The story of Fifine

by Bernard Capes

It was a lovely quiet noon, but with a brooding stillness in the air which brought Carabas’s warning into my mind. Still, at the worst, I had before me long hours of unobscured sunshine, enough and to spare for all the use I wanted to make of it. At the sign-post, turning off from the road, I struck straight across the valley, and was soon among the lower intricacies of the opposite hills. And there I sat down among the rocks, and, for a good beginning, got out my provender.

There was nothing in it inimical to a sober and temperate view of things; indeed the wine was rather a febrifuge than a stimulant; wherefore it was, perhaps, that I soon found myself excusing my late ebullition of feeling to myself on the score that it had been conceded to a purely abstract idea—the thought of a pleasant comradeship ended, or about to end—and that I should never have dreamed of so committing myself to that demonstration unless I had been sure that the tender sentiment it embodied was predestined to unfulfilment. Nobody was compromised by it—least of all myself, in whose independent soul it had figured for the mere indulgence of a whimsical fancy.

All of which was quite sensible and satisfactory. And then I bethought myself, with a gleeful chuckle, that I possessed, in the shape of a flask of right cognac in my breast pocket, a jocund corrective to the dismal stuff I had been swilling; and out it came, to change, in a few moments, the whole complexion of my mind.

So do great conclusions hang upon little means. It was a fly that once made the throne of St. Peter vacant, a gnat that, entering the ear of the arrogant King who thought to storm heaven with his flying chariots, hurled all that vast expedition to the ground. A few drops of Prussic acid will suffice to poison the whole stream, with its thousand tributaries, of the living ichor; a thimbleful of liqueur runs the same course in stimulating fire. Now, as I sat, without yielding my title to a spiritual independence I did certainly begin to consider it from the point of view of its losses rather than its gains. Or, rather, my mood lapsed entirely from the critical to the sentimental, and not my sacrifice, but the constitution of what I sacrificed, came to absorb me.

She had a hundred pretty ways—now I studied her thus impersonally, as one might a figure in a book—yet not one but was a sincere expression of her feelings, and without conscious art. I always loved the quality of her voice; it was slander that could call its leisured music apathy. One thought of her as one did of sleep—the “swooning to death” of Keats, and in as sweet a connexion. Because sleep has more and dearer discoveries than waking, a deeper understanding, mysteries of the subconscious spirit too shy to face the light, but confessing themselves dearly out of the darkness. So she seemed to me, a thing of daylight reserves, enough to obscure but not to kill the promise of the lovelier soul that hid within. And, with such potentialities, how rich a possession might she not prove to the man who won her.

What were she and Carabas doing at that moment? I got up suddenly on the thought, and began to move off among the rocks, turning my face instinctively homewards. But as suddenly I swerved to the left, with a little testy laugh, and addressed myself resolutely to my business of exploration.

For some time I went at random, fairly involving myself in the huddle of low hills and slades into which the mountains here ran down, suggesting, as it were, the subsiding waters of a cataract. They were pretty intricately confused, and tessellated everywhere with patches of bush and waste ground, with occasionally a cultivated field of olive or almond set amidst. My purpose being on the whole to kill time, I took little thought as to my bearings, only noting in a general way the trend of the hills, and the position of that particular one which I intended presently to climb. It remained a dead calm, sultry, and with little incitement in it to exertion; but the haze was palpably thickening; and presently I came to realise that, did I wish to attain the Roman Camp, the sooner I set about making for it the better.

I was by then well to the south-west, in a wild hill-tossed country, of the particular height which I understood to be my goal, and since I was virtually lost it seemed that my plain course was to take as much as possible a bee-line for it—which was what any Roman himself would have done. Wherefore I set off—only to find that what meant a bee-line for a bee might mean a scarce passable switchback for a human being. Plunging through thickets; ploughing along clayey bottoms; struggling over boulder-strewn slopes, only to discover that they were isolated mounds I might have skirted; threading my way through thronged groves of olive and mulberry, to lose my direction and be aggravating minutes in refinding it; most often painfully forcing a passage through massed bushes of juniper or tamarisk, and never once crossing a friendly track or lane that would have helped me over a difficulty, slowly I toiled on towards release and reassurance. And when at last, after hours of labour as it seemed, I did break into the open, and saw what I conceived to be the hill of the camp towering mistily in its full height before me, I threw myself with a groan down on the rocks, and set to cursing all bee-lines literally up hill and down dale.

So I had not attained my goal yet; I was not in the way to attain goals, it seemed, however fair and desirable. Fate, on the whole, was treating me pretty scurvily. And I had done nothing, absolutely nothing, to merit the curse of Tantalus—or to merit that form of it, since I had not coveted the grapes for myself, which was implied in the sight of another man’s enjoyment. Soft, bloomy, delicious things! Damn the fellow, with his globular paunch and thick relishing lips! How women could let their beauty be so profaned! I had often dwelt on her profile seen against a background of silvery light or purple drapery, and loved its infinite childishness—the smooth rounded cheek, the short rather insolent nose, the upper lip projecting but the tiniest fraction of an inch over the lower, an endearing feature. And she could value them all at no better than material for that fulsome traffic!

I jumped up, and began to ascend the hill. The sun, during the half hour I had lain resting and brooding, was already sloping deep into the west, and there was a chill heaviness in the air which portended evil. I was conscious of it, even while the fire in my brain drove me on, reckless of consequences. What did it matter, even though I had to spend the night on the mountains? I had only myself to consider; there was no one else affected by my obstinacy. I had said I would explore the Roman Camp, and I meant to do it. I would show that my will could be resolute, even though to a foolish end. I meant to paint a picture presently that should give all my slanderers the lie; and then there would be a finish to this talk about my idle futility, and the charge that had been brought should be regretted, and bitterly regretted, and in vain.