Rocky turned quickly round, and something in her throat seemed to tighten.
“Are you going up Vesuvius?” she asked.
“No—out to Pompeii.”
She smiled a little constrainedly.
“So are we—perhaps we shall meet,” and she wondered how Gina would manage on the rough roads, of which Sir John had warned them, in the high-peg heeled shoes which she invariably favoured when she was not wearing coloured sandals.
Lucky Gina all the same, she thought with a half sigh. Miss Esther turned away. “I suppose I must get ready,” she said anxiously. “I wonder whether I shall want a thick coat?”
“I think it will be hot,” Rocky warned her.
Miss Esther hesitated.
“Well, I think I’ll take a coat,” she said at last as if it were a matter of national importance. “I can carry it over my arm.”
“Clive will carry it for you,” Rocky said wickedly.
Miss Esther gave her a grateful little smile and hurried away.
Clive looked at Rocky with a long-suffering air.
“Have you asked the Captain and the Purser and the head steward to join us as well?” he enquired.
“Don’t be horrid,” Rocky retorted calmly. “Perhaps some day you’ll be a lonely old bachelor longing for someone to be kind to you and then you’ll know how it feels.”
“If I’m a bachelor it will be your fault,” he answered.
Rocky turned away, leaning her arms on the ship’s rails, her eyes on the panorama before her.
She gave a little start when Clive spoke.
“Will you be here for a moment? I want to get some money——”
“I’ve got plenty,” she called after him, but he walked away, and she returned to her rapt dreaming.
She was suddenly aware that Wheeler was beside her. Funny, she thought, for she had not turned her head or even been conscious of his footstep, and yet she knew he was there, for something, like an unexpected warmth, seemed to touch her.
“It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly.
“Very,” he agreed.
She glanced down at his hand, which was resting on the rail, and she wished that it was possible to slip her own confidingly beneath it. And then she found herself wondering whether he ever held Gina’s hand, with its slim whiteness and almond-shape painted nails.
She looked again at the Bay before her.
“I wish we could go on and on for ever,” she said impulsively. “In the ship, I mean—I wish we need never go back.”
“What about those we have left behind?” he asked.
Rocky shivered, but she did not answer, and he said: “You’d grow tired of it—people grow tired of everything in time, even of one another.”
“I suppose you speak from experience,” she said quickly.
“I do,” he agreed; and then he suddenly raised himself from his leaning posture to say quietly: “Here comes Mademoiselle.”
“Oh,” Rocky said faintly. He met her eyes.
“Mustn’t she?” he asked; but there was no time for Rocky to reply before the Frenchwoman joined them.
She was very smartly dressed in a chic little hat with a tiny bird’s plume on one side, and a loose silk coat worn carelessly over a frock to match.
“She might be going to a garden party,” Rocky thought; and then, instantly repenting, she said: “How nice you look.”
Gina made a little grimace.
“Nice! … such a dull word,” she protested.
“ ‘Beautiful,’ then,” Rocky said generously. She half sighed. “Well, I suppose I must get my humble beret. Good-bye; I hope you have a happy day.”
She felt a little depressed as she walked away. No doubt they would have a happy day, she thought; a happy day which she herself might have spent in Wheeler’s company.
Then she gave herself a little mental shake.
“This is Naples” she told herself firmly. “Naples, which you have always longed to see, so don’t be a misery and spoil it all.” She put on a plain washing coat and skirt and the white beret, and some flat-heeled brown-topped shoes, telling herself that if Gina chose to look like a garden party she would be severely businesslike, and sensible.
She caught a glimpse of Wheeler and Gina when she came back on deck, and then Miss Esther came rushing along dragging on her gloves.
“Sir John is coming with us,” she panted excitedly. “He has just asked me if I thought you would mind, and I said ‘No, I was quite sure you wouldn’t.’ Oh, I hope you don’t mind?” she appealed.
“I’m very glad,” Rocky said sincerely, and she laughed. “It looks as if we shall want three cars instead of two.”
Clive arrived on the scene; he surveyed his party with a cold eye.
“Sir John is coming too,” Rocky informed him saucily.
Miss Esther glanced at him anxiously.
“I hope you don’t mind?” she appealed once more.
“I’m past minding anything” Clive answered.
They were alongside now and the gangways were in place. The middle-aged couple who were on their way round the world had gone ashore and were already arguing furiously with a guide who had attacked them, and Rocky heard the husband say:
“A pound! … sheer robbery—I’ll give you ten shillings.”
Rocky tugged at Clive’s coat sleeve.
“Don’t let’s waste time,” she begged. And then suddenly Wheeler called to her:
“Miss Chandler!”
“He’s almost the only one who never calls me Rocky,” she thought as she turned towards him; and he said: “One of the stewards is looking for you. It’s a wireless message, I think.”
“A wireless!” Rocky changed colour. “It can’t be for me,” she said sharply, for how could it possibly be for her when nobody knew where she was—or—had they discovered?
But the steward was already coming towards her.
“Wireless message for you, Miss,” he said, and he put an envelope into her reluctant hand.
Chapter
8
It was queer, Rocky thought afterwards, that, although there were a dozen people grouped around her, she was only conscious of Wheeler’s eyes as with cold fingers she tore open the envelope and read the little message it contained. She read it through twice uncomprehendingly, as if it were written in a foreign language which she did not understand, and then with a great effort she forced herself to speak:
“All right, thank you—it’s nothing.”
She crushed it into the pocket of her coat and turned to Clive. “Shall we go? Sorry to have kept you all waiting.”
“Not bad news, I hope?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“Oh no—nothing important.” She glanced round at the curious faces of Edith and Constance. “Sorry to have kept you all waiting,” she said again in a flat sort of voice.
Wheeler had gone on ahead, with Gina pattering beside him.
“He didn’t trouble to ask,” Rocky thought painfully.
They trooped ashore led by Sir John.
“Doesn’t he look marvellous?” Miss Esther whispered to Rocky.
Rocky started, and blinked her long lashes.
“Marvellous?—who?” she asked vaguely.
“Sir John,” the little woman explained. “I have never seen a man with quite his air of breeding and dignity.”
“No,” Rocky agreed, but she was hardly attending, and the fingers of her left hand were still gripping the crumpled cable, which she had thrust into her coat pocket.
Clive touched her arm.
“Follow the man from Cook’s,” he said dryly. He was beginning to feel a little out of things; this had promised to be such a wonderful day during which he would have Rocky entirely to himself, and, after all, they were just two in a crowd.
Sir John was bargaining for two roomy cars which would accommodate them all.
“Will you drive with me?” Clive asked Rocky. “Or is even that too much to expect
?”
“Don’t be grumpy,” she answered. “Of course I’ll come with you.”
They stowed themselves away, chattering and laughing, and to Miss Esther’s joy she found herself seated beside Sir John.
She glanced back at the ship, and a little chill crept over her excitement as she saw her sister’s thin, disapproving figure, standing by the rails watching them.
“I suppose I ought not to have come—really,” she thought guiltily.
Sir John looked down at her with a smile.
“Have you enough room?” he asked.
Edith, still looking slightly depressed, was on his other side.
“I hope we’ve got a careful driver,” she said. “I’m so terrified of speed.”
“I’ve told him to drive quietly,” Sir John answered.
He glanced across to the second car where Rocky and Clive and Constance were packing themselves into the rather narrow seat.
“Ready to go?” he called to them.
“Somebody ought to ring a bell or fire a pistol,” Clive said gloomily; and his sister said sharply:
“Of course, if I’m not wanted——”
But the car had already moved forward.
Sir John had arranged that they should drive straight out to Pompeii, see as much as they could before lunch, and afterwards make a tour of the town and do some shopping.
“You can buy gloves very cheaply in Naples,” he told Miss Esther.
“Oh, can you? I should love some new gloves,” she said in a flutter.
Rocky’s car was ahead, and as they passed through the dockyard gates and turned into the road she sat forward, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her eyes trying to take in everything at once.
“Look at that old castle,” she said. “Look at the mountains. Oh! isn’t Vesuvius wonderful?”
Her little feet began their eager tap-tap until Constance said sourly: “You’ll have the bottom out of the car if you don’t keep still.”
“Sorry,” Rocky answered good-temperedly. She leaned back a little with a subdued air, and a sudden halt at a cross-road brought them level with the car in which Wheeler and Gina Savoire were driving.
It was a two-seater car. “It would be,” Rocky thought with a sigh, and she resolutely turned her eyes away as Gina leaned forward and waved a daintily gloved hand, and then the traffic moved forward once more.
Presently they were out on the new great wide road which leads to Pompeii, and the driver put on speed.
“I should like to drive a car along here myself,” Clive said.
He was looking more cheerful, and he leaned forward interestedly to watch the speedometer. Rocky leaned forward too.
“We’re doing sixty-five,” she said.
Constance laughed. “Edith will be having forty fits,” she said; but when they glanced back, Sir John’s car was some distance behind them still going at a leisurely pace.
It was a wonderful morning; all the more so to Clive’s way of thinking because Constance soon grew tired of walking over the cobbled stones of the buried city, and declared that she would sit down near the entrance and wait for them to return.
“But you haven’t seen anything yet!” Rocky objected.
“I’ve seen quite enough,” Constance retorted. “You two go on if you like—I can amuse myself.”
“Thank Heaven for that,” Clive said when they were out of hearing. He linked his arm through Rocky’s. “You’re not tired?” he asked. She gave him a look of supreme scorn.
“Tired! I want to see everything.”
“I wanted to have you to myself,” he told her, but Rocky was not particularly interested; she felt as if she had gone back hundreds of years—as if life as she knew it had ceased to exist, and she was one of the crowds of terrified, bewildered people who had tried in vain to escape when death and disaster descended so ruthlessly and in the utter darkness.
The marks of the old chariot wheels in the roads intrigued her profoundly, and the mummified figure of the dog which had been found, still wearing a blue collar, beneath the piles of lava and ashes.
“Oh, poor fellow,” she said pityingly.
And then quite incongruously she thought of Sir John’s words that morning when he had asked her not to be unkind to Clive, and she stole a little remorseful glance at him.
He was nice, she thought—and knew that it was not in the very least how he wished her to think of him.
In the courtyard of one of the wrecked villas they came face to face with the middle-aged couple who were touring the world. They both looked hot and a little fretful, and Mrs. Bumpus said with a heavy sigh: “Call this a holiday! I call it hard work—far harder than anything I have done in my life.”
Her husband, who was busy writing addresses on a bunch of picture postcards, glanced up at her with mild reproval.
“Well, my dear, you would come,” he protested.
“How many more times am I to be reminded of the fact?” she asked; she appealed to Rocky. “It is true that all my life I have longed to see the world,” she admitted. “For years I dreamed of nothing else and planned how it could be made possible—and now here we are—well on the way, and I’d as soon turn round and go back to Wimbledon, where we came from.”
There was something rather pathetic in her voice in spite of its exasperation, so that Rocky said kindly:
“But you can always go back when you have had enough of travelling, can’t you?”
“Can we? When the house is sold and everything it contained,” Mrs. Bumpus answered; she mopped her hot face with a very new silk handkerchief. “If we go back it won’t be the same, and it will mean starting all over again. That’s so like life! It makes you believe that you want something with all your heart and soul and then when you get it you find that it’s not nearly as good as you expected or believed—but just a disappointment.”
“But it’s all so wonderful,” Rocky said warmly. “Travelling, I mean. And this wonderful place, and all the other places we shall see.”
Mrs. Bumpus shook her head. “I’ve seen nothing as good as my home was on a winter’s evening,” she said.
There was a profound silence, and Rocky thought with a vague sense of panic: “And shall I be feeling like this some day? Wishing I’d never come—longing to go back?”
Return journey! Sir John had spoken those words with a little shade of regret in his voice. What sort of a return journey would hers be, Rocky wondered, and then she laughed.
“You’re giving me the blues, Mrs. Bumpus,” she said ruefully. “I expect you’re tired, that’s what it is, and you want your lunch. What is the time, Clive?”
“It’s ten minutes to one,” he told her.
“Then we all want our lunch,” Rocky declared. “And I believe we’ve seen as much as we possibly can, so shall we go back and find the cars?”
“I think a brandy and soda is what you want, my dear,” Mr. Bumpus told his wife; he drew her hand through his arm. “And look out for a pillar-box on the way. I want to post these cards.”
“Did they have pillar-boxes in Pompeii?” Rocky enquired, with a twinkle.
“I shouldn’t think they had anything but discomfort,” Mrs. Bumpus retorted depressedly, and she thought of her snug little parlour at home, with its warm fire and comfortable armchairs, and the ferns in the window.
“I was too old to start travelling,” she told herself sadly, and she wondered whether it was yet too late to turn tail and leave the rest of the world to take care of itself.
Rocky and Clive lost sight of them presently when Rocky stopped to buy a little souvenir from a stall—a copy of one of the old statues of a boy taking a thorn from his foot.
“Let me give you that,” Clive said quickly.
“Oh, all right, thank you very much,” Rocky said gratefully: she examined the-gift with admiration, glad that it had only cost a few shillings. “I shall always keep it,” she added.
“Look—there are the cars,” she said. “And there�
��s Constance and Mademoiselle and Mr. Wheeler.”
“And Sir John, and Miss Esther, and the Gloomy Edith, and all the rest of the personally conducted,” Clive added impatiently.
“We’ve found out all about the best place for lunch,” Sir John told them; he looked at Rocky. “Have you enjoyed your morning?” he asked.
“It’s wonderful,” she answered; she showed him the little statue which Clive had given her.
“And Sir John bought one for me too,” Miss Esther broke in eagerly. She was looking quite pretty in her happy excitement, although her hat was all on one side and she had discarded her gloves. “I’ve never, never had such a perfectly lovely day,” she added profoundly.
“It’s not over yet,” Rocky reminded her. “We’ve got to buy gloves and eat and drive round the town.”. She looked at Wheeler. Had he enjoyed himself, she wondered, or was he just a little tired of Gina’s high staccato voice and incessant chatter?
They all went to the same restaurant for lunch; there was a gipsy band playing, and a man with a wonderful voice sang Italian love songs, and they drank Chianti—Miss Esther quite forgetting her determination never to drink wine again—and it was a very merry party indeed until Sir John reminded them that the ship sailed at five o’clock, and that if they wanted to see the town and the shops they ought to be moving.
It was as Rocky was putting on her coat that she suddenly remembered the cable which had arrived that morning, and for an instant the happiness of her eyes clouded.
Had she really received it or was it just a bad dream? She slipped a hand into her coat pocket and touched the crumpled paper. Yes, there it was—an ugly fact to drag her down from Olympus and to remind her that there is always a Yesterday which cannot be pushed quite out of sight no matter how much one may wish to do so.
She was rather silent during the return drive.
“Tired?” Clive asked more than once; but she shook her head.
“No, just thinking about things.”
“I’m tired,” Edith complained; she had changed places with Constance because she declared that Miss Esther got on her nerves.
“She’s so silly,” she said impatiently. “She doesn’t seem to know anything or to have been anywhere.”
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