EXILE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20536, 10 April 1930, Page 20

EXILE.

BY WARWICK DEEPING.

CHAPTER XI. St. Sofurio bad como down from tho hills, and Frevick sat on alone at liis table with bis empty glass and bis empty thoughts. People had passed—people from the villas and the Hotels Elyseo and St.. George —English, Americans, Germans, nil hurrying to the Piazza where St. Sofa'rio sat in a kind of palanquin, while Iho bonfire blazed and fireworks crackled. The Piazza would ho full of shadows—shadows 011 the walls of the houses and 011 (ho grey paving-stones. Fievick's eyes were half closed; he sat all hunched up, bis bands in bis pockets. The Circe crowd bad gone, noisy and intimato and full of tho grape. The orchestra bad ceased to play. " Streaks of tho brush—just streaks of the brush."

Ho saw life as'a daub, a crudely impressionist picture, a splodge of light and of shadow, and full of faces that were unfinished, their mouths liko slits cut with a knife.

With an abrupt gesture ho pushed the empty glass off the table so that it broke on the pavement; lie" sat and stared at tho fragments. Ho would have to pay for that glass, and he. did not care. Yes, lie would pay. Lifo made you pay. There was 110 escapo from tho inevitablene'ss of that settlement, though you might smirk and write epigrams and twiddle your thumbs. Tho payment might be niado in invisible cash, in coin that did not pass with the multitude; you paid with tho blood of your soul, with those secret shames and agonies, with tho sclfstranglings of your craft, tho sodden stultifying of your genius. Beauty and joy' took (light. Tho perfumo was no more. You sat at the feet of a fellowlike Slade like a mangy dog going blind. " Oh, God in Heaven!"

Tommaso appeared and gathered the broken glass into the top of a tin box. Politely ho stood and waited. Frovick groped. Ho laid a greasy, and crumpled note on the table. Tommaso picked it up, but delicately so, and with a bending of his fat body. " Grazie, signore." If was a gesture, gentle and human. He had an affection for Frevick; Frovick was not quite like those others, ho had the eyes of a man; ho painted pictures. " Grazie, signore." Frevick looked at him strangely. " Tho blood of the good saint to you, [Tomnieso." "Ancf to you, signore." They smiled, and tho white apron drifted away, and Frevick's face became suddenly twisted. "By Heaven, I'll do it to-night. I'll rut my damned throat. Sot and pic! Oh, God in Heaven, why am I so lonely ?" Ho glared, and the glare changed to a slow dog-like stare of surprise. Someone was standing there; ho saw a pair of feet and ' ankles, the edge of a black skirt. His gazo lifted,; ho scented to straighten in his chair, ho looked tragic, torn, pitiable. ".Julia!" She torched the table with her fingers. " I had to come out. You remember. Never since that last night. But tonicht " He looked up at her, puzzled, questioning. Ho pulled himself together; he stood up. "Why?' Yes—l'm all right. Her eyes'looked like two black circles in her firm face. Her voice had a strange softness. " You'll come. Was Oscar blade here'!" " Yes."

" I thought so. Tom, I want you to come with me." * . 1 Ho seemed to rock lightly on his feet. 44 Anywhere you liko, Julia. I m all right. I wish I had always been all right. My fault." She gave him a glance of strange ai.u tragic compassion. They went together down the Corso, arid for the moment it was an empty street, for all Tindaro had crowded into the. Piazia del Duoino, and Frevick was remembering the night when he and Julia Lord had walked down this same strefet to see St. Sofario in his glorv. How many years ago was it ? And, after all, life was only like walking «nv\n a street; you caine to the end of it, ai.d perhaps some strange old saint was waiting for you on the edge of the unknown. And suddenly he was saying something to the woman at his side. " You always had plenty of courage, Julie."

" Think so? . ' " Why, even to-night. What is it. - " I'm worried. It Is about the pirl "Was she with your crowd to-night?"

".No." , , " I'm glad. But not you. J never think of you as belonging "Thanks, Julie. I belong nowhere My fault. But has Slado "

" Gossip." ' . ~ " Oh, probably. That s one of the reasons why virtue is superfluous in a town like this, for no one'allows you any virtue." " She touched his arm gently. " Not true. That's a Sladeism. But this* girl, I've grown rather fond of her °Hc seemed to miss a step. He pushed his hat back. "Of course. Something struck me. What you were like, Julie. I mean— —- " My dear, don't think I'm sensitive about growing old. But you know what Tindaro is, and Slade." " He's a successful swine. 1 beg your Pa,r, oh!" not quite that. He just doesn't care: lie has no pity. .... , "He can't leave fresh fruit alone. He's not white, whatever that means. Like,a boy who has always had his own V Her face, lit up by the glare of light that now filled the street, seemed both <o flinch and to refuse to betray the weakness.

" How crude .life is," Frevick's lips moved silently. " Not crude, my dear, but beautiful, when beauty matters to us more than anything." He stood still. But beauty, beauty should be impersonal, not clutched at and torn petal from petal. His eyes softened. Ho was standing with a woman beside him," beholding beauty, that old, brown, battered square like a golden box full of amber light. The fire was a mass of Glowing embers. The torches had been extinguished, but the lanterns and lamps hung upon poles kept up a constant flickering. Cornices and windows caught the light. The pipes were playing. Clouds of confetti (lew, making little htiirs of coloured mist. And the southern crowd was happy and joyous and good-tempered. It. laughed, and its laughter seemed to play upon the old walls like the light. Hundreds of dark heads moved. Ilands throw confetti. There were little shrieks and swirls of laughter, and chasings, and little struggles and a mysterious human thrill. Frevick and Julia Lord stood back against the wall of a house. Their hands touched for a moment. " Children." "That's how one should try and see life. Julie." • , . There was a break in tho crowd oi figures just in. front of them. A woman screamed. Her black hat was awry. Sho carried a bag of confetti, and she was cramming confetti down tho neck of a inan Who—with his collar turned up —laughed and fled. They disappeared again -.in the crowd. " Pour devil," said Frevick.

lie saw Judia Lord's lips move. " Where is the child in Sadie Shane?" " She's all child, my dear. Sho's never grown up with anyone who cared. I can cast no stones." Sho touched his hand.

(copynionT.)

Author of that much-loved book, " Sorrell and Son."

" I'm . sorry, Tom. We're 100 old now."

The touch became a clasp of tho fingers, and lho pressure of her fingers warned him. It said " Look," and Frevick saw what she had seen, the head of Slade moving through tho crowd with Billy's head very close to his. Slade was laughing, lie looked all black and whito against tho glare, lu'ad in air, hat pushed back victoriously. Miss Lord said "Damn!" And suddenly sho turned and moved away, and with an air of discouragement. Sho looked less tall and sure, ancl Frevick, following her, was filled with niuto pity. . " Julie—"

They wero in the Corso again, and their two figures threw long shadows. The glare and tho noise grew <less; their shadows and the stones became dim, and in the strip of sky above the stars roappenrecl. "Oh, she'll be all right. She's sound! Slade can't fool " Her voico broke in.

"It isn't that. It isn't Slade. It's—it's life, the spring, what wo women, all of us " " My dear ! "

" It's true. Think. Can't you remember ? Tho first time such a thing happened." " I can. In the blood, you mean? "

"Ob, yes! And what am I to do? Meddle? Just tell her what tho man is? Sometimes it's so fatal."

Frevick stood still,- with an air of a man who hasgJost his way. His long arms moved helplessly.

"Common sense. What? Leave it to her common sense, Julie. I would. DoVt believe in catechisms. He's rotten. She'll —she'll know." Julia Lord looked back toward tho Piazza. " But will she ? Rotten men have a fascination. Tom, I'm fiigh'.oned." He took her arm. " Julio, I'll see you home. I'd leave it. Common sense, what? But I'm not afraid of tho fellow. Look here, I'll tackle him'. I'll give him it full in the face. Either he lets things alone " Sho allowed herself his arm.

" Tom, you are all right. Oh, my dear, you ought to be—" He set his teeth.

" Ought to have been, yes. Rotten in places. Oh, let it be, Julie. Some things are too damnable."

Oscar Slade had drawn Billy aside to tho steps of the church, and they stood there as upon a little platform jutting out into a sea of heads and of faces. Over the Piazza lay a level, yellow light that reached as high as the lops of the houses and ended there in a shroud of black velvet. All the windows were full of faces. Puffs of confetti drifted like little clouds of smoke. Tho pipers had ceased to play; they stood in a group near the red ash of tho fire. ,

Billy's face had a kind of sheen upon it, a dusting of yellow light. "What happens now?" Slade stood close to' her, looking down. His voice was caressing. V Guess." " We all go home." " Not quite that yet. You'll see something nearly as old as the hills." She gave him a quick upward glance. Her eyes, too, had a sheen in them. She had caught the emotion of tho crowd. " Do we sing hymns? " He laughed. " Older than that. You don't really think " " No." " There is some confetti in your hair. It's rather pretty." He watched her face, and was wise, for he had studied the faces of women. And Billy was a woman, but not quite woman as he had known her previously —a creature of sudden surrenderings, of surprising fervours, of unexpected nakedness. Sl.e wore no veil. She used no cunning. " Gently," he thought, " gently." Suddenly the pipes began to play with a shrillness that challenged the crowd. Tho music opened another movement. The Piazza seemed to settle into momentary stillness of expectancy; it was like water that waited to be troubled. Slade touched Billy's arm.

" Watch those steps over there, between the houses." She noticed that all the faces were turned toward the dark cleft between the high houses from which a flight of grey steps descended into the light. Sudden brown figures appeared upon the steps; there were six of them, men dressed in the skins of animals. With loud cries they leaped down into the Piazza. The piping flew upwards to a shrill crescendo. Tho men in fur were leaping and dancing through the crowd. They carried olive twigs, with which they struck right and left, and Billy saw girls and women press forward to be touched by those symbolical wands. Slade glanced at her face. " Symbolism. Old as the hills. The gods survive." " Is it lucky to be touched ? " •" It means love, children." As though moved by some common impulse tho whole Piazza began to dance —old men and young, women, children, girls. It was like tho dancing madness of tho Middle Ages, but this Italian crowd was not moved by a fanatical frenzy; it was of the South. It danced becauso of the human urgo in it, for joy, for love, because of the call of tho blood. It danced to the sun and the moon and the stars, and to man and to woman, and without asking why it danced.

The men in skins were everywhere; the olive twigs struck hands and arms and shoulders. Jokingly they would fiick some old, woman.

" Salute for the olives of yesterday, mother! "

Magna Mater! The eternal mystery, Children. Girls were pushed forward to be touched. Young men laughed. There were kisses. One of these skin-clad messengers, leaping upon the church steps, held out his wand to Billy. You, too, Sigriorina Inglese." She gave a shake of tho head and laughed, and then held out a hand, and tho man struck it gently with tho olivo twig. " Spring has come." She felt a strange flush go over her. She was aware of Slado at her sido; she heard his voice. " That's lucky. Like an annunciation. Theso people are wise; they know how to live." But another voice came to them from tho crowd.

"Why, there's Oscar! Hallo, Oscar! And Miss Brown! My dear, aren't theso satyr boys just marvellous.'' Her large white face under its disordered hat suggested possible intimacies and embarrassments. On such occasions she would be completely irresponsible; she would scream impossible' things and go off into shrieks of laughter. She had linked up Mirlecs and the Russian, had them hooked by the arms, and was drag•ging them hither and thither with an immense exuberance. They looked rather like two sulky boys who could not escape to phiv upon their own. She tried to pull lherri toward the steps of the church. "Come on down, Oscar; let's go and celebrato. Coine on down, my dear! (To bo continued daily.)