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Updated: June 19, 2025
The next few weeks were for me, as for the invalids, a low delirium, clouded with fantastic memories of Portuguese officials trying to tax calves'-foot jelly; voluble doctors insisting that true typhoid was unknown in the island; nurses who had to be exercised, taken out of themselves, and returned on the tick of change of guard; night slides down glassy, cobbled streets, smelling of sewage and flowers, between walls whose every stone and patch Attley and I knew; vigils in stucco verandahs, watching the curve and descent of great stars or drawing auguries from the break of dawn; insane interludes of gambling at the local Casino, where we won heaps of unconsoling silver; blasts of steamers arriving and departing in the roads; help offered by total strangers, grabbed at or thrust aside; the long nightmare crumbling back into sanity one forenoon under a vine-covered trellis, where Attley sat hugging a nurse, while the others danced a noiseless, neat-footed breakdown never learned at the Middlesex Hospital.
A low vine-covered villino slanted along the canal; beyond, there was a cow-house where a boy was feeding some glossy cows. The garden was full of the morning sun. Lawrence could see her from the open door, a white figure, loitering in a bed of purple tulips. Her dark hair was loosely knotted up; stray wisps fell about her ears.
On the vine-covered porch Eric lay in a hammock, his little daughter, as usual, by his side.
If Vere had not been there she might but Vere was there. It was inevitable. She must return to the island. She stood still in the path, between the high banks. Her body was demanding not to be forced by the will to go to the island. "I must go back to the island." She walked on very slowly till she could see the shining water over the sloping, vine-covered land.
But the bad days are not many, if only there be rain enough, for a little is worse than none. The nights lengthen and the September gales sweep away the poison-mists with kindly strength. Body and soul revive, as the ripe grapes appear in their vine-covered baskets at the street corners.
In the garden is a vine-covered arbor, with seats and tables, and at the end of it is the opening into a little chapel, a domestic chapel, carpeted like a parlor, and bearing all the emblems of a loving devotion. Perfect system reigns in Signora Del Valle's establishment, and even the least child in it has its duty.
She seemed to be carefully inspecting the vine-covered mounds in the mellow soil, for he saw her stoop now and then and lift the vines and peer beneath them. Vaulting over the fence, he was soon by her side. "Always at work, rain or shine," he said, lightly, as she glanced up and smiled a cheery greeting. "I've hit it right on these goobers, Alfred," she said.
There are grand trees in every street, and every old yard, and one cannot help feeling great indignation to see where in some places the incoming gentiles have cut trees down to make space for modern showy buildings, that are so wholly out of harmony with the low, artistic white houses and vine-covered walls.
Caguan was a little church, a little vine-covered inn, a dozen one-story adobe houses shining in the moonlight like whitewashed sepulchres. They faced a grass-grown plaza, in the centre of which stood a great wooden cross. At one corner of the village was a corral, and in it many ponies. At the sight Chesterton gave a cry of relief.
He talked about his proposed plans of Abbotsford: happy would it have been for him could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple yet hearty and hospitable style in which he lived at the time of my visit.
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