Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

The anchorage of the Amphitrite lay in a bay not far from the entrance to the harbour, screened by the steep-climbing olive groves belonging to this Castello of Silorno which Archie's mother had taken for the months of May and June: Silorno itself, that incredibly picturesque huddle of pink and yellow walls, of campaniles, and lacemakers, who, with bright coloured kerchiefs over their comely heads, plied their wooden bobbins all day in the shade of its narrow streets, rose, roof over roof, at the head of the harbour. A big cobbled piazza sloped down to the quay wall where sailors chatted and dozed in the shadow all day, putting to sea for their night-fishing by the light of flares about the time of sunset. The village was impenetrable to wheeled traffic, for the road along the bay came to an end at its outskirts, and thereafter became a narrow cobbled track, built in steps where the steepness of its streets demanded. Round the town rose an amphitheatre of hills broken only by the low saddle, where the final promontory on which the Castello stood swam out seawards in three wooded humps of hills. And, sitting here, you could observe on days like these the breakers crashing on the reefs to the right, where the seas rolled in from the open Mediterranean, while the land-locked harbour, into which Archie had just brought his boat, lay smooth as a mirror at your feet towards the left. Straight in front ran the ascending path that passed below the Castello to the head of the promontory, where enlightened Italian enterprise was building an execrable and totally useless lighthouse to supplant the little Madonna chapel that had stood there for centuries.

Archie took down his sail, anchored the Amphitrite, and punted himself across in a small boat to the landing-stage at the foot of the hill on which the Castello stood. Here the trees stood untroubled by the gale that poured high over them from the south, though on the other side of the harbour the wind roared in the olives, and turned their green to the grey of the underleaf, and the great surges beat and burst on the rocks he had narrowly avoided. But here that tumultuous stir was unfelt, and the resinous smell of pines and the clean odour of the eucalyptus-trees hung in the warm and sheltered air. Out of that denser shade he passed into the belt of olives that grew higher on the slope, mixed with angled and contorted fig-trees, where the fruit was already beginning to swell and ripen. Above rose the great grey bastion of the retaining fortress wall, tufted with stone-crop and valerian that was rooted in the crevices, and above that again was spread the umbrella of the stone-pine that grew at the corner of the garden. The path he followed wound round the base of this wall and passed below its easterly side, where he came into the blast of the warm south wind again that swept along the face of the Castello, and made the cypresses bend and buckle like fishing-rods which feel the jerk and pull of some hooked giant of the waters. The hillside here plunged very precipitously downwards to the bay three hundred feet below, wrinkled with waves, and feathered with foam, and, lover of the sea though he was, he felt content to observe that tumult of windy water. Not a sail was visible right across to the farther shore of the gulf, and to-night there would be no illumination of the fishing-boats that in calm weather rode out there, twinkling and populous as a town. But he stood looking at the sea a moment before he turned into the narrow stone passage that led to the gate of the house, as a man may look with love on his horse that, unruly and obstreperous, has yet carried him so gallantly.

A girl came up the cobbled way from the town just as he turned in. She had on a very simple linen dress that the wind blew close to her body, and a flapping linen sunbonnet, tied below her chin, to prevent the wind capturing it. She was tall and slight, moved easily, as with a boyish carelessness; a very pleasant face, also boyish and quite plain, peered from under her flapping bonnet. Her hands were noticeable: they were large but extremely well shaped, and the fingers showed both perception and efficiency. It may be remarked that Archie had never noticed her hands at all.

"Hullo, Jess," said he. "I'm just back. Lord, I've had such a ripping afternoon. And the cigarettes are quite dry. Where have you been?"

"Just down into Silorno. Cousin Marion wanted a telegram sent about their sleeping-berths to-morrow."

Archie frowned. He had noticed that Jessie was often sent on errands.
People who can absolutely be relied on usually are.

"I should have thought my mother might have sent Pasqualino," he observed.

The girl laughed.

"Oh, she wanted to, but I said I would go instead. You see, Cousin Marion and Helena were getting in what might be called rather a state about you. I tried to infect them with my own calm, but they wouldn't catch it. So I thought a little walk would be pleasant."

"Oh, was Helena frightened?" asked Archie rather greedily.