CHAPTER IV

THE BRITON

“Such a gay little cavalcade we are,” said Gabriella, looking back over the long white road which wound along the cliffs above the bluest of seas and beneath the bluest of skies. “I didn’t think Gem would desert us so early in the fray,” she continued, “but I think she really does enjoy those nice Englishwomen that we met at Sorrento, and she thought it would be rather fun for us two girls to have this drive to ourselves. I notice she has discreetly sent us on ahead of her carriage and that she intervenes between us and that young Englishman and his friend whom we caught sight of as we were leaving the town. Did you ever see anything so rakish as these little horses with the long feather sticking out of their heads? ‘Stick a feather in his cap and call him Maccaroni;’ that would be a good name for an Italian horse.”

Sidney looked back. “The Englishman’s carriage has passed Gem’s. I believe they want to lead.”

“Beasts! We shall get all their dust. Where’s the dictionary? What do we say when we want the driver to go faster?”

“We mustn’t get ahead of Gem’s carriage; we must keep just a little in advance of it.”

“But I will not have that haughty Briton’s dust, I declare it. I am a free-born American citizen and I absolutely refuse to be treated with spurn by any Englishman that ever trod.”

Sidney looked back to gain further information. “They have slacked up. Oh, Gabriella, look; they are amicably conversing with Gem’s Sorrento acquaintances. Do you suppose they know them?”

“Perhaps, but don’t look back again as you value your life. I feel hostile.”

“And why?”

“Oh, because I don’t want them to know that we are aware of their existence. Let’s talk about Tiberius. My book says that he is still considered the patron of Capri, and that there they yet regard him with pride. I’d like to go to Capri and stay a while, although they say that the tourists are spoiling it. Anacapri is still provincial, I believe.”

“I am sure we found an unspoiled resident of the island,” remarked Sidney.

“We surely did; I acknowledge that. Sidney, you might look back just once and glimpse them; as it were. We mustn’t get too far ahead.”

“They are forging along,” Sidney reported, “and Gem is waving her handkerchief. Does that mean we are to call a halt?”

“It means something. We’ll have to stop and see what. _Cocchiere fermo._ That is what the dictionary says. I hope it is right.”

“Evidently it is, as we have stopped. Are you going to get out?”

“No, I am going to wait events. I am nothing if not cautious.”

The other carriages came up to them and Miss Cavendish called. “We are going to have luncheon now, girls.”

“Must we get out?” asked Sidney.

“No, no,” expostulated Gabriella, acquiring an English reserve at once. “We can drive alongside, Sidney, the other side from the Britons.”

But all this scheming came to naught, for no sooner were the three carriages grouped by the side of the road than Mr. Owen Morgan and his friend, Herr Muller, were presented to the girls by the Misses Bailey, whose friends they were, and it turned out that the Englishman was not strictly English but Welsh. Gabriella unfroze a little, for she had a confessed weakness for anything Welsh, and announced that she considered a Welsh rarebit the choicest of treats. Sidney was pleasantly polite to the German whose English was meagre but who spoke fairly good French, and, therefore, in a little while it was really quite a jolly party. The gentlemen gallantly waited on the ladies, sharing their luncheon with them, while the ladies produced their own stores. “To be sure,” said Gabriella afterward, “our stores were much the best, for that dear delightful old man at the pension had put such delicious things in our basket, toothsome little cakes and those delectable raisiny things done up with spices and baked in fig leaves. We had figs and oranges galore, too, but I must say the masculines furnished better wine than ours.”

They set off again very gaily after luncheon and all reached Amalfi together, Miss Cavendish and her girls separating from the others at this place.

“It is a dear and lovely spot but not as fascinating as the one we have just left,” said Sidney, “though Miss Mildred Bailey likes it better.”

“I don’t see how she could,” returned Gabriella. “I wouldn’t exchange this clean, quiet little hotel for theirs, either.”

“It is well to be so content with what is a matter of economy,” said Miss Cavendish, “for this is much the cheaper.”

“So much the better for that. How did you like the masculine element, Gem? Now, I come to think of it, I believe that it is because of those ravening wolves that you have brought your meek little lambs here, so as to get them away from danger.”

“You are such a very meek little lamb,” remarked Miss Cavendish. “I noticed what a very faint and protesting bleat you gave to that young Morgan.”

“Sidney’s French is better than mine, so I naturally turned her over to the German while Owen Morgan and I talked of Welsh rarebit and--things. Hasn’t he the dearest Welsh name?”

“It is very Welsh; I don’t know how dear it may be to you,” answered Miss Cavendish.

“It is very dear to-day, but I cannot tell how it may seem to-morrow. I saw the elder Miss Bailey looking very hard at me once or twice, but I knew you, my dearest Gem, could not disapprove of my making myself agreeable and of keeping up our national reputation for vivacity. I have noticed that the English girls, the few that I have seen, are not animated. I suppose Miss Bailey was studying me as a type.”

“We shall see them again,” remarked Miss Cavendish, “for we are going up to the Cappuchini, and they promised to look out for us.”

But they did not see their travelling companions of the morning, for Gabriella caught sight of them in the town and insisted that they should take the opportunity of visiting the famous old monastery before the Bailey party should have returned to it, and, after the long climb up the cliffs and a rest under the vines of the garden, they returned without regret to their own simpler establishment.

“It is certainly a delightful spot, or would be if it were not so full of new richness,” declared Gabriella. “It is exactly like the pictures of it on the postal cards, but I like this place better, where I don’t feel as if we had to pay a _centesimi_ for every breath we draw.”

[Illustration: “VIEW FROM THE MONASTERY.”]

“Do you notice how we are beset by beggars here in Amalfi?” said Sidney. “They are even worse than they were in Naples, and that is saying a good deal. We didn’t have near so many at Sorrento. Come here, Gabriella, and see them below our windows.”

Gabriella joined her. “I just stepped out here to look at the view,” continued Sidney, “and there were dozens of them clamoring for _una soldi_.”

“We can go into that cunning little garden,” said Gabriella, “and get rid of them. I believe I must not say cunning; it is an Americanism which will be misunderstood by our English friends, who will think I mean crafty. I wonder if we shall meet them again. They are not going on to Paestum, but will return to Naples by way of Castellemare. Gem seems rather sorry. I think she likes the young men; they amuse her. I must confess that they also amuse me.”

“I shall never forget that early morning drive to Amalfi,” mused Sidney. “I should feel well repaid for having crossed the ocean if I saw nothing more than this lovely southern Italy.”

“If I were to be recalled this minute I should not regret having made the trip,” remarked Miss Cavendish. “Travelling in this section is certainly made very easy.”

But she changed her mind somewhat before they reached Pompeii; for, after having expended their adjectives freely in admiring the splendid Greek temples of Paestum, they set out to continue their way to Naples by way of Pompeii. Their experience had been that nearly everywhere it was possible to find some one who could speak English, and were now expecting nothing less. They had in the beginning carefully prepared sentences, studiously constructing them from the dictionary and phrase book, and then presenting them haltingly only to have them answered in perfectly correct English, so that it seemed rather superfluous to worry over the matter of acquiring a strange language, as time went on.

“It did very well at the shops and hotels and such places,” said Miss Cavendish, looking helplessly at her tickets, “but there seems to be an unwritten law that at the railroad stations none of the officials are to speak English. These tickets have a notice attached saying that they are to be signed somewhere by somebody. I infer, from what I can make out, that it must be done at the first station, so we must get off there.”

When this point was reached they all rushed from the train and sought the ticket-office, none too easily discovered, to learn that their errand was unnecessary, so they hurried back to their places.

“All that hurry for nothing,” panted Miss Cavendish.

“I shouldn’t have minded it so much,” said Gabriella, “if that pestiferously officious man had not hampered us by pretending he knew what we wanted, and after all was only a hindrance. He made me so mad, and I wouldn’t have given him a penny, although that was what he expected. Why, he didn’t do a thing but get in our way. If we had missed the train on his account, I should like to have done something to him.”

“We changed at Battapaglia, didn’t we?” said Miss Cavendish in the course of half an hour.

Gabriella did not remember, but Sidney did. “Yes,” she replied, “that was the place. I remember perfectly.”

“Then we must not fail to be ready to get out there. Not one of these guards can understand a word we say, so we shall have to look out for ourselves. There, we are slowing up now. The guard called something. Didn’t it sound to you like Battapaglia?”

“It certainly did,” agreed the two girls, and they picked up their traps, and hastened out. Each had a satchel; Gabriella had a package of Sorrento wood-work; Sidney had a bundle of silk stuffs which she had bought at the same place; Miss Cavendish had the golf capes and the umbrellas. It was something to get all these belongings together, but they managed it only to find that it was not Battapaglia, but a place similar in name.

“We are fortunate always to be able to get the same train,” said Sidney, sinking down into her place.

“There is some comfort in knowing the train will wait for us,” said Miss Cavendish; “they never seem to be in any hurry to start.”

The real Battapaglia was reached in due time; it was plain enough to discover the name on a big sign, and being sure that this time they were right the three ladies left the train. But after rushing from one side of the platform to the other, they found an official who was made to understand that they wanted to go to Pompeii, and who hurried them back to the same train which they had just left.

“Isn’t it the most patient, good-natured thing you ever saw?” said Gabriella, as she sank laughing into her seat. “I never believed a train could so take upon itself the characteristics of a people. It simply stands till we get through our vagaries and then takes us aboard and goes on again.”

“It is a through train, I suppose,” said Miss Cavendish, as if she rather regretted the fact. “Now we must make no more mistakes, but must have our eyes open for Pompeii.”

Sidney kept a sharp lookout and at last announced, “This is it. ‘Val de Pompeii.’ There can’t be more than one Pompeii, can there?”

They gathered up their belongings and fared forth. Miss Cavendish grasped a guard by the coat sleeve and showed him her tickets. “Si, si,” he said. But the wayfarers had only walked a short distance up the platform when Miss Cavendish was seized with doubts. Where was the Hotel Suisse? the Hotel Diomede? The three retraced their steps and Miss Cavendish fell upon a passing traveller. “Is this the station for Pompeii?” she asked.

The man shook his head. “Val de Pompeii. Non Pompeii.” They rushed tumultuously back, and there still stood the little train as ready as ever to take them on, and this time they did not leave it till Pompeii was actually reached.

“Imagine such an experience in our country,” gasped Miss Cavendish, “but, even over here, I defy anybody to do more than take the same train four times in one afternoon.”

Both Gabriella and Sidney were mute. The limit of human endurance had been reached, and when they dragged forth their suit cases for the last time and found their way to the hotel, it was Gabriella who rushed up to the smiling host who met them at the door. “Do you speak English?” she queried anxiously and excitedly.

“Yes, miss,” he replied.

“Thank Heaven!” she ejaculated. “We have found some one we can tell our troubles to.”

“It is so comfortable to feel that we do not even have to remember _aqua calde_,” said Sidney, when they had been shown to their rooms and had given their orders to a neat little English-speaking maid.

“And to think that we shall not have to examine a dictionary before our appetites can be appeased,” said Gabriella. “No sallying forth for me, this evening, I shall simply sit in this hotel and gloat.”

“I think we shall all do well to rest,” said Miss Cavendish, “for we shall need all our energies to-morrow for the ruined city. Pray we may have an intelligent guide.”

“Who speaks intelligible English,” said Sidney.

Their guide happened to fill both these requirements, and moreover, added to the merit of good looks the fact that he was from Sorrento.

“I never dreamed it would be so absorbingly interesting,” said Gabriella, as they came away after spending their day among the ruins. “I think it was half that handsome guide who spoke such excellent English. He made it so fascinating to me.”

“He made it fascinating to us all,” said Miss Cavendish. “That silent city! How many times I shall think of the story it told us. How many times I shall look back to the sunshiny morning when we wandered through the desolate streets, in fancy hearing the shout of charioteers, in fancy seeing the helmeted soldiers, the exquisites in their robe making their way to the thermæ; seeing Nydia bearing her flowers, and the slaves with their amphoræ.”

“Dear me, Gem,” cried Gabriella, “you are waxing booky. Didn’t you love to see the little lizards twinkling in and out the overthrown stones? Isn’t it strange to think they are the only inhabitants of that old city, and that people of another race now haunt the place to wonder at the splendor of a departed glory?”

“Who’s talking booky now?” laughed Sidney. “Come, dear people, we must finish ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’ to-night or we shall find that it is lapping over upon some of the things we shall have to read in Rome.”

“Had you thought of making the ascent of Vesuvius?” Gabriella asked Miss Cavendish the next morning.

“I had thought of it, but it is an expensive trip, and I, for one, do not need to put my hand on wonders of that kind in order to enjoy them. I think we can get all the satisfaction we want from a volcano by looking at it from a distance.”

Gabriella looked a little disappointed. She liked the daring and difficult things. “There is a way of going up from this side which is much cheaper,” she remarked. “Our guide told me about it.”

“Oh, but we mustn’t do it unless there is a big party,” Sidney broke in. “I had some friends who took that trip and they had a dreadful time. It cost twice as much as they had been given to suppose it would, and it was really very dangerous, they heard afterward. They were three ladies who undertook the trip, and their friends in Naples were shocked to think they had trusted themselves to those strange guides that no one knew anything about, and who might have robbed them and thrown them into the crater and no one would have been the wiser.”

“I can vouch for their not robbing me,” remarked Gabriella, with a laugh. “But that grewsome suggestion of yours, Sidney, cures me of any desire to go up except in the most commonplace way on an orderly funicular railway. I must confess I had visions of riding a donkey, or of being toted by two lusty guides when we came to the steepest places, but I have no ambition to be thrown into a fiery furnace.” And she walked off humming, “Where, oh, where are the Hebrew children.”

“I am afraid Gabriella is disappointed,” said Sidney, regretfully, “but really, Gem, I don’t think we ought to go on that trip. You know Gabriella’s utter confidence in humanity. She would, like as not, give one of those men her pocketbook to hold, and so arouse his cupidity. I have already seen her share her chocolate with the most vicious looking of cab-drivers, and I am sure she would do the same with those rascally donkey boys. It wouldn’t be safe.”

“I agree with you,” said Miss Cavendish. “Yet Gabriella’s smiling confidence and her good comradeship gains us more than one favor. She will hob-nob with anybody, and is rarely taken advantage of, by even the most wily old cheats, just because she is so sweetly trusting. That blind man who gave her the empty match-box would never have done it if he could have seen her smile.”

“Let us hope Gabriella’s smile will be the means of getting us out of all future difficulties,” said Sidney, who, being very tired, was slightly pessimistic.

“What’s that about difficulties?” asked Gabriella, coming in from the balcony. “We aren’t going to have any. Next time I shall get a time-table and shall study up all the stations as we go along. You don’t suppose by any chance we shall miss getting out at Rome when we get there, do you? There can’t be a Val de Roma, but I’ll make it my business to find out if there is. Come out, Sid, and hear those dear men singing ‘Funiculi, Funicula.’ When shall we hear that song again, I wonder. I am sure whenever I do it will make me homesick for this lovely southern Italy. Come, Sidney.” And the two went out to expend their coppers upon the singers in the street below.