"The story is one of those old nature myths of which the Greeks were so fond. The time Proserpine spent in Hades symbolized winter, when winds blew cold, and few flowers bloomed, and her return symbolized the advent of spring. It has a deeper meaning, also, to those who look for it, because it is a type of the Resurrection, and shows that our dear ones are not really taken from us, but will come again in more glorious life and beauty. Many of the old Greek myths had this meaning hidden under them, as if they were sent to prepare people for the truth that Christ was to reveal more fully later on. Nearly all early religions began with pure and beautiful conceptions of G.o.d, and then trailed down to earth, because their followers were too ignorant to understand. The ancient Egyptians believed in G.o.d, and said that one of His attributes was strength. The strongest thing they knew was a bull, so they made colossal statues of bulls in black marble, to show G.o.d's strength, but the populace worshipped the statues instead of G.o.d himself, and became idolaters. In the same way the ancient Greeks realized that Beauty was part of G.o.d's scheme of work, and they came to worship Beauty quite apart from Goodness, forgetting that the two must go together. They imagined their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses as magnificent men and women, with superb bodies but no beauty of soul, and as there was nothing uplifting in this religion, it soon died out, as all things die in time, if they don't help us to grow nearer to G.o.d. The story of Proserpine is one of the prettiest of the old Greek legends, and I can just imagine her gathering these lovely flowers. I believe we're going on to see her fountain, aren't we, Vittore? She made it with her tears when Pluto carried her off."

The object of the expedition was indeed to see Proserpine's fountain, a clear spring out of which flowed a small river. After walking another mile across the meadows, the party came to this river, where they were able to engage boats to row them up to the fount. It was a unique spot, for the whole of the banks were bordered with an avenue of papyrus, which grew there in greatest profusion. Legend said that it had been planted by an Egyptian princess who brought it from the Nile, and that it grew in no other place in Europe, a statement which was satisfactory enough, though rather difficult to verify. There was much bargaining, after true Sicilian fashion, with the native boatmen, who demanded at least four times what they meant to take, protesting that they would be ruined at the sum Ernesto named to them, and finally, when he pretended to walk away, accepting his offer with enthusiasm. This very necessary preliminary satisfactorily settled, the company was packed into the small boats, about four going in each. In the distribution of the guests occurred the first hitch in the Ingletons' visit. Mr. Stacey suggested that it was advisable to sandwich children and grown-ups, and he and Lilias started in the first "barca" in charge of little Luigia, Vincent, and Pepino. Dulcie and Douglas were responsible for Gaspare, Rosalia, and Nina, while Vittore, and Aimee, Claude, and Bertram went together.

Carmel held t.i.to and Berta each by a hand, and Ernesto helped them all three into a boat. Everard was in the very act of jumping in after them, when Ernesto stopped him.

"Excuse me, Signore, that is my place! There is plenty of room for you in the other boat."

"And surely in this too?" said Everard, flushing with annoyance.

Ernesto shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, no! You and I are too heavy to be together. Vittore and the others are light; you will just make weight." And, stepping in, Ernesto took his seat beside Carmel, and told the boatman to push off, while Everard, with a face like a thundercloud, joined the younger children.

Up the narrow little river the light boats pushed, under an overhanging archway of papyrus reeds, so that they seemed as if penetrating through a green jungle. The boatmen began to sing Sicilian folk-songs, and Vittore and Rosalia and t.i.to and some of the others joined in. To everyone except Everard the excursion was delightful, but he, considering himself treated with scant politeness, sat sulking in Vittore's boat, and would scarcely speak to Aimee, who made a really heroic effort to amuse him.

Proserpine's fountain, where after half an hour's rowing the boatmen took them, was a clear deep pool reflecting the blue of the sky, and encircled with papyrus, donax reeds, and beautiful irises. It seemed a fit setting for the legend of antiquity, and a fertile imagination could almost conjure up a vision of Pluto, with his chariot and black horses, carrying off the lovely nymph from her meadows of flowers to his gloomy realm of darkness. On the way back the second boat made a halt to cut some pieces of papyrus reed, and Dulcie called out in much excitement to the occupants of the other "barcas."

"Lilias! Everard! We're cutting some papyrus, and Douglas is going to show me how to make it into parchment like the ancient Egyptians used to write on. Won't it be gorgeous? Don't you want some too?"

"Rather!" replied Lilias, appealing to Mr. Stacey, who promptly pulled out his penknife, and began to hack away at a stout stem on her behalf.

The lengths of papyrus which they bore off with them somewhat resembled thick pieces of rhubarb, and how these were ever going to be turned into writing materials was a puzzle to Dulcie, though Douglas a.s.sured her airily that he knew all about it. The elders of the party were glad to get the lively youngsters safely on dry land again.

"I thought Rosalia was going to turn into a water nymph," said Lilias, comparing notes afterwards with Dulcie. "She leaned over in the most dangerous manner, and so did t.i.to. If the boats hadn't been so broad, they would have capsized."

"Then Pluto would have bagged the whole lot of us! More than he quite bargained for, perhaps!" laughed Dulcie.

The making of the parchment was a matter of great interest to the Ingletons. With Douglas as an instructor, they all set to work on its manufacture. Taking ten inch lengths of the papyrus reeds, they cut them into long, thin, vertical slices, and laid these across each other in the form of a small mat between sheets of blotting paper. This was next squeezed through a wringing-machine to rid it of superfluous moisture, then placed under a heavy weight, in the manner of pressing flowers.

When at last it was dry, the alternate layers of the papyrus had adhered together and amalgamated into a substance identical with the old Egyptian parchment, though much coa.r.s.er and rougher in quality. The girls were delighted with it. They borrowed a book on Egypt from Mr.

Greville's library, and copied little pictures of the Sphinx, scarabs, Ra, the Sun G.o.d, and other appropriate bits, painting them in bold colors on their pieces of parchment, and feeling as if they had gone back a few thousand years in history, and were dwellers in Memphis or some other great city on the banks of the Nile. They designed special ones for Miss Walters, Miss Hardy, and Miss Herbert, and smaller offerings for Gowan, Bertha, Phillida, Noreen, and others of their friends at Chilcombe Hall. Papyrus, indeed, became the rage at Casa Bianca. All the various cousins vied with one another in making the choicest specimens. They wrote letters to each other upon it, rolling up the parchments and tying them with ribbons in the manner of ancient scribes. Perhaps the whitest and best welded sheet of all was one made by Mr. Stacey, who turned out to be so clever at the new craze that he jokingly declared he must be a priest of some Egyptian temple come to life again. He used a reed pen, and got some very happy effects in hieroglyphs, puzzling out the names of each of the company in the curious picture writing of the days of the Pharaohs who reared the pyramids.

"Will you take us some day to see the Nile?" asked Lilias, happy in the possession of her name neatly pictured on the specially white sheet of papyrus, with a lotus bloom, the lily of Egypt, painted underneath. "You know Captain Porter said we ought to go to Alexandria!"

"Nothing would please me better, if the fates willed it!" smiled Mr.

Stacey.

"We'll go in a party, and hire a boat up the Nile, and take all the Grevilles with us, specially Douglas," declared Dulcie. "I count them my cousins too. Don't you, Everard?"

"Right-o!" laughed Everard. "Cousins by all manner of means let them be!" ("Though I don't bargain to include the Trapani family among our new relations!" he added softly to himself, half under his breath).

CHAPTER XVIII

A Night of Adventure

It will be seen from the events recorded in the last chapter that Everard, while liking the various members of the Greville family, had taken a great prejudice against Ernesto Trapani. The fact is that Everard, brought up with all the insular pride of birth of an English squire, had a poor opinion of foreigners, and was unwise enough occasionally to reveal his att.i.tude of British superiority, and to give himself airs. Ernesto, handsome, clever, and with a long line of Italian ancestry at his back, considered himself in every way a match for the young Englishman, and would argue with him on many points, often beating him by logic, though never convincing him. It annoyed Everard to see Ernesto on terms of great intimacy with Carmel, and to hear them talk together in Italian, a language of which, as yet, he knew only a few sentences.

"I wish you'd speak decent English, instead of that beastly lingo!" he said to her one day, petulantly.

Carmel flushed crimson.

"Please don't call Italian a beastly lingo! I'm sorry if I've been rude in speaking it, but I sometimes forget that you don't understand what we're saying. It comes naturally to me. I'll try to remember."

"Remember you're an Ingleton, and the owner of English property," urged Everard. "Now you're at Casa Bianca I don't believe you ever give a thought to the Chase!"

"Yes, I do! Oftener than you suppose. I've grown to love England more than I believed possible. In summer the country was all green and beautiful, while here every blade of gra.s.s gets burnt up by the blazing sun. Oh, yes! I'm really very fond of the Chase! I am indeed!"

"Then, which do you like better--England or Sicily?"

But at that question Carmel shook her head.

"My opinions are my own, and I'm not going to tell them to anybody!" she flashed merrily. "It's a good motto to enjoy yourself wherever you may happen to be! That's all you'll get out of me, Mr. Everard! And quite enough, too!"

Though Everard might have private reasons of his own that marred the pleasure of his visit to Montalesso, his sisters were having the time of their lives. Lilias, with the help of Mr. Stacey, had taken enthusiastically to botany, and was making a collection of pressed Sicilian flowers. She had also begun to sketch under his tuition, and had finished quite a pretty little water color of the house. Dulcie, always interested in country life, was thoroughly happy on the estate.

She liked to watch the gathering of the oranges and lemons, the pruning of the vines; to see the great white bullocks plowing in the fields or slowly drawing the gaily painted carts. The wealth of flowers delighted her, and much to Everard's disgust, she frankly acknowledged herself in love with Sicily, and insisted that she would like to live there.

"I shall ask Aunt Nita to keep me instead of Carmel!" she declared. "You may all go back to England and leave me behind!"

"What would Mr. Bowden say to that?" asked Cousin Clare. "He has arranged for you to stay another two years at school!"

"Oh! bother Mr. Bowden! I wish he wasn't my guardian! Can't I swop him, and have Mr. Greville instead?"

"Unfortunately people can't change their guardians!" laughed Cousin Clare. "They have to stick to those to whom the law a.s.signs them. Cheer up! You might have a far sterner one than Mr. Bowden, and a much more disagreeable school than Chilcombe. You've the summer term to look forward to when you get back."

"Chilcombe isn't Montalesso!" persisted Dulcie, pulling a face. "No, you d.i.n.ky, deary Cousin Clare, you'll never persuade me to like school again! I shall catch a cold on purpose as soon as I go back, and then you'll have to bring me over here for the sake of a warmer climate. I'll bribe the old doctor!"

"Who'll probably send you to Switzerland for open-air treatment among the snow!" said Cousin Clare, who generally managed to get the last word.

The Ingletons had now been some weeks at the Casa Bianca, and were beginning to grow more accustomed to Sicilian ways. In Mr. Greville's car they had been taken to many of the princ.i.p.al places of interest in the neighborhood; they had seen the Castello, the old ruined tower which in bygone days had been the stronghold of brigands, the ancient Greek amphitheater, with its marble seats still bearing the names of owners who sat and watched the chariot races in the fourth century B. C., the beautiful Temple of Neptune, and the Palazzo Salvatore, with its museum of priceless treasures. There was one local gathering, however, which Carmel declared they must not on any account miss.

"I'm so glad you will here for the fair at Targia Vecchia!" she said.

"It's really the event of the whole year. You'll see more Sicilian customs there than anywhere else I know. The peasants come down from the mountains for miles round. You'll just love it!"

Such a spectacle was, of course, a great attraction to the Ingletons, so a select party was made up to visit the famous fair. Signora Greville, nervous about infection, would not allow her younger children to go, for fear they might catch measles among the motley crowd, and the same cautious care was extended over the children of the other families, but Douglas and Aimee joined the expedition, and Ernesto and Vittore, somewhat to Everard's disgust, had a special holiday from Palermo in order to be present. They all set off on foot, and followed the winding road that led down the hill-side from Montalesso to the little harbor of Targia Vecchia.

For once the country-side seemed alive with people. Down every mountain path descended donkeys, on which were seated girls or women in their best gala garments, striped skirts, bright ap.r.o.ns, lace on their velvet bodices, gay kerchiefs on their heads, and large gold ear-rings in their ears. The men who led the donkeys were dressed in equally picturesque fashion. Many wore black velvet jackets and scarlet Neapolitan caps, or long brown cloaks with hoods over their heads; their legs bound with rough puttees, and their feet thrust into sandals of hide with the hair left on. Everybody seemed to carry a large cotton umbrella, either of bright green or magenta.

"They think it looks grand," explained Carmel. "Every peasant brings his umbrella to the fair, to show that he has one!"

"Except the brigands," added Vittore. "You can always tell a brigand because he never carries an umbrella."

"Are there any brigands?" asked Dulcie anxiously.

"Oh, yes!" replied Vittore, winking secretly at Ernesto. "There are quite a number still in the neighborhood."

"I was talking to one only the other day!" admitted Ernesto.