I was continually drawn back to the picture. I would sit before it for hours. It explained nothing. If offered no suggestions. It simply told me what I already knew about myself. But in watching it I found rest. Rebellion against social facts which turn love into lust left me. I came to see that a love which is unlawful is only lovely in its unfulfilment. The young girl in the woodland, did she rouse the frenzy in her lover, would lose the purity which was irrecoverable; by evening she would weep among the broken flowers. Perhaps, did I win her, it might be so with Vi.
I tried to find satisfaction by losing myself in memories of the past. The past is always kindlier than the present because, as Carlyle once said, the fear has gone out of it. The heavy actuality of the sorrows of Romeos makes them pleasurable romance only to latter-day observers. In their own day they were scandals. So I wandered through sun-scorched Italian towns, red and white and saffron, and I hung above ancient bridges, looking down on rushing mountain torrents, and I dreamt myself back to the glory of the loves that had once been self-consuming beneath that forgetful hard blue sky.
When I came to Ferrara my mind was stormy with thoughts of Lucrezia Borgia—Lucrezia of the amber hair. It was here that she came in her pageantry of shame to seek her third husband in the unwilling Alphonso. Ferrara had not changed since that day. She had seen it as I saw it. I entered the town at sunset. The golden light smote against the red-brick walls of the Castello. I imagined that I saw her sweet wronged face, half-saint, half-siren, gazing out from the narrow barred windows across the green-scummed moat.
I hired rooms in the primitive Pellegrino e Gaiana. They looked out on the dusty tree-shadowed Piazza Torquato Tasso, where tables with white cloths were spread, on which stood tall bottles of rough country wine. I promised myself that from there, as I sat, I could just discern the Castello. I had my dinner beneath the trees. On the further side of the square was a wine tavern. Men and girls were singing there. Sometimes the door would push open, letting out a rush of light. I tried to think that they were the men-at-arms of long ago. A cool breeze stirred the dust at my feet. The moon was rising. I got up and sauntered through gaunt paved streets, past empty palaces, past Ariosto’s house and out toward the country, where vines hung heavy with grapes, festooning the olive-trees. Italy lay languorous and scented in the night, like a fair deep-bosomed courtesan. The sensuous delight of the present mingled with my thoughts of the past. I had been hardly surprised had Lucrezia stolen out from the dusk towards me, with the breeze whipping about her the golden snakes of her hair.
Slowly I turned back to the town. At the Castello I halted, peering across the moat at the sullen darkness of the walls on the other side. As I stood smoking my cigar, I saw an English girl coming towards me across the Piazza Savonarola. Her nationality was unmistakable; she walked with a healthy air of self-reliance which you do not find in Latin women. I was surprised to see her. July is not the month for tourists. So far, save for a few Americans, I had had Italy to myself. And I was surprised for another reason—she was unaccompanied.
As she drew nearer, I turned my back so that she should not be offended by my staring. I heard her step coming closer. It halted at my side. I looked round, supposing she had lost her direction and was about to question me.
“You—you here!” I exclaimed and remained staring.
“I didn’t think you’d expect me,” she laughed shyly.
“Of course I didn’t. How should I? What brought you?”
“I was on my way to Venice; but remembering you were here, I stayed over for the night. You don’t mind?”