disappeared. It was the niece of the landlady parting from her lover.
We waited outside the locked door, at the top of the stone steps, in the
darkness of midnight. The stream rustled below. Then came a shouting and
an insane snarling within the passage; the bolts were not withdrawn.
'It is the gentleman, it is the strange gentleman,' called the girl.
Then came again the furious shouting snarls, and the landlord's mad
voice:
'Stop out, stop out there. The door won't be opened again.'
'The strange gentleman is here,' repeated the girl.
Then more movement was heard, and the door was suddenly opened, and the
landlord rushed out upon us, wielding a broom. It was a strange sight,
in the half-lighted passage. I stared blankly in the doorway. The
landlord dropped the broom he was waving and collapsed as if by magic,
looking at me, though he continued to mutter madly, unintelligibly. The
girl slipped past me, and the landlord snarled. Then he picked up the
brush, at the same time crying:
'You are late, the door was shut, it will not be opened. We shall have
the police in the house. We said twelve o'clock; at twelve o'clock the
door must be shut, and must not be opened again. If you are late you
stay out--'
So he went snarling, his voice rising higher and higher, away into the
kitchen.
'You are coming to your room?' the landlady said to me coldly. And she
led me upstairs.
The room was over the road, clean, but rather ugly, with a large tin,
that had once contained lard or Swiss-milk, to wash in. But the bed was
good enough, which was all that mattered.
I heard the landlord yelling, and there was a long and systematic
thumping somewhere, thump, thump, thump, and banging. I wondered where
it was. I could not locate it at all, because my room lay beyond another
large room: I had to go through a large room, by the foot of two beds,
to get to my door; so I could not quite tell where anything was.
But I went to sleep whilst I was wondering.
I woke in the morning and washed in the tin. I could see a few people in
the street, walking in the Sunday morning leisure. It felt like Sunday
in England, and I shrank from it. I could see none of the Italians. The
factory stood there, raw and large and sombre, by the stream, and the
drab-coloured stone tenements were close by. Otherwise the village was a
straggling Swiss street, almost untouched.
The landlord was quiet and reasonable, even friendly, in the morning. He
wanted to talk to me: where had I bought my boots, was his first
question. I told him in Munich. And how much had they cost? I told him
twenty-eight marks. He was much impressed by them: such good boots, of
such soft, strong, beautiful leather; he had not seen such boots for a
long time.
Then I knew it was he who had cleaned my boots. I could see him
fingering them and wondering over them. I rather liked him. I could see
he had had imagination once, and a certain fineness of nature. Now he
was corrupted with drink, too far gone to be even a human being. I hated
the village.
They set bread and butter and a piece of cheese weighing about five
pounds, and large, fresh, sweet cakes for breakfast. I ate and was
thankful: the food was good.
A couple of village youths came in, in their Sunday clothes. They had
the Sunday stiffness. It reminded me of the stiffness and curious
self-consciousness that comes over life in England on a Sunday. But the
Landlord sat with his waistcoat hanging open over his shirt,
pot-bellied, his ruined face leaning forward, talking, always talking,
wanting to know.
So in a few minutes I was out on the road again, thanking God for the
blessing of a road that belongs to no man, and travels away from
all men.
I did not want to see the Italians. Something had got tied up in me, and
I could not bear to see them again. I liked them so much; but, for some
reason or other, my mind stopped like clockwork if I wanted to think of
them and of what their lives would be, their future. It was as if some
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