Vestal Fire

by Compton McKenzie

She was still beautiful, but she had allowed time and the
weather to beat her complexion into numberless fine
wrinkles, and the loose gowns that might have become her
slim youth looked dowdy now on the angularity to which
that slimness had turned. Yet she still diffused on "the
sensitive observer a fragrance of the romantic ’eighties and
made him think of early volumes of Browning he had come
across marked here and there in a fine hand beside the
poems with dates and the names of fair old towns like
Ravenna or Assisi. ' Indeed, she resembled nothing so much
as a roseleaf pressed between the pages of a book, and those
who were privileged to enjoy her friendship and sit talking
to her in the little study whose windows looked out across
olive-orchards to the Salernian gulf never left her company
without feeling the richer for it. The walls were crowded
with the faded photographs of cinquecento pictures and
reproductions of Della Robbia plaques, and the tops of
her book-cupboards were thronged with the plaster casts
of famous statues. You felt that she had drawn near to
beauty along byways of her own and never travelled down
the high-road of fashion. Like most people on Sirene she
had her eccentricity. It was her habit to take the gloomiest
view of everything. She loved to think that people were
ill or unhappy or miserable, not because she yearned to
sympathize with them or help them, and certainly not
from any malice, ‘but purely to indulge a mental luxury
of her own. Joseph Neave could not bear her pessimism,
which was extreme in the Villino Paradiso where she could
revelin the gloomiest forebodings about his own health and
at the same time sigh over the anxiety he must be causing
to his poor wife, for whom she had a great affection, con-
sidering her to be on the whole the most worthy object of
compassion in all Sirene. .

and
but once upon a time there was none of that kind of stufii-
ness in Sirene. Only about fifteen years before this date
an English nobleman made a regular practice of walking‘
down from Anasirene to pay visits in Sirene with nothing
on but a top-hat. In fact the tenant of the Villa Parnasso,
now owned by Scudamore the American scholar, had grilles
put in the seven doors that gave ingress to its hallowed
shades so that when she was having a tea-party she could
inspect Lord G—-—-’s attire before admitting him. And
if any young unmarried girls were present nothing would
induce her to let him in, which everybody used to think
so sweet and hold-fashioned of dear Mrs. W-———. Then
there was a Slovakian painter called Czcszckz who used to
take ofil all his clothes and sit on the wall of Mrs. Pape’s
Villa Eolia, reading The Little F lowers of St. Francis. Even
her benevolence could not stand this, and she sent for
Beccafico the guafdia to dress Czcszckz and take him away.
As even in the coldest weather he only wore one of his wife’s
nightgowns, this should have been easy, but Beccafico had
to chase -him all over Sirene as a butterfly-hunter pursues
his game before he managed to envelop him. Beccafico
was so much exhausted by the chase that he drank even
more ‘wine than usual to restore himself, with the result that
he lay supine for three days and three nights afterwards,
during which time no less than six outrages against pudor
of a much graver nature were committed in public, and
the island was in worse repute than at any time since the
days of Tiberius. In these days of course nothing like that
could happen. Except for a few Bolsheviks who haunt with
terra-cotta nudity the almost inaccessible coves at the foot
of Monte Ventoso nobody offends against pudor, and all
bathing-dresses must conform to the design approved by
the rindaco and are not licensed until they have been
measured with the municipal tape. I
Carlyle once said that Herbert Spencer was the most
unending ass in Christendom. He had not met the Count.
 and
Myself I intend to make excava-
tions in searching for the lost books of Elephantis. What
villainy that these books into which the most poetic cour-
tezan who has ever lived inserted all which she knew of her
profession will be no longer at our service ! I adore to think
of the venerable Tiberius studying them in the seclusion of
this ile encbantée . . .” and so on till surmienly Michele
swung round from the box as they were pass' g a rose-hung
gateway and shouted: e
“ Anglish chimetery.” '
“ Fine,” acknowledged the Harvard philosopher, who was
beginning to think Marsac a bore. ,
“ Many Anglish and American deads inside,” Michele
commented, cracking his whip with a macabre relish.