"But I am really no longer an invalid," he said. "And I must be getting
northward very soon. I need the bracing air, the Spartan touch of the
cold that the Sybarite in me dreads. Perhaps we all need them."
"If you go on like this, you two," Hermione exclaimed, "you will make me
feel as if it were degraded to wish to live anywhere except at Clapham
Junction or the North Pole. Let us be happy as we are, where we are,
to-day and--yes, call me weak if you like--and to-morrow!"
Maurice made no answer to this challenge, but Artois covered his silence,
and kept the talk going on safe topics till Gaspare came to the terrace
to lay the cloth for collazione.
It was past noon now, and the heat was brimming up like a flood over the
land. Flies buzzed about the terrace, buzzed against the white walls and
ceilings of the cottage, winding their tiny, sultry horns ceaselessly,
musicians of the sun. The red geraniums in the stone pots beneath the
broken columns drooped their dry heads. The lizards darted and stopped,
darted and stopped upon the wall and the white seats where the tiles were
burning to the touch. There was no moving figure on the baked mountains,
no moving vessel on the shining sea. No smoke came from the snowless lips
of Etna. It was as if the fires of the sun had beaten down and slain the
fires of the earth.
Gaspare moved to and fro slowly, spreading the cloth, arranging the pots
of flowers, the glasses, forks, and knives upon it. In his face there was
little vivacity. But now and then his great eyes searched the hot world
that lay beneath them, and Artois thought he saw in them the
watchfulness, the strained anxiety that had been in Maurice's eyes.
"Some one must be coming," he thought. "Or they must be expecting some
one to come, these two."
"Do you ever have visitors here?" he asked, carelessly.
"Visitors! Emile, why are we here? Do you anticipate a knock and 'If you
please, ma'am, Mrs. and the Misses Watson'? Good Heavens--visitors on
Monte Amato!"
He smiled, but he persisted.
"Never a contadino, or a shepherd, or"--he looked down at the sea--"or a
fisherman with his basket of sarde?"
Maurice moved in his chair, and Gaspare, hearing a word he knew, looked
hard at the speaker.
"Oh, we sometimes have the people of the hills to see us," said Hermione.
"But we don't call them 'visitors.' As to fishermen--here they are!"