COLIN was lying full length in the shadow of the ruined walls and tumbled masonries that crowned the cliff at the east end of the island. A few yards away was the wind-bitten edge from which the huge rock plunged sheer into the sea. Pamela sat by him leaning on her elbow: at the moment her hand was foraging in his breast-pocket for his cigarette-case. She would find it for herself, she said; he need not disturb himself. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, and the raising of his left arm, to make a pillow for his head, delved a cupped hollow of suntanned skin above his collar bone.
He had just told her that this ruin of walls was one of the palaces of Tiberius.
“He had seven palaces on the island,” said Colin lazily. “Wasn’t that imperial? One for each day of the week, perhaps—oh, they didn’t have weeks, but it doesn’t matter—and this was the Sunday one!”
Her fingers found the cigarette-case: it lay against his chest, and as she withdrew it her finger-tips perceived the steady beat of his heart. Presently, when she put it back, they would dwell there again for a moment.
“Why his Sunday palace?” she asked.
“Oh, just the best and biggest, the one he enjoyed most. The better the day the better the palace. He was awfully Tiberian here: Nino told me all about it: such goings-on! It was a sort of Sunday school. He used to send for some samples of nice young things to stay with him from Saturday till Monday, and if he got tired of the girl he chose, he had her brought out and chucked over the edge. Just as you throw away a paper bag when you’ve eaten your sponge-cake.”
“Colin, what a horrible story,” she said. “I think I had better move further from the edge, in case you feel you’re tired of me.”
“Now that’s unkind of you,” said he. “I’ve been doing my best as host, not only to amuse you but to enjoy myself, which is the first duty of a host——”
“I wonder if you have enjoyed my being here,” she said in interruption.
“Don’t stop me in the middle of a sentence,” said he. “As I was saying, I’ve been trying to do my duty as a host, and the impression I’ve left on my guest appears to be that I am tired of her!”
She put the cigarette-case back. Even if his pocket had been full of red-hot pebbles she could not have prevented her fingers from lingering there to feel that slow steady pulsation below. But it did not quicken under her touch, and how she longed for that!
“No, I don’t believe you’re really tired of me,” she said. “I was fishing for a compliment. But I don’t seem to have used the right bait.”
“But, my dear, why should you fish for compliments from me?” he asked. “Great friends, like us, don’t pay compliments to each other.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we are great friends,” said she.... Colin waited for this train of thought to develop itself: if he took no notice of what she had said, it was certain that she would carry it a step farther, or at any rate repeat it....
She had been here a couple of days, during which she had never let go of herself at all. She had been quite cool and comrade-like. Violet might have listened to all that they had to say to each other. But to-day there had been signs that her self-control was becoming difficult to her. She had sulked—no less—at luncheon, and that was a sure sign: it always meant that a woman wanted to be asked, ever so delicately and affectionately, what was the matter. He knew quite well what was the matter, and so had not asked, but remained good-natured and maddeningly unconscious of her mood till she gave that up, and apologized for being so silent. Then to make amends (as if he cared!) she had been effusive with protestations of how much she was enjoying herself, of how good it was of him to ask her here.... And now again this wondering if they were great friends indicated a certain perturbation....
“Tell me, are we great friends?” she asked.
He knew she would ask that again: women are such damned fools, and he leaned lazily towards her.
“And tell me!” he said. “Don’t you know it?”
His face must have reassured her, for she let her eyes dwell on it, and broke into a smile.
“I suppose I do,” she said. “You wouldn’t have asked me to stay with you otherwise. What a bore we women must be! We always want to be reassured about the things a man takes for granted!”
Colin turned over on to his side.
“I never take anything for granted,” he said. “It’s really much wiser not to expect anything, and not to count on anything till it’s given you.”
He knew she would attach a certain meaning to that. She did.
“Colin, what nonsense!” she said. “Why, you’re the one person in the world who always gets what he wants.”
He sat up, plucked two long stems of grass, and threaded them together, with that rapt intentness which must mean to her that he was thinking of something else than this task of his fingers.
“Not a bit,” he said. “I have so often expected to get what doesn’t come to me, and then what comes instead is a disappointment. Moral: never ask, never expect! Take what is given you and be thankful, and if nothing is given you, do without it. But, my dear, I didn’t bring you up here to bore you with mild philosophical homilies.”
He threw away his threaded grass stems, and appeared to throw away with them his unspoken preoccupation.
“To get back to our topic,” he said, “I was telling you that Tiberius pitched the favourite of the night over the edge of the cliff. I always make pictures in my mind of Nino’s stories of Tiberius: he tells them so vividly. It was just here it happened at dawn, when the rising sun came over the top of the hills there above Sorrento so that it shone on this palace on the peak, but below it was still clear dusk. And Tiberius came out of the palace, rather bored and rather sleepy, followed by two black slaves who dragged his—his discard along. Then he made a sign to them, and they picked her up by the wrists and ankles and swung her once or twice and then let go. Out she went, a glimmer of white limbs, like a starfish, clutching at the empty air, and turning slowly over as she fell. She passed out of the sunlight into the shadow below, and then there was a little splash, just a little white feather on the sea, and that was all. Or, perhaps, if they did not swing her far enough, she would fall on the beach, and there would be no splash. Tiberius peered over the edge, and then went in to have his early morning tea, or whatever they took then, and probably dozed for a little. Perhaps the chill of the dawn had made him sneeze.... I shall write a picturesque guide-book to Capri some day, and send you a copy from the author.”
Pamela hastened to fit herself to his mood. He did not want to talk about the only thing that interested her, which was their personal relations to each other, and she was wise enough not to bore him by an insistent return to them. Men were like that; even if they were tremendously in love with a woman, they did not want to discuss it all day. They kept their other interests alive and intact: they played golf just the same, or talked politics, or ate their dinner. Whereas a woman when she was in love thought about nothing whatever else. But she did not make a man any fonder of her by limiting her conversation to that. And if he was not in love with her, she ruined her chance if she irritated him by bleating. She had to be sympathetic and interested in what occupied him, if she was to get her way with him. But how increasingly hard it was to be intelligent and companionable when only one thing mattered, and it was the part of wisdom not to mention that.
“Do write a guide-book to Capri,” she said. “You’re quite horrible about Tiberius and his Sunday palace, but you make it tremendously picturesque. You’re frightfully pitiless, you know. You haven’t a grain of sympathy for that poor white starfish. What had she done to be chucked over the edge?”
“Why, she had bored him!” said Colin lucidly. “After all, what more horrible outrage can we commit on each other?”
Pamela’s mind switched back to personal matters. She mustn’t bore Colin....
“Well, it was his own fault for having chosen her,” she said. “He ought to have seen she would have bored him!”
“Quite so. Of course he became more savage just because it was his fault.”
What a nuisance she was, he thought. Whatever he said to Pamela, she wanted to be bright and discuss it, and argue and interest him.... It was his fault also that he had allowed her to come here, and that had the same effect on him as on Tiberius.
“Yes, that’s quite true. We always are angry with others when we’ve been mistaken in them or have injured them,” she said.
Colin suddenly registered the fact that he hated her. The knowledge seemed to spring from no particular source; it was blown to him perhaps on this evening breeze. In consequence he exerted himself to charm and attract her, for that was the path that led to the completest outrage and humiliation for her. He hated her passion for him, and therefore inflamed it, so that she would pay the more for it.
“I don’t believe you ever wanted to injure anybody,” he said. “You’ve got the most adorable nature, do you know?”
“My dear, how about compliments?” she asked. “Great friends don’t pay each other compliments, you told me.”
“Well, I wanted to let you know that I had noticed it. Leave it at that.... Ah, look; the loveliest light of all is beginning. Just before sunset sea and sky and land all get inside an opal. The hard wearisome brilliance of the afternoon fades, and you have ten minutes of pure fairyland. Everything is unreal and exquisite: you can hardly believe in the beauty of it. I could almost jump over the cliff myself for the sheer joy of falling, free and unfettered, through the air. One is too much anchored when one is on land. Swimming you get some feeling of being unattached to anything, but think if one was falling, falling through the air. And what does it matter if there’s death at the end? One would have had a perfect moment. Fancy being happy, though only for a few seconds!”
He sat with knees drawn up to his chin, looking outwards over the bright gulf of air, below which the sea lay blue and unflecked, and he heard her take a quick breath as she looked at him. Then, turning, he saw the fire in her eyes so nearly breaking into flame.
“Fairyland!” he said. “And you look a real native of it, Pamela.... My dear, ‘real native’! It sounds as if I were calling you a Whitstable oyster. And then, as one fairyland fades—look, it’s going quickly—another, the fairyland of night, begins. I could sit here, at least so I believe this moment, all night with you, watching the stars wheel, and fancying I could hear the rustle of the world as it span through space, until it came out of the tunnel of the night into morning again. But you would have to be close by me. I couldn’t do it alone; I should get self-conscious, and that’s the ruin of magic. My dear, how bored you would get before sunrise.”
He saw the fire begin to leap in her eyes, and he did not want it to burst out yet. There must be some greater abasement for her than his mere solitary derision, if he let her now say what was trembling on her lips, or if under the impulse she could barely resist she clasped and clung to him. That fire must be damped down for the present: the core of it would only grow the hotter for that.... He laughed and went on without pause.
“What dreadful positions I put you in,” he said. “You are almost bound to say that you would be delighted to stay here all night with me, and your tongue would be blistered for that thumping lie. How bored you would be before morning! I shall get Nino to come instead: poor Nino, he would have to do as he was told, and I shouldn’t care how bored he was. Or your maid, perhaps she would come, or Nino’s stepmother. But a companion would be necessary: just somebody, just anybody.”
She got up, stung to the quick, but Colin was quite undismayed. The fire burned all right, that blast of cold air only made the core of it turn white-hot, as the surface of it for the moment ceased to glow. Perhaps she was going to sulk again.... But apparently she had not found that of any use: instead, after that one moment of averted face, she laughed.
“You’re a savage,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust myself up here for a night with you. You would get tired of me, and push me over the edge.”
He sprang up: this was how to treat her, with romance and sweetness one moment, and the next with this callous indifference, and then with gay affection again and encouragement and nonsense till she was dizzy with desire and bewilderment and pique.
He could play on her like a lute, which presently he would dash down and trample on. The manner of that was beginning to form itself in his mind. It would serve her right for coming to Capri in this compromising way.
“Ah, you’re really unkind,” he said. “That’s the second time you’ve told me you were afraid I should commit a murderous assault on you. I’m a savage: there it is. How you bully me! But I forgive you. You’re one of those blessed people who will always be forgiven whatever they do. Sunbeams of life: you melt whatever you shine on! Blessed ray from that celestial luminary!...”
Colin’s sudden pomposity was irresistibly funny. He spoke with a throaty pious intonation.
“Oh, what nonsense you talk,” she said. “Are you ever the same for two minutes together? Just now you were in fairyland, and then you snubbed me, and now you’re a dreadful sort of parson. When are you Colin?”
Colin continued to be the dreadful parson.
“Dear friends,” he said, “let us ask ourselves in all humility of heart how often we are our own true selves. I would fain we were our true selves oftener. What is it that the Swan of Avon says, ‘To thine own self be true, and then you will be true to everybody else.’ Truth and lies! How wholly unlike they are, the one to the other. Let us sing the hymn ‘The sun is sinking fast’.... Golly, so it is, Pamela and the antiquarian lecture I meant to give you hasn’t been begun yet. Let’s go home. And my hair is full of grass-seeds with lying down.”
“Stand still, and I’ll pick them out,” she said. She perceived in his sun-warmed hair the faint fragrance of the sea, and longed to bury her face in it.
“No, it doesn’t matter. Perhaps they’ll sprout. I should like to have a hay-field on my head. I would sit in the hay.... Then, to skip a few centuries, when the Christians came to the island, they built a little shrine up here, and erected that bloated statue of the Virgin. I suppose they thought her image would disinfect the place from its Tiberian memories. But it doesn’t; it’s Pagan in spite of all their statues. You’re a Pagan, too, Pamela. That’s why you fit in so well up here.”
“Yes, I’ve never believed in anything,” said she. “How can one believe in anything one doesn’t know of? I believe in what I see, and hear, and touch and feel. I know of nothing else but these things. I’m a flame that throws a little light round itself, so that it perceives. And then it’s blown out. All the more reason for making the most of it, while it’s alight.”
They had begun the downward descent of the steep path, too narrow for two to walk abreast. Colin, just behind her, found his muscles twitching with intolerance of her shallowness.
“Then you don’t fear death?” he asked.
“Of course not. As long as things are pleasant, and I don’t have toothache or cancer, I don’t want to die. But if I was fearfully unhappy I shouldn’t think twice about dying. Or if——”
She paused a moment: the path had broadened out, and there was room for them both.
“Or if——” said he, stepping to her side.
“Or if I was terribly happy,” she said softly. “It would be dull to go back to ordinary pleasantness after that. To flare up, and go out. Not a bad fate, Colin. Who wants to gutter away into old age?”
He laughed.
“Then all your friends must keep you gently simmering,” he said. “You mustn’t be allowed to be terribly happy or terribly unhappy. Or you’d blow yourself out like a candle. But I don’t agree at all: I shall like being old; I shan’t then have desires and expectations which I fear to put to the test. I shall be a gentle old man with a beard, and a bath-chair, and some grandchildren, and some gout, and no memory, and no desires. But, enough of that. Let’s observe the features of the landscape. There’s the town beginning to twinkle with lights, and there’s the Marina with the evening boat just coming in. And there’s that wonderful Monte Solaro, where we’ll go to-morrow if you like a long walk. At the top you can see fifty thousand miles in every direction, and there are tawny lilies in the grass, also quantities of insects with quantities of legs. And here’s the villa. Blessed place but rather sad. Yet I have been awfully happy here sometimes. You know I spent my honeymoon here with Violet.”
That was designed to prick her, and excellently well it did so, for Pamela had not forgotten that little tragedy of Violet’s dislike of him, which he had talked of on the terrace at Stanier. And now he clearly conveyed to her that Violet’s coldness had infused the villa with the bitterness of sweet memories. As they entered together in the cool dusk, there was lying on the table just inside the door a letter for him, and she heard him mutter to himself rather than say to her, “Ah, that’s from Violet,” and, opening it, he instantly became absorbed in it. To Pamela that was the definite challenge: it was as if Violet’s glove had been thrown on the floor between them, and all aflame she went on up the stairs, and into her room, which stood at the head of them.
So it was Violet for whom he still ached and thirsted, and the knowledge was a spur to her passion. The cause of his cool friendliness to herself, vague and indefinite before, was firmly outlined now; she knew what stood in her way, and what must be demolished. After all, he had asked her here alone; that argued strongly in favour of her success, and it was up to her to make good the footing he had given her. It was still the thought of Violet which occupied him.... Now that she knew that, she could act on her knowledge: she must use her utmost seduction, not alone for her own enhancement but to point the contrast between Violet’s lovelessness and herself. And without doubt she held an advantage: he and she were alone together in this spell-struck island with all the setting for passion; they were both young, and she was a beautiful woman.... His preoccupation with Violet had blinded him: he had not seen with what intensity she wanted him. He had said that he never counted on anything until it was given him: what could that mean except that he was not certain about her? There should be no further doubt about that....
Colin read his letter through twice. As a matter of fact it was not from Violet at all, but how well he played on that poor lute with his muttered information! He knew just what effect his absorption in a letter from Violet would have on his companion. But there was nothing false about his absorption in his letter, for it was from his architect, and told him of the progress of what was in building at Stanier. The walls were rising apace: he had plenty of old weathered bricks for the facing of it, and assuredly the addition would be quite in keeping with the south front of the house.
So that was good, and in the meantime there was plenty to occupy him. He went up to his room, where Nino was waiting for him to come and dress, and his tactics for the evening were all settled now, though he had scarcely given a conscious thought to them. The plan, whatever its success might be, had ripened of its own accord like a fruit hanging on a sunny wall, and he longed to set his teeth in it. Surely his project would be successful: what came to him like this always succeeded.
As he dressed he looked round the room. The door from the passage was opposite the window; in the wall to the right was the door into Pamela’s room, converted from its usual habit of sitting-room; in the wall to the left the door that led to Nino’s room. There was but little furniture; there would be plenty of space for Nino’s bed along the wall of Pamela’s room. His own was on the other side, in the corner by the window, head to the wall. Beside it were two switches that turned on the light above his bed and that in the middle of the room, suspended by a cord from the arch of the vaulted ceiling. That would do nicely....
“Well, Nino,” he said, “I haven’t seen you all day. I don’t have so much time to bully you now I’ve got a visitor to attend to. Don’t you hope she’ll stop till we go back to England?”
Nino grinned. He did not want any visitors: he much preferred being bullied by Colin to not seeing him, and it had entered his curly head that his master was just as happy alone with him as with his guest.
“I can do without visitors,” he said.
“Well, I expect you will very soon have to,” said Colin. He pulled his shirt over his head, and went softly to the door into Pamela’s room. It was shut.
“Nino, you don’t say your prayers before you get into bed, do you?” he asked, “or snore when you’re asleep, or have any monkey tricks of that kind?”
“No, neither prayers nor snoring,” said Nino. “You have never heard me pray or snore.”
“I don’t think I have, and don’t let me.”
He came close to the boy.
“I want you to sleep in my room to-night, Nino,” he said. “Isn’t that odd? But I do, and I’ll promise not to pray or snore either. Bring in your bed when your sister has done the room, and put it alongside that wall there. Be in bed when I come up. Can you keep awake?”
“If you wish me to,” said Nino.
“I do. And when I’ve got into bed and put out the light, I want you to lie quite still whatever happens. I don’t suppose it will be for long. And if by chance afterwards I turn on the light again, I want you to sit up in bed and look cheerfully round, and laugh or do anything you like. Do you understand?”
“I understand what the signor says, but I do not understand what he means,” said Nino.
“Well, perhaps you will ... and then after that you can go to sleep. Poor Nino, how I bully and sweat you. Aren’t I a queer creature? You’re sure you quite understand what I say? Say it over to me! And then run downstairs, and see if dinner’s ready.”
Colin finished dressing and, when Nino returned, tapped on the door that communicated with Pamela’s room.
“Dinner’s ready,” he called out, “and if you are, come in here a minute. You’ve never seen my room, have you?”
Pamela entered. For the last two evenings she had only put on a tea-gown for their garden-dinner, but to-night she was resplendent in a blue silver-shot magnificence, cut very low and clinging close to her beautiful girlish figure. Over her arm she carried a cloak of pale pink feathers.
Colin stood open-mouthed.
“You perfectly glorious vision!” he said. “You’re superb: you’re dazzling!”
“Do you like it?” she said. “I was tired of being so dowdy.”
“Like it? I adore it,” said he. “It’s really almost worthy of you.”
She looked round the room.
“Oh, Colin, what a nice room!” she said. “Just a rug and a bed and a washing-stand and a couple of chairs. Tremendously like you, somehow.”
He laughed.
“I’m a penny, plain,” said he, “and you’re quite twopence, coloured. I bet you that gown didn’t cost less than twopence. Come to dinner. I shall walk backwards in front of you and stare at you.”
“You won’t. You’ll give me your arm.”
The table was set at the end of the pergola, lit by electric lights half screened in the vine-leaves, among which the bunches were beginning to ripen. Curtains of brown sailcloth were hung between the pillars, and Nino had drawn all these but one, so that their table was screened from the house, and the road below. This one square opening looked westwards where the last crimson of sunset was fading, and across it rose the black stem of the stone pine, and, though the night was windless here, some murmur as of the distant sea stirred drowsily in its branches. Nino, serving them, slipped noiselessly to and fro, and presently he brought them their coffee.
“Shall I draw the other curtain, signor?” he asked.
Colin glanced at Pamela, and there was no need to ask her what she preferred.
“Yes, Nino,” he said. “And clear away now. Just leave the cloth.”
All through dinner they had been gay on trivial topics, and again and again she had known that battery of swift glances like signals that he had cast on her, as if unable to take his eyes off her for long. Now she pushed back the cloak that she had thrown over her shoulders.
“Ah, that’s right,” he said, more to himself than her.
Though he laughed at himself for doing so, he often listened to the sound of the breeze, as if to a wordless and friendly counsellor.
“What a delightful evening you’re giving me, Pamela,” he said. “You wean me from myself with your splendour and your gaiety. I declare that since you came into my room before dinner I haven’t once thought of that letter I found waiting for me.”
“From Violet?” she said.
His eyebrows contracted as if with a twinge of pain.
“Yes. Oh, no bad news. Excellent news: she’s getting on wonderfully well without me. Hopes I am enjoying myself very much——”
“I join her in that wish,” said Pamela.
“I know you do, bless you, and it would be black and ungrateful of me if I didn’t recognize that. My dear, you’ve been such a godsend, coming here to sit on the perch with the moping owl.”
“You mustn’t mope,” she said. “You’re an owl for moping, Colin.”
“I don’t mope except with you,” said he. “It’s shocking bad manners, I know, and yet it’s one of those involuntary compliments. Ooh, the relief of getting somebody who understands.”
His eyes left her face, dwelt hovering over her breast, and came back again.
“Help me, Pamela,” he said.
She leaned forward over the table. She loved this weakness and this appeal.
“Violet has used you abominably,” she said.
“No, no: you mustn’t say that,” he interrupted.
“But I must say that. I want to help you, my dear, and ah, how lovely it is that you ask me to try—and you must lay hold on that. She gets on wonderfully well without you, you told me. Let that rouse your pride. Don’t let your happiness suffer shipwreck over that. Heavens, if I found that anyone I was fond of got on wonderfully well without me, that would make me determined to get on just as well without him. I saw how charming and gentle you were with her at Stanier, and she gives you a stone——”
“She gives me nothing,” said he, in a voice suddenly harsh and bitter.
She put her hand on his as it lay on the table, and he felt her pulses leap at the contact.
“I like to hear you say that,” she said. “Say it again and again till the truth of it stings you. Realize it, make it part of yourself instead of looking at it from outside and mourning over it. Oh, my dear, have some pride! You aren’t going to let all your power of love and of happiness pour itself away into the sand of a desert! You’ve got enough power of happiness to light up the midnight. Don’t waste it.”
(“She’s going it rather well,” thought Colin, “and I’m not doing it badly.”)
“I know you’re right,” he said.
He raised his eyes to hers.
“Of course I’m right,” said she. “Oh, youth passes so quickly, and with it all power of real happiness, though you may tell me that you will like to be old.... Ah, what nonsense!... Colin, you’re so different to what I thought you at first. When first we met and made friends, you were all laughter and enjoyment. Who could have guessed that you knew sorrow or unrequited love?”
She paused a moment: in that gaze of his there was a light she had never seen there yet. So suffocatingly sweet to her was it, that she panted for breath.
“Don’t fence yourself in,” she said, “and mourn over ruins. Build with them: use ... use the stones you spoke of, to make a pleasure-house. Laugh to see them serve your end.”
He looked at her in amazement. There was enchantment and force in her, and her beauty was enough to make a man’s senses reel. Was this the strength of which Violet had spoken which was more potent than all else in the world?
Pamela leaned back her head, pushing the heavy black hair from her forehead.
“Open the curtains, Colin,” she said. “Let’s have some air; I’m stifling.”
Was she going to faint, he thought, or adopt some mean feminine device of her weakness to escape from the situation that was closing round her, and which she had done her best to provoke? That would be tragic.... He pulled back the curtain with a rattle of rings, and the still tide of the night swept in.
“Ah, that’s delicious!” she said.
“Not faint?” he asked. “Not overtired?”
“Not a bit. It was just a breath of air I wanted: our lovely little tent was concentrated, overcharged....”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Hadn’t you better go quietly to bed? It would be wretched if in return for the help and strength you bring me—ah, such help, such strength....”
If all the kingdoms of the world had been his, he would have staked them against a penny-piece on her answer. It was her hour, she was winning, so she thought, all down the line. This was not the moment for the victor to ask for a truce.
She rose from her chair and stood by him. The flame burst out from her, enveloping her in fire.
“It’s all yours,” she whispered.