Rhoda Polly, Hugh and I helped the men over the wall with him, and held the brancard in place till they could get over to our assistance. We did not try to go straight to the landing place through the bull ring, but instead cast a wide circuit about the town, and finally came out upon the little house of gardener Arcadius buried among its trees.
Him I awakened with care, first a hail of pebbles on his window panes, followed the scratching teeth of a garden rake to indicate a friend, and lastly my own voice calling softly his name. He looked sleepily out, for he cared nothing about the town and its ongoings, if the early blossoms were not frosted and his young trees were not eaten by predatory goats.
He made me a sign that he would be down immediately, and he was buckling an equatorial waistbelt even as he opened the door.
He started back at the sight of the brancard. "What! A dead man?"
I explained the desperate need of Keller Bey and his daughter—how they must cross the river and how we counted on him to give us porters. For the boat Rhoda Polly and I would be sufficient, but for the carrying of the stretcher up the hill we had need of four stout fellows.
"I have my Italians," he said, "that is, if none of them have decamped; I locked them in, but the lads from the Peninsula are very handy with a crooked nail."
As we went, Arcadius, lurching in front like a huge sea-lion doing tricks, waved a lantern and spoke of the prospects of his garden. The hard winter had done no harm. It had broken the clods and killed the grubs. The war, the Commune, the black terror of Aramon did not exist for Arcadius. Barrès would not come to expropriate his cauliflowers and early potatoes. He asked no questions about Keller Bey and genially cut short any offer of explanation. His business was the soil, the fruit trees, planting and transplanting, and the sale of young vegetables. Beyond these he desired to know nothing.
His four Italians were there, big, good-looking lads from the north, who found gardening more to their taste than making roads or piling up railway embankments. Arcadius addressed them in a kind of lingua franca which included much gesticulation and even foot-stamping.
The men appeared to understand, and I put in a few words as to remuneration in their own tongue. For the son of the historian of Italian Art had, of course, been bred to the language. They started and turned upon me eager eyes, and then broke into a torrent of Tuscan which took me instantly to the scented bean-fields and beautiful hills about Siena. Of course they would be proud to carry my friend up the hill. I was the son of the Wise Man of the Many Books. I had been with Garibaldi. Ah, then, that said all. One had a brother who had died following the Little Father. Another had even been told to get out of the way by hasty Menotti. He laughed at the oath which accompanied the command. Of course they were all ready. They could find the boat. It was quite safe. They knew where. They had emptied it once when a squall had overturned it, so that it lay on its side facing the rain.
So with Hugh, Rhoda Polly, one of the Tuscans and myself at the oars we were soon letting ourselves slip away from the shore on which stood Arcadius and his lantern, urging us to bring the lads safe back, because there was a big job with the sweet peas on the morrow.