.

"Yes, it's a beautiful coat. Of course!" he said. "I hope you find it
warm."

"Wonderful," said I. "I feel as warm as a millionaire."

"I'm so glad you do," he laughed.

"You don't mind my wearing your grand coat?" I said.

"Of course not! Of course not! It's a pleasure to nie if it will keep
you warm. We don't want to die of cold in the monastery, do we? That's
one of the mortifications we will do our best to avoid. What? Don't
you think? Yes, I think this coldness is going almost too far.  I had
that coat made in New York fifteen years ago. Of course in Italy----"
he said It'ly--"I've never worn it, so it is as good as new. And it's
a beautiful coat, fur and cloth of the very best. _And_ the tailor."
He laughed a little, self-approving laugh. He liked to give the
impression that he dealt with the _best_ shops, don't you know, and
stayed in the _best_ hotels, etc. I grinned inside the coat, detesting
best hotels, best shops, and best overcoats. So off we went, he in his
grey overcoat and I in my sealskin millionaire monster, down the dim
corridor to the guests' refectory. It was a bare room with a long
white table. M-----and I sat at the near end. Further down was another
man, perhaps the father of one of the boy students. There is a college
attached to the monastery.

We sat in the icy room, muffled up in our overcoats.  A lay-brother
with a bulging forehead and queer, fixed eyes waited on us. He might
easily have come from an old Italian picture. One of the adoring
peasants. The food was abundant--but alas, it had got cold in the long
cold transit from the kitchen. And it was roughly cooked, even if it
was quite wholesome. Poor M----did not eat much, but nervously nibbled
his bread. I could tell the meals were a trial to him. He could not
bear the cold food in that icy, empty refectory. And his tisickyness
offended the lay-brothers. I could see that his little pomposities and
his "superior" behaviour and his long stay made them have that old
monastic grudge against him, silent but very obstinate and
effectual--the same now as six hundred years ago. We had a decanter of
good red wine--but he did not care for much wine.  He was glad to be
peeling the cold orange which was dessert.

After dinner he took me down to see the church, creeping like two
thieves down the dimness of the great, prison-cold white corridors, on
the cold flag floors.

Stone cold: the monks must have invented the term.  These monks were
at Compline. So we went by our two secret little selves into the tall
dense nearly-darkness of the church. M----, knowing his way about here
as in the cities, led me, poor wondering worldling, by the arm through
the gulfs of the tomb-like place. He found the electric light switches
inside the church, and stealthily made me a light as we went. We
looked at the lily marble of the great floor, at the pillars, at the
Benvenuto Cellini casket, at the really lovely pillars and slabs of
different coloured marbles, all coloured marbles, yellow and grey and
rose and green and lily white, veined and mottled and splashed:
lovely, lovely stones-----And Benvenuto had used pieces of lapis
lazuli, blue as cornflowers.  Yes, yes, all very rich and wonderful.

We tiptoed about the dark church stealthily, from altar to altar, and
M-----whispered ecstasies in my ear.  Each time we passed before an
altar, whether the high altar or the side chapels, he did a wonderful
reverence, which he must have practised for hours, bowing waxily down
and sinking till his one knee touched the pavement, then rising like a
flower that rises and unfolds again, till he had skipped to my side
and was playing cicerone once more. Always in his grey overcoat, and
in whispers: me in the big black overcoat, millionairish. So we crept
into the chancel and examined all the queer fat babies of the choir
stalls, carved in wood and rolling on their little backs between
monk's place and monk's place--queer things for the chanting monks to
have between them, these shiny, polished, dark brown fat babies, all
different, and all jolly and lusty. We looked at everything in the
church--and then at everything in the ancient room at the side where
surplices hang and monks can wash their hands.

Then we went down to the crypt, where the modern mosaics glow in
wonderful colours, and sometimes in fascinating little fantastic trees
and birds. But it was rather like a scene in the theatre, with
M-----for the wizard and myself a sort of Parsifal in the New York
coat. He switched on the lights, the gold mosaic of the vaulting
glittered and bowed, the blue mosaic glowed out, the holy of holies
gleamed theatrically, the stiff mosaic figures posed around us. To
tell the truth I was glad to get back to the normal human room and sit
on a sofa huddled in my overcoat, and look at photographs which
M-----showed me: photographs of everywhere in Europe. Then he showed
me a wonderful photograph of a picture of a lovely lady--asked me what
I thought of it, and seemed to expect me to be struck to bits by the
beauty. His almost sanctimonious expectation made me tell the truth,
that I thought it just a bit cheap, trivial.  And then he said,
dramatic:

"That's my mother."

It looked so unlike anybody's mother, much less M----'s, that I was
startled. I realized that she was his great stunt, and that I had put
my foot in it. So I just held my tongue. Then I said, for I felt he
was going to be silent forever:

"There are so few portraits, unless by the really great artists, that
aren't a bit cheap. She must have been a beautiful woman."

"Yes, she _was_," he said curtly. And we dropped the subject.

He locked all his drawers _very_ carefully, and kept the keys on a
chain. He seemed to give the impression that he had a great many
secrets, perhaps dangerous ones, locked up in the drawers of his
writing-table there. And I always wonder what the secrets can be, that
are able to be kept so tight under lock and key.

Don Bernardo tapped and entered. We all sat round and sipped a funny
liqueur which I didn't like. M----lamented that the bottle was
finished. I asked him to order another and let me pay for it. So he
said he would tell the postman to bring it up next day from the town.
Don Bernardo sipped his tiny glass with the rest of us, and he told
me, briefly, his story--and we talked politics till nearly midnight.
Then I came out of the black overcoat and we went to bed.

In the morning a fat, smiling, nice old lay-brother brought me my
water. It was a sunny day. I looked down on the farm cluster and the
brown fields and the sere oak woods of the hill-crown, and the rocks
and bushes savagely bordering it round. Beyond, the mountains with
their snow were blue-glistery with sunshine, and seemed quite near,
but across a sort of gulf. All was still and sunny. And the poignant
grip of the past, the grandiose, violent past of the Middle Ages, when
blood was strong and unquenched and life was flamboyant with
splendours and horrible miseries, took hold of me till I could hardly
bear it. It was really agony to me to be in the monastery and to see
the old farm and the bullocks slowly working in the fields below, and
the black pigs rooting among weeds, and to see a monk sitting on a
parapet in the sun, and an old, old man in skin sandals and white
bunched, swathed legs come driving an ass slowly to the monastery
gate, slowly, with all that lingering nonchalance and wildness of the
Middle Ages, and yet to know that I was myself, child of the present.
It was so strange from M----'s window to look down on the plain and
see the white road going straight past a mountain that stood like a
loaf of sugar, the river meandering in loops, and the railway with
glistening lines making a long black swoop across the flat and into
the hills. To see trains come steaming, with white smoke flying. To
see the station like a little harbour where trucks like shipping stood
anchored in rows in the black bay of railway. To see trains stop in
the station and tiny people swarming like flies! To see all this from
the monastery, where the Middle Ages live on in a sort of agony, like
Tithonus, and cannot die, this was almost a violation to my soul, made
almost a wound.

Immediately after coffee we went down to Mass. It was celebrated in a
small crypt chapel underground, because that was warmer. The twenty or
so monks sat in their stalls, one monk officiating at the altar. It
was quiet and simple, the monks sang sweetly and well, there was no
organ. It seemed soon to pass by. M-----and I sat near the door. He
was very devoted and scrupulous in his going up and down. I was an
outsider. But it was pleasant--not too sacred. One felt the monks were
very human in their likes and their jealousies. It was rather like a
group of dons in the dons' room at Cambridge, a cluster of professors
in any college. But during Mass they, of course, just sang their
responses. Only I could »ell some watched the officiating monk rather
with ridicule--he was one of the ultra-punctilious sort, just like a
don. And some boomed their responses with a grain of defiance against
some brother monk who had earned dislike. It was human, and more like
a university than anything. We went to Mass every morning, but I did
not go to Evensong.

After Mass M-----took me round and showed me everything of the vast
monastery. We went into the Bramante Courtyard, all stone, with its
great well in the centre, and the colonnades of arches going round,
full of sunshine, gay and Renaissance, a little bit ornate but still
so jolly and gay, sunny pale stone waiting for the lively people, with
the great flight of pale steps sweeping up to the doors of the church,
waiting for gentlemen in scarlet trunk-hose, slender red legs, and
ladies in brocade gowns, and page-boys with fluffed, golden hair.
Splendid, sunny, gay Bramante Courtyard of lively stone. But empty.
Empty of life. The gay red-legged gentry dead forever. And when
pilgrimages do come and throng in, it is horrible artisan excursions
from the great town, and the sordidness of industrialism.

We climbed the little watchtower that is now an observatory, and saw
the vague and unshaven Don Giovanni among all his dust and
instruments. M----was very familiar and friendly, chattering in his
quaint Italian, which was more wrong than any Italian I have ever
heard spoken; very familiar and friendly, and a tiny bit deferential
to the monks, and yet, and yet--rather patronizing. His little
pomposity and patronizing tone coloured even his deferential yearning
to be admitted to the monastery. The monks were rather brief with him.
They no doubt have their likes and dislikes greatly intensified by the
monastic life.

We stood on the summit of the tower and looked at the world below: the
town, the castle, the white roads coming straight as judgment out of
the mountains north, from Rome, and piercing into the mountains south,
toward Naples, traversing the flat, flat plain.  Roads, railway,
river, streams, a world in accurate and lively detail, with mountains
sticking up abruptly and rockily, as the old painters painted it. I
think there is no way of painting Italian landscape except that
way--that started with Lorenzetti and ended with the sixteenth
century.

We looked at the ancient cell away under the monastery, where all the
sanctity started. We looked at the big library that belongs to the
State, and at the smaller library that belongs still to the abbot. I
was tired, cold, and sick among the books and illuminations. I could
not bear it any more. I felt I must be outside, in the sun, and see
the world below, and the way out.

That evening I said to M----:

"And what was the abyss, then?"

"Oh well, you know," he said, "it was a cheque which I made out at
Anzio. There should have been money to meet it, in my bank in New
York. But it appears the money had never been paid in by the people
that owed it me. So there was I in a very nasty hole, an unmet cheque,
and no money at all in Italy. I really had to escape here. It is an
_absolute_ secret that I am here, and it must be, till I can get this
business settled. Of course I've written to America about it. But as
you see, I'm in a very nasty hole. That five francs I gave you for the
driver was the last penny I had in the world: absolutely the last
penny. I haven't even anything to buy a cigarette or a stamp." And he
laughed chirpily, as if it were a joke. But he didn't really think it
a joke. Nor was it a joke.

I had come with only two hundred lire in my pocket, as I was waiting
to change some money at the bank. Of this two hundred I had one
hundred left or one hundred and twenty-five. I should need a hundred
to get home.  I could only give M---the twenty-five, for the bottle of
drink. He was rather crestfallen. But I didn't want to give him money
this time: because he expected it.

However, we talked about his plans: how he was to earn something. He
told me what he had written. And I cast over in my mind where he might
get something published in London, wrote a couple of letters on his
account, told him where I thought he had best send his material. There
wasn't a great deal of hope, for his smaller journalistic articles
seemed to me very self-conscious and poor. He had one about the
monastery, which I thought he might sell because of the photographs.

That evening he first showed me the Legion manuscript.  He had got it
rather raggedly typed out. He had a type-writer, but felt he ought to
have somebody to do his typing for him, as he hated it and did it
unwillingly.  That evening and when I went to bed and when I woke in
the morning I read this manuscript. It did not seem very good--vague
and diffuse where it shouldn't have been--lacking in sharp detail and
definite event. And yet there was something in it that made me want it
done properly. So we talked about it, and discussed it carefully, and
he unwillingly promised to tackle it again. He was curious, always
talking about his work, even always working, but never _properly_
doing anything.

We walked out in the afternoon through the woods and across the rocky
bit of moorland which covers most of the hill-top. We were going to
the ruined convent which lies on the other brow of the monastery hill,
abandoned and sad among the rocks and heath and thorny bushes. It was
sunny and warm. A barefoot little boy was tending a cow and three
goats and a pony, a barefoot little girl had five geese in charge. We
came to the convent and looked in. The further part of the courtyard
was still entire, the place was a sort of farm, two rooms occupied by
a peasant-farmer. We climbed about the ruins. Some creature was
crying--crying, crying, crying with a strange, inhuman persistence,
leaving off and crying again. We listened and listened--the sharp,
poignant crying. Almost it might have been a sharp-voiced baby. We
scrambled about, looking.  And at last outside a little cave-like
place found a blind black puppy crawling miserably on the floor,
unable to walk, and crying incessantly. We put it back in the little
cave-like shed, and went away. The place was deserted save for the
crying puppy.

On the road outside however was a man, a peasant, just drawing up to
the arched convent gateway with an ass under a load of brushwood. He
was thin and black and dirty. He took off his hat, and we told him of
the puppy. He said the bitch-mother had gone off with his son with the
sheep. Yes, she had been gone all day.  Yes, she would be back at
sunset. No, the puppy had not drunk all day. Yes, the little beast
cried, but the mother would come back to him.

They were the old-world peasants still about the monastery, with the
hard, small bony heads and deep-lined faces and utterly blank minds,
crying their speech as crows cry, and living their lives as lizards
among the rocks, blindly going on with the little job in hand, the
present moment, cut off from all past and future, and having no idea
and no sustained emotion, only that eternal will-to-live which makes a
tortoise wake up once more in spring, and makes a grasshopper whistle
on in the moonlight nights even of November. Only these peasants don't
whistle much. The whistlers go to America. It is the hard, static,
unhoping souls that persist in the old life. And still they stand
back, as one passes them in the corridors of the great monastery, they
press themselves back against the whitewashed walls of the still
place, and drop their heads, as if some mystery were passing by, some
God-mystery, the higher beings, which they must not look closely upon.
So also this old peasant--he was not old, but deep-lined like a
gnarled bough. He stood with his hat down in his hands as we spoke to
him and answered the short, hard, insentient answers, as a tree might
speak.

"The monks keep their peasants humble," I said to M----.

"Of course!" he said. "Don't you think they are quite right? Don't you
think they should be humble?" And he bridled like a little turkey-cock
on his hind legs.

"Well," I said, "if there's any occasion for humility, I do."

"Don't you think there is occasion?" he cried. "If there's one thing
worse than another, it's this _equality_ that has come into the world.
Do you believe in it yourself?"

"No," I said. "I don't believe in equality. But the problem is,
wherein does superiority lie."

"Oh," chirped M-----complacently. "It lies in many things. It lies in
birth and in upbringing and so on, but it is chiefly in _mind_. Don't
you think? Of course I don't mean that the physical qualities aren't
_charming_. They are, and nobody appreciates them more than I do. Some
of the peasants are _beautiful_ creatures, perfectly beautiful. But
that passes. And the mind endures."

I did not answer. M-----was not a man one talked far with. But I
thought to myself, I _could_ not accept M----'s superiority to the
peasant. If I had really to live always under the same roof with
either one of them, I would have chosen the peasant. If I had had to
choose, I would have chosen the peasant. Not because the peasant was
wonderful and stored with mystic qualities.  No, I don't give much for
the wonderful mystic qualities in peasants. Money is their mystery of
mysteries, absolutely. No, if I chose the peasant it would be for what
he _lacked_ rather than for what he had. He lacked that complacent
mentality that M-----was so proud of, he lacked all the trivial trash
of glib talk and more glib thought, all the conceit of our shallow
consciousness.  For his mindlessness I would have chosen the peasant:
and for his strong blood-presence. M-----wearied me with his facility
and his readiness to rush into speech, and for the exhaustive nature
of his presence. As if he had no strong blood in him to sustain him,
only this modern parasitic lymph which cries for sympathy all the,
time.

"Don't you think yourself that you are superior to that peasant?" he
asked me, rather ironically. He half expected me to say no.

"Yes, I do," I replied. "But I think most middle-class, most so-called
educated people are inferior to the peasant. I do that."

"Of course," said M-----readily. "In their _hypocrisy_----" He was
great against hypocrisy--especially the English sort.

"And if I think myself superior to the peasant, it is only that I feel
myself like the growing tip, or one of the growing tips of the tree,
and him like a piece of the hard, fixed tissue of the branch or trunk.
We're part of the same tree: and it's the same sap," said I.

"Why, exactly! Exactly!" cried M----. "Of course! The Church would
teach the same doctrine.  We are all one in Christ--but between our
souls and our duties there are great differences."

It is terrible to be agreed with, especially by a man like M----. All
that one says, and means, turns to nothing.

"Yes," I persisted. "But it seems to me the so-called culture,
education, the so-called leaders and leading-classes to-day, are only
parasites--like a great flourishing bush of parasitic consciousness
flourishing on top of the tree of life, and sapping it. The
consciousness of to-day doesn't rise from the roots. It is just
parasitic in the veins of life. And the middle and upper classes are
just parasitic upon the body of life which still remains in the lower
classes."

"What!" said M-----acidly. "Do you believe in the democratic lower
classes?"

"Not a bit," said I.

"I should think not, indeed!" he cried complacently.

"No, I don't believe the lower classes can ever make life whole again,
till they _do_ become humble, like the old peasants, and yield
themselves to real leaders. But not to great negators like Lloyd
George or Lenin or Briand."

"Of course! of course!" he cried. "What you need is the Church in
power again. The Church has a place for everybody."

"You don't think the Church belongs to the past?" I asked.

"Indeed I don't, or I shouldn't be here. No," he said sententiously,
"the Church is eternal. It puts people in their proper place. It puts
women down into _their_ proper place, which is the first thing to be
done----"

He had a great dislike of women, and was very acid about them. Not
because of their sins, but because of their virtues: their economies,
their philanthropies, their spiritualities. Oh, how he loathed women.
He had been married, but the marriage had not been a success. He
smarted still. Perhaps his wife had despised him, and he had not
_quite_ been able to defeat her contempt.

So, he loathed women, and wished for a world of men.  "They talk about
love between men and women," he said. "Why it's all a _fraud_. The
woman is just taking all and giving nothing, and feeling sanctified
about it.  All she tries to do is to thwart a man in whatever he is
doing. No, I have found my life in my _friendships_.  Physical
relationships are very attractive, of course, and one tries to keep
them as decent and all that as one can. But one knows they will pass
and be finished.  But one's _mental_ friendships last for ever."

"With me, on the contrary," said I. "If there is no profound
blood-sympathy, I know the mental friendship is trash. If there is
real, deep blood response, I will stick to that if I have to betray
all the mental sympathies I ever made, or all the lasting spiritual
loves I ever felt."

He looked at me, and his face seemed to fall. Round the eyes he was
yellow and tired and nervous. He watched me for some time.

"Oh!" he said, in a queer tone, rather cold. "Well, my experience has
been the opposite."

We were silent for some time,

"And you," I said, "even if you do manage to do all your studies and
enter the monastery, do you think you will be satisfied?"

"If I can be so fortunate, I do really," he said. "Do you doubt it?"

"Yes," I said. "Your nature is worldly, more worldly than mine. Yet I
should die if I had to stay up here."

"Why?" he asked, curiously.

"Oh, I don't know. The past, the past. The beautiful, the wonderful
past, it seems to prey on my heart, I can't bear it."

He watched me closely.

"Really!" he said stoutly. "Do you feel like that?  But don't you
think it is a far preferable life up here than down there? Don't you
think the past is far preferable to the future, with all this
_socialismo_ and these _com-munist_i and so on?"

We were seated, in the sunny afternoon, on the wild hill-top high
above the world. Across the stretch of pale, dry, standing thistles
that peopled the waste ground, and beyond the rocks was the ruined
convent. Rocks rose behind us, the summit. Away on the left were the
woods which hid us from the great monastery. This was the mountain
top, the last foothold of the old world.  Below we could see the
plain, the straight white road, straight as a thought, and the more
flexible black railway with the railway station. There swarmed the
_ferrovieri_ like ants. There was democracy, industrialism, socialism,
the red flag of the communists and the red, white and green tricolor
of the fascist! That was another world.  And how bitter, how barren a
world! Barren like the black cinder-track of the railway, with its two
steel lines.

And here above, sitting with the little stretch of pale, dry thistles
around us, our back to a warm rock, we were in the Middle Ages. Both
worlds were agony to me.  But here, on the mountain top was worst: The
past, the poignancy of the not-quite-dead past.

"I think one's got to go through with the life down there--get
somewhere beyond it. One can't go back," I said to him.

"But do you call the monastery going back?" he said.  "I don't. The
peace, the eternity, the concern with things that matter. I consider
it the happiest fate that could happen to me. Of course it means
putting physical things aside. But when you've done that--why, it
seems to me perfect."

"No," I said. "You're too worldly."

"But the monastery is worldly too. We're not Trappists. Why the
monastery is one of the centres of the world--one of the most active
centres."

"Maybe. But that impersonal activity, with the blood suppressed and
going sour--no, it's too late. It is too abstract--political
maybe------"

"I'm sorry you think so," he said, rising. "I don't."

"Well," I said. "You'll never be a monk here, M----.  You see if you
are."

"You don't think I shall?" he replied, turning to me. And there was a
catch of relief in his voice. Really, the monastic state must have
been like going to prison for him.

"You haven't a vocation," I said.

"I may not _seem_ to have, but I hope I actually have."

"You haven't."

"Of course, if you're so sure," he laughed, putting his hand on my
arm.

He seemed to understand so much, round about the questions that
trouble one deepest. But the quick of the question he never felt. He
had no real middle, no real centre bit to him. Yet, round and round
about all the questions, he was so intelligent and sensitive.

We went slowly back. The peaks of those Italian mountains in the
sunset, the extinguishing twinkle of the plain away below, as the sun
declined and grew yellow; the intensely powerful mediaeval spirit
lingering on this wild hill summit, all the wonder of the mediaeval
past; and then the huge mossy stones in the wintry wood, that was once
a sacred grove; the ancient path through the wood, that led from
temple to temple on the hill summit, before Christ was born; and then
the great Cyclopean wall one passes at the bend of the road, built
even before the pagan temples; all this overcame me so powerfully this
afternoon, that I was almost speechless.  That hill-top must have been
one of man's intense sacred places for three thousand years. And men
die generation after generation, races die, but the new cult finds
root in the old sacred place, and the quick spot of earth dies very
slowly. Yet at last it too dies. But this quick spot is still not
quite dead. The great monastery couchant there, half empty, but also
not quite dead. And M----and I walking across as the sun set yellow
and the cold of the snow came into the air, back home to the
monastery!  And I feeling as if my heart had once more broken: I don't
know why. And he feeling his fear of life, that haunted him, and his
fear of his own self and its consequences, that never left him for
long. And he seemed to walk close to me, very close. And we had
neither of us anything more to say.

Don Bernardo was looking for us as we came up under the archway, he
hatless in the cold evening, his black dress swinging voluminous.
There were letters for M----. There was a small cheque for him from
America--about fifty dollars--from some newspaper in the Middle West
that had printed one of his articles.  He had to talk with Don
Bernardo about this.

I decided to go back the next day. I could not stay any longer.
M-----was very disappointed, and begged me to remain. "I thought you
would stay a week at least," he said. "Do stay over Sunday. Oh do!"
But I couldn't, I didn't want to. I could see that his days were a
torture to him--the long, cold days in that vast quiet building, with
the strange and exhausting silence in the air, and the sense of the
past preying on one, and the sense of the silent, suppressed scheming
struggle of life going on still in the sacred place.

It was a cloudy morning. In the green courtyard the big Don Anselmo
had just caught the little Don Lorenzo round the waist and was
swinging him over a bush, like lads before school. The Prior was just
hurrying somewhere, following his long fine nose. He bade me goodbye;
pleasant, warm, jolly, with a touch of wistfulness in his deafness. I
parted with real regret from Don Bernardo.

M-----was coming with me down the hill--not down the carriage road,
but down the wide old paved path that swoops so wonderfully from the
top of the hill to the bottom. It feels thousands of years old.
M------was quiet and friendly. We met Don Vincenzo, he who has the
care of the land and crops, coming slowly, slowly uphill in his black
cassock, treading slowly with his great thick boots. He was reading a
little book. He saluted us as we passed. Lower down a strapping girl
was watching three merino sheep among the bushes. One sheep came on
its exquisite slender legs to smell of me, with that insatiable
curiosity of a pecora. Her nose was silken and elegant as she reached
it to sniff at me, and the yearning, wondering, inquisitive look in
her eyes, made me realize that the Lamb of God must have been such a
sheep as this.

M-----was miserable at my going. Not so much at my going, as at being
left alone up there. We came to the foot of the hill, on to the town
highroad. So we went into a little cave of a wine-kitchen to drink a
glass of wine. M-----chatted a little with the young woman.  He
chatted with everybody. She eyed us closely--and asked if we were from
the monastery. We said we were.  She seemed to have a little lurking
antagonism round her nose, at the mention of the monastery. M-----paid
for the wine--a franc. So we went out on the highroad, to part.

"Look," I said. "I can only give you twenty lire, because I shall need
the rest for the journey----"

But he wouldn't take them. He looked at me wistfully.  Then I went on
down to the station, he turned away uphill. It was market in the town,
and there were clusters of bullocks, and women cooking a little meal
at a brazier under the trees, and goods spread out on the floor to
sell, and sacks of beans and corn standing open, clustered round the
trunks of the mulberry trees, and wagons with their shafts on the
ground. The old peasants in their brown homespun frieze and skin
sandals were watching for the world. And there again was the Middle
Ages.

It began to rain, however. Suddenly it began to pour with rain, and my
coat was wet through, and my trouser-legs.  The train from Rome was
late--I hoped not very late, or I should miss the boat. She came at
last: and was full. I had to stand in the corridor. Then the man came
to say dinner was served, so I luckily got a place and had my meal
too. Sitting there in the dining-car, among the fat Neapolitans eating
their macaroni, with the big glass windows steamed opaque and the rain
beating outside, I let myself be carried away, away from the
monastery, away from M----, away from everything.

At Naples there was a bit of sunshine again, and I had time to go on
foot to the Immacolatella, where the little steamer lay. There on the
steamer I sat in a bit of sunshine, and felt that again the world had
come to an end for me, and again my heart was broken. The steamer
seemed to be making its way away from the old world, that had come to
another end in me.

It was after this I decided to go to Sicily. In February, only a few
days after my return from the monastery, I was on the steamer for
Palermo, and at dawn looking out on the wonderful coast of Sicily.
Sicily, tall, forever rising up to her gem-like summits, all golden in
dawn, and always glamorous, always hovering as if inaccessible, and
yet so near, so distinct. Sicily unknown to me, and
amethystine-glamorous in the Mediterranean dawn: like the dawn of our
day, the wonder-morning of our epoch.

I had various letters from M----. He had told me to go to Girgenti.
But I arrived in Girgenti when there was a strike of sulphur-miners,
and they threw stones.  So I did not want to live in Girgenti.
M-----hated Taormina--he had been everywhere, tried everywhere, and
was not, I found, in any good odour in most places.  He wrote however
saying he hoped I would like it. And later he sent the Legion
manuscript. I thought it was good, and told him so. It was offered to
publishers in London, but rejected.

In early April I went with my wife to Syracuse for a few days: lovely,
lovely days, with the purple anemones blowing in the Sicilian fields,
and Adonis-blood red on the little ledges, and the corn rising strong
and green in the magical, malarial places, and Etna flowing now to the
northward, still with her crown of snow. The lovely, lovely journey
from Catania to Syracuse, in spring, winding round the blueness of
that sea, where the tall pink asphodel was dying, and the yellow
asphodel like a lily showing her silk. Lovely, lovely Sicily, the
dawn-place, Europe's dawn, with Odysseus pushing his ship out of the
shadows into the blue. Whatever had died for me, Sicily had then not
died: dawn-lovely Sicily, and the Ionian sea.

We came back, and the world was lovely: our own house above the almond
trees, and the sea in the cove below. Calabria glimmering like a
changing opal away to the left, across the blue, bright straits, and
all the great blueness of the lovely dawn-sea in front, where the sun
rose with a splendour like trumpets every morning, and me rejoicing
like a madness in this dawn, day-dawn, life-dawn, the dawn which is
Greece, which is me.

Well, into this lyricism suddenly crept the serpent.  It was a lovely
morning, still early. I heard a noise on the stairs from the lower
terrace, and went to look.  M-----on the stairs, looking up at me with
a frightened face.

"Why!" I said. "Is it you?"

"Yes," he replied. "A terrible thing has happened."

He waited on the stairs, and I went down. Rather unwillingly, because
I detest terrible things, and the people to whom they happen. So we
leaned on the creeper-covered rail of the terrace, under festoons of
creamy bignonia flowers, and looked at the pale blue, ethereal sea.

"What terrible thing!" said I.

"When did you get back?" said he.

"Last evening."

"Oh! I came before. The contadini said they thought you would come
yesterday evening. I've been here several days."

"Where are you staying?"

"At the San Domenico."

The San Domenico being then the most expensive hotel here, I thought
he must have money. But I knew he wanted something of me.

"And are you staying some time?"

He paused a moment, and looked round cautiously.

"Is your wife there?" he asked, sotto voce.

"Yes, she's upstairs."

"Is there anyone who can hear?"

"No--only old Grazia down below, and she can't understand anyhow."

"Well," he said, stammering. "Let me tell you what's happened. I had
to escape from the monastery.  Don Bernardo had a telephone message
from the town below, that the carabinier! were looking for an
Americano--my name-----Of course you can guess how I felt, up there!
Awful! Well----! I had to fly at a moment's notice. I just put two
shirts in a handbag and went.  I slipped down a path--or rather, it
isn't a path--down the back of the hill. Ten minutes after Don
Bernardo had the message I was running down the hill."

"But what did they want you for?" I asked dismayed.

"Well," he faltered. "I told you about the cheque at Anzio, didn't I?
Well, it seems the hotel people applied to the police. Anyhow," he
added hastily, "I couldn't let myself be arrested up there, could I?
So awful for the monastery!"

"Did they know then that you were in trouble?" I asked.

"Don Bernardo knew I had no money," he said. "Of course he had to
know. Yes--he knew I was in _difficulty_.  But, of course, he didn't
know--well--_everything_." He laughed a little, comical laugh over the
_everything_, as if he was just a little bit naughtily proud of it:
most ruefully also.

"No," he continued, "that's what I'm most afraid of--that they'll find
out everything at the monastery.  Of course it's _dreadful_--the
Americano, been staying there for months, and everything so nice
and--, well you know how they are, they imagine every American is a
millionaire, if not a multi-millionaire. And suddenly to be wanted by
the police! Of course it's _dreadful_!  Anything rather than a scandal
at the monastery--anything.  Oh, how awful it was! I can tell you, in
that quarter of an hour, I sweated blood. Don Bernardo lent me two
hundred lire of the monastery money--which he'd no business to do. And
I escaped down the back of the hill, I walked to the next station up
the line, and took the next train--the slow train--a few stations up
towards Rome. And there I changed and caught the diretto for Sicily. I
came straight to you-----Of course I was in _agony_: imagine it! I
spent most of the time as far as Naples in the lavatory." He laughed
his little jerky laugh.

"What class did you travel?"

"Second. All through the night. I arrived more dead than alive, not
having had a meal for two days--only some sandwich stuff I bought on
the platform."

"When did you come then?"

"I arrived on Saturday evening. I came out here on Sunday morning, and
they told me you were away. Of course, imagine what it's like! I'm in
torture every minute, in torture, of course. Why just imagine!" And he
laughed his little laugh.

"But how much money have you got?"

"Oh--I've just got twenty-five francs and five soldi." He laughed as
if it was rather a naughty joke.

"But," I said, "if you've got no money, why do you go to the San
Domenico? How much do you pay there?"

"Fifty lire a day. Of course it's _ruinous_----"

"But at the Bristol you only pay twenty-five--and at Fichera's only
twenty."

"Yes, I know you do," he said. "But I stayed at the Bristol once, and
I loathed the place. Such an offensive manager. And I couldn't touch
the food at Fichera's."

"But who's going to pay for the San Domenico, then?" I asked.

"Well, I thought," he said, "you know all those manuscripts of mine?
Well, you think they're some good, don't you? Well, I thought if I
made them over to you, and you did what you could with them and just
kept me going till I can get a new start--or till I can get away----"

I looked across the sea: the lovely morning-blue sea towards Greece.

"Where do you want to get away to?" I said.

"To Egypt. I know a man in Alexandria who owns newspapers there. I'm
sure if I could get over there he'd give me an editorship or
something. And of course money will come. I've written to-----, who
was my _greatest_ friend, in London. He will send me something----"


"And what else do you expect?"

"Oh, my article on the monastery was accepted by _Land and
Water_--thanks to you and your kindness, of course. I thought if I
might stay very quietly with you, for a time, and write some things
I'm wanting to do, and collect a little money--and then get away to
Egypt----"

He looked up into my face, as if he were trying all he could on me.
First thing I knew was that I could not have him in the house with me:
and even if I could have done it, my wife never could.

"You've got a lovely place here, perfectly beautiful," he said. "Of
course, if it had to be Taormina, you've chosen far the best place
here. I like this side so much better than the Etna side. Etna always
there and people raving about it gets on my nerves. And a _charming_
house, _charming_."

He looked round the loggia and along the other terrace.

"Is it all yours?" he said.

"We don't use the ground floor. Come in here."

So we went into the salotto.

"Oh, what a beautiful room," he cried. "But perfectly palatial.
Charming! Charming! _Much_ the nicest house in Taormina."

"No," I said, "as a house it isn't very grand, though I like it for
myself. It's just what I want. And I love the situation. But I'll go
and tell my wife you are here."

"Will you?" he said, bridling nervously. "Of course I've never met
your wife." And he laughed the nervous, naughty, jokey little laugh.

I left him, and ran upstairs to the kitchen. There was my wife, with
wide eyes. She had been listening to catch the conversation. But
M----'s voice was too hushed.

"M----!" said I softly. "The carabinieri wanted to arrest him at the
monastery, so he has escaped here, and wants me to be responsible for
him."

"Arrest him what for?"

"Debts, I suppose. Will you come down and speak to him?"

M-----of course was very charming with my wife.  He kissed her hand
humbly, in the correct German fashion, and spoke with an air of
reverence that infallibly gets a woman.

"Such a beautiful place you have here," he said, glancing through the
open doors of the room, at the sea beyond. "So clever of you to find
it."

"Lawrence found it," said she. "Well, and you are in all kinds of
difficulty!"

"Yes, isn't it terrible!" he said, laughing as if it were a
joke--rather a wry joke. "I felt dreadful at the monastery. So
dreadful for them, if there was any sort of scandal. And after I'd
been so well received there--and so much the Signor
Americano-----Dreadful, don't you think?" He laughed again, like a
naughty boy.

We had an engagement to lunch that morning. My wife was dressed, so I
went to get ready. Then we told M-----we must go out, and he
accompanied us to the village. I gave him just the hundred francs I
had in my pocket, and he said could he come and see me that evening? I
asked him to come next morning.

"You're so awfully kind," he said, simpering a little.

But by this time I wasn't feeling kind.

"He's quite nice," said my wife. "But he's rather an impossible little
person. And you'll see, he'll be a nuisance. Whatever do you pick up
such dreadful people for?"

"Nay," I said. "You can't accuse me of picking up dreadful people.
He's the first. And even he isn't dreadful."

The next morning came a letter from Don Bernardo addressed to me, but
only enclosing a letter to M----.  So he was using my address. At ten
o'clock he punctually appeared: slipping in as if to avoid notice. My
wife would not see him, so I took him out on the terrace again.

"Isn't it beautiful here!" he said. "Oh, so beautiful!  If only I had
my peace of mind. Of course I sweat blood every time anybody comes
through the door. You are splendidly private out here."

"Yes," I said. "But M----, there isn't a room for you in the house.
There isn't a spare room anyway.  You'd better think of getting
something cheaper in the village."

"But what can I get?" he snapped.

That rather took my breath away. Myself, I had never been near the San
Domenico hotel. I knew I simply could not afford it.

"What made you go to the San Domenico in the first place?" I said.
"The most expensive hotel in the place!"

"Oh, I'd stayed there for two months, and they knew me, and I knew
they'd ask no questions. I knew they wouldn't ask for a deposit or
anything."

"But nobody dreams of asking for a deposit," I said.

"Anyhow I shan't take my meals there. I shall just take coffee in the
morning. I've had to eat there so far, because I was starved to death,
and had no money to go out. But I had two meals in that little
restaurant yesterday; disgusting food."

"And how much did that cost?"

"Oh fourteen francs and fifteen francs, with a quarter of wine--and
such a poor meal!"

Now I was annoyed, knowing that I myself should have bought bread and
cheese for one franc, and eaten it in my room. But also I realized
that the modern creed says, if you sponge, sponge thoroughly: and also
that every man has a "right to live," and that if he can manage to
live well, no matter at whose expense, all credit to him. This is the
kind of talk one accepts in one's slipshod moments; now it was
actually tried on me, I didn't like it at all.

"But who's going to pay your bill at the San Domenico?" I said.

"I thought you'd advance me the money on those manuscripts."

"It's no good talking about the money on the manuscripts," I said. "I
should have to give it to you. And as a matter of fact, I've got just
sixty pounds in the bank in England, and about fifteen hundred lire
here. My wife and I have got to live on that. We don't spend as much
in a week as you spend in three days at the San Domenico. It's no good
your thinking I can advance money on the manuscripts. I can't. If I
was rich, I'd give you money. But I've got no money, and never have
had any. Have you nobody you can go to?"

"I'm waiting to hear from-------. When I go back into the village,
I'll telegraph to him," replied M----, a little crestfallen. "Of
course I'm in torture night and day, or I wouldn't appeal to you like
this. I know it's unpleasant for you----" and he put his hand on my
arm and looked up beseechingly. "But what am I to do?"

"You must get out of the San Domenico," I said.  "That's the first
thing."

"Yes," he said, a little piqued now. "I know it is.  I'm going to ask
Pancrazio Melenga to let me have a room in his house. He knows me
quite well--he's an awfully nice fellow. He'll do _anything_ for
me--_anything_.  I was just going there yesterday afternoon when you
were coming from Timeo. He was out, so I left word with his wife, who
is a charming little person. If he has a room to spare, I know he will
let me have it.  And he's a _splendid_ cook-----splendid. By far the
nicest food in Taormina."

"Well," I said. "If you settle with Melenga, I will pay your bill at
the San Domenico, but I can't do any more. I simply can't."

"But what am I to _do_?" he snapped.

"I don't know," I said. "You must think."

"I came here," he said, "thinking you would help me. What am I to do,
if you won't? I shouldn't have come to Taormina at all, save for you.
Don't be unkind to me--don't speak so coldly to me----" He put his
hand on my arm, and looked up at me with tears swimming in his eyes.
Then he turned aside his face, overcome with tears. I looked away at
the Ionian sea, feeling my blood turn to ice and the sea go black. I
loathe scenes such as this.

"Did you telegraph to-------?" I said.

"Yes. I have no answer yet. I hope you don't mind--I gave your address
for a reply."

"Oh," I said. "There's a letter for you from Don Bernardo."

He went pale. I was angry at his having used my address in this
manner.

"Nothing further has happened at the monastery," he said. "They rang
up from the Questura, from the police station, and Don Bernardo
answered that the Americano had left for Rome. Of course I did take
the train for Rome. And Don Bernardo wanted me to go to Rome. He
advised me to do so. I didn't tell him I was here till I had got here.
He thought I should have had more resources in Rome, and of course I
should. I should certainly have gone there, if it hadn't been for
_you_ _here_----"

Well, I was getting tired and angry. I would not give him any more
money at the moment. I promised, if he would leave the hotel I would
pay his bill, but he must leave it at once. He went off to settle with
Melenga.  He asked again if he could come in the afternoon: I said I
was going out.

He came nevertheless while I was out. This time my wife found him on
the stairs. She was for hating him, of course. So she stood immovable
on the top stair, and he stood two stairs lower, and he kissed her
hand in utter humility. And he pleaded with her, and as he looked up
to her on the stairs the tears ran down his face and he trembled with
distress. And her spine crept up and down with distaste and
discomfort. But he broke into a few phrases of touching German, and I
know he broke down her reserve and she promised him all he wanted.
This part she would never confess, though. Only she was shivering with
revulsion and excitement and even a sense of power, when I came home.

That was why M-----appeared more impertinent than ever, next morning.
He had arranged to go to Melenga's house the following day, and to pay
ten francs a day for his room, his meals extra. So that was something.
He made a long tale about not eating any of his meals in the hotel
now, but pretending he was invited out, and eating in the little
restaurants where the food was so bad. And he had now only fifteen
lire left in his pocket. But I was cold, and wouldn't give him any
more. I said I would give him money next day, for his bill.

He had now another request, and a new tone.

"Won't you do _one more_ thing for me?" he said. "Oh do! Do do this
one thing for me. I want you to go to the monastery and bring away my
important papers and some clothes and my important trinkets. I have
made a list of the things here--and where you'll find them in my
writing-table and in the chest of drawers. I don't think you'll have
any trouble. Don Bernardo has the keys. He will open everything for
you. And I beg you, _in the name of God_, don't let anybody else see
the things.  Not even Don Bernardo. Don't, whatever you do, let him
see the papers and manuscripts you are bringing.  If he sees them,
there's an end to me at the monastery.  I can _never_ go back there. I
am ruined in their eyes for ever. As it is--although Don Bernardo is
the best person in the world and my dearest friend, still--you know
what people are--especially monks. A little curious, don't you know, a
little inquisitive. Well, let us hope for the best as far as that
goes. But you will do this for me, won't you? I shall be so eternally
grateful."

Now a journey to the monastery meant a terrible twenty hours in the
train each way--all that awful journey through Calabria to Naples and
northwards. It meant mixing myself up in this man's affairs. It meant
appearing as his accomplice at the monastery. It meant travelling with
all his "compromising" papers and his valuables. And all this time, I
never knew what mischiefs he had really been up to, and I didn't trust
him, not for one single second. He would tell me nothing save that
Anzio hotel cheque. I knew that wasn't all, by any means. So I
mistrusted him. And with a feeling of utter mistrust goes a feeling of
contempt and dislike----And finally, it would have cost me at least
ten pounds sterling, which I simply did not want to spend in waste.

"I don't want to do that," I said.

"Why not?" he asked, sharp, looking green. He had planned it all out.

"No, I don't want to."

"Oh, but I _can't_ remain here as I am. I've got no _clothes_--I've
got nothing to _wear_. I _must_ have my things from the monastery.
What can I do? What can I do?  I came to you, if it hadn't been for
you I should have gone to Rome. I came to you--Oh yes, you _will_ go.
You _will_ go, won't you? You _will_ go to the monastery for my
things?" And again he put his hand on my arm, and the tears began to
fall from his upturned eyes. I turned my head aside. Never had the
Ionian sea looked so sickening to me.

"I don't _want_ to," said I.

"But you _will_! You will! You _will_ go to the monastery for me,
won't you? Everything else is no good if you won't. I've nothing to
wear. I haven't got my manuscripts to work on, I can't do the things I
am doing. Here I live in a sweat of anxiety. I try to work, and I
can't settle. I can't do anything. It's dreadful.  I shan't have a
minute's peace till I have got those things from the monastery, till I
know they can't get at my private papers. You will do this for me! You
will, won't you? Please do! Oh please do!" And again tears.

And I with my bowels full of bitterness, loathing the thought of that
journey there and back, on such an errand. Yet not quite sure that I
ought to refuse.  And he pleaded and struggled, and tried to bully me
with tears and entreaty and reproach, to do his will.  And I couldn't
quite refuse. But neither could I agree.

At last I said:

"I don't want to go, and I tell you. I won't promise to go. And I
won't say that I will not go. I won't say until to-morrow. To-morrow I
will tell you. Don't come to the house. I will be in the Corso at ten
o'clock."

"I didn't doubt for a minute you would do this for me," he said.
"Otherwise I should never have come to Taormina." As if he had done me
an honour in coming to Taormina; and as if I had betrayed _him_.

"Well," I said. "If you make these messes you'll have to get out of
them yourself. I don't know why you are _in_ such a mess."

"Any man may make a mistake," he said sharply, as if correcting me.

"Yes, a _mistake_!" said I. "If it's a question of a mistake."

So once more he went, humbly, beseechingly, and yet, one could not
help but feel, with all that terrible insolence of the humble. It is
the humble, the wistful, the would-be-loving souls to-day who bully us
with their charity-demanding insolence. They just make up their minds,
these needful sympathetic souls, that one is there to do their will.
Very good.

I decided in the day I would _not_ go. Without reasoning it out, I
knew I _really_ didn't want to go. I plainly didn't want it. So I
wouldn't go.

The morning came again hot and lovely. I set off to the village. But
there was M-----watching for me on the path beyond the valley. He came
forward and took my hand warmly, clingingly. I turned back, to remain
in the country. We talked for a minute of his leaving the hotel--he
was going that afternoon, he had asked for his bill. But he was
waiting for the other answer.

"And I have decided," I said, "I won't go to the monastery."

"You won't." He looked at me. I saw how yellow he was round the eyes,
and yellow under his reddish skin.

"No," I said.

And it was final. He knew it. We went some way in silence. I turned in
at the garden gate. It was a lovely, lovely morning of hot sun.
Butterflies were flapping over the rosemary hedges and over a few
little red poppies, the young vines smelt sweet in flower, very sweet,
the corn was tall and green, and there were still some wild, rose-red
gladiolus flowers among the watery green of the wheat. M-----had
accepted my refusal.  I expected him to be angry. But no, he seemed
quieter, wistfuller, and he seemed almost to love me for having
refused him. I stood at a bend in the path. The sea was heavenly blue,
rising up beyond the vines and olive leaves, lustrous pale lacquer
blue as only the Ionian sea can be. Away at the brook below the women
were washing, and one could hear the chock-chock-chock of linen beaten
against the stones. I felt M-----then an intolerable weight and like a
clot of dirt over everything.

"May I come in?" he said to me.

"No," I said. "Don't come to the house. My wife doesn't want it."

Even that he accepted without any offence, and seemed only to like me
better for it. That was a puzzle to me.  I told him I would leave a
letter and a cheque for him at the bank in the Corso that afternoon.

I did so, writing a cheque for a few pounds, enough to cover his bill
and leave a hundred lire or so over, and a letter to say I could _not_
do any more, and I didn't want to see him any more.

So, there was an end of it for a moment. Yet I felt him looming in the
village, waiting. I had rashly said I would go to tea with him to the
villa of one of the Englishmen resident here, whose acquaintance I had
not made. Alas, M-----kept me to the promise. As I came home he
appealed to me again. He was rather insolent.  What good to him, he
said, were the few pounds I had given him? He had got a hundred and
fifty lire left.  What good was that? I realized it really was not a
solution, and said nothing. Then he spoke of his plans for getting to
Egypt. The fare, he had found out, was thirty-five pounds. And where
were thirty-five pounds coming from? Not from me.

I spent a week avoiding him, wondering what on earth the poor devil
was doing, and yet _determined_ he should not be a parasite on me. If
I could have given him fifty pounds and sent him to Egypt to be a
parasite on somebody else, I would have done so. Which is what we call
charity. However, I couldn't.

My wife chafed, crying: "What have you done!  We shall have him on our
hands all our life. We can't let him starve. It is degrading,
degrading, to have him hanging on to us."

"Yes," I said. "He must starve or work or something.  I am not God who
is responsible for him."

M-----was determined not to lose his status as a gentleman.  In a way
I sympathized with him. He would never be out at elbows. That is your
modern rogue.  He will not degenerate outwardly. Certain standards of
a gentleman he _would_ keep up: he would be well-dressed, he would be
lavish with borrowed money, he would be as far as possible honourable
in his small transactions of daily life. Well, very good. I
sympathized with him to a certain degree. If he could find his own way
out, well and good. Myself, I was not his way out.

Ten days passed. It was hot and I was going about the terrace in
pyjamas and a big old straw hat, when suddenly, a Sicilian, handsome,
in the prime of life, and in his best black suit, smiling at me and
taking off his hat!

And could he speak to me. I threw away my straw hat, and we went into
the salotto. He handed me a note.

"II Signor M-----mi ha dato questa lettera per Lei!" he began, and I
knew what was coming. Melenga had been a waiter in good hotels, had
saved money, built himself a fine house which he let to foreigners. He
was a pleasant fellow, and at his best now, because he was in a rage.
I must repeat M----'s letter from memory--"Dear Lawrence, would you do
me another kindness.  _Land and Water_ sent a cheque for seven guineas
for the article on the monastery, and Don Bernardo forwarded this to
me under Melenga's name. But unfortunately he made a mistake, and put
Orazio instead of Pancrazio, so the post office would not deliver the
letter, and have returned it to the monastery. This morning Melenga
insulted me, and I cannot stay in his house another minute. Will you
be so kind as to advance me these seven guineas, and I shall leave
Taormina at once, for Malta."

I asked Melenga what had happened, and read him the letter. He was
handsome in his rage, lifting his brows and suddenly smiling:

"Ma senta, Signore! Signor M-----has been in my house for ten days,
and lived well, and eaten well, and drunk well, and I have not seen a
single penny of his money. I go out in the morning and buy all the
things, all he wants, and my wife cooks it, and he is very pleased,
very pleased, has never eaten such good food in his life, and
everything is splendid, splendid. And he never pays a penny. Not a
penny. Says he is waiting for money from England, from America, from
India. But the money never comes. And I am a poor man, signore, I have
a wife and child to keep. I have already spent three hundred lire for
this Signor M----, and I never see a penny of it back. And he says the
money is coming, it is coming-----But when? He never says he has got
no money. He says he is expecting. To-morrow--always to-morrow. It
will come to-night, it will come to-morrow. This makes me in a rage.
Till at last this morning I said to him I would bring nothing in, and
he shouldn't have not so much as a drop of coffee in my house until he
paid for it. It displeases me, Signore, to say such a thing. I have
known Signor M-----for many years, and he has always had money, and
always been pleasant, molto bravo, and also generous with his money.
Si, lo so! And my wife, poverina, she cries and says if the man has no
money he must eat. But he doesn't say he has no money. He says always
it is coming, it is coming, to-day, to-morrow, to-day, to-morrow. E
non viene mai niente. And this enrages me, Signore. So I said that to
him this morning. And he said he wouldn't stay in my house, and that I
had insulted him, and he sends me this letter to you, signore, and
says you will send him the money. Ecco come!"

Between his rage he smiled at me. One thing however I could see: he
was not going to lose his money, M----or no M----.

"Is it true that a letter came which the post would not deliver?" I
asked him.

"Si signore, e vero. It came yesterday, addressed to me. And why,
signore, why do his letters come addressed in my name? Why? Unless he
has done something----?"

He looked at me enquiringly. I felt already mixed up in shady affairs.

"Yes," I said, "there is something. But I don't know exactly what. I
don't ask, because I don't want to know in these affairs. It is better
not to know."

"Gia! Gia! Molto meglio, signore. There will be something. There will
be something happened that he had to escape from that monastery. And
it will be some affair of the police."

"Yes, I think so," said I. "Money and the police.  Probably debts. I
don't ask. He is only an acquaintance of mine, not a friend."

"Sure it will be an affair of the police," he said with a grimace. "If
not, why does he use my name! Why don't his letters come in his own
name? Do you believe, signore, that he has any money? Do you think
this money will come?"

"I'm sure he's _got_ no money," I said. "Whether anybody will send him
any I don't know."

The man watched me attentively.

"He's got nothing?" he said.

"No. At the present he's got nothing."

Then Pancrazio exploded on the sofa.

"Allora! Well then! Well then, why does he come to my house, why does
he come and take a room in my house, and ask me to buy food, good food
as for a gentleman who can pay, and a flask of wine, and everything,
if he has no money. If he has no money, why does he come to Taormina?
It is many years that he has been in Italy--ten years, fifteen years.
And he has no money. Where has he had his money from before?  Where?"

"From his writing, I suppose."

"Well then why doesn't he get money for his writing now? He writes. He
writes, he works, he says it is for the big newspapers."

"It is difficult to sell things."

"Heh! then why doesn't he live on what he made before? He hasn't a
soldo. He hasn't a penny--But how! How did he pay his bill at the San
Domenico?"

"I had to lend him the money for that. He really hadn't a penny."

"You! You! Well then, he has been in Italy all these years. How is it
he has nobody that he can ask for a hundred lire or two? Why does he
come to you?  Why? Why has he nobody in Rome, in Florence, anywhere?"

"I wonder that myself."

"Sicuro! He's been all these years here. And why doesn't he speak
proper Italian? After all these years, and speaks all upside-down, it
isn't Italian, an ugly confusion. Why? Why? He passes for a signore,
for a man of education. And he comes to take the bread out of my
mouth. And I have a wife and child, I am a poor man, I have nothing to
eat myself if everything goes to a mezzo-signore like him. Nothing! He
owes me now three hundred lire. But he will not leave my house, he
will not leave Taormina till he has paid. I will go to the Prefettura,
I will go to the Questura, to the police. I will not be swindled by
such a mezzo-signore. What does he want to do? If he has no money,
what does he want to do?"

"To go to Egypt where he says he can earn some," I replied briefly.
But I was feeling bitter in the mouth.  When the man called M-----a
mezzo-signore, a half-gentleman, it was so true. And at the same time
it was so cruel, and so rude. And Melenga--there I sat in my pyjamas
and sandals--probably he would be calling me also a mezzo-signore, or
a quarto-signore even. He was a Sicilian who feels he is being done
out of his money--and that is saying everything.

"To Egypt! And who will pay for him to go? Who will give him money?
But he must pay me first. He must pay me first."

"He says," I said, "that in the letter which went back to the
monastery there was a cheque for seven pounds--some six hundred
lire--and he asks me to send him this money, and when the letter is
returned again I shall have the cheque that is in it."

Melenga watched me.

"Six hundred lire----" he said.

"Yes."

"Oh well then. If he pays me, he can stay----" he said; he almost
added: "till the six hundred is finished." But he left it unspoken.

"But am I going to send the money? Am I sure that what he says is
true?"

"I think it is true. I think it is true," said he. "The letter _did_
come."

I thought for a while.

"First," I said, "I will write and ask him if it is quite true, and to
give me a guarantee."

"Very well," said Melenga.

I wrote to M----, saying that if he could assure me that what he said
about the seven guineas was quite correct, and if he would give me a
note to the editor of _Land and Water_, saying that the cheque was to
be paid to me, I would send the seven guineas.

Melenga was back in another half-hour. He brought a note which began:

"Dear Lawrence, I seem to be living in an atmosphere of suspicion.
First Melenga this morning, and now you----" Those are the exact
opening words. He went on to say that of course his word was true, and
he enclosed a note to the editor, saying the seven guineas were to be
transferred to me. He asked me please to send the money, as he could
not stay another night at Melenga's house, but would leave for
Catania, where, by the sale of some trinkets, he hoped to make some
money and to see once more about a passage to Egypt. He had been to
Catania once already--travelling _third class_!--but had failed to
find any cargo boat that would take him to Alexandria. He would get
away now to Malta. His things were being sent down to Syracuse from
the monastery.

I wrote and said I hoped he would get safely away, and enclosed the
cheque.

"This will be for six hundred lire," said Melenga.

"Yes," said I.

"Eh, va bene! If he pays the three hundred lire, he can stop in my
house for thirty lire a day."

"He says he won't sleep in your house again."

"Ma! Let us see. If he likes to stay. He has always been a bravo
signore. I have always liked him quite well. If he wishes to stay and
pay me thirty lire a day----"

The man smiled at me rather greenly.

"I'm afraid he is offended," said I.

"Eh, va bene! Ma senta, signore. When he was here before--you know I
have this house of mine to let.  And you know the English signorina
goes away in the summer. Oh, very well. Says M----, he writes for a
newspaper, he owns a newspaper, I don't know what, in Rome. He will
put in an advertisement advertising my villa. And so I shall get
somebody to take it. Very well. And he put in the advertisement. He
sent me the paper and I saw it there. But no one came to take my
villa. Va bene! But after a year, in the January, that is, came a bill
for me for twenty-two lire to pay for it. Yes, I had to pay the
twenty-two lire, for nothing--for the advertisement which Signore
M-----put in the paper."

"Bah!" said I.

He shook hands with me and left. The next day he came after me in the
street and said that M-----had departed the previous evening for
Catania. As a matter of fact the post brought me a note of thanks from
Catania. M-----was never indecent, and one could never dismiss him
just as a scoundrel. He was not. He was one of these modern parasites
who just assume their right to live and live well, leaving the payment
to anybody who can, will, or must pay. The end is inevitably
swindling.

There came also a letter from Rome, addressed to me.  I opened it
unthinking. It was for M----, from an Italian lawyer, stating that
enquiry had been made about the writ against M----, and that it was
for _qualche affaro di truffa_, some affair of swindling: that the
lawyer had seen this, that and the other person, but nothing could be
done. He regretted, etc. etc. I forwarded this letter to M-----at
Syracuse, and hoped to God it was ended. Ah, I breathed free now he
had gone.

But no. A friend who was with us dearly wanted to go to Malta. It is
only about eighteen hours' journey from Taormina--easier than going to
Naples. So our friend invited us to take the trip with her, as her
guests.  This was rather jolly. I calculated that M------, who had
been gone a week or so, would easily have got to Malta. I had had a
friendly letter from him from Syracuse, thanking me for the one I had
forwarded, and enclosing an I.O.U. for the various sums of money he
had had.

So, on a hot, hot Thursday, we were sitting in the train again running
south, the four and a half hours journey to Syracuse. And
M-----dwindled now into the past. If we should see him! But no, it was
impossible.  After all the wretchedness of that affair we were in
holiday spirits.

The train ran into Syracuse station. We sat on, to go the few yards
further into the port. A tout climbed on the foot-board: were we going
to Malta? Well, we couldn't. There was a strike of the steamers, we
couldn't go. When would the steamer go? Who knows?  Perhaps to-morrow.

We got down crestfallen. What should we do?  There stood the express
train about to start off back northwards. We could be home again that
evening.  But no, it would be too much of a fiasco. We let the train
go, and trailed off into the town, to the Grand Hotel, which is an old
Italian place just opposite the port. It is rather a dreary hotel--and
many bloodstains of squashed mosquitoes on the bedroom walls. Ah, vile
mosquitoes!

However, nothing to be done. Syracuse port is fascinating too, a tiny
port with the little Sicilian ships having the slanting eyes painted
on the prow, to see the way, and a coal boat from Cardiff, and one
American and two Scandinavian steamers--no more. But there were two
torpedo boats in the harbour, and it was like a festa, a strange,
lousy festa.

Beautiful the round harbour where the Athenian ships came. And
wonderful, beyond, the long sinuous sky-line of the long flat-topped
table-land hills which run along the southern coast, so different from
the peaky, pointed, bunched effect of many-tipped Sicily in the north.
The sun went down behind that lovely, sinuous sky-line, the harbour
water was gold and red, the people promenaded in thick streams under
the pomegranate trees and hibiscus trees. Arabs in white burnouses and
fat Turks in red fezzes and black alpaca long coats strolled
also--waiting for the steamer.

Next day it was very hot. We went to the consul and the steamer
agency. There was real hope that the brute of a steamer might actually
sail that night. So we stayed on, and wandered round the town on the
island, the old solid town, and sat in the church looking at the grand
Greek columns embedded there in the walls.

When I came in to lunch the porter said there was a letter for me.
Impossible! said I. But he brought me a note. Yes. M----! He was
staying at the other hotel along the front. "Dear Lawrence, I saw you
this morning, all three of you walking down the Via Nazionale, but you
would not look at me. I have got my visés and everything ready. The
strike of the steamboats has delayed me here. I am sweating blood. I
have a last request to make of you. Can you let me have ninety lire,
to make up what I need for my hotel bill? If I cannot have this I am
lost. I hoped to find you at the hotel but the porter said you were
out. I am at the Casa Politi, passing every half-hour in agony. If you
can be so kind as to stretch your generosity to this last loan, of
course I shall be eternally grateful. I can pay you back once I get to
Malta----"

Well, here was a blow! The worst was that he thought I had cut him--a
thing I wouldn't have done. So after luncheon behold me going through
the terrific sun of that harbour front of Syracuse, an enormous and
powerful sun, to the Casa Politi. The porter recognized roe and looked
enquiringly. M-----was out, and I said I would call again at four
o'clock.

It happened we were in the town eating ices at four, so I didn't get
to his hotel till half-past. He was out--gone to look for me. So I
left a note saying I had not seen him in the Via Nazionale, that I had
called twice, and that I should be in the Grand Hotel in the evening.

When we came in at seven, M-----in the hall, sitting the picture of
misery and endurance. He took my hand in both his, and bowed to the
women, who nodded and went upstairs. He and I went and sat in the
empty lounge. Then he told me the trials he had had--how his luggage
had come, and the station had charged him eighteen lire a day for
deposit--how he had had to wait on at the hotel because of the
ship--how he had tried to sell his trinkets, and had to-day parted
with his opal sleevelinks--so that now he only wanted seventy, not
ninety lire. I gave him a hundred note, and he looked into my eyes,
his own eyes swimming with tears, and he said he was sweating blood.

Well, the steamer went that night. She was due to leave at ten. We
went on board after dinner. We were going second class. And so, for
once, was M----.  It was only an eight hours' crossing, yet, in spite
of all the blood he had sweated, he would not go third class.  In a
way I admired him for sticking to his principles.  I should have gone
third myself, out of shame of spending somebody else's money. He would
not give way to such weakness. He knew that as far as the world goes,
you're a first-class gentleman if you have a first-class ticket; if
you have a third, no gentleman at all. It behoved him to be a
gentleman. I understood his point, but the women were indignant. And I
was just rather tired of him and his gentlemanliness.

It amused me very much to lean on the rail of the upper deck and watch
the people coming on board--first going into the little customs house
with their baggage, then scuffling up the gangway on board. The tall
Arabs in their ghostly white woollen robes came carrying their sacks:
they were going on to Tripoli.  The fat Turk in his fez and long black
alpaca coat with white drawers underneath came beaming up to the
second class. There was a great row in the customs house: and then,
simply running like a beetle with rage, there came on board a little
Maltese or Greek fellow, followed by a tall lantern-jawed fellow: both
seedy-looking scoundrels suckled in scoundrelism. They raved and
nearly threw their arms away into the sea, talking wildly in some
weird language with the fat Turk, who listened solemnly, away below on
the deck. Then they rushed to somebody else. Of course, we were dying
with curiosity. Thank heaven I heard men talking in Italian.  It
appears the two seedy fellows were trying to smuggle silver coin in
small sacks and rolls out of the country.  They were detected. But
they declared they had a right to take it away, as it was foreign
specie, English florins and half-crowns, and South American dollars
and Spanish money. The customs-officers however detained the lot.  The
little enraged beetle of a fellow ran back and forth from the ship to
the customs, from the customs to the ship, afraid to go without his
money, afraid the ship would go without him.

At five minutes to ten, there came M----: very smart in his little
grey overcoat and grey curly hat, walking very smart and erect and
genteel, and followed by a porter with a barrow of luggage. They went
into the customs, M-----in his grey suède gloves passing rapidly and
smartly in, like the grandest gentleman on earth, and with his grey
suède hands throwing open his luggage for inspection. From on board we
could see the interior of the little customs shed.

Yes, he was through. Brisk, smart, superb, like the grandest little
gentleman on earth, strutting because he Was late, he crossed the bit
of flagged pavement and came up the gangway, haughty as you can wish.
The carabinieri were lounging by the foot of the gangway, fooling with
one another. The little gentleman passed them with his nose in the
air, came quickly on board, followed by his porter, and in a moment
disappeared.  After about five minutes the porter reappeared--a
red-haired fellow, I knew him--he even saluted me from below, the
brute. But M-----lay in hiding.

I trembled for him at every unusual stir. There on the quay stood the
English consul with his bull-dog, and various elegant young officers
with yellow on their uniforms, talking to elegant young Italian ladies
in black hats with stiff ospreys and bunchy furs, and gangs of porters
and hotel people and onlookers. Then came a tramp-tramp-tramp of a
squad of soldiers in red fezzes and baggy grey trousers. Instead of
coming on board they camped on the quay. I wondered if all these had
come for poor M----. But apparently not.

So the time passed, till nearly midnight, when one of the elegant
young lieutenants began to call the names of the soldiers: and the
soldiers answered: and one after another filed on board with their
kit. So, they were on board, on their way to Africa.

Now somebody called out--and the visitors began to leave the boat.
Barefooted sailors and a boy ran to raise the gangway. The last
visitor or official with a bunch of papers stepped off the gangway.
People on shore began to wave handkerchiefs. The red-fezzed soldiers
leaned like so many flower-pots over the lower rail. There was a
calling of farewells. The ship was fading into the harbour, the people
on shore seemed smaller, under the lamp, in the deep night--without
one's knowing why.

So, we passed out of the harbour, passed the glittering lights of
Ortygia, past the two lighthouses, into the open Mediterranean. The
noise of a ship in the open sea!  It was a still night, with stars,
only a bit chill. And the ship churned through the water.

Suddenly, like a revenant, appeared M-----near us, leaning on the rail
and looking back at the lights of Syracuse sinking already forlorn and
little on the low darkness. I went to him.

"Well," he said, with his little smirk of a laugh.  "Good-bye Italy!"

"Not a sad farewell either," said I.

"No, my word, not this time," he said. "But what an awful long time we
were starting! A brutta mezz'ora for me, indeed. Oh, my word, I begin
to breathe free for the first time since I left the monastery! How
awful it's been! But of course, in Malta, I shall be all right. Don
Bernardo has written to his friends there.  They'll have everything
ready for me that I want, and I can pay you back the money you so
kindly lent me."

We talked for some time, leaning on the inner rail of the upper deck.

"Oh," he said, "there's Commander So-and-so, of the British fleet.
He's stationed in Malta. I made his acquaintance in the hotel. I hope
we're going to be great friends in Malta. I hope I shall have an
opportunity to introduce you to him. Well, I suppose you will want to
be joining your ladies. So long, then. Oh, for to-morrow morning! I
never longed so hard to be in the British Empire----" He laughed, and
strutted away.

In a few minutes we three, leaning on the rail of the second-class
upper deck, saw our little friend large as life on the first-class
deck, smoking a cigar and chatting in an absolutely first-class-ticket
manner with the above mentioned Commander. He pointed us out to the
Commander, and we felt the first-class passengers were looking across
at us second-class passengers with pleasant interest. The women went
behind a canvas heap to laugh, I hid my face under my hat-brim to grin
and watch. Larger than any first-class ticketer leaned our little
friend on the first-class rail, and whiffed at his cigar. So _dégagé_
and so genteel he could be. Only I noticed he wilted a little when the
officers of the ship came near.

He was still on the first-class deck when we went down to sleep. In
the morning I came up soon after dawn.  It was a lovely summer
Mediterranean morning, with the sun rising up in a gorgeous golden
rage, and the sea so blue, so fairy blue, as the Mediterranean is in
summer.  We were approaching quite near to a rocky, pale yellow island
with some vineyards, rising magical out of the swift blue sea into the
morning radiance. The rocks were almost as pale as butter, the islands
were like golden shadows loitering in the midst of the Mediterranean,
lonely among all the blue.

M-----came up to my side.

"Isn't it lovely! Isn't it beautiful!" he said. "I love approaching
these islands in the early morning." He had almost recovered his
assurance, and the slight pomposity and patronizing tone I had first
known in him.  "In two hours I shall be free! Imagine it! Oh what a
beautiful feeling!" I looked at him in the morning light. His face was
a good deal broken by his last month's experience, older looking, and
dragged. Now that the excitement was nearing its end, the tiredness
began to tell on him. He was yellowish round the eyes, and the whites
of his round, rather impudent blue eyes were discoloured.

Malta was drawing near. We saw the white fringe of the sea upon the
yellow rocks, and a white road looping on the yellow rocky hillside. I
thought of St. Paul, who must have been blown this way, must have
struck the island from this side. Then we saw the heaped glitter of
the square facets of houses, Valletta, splendid above the
Mediterranean, and a tangle of shipping and Dreadnoughts and
watch-towers in the beautiful, locked-in harbour.

We had to go down to have passports examined. The officials sat in the
long saloon. It was a horrible squash and squeeze of the first and
second-class passengers.  M-----was a little ahead of me. I saw the
American eagle on his passport. Yes, he passed all right. Once more he
was free. As he passed away he turned and gave a condescending affable
nod to me and to the Commander, who was just behind me.

The ship was lying in Valletta harbour. I saw M----, quite superb and
brisk now, ordering a porter with his luggage into a boat. The great
rocks rose above us, yellow and carved, cut straight by man. On top
were all the houses. We got at last into a boat and were rowed ashore.
Strange to be on British soil and to hear English. We got a carriage
and drove up the steep highroad through the cutting in the rock, up to
the town.  There, in the big square we had coffee, sitting out of
doors. A military band went by, playing splendidly in the bright, hot
morning. The Maltese lounged about, and watched. Splendid the band,
and the soldiers!  One felt the splendour of the British Empire, let
the world say what it likes. But alas, as one stayed on even in Malta,
one felt the old lion had gone foolish and amiable. Foolish and
amiable, with the weak amiability of old age.

We stayed in the Great Britain Hotel. Of course one could not be in
Valletta for twenty-four hours without meeting M----. There he was, in
the Strada Reale, strutting in a smart white duck suit, with a white
piqué cravat. But alas, he had no white shoes: they had got lost or
stolen. He had to wear black boots with his summer finery.

He was staying in an hotel a little further down our street, and he
begged me to call and see him, he begged me to come to lunch. I
promised and went. We went into his bedroom, and he rang for more
sodas.

"How wonderful it is to be here!" he said brightly.  "Don't you like
it immensely? And oh, how wonderful to have a whisky and soda! Well
now, say when."

He finished one bottle of Black and White, and opened another. The
waiter, a good-looking Maltese fellow, appeared with two syphons.
M-----was very much the signore with him, and at the same time very
familiar: as I should imagine a rich Roman of the merchant class might
have been with a pet slave. We had quite a nice lunch, and whisky and
soda and a bottle of French wine.  And M-----was the charming and
attentive host.

After lunch we talked again of manuscripts and publishers and how he
might make money. I wrote one or two letters for him. He was anxious
to get something under way. And yet the trouble of these arrangements
was almost too much for his nerves. His face looked broken and old,
but not like an old man, like an old boy, and he was really very
irritable.

For my own part I was soon tired of Malta, and would gladly have left
after three days. But there was the strike of steamers still, we had
to wait on. M----professed to be enjoying himself hugely, making
excursions every day, to St. Paul's Bay and to the other islands.  He
had also made various friends or acquaintances.  Particularly two
young men, Maltese, who were friends of Don Bernardo. He introduced me
to these two young men: one Gabriel Mazzaiba and the other Salonia.
They had small businesses down on the wharf. Salonia asked M-----to go
for a drive in a motor-car round the island, and M-----pressed me to
go too. Which I did.  And swiftly, on a Saturday afternoon, we dodged
about in the car upon that dreadful island, first to some fearful and
stony bay, arid, treeless, desert, a bit of stony desert by the sea,
with unhappy villas and a sordid, scrap-iron front: then away inland
up long and dusty roads, across a bone-dry, bone-bare, hideous
landscape. True, there was ripening corn, but this was all of a colour
with the dust-yellow, bone-bare island. Malta is all a pale, softish,
yellowish rock, just like bathbrick: this goes into fathomless dust.
And the island is stark as a corpse, no trees, no bushes even: a
fearful landscape, cultivated, and weary with ages of weariness, and
old weary houses here and there.

We went to the old capital in the centre of the island, and this is
interesting. The town stands on a bluff of hill in the middle of the
dreariness, looking at Valletta in the distance, and the sea. The
houses are all pale yellow, and tall, and silent, as if forsaken.
There is a cathedral, too, and a fortress outlook over the sun-blazed,
sun-dried, disheartening island. Then we dashed off to another village
and climbed a church-dome that rises like a tall blister on the plain,
with houses round and corn beyond and dust that has no glamour, stale,
weary, like bone-dust, and thorn hedges sometimes, and some tin-like
prickly pears. In the dusk we came round by St. Paul's Bay, back to
Valletta.

The young men were very pleasant, very patriotic for Malta, very
Catholic. We talked politics and a thousand things. M-----was gently
patronizing, and seemed, no doubt, to the two Maltese a very elegant
and travelled and wonderful gentleman. They, who had never seen even a
wood, thought how wonderful a forest must be, and M-----talked to them
of Russia and of Germany.

But I was glad to leave that bone-dry, hideous island.  M-------begged
me to stay longer: but not for worlds!  He was establishing himself
securely: was learning the Maltese language, and cultivating a
thorough acquaintance with the island. And he was going to establish
himself.  Mazzaiba was exceedingly kind to him, helping him in every
way. In Rabato, the suburb of the old town--a quiet, forlorn little
yellow street--he found a tiny house of two rooms and a tiny garden.
This would cost five pounds a year. Mazzaiba lent the furniture--and
when I left, M-----was busily skipping back and forth from Rabato to
Valletta, arranging his little home, and very pleased with it. He was
also being very Maltese, and rather anti-British, as is essential,
apparently, when one is not a Britisher and finds oneself in any part
of the British Empire. M-----was very much the American gentleman.

Well, I was thankful to be home again and to know that he was safely
shut up in that beastly island. He wrote me letters, saying how he
loved it all, how he would go down to the sea--five or six miles'
walk--at dawn, and stay there all day, studying Maltese and writing
for the newspapers. The life was fascinating, the summer was
blisteringly hot, and the Maltese were most attractive, especially
when they knew you were not British. Such good-looking fellows, too,
and do anything you want. Wouldn't I come and spend a month?--I did
not answer--felt I had had enough. Came a postcard from M----: "I
haven't had a letter from you, nor any news at all. I am afraid you
are ill, and feel so anxious. Do write----" But no, I didn't want to
write.

During August and September and half October we were away in the
north. I forgot my little friend: hoped he was gone out of my life.
But I had that fatal sinking feeling that he _hadn't_ really gone out
of it yet.

In the beginning of November a little letter from Don Bernardo--did I
know that M-----had committed suicide in Malta? Following that, a
scrubby Maltese newspaper, posted by Salonia, with a marked notice:
"The suicide of an American gentleman at Rabato. Yesterday the
American M-------M----, a well-built man in the prime of life, was
found dead in his bed in his house at Rabato.  By the bedside was a
bottle containing poison. The deceased had evidently taken his life by
swallowing prussic acid. Mr. M-----had been staying for some months on
the island, studying the language and the conditions, with a view to
writing a book. It is understood that financial difficulties were the
cause of this lamentable event."

Then Mazzaiba wrote asking me what I knew of M----, and saying the
latter had borrowed money which he, Mazzaiba, would like to recover. I
replied at once, and then received the following letter from Salonia.
"Valletta, 20 November, 1920. My dear Mr. Lawrence, some time back I
mailed you our _Daily Malta Chronicle_ which gave an account of the
death of M----. I hope you have received same. As the statements
therein given were very vague and not quite correct, please accept the
latter part of this letter as a more correct version.

"The day before yesterday Mazzaiba received your letter which he gave
me to read. As you may suppose we were very much astonished by its
general purport.  Mazzaiba will be writing to you in a few days, in
the meantime I volunteered to give you the details you asked for.

"Mazzaiba and I have done all in our power to render M----'s stay here
as easy and pleasant as possible from the time we first met him in
your company at the Great Britain Hotel. [This is not correct. They
were already quite friendly with M-----before that motor-drive, when I
saw these two Maltese for the first time.] He lived in an embarrassed
mood since then, and though we helped him as best we could both
morally and financially he never confided to us his troubles. To this
very day we cannot but look on his coming here and his stay amongst
us, to say the least of the way he left us, as a huge farce wrapped up
in mystery, a painful experience unsolicited by either of us and a
cause of grief unrequited except by our own personal sense of duty
towards a stranger.

"Mazzaiba out of mere respect did not tell me of his commitments
towards M-----until about a month ago, and this he did in a most
confidential and private manner merely to put me on my guard,
thinking, and rightly, too, that M-----would be falling on me next
time for funds; Mazzaiba having already given him about.£55 and would
not possibly commit himself any further. Of course, we found him all
along a perfect gentleman.  Naturally, he hated the very idea that we
or anybody else in Malta should look upon him in any other light.  He
never asked directly, though Mazzaiba (later myself) was always quick
enough to interpret rightly what he meant and obliged him forthwith.

"At this stage, to save the situation, he made up a scheme that the
three of us should exploit the commercial possibilities in Morocco. It
very nearly materialized, everything was ready, I was to go with him
to Morocco, Mazzaiba was to take charge of affairs here and to dispose
of transactions we initiated there.  Fortunately, for lack of the
necessary funds the idea had to be dropped, and there it ended, thank
God, after a great deal of trouble I had in trying to set it well on
foot.

"Last July, the Police, according to our law, advised him that he was
either to find a surety or to deposit a sum of money with them as
otherwise at the expiration of his three months' stay he would be
compelled to leave the place. Money he had none, so he asked Mazzaiba
to stand as surety. Mazzaiba could not as he was already guarantor for
his alien cousins who were here at the time.  Mazzaiba (not M----)
asked me and I complied, thinking that the responsibility was just
moral and only exacted as a matter of form.

"When, as stated before, Mazzaiba told me that M----owed him £55 and
that he owed his grocer and others at Notabile (the old town, of which
Rabato is the suburb) over £10, I thought I might as well look up my
guarantee and see if I was directly responsible for any debts he
incurred here. The words of his declaration which I endorsed stated
that 'I hereby solemnly promise that I will not be a burden to the
inhabitants of these islands, etc.,' and deeming that unpaid debts to
be more or less a burden, I decided to withdraw my guarantee, which I
did on the 23rd ult. The reason I gave to the police was that he was
outliving his income and that I did not intend to shoulder any
financial responsibility in the matter. On the same day I wrote to him
up at Notabile saying that for family reasons I was compelled to
withdraw his surety. He took my letter in the sense implied and no way
offended at my procedure.

"M----, in his resourceful way, knowing that he would with great
difficulty find another guarantor, wrote at once to the police saying
that he understood from Mr. Salonia that he (S) had withdrawn his
guarantee, but as he (M) would be leaving the island in about three
weeks' time (still intending to exploit Morocco) he begged the
Commissioner to allow him this period of grace, without demanding a
new surety. In fact he asked me to find him a cheap passage to Gib. in
an ingoing tramp steamer. The police did not reply to his letter at
all, no doubt they had everything ready and well thought out.  He was
alarmed in not receiving an acknowledgment, and, knowing full well
what he imminently expected at the hands of the Italian police, he
decided to prepare for the last act of his drama.

"We had not seen him for three or four days when he came to Mazzaiba's
office on Wednesday, 3rd inst., in the forenoon. He stayed there for
some time talking on general subjects and looking somewhat more
excited than usual. He went up to town alone at noon as Mazzaiba went
to Singlea. I was not with them