engaged horses and started at once."
"I don't know as I care about going."
"Not to see the temples?"
"I didn't know as there were temples," murmured the other, shyly.
"Fancy! But you really ought to go, you know," the pleasant voice
resumed, doing a little missionary work (which can never come amiss).
"The temples are well worth seeing; they are Greek."
"I've been ter see a good many buildings already: in Paris there were a
good many; my son took me," the tall woman answered, her tone becoming
more assured as she mentioned "my son."
"But these temples are--are rather different. I was saying to our
neighbor here that she really ought on no account to miss going down to
Paestum," the fresh-faced Englishwoman continued, addressing her husband,
who sat next to her on the right, for the moment very busy with his peas
(which were good, but a little oily). "The drive is not difficult. And
we found it most interesting."
"Interesting? It may well be interesting; finest Greek remains outside
of Athens," answered the husband, a portly Warwickshire vicar. He bent
forward a little to glance past his wife at this ignorer of temples at
her other hand. "American," he said to himself, and returned to his
peas.
The friendly vicaress offered a few words more the next day. Coming in
from her walk, in her stout shoes, and broad straw hat garnished with
white muslin, she was entering the inn by the back door, when she espied
her neighbor of the dinner-table sitting near by on a bench. There was
nothing to see but a paling fence; she was unoccupied, unless a basket
with Souvenir de Lucerne on one side, and a flat bouquet of artificial
flowers on the other, represented occupation.
"Do you prefer this to the garden in front?" the English woman asked, in
some surprise.
"Yes, I think I do."
"I must differ from you, then, because there we have the sea, you know;
'tis such a pretty view."
"I don't know as I care about the sea; it's all water--nothing to look
at."
"Ah! I dare say it makes you ill. We had a very nasty day when we
crossed from Folkestone."
"No; it ain't that exactly. I sit here because I like ter see the things
grow," hazarded the American, timidly, as if she felt that some
explanation was expected.
"The things?"
"Yes, in there." (She pointed to the paling fence.) "There's peas, and
asparagus, and beans, and some sorts I don't know; you wouldn't believe
how they do push up, day after day."
"Ah, indeed! I dare say they do," the Englishwoman answered, a little
bewildered, looking at the lines of green behind the palings.
"Her name is Ash, Azubah Ash--fancy!" she said to her husband, later. "I
saw it written on a Swiss basket in which she keeps her crewel-work. She
is extremely odd. She has no maid, yet she wears those very good
diamonds; and she always appears in that Paris gown of rich black
silk--the very richest quality, I assure you, Augustas: she wears it and
the diamonds at breakfast. She has spoken of a son, but apparently he
never turns up. And she spends all her time on a bench behind the house
watching the beans grow."
"I should think she would bore herself to extinction," said the
easy-going vicar.
"I dare say she _is_ having rather a hard time of it, she is so
_bornee_. I would offer her a book, but I don't think she ever reads.
And when I told her that I should be very pleased to show her some of
the pretty walks about here, she said that she never walked. She must be
sadly lonely, poor thing!"
But Mrs. Ash was not lonely; or, if she was, she did not know the name
of her malady. The comings and goings of her son were without doubt very
uncertain; but the mother had been born among people who believe that
the "men-folks" of a family have an existence apart from that of mothers
and sisters, and that it is right that they should have it. Her son, who
never went himself to a public table, had taken it for granted that his
mother would prefer to have her meals served privately in one of the
four large rooms which he had engaged for her at the inn.
"I think I like it better in the big dining-room, John," Mrs. Ash had
replied. She did not tell him that she found it less difficult to eat
her dinner when the attention of the waiter was distracted by the
necessity of attending to the wants of ten persons than when his gaze
was concentrated upon her solitary knife and fork alone.
John Ash was fond of his mother. It did not occur to him that this
nomad life abroad was causing her any suffering. Her shyness, her dread
of being looked at, her dread of foreign servants, he did not fully see,
because when he was present she controlled them; when he was present,
also, in a great measure, they disappeared. He knew that she would not
have had one moment's content had he left her behind him, even if he had
left her in the finest house his money could purchase; so he took her
with him, and travelled slowly, for her sake, making no journeys that
she could not make, sending forward to engage the best rooms for her at
the inns where he intended to stop.
That he had not taken her to Paestum was not an evidence of neglect.
During the first months of their wanderings he had been at pains to take
her everywhere he had thought that she would enjoy it. But Mrs. Ash had
enjoyed nothing--save the going about on her son's arm. If he left her
alone amid the most exquisite scenery in the world, she did not even see
the scenery; she thought a dusty jaunt in a horse-car "very pleasant" if
John was there. So at last John gave her his simple presence often, but
troubled her with descriptions and excursions no more.
Dumb, shy, hopelessly out of her element as she was, this mother had, on
the whole, enjoyed her two years abroad. The reason was found in the
fact that she could say to herself, or rather could hope to herself,
that John was more "steady" over here.
The rustic term covered much--the days and the nights when John had not
been "steady."
These six weeks at Salerno particularly had been a season of blessed
repose to Azubah Ash; the days had gone by so peacefully that life had
become almost comfortable to her again, in spite of the ordeal of
dinner. She had even been beguiled into thinking a little of the
future--of the farm she should like to have some day, with fruit and
cream and vegetables--yes, especially vegetables; and she dreamed of an
old pleasure of her youth, that of hunting for little round artichokes
in the cool brown earth. John had been contented all the time, and his
mood had been very tranquil. His mother liked this much better than high
spirits. There was an element sometimes in John's high spirits that had
made her tremble.
But on the day succeeding that last ride with Mrs. Graham, when they had
dismounted and walked down to the shore, John had come back to the inn
with a darkened face. The dark mood had lasted now for ten days. His
mother began to lead her old sleepless, restless life again. Her awkward
crochet-needle had stopped of itself; she went no more to her bench
beside the asparagus. Instead, she remained in her room--her four
rooms--every now and then peeping anxiously through the blinds. Nothing
happened--so any one would have said; the sea continued blue and misty,
the sky blue and clear; every one came and went as usual in the divine
weather of the Italian spring. But John Ash's mother had, to use an old
expression, her heart in her mouth all the time.
It choked her, and she gave up going to the _table d'hote_; she let her
son suppose that the meal was served in her sitting-room, but in reality
she took no dinner at all. When he came in she was always there, always
carefully dressed in the black silk whose rich texture the vicar's wife
had noticed, with the "very good" diamonds fastening her collar and on
her thin hands. She made a constant effort that her son should notice
no change in her.
Azubah Ash had a gaunt frame with large bones; her chest was hollow, and
she stooped a little as she walked. Yet, looking at her, one felt sure
that she would live to be an old woman. Her large features were roughly
moulded, her cheeks thin; her thick dusky hair was put plainly back from
her face, and arranged with a high comb after a fashion of her youth.
Her eyes, large, dark, and appealing, were sunken; they were beautiful
eyes, if one could have removed from them their expression of
apprehension, but that seemed now to have grown a part of them, to have
become fixed by time. Observers of physiognomy who met Azubah during
these two years of her sojourn abroad never forgot her--that tall gaunt
woman with the awkward step and bearing, with the rich dress and
diamonds, from whose timid face with its rough features those beautiful
eyes looked appealingly out.
"Mother, I am going to Paestum to-morrow," announced Ash on that eleventh
day. "Perhaps you had better go with me." He had come in and thrown
himself down upon the sofa, where he sat staring at the wall.
"Paestum--yes, that's where that English lady said I'd oughter go,"
answered Mrs. Ash. Then, after a moment, "She said there were temples
there." She had her hands folded tightly as she looked at her son.
"They're all going--old lady Preston, with her ghosts of Abercrombies,
little Miss Holland, Mrs. Graham, and all. Those boys are sketching down
there; they've been there some time."
[Illustration: AZUBAH ASH]
"I shall be very glad ter go, John, if you are going. Would you like
ter have me--ter have me ride horseback?"
Ash, coming out of his abstraction, broke into a laugh. "I shall take
you in the finest landau in Salerno, marmer," he said, coming across to
kiss her; "old lady Preston will have to put up with the second best.
You haven't forgotten, then, that you used to ride, marmer, have you?"
The mother's eyes had filled upon hearing the old name, the "marmer" of
the days when he had been her devoted, constantly following, tyrannical,
but very loving little boy. But she did not let the tears drop: she
never made scenes of any kind before John. "Well, you've been riding
horseback every day now for a long while; you haven't seemed to care at
all for carriages. And I did use to ride horseback a good deal when I
was a girl; I used to ride to the mill."
"I know you did. And carry the grist to be ground." He kissed her again.
"Don't be afraid of anything or anybody to-morrow, marmer, I beg. You're
the bravest and most sensible woman I know, and I want you to look what
you are."
"Shall I wear my India shawl, then?"
"Wear the best you have; I wish it were a hundred times bester. You are
handsomer than any of them as it is."
"Oh no, John; I ain't good-looking; I never was," said his mother,
blushing. She put her hand up for a moment, nervously, over her mouth--a
gesture habitual with her.
"Yes, you are, marmer. Look at your eyes. It's only that you have got
into a way of not thinking so. But I think so, and others shall." He
went back to the sofa, and sank into abstraction again.
At length his mother broke the silence, which had lasted very long. "I
hope they are all well over there to-day?" she asked, hesitatingly.
"Over there" was her name for the house on the shore, the house where
she knew her son had for many weeks spent all his time.
"Well? They're extraordinarily well," said Ash. He got up and walked
restlessly about the room. After a while he stopped, and now he seemed
to have forgotten his mother's presence, for his eyes rested upon her
without seeing her. "One of them is a little too well," he said,
menacingly; "let him look to himself--that's all." And then into his
face, his mother, watching him, saw coming slowly something she knew.
The expression changed him so completely that the ladies who had seen so
much of him would not have recognized their visitor. His mother
recognized him. That expression on her son's face was her life's long
terror.
He left the room. She listened as long as she could hear his steps;
then, after sitting for some time with her head upon her arms on the
table before her, she rose, and went slowly to put on her bonnet and
shawl. Coming back, still slowly, she paused, and for five minutes stood
there motionless. Then her hands dropped desparingly by her sides, and
her worn face quivered. "O God, O our Father, I really don't know what
ter do!" she murmured, breaking into helpless sobs, the stifled,
difficult sobs of a person unaccustomed to self-expression, even the
self-expression of grief.
She did not go out. Instead of that, she went back to the inner room and
knelt down.
IV
The next morning three carriages and two persons on horseback were
following the long road that stretches southward from Salerno to Paestum.
In the first carriage old Mrs. Preston sat enthroned amid cushions and
shawls; opposite she had placed her nephew Arthur, first because he was
slim, second because he was a man (Mrs. Preston was accustomed to say,
"Too much lady talk dries my brain"); the second carriage held Isabella
Holland and the Abercrombie girls; in the third, a landau drawn by two
spirited horses, were Mrs. Ash and her son. The two persons on horseback
were Pauline Graham and Griffith Carew.
In the soft spring air the mountains that rise all the way on the left
at no great distance from the road had in perfection the vague, dreamy
outlines and violet hues that form so characteristic a feature of the
Italian landscape. Up in the sky their peaks shone whitely, powdered
with snow. The flat plain that stretches from the base of the mountains
to the sea had beauty of another kind; often a fever-swept marsh, it
possessed at this season all a marsh's luxuriance of waving reeds and
flowers and tasselled jungles, with water birds rising from their
feeding-places, and flying along, low down, with a slow motion of their
broad wings, their feet stretched out behind. Troops of buffalo could be
seen here and there. At rare intervals there was an oasis of cultivated
ground, with a solitary farm-house. On the right, all the way, the
Mediterranean, meeting the flat land flatly, stretched forward from
thence into space, going on bluely, and rising a little on the horizon
line, as though it were surmounting a low hill.
Occasionally the carriages passed a little band of the small,
quick-stepping Italian soldiers.
"Oh, I say, did you know, aunt, that people were murdered by brigands on
this very bridge only ten years ago?" said Arthur, as they rolled across
a stone causeway raised in the form of an arch over a sluggish stream.
"I should like very much to see the brigands who did it!" Mrs. Preston
answered, smacking her lips contemptuously.
Arthur at least was very sure that no ten brigands could have vanquished
his aunt.
"This, girls, is the ancient Tyrrhenian Gulf," began Isabella to her
companions, waving one neatly gloved hand towards the sea. Isabella,
owing to the singularly incessant death of relatives, was always in
mourning; her neat gloves therefore were sable. "The temples we are
about to visit are very ancient also, having been built ages ago by
Greeks, who came from--from Greece, of course, naturally; and never
ceased to regret it. And all this shore, and the temples also, were
sacred to Neptune, or Poseidon, as he was called in Greek. And the
Greeks lamented--but I will read you that later at the threshold of the
temples; you cannot fail to be interested."
"I shall not be interested at all," said Hildegarde.
"Nor I," said Rose.
"_They_ had nothing to lament about; _they_ had no dancing to do," added
Dorothea. And the three white faces glared suddenly and sullenly at
their astonished companion.
"I am shocked," began Isabella.
"Shocked yourself," said Rose.
"You are a busybody," said Dorothea.
"And a gormandizer," added Hildegarde.
"And a _Worm_!" said Rose, with decision. "We have decided not to
pretend any more before _you_, Worm! Dance yourself till your legs drop
off, and see how you like it."
The three girls had weak soft voices; they possessed no other tones; the
strong words they used, therefore, were all the more startling because
so gently, almost sighingly, spoken.
In the landau there had been silence. Mrs. Ash, after respecting her
son's sombre mood for more than an hour, at last spoke: "I guess you
don't care very much about those triflin' temples, after all, do you,
John? And it's going to be very long. Supposing we turn back?" She wore
her India shawl and a Paris bonnet; she was sitting without touching the
cushions of the carriage behind her. She had looked neither at the
mountains nor at the sea; most of the time her eyes had rested on the
blue cloth of the empty seat opposite. Occasionally, however, they had
followed the two figures on horseback, and it was after these figures
had passed them a second time, pushing on ahead in order to get a free
space of road for a gallop, that she had offered her suggestion.
"Go back? Not for ten thousand dollars--not for ten thousand devils!"
said John Ash. "What a lazy girl you are, marmer!" And he became gay and
talkative.
His mother responded to his gayety as well as she could: she laughed
when he did. Her laugh was eager. It was almost obsequious.
By-and-by the three temples loomed into view, standing in all their
beauty on the barren waste, majestic, uninjured, extraordinary. Their
rows of fluted columns, their brilliant tawny hues, their perfect Doric
architecture, made the loneliness surrounding them even more lonely,
made the sound of the sea breaking near by on the lifeless shore a
melancholy dirge. When the party reached the great colonnades there were
exclamations; there was even declamation, Mrs. Preston having been
fitted by nature for that. Freemantle, Gates, and Beckett had come
rushing forward to meet their arriving friends. In reality, however, it
was Griff whom they had rushed to meet. Griff to their minds was the
only important person present, even though the unimportant included
Pauline.
"Hallo, Griff, old fellow! how are you?"
"Couldn't you stay, Griff? We've got a tent for you."
They laughed, and made jokes, and hovered about him, longing to drag him
off immediately to show him their drawings, and to discuss with him a
hundred disputed points. But though they thus paid small attention to
Pauline, they were obliged to form part of her train; for as Griff
remained with her, and they remained with Griff, naturally, as Isabella
would have said, they made the tour of inspection in her company.
In the meanwhile Isabella, who had it upon her strictly kept conscience
not to neglect her own duties in spite of the Abercrombie revolt, had
taken her stand before the great temple of Neptune, with her instructive
little book in her hand. "'The men of Poseidonia,'" she began, "'having
been at first true Greeks, had in process of time gradually become
barbarized, changing to Romans.' Poseidonia, girls, was the ancient
name of Paestum," she interpolated in explanation, glancing over her
glasses at her silent audience.
The Abercrombies could not retort this time, because Aunt Octavia was
very near them, sitting at the base of one of the great columns of
travertine with the air and manner of Neptune's only lawful wife. But
their backs were towards her; she could not see their faces; they were
able, therefore, to make grimaces at Isabella, and this they immediately
proceeded to do in unison, flattening their thin lips over their teeth
in a very ghastly way, and turning up their eyes so unnaturally far that
Isabella was afraid the pupils would never come down again.
"'Yet they still observed one Hellenic festival,'" she read stumblingly
on--stumblingly because she felt obliged from a sort of fascination to
glance every now and then at the distorted countenances before
her--"'one Hellenic festival, when they met together here to call to
remembrance the old days and the old customs, and to weep upon each
other's necks, and to lament drearily. And then, when the time of their
mourning was over, they departed, each man in silence to his Roman
home.'"
"Very fine," said Mrs. Preston, commendingly, from her column.
But Isabella had closed her book, and was walking away, wiping her
forehead: those girls' faces were really too horrible.
"Where are you going, Isabella?" Mrs. Preston called.
"I suppose I may gather some asphodel?" Isabella responded, with some
asperity.
But she did not gather much asphodel. Coming upon Mrs. Ash wandering
about over the fallen stones, she stayed her steps to speak to her. She
was not interested in Mrs. Ash, but she was so "happily relieved" that
dear Paulie lately had given up her rides with the son, that she, as
Paulie's cousin (first), could afford to be civil to the mother, in
spite of that mother's bad judgment as to English and diamonds. Isabella
disapproved of Mrs. Ash; she thought that "such persons" did great harm
by their display of "mere vulgar affluence." No vulgar affluence
oppressed Isabella. She had six hundred dollars a year of her own, and
each dollar was well bred.
"We shall soon be having lunch, I suppose," she began, in a gracious
tone. "It seems almost a desecration, doesn't it, to have it in the
shrine itself, for I see they are arranging it there."
"Oh, is that a shrine?" said Mrs. Ash, vaguely. "I didn't know. But then
I'm not a Catholic. They seem very large buildings. They seem wasted
here."
Little Isabella looked up at her--she was obliged to look up, her
companion was so tall. The anxious expression in Mrs. Ash's eyes had
grown into anguish: she was watching her son, who had now joined Pauline
and her train. Pauline had Carew on her right hand and John Ash on her
left; the four boys walked stragglingly, now in front, now behind, but
never far from Carew.
"You are not well," said Isabella; "the drive was too long for you. Pray
take my smelling-salts; they are sometimes refreshing." And she detached
from its black chain a minute funereal bottle.
"Thank you," answered Mrs. Ash, gazing down uncomprehendingly at the
offering; "I am very well indeed. I was jest looking at your cousin,
Mrs. Graham; she's very handsome."
"Yes," responded Isabella, gladly seizing this opportunity to convey to
the Ash household a little light, "Pauline is handsome--in her own way.
It is not the style that I myself admire. But then I know that my taste
is severe. By ordinary people Pauline is considered attractive; it is
therefore all the more to be deplored that she should be such a sad, sad
flirt."
"A flirt?" said Mrs. Ash.
"Yes--I am sorry to say it. No matter how far she may go, it means
nothing, absolutely nothing; she has not the slightest intention of
allowing herself either to fall in love or to marry again; she prefers
her position as it is. And I don't think she realizes sufficiently that
what is but pastime to her may be taken more seriously by others; and
naturally, I must say, after the way she sometimes goes on. _I_ could
never do so, no matter what the temptations were, and I must say I have
never been able to understand it in Pauline. At present it is Mr. Carew;
she is going to Naples with him to-morrow for the day. As you may
imagine, it is against our wish--Cousin Octavia Preston's and mine. But
Pauline being a widow, which _she_ considers an advantage, and no longer
young (she is thirty, though you may not think it; she shows her age
very fully in the morning)--Pauline, under these circumstances, has for
some time refused a chaperon. I don't think myself that she needs a
chaperon exactly, but she might take a lady friend."
"Going to Naples with him to-morrow," murmured Mrs. Ash. She put her
gloved hand over her mouth for a moment, the large kid expanse very
different from Isabella's little black paw. "I might as well go over
there," she said, starting off with a rapid step towards Pauline.
Pauline received her smilingly; Ash frowned a little. He frowned not at
his mother--she was always welcome; he frowned at her persistence in
standing so near Pauline, in dogging her steps. Mrs. Ash kept this up;
she sat near Pauline at lunch; she followed her when she strolled down
to the beach; she gathered flowers for her; in her India shawl and Paris
bonnet she hovered constantly near.