CHAPTER XIII

WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT

The fresh morning air comes startling after a central heated house.  So Aaron found it.  He felt himself dashing up the steps into the garden like a bird dashing out of a trap where it has been caught:  that warm and luxurious house.  Heaven bless us, we who want to save civilisation.  We had better make up our minds what of it we want to save.  The kernel may be all well and good.  But there is precious little kernel, to a lot of woolly stuffing and poisonous rind.

The gardens to Sir William’s place were not imposing, and still rather war-neglected.  But the pools of water lay smooth in the bright air, the flowers showed their colour beside the walks.  Many birds dashed about, rather bewildered, having crossed the Alps in their migration southwards.  Aaron noted with gratification a certain big magnificence, a certain reckless powerfulness in the still-blossoming, harsh-coloured, autumn flowers.  Distinct satisfaction he derived from it.

He wandered upwards, up the succeeding flights of step; till he came to the upper rough hedge, and saw the wild copse on the hill-crest just above.  Passing through a space in the hedge, he climbed the steep last bit of Sir William’s lane.  It was a little vineyard, with small vines and yellowing leaves.  Everywhere the place looked neglected—­but as if man had just begun to tackle it once more.

At the very top, by the wild hedge where spindle-berries hung pink, seats were placed, and from here the view was very beautiful.  The hill dropped steep beneath him.  A river wound on the near side of the city, crossed by a white bridge.  The city lay close clustered, ruddy on the plains, glittering in the clear air with its flat roofs and domes and square towers, strangely naked-seeming in the clear, clean air.  And massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger-like Alps.  Tigers prowling between the north and the south.  And this beautiful city lying nearest exposed.  The snow-wind brushed her this morning like the icy whiskers of a tiger.  And clear in the light lay Novara, wide, fearless, violent Novara.  Beautiful the perfect air, the perfect and unblemished Alp-sky.  And like the first southern flower, Novara.

Aaron sat watching in silence.  Only the uneasy birds rustled.  He watched the city and the winding river, the bridges, and the imminent Alps.  He was on the south side.  On the other side of the time barrier.  His old, sleepy English nature was startled in its sleep.  He felt like a man who knows it is time to wake up, and who doesn’t want to wake up, to face the responsibility of another sort of day.

To open his darkest eyes and wake up to a new responsibility.  Wake up and enter on the responsibility of a new self in himself.  Ach, the horror of responsibility!  He had all his life slept and shelved the burden.  And he wanted to go on sleeping.  It was so hateful to have to get a new grip on his own bowels, a new hard recklessness into his heart, a new and responsible consciousness into his mind and soul.  He felt some finger prodding, prodding, prodding him awake out of the sleep of pathos and tragedy and spasmodic passion, and he wriggled, unwilling, oh, most unwilling to undertake the new business.