Part 8 (2/2)

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.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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, blus.h.i.+ng. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 G.o.d, 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 ta.s.selled 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 s.p.a.ce, going on bluely, and rising a little on the horizon line, as though it were surmounting a low hill.

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