The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories. Woolson Constance Fenimore

Pauline answered.

      The next moment they were flying over the plain.

      III

      The table d'hôte of the Star of Italy, the Salerno inn from whose mysteries (of eels and chestnuts) Mrs. Preston had fled – this unctuous table d'hôte had been unusually brilliant during this month of March; upon several occasions there had been no less than fifteen travellers present, and the operatic young landlord himself, with his affectionate smile, had come in to hand the peas.

      The most unnoticed person was always a tall woman of fifty-five, who, entering with noiseless step, slipped into her chair so quickly and furtively that it seemed as if she were afraid of being seen standing upon her feet. Once in her place, she ate sparingly, looking neither to the right nor the left, holding her knife and fork with care, and laying them down cautiously, as though she were trying not to waken some one who was asleep. But the table d'hôte of the Star of Italy was never asleep; the travellers, English and American, could not help feeling that they were far from home on this shore where so recently brigands had prowled. It is well known that this feeling promotes conversation.

      One evening a pink-cheeked woman, who wore a little round lace cap perched on the top of her smooth gray hair, addressed the silent stranger at her left hand. "You have been to Pæstum, I dare say?" she said, in her pleasant English voice.

      "No."

      "But you are going, probably? Directly we came, yesterday morning, we engaged horses and started at once."

      "I don't know as I care about going."

      "Not to see the temples?"

      "I didn't know as there were temples," murmured the other, shyly.

      "Fancy! But you really ought to go, you know," the pleasant voice resumed, doing a little missionary work (which can never come amiss). "The temples are well worth seeing; they are Greek."

      "I've been ter see a good many buildings already: in Paris there were a good many; my son took me," the tall woman answered, her tone becoming more assured as she mentioned "my son."

      "But these temples are – are rather different. I was saying to our neighbor here that she really ought on no account to miss going down to Pæstum," the fresh-faced Englishwoman continued, addressing her husband, who sat next to her on the right, for the moment very busy with his peas (which were good, but a little oily). "The drive is not difficult. And we found it most interesting."

      "Interesting? It may well be interesting; finest Greek remains outside of Athens," answered the husband, a portly Warwickshire vicar. He bent forward a little to glance past his wife at this ignorer of temples at her other hand. "American," he said to himself, and returned to his peas.

      The friendly vicaress offered a few words more the next day. Coming in from her walk, in her stout shoes, and broad straw hat garnished with white muslin, she was entering the inn by the back door, when she espied her neighbor of the dinner-table sitting near by on a bench. There was nothing to see but a paling fence; she was unoccupied, unless a basket with Souvenir de Lucerne on one side, and a flat bouquet of artificial flowers on the other, represented occupation.

      "Do you prefer this to the garden in front?" the English woman asked, in some surprise.

      "Yes, I think I do."

      "I must differ from you, then, because there we have the sea, you know; 'tis such a pretty view."

      "I don't know as I care about the sea; it's all water – nothing to look at."

      "Ah! I dare say it makes you ill. We had a very nasty day when we crossed from Folkestone."

      "No; it ain't that exactly. I sit here because I like ter see the things grow," hazarded the American, timidly, as if she felt that some explanation was expected.

      "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.