Читать книгу The American Baron - James De Mille - Страница 6

"HE BENT HIS HEAD DOWN, AND RAN HIS HAND THROUGH HIS BUSHY HAIR."

Lord Harry Hawbury had been wandering for three months on the Continent, and had finally found himself in Naples. It was always a favorite place of his, and he had established himself in comfortable quarters on the Strada Nuova, from the windows of which there was a magnificent view of the whole bay, with Vesuvius, Capri, Baiæ, and all the regions round about. Here an old friend had unexpectedly turned up in the person of Scone Dacres. Their friendship had been formed some five or six years before in South America, where they had made a hazardous journey in company across the continent, and had thus acquired a familiarity with one another which years of ordinary association would have failed to give. Scone Dacres was several years older than Lord Hawbury.

One evening Lord Hawbury had just finished his dinner, and was dawdling about in a listless way, when Dacres entered, quite unceremoniously, and flung himself into a chair by one of the windows.

"Any Bass, Hawbury?" was his only greeting, as he bent his head down, and ran his hand through his bushy hair.

"Lachryma Christi?" asked Hawbury, in an interrogative tone.

"No, thanks. That wine is a humbug. I'm beastly thirsty, and as dry as a cinder."

Hawbury ordered the Bass, and Dacres soon was refreshing himself with copious draughts.

The two friends presented a singular contrast. Lord Hawbury was tall and slim, with straight flaxen hair and flaxen whiskers, whose long, pendent points hung down to his shoulders. His thin face, somewhat pale, had an air of high refinement; and an ineradicable habit of lounging, together with a drawling intonation, gave him the appearance of being the laziest mortal alive. Dacres, on the other hand, was the very opposite of all this. He was as tall as Lord Hawbury, but was broad-shouldered and massive. He had a big head, a big mustache, and a thick beard. His hair was dark, and covered his head in dense, bushy curls. His voice was loud, his manner abrupt, and he always sat bolt upright.

"Any thing up, Sconey?" asked Lord Hawbury, after a pause, during which he had been languidly gazing at his friend.

"Well, no, nothing, except that I've been up Vesuvius."

Lord Hawbury gave a long whistle.

"And how did you find the mountain?" he asked; "lively?"

"Rather so. In fact, infernally so," added Dacres, thoughtfully. "Look here, Hawbury, do you detect any smell of sulphur about me?"

"Sulphur! What in the name of—sulphur! Why, now that you mention it, I do notice something of a brimstone smell. Sulphur! Why, man, you're as strong as a lighted match. What have you been doing with yourself? Down inside, eh?"

Dacres made no answer for some time, but sat stroking his beard with his left hand, while his right held a cigar which he had just taken out of a box at his elbow. His eyes were fixed upon a point in the sky exactly half-way between Capri and Baiæ, and about ten degrees above the horizon.

"Hawbury," said he, solemnly, after about two minutes of portentous silence.

"Well, old man?"

"I've had an adventure."

"An adventure! Well, don't be bashful. Breathe forth the tale in this confiding ear."

"You see," said Dacres, "I started off this morning for a ride, and had no more intention of going to Vesuvius than to Jericho."

"I should hope not. What business has a fellow like you with Vesuvius—a fellow that has scaled Cotopaxi, and all that sort of thing? Not you."

Dacres put the cigar thoughtfully in his mouth, struck a light, and tried to light it, but couldn't. Then he bit the end off, which he had forgotten to do before. Then he gave three long, solemn, and portentous puffs. Then he took the cigar between his first and second fingers, and stretched his hand out toward Hawbury.

"Hawbury, my boy," said he again.

"All right."

"You remember the time when I got that bullet in Uruguay?"

"Yes."

"Well, I had a shot to-day."

"A shot! The deuce you had. Cool, too. Any of those confounded bandits about? I thought that was all rot."

"It wasn't a real shot; only figurative."

"Figurative!"

"Yes; it was a—a girl."

"By Jove!" cried Hawbury, starting up from an easy posture which he had secured for himself after fifteen minutes shifting and changing. "A girl! You, Dacres, spooney! A fellow like you, and a girl! By Jove!"

Hawbury fell back again, and appeared to be vainly trying to grapple with the thought. Dacres put his cigar between his lips again, and gave one or two puffs at it, but it had gone out. He pitched it out of the window, and struck his hand heavily on the arm of his chair.

"Yes, Hawbury, a girl; and spooney, too—as spooney as blazes; but I'll swear there isn't such another girl upon the whole face of the earth; and when you bear in mind the fact that my observation, with extended view, has surveyed mankind from China to Peru, you'll be able to appreciate the value of my statement."

"All right, old man; and now for the adventure."

"The adventure? Well, you see, I started for a ride. Had a misty idea of going to Sorrento, and was jogging along among a million pigs or so at Portici, when I overtook a carriage that was going slowly along. There were three ladies in it. The backs of two of them were turned toward me, and I afterward saw that one was old—no doubt the chaperon—and the other was young. But the third lady, Hawbury—Well, it's enough to say that I, who have seen all women in all lands, have never seen any thing like her. She was on the front seat, with her face turned toward me. She was small, a perfect blonde; hair short and curling; a round, girlish face; dimpled cheeks, and little mouth. Her eyes were large and blue; and, as she looked at me, I saw such a bewitching innocence, such plaintive entreaty, such pathetic trust, such helpless, childlike—I'll be hanged if I can find words to express what I want to say. The English language doesn't contain them."

"Do it in Latin, then, or else skip the whole description. All the same. I know the whole story by heart. Love's young dream, and all that sort of thing, you know."

"Well," continued Dacres, "there was something so confoundedly bewitching in the little girl's face that I found myself keeping on at a slow pace in the rear of the carriage, and feasting on her looks. Of course I wasn't rude about it or demonstrative."

"Oh, of course. No demonstration. It's nothing to ride behind a carriage for several hours, and 'feast' one's self on a pretty girl's looks! But go on, old man."

"Oh, I managed it without giving offense. You see, there was such a beastly lot of pigs, peasants, cows, dirty children, lazaroni, and all that sort of thing, that it was simply impossible to go any faster; so you see I was compelled to ride behind. Sometimes, indeed, I fell a good distance back."

"And then caught up again to resume the 'feast?'"

"Well—yes."

"But I don't see what this has to do with your going to Vesuvius."

"It has every thing to do. You see, I started without any fixed purpose, and after I saw this carriage, I kept on insensibly after it."

"Oh, I see—yes. By Jove!"

"And they drove up as far as they could."

"Yes?"

"And I followed. You see, I had nothing else to do—and that little girl! Besides, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be going up; and the fact that I was bent on the same errand as themselves was sufficient to account for my being near the carriage, and would prevent them from supposing that I was following them. So, you see, I followed, and at length they stopped at the Hermitage. I left my horse there, and strolled forward, without going very far away; my only idea was to keep the girl in sight. I had no idea that they would go any further. To ascend the cone seemed quite out of the question. I thought they would rest at the Hermitage, drink some Lachryma Christi, and go back. But to my surprise, as I was walking about, I saw the two young ladies come out and go toward the cone.

"I kept out of the way, as you may suppose, and watched them, wondering what idea they had. As they passed I heard the younger one—the child-angel, you know, my girl—teasing the other to make the ascent of the cone, and the other seemed to be quite ready to agree to the proposal.

"Now, as far as the mere ascent is concerned, of course you know that is not much. The guides were there with straps and chairs, and that sort of thing, all ready, so that there was no difficulty about that. The real difficulty was in these girls going off unattended; and I could only account for it by supposing that the chaperon knew nothing whatever about their proposal. No doubt the old lady was tired, and the young ones went out, as she supposed, for a stroll; and now, as they proposed, this stroll meant nothing less than an ascent of the cone. After all, there is nothing surprising in the fact that a couple of active and spirited girls should attempt this. From the Hermitage it does not seem to be at all difficult, and they had no idea of the actual nature of the task.

"What made it worse, however, was the state of the mountain at this particular time. I don't know whether you have taken the trouble to raise your eyes so high as the top of Vesuvius—"

Hawbury languidly shook his head.

"Well, I supposed not; but if you had taken the trouble, you would have noticed an ugly cloud which is generally regarded here as ominous. This morning, you know, there was an unusually large canopy of very dirty smoke overhead. I knew by the look of things that it was not a very pleasant place to go to. But of course they could not be supposed to know any thing of the kind, and their very ignorance made them rash.

"Well, I walked along after them, not knowing what might turn up, but determined to keep them in sight. Those beggars with chairs were not to be trusted, and the ladies had gold enough about them to tempt violence. What a reckless old devil of a chaperon she was, to let those young girls go! So I walked on, cursing all the time the conventionalities of civilization that prevented me from giving them warning. They were rushing straight on into danger, and I had to keep silent.

"On reaching the foot of the cone a lot of fellows came up to them, with chairs and straps, and that sort of thing. They employed some of them, and, mounting the chairs, they were carried up, while I walked up by myself at a distance from which I could observe all that was going on. The girls were quite merry, appeared to be enchanted with their ride up the cone, enjoyed the novelty of the sensation, and I heard their lively chatter and their loud peals of ringing laughter, and longed more than ever to be able to speak to them.

"Now the little girl that I had first seen—the child-angel, you know—seemed, to my amazement, to be more adventurous than the other. By her face you would suppose her to be as timid as a dove, and yet on this occasion she was the one who proposed the ascent, urged on her companion, and answered all her objections. Of course she could not have really been so plucky as she seemed. For my part, I believe the other one had more real pluck of the two, but it was the child-angel's ignorance that made her so bold. She went up the cone as she would have gone up stairs, and looked at the smoke as she would have looked at a rolling cloud.

"At length the bearers stopped, and signified to the girls that they could not go any further. The girls could not speak Italian, or any other language apparently than English, and therefore could not very well make out what the bearers were trying to say, but by their gestures they might have known that they were warning them against going any further. One might have supposed that no warning would have been needed, and that one look upward would have been enough. The top of the cone rose for upward of a hundred feet above them, its soil composed of lava blocks and ashes intermingled with sulphur. In this soil there were a million cracks and crevices, from which sulphurous smoke was issuing; and the smoke, which was but faint and thin near where they stood, grew denser farther up, till it intermingled with the larger volumes that rolled up from the crater.

"Now, as I stood there, I suddenly heard a wild proposal from the child-angel.

"'Oh, Ethel,' she said, 'I've a great mind to go up—'"

Here Hawbury interrupted his friend:

"What's that? Was that her friend's name?" he asked, with some animation. "Ethel?—odd, too. Ethel? H'm. Ethel? Brunette, was she?"

"Yes."

"Odd, too; infernally odd. But, pooh! what rot! Just as though there weren't a thousand Ethels!"

"What's that you're saying about Ethel?" asked Dacres.

"Oh, nothing, old man. Excuse my interrupting you. Go ahead. How did it end?"

"I SAW HER TURN AND WAVE HER HAND IN TRIUMPH."

"Well, the child-angel said, 'Ethel, I've a great mind to go up.'

"This proposal Ethel scouted in horror and consternation.

"'You must not—you shall not!' she cried.

"'Oh, it's nothing, it's nothing,' said the child-angel. 'I'm dying to take a peep into the crater. It must be awfully funny. Do come; do, do come, Ethel darling.'

"'Oh, Minnie, don't,' cried the other, in great alarm. And I now learned that the child-angel's name was Minnie. 'Minnie,' she cried, clinging to the child-angel, 'you must not go. I would not have come up if I had thought you would be so unreasonable.'

"'Ethel,' said the other, 'you are really getting to be quite a scold. How ridiculous it is in you to set yourself up in this place as a duenna! How can I help going up? and only one peep. And I never saw a crater in my life, and I'm dying to know what it looks like. I know it's awfully funny; and it's horrid in you to be so unkind about it. And I really must go. Won't you come? Do, do, dear—dearest darling, do—do—do!'

"Ethel was firm, however, and tried to dissuade the other, but to no purpose; for at length, with a laugh, the child-angel burst away, and skipped lightly up the slope toward the crater.

"'Just one peep,' she said. 'Come, Ethel, I must, I really must, you know.'

"She turned for an instant as she said this, and I saw the glory of her child-face as it was irradiated by a smile of exquisite sweetness. The play of feature, the light of her eyes, and the expression of innocence and ignorance unconscious of danger, filled me with profound sadness. And there was I, standing alone, seeing that sweet child flinging herself to ruin, and yet unable to prevent her, simply because I was bound hand and foot by the infernal restrictions of a miserable and a senseless conventionality. Dash it, I say!"

As Dacres growled out this Hawbury elevated his eyebrows, and stroked his long, pendent whiskers lazily with his left hand, while with his right he drummed on the table near him.