“How absolutely awful,” he said, “you make me shudder, Mr. Cecil. And how well and vividly you are telling it. But, horrible as it all is, I think you must let me see that missal. I’ve got gruesome tastes, you know. I like to be horrified. When will you let me see it?”
“You shall see it whenever you like. You will be passing through Naples on your way home, and I should be delighted to shew it you. We could have another bachelor evening together, as we had before. Dear me, I quite forgot that you were married now, Lord Yardley: I should never have said that. But if you will persist in looking like a boy of eighteen——”
Colin was on fire with impatience to see this missal, but he did not in the least want to spend another evening, such as he had done before, with this sprightly elderly sensualist in the cafés of Naples. Passionately evil though he was, there was not a grain of coarseness in him: he had no objection to others wallowing in mere animalism, poking and giggling and prying, but he had no mind for it himself: that was not his brand. What was imperative was that he should get hold of this wonderful book without delay: literally he thirsted for it, and his thirst must be assuaged. He wouldwant to make a copy of it, unless, as he determined to try to do, he could secure the original. He could not wait....
“Ah, yes, bachelor-evenings are not for me any more,” he said gaily. “I’m a father, a heavy father, Mr. Cecil, and I read the lessons in church on Sunday mornings. Imagine if some respectable neighbour from Stanier saw me razzle-dazzling in shady places in Neapolitan slums! I should be thought such a hypocrite. But this missal: couldn’t I send Nino across to Naples to-morrow, with a note from you to your housekeeper, telling her to look on a certain shelf, and let him have a certain book?”
Mr. Cecil gave a complacent little giggle.
“I’m afraid that would hardly do,” he said. “That book is locked away in a cupboard, and there are some other things there I should hardly like my housekeeper to see. One or two of those terra-cottas from Pompeii; not quite in my housekeeper’s style. You remember her? Comes from Aberdeen; Aberdeen granite I call her.”
Colin had to continue propitiating this dreadful little man till he had got what he wanted.
“Excellent!” he said. “What a knack you have of hitting a person off, Mr. Cecil. I remember her perfectly. Aberdeen granite! Awfully good!... But I’ve got to go to Naples soon. Would it bore you too much if I came across with you on Monday?”
“By all means do that, and I’ll shew you the missal. But it’s queer to me that you are so anxious to see it. What was my phrase for it just now? A mere farrago of blasphemy. That’s all it is.”
“Somehow, you’ve interested me in it,” said Colin. “Well, what do you say about bed? I’ve got no amusing little night-haunts to shew you in Capri. We’re innocent Arcadians here, Mr. Cecil, who eat lotuses and go to bed at ten.”
Colin shewed his guest to his room, and went to his own. The scirocco, which an hour ago had been raging, had quite died down, and he threw open his closed shutters, and looked out on to the ‘darkness thick and hot.’ That furious wind which had clamoured round the house, until it had burst open the Venetian shutters, and then, as if its purpose had been fulfilled, had ceased altogether, seemed to have charged the nightwith power; it tingled round him in bubbling eddies.... He could hear the sea, maddened by that fierce tempest, buffeting along the rocky coast to the south, and surely not far away the wind still yelled. But just here there was calm as at the centre of some cyclone....
Colin accompanied Mr. Cecil to Naples on Monday morning, and they went straight to his house. Presently the cupboard containing the objects which were not fit for the stony eyes of Aberdeen granite was open, and Mr. Cecil drew out a very thin quarto volume, finely bound in tooled morocco, but much worn.
“There’s your book for you,” he said. “It’s quite a long time since I set eyes on it: a fine binding, and I see, what I had forgotten, that there’s a coronet and a coat of arms on the back.”
Colin, before opening it, looked at the cover. There was an earl’s coronet, and below—— He jumped out of his chair, his eyes wide with wonder.
“But, Mr. Cecil!” he cried. “This is the most amazing thing, the thing’s a miracle. Those are my arms. And there’s the date, 1640, the book must have belonged to the founder of the family; the Elizabethan Colin, who made the bargain with Satan.... No one could have put the coronet and his arms on a book in 1640, except him. He died in 1643.”
Then, in a flash, the whole history of the book dawned on him; the theory was as incontestable as a mathematical proof.
“I’ve got it!” he cried. “As you know, he built Stanier, he collected pictures and bronzes, and, as I read the other day only, in the Memoirs he himself wrote, he collected a quantity of magical and occult books, and mentions among them a missal of ‘wondrous blasphemies.’ They don’t exist at Stanier nowadays: probably he disposed of them.”
“Dear me, dear me!” said Mr. Cecil, reaching out his hand for the book. “Your arms, are they? And the date, and the coronet.... Yes, I see. Go on, please, my dear fellow.”
“Well, he lived an awful life,” said Colin. “I will show you the Memoirs when you come to England and stay with us, as you must promise to do. He enjoyed the benefits of his bargain to the full. And he certainly contemplated—thisis rather private family history—he contemplated building a sanctuary for Satanic worship. Then, the year before he died, he got into a state of terror about the future. He wrote no more about his awful deeds in his Memoirs, and he did not build the chapel, of which he left the plan, with a priest’s lodging adjoining.... Now doesn’t that fit in completely with the disappearance of the collection of magical lore, and the book of wondrous blasphemies? He fired them out of his library, and read lives of the saints, and that sort of truck: those books are there, yards of them. And now the missal of wondrous blasphemies has turned up again. There it is in your hand.”
Mr. Cecil looked at the device on the cover.
“Well, upon my word, that does seem a very sound hypothesis,” he said. “Really, if I had known——”
Colin laughed.
“You needn’t finish that sentence,” he said. “What is in your head is that you would never have shewn it me, if you had known that it came from Stanier.”
He sat down again, and, laying his hand on Mr. Cecil’s arm, summoned all the charm and persuasion of which he was master.
“I must have that book you know,” he said. “I should have tried to get you to let me buy it from you, anyhow, but now, I really have the right to acquire it, haven’t I?”
Now this reconstruction, so ably sketched by Colin, had considerably increased the pride of possession in Mr. Cecil. It gave an immense interest to the missal to know that it had once belonged to so historical a Faust as the first Earl of Yardley.
“I don’t see that there’s any question of right about it,” he said.
Colin bridled his impatience. Once the book was in his possession, he wanted no more of Mr. Cecil, who, for all he cared, could burrow in underground Naples to his heart’s content, until somebody knifed him.
“Perhaps ‘right’ is too strong a word,” he said. “Let’s say suitability. Surely it’s very suitable that the book should go back to Stanier. As for price, if you’ll tell me what you paid for it, I’ll give you five times what it cost you.”
Mr. Cecil laughed.
“I fancy I bought it for five liras, say four shillings,” he said. “I don’t know that twenty-five liras would tempt me very irresistibly.”
“Five liras!” said Colin. “My goodness, I wish I had been shopping with you that day! Of course, that makes my offer ludicrous. But how about getting it valued by Quaritch or somebody who knows? I would then be delighted to pay you twice its estimated value.”
Mr. Cecil shook his head.
“I don’t really want to part with it,” he said. “Charmed to let you read it——”
“But I want to own it,” said Colin quietly. “In fact I must. After all, it is only a question of terms. Please name your terms.”
Mr. Cecil, for answer, merely put the book in the cupboard from which he had taken it, and turned the key on it. Colin’s insistence had increased his determination to keep the book; as a strong sub-current in his mind there was the notion that here was this enormously wealthy young man, who, for some reason of his own, intensely wanted the book. There was no harm in running up the price....
“Ah, my dear boy, you don’t understand the collector’s spirit,” he said. “He is as obstinate as a mule when he has got hold of something he values. The book is not for sale.”
Colin felt one spasm of furious rage. It was for the honour of his Lord and Benefactor that he was engaged, and at that moment he would have stuck at nothing to get his desire. From the depth of his heart he let some voiceless intense petition issue.
As that silent prayer welled out of his inmost soul, his anger fell off him like dead autumn leaves, and through him there spread the clear consciousness of the presence of the power which two nights ago had infused the riot of the wind, and brooded in the calm that followed. What had made him angry was the sense of his own impotence to get what he wanted; what gave him now this sense of perfect confidence, was the knowledge that an all-encompassing power possessed him. He spoke as it was given him to speak, without thought or reflection, but with the irresponsibility of inspiration. Hissmile came back to his lips, and to his eyes that boyish charm and brightness.
“Ah, we mustn’t quarrel, Mr. Cecil,” he said. “Surely you are wise enough to see that. People who quarrel with me have no luck ever afterwards, and, believe me, I should hate to be the cause, the unwitting cause, I may say, for it is none of my doing, of what might befall you. Don’t force me to break you to atoms—yes, you may stare, but I mean just that, and at the bottom of your heart you know I mean it, and you’re afraid already. Well you may be, for you are beginning to guess what stands by me.”
Indeed, Mr. Cecil was staring at him, and indeed he knew that he was afraid. As he looked, some nameless inexplicable terror began to stir in him.
Colin paused: the power that gripped him grew in intensity as he yielded himself to it, and it now completely possessed him, so that he had no volition of his own, and no consciousness of himself apart from it. Once more he spoke, and though with his outward ears he could hear the words he uttered, he did not grasp their import. He was a mouthpiece only of the power that used his lips. He had no idea what he was saying: all he knew was that his voice uttered the syllables, which, as they were spoken, he heard, but which, once said, passed from his mind altogether. But as he spoke he saw Mr. Cecil’s face change, the ruddiness of it blanched to a deadly glistening whiteness, and suddenly, with a cry, he started to his feet, and fumbled for his keys, and opened the cupboard door.
“Stop, stop! that’s enough,” he said. “For God’s sake, for God’s sake!... Here; here’s the accursed thing. Take it and begone.”
The power that possessed Colin ebbed and sank, and he felt his own individuality restored to him. He did not know what he had been saying; but, whatever it was, it had been sufficient, for this gross little man was as white as paper, and, shaking, he thrust the missal into his hand.
“That’s delightful of you, Mr. Cecil,” he said. “I thought, I was sure, in fact, that when I put the case to you, quite simply like that, you would agree with me. Now I will take this to Quaritch’s, or wherever you choose, and send you theirestimate of what it would fetch at a good auction, and with that I will send you a cheque for double the amount. Its value to me, as perhaps I told you, is quite inestimable.”
Mr. Cecil mopped his face.
“I will not receive a penny for it,” he said hoarsely. “It is for me to thank you for taking it off my hands.”
“Oh, I can’t accept such generosity,” said Colin.
“I must ask you to. And in your turn you can do me a favour.”
“Willingly: it is yours,” said Colin.
“Then never let me set eyes on you again,” said Mr. Cecil.
Colin rose and picked up his hat.
“Delighted,” he said. “Why on earth should I want to see you again? You didn’t think I liked you, did you?”
He found a letter from Pamela waiting for him on his return to the villa with his treasure that evening, in which she announced her arrival in a couple of days. This letter, to his mind, was thoroughly typical of her type, reeking with sub-conscious falsity, cloaking the obvious with the transparent, and pretending that it did not shew through. Was it worth while, for instance, to ask whether Violet was with him, when she knew so well that her visit was based on the fact of Violet’s absence? And was it worth while to say that she wondered whether she had not better stay at an hotel? She knew perfectly well that she had not the smallest intention of staying at an hotel, she would not have come to Capri for that. Colin could imagine the blankness of her face if, when he met her, he told her that he had taken a nice room for her at the Bella Vista, or that Violet was with him at the villa.... Or should he telegraph and put her off altogether?
He carried this question still undecided down with him to the beach next morning, and, as he swam, turned it coolly over in his mind, and, as he basked on the hot shingle, let his decision liquefy and declare itself. For himself, he did not in the least want her here, neither as comrade nor as lover had he any use for her. Her beauty made no spell for his senses, and the very fact that it was his for the askingdiscounted it to a zero. If she had been difficult of access, he might have found pleasure in the chase; as it was, it was only himself who was being chased.... On the other hand, as he had already sketched it out, the prospect of some ludicrous and humiliating dénouement for her attracted him: it would be amusing also to play the part of the outraged moralist, the unsuspecting and devoted husband. How his face would pass from amazement to indignation, when she made her meaning clear! Or perhaps some intolerable humiliation....
He turned over on to his back, and threw an arm across his eyes, to shield them from this resplendent glare of the noonday, and let his body and limbs drink in the light and the heat. These were the allurements of the South: the hot basking and the plunge into that liquid crystal, the mouldering fragments of Roman masonry, with lizards basking on them, and tufts of fragile campanula springing from the crevices, dusty roads with walled-in paths leading through the ripening vineyards, stories of Tiberio, wine decanted from perettas into bottles stoppered with green folded leaves, ripe figs, and the warm dusk of evening, saunterings on the piazza among dark-eyed boys and smiling girls, gay and friendly ... all these made up the Italian spell of exquisite conditions and effortless existence. To his loveless nature mere physical passion was an affair of kisses and laughter and light caresses, to be enjoyed and forgotten and renewed. If you adored a woman’s personality, you would need her, body, soul and spirit, but without love to inspire passion she provided no more than a pastime. And love was his enemy; whether it was such love as Violet’s or such as Pamela’s, its only office was to give quarry for his sport. He liked laying traps and ambushes for it, he liked hurting and humiliating it.... Sometimes, of course, the claims of the body were insistent, you desired satisfaction, if only to rid you of its unease. Just so, if you had a corn, you would go to a corn-cutter, who would make you comfortable....
“Yes, Pamela shall come,” he said to himself, “and God knows in what plight Pamela shall go.” That would all be settled for him, he thought, some inspiration would come, not out of his own contrivance and ingenuity, but, like those wordswhich he had spoken to Mr. Cecil yesterday, out of a subtler wisdom than his. Never had he been able to recollect them: they were spoken in some ecstasy, and how well they had done their work! He had seen how the man’s face changed to damp ash as he listened; would Pamela’s suffer some such change?
He raised himself on his elbow: the air over the hot white beach was tremulous with the heat; a few yards away the sea, still as a lake, sent no tiniest ripple to its liquid rims. Within it, like the fire in some precious stone, a network of light played over the pebbles that lay below, and, more than ever this morning, Colin was conscious of the fire within himself, which, like that radiance within the sea, made a dancing light deep in his soul. He had read and re-read that missal of wondrous blasphemies, and like Faust it fed his soul. In the devotion of worship was the true expression of the spirit, and with what knowledge of its needs had the compiler framed the ritual of mockery and defiance! The vestments of the priest and his acolyte, the gestures and genuflexions with which he accompanied his acts, the atrocious symbolism ordained for the decking of the altar, all stirred the imagination to the lust of evil. Those impious orisons! How they prepared the soul for the culminating act described in the rubric the very reading of which had made Mr. Cecil sweat with horror! To Colin it had given a gasp and spasm of delight: it expressed in visible symbol the core and spirit of his being.... Here was the fire and the dancing radiance that worked within him: presently, when the building which his ancestor had planned at Stanier was erected, it would blaze up, a beacon of self-dedication.
Well, it was time for a final swim, for he was roasted through and through, and already Nino with the boat that should take him back to the Marina was approaching, and, running over the hot pebbles, he fell forward into the sea, and lay floating with arms and legs spread wide, and face submerged. His own shadow hovered below him on the bottom with flickering outline, and the water clear as air seemed to hold the sunshine in solution. For the moment the cool tingling touch made him forget the missal and the traps to be laid for love; the sheer exquisitness of bodily sensation contented all hisneeds. If only that sensation could be preserved in all its first sharpness, he could imagine himself happy, without his burning love of hate and his hate of love, in this Nirvana of liquidness and sun.
Colinwas 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 herbrought 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 hermood 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 hereit 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 thatpoor 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 whatdoes 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 themoment 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 intensityshe 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 hadentered 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 verylow 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 takehis 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 thatanyone 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. “All ... all.”
She swayed towards him, and he caught her close; her face was against his, and she sought his lips. No word, no whisper even came from her: dumbly she clung to him, and, exultant, he betrayed her with a kiss. The best and the worst of her, love, trust, and all that was merely sensual as well, were his.
For one second he wavered, and reconsidered. Partly it was the mere beauty and physical intensity of her that gave him pause, partly also something akin to what he had felt when he saw Dennis staggering on the terrace at Stanier. Then back, stronger than ever from the gathered force of that check, came his hatred of love.
“We must go in,” he said.... “Pamela, you adorable thing. Your pity first, and then your love.”
They paused at the head of the stairs. Not a word had passed since they left the table.
“But your maid next door ...?” he queried, and her smile told him she understood.
Colin went softly into his room. There was Nino’s bed along the wall, and Nino there already, awake and silent, and eager for any adventure of Colin’s contriving. He tore offhis clothes, and, as he undressed, once or twice his eyes caught Nino’s, and he had to check himself from laughing aloud. He slid into bed, and clicked off the light.
There was no long waiting: there came a faint rattle from the door into Pamela’s room, but in the darkness nothing was visible there, and Colin heard the door close again, and the key turned. He could just hear her feet on the bare tiles of the floor, and then from close at hand a little bubbling laugh and his name softly called. The sheer happiness of love sounded in that whisper: it might have been Violet’s voice speaking to him on one of the nights of their honeymoon here, and he hated the inimitable thrill of it....
He reached his hand to the switches and turned them both on.
She was standing in the middle of the room just under the light from the ceiling. In that strong illumination the thin silk nightdress, which was all that covered her, was transparent as a veil of sun-pierced mist; her figure crowned by that bright flame of her face was clearly visible, and her apparelled magnificence was pale beside this luminous revealed perfection. Colin almost regretted that he had prepared this hellish surprise for her to-night. To-morrow would have done as well ... and yet, what thrill of physical love could rival this gorgeous humiliation? How superbly moral it was! The woman had tempted him, coming to him at solitary midnight in the blaze of her beauty, and for once the man, master of his soul, derided her seduction. But the infamy of the brothels of Sodom was nearer salvation than his chastity.
She heard a stir behind her and half-turned. There was Nino sitting upright in bed. Simultaneously Colin spoke.
“Hullo, here’s a pretty lady!” he said. “Has she come to visit you or me, Nino? I’ll pretend to be asleep, if you like.”
She turned back towards Colin as he spoke, and there came over her face just such a blanching, just such a stark terror as had struck the colour from Mr. Cecil’s. Colin’s laughing mouth, his dancing blue eyes, were close to her; in his hurry to be ready for her he had not put on his nightclothes, and over his slim suntanned body, as he sat up in bed, the skin-sheathedmuscles rippled as he breathed, and at the sight, as if the horror of the Gorgon’s head had been shewn her, she turned to stone. Her arms made one stiff movement, as if drawing a cloak round her to hide her, and she went back to the door through which she had come. A violent trembling seized her; she could scarcely grasp the key in her fingers.
“The lock’s a little stiff,” said Colin. “Ah, that’s right. What a short visit! Good night, dear Pamela.”
Colin jumped out of bed the moment she had gone, and briskly turned the key.
“We’ll have no more visitors to-night, Nino,” he said. “The bold slut! There’s a lesson for her. What’s the matter, Nino?”
Nino’s face was buried in his pillow. He had given that one glance at her as she stood under the light, and then, for very pity, had hidden his eyes from her intolerable shame. Now at Colin’s voice he looked up.
“Ah, the poor lady!” he said. “You were terrible to her, signor.”
Some ecstasy of wickedness possessed Colin. Naked as a young Greek god, and as fair, he capered round the room in an abandonment of glee.
“Oh, the poor pretty lady!” he cried. “What a pleasant hour she had planned, and what a disappointment! But how naughty of her! She shocked me. What will she plan next, do you think? I would bet on a slight headache in the morning, and breakfast in her room. Or will she make an effort and catch the early boat?Chi sa?Good night, Nino.”
He jumped into bed; Nino could hear it shaking under the gusts of his smothered laughter.
Colin, according to his wont, slept dreamlessly, and woke to find Nino’s hand on his shoulder, rousing him.
“Wake, signor,” he said.
Colin yawned and stretched himself.
“I’ll raise your wages, Nino, if you’ll go away,” he said.
“The signora——” began Nino.
Colin broke off his yawn and began to laugh.
“Good Lord, yes,” he said. “Well, what about the signora? I hope she had as good a night as I.”
“She did not sleep in her bed,” said Nino, “and she is not in the house.”
“Well, what then? She’s gone by the early boat; I thought she very likely would. So cool in the early morning. Probably she has left a note for her maid to say so. Look and find it. I’ll have breakfast out of doors.”
He got out of bed, and while he dressed basked in the wonderful memories of the night before. Just here had she stood for that short moment ... and then with that odd gesture of folding something round her had turned.... What a horrid humiliated night she must have passed, too badly stung to sleep, and only eager for the morning, and the boat that left at six o’clock, which would carry her away from the island. He wondered whether, if he had received a slap like that, he would have turned tail. Certainly it would have been an embarrassing breakfast next morning; they would have had to talk with great perseverance and animation. He rather thought that he would have stopped and brazened it out to show he didn’t care....
Nino entered again.
“I’ve found a note, signor,” he said, “but it is addressed to you not to her maid. It was on the breakfast table in the pergola.”
Colin held out his hand for it and opened it. It was quite short.
“I was terribly happy here,” it ran, “and I have been terribly unhappy. So it is good-bye, Colin.”
He knitted his brows. Surely he had heard something very like this only a few hours before.... Then he remembered.
“No-one knows of this but you, Nino?” he asked.
“No, signor, I found it and brought it to you.”
Colin stood crumpling the note in his hand. A contingency had presented itself with the reading of that note, which he wished to be prepared for. If the implication there hinted at was true, he did not want to stew in that ebullition of scandal and gossip which would boil up if last night’s adventure were known. Three people knew of it, possibly onlytwo now, himself and Nino.... For a few seconds he thought intently, then his face cleared.
“Now, listen to me, Nino,” he said. “You have found no note for me, you have brought me no note. The last you saw of the signora was when you brought us coffee last night after dinner in the garden. That’s all you know.... Ah, wait a moment: your bed. Move it back to your room, where of course you slept last night as usual. I’ll help you. Now——”
Colin laid his hands on the boy’s shoulders and looked him in the face.
“When did you see the signora last?” he said.
Nino’s eyes were wide with some unspoken terror.
“Last night,” he said, “when I brought your coffee after dinner.”
“And you found nothing on the table when you went to lay my breakfast this morning?”
“No, signor.”
“Good boy. Now be quick with my coffee. I long to be in the sea this morning.”
Colin swam and basked and swam again, spending the whole morning on the beach. He was convinced that when Pamela wrote that note to him she had intended, at any rate, to take her own life, for the wording of it reproduced too closely for any explanation of fortuitous resemblance what she had said to him the evening before as they came home. Very likely she had not done so, for there was a big gulf between such an intention and its execution. It was one thing to feel that you were terribly unhappy, and quite another to put an end to your unhappiness. Most people preferred any amount of unhappiness to forcing an entry through the door that led no man knew whither. Even if it led into nothingness, anything that could happen to you was better than nothingness.
Colin came up out of the water, and, after brushing the wetness off him, sat down on the hot shingle. Supposing Pamela had done what her melodramatic little note implied, what would he think of her, or what (which concerned him more) would he think of himself?
Of course he had never dreamed of such a possibility, but if she had done it what a swift and surprising drama? Yet how abominably stupid, and how, if you looked at it clearlyhow self-conscious! There was revenge in it, too: she meant, at fatal cost to herself, to overwhelm him with remorse at this great final gesture. Was it a sign of love, to do that which might be calculated however mistakenly to bring misery on the adored? Yet, after all, it was not love of him that might have driven her to the desperate act, it was no more than self-love and self-pity for that unexpected exposure. He remembered just how she had looked when he turned up the light, and she heard Nino stir. If he had supplied a determining motive at all, it was fear.
Misery ... remorse.... What had he done to be miserable or remorseful for? The woman was a slut and she had come to stay with a respectable married man, who had assured her that his heart’s devotion was consecrated to his wife, and, knowing that, she had deliberately tried to seduce him, coming into his room at midnight and offering herself. There was a fine story to tell the world, if so he chose, and Nino, with a wink from him, would testify to the veracity of the crucial episode. And the stern morality of his own attitude, his scorn of her intrusion! That was the cream of it! The missal of wonderful blasphemies itself contained no mockery so distilled.
And then supposing she had done nothing desperate at all, but simply gone for a nice walk to think things over and console her wounded vanity? It was easy to realize what he would feel then. Mockery, sheer mockery and contempt at the fiasco. She had written that note to indicate what she meant to do, and when it came to the doing of it she had squealed and shied off at the idea of going out alone into the dark of nothingness or whatever she imagined was the next scene. Probably she thought that nothingness came next: that was the usual conclusion of such shallow folk. He knew better than that....
The dense stupidity, the blindness of those who did not believe in the hereafter of heaven and hell! He knew his hereafter well enough, the eternal hate, or, if love was too strong, the eternal spectacle of love, and to have no share in it, to sit in a cave of ice, and in an everlasting numbness of cold to behold the sun.... But the very thought of that, the certainty that in the end God would somehow beat him, gavethe spice to defiance. Safe in the protection of evil, as long as life lasted he would enjoy and deride without remorse or fear. He chose evil because he loved it, and because he hated love, even when it was such love as Pamela had tried to enchain him with, for it partook in its narrow greedy sphere of the true essence, in that she wanted somebody not herself, and if she longed to get, she also longed to give.
Through the windless calm there came the sound of some rhythmical movement, and sitting up he saw a boat approaching with swiftly-dipping oars. The sun was bright on the water, and it was only a vague black speck, but soon he saw who was rowing in such a hurry.... He had said he would come back for lunch, so why had Nino come down to the bathing-place? News of some kind, perhaps.
Nino beached the boat, and jumped out.
“The signora,” he said.
“So she’s come back,” said Colin. “I knew she would.”
Nino looked at him with wide eyes of horror.
“They brought her back,” he said. “Two fishermen found her in the water below the high cliff where Tiberio’s palace is, the palace you call the Sunday palace....”