I
The Peaslake party was most harmonious in its composition. Four out of the five were Peaslakes, which partly accounted for the success, but the fifth, Harold, seemed to have been created to go with them. They had started from England soon after his engagement to Mildred Peaslake, and had been flying over Europe for two months. At first they were a little ashamed of their rapidity, but the delight of continual customhouse examinations soon seized them, and they had hardly learnt what “Come in,” and “Hot water, please,” were in one language, before they crossed the frontier and had to learn them in another.
But, as Harold truly said, “People say we don’t see things properly, and are globetrotters, and all that, but after all one travels to enjoy oneself, and no one can say that we aren’t having a ripping time.”
Every party, to be really harmonious, must have a physical and an intellectual centre. Harold provided one, Mildred the other. He settled whether a mountain had to be climbed or a walk taken, and it was his fists that were clenched when a porter was insolent, or a cabman tried to overcharge. Mildred, on the other hand, was the fount of information. It was she who generally held the Baedeker and explained it. She had been expecting her Continental scramble for several years, and had read a fair amount of books for it, which a good memory often enabled her to reproduce.
But they all agreed that she was no dry encyclopedia. Her appetite for facts was balanced by her reverence for imagination.
“It is imagination,” she would say, “that makes the past live again. It sets the centuries at naught.”
“Rather!” was the invariable reply of Harold, who was notoriously deficient in it. Recreating the past was apt to give him a headache, and his thoughts obstinately returned to the unromantic present, which he found quite satisfactory. He was fairly rich, fairly healthy, very much in love, very fond of life, and he was content to worship in Mildred those higher qualities which he did not possess himself.
These two between them practically ran the party, and both Sir Edwin and Lady Peaslake were glad that the weight of settling or explaining anything should be lifted off their shoulders. Sir Edwin sometimes held the Baedeker, but his real function was the keeping of a diary in which he put down the places they went to, the people they met, and the times of the trains. Lady Peaslake’s department was packing, hotels, and the purchasing of presents for a large circle of acquaintance. As for Lilian, Mildred’s sister, whatever pleased other people pleased her. Altogether it was a most delightful party.
They were however just a little subdued and quiet during that journey from Palermo to Girgenti. They had done Palermo in even less time than Baedeker had allowed for it, and such audacity must tell on the most robust of tourists. Furthermore they had made an early start, as they had to get to Girgenti for lunch, do the temples in the afternoon, and go on the next morning to Syracuse.
It was no wonder that Lady Peaslake was too weary to look out of the window, and that Harold yawned when Mildred explained at some length how it was that a Greek temple came to be built out of Greece.
“Poor boy! you’re tired,” she said, without bitterness, and without surprise.
Harold blushed at his impoliteness.
“We really do too much,” said Lady Peaslake. “I never bought that Sicilian cart for Mrs. Popham. It would have been the very thing. She will have something out of the way. If a thing’s at all ordinary she will hardly say thank you. Harold, would you try at Girgenti? Mind you beat them down. Four francs is the outside.”
“Certainly, Lady Peaslake.” His method of purchasing for her, was to pay whatever was asked, and to make good the difference out of his own pocket,
“Girgenti will produce more than Sicilian carts,” said Mildred, smoothing down the pages of the guide book. “In Greek times it was the second city of the island, wasn’t it? It was famous for the ability, wealth, and luxury of its inhabitants. You remember, Harold, it was called Acragas.”
“Acragas, Acragas,” chanted Harold, striving to rescue one word from the chaos. The effect was too much for him, and he gave another yawn.
“Really, Harold!” said Mildred, laughing. “You’re very much exhausted.”
“I’ve scarcely slept for three nights,” he replied in rather an aggrieved voice.
“Oh, my dear boy! I’m very sorry. I had no idea.”
“Why did not you tell me?” said Sir Edwin. “We would have started later. Yes, I see you do look tired.”
“It’s so queer. It’s ever since I’ve been in Sicily. Perhaps Girgenti will be better.”
“Have you never slept since Naples?”
“Oh, I did sleep for an hour or so last night. But that was because I used my dodge.”
“Dodge!” said Sir Edwin, “whatever do you mean!”
“You know it, don’t you? You pretend you’re someone else, and then you go asleep in no time.”
“Indeed I do not know it,” said Sir Edwin emphatically.
Mildred’s curiosity was aroused. She had never heard Harold say anything unexpected before, and she was determined to question him.
“How extremely interesting! How very interesting! I don’t know it either. Who do you imagine yourself to be?”
“Oh, no one—anyone. I just say to myself, ‘That’s someone lying awake. Why doesn’t he go to sleep if he’s tired?’ Then he—I mean I—do, and it’s all right.”
“But that is a very wonderful thing. Why didn’t you do it all three nights?”
“Well, to tell the truth,” said Harold, rather confused, “I promised Tommy I’d never do it again. You see, I used to do it, not only when I couldn’t sleep, but also when I was in the blues about something—or nothing—as one is, I don’t know why. It doesn’t get rid of them, but it kind of makes me go strong that I don’t care for them—I can’t explain. One morning Tommy came to see me, and I never knew him till he shook me. Naturally he was horribly sick, and made me promise never to do it again.”
“And why have you done it again?” said Sir Edwin.
“Well, I did hold out two nights. But last night I was so dead tired, I couldn’t think what I wanted to—of course you understand that: it’s rather beastly. All the night I had to keep saying ‘I’m lying awake, I’m lying awake, I’m lying awake,’ and it got more and more difficult. And when it was almost time to get up, I made a slip and said, ‘He’s lying awake’—and then off I went.”
“How very, very interesting,” said Mildred, and Lilian cried that it was a simply splendid idea, and that she should try it next time she had the toothache.
“Indeed, Lilian,” said her mother, “I beg you’ll do no such thing.”
“No, indeed,” said Sir Edwin, who was looking grave. “Harold, your friend was quite right. It is never safe to play tricks with the brain. I must say I’m astonished: you of all people!”
“Yes,” said Harold, looking at a very substantial hand. “I’m such a stodgy person. It is odd. It isn’t brain or imagination or anything like that. I simply pretend.”
“It is imagination,” said Mildred in a low determined voice.
“Whatever it is, it must stop,” said Sir Edwin. “It’s a dangerous habit. You must break yourself of it before it is fully formed.”
“Yes. I promised Tommy. I shall try again tonight,” said Harold, with a pitiful little sigh of fatigue.
“I’ll arrange to have a room communicating with yours. If you can’t sleep tonight, call me.”
“Thanks very much, I’m sure not to do it if you’re near. It only works when one’s alone. Tommy stopped it by taking rooms in the same house, which was decent of him.”
The conversation had woke them up. The girls were quiet, Lilian being awed, and Mildred being rather annoyed with her parents for their want of sympathy with imagination. She felt that Harold had so little, that unless it was nourished it would disappear. She crossed over to him, and managed to say in a low voice,
“You please me very much. I had no idea you were like this before. We live in a world of mystery.”
Harold smiled complacently at the praise, and being sure that he could not say anything sensible, held his tongue. Mildred at once began to turn his newly-found powers to the appreciation of Girgenti.
“Think,” she said, “of the famous men who visited her in her prime. Pindar, Aeschylus, Plato—and as for Empedocles, of course he was born there.”
“Oh!”
“The disciple, you know, of Pythagoras, who believed in the transmigration of souls.”
“Oh!”
“It’s a beautiful idea, isn’t it, that the soul should have several lives.”
“But, Mildred darling,” said the gentle voice of Lady Peaslake, “we know that it is not so.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that, mamma. I only said it was a beautiful idea.”
“But not a true one, darling.”
“No.”
Their voices had sunk into that respectful monotone which is always considered suitable when the soul is under discussion. They all looked awkward and ill at ease. Sir Edwin played tunes on his waistcoat buttons, and Harold blew into the bowl of his pipe. Mildred, a little confused at her temerity, passed on to the terrible sack of Acragas by the Romans. Whereat their faces relaxed, and they regained their accustomed spirits.
“But what are dates?” said Mildred. “What are facts, or even names of persons? They carry one a very little way. In a place like this one must simply feel.”
“Rather,” said Harold, trying to fix his attention.
“You must throw yourself into a past age if you want to appreciate it thoroughly. Today you must imagine you are a Greek.”
“Really, Mildred,” said Sir Edwin, “you’re almost too fanciful.”
“No, father, I’m not. Harold understands. He must forget all these modern horrors of railways and Cook’s tours, and think that he’s living over two thousand years ago, among palaces and temples. He must think and feel and act like a Greek. It’s the only way. He must—well, he must be a Greek.”
“The sea! the sea!” interrupted Harold. “How absolutely ripping! I swear I’ll put in a bathe!”
“Oh, you incorrigible boy!” said Mildred, joining in the laugh at the failure of her own scheme. “Show me the sea, then.”
They were still far away from it, for they had hardly crossed the watershed of the island. It was the country of the mines, barren and immense, absolutely destitute of grass or trees, producing nothing but cakes of sallow sulphur, which were stacked on the platform of every wayside station. Human beings were scanty, and they were stunted and dry, mere withered vestiges of men. And far below at the bottom of the yellow waste was the moving living sea, which embraced Sicily when she was green and delicate and young, and embraces her now, when she is brown and withered and dying.
“I see something more interesting than the sea,” said Mildred. “I see Girgenti.”
She pointed to a little ridge of brown hill far beneath them, on the summit of which a few grey buildings were huddled together.
“Oh, what a dreadful place!” cried poor Lady Peaslake. “How uncomfortable we are going to be.”
“Oh dearest mother, it’s only for one night. What are a few drawbacks, when we are going to see temples! Temples, Greek temples! Doesn’t the word make you thrill?”
“Well, no dear, it doesn’t. I should have thought the Pesto ones would have been enough. These can’t be very different.”
“I consider you are a recreant party,” said Mildred in a sprightly voice. “First it’s Harold, now it’s you. I’m the only worthy one among you. Today I mean to be a Greek. What hotel do we go to?”
Lady Peaslake produced her notebook and said “Grand Hôtel des Temples. Recommended by Mr. Dimbleby. Ask for a back room, as those have the view.”
But at the Girgenti railway station, the man from the Temples told them that his hotel was full, and Mildred, catching sight of the modest omnibus of the “Albergo Empedocle,” suggested that they should go there, because it sounded so typical.
“You remember what the doctrine of Empedocles was, Harold?”
The wretched Harold had forgotten.
Sir Edwin was meanwhile being gently urged into the omnibus by the man from the “Empedocle.”
“We know nothing about it, absolutely nothing. Are you—have you clean beds?”
The man from the “Empedocle” raised his eyes and hands to Heaven, so ecstatic was his remembrance of the purity of the blankets, the spotlessness of the sheets. At last words came, and he said, “The beds of the Empedocle! They are celestial. One spends one night there, and one remembers it forever!”