I tripped gaily, too, at first, but the sun grew hot and so did I. Still, on we went, up the face of the cliff, and with every interval for rest came a new and wonderful view. By-and-by we got up so high that the row boats on their way to the Blue Grotto looked like little water-beetles, with oars for legs; and though the waves were beating against the rocks, we could no longer see them; the water appeared as smooth as an endless sapphire floor polished for the sirens to dance on. It was all so entrancing that I didn't know I was almost getting a sun-stroke; besides, who would think of sunstrokes in January, no matter how hot the weather? Brown remarked that my lips were pale, but I said I was only a little tired. In rather more than an hour we came to the top, which was Anacapri. My head ached, so we went into a restaurant place, which turned out to be very famous. I sat on the wall of a terrace looking over a sheer precipice a thousand feet high until I felt partly rested; then a handsome girl, evidently of Saracen blood, brought me delicious lemonade. We had started away to walk into the village of Anacapri, when everything began to swim before my eyes. Luckily we were close to a house. It was a little old domed white house with a long vine-covered pergola, and it said "Bella Vista" over the gateway. I had to lean on Brown's arm going in, and the last thing I remember was a kind-faced man hurrying to the door. The next thing I was in a big white bedroom, sparsely furnished and daintily neat. I had fainted and they had sent for a doctor. Presently he appeared, and afterwards I found out that he was quite a celebrity-the "Doctor Antonio" of Capri. He said it was the sun; I hadn't eaten enough breakfast, and I'd had a "heat-stroke"-not half so bad as a sun-stroke; still, I ought to rest.
I was quite willing to obey the prescription, for I was falling in love with the house, and longed to stay in it for days. The room I was in had four windows, each one looking out on a view that stay-at-home people would give hundreds of dollars to see; and it opened on to a lovely private terrace. Brown took a message "downstairs" to Capri, asking Aunt Mary to pack up and come to the Bella Vista, which she did, and we've been here for two days. I was quite well in a few hours, but I wouldn't have gone back to more conventional comforts for anything. Anacapri and our little house seem as if they were in the world on top of the clouds which Jack discovered when he climbed his beanstalk up into the sky. Why, the first morning when I waked here, and opened my glass door on to the terrace to look at the sea, and the umbrella pines, and the cypresses (which I seem to hear, as well as see, like sharp notes in music), four or five large white clouds got up from the terrace where they'd been sitting and sneaked past me through the door into the room, just like the cows which, I suppose, the gods kept on Olympus to milk for their ambrosia. And the sunsets, with Vesuvius set like a great conical amethyst in a blaze of ruby and topaz glory! It is something to come to Anacapri for. But at the Bella Vista we would not feed you on sunsets and cloud's milk alone. The little landlord and landlady cook and wait on us, and I never tasted daintier dishes than they "create."
There are more things than sunsets and pines and cypresses to see too. One takes walks all over the island. One goes to rival inns where rival beauties dance the tarantella, and vie in announcements that Tiberius amused himself by throwing victims in the sea from the exact site of their houses. Oh, everything is Tiberius here. He is regarded by the peasants as quite a modern person, whom you may meet in a dark night, if you haven't murmured a prayer before the lovely white virgin in her illuminated grotto of rock. Mothers say to their children, "If you do that, Tiberius will catch you"; and the English colony of Capri quarrel over the gentleman's character, on which there are differences of opinion.
The most beautiful house I ever saw in my life is set on the brow of the precipice at Anacapri; it is a dream-house; or else its owner rubbed a lamp, and a genie gave it to him. It is long and low and white, and filled with wonderful treasures which its possessor found under the sea-spoil of Tiberius' buried palaces. The floors are paved with mosaic of priceless coloured marble, which Tiberius brought from distant lands for himself; a red sphinx, which Tiberius imported from Egypt crouches on the marble wall, gazing over the cliffs and the sea; Tiberius' statues in marble and bronze line the arched, open-air corridors. There's nothing else like it in the world in these days, and few men would be worthy to have it and to live there; but I think, from what I hear, that the man who does live there is worthy of it all.
You will find a rose and a spray of jasmine in this letter. I picked the rose for you, in the pergola, and our landlady gave me the jasmine. I wish I could send you more of the beauty of this magic island.
Your enchanted
Molly.
FROM JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE
Taormina, Sicily,
January 26.