They refused to believe. “But your porter said you had.”
“Yes, an hour ago, but now they are taken.”
A merciful daze fell upon Peripatetica and Jane....
How they returned to the “Castel-a-Mare” and got themselves and their mountain of luggage into the one room in all Taormina they might call theirs for as much as a night, they never knew; when consciousness came back they were sitting in front of food in a bright dining-room, and knew by each other’s faces that hot water and soap must have happened in the interval.
Speech came back to Peripatetica, and she announced that she was never going to travel more, except to reach some place where she might stay on and on forever. Jane might tour through Sicily if she liked, but as for her, Syracuse and Girgenti and all could remain mere words on the map, and Cook keep her tickets—if she had to move on again on the morrow, she would go straight to Palermo and there stay!
Jane admitted to congenial feelings, and resigned all intervening Sicily without a pang. There would be no place in inhospitable Taormina for Persephone to squeeze into any way!
They went to question the Concierge of trains to Palermo. He took it as a personal grief that they must leave Taormina so soon. “The air of Palermo is not like ours.” They hoped it was not, as they shivered in a cold blast from the open door, and put it to him that they could hardly live on air alone, and that Taormina offered them nothing more. But he had something to suggest—furnished rooms that he had heard that a German shop-keeper wished to let. Peripatetica did not take to the suggestion kindly, in fact her aristocratic nose quite curled up at it. But she assented dejectedly that they might as well walk there as anywhere, and give the place a look.
Through the dust and shrivelled almond blossoms they trailed back into town. The sun was still behind grey clouds and an icy wind whipped up the dust.
“Too late for the almond bloom, too early for warmth. What is the right moment for Sicily?” murmured Peripatetica.
The mountains with their sweeping curves into the sea were undeniably beautiful; the narrow town street they entered through the battlemented gate was full of gay colour, but it left them cold and homesick for Calabria. A little old Saracen palace, with some delicate Moorish windows and mouldings still undefaced, held the antiquity shop of the Frau Schuler. Brisk and rosy she seemed indeed the “trustable person” of the Concierge’s description.