A NIGHT AT NAPLES
There was a joyous time at the Salone Margherita that evening. Homeward
bound, the _Burnside_, from Manila to New York _via_ Suez, had anchored
that morning off the Dogana quay, and twoscore officers and ladies and a
numerous contingent of discharged soldiers had come swarming ashore to
see what they could of Naples before again proceeding on the morrow. The
fact that most of the officers were invalided home, convalescing from
wounds or severe illness, seemed but moderately to cloud their
enjoyment. By six o'clock most of their number had heard that Dwight of
the cavalry, with his bride, was at the Grand, whither several went at
once before ordering dinner. First to arrive, alone, and looking pallid
and ill, was a young soldier in civilian dress, who seemed nervously
impatient at the delay that followed the sending up of his card, and by
no means delighted when three or four of his fellows came in and
followed suit before his own was acknowledged. So uncompanionable,
indeed, was he that he stepped outside to the southward terrace as
though to avoid these others, and, but for the cards, the observant
_portier_ might have thought them strangers to each other. The late
arrivals, as a rule, were garbed in khaki, just as they had come away
from Manila, and were objects of polite curiosity to the elegantly
capped, cloaked and uniformed Italian officers sauntering in from the
Piazza Umberto, many of whom saluted courteously, though few could tell
from the dress worn by the Americans which was officer and which was
private soldier.
It was full fifteen minutes before Captain Dwight appeared, though
little Jim had come bounding down the carpeted stairway all joy at
seeing a face or two he well remembered, and in meeting new friends, who
were unspeakably welcome because they were soldiers, American soldiers,
_our_ soldiers. Father, he said, would be down in a moment. Mamma was
not quite well, over-tired, perhaps, from the long drive and day at
sight-seeing and shopping. Even when Dwight appeared, shaking hands most
cordially, rejoicefully, with all, and, indeed, nearly embracing Sandy
Ray, whom he had known since that young gentleman's babyhood, it was a
disappointment to all his visitors that he seemed worried and harassed.
Mrs. Dwight, he explained, had not benefited as they had hoped by the
journeyings abroad, and she had just had something like a sinking spell.
They would have to excuse her a while. She'd be down later. "But you,
too, Sandy boy! What a tough time you must have been having! I hadn't
heard of your being ill. I haven't heard anything, in fact. Your father
hasn't written to me at all. What has been the matter?"
And then it appeared that Sandy had been ailing for weeks on top of a
not very serious wound, "wasn't at all fit," yet didn't wish to come
home--had been ordered out of the Islands, in fact. And then, as it
further appeared, when Dwight turned, looking for little Jim, all
eagerness that Sandy should see how splendidly the lad was grown and
developed since their parting in Arizona years ago, when Jimmy was just
beginning to toddle about and talk, there stood the boy, his big blue
eyes fixed on the pallid, solemn face of Lieutenant Ray with a look of
bewilderment and trouble. Fowne of the Engineers spoke of it later to
Foster, who just at that moment had seized Jimmy and swung him to his
shoulder, where, instead of gleefully pounding his captor's head and
laughing merrily, as of old he would have done, Jimmy was straining his
violet blue eyes again, staring after Ray, whom a waiter, bearing his
card, had summoned to follow him. Three or four of the laughing party at
the moment had surrounded Dwight, compelling him with their chatter, so
that he stood with a hand still extended toward the spot where Jimmy had
been standing, and did not even see that Ray had been summoned and was
gone. Question and answer were flying thick and fast, for full five
minutes before, looking about him, Dwight missed his boy. Foster,
finding the little fellow unresponsive, at least, had presently set him
down, and then, plunging eagerly into the talk over the latest newspaper
tidings of the doings of the Islands--of Otis's probable home-coming and
MacArthur's succeeding to the command, of what could be looked for at
Samar and Mindanao--he, too, had lost sight of the lad. "Hullo!" said
Dwight, "Jimmy has taken possession of Ray. Well, that's as it should
be. How was Gridley when you last saw him, Foster? And tell me about the
Gillettes. They were mighty kind to me when I was so knocked out after
Bender's trial. Fit now? I should say so! Never felt finer in my life.
I'm going back to Manila just as soon as I can place my wife and Jimmy,
no matter what the doctors say."
And so it happened that, for ten minutes or more, neither Lieutenant Ray
nor little Jim was greatly missed. But then Dwight began bethinking him
it was high time for Inez to appear. She had promised to come down and
meet his old comrades. Only a few minutes would be needed, she declared,
in which "to prink a bit." She had been looking so white, or yellow,
rather--so wan and weak, yet, after a bumper of champagne, had rallied
gallantly, had bidden him run down to meet them and keep them
entertained. She'd soon be there. That was now full twenty minutes back,
and these fellows were getting impatient for dinner. The head waiter was
even now announcing that their table was in readiness. Excusing himself
a moment, Dwight hastened from the salon and ran swiftly up to their
apartments. She was not there. He went out upon the gallery--the last
look by day over that incomparable panorama of earth and sea and sky,
for the sun was just kissing the far westward wave and throwing a glow
of ruddy gold all over the Vesuvian shore. The waiter was clearing the
table. Would the signor finish his wine? The signor needed none. Since
that heat prostration in Luzon, Dwight found that a single glass would
sometimes go to his head, and so when Inez was fatigued on land or ill
at sea, and on her account he had ordered champagne, he merely sipped
it, as it were, for her sake. There stood the generous flask still
beaded with its icy dew, but most of its contents were gone. So was
Inez. That waiter had then the proverbial "cheek" of his class--to drink
half their wine and offer the signor the dregs. No, he wished no wine.
Where was the signora? The signora, with the signorino, said the waiter,
had been there but the moment before. The signora had reentered her
apartment as the signor ascended. Dwight tapped at her window, and
presently her voice answered him, in apparent exasperation. She had been
having "no end of bother" changing her gown. She couldn't come down to
meet his friends in the dusty traveling suit she had worn all day. She
had hunted through two trunks before she found what she needed, and was
so sorry for the delay, but she heard the party was to dine there. She
had a maid to help her now, so she was trying to look her best and be
worthy of him. Could he help in some way? Oh, dear no. Run back to them,
there's a good boy, and in a few minutes she would be there.
So Dwight returned to the laughing party and went with them to their
table and sat with them--an odd group in their service-worn suits of
khaki amid the sumptuously attired guests in the brilliant room. Yet
even among the wearers of the handsome Italian uniform the incessant
glances toward the American party were far from critical. These men had
but recently seen sharp service, and soldiers respect and envy soldier
achievement. It was Dwight who first missed and asked for Ray. Ray? Why,
Ray wasn't of our party. Ray wasn't of any party, in fact. Ray was "off
his feed, if not off his base." The fellow was utterly hipped, said
Foster. "No more like his father than I to Hercules, and nobody knows
why." Ray came ashore with the rest of the crowd, had business at Cook's
Bank, wandered off by himself and had been mooning by himself most of
the voyage. Foster buried his muzzle deep in his brimming glass of
Chianti and didn't care a billy what had become of young Ray. Gone back
to the ship, probably, to sit and sulk the rest of the voyage. Obviously
the quartette was out for pleasure, and Ray would have been a
spoil-sport. None the less, Dwight felt that he should find him, if
possible, and so went to the office. But assuredly, said the smiling,
gold-banded official, the tenente departed as they were all in
conversation. The tenente wished not to disturb them. The signorino went
with him to his carriage and, behold! the signorino himself! Jimmy,
indeed, came through the portal at the moment from the Piazza Umberto
side, but not the blithe, bounding, joyous Jimmy of the morning. The
young face was clouded with a look the father never before had seen, and
when he called and Jimmy suddenly turned and saw him, though the bright
eyes lighted instantly with all the old love--perhaps, too, with some
relief--the cloud did not entirely vanish, nor did the boy come
bounding. He ran; he took his father's hand and looked up in his face,
and when he was asked what he had done with Mr. Ray, said slowly: "Why,
daddy, he isn't a bit like what I 'sposed he'd be. He only spoke to
mamma a minute or two, and--I guess he isn't well. He didn't have time
to speak to me--he hardly said good-by, or--anything."
"Oh, then mamma saw Mr. Ray! I'm glad of that," said Dwight, though
remembering she had not mentioned it.
"Yes, on the gallery," said Jimmy. "At least, I suppose so. He came out
through the corridor, and then mamma sent me after him with the gloves
he had left. I wanted to ask him----" hesitated Jimmy. He did not know
whether to go on or not, but he need not have worried. Papa had suddenly
turned from him, turned to meet his new mamma--his beautiful young
mamma, who, with bared neck and arms, in dinner toilet, was coming
slowly and with trailing skirts down the broad and carpeted stairway and
looking more radiant and beautiful than Jimmy ever before had seen her;
she whom, a few minutes earlier, he had found on the gallery pallid and
excited, trembling from weakness, perhaps. Now she had diamonds in her
ears and at her creamy throat, diamonds flashing in her corsage. There
were shimmer and spangle and firefly sparklings in the lustrous folds of
her gown. There were starlight twinklings from the bands of those
wondrous, dainty, high-heeled little "slipper shoes," as Jimmy called
them. There were glowworm gems in the dark masses of her luxuriant hair.
There were rich and precious stones upon her slender, clasping fingers,
for Dwight had been lavish to an extent he only now began to realize,
for, though his heart leaped in unison with the instant admiration and
worship in his eyes, it ached in strange, dull foreboding and reproach
for the thought that instantly seized him: How utterly unlike Margaret!
A moment later and the men in khaki were being presented. They had
sprung to their feet at sight of the radiant vision in the doorway,
where for a moment Inez seemed to hesitate. Beautiful she was beyond
question, with the rich, dusky beauty of the passionate South, and they
who gazed upon her marveled not at the lover worship in Dwight's
deep-set eyes--at the pride with which he watched her gracious,
graceful, yet half-appealing and timid acknowledgment of their soldier
homage. They made way for her, and would have it that she should sit
with them as they lingered a few moments over their wine. And then
Farnham, their senior present, raised his glass to her with a word of
soldier compliment and greeting, after the manner of the days of his
forefathers, and they joined in the toast, one and all, and Inez blushed
and beamed upon them, and looked up into her husband's eyes as though
begging that he should speak for her, and sipped just the tiniest ripple
from the brimming glass of champagne. They had not too much time, for
boxes had been reserved for all their party at the Salone Margherita,
and could not--would not Mrs. Dwight and the captain join them? Several
of the ladies from the transport were to be with them, and now it would
be incomplete without Mrs. Dwight. Again the deep, dark, lustrous eyes
sought the husband's face, as though she would say in this, as in
everything, he must decide. The transport was to proceed at dawn. The
_Hohenzollern_ could not be going earlier. How she _would_ shine, this
bird of paradise, among those simply-garbed army women who perforce were
limited to such toilets as could be evolved from the little steamer
trunks. It was Dwight who negatived the project. She would be utterly
overdressed for the place and the occasion, but he based his regrets
upon the long and fatiguing day, the packing that had to be done, the
coming at any moment of their ship. Even now she was announced, said
Jimmy, hastening in. And so the others went their way without the
Dwights and joined their fellow-voyagers in their revel, the merriest
group in all that laughing company, and only once or twice did someone,
some gentle-hearted woman, speak the thought that more than once or
twice occurred to many present: Why should Sandy Ray have withdrawn from
all companionship? Someone said he had returned to the steamer--alone.
It was long after midnight when they came rippling back to the huge bulk
of the troopship, with silver raining from the blades of their oars into
the sparkling bosom of that wondrous bay. A joyous little flotilla of
Neapolitan water craft was theirs, for they had chartered several of the
clumsy, unwieldly looking, yet most serviceable barklings, each with its
dusky, brown-throated oarsman. They had spent some merry hours after the
long, hot voyage through Indian seas and under torrid skies. They had
heard much catchy music that all could appreciate and few words,
fortunately, that any could understand. They were chatting and singing
and recalling the brilliant scene, the dazzling lights, the lustrous
corridor and stairway of pure white marble, the coaxing, wheedling swarm
of beggar children, the sharp and ever-recurrent contrast between
splendid opulence and squalid misery, and as they circled under the
massive overhang of their stanch and trusty ship, and one after another
each merry boatload came again in full view of the frowning cone of old
Vesuvius, belching lurid flame and billowing ruddy streams of molten
lava from its crest, some sweet-voiced woman in the foremost boat
uplifted her heart in the barcarole from "Masaniello": "Behold how
brightly breaks the morning," and, though morning was yet some hours
away, here but a league or two across the star-reflecting deep and under
the shoulder of the mountain furnace lay the vine-covered walls of
Portici, where first was trilled that exquisite welcome to Aurora. And
so with music and merriment and laughter, homeward bound from distant
service in defense of a beloved flag, they came trooping up the side,
the opulence of their gladness all the sharper contrast to the dull
apathy of one lone watcher who shrank from their approach and sought
seclusion across the deck and in the shadow of the long boat.
Ray was not in his stateroom when Foster bustled thither to inquire. Ray
had returned some hours before, said the ship's official on duty. Ray
was not found, however, until nearly four bells, when Foster, who had
smoked too much to feel sleepy and wished to "stay up and see Vesuvius,
anyhow," made an extended inspection of the silent deck. Foster had
taken it amiss that Ray should seem so downhearted and be so
uncompanionable. Foster felt that the time had come when, in the absence
of Sandy's own, he (Foster) should assume paternal rights, or at least
those of elder brother, and take the youngster to task. Here and there
about the big ship he found, in knots of two or three, silent or
conversing in low tone, comrades of the commissioned list or of the
ranks, unwilling to seek their berths so long as so gorgeous a panorama
lasted. These were ranged along the starboard side, where best they
could study that superb sweep of shore line, of light and shadow, of
slope and mountain, of curving strand--white, flashing in the moonbeams,
of twinkling villages low-lying, of distant, rock-ribbed isles, but
among these worshipers there was no Ray.
It was over on the other--the dark, the port--side, and all alone,
sprawled in a steamer chair he had lugged to the upper deck and the
shadow of the big boat, that Foster came upon the lad. His field glasses
were in his hand; his eyes fixed dreamily upon the dwindling,
diminishing night lights of the westward suburbs, and Foster hailed
brusquely. It was time to jar the boy out of his mooning:
"Hello, Sandy! Where on earth have you been all night?"
"Nowhere," was the short reply.
"Where on sea then, if you will be captious?"
"Oh, admiring scenery," and Sandy yawned suggestively.
"Scenery is all on t'other side, man! Nothing here but ships and shore
lights."
"Well--that's what I'm--looking at."
Foster turned sulkily. He disliked being "stood off" by anybody,
especially a youngster. Dimly in the soft moonlight the sleeping city
lay outspread before him. Standing on the rail, grasping a stanchion, he
could see, save where the charthouse and huge funnel interposed, the
entire sweep from Posilipo at the west around almost to Sorrento. Ray,
seated under the shadow of the long boat, could see only from Posilipo
to a low-lying cluster of lights almost at the water's edge. That then
was the Piazza Umberto, and those few twinkling, starlike sparkles to
the left, dancing so merrily on the intervening wave--those were from
some still open casements at the Grand. Then Foster saw what Sandy Ray
was looking for, and turned and left him.
At dawn they were weighing anchor, but the big ship had not yet swung
her nose to the west when Foster again appeared on the dripping deck and
again found Ray almost at the same spot. Some of the same lights, a very
few, were still faintly to be seen to the west of the Piazza, and Ray's
signal glasses were lifted to his eyes. Aloft the sentinel stars were
paling, their night watch ended. Ashore, along the quays and basin and
about the Dogana, the lantern lights told of the stir of coming day and
departing shipping. Beyond the heavy smoke all about the lone and
threatening mountain, the skies were taking on a rose hue of their own
that dulled the glow of the sluggish streams rolling ever down those
scarred and desolate slopes. Near by in silvery chime ship after ship
announced the passing of the night hours, the birth of the infant day,
and a long, light-girdled shape, floating easily close at hand on the
swelling tide, slowly changed from shadowy black to gray, from gray to
violet, and finally--as the still invisible sun peered long leagues away
beyond the Italian mountains, beyond the Adriatic wave, above the dim
Aegean shore, and sent his flashing signals through the upper ether--from
cream to snowy white, there lay the _Hohenzollern_, "all a taunto and
impatient" for her westward voyage for "Gib," for the Azores, for home,
and they of the bulkier, heavier transport envied possibly the lithe and
lissome build of the famous pleasure craft, once the pride of the old
German Lloyds. She might follow in the run past Ischia and Sicily. She
would lead far in the chase for Sandy Hook.
"Been up all night, Sandy?" hailed Foster sharply, believing it high
time to break in upon these romantic moonings.
"No," said the young soldier slowly. "I've been--down."
"Poor boy," thought Foster, as he turned away. "He looks it! Poor,
nonsensical, damn little fool!"
Yet Foster was not so very big, so very wise, so very safe and sure. He
had yet to know for himself much that Ray knew now.