AT THE CERTOSA DI VAL D’EMA
I sat on the terrace of the old palace, waiting for the coming of the rain-clouds. The sunshine was gone, and with it the city’s witty sparkle; the sirocco’s breath puffed warm and moist; and Florence, all ruddled and sullen, lay chaunting her ponderous notes of bronze.
Below, knee-deep in the yellow, straggling stream, a fisherman swayed his net, slowly straining the supple framework; and while I watched him, of a sudden, a fitful longing to see the place again laid hold of me—to see it, just as it had been last year, on that mellow September afternoon, all garnished with soft light, all fragrant with coquettish simplicity and pleasant, prosperous peace. And soon, as the sky darkened, and the rain-clouds—a sombre, swelling herd—gathered above the cypresses of San Miniato, I seemed to hear the organ’s stately roll, and to perceive, through the obscurity of the half-darkened chapel, a crowding circle of white-robed figures. The chaunt of the church bells beat the air: all else seemed stilled—love and the quickening joy of life—and with a sort of childish inconsequence, bred perhaps of the curious, literary habit, I fell to envying them a little—those tall, white-robed fathers—their miniature rows of monkish gardens, and their solitary pacings beneath the pale-lemon cloisters....
So I started to go there, rattling through the dust in the face of the coming storm. By the roadside, the grey olives matched the sky; all around, the vines hung delicately dying, drooping in tired curves their fragile garlands of pallid-gold leaves; and here and there peeped specks of scarlet, like lingering traces of some bygone fête.
But, before we had climbed the hill, the rain came—a deliberate prelude of monstrous drops; and a veil, as of grey gauze, blurred the white-faced villas peopling the hill-sides, and changed the cypresses to dim, spiky sentinels....
It was Brother Agostino who came to the gate, greeting me, so I fancied, with a quick smile of recognition; then, before the groups of noisy village youths and raffish, Florentine cabmen, who encumbered the corridor, his features dropped back to the patient vacancy of habitual fatigue.
Over the tiled floor of the cloister-court rattled the dance of the rain; the great well, over-grown with rank grass, wore a forlorn, decrepit air; and a musty scent, as of approaching decay, floated over the vast garden.
In the chapel, a band of blatant Americans joined us, listening complacently to Brother Agostino’s perfunctory explanations concerning the frescoes, the stained-glass windows, the exquisite tomb of the monastery’s founder.
And the place seemed all changed: its fine distinction was gone: the old Certosa exposed to the hurried gaze of every passing tourist; and stern-faced Brother Agostino, footsore and weary, degraded to the rôle of a common, obsequious guide.