CHAPTER III

IN HONOR OF A QUEEN

Miss Cavendish was not disappointed in her optimistic belief in the kindliness of the Italians, for after Sorrento was reached and the three tired, but happy travellers had decided to quarter themselves in an old monastery set in an orange grove, they undertook a journey into the village of flowers for the purpose of buying postal cards. A smile, a word of appreciation to the good old woman who kept the shop, and they were loaded with favors; huge bunches of roses were bestowed upon them, oranges of a size and flavor not before discovered, were offered them.

“It is Arcadia,” sighed Sidney. “I knew it the moment our little boat stopped at that old stone landing and we went up, up that vaulted passageway to the top of the bluff. Every time we came out upon one of those balconies to rest and looked down on that blue, blue sea I knew we were ‘under the walls of paradise’ in reality.”

“I knew it before that,” said Gabriella. “I was thrilled with the fact when the steamer stopped off there in the bay and those little boats came up and surrounded us. The boatmen looked so picturesque standing in those tiny tossing things and it was all so unlike anything I ever knew before. How did you ever happen to pick out the right one, Gem, when they were all babbling and clamoring so?”

“I have dreamed of this spot for years,” Miss Cavendish told her. “I read of it long ago and determined, once I had the good fortune to come to Sorrento, I would stop nowhere else.”

“It is so fascinating,” sighed Gabriella. “Everything about it is fascinating down to the _major domo_ with his five languages and his side-whiskers. I shall never forget my sensations when we reached the top of that old stone stairway and came out at last in the orange grove. Then when I learned that we could have all the oranges we wanted, and when I saw those busy little bees at work for us, I knew we had struck Elysium. I can tell you, dear people, those good bees will have to get awfully busy now I have come.”

“And then the orange-blossoms and the roses in such profusion,” Sidney continued the rhapsody.

“And the dinner,” Gabriella took up the strain; “I never ate such good things in all my life.”

“And all for six francs a day, wine and lights included,” said Miss Cavendish. “Girls, I vote we stay here two or three days; I’m sure we shall never regret it.”

“Oh, dearest Gem,” Gabriella threw herself upon her friend in a transport of delight, “it is what I have been longing to do from the time I set foot inside the walls, but I didn’t want to interfere with your plans.”

“Our plans aren’t cast iron,” returned Miss Cavendish; “that is the beauty of them; we can do what we please when we please and how we please. If we prefer to stay in Italy the entire six months we can do it and nobody can object.”

“I am so happy,” sighed Sidney.

“I am so ecstatically joyful,” cried Gabriella, “that I don’t believe I could stand much more. Oh, the bliss of being here in this spot of spots, and of knowing that we shall have time to learn it better. We can stay over Sunday, can’t we, Gem?”

“We can and we will. I don’t know of a better place for that day of rest.”

Night lay upon Sorrento. Across the bay the lights of Naples twinkled through the lambent atmosphere. High above the plain the red fires of Vesuvius once in a while shot up wickedly. From Sorrento’s bluffs one could look down upon the doubles of stars reflected in the blue waters beneath. The orange groves sent forth a delicious odor, which, mingling with the scent of roses, filled the air with a mysterious sweetness whose source was visibly discerned only when one caught a glimpse of pale blossoms rioting over the grey walls.

Miss Cavendish and Sidney were treading the path which led between rows of orange and lemon trees to the edge of the bluff. “We should certainly hear nightingales here,” remarked Miss Cavendish. “Of all places this is where I should expect to hear them. It may not be the season for the full song, yet it does seem to me that I can detect a very sweet twittering which comes from the depths of that garden next us.”

“It belongs to the villa of a princess,” Sidney told her. “Gabriella and I have peeped in and we are dying to penetrate further. It looks perfectly fascinating like the pictures one sees of such places in the _Century Magazine_. That was the lodge we passed on our way to the town this afternoon; that house, you know, where they had all those birds and monkeys and things. What a perfect night.”

“And what a perfect day, or rather days we have had; each one as exquisite as it would be possible for weather to give.”

“And to think we saw the Queen of Holland face to face. Wasn’t that luck? Here comes Gabriella; I hear her calling us.”

“Where are you two?” Gabriella’s voice penetrated the quiet. “Gem, Sidney? Ah, I thought I should find you here. Isn’t it perfect? But you can’t stay, for our host has asked some of us to go into the gardens of the princess, where we can see the illuminations. They are going to send up fireworks from the village in honor of Queen Wilhelmina. There is to be a boat race, too, and all the houses along the bluff are lighted up gorgeously. Come along; the others are waiting.”

Her companions needed no second bidding, and a little party was soon on its way down the dusty road to the lodge. The garden, when they entered, was dimly beautiful, but as they advanced they perceived lanterns swinging from the archways, while upon the marble balustrade of the long colonnade were set, at intervals, tiny lamps of so primitive a character that they seemed a remnant of antiquity. “Aren’t they pretty?” said Gabriella, leaning over to look at them closer. “They are nothing in the world but tumblers with oil in them and little lighted wicks floating on top. Did you ever suspect, Sid, to be walking in such a place on such a night? Did you ever expect to be presented to anyone’s vision against a background of clipped hedges and marvellous peacock-shaped bushes and marble statuary and urns and amphoras and things? When I get rich I shall buy a villa at Sorrento and you shall both come and spend months with me. I have found the one place in the world that was made for me. There goes a rocket. Come, we must do honor to the queen by gazing at her fireworks.”

For an hour or more the little company enjoyed the scene, and then they were piloted home by their host, sombrely wrapped in his black cloak, a broad-brimmed hat set upon his dark curling locks.

“He looks as if he had stepped out of an old romance,” whispered Sidney, “and I feel as if I were here upon some mysterious errand, stealing through this dim garden, and through these dark unfamiliar rooms.” At this moment a harsh cry at her very side startled her, and her sleeve was suddenly caught and held. She gave a slight scream which brought the keeper of the lodge and, by the light of a swinging lamp which he turned in her direction, they discovered that a gorgeous parrot had resented this intrusion and had given a sudden peck at the passing stranger.

Till midnight the festivities were kept up, and all Sorrento joined in the celebration, but at last the final rocket soared into the sky and fell hissing into the waters below. Then only the gloomy fires of Vesuvius glowed sullenly upon the mountain top while Sorrento slept.

Gabriella, however, remained awake for a long time. New and vivid impressions had been made too rapidly upon her brain and she stole from her bed to creep out upon the balcony, thinking the peace of the night might enter her soul and quiet her. The faint and far tinkle of a mandolin, the occasional twitter of a bird in the deep grove, the plash of the water on the sands far below were the only sounds she could hear. “Night in Italy and I am here, while at home my little mother has no idea of the joy of it. She is burdened by the cares of the day, by the never ceasing grind of existence.” The girl sighed, and her eyes filled. “Oh, sweetest mother, I am thinking of you, and I am wishing that I could share this rapture with you. It is rapture, this being here, and across the sea I send you a wish for some great joy to come to you to-morrow.” After these thoughts Gabriella tip-toed back to her bed and the morning brought the mother her child’s first letter from foreign lands.

But on that morrow no one could detect in Gabriella a suggestion of her mood of the night before. She was all sparkle and gladness, bubbling over with nonsense and ready for anything. Eager for mental as well as carnal food, she declared herself. “Like Saint Lucy I seem to keep my eyes in a dish, I eat so much,” she said. “You might send a picture of me to mother, and under it write, ‘Saint Gabriella with her eyes in a dish.’ I’ll take your egg, Gem, if you are not going to eat it.”

“Can you really manage it, Gabriella, with polenta and honey, too, not to mention all that toast?” asked Miss Cavendish.

“Oh, yes, I can manage it, thank you,” replied Gabriella cheerfully; “the bees will have to work over-time, that’s all. It won’t hurt them; I’d do the same for the sake of living in an orange grove and always having honey for breakfast. I want to learn something about Tasso to-day, Gem, so please prime yourself, for I don’t intend to lose any opportunity of improving my mind. I must find out why and when and to what degree his spirit soared and sung. Any facts gratefully received. We will repair to the orange grove immediately after breakfast. I expect to eat at least six oranges before lunch time.”

“You will be in no state then for improving your mind, I fear,” returned Miss Cavendish.

“Won’t I? Just try me. I am not to be outdone by a little thing like an extra egg. I am simply the better reinforced. Brain work is very exhausting to the system and I must repair the waste. Have you finished, Sid? Were you going to send for some more hot polenta?”

“I have finished. Why?”

“Nothing; I only thought if you couldn’t eat all that polenta I might help you out.”

“Gabriella Thorne, you shall not have another mouthful,” declared Miss Cavendish. “I am responsible to your mother for you, and I shall not return her either a wreck or a glutton.”

Gabriella laughed and arose from her place. “That settles it. I am now ready for Tasso. Let us to the orange grove; some one will have our seat if I tarry any longer.”

They wandered down the shady path and established themselves upon one of the old stone benches by the wall. This spot overlooked the magnificent expanse of blue sea and sky, with Ischia and Capri hazily azure on the one side and the cone of smoking Vesuvius on the other. Far below them glistened the white sands upon which the long ripples plashed with a gentle murmur. The eye following the line of the bluff was arrested here and there by some brilliant blossom swinging from its slight hold in a crannied rock, and the song of a boatman, standing as he rowed, came sweetly to their ears.

Miss Cavendish carefully spread a shawl over the stone bench littered with leaves and green with moss. She looked at the lovely scene before her. “And this was what the young eyes of Torquato Tasso saw,” she said after a while. “He was born in Sorrento in 1544. He left this fair spot when he was ten years old and joined his father in Rome. His mother was of Sorrento. Porzia de Rossi was her name. Tasso was well born and had more than usual advantages in education. Of course you know that he wrote ‘Rinaldo’ and the ‘Gerusalemme Liberata,’ the first a heroic romance, the second a heroic record of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. He was a great poet, so great that his father, no mean poet himself, at first was jealous, but afterward he rejoiced in the brilliant successes of his son Torquato.”

“And poor Tasso became insane; I know that much about him,” said Gabriella.

“Yes, in his case it was true that whom the gods destroy they first made mad. He believed that he was pursued by secret persecutors who had declared him a heretic and had denounced him to the Inquisition. These delusions were not constant and, in this, his native spot, he recovered his equilibrium.”

“Who wouldn’t?” sighed Gabriella. “I am sure I would. Go on, Gem.”

“But when he returned to the old excitements of court life, the malady again appeared and he finally died in the monastery of Sant’ Onofrio in Rome.”

“We must go there,” said Sidney. “I am interested in Tasso. I’d like to hear more details of his life.”

“That is one of the joys,” remarked Gabriella; “every spot one visits re-creates a desire to dive deeper into books. I feel my mind expanding hourly, and the beauty of it is that what you learn over here will stick, for it will be accentuated by these living pictures.”

“Oh, to know the languages,” said Sidney. “Don’t you feel yourself a perfect ignoramus when you run across a ragged little urchin, or a wretch of a cab-driver who can speak fluently two or three languages? I have been put to shame more than once by the poorest sort of shopkeeper, who knows English and French besides his own native Italian.”

“As a nation,” remarked Miss Cavendish, “we are exceedingly well satisfied. Our language is sufficient for us. We are not dependent upon foreigners for our bread and butter as the Italians are. Moreover, our country is so large and, as English is its universal language, we do not feel required to learn another. Here if they but step over the border it is to hear a strange tongue.”

“Nevertheless, I don’t think we are the linguists we should be,” said Sidney. “When I go home I shall take up French and German again so when I come abroad another time I shall not feel such a goose.”

“May fate order that we be her travelling companions that next time,” said Gabriella. “Now, what I should like to do, would be to stay right here in this dear old place and study Italian, read Italian literature and all that. I’d begin with Tasso.”

“And learn to drop the O from Sorrento, and in fact slip off the penultimate as most of these of Sorrento do. I’d advise you to study Italian elsewhere than in Southern Italy unless you are sure of your master’s knowledge of the language. I should begin, too, my literature further back than Tasso,” Miss Cavendish went on. “I should take Dante first and follow him up with Petrarch, though both of them belong properly to Florence and might better be studied there. Still they were also Italian, if Florentines, and if one had the time to linger in this charmed Sorrento, what more delightful than to make a comprehensive study of Italian literature in this very place?”

“And learn to read it in the original,” interposed Gabriella. “Oh me, life is much too short to do all there is to do. How can anybody call his days flat and uneventful when there is a whole world to explore, if not in the body, in the mind? I wish I were twins that I might have one of me for the work-a-day world and the other to do those things which please only my love of the æsthetic. Yes, I regret more and more that loss of a Methuselah’s length of years, but since we have not time for plodding, let us take a short cut to-day, so please, ma’am, tell us more of Tasso. I wish you remembered some of his poetry.”

“Perhaps I do, a little. You are familiar with those well-known stanzas upon Carthage:

“‘Great Carthage prostrate lies; and scarce a trace Of all her mighty ruins marks the place Where once she stood: thus Desolation waits On loftiest cities, and on proudest states; Huge heaps of sand, and waving herbage hide The pomp of power, the monuments of pride; And yet does man, poor child of earth presume To mourn vain arrogance! his mortal doom!’

“Tasso wrote more than a thousand sonnets and such like poems. I wish I could repeat some of them.”

“The next time we come to Sorrento we must bring a volume of his poems with us,” Sidney decided.

“When we go to Florence we will be saying that we must have Dante and Petrarch, and in Rome--dear, dear, what shall we not want?” said Gabriella. “No, Sidney, our baby trunks will not hold any accumulation of books. We shall have to store our minds, and carry our information as the bees do honey to be placed in the honeycombs afterward. After this mental effort I feel the need of an orange. Sid, will you help me to get some for all of us?”

Miss Cavendish picked up her book and the girls wandered off among the orange trees. She heard their laughing voices in merry, chaffing, girlish talk. They were so happy that she could not refrain from joining them. They were leaning over the wall looking at the beautiful scene before them.

“Sid wants a history,” said Gabriella, as Miss Cavendish came up, “but I need a dictionary of my own language. I don’t care what this place has been; all I want to know is where I can find adjectives enough to adequately express my present admiration for what it is. I have used exquisite, divine, perfect, delicious, fascinating, bewildering so many times that I am getting ashamed of myself, and now I am beginning to say _wunderschoen_ till Sid laughs at me. What am I to do? I simply cannot restrain my desire to express what I feel, and I am helpless with such a limited vocabulary. What am I to do?”

“There is no use in telling you to exercise self-control, so I suppose the only thing you can do is to wear your adjectives threadbare. We can stand it when we consider the occasion.”

“But isn’t it the most exquisite panorama you ever saw?” said Gabriella for the hundredth time. “I don’t care a rap about Herculaneum and Pompeii and ancient Greek civilization when I can glory in the presence of such color, such composition. I am afraid I am not historically inclined. I have decided that in my last incarnation I was an artist. Go to, Sidney. Don’t ask Gem another question about the different eruptions of Vesuvius. Who cares for stale dates when one can get fresh oranges?”

“Gabriella, you are incorrigible,” said Miss Cavendish. “Go off and make those meaningless speeches to yourself while Sidney and I improve our minds.”

“No, I’ll play the Gamaliel act, too, and sit at your feet,” returned Gabriella.

“Then you will have to promise not to interrupt.”

“Oh, I can promise fast enough, if that’s all,” returned the girl, laughing. “But do draw it mild. If you encourage Sid in these investigations she will demand that you take up the study of cuneiform and will insist upon buying queer things like the Rosetta stone. There is no telling, once such a craze overtakes one, where it will lead.”

“If Gabriella is going to keep up this incessant gabble,” said Miss Cavendish, “you and I, Sidney, would better go somewhere else.”

“I will be good; I promise,” said Gabriella.

“But will you perform?”

“Yes, I really will. To think that Vesuvius was once smiling with green vines, and that no one suspected it to be a volcano. There, doesn’t that show my interest and my intimate knowledge of the subject? Spare me dates, good lady and I am a meek Gamaliel.”

“The first recorded eruption took place in A. D. 79,” began Miss Cavendish.

“She begins with dates right away,” groaned Gabriella. “I fear my mortal mind cannot stand it. I will go and write to mother. Farewell, dears, loath as I am to leave you, I cannot look at Vesuvius arithmetically. I prefer its ‘misty brim’ to remain misty so far as history is concerned. Farewell, oh, sapient educator, and inquisitive pupil. I am going.”