«Clouds over Carrara,» said Mr. Topes, deprecating his remark with a little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. «I like to fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. I imagine their ghosts»—his voice trembled—»feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. Look, there’s something of Michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath it.» Mr. Topes pointed, and Barbara, nodded and said, «Yes, yes,» though she wasn’t quite sure which cloud he meant.
«It’s like Night on the Medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. And there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour—you see the one I mean—there’s a Bernini. All the passion’s on the surface, expressed; the gesture’s caught at its most violent. And that sleek, smug white fellow over there, that’s a delicious absurd Canova.» Mr. Topes chuckled.
«Why do you always talk about art?» said Barbara. «You bring these dead people into everything. What do I know about Canova or whoever it is?» They were none of them alive. She thought of that dark face, bright as a lamp with life. He at least wasn’t dead. She wondered whether the letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. No, of course not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out.
Mr. Topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. He always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. Like an old tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to keep him from rotting away. They walked on for a long time in silence.
«Here’s the river,» said Mr. Topes at last.
A few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came down slowly through the plain to the sea. Just inland from the beach it was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, and beyond the plain were the mountains. In this calm light after the storm everything looked strange. The colours seemed deeper and more intense than at ordinary times. And though all was so clear, there was a mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. There was no sound except the continuous breathing of the sea. They stood for a little while, looking; then turned back.
Far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. White flannel trousers, a pink skirt.
«Nature,» Mr. Topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. «One always comes back to nature. At a moment such as this, in surroundings like these, one realises it. One lives now—more quietly, perhaps, but more profoundly. Deep watery. Deep waters….»
The figures drew closer. Wasn’t it the marquis? And who was with him? Barbara strained her eyes to see.
«Most of one’s life,» Mr. Topes went on, «is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. Your father and I, we collect pictures and read about the dead. Other people achieve the same results by drinking, or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. Anything rather than think calmly about the important things.»
Mr. Topes was silent. He looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, at the great clouds, at his companion. A frail Montagna madonna, with the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity as a background. And he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. He thought of death and the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt inclined to weep.
The approaching couple were quite near now.
«What a funny old walrus,» said the lady.
«Walrus? Your natural history is quite wrong.» The marquis laughed. «He’s much too dry to be a walrus. I should suggest some sort of an old cat.»
«Well, whatever he is, I’m sorry for that poor little girl. Think of having nobody better to go about with!»
«Pretty, isn’t she?»
«Yes, but too young, of course.»
«I like the innocence.»
«Innocence? Cher ami! These English girls. Oh, la la! They may look innocent But, believe me….»
«Sh, sh. They’ll hear you.»
«Pooh, they don’t understand Italian.»
The marquis raised his hand. «The old walrus….» he whispered; then addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers.
«Good evening, signorina. Good evening, Mr. Topes. After a storm the air is always the purest, don’t you find, eh?»
Barbara nodded, leaving Mr. Topes to answer. It wasn’t his sister. It was the Russian woman, the one of whom Mrs. Topes used to say that it was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. She had turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; Barbara looked at the line of her averted face. Mr. Topes was saying something about the Pastoral Symphony.
Purple face powder in the daylight; it looked hideous.
«Well, au revoir.»
The flash of the marquis’s smile was directed at them. The Russian woman turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. Her heavy white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous ennui.
«They jar a little,» said Mr. Topes when they were out of earshot—»they jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. They haven’t the innocence for this … this….»—he wriggled and tremoloed out the just, the all too precious word—»this prelapsarian landscape.»
He looked sideways at Barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully frowning over. Oh, lovely and delicate young creature! What could he adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? Tenderness….
«All this,» he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the sky, the sea, the mountains, «this scene is like something remembered, clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening time.»
But that was not really what he wanted to say.
«You see what I mean?» he asked dubiously. She made no reply. How could she see? «This scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the corresponding emotion. Those people were out of harmony. They weren’t clear and pure enough.» He seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. «It’s an emotion of the young and of the old. You could feel it, I could feel it. Those people couldn’t.» He was feeling his way through obscurities. Where would he finally arrive? «Certain poems express it. You know Francis Jammes? I have thought so much of his work lately. Art instead of life, as usual; but then I’m made that way. I can’t help thinking of Jammes. Those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about Clara d’Ellébeuse.»
«Clara d’Ellébeuse?» She stopped and stared at him.
«You know the lines?» Mr. Topes smiled delightedly. «This makes me think, you make me think of them. ‘F’aime dans les temps Clara d’Ellébeuse….’ But, my dear Barbara, what is the matter?»
She had started crying, for no reason whatever.
The End
