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 interested in her and the carrying out of my own secret plans, which can best be accomplished with the aid of a sympathetic mother. I wanted to reach Taormina as soon as possible, so as to be on the spot when the mater arrives. Naturally I did not openly oppose the will of a mere Brown against that of Brown's mistress. I merely hinted that there was said to be a good deal of white dust in Siracusa, and that it was hot. I also mentioned, inadvertently, that in some of the hotels there were mice. It was a blow to hear that Miss Randolph liked mice; but there was encouragement in Aunt Mary's "Oh!" of horror; and I lived in hope.
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 tableland 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.