Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 24

"Here it is," said Freya.

And thereupon she pointed to the only door that was covered with a screen of green leather displaying a commercial sign,--enormous, gilded and pretentious. The doctor was lodging in an office.... How could he ever have found it!

The first room really was an office, a merchant's room with files for papers, maps, a safe for stocks, and various tables. One employee only was working here,--a man of uncertain age with a childish face and a clipped beard. His obsequious and smiling att.i.tude was in striking contrast to his evasive glance,--a glance of alarm and distrust.

Upon seeing Freya he arose from his seat. She greeted him, calling him Karl, and pa.s.sed on as though he were a mere porter. Ulysses upon following her, surmised that the suspicious glance of the writer was fixed upon his back.

"Is he a Pole, too?" he asked.

"Yes, a Pole.... He is a protege of the doctor's."

They entered a salon evidently furnished in great haste, with the happy-go-lucky and individual knack of those accustomed to traveling and improvising a dwelling place;--divans with cheap and showy chintzes, skins of the American llama, glaring imitation-Oriental rugs, and on the walls, prints from the periodicals between gilt moldings. On a table were displayed their marble ornaments and silver things, a great dressing-case with a cover of cut leather, and a few little Neapolitan statuettes which had been bought at the last moment in order to give a certain air of sedentary respectability to this room which could be dismantled suddenly and whose most valuable adornments were acquired _en route_.

Through a half-drawn portiere they descried the doctor writing in the nearby room. She was bending over an American desk, but she saw them immediately in a mirror which she kept always in front of her in order to spy on all that was pa.s.sing behind her.

Ulysses surmised that the imposing dame had made certain additions to her toilette in order to receive him. A gown as close as a sheath molded the exuberance of her figure. The narrow skirt drawn tightly over the edge of her knees appeared like the handle of an enormous club. Over the green sea of her dress she was wearing a spangled white tulle draped like a shawl. The captain, in spite of his respect for this wise lady, could not help comparing her to a well-nourished mother-mermaid in the oceanic pasture lands.

With outstretched hands and a joyous expression on her countenance irradiating even her gla.s.ses, she advanced toward Ferragut. Her meeting was almost an embrace.... "My dear Captain! Such a long time since I have seen you!..." She had heard of him frequently through her young friend, but even so, she could not but consider it a misfortune that the sailor had never come to see her.

She appeared to have forgotten her coldness when bidding him farewell in Salerno and the care which she had taken to hide from him her home address.

Neither did Ferragut recall this fact now that he was so agreeably touched by the doctor's amiability. She had seated herself between the two as though wis.h.i.+ng to protect them with all the majesty of her person and the affection of her eyes. She was a real mother for her young friend. While speaking, she was patting Freya's great locks of hair, which had just escaped from underneath her hat, and Freya, adapting herself to the tenderness of the situation, cuddled down against the doctor, a.s.suming the air of a timid and devoted child while she fixed on Ulysses her eyes of sweet promise.

"You must love her very much, Captain," continued the matron. "Freya speaks only of you. She has been so unfortunate!... Life has been so cruel to her!..."

The sailor felt as though he were in the placid bosom of a family. That lady was discreetly taking everything for granted, speaking to him as to a son-in-law. Her kindly glance was somewhat melancholy. It was the sweet sadness of mature people who find the present monotonous, the future circ.u.mscribed, and taking refuge in memories of the past, envy the young who enjoy the reality of what they can taste only in memory.

"Happy you!... You love each other so much!... Life is worth living only because of love."

And Freya, as though irresistibly affected by these counsels, threw one arm around the doctor's globular, corseted figure, while convulsively clasping Ulysses' right hand.

The gold-rimmed spectacles, with their protecting gleam, appeared to incite them to even greater intimacy. "You may kiss each other...." And the imposing dame, trumping up an insignificant pretext, so as to facilitate their love-making was about to go out when the drapery of the door between the salon and office was raised.

There entered a man of Ferragut's age, but shorter, with a weather-beaten face. He was dressed in the English style with scrupulous correctness. It was plain to be seen that he was accustomed to take the most excessive and childish interest in everything referring to the adornment of his person. The suit of gray wool appeared to have achieved its finis.h.i.+ng touch in the harmony of cravat, socks, and handkerchief sticking out of his pocket,--all in the same tone. The three pieces were blue, without the slightest variation in shade, chosen with the exact.i.tude of a man who would undoubtedly suffer cruel discomfort if obliged to go out into the street with his cravat of one color and his socks of another. His gloves had the same dark tan tone as his shoes.

Ferragut thought that this dandy, in order to be absolutely perfect, ought to be clean shaved. And yet, he was wearing a beard, close clipped on the cheeks and forming over the chin a short, sharp point.

The captain suspected that he was a sailor. In the German fleet, in the Russian, in all the navies of the North where they are not shaved in the English style, they use this traditional little beard.

The newcomer bowed, or, more properly speaking, doubled himself over at right angles, with a brusque stiffness, upon kissing the hands of the two ladies. Then he raised his impertinent monocle and fixed it in one of his eyes while the doctor made the introduction.

"Count Kaledine ... Captain Ferragut."

The count gave the sailor his hand, a hard hand, well-cared for and vigorous, which for a long time enclosed that of Ulysses, wis.h.i.+ng to dominate it with an ineffectual pressure.

The conversation continued in English which was the language employed by the doctor in her relations with Ulysses.

"The gentleman is a sailor?" asked Ferragut in order to clarify his doubts.

The monocle did not move from its...o...b..t, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. The doctor hastened to reply.

"The count is an ill.u.s.trious diplomat who is now on leave, regaining his health. He has traveled a great deal, but he is not a sailor."

And she continued her explanations.

The Kaledines were of a Russian family enn.o.bled in the days of Catherine the Great. The doctor, being a Polish woman, had been connected with them for many years.... And she ceased speaking, giving Kaledine his cue in the conversation.

At the beginning the count appeared cold and rather disdainful in his words, as though he could not possibly lay aside his diplomatic haughtiness. But this hauteur gradually melted away.

Through his "distinguished friend,--Madame Talberg," he had heard of many of Ferragut's nautical adventures. Men of action, the heroes of the ocean, were always exceedingly interesting to him.

Ulysses suddenly noticed in his n.o.ble interlocutor a warm affection, a desire to make himself agreeable, just like the doctor's. What a lovely home this was in which everybody was making an effort to be gracious to Captain Ferragut!

The count, smiling amiably, ceased to avail himself of his English, and soon began talking to him in Spanish, as though he had reserved this final touch in order to captivate Ulysses' affection with this most irresistible of flatteries.

"I have lived in Mexico," he said, in order to explain his knowledge of the language. "I made a long trip through the Philippines when I was living in j.a.pan."

The seas of the extreme Far East were those least frequented by Ulysses. Only twice had he entered the Chinese and Nipponese harbors, but he knew them sufficiently to keep up his end of the conversation with this traveler who was displaying in his tastes a certain artistic refinement. For half an hour, there filed through the vulgar atmosphere of this salon, images of enormous paG.o.das with superimposed roofs whose strings of bells vibrated in the breeze like an Aeolian harp, monstrous idols--carved in gold, in bronze, or in marble-houses made of paper, thrones of bamboo, furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay, screens with flocks of flying storks.

The doctor disappeared, bored by a dialogue of which she could only understand a few words. Freya, motionless, with drowsy eyes, and a knee between her crossed hands, held herself aloof, understanding the conversation, but without taking any part in it, as though she were offended at the forgetfulness in which the two men were leaving her.

Finally she slipped discreetly away, responding to the call of a hand peeping through the portieres. The doctor was preparing tea and needed help.

The conversation continued on in no way affected by their absence.

Kaledine had abandoned the Asiatic waters in order to pa.s.s to the Mediterranean, and there he anch.o.r.ed himself with admirable insistence.

Another sign of affection for Ferragut who was finding him more and more charming in spite of his slightly glacial att.i.tude.

He suddenly noticed that it was not as a Russian count that he was speaking since, with brief and exact questions, he was making Ferragut reply just as though he were undergoing an examination.

These signs of interest shown by the great traveler in the little _mare nostrum_, and especially in the details of its western bowl which he wished to know most minutely, pleased Ferragut greatly.

He might ask him whatever he wished. Ferragut knew mile for mile all its sh.o.r.es,--Spanish, French, and Italian, the surface and also its depths.

Perhaps because he was staying in Naples, Kaledine insisted upon learning especially about that part of the Mediterranean enclosed between Sardinia, southern Italy, and Sicily,--the part which the ancients had called the Tyrrhenian Sea.... Did the captain happen to know those little frequented and almost forgotten islands opposite Sicily?

"I know all about all of them," replied the sailor boastfully. And without realizing exactly whether it was curiosity on the part of the listener, or whether he was being submitted to an interesting examination, he talked on and on.

He was well acquainted with the archipelago of the Lipari Islands with their mines of sulphur and pumice-stone,--a group of volcanic peaks which rise up from the depths of the Mediterranean. In these the ancients had placed Aeolus, lord of the winds; in these was Stromboli, vomiting forth enormous b.a.l.l.s of lava which exploded with the roar of thunder. Its volcanic slag fell again into the chimneys of the crater or rolled down the mountain slopes, falling into the waves.

More to the west, isolated and solitary in a sea free from shoals, was Ustica,--an abrupt and volcanic island that the Phoenicians had colonized and which had served as a refuge for Saracen pilots. Its population was scant and poor. There was nothing to see on it, apart from certain fossil sh.e.l.ls interesting to men of science.

But the count showed himself wonderfully interested in this extinct and lonely crater in the midst of a sea frequented only by fis.h.i.+ng smacks.

Ferragut had also seen, although far off, at the entrance of the harbor of Trapani, the archipelago of the Aegadian Islands where are the great fis.h.i.+ng grounds of the tunny. Once he had disembarked in the island of Pantellaria, situated halfway between Sicily and Africa. It was a very high, volcanic cone that came up in the midst of the strait and had at its base alkaline lakes, sulphurous fumes, thermal waters, and prehistoric constructions of great stone blocks similar to those in Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. Boats bound for Tunis and Tripoli used to carry cargoes of raisins, the only export from this ancient Phoenician colony.

Between Pantellaria and Sicily the ocean floor was considerably elevated, having on its back an aquatic layer that in some points was only twelve yards thick. It was the great shoal called the Aventura, a volcanic swelling, a double submerged island, the submarine pedestal of Sicily.

The ledge of Aventura also appeared to interest the count greatly.

"You certainly know the sea well," he said in an approving tone.