On the days when there was no climbing of the islands that sink abruptly to the sea, the party could look at them from the deck or the library, as they passed. Ethel took the opportunity for her physical training, or put herself out of breath on a stationary bicycle, like those on which the travelers on the trans-Siberian line get the rust from their legs.
“You’ll tire yourself, Miss Rowrer,” Helia said to her, when she saw what ardor she displayed.
“No, no!” said Ethel, “just show me how to do it.”
Helia went through a few movements with consummate ease. There was no getting out of breath, no swelling of veins—neck and shoulders and arms were smooth as marble; for exercise only developed in her the exquisite purity of her form.
“Oh, Helia!” Ethel added, “show me how I can have a neck and shoulders and arms like yours.”
During these short training lessons her friendship for Helia grew; and it is possible Ethel’s only ambition was to have arms like Helia. But it was not such an ambition which the press had been attributing to her for some time back. For the newspapers were always talking about her. When the yacht entered the smallest port, it drew more attention than a war squadron. The cabbage-leaf papers of Calabria and Sicily all had something to say of Miss Rowrer. They spoke of her as a wild woman, because she had bought and saved from death the dog whom the natives were asphyxiating, in honor of foreign tourists, amid the noxious gases of a sulphur grotto. Then they had a story of some hermit on a cliff, whom she wished, so it seemed, to take to Chicago to have him bless her father’s stock-yard from the top of a sky-scraper!
“What fools!” said Will. “They’d do better to put glass in their windows and cultivate their nespoli and pomidoro than lose their time in such silliness. It’s true that time is not worth much in a country where Stromboli and Vesuvius take the place of our Pittsburgs and Homesteads—where there’s nothing smoking on the horizon except some old volcano!”
Yet the yachting-party found pleasure in the halts when, for a change, they went to dine at the hotels. The rushing down-stairs of the clerks and porters and maîtres-d’hôtel, who got suddenly into rank and waited for their orders, amused them. For the landlords their landing was a signal to make all the hay they could while the sun was shining.
Not the cabbage-leaf papers alone, but the great journals also, printed Ethel’s name. At least, she concluded this must be the case one day when she remained on board while Will and the others visited the museum at Palermo. Ethel had letters to write and sat herself down near the music-room under an awning. The yacht was moored beside a great steamer for tourists. Without being seen she could hear, above her head, the talk of these cosmopolitan people, familiar with the Pyramids and the Acropolis, the Smyrna bazaars and Monte Carlo. The whole international swarm knew the Columbia by name. On the steamer they were talking travel and trade and the weather. Ethel heard her name pronounced along with the rest. They were discussing her probable marriage with the Duke of Morgania—“a glorious name in Europe.” “Do you know what Chartered is quoted at on the Stock Exchange?” “They’ll be a magnificent couple!” “The big Pyramid is seven hundred feet less than the Eiffel Tower.” “She’d be a charming duchess!” “The best chance Morgania ever had!”