For the lady had been busy all winter in Rome copying in the Borghese Gallery, and it was not until she had found herself almost alone among the deserted rooms, whence all her companions of the year had fled before fear of the fever, that she had also sought some place where she could paint, and rest from painting when she would, the remainder of the summer. This and a second-class railway-ticket were what had brought her to Naples, where she had driven to the Mole and embarked upon the little steamer just five minutes before the gentleman, who had come from Rome in a first-class carriage, also stepped upon it.
His appearance there, just upon that day of all days, might be called stranger than hers. For, really, there was no reason whatever for his being there that sleepy midsummer day. Indeed, reason had nothing whatever to do with it. It was brought about by something quite remote from reason—by an indescribable longing, which was perhaps, however, as unyielding a link in the chain of cause and effect—or of destiny, let us say—as any more visible and tangible one.
These two people were not entirely strangers to each other. Fifteen years before they had spent a summer together in an old farm-house far away beyond where the sun would set this evening behind old Roman Baiæ. That farm-house was wonderfully picturesque, although picturesqueness had been none of its original builder's intention. It had been a sort of manor-house, built by a blond and robust English family in memory of the Elizabethan mansion in which, father and son and son's son, they had thriven and decayed across the sea. Generations had come and gone since then. The Tudor gables and overhanging stories, like the Tudor nose in Westminster Abbey, had felt the tooth of time. The nose is imperious still, although its royal end is broken off, and it points heavenward with its regal pride not in the least abated with its proportions. Unlike the Tudor nose, the Tudor gables had weakened, and sunk and bulged in all sorts of picturesquely-pusillanimous lines and curves under a soft veil of moss. The house had become a medley of quaint humps and protuberances, huddled together without rhyme or reason by the taste or needs of each succeeding heir. But, flooded and dashed with blooming, radiant neglect, throttled with many-fingered vines, the gray centre of a rainbow of wild brier, syringa, hollyhocks and sunflowers, it was a delight to artistic eyes.
"It's only 'cos pa's enjoyed such pore health for long back, and we bein' all girls, that the ole place looks so like creation," would always say one of the "girls," thus apologetic of the dilapidation and decay which were the chief means of the family's support. For never an artist passed that way that he did not stay his steps and beg to be sheltered by that quaint old roof for at least a day or two. And when, gone hence, the strolling artist would sing of the idyllic nook he had found in a crescent of hills by the sea, where heaven came down to earth and board was but two dollars a week, others of his kind would be sure to be lured by echo of his strain to the same spot.
Thus every summer for three years the house had been full of boarders. Its owners gained thus the means to live during all the year, and also were able to secure a reservoir of gossip and tittle-tattle from which to draw refreshing streams during all the arid days between October's late dahlias and the earliest roses of June.
The two people upon the Neapolitan steamer had met for the first time in the great dining-room one noon of June. It was at a farmer's dinner of beef, potatoes and dandelion-greens, finished with a sort of machicolated decoration of square pieces of rhubarb pie set beside each plate in saucers—nicked saucers, whereon indigo mandarins floated airily over sky-blue hills on their pious way from one indigo pagoda to another. Dancing vines at the open windows spread quaint, shifting embroidery over the coarse tablecloth, yellow walls and unpainted floor. The drowsy hum of bees was heard above the iron clatter of knives and forks. Sweet incense of myriad rose-censers floated above the vulgar odors of the meal, and the open doorway with its flat white doorstone was a picture-frame sculptured in foliage and bloom around a foreground of wild garden, of black sea-weed and sea-shell, roughened rocks, and then a borderless stretch of blue glittering sea and sky. There were half a dozen men and women around the table, who chanced at the moment the new boarder appeared to be elevating half a dozen noses in the air before the alkaline fumes of the hot biscuits.
She was rather a pretty little thing, with blue eyes, a collar all awry, and the headless, leafless stalks of what had once been red roses standing up valiantly in her brown hair.
"What a flutter-budget!" he thought as he saw by the swift, birdlike motion of her head that indeed flowers must needs have more than flower-like frames to remain long undecapitated amid all that breeziness.
And indeed "flutter-budget" was not amiss as a descriptive word for her who sang oftener than she spoke, because it was her nature to, and who danced more naturally than she walked, because God had made her so.
It was rather ridiculous to think of her painting pictures. One could scarcely imagine her doing anything that required a moment's repose, and therefore was not unnatural the remark whispered by the monochromatic Miss Grey into the ear of the water-colored Miss Bray as the newcomer floated to her seat: "She paint! Mmnph! I wouldn't trust her to paint a yellow dog!"