Chapter 5 #3
“Colony? What do you mean?”
For the second time Horacio stared at his guest in amazement.
“Prudencia, are you telling me that you had no idea that San Ireneo was a refuge for exiles from the hustle and bustle of modern life? It’s precisely what attracts such diverse people from so many different places!
I’m beginning to think you accepted the job absolutely blind.
I can’t believe you hadn’t seen that there was something unusual about our way of life until now. ”
Emboldened by the brandy, Miss Prim confessed that she had noticed something.
She’d been there long enough to take stock, form an opinion, and build up a mental picture of the place, if only a rather impressionistic one.
Admittedly, she’d really only managed a rough sketch.
She had, however, observed one or two peculiarities.
In that one remote village, families of very different backgrounds had settled.
They all owned their own houses, land, or small businesses.
Primary goods were produced in the village, and there was a flourishing, prosperous local trade.
She hadn’t spotted it at first, partly because she hadn’t had to buy much.
If she wanted tights, shoes, or any other personal items she simply made a note of it and bought whatever she needed on her fortnightly visits to the city.
She then aired her flat, watered her plants, chatted with her mother, had coffee with friends, did some shopping, and returned in the evening.
Gradually, however, she began to sense that there was something hidden beneath the surface of the community.
In the area around San Ireneo de Arnois there were no factories, large businesses, or offices.
All the shops sold high-quality goods, produced locally.
The clothes and shoes bore the signatures of three or four tailors and shoemakers; the small stationery shop, charmingly, sold goods made to order; the food shops were friendly establishments bursting with produce, handmade preserves, fresh milk, and bread just baked at the bakery on the corner.
At first, Miss Prim thought she detected an environmentalist zeal, but soon realized she was wrong.
Whatever was nourishing this village, it was far from green in hue.
A quiet, peaceful community of home and business owners, that’s what it was.
Life in San Ireneo was small-scale and, Miss Prim thought to herself, also unusually harmonious.
“Are they Distributists, or something?”
“They are, as well as many other things. Really, I am amazed, Prudencia. I’d have expected you to inform yourself before coming here,” admonished her host.
“Do people who believe that sort of thing still exist? I thought those old ideas of returning to a simple, traditional, family-based economy had vanished long ago.”
“They definitely still exist. You’re in the place where almost all of them live in this country. And they’re not only from this country. Or hadn’t you also noticed the intriguing variety of surnames we have here?”
“I’m surprised you’re one of them. I’d never have dreamed you were a utopian.”
Horacio took a generous gulp of brandy and regarded her affectionately.
“It would be utopian to imagine that the present-day world could go into reverse and completely reorganize itself. But there’s nothing utopian about this village, Prudencia.
What we are is hugely privileged. Nowadays, to live quietly and simply you have to take refuge in a small community, a village or hamlet where the din and aggression of the overgrown cities can’t reach; a remote corner like this, where you know nevertheless that about a couple of hundred miles away, just in case”—he smiled—“a vigorous, vibrant metropolis exists.”
Pensively, Miss Prim placed her empty glass on the table.
“This does seem like a very prosperous place.”
“It is, in all senses.”
“So you’re all refugees from the city, romantic fugitives?”
“We have escaped the city, you’re right, but not all for the same reasons.
Some, like old Judge Bassett and I, made the decision after having got all we possibly could out of life, because we knew that finding a quiet, cultured environment like the one that’s grown up here is a rare freedom.
Others, like Herminia Treaumont, are reformers.
They’ve come to believe that contemporary life wears women out, debases the family, and crushes the human capacity for thought, and they want to try something different.
And there’s a third group, to which your Man in the Wing Chair belongs, whose aim is to escape from the dragon.
They want to protect their children from the influences of the world, to return to the purity of old customs, recover the splendor of an ancient culture. ”
Horacio paused to pour himself another glass of brandy.
“Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Prudencia?
You can’t build yourself a world made to measure, but you can build a village.
In a way, all of us here belong to a club of refugees.
Your employer is one of the few inhabitants with family roots in San Ireneo.
He came back a few years ago and set it all up.
You may not know it, but his father’s family has lived here for centuries. ”
Miss Prim, who had been listening closely to her friend’s explanation, now sighed in resignation.
“Horacio, is there anything else I should know about this village?”
“Of course there is, my dear,” he replied with a wink before draining his glass. “But I’m not going to tell you what it is.”
I. G. K. Chesterton