He had had some of his things in one of the girls’ boxes. When he remembered it in the evening they had already begun to undress and were laughing and chatting when he knocked at their door. Jenny opened it a little, giving him what he asked for. She had on a light dressing-jacket with short sleeves, leaving the slender white arm bare. It tempted him to many kisses, but he dared only give it one single, light one. He had been in love with her then, intoxicated with the spring, the wine, the merry rain, and the sudden sunshine, with his own youth and the joy of life. He wanted to make her dance—that tall, fair girl, who smiled so guardedly as if she were trying a new art, something she had never yet done—she who had stared with grey, serious eyes at all the flowers they passed and that she wanted to pick.
Oh, how different all might have been! The dry, bitter sob shook his frame again.
The day they went to Montefiascone it rained too, so hard that the water was flung back from the stone bridge on to the girls’ lifted skirts and ankles. How they had laughed, all three of them, when they walked up the narrow street, the rain-water streaming towards them in small torrents. When they reached Rocca, the castle cliff in the centre of the old town, it cleared. They leaned over the rampart, looking at the lake, which lay black beneath the olive groves and the vineyards. The skies hung low about the hills round the lake, but across the dark water there came a silver line, which broadened, the mist rolled back into the crevices, and the mountain came into better view. The sun pierced the clouds, which sank down to rest round the small promontories with grey stone castles. Towards the north a distant peak became visible—Cesca said it was Monte Amiata.
The last rain-clouds rolled across the blue spring sky, melting before the sun; the bad weather fled westward, darkening the Etrurian heights, which sloped desolately towards the far yellow-white strip of the Mediterranean. The sight reminded him of the mountain scenery in his own country, in spite of the olive grove and the vineyards.
He and she had stooped behind the hedge, and he had held out his coat so that she could light her cigarette. The wind was keen up there, and she shivered a little in her wet clothes. Her cheeks were red and the sun glittered in her damp, golden hair as she stroked it away from her eyes with one hand.
He would go there tomorrow to meet the spring, the cold, naked spring, full of expectation, with all the buds wet and shivering in the wind—blossoming all the same.
She and the spring were one to him, she who stood shivering and smiled in the changing weather and wanted to gather all the flowers into her lap. Little Jenny, you were not to gather the flowers, and your dreams never came true—and now I am dreaming them for you.
And when I have lived long enough to be so full of longing as you were, perhaps I will do as you, and say to fate: Give me a few of the flowers; I will be satisfied with much less than I wanted in the beginning of life. But I will not die as you did, because you could not be content. I will remember you, and kiss your head and your golden hair and think: She could not live without being the best, and claiming the best as her right; and maybe I shall say: Heaven be praised that she chose death rather than living content.
Tonight I will go to Piazza San Pietro and listen to the wild music of the fountain that never stops, and dream my dream. For you, Jenny, are my dream, and I have never had any other.
Dream—oh, dream!