The Lightning Conductor/Chapter 19
FROM JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE
Taormina, Sicily,
My dear Montie,
We are at Taormina! When I say that, I want you to realise that we have arrived at the Most Beautiful Place in the world. Nothing less than capital letters can express it. We have had six glorious days in Sicily, and it is fit that these wild ramblings of mine with the Goddess should end here amidst such scenes of loveliness that even the imagination can conjure up nothing more exquisite. For end these ramblings must; to be continued, as I hope (but dare not expect), in a life-journey in which I may wear my own name shared then by her. It is through my dear, kind, little match-making mother that I trust this may be brought about; for my pluck fails me when I think of confessing my imposture to the Goddess.
I told you in my letter from Rome that at the hotel there I found a forwarded letter from the mater, saying that on account of the continued rain and cold she and the inevitable Barrows had determined to leave Rome suddenly and go to Naples, perhaps to Sicily, in search of sunshine. She added that she had been worried about me, as she had not heard anything for weeks, from which it is clear that at least three letters have somehow miscarried—doubtless owing to her constant change of address and the carelessness of hotel people in forwarding. The worst of it is that I haven't been able to reassure her mind, as she gave me no new address, but merely said that when she was settled she would wire. Of course, I gave the hall-porter at the "Grand" the most explicit directions as to where I was to be found, and tipped him well. The result is that on my arrival here in Taormina I found a telegram (sent on from Rome) to say that my mother and the Barrows will arrive here to-morrow to stay a week with Sir Evelyn Haines, an old friend of the mater's, who has, I believe, bought a deserted monastery and turned it into a fine house. To-morrow, then, my mother will be here; I shall tell her everything, throw myself on her mercy, and get her to make peace for me with the Goddess. That, at least, is my present plan. But who can tell how events may upset it?
Well, as you don't know Italy south of Naples, perhaps you'd like to hear something of our Sicilian adventures. Of adventures, in the strict sense, we have had less here than in other places. If I hadn't been certain that the country was quite safe as far as brigandage is concerned, I should not have been such a fool as to bring two ladies through it in a motor-car. But we have had, as I said, "six glorious days," and the Goddess and I are agreed that in many ways Sicily is the best thing we have done on our whole long tour.
We landed at Palermo, after a night passage in a comfortable boat from Naples, leaving one world-famous bay to enter another scarcely less beautiful. Rarely have I seen anything finer than Palermo and the group of mountains round it as we steamed in at sunrise on a white and gold morning. The ship goes alongside the quay, so there was no difficulty at all about landing the car. It was slung, and gently deposited on shore by the ship's crane, and we drove off on it at once to the Villa Igiea. Everything was new to me in Sicily, and I confess that the Igiea was a surprise. One has heard that Sicily is a hundred years behind the times, and that in accommodation the island is deficient. That cannot be said any longer. The Igiea is perfect. Miss Randolph reluctantly admitted that there is nothing better in America. In situation the house is unique, lying under the tall, pink Monte Pellegrino. It was built by the Sicilian millionaire Florio for a sanitarium, but never so used. It is a long building of honey-coloured stone, standing in an exquisite terraced garden that stretches along the sea, and actually overhangs it a charmingly irregular garden, with many unexpected nooks, and sweet-smelling flowers, palms, and all kinds of sub-tropical plants, fountains playing in marble basins, and a huge, half-covered balcony, where everyone except insignificant chauffeurs assemble for tea. Altogether a gay and delightful place, and it is having the effect of bringing to the island a stream of rich and luxury-loving travellers.
From afar I saw Miss Randolph and Aunt Mary breakfasting on the big balcony; and they could not have lingered long over their unpacking, for at ten o'clock I had orders to be at the hotel door with the Napier. I knew no more of Sicily than they did, but it is my mêtier to keep up the reputation of a walking encyclopædia; therefore, in the small watches of the night, while the Goddess and her Aunt slept the sleep of the just, I had poured over guide-books and fat little volumes of Sicilian history. What I wasn't prepared to tell them that heavenly morning about Ulysses, Polyphemus, the omnipotent Roger, and other persons of local interest, to say nothing of the right buildings to be visited, was not worth telling.
We ran along the shore, past harbours and basins where strangely shaped boats lay at anchor on a smooth, blue sea, with an elusive background of shimmering, snowclad mountains; and in a street, like a moving picture gallery, we made the acquaintance of those painted carts which are indigenous to the island. Quaintly rudimentary as carts, these extraordinary vehicles are remarkable as works of art, and the Goddess did exactly what I expected of her—wanted to buy one. With her usual quick discrimination, she picked out a fine specimen, the wheels, shafts, and underwork a mass of elaborate wood-carving, richly coloured, the boldly painted panels representing a victory of Roger's, attended with great slaughter. The little horse was jingling with bells, and almost overweighted with his towering scarlet plumes.
"I must have that," exclaimed my impulsive Angel. "Please stop the car, Brown, and ask the man how much he will sell it for, just as it stands—harness and all, but not the horse."
The much-enduring Brown stopped, ran back, hailed the owner of the cart, who was accompanied by a dove-eyed wife and seven Saracenic children all piled in anyhow on top of each other like parcels. Never, probably, was a man more surprised than by the question hurled at him, but Sicilians retain too deep a strain of the oriental to show that they are flustered. He said in a strange patois that his cart was the pride and joy of the household; that it had been decorated by the one man in Sicily who had inherited the true art of historical cart-painting; that it was one of the best on the island, and he had expected it to remain an ornament to his family unto the third and fourth generations, but that he would part with it for the sum of one thousand lira. I beat him down until, with tears in his magnificent eyes, he consented to accept two-thirds, which really was more than the cart was worth, or than he had expected to get when he began to bargain. The cart was Miss Randolph's, and later that day I arranged about having it taken to pieces, boxed, and sent to New York. She was delighted with her purchase, and in such a radiant mood that she thought everything and everyone she saw perfect, from the men milking goats to the dramatically talented gardien of the beautiful old red-domed San Giovanni degli Eremiti, once a mosque.
The German Emperor is rather a hero of hers, and when we left the car in the street and visited the Palazzo Reale she was charmed to learn that he had pronounced a view from a certain balcony the finest he had ever seen, resting his elbows on the iron railing and gazing out over the city for half an hour. It really was inspiring—the blue harbour and the ring of sparkling white mountains, but I'm not prepared to agree with the superlative. I put the view of Naples from St. Elmo ahead. When the Goddess came to see the Capella Palatina with its gem-like Arabo-Norman mosaics, she was moved almost to tears. "It is matchless; the most beautiful thing on earth!" she said. But afterwards I drove her (Aunt Mary you may take for granted) out four steep miles to Monreale, and it was well that she had saved a few adjectives. Not that she is a girl who scatters much small coin of this kind, but she has usually the right word when a thing does not go beyond words. When it does she says nothing, except with her eloquent eyes. But in the ancient cloisters of that old monastery I watched her face, and it was a study. I believe, though each carved capital on each column is different from the others, she could enumerate in order the quaint and intricate biblical designs. In one secluded and dusky corner there was the faint tinkle of a fountain—a wonderful fountain, very old, and copied from a still older Moorish memory, by some Arab who served his Norman conquerors. My beautiful girl was a picture as she stood gazing at it, leaning against a pillar, her white dress half in sunshine, half in shadow, her brown hair burnished to living gold.
For the modern part of Palermo she didn't much care; the crowded Corso Vittorio Emanuele; the Quattro Canti, which is the Piccadilly Circus of the Sicilian capital, or even the cathedral. But she loved the Villa Giulia, which she was greatly surprised to find a garden, not knowing that all gardens are "villas" in Sicily; she and Aunt Mary went in alone, while I waited outside the gates in the car; but her beauty and pretty frock excited so much attention that she was quite embarrassed, and I reaped advantage from her discomfiture, being invited to act as guard in the Botanical Gardens. I begged for her Kodak there, to take a photo (ostensibly) of the big building devoted to lectures, but quietly waited until she had inadvertently "crossed my path." Then I snapped her.
We stayed in Palermo for three days, and even so had the barest glimpse of the place. If I have luck, and win Her forgiveness first, and then at last Herself, maybe we shall come again to Sicily together, lingering at all the places we are slighting now. But, dare I dream of it?
On the fourth day we set out for a visit to one of the show places of the island Girgenti of the Temples. And now we began to understand why the millionaire Florio, with his four noble motor-cars panting in their stalls, has not been able to induce his friends to stock their Sicilian stables in the same way. We knew already that Italian roads were generally inferior to French ones; that it was comparatively difficult to buy petrol, especially good petrol, or essence, in Italy, and I loaded up the willing car with several reserve tins on leaving the Igiea; but of course I had had to take the state of the roads on hearsay. The surprise and interest of the crowd, even in Palermo, where Signor Florio often drives, warned us that not many ventured, with "mechanically propelled vehicles" where we were about to venture, and I was a little dubious, though the Goddess was in the highest spirits and yearning for brigands. She had heard at the hotel of a very picturesque one who owned a lair in the mountains, and urged me to pay the chivalrous gentleman a morning call, but I was both obdurate and unbelieving.
We started; occasionally, as we progressed, it was necessary to ask the way. The peasants we passed on foot, on donkey back, or crowded into their painted carts, were so wrapped in wonder at sight of us that it was useless to shout at them without warning; they couldn't recover themselves in time to answer before we had sped by. So I adopted a method I have often found useful. I selected my man at a distance, singling him out from his companions, and pointing my finger straight at him as I approached. This excited his curiosity and riveted his attention; he was then able to reply when I demanded a direction.
From Palermo on the north to Girgenti on the south of the island is something over sixty miles the way we went—sixty miles of bad and up-and-down road. Sicily is poor, and it could not but be to its advantage if visitors came to it in larger numbers. I should say one of the first things they ought to do is to improve the roads, and make them decently passable for carriages, motor-cars, and bicycles. At present the plan of mending the roads is to dump down so much "metal," and leave the local traffic to grind it in. As everybody avoids it and there is little rain, there it stays, and in consequence patches of sharp, loose stones lie over the roads the year round. Steer with all the skill one can, it's impossible always to dodge the stones, and our tyres got a good punishment.
The interior of the island, though grandly impressive, is unusually bare, save for its wild flowers, the ancient forests having long since disappeared. Our road lay for a time along the sea, and then inland, always mounting up into the heart of the mountains, by long, green valleys and over desolate plateaux where flocks of sheep and goats grazed under the guardianship of wild-looking shepherds and fierce dogs, the latter violently resenting the intrusion of the car into their fastnesses. We saw few people on the road, and passed only the poorest villages; but we had brought an excellent luncheon which we ate by the roadside, we three (would it had been two!), alone in a wide and solitary landscape. A very few years ago such a journey as this across the interior of Sicily would have been highly dangerous on account of brigands. As it was we had scowls from dark-browed men whose horses took fright at us, but no such encounter as we had with the peasants in France. An Englishman at Palermo who has lived long in Sicily warned me that every Sicilian carries a gun, and said that in the wild interior they would very likely shoot at the automobile for the mere fun of the thing as they would at any other strange beast that was new to them. This wasn't encouraging to hear. But though we met some truculent-looking fellows on the road, their sentiments towards us seemed to be those of wonder rather than animosity.
The sun was sinking in a haze of rose and gold as we came to the crest of the long hill on which stands the town of Girgenti, passed through it, and coasted down to the Hotel des Temples. Beyond the hotel, which stands isolated between the town and the sea, we saw suddenly the great Temple of Concord, a lonely and magnificent monument. It affects the imagination as Stonehenge does when you see it for the first time. The red rays of the sun shone aslant upon its splendid amber-coloured pillars and colossal pediments, revealing every detail of the pure Doric architecture. When the smiling Signer Gagliardi had received us and allotted rooms to the party (the best in the house for the American ladies on their automobile, and a little one for the chauffeur), I strolled in the fragrant old garden, and leaning on the balustrade by the ancient well of carved stone, looked long over this wonderful plateau above the sea, where once stood perhaps the finest assemblage of Greek temples the world has ever seen. Next morning we went down to see the temples at close quarters. I had been warned that the road would be too rough for an automobile; but a gallant Napier which had passed through the forest of the Landes and braved the dragon's teeth sown on the roads of Sicily's fastnesses was not to be dismayed by a few jolting miles. Everyone in the hotel—English, American, German—came out to see us start, predicting that if we came back the car wouldn't, or if it came back, it would be—so to speak—over our dead bodies. Aunt Mary was so much impressed by these dark prophecies that she refused to accompany us, and engaged one of the odd little carriages from the ancient town of Girgenti bristling on the height above our hotel. Thus it came about that I had my Goddess to myself, and in her congenial company I hardly knew whether the road was rough or no. Certainly the good Napier did not complain, and as for the tyres, the roads of Central Sicily had made them callous.
I thought then that never was such a day in the memory of man; but several days have come and gone since—also with her, and a man's opinion changes. I knew that in the society of no one else would there have hovered such a glamour over the ruins of Greek glory. Five noble temples they are, my Montie, of which two are almost perfect; the others pathetic relics of past grandeur, with their heaped, fallen columns. There they stand—or lie prone with here and there a majestic pillar pointing skyward—in a stately row between the brilliant blue sea and the billowing flower-starred plain on the one side, the hills and the grim city, like a crow's nest, on the other. Their sandstone columns hold oyster and scallop shells from prehistoric ages, while here and there a broken vein of coralline stains the dun surface as if with blood. Below the towering temples are shimmering olive trees, silver-green as they quiver in the warm breeze, and on this day of ours a myriad budding almond-blossoms were breaking at their massive feet in rosy foam. All the ground was carpeted with yellow daisies, pimpernel, and iris, blue-grey as my lady's eyes. Together we pictured processions of men and maidens, white-robed, bearing urns and waving garlands of roses, chanting pæans in a slow ascent of the amber-hued temple steps. We also were in a mood to sing praises as we drove back to the friendly hotel in its high eyrie of garden.
In the afternoon, I am sorry to say, we went up into the town—it is a bleak and gruesome memory; and next day we had a hundred and twenty miles' drive to Catania, our faces turned towards Etna, the Queen of Sicily, which we had not yet seen, but longed to see. In view of the awful roads we were likely to encounter, I had asked the ladies if they would mind starting at seven. They were ready on the minute, and I think they were repaid by the beauty of the newly waked morning, bathed in diamond-dew, and pearly with sunrise.
Again we drove through strange country, sterile save for the crowding prickly pears with their leering green faces, tangled garlands of pink, wild geranium, and a blaze of poppies spreading over the meadow land like a running flame. We penetrated the heart of Sicily, wound through her undulating valleys, and were frowned on by her ruined robber-castles; but the towns were discouragingly squalid, for much of our way led through the sulphur-mine district.
The true interest of that day came when from afar off we descried twin mountains, each bearing a huddled town on its summit. My midnight studies warned me that they were Castrogiovanni and Calascibetta, and I had suggested to Miss Randolph on starting that even at the risk of having to drive to Catania in the dark, we should not miss a visit to Castrogiovanni. At Palermo she had bought Douglas Sladen's book, In Sicily, and Miss Lorimer's travel-romance, By the Waters of Sicily, so that she was already fired at the name of Castrogiovanni, and needed no persuasion from me to turn aside to scale the ancient rock-fortress that marks the very centre of Sicily. I am pretty sure that never before has a motor-car climbed that winding road, and I think the whole population turned out and ran at our heels as we drove slowly through the sombre, wind-swept, eagle-eyrie of a town. As it happened, the day was overcast, and scudding clouds drifted coldly across the mountain-top, showing us the reason for the great blue hoods that the men wear over their heads, their Saracenic faces peering out as from a cave. We alighted in the market-place, and leaned on the balustrade to see the tremendous view—all Sicily spread out below us, gleaming with opaline lights and shadows. Hundreds of people clustered curiously round us and watched with dark, lustrous eyes, as if we had been beings from another world. We tried to ignore all these silent watchers, who, Aunt Mary said, gave her "a creepy feeling in her spine," and gazed out over the tumbled mountains of Sicily.
Suddenly a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and descended to earth like a golden ladder. It was the signal for a transformation scene. The white mists coiling round us, disappeared; the clouds floated away before a breath of balmy wind, and the landscape lay bright and clear at our feet. Then "Oh! What is that?" exclaimed Miss Randolph. I followed the glance of her eyes, and far away there was a great white floating cone of pearl soaring up into the sky. Yes, it was Etna!
At Castrogiovanni there is no inn where a lady can stay, so when we had seen the view there was nothing more to keep us. I had stopped the motor when we left the car, and everyone crowded eagerly round us as the ladies mounted to their places. Their amazement when they saw me start the motor with one turn of the handle was immense. A kind of awed murmur went up from the crowd; and when, with a warning blast on the horn, I drove slowly through their parting ranks, circled round in the market-place, just avoiding a procession of masked Misericordia, and putting on speed, passed swiftly through the streets, with a great shout everyone started to run after the car. We distanced them easily (Miss Randolph imprudently showering pennies), and ran at a fair pace down the winding road that led to the valley. Looking up, we could see the terraces and every window of the houses alive with wondering heads. Castrogiovanni will remember for many a day the visit of the first motor-car to its historic heights.
Catania is, I think, memorable to Miss Randolph merely because she bought there at a tiny but famous shop incredible quantities of curious Sicilian amber, streaked green with sulphur, absolutely unique, and valued as a luck-bringer. She says that she has a "pocket-piece" for each one of her most intimate friends in New York. Judging by the provision made, the name of these intimates must be legion. Apart from her opinion, however, I humbly venture to think that Catania has its points, if only people stopped long enough to see them, which they don't, Catania being the Basle of Sicily—the place of departure for somewhere else. In our case the somewhere else was Syracuse.
Now the Goddess had been looking forward to Siracusa; I'm not sure that she was not by way of regarding her whole past as working slowly up to a sight of that place, since she had come to think of it. She had made up her royal mind to stop there some time, dreaming in the quarries where the seven thousand Greeks languished in captivity while the Siracusan beauties, under red umbrellas, derided or brazenly admired them. She had, so to speak, made a note of Dionysius' Ear, and the Greek and Roman theatres, and already she had bought a photograph of a strange, Dante-esque den in the rocks which resembled Hades and was called Paradise. She planned an excursion up the little river Anapo to see the papyrus, and the deep blue pool of jewelled fish at the source; and there were various drives and walks which, she thought, would keep her at the Villa Politi at least a week. But, on my part, I was equally determined that she should not stop an hour over the two days I had grudgingly allotted her. Not that I wasn't interested in Siracusa; I was, intensely, but I was and am a good deal more 
"THE GEM OF ALL IS THE ANCIENT GREEK THEATRE."
In order not to waste a moment, I turned the car aside on the way to Siracusa, and drove along a white road between olive-clad hills to the ancient Greek stronghold of Fort Euryelus, which once guarded the western extremity of that great table-land which was the splendid city of Siracusa. You, who know your Thucydides better than I do, are probably well up in all the thrilling events which took place there four hundred years before Christ; but the Goddess depended largely upon my lips for bread-crumbs of knowledge, and her awed interest in the perfectly preserved magazines for food, the subterranean galleries, and the secret sallyport betrayed to the enemy by a traitor, was pretty to see. From a tower of piled stones I pointed away towards Etna with Taormina at its feet and said, "There—there lies the beauty-spot of Sicily." Thus I got in my entering wedge.
It was four o'clock when we finally reached Siracusa, but I took my lady and her aunt for a glimpse of Arethusa's fountain in the town before driving them into perhaps the most wonderful garden in the world—the double garden of the Villa Politi. It is double because the heights, on a level with the white balconied hotel, bloom with flowers and billow with waving olive trees; while down below, far below, lie the haunted quarries, starry now in their tragic shadows with the golden spheres of oranges. The latomia forms a subterranean garden; when the brilliant flower-beds above are scintillating with noonday heat, down there, under the orange trees with their white blossoms, it is always cool and dim, with a green light like a garden under the sea.
The quarry is deep, with sheer white walls overgrown with ivy and purple bouganvillia. It is of enormous extent, winding irregularly, crossed here and there with a slight bridge, and the hotel stands on the very edge. Far away lies Siracusa, a streak of pearl against the deep indigo of the sea. We went down into the latomia and wandered into its most secret places. But when we came upon a pile of skulls Aunt Mary beat a retreat. The ghosts of the tortured Greeks haunted the place, she vowed, and lest she should be lost in the labyrinth of the quarry, she had to be escorted up to the world of mortals.
Next day we did most of the things that Miss Randolph had set her heart on, but not all. My alluring picture of Taormina consoled her for what she had to miss, and she consented to be torn away on the following morning.
Our drive to-day has been a scamper through Paradise. The road we took wound through orange groves, the sea lay glittering below us, mountains towering above, each hill-top crested with a ruin which had crumbled to decay when the world was young. My Goddess said that she had never known how much truer than history mythology was until this magic morning. Why, we saw the stones that Polyphemus threw after Ulysses, and the scene of Acis' love, and always before us, beckoning us on, was the white, hovering cone of Etna.
At last we struck the little station of Giardini on the coast, the nearest to Taormina, which lies some hundreds of feet above on a high shoulder of the mountains. An exquisite road, engineered in gradual curves, winds upwards along the mountain breast, and as usual the Napier took it at an easy ten miles an hour, and could have done it faster if I had let her. The view grew fairer and fairer as we mounted, and the coast line disclosed itself to north and south. In some three miles we were at the gate of the town. Taormina is practically a long, straight street, at one end the Timeo, at the other the San Domenico. It is simply a Sicilian village, with its Norman fountain and its crumbling palaces, but with a history that goes back to Greece in its prime. Above rises on a splendid height the old Castello; further inland, and higher still, is the wild village of Mola peeping over the edge of a precipice that overhangs the valley. Twenty miles away floats the stately cone of Etna. It is a place of entrancing beauty, and the gem of it all is the ancient Greek theatre. I suppose that nowhere in the world have nature and the noblest art that ever adorned the earth combined in a more perfect picture.
The resting-place chosen by Miss Randolph is not out of that picture, but a part of it. For five hundred years it was a monastery. How well those good old monks knew how to do themselves! They laid out a fairy garden on a gracious headland above the sea, overlooking a panorama the most beautiful in Sicily. They planted it thick with orange and lemon trees and flowers as sweet as bloomed in Eden. Now the monks are banished, but the garden remains, and their old home (with its lovely cloisters, its long, dim corridors pannelled with painted saints, its tiled rooms and deep-set windows) opens hospitable doors to strangers.
Aunt Mary is delighted with the San Domenico, because a "real live prince" is her landlord. Even the Goddess says that it makes her feel more than ever that she is living in a fairy story. Now, if only the fairy godmother will come along to-morrow, and waving her wand over Brown, transform him into a worthier hero of that story, and soften the heart of the Princess! Do you think it will be so? In any event, it has done me good to write you this. If all goes well I'll wire. I don't think there's much sleep for me to-night. As soon as there's a chance that the mater can have arrived I shall go down to Santa Margherita, Sir Evelyn Haines' place, and have it out with her.
Your somewhat distracted but faithful friend,