had landed at the steamship quay, and passed half the night in an
aimless ramble. There is something about Naples at night which goes to
the head like wine; especially if the head is young and set on the
shoulders of one who has never before known the life of southern cities.
Jerry walked from the railroad station to the Public Gardens, and from
the Mola to the Hôtel Britannique upon the heights. He attempted no
systematic exploration, but simply wandered with no other object than
the simple delight of rambling. By daylight the picturesque streets; the
variegated rabble, ragged, dirty, beautiful, impudent, at once repulsive
and enchanting; the crooked, crowded ways that climb the hill; the
awnings, the heaps of fruit, the strange wares, the familiar air of the
family life which made of the streets a home, and seemed to turn all the
inhabitants of the town into one huge family; the unconsciously artistic
groups, the tumbling _bambini_, the women, bold, piquant, handsome, or
ugly with a hideousness of which Jerry had never conceived,--all these
things passed before him like the whirling shows of an opium dream. As
night fell, and the lights appeared, the scenes through which he went
half dazed and wholly delighted took on a new quality of the weird and
fantastic. The flaring lamps, the mysterious shadows, the blazing colors
which not even the night could subdue, the theatrical effects seen down
the narrow streets as on a stage set for opera, the inexhaustible
vivacity, which seemed not to diminish with the lateness of the hour,
all blended in an intoxicating experience such as Taberman had never
known, and indeed such as had never come into his liveliest fancy.
The next day Jerry went ashore in the morning, and set himself to more
regular sight-seeing under the care of a professional guide. He went
over the famous Museum, saw Vergil's Tomb, Posilipo, Sanazar's house,
and Marti's _pozzo_. After a capital luncheon in one of the cafés in the
Arcade, he rejoined his guide, who took him to the Aquarium. On the way
they stopped at the Royal Palace and the Morro, Tab being duly impressed
by the grandeur of royalty and the majesty of the law. Continually he
wished that Jack were with him, for he had so fallen into the habit of
depending on Jack for opinions that without his friend his impressions
seemed to lack the clearness of sanction. When it came to the Aquarium,
however, not only did the things he had seen in his day's explorations
fade from his mind, but he was too delighted not to know exactly what he
felt.
The Aquarium of Naples is by far the most wonderful in the world. It is
smaller and less elaborate than others, as, for instance, that of the
Trocadero, but it outranks all in interest and impressiveness. The
virtue of the place lies in its simplicity of construction and in the
rarity of its exhibits. A sense of restful shadow and coolness
succeeding to outside glare and heat; a dim greenish light in broad,
glass-faced tanks of sea-water; an odd feeling of being fathoms deep in
a tropical sea,--these are the sensations the visitor has first in this
wonderful home of strange fish in exile.
Tab made the rounds half a dozen times before he could bring himself to
leave. Quite unscientific, but as enthusiastic as a boy, he stood in
front of each tank, and tried vainly to determine which was most
fascinating. Here were spiny lobster-like crustacea, spotted with a
dozen colors; there were beautiful fish with shining iridescent sides
and waving filmy, vaporous tails; one tank was inhabited by repulsive,
warty octopi, splotched with dull browns and plague-spots of ugly red,
which melted and slimed about, so disgusting that they seemed almost
obscene; from another a huge sea python, with body as large as the thigh
of a man and a head like that of a bald wolf, seemed to grin with
sinister, snarling face at Jerry, while all about the monster bloated
globe-fish and distorted marine shapes swam and circled; in a corner
tank a brood of asp-like fish, with skins that seemed of richest velvet,
dusky and wonderful in hue, lay heaped like incarnate poison; and near
by the angel-fish went waving and trailing their way about the sand.
Jerry was perhaps most impressed, however, by the mysterious life which
went on in a tank to which he came among the last. Thin, slow-waving
filaments of colorless jelly, crowned with diaphanous cups, not
differing greatly from the poppy-flower in shape; and near them other
forms, transparent, hardly more than condensed sea-water in appearance,
yet with slow pulsations, continuous and wonderful, of phosphoric
sparks,--as if one saw life itself throbbing rhythmically in the
pellucid hairs of jelly.
Jerry had not been so completely happy since he parted from Jack. He
reveled in a boyish delight, and let no wonder of the place escape him.
He tipped the keeper to feed the octopi with young crabs, lowered on a
string; he took a smart electric shock from a morose torpedo which lay
sulkily in a small open tub with a pebbly bottom; he had the big
anemones and the coral-polyps "put to sleep," in the words of his
guide,--an operation consisting simply of the moving in the water of a
small stick which caused them to close in alarm; he did, in a word,
everything his guide could think of for him to do, and went away in the
end only half content to leave.
After the Aquarium, Jerry turned a deaf ear to the alluring speeches of
the guide, the burden of whose song was all of curiosities unseen and of
pleasures untasted. He paid the importunate manikin, and made his way
back to the Merle. The truth was that he had seen something which
thoroughly pleased him, and after that it was impossible to return to
the perfunctory seeing of regulation sights which really did not take
hold of him in the least.
Before the first week was ended, Jerry had visited Pompeii and Baiæ, and
what was to be seen of Herculaneum. He had made some purchases; and then
he began to wait about, ashore or aboard, for Jack. That gentleman had
written no response to Tab's letter announcing the arrival of the Merle
at Naples, and Jerry could only think of him as so absorbed in his
wooing as to have forgotten all about his friend. Some not unnatural
jealousy began to ferment in his mind, and did not add to his comfort.
By the advice of Gonzague he took the market-boat, and setting out early
one morning he sailed with a couple of the men across the bay to Capri,
where he passed the day. The only thing which cheered him on his lonely
expedition was a tarantella, which was danced for his diversion by a
romantic-looking _raggaza_, with black eyes and short petticoats. The
moonlight sail back would have pleased him more had it not been
necessary to keep the men rowing for two thirds of the way. On the
whole, Jerry could find nothing to please him on land or sea.
The major part of the next week he had spent stretched out in a cane
_chaise longue_ in the cockpit, drinking iced sangaree and reading
Didron's _Artémise_. He had a fly stretched over the awning for
increased coolness, and the "dusters" put up to shut out the glare from
the water; there, like some melancholy monarch beneath his canopy, he
read, dozed, and grumbled--without even the satisfaction of any fit
audience--from morning to sundown.
In the cool of the evening he usually went ashore, and one night he was
strolling along the water-front, stick in hand and his Panama set well
back on his head. As he passed the Hôtel du Vesuve, wondering when Jack
would arrive, a small figure moved quickly in front of him and bowed. At
first he was startled, but almost instantly he saw that it was the valet
de place who had gone about with him in the early days of his stay at
Naples.
"Hello," said Jerry in surprise, yet not without a feeling of
satisfaction at finding even this apology for a companion.
"_Buon' sera, signor_," responded the little man vivaciously. "How do?
You tek-a de night air? _É verament' un' bellissima notte._ It mek-a
cool, eh?"
And he waved his arms expressively.
He might have been thirty or thirty-five, and had coarse black hair,
with fiery eyes. He was not ill-looking, but his clothes were hopelessly
threadbare and his face pinched. He bore dark circles under his eyes,
and was in no way markedly different from others of his numerous and
futile class, who, with a smattering of French, German, or English,
struggle desperately for a livelihood by acting, not always very
virtuously, as guides for traveling _forestieri_.
"You busy?" Jerry asked, a sudden thought striking him.
"No--no," replied the Neapolitan, his face as eager as his tone. "What-a
you like see? Eh? Some of dose oder curiosities _forse_?" he asked with
a suggestive smile.
"Thanks, no," Jerry returned dryly; "but if you aren't busy, I wish
you'd walk along with me. I'm bored--tired--'most to death, and I fancy
you might tell me how I may best kill time for the next few days."
The little guide was delighted. He suggested a multitude of things which
might be done,--visits to Castellmare and Sorrento or Amalfi; wonders
the signor had neglected in the museum; the _pasta_ shops; and so on for
a variety of possible and impossible diversions. But still Taberman
shook his head. He wanted to be amused, but he was lonely and rather
homesick, so that while he regretted being so difficult, nothing
appealed to him. Finally, the guide, quite at his wit's end but still
bland, smiling, patient, obsequious, and apparently unruffled by the
careless way in which the American rejected all his suggestions one
after the other, mentioned Pesto.
"Pesto?" queried Tab carelessly. "What is that?"
"_Si!_ Pesto. It ees dere dey hav-a de gret-a temple; t'ree gret-a
temple, all put een de row-a,--_uno, due, tre_." And he held up three
fingers to make his statement at once clearer and more emphatic.
"Temples? Real ones?" asked Jerry. "I mean are they old--Roman, that
is--or just churches?"
"_Ma verament'_," laughed the valet de place, "_ci son' tre templi_;
bot-a dey not-a Roman; dey Gre'k. Fin-a, big-a temple; big-a like Hôtel
du Vesuve!"
He waved his spread arms as if he would embrace the universe. Jerry
laughed at the little man's enthusiasm, but his interest was excited.
"Greek, eh?" he said. "How far is it? How do you get there?"
The guide explained volubly, told the time of trains to Pæstum,
declared that the trip was easily made in a day, and proffered his
services as escort. This Jerry declined, quite as much from motives of
economy as from any other reason; but he invited the little guide to sit
down at one of the small tables on the sidewalk before Zinfoni's, where
he furnished him with refreshments and made him repeat his account of
the temples, the details of the journey, and whatever information he
could furnish. Jerry was really lonely enough to be amused by the
company of the Neapolitan, and as he sat listening and watching the
people drifting past, he was soothed with the feeling of being not so
entirely alone. From Zinfoni's the pair sauntered down to the quay,
where they parted. The Italian was profuse in his thanks and
protestations, and Jerry was considerate enough to act in such a manner
as to make the little man think him the most affable of _Inglesi_.
When he was aboard again, Jerry got out a chart, and after some
searching located Pæstum. As it was not too far from Naples to be
possible in a day, he determined upon the expedition. Jack was not due
for two or three days yet, and the time must be killed somehow. He
summoned Gonzague, ordered an early breakfast, told him he should be
absent all the next day, and that he should leave him in charge. He had
a sort of mild exhilaration at his boldness in thus venturing off into
the midst of a land whose language he could not speak, and he went to
bed that night with a great feeling of relief. The doldrums were over;
he had something to do to bridge the time until Jack came.
[Illustration: Decoration]
Chapter Ten
MR. WRENMARSH, THE EXTRAORDINARY
On the following morning, as, a few minutes after nine, the southbound
train from Naples to Tarento drew out of the station, Taberman, winking
a little at the sudden glare of the sun, began to look about him. The
morning promised a hot day, and his comfort in traveling was likely to
be lessened by the fact that in the second-class compartment with him
were five Italians. They had already settled themselves back against the
cushions, turning upward sunburnt, perspiring faces, and allowing
themselves to be jolted by the train like so many dead-weights. Their
ugly straw hats, high-crowned and narrow-brimmed, were set on their
knees or wedged beside them on the seat; two of the travelers had gay
bandannas tucked into their collars about their throats. One man--a
pursy old codger in the corner--had lighted, after a mumbled "con
permesso," a long Virginia, which filled the compartment with a thin
blue haze and an acrid smell as of burning leather.
The train rumbled along over a dubious roadbed, flanked by its
cinder-strewn berms; and Tab, looking through the window on his right,
recognized the line as that by which he had gone to Pompeii. At times
the train went close to where the curling ripples of the sapphirine bay
were breaking gently on the shore; sometimes it ran through small
hamlets, and again passed country places where the busy peasants were at
work in the rich vineyards, the orchards, or the tilled fields.
At the end of half an hour, they stopped at Pompeii for a moment, and
Jerry, through the opposite window, recognized the station and the
paltry inn beyond. As the train drew out again, he caught brief glimpses
of the ancient city, dull red-brown walls among the silver-gray of the
olive-trees.
The train sped on southward. It dipped into little vales, and wound its
way up and into the hills that ring themselves around the plain of
Pæstum. In an hour's time they pulled up at a small town on the left of
the track. Jerry made out the name of the station, enameled in big white
letters on a blue field, Battapaglia. The guard came by, unlocking the
compartment doors, and as the men in his compartment got out and left
their luggage behind them, Jerry concluded that here was to be a wait
of some minutes. He therefore followed the example of his fellow
travelers, and stepped down upon the sunny platform. It was very hot.
Tab mopped his face with his handkerchief and turned down the brim of
his Panama all around.
"_Graniti, signor? Citron? Orang'?_"
A small boy had singled him out, probably because he was the only
_forestiere_ on the platform, and was offering him syrupy drinks cooled
with cracked ice. For a soldo Tab secured a glass of sherbet,
fruit-juice and water half frozen and very delicious. It was so
refreshing that he bestowed an extra soldo on the vender in sheer
gratitude. The lad rewarded him with a curt "grazie," and a look half
grateful and half suspicious, and then hastened on to urge his wares on
other travelers. Jerry looked after him in amusement at the fringe made
by the tatters of his trousers, and in lazy admiration of the sinewy
brown arms left bare by the sleeveless cotton shirt and of the jaunty
poise of the curly head.
The train still waited.
Jerry lighted a cigarette and got into the shadow of the cars. Presently
a big express came thundering out of the pass in the hills with a roar,
and rushed away to southward on the main track.
"_Pronto! Partenza! Partenza!_" cried the guard, with a blast of his
horn.
The road was again clear, the express-mail having passed. The passengers
clambered aboard, and settled themselves in their former places. The old
man with the Virginia had purchased a copy of "Il Papagallo," though it
was a mystery how he could have got hold of it in such a place. He
clucked oilily as he read, occasionally calling the attention of his
nearest neighbor to some gaudy cartoon or some political pasquinade.
Jerry speculated in regard to what it might all be about, and was filled
with that vague sense of baffled irritation which comes from seeing
others enjoying jokes in a language one cannot understand.
Mile after mile of level track, flanked by the interminable
cinder-covered berms. Once in a while the level was broken by clumps of
dusty cactus, ugly and forbiddingly aggressive in the sun. To the right,
beyond a flat, gorse-grown waste, relieved only by an occasional palm or
oleaster, Tab could discern the blue shimmer of the sea. To the left, he
could see only the same dull plain, bounded by bluish hills, which rose
about it like the seats of some titanic amphitheatre. Now and again two
or three buffaloes, their black hides caked with patches of yellow mud,
lay in their wallows or stood contemptuously indifferent to the noisy
train, which beside them seemed so impertinently modern.
At last the train, with a screaming of gritty brakes on the wheels, and
the inevitable clanking and banging of cars and couplings, drew up
beside a tiny station on the right of the track.
"Pesto! Pesto!"
The guard unlocked the compartment door, and Jerry stepped out. The
station was smaller than any they had passed, and Tab smilingly
reflected that the lodge at the entrance of his father's place at Dedham
was bigger. He was the only passenger to alight, and no sooner was he
out than the guard, like an overgrown mechanical toy, called out his
"_Pronto! Partenza!_" blew his toy horn, and swung himself aboard again.
The long train, with bitter metallic complaint at being obliged to go
farther, drew past the little station, and rolled away toward a gap in
the southern hills, far beyond which lies Tarento.
Taberman turned to the station master, a discouraged-looking individual
who stood on the platform with his truncheon tucked under his arm,
examining a batch of dispatches as if this were the first time such
papers had ever come under his notice. Jerry's Italian vocabulary was
limited to some score of words, with a few expressions, such as _dolce
far niente_ and the like, more ornamental than useful. As, however, he
could perceive no sign of any temples,--or town either, for the matter
of that,--he determined to question the _capo_.
"_Bonn giorno_," he began with a painful sense of effort, but with a
mild self-congratulatory thrill at having said something in Italian.
"_Buon' giorno_," responded the station master, turning a pair of dull
eyes and an emaciated face from the dispatches to Taberman.
Jerry spoke French moderately well, and resolved to address the official
in that tongue, in the hope that the Italian might understand.
"Peut-être vous parlez Français?" he began.
"_Cosa?_" asked the Italian, obviously puzzled, as he stepped out of the
sun into the shadow of the little station.
"What?" demanded Jerry in English, and with much the same puzzled air.
"_Non capisco_," said the man, with a sort of dull finality.
Conversation languished. Jerry felt himself pretty well baffled, yet he
had no choice but to go on with the unpromising attempt to elicit
information here, as no other human being was in sight. He considered a
moment, and then in an explosive tone, demanded:--
"_Templi?_"
"_Bruto Inglise!_" murmured the _capo_ under his breath. "_Che volete?_"
he added aloud.
"What?" asked Jerry, again scared over the dubious boundary of his
Italian into English.
"_Non capisco_," repeated the Italian morosely, wetting his dingy
forefinger, and going over his papers for at least the third time.
"Damn it!" cried Jerry, in complete exasperation, "if you say that again
I'll punch your head!"
The other started back in such obvious terror that Tab hastened to
propitiate him by putting on quickly his most ingratiating smile, and
nodding as if he had made a merry joke. The other seemed reassured,
although he edged away a little, as if he were doubtful of the sanity of
this foreign brute; and Tab fell again to the effort to rally all the
words in his Italian vocabulary about one idea.
"_Dove_," he began in one grand final attempt to wring information out
of this sullen and taciturn official, "_dove_"-- He was so pleased with
himself for having remembered the word that he came near forgetting all
the rest, but with a desperate rally, he went blundering on. "_Dove_, I
say, is--is--_la via per i templi_?"
The _capo_ looked at him, apparently in mingled curiosity and disgust.
Then he beckoned him to the edge of the platform on the other side of
the station, whence stretched westward a ribbon of dust-heaped road.
"_Ecco-la_" he ejaculated, waving his truncheon vaguely toward the
distance.
"Ah," said Jerry, "_grazie_."
As the _capo_ responded to this speech not at all, Tab set out on the
dusty road without more ado. The way was inches deep in loose, gray
dust, and spiny cacti bristled on either hand. Jerry had not gone far
before, turning a bend, he saw at no great distance ahead of him an
arched gateway through which the road passed. The arch, broken and
crumbled, was set in a ruined wall, which trailed away on either hand,
now rising to the height of something like a dozen feet, now razed to
the very ground.
"That's a forlorn-looking piece o' work," commented Tab aloud.
Had Jerry been blessed with the education of his forefathers, instead of
having brought out of school and college a hodgepodge smattering of
physics and economics, he might have known and reflected that the wall
he thus carelessly characterized had been standing some two thousand
years, and gloriously attested the puissance of old Rome. With no such
thought, however, he passed beneath the crumbling gateway and continued
his march. At some distance ahead he now perceived signs of life in the
shape of a few dwellings.
As he looked at them he became aware of two horsemen, who were cantering
toward him on the crest of the little slope made by the road just inside
the old gateway. Their horses' hoofs stirred up light clouds of yellow
dust. Even at first glance the riders showed themselves to be ruggedly
dressed, and with something of a thrill Jerry noticed instantly that
slung across their shoulders they carried carbines. Wild tales of
brigands flashed confusedly through his brain, and especially a tale the
Neapolitan guide had related of the capture and murder at this very
place of an English gentleman and his wife. The guide had said that that
was sixteen years ago, but the place seemed so lonely, so remote, Tab's
ideas of rural Italy were so vague, the effect of the landscape and of
these wild figures was so startling as, riding toward him, they stood
out against the sky, that it was no wonder Jerry involuntarily cast a
quick glance around to note the lay of the land and to see if any
possible help were in sight in case of need.
The horsemen rode down to him on a lazy lope. They were big, bronzed
fellows, smoking cigarettes, and riding with their feet out of the
stirrups. They nodded to him pleasantly and smiled, showing large white
teeth. They had about them, these big fellows, a look so engaging that
Tab was won at once, and the vague mist of his suspicions vanished like
smoke in air. He grinned to himself at the idea of brigands.
"_Dove templi?_" he asked, returning their salutation.
The big men smiled more broadly, and one of them replied in French.
"Vous ne parlez pas beaucoup d'italien?" he asked in a pleasant voice.
"Ne pas de tout!" responded Jerry heartily, with a laugh.