“You seemed to be most tremendously in earnest yesterday, when we were talking about that book,” observed Brook on the following afternoon.
“Of course I was,” answered Clare. “I said just what I thought.”
They were walking together along the high road which leads from Amalfi towards Salerno. It is certainly one of the most beautiful roads in Europe, and in the whole world. The chain of rocky heights dashes with wild abruptness from its five thousand feet straight to the dark-blue sea, bristling with sharp needles and spikes of stone, rough with a chaos of brown boulders, cracked from peak to foot with deep torn gorges. In each gorge nestles a garden of orange and lemons and pomegranates, and out of the stones there blows a perfume of southern blossom through all the month of May. The sea lies dark and clear below, ever tideless, often still as a woodland pool; then, sometimes, it rises suddenly in deep-toned wrath, smiting the face of the cliff, booming through the low-mouthed caves, curling its great green curls and combing them out to frothing ringlets along the strips of beach, winding itself about the rock of Conca in a heavily gleaming sheet and whirling its wraith of foam to heaven, the very ghost of storm.
And in the face of those rough rocks, high above the water, is hewn a way that leads round the mountain’s base, many miles along it, over the sharp-jutting spurs, and in between the boulders and the needles, down into the gardens of the gorges and past the dark towers whence watchmen once descried the Saracen’s ill-boding sail and sent up their warning beacon of smoke by day and fire by night.
It is the most beautiful road in the world, in its infinite variety, in the grandeur above and the breadth below, and the marvellous rich sweetness of the deep gardens—passing as it does out of wilderness into splendour, out of splendour into wealth of colour and light and odour, and again out to the rugged strength of the loneliness beyond.
Clare and Johnstone had exchanged idle phrases for a while, until they had passed Atrani and the turn where the new way leads up to Ravello, and were fairly out on the road. They were both glad to be out together and walking, for Clare had grown stronger, and was weary of always sitting on the terrace, and Johnstone was tired of taking long walks alone, merely for the sake of being hungry afterwards, and of late had given it up altogether. Mrs. Bowring herself was glad to be alone for once, and made little or no objection, and so the two had started in the early afternoon.
Johnstone’s remark had been premeditated, for his curiosity had been aroused on the preceding day by Clare’s words and manner. But after she had given him her brief answer she said no more, and they walked on in silence for a few moments.
“Yes,” said Johnstone at last, as though he had been reflecting, “you generally say what you think. I didn’t doubt it at the time. But you seem rather hard on the men. Women are all angels, of course—”
“Not at all!” interrupted Clare. “Some of us are quite the contrary.”
“Well, it’s a generally accepted thing, you know. That’s what I mean. But it isn’t generally accepted that men are. If you take men into consideration at all, you must make some allowances.”