The glare was gone.
The yellow houses and the yellow walls, even the brown dust itself, were not so parched as they had been before.
Color came back to the houses, faded perhaps, subdued, but with an afterglow more tender now that the full force of the sun was spent.
Cypress trees, shrouded and still, turned inky green.
The driver drew up his carrozza before a closed gate set in a long high wall. He turned in his seat and looked down at me over his shoulder.
“Villa Sangalletti,” he said.
The end of my journey.
I made signs to him to wait, and, getting out, walked up to the gate and pulled at the bell that hung there on the wall.
I could hear it jangle from within.
My driver coaxed his horse into the side of the road, and climbing from his seat stood by the ditch, waving the flies away from his face with his hat.
The horse drooped, poor half-starved brute, between his shafts; he had not spirit enough after his climb to crop the wayside, and dozed, with twitching ears.
There was no sound from within the gate, and I rang the bell again.
This time there was a muffled barking of a dog, becoming suddenly louder as some door was opened; the fretful cry of a child was hushed shrilly, with irritation, by a woman’s voice, and I could hear footsteps approaching the gate from the other side.
There was a heavy dragging sound of bolts being withdrawn, and then the grind of the gate itself, as it scraped the stone beneath and was opened.
A peasant woman stood peering at me.
Advancing upon her, I said:
“Villa Sangalletti?
Signor Ashley?”
The dog, chained inside the lodge where the woman lived, barked more furiously than before.
An avenue stretched in front of me, and at the far end I could see the villa itself, shuttered and lifeless.
The woman made as though to shut the gate against me, as the dog continued barking and the child cried.
Her face was puffed and swollen on one side, as though with toothache, and she kept the fringe of her shawl to it to ease the pain.
I pushed past her through the gate and repeated the words
“Signor Ashley.”
This time she started, as though for the first time she saw my features, and began to talk rapidly, with a sort of nervous agitation, gesturing with her hands towards the villa.
Then she turned swiftly and called over her shoulder, to the lodge.
A man, presumably her husband, appeared at the open door, a child on his shoulder.
He silenced the dog and came towards me, questioning his wife.
She continued her torrent of words to him, and I caught the words
“Ashley,” and then “Inglese,” and now it was his turn to stand and stare at me.
He looked a better type than the woman, cleaner, with honest eyes, and as he stared at me an expression of deep concern came upon his face and he murmured a few words to his wife, who withdrew with the child to the entrance of the lodge and stood watching us, her shawl still held to her swollen face.
“I speak a little English, signore,” he said.
“Can I help you?”
“I have come to see Mr. Ashley,” I said.
“Are he and Mrs. Ashley at the villa?”
The concern on his face became greater.
He swallowed nervously.
“You are Mr. Ashley’s son, signore?” he said.
“No,” I said impatiently, “his cousin.
Are they at home?”
He shook his head, distressed.
“You have come from England then, signore, and have not heard the news?
What can I say?
It is very sad, I do not know what to say. Signor Ashley, he died three weeks ago. Very sudden.
Very sad.
As soon as he is buried, the contessa she shut up the villa, she went away. Nearly two weeks she has been gone.
We do not know if she will come back again.”
The dog began to bark again and he turned to quieten it.
I felt all the color drain away from my face.
I stood there, stunned.