I never knew how beautiful marble could be until I came to Pisa andRome. Somehow I had associated Pisa with the Leaning Tower, and not with the Baptistry. I knew it existed, and, vaguely, that it was worth seeing; but Pisa meant the Leaning Tower to me. Now I couldn't tell you which has left the deeper impression. I'm not at all the same girl that I was before I put Pisa and Rome into the gallery of my mind. Imustmake myself a worthy frame for such pictures as I am storing up now. I have the feeling not only that I want to read better books, hear more splendid music, and do more noble things, but that I shall know how to appreciate more clearly everything that is exalted or exalting. I hope you won't think me sentimental to say that.
We stayed all night at a real Italian hotel on the Lung Arno. Brown suggested it, thinking that we might enjoy an experience thoroughly characteristic of the country through which we were flying so fast. Aunt Mary wasn't pleased with the idea at all, said it would be horrid, and prophesied unspeakable things; but, as usual, Brown proved to be right, and she consented to admit it if I would promise not to punish her with her own stock phrase-"I told you so!" You would have laughed to see me conscientiously trying to eat maccaroni in the true Italian way. I curled it round my fork beautifully, but the hateful thingwoulduncurl again before I could get it up to my mouth, and accidents happened.
I watched the Italians, too, pouring their wine from the fat glass flasks swung in pivoted cradles. They did it all with one hand, holding a gobletbetween the thumb and second finger, and twisting the index finger round the neck of the bottle to pull it forward. It looked such a neat and simple trick that I thought I could do likewise; but-well, it was the reverse of neat when I did it, and the spotless tablecloth was spotless no longer. Instead of glaring at me for the mischief I had done, the head waiter was all sympathy. How nice and Italian of him!
That night, lying between sheets that smelt of lavender-only better than American or English lavender-I lived through the day once more, seeing ruined watch-towers set on hills, old grey monasteries falling into beautiful decay, or apparitions of white marble cathedrals. Then, over and over again, that wonderful carved-ivory tower leaning against the golden sky came back to me-soclean, so uninjured by the reverent centuries, and the sound of the angel-voiced echo in the Baptistry, and the strange shapes of the dear beasts supporting the pulpit, just like I used to picture the beasts in Revelations when I was a little girl. Next morning I had another look at the Leaning Tower before we started, and in a shop I came across a delicious and beautifully written book calledIn Tuscany, by the English Consul at Leghorn, so I bought it, and now I know as much as Brown does about the country through which we passed during several perfect days.
I'm not sure, but I am being both brutal and banal in saying that the rest of our journey to Rome was comparatively uninteresting. Of course, nothing can bereallyuninteresting in Italy, but I suppose those first days had spoiled me. We drove for mile aftermile through marshy land, where tall, melancholy eucalyptus trees told their tale of a brave struggle against malaria. All the windows and doors of the signal cabins by the railway stations were protected by wire gauze against mosquitoes, and we who have spent summers on Staten Island know whatthatmeans, don't we?
I think, if I were not in Rome, I could have written you a better account of our flight through Italy; but the Eternal City has blurred all other impressions for me now, though I think afterwards they will come back as clear and bright as ever. Nevertheless, I'm not going to write you much about Rome. It's too big for my pen, too mighty and too marvellous. I can only feel. You have been here, and Rome doesn't change. Only Iwonderwhat you felt when you first saw the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere? I used to think I didn't quite appreciate sculpture, but now I know it was because something in me was waiting for thebest, and refusing to be satisfied with what was less than the best. Why, I didn't even know whatmarblecould be till I saw the Laocoön. I had meant to do a good deal of sight-seeing that day when I began with the Vatican; but I sat for hours in front of those writhing figures in their eternal torture. I couldn't go away. The statue seemed to belong to me, and I had found it again, after searching hundreds and hundreds of years. I wonder if I was once a princess in the palace of the Cæsars, in another state of existence, and if in those days I used to stand and worship the Laocoön? I shouldn't wonder a bit. And the ApolloBelvedere! What a gentleman-what aperfect gentlemanhe is! You will laugh at me for such a thought. It seems commonplace, but it isn't. Nobody's ever said it before. He's such a gentleman and so graciously beautiful that you know he must be a god. I shouldn't have minded worshipping him a bit. Paganism had its points.
I should love to come back to Rome on my wedding trip if I were married to exactly the right man; but if he were notexactlyright I should kill him; whereas in ordinary places I might be able to stand him well enough, as well as most women stand their husbands. Speaking of men who aren't exactly right reminds me of Jimmy Payne. He is here. He seems to have a sort of instinct to tell him when one is about to drive up to a hotel, and then he stations himself in the door, expecting the blessing which is for those who stand and wait. We made a sensation driving down the narrow Corso at the fashionable hour, and Jimmy got some of the credit of it when he stepped forward to welcome us. He had heard me say that we would stop here, because I'd been told it was the only hotel in Rome with a garden, and was close to the Pincian; and Jimmy has such a way of remembering things you say, if he thinks it's to his advantage. His first appearance was slightly marred, however, by a sneeze which, like Lady Macbeth's etcetera spot, would "out" at the precise moment of shaking hands. He says he got influenza from the Duchessa di Something-or-Other, upon whom he was obliged to call the instant he arrived, or she would never have forgiven him; so ofcourse it's not quite so hard to bear as common, second-class influenza. It appears that he was so anxious to see "dear Lady Brighthelmston before she could get away" that he shed his automobile at Genoa, and hurried on by train, though whether on receipt of a telegraphic bidding from her ladyship or not I don't know. Anyway, she didn't wait for him, or else the influenza frightened her; for she has gone, and apparently without leaving word for poor disconsolate Jimmy. She was at his hotel, and left word with the manager that she would wire when she was settled in "some place where there was alittlesunshine" for her letters to be forwarded. He is waiting till that wire arrives.
Jimmy is "thick as thieves" with Aunt Mary, but as frigid as a whole iceberg to poor Brown, if they happen to run across each other. I do think, don't you, Dad, that it shows shocking bad breeding to be nasty to a person who, from the very nature of the case, can't answer back? When I hear people speaking rudely to servants I always set them down as cads. Imagine marrying a man and then finding out that he was a cad! One ought to be able to get a divorce. The weather has, I suppose, been terrible since we came to Rome; at least, I hear everyone in our hotel grumbling, and certainly gardens haven't been of much use to us. But I am in a mood not to mind weather. I am in Rome. I say that over to myself, and I readLancianiandHare, and then I don't know whether it rains or not. Besides, yesterday was clear on purpose for me to walk in the Pincian and Borghese Gardens. Brown had to gowith me because Aunt Mary was afraid there would be another storm; and besides, some little English ladies she has met in our hotel had invited her to have tea with them in their bedroom. They make it themselves with their own things, because then you don't have to pay; and if there aren't enough cups to go round among the ladies they've asked, they take their tooth-brush glasses for themselves. And they bring in custardy cakes in paper-bags and cream in tiny pails which they hide in their muffs, and try to look unconscious. There are a lot here like that, and they stay all winter. None of them are married, and they all do and say exactly the things you know they will beforehand. Why, just to look at them you feel sure they'd have tatting on their stays, and make their own garters. But some of them are titled, or if they're not they talk a great deal about being "well connected"; and they do nothing on weekdays but read novels, work in worsteds, and play bridge with the windows hermetically sealed; or on Sundays but go to the English church. Only think, and they're inRome!
I haven't wasted one minute since we came, but, thank goodness, I'm not trying to "do" Rome scientifically and exhaustively like so many poor wilted-looking Americans I've met here. They think they must see every picture in every gallery, and put at least their noses inside every church; and then they scribble things down in their note-books-things which will do them just as much good afterwards as Lizard Bill's writings on his slate when the ink trickled over his nose, inAlice's Adventures. OneAmerican lady in this hotel said her daughters had dragged her about so much that she didn't know what country she was in any more, except by the postage stamps. If I were in her place I should lie down to take a nap when I arrived in town, andsayI had seen the things when I went back to Fond du Lac; there's where she lived before her daughters took to doing Paris in one day and London in two; they told me quite simply that was the time you needed to give.
Dad,we drove in the automobile along the Appian Way. It sounds shocking, but it wasn't; it was glorious. There is never anything jarring (I don't mean that for a pun) about going into the midst of old and wonderful things on a motor-car, foritis wonderful too, and it has a dignity of its own-the dignity of fine and perfect mechanism which seems alive, like a splendid Pegasus or an obedient unicorn, or some other strange legendary animal which you are obliged to respect and marvel at.
And Brown took me into the Colosseum last night-late-when the moon was rising out of torn black clouds.
But I said I wasn't going to write about Rome, and I won't-I vow I won't, not even about St. Peter's. I think one ought to stop here ten days, and see things all day long-just things you want to see, not things you ought to see; or else linger for months, and let everything soak into your soul. I can't do the latter, this time, with the Napier waiting-waiting; and so I'm making the best of the first.
Your reincarnated Roman Princess,Molly.
Parker's Hotel, Naples,January 13.
You Dear,
I have seen Naples, but I don't wish to die. Not that I should so much grudge dying after the happy life you've given me, but there'd be such an awful waste of time in staying dead when so much is left to see. There's Capri, and there's Sicily almost next door; and even a Saturday to Monday on Mars wouldn't make up to me for missing them.
We put our hands to the plough, and came here from Rome in six hours, only one hour more than the fast (?) train takes. We didn't stop for lunch, but kept ourselves up on beef lozenges, which were nasty but supporting. We wanted to see how quickly wecoulddo it, and even Aunt Mary was excited. She is much pleasanter without Jimmy, and we really did have fun. It's an ill rain that doesn't temper the dust to an automobile, so we blessed the weather which we had previously anathematised. After a pouring night, it cleared before we started; and it was one of the best days we have ever had. I remembered heaps of things which had happened to me when I was a Roman princess, two thousand yearsago, and felt just as if I were travelling in my chariot from my father's palace in Rome to his villa, perhaps in Baiæ. My only fear was that, in going so fast, we should arrive at our destination so long before the impedimenta that I should have to do without my baths of asses' milk for several days; and where would be my royal complexion?
It was six o'clock, and dark, when we came in sight of something which made me cry out "Oh!" It was a dull red light, high up in the sky, and a dark shape, like a great wounded bull, with two streams of fiery blood pouring down its gored sides. Vesuvius! Brown had planned that we should see it for the first time after dark. I had wondered why he suggested not leaving Rome till twelve o'clock, when usually he is so keen on early starts, and he was evasive when I asked why. But when I had breathed that "Oh!" and had a moment to recover myself, he told me.
Dad, dear, Brown is splendid. He hasrevealedNaples to me. I can't express it in any other way, for nobody else who has told me about coming to Naples has ever done the things that we have; and they would not have occurred to Aunt Mary or me. We should have gone the ordinary round if it hadn't been for him, and when we said good-bye to her Naples would have been only a mere acquaintance of ours, not a dear and intimate friend who has told us her best secrets. In the first place, we shouldn't have known any better than to stop in some big,obvioussort of hotel in the noisy wasps' nest of the city, instead of coming here where the air is pureand some of the most beautiful things in the world in sight without turning our heads. It's such a homelike hotel, and instead of sending toEnglandfor orange marmalade made of Sicilian oranges, the way all the other hotels seem to do, they make it themselves out of their own oranges; and it's a poem.
We've been up Vesuvius, not in the daytime, like the humdrum tourists, but by torchlight, and we saw the moon rise. Instead of rushing to the Museum the first thing and mooning vaguely about there for hours, we saved it until after we'd been out to Pompeii on the motor-car; then it was a hundred times more interesting, and we are coming back after Capri to pay another visit to the busts of Tiberius and his terrible mother. I felt in Rome as if it were an impertinence to be modern and young. But in Pompeii-oh, I can't tell you what I felt there. I think-I really do think that I saw ghosts, and they were much more real and important than I. It was like entering the enchanted palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood, only a thousand times more thrilling and wonderful. I didn't feel as if anyone else had ever been there since it was dug up, except Brown and me-and, of course, Aunt Mary.
Brown knew about fascinating Italian restaurants, and he drove us up on the automobile for tea to a new hotel on a high hill, almost a mountain. It's the "smart" thing for people who know to go up to tea, which-if it's fine-you have on a great terrace that is the most beautiful thing in all Naples. And we spent a whole morning up at St. Elmo. That is going to be my best recollection, I think, and-youwill laugh-but the next best will be the Aquarium. When you came to Naples was there a thing in the Aquarium like the ghost of a cucumber, transparent as glass, with strings of opals and rubies being drawn through its veins every two minutes regularly? Brown says that it-or its ancestor-has been there ever since he can remember. I like that green light in the Aquarium, which makes you feel as if you were a mermaid under the sea, and inclined to swim instead of walk.
When we were driving up to the hotel, Brown said it was almost as steep and winding as the road from Capri to Anacapri. That speech, and gazing from our balcony at Parker's over the blue bay to the island which looks like the Sphinx rising out of the sea, have made me distracted to take the automobile to Capri. Brown "doesn't advise it," and thinks "we may have great trouble in landing," but that makes me want the adventure all the more; so we're going to-morrow-not just for a day, like the people who don't care about Tiberius, and think the Blue Grotto is the only thing to see-but to stay for several days. Brown says one could find a new walk on the island for every day of a whole month, and each would be absolutely different from the other, though Capri is only three and a half miles long and about a mile and a half in width.
I feel as if we were in for something exciting, just as you feel, I suppose, when you are going to bring off a bigcoup"in the street."
Your Chip-of-the-old-Block,Molly.
P.S.-I wouldn't post my Naples letter. I thought if I did, you might imagine that we and our car had been engulphed in the sea, unless you got the end of the adventure tacked on to the beginning; so this is to be a fat postscript. Yes, a gorged python of a postscript.
At first the dock people couldn't be persuaded that we seriously intended to take an automobile to the island of Capri; and when they realised that we were in earnest, they buzzed with excitement like swarming bees. Everyone directly or indirectly concerned argued at the top of his voice, and embroidered his arguments with gestures, nobody paying the slightest attention to anybody else. We didn't even ask permission to go on one of the big passenger steamers, for we knew it would be no use; but there's a little sea-chick of a thing calledLa Sirena, which plies back and forth every day with provisions, luggage, and passengers, to whom cheapness is an object. She was our prey; and as nobody had happened to make a law against transporting motor-cars, simply because nobody had ever thought of taking anything so abnormal since Tiberius used to send his chariots, we could not be restrained.
All the loafers in Naples collected on the quay, and I don't believe anything would have been done for us if Brown hadn't calmly begun to widen the gangway. He had suggested that I should go over in the morning with Aunt Mary on the North German Lloyd that takes the trippers (as he calls them) over for the Blue Grotto, and lunch. But I didn't see it in that light, for I wanted the adventure. Aunt Marydidn'twant it at any price, so she was packed off by herself; and when the Lightning Conductor slowly drove the car on board the littleSirenaI was by his side. There was a moment of awestruck silence on the quay; but when Brown had gently manœuvred Balzac into position in a clear space on deck, the murmurs of doubt and disapproval turned into a burst of delighted wonder. Brown and I felt like "variety" artistes being applauded for a clever turn, and the appropriate thing would have been to bow and kiss our hands.
But all this was nothing to what was in store for us at the Grande Marina at Capri. If we had gone in one of the bigger steamers, we should have had to get the automobile into a small boat, or perhaps lash it somehow on to two boats; but theSirenais so small that she can come up along the landing-place, which was one reason why, after Brown had made inquiries, he was willing to go with the fowls and vegetables. The nearer we got to the island, the more beautiful it looked, and as we came in Brown was telling me things about Tiberius' palaces and where they had stood, when suddenly a shout went up from the quay. A group of stalwart women, clustered together there, were laughing and pointing at our car. They belonged to a race of Amazons bred on Capri, whose daily work it is to land heavy goods and carry trunks on their heads to the omnibuses and cabs in waiting at the end of the quay. Before we were fairly in, they swooped like a pack of wolves on the car, laughing and gabbling, and somehow they and Brown landed it on the slippery little quay.
The news that there was an automobile on the island must have flashed around by magic telegraph, for people-swarms of people, more than you would have thought could live on the whole of Capri-came running from everywhere to see us start. I should have been awfully amused if it hadn't been for one thing. Up there at the end of the quay, where we must pass, were half a dozen hotel omnibuses and a long rank of smart cabs, like victorias, with very pretty little horses, whose faces looked incredibly short-perhaps on account of their huge blinders. They had feathers on their heads, and their harness was ornamented with all kinds of strange devices in silver or brass. Sweet little pets they were, that you felt as if you might ask into your house to sit on the hearthrug; and when they saw Balzac they all began to snort and shiver and act as if they were going to faint. Their drivers-in hard, white hats something like our policemen's helmets-flew to the poor beasties' heads; and some laughed, and some looked anxious, some angry.
Evidently the little horses had lived an innocent, peaceful life for years on Capri, and had never heard of railways or steam rollers, much less automobiles. I was so sorry for them, and wished I hadn't been so headstrong, but had been guided by Brown when he advised me to leave Balzac at Naples. However, we couldn't abandon the car on the quay, so we got in and Brown started the motor. Oh, my goodness! every horse went into hysterics! Their drivers held them, and said things soothing or the reverse, according to their bringing-up, but the little things kickedand plunged and doubled up in knots, although Brown drove by as slowly and solemnly as the Dead March inSaul. I thought we should never get past, but when we did the worst was still to come, for we had a steep road to climb up the cliff, and in the distance several cab-horses were trotting down. I begged Brown to stop and let them go by, lest they should jump over into space, so he did; and it was all that he and the drivers of the cabs could do to get the poor horrified little animals past us at all. That experience was enough for me. Brown pointed up towards Anacapri, far, far above Capri proper, on a horn of the mountain, reached only by a narrow but splendidly engineered road winding like a piece of thin wood shaving, or by steep steps cut in the rock by the Phœnicians thousands of years ago. "No," said I sadly, "we'll never drive up to Anacapri on the automobile. I shan't use it once again while we're on the island, and all the horses had better be warned indoors when we go down to take the boat."
But it was a beautiful drive up from the quay to the town of Capri and our hotel. I couldn't help enjoying it a little, in spite of feeling like an incipient murderess. I believe if I'd been on the way to execution I would have enjoyed it. The road swept round to the left, ascending loop after loop, to a saddle of the island lying between two cliffs, crowned with the most picturesque ruins I ever saw. Everywhere you looked was a new picture, and oh! the delicious colour of sky, and sea, and the dove-grey of the cliffs! You can see next to nothing of thetown till you come on it; then suddenly you are in a busypiazza, with an old palace or two and a beautiful tower, and everything characteristically Italian, even the sunshine, which is so vivid that it is like apoolof light. Here we made a great deal more excitement before we drove under an old archway and plunged down a steep, stone-paved street filled with gay little shops, and ending with the courtyard of our hotel.
I know you only came to Capri with the "trippers" to see the Blue Grotto, and I feel sorry for you, you poor Dad, because, though the Grotto is so strange and beautiful, it is the thing I care for least of all. Just think, you didn't even stay long enough to see the sunset turn the Faraglioni rocks to brilliant, beaten copper, standing up from clear depths of emerald, into which the clouds drop rose-leaves! You didn't go to the old grey Certosa, for if you had you would certainly have bought it and restored it to use as a sort of "occasional villa," like those nice heroes of Ouida's who say, "I believe, by the way, that is mine," when they are travelling with friends in yachts and pass magnificent palaces which they have quite forgotten on the shores of the Mediterranean or the Italian lakes. You didn't walk along a steep path about twelve inches wide, hanging over a dizzy precipice, to the Arco Naturale-and neither would I if it hadn't been for Brown. I was horribly afraid, but I was ashamed to let him see that, so I struggled along somehow, and it was glorious. We ended the walk by going down a great many steps cut in the rock to the grotto of Mitromania, where they usedto worship the sun-god and sacrifice living victims-human beings sometimes. You can see the altar still, and the trough where the blood used to run-ugh! and the secret chambers where they kept the victims.
We stayed a day and two nights in the town of Capri, and should have stopped on till we were ready to leave the island, for it is a charming hotel, with a big garden and a ravishing view; but I got it into my head that I wanted to walk up all the Phœnician steps to Anacapri-there are about eight hundred of them-instead of going up by a mere road, no matter how beautiful. Of course, Aunt Mary was consumed with no such mad ambition, and as she had heard that to go up the steps was like walking up a wall, she was afraid to have me try the ascent alone; so I asked Brown to take me. We started after breakfast; and to go up all the steps we first had to descend to the very shore, near a palace of Tiberius', which is buried under the sea with all its treasures. Doesn't that sound like a fairy story? Then we began going up and up, and we kept meeting peasant girls tripping gaily down in their rope shoes, singing together like happy birds, not even touching with their hands the loaded baskets on their heads. They were so beautiful that they were more like stage peasants than real ones. Their eyes were great stars, and their clear, olive faces were like cameos with a light shining through from behind. They were dressed in the simplest cotton dresses, but their pinks and blues and purples, put on without any regard to artistic contrast, blendedtogether as exquisitely as flowers in a brilliant garden.
I tripped gaily, too, at first, but the sun grew hot and so did I. Still, on we went, up the face of the cliff, and with every interval for rest came a new and wonderful view. By-and-by we got up so high that the row boats on their way to the Blue Grotto looked like little water-beetles, with oars for legs; and though the waves were beating against the rocks, we could no longer see them; the water appeared as smooth as an endless sapphire floor polished for the sirens to dance on. It was all so entrancing that I didn't know I was almost getting a sun-stroke; besides, who would think of sunstrokes in January, no matter how hot the weather? Brown remarked that my lips were pale, but I said I was only a little tired. In rather more than an hour we came to the top, which was Anacapri. My head ached, so we went into a restaurant place, which turned out to be very famous. I sat on the wall of a terrace looking over a sheer precipice a thousand feet high until I felt partly rested; then a handsome girl, evidently of Saracen blood, brought me delicious lemonade. We had started away to walk into the village of Anacapri, when everything began to swim before my eyes. Luckily we were close to a house. It was a little old domed white house with a long vine-covered pergola, and it said "Bella Vista" over the gateway. I had to lean on Brown's arm going in, and the last thing I remember was a kind-faced man hurrying to the door. The next thing I was in a big white bedroom, sparsely furnished and daintily neat.I had fainted and they had sent for a doctor. Presently he appeared, and afterwards I found out that he was quite a celebrity-the "Doctor Antonio" of Capri. He said it was the sun; I hadn't eaten enough breakfast, and I'd had a "heat-stroke"-not half so bad as a sun-stroke; still, I ought to rest.
I was quite willing to obey the prescription, for I was falling in love with the house, and longed to stay in it for days. The room I was in had four windows, each one looking out on a view that stay-at-home people would give hundreds of dollars to see; and it opened on to a lovely private terrace. Brown took a message "downstairs" to Capri, asking Aunt Mary to pack up and come to the Bella Vista, which she did, and we've been here for two days. I was quite well in a few hours, but I wouldn't have gone back to more conventional comforts for anything. Anacapri and our little house seem as if they were in the world on top of the clouds which Jack discovered when he climbed his beanstalk up into the sky. Why, the first morning when I waked here, and opened my glass door on to the terrace to look at the sea, and the umbrella pines, and the cypresses (which I seem tohear, as well as see, like sharp notes in music), four or five large white clouds got up from the terrace where they'd been sitting and sneaked past me through the door into the room, just like the cows which, I suppose, the gods kept on Olympus to milk for their ambrosia. And the sunsets, with Vesuvius set like a great conical amethyst in a blaze of ruby and topaz glory! It is something to come to Anacapri for. But at the Bella Vistawe would not feed you on sunsets and cloud's milk alone. The little landlord and landlady cook and wait on us, and I never tasted daintier dishes than they "create."
There are more things than sunsets and pines and cypresses to see too. One takes walks all over the island. One goes to rival inns where rival beauties dance the tarantella, and vie in announcements that Tiberius amused himself by throwing victims in the sea from the exact site of their houses. Oh, everything is Tiberius here. He is regarded by the peasants as quite a modern person, whom you may meet in a dark night, if you haven't murmured a prayer before the lovely white virgin in her illuminated grotto of rock. Mothers say to their children, "If you do that, Tiberius will catch you"; and the English colony of Capri quarrel over the gentleman's character, on which there are differences of opinion.
The most beautiful house I ever saw in my life is set on the brow of the precipice at Anacapri; it is a dream-house; or else its owner rubbed a lamp, and a genie gave it to him. It is long and low and white, and filled with wonderful treasures which its possessor found under the sea-spoil of Tiberius' buried palaces. The floors are paved with mosaic of priceless coloured marble, which Tiberius brought from distant lands for himself; a red sphinx, which Tiberius imported from Egypt crouches on the marble wall, gazing over the cliffs and the sea; Tiberius' statues in marble and bronze line the arched, open-air corridors. There's nothing else like it in theworld in these days, and few men would be worthy to have it and to live there; but I think, from what I hear, that the man who does live thereisworthy of it all.
You will find a rose and a spray of jasmine in this letter. I picked the rose for you, in the pergola, and our landlady gave me the jasmine. I wish I could send you more of the beauty of this magic island.
Your enchantedMolly.
Taormina, Sicily,January 26.
My dear Montie,
We are at Taormina! When I say that, I want you to realise that we have arrived at the Most Beautiful Place in the world. Nothing less than capital letters can express it. We have had six glorious days in Sicily, and it is fit that these wild ramblings of mine with the Goddess should end here amidst such scenes of loveliness that even the imagination can conjure up nothing more exquisite. For end these ramblings must; to be continued, as I hope (but dare not expect), in a life-journey in which I may wear my own name shared then by her. It is through my dear, kind, little match-making mother that I trust this may be brought about; for my pluck fails me when I think of confessing my imposture to the Goddess.
I told you in my letter from Rome that at the hotel there I found a forwarded letter from the mater, saying that on account of the continued rain and cold she and the inevitable Barrows had determined to leave Rome suddenly and go to Naples, perhaps to Sicily, in search of sunshine. She added that she had been worried about me, as she had notheard anything for weeks, from which it is clear that at least three letters have somehow miscarried-doubtless owing to her constant change of address and the carelessness of hotel people in forwarding. The worst of it is that I haven't been able to reassure her mind, as she gave me no new address, but merely said that when she was settled she would wire. Of course, I gave the hall-porter at the "Grand" the most explicit directions as to where I was to be found, and tipped him well. The result is that on my arrival here in Taormina I found a telegram (sent on from Rome) to say that my mother and the Barrows will arrive here to-morrow to stay a week with Sir Evelyn Haines, an old friend of the mater's, who has, I believe, bought a deserted monastery and turned it into a fine house. To-morrow, then, my mother will be here; I shall tell her everything, throw myself on her mercy, and get her to make peace for me with the Goddess. That, at least, is my present plan. But who can tell how events may upset it?
Well, as you don't know Italy south of Naples, perhaps you'd like to hear something of our Sicilian adventures. Of adventures, in the strict sense, we have had less here than in other places. If I hadn't been certain that the country was quite safe as far as brigandage is concerned, I should not have been such a fool as to bring two ladies through it in a motor-car. But we have had, as I said, "six glorious days," and the Goddess and I are agreed that in many ways Sicily is the best thing we have done on our whole long tour.
We landed at Palermo, after a night passage in a comfortable boat from Naples, leaving one world-famous bay to enter another scarcely less beautiful. Rarely have I seen anything finer than Palermo and the group of mountains round it as we steamed in at sunrise on a white and gold morning. The ship goes alongside the quay, so there was no difficulty at all about landing the car. It was slung, and gently deposited on shore by the ship's crane, and we drove off on it at once to the Villa Igiea. Everything was new to me in Sicily, and I confess that the Igiea was a surprise. One has heard that Sicily is a hundred years behind the times, and that in accommodation the island is deficient. That cannot be said any longer. The Igiea is perfect. Miss Randolph reluctantly admitted that there is nothing better in America. In situation the house is unique, lying under the tall, pink Monte Pellegrino. It was built by the Sicilian millionaire Florio for a sanitorium, but never so used. It is a long building of honey-coloured stone, standing in an exquisite terraced garden that stretches along the sea, and actually overhangs it-a charmingly irregular garden, with many unexpected nooks, and sweet-smelling flowers, palms, and all kinds of sub-tropical plants, fountains playing in marble basins, and a huge, half-covered balcony, where everyone except insignificantchauffeursassemble for tea. Altogether a gay and delightful place, and it is having the effect of bringing to the island a stream of rich and luxury-loving travellers.
From afar I saw Miss Randolph and Aunt Mary breakfasting on the big balcony; and they could nothave lingered long over their unpacking, for at ten o'clock I had orders to be at the hotel door with the Napier. I knew no more of Sicily than they did, but it is mymêtierto keep up the reputation of a walking encyclopædia; therefore, in the small watches of the night, while the Goddess and her Aunt slept the sleep of the just, I had poured over guide-books and fat little volumes of Sicilian history. What I wasn't prepared to tell them that heavenly morning about Ulysses, Polyphemus, the omnipotent Roger, and other persons of local interest, to say nothing of the right buildings to be visited, was not worth telling.
We ran along the shore, past harbours and basins where strangely shaped boats lay at anchor on a smooth, blue sea, with an elusive background of shimmering, snowclad mountains; and in a street, like a moving picture gallery, we made the acquaintance of those painted carts which are indigenous to the island. Quaintly rudimentary as carts, these extraordinary vehicles are remarkable as works of art, and the Goddess did exactly what I expected of her-wanted to buy one. With her usual quick discrimination, she picked out a fine specimen, the wheels, shafts, and underwork a mass of elaborate wood-carving, richly coloured, the boldly painted panels representing a victory of Roger's, attended with great slaughter. The little horse was jingling with bells, and almost overweighted with his towering scarlet plumes.
"I must have that," exclaimed my impulsive Angel. "Please stop the car, Brown, and ask theman how much he will sell it for, just as it stands-harness and all, but not the horse."
The much-enduring Brown stopped, ran back, hailed the owner of the cart, who was accompanied by a dove-eyed wife and seven Saracenic children all piled in anyhow on top of each other like parcels. Never, probably, was a man more surprised than by the question hurled at him, but Sicilians retain too deep a strain of the oriental to show that they are flustered. He said in a strangepatoisthat his cart was the pride and joy of the household; that it had been decorated by the one man in Sicily who had inherited the true art of historical cart-painting; that it was one of the best on the island, and he had expected it to remain an ornament to his family unto the third and fourth generations, but that he would part with it for the sum of one thousand lira. I beat him down until, with tears in his magnificent eyes, he consented to accept two-thirds, which really was more than the cart was worth, or than he had expected to get when he began to bargain. The cart was Miss Randolph's, and later that day I arranged about having it taken to pieces, boxed, and sent to New York. She was delighted with her purchase, and in such a radiant mood that she thought everything and everyone she saw perfect, from the men milking goats to the dramatically talentedgardienof the beautiful old red-domed San Giovanni degli Eremiti, once a mosque.
The German Emperor is rather a hero of hers, and when we left the car in the street and visited the Palazzo Reale she was charmed to learn that hehad pronounced a view from a certain balcony the finest he had ever seen, resting his elbows on the iron railing and gazing out over the city for half an hour. It really was inspiring-the blue harbour and the ring of sparkling white mountains, but I'm not prepared to agree with the superlative. I put the view of Naples from St. Elmo ahead. When the Goddess came to see the Capella Palatina with its gem-like Arabo-Norman mosaics, she was moved almost to tears. "It is matchless; the most beautiful thing on earth!" she said. But afterwards I drove her (Aunt Mary you may take for granted) out four steep miles to Monreale, and it was well that she had saved a few adjectives. Not that she is a girl who scatters much small coin of this kind, but she has usually the right word when a thing does not go beyond words. When it does she says nothing, except with her eloquent eyes. But in the ancient cloisters of that old monastery I watched her face, and it was a study. I believe, though each carved capital on each column is different from the others, she could enumerate in order the quaint and intricate biblical designs. In one secluded and dusky corner there was the faint tinkle of a fountain-a wonderful fountain, very old, and copied from a still older Moorish memory, by some Arab who served his Norman conquerors. My beautiful girl was a picture as she stood gazing at it, leaning against a pillar, her white dress half in sunshine, half in shadow, her brown hair burnished to living gold.
For the modern part of Palermo she didn't much care; the crowded Corso Vittorio Emanuele; theQuattro Canti, which is the Piccadilly Circus of the Sicilian capital, or even the cathedral. But she loved the Villa Giulia, which she was greatly surprised to find a garden, not knowing that all gardens are "villas" in Sicily; she and Aunt Mary went in alone, while I waited outside the gates in the car; but her beauty and pretty frock excited so much attention that she was quite embarrassed, and I reaped advantage from her discomfiture, being invited to act as guard in the Botanical Gardens. I begged for her Kodak there, to take a photo (ostensibly) of the big building devoted to lectures, but quietly waited until she had inadvertently "crossed my path." Then I snapped her.
We stayed in Palermo for three days, and even so had the barest glimpse of the place. If I have luck, and win Her forgiveness first, and then at last Herself, maybe we shall come again to Sicily together, lingering at all the places we are slighting now. But dare I dream of it?
On the fourth day we set out for a visit to one of the show places of the island Girgenti of the Temples. And now we began to understand why the millionaire Florio, with his four noble motor-cars panting in their stalls, has not been able to induce his friends to stock their Sicilian stables in the same way. We knew already that Italian roads were generally inferior to French ones; that it was comparatively difficult to buy petrol, especiallygoodpetrol, oressence, in Italy, and I loaded up the willing car with several reserve tins on leaving the Igiea; but of course I had had to take the state of theroads on hearsay. The surprise and interest of the crowd, even in Palermo, where Signor Florio often drives, warned us that not many ventured with "mechanically propelled vehicles" where we were about to venture, and I was a little dubious, though the Goddess was in the highest spirits and yearning for brigands. She had heard at the hotel of a very picturesque one who owned a lair in the mountains, and urged me to pay the chivalrous gentleman a morning call, but I was both obdurate and unbelieving.
We started; occasionally, as we progressed, it was necessary to ask the way. The peasants we passed on foot, on donkey back, or crowded into their painted carts, were so wrapped in wonder at sight of us that it was useless to shout at them without warning; they couldn't recover themselves in time to answer before we had sped by. So I adopted a method I have often found useful. I selected my man at a distance, singling him out from his companions, and pointing my finger straight at him as I approached. This excited his curiosity and riveted his attention; he was then able to reply when I demanded a direction.
From Palermo on the north to Girgenti on the south of the island is something over sixty miles the way we went-sixty miles of bad and up-and-down road. Sicily is poor, and it could not but be to its advantage if visitors came to it in larger numbers. I should say one of the first things they ought to do is to improve the roads, and make them decently passable for carriages, motor-cars, andbicycles. At present the plan of mending the roads is to dump down so much "metal," and leave the local traffic to grind it in. As everybody avoids it and there is little rain, there it stays, and in consequence patches of sharp, loose stones lie over the roads the year round. Steer with all the skill one can, it's impossible always to dodge the stones, and our tyres got a good punishment.
The interior of the island, though grandly impressive, is unusually bare, save for its wild flowers, the ancient forests having long since disappeared. Our road lay for a time along the sea, and then inland, always mounting up into the heart of the mountains, by long, green valleys and over desolate plateaux where flocks of sheep and goats grazed under the guardianship of wild-looking shepherds and fierce dogs, the latter violently resenting the intrusion of the car into their fastnesses. We saw few people on the road, and passed only the poorest villages; but we had brought an excellent luncheon which we ate by the roadside, we three (would it had been two!), alone in a wide and solitary landscape. A very few years ago such a journey as this across the interior of Sicily would have been highly dangerous on account of brigands. As it was we had scowls from dark-browed men whose horses took fright at us, but no such encounter as we had with the peasants in France. An Englishman at Palermo who has lived long in Sicily warned me that every Sicilian carries a gun, and said that in the wild interior they would very likely shoot at the automobile for the mere fun of the thing as they wouldat any other strange beast that was new to them. This wasn't encouraging to hear. But though we met some truculent-looking fellows on the road, their sentiments towards us seemed to be those of wonder rather than animosity.
The sun was sinking in a haze of rose and gold as we came to the crest of the long hill on which stands the town of Girgenti, passed through it, and coasted down to the Hotel des Temples. Beyond the hotel, which stands isolated between the town and the sea, we saw suddenly the great Temple of Concord, a lonely and magnificent monument. It affects the imagination as Stonehenge does when you see it for the first time. The red rays of the sun shone aslant upon its splendid amber-coloured pillars and colossal pediments, revealing every detail of the pure Doric architecture. When the smiling Signor Gagliardi had received us and allotted rooms to the party (the best in the house for the American ladies on their automobile, and a little one for thechauffeur), I strolled in the fragrant old garden, and leaning on the balustrade by the ancient well of carved stone, looked long over this wonderful plateau above the sea, where once stood perhaps the finest assemblage of Greek temples the world has ever seen. Next morning we went down to see the temples at close quarters. I had been warned that the road would be too rough for an automobile; but a gallant Napier which had passed through the forest of the Landes and braved the dragon's teeth sown on the roads of Sicily's fastnesses was not to be dismayed by a few jolting miles. Everyone in thehotel-English, American, German-came out to see us start, predicting that if we came back the car wouldn't, or ifitcame back, it would be-so to speak-over our dead bodies. Aunt Mary was so much impressed by these dark prophecies that she refused to accompany us, and engaged one of the odd little carriages from the ancient town of Girgenti bristling on the height above our hotel. Thus it came about that I had my Goddess to myself, and in her congenial company I hardly knew whether the road was rough or no. Certainly the good Napier did not complain, and as for the tyres, the roads of Central Sicily had made them callous.
I thought then that never was such a day in the memory of man; but several days have come and gone since-also with her, and a man's opinion changes. I knew that in the society of no one else would there have hovered such a glamour over the ruins of Greek glory. Five noble temples they are, my Montie, of which two are almost perfect; the others pathetic relics of past grandeur, with their heaped, fallen columns. There they stand-or lie prone with here and there a majestic pillar pointing skyward-in a stately row between the brilliant blue sea and the billowing flower-starred plain on the one side, the hills and the grim city, like a crow's nest, on the other. Their sandstone columns hold oyster and scallop shells from prehistoric ages, while here and there a broken vein of coralline stains the dun surface as if with blood. Below the towering temples are shimmering olive trees, silver-green as they quiver in the warm breeze, and on this day of ours amyriad budding almond-blossoms were breaking at their massive feet in rosy foam. All the ground was carpeted with yellow daisies, pimpernel, and iris, blue-grey as my lady's eyes. Together we pictured processions of men and maidens, white-robed, bearing urns and waving garlands of roses, chanting pæans in a slow ascent of the amber-hued temple steps. We also were in a mood to sing praises as we drove back to the friendly hotel in its high eyrie of garden.
In the afternoon, I am sorry to say, we went up into the town-it is a bleak and gruesome memory; and next day we had a hundred and twenty miles' drive to Catania, our faces turned towards Etna, the Queen of Sicily, which we had not yet seen, but longed to see. In view of the awful roads we were likely to encounter, I had asked the ladies if they would mind starting at seven. They were ready on the minute, and I think they were repaid by the beauty of the newly waked morning, bathed in diamond-dew, and pearly with sunrise.
Again we drove through strange country, sterile save for the crowding prickly pears with their leering green faces, tangled garlands of pink, wild geranium, and a blaze of poppies spreading over the meadow land like a running flame. We penetrated the heart of Sicily, wound through her undulating valleys, and were frowned on by her ruined robber-castles; but the towns were discouragingly squalid, for much of our way led through the sulphur-mine district.
The true interest of that day came when from afar off we descried twin mountains, each bearing a huddled town on its summit. My midnight studieswarned me that they were Castrogiovanni and Calascibetta, and I had suggested to Miss Randolph on starting that even at the risk of having to drive to Catania in the dark, we should not miss a visit to Castrogiovanni. At Palermo she had bought Douglas Sladen's book,In Sicily, and Miss Lorimer's travel-romance,By the Waters of Sicily, so that she was already fired at the name of Castrogiovanni, and needed no persuasion from me to turn aside to scale the ancient rock-fortress that marks the very centre of Sicily. I am pretty sure that never before has a motor-car climbed that winding road, and I think the whole population turned out and ran at our heels as we drove slowly through the sombre, wind-swept, eagle-eyrie of a town. As it happened, the day was overcast, and scudding clouds drifted coldly across the mountain-top, showing us the reason for the great blue hoods that the men wear over their heads, their Saracenic faces peering out as from a cave. We alighted in the market-place, and leaned on the balustrade to see the tremendous view-all Sicily spread out below us, gleaming with opaline lights and shadows. Hundreds of people clustered curiously round us and watched with dark, lustrous eyes, as if we had been beings from another world. We tried to ignore all these silent watchers, who, Aunt Mary said, gave her "a creepy feeling in her spine," and gazed out over the tumbled mountains of Sicily.
Suddenly a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and descended to earth like a golden ladder. It was the signal for a transformation scene. Thewhite mists coiling round us, disappeared; the clouds floated away before a breath of balmy wind, and the landscape lay bright and clear at our feet. Then "Oh! What is that?" exclaimed Miss Randolph. I followed the glance of her eyes, and far away there was a great white floating cone of pearl soaring up into the sky. Yes, it was Etna!
At Castrogiovanni there is no inn where a lady can stay, so when we had seen the view there was nothing more to keep us. I had stopped the motor when we left the car, and everyone crowded eagerly round us as the ladies mounted to their places. Their amazement when they saw me start the motor with one turn of the handle was immense. A kind of awed murmur went up from the crowd; and when, with a warning blast on the horn, I drove slowly through their parting ranks, circled round in the market-place, just avoiding a procession of masked Misericordia, and putting on speed, passed swiftly through the streets, with a great shout everyone started to run after the car. We distanced them easily (Miss Randolph imprudently showering pennies), and ran at a fair pace down the winding road that led to the valley. Looking up, we could see the terraces and every window of the houses alive with wondering heads. Castrogiovanni will remember for many a day the visit of the first motor-car to its historic heights.
Catania is, I think, memorable to Miss Randolph merely because she bought there at a tiny but famous shop incredible quantities of curious Sicilian amber, streaked green with sulphur, absolutelyunique, and valued as a luck-bringer. She says that she has a "pocket-piece" for each one of her most intimate friends in New York. Judging by the provision made, the name of these intimates must be legion. Apart from her opinion, however, I humbly venture to think that Catania has its points, if only people stopped long enough to see them, which they don't, Catania being the Basle of Sicily-the place of departure for somewhere else. In our case the somewhere else was Syracuse.
Now the Goddess had been looking forward to Siracusa; I'm not sure that she was not by way of regarding her whole past as working slowly up to a sight of that place, since she had come to think of it. She had made up her royal mind to stop there some time, dreaming in the quarries where the seven thousand Greeks languished in captivity while the Siracusan beauties, under red umbrellas, derided or brazenly admired them. She had, so to speak, made a note of Dionysius' Ear, and the Greek and Roman theatres, and already she had bought a photograph of a strange, Dante-esque den in the rocks which resembled Hades and was called Paradise. She planned an excursion up the little river Anapo to see the papyrus, and the deep blue pool of jewelled fish at the source; and there were various drives and walks which, she thought, would keep her at the Villa Politi at least a week. But, on my part, I was equally determined that she should not stop an hour over the two days I had grudgingly allotted her. Not that I wasn't interested in Siracusa; I was, intensely, but I was and am a good deal more interestedin her and the carrying out of my own secret plans, which can best be accomplished with the aid of a sympathetic mother. I wanted to reach Taormina as soon as possible, so as to be on the spot when the mater arrives. Naturally I did not openly oppose the will of a mere Brown against that of Brown's mistress. I merely hinted that there was said to be a good deal of white dust in Siracusa, and that it was hot. I also mentioned, inadvertently, that in some of the hotels there were mice. It was a blow to hear that Miss Randolph liked mice; but there was encouragement in Aunt Mary's "Oh!" of horror; and I lived in hope.
In order not to waste a moment, I turned the car aside on the way to Siracusa, and drove along a white road between olive-clad hills to the ancient Greek stronghold of Fort Euryelus, which once guarded the western extremity of that great tableland which was the splendid city of Siracusa. You, who know your Thucydides better than I do, are probably well up in all the thrilling events which took place there four hundred years before Christ; but the Goddess depended largely upon my lips for bread-crumbs of knowledge, and her awed interest in the perfectly preserved magazines for food, the subterranean galleries, and the secret sallyport betrayed to the enemy by a traitor, was pretty to see. From a tower of piled stones I pointed away towards Etna with Taormina at its feet and said, "There-there lies the beauty-spot of Sicily." Thus I got in my entering wedge.
It was four o'clock when we finally reached Siracusa,but I took my lady and her aunt for a glimpse of Arethusa's fountain in the town before driving them into perhaps the most wonderful garden in the world-the double garden of the Villa Politi. It is double because the heights, on a level with the white balconied hotel, bloom with flowers and billow with waving olive trees; while down below, far below, lie the haunted quarries, starry now in their tragic shadows with the golden spheres of oranges. The latomia forms a subterranean garden; when the brilliant flower-beds above are scintillating with noonday heat, down there, under the orange trees with their white blossoms, it is always cool and dim, with a green light like a garden under the sea.
The quarry is deep, with sheer white walls overgrown with ivy and purple bouganvillia. It is of enormous extent, winding irregularly, crossed here and there with a slight bridge, and the hotel stands on the very edge. Far away lies Siracusa, a streak of pearl against the deep indigo of the sea. We went down into the latomia and wandered into its most secret places. But when we came upon a pile of skulls Aunt Mary beat a retreat. The ghosts of the tortured Greeks haunted the place, she vowed, and lest she should be lost in the labyrinth of the quarry, she had to be escorted up to the world of mortals.
Next day we did most of the things that Miss Randolph had set her heart on, but not all. My alluring picture of Taormina consoled her for what she had to miss, and she consented to be torn away on the following morning.
Our drive to-day has been a scamper throughParadise. The road we took wound through orange groves, the sea lay glittering below us, mountains towering above, each hill-top crested with a ruin which had crumbled to decay when the world was young. My Goddess said that she had never known how much truer than history mythology was until this magic morning. Why, we saw the stones that Polyphemus threw after Ulysses, and the scene of Acis' love, and always before us, beckoning us on, was the white, hovering cone of Etna.
At last we struck the little station of Giardini on the coast, the nearest to Taormina, which lies some hundreds of feet above on a high shoulder of the mountains. An exquisite road, engineered in gradual curves, winds upwards along the mountain breast, and as usual the Napier took it at an easy ten miles an hour, and could have done it faster if I had let her. The view grew fairer and fairer as we mounted, and the coast line disclosed itself to north and south. In some three miles we were at the gate of the town. Taormina is practically a long, straight street, at one end the Timeo, at the other the San Domenico. It is simply a Sicilian village, with its Norman fountain and its crumbling palaces, but with a history that goes back to Greece in its prime. Above rises on a splendid height the old Castello; further inland, and higher still, is the wild village of Mola peeping over the edge of a precipice that overhangs the valley. Twenty miles away floats the stately cone of Etna. It is a place of entrancing beauty, and the gem of it all is the ancient Greek theatre. I suppose that nowhere in the world have nature and the noblest artthat ever adorned the earth combined in a more perfect picture.
The resting-place chosen by Miss Randolph is not out of that picture, but a part of it. For five hundred years it was a monastery. How well those good old monks knew how to do themselves! They laid out a fairy garden on a gracious headland above the sea, overlooking a panorama the most beautiful in Sicily. They planted it thick with orange and lemon trees and flowers as sweet as bloomed in Eden. Now the monks are banished, but the garden remains, and their old home (with its lovely cloisters, its long, dim corridors panelled with painted saints, its tiled rooms and deep-set windows) opens hospitable doors to strangers.
Aunt Mary is delighted with the San Domenico, because a "real live prince" is her landlord. Even the Goddess says that it makes her feel more than ever that she is living in a fairy story. Now, if only the fairy godmother will come along to-morrow, and waving her wand over Brown, transform him into a worthier hero of that story, and soften the heart of the Princess! Do you think it will be so? In any event, it has done me good to write you this. If all goes well I'll wire. I don't think there's much sleep for me to-night. As soon as there's a chance that the mater can have arrived I shall go down to Santa Margherita, Sir Evelyn Haines' place, and have it out with her.
Your somewhat distracted but faithful friend,Jack.
Santa Margherita,Taormina, Sicily,January 28.
My darling Min,-
You were a saucy girl to chaff me like that about the Honourable Mr. Winston. It didn't matter one bit tomewhether we got to know him or not. Why should it? Even when he comes into the title he'll only be a viscount, and Lord Brighthelmston may live foryears. It wasn't to meet him that we joined the viscountess, though I shouldn't wonder if she had something up her sleeve when she asked us to meet her in Cannes. Anyway, she'd taken a tremendous fancy to me. We got on awfully well together at first, but she needs a lot of living up to, and if she hadn't held a sort ofsaloneverywhere we've been, with all kinds of swells, home-made and foreign, kootooing to her, and being introduced to us, I don't know but I should have persuaded Pa to drop the whole business long ago. She's a nice old lady, but sometimes, when you let yourself go, and are having a ripping time, she freezes up and looks at you as if you were some unknown species of animalin the Zoo. That's what I mean when I say she wants a lot of living up to; and more than once in the last two months or so I'd have given my boots if Pa and I hadn't bound ourselves to travel about with her, but had gone off on our own, with a courier, like that handsome one I sent you the snapshot of with the Yankee girl at Blois. Well, anyhow, it's all come to an end now; and she's introduced us to dozens of smart people, so there's nothing to regret.
Pa and I are going back to Naples to-morrow or the day after, and so home to England. Give me London! I'm dying for a good game of ping pong. I asked them to get it at the Grand Hotel in Rome, but the silly things didn't. Addie Johnson has written and asked me to a swell dance she's giving at the Kensington Town Hall; I hope we can get back in time; and I may be able to take a charming cavalier with me. But I'll tell you about him later. We've been having scenes of great excitement for the last few days, which have helped me to get through the time in Sicily, which otherwise would have been pretty slow, as I don't care for country, abroad or at home. Besides, the oranges and lemons keep falling on your head, and at night you have to throw gravel at the nightingales to keep the noisy creatures still. I collected some on purpose.
Well, I told you how vexed Lady B. was because "Jack," as she calls him, couldn't get to Cannes. He was always writing from different places and making excuses, till Pa said in his joking way, he'd bet that "Jack was up to some game of his own," and my lady didn't like that a little bit. Finally, when Paand I got sick of Cannes, which is too far from Monte Carlo to be lively, we all went on to Rome. That was just after my last epistle to you. It rained cats and dogs in Rome, and I never went into a single church, not even St. Peter's. We planned to wait for "Jack," but your letter came, and I was afraid there might be something in that joke of yours about his trying to keep out of my way, and I was bound he shouldn't think I was after him. There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it for a girl who can bait her hook as I can. So when Lady B.'s neuralgia got bad, we proposed Naples, and it was very nice. But she is a fussy old thing and couldn't let well alone; she'd seen Naples and hadn't seen Sicily. Nothing would do but we should "run over." I would have put my foot down on that, but Lady B. mentioned that she had a friend at some place called Taormina, an English baronet with a lovely house, who always had a lot of nice people staying with him. And she said she'd often been invited, and would get an invitation for us all for a few days if we'd go. I thought we might meet someone it would be a good thing for us to know, so I consented; but we were to go first to Palermo and Siracusa, and work on to Taormina by the time our invitation arrived.
Palermo wasn't so bad. I never saw so many young men in my life, all very dark, with enormous eyes, and little moustaches and canes, both of which they twirled a good deal when they looked at anyone they admired. But Syracuse wasawfulI daresay it was nice enough when you could be a tyrant andcut off your enemies' heads, and build gold statues to yourself; but tyrants are out of their job now, and things have been allowed to go down a good deal since their day. I nearly cried when I saw what sort of hole it was, but our invitation to Sir Evelyn Haines' (which we found waiting for us) wasn't for that day, but the next. It was settled that we should go on by the first train in the morning, when a telegram arrived for Lady B. She was in a twitter, and gave it to Pa to read, and say what he thought. It was sent from Naples by a perfect stranger to her, who signed his name James Van Wyck Payne; and as nearly as I can remember, it said, "Beg that you will receive me at Syracuse. Have travelled on from Rome on purpose immediately on learning your address. Have news of vital importance to give you about your son."
Lady B. couldn't think what it all meant; but she was anxious, and we were curious. She and Pa calculated times, and discovered that if we went away by the first train we would miss the mysterious Mr. Payne, so it was decided that we must wait till the next, and a telegram was sent to an address in Naples to that effect.
In the morning, as early as he could, he arrived. I was on the verandah of the hotel, watching, dressed in my travelling frock, so as to be ready to get off by the next train. When a stranger came running up the steps asking for Lady Brighthelmston, you can believe I kept my eyes open, though I pretended to be reading an awfully exciting book of Guy Boothby's-reallygreat! He was young, and evidentlyAmerican, but very handsome, and the best of form; blond, tall, and smooth-faced, with such a clever expression, and unfathomable eyes. He was shown in; but as Lady B.'s sitting-room had a window opening on the verandah, with the blinds only half shut, I could presently hear from where I sat a murmur of voices which I knew to be hers and his. Just as Pa had joined me, and was asking whether the gentleman had turned up yet, there came a stifled shriek from Lady B.'s room. We jumped up, rushed to the window, and met her there as she was running out to call us, crying, with Mr. Payne at her back. We went in, and she made him tell his story, which was very complicated. However, we soon understood that the Honourable Mr. Winston's chauffeur had stolen his motor-car, and his watch (which Mr. Payne had got out of pawn and shown to Lady B.) and his clothes, and probably murdered him. Lady B. hadn't had any letter for ages; she had supposed that was because she was travelling about so much lately and had missed them, but now she saw that anything might easily have happened to her son. Everything was frightfully confused and exciting, and while Pa tried to soothe Lady B., Mr. Payne and I stepped out on the verandah to talk things over quietly, as I had kept my head. He showed wonderful detective gifts, and from some details he told me about the girl and a middle-aged American lady, friends of his, whom thechauffeurhad deceived, I began to think it might be the party I had seen in Blois, only with a different car; but that, as I said to Mr. Payne, must have been before any tragedy hadtaken place. He thought I was probably right about the identity; and to make sure, I went upstairs to one of my boxes which wasn't locked yet, and rooted out the negative of that snapshot I sent you from Blois. We looked at the film together, each holding it with one hand to keep it from curling, and Mr. Payne exclaimed, "That's the man! that's the scoundrel!" I had thought the face awfully good-looking, but it didn't seem the same to me then, and I had to admit itmightbe that of a murderer. I proposed showing it to Lady B., but she was frightfully upset already; and Mr. Payne said he didn't see that it would do any good to harrow up her feelings still more now, and perhaps if we did she wouldn't be able to undertake a journey. If he'd known in time that we were going on to Taormina, he wouldn't have kept us at Syracuse, but would have joined us at Taormina; for he had news that Miss Randolph, that stuck-up American girl, and her aunt had just arrived there the night before, with poor Mr. Winston's stolen car, which the wickedchauffeurwas driving. He-Mr. Payne, I mean-had written from Rome to the girl's father in New York, that she was in the power of an abandoned ruffian, and the father had started off to the rescue the very day after receiving the letter. He had cabled to Mr. Payne in Rome, and the message had been forwarded to Naples, but in that way they had missed each other, and Mr. Payne only knew that the old man had been following the girl about from pillar to post; that he'd heard in Naples that she'd gone to Palermo, and had proceeded there himself.Probably, when he found that she had left, if the hotel people could tell him where she was likely to be by this time, he wouldn't wait for an ordinary train, but would take a special. Mr. Payne said he was that kind of man; and if Lady B. would go on now by the next train to Taormina, everybody might confront thechauffeurand denounce him at once. By everybody he meant himself, Lady B., and this Mr. Randolph, of New York. I was very much interested, of course, and naturally wanted to be in at the death, which Mr. Payne seemed quite pleased to have me do, for we had by this time made up great friends; we seemed so congenial in many ways, and he knows such quantities of swell people everywhere. The Duke of Burford is a great chum of his, and so is that handsome Lord Lane that you were wild to meet last year and couldn't get to know. But perhaps youshallyet, dear. Who can tell?
Poor Lady B. was as weak as a rag, but determined on revenge, and Pa kept her up on a raw egg in wine. We took the train for Taormina. It was a strange journey. We four reserved a carriage for ourselves, and Lady B. asked questions till she was too exhausted to speak. Then she sat with her eyes shut, and salts to her nose, trying to strengthen herself for what was to come, while Mr. Payne and I talked in low voices about people we knew. Sometimes IintimatedI knew them, too, and others still more swell, for I didn't like to seem out of it; and luckily I'd read a great deal about them in the Society papers, so I was never at a loss.