The weather was perfect, the sea like a millpond, as we coasted down to Naples. The Raymonds kept very much to themselves. They would sit side by side for hours in their two chairs, with the same rug across their knees, whilst she read or did fancy-work, and he dozed and smoked. After dinner they paced the deck arm-in-arm, and only mixed with their fellow-passengers at meals. They seemed quite a devoted couple, and when I remarked this to Becky Sharpe, that lively lady exclaimed, “Devoted! Where are your dear old eyes? She is the acknowledged belle on board, though I can’t see myself what all the men are raving about. She reminds me exactly of one of those coloured pictures on a chocolate box—very pink cheeks, very blue eyes, very yellow hair. He is as jealous as a Turk. No man dare approach her. He never leaves her by herself for one second; they sit half the day under a big umbrella, and at table are flanked and faced by old married people. He won’t allow her to join in any games after dinner, poor girl, and packs her off to her cabin at eight o’clock. Do you mean to say you have not noticed this? Why, it is the talk of the ship!”
I had not noticed it, but I now began to see that there was something in Mrs. Sharpe’s remarks, even allowing for her exaggeration. I never saw a man speak to Mrs. Raymond, I never saw her husband quit her side, and I observed that, although he was in the saloon of an evening, playing whist and other games, she was not there; and once she said to me at table—
“Do all the ladies go to their cabins at eight o’clock, so as to leave the saloon for the gentlemen?”
“No, certainly not,” I answered. “I never think of leaving till ten. I like my game of whist, and we generally have some music.”
That same evening she came up to me and said, “My husband says I may stay up too, if you will allow me to sit beside you. Please do, Mrs. Paulet; it is so dreadfully dull in my cabin. I cannot go to sleep at eight o’clock, like a little child.”
“Of course you may sit beside me,” I answered.
I glanced over, and saw Mr. Raymond’s keen, piercing eyes on me and her. We were all an elderly party; no one among us was likely to rouse his jealousy. She, poor girl, seemed delighted to have so much liberty, and chattered away, as I had never heard her, to Mrs. Sharpe, and Charlie, and the Barkers. Every evening she established herself beside me, work in hand, and thus it came to pass that I became Mrs. Raymond’s chaperone!
It was evident that Mr. Raymond was rich; he had the air of a man who had never had to think of money. It was whispered that he and the Mexicans and Americans played very high, and that when he lost he laughed and paid up. Mrs. Raymond’s dresses were Parisian, more costly than tasteful. She came out in a set of Russian sables one cold evening, that made the other women respect her as they had never respected her previously, and her diamond bangles, brooches, and earrings caused even the American ladies to exclaim. All her belongings were in keeping, for one day she called me into her cabin to show me a picture, and I noticed the luxuries with which she was surrounded. The silver-mounted looking-glass and brushes, gold-topped scent-bottles, the cabin and its valuable contents, including her jewel-case, were all left in charge of Mr. Raymond’s Mahomedan servant, a stern-faced, elderly man, with a square-cut beard, who stood outside the door with folded arms, as motionless and rigid as a statue. I had had plenty of Mahomedan servants of my own, and I must say that I did not take a fancy to Ahmed Khan. He never salaamed to any one but his own master, and there seemed to me a sort of scarcely repressed insolence in his stolid glance. He was devoted to Mr. Raymond, more like a dog than a human being; he slept on the mat outside his cabin by night, and obeyed his merest glance by day.
“To see Naples and die” is a very fine expression. I have seen Naples harbour with dirty brownish waves, seen Vesuvius covered with snow, the streets covered with mud and slush, and have very nearly died of cold and sea-sickness after an awful passage from Messina, in the very teeth of a gale; but now, en route out, Naples looked gay and bright—but not a bit more beautiful in my perhaps prejudiced eyes than Bombay—and, as the steamer was to wait twenty hours, we all took boat and went ashore. Charles and I had been to Pompeii, had seen the cathedral, so we merely drove about shopping, and along the Ciaja; and almost everywhere we went we encountered the Raymonds, with Ahmed Khan in attendance. She looked radiant. We saw them in photographers’ shops, in milliners’, in jewellers’, and she whispered to me “that he had given her loads of pretty things, and that she was sending presents home, and had had her photograph taken.” I had never seen her in such spirits, for she was generally rather quiet, not to say depressed. At the Museum we met them again, and, as we were poking about among the wonderful remains from Pompeii, two young men came in, talking in the loud voices of the British tourists abroad.
One was a tall nice-looking man, with dark grey eyes; the other was smaller and plainer, but had a certain air of distinction about him, and any one could see at a glance that they were both officers in the British Army. They went round together, audibly discussing and admiring all they saw, and then they evidently caught sight of us—or, more properly, of Mrs. Raymond, who was examining a vase with Charles. I was a good deal surprised to hear one say to the other in Hindustani—