Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/497

Rh other arrivals, but they merited no attention,—several Russians, who had settled in Capri,—absent-minded because their bookish meditations, unkempt, bearded, spectacled, the collars of their old frayed overcoats turned up; and a group of long-legged, long-necked, round-headed German youths in Tyrolean costumes, with canvas knapsacks slung over their shoulders; these stood in no need of anybody's services, feeling themselves at home everywhere, and knowing how to practise the strictest economies, The gentleman from San Francisco, on the other hand, who was calmly keeping aloof from both the one group and the other, was immediately observed. He and his ladies were promptly helped out, some men running ahead of him to show him the way. Again he was surrounded by urchins, and by those stalwart Caprian wives who bear on their heads the portmanteaux and trunks of respectable travellers. The wooden pattens of these women clattered over a little square, which seemed to belong to some opera, an electric globe swaying above it in the damp wind. The rabble of urchins burst sharp, bird-like whistles,—and, as if on a stage, the gentleman from San Francisco proceeded in their midst toward some mediæval arch underneath houses that had become merged into one mass, beyond which a little echoing street,—with the tuft of a palm above flat roofs on its left, and with blue stars in the black sky overhead,—led slopingly to the now visible grand entrance of the hotel, all agleam with light. . . . And again it seemed that it as, in honour of the guests from San Francisco that this dump little town of stone on a craggy little island of the Mediterranean Sea had come