CHAPTER XVI
THE garden was reached from the flat by a little
terrace and two or three steps.
“You are too early to see it in its winter glory,”
said Ottilie. “You’re much too early. Nature
here sleeps all through the summer under the
scorching sun.”
“That’s one long, long love-sleep,” said Lot,
with his arm in his sister’s.
“Yes, one long love-sleep,” Ottilie echoed. “At
the beginning of the autumn, the heavy rains come.
They may overcome us yet, suddenly. When they
are past, then nature buds for the winter. That is
so exquisite here. When, everywhere up in the
north, there’s not a leaf or flower to be seen, the
ground here is dug up, grass is sown and the mimosa
blossoms and the carnations and you get your
violets. You’re too early, but you can see one
phase of the change. Look at my last summer
roses, blooming in such mad, jolly disorder. And
the heliotrope, delicious, eh? Yes, this one is still
glorious. Look at my pears: did you ever see such
big ones? How many are there? Three, four,
five … six. We’ll pluck them; they’re quite
ripe: if they fall to the ground, the ants eat them
in a moment … Aldo! Aldo! Come here
for a second…. Pluck a few pears, will you?
I can’t reach them, no more can Lot … Elly,
have you seen my grapes? Just look at my trelliswork
of vines? It might be a pergola, mightn’t it?
And they’re those raspberry-grapes, you know; you
must taste them. Try this bunch: they’re delicious …. We’ll
eat the pears presently, at lunch.
They’re like sweet, aromatic snow…. Here
are figs for you: this is an old tree, but it still
stands as a symbol of fruitfulness. Pick them for
yourself, take as many as you like…. Here
are my peaches…. How hot the sun is still!
And everything’s steaming: I love all that natural
perfume. Those grapes sometimes drive me
mad….”
She thrust a white arm out of the sleeve of her
white gown among the hazy-blue bunches and
picked and picked, more and more. It was a feast
of gluttony, an orgy of grapes. Aldo picked the
finest for Elly. Well past forty, in the tranquil
calmness of his graceful strength he was plainly a
man of warm passion, a southern man of passion,
a tranquil, smiling and yet passionate nature. As
he drew himself up lissomely, in his loose-fitting
grey-flannel suit, and stretched his hands towards
the highest bunches, the harmonious lines of his
statuesquely handsome figure appeared sinewy and
supple; and there was this contradiction in him, that
he suggested a piece of classic sculpture in the costume
of to-day. The smiling serenity of his regular,
large-boned face also reminded Lot of busts which
he had seen in Italy: the Hermes of the Vatican—no,
Aldo was not so intelligent as that—the
Antinous of the Capitol, but a manlier brother;
the Wrestlers of the Braccio Nuovo, only not so
young and more powerfully built…. Aldo’s
smile answered to Ottilie’s smile and contained the
tranquillity of a secure happinerss, of an intense
moment of perfect human bliss. That moment was
there, even if it were passing. That secure happiness
was as the pressed bunch of grapes….
Lot felt that he was living his own ecstatic moment,
felt that he was happy in Elly, but yet he
experienced a certain jealousy because of the
physical happiness in that very good-looking couple:
there was something so primitive in it, something
almost classical in this southern autumnal nature,
among this superabundance of bursting fruits; and
he knew for certain that he would never approach
such happiness, physically, because he felt the north
in his soul, however eagerly his soul might try to
escape that north; because he felt the dread of the
years that were to come; because his love for Elly
was so very much one of sympathy and temperament;
because his nature was lacking in vigorous
sensuality. And it made him feel the want of
something; and because of that want he was jealous,
with all the jealousy which he had inherited from
his mother…… They too, Aldo and Ottilie,
felt no morbid melancholy, no sickly dread; and
yet their happiness, however superabundant, had
the sere tint of autumn, like all the nature around
them. The glowing-copper leaves of the plane-trees
blew suddenly over the vine-trellis, scattered
by the rough, brusque hands of the gaily-gathering
wind. A shudder passed through the disordered
rose-bushes; a heavy-ripe pear fell to the ground.
It was autumn; and neither Aldo nor Ottilie was
young, really young. And yet they had found this;
and who could tell what they had found before,
each on a different path! Oh, that untrammelled
happiness, that moment! … Oh, how Lot felt
his jealousy! … Oh, how he longed to be like
Aldo, so tall, so vigorous, handsome as a classical
statue, so natural, a classical soul! … To feel
his blood rush madly through his veins I … Oh,
that north, which froze something inside him; that
powerlessness to seize the moment with a virile
hand; and the dread, the dread of what was to
come: that horror of old age, while after all he
was still young! … He now looked at his wife;
and suddenly his soul became quite peaceful. He
loved her. Silent inward melancholy, dread: those
were his portion; they couldn’t be helped; they must
be accepted with resignation. The headiness of
rapture could overwhelm him for a, moment: it
was not the true sphere of his happiness. It would
intoxicate him: his blood was not rich enough for
it. He loved, in so far as he was able; he was
happy, in so far as he could be. It was that, after
all: he had found what he wanted, he wished to be
grateful. A tenderness for Elly flowed through him
so intensely: he felt that his soul was the sister-soul
to hers. Superabundance was not for him; and the
pressure of the things that passed had always
weighed upon him and always hindered him from
flinging his two arms riotously round life….
He threw away the stalk of his bunch of grapes
and followed Aldo, who was calling to him, indoors.
The Italian took his arm with a movement of
sympathy:
“Ottilie’s going to sing,” he said. “Your wife
has asked her to.”
His French had the sensual softness of his too
southern accent.
Ottilie was already singing, to her own accompaniment,
in the drawing-room. Her rich voice,
schooled to the spaciousness of large halls, swelled
to a pure stream of sound, made the air quiver even
in the garden with notes heavy with happiness. It
was an Italian song, by a composer whom Lot did
not know; and it provided an illusion as though
Ottilie were improvising the song at the moment.
There was a single phrase, which opened softly,
rippled with laughter and melted away swooning,
like a nymph in a faun’s arms.
“Another time, perhaps I’ll sing you something
serious,” said Ottilie. “This is only a single cry:
a cry of life, nothing more…..”
They sat down to lunch. The sun, which had
scorched them, the wind, which had covered them
with rough kisses, had given them an appetite; and
the saffron bouillabaisse stimulated their palates
lustily. On the side-board the fruit lay heaped in
large, plain baskets and represented autumn’s lavish
abundance indoors as well.
“Lot,” said Elly, suddenly, “I don’t know what
it is, but I suddenly feel the south.”
“We poor northerners!” said Lot. “Ottilie
and Aldo: they feel the south.”
“But so do I!” said Elly.
“Nice is a novitiate for you, Elly, before you
get to Italy!” said Ottilie. “Do you actually feel
the south here? In the air?”
“Yes, in the air … and in myself, in
myself….”
“Well, we have tropical blood in us,” said
Ottilie. “Why shouldn’t we feel the south at once?
Aldo could never feel the north: he went to Stockholm
with me when I was singing there.”
“Didn’t you feel the north, in the air?” asked
Lot.
“Sicuro.” said Aldo. “I found it cold and
bleak, but then it was winter. I felt no more in
it than that. You northerners feel things more
sensitively. We feel perhaps … more brutally
and fully. We have redder blood. You have the
gift of feeling nuances. We haven’t. When I feel,
I feel entirely. When Ottilie feels a thing now,
she also feels it like that. But she was not
always so.”
“Aldo is making a southerner of me!” said
Ottilie. “He is wiping out all my nuances!”
Outside, the mistral rose and raged in a whirl
of glowing-copper plane-leaves.
“That’s autumn,” said Ottilie.
“Turning into winter,” said Lot.
“But winter here is life again, renewed. Life is
renewed daily. Every day that comes is new
life.”
“So no dying, but everlasting resurrection?”
asked Lot, with a smile.
“No dying, everlasting resurrection!”
Her voice rang out defiantly. Oh, to embrace the
moment … with virile strength! It was not
for him, thought Lot. But what there was was
tender happiness. If only it remained so! If only
he were not left behind, lonely, alone and old, now
that he had known tender happiness! … He
looked at his wife. The topaz-coloured wine sent
a sparkle to her eyes and a flush over her usual
pallor; she was joking with Aldo and Ottilie, was
gayer than Lot had ever seen her; she became almost
pretty and began boldly to talk Italian to Aldo,
spinning out whole sentences which he corrected
with his quiet laugh.
“Who knows,” thought Lot, “what she may yet
feel? She is twenty-three. She is very fond of me;
and, before she came to love me, she had known
sorrow, because of another love. Who can tell
what the years may bring? Oh, but this is a divine
moment, these days are perhaps forming the most
heavenly moment of my life! Let me never forget
them…. I am happy, so far as I can be happy.
And Elly must be feeling happy too…. She is
breathing again…. It is as though an oppression
had gone over her and as though she were
breathing again. She lived too long with the old
man. The past is an oppression in his house. It is
an oppression at Grandmamma’s. It is an oppression
even with us, at home, because of Mamma
… Life does not renew itself there. It dies
away, it passes; and the melancholy of it depresses
even us, the young people…. Oh, Elly will
not be really happy until she is in Italy!…
This is only an intoxication, delicious, but too full
and brutal for our senses; and there … there,
when we are working together, we shall find glad
happiness: I know it! Glad happiness in a country
not so sensual as Nice, but more intelligent and
dusted exquisitely with the bloom of the dead past.
… Yes, we shall be in harmony there and happy
and we shall work together….”
Aldo was opening the champagne; and Lot
whispered:
“Elly!”
“What?”
“You felt the south just now?”
“Yes … oh, Lot, beyond a doubt!”
“Well, I … I feel happiness!”
She squeezed his hand; a smile played around her
lips. She also would never forget this moment of
her life, whatever else those future years might
bring: with her northern soul of sadness, she felt
the south and her happiness … and what passed
they did not see…..
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