Part 20 (2/2)

All nature was in a mood divine. They were close enough insh.o.r.e to see the splendid temples clearly with the naked eye. The sky and the sea were of the colour only the Mediterranean knows.

It was hot and still, and the moon in her pure magnificence cast her never-ending spell.

Not a sound of the faintest ripple met his ear. The sailors supped below. All was silence. On one side the vast sea, on the other the sh.o.r.e, with this masterpiece of man's genius, the temple of the great G.o.d Poseidon, in this vanished settlement of the old Greeks. How marvellously beautiful it all was, and how his Queen would have loved it! How she would have told him its history and woven round it the spirit of the past, until his living eyes could almost have seen the priests and the people, and heard their wors.h.i.+pping prayers!

His darling had spoken of it once, he remembered, and had told him it was a place they must see. He recollected her very words:

”We must look at it first in the winter from the sh.o.r.e, my Paul, and see those splendid proportions outlined against the sky--so n.o.ble and so perfectly balanced--and then we must see it from the sea, with the background of the olive hills. It is ever silent and deserted and calm, and death lurks there after the month of March. A cruel malaria, which we must not face, dear love. But if we could, we ought to see it from a yacht in safety in the summer time, and then the spell would fall upon us, and we would know it was true that rose-trees really grew there which gave the world their blossoms twice a year. That was the legend of the Greeks.”

Well, he was seeing it from a yacht, but ah, G.o.d! seeing it alone--alone. And where was she?

So intense and vivid was his remembrance of her that he could feel her presence near. If he turned his head, he felt he should see her standing beside him, her strange eyes full of love. The very perfume of her seemed to fill the air--her golden voice to whisper in his ear--her soul to mingle with his soul. Ah yes, in spirit, as she had said, they could never be parted more.

A suppressed moan of anguish escaped his lips, and his father, who had come silently behind him, put his hand on his arm.

”My poor boy,” he said, his gruff voice hoa.r.s.e in his throat, ”if only to G.o.d I could do something for you!”

”Oh, father!” said Paul.

And the two men looked in each other's eyes, and knew each other as never before.

CHAPTER XXIII

Next day there was a fresh breeze, and they scudded before it on to Naples.

Here Paul seemed well enough to take train, and so arrive in England in time for his birthday. He owed this to his mother, he and his father both felt. She had been looking forward to it for so long, as at the time of his coming of age the festivities had been interrupted by the sudden death of his maternal grandfather, and the people had all been promised a continuance of them on this, his twenty-third birthday. So, taking the journey by sufficiently easy stages, sleeping three nights on the way, they calculated to arrive on the eve of the event.

The Lady Henrietta would have everything in readiness for them, and her darling Paul was not to be over-hurried. Only guests of the most congenial kind had been invited, and such a number of nice girls!

The prospect was perfectly delightful, and ought to cause any young man pure joy.

It was with a heart as heavy as lead Paul mounted the broad steps of his ancestral home that summer evening, and was folded in his mother's arms. (The guests were all fortunately dressing for dinner.)

Captain Grigsby had been persuaded to abandon his yacht and accompany them too.

”Yes, I'll come, Charles,” he said. ”Getting too confoundedly hot in these seas; besides, the boy will want more than one to see him through among those cackling women.”

So the three had travelled together through Italy and France--Switzerland had been strictly avoided.

”Paul! darling!” his mother exclaimed, in a voice of pained surprise as she stood back and looked at him. ”But surely you have been very ill. My darling, darling son--”

”I told you he had had a sharp attack of fever, Henrietta,” interrupted Sir Charles quickly, ”and no one looks their best after travelling in this grilling weather. Let the boy get to his bath, and you will see a different person.”

But his mother's loving eyes were not to be deceived. So with infinite fuss, and terms of endearment, she insisted upon accompanying her offspring to his room, where the dignified housekeeper was summoned, and his every imaginable and unimaginable want arranged to be supplied.

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