The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories

"The things?"

"Yes, in there." (She pointed to the paling fence.) "There's peas, and asparagus, and beans, and some sorts I don't know; you wouldn't believe how they do push up, day after day."

"Ah, indeed! I dare say they do," the Englishwoman answered, a little bewildered, looking at the lines of green behind the palings.

"Her name is Ash, Azubah Ash – fancy!" she said to her husband, later. "I saw it written on a Swiss basket in which she keeps her crewel-work. She is extremely odd. She has no maid, yet she wears those very good diamonds; and she always appears in that Paris gown of rich black silk – the very richest quality, I assure you, Augustas: she wears it and the diamonds at breakfast. She has spoken of a son, but apparently he never turns up. And she spends all her time on a bench behind the house watching the beans grow."

"I should think she would bore herself to extinction," said the easy-going vicar.

"I dare say she is having rather a hard time of it, she is so bornée. I would offer her a book, but I don't think she ever reads. And when I told her that I should be very pleased to show her some of the pretty walks about here, she said that she never walked. She must be sadly lonely, poor thing!"

But Mrs. Ash was not lonely; or, if she was, she did not know the name of her malady. The comings and goings of her son were without doubt very uncertain; but the mother had been born among people who believe that the "men-folks" of a family have an existence apart from that of mothers and sisters, and that it is right that they should have it. Her son, who never went himself to a public table, had taken it for granted that his mother would prefer to have her meals served privately in one of the four large rooms which he had engaged for her at the inn.

"I think I like it better in the big dining-room, John," Mrs. Ash had replied. She did not tell him that she found it less difficult to eat her dinner when the attention of the waiter was distracted by the necessity of attending to the wants of ten persons than when his gaze was concentrated upon her solitary knife and fork alone.

John Ash was fond of his mother. It did not occur to him that this nomad life abroad was causing her any suffering. Her shyness, her dread of being looked at, her dread of foreign servants, he did not fully see, because when he was present she controlled them; when he was present, also, in a great measure, they disappeared. He knew that she would not have had one moment's content had he left her behind him, even if he had left her in the finest house his money could purchase; so he took her with him, and travelled slowly, for her sake, making no journeys that she could not make, sending forward to engage the best rooms for her at the inns where he intended to stop.

That he had not taken her to Pæstum was not an evidence of neglect. During the first months of their wanderings he had been at pains to take her everywhere he had thought that she would enjoy it. But Mrs. Ash had enjoyed nothing – save the going about on her son's arm. If he left her alone amid the most exquisite scenery in the world, she did not even see the scenery; she thought a dusty jaunt in a horse-car "very pleasant" if John was there. So at last John gave her his simple presence often, but troubled her with descriptions and excursions no more.

Dumb, shy, hopelessly out of her element as she was, this mother had, on the whole, enjoyed her two years abroad. The reason was found in the fact that she could say to herself, or rather could hope to herself, that John was more "steady" over here.

The rustic term covered much – the days and the nights when John had not been "steady."

These six weeks at Salerno particularly had been a season of blessed repose to Azubah Ash; the days had gone by so peacefully that life had become almost comfortable to her again, in spite of the ordeal of dinner. She had even been beguiled into thinking a little of the future – of the farm she should like to have some day, with fruit and cream and vegetables – yes, especially vegetables; and she dreamed of an old pleasure of her youth, that of hunting for little round artichokes in the cool brown earth. John had been contented all the time, and his mood had been very tranquil. His mother liked this much better than high spirits. There was an element sometimes in John's high spirits that had made her tremble.

But on the day succeeding that last ride with Mrs. Graham, when they had dismounted and walked down to the shore, John had come back to the inn with a darkened face. The dark mood had lasted now for ten days. His mother began to lead her old sleepless, restless life again. Her awkward crochet-needle had stopped of itself; she went no more to her bench beside the asparagus. Instead, she remained in her room – her four rooms – every now and then peeping anxiously through the blinds. Nothing happened – so any one would have said; the sea continued blue and misty, the sky blue and clear; every one came and went as usual in the divine weather of the Italian spring. But John Ash's mother had, to use an old expression, her heart in her mouth all the time.

It choked her, and she gave up going to the table d'hôte; she let her son suppose that the meal was served in her sitting-room, but in reality she took no dinner at all. When he came in she was always there, always carefully dressed in the black silk whose rich texture the vicar's wife had noticed, with the "very good" diamonds fastening her collar and on her thin hands. She made a constant effort that her son should notice no change in her.

Azubah Ash had a gaunt frame with large bones; her chest was hollow, and she stooped a little as she walked. Yet, looking at her, one felt sure that she would live to be an old woman. Her large features were roughly moulded, her cheeks thin; her thick dusky hair was put plainly back from her face, and arranged with a high comb after a fashion of her youth. 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 Pæstum 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.

"Pæstum – 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."

"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, blushing. 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 shore, 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 God, 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 Pæstum.

In the first carriage old Mrs. Preston sat enthroned amid cushions 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 tasselled 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 space, going on bluely, and rising a little on the horizon line, as though it were surmounting a low hill.

Occasionally the carriages passed a little band of the small, quick-stepping Italian soldiers.

"Oh, I say, did you know, aunt, that people were murdered by brigands on this very bridge only ten years ago?" said Arthur, as they rolled across a stone causeway raised in the form of an arch over a sluggish stream.

"I should like very much to see the brigands who did it!" Mrs. Preston answered, smacking her lips contemptuously.

Arthur at least was very sure that no ten brigands could have vanquished his aunt.

"This, girls, is the ancient Tyrrhenian Gulf," began Isabella to her companions, waving one neatly gloved hand towards the sea. Isabella, owing to the singularly incessant death of relatives, was always in mourning; her neat gloves therefore were sable. "The temples we are about to visit are very ancient also, having been built ages ago by Greeks, who came from – from Greece, of course, naturally; and never ceased to regret it. And all this shore, and the temples also, were sacred to Neptune, or Poseidon, as he was called in Greek. And the Greeks lamented – but I will read you that later at the threshold of the temples; you cannot fail to be interested."

"I shall not be interested at all," said Hildegarde.

"Nor I," said Rose.

"They had nothing to lament about; they had no dancing to do," added Dorothea. And the three white faces glared suddenly and sullenly at their astonished companion.

"I am shocked," began Isabella.

"Shocked yourself," said Rose.

"You are a busybody," said Dorothea.

"And a gormandizer," added Hildegarde.

"And a Worm!" said Rose, with decision. "We have decided not to pretend any more before you, Worm! Dance yourself till your legs drop off, and see how you like it."

The three girls had weak soft voices; they possessed no other tones; the strong words they used, therefore, were all the more startling because so gently, almost sighingly, spoken.

In the landau there had been silence. Mrs. Ash, after respecting her son's sombre mood for more than an hour, at last spoke: "I guess you don't care very much about those triflin' temples, after all, do you, John? And it's going to be very long. Supposing we turn back?" She wore her India shawl and a Paris bonnet; she was sitting without touching the cushions of the carriage behind her. She had looked neither at the mountains nor at the sea; most of the time her eyes had rested on the blue cloth of the empty seat opposite. Occasionally, however, they had followed the two figures on horseback, and it was after these figures had passed them a second time, pushing on ahead in order to get a free space of road for a gallop, that she had offered her suggestion.

"Go back? Not for ten thousand dollars – not for ten thousand devils!" said John Ash. "What a lazy girl you are, marmer!" And he became gay and talkative.

His mother responded to his gayety as well as she could: she laughed when he did. Her laugh was eager. It was almost obsequious.

By-and-by the three temples loomed into view, standing in all their beauty on the barren waste, majestic, uninjured, extraordinary. Their rows of fluted columns, their brilliant tawny hues, their perfect Doric architecture, made the loneliness surrounding them even more lonely, made the sound of the sea breaking near by on the lifeless shore a melancholy dirge. When the party reached the great colonnades there were exclamations; there was even declamation, Mrs. Preston having been fitted by nature for that. Freemantle, Gates, and Beckett had come rushing forward to meet their arriving friends. In reality, however, it was Griff whom they had rushed to meet. Griff to their minds was the only important person present, even though the unimportant included Pauline.

"Hallo, Griff, old fellow! how are you?"

"Couldn't you stay, Griff? We've got a tent for you."

They laughed, and made jokes, and hovered about him, longing to drag him off immediately to show him their drawings, and to discuss with him a hundred disputed points. But though they thus paid small attention to Pauline, they were obliged to form part of her train; for as Griff remained with her, and they remained with Griff, naturally, as Isabella would have said, they made the tour of inspection in her company.

In the meanwhile Isabella, who had it upon her strictly kept conscience not to neglect her own duties in spite of the Abercrombie revolt, had taken her stand before the great temple of Neptune, with her instructive little book in her hand. "'The men of Poseidonia,'" she began, "'having been at first true Greeks, had in process of time gradually become barbarized, changing to Romans.' Poseidonia, girls, was the ancient name of Pæstum," she interpolated in explanation, glancing over her glasses at her silent audience.

The Abercrombies could not retort this time, because Aunt Octavia was very near them, sitting at the base of one of the great columns of travertine with the air and manner of Neptune's only lawful wife. But their backs were towards her; she could not see their faces; they were able, therefore, to make grimaces at Isabella, and this they immediately proceeded to do in unison, flattening their thin lips over their teeth in a very ghastly way, and turning up their eyes so unnaturally far that Isabella was afraid the pupils would never come down again.

"'Yet they still observed one Hellenic festival,'" she read stumblingly on – stumblingly because she felt obliged from a sort of fascination to glance every now and then at the distorted countenances before her – "'one Hellenic festival, when they met together here to call to remembrance the old days and the old customs, and to weep upon each other's necks, and to lament drearily. And then, when the time of their mourning was over, they departed, each man in silence to his Roman home.'"

"Very fine," said Mrs. Preston, commendingly, from her column.

But Isabella had closed her book, and was walking away, wiping her forehead: those girls' faces were really too horrible.

"Where are you going, Isabella?" Mrs. Preston called.

"I suppose I may gather some asphodel?" Isabella responded, with some asperity.

But she did not gather much asphodel. Coming upon Mrs. Ash wandering about over the fallen stones, she stayed her steps to speak to her. She was not interested in Mrs. Ash, but she was so "happily relieved" that dear Paulie lately had given up her rides with the son, that she, as Paulie's cousin (first), could afford to be civil to the mother, in spite of that mother's bad judgment as to English and diamonds. Isabella disapproved of Mrs. Ash; she thought that "such persons" did great harm by their display of "mere vulgar affluence." No vulgar affluence oppressed Isabella. She had six hundred dollars a year of her own, and each dollar was well bred.

"We shall soon be having lunch, I suppose," she began, in a gracious tone. "It seems almost a desecration, doesn't it, to have it in the shrine itself, for I see they are arranging it there."

"Oh, is that a shrine?" said Mrs. Ash, vaguely. "I didn't know. But then I'm not a Catholic. They seem very large buildings. They seem wasted here."

Little Isabella looked up at her – she was obliged to look up, her companion was so tall. The anxious expression in Mrs. Ash's eyes had grown into anguish: she was watching her son, who had now joined Pauline and her train. Pauline had Carew on her right hand and John Ash on her left; the four boys walked stragglingly, now in front, now behind, but never far from Carew.

"You are not well," said Isabella; "the drive was too long for you. Pray take my smelling-salts; they are sometimes refreshing." And she detached from its black chain a minute funereal bottle.

"Thank you," answered Mrs. Ash, gazing down uncomprehendingly at the offering; "I am very well indeed. I was jest looking at your cousin, Mrs. Graham; she's very handsome."

"Yes," responded Isabella, gladly seizing this opportunity to convey to the Ash household a little light, "Pauline is handsome – in her own way. It is not the style that I myself admire. But then I know that my taste is severe. By ordinary people Pauline is considered attractive; it is therefore all the more to be deplored that she should be such a sad, sad flirt."

"A flirt?" said Mrs. Ash.

"Yes – I am sorry to say it. No matter how far she may go, it means nothing, absolutely nothing; she has not the slightest intention of allowing herself either to fall in love or to marry again; she prefers her position as it is. And I don't think she realizes sufficiently that what is but pastime to her may be taken more seriously by others; and naturally, I must say, after the way she sometimes goes on. I could never do so, no matter what the temptations were, and I must say I have never been able to understand it in Pauline. At present it is Mr. Carew; she is going to Naples with him to-morrow for the day. As you may imagine, it is against our wish – Cousin Octavia Preston's and mine. But Pauline being a widow, which she considers an advantage, and no longer young (she is thirty, though you may not think it; she shows her age very fully in the morning) – Pauline, under these circumstances, has for some time refused a chaperon. I don't think myself that she needs a chaperon exactly, but she might take a lady friend."

"Going to Naples with him to-morrow," murmured Mrs. Ash. She put her gloved hand over her mouth for a moment, the large kid expanse very different from Isabella's little black paw. "I might as well go over there," she said, starting off with a rapid step towards Pauline.

Pauline received her smilingly; Ash frowned a little. He frowned not at his mother – she was always welcome; he frowned at her persistence in standing so near Pauline, in dogging her steps. Mrs. Ash kept this up; she sat near Pauline at lunch; she followed her when she strolled down to the beach; she gathered flowers for her; in her India shawl and Paris bonnet she hovered constantly near.

Only once did John Ash find opportunity to speak to Pauline alone. The boys had at last carried off Griff by force to their camp; Griff was willing enough to go, the "force" applied to the intellectual effort necessary on the boys' part to detach him from a lady who wished to keep him by her side. They had all been strolling up and down in the shade of the so-called Basilica, amid the fern and acanthus. Left alone with her son and Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Ash, after remaining with them a few moments, turned aside, and entering the temple, sat down there. She was out of hearing, but still near.

"Ride with me to-morrow, Pauline," Ash said, immediately. "I have not had a chance to speak to you before. Don't refuse."

"I am afraid I must. I have an engagement."

"With Carew?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"I am very good-natured to tell you. I am going to Naples with him for the day."

"You are going – Damnation!"

"You forget yourself," said Pauline. Then, when she saw the look on his face – the face of this man with whom she had played – she was startled.

"Forget myself! I wish I could. You shall not go to Naples."

"And how can you prevent it?"

"Are you daring me?"

"By no means," answered Pauline; and this time she really tried to speak gently. "I was calling to your remembrance the fact that there is no tie between us, Mr. Ash; you have no shadow of authority over my actions; I am free to do as I please."

"I know you are; that is the worst of it," he said, almost with a groan. "Pauline, don't play with me now. I have given up hoping for anything for myself – if I ever really did hope; I am not worthy of you. Whether you could make me worthy I don't know; but I don't ask you that; I don't ask you to try; it would be too much. I only ask you to be as you have been; as you were, I mean, during all those many weeks, not as you have been lately. Only a few days are left when I can see you freely; be kind to me, then, during those few days, and then I will take myself off."

"I mean to be kind; I am kind."

"Then ride with me to-morrow; just this once more."

"But I told you it was impossible; I told you I was going to Naples."

The pleading vanished from Ash's face and voice. "I never asked you to do that – to go off with me for a whole day."

Pauline did not answer; she was arranging the flowers which Mrs. Ash had industriously gathered.

"So much the greater fool I! – is that what you are thinking?" Ash went on, laughing discordantly.

For the moment Pauline forgot to be angry in the vague feeling, something like fear, which took possession of her. All fear is uncomfortable, and she hated discomfort; she gave herself a little inward shake as if to shake it off. "I shall ask Cousin Oc to go back to Paris next week," was her thought. "I have had enough of Italy for the present – Italy and madmen!"