Revolving Lights: Pilgrimage, Volume 7

by Dorothy M. Richardson

“Oh no, my dear!” She shrieked gently; wheeling round to share her mirth. “The Past. ’Istry. The Mediterranean past.”

“Her stones are precious stones.” From this beginning, to go on looking only at things, ignoring surroundings....

“That’s it! Come along!” Alma went blithely forward, again humming her tune. But there was a faint change in her confident manner. She too, was conscious of going to meet an ordeal.

Through the still, open-windowed brightness of the brown-green room, out into the naked blaze. Rocky dryness and sea freshness mingled in the huge air. The little baked pathway ribboning the level grass, disappearing round the angle of the enclosing edge, the perfect sharp edge, irises feathering along it, sharp green spikes and deep blue hoods of filmy blossom patterned against the paler misty blueness of the sea. Perfect. Hidden beyond the sharp edge, the pathway winding down the terraced slope of the cliff to the little gate opening from the tangled bottom on to the tamarisk-trimmed sea road. Seats set at the angles of the winding path. The sea glinting at your side between the leaf patterns of the creeper covered pergola. The little roughstone shelter, trapping the sunblaze. The plain bench along the centre of a piece of pathway, looking straight out to the midmost sea; sun-baked gravel under your feet, clumps of flowers in sight. Somewhere the rockery, its face catching the full blaze of the light, green bosses clumped upon it, with small pure-toned flowers, mauvy pink and tender eastern blue. On the level just below it, a sudden little flat of grass, small flowered shrubs at its edge towards the sea.

All waiting for tomorrow, endless tomorrows, in the morning, when the sunlight poured from the other side of the sky and the face of the cliff was cool and coloured. For tonight when the blaze had deepened into sunset and afterglow, making a little Naples of the glimpse of white town, winding street and curve of blue bay visible in the distance beyond the shoulder of the sidemost clump of shrubs along the end of the sunk lawn.

Alma had halted, just behind, letting her gaze her fill. There was no one to be seen. No sound. Nothing to break the perfect expressiveness.

“We’ve taken refuge at the back,” suggested Alma into her arm-stretching groan of contentment. Down across the lawn into the little pathway between the shrubs. There they were, in the cool shadows under the small trees. Large bamboo chairs, a cushioned hammock, tea going on, Hypo rising in the middle of a sentence. Miss Prout sitting opposite, upright, posed, knee over knee, feet shod in peacock blue, one pointing downwards in the air, exactly above the other pointing on to the gravel. A wide silky gown, loose; held flat above the chest by brilliant bold embroidery; a broad dark head; short wide tanned face.

The eyes were not brown but wide starry blue; unseeing; contradicting her matronly shape. Now that the arrival was over and Hypo had begun again, she still had the look of waiting, apart. As if she were sitting alone. Yet her clever clothes and all her outlines diffused companionship.

The lizards must have looked perfect, darting and basking on the rockery. But why have his heart won only by the one that quickly wriggled out of the box?... Paying attention only to the people who were strong enough to fuss all the time. Not seeing that half their animation was assumed.... “Do you still,” the bells of the blue flowers in the deepest shadow were like lanterns hung on little trees crowded upon the brown earth. The sound of grass and flowers in blissful shade poured into the voices, making agreement, giving them all the quality of blossoming in the surrounding coolness, aware of it, aware of the outer huge splintering sunlight that made it perfect, fled away from, left to itself to prepare another perfection ... “divide people into those who like ‘The Reading Girl’ and those who prefer the Dresden teapot?”

“Sudden Miriam. Miriam, Edna, is ... is terrifying....” He turned full round to hand the buns, both firm neatly moulded hands holding the dish ironically-carefully. The wide blue eyes looked across. Where was she all the time; so calm and starry.... “She comes down from London, into our rustic solitude, primed....”