Then Rodney, knowing that he could be no more use, left the three derelicts together.
CHAPTER XXI
ON THE SHORE
There is a shore along which the world flowers, one long sweet garden strip, between the olive-grey hills and the very blue sea. Like nosegays in the garden the towns are set, blooming in their many colours, linked by the white road running above blue water. For vagabonds in April the poppies riot scarlet by the white road's edge, and the last of the hawthorn lingers like melting snow, and over the garden walls the purple veils of the wistaria drift like twilight mist. Over the garden walls, too, the sweetness of the orange and lemon blossom floats into the road, and the frangipani sends delicate wafts down, and the red and white roses toss and hang as if they had brimmed over from sheer exuberance. If a door in one of the walls chance to stand ajar, vagabonds on the road may look in and see an Eden, unimaginably sweet, aflame with oleanders and pomegranate blossom, and white like snow with tall lilies.
The road itself is good, bordered on one side by the garden sweetness and the blossoms that foam like wave-crests over the walls, on the other breaking down to a steep hill-slope where all the wild flowers of spring star the grassy terraces, singing at the twisted feet of the olives that give them grey shadow. So the hillside runs steeply down to where at its rocky base the blue waves murmur. All down the coast the road turns and twists and climbs and dips, above little lovely bays and through little gay towns, caught between mountains and blue water. For those who want a bed, the hush of the moonlit olives that shadow the terraced slopes gives sweeter sleep than the inns of the towns, and the crooning of the quiet sea is a gentler lullaby than the noises of streets, and the sweetness of the myrtle blossom is better to breathe than the warm air of rooms. To wander in spring beneath the sun by day and the moon by night along the sea's edge is a good life, a beautiful life, a cheerful and certainly an amusing life. Social adventures crowd the road. There are pleasant people along this shore of little blue bays. Besides the ordinary natives of the towns and the country-side, and besides the residents in the hotels (whose uses to vagabonds are purely financial) there is on this shore a drifting and incalculable population, heterogeneous, yet with a note of character common to all. A population cosmopolitan and shifting, living from hand to mouth, vagrants of the road or of the street corner, finding life a warm and easy thing in this long garden shut between hills and sea. So warm and lovely and easy a garden is it that it has for that reason become a lee shore; a shore where the sick and the sad and the frail and the unfortunate are driven by the winds of adversity to find a sheltered peace. On the shore all things may be given up; there is no need to hold with effort any possession, even life itself, for all things become gifts, easily bestowed and tranquilly received. You may live on extremely little there, and win that little lightly. You may sell things along the road for some dealer, or for yourself—plaster casts, mosaic brooches, picture postcards, needlework of divers colours. If you have a small cart drawn by a small donkey, you are a lucky man, and can carry your wares about in it and sell them at the hotels, or in the towns at fair-time. If you possess an infant son, you can carry him also about in the cart, and he will enjoy it. Also, if your conversation is like the sun's, with a friendly aspect to good and bad, you will find many friends to beguile the way. You may pick them up at fairs, on festa days, like blackberries.
On Santa Caterina's day, the 30th of April, there is a great festa in the coast towns. They hold the saint in especial honour on this shore, for she did much kindness there in plague-time. Vagabonds with wares to sell have a good day. There was, on one Santa Caterina's day, a young man, with a small donkey-cart and a small child and a disreputable yellow dog, who was selling embroidery. He had worked it himself; he was working at it even now, in the piazza at Varenzano, when not otherwise engaged. But a fair is too pleasantly distracting a thing to allow of much needlework being done in the middle of it. There are so many interesting things. There are the roulette tables, round which interested but cautious groups stand, while the owners indefatigably and invitingly twirl. The gambling instinct is not excessively developed in Varenzano. There was, of course, the usual resolute and solitary player, who stood through the hours silently laying one halfpenny after another on clubs, untempted to any deviation or any alteration of stake, except that on the infrequent occasions when it really turned out clubs he stolidly laid and lost his gained halfpennies by the other. By nine o'clock in the morning he had become a character; spectators nudged new-comers and pointed him out, with "Sempre fiori, quello." The young man with the embroidery was sorry about him; he had an expression as if he were losing more halfpence than he could well afford. The young man himself lost all the stakes he made; but he didn't gamble much, knowing himself not lucky. Instead, he watched the fluctuating fortunes of a vivacious and beautiful youth near him, who flung on his stakes with a lavish gesture of dare-devil extravagance, that implied that he was putting his fortune to the touch to win or lose it all. It was a relief to notice that his stakes were seldom more than threepence. When he lost, he swore softly to himself: "Dio mio, mio Dio, Dio mio," and then turned courteously to the embroidery-seller, who was English, with a free interpretation—"In Engliss, bai George." This seemed to the embroidery-seller to be true politeness in misfortune. The beautiful youth seemed to be a person of many languages; his most frequent interjection was, "Dio mio—Holy Moses—oh hang!" After which he would add an apology, addressed to the embroidery-seller, who had a certain air of refined innocence, "Bestemmiar, no. Brutto bestemmiare. Non gli piace, no," and resume his game.
Peter, who was selling embroidery, liked him so much that he followed him when he went to try his luck at the cigar game. Here Peter, who never smoked, won two black and snake-like cigars, which he presented to the beautiful young man, who received them with immense cordiality. A little later the young man, whose name was Livio, involved himself in a violent quarrel with the cigar banker, watched by an amused, placid and impartial crowd of spectators. Peter knew Livio to have the right on his side, because the banker had an unpleasant face and Livio accused him of being not only a Venetian but a Freemason. The banker in response remarked that he was not going to stay to be insulted by a Ligurian thief, and with violent gestures unscrewed his tin lady and her bunch of real lemons and put away his board. Livio burst into a studied and insulting shout of laughter, stopped abruptly without remembering to bring it to a proper finish, and began to be pleasant to the embroidery-seller, speaking broken American English with a strong nasal twang.
"My name is Livio Ceresole. Bin in America; the States. All over the place. Chicago, 'Frisco, Pullman cars, dollars—you know. Learnt Engliss there. Very fine country; I should smile." He did so, and looked so amiable and so engaging that the embroidery-seller smiled back, thinking what a beautiful person he was. He had the petulant, half sensuous, spoilt-boy beauty of a young Antinuous, with a rakish touch added by the angle of his hat and his snappy American idioms.
So it came about that those two threw in their lots for a time. There was something about the embroidery-seller that drew these casual friendships readily to him; he was engaging, with a great innocence of aspect and gentleness of demeanour, and a friendly smile that sweetened the world, and a lovable gift of amusement.