CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.
"We are going to follow the track of Ulysses," said Katy, with her eyesfixed on the little travelling-map in her guide-book. "Do you realizethat, Polly dear? He and his companions sailed these very seas beforeus, and we shall see the sights they saw,--Circe's Cape and the Isles ofthe Sirens, and Polyphemus himself, perhaps, who knows?"
The "Marco Polo" had just cast off her moorings, and was slowly steamingout of the crowded port of Genoa into the heart of a still rosy sunset.The water was perfectly smooth; no motion could be felt but the engine'sthrob. The trembling foam of the long wake showed glancing points ofphosphorescence here and there, while low on the eastern sky a greatsilver planet burned like a signal lamp.
"Polyphemus was a horrible giant. I read about him once, and I don'twant to see him," observed Amy, from her safe protected perch in hermother's lap.
"He may not be so bad now as he was in those old times. Some missionarymay have come across him and converted him. If he were good, youwouldn't mind his being big, would you?" suggested Katy.
"N-o," replied Amy, doubtfully; "but it would take a great lot ofmissionaries to make _him_ good, I should think. One all alone would beafraid to speak to him. We shan't really see him, shall we?"
"I don't believe we shall; and if we stuff cotton in our ears and lookthe other way, we need not hear the sirens sing," said Katy, who was inthe highest spirits.--"And oh, Polly dear, there is one delightful thingI forgot to tell you about. The captain says he shall stay in Leghornall day to-morrow taking on freight, and we shall have plenty of time torun up to Pisa and see the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower andeverything else. Now, that is something Ulysses didn't do! I am so gladI didn't die of measles when I was little, as Rose Red used to say." Shegave her book a toss into the air as she spoke, and caught it again asit fell, very much as the Katy Carr of twelve years ago might have done.
"What a child you are!" said Mrs. Ashe, approvingly; "you never seem outof sorts or tired of things."
"Out of sorts? I should think not! And pray why should I be,Polly dear?"
Katy had taken to calling her friend "Polly dear" of late,--a trickpicked up half unconsciously from Lieutenant Ned. Mrs. Ashe liked it;it was sisterly and intimate, she said, and made her feel nearerKaty's age.
"Does the tower really lean?" questioned Amy,--"far over, I mean, sothat we can see it?"
"We shall know to-morrow," replied Katy. "If it doesn't, I shall loseall my confidence in human nature."
Katy's confidence in human nature was not doomed to be impaired. Therestood the famous tower, when they reached the Place del Duomo in Pisa,next morning, looking all aslant, exactly as it does in the pictures andthe alabaster models, and seeming as if in another moment it must toppleover, from its own weight, upon their heads. Mrs. Ashe declared that itwas so unnatural that it made her flesh creep; and when she was coaxedup the winding staircase to the top, she turned so giddy that they wereall thankful to get her safely down to firm ground again. She turned herback upon the tower, as they crossed the grassy space to the majesticold Cathedral, saying that if she thought about it any more, she shouldbecome a disbeliever in the attraction of gravitation, which she hadalways been told all respectable people _must_ believe in.
The guide showed them the lamp swinging by a long slender chain, beforewhich Galileo is said to have sat and pondered while he worked out histheory of the pendulum. This lamp seemed a sort of own cousin to theattraction of gravitation, and they gazed upon it with respect. Thenthey went to the Baptistery to see Niccolo Pisano's magnificent pulpitof creamy marble, a mass of sculpture supported on the backs of lions,and the equally lovely font, and to admire the extraordinary soundwhich their guide evoked from a mysterious echo, with which he seemedto be on intimate terms, for he made it say whatever he would andalmost "answer back."
It was in coming out of the Baptistery that they met with an adventurewhich Amy could never quite forget. Pisa is the mendicant city of Italy,and her streets are infested with a band of religious beggars who callthemselves the Brethren of the Order of Mercy. They wear loose blackgowns, sandals laced over their bare feet, and black cambric masks withholes, through which their eyes glare awfully; and they carry tin cupsfor the reception of offerings, which they thrust into the faces of allstrangers visiting the city, whom they look upon as their lawful prey.
As our party emerged from the Baptistery, two of these Brethren espiedthem, and like great human bats came swooping down upon them with longstrides, their black garments flying in the wind, their eyes rollingstrangely behind their masks, and brandishing their alms-cups, which had"Pour les Pauvres" lettered upon them, and gave forth a clapping soundlike a watchman's rattle. There was something terrible in theirappearance and the rushing speed of their movements. Amy screamed andran behind her mother, who visibly shrank. Katy stood her ground; butthe bat-winged fiends in Dore's illustrations to Dante occurred to her,and her fingers trembled as she dropped some money in the cups.
Even mendicant friars are human. Katy ceased to tremble as she observedthat one of them, as he retreated, walked backward for some distance inorder to gaze longer at Mrs. Ashe, whose cheeks were flushed with brightpink and who was looking particularly handsome. She began to laughinstead, and Mrs. Ashe laughed too; but Amy could not get over theimpression of having been attacked by demons, and often afterwardrecurred with a shudder to the time when those awful black _things_ flewat her and she hid behind mamma. The ghastly pictures of the Triumph ofDeath, which were presently exhibited to them on the walls of the CampoSanto, did not tend to reassure her, and it was with quite a pale,scared little face that she walked toward the hotel where they were tolunch, and she held fast to Katy's hand.
Their way led them through a narrow street inhabited by the poorerclasses,--a dusty street with high shabby buildings on either side andwide doorways giving glimpses of interior courtyards, where emptyhogsheads and barrels and rusty caldrons lay, and great wooden trays ofmacaroni were spread out in the sun to dry. Some of the macaroni wasgray, some white, some yellow; none of it looked at all desirable toeat, as it lay exposed to the dust, with long lines of ill-washedclothes flapping above on wires stretched from one house to another. Asis usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and theappearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over hershoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great sensation. Thechildren in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children withinthe houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers andolder sisters peeped from the doorways. The very air seemed full ofeager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down withexcitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, who withher thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and jacket,feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange smallmarvel from another world. They could not decide whether she was aliving child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near enoughto find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with theirfingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with theadmiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view.
At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round head seemedto make up _her_ mind, and darting indoors returned with her doll,--apoor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of redcotton. This she held out for Amy to see. Amy smiled for the first timesince her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking Mabelfrom her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other. Butthough the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of a_bacio_ between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, and hid hertreasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying somethingvery fast which none of them understood, while she waved two fingers atthem with a curious gesture.
"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll,"said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what thispantomime meant.
"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged
Amy; "do you suppose for onemoment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly? You ought to beglad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean."
The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of thelittle Italian. With a shriek she fled, and all the other childrenafter her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatureswho didn't speak the familiar language. Katy, wishing to leave apleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them.This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter,and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded ontheir way to the hotel.
All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the "Marco Polo" slippedalong the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those oldlegendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes. Katyroused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had aglimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where thatwar-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while. Then she fell asleep again,and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast ofOstia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber. Dreamy mountain-shapes rosebeyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of thecoast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing.
About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which thecaptain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty milesdistant. This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond ofspeculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the imaginarymoment, could not help smiling. Neither she nor Clover had ever supposedthat her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little impressive.
On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and Amy, grownvery tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and grown-upraptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the end ofthe long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for anotherstory concerning Violet and Emma.
"Just a little tiny chapter, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did onNew Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and sailingall day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told meanything about them, really and truly it is!"
Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be thebane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventfuladventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, tillher imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop ofmoisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the talenever flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she reallycould not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turnthe tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell _you_ a chapter?"whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:--
"It was the day before Christmas--no, we won't have it the day beforeChristmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving. Violet and Emmagot up in the morning, and--well, they didn't do anything in particularthat day. They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played andstudied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next morning--well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had theirbreakfasts and dinners, and played."
Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them to her,that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her narrations, butshe had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred. So when Amymade this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution tookpossession of her, and she decided to put an end to these dreadfulchildren once for all.
"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about Violet andEmma; but this is positively the last."
So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt attention asKaty told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet and Emmastarted by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to carry to apoor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain slope abasket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch ofcelery, and a mince-pie.
"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take to poorwidow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see them,"proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black the skywas getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs of thetrees. They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the way, andit was hard work for the poor pony. But he was a stout little fellow,and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked andlaughed, and never thought what was going to happen. Just half-way upthe mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and onthis cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree. The branches were loaded withsnow, which made them much heavier than usual. Just as the sleigh passedslowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from theravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots and all.It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the pony andthe basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all crushedas flat as pancakes!"
"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened then?"
"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful solemnity;"nothing could happen! Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was dead, thethings in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a greatsnowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they were orwhat had become of them till the snow melted in the spring."
With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench.
"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead! I won't let them be dead!"Then she burst into tears, ran down the stairs, locked herself into hermother's stateroom, and did not appear again for several hours.
Katy laughed heartily at first over this outburst, but presently shebegan to repent and to think that she had treated her pet unkindly. Shewent down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not answer.She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and pleaded, butit was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the afternoon;and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were red withcrying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had beenattending the funeral of her dearest friend.
Katy's heart smote her.
"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come and sitin my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They shallgo on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell storiesabout them to the end of the chapter."
"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. They're dead,and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm soso-o-rry."
All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were useless.Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not makeherself believe in them any more.
She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swinewhich Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and theisles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The sunset, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless lampsand the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed intothe Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could beseen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her passengers totheir landing-place.
They woke next morning to a summer atmosphere full of yellow sunshineand true July warmth. Flower-vendors stood on every corner, and pursuedeach newcomer with their fragrant wares. Katy could not stop exclaimingover the cheapness of the flowers, which were thrust in at the carriagewindows as they drove slowly up and down the streets. They were tiedinto flat nosegays, whose centre was a white camellia, encircled withconcentric rows of pink tea rosebuds, ring after ring, till the wholewas the size of an ordinary milk-pan; all to be had for the sum of tencents! But after they had bought two or three of these enormousbouquets, and had discovered that not a single rose boasted an inch ofstem, and that all were pierced with long wires through their veryhearts, she ceased to care for them.
"I would rather have one Souvenir or General Jacqueminot, with a longstem and plenty of leaves, than a dozen of these stiff platters ofbouquets," Katy told Mrs. As
he. But when they drove beyond the citygates, and the coachman came to anchor beneath walls overhung with thesame roses, and she found that she might stand on the seat and pull downas many branches of the lovely flowers as she desired, and gatherwallflowers for herself out of the clefts in the masonry, she wasentirely satisfied.
"This is the Italy of my dreams," she said.
With all its beauty there was an underlying sense of danger aboutNaples, which interfered with their enjoyment of it. Evil smells camein at the windows, or confronted them as they went about the city.There seemed something deadly in the air. Whispered reports met theirears of cases of fever, which the landlords of the hotels were doingtheir best to hush up. An American gentleman was said to be lying veryill at one house. A lady had died the week before at another. Mrs. Ashegrew nervous.
"We will just take a rapid look at a few of the principal things," shetold Katy, "and then get away as fast as we can. Amy is so on my mindthat I have no peace of my life. I keep feeling her pulse and imaginingthat she does not look right; and though I know it is all my fancy, I amimpatient to be off. You won't mind, will you, Katy?"
After that everything they did was done in a hurry. Katy felt as if shewere being driven about by a cyclone, as they rushed from one sight toanother, filling up all the chinks between with shopping, which wasirresistible where everything was so pretty and so wonderfully cheap.She herself purchased a tortoise-shell fan and chain for Rose Red, andhad her monogram carved upon it; a coral locket for Elsie; some studsfor Dorry; and for her father a small, beautiful vase of bronze, copiedfrom one of the Pompeian antiques.
"How charming it is to have money to spend in such a place as this!" shesaid to herself with a sigh of satisfaction as she surveyed thesedelightful buyings. "I only wish I could get ten times as many thingsand take them to ten times as many people. Papa was so wise about it. Ican't think how it is that he always knows beforehand exactly how peopleare going to feel, and what they will want!"
Mrs. Ashe also bought a great many things for herself and Amy, and totake home as presents; and it was all very pleasant and satisfactoryexcept for that subtle sense of danger from which they could not escapeand which made them glad to go. "See Naples and die," says the oldadage; and the saying has proved sadly true in the case of many anAmerican traveller.
Beside the talk of fever there was also a good deal of gossip aboutbrigands going about, as is generally the case in Naples and itsvicinity. Something was said to have happened to a party on one of theheights above Sorrento; and though nobody knew exactly what thesomething was, or was willing to vouch for the story, Mrs. Ashe andKaty felt a good deal of trepidation as they entered the carriage whichwas to take them to the neighborhood where the mysterious "something"had occurred.
The drive between Castellamare and Sorrento is in reality as safe asthat between Boston and Brookline; but as our party did not know thisfact till afterward, it did them no good. It is also one of the mostbeautiful drives in the world, following the windings of the exquisitecoast mile after mile, in long links of perfectly made road, carved onthe face of sharp cliffs, with groves of oranges and lemons and oliveorchards above, and the Bay of Naples beneath, stretching away like asolid sheet of lapis-lazuli, and gemmed with islands of the mostpicturesque form.
It is a pity that so much beauty should have been wasted on Mrs. Asheand Katy, but they were too frightened to half enjoy it. Their carriagewas driven by a shaggy young savage, who looked quite wild enough to bea bandit himself. He cracked his whip loudly as they rolled along, andevery now and then gave a long shrill whistle. Mrs. Ashe was sure thatthese were signals to his band, who were lurking somewhere on theolive-hung hillsides. She thought she detected him once or twice makingsigns to certain questionable-looking characters as they passed; and shefancied that the people they met gazed at them with an air ofcommiseration, as upon victims who were being carried to execution. Herfears affected Katy; so, though they talked and laughed, and made jokesto amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that anything wasamiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they wereprivately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal ofhighly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento inperfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned out tobe a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to support,who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red wine asthe height of luxury, and was grateful for a small gratuity of thirtycents or so, which would enable him to purchase these dainties. Mrs.Ashe had a very bad headache next day, to pay for her fright; but sheand Katy agreed that they had been very foolish, and resolved to pay nomore attention to unaccredited rumors or allow them to spoil theirenjoyment, which was a sensible resolution to make.
Their hotel was perched directly over the sea. From the balcony of theirsitting-room they looked down a sheer cliff some sixty feet high, intothe water; their bedrooms opened on a garden of roses, with an orangegrove beyond. Not far from them was the great gorge which cuts thelittle town of Sorrento almost in two, and whose seaward end makes theharbor of the place. Katy was never tired of peering down into thisstrange and beautiful cleft, whose sides, two hundred feet in depth, arehung with vines and trailing growths of all sorts, and seem alla-tremble with the fairy fronds of maiden-hair ferns growing out ofevery chink and crevice. She and Amy took walks along the coast towardMassa, to look off at the lovely island shapes in the bay, and admirethe great clumps of cactus and Spanish bayonet which grew by theroadside; and they always came back loaded with orange-flowers, whichcould be picked as freely as apple-blossoms from New England orchards inthe spring. The oranges themselves at that time of the year were verysour, but they answered as well for a romantic date, "From an orangegrove," as if they had been the sweetest in the world.
They made two different excursions to Pompeii, which is within easydistance of Sorrento. They scrambled on donkeys over the hills, and hadglimpses of the far-away Calabrian shore, of the natural arch, and thetemples of Paestum shining in the sun many miles distant. On Katy'sbirthday, which fell toward the end of January, Mrs. Ashe let her haveher choice of a treat; and she elected to go to the Island of Capri,which none of them had seen. It turned out a perfect day, with sea andwind exactly right for the sail, and to allow of getting into the famous"Blue Grotto," which can only be entered under particular conditions oftide and weather. And they climbed the great cliff-rise at the island'send, and saw the ruins of the villa built by the wicked emperorTiberius, and the awful place known as his "Leap," down which, it issaid, he made his victims throw themselves; and they lunched at a hotelwhich bore his name, and just at sunset pushed off again for the rowhome over the charmed sea. This return voyage was almost the pleasantestthing of all the day. The water was smooth, the moon at its full. It waslarger and more brilliant than American moons are, and seemed to possessan actual warmth and color. The boatmen timed their oar-strokes to thecadence of Neapolitan _barcaroles_ and folk-songs, full of rhythmicmovement, which seemed caught from the pulsing tides. And when at lastthe bow grated on the sands of the Sorrento landing-place, Katy drew along, regretful breath, and declared that this was her bestbirthday-gift of all, better than Amy's flowers, or the prettytortoise-shell locket that Mrs. Ashe had given her, better even than theletter from home, which, timed by happy accident, had arrived by themorning's post to make a bright opening for the day.
All pleasant things must come to an ending.
"Katy," said Mrs. Ashe, one afternoon in early February, "I heard someladies talking just now in the _salon_, and they said that Rome isfilling up very fast. The Carnival begins in less than two weeks, andeverybody wants to be there then. If we don't make haste, we shall notbe able to get any rooms."
"Oh dear!" said Katy, "it is very trying not to be able to be in twoplaces at once. I want to see Rome dreadfully, and yet I cannot bear toleave Sorrento. We have been very happy here, haven't we?"
So they took up their wandering staves again, and departed for Rome,like the Ap
ostle, "not knowing what should befall them there."