Part 15 (1/2)

”Not now. I did once.”

”Wasn't it very hard work?”

”That? Nothing at all. You should have seen us grubbing up the stumps--Tipp and I!”

”Mr. Tipp is perhaps your partner?” said Dallas.

”Yes; Jim Tipp. Tipp and Rod is the name of the firm.”

”Tipp--and Rod,” repeated Dallas, slowly. Then with quick utterance, as if trying it, ”Tippandrod.”

Pierre was now returning with his flowers. As he joined them, round the corner of their zigzag, from a pasture above came a troop of ponies that had escaped from their driver, and were galloping down to Sorrento; two and two they came rus.h.i.+ng on, too rapidly to stop, and everybody pressed to one side to give them room to pa.s.s on the narrow causeway.

Pierre jumped up on the low stone wall and extended his hand to Eva.

”Come!” he said, hastily.

Rod put out his arm and pushed each outside pony, as he pa.s.sed Eva, forcibly against his mate who had the inside place; a broad s.p.a.ce was thus left beside her, and she had no need to leave the causeway. She had given one hand to Pierre as a beginning; he held it tightly.

Mademoiselle meanwhile had climbed the wall like a cat. There were twenty of the galloping little nags; they took a minute or two to pa.s.s.

Rod's out-stretched hands, as he warded them off, were seen to be large and brown.

Eva imagined them ”grubbing up” the stumps. ”What is grubbing?” she said.

”It is writing for the newspapers in a street in London,” said Pierre, jumping down. ”And you must wear a torn coat, I believe.” Pierre was proud of his English.

He presented his flowers.

Mademoiselle admired them volubly. ”They are like souls just ready to wing their way to another world,” she said, sentimentally, with her head on one side. She put her well-gloved hand in Eva's arm, summoned Pierre with an amiable gesture to the vacant place at Eva's left hand, and the three walked on together.

The Deserto, though disestablished and dismantled, like many another monastery, by the rising young kingdom, held still a few monks; their brown-robed brethren had aided Pierre's servant in arranging the table in the high room which commands the wonderful view of the sea both to the north and the south of the Sorrento peninsula, with Capri lying at its point too fair to be real--like an island in a dream.

”O la douce folie-- Aimable Capri!”

said Mark Ferguson. No one knew what he meant; he did not know himself.

It was a poetical inspiration--so he said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT THE DESERTO]

The lunch was delicate, exquisite; everything save the coffee (which the monks wished to provide: coffee, black-bread, and grapes which were half raisins was the monks' idea of a lunch) had been sent up from Sorrento.

Dallas, who was seated beside f.a.n.n.y, gave her a congratulatory nod.

”Yes, all Pierre does is well done,” she answered, in a low tone, unable to deny herself this expression of maternal content.

Pierre was certainly a charming host. He gave them a toast; he gave them two; he gave them a song: he had a tenor voice which had been admirably cultivated, and his song was gay and sweet. He looked very handsome; he wore one of the cyclamen in his b.u.t.ton-hole; Eva wore the rest, arranged by the deft fingers of Mademoiselle in a knot at her belt. But at the little feast f.a.n.n.y was much more prominent than her daughter: this was Pierre's idea of what was proper; he asked her opinion, he referred everything to her with a smile which was homage in itself. Dallas, after a while, was seized with a malicious desire to take down for a moment this too prosperous companion of his boyhood. It was after Pierre had finished his little song. ”Do you ever sing now, f.a.n.n.y?” he asked, during a silence. ”I remember how you used to sing Trancadillo.”

”I am sure I don't know what you refer to,” answered f.a.n.n.y, coldly.

Another week pa.s.sed. They sailed to Capri; they sailed to Ischia; they visited Pompeii. Bartholomew suggested these excursions. Eva too showed an almost pa.s.sionate desire for constant movement, constant action.