Chapter 5

It was Cloudy in Italy, which surprised them.  They had expected brilliant sunshine.  But never mind:  it was Italy, and the very clouds looked fat.  Neither of them had ever been there before.  Both gazed out of the windows with rapt faces.  The hours flew as long as it was daylight, and after that there was the excitement of getting nearer, getting quite near, getting there.  At Genoa it had begun to rain—­ Genoa!  Imagine actually being at Genoa, seeing its name written up in the station just like any other name—­at Nervi it was pouring, and when at last towards midnight, for again the train was late, they got to Mezzago, the rain was coming down in what seemed solid sheets.  But it was Italy.  Nothing it did could be bad.  The very rain was different—­ straight rain, falling properly on to one’s umbrella; not that violently blowing English stuff that got in everywhere.  And it did leave off; and when it did, behold the earth would be strewn with roses.

Mr. Briggs, San Salvatore’s owner, had said, “You get out at Mezzago, and then you drive.”  But he had forgotten what he amply knew, that trains in Italy are sometimes late, and he had imagined his tenants arriving at Mezzago at eight o’clock and finding a string of flys to choose from.

The train was four hours late, and when Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins scrambled down the ladder-like high steps of their carriage into the black downpour, their skirts sweeping off great pools of sooty wet because their hands were full of suit-cases, if it had not been for the vigilance of Domenico, the gardener at San Salvatore, they would have found nothing for them to drive in.  All ordinary flys had long since gone home.  Domenico, foreseeing this, had sent his aunt’s fly, driven by her son his cousin; and his aunt and her fly lived in Castagneto, the village crouching at the feet of San Salvatore, and therefore, however late the train was, the fly would not dare come home without containing that which it had been sent to fetch.

Domenico’s cousin’s name was Beppo, and he presently emerged out of the dark where Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins stood, uncertain what to do next after the train had gone on, for they could see no porter and they thought from the feel of it that they were standing not so much on a platform as in the middle of the permanent way.

Beppo, who had been searching for them, emerged from the dark with a kind of pounce and talked Italian to them vociferously.  Beppo was a most respectable young man, but he did not look as if her were, especially not in the dark, and he had a dripping hat slouched over one ye.  They did not like the way he seized their suit-cases.  He could not be, they thought, a porter.  However, they presently from out of his streaming talk discerned the words San Salvatore, and after that they kept on saying them to him, for it was the only Italian they knew, as they hurried after him, unwilling to lose sight of their suit-cases, stumbling across rails and through puddles out to where in the road a small, high fly stood.