The Strange Man's Sorrow

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Title:     The Strange Man's Sorrow
Author: Charles Lever [More Titles by Lever]

"When I first knew Spezia, it was a very charming spot to pass the summer in. The English had not found it out A bottle of Harvey sauce or a copy of 'Galignani' had never been seen here; and the morning meal, which now figures in my bill as 'Dejeuner complet--two francs.' was then called 'Coffee,' and priced twopence. I used to pass my day in a small sail-boat, and in my evenings I played halfpenny whist with the judge and the commander of the forces and a retired envoy, who, out of a polite attention to me as a stranger, agreed to play such high stakes during my sojourn at the Baths.

"They were excellent people, of unblemished character, and a politeness I have rarely seen equalled. Nobody could sneeze without the whole company rising to wish him a long and prosperous life, or a male heir to his name; and as for turning the trump card without a smile and a bow all round to the party, it was a thing unheard of.

"I thought if I could only secure a spot to live in in such an Arcadia, it would be charming, but this was a great difficulty. No one had any accommodation more than he wanted for himself. The very isolation that gave the place its charm excluded all speculation, and not a house was to be had. In my voyagings, however, around the Gulf, I landed one day at a little inlet, surrounded with high lands, and too small to be called a bay, and there, to my intense astonishment, I discovered a small villa. It looked exactly like the houses one sees in a toy-shop, and where you take off the roof to peep in and see how neatly the stairs are made and the rooms divided; but there was a large garden at one side and an orangery at the other, and it all looked the neatest and prettiest little thing one ever saw off the boards of a minor theatre. I drew my boat on shore and strolled into the garden, but saw no one, not even a dog. There was a deep well with a draw-bucket, and I filled my gourd with ice-cold water; and then plucking a ripe orange that had just given me a bob in the eye, I sat down to eat it. While I was engaged, I heard a wicket open and shut, and saw an old man, very shabbily dressed, and with a mushroom straw hat, coming towards me. Before I could make excuses for my intrusion, he had welcomed me to Pertusola--'The Nook,' in English--and invited me to step in and have a glass of wine.

"I took him for the steward or fattore, and acceded, not sorry to ask some questions about the villa and its owner. He showed me over the house, explaining with much pride how a certain kitchen-range came from England, though nobody ever knew the use of it, but it was all very comfortable. The silk-worms and dried figs and salt-fish occupied more space, and contributed more odour, perhaps, than a correct taste would have approved of. Yet there were capabilities--great capabilities; and so, before I left, I took it from the old gentleman in the rusty costume, who turned out to be the proprietor, a marquis, the 'commendatore' of I don't know what order, and various other dignities beside, all recited and set forth in the lease.

"I suppose I have something of Robinson Crusoe in my nature, for I loved the isolation of this spot immensely. It wasn't an island, but it was all but an island. Towards the land, two jutting promontories of rock denied access to anything not a goat; the sea in front; an impenetrable pine wood to the rear: and there I lived so happily, so snugly, that even now, when I want a pleasant theme to doze over beside my wood-fire of an evening, I just call up Pertusola, and ramble once again through its olive groves, or watch the sunset tints as they glow over the Carara mountains.

"I smartened the place up wonderfully, within doors and without. I got flowers, roots, and annuals, and slips of geraniums, and made the little plateau under my drawing-room window a blaze of tulips and ranunculuses, so that the Queen--she was at Spezia for the bathing--came once to see my garden, as one of the show spots of the place. Her Majesty was as gracious as only royalty knows how to be, and so were all her suite in their several ways; but there was one short, fat, pale-faced man, with enormous spectacles, who, if less polite than the rest, was ten times as inquisitive. He asked about the soil, and the drainage, the water and its quality--was it a spring--did it ever fail--and when, and how? Then as to the bay itself, was it sheltered, and from what winds? What the anchorage was like--mud--and why mud? And when I said there was always a breeze even in summer, he eagerly pushed me to explain, why? and I did explain that there was a cleft or gully between the hills, which acted as a sort of conductor to the wind; and on this he went back to verify my statement, and spent some time poking about, examining everything, and stationing himself here and there on points of rock, to experience the currents of air. 'You are right,' said he, as he got into his boat, 'quite right; there is a glorious draught here for a smelting-furnace.'

"I thought it odd praise at the time, but before six months I received notice to quit.

"Pertusola had been sold to a lead company, one of the directors having strongly recommended the site as an admirable harbour, with good water, and a perpetual draught of wind, equal to a blast-furnace."

Looking at the dress-coat in which you once captivated dinner-parties, on a costeimonger--seeing the strong-boned hunter that has carried you over post and rail, in a cab,--are sore trials; but nothing, according to my companion's description, to the desecration of your house and home by its conversion into a factory. Such an air of the "Inferno," too, pervades the smelting-house, with its lurid glow, its roar, its flash, and its furious heat, that I could readily forgive him the passionate warmth with which he described it.

"They had begun that chimney, sir," cried he, "before I got out of the house. I had to cross on a plank over a pit before my door, where they were riddling the ore. The morning I left, I covered my eyes, not to see the barbaric glee with which they destroyed all around, and I left the place for ever. I crossed over the Gulf, and I took that house you can see on the rocky point called Marola. It had no water; there was no depth to anchor in; and not a breath of air could come at it except in stillness. No more terrors of smelting-house here, thought I. Well, sir, I must be brief; the whole is too painful to dwell on. I hadn't been eight months there when a little steamer ran in one morning, and four persons in plain clothes landed from her, and pottered about the shore--I thought looking for anemones. At last they strolled up to my house, and asked permission to have a look at the Gulf from my terrace. I acceded, and in they came. They were all strangers but one, and who do you think he was? The creature with the large spectacles! My blood ran cold when I saw him.

"'You used to live yonder, if I mistake not,' said he to me, coolly.

"'Yes, and I might have been living there still,' replied I, 'if it had not been for the prying intrusion of a stranger, to whom I was weak enough to be polite.'

"He never noticed my taunt in the least, but, calmly opening the window, passed out upon the terrace. The others speedily gathered around him, and I saw that he knew the whole place as if it had been his bedroom; for not only did he describe the exact measurements between various points, but the depth of water, the character of the bottom, the currents, and the prevailing winds. He went on, besides, to show how, by running out a pier here, and a breakwater there--by filling up this, and deepening that--safe anchorage could be secured in all weathers; while the headlands could be easily fortified, and 'at a moderate cost,' I quote himself, 'of say twenty two or three millions of francs, while a fort erected on the island there would command the whole entrance.'

"'And who, in the name of all Utopia, wants to force it?' cried I; for, as they talked so openly, I thought I might interpose as frankly.

"He never seemed to resent my remark as obtrusive, but said quietly, 'Who knows? the French perhaps--perhaps your own people one of these days.'

"I'd like to have said, but I didn't, 'We could walk in and walk out here, with our iron-clads, as coolly as a man goes out in the rain with a mackintosh.'

"They remained fully an hour, talking as freely as if I was born deaf and dumb. At last they arose to leave, and the owl-faced man--he looked exactly like an owl--said, with a little grin, 'We're going to disturb you again.'

"'How so?' cried I; 'you can't smelt lead here.'

"'No, but we're going to make an arsenal. Where you stand now will be a receiving-dock, and that garden of yours a patent slip. You'll have to clear out before the New Year.'

"'Who is he? who is that with the spectacles?' asked I of one of the servants, who waited outside with cloaks and umbrellas.

"'That's the Conte di Cavour,' said the fellow, haughtily; and thus was the whole murder out at once. They turned me out, sir, in two months, and I never ventured to take a lease of a place till he died. After that event, I purchased a little spot on the island of Tino yonder, and built myself a cottage. They could neither smelt metal nor build a ship there, and I hugged myself at the thought of safety. But, would you believe it? last week--only last week--his successor, in rummaging over Cavour's papers in the Foreign Office, comes upon a packet labelled 'Spezia,' and discovers a memorandum in these words, 'The English Admiral, at dinner to-day, laughed at the idea of defending the mouth of the Gulf from the island. He said the entrance should be two-thirds closed by a breakwater, and a strong fort _a fleur d'eau_ built on Tino. I have thought of it all night; he is perfectly right, and I'll do it;' and here, sir," said my companion, drawing a paper from his pocket, "is a 'sommation' from the minister to surrender my holding on Tino, receiving a due compensation for the same, and once more betake myself, heaven knows where; for, though the great Count Cavour is dead and gone, his grand intentions are turning up every day, out of drawers and pigeonholes, and I shrewdly suspect that neither Pio Nono nor myself will live to see the last of them."

[The end]
Charles Lever's essay: Strange Man's Sorrow

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