I was shown to my quarters—the room that had been Mr. Bicknell’s—in a small frame house, sixteen by sixteen. It was divided into two rooms by a wooden partition with a door; there was a well fitted window with a sash curtain in each room. Behind the house was the famous kitchen, of which we had heard so much. It is a tiny convenient place with a cement floor and walls, a stone table with little holes for the live charcoal, and grates to go over the fire. My room had a table, chair, washstand with jug, basin and pail. Gasperone brought me hot water and took my boots and dress to brush. In the corner of the room was a most ingenious and convenient bed. Some springy boards were nailed rather loosely to an upright head and footpiece; the boards were almost as good as a spring, the mattress and pillow of sea-moss were comfortable enough for anybody, not born in Sybaris.
I sat down and looked out of the window towards the tool house, the center of interest for the moment. The men had knocked off work, and were passing in file, very slowly, before the open window, where the paymaster sat, paying each man what was due him.
AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA. THE PAY LINE. [Page 286.]
“THE FRONT OF THE PALACE HAD FALLEN INTO A HEAP OF RUINS.” [Page 305.]
SEMINARA. CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF THE POOR.
After our long journey, our harassing drive through ruined Messina—where the reality surpassed all descriptions—the exquisite neatness, the order, the comfort of the Zona Case Americane, brought a sense of well-being like oil poured on a burning wound. I sat for an hour in that fragrant little wooden room, while the rain drummed with soft fingers on the roof, and went over the history of our journey step by step, tested link by link the chain of chance circumstances that had drawn young Brush, the new recruit, from the garage in Florence to the camp by the Torrente Zaera.