“But we can always go and feed at the Tramontano or the Victoria,” he pointed out. “And there’s a charm about this tumbledown old place. I was here once ten years ago and always promised myself a return visit. Of course, Winter is not the time to be in Sorrento. It’s not till the oranges come into their glory, about Easter, that one understands the raptures of the great men who have visited this place. The fascination of Sorrento is a stock subject with all the letter-writers of our century.”
“Och, but I would much rather be staying here,” Nancy assured him. “I think this place is so attractive.”
“It would be more attractive in Spring when the creamy Banksia roses are in blossom and hung with necklaces of wistaria. It is a little melancholy now. Yet the sun strikes warm at midday. I’ve told them to make up a roaring fire of chestnut logs in your room.”
“They’ve certainly done so, and it’s as cosy as it can be.”
“I only hope the weather stays fine for our holiday,” said Kenrick, putting up his monocle and staring an appeal to the tender azure of the December sky.
And the weather did stay fine, so that they were able to drive or walk all day and escape from the narrow walled alleys of Sorrento, alleys designed for summer heats, when their ferns and mosses would refresh the sun-tired eye, but in Winter damp and depressing, soggy with dead leaves.
On the last day of the old year they climbed up through the olives until they reached an open grassy space starred thick with the tigered buff and mauve blooms of a myriad crocuses, the saffron stamens of which burned like little tongues of fire in the sunlight.
“Forgive the melancholy platitude,” said Kenrick, “but I am oppressed by the thought of our transience here, and not only our transience, but the transience of all the tourists who sojourn for a while on this magic coast. The song of a poet here is already less than the warble of a passing bird; the moonlight is more powerful than all the vows of all who have ever loved in Sorrento; no music can endure beside the murmur of the Tyrrhenian. ‘Here could I live,’ one protests, and in a day or two the railway-guide is pulled out, and one is discussing with the hotel porter how to fit in Pompeii on the way back to Naples. Ugh! What is it that forbids man to be happy?”
“Well, obviously most of the people who visit Sorrento couldn’t afford to stay here indefinitely,” said Nancy, who always felt extremely matter-of-fact when her companion began to talk in this strain.
“Yes, but there must be many people like myself who could.”