Kitabı oku: «The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor-Car», sayfa 16

FROM MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER

Parker's Hotel, Naples,

January 13.

You Dear,

I have seen Naples, but I don't wish to die. Not that I should so much grudge dying after the happy life you've given me, but there'd be such an awful waste of time in staying dead when so much is left to see. There's Capri, and there's Sicily almost next door; and even a Saturday to Monday on Mars wouldn't make up to me for missing them.

We put our hands to the plough, and came here from Rome in six hours, only one hour more than the fast (?) train takes. We didn't stop for lunch, but kept ourselves up on beef lozenges, which were nasty but supporting. We wanted to see how quickly we could do it, and even Aunt Mary was excited. She is much pleasanter without Jimmy, and we really did have fun. It's an ill rain that doesn't temper the dust to an automobile, so we blessed the weather which we had previously anathematised. After a pouring night, it cleared before we started; and it was one of the best days we have ever had. I remembered heaps of things which had happened to me when I was a Roman princess, two thousand years ago, and felt just as if I were travelling in my chariot from my father's palace in Rome to his villa, perhaps in Baiæ. My only fear was that, in going so fast, we should arrive at our destination so long before the impedimenta that I should have to do without my baths of asses' milk for several days; and where would be my royal complexion?

It was six o'clock, and dark, when we came in sight of something which made me cry out "Oh!" It was a dull red light, high up in the sky, and a dark shape, like a great wounded bull, with two streams of fiery blood pouring down its gored sides. Vesuvius! Brown had planned that we should see it for the first time after dark. I had wondered why he suggested not leaving Rome till twelve o'clock, when usually he is so keen on early starts, and he was evasive when I asked why. But when I had breathed that "Oh!" and had a moment to recover myself, he told me.

Dad, dear, Brown is splendid. He has revealed Naples to me. I can't express it in any other way, for nobody else who has told me about coming to Naples has ever done the things that we have; and they would not have occurred to Aunt Mary or me. We should have gone the ordinary round if it hadn't been for him, and when we said good-bye to her Naples would have been only a mere acquaintance of ours, not a dear and intimate friend who has told us her best secrets. In the first place, we shouldn't have known any better than to stop in some big, obvious sort of hotel in the noisy wasps' nest of the city, instead of coming here where the air is pure and some of the most beautiful things in the world in sight without turning our heads. It's such a homelike hotel, and instead of sending to England for orange marmalade made of Sicilian oranges, the way all the other hotels seem to do, they make it themselves out of their own oranges; and it's a poem.

We've been up Vesuvius, not in the daytime, like the humdrum tourists, but by torchlight, and we saw the moon rise. Instead of rushing to the Museum the first thing and mooning vaguely about there for hours, we saved it until after we'd been out to Pompeii on the motor-car; then it was a hundred times more interesting, and we are coming back after Capri to pay another visit to the busts of Tiberius and his terrible mother. I felt in Rome as if it were an impertinence to be modern and young. But in Pompeii-oh, I can't tell you what I felt there. I think-I really do think that I saw ghosts, and they were much more real and important than I. It was like entering the enchanted palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood, only a thousand times more thrilling and wonderful. I didn't feel as if anyone else had ever been there since it was dug up, except Brown and me-and, of course, Aunt Mary.

Brown knew about fascinating Italian restaurants, and he drove us up on the automobile for tea to a new hotel on a high hill, almost a mountain. It's the "smart" thing for people who know to go up to tea, which-if it's fine-you have on a great terrace that is the most beautiful thing in all Naples. And we spent a whole morning up at St. Elmo. That is going to be my best recollection, I think, and-you will laugh-but the next best will be the Aquarium. When you came to Naples was there a thing in the Aquarium like the ghost of a cucumber, transparent as glass, with strings of opals and rubies being drawn through its veins every two minutes regularly? Brown says that it-or its ancestor-has been there ever since he can remember. I like that green light in the Aquarium, which makes you feel as if you were a mermaid under the sea, and inclined to swim instead of walk.

When we were driving up to the hotel, Brown said it was almost as steep and winding as the road from Capri to Anacapri. That speech, and gazing from our balcony at Parker's over the blue bay to the island which looks like the Sphinx rising out of the sea, have made me distracted to take the automobile to Capri. Brown "doesn't advise it," and thinks "we may have great trouble in landing," but that makes me want the adventure all the more; so we're going to-morrow-not just for a day, like the people who don't care about Tiberius, and think the Blue Grotto is the only thing to see-but to stay for several days. Brown says one could find a new walk on the island for every day of a whole month, and each would be absolutely different from the other, though Capri is only three and a half miles long and about a mile and a half in width.

I feel as if we were in for something exciting, just as you feel, I suppose, when you are going to bring off a big coup "in the street."

Your Chip-of-the-old-Block,

Molly.

P.S. – I wouldn't post my Naples letter. I thought if I did, you might imagine that we and our car had been engulphed in the sea, unless you got the end of the adventure tacked on to the beginning; so this is to be a fat postscript. Yes, a gorged python of a postscript.

At first the dock people couldn't be persuaded that we seriously intended to take an automobile to the island of Capri; and when they realised that we were in earnest, they buzzed with excitement like swarming bees. Everyone directly or indirectly concerned argued at the top of his voice, and embroidered his arguments with gestures, nobody paying the slightest attention to anybody else. We didn't even ask permission to go on one of the big passenger steamers, for we knew it would be no use; but there's a little sea-chick of a thing called La Sirena, which plies back and forth every day with provisions, luggage, and passengers, to whom cheapness is an object. She was our prey; and as nobody had happened to make a law against transporting motor-cars, simply because nobody had ever thought of taking anything so abnormal since Tiberius used to send his chariots, we could not be restrained.

All the loafers in Naples collected on the quay, and I don't believe anything would have been done for us if Brown hadn't calmly begun to widen the gangway. He had suggested that I should go over in the morning with Aunt Mary on the North German Lloyd that takes the trippers (as he calls them) over for the Blue Grotto, and lunch. But I didn't see it in that light, for I wanted the adventure. Aunt Mary didn't want it at any price, so she was packed off by herself; and when the Lightning Conductor slowly drove the car on board the little Sirena I was by his side. There was a moment of awestruck silence on the quay; but when Brown had gently manœuvred Balzac into position in a clear space on deck, the murmurs of doubt and disapproval turned into a burst of delighted wonder. Brown and I felt like "variety" artistes being applauded for a clever turn, and the appropriate thing would have been to bow and kiss our hands.

But all this was nothing to what was in store for us at the Grande Marina at Capri. If we had gone in one of the bigger steamers, we should have had to get the automobile into a small boat, or perhaps lash it somehow on to two boats; but the Sirena is so small that she can come up along the landing-place, which was one reason why, after Brown had made inquiries, he was willing to go with the fowls and vegetables. The nearer we got to the island, the more beautiful it looked, and as we came in Brown was telling me things about Tiberius' palaces and where they had stood, when suddenly a shout went up from the quay. A group of stalwart women, clustered together there, were laughing and pointing at our car. They belonged to a race of Amazons bred on Capri, whose daily work it is to land heavy goods and carry trunks on their heads to the omnibuses and cabs in waiting at the end of the quay. Before we were fairly in, they swooped like a pack of wolves on the car, laughing and gabbling, and somehow they and Brown landed it on the slippery little quay.

The news that there was an automobile on the island must have flashed around by magic telegraph, for people-swarms of people, more than you would have thought could live on the whole of Capri-came running from everywhere to see us start. I should have been awfully amused if it hadn't been for one thing. Up there at the end of the quay, where we must pass, were half a dozen hotel omnibuses and a long rank of smart cabs, like victorias, with very pretty little horses, whose faces looked incredibly short-perhaps on account of their huge blinders. They had feathers on their heads, and their harness was ornamented with all kinds of strange devices in silver or brass. Sweet little pets they were, that you felt as if you might ask into your house to sit on the hearthrug; and when they saw Balzac they all began to snort and shiver and act as if they were going to faint. Their drivers-in hard, white hats something like our policemen's helmets-flew to the poor beasties' heads; and some laughed, and some looked anxious, some angry.

Evidently the little horses had lived an innocent, peaceful life for years on Capri, and had never heard of railways or steam rollers, much less automobiles. I was so sorry for them, and wished I hadn't been so headstrong, but had been guided by Brown when he advised me to leave Balzac at Naples. However, we couldn't abandon the car on the quay, so we got in and Brown started the motor. Oh, my goodness! every horse went into hysterics! Their drivers held them, and said things soothing or the reverse, according to their bringing-up, but the little things kicked and plunged and doubled up in knots, although Brown drove by as slowly and solemnly as the Dead March in Saul. I thought we should never get past, but when we did the worst was still to come, for we had a steep road to climb up the cliff, and in the distance several cab-horses were trotting down. I begged Brown to stop and let them go by, lest they should jump over into space, so he did; and it was all that he and the drivers of the cabs could do to get the poor horrified little animals past us at all. That experience was enough for me. Brown pointed up towards Anacapri, far, far above Capri proper, on a horn of the mountain, reached only by a narrow but splendidly engineered road winding like a piece of thin wood shaving, or by steep steps cut in the rock by the Phœnicians thousands of years ago. "No," said I sadly, "we'll never drive up to Anacapri on the automobile. I shan't use it once again while we're on the island, and all the horses had better be warned indoors when we go down to take the boat."

But it was a beautiful drive up from the quay to the town of Capri and our hotel. I couldn't help enjoying it a little, in spite of feeling like an incipient murderess. I believe if I'd been on the way to execution I would have enjoyed it. The road swept round to the left, ascending loop after loop, to a saddle of the island lying between two cliffs, crowned with the most picturesque ruins I ever saw. Everywhere you looked was a new picture, and oh! the delicious colour of sky, and sea, and the dove-grey of the cliffs! You can see next to nothing of the town till you come on it; then suddenly you are in a busy piazza, with an old palace or two and a beautiful tower, and everything characteristically Italian, even the sunshine, which is so vivid that it is like a pool of light. Here we made a great deal more excitement before we drove under an old archway and plunged down a steep, stone-paved street filled with gay little shops, and ending with the courtyard of our hotel.

I know you only came to Capri with the "trippers" to see the Blue Grotto, and I feel sorry for you, you poor Dad, because, though the Grotto is so strange and beautiful, it is the thing I care for least of all. Just think, you didn't even stay long enough to see the sunset turn the Faraglioni rocks to brilliant, beaten copper, standing up from clear depths of emerald, into which the clouds drop rose-leaves! You didn't go to the old grey Certosa, for if you had you would certainly have bought it and restored it to use as a sort of "occasional villa," like those nice heroes of Ouida's who say, "I believe, by the way, that is mine," when they are travelling with friends in yachts and pass magnificent palaces which they have quite forgotten on the shores of the Mediterranean or the Italian lakes. You didn't walk along a steep path about twelve inches wide, hanging over a dizzy precipice, to the Arco Naturale-and neither would I if it hadn't been for Brown. I was horribly afraid, but I was ashamed to let him see that, so I struggled along somehow, and it was glorious. We ended the walk by going down a great many steps cut in the rock to the grotto of Mitromania, where they used to worship the sun-god and sacrifice living victims-human beings sometimes. You can see the altar still, and the trough where the blood used to run-ugh! and the secret chambers where they kept the victims.

We stayed a day and two nights in the town of Capri, and should have stopped on till we were ready to leave the island, for it is a charming hotel, with a big garden and a ravishing view; but I got it into my head that I wanted to walk up all the Phœnician steps to Anacapri-there are about eight hundred of them-instead of going up by a mere road, no matter how beautiful. Of course, Aunt Mary was consumed with no such mad ambition, and as she had heard that to go up the steps was like walking up a wall, she was afraid to have me try the ascent alone; so I asked Brown to take me. We started after breakfast; and to go up all the steps we first had to descend to the very shore, near a palace of Tiberius', which is buried under the sea with all its treasures. Doesn't that sound like a fairy story? Then we began going up and up, and we kept meeting peasant girls tripping gaily down in their rope shoes, singing together like happy birds, not even touching with their hands the loaded baskets on their heads. They were so beautiful that they were more like stage peasants than real ones. Their eyes were great stars, and their clear, olive faces were like cameos with a light shining through from behind. They were dressed in the simplest cotton dresses, but their pinks and blues and purples, put on without any regard to artistic contrast, blended together as exquisitely as flowers in a brilliant garden.

I tripped gaily, too, at first, but the sun grew hot and so did I. Still, on we went, up the face of the cliff, and with every interval for rest came a new and wonderful view. By-and-by we got up so high that the row boats on their way to the Blue Grotto looked like little water-beetles, with oars for legs; and though the waves were beating against the rocks, we could no longer see them; the water appeared as smooth as an endless sapphire floor polished for the sirens to dance on. It was all so entrancing that I didn't know I was almost getting a sun-stroke; besides, who would think of sunstrokes in January, no matter how hot the weather? Brown remarked that my lips were pale, but I said I was only a little tired. In rather more than an hour we came to the top, which was Anacapri. My head ached, so we went into a restaurant place, which turned out to be very famous. I sat on the wall of a terrace looking over a sheer precipice a thousand feet high until I felt partly rested; then a handsome girl, evidently of Saracen blood, brought me delicious lemonade. We had started away to walk into the village of Anacapri, when everything began to swim before my eyes. Luckily we were close to a house. It was a little old domed white house with a long vine-covered pergola, and it said "Bella Vista" over the gateway. I had to lean on Brown's arm going in, and the last thing I remember was a kind-faced man hurrying to the door. The next thing I was in a big white bedroom, sparsely furnished and daintily neat. I had fainted and they had sent for a doctor. Presently he appeared, and afterwards I found out that he was quite a celebrity-the "Doctor Antonio" of Capri. He said it was the sun; I hadn't eaten enough breakfast, and I'd had a "heat-stroke" – not half so bad as a sun-stroke; still, I ought to rest.

I was quite willing to obey the prescription, for I was falling in love with the house, and longed to stay in it for days. The room I was in had four windows, each one looking out on a view that stay-at-home people would give hundreds of dollars to see; and it opened on to a lovely private terrace. Brown took a message "downstairs" to Capri, asking Aunt Mary to pack up and come to the Bella Vista, which she did, and we've been here for two days. I was quite well in a few hours, but I wouldn't have gone back to more conventional comforts for anything. Anacapri and our little house seem as if they were in the world on top of the clouds which Jack discovered when he climbed his beanstalk up into the sky. Why, the first morning when I waked here, and opened my glass door on to the terrace to look at the sea, and the umbrella pines, and the cypresses (which I seem to hear, as well as see, like sharp notes in music), four or five large white clouds got up from the terrace where they'd been sitting and sneaked past me through the door into the room, just like the cows which, I suppose, the gods kept on Olympus to milk for their ambrosia. And the sunsets, with Vesuvius set like a great conical amethyst in a blaze of ruby and topaz glory! It is something to come to Anacapri for. But at the Bella Vista we would not feed you on sunsets and cloud's milk alone. The little landlord and landlady cook and wait on us, and I never tasted daintier dishes than they "create."

There are more things than sunsets and pines and cypresses to see too. One takes walks all over the island. One goes to rival inns where rival beauties dance the tarantella, and vie in announcements that Tiberius amused himself by throwing victims in the sea from the exact site of their houses. Oh, everything is Tiberius here. He is regarded by the peasants as quite a modern person, whom you may meet in a dark night, if you haven't murmured a prayer before the lovely white virgin in her illuminated grotto of rock. Mothers say to their children, "If you do that, Tiberius will catch you"; and the English colony of Capri quarrel over the gentleman's character, on which there are differences of opinion.

The most beautiful house I ever saw in my life is set on the brow of the precipice at Anacapri; it is a dream-house; or else its owner rubbed a lamp, and a genie gave it to him. It is long and low and white, and filled with wonderful treasures which its possessor found under the sea-spoil of Tiberius' buried palaces. The floors are paved with mosaic of priceless coloured marble, which Tiberius brought from distant lands for himself; a red sphinx, which Tiberius imported from Egypt crouches on the marble wall, gazing over the cliffs and the sea; Tiberius' statues in marble and bronze line the arched, open-air corridors. There's nothing else like it in the world in these days, and few men would be worthy to have it and to live there; but I think, from what I hear, that the man who does live there is worthy of it all.

You will find a rose and a spray of jasmine in this letter. I picked the rose for you, in the pergola, and our landlady gave me the jasmine. I wish I could send you more of the beauty of this magic island.

Your enchanted

Molly.