Dicky shouted till the skeletons turned to listen.
I will skip the scene of our reunion, because I am not good at matters which are moving, and we were all excessively moved. It is necessary to explain, however, that Brother Demetrius, when he went above ground, felt his lumbago so acutely that he retired to bed, and was therefore not visible when the others came up. As we had planned beforehand, the Senator decided to go on to the Jewish Catacombs, taking it for granted that we would follow, while Brother Eusebius, when he found Demetrius in bed, also took it for granted that we had gone on ahead. He did not inquire, he said, because the virtue of taciturnity being denied to them in the exercise of their business, they always diligently cultivated it in private. My own conviction was that they were not on speaking terms. Our friends and relatives, after looking at the Jewish Catacombs, had driven back to the hotel, and only began to feel anxious at tea time, as they knew the English refreshment-rooms were closed for the season, like everything else, and Isabel asserted with tears that if her mother was above ground she would not miss her tea. So they all drove back to the Catacombs, and effected our rescue after we had been immured for exactly seven hours. I wish to add, to the credit of Mr. Richard Dod, that he has never yet breathed a syllable to anybody about the manner in which Mrs. Portheris sustained nature during our imprisonment, although he must often have been strongly tempted to do so. And neither have I—until now.
CHAPTER XV.
"The thing that struck me on our drive to the hotel," remarked momma, "was that Naples was almost entirely inhabited by the lower classes."
"That is very noticeable indeed," concurred Mr. Mafferton, who was also there for the first time. "The people of the place are no doubt in the country at this time of the year, but one would naturally expect to see more respectable persons about."
"Now you'll excuse me, Mafferton," said the Senator, "but that's just one of those places where I lose the trail of the English language as used by the original inventors. Where do you draw the line of distinction between people and persons?"
"It's a mere Briticism, poppa," I observed. Mr. Mafferton loathed being obliged to defend his native tongue at any point. That very morning the modus vivendi between us, that I had done so much for Dicky's sake to establish, had been imperilled by my foolish determination to know why all Englishmen pronounced "white" "wite."
"I daresay," said poppa gloomily, "but I am not on to it and I don't suppose I ever shall be. What struck me on the ride up through the city was the perambulating bath. Going round on wheels to be hired out, just the ordinary tin tub of commerce. The fellows were shouting something—'Who'll buy a wash!' I suppose. But that's the disadvantage of a foreign language; it leaves so much to the imagination."
"The goats were nice," I said, "so promiscuous. I saw one of them looking out of a window."
"And the dear little horses with bells round their necks," momma added, "and the tall yellow houses with the stucco dropping off, and especially the fruit shops and the flower stalls that make pictures down every narrow street. Such masses of colour!"
"We might have hit on a worse hotel," observed Mr. Mafferton. "Very tolerable soup, to-night."
"I can't say I noticed the soup," said the Senator. "Fact is, soup to me is just—soup. I presume there are different kinds, but beyond knowing most of them from gruel I don't pretend to be a connoisseur."
"What nonsense, Alexander!" said momma sternly.
"Some are saltier than others, Augusta, I admit. But what I was going on to say was that for clear monotony the dinner programmes ever since Paris have beaten the record. Bramley told me how it would be. Consommy, he said—that's soup—consommy, the whole enduring time. Fish frité or fried, roast beef à l'Italienne or mixed up with vegetables. Beans—well, just beans, and if you don't like 'em you can leave 'em, but that fourth course is never anything but beans. After that you get a chicken cut up with lettuce, because if it was put on the table whole some disappointed investigator might find out there was nothing inside and file a complaint. Anything to support that unstuffed chicken? Nope. Finishing up with a compote of canned fruit, mostly California pears that want more cooking, and after that cheese, if you like cheese, and coffee charged extra. Thanks to Bramley, I can't say I didn't know what to expect, but that doesn't increase the variety any. Now in America—I understand you have been to America, sir?"
"I have travelled in the States to some extent," responded Mr. Mafferton.
"Seen Brooklyn Bridge and the Hudson, I presume. Had a look at Niagara Falls and a run out to Chicago, maybe. That was before I had the pleasure of meeting you. Get as far as the Yosemite? No? Well, you were there long enough anyhow to realise that our hotels are run on the free will system."
"I remember," said Mr. Mafferton. "All the luxuries of the coming season, printed on a card usually about a foot long. A great variety, and very difficult to understand. When I had finished trying to translate the morning paper, I used to attack the card. I found that it threw quite a light upon early American civilisation from the aboriginal side. 'Hominy,' 'Grits,' 'Buckwheats,' 'Cantelopes,' are some of the dishes I remember. 'Succotash,' too, and 'creamed squash,' but I think they occurred at dinner generally. I used to summon the waiter, and when he came to take my orders I would ask him to derive those dishes. I had great difficulty after a time in summoning a waiter. But the plan gave me many interesting half hours. In the end I usually ordered a chop."
"I don't want to run down your politics," poppa said, "but that's what I call being too conservative. Augusta, if you have had enough of the Bay of Naples and the moon, I might remind you of the buried city of Pompeii, which is on for to-morrow. It's a good long way out, and you'll want all your powers of endurance. I'm going down to have a smoke, and a look at the humorous publications of Italy. There's no sort of sociability about these hotels, but the head portier knows a little English."
"I suppose I had better retire," momma admitted, "though I sometimes wish Mr. Wick wasn't so careful of my nervous system. Delicious scene, good-night." And she too left us.
We were sitting in a narrow balcony that seemed to jut out of a horn of the city's lovely crescent. Dicky and Isabel occupied chairs at a distance nicely calculated to necessitate a troublesome raising of the voice to communicate with them. Mrs. Portheris was still confined to her room with what was understood to be the constitutional shock of her experiences in the Catacombs. Dicky, in joyful privacy, assured me that nobody could recover from a combination of Roman tallow and French kid in less than a week, but I told him he did not know the British constitution.
We were sitting in a narrow balcony.
The moon sailed high over Naples, and lighted the lapping curve of her perfect bay in the deepest, softest blue, and showed us some of the nearer houses of the city, sloping and shouldering and creeping down, that they were pink and yellow and parti-coloured, while the rest curved and glimmered round the water in all tender tones of white holding up a thousand lamps. And behind, curving too, the hills stood clear, with the grey phantom of Vesuvius in sharp familiar lines, sending up its stream of steady red, and now and then a leaping flame. It was a scene to wake the latent sentiment of even a British bosom. I thought I would stay a little longer.
"So you usually ordered a chop?" I said by way of resuming the conversation. "I hope the chops were tender."
(I have a vague recollection that my intonation was.)
"There are worse things in the States than the mutton," replied Mr. Mafferton, moving his chair to enable him, by twisting his neck not too ostentatiously, to glance occasionally at Dicky and Isabel, "but the steaks were distinctly better than the chops—distinctly."
"So all connoisseurs say," I replied respectfully. "Would you like to change seats with me? I don't mind sitting with my back to—Vesuvius."
Mr. Mafferton blushed—unless it was the glow from the volcano.
"Not on my account," he said. "By any means."
"You do not fear a demonstration," I suggested. "And yet the forces of nature are very uncertain. That is your English nerve. It deserves all that is said of it."
Mr. Mafferton looked at me suspiciously.
"I fancy you must be joking," he said.
He sometimes complained that the great bar to his observation of the American character was the American sense of humour. It was one of the things he had made a note of, as interfering with the intelligent stranger's enjoyment of the country.
"I suppose," I replied reproachfully, "you never pause to think how unkind a suspicion like that is? When one wishes to be taken seriously."
"I fear I do not," Mr. Mafferton confessed. "Perhaps I jump rather hastily to conclusions sometimes. It's a family trait. We get it through the Warwick-Howards on my mother's side."
"Then, of course, there can't be any objection to it. But when one knows a person's opinion of frivolity, always to be thought frivolous by the person is hard to bear. Awfully."
And if my expression, as I gazed past this Englishman at Vesuvius, was one of sad resignation, there was nothing in the situation to exhilarate anybody.
The impassive countenance of Mr. Mafferton was disturbed by a ray of concern. The moonlight enabled me to see it quite clearly. "Pray, Miss Wick," he said, "do not think that. Who was it that wrote—"
"A little humour now and then
Is relished by the wisest men."
"I don't know," I said, "but there's something about it that makes me think it is English in its origin. Do you really endorse it?"
"Certainly I do. And your liveliness, Miss Wick, if I may say so, is certainly one of your accomplishments. It is to some extent a racial characteristic. You share it with Mr. Dod."
I glanced in the direction of the other two. "They seem desperately bored with each other," I said. "They are not saying anything. Shall we join them?"
"Dod is probably sulking because I am monopolising you. Mrs. Portheris, you see, has let me into the secret"—Mr. Mafferton looked very arch—"By all means, if you think he ought to be humoured."
"No," I said firmly, "humouring is very bad for Dicky. But I don't think he should be allowed to wreak his ill-temper on Isabel."
"I have noticed a certain lack of power to take the initiative about Miss Portheris," said Mr. Mafferton coldly, "especially when her mother is not with her. She seems quite unable to extricate herself from situations like the present."
"She is so young," I said apologetically, "and besides, I don't think you could expect her to go quite away and leave us here together, you know. She would naturally have foolish ideas. She doesn't know anything about our irrevocable Past."
"Why should she care?" asked Mr. Mafferton hypocritically.
"Oh," I said. "I don't know, I'm sure. Only Mrs. Portheris——"
"She is certainly a charming girl," said Mr. Mafferton.
"And so well brought up," said I.
"Ye-es. Perhaps a little self-contained."
"She has no need to rely upon her conversation." I observed.
"I don't know. The fact is——"
"What is the fact?" I asked softly. "After all that has passed I think I may claim your confidence, Mr. Mafferton." I had some difficulty afterwards in justifying this, but it seemed entirely appropriate at the time.
"The fact is, that up to three weeks ago I believed Miss Portheris to be the incarnation of so many unassuming virtues and personal charms that I was almost ready to make a fresh bid for domestic happiness in her society. I have for some time wished to marry——"
"I know," I said sympathetically.
"But during the last three weeks I have become a little uncertain."
"There shouldn't be the slightest uncertainty," I observed.
"Marriage in England is such a permanent institution."
"I have known it to last for years even in the United States," I sighed.
"And it is a serious responsibility to undertake to reciprocate in full the devotion of an attached wife."
"I fancy Isabel is a person of strong affections," I said; "one notices it with her mother. And any one who could dote on Mrs. Portheris would certainly——"
"I fear so," said Mr. Mafferton.
"I understand," I continued, "why you hesitate. And really, feeling as you do, I wouldn't be precipitate."
"I won't," he said.
"Watch the state of your own heart," I counselled, "for some little time. You may be sure that hers will not alter;" and, as we said good-night, I further suggested that it would be a kindness if Mr. Mafferton would join my lonely parent in the smoking-room.
I don't know what happened on the balcony after that.
CHAPTER XVI.
"Mamma," said Isabel, as we gathered in the hotel vestibule for the start to Pompeii, "is really not fit to undertake it."
"You'll excuse me, Aunt Caroline," remarked the Senator, "but your complexion isn't by any means right yet. It's a warm day and a long drive. Just as likely as not you'll be down sick after it."
"Stuff!" said Mrs. Portheris. "I thank my stars I have got no enfeebled American constitution. I am perfectly equal to it, thank you."
"It's most unwise," observed Mr. Mafferton.
"Darned—I mean extremely risky," sighed Dicky.
Mrs. Portheris faced upon them. "And pray what do you know about it?" she demanded.
Then momma put in her oar, taking most unguardedly a privilege of relationship. "Of course, you are the best judge of how you feel yourself, Aunt Caroline, but we are told there are some steps to ascend when we get there—and you know how fleshy you are."
In the instant of ominous silence which occurred while Mrs. Portheris was getting her chin into the angle of its greatest majesty, Mr. Mafferton considerately walked to the door. When it was accomplished she looked at momma sideways and down her nose, precisely in the manner of the late Mr. Du Maurier's ladies in Punch, in the same state of mind. She might have sat or stood to him. It was another ideal realised.
"That is the latest, the very latest Americanism which I have observed in your conversation, Augusta. In your native land it may be admissible, but please understand that I cannot permit it to be applied to me personally. To English ears it is offensive, very offensive. It is also quite improper for you to assume any familiarity with my figure. As you say, I may be aware of its corpulence, but nobody else—er—can possibly know anything about it."
Momma was speechless, and, as usual, the Senator came to the rescue. He never will allow momma to be trampled on, and there was distinct retaliation in his manner. "Look here, aunt," he said, "there's nothing profane in saying you're fleshy when you are, you know, and you don't need to remove so much as your bonnet strings for the general public to be aware of it. And when you come to America don't you ever insult anybody by calling her corpulent, which is a perfectly indecent expression. Now if you won't go back to bed and tranquillise your mind—on a plain soda——"
"I won't," said Mrs. Portheris.
"De carriages is already," said the head porter, glistening with an amiability of which we all appreciated the balm. And we entered the carriages—Mrs. Portheris and the downcast Isabel and Mr. Mafferton in one, and momma, poppa, Dicky, and I in the other. For no American would have been safe in Mrs. Portheris's carriage for at least two hours, and this came home even to Mr. Dod.
"Never again!" exclaimed momma as we rattled down among the narrow streets that crowd under the Funicular railway. "Never again will I call that woman Aunt Caroline."
"Don't call her fleshy, my dear, that's what really irritated her," remarked the Senator. The Senator's discrimination, I have often noticed, is not the nicest thing about him.
Hours and hours it seemed to take, that drive to Pompeii. Past the ambitious confectioner with his window full of cherry pies, each cherry round and red and shining like a marble, and the plate glass dry-goods store where ready-made costumes were displayed that looked as if they might fit just as badly as those of Westbourne Grove, and so by degrees and always down hill through narrower and shabbier streets where all the women walked bareheaded and the shops were mostly turned out on the pavement for the convenience of customers, and a good many of them went up and down in wheelbarrows. And often through narrow ways so high-walled and many-windowed that it was quite cool and dusky down below, and only a strip of sun showed far up along the roofs of one side. Here and there a wheelbarrow went strolling through these streets too, and we saw at least one family marketing. From a little square window a prodigious way up came, as we passed, a cry with custom in it, and a wheelbarrow paused beneath. Then down from the window by a long, long rope slid a basket from the hands of a young woman leaning out in red, and the vendor took the opportunity of sitting down on his barrow handle till it arrived. Soldi and a piece of paper he took out of the basket and a cabbage and onions he put in, and then it went swinging upwards and he picked up his barrow again, and we rattled on and left him shouting and pushing his hat back—it was not a soft felt but a bowler—to look up at the other windows. In spite of the bowler it was a picturesque and Neapolitan incident, and it left us much divided as to the contents of the piece of paper.
"My idea is," said the Senator, "that the young woman in the red jersey was the hired girl and that note was what you might call a clandestine communication."
"Since we are in Naples," remarked Mr. Dod, "I think, Senator, your deduction is correct. Where we come from a slavey with any self-respect would put her sentiments on a gilt-edged correspondence card in a scented envelope with a stamp on the outside and ask you to kindly drop it into the pillar box on your way to business; but this chimes in with all you read about Naples."
"Perfectly ridiculous!" said momma. "Mark my words, that note was either a list of vegetables wanted, or an intimation that if they weren't going to be fresher than the last, that man needn't stop for orders in future. And in a country as destitute of elevators as this one is I suppose you couldn't keep a servant a week if you didn't let her save the stairs somehow. But I must say if I were going to have cabbage and onions the same day I wouldn't like the neighbours to know it."
I entirely agreed with momma, and was reflecting, while they talked of something else, on the injustice of considering ours the sentimental sex, when the Senator leaned forward and advised me in an undertone to make a note of the market basket.
"And take my theory to account for the piece of paper," said he; "your mother's may be the most likely, but mine is what the public will expect."
And always the shadows of the narrow streets crooked in the end into a little plaza full of sun and beggars, and lemonade stands, and hawkers of wild strawberries, and when the great bank of a flower-stall stood just where the shadow ended sharply and the sun began, it made something to remember. After that our way lay through a suburban parish fête, and we pursued it under strings and strings of little glass lanterns, red, and green, and blue, that swung across the streets; and there were goats and more children, and momma vainly endeavoured to keep off the smells with her parasol. Then a region of docks and masts rising unexpectedly, and many little fish shops, and a glitter of scales on the pavement, and disconnected coils of rope, and lounging men with earrings, and unkempt women with babies, and above and over all the warm scent, standing still in the sun, of hemp, and tar, and the sea.
"The city," said the Senator, casting his practised eye on a piece of dead wall that ran along the pavement, "is evidently in the turmoil of a general election, though you mightn't notice it. It's the third time I've seen those posters 'Viva il Prefétto!' and 'Viva L'opposizione! That seems to be about all they can do, just as if we contented ourselves with yelling ''Rah for Bryan!' 'One more for McKinley!' I must say if they haven't any more notion of business than that they don't either of 'em deserve to get there."
"In France," observed Mr. Dod, "they stick up little handbills addressed to their 'chers concitoyens' as if voters were a lot of baa-lambs and willie-boys. It makes enervating reading."
"Young man," said poppa in a burst of feeling, "they say the American eagle might keep her beak shut with advantage, more than she does; but I tell you," and the Senator's hand came down hard on Dicky's knee, "a trip around Europe is enough to turn her into a singing bird, sir, a singing bird."
I don't get my imagination entirely from momma.
"Viva il Prefétto! Viva L'opposizione!" poppa repeated pityingly, as another pair of posters came in sight. "Well, it won't ever do the Government of Italy any good, but I guess I'm with the Opposizione."
The road grew emptier and sandy white, and commerce forsook it but for here and there a little shop with fat yellow bags, which were the people's cheeses, hanging in bladders at the door. Crumbled gateways began to appear, and we saw through them that the villa gardens inside ran down and dropped their rose leaves into the blue of the Mediterranean. We met the country people going their ways to town; they looked at us with friendly patronage, knowing all about us, what we had come to see, and the foolishness of it, and especially the ridiculous cost of carozza that take people to Pompeii. And at last, just as the sun and the jolting and the powdery white dust combined had instigated us all to suggest to the Senator how much better it would have been to come by rail, the ponies made a glad and jingling sweep under the acacias of the Hôtel Diomede, which is at the portals of Pompeii.
It seemed a casual and a cheerful place, full of open doors and proprietary Neapolitans who might have been brothers and sisters-in-law, whose conversation we interrupted coming in. There had been domestic potations; a very fat lady, with a horn comb in her hair, wiped liquid rings off the table with her apron, removing the glasses, while a collarless male person with an agreeable smile and a soft felt hat placed wooden chairs for us in a row. Poppa knows no Italian, but they seemed to understand from what he said that we wanted things to drink, and brought us with surprising accuracy precisely what each of us preferred, lemonade for momma and me, and beverages consisting largely, though not entirely, of soda water for the Senator and Mr. Dod. While we refreshed ourselves, another, elderly, grizzled, and one-eyed, came and took up a position just outside the door opposite and sang a song of adventurous love, boxing his own ears in the chorus with the liveliest effect. A further agreeable person waited upon us and informed us that he was the interpreter, he would everything explain to us, that this was a beggar man who wanted us to give him some small money, but there was no compulsion if we did not wish to do so. I think he gave us that interpretation for nothing. The fat lady then produced a large fan which she waved over us assiduously, and the collarless man in the soft hat stood by to render aid in any further emergency, smiling upon us as if we were delicacies out of season. Poppa bore it as long as he could, and we all made an unsuccessful effort to appear as if we were quite accustomed to as much attention and more in the hotels of America; but in a very few minutes we knew all the disadvantages of being of too much importance. Presently the one-eyed man gave way to a pair of players on the flute and mandolin.
"Look here," said poppa at this, to the interpreter, "you folks are putting yourselves out on our account a great deal more than is necessary. We are just ordinary travelling public, and you don't need to entertain us with side shows that we haven't ordered any more than if we belonged to your own town. See?" But the interpreter did not see. He beckoned instead to an engaging daughter of the fat lady, who approached modestly with a large book of photographs, which she opened before the Senator, kneeling beside his chair.
"Great Scott!" exclaimed poppa, "I'm not a crowned head. Rise, Miss Diomede."
Removing his cigar, he assisted the young lady to her feet and led her to a sofa at the other end of the room, where, as they turned over the photographs together, I heard him ask her if she objected to tobacco.
"You may go," said momma to the interpreter, "and explain the scenes. Mr. Wick will enjoy them much more if he understands them." The freedom from conventional restraint which characterises American society very seldom extends to married gentlemen.
We had to wait twenty minutes for the other party, on account of their British objection to anybody's dust. Even Mr. Mafferton looked quelled when they arrived, and Isabel quite abject, while Mrs. Portheris wore that air of justification which no circumstance could impair, which was particularly her own. She would not sit down. "It gives these people a claim on you," she said. "I did not come here to run up an hotel bill, but to see Pompeii. Pompeii I demand to see." The players on the flute and mandolin looked at Mrs. Portheris consideringly and then strolled away, and the guide, with a sorrowful glance at the landlady, put on his hat. "I can explain you everything," he said with an inflection that placed the responsibility for remaining in ignorance upon our own heads, but Mrs. Portheris waved him away with her fan. "No," she said. "I beg that this man shall not be allowed to inflict himself upon our party. I particularly desire to form my own impression of the historic city, that city that did so much for the reputation of Sir Henry Bulwer Lytton. Besides, these people mount up ridiculously, and with servants at home on half wages, and Consols in the state they are, one is really compelled to economise."
"I'm not a crowned head!"
It was difficult to protest against Mrs. Portheris's regulations, and impossible to contravene them, so I have nothing to report of that guide but his card, which bore the name "Antonio Plicco," and his memory, which is a blank.
There was an ascent, and Mrs. Portheris mounted it proudly. I pointed out to poppa half-way up that his esteemed relative hadn't turned a hair, but he was inclined to be incredulous; said you couldn't tell what was going on in the Department of the Interior. The Senator often uses a political reference to carry him over a delicate allusion. Flowering shrubs and bushes lined the path we climbed, silent in the sunshine, dustily decorative, and at the top the turning of a key let us into a strange place. Always a strange place, however often the guide-books beat their iterations upon it, a place that leaps at imagination, peering into other days through the mists that lie between, and blinds it with a rush of light—the place where they have gathered together what was left of the dead Pompeiians and their world. There they lay before us for our wonderment as they ran, and tripped, and struggled, and fell in the night of that day when they and the gods together were overwhelmed, and they died as they thought in the end of time. And through an open door Vesuvius sent up its eternal gentle woolly curl again the daylight sky, and vineyards throve, and birds sang, and we, who had survived the gods, came curious to look. The figures lay in glass cases, and Dicky remarked, with unusual seriousness, that it was like a dead-house.
"Except," said poppa, "that in this mortuary there isn't ever going to be anybody who can identify the remains. When you come to think of it—that's kind of hard."
"No chance of Christian burial once you get into a museum," said Dick with solicitude.
"I should like," remarked Mrs. Portheris, polishing her pince nez to get a better view of a mother and daughter lying on their faces. "I should like to see the clergyman who would attempt it. These people were heathen, and richly deserved their fate. Richly!"
Momma looked at her husband's Aunt Caroline with indignant scorn. "Do you really think so?" she asked, but we could all see that her words were a very inadequate expression for her emotions. Mrs. Portheris drew all the guns of her orthodoxy into line for battle. "I am surprised——" she began, and then the Senator politely but firmly interfered.
"Ladies," he said, "'De mortuis nisi bonum,' which is to say it isn't customary to slang corpses, especially, as you may say, in their presence. I guess we can all be thankful, anyhow, that heathen nowadays have got a cooler earth to live on," and that for the moment was the end of it, but momma still gazed commiseratingly at the figures, with a suspicious tendency to look for her handkerchief.
"It's too terrible," she said. "We can actually see their features."
"Don't let them get on your nerves, Augusta," suggested poppa.
"I won't if I can help it. But when you see their clothes and their hair and realise——"
"It happened over eighteen hundred years ago, my dear, and most of them got away."
"That didn't make it any better for those who are now before us," and momma used her handkerchief threateningly, though it was only in connection with her nose.
"Well now, Augusta, I hate to destroy an illusion like that, because they're not to be bought with money, but since you're determined to work yourself up over these unfortunates, I've got to expose them to you. They're not the genuine remains you take them for. They're mere worthless imitations."
"Alexander," said momma suspiciously, "you never hesitate to tamper with the truth if you think it will make me any more comfortable. I don't believe you."
"All right," returned the Senator; "when we get home you ask Bramley. It was Bramley that put me on to it. Whenever one of those Pompeii fellows dropped, the ashes kind of caked over him, and in the course of time there was a hole where he had been. See? And what you're looking at is just a collection of those holes filled up with composition and then dug out. Mere holes!"
"The illusion is dreadfully perfect," sighed momma. "Fancy dying like a baked potato in hot ashes! Somehow, Alexander, I don't seem able to get over it," and momma gazed with distressed fascination at the grim form of the negro porter.
"We've got no proper grounds for coming to that conclusion either," replied poppa firmly. "Just as likely they were suffocated by the gas that came up out of the ground."
"Oh, if I could think that!" momma exclaimed with relief. "But if I find you've been deceiving me, Alexander, I'll never forgive you. It's too solemn!"
"You ask Bramley," I heard the Senator reply. "And now come and tell me if this loaf of bread somebody baked eighteen hundred and twenty something years ago isn't exactly the same shape as the Naples bakers are selling right now."
"Daughter," said momma as she went, "I hope you are taking copious notes. This is the wonder of wonders that we behold to-day." I said I was, and I wandered over to where Mrs. Portheris examined with Mr. Mafferton an egg that was laid on the last day of Pompeii. Mrs. Portheris was asking Mr. Mafferton, in her most impressive manner, if it was not too wonderful to have positive proof that fowls laid eggs then just as they do now; and I made a note of that too. Dicky and Isabel bemoaned the fate of the immortal dog who still bites his flank in the pain extinguished so long ago. I hardly liked to disturb them, but I heard Dicky say as I passed that he didn't mind much about the humans, they had their chance, but this poor little old tyke was tied up, and that on the part of Providence was playing it low down.
Then we all stepped out into the empty streets of Pompeii and Mr. Mafferton read to us impressively, from Murray, the younger Pliny's letter to Tacitus describing its great disaster. The Senator listened thoughtfully, for Pliny goes into all kinds of interesting details. "I haven't much acquaintance with the classics," said he, as Mr. Mafferton finished, "but it strikes me that the modern New York newspaper was the medium to do that man justice. It's the most remarkable case I've noticed of a good reporter born before his time."
"A terrible retribution," said Mrs. Portheris, looking severely at the Tavern of Phœbus, forever empty of wine-bibbers. "They worshipped Jupiter, I understand, and other deities even less respectable. Can we wonder that a volcano was sent to destroy them! One thing we may be quite sure of—if the city had only turned from its wickedness and embraced Christianity, this never would have happened."
Momma compressed her lips and then relaxed them again to say, "I think that idea perfectly ridiculous." I scented battle and hung upon the issue, but the Senator for the third time interposed.
"Why no, Augusta," he said, "I guess that's a working hypothesis of Aunt Caroline's. Here's Vesuvius smokin' away ever since just the same, and there's Naples with a bishop and the relics of Saint Januarius. You can read in your guide-book that whenever Vesuvius has looked as if he meant business for the past few hundred years, the people of Naples have simply called on the bishop to take out the relics of Saint Januarius and walk 'em round the town; and that's always been enough for Vesuvius. Now the Pompeii folks didn't know a saint or a bishop by sight, and Jupiter, as Aunt Caroline says, was never properly qualified to interfere. That's how it was, I presume. I don't suppose the people of Naples take much stock in the laws of nature; they don't have to, with Januarius in a drawer. And real estate keeps booming right along."
"You have an extraordinary way of putting things," remarked Mrs. Portheris to her nephew. "Very extraordinary. But I am glad to hear that you agree with me," and she looked as if she did not understand momma's acquiescent smile.
We went our several ways to see the baths, and the Comic Theatre, the bakehouse and the gymnasium; and I had a little walk by myself in the Street of Abundance, where the little empty houses waited patiently on either side for those to return who had gone out, and the sun lay full on their floors of dusty mosaic, and their gardens where nothing grew. It seemed to me, as it seems to everybody, that Pompeii was not dead, but asleep, and her tints were so clear and gay that her dreams might be those of a ballet-girl. A solitary yellow dog chased a lizard in the sun, and the pebbles he knocked about made an absurdly disturbing noise. Beyond the vague tinted roofless walls that stretched over the pleasant little peninsula, the blue sea rippled tenderly, remembering much delight, and the place seemed to smile in its sleep. It was easy to understand why Cicero chose to have his villa in the midst of such light-heartedness, and why the gods, perhaps, decided that they had lent too much laughter to Pompeii. I made free of the hospitality of Cornelius Rufus and sat for a while in his exedra, where he himself, in marble on a little pillar in the middle of the room, made me as welcome as if I had been a client or a neighbour. We considered each other across the centuries, making mutual allowances, and spent the most sociable half-hour. I take a personal interest in the city's disaster now—it overwhelmed one of my friends.
CHAPTER XVII.
On the Lungarno in Florence, in the cool of the evening, we walked together, the Senator, momma, Dicky, and I. Dicky radiated depression, if such a thing is atmospherically possible; we all moved in it. Mr. Dod had been banished from the Portheris party, and he groaned over the reflection that it was his own fault. At Pompeii I had exerted myself in his interest to such an extent that Mr. Mafferton detached himself from Mrs. Portheris and attached himself to momma for the drive home. Little did I realise that one could be too agreeable in a good cause. Dicky insinuated himself with difficulty into Mr. Mafferton's vacant place opposite Mrs. Portheris, and even before the carriages started I saw that he was going to have a bad time. His own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel. The unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy was most discreet.
"There is something Biblical," said Mrs. Portheris (so Dicky related), "that those Pompeiian remains remind me of, and I cannot think what it is."
"Lot's wife, mamma?" said Isabel.
"Quite right, my child—what a memory you have! That wretched woman who stopped to look back at the city where careless friends and relatives were enjoying themselves, indifferent to their coming fate, in direct disobedience to the command. Of course, she turned to salt, and these people to ashes, but she must have looked very much like them when the process was completed."
That was Dicky's opportunity for restraint and submission, but he seemed to have been physically unable to take it. He rushed, instead, blindly to perdition. "I don't believe that yarn," he said.
There was a moment's awful silence, during which Dicky said he counted his heart-beats and felt as if he had announced himself an atheist or a Jew, and then his sentence fell.
"In that case, Mr. Dod, I must infer that you are opposed to the doctrine of the complete inspiration of Holy Writ. If you do not believe in that, I shudder to think of what you may not believe in. I will say no more now, but after dinner I will be obliged to speak to you for a few minutes, privately. Thank you, I can get out without assistance."
And after dinner, privately, Dicky learned that Mrs. Portheris had for some time been seriously considering the effect of his, to her, painfully flippant views, upon the opening mind of her daughter—the child had only been out six months—and that his distressing announcement of this morning left her in no further doubt as to her path of duty. She would always endeavour to have as kindly a recollection of him as possible, he had really been very obliging, but for the present she must ask him to make some other travelling arrangements. Cook, she believed, would always change one's tickets less ten per cent., but she would leave that to Dicky. And she hoped, she sincerely hoped, that time would improve his views. When that was accomplished she trusted he would write and tell her, but not before.
"And while I'm getting good and ready to pass an examination in Noah, Jonah, and Methuselah," remarked Dicky bitterly, as we discussed the situation on the Lungarno for the seventh time that day, "Mafferton sails in."
"Why didn't you tell her plainly that you wanted to marry Isabel, and would brook no opposition?" I demanded, for my stock of sympathy was getting low.
"Now that's a valuable suggestion, isn't it?" returned Mr. Dod with sarcasm. "Good old psychological moment that was, wasn't it? Talk about girls having tact! Besides, I've never told Isabel herself yet, and I'm not the American to give in to the effete and decaying custom of asking a girl's poppa, or momma if it's a case of widow, first. Not Richard Dod."
"What on earth," I exclaimed, "have you been doing all this time?"
"Now go slow, Mamie, and don't look at me like that. I've been trying to make her acquainted with me—explaining the kind of fellow I am—getting solid with her. See?"
"Showing her the beauties of your character!" I exclaimed derisively.
"I said something about the defects, too," said Dicky modestly, "though not so much. And I was getting on beautifully, though it isn't so easy with an English girl. They don't seem to think it's proper to analyse your character. They're so maidenly."
"And so unenterprising," I said, but I said it to myself.
"Isabel was actually beginning to lead up to the subject," Dicky went on. "She asked me the other day if it was true that all American men were flirts. In another week I should have felt that she would know what was proposing to her."
"And you were going to wait another week?"
"Well, a man wants every advantage," said Dicky blandly.
"Did you explain to Isabel that you were only joining our party in the hope of meeting her accidentally soon again?"
"What else," asked he in pained surprise, "should I have joined it for? No, I didn't; I hadn't the chance, for one thing. You took the first train back to Rome next morning, you know. She wasn't up."
"True," I responded. "Momma said not another hour of her husband's Aunt Caroline would she ever willingly endure. She said she would spend her entire life, if necessary, in avoiding the woman." But Dicky had not followed the drift of my thought.
I added vaguely, "I hope she will understand it"—I really couldn't be more definite—and bade Mr. Dod good-night. He held my hand absent-mindedly for a moment, and mentioned the effectiveness of the Ponte Vecchio from that point of view.
"I didn't feel bound to change my tickets less ten per cent.," he said hopefully, "and we're sure to come across them early and often. In the meantime you might try and soften me a little—about Lot's wife."
Next day, in the Ufizzi, it was no surprise to meet the Miss Binghams. We had a guilty consciousness of fellow-citizenship as we recognised them, and did our best to look as if two weeks were quite long enough to be forgotten in, but they seemed charitable and forgiving on this account, said they had looked out for us everywhere, and had we seen the cuttings in the Vatican?
"The statues, you know," explained Miss Cora kindly, seeing that we did not comprehend. "Marvellous—simply marvellous! We enjoyed nothing so much as the marble department. It takes it out of you though—we were awfully done afterwards."
I wondered what Phidias would have said to the "cuttings," and whether the Miss Binghams imagined it a Briticism. It also occurred to me that one should never mix one's colloquialisms; but that, of course, did not prevent their coming round with us. I believe they did it partly to diffuse their guide among a larger party. He was hanging, as they came up, upon Miss Cora's reluctant earring, so to speak, and she was mechanically saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" to his representations. "I suppose," said she inadvertently, "there is no way of preventing their giving one information," and after that when she hospitably pressed the guide upon us we felt at liberty to be unappreciative.
I regret to write it of two maiden ladies of good New York family, and a knowledge of the world; but the Miss Binghams capitulated to Dicky Dod with a promptness and unanimity which would have been very bad for him if nobody had been there to counteract its effects. He walked between them through the vestibules, absorbing a flow of tribute from each side with a complacency which his recent trying experiences made all the more profound. There was always a something, Miss Nancy declared, about an American who had made his home in England—you could always tell. "In your case, Mr. Dod, there is an association of Bond Street. I can't describe it, but it is there. I hope you don't mind my saying so."
"Oh, no," said Dicky, "I guess it's my tailor. He lives in Bond Street;" but this was artless and not ironical. Miss Cora went further. "I should have taken Mr. Dod for an Englishman," she said, at which the miscalculated Mr. Dod looked alarmed.
"Is that so?" he responded. "Then I'll book my passage back at once. I've been over there too long. You see I've been kind of obliged to stay for reasons connected with the firm, but you ladies can take my word for it that when you get through this sort of ridiculous veneer I've picked up you'll find a regular all-wool-and-a-yard-wide city-of-Chicago American, and I'm bound to ask you not to forget it. This English way of talking is a thing that grows on a fellow unconsciously, don't you know. It wears off when you get home."
At which Miss Cora and Miss Nancy looked at each other smilingly and repeated "Don't you know" in derisive echo, and we all felt that our young friend had been too modest about his acquirements.
"But we mustn't neglect our old masters," cried Miss Nancy as those of the first corridor began to slip past us on the walls, with no desire to interrupt. "What do you think of this Greek Byzantine style, Mr. Wick? Somehow it doesn't seem to appeal to me, though whether it's the flatness—or what——"
"It is flat, certainly," agreed the Senator, "but that's a very popular style of angel for Christmas cards—the more expensive kinds. Here, I suppose, we get the original."
"That is Tuscan school, sir—madam," put in the guide, "and not angel—Saint Cecilia. Fourteen century, but we do not know that artiss his name. In the book you will see Cimabue, but it is not Cimabue—unknown artiss."
"Dear me!" cried momma. "St. Cecilia, of course. Don't you remember her expression—in the Catacombs?"
"She's sweet, always and everywhere," said Miss Cora, as we moved on, leaving the guide explaining St. Cecilia with his hands behind his back. "And you did go to Capri after all? Now I wonder, Nancy, if they had our experience about the oysters?"
"A horrid little man!" cried momma.
"Who showed you the way to the steamer——"
"And hung around doing things the whole enduring time," continued my parent, as Mark Antony's daughter turned her head aside, and Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, frowned upon our passing.
"He must have been our man!" cried both the Misses Bingham, with excitement.
"In the manner of Taddeo Gaddi," interrupted the guide, surprising us on the flank with a Holy Family.
"All right," said the Senator. "Well, this fellow proposed to bring our party oysters on the steamer, and we took him, of course, for the steward's tout——"
"Exactly what we thought."
"Since you are going to tell the story, Alexander, I may remind you that he said they were the best in the world," remarked momma, with several degrees of frost.
"My dear, the anecdote is yours. But you remember I told him they wouldn't be in it with Blue Points."
"Now what," exclaimed Miss Nancy, with excitement, "did he ask you for them?"
"Three francs a head, Nancy, wasn't it, Mrs. Wick? And you gave the order, and the man disappeared. And you thought he'd gone to get them; at least, we did. Nancy here had perfect confidence in him. She said he had such dog-like eyes, and we were both perfectly certain they would be served when the steamer stopped at the Blue Grotto——" Miss Cora paused to smile.
"But they weren't," suggested momma feebly.
"No, indeed, and hadn't the slightest intention of being." Miss Nancy took up the tale. "Not until we were taking off our gloves in the hotel verandah, and making up our minds to a good hot lunch, did those oysters appear—exactly half a dozen, and bread and butter extra! And we couldn't say we hadn't ordered them. And the lunch was only two francs fifty, complet. But we felt we ought to content ourselves with the oysters, though, of course, you wouldn't with gentlemen in your party. Now, what course did you pursue, Mrs. Wick?"
"Really," said momma distantly, "I don't remember. I believe we had enough to eat. Surely that is little Moses being taken from the bulrushes! How it adds to one's interest to recognise the subject."
"By B. Luti," responded Miss Nancy. "I hope he isn't very well known, for I never heard of him before. Now, there's a Domenichino; I can tell it from here. I do love Domenichino, don't you?"
I suppose the Senator knew that momma didn't love Domenichino, and would possibly be at a loss to say why; at all events, he remarked that, talking of Capri, he hoped the Miss Binghams had not felt as badly about inconveniencing the donkeys that took them to the top of the cliff as momma had. "Mrs. Wick," he informed them, "rode an ass by the name of Michael Angelo, perfectly accustomed to the climate, and, do you believe it, she held her parasol over that animal's head the whole way." At which everybody laughed, and momma, invested with an original and amiable weakness, was appeased.
"Of Michelangelo we have not here much," said the guide patiently. "Drawings yes, and one holy Family—magnificent! But all in another room w'ich——"
"Now what Bramley said about the Ufizzi was this," continued the Senator. "'You'll see on those walls,' he said, 'the best picture show in the world, both for pedigree and quality of goods displayed. I'd go as far as to say they're all worth looking at, even those that have been presented to the institution. But don't you look at them,' Bramley said, 'as a whole. You keep all your absorbing-power for one apartment,' he said—'the Tribune. You'll want it.' Bramley gave me to understand that it wasn't any use he didn't profess to be able to describe his sublimer emotions, but when he sat down in the Tribune he had a sort of instinctive idea that he'd got the cream of it—he didn't want to go any further."
We decided, therefore, in spite of such minor attractions as those of Niobe and her daughters, at once to achieve the Tribune, feeling, as poppa said, that it would be most unfortunate to have our admiration all used up before we reached it. The guide led the way, and it was beguiled with the fascinating experience of the Miss Binghams, who had met Queen Marguerite driving in the Villa Borghese at Rome and had received a bow from her Majesty of which nothing would ever be able to deprive them. "Of course we drew up to let her pass," said Miss Nancy, "and were careful not to make ourselves in any way conspicuous, merely standing up in the carriage as an ordinary mark of respect. And she looked charming, all in pink and white, with a faded old maid of honour that set her off beautifully, didn't she, Cora? And such a pretty smile she gave us—they say she likes the better class of Americans."
"Oh, we've nothing to regret about Rome," rejoined Cora. "Even Peter's toe. I wouldn't have kissed it at the time if the guide hadn't said it was really Jupiter's. I was sure our dear vicar wouldn't mind my kissing Jupiter's toe. But now I'm glad I did it in any case. People always ask you that."
When we arrived at the little octagonal treasure chamber Mr. Dod and Miss Cora sat down together on one of the less conspicuous sofas, and I saw that Dicky was already warmed to confidence. Momma at once gave up her soul to the young St. John, having had an engraving of it ever since she was a little girl, and the Senator went solemnly from canvas to canvas on tip-toe with a mind equally open to Job and the Fornarina. He assured Miss Nancy and me that Bramley was perfectly right in thinking everything of the Tribune, and with reference to the Dancing Fawn, that it was worth a visit to see Michael Angelo's notion of executing repairs to statuary alone. He gave the place the benefit of his most serious attention, pulling his beard a good deal before Titian's Venus (which poppa always did in connection with this goddess, however, entirely apart from the merit of the painting) and obviously making allowances for her of Medici on account of her great age. At the end of the hour we spent there it had the same effect upon him as upon Colonel Bramley, he did not wish to go any further; and we parted from the Miss Binghams, who did. As I said good-bye to Miss Cora she gave my hand a subtly sympathetic pressure, whispered tenderly, "He's very nice," and roguishly escaped before I could ask who was, or what difference it made. Having thought it over, I took the first opportunity of inquiring of Dicky how much of his private affairs he had unburdened to Miss Cora. "Oh," said he, "hardly anything. She knows a former young lady friend of mine in Syracuse—we still exchange Christmas cards—and that led me on to say I thought of getting married this winter. Of course I didn't mention Isabel."
CHAPTER XVIII.
Out of indulgence to Dicky we lingered in Florence three or four days longer than was at all convenient, considering, as the Senator said, the amount of ground we had to cover before we could conscientiously recross the Channel. But neither poppa nor momma were people to desert a fellow-countryman in distress in foreign parts, especially in view of this one's pathetic reliance upon our sympathy and support, as a family. We all did our best toward the distraction of what momma called his poor mind, though I cannot say that we were very successful. His poor mind seemed wholly taken up with one anticipative idea, and whatever failed to minister to that he hadn't, as poppa sadly said, any use for. The cloisters of San Marco had no healing for his spirit, and when we directed his attention to the solitary painting on the wall with which Fra Angelico made a shrine of each of its monastic cubicles he merely remarked that it was more than you got in most hotels, and turned joylessly away. Even the charred stick that helped to martyr Savonarola left him cold. He said, indifferently, that it was only the natural result of mixing up politics and religion, and that certain Chicago ministers who supported Bryan from the pulpit might well take warning. But his words were apathetic; he did not really care whether those Chicago ministers went to the stake or not. We stood him before the bronze gates of Ghiberti, and walked him up and down between rows of works in pietra dura, but without any permanent effect, and when he contemplated the consecrated residences of Cimabue and Cellini, we could see that his interest was perfunctory, and that out of the corner of his eye he really considered passing fiacres. I read to him aloud from "Romola," and momma bought him an English and Italian washing book that he might keep a record of his camicie and his fazzoletti—it would be so interesting afterwards, she thought—while the Senator exerted himself in the way of cheerful conversation, but it was very discouraging. Even when we dined at the fashionable open air restaurant in the Cascine, with no less a person than Ouida, in a fluff of grey hair and black lace, at the next table, and the most distinguished gambler of the Italian aristocracy presenting a narrow back to us from the other side, he permitted poppa to compare the quality of the beef fillets unfavourably with those of New York in silence, and drank his Chianti with a lack-lustre eye.
Towards the end of the week, however, Dicky grew remorseful. "It's all very well," he said to me privately, "for Mrs. Wick to say that she could spend a lifetime in Florence, if the houses only had a few modern conveniences. I daresay she could—and as for your poppa, he's as patient as if this were a Washington hotel and he had a caucus every night, but it's as plain as Dante's nose that the Senator's dead sick of this city."
"Dicky," I said, "that is a reflection of your own state of mind. Poppa is willing to take as much more Botticelli and Filippo Lippi as it may be necessary to give him."
"Oh, I know he would" Dicky admitted, "but he isn't as young as he was, and I should hate to feel I was imposing on him. Besides, I'm beginning to conclude that they've skipped Florence."
So it came to pass that we departed for Venice next day, tarrying one night at Bologna. We had cut a day off Bologna for Dicky's sake, but the Senator could not be persuaded to sacrifice it altogether on account of its well known manufacture, into the conditions of which he wished to inquire. The shops, as we drove to the hotel, seemed to expose nothing else for sale, but poppa said that, in spite of the local consumption, it had certainly fallen off, and, as an official representative of one of its great rivals in the west, he naturally felt a compunctious interest in the state of the industry. The hotel had a little courtyard, with an orange tree in the middle and palms in pots, and we came down the wide marble stairs, past the statues on the landing, and the paintings on the walls, to find dinner laid on round tables out there, I remember. A note of momma's occurs here to the effect that there is a great deal too much fine art in Italian hotels, with a reference to the fact that the one at Naples had the whole of Pompeii painted on the dining room walls. She considers this practice embarrassing to the public mind, which has no way of knowing whether to admire these things or not, though personally we boldly decided to scorn them all. This, however, has nothing to do with poppa and the commercial traveller. We knew he was a commercial traveller by the way he put his toothpick in his pocket, though poppa said afterwards that he was not exceptionally endowed for that line of business. He was dining at our table, and by his gratified manner when we sat down, it was plain that he could speak English and would be very pleased to do so. Poppa, knowing that his time was short, began at once.
"You belong to Bologna, sir?" he inquired with his first spoonful of soup. For some reason it seems impossible to address a stranger at a table d'hôte, before the soup takes the baldness off the situation.
The gentleman smiled. He had a broad, open, amiable, red face, with a short black beard and a round head covered with thick hair in curls, beautifully parted. "I do not think I belong," he said; "my house of business, it is at Milan, and I am born at Finalmarina. But I come much to Bologna, yes."
"Where did you say you were born?" asked the Senator.
"Finalmarina. You did not go to there, no? I am sorry."
"It does seem a pity," replied poppa, "but we've been obliged to pass a considerable number of your commercial centres, sir. This city, I presume, has large manufacturing interests?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose. You 'ave seen that San Petronio, you cannot help. Very enorm'! More big than San Peter in Rome. But not complete since fourteenth century. In America you 'ave nothing unfinish, is it not?"
"Far as that goes," said poppa, "we generally manage to complete our contracts within the year; as a rule, I may say within the building season. But I have seen one or two Roman Catholic churches left with the scaffolding hanging round the ceiling for a good deal longer, the altar all fixed up too, and public worship going on just as usual. It seems to be a way they have. Well, sir, I knew Bologna, by reputation, better than any other Italian city, for years. Your local manufacture did the business. As a boy at school, there was nothing I was more fond of for my dinner. Thirty years ago, sir, the interest was created that brings me here to-day."
The commercial traveller bowed with much gratification. In the meantime he had presented a card to momma, which informed her that Ricardo Bellini represented the firm of Isapetti and Co., Milan, Artificial Flowers and Lace.
"Thirty years, that is a long time to remember Bologna, I cannot say that thirty years I remember New York. You will not believe!" He was obviously not more than twenty-five, so this was vastly humorous. "Twenty years, yes, twenty years I will say! And have you seen San Stefano? Seven churches in one! Also the most old. And having forty Jerusalem martyrs."
"Forty would go a long way in relics," the Senator observed with discouragement, "but my remarks had reference to the Bologna sausage, sir."
"Sausage—ah! mortadella—yes they make here I believe." Mr. Bellini held up his knife and fork to enable his plate to be changed and looked darkly at the succeeding course. "But every Italian cannot like that dish. I eat him never. You will not find in this hotel no." His manner indicated a personal hostility to the Bologna sausage, but the Senator did not seem to notice it.
"You don't say so! Local consumption going off too, eh? Now how do you explain that?"
Mr. Bellini shrugged his shoulders. "It is much eat by the poor people. They will always have that mortadella!"
"That looks," said the Senator thoughtfully, "like the production of an inferior article. But not necessarily, not necessarily, of course."
"Bologna it is very ecclesiastic." Mr. Bellini addressed my other parent, recovering a smile. "We have produced here six popes. It is the fame of Bologna."
"You seem to think a great deal of producing popes in Italy," momma replied coldly. "I should consider it a terrible responsibility."
"Now do you suppose," said poppa confidentially, "that the idea of trichinosis had anything to do with slackening the demand?"
Mr. Bellini threw his head back, and passionately replaced a section of biscuit and cheese in the middle of his plate.
"I know nossing, any more than you! Why you speak me always that Bologna sausage! Pazienza! What is it that sausage to make the agreeable conversation!"
"Sir," exclaimed the Senator with astonishment and equal heat, "you don't seem to be aware of it, but at one time the Bologna sausage ruled the world!"
Mr. Bellini, however, could evidently not trust himself to discuss the matter further. He rose precipitately with an outraged, impersonal bow, and left the table, abandoning his biscuit and cheese, his half finished bottle of Rudesheimer and the figs that were to follow, with the indifference of a lofty nature.
"I'm sorry I spoiled his dinner," said poppa with concern, "but if a Bologna man can't talk about Bologna sausages, what can he talk about?"
It made the Senator reticent, though, as to sausages of any kind, with the other commercial traveller—the hotel was full of them, and we found it very entertaining after the barren dining rooms of southern Italy—with whom we breakfasted. He spoke to this one exclusively about the architectural and historic features of the city, in a manner which forbade any approach to gastronomic themes, and while the second commercial traveller regarded him with great respect, it must be confessed that the conversation languished. Dicky might have helped us out, but Dicky was following his usual custom of having rooms in one hotel and covering as many others as possible with his meals, in the hope of an accidental meeting. This was excellent as a distraction for his mind, but since it occasionally led him into three déjeuners and two dinners, rather bad, we feared, for other parts of him. He had confided his design to me; he intended, on meeting Isabel's eye, to turn very pale, abruptly terminate his repast, ask for his hat and stick, and walk out with conspicuous agitation. As to the course he meant to pursue afterwards he was vague; the great thing was to make an impression upon Isabel. We differed about the nature of the impression. Dicky took it for granted that she would be profoundly affected, but he made no allowance for the way in which maternal vigilance like that of Mrs. Portheris can discourage the imagination.
Poppa made two further attempts to inform himself upon the leading manufacturing interest of Bologna. He inquired of the padrone, who was pleased to hear that Bologna had a leading manufacturing interest, and when my parent asked where he could see the process, pointed out several shops in the Piazza Maggiore. One of these the Senator visited, note-book in hand, and was shown with great alacrity every variety of mortadella, from delicacies the size of a finger to mottled conceptions as thick as a small barrel. He found a difficulty in explaining, however, even with an Italian phrase book, that it was the manufacture only about which he was curious, and that, admirable as the result might be, he did not wish to buy any of it. When the latter fact finally made itself plain, the proprietor became truculent and gave us, although he spoke no English, so vivid an idea of the inconsistency of our presence in his premises, that we retired in all the irritation of the well-meaning and misunderstood. The Senator, however, who had absolute confidence in his phrase book, saw a deeper significance in the remarkable unwillingness of the people of Bologna to expatiate upon the feature which had given them fame. "The fact is," said he gloomily, restoring his note-book to his inside pocket as we entered the terra-cotta doorway of St. Catarina, "they're not anxious to let a stranger into the know of it." And this conviction remaining with him, still inspires the Senator with a contemptuous pity for the porcine methods of a people who refuse to submit them to the light of day and the observation of the world at large.