Then up again through trees, along
a zigzag path with the smell all the way of the flowers they could not
see. The warm rain was bringing out all the sweetness. Higher and
higher they went in this sweet darkness, and the red light on the jetty
dropped farther and farther below them.
The path wound round to the other side of what appeared to be a
little peninsula; the jetty and the red light disappeared; across the
emptiness on their left were distant lights.
"Mezzago," said the man, waving his lantern at the lights.
"Si, si," they answered, for they had by now learned si, si.
Upon which the man congratulated them in a great flow of polite words,
not one of which they understood, on their magnificent Italian; for
this was Domenico, the vigilant and accomplished gardener of San
Salvatore, the prop and stay of the establishment, the resourceful, the
gifted, the eloquent, the courteous, the intelligent Domenico. Only
they did not know that yet; and he did in the dark, and even sometimes
in the light, look, with his knife-sharp swarthy features and swift,
panther movements, very like somebody wicked.
They passed along another flat bit of path, with a black shape
like a high wall towering above them on their right, and then the path
went up again under trellises, and trailing sprays of scented things
caught at them and shook raindrops on them, and the light of the
lantern flickered over lilies, and then came a flight of ancient steps
worn with centuries, and then another iron gate, and then they were
inside, though still climbing a twisting flight of stone steps with old
walls on either side like the walls of dungeons, and with a vaulted
roof.
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