So far, momma said she had every reason to be pleased with the effect on her mind. About the Senator's she would not commit herself, beyond saying that we had a great deal to be thankful for in that his health hadn't suffered, in spite of the indigestibility of that eternal French twist and honey that you were obliged on the Continent to begin the day with. She hoped, I think, that the Senator had absorbed other things beside the French twist equally unconsciously, with beneficial results that would appear later. He said himself that it was well worth anybody's while to make the trip, if only in order to be better satisfied with America for the rest of his life, but why people belonging to the United States and the nineteenth century should want to spend whole summers in the Middle Ages he failed to understand. Both my parents, however, looked forward to Venice with enthusiasm. Momma expected it to be the realization of all her dreams, and poppa decided that it must, at all events, be unique. It couldn't have any Arno or any Campagna in the nature of things—that would be a change—and it was not possible to the human mind, however sophisticated, with a livelong experience of street cars and herdics, to stroll up and take a seat in a gondola and know exactly what would happen, where the fare-box was and everything, and whether they took Swiss silver, and if a gentleman in a crowded gondola was expected to give up his seat to a lady and stand. Poppa, as a stranger and unaccustomed to the motion, hoped this would not be the case, but I knew him well enough to predict that if it were so he would vindicate American gallantry at all risks.
Thus it was that, from the moment momma put her head out of the car window, after Mestre, and exclaimed, "It's getting wateryer and wateryer," Venice was a source of the completest joy and satisfaction to both my parents. Dicky and I took it with the more moderate appreciation natural to our years, but it gave us the greatest pleasure to watch the simple and unrestrained delight of momma and poppa, and to revert, as it were, in their experience, to what our own enjoyment might have been had we been born when they were. "No express agents, no delivery carts, no baggage checks," murmured poppa, as our trunks glided up to the hotel steps, "but it gets there all the same." This was the keynote of his admiration—everything got there all the same. The surprise of it was repeated every time anything got there, and was only dashed once when we saw brown-paper parcels being delivered by a boy at the back door of the Palazzo Balbi, who had evidently walked all the way. The Senator commented upon that boy and his groceries as an inconsistency, and thereafter carefully closed his eyes to the fact that even our own hotel, which faced upon the Grand Canal, had communications to the rear by which its guests could explore a large part of commercial Venice without going in a gondola at all. The canals were the only highways he would recognise, and he went three times to St. Maria della Salute, which was immediately opposite, for the sake of crossing the street in the Venetian way. Momma became really hopeful about the stimulus to his imagination; she told him so. "It appeals to you, Alexander," she said. "Its poetry comes home to you—you needn't deny it;" and poppa cordially admitted it. "Yes," he said, "Ruskin, according to the guide-book, doesn't seem as if he could say too much about this city, and Bramley was just the same. They're both right, and if we were going to be here long enough I'd be like that myself. There's something about it that makes you willing to take a lot of trouble to describe it. There's no use saying it's the canals, or the reflections in the water, or the bridges, or the pigeons, or the gargoyles, or the gondolas——"
"Or Salviati, or Jesurum," said momma, in lighter vein.
"Your memory, Augusta, for the names of old masters is perfectly wonderful," continued poppa placidly. "Or Salviati, or Jesurum, or what. But there's a kind of local spell about this place——"
"There are various kinds of local smells," interrupted Dicky, whom Mrs. Portheris still evaded, but this levity received no encouragement from the Senator. He said instead that he hadn't noticed them himself. For his part he had come to Venice to use his eyes, not his nose; and Dicky, thus discouraged, faded visibly upon his stem.
I could see that poppa was still strongly under the influence of the Venetian sentiment when he invited me to go out in a gondola with him after dinner, and pointedly neglected to suggest that either momma or Dicky should come too. I had a presentiment of his intention. If I have seemed, thus far, to omit all reference to Mr. Page in Boston, since we left Paris, it is, first, because I believe it is not considered necessary in a book of travels to account for every half hour, and second, because I privately believed him to be in correspondence with the Senator the whole time, and hesitated to expose his duplicity. I had given poppa opportunities for confessing this clandestine business, but in his paternal wisdom he had not taken them. I was not prepared, therefore, to be very responsive when, from a mere desire to indulge his sense of the fitness of things, poppa endeavoured to probe my sentiments with regard to Mr. Page by moonlight on the Grand Canal. To begin with, I wasn't sure of them—so much depended upon what Arthur had been doing; and besides, I felt that the perfect confidence which should exist between father and daughter had already been a good deal damaged at the paternal end. So when poppa said that it must seem to me like a dream, so much had happened since the day momma and I left Chicago at twenty-four hours' notice, six weeks ago, I said no, for my part I had felt pretty wide awake all the time; a person had to be, I ventured to add, with no more time to waste upon Southern Europe than we had.
"You mean you've been sleeping pretty badly," said the Senator sympathetically.
"Where was it," I inquired, "you would give us pounded crabs and cream for supper after we'd been to hear masses for the repose of somebody's soul? That was a bad night, but I don't think I've had any others. On the contrary."
"Oh, well," said poppa, "it's a good thing it isn't undermining your constitution," but he looked as if it were rather a disappointment.
"The American constitution can stand a lot of transportation," I remarked. "Railways live on that fact. I've heard you say so yourself, Senator."
Then there was an interval during which the oars of the gondoliers dipped musically, and the moon made a golden pathway to the marble steps of the Palazzo Contarina. Then poppa said, "I refer to the object of our tour."
"The object of our tour wasn't to undermine my constitution," I replied. "It was to write a book—don't you remember. But it's some time since you made any suggestions. If you don't look out, the author of that volume will practically be momma."
The Senator allowed himself to be diverted. "I think," he said, "you'd better leave the chapter on Venice to me; you can't just talk anyhow about this city. I'll write it one of these nights before I go to bed."
"But the main reason," he continued, "that sent us to glide this minute over the canal system of the Bride of the Adriatic was the necessity of bracing you up after what you'd been through."
"Well," I said, "it's been very successful. I'm all braced up. I'm glad we have had such a good excuse for coming." A fib is sometimes necessary to one's self-respect.
"Premé!" cried the gondolier, and we shaved past the gondola of a solitary gentleman just leaving the steps of the Hotel Britannia.
"That was a shave!" poppa exclaimed, and added somewhat inconsequently, "You might just as well not speak so loud."
"I've always liked Arty," he continued, as we glided on.
"So have I," I returned cordially.
"He's in many ways a lovely fellow," said poppa.
"I guess he is," said I.
"I don't believe," ventured my parent, "that his matrimonial ideas have cooled down any."
"I hope he may marry well," I said. "Has he decided on Frankie Turner?"
"He has come to no decision that you don't know about. Of course, I have no desire to interfere where it isn't any of my business, but if you wish to gratify your poppa, daughter, you will obey him in this matter, and permit Arthur once more to—to come round evenings as he used to. He is a young man of moderate income, but a very level head, and it is the wish of my heart to see you reconciled."
"Sorry I can't oblige you, poppa," I said. I certainly was not going to have any reconciliation effected by poppa.
"You'd better just consider it, daughter. I don't want to interfere—but you know my desire, my command."
"Senator," said I, "you don't seem to realise that it takes more than a gondola to make a paternal Doge. I've got to ask you to remember that I was born in Chicago. And it's my bed time. Gondolier! Albergo! Andate presto!"
"He seems to understand you," said poppa meekly.
So we dropped Arthur—dropped him, so to speak, into the Grand Canal, and I really felt callous at the time as to whether he should ever come up again.
But the Senator's joy in Venice found other means of expressing itself. One was an active and disinterested appeal to the gondoliers to be a little less modern in their costume. He approached this subject through the guide with every gondolier in turn, and the smiling impassiveness with which his suggestions were received still causes him wonder and disgust. "I presume," he remonstrated, "you think you earn your living because tourists have got to get from the Accademia to St. Mark's, and from St. Mark's to the Bridge of Sighs, but that's only a quarter of the reason. The other three-quarters is because they like to be rowed there in gondolas by the gondoliers they've read about, and the gondoliers they've read about wore proper gondoliering clothes—they didn't look like East River loafers."
"They are poor men, these gondolieri," remarked the guide. "They cannot afford."
"I am not an infant, my friend. I'm a business man from Chicago. It's a business proposition. Put your gondoliers into the styles they wore when Andrea Dandolo went looting Constantinople, and you'll double your tourist traffic in five years. Twice as many people wanting gondolas, wanting guides, wanting hotel accommodation, buying your coloured glass and lace flounces—why, Great Scott! it would pay the city to do the thing at the public expense. Then you could pass a by-law forbidding gondoliering to be done in any style later than the fifteenth century. Pay you over and over again."
Poppa was in earnest, he wanted it done. He was only dissuaded from taking more active measures to make his idea public by the fact that he couldn't stay to put it through. He was told, of course, how the plain black gondola came to be enforced through the extravagance of the nobles who ruined themselves to have splendid ones, and how the Venetians scrupled to depart from a historic mandate, but he considered this a feeble argument, probably perpetuated by somebody who enjoyed a monopoly in supplying Venice with black paint. "Circumstances alter cases," he declared. "If that old Doge knew that the P. and O. was going to run direct between Venice and Bombay every fortnight this year, he'd tell you to turn out your gondolas silver-gilt!"
Nevertheless, as I say, the Senator's views were coldly received, with one exception. A highly picturesque and intelligent gondolier, whom the guide sought to convert to a sense of the anachronism of his clothes in connection with his calling, promised that if we would give him a definite engagement for next day, he would appear suitably clad. The following morning he awaited us with honest pride in his Sunday apparel, which included violently checked trousers, a hard felt hat, and a large pink tie. The Senator paid him hurriedly and handsomely and dismissed him with as little injury to his feelings as was possible under the circumstances. "Tell him," said poppa to the guide, "to go home and take off those pants. And tell him, do you understand, to rush!"
That same day, in the afternoon, I remember, when we were disembarking for an ice at Florian's, momma directed our attention to two gentlemen in an approaching gondola. "There's something about that man," she said impressively, "I mean the one in the duster, that belongs to the reign of Louis Philippe."
"There is," I responded; "we saw him last in the Petit Trianon. It's Mr. Pabbley and Mr. Hinkson. Two more Transatlantic fellow-travellers. Senator, when we meet them shall we greet them?"
The Senator had a moment of self-expostulation.
"Well, no," he said, "I guess not. I don't suppose we need feel obliged to keep up the acquaintance of every American we come across in Europe. It would take us all our time. But I'd like to ask him what use he finds for a duster in Venice."
"How I wish the Misses Bingham could hear you," I thought, but one should never annoy one's parents unnecessarily, so I kept my reflections to myself.
That last day in Venice we went, I remember, to the Lido. Nothing happened, but I don't like leaving it out, because it was the last day, and the next best thing to lingering in Venice is lingering on it. We went in a steamboat, under protest from poppa, who said it might as well be Coney Island until we got there, when he admitted points of difference, and agreed that if people had to come all the way out in gondolas, certain existing enterprises might as well go out of business. The steamer was full of Venetians, and we saw that they were charming, though momma wishes it to be understood that the modern Portia wears her bodice cut rather too low in the neck and gazes much too softly at the modern Bassanio. Poppa and I thought it mere amiability that scorned to conceal itself, but momma referred to it otherwise, admitting, however, that she found it fascinating to watch.
We seemed to disembark at a restaurant permanent among flowing waters, so prominent was this feature of the island, but it had only a roof, and presently we noticed a little grass and some bushes as well. The verdure had quite a novel look, and we decided to discourage the casual person who wished to sell us strange and uncertified shell fish from a basket for immediate consumption, and follow it up.
Dicky was of opinion that we might arrive at the vegetable gardens of Venice, but in this we were disappointed. We came instead to a street-car, and half a mile of arbour, and all the Venetians pleasurably preparing to take carriage exercise. The horses seemed to like the idea of giving it to them, they were quite light-hearted, one of them actually pawed. They were the only horses in Venice, they felt their dignity and their responsibility in a way foreign to animals in the public service, anywhere else in the world. Personally we would have preferred to walk to the other end of the arbour, but it would have seemed a slight, and, as the Senator said, we weren't in Venice to hurt anybody's feelings that belonged there. It would have been extravagant too, since the steamboat ticket included the drive at the end. So we struggled anxiously for good places, and proceeded to the other side with much circumstance, enjoying ourselves as hard as possible. Dicky said he never had such a good time; but that was because he had exhausted Venice and his patience, and was going on to Verona next day.
The arbour and the grass and the street-car track ended sharply and all together at a raised wooden walk that led across the sand to a pavilion hanging over the Adriatic, and here we sat and watched other Venetians disporting themselves in the water below. They were glorious creatures, and they disported themselves nobly, keeping so well in view of the pavilion and such a steady eye upon the spectators that poppa had an impulsive desire to feed them with macaroons. He decided not to; you never could tell, he said, what might be considered a liberty by foreigners; but he had a hard struggle with the temptation, the aquatic accomplishments we saw were so deserving of reward. I had the misfortune to lose a little pink rose overboard, as it were, and Dicky looked seriously annoyed when an amphibious young Venetian caught it between his lips. I don't know why; he was one of the most attractive on view, but I have often noticed Turkish tendencies in Dicky where his country-women are concerned. We came away almost immediately after, so that rose will bloom in my memory, until I forget about it, among romances that might have been.
Strolling back, we bought a Venetian secret for a sou or two, a beautiful little secret, I wonder who first found it out. A picturesque and fishy smelling person in a soft felt hat sold it to us—a pair of tiny dainty dried sea-horses, "mère" and "père" he called them. And there, all in the curving poise of their little heads and the twist of their little tails, was revealed half the art of Venice, and we saw how the first glass worker came to be told to make a sea green dragon climbing over an amber yellow bowl, and where the gondola borrowed its grace. They moved us to unanimous enthusiasm, and we utterly refused to let Dicky put one in his button-hole.
It is looking back upon Venice, too, that I see the paternal figure of the Senator nourishing the people with octopuses. This may seem improbable, but it is strictly true. They were small octopuses, not nearly large enough to kill anybody while they were alive, though boiled and pickled they looked very deadly. Pink in colour, they stood in a barrel near the entrance, I remember, of Jesurum's, and attracted the Senator's inquiring eye. When the guide said they were for human consumption poppa looked at him suspiciously and offered him one. He ate it with a promptness and artistic despatch that fascinated us all, gathering it up by its limp long legs and taking bites out of it, as if it were an apple. A one-eyed man who hooked pausing gondolas up to the slippery steps offered to show how it should be done, and other performers, all skilled, seemed to rise from the stones of the pavement. Poppa invited them all, by pantomime, to walk up and have an octopus, and when the crowd began to gather from the side alleys, and the enthusiasm grew too promiscuous, he bought the barrel outright and watched the carnival from the middle of the canal. He often speaks of his enjoyment of the Venetian octopus, eaten in cold blood, without pepper, salt, or vinegar; and the effect, when I am not there, is awe-stricken.
Next morning we took a gondola for the station, and slipped through the gold and opal silence of the dawn on the canals away from Venice. No one was up but the sun, who did as he liked with the façades and the bridges in the water, and made strange lovelinesses in narrow darkling places, and showed us things in the calli that we did not know were in the world. The Senator was really depressing until he gradually lightened his spirits by working out a scheme for a direct line of steamships between Venice and New York, to be based on an agreement with the Venetian municipality as to garments of legitimate gaiety for the gondoliers, the re-nomination of an annual Doge, who should be compelled to wear his robes whenever he went out of doors, and the yearly resurrection of the ancient ceremony of marrying Venice to the Adriatic, during the months of July and August, when the tide of tourist traffic sets across the Atlantic. "We should get every school ma'am in the Union, to begin with," said poppa confidently, and by the time we reached Verona he had floated the company, launched the first ship, arrived in Venice with full orchestral accompaniment, and dined the imitation Doge—if he couldn't get Umberto and Crispi—upon clam chowder and canvas-backs to the solemn strains of Hail Columbia played up and down the Grand Canal. "If it could be worked," said poppa as we descended upon the platform, "I'd like to have the Pope telephone us a blessing on the banquet."
It was the middle of the afternoon, and momma, having spent the morning among the tombs of the Scaligeri, was lying down. The Scaligeri somehow had got on her nerves; there were so many of them, and the panoply of their individual bones was so imposing.
"Daughter," she had said to me on the way back to the hotel, "if you point out another thing to me I'll slap you." In that frame of mind it was always best to let momma lie down. The Senator had letters to write; I think he wanted to communicate his Venetian steamship idea to a man in Minneapolis. Dicky had already been round to the Hotel di Londres—we were at the Colomba—and had found nothing, so when he asked me to come out for a walk I prepared to be steeped in despondency. An unsuccessful love affair is a severe test of friendship; but I went.
It was as I expected. Having secured a spectator to wreak his gloom upon, Mr. Dod proceeded to make the most of the opportunity. He put his hat on recklessly, and thrust his hands into his pa—his trouser pockets. We were in a strange town, but he fastened his eyes moodily upon the pavement, as if nothing else were worth considering. As we strolled into the Piazza Bra, I saw him gradually and furtively turn up his coat-collar, at which I felt obliged to protest.
"Look here, Dicky," I said, "unrequited affection is, doubtless, very trying, but you're too much of an advertisement. The Veronese are beginning to stare at you; their sorcerers will presently follow you about with their patent philters. Reform your personal appearance, or here, at the foot of this statue of Victor Emmanuel, I leave you to your fate."
Dicky reformed it, but with an air of patience under persecution which I found hard to bear. "I don't know your authority for calling it unrequited," he said, with dignity.
"All right—undelivered," I replied. "That is a noble statue—you can't contradict the guide-book. By Borghi."
"Victor Emmanuel, is it? Then it isn't Garibaldi. You don't have to travel much in Italy to know it's got to be either one or the other. What they like is to have both," said Mr. Dod, with unnecessary bitterness. "I'd enjoy something fresh in statues myself." Then, with an imperfectly-concealed alertness, "There seems to be something going on over there," he added.
We could see nothing but an arched door in a high, curving wall, and a stream of people trickling in. "Probably only one of their eternal Latin church services," continued Dicky. "It's about the only form of public entertainment you can depend on in this country. But we might as well have a look in." He went on to say, as we crossed the dusty road, that my unsympathetic attitude was enough to drive anybody to the Church of Rome, even in the middle of the afternoon.
But we perceived at once that it was not the Church of Rome, or any other church. There was more than one arched entrance, and a man in each, to whom people paid a lira apiece for admission, and when we followed them in we found our feet still upon the ground, and ourselves among a forest of solid buttresses and props. The number XV. was cut deep over the door we came in by, and the props had the air of centuries of patience. A wave of sound seemed to sweep round in a circle inside and spend itself about us, of faint multitudinous clappings. Conviction descended upon us suddenly, and as we stumbled after the others we shared one classic moment of anticipation, hurrying and curious in 1895 as the Romans hurried and were curious in 110, a little late for the show in the Arena. They were all there before us, they had taken the best places, and sat, as we emerged in our astonishment, tier above tier to the row where the wall stopped and the sky began, intent, enthusiastic. The wall threw a new moon of shadow on the west, and there the sun struck down sharply and made splendid the dyes in the women's clothes, and turned the Italian soldiers' buttons into flaming jewels. And again, as we stared, the applause went round and up, from the yellow sand below to the blue sky above, and when we looked bewildered down into the Arena for the victorious gladiator, and saw a tumbling clown with a painted face instead, the illusion was only half destroyed. We climbed and struggled for better places, treading, I fear, in our absorption on a great many Veronese toes. Dicky said when we got them that you had to remember that the seats were Roman in order to appreciate them, they were such very cold stone, and they sloped from back to front, for the purpose, as we found out afterward from the guide-book, of letting off the rain water. We were glad to understand it, but Dicky declared that no explanation would induce him to take a season ticket for the Arena, it was too destitute of modern improvements. It was something, though, to sit there watching, with the ranged multitude, a show in a Roman Amphitheatre—one could imagine things, lictors and ædiles, senators and centurions. It only required the substitution of togas and girdled robes for trousers and petticoats, and a purple awning for the emperor, and a brass-plated body-guard with long spears and hairy arms and legs, and a few details like that. If one half closed one's eyes it was hardly necessary to imagine. I was half closing my eyes, and wondering whether they had Vestal Virgins at this particular amphitheatre, and trying to remember whether they would turn their thumbs up or down when they wished the clown to be destroyed, when Dicky grew suddenly pale and sprang to his feet.
"I was afraid it might give one a chill," I said, "but it is very picturesque. I suppose the ancient Romans brought cushions."
Mr. Dod did not appear to hear me.
"In the third row below," he exclaimed, blushing joyfully, "the sixth from this end—do you see? Yellow bun under a floral hat—Isabel!"
"A yellow bun under a floral hat," I repeated, "that would be Isabel, if you add a good complexion and a look of deportment. Yes, now I see her. Mrs. Portheris on one side, Mr. Mafferton on the other. What do you want to do?"
"Assassinate Mafferton," said Dicky. "Does it look to you as if he had been getting there at all."
"So far as one can see from behind, I should say he has made some progress, but I don't think, Dicky, that he has arrived. He is constitutionally slow," I added, "about arriving."
At that moment the party rose. Without a word we, too, got on our feet and automatically followed, Dicky treading the reserved seats of the court of Berengarius as if they had been the back rows of a Bowery theatre. The classics were wholly obscured for him by a floral hat and a yellow bun. I, too, abandoned my speculations cheerfully, for I expected Mrs. Portheris, confronted with Dicky, to be more entertaining than any gladiator.
We came up with them at the exit, and that august lady, as we approached, to our astonishment, greeted us with effusion.
"We thought," she declared, "that we had lost you altogether. This is quite delightful. Now we must reunite!" Dicky was certainly included. It was extraordinary. "And your dear father and mother," went on Mrs. Portheris, "I am longing to hear their experiences since we parted. Where are you? The Colomba? Why what a coincidence! We are there, too! How small the world is!"
"Then you have only just arrived," said Mr. Dod to Miss Portheris, who had turned away her head, and was regarding the distant mountains.
"Yes."
"By the 11.30 p.m.?"
"No. By the 2.30 p.m."
"Had you a pleasant journey up from Naples?"
"It was rather dusty."
I saw that something quite awful was going on and conversed volubly with Mrs. Portheris and Mr. Mafferton to give Dicky a chance, but in a moment I, too, felt a refrigerating influence proceeding from the floral hat and the bun for which I could not account.
"Where have you been?" inquired Dicky, "if I may ask."
"At Vallombrosa."
There was also a parasol and it twisted indifferently.
"Ah—among the leaves! And were they as thick as William says they are?"
"I don't understand you." And, indeed, this levity assorted incomprehensively with the black despair that sat on Dicky's countenance. It was really very painful in spite of Mrs. Portheris's unusual humanity and Mr. Mafferton's obvious though embarrassed joy, and as Mrs. Portheris's cab drove up at the moment I made a tentative attempt to bring the interview to a close. "Mr. Dod and I are walking," I said.
"Ah, these little strolls!" exclaimed Mrs. Portheris, with benignant humour. "I suppose we must condone them now!" and she waved her hand, rolling away, as if she gave us a British matron's blessing.
"Oh, don't!" I cried. "Don't condone them—you mustn't!" But my words fell short in a cloud of dust, and even Dicky, wrapped in his tragedy, failed to receive an impression from them.
"How," he demanded passionately, "do you account for it?"
"Account for what?" I shuffled.
"The size of her head—the frost—the whole bally conversation!" propounded Dicky, with tears in his eyes.
I have really a great deal of feeling, and I did not rebuke these terms. Besides, I could see only one way out of it, and I was occupied with the best terms in which to present it to Dicky. So I said I didn't know, and reflected.
"She isn't the same girl!" he groaned.
"Men are always talking in the funny columns of the newspapers," I remarked absently, "about how much better they can throw a stone and sharpen a pencil than we can."
Mr. Dod looked injured. "Oh, well," he said, "if you prefer to talk about something else——"
"But they can't see into a sentimental situation any further than into a board fence," I continued serenely. "My dear Dick, Isabel thinks you're engaged. So does her mamma. So does Mr. Mafferton."
"Who to?" exclaimed Mr. Dod, in ungrammatical amazement.
"I looked at him reproachfully. Don't be such an owl!" I said.
Light streamed in upon Dicky's mind. "To you!" he exclaimed. "Great Scott!"
"Preposterous, isn't it?" I said.
"I should ejaculate! Well, no, I mean—I shouldn't ejaculate, but—oh, you know what I mean——"
"I do," I said. "Don't apologise."
"What in my aunt's wardrobe do they think that for?"
"You left their party and joined ours rather abruptly at Pompeii," I said.
"Had to!"
"Isabel didn't know you had to. If she tried to find out, I fancy she was told little girls shouldn't ask questions. It was Lot's wife who really came between you, but Isabel wouldn't have been jealous of Lot's wife."
"I suppose not," said Dicky doubtfully.
"Do you remember meeting the Misses Bingham in the Ufizzi? and telling them you were going to be——"
"That's so."
"You didn't give them enough details. And they told me they were going to Vallombrosa. And when Miss Cora said good-bye to me she told me you were a dear or something."
"Why didn't you say I wasn't?"
"Dicky, if you are going to assume that it was my fault——"
"Only one decent hotel—hardly anybody in it—foregathered with old lady Portheris—told every mortal thing they knew! Oh," groaned Dicky. "Why was an old maid ever born!"
"She never was," I couldn't help saying, but I might as well not have said it. Dicky was rapidly formulating his plan of action.
"I'll tell her straight out, after dinner," he concluded, "and her mother, too, if I get a chance."
"Do you know what will happen?" I asked.
"You never know what will happen," replied Dicky, blushing.
"Mrs. and Miss Portheris and Mr. Mafferton will leave the Hotel Colomba for parts unknown, by the earliest train to-morrow morning."
"But Mrs. Portheris declares that we're to be a happy family for the rest of the trip."
"Under the impression that you are disposed of, an impression that might be allowed to——"
"My heart," said Dicky impulsively, "may be otherwise engaged, but my alleged mind is yours for ever. Mamie, you have a great head."
"Thanks," I said. "I would certainly tell the truth to Isabel, as a secret, but——"
"Mamie, we cut our teeth on the same——"
"Horrid of you to refer to it."
"It's such a tremendous favour!"
"It is."
"But since you're in it, you know, already—and it's so very temporary—and I'll be as good as gold——"
"You'd better!" I exclaimed. And so it was settled that the fiction of Dicky's and my engagement should be permitted to continue to any extent that seemed necessary until Mr. Dod should be able to persuade Miss Portheris to fly with him across the Channel and be married at a Dover registry office. We arranged everything with great precision, and, if necessary, I was to fly too, to make it a little more proper. We were both somewhat doubtful about the necessity of a bridesmaid in a registry office, but we agreed that such a thing would go a long way towards persuading Isabel to enter it.
When we arrived at the hotel we found Mrs. Portheris and Mr. Mafferton affectionately having tea with my parents. Isabel had gone to bed with a headache, but Dicky, notwithstanding, displayed the most unfeeling spirits. He drove us all finally to see the tomb of Juliet in the Vicolo Franceschini, and it was before that uninspiring stone trough full of visiting cards, behind a bowling green of suburban patronage, that I heard him, on general grounds of expediency, make contrite advances to Mrs. Portheris.
"I think I ought to tell you," he said, "that my views have undergone a change since I saw you."
Mrs. Portheris fixed her pince nez upon him in suspicious inquiry.
"I can even swallow the whale now," he faltered, "like Jonah."
After two days of the most humid civility Mrs. Portheris had brought momma round. It was not an easy process, momma had such a way of fanning herself and regarding distant objects; and Dicky and I observed its difficulties with great satisfaction, for a family matter would be the last thing anybody would venture to discuss with momma under such circumstances, and we very much preferred that Mrs. Portheris's overflowing congratulations should be chilled off as long as possible. Dicky was for taking my parents into our confidence as a measure of preparation, but with poppa's commands upon me with regard to Arthur, I felt a delicacy as to the subject of engagements generally. Besides, one never can tell whether one's poppa and momma would back one up in a thing like that.
I never could quite understand Mrs. Portheris's increasingly good opinion of us at this point. The Senator declared that it was because some American shares of hers had gone up in the market, but that struck momma and me as somewhat too general in its application. I preferred to attribute it to the Senator's Tariff Bill. Mr. Mafferton brought us the Times one evening in Verona, and pointed out with solemn congratulation that the name of J.P. Wick was mentioned four times in the course of its leading article. That journal even said in effect that, if it were not for the faithfully sustained anti-humorous character which had established it for so many generations in the approbation of the British public, it would go so far as to call the contemplated measure "Wicked legislation." Mr. Mafferton could not understand why poppa had no desire to cut out the article. He said there was something so interesting about seeing one's name in print—he always did it. I was very curious to see instances of Mr. Mafferton's name in print, and finally induced him to show them to me. They were mainly advertisements for lost dogs—"Apply to the Hon. Charles Mafferton," and the reward was very considerable.
But this has nothing to do with the way the plot thickened on the Lake of Como. I was watching Bellagio slip past among the trees on the left shore and wondering whether we could hear the nightingales if it were not for the steamer's engines—which was particularly unlikely as it was the middle of the afternoon—and thinking about the trifles that would sometimes divide lives plainly intended to mingle. Mere enunciation, for example, was a thing one could so soon become reaccustomed to; already momma had ceased to congratulate me on my broad a's, and I could not help the inference that my conversation was again unobtrusively Chicagoan. It was frustrating, too, that I had no way of finding out how much poppa knew, and extremely irritating to think that he knew anything. He was sitting near me as I mused, immersed in the American mail, while momma and his Aunt Caroline insensibly glided towards intimacy again on two wicker chairs close by. Mr. Mafferton was counting the luggage somewhere; he was never happy on a steamer until he had done that; and Isabel was being fervently apologised to by Dicky on the other side of the deck. I hoped she was taking it in the proper spirit. I had the terms all ready in which I should accept an apology, if it were ever offered to me.
"Now, I must not put off any longer telling you how delighted I am at your dear Mamie's re-engagement."
The statement reached us all, though it was intended for momma only. Even Mrs. Portheris's more amiable accents had a quality which penetrated far, with a suggestion of whiskers. I looked again languidly at Bellagio, but not until I had observed a rapid glance between my parents, recommending each other not to be taken by surprise.
"Has she confided in you?" inquired momma.
"No—no. I heard it in a roundabout way. You must be very pleased, dear Augusta. Such an advantage that they have known each other all their lives!"
Poppa looked guardedly round at me, but by this time I was asleep in my camp chair, the air was so balmily cool after our hot rattle to Como.
"How did you hear?" he demanded, coming straight to the point, while momma struggled after tentative uncertainties.
"Oh, a little bird, a little bird—who had it from them both! And much better, I said when I heard it, that she should marry one of her own country-people. American girls nowadays will so often be content with nothing less than an Englishman!"
"So far as that goes," said the Senator crisply, "we never buy anything we haven't a use for, simply because it's cheap. But I don't mind telling you that my daughter's re-engagement, on the old American lines, is a thing I've been wanting to happen for some time."
"And there are some really excellent points about Mr. Dod. We must remember that he is still very young. He has plenty of time to repair his fortunes. Of one thing we may be sure," continued Mrs. Portheris magnanimously, "he will make her a very kind husband."
At this I opened my eyes inadvertently—nobody could help it—and saw the barometrical change in poppa's countenance. It went down twenty degrees with a run, and wore all the disgust of an hon. gentleman who has jumped to conclusions and found nothing to stand on.
"Oh, you're away off there, Aunt Caroline," he said with some annoyance. "Better sell your little bird and buy a telephone. Richard Dod is no more engaged to our daughter than the man in the moon."
"Well, I should say not!" exclaimed momma.
"I have it on the best authority," insisted Mrs. Portheris blandly. "You American parents are so seldom consulted in these matters. Perhaps the young people have not told you."
This was a nasty one for both the family and the Republic, and I heard the Senator's rejoinder with satisfaction.
"We don't consider, in the United States, that we're the natural bullies of our children because we happen to be a little older than they are," he said, "but for all that we're not in the habit of hearing much news about them from outsiders. I'll have to get you to promise not to go spreading such nonsense around, Aunt Caroline."
"Oh, of course, if you say so, but I should be better satisfied if she denied it herself," said Mrs. Portheris with suavity. "My information was so very exact."
I had slumbered again, but it did not avail me. I heard the American mail dispersing itself about the deck in all directions as the Senator rose, strode towards my chair, and shook me much more vigorously than there was any necessity for.
"Here's Aunt Caroline," he said, "wanting us to believe that you and Dicky Dod are engaged—you two that have quarrelled as naturally as brother and sister ever since you were born. I guess you can tell her whether it's very likely!"
I yawned, to gain time, but the widest yawn will not cover more than two seconds.
"What an extraordinary question!" I said. It sounds weak, but that was the way one felt.
"Don't prevaricate, Mamie, love," said Mrs. Portheris sternly.
"I'm not—I don't. But n-nothing of the kind is announced, is it?" I was growing nervous under the Senatorial eye.
"Nothing of the kind exists," said poppa, the Doge all over, except his umbrella. "Does it?"
"Why no," I said. "Dicky and I aren't engaged. But we have an understanding."
I was extremely sorry. Mrs. Portheris was so triumphant, and poppa allowed his irritation to get so much the better of him.
"Oh," he said, "you've got an understanding! Well, you've been too intelligent, darned if you haven't!" The Senator pulled his beard in his most uncompromising manner. "Now you can understand something more. I'm not going to have it. You haven't got my consent and you're not going to get it."
"But, my dear nephew, the match is so suitable in every respect! Surely you would not stand in the way of a daughter's happiness when both character and position—position in Chicago, of course, but still—are assured!"
Poppa paused, uncertain for an instant whether to turn his wrath upon his aunt, and that, of course, was my opportunity to plead with my angry parent. But the knowledge that the hopes which poppa was reducing to dust and ashes were fervently fixed on a floral hat and a yellow bun over which he had no control, on the other side of the ship, overcame me, and I looked at Bellagio to hide my emotions instead, in a way which they might interpret as obstinate, if they liked.
"Aunt Caroline," said the Senator firmly, "I'll thank you to keep your spoon out of the preserves. My daughter knows where I have given her hand, and that's the direction she's going with her feet. Mary, I may as well inform you that the details of your wedding are being arranged in Chicago this minute. It will take place within three weeks of our arrival, and it won't be any slump. But Richard Dod might as well be told right now that he won't be in it, unless in the capacity of usher. As I don't contemplate breaking up this party and making things disagreeable all round, you'll have to tell him yourself. We sail from Liverpool"—poppa looked at his watch—"precisely one week and four hours from now, and if Mr. Dod has not agreed to the conditions I mention by that time we will leave him upon the shore. That's all I have to say, and between now and then I don't expect you or anybody else to have the nerve to mention the matter to me again."
After that it was impossible to wink at poppa, or in any way to give him the assurance that my regard for him was unimpaired. There are things that can't be passed over with a smile in one's poppa without doing him harm, and this was one of them. It was a regular manifesto, and I felt exactly like Lord Salisbury. I couldn't take him seriously, and yet I had to tell him to come on, if he wanted to, and devote his spare time to learning the language of diplomacy. So I merely bowed with what magnificence I could command and filed it, so to speak; and walked to the other side of the deck, leaving poppa to his conscience and momma and his Aunt Caroline. I left him with confidence, not knowing which would give him the worst time. Mrs. Portheris began it, before I was out of earshot. "For an American parent," she said blandly, "it strikes me, Joshua, that you are a little severe."
I found Mr. Mafferton interfering, as I expected, with Dicky and Isabel in their appreciation of the west shore. He was pointing out the Villa Carlotta at Caddenabbia, and explaining the beauties of the sculptures there and dwelling on the tone of blue in the immediate Alps and reminding them that the elder Pliny once picked wild flowers on these banks, and generally making himself the intelligent nuisance that nature intended him to be. In spite of it Isabel was radiant. She said a number of things with the greatest ease; one saw that language, after all, was not difficult to her, she only wanted practice and an untroubled mind. I looked at Dicky and saw that a weight had been removed from his, and it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that peace and satisfaction in this life would date for these two, if all went well for the next few days, from the Lake of Como. But all could not be relied upon to go well so long as Mr. Mafferton hovered, quoting Claudian on the mulberry tree, upon the brink of a proposal, so I took him away to translate his quotation for me in the stern, which naturally suggested the past and its emotions. We could now refer quite sympathetically to the altogether irretrievable and gone by, and Mr. Mafferton was able to mention Lady Torquilan without any trace of his air that she was a person, poor dear, that brought embarrassment with her. Indeed, I sometimes thought he dragged her in. I asked him, in appropriate phrases, of course, whether he had decided to accept Mrs. Portheris's daughter, and he fixed mournful eyes upon me and said he thought he had, almost. The news of my engagement to Mr. Dod had apparently done much to bring him to a conclusion; he said it pointed so definitely to the unlikelihood of his ever being able to find a more stimulating companion than Miss Portheris, with all her charms, was likely to prove. It was difficult, of course, to see the connection, but I could not help confiding to Mr. Mafferton, as a secret, that there was hardly any chance of my union with Dicky—after what poppa had said. When I assured him that I had no intention whatever of disobeying my parent in a matter of which he was so much better qualified to be a judge than I, it was impossible not to see Mr. Mafferton's good opinion of me rising in his face. He said he could not help sympathising with the paternal view, but that was all he would say; he refrained magnificently from abusing Dicky. And we parted mutually more deeply convinced than ever of the undesirability of doing anything rash in the all important direction we had been discussing.
As we disembarked at Colico to take the train for Chiavenna, Mrs. Portheris, after seeing that Mr. Mafferton was collecting the portmanteaux, gave me a word of comfort and of admonition. "Take my advice, my child," she said, "and be faithful to poor dear Richard. Your father must, in the end, give way. I shall keep at him in your interests. When you left us this afternoon," continued the lady mysteriously, "he immediately took out his fountain pen and wrote a letter. It was directed—I saw that much—to a Mr. Arthur Page. Is he the creature who is to be forced upon you, my child?" Mrs. Portheris in the sentimental view was really affecting.
"I think it very likely," I said calmly, "but I have promised to be faithful to Richard, Mrs. Portheris, and I will."
But I really felt a little nervous.
The instant we saw the diligence momma declared that if she had to sit anywhere but in the middle of it she would remain in Chiavenna until next day. Mrs. Portheris was of the same mind. She said that even the intérieur would be dangerous enough going down hill, but if the Senator would sit there too she would try not to be nervous. The coupé was terrifying—one saw everything the poor dear horses did—and as to the banquette she could imagine herself flying out of it, if we so much as went over a stone. As a party we were strangers to the diligence; we had all the curiosity and hesitation about it, as Dicky remarked, of the animals when Noah introduced them to the Ark. I asked Dicky to describe the diligence for the purpose of this volume, thinking that it might, here and there, have a reader who had never seen one, and he said that, as soon as he had made up his mind whether it was most like a triumphal chariot in a circus procession or a boudoir car in an ambulance, he would; but then his eyes wandered to Isabel, who was pinker than ever in the mountain air, and his reasoning faculties left him. A small German with a very red nose, most incoherent in his apparel—he might have been a Baron or again a hair-dresser—already occupied one of the seats in the intérieur, so after our elders had been safely deposited beside him the banquette and the coupé were left, as Mrs. Portheris said, to the adventurous young people. Dicky and I had conspired, for the sustained effect on Mrs. Portheris, to sit in the banquette, while Isabel was to suffer Mr. Mafferton in the coupé—an arrangement which her mother viewed with entire complacency. "After all," said Mrs. Portheris to momma, "we're not in Hyde Park—and young people will be young people." We had not counted, however, with the Senator, who suddenly realised, as Dicky was handing me up, that it was his business, in the capacity of Doge, to interfere. It is to his credit that he found it embarrassing, on account of his natural, almost paternal, dislike to make things unpleasant for Dicky. He assumed a sternly impenetrable expression, thought about it for a moment, and then approached Mr. Mafferton.
"I'd be obliged to you," he said, "if you could arrange, without putting yourself out any, to change places with young Dod, there, as far as St. Moritz. I have my reasons—but not necessarily for publication. See?"
Mr. Mafferton's eye glistened with appreciation of the confidence reposed in him. "I shall be most happy," he said, "if Dod doesn't mind." But Dicky, with indecent haste, was already in the coupé. "Don't mention it, Mafferton," he said out of the window. "I'm delighted—at least—whatever the Senator says has got to be done, of course," and he made an attempt to look hurt that would not have imposed upon anybody but a self-constituted Doge with a guilty conscience. I took my bereavement in stony calm, with possibly just a suggestion about my eyebrows and under-lip that some day, on the far free shores of Lake Michigan, a downtrodden daughter would re-assert herself; poppa re-entered an intérieur darkened by a thunder-cloud on the brow of his Aunt Caroline; and we started.
It was some time before Mr. Mafferton interfered in the least with the Engadine. He seemed wrapped in a cloud of vain imaginings, sprung, obviously, from poppa's ill-considered request. I understood his emotions and carefully respected his silence. I was unwilling to be instructed about the Engadine either botanically or geologically—it was more agreeable not to know the names of the lovely little foreign flowers, and quite pleasant enough that every turn in the road showed us a white mountain or a purple one without having to understand what it was made of. Besides, I particularly did not wish to precipitate anything, and there are moments when a mere remark about the weather will do it. I had been suffering a good deal from my conscience since Mrs. Portheris had told me that poppa had written to Arthur—I didn't mind him enduring unnumbered pangs of hope deferred, but it was quite another thing that he should undergo the unnecessary martyrdom of imagining that he had been superseded by Dicky Dod. On reflection, I thought it would be safer to start Mr. Mafferton on the usual lines, and I nerved myself to ask him whether he could tell me anything about the prehistoric appearance of these lovely mountains.
"I am glad," he responded absently, "that you admire my favourite Alps." Nothing more. I tried to prick him to the consideration of the scenery by asking him which were his favourite Alps, but this also came to nothing. Having acknowledged his approval of the Alps, he seemed willing to let them go unadorned by either fact or fancy. I offered him sandwiches, but he seemed to prefer his moustache. Presently he roused himself.
"I'm afraid you must think me very uninteresting, Miss Wick," he said.
"Dear me, no," I replied. "On the contrary, I think you are a lovely type."
"Type of an Englishman?" Mr. Mafferton was not displeased.
"Type of some Englishmen. You would not care to represent the—ah, commercial classes?"
"If I had been born in that station," replied Mr. Mafferton modestly, "I should be very glad to represent them. But I should not care to be a Labour candidate."
"It wouldn't be very appropriate, would it?" I suggested. "But do you ever mean to run for anything, really?"
"Certainly not," Mr. Mafferton replied, with slight resentment. "In our family we never run. But, of course, I will succeed my uncle in the Upper House."
"Dear me!" I exclaimed. "So you will! I should think it would be simply lovely to be born a legislator. In our country it is attained by such painful degrees." It flashed upon me in a moment why Mr. Mafferton was so industrious in collecting general information. He was storing it up against the day when he would be able to make speeches, which nobody could interrupt, in the House of Lords.
The conversation flagged again, and I was driven to comment upon the appearance of the little German down in the intérieur. It was quite remarkable, apart from the bloom on his nose, his pale-blue eyes wandered so irresponsibly in their sockets, and his scanty, flaxen beard made such an unsuccessful effort to disguise the amiability of his chin. He wore a braided cotton coat to keep cool, and a woollen comforter to keep warm, and from time to time he smilingly invited the attention of the other three to vast green maps of the country, which I could see him apologising for spreading over Mrs. Portheris's capacious lap. It was interesting to watch his joyous sense of being in foreign society, and his determination to be agreeable even if he had to talk all the time. Now and then a sentence bubbled up over the noise of the wheels, as when he had the happiness to discover the nationalities of his fellow-travellers.
"Ach, is it so? From England, from America also, and I from Markadorf am! Four peoples, to see zis so beautiful Switzerland from everyveres in one carriage we are come!" He smiled at them one after another in the innocent joy of this wonderful fact, and it made me quite unhappy to see how unresponsive they had grown.
"In America I haf one uncle got——"
"No, I don't know him," said the Senator, who was extremely tired of being expected to keep up with society in Castle Garden.
"But before I vas born going, mein uncle I myself haf never seen! To Chicago mit nossings he went, und now letters ve are always getting it is goot saying."
"Made money, has he?" poppa inquired, with indifference.
"Mit some small flours of large manufacture selling. Dose small flours—ze name forgotten I haf—ze breads making, ze cakes making, ze mädschen——"
"Baking powder!" divined momma.
"Bakings—powder! In America it is moch eat. So mine uncle Blittens——"
"Josef Blittens?" exclaimed poppa.
"Blittens und Josef also! The name of mine uncle to you is known! He is so rich, mit carriage, piano, large family—he is now famous also, hein? My goot uncle!"
"He's been my foreman for fifteen years," said poppa, "and I don't care where he came from; he's as good an American now as there is in the Union. I am pleased to make the acquaintance of any member of his family. There's nothing in the way of refreshments to be got till we next change horses, but as soon as that happens, sir, I hope you will take something."
After that we began to rattle down the other side of the Julier and I lost the thread of the conversation, but I saw that Herr Blittens' determination to practise English was completely swamped in the Senator's desire to persuade him of the advantages of emigration.
"I never see a foreigner in his native land," said Mr. Mafferton, regarding this one with disapproval, "without thinking what a pity it is that any portion of the earth, so desirable for instance as this is, should belong to him." Which led me to suggest that when he entered political life in his native land Mr. Mafferton should aim at the Cabinet, he was obviously so well qualified to sustain British traditions.
My companion's mind seemed to be so completely diverted by this prospect that I breathed again. He could be depended upon I knew, never to think seriously of me when there was an opportunity of thinking seriously of himself, and in that certainty I relaxed my efforts to make it quite impossible that anything should happen. I forgot the contingencies of the situation in finding whiter glaciers and deeper gorges, and looking for the Bergamesque sheep and their shepherds which Baedeker assured us were to be seen pasturing on the slopes and heights of the Julier wearing long curling locks, mantles of brown wool, and peaked Calabrian hats. We grew quite frivolous over this phenomenon, which did not appear, and it was only after some time that we observed the Baedeker to be of 1877, and decided that the home of truth was not in old editions. It seemed to me afterwards that Mr. Mafferton had been waiting for his opportunity; he certainly took advantage of a very insufficient one.
"It's exactly," said I, talking of the compartments of the diligence, "as if Isabel and Dicky had the first floor front, momma and poppa the dining room, and you and I the second floor back."
It was one of those things that one lives to repent if one survives them five seconds; but my remorse was immediately swallowed up in consequences. I do not propose to go into the details of Mr. Mafferton's second attempt upon my insignificant hand—to be precise, I wear fives and a quarter—but he began by saying that he thought we could do better than that, meaning the second floor back, and he mentioned Park Lane. He also said that ever since Dicky, doubtless before his affections had become involved, had told him that there was a possibility of my changing my mind—I was nearly false to Dicky at this point—he had been giving the matter his best consideration, and he had finally decided that it was only fair that I should have an opportunity of doing so. These were not his exact words, but I can be quite sure of my impression. We were trotting past the lake at Maloja when this came upon me, and when I reflected that I owed it about equally to poppa and to Dicky Dod I felt that I could have personally chastised them—could have slapped them—both. What I longed to do with Mr. Mafferton was to hurl him, figuratively speaking, down an abyss, but that would have been to send him into Mrs. Portheris's beckoning arms next morning, and I had little faith in any floral hat and pink bun once its mamma's commands were laid upon it. I thought of my cradle companion—not tenderly, I confess—and told Mr. Mafferton that I didn't know what I had done to deserve such an honour a second time, and asked him if he had properly considered the effect on Isabel. I added that I fancied Dicky was generalising about American girls changing their minds, but I would try and see if I had changed mine and would let him know in six days, at Harwich. Any decision made on this side of the Channel might so easily be upset. And this I did knowing quite well that Dicky and Isabel and I were all to elope from Boulogne, Dicky and Isabel for frivolity and I for propriety; for this had been arranged. In writing a description of our English tour I do not wish to exculpate myself in any particular.
We arrived late at St. Moritz, and the little German, on a very fraternal footing, was still talking as the party descended from the intérieur. He spoke of the butterflies the day before in Pontresina, and he laughed with delight as he recounted.
"Vorty maybe der vas, vifty der vas, mit der diligence vlying along; und der brittiest of all I catch; he vill come at my nose"
Leaving out the scenery—the Senator declares that nothing spoils a book of travels like scenery—the impressions of St. Moritz which remain with me have something of the quality, for me, of the illustrations in a French novel. I like to consult them; they are so crisp and daintily defined and isolated and individual. Yet I can only write about an upper class German mamma eating brodchen and honey with three fair square daughters, young, younger, youngest, and not a flaxen hair mislaid among them, and the intelligent accuracy with which they looked out of the window and said that it was a horse, the horse was lame, and it was a pity to drive a lame horse. Or about the two American ladies from the south, creeping, wrapped up in sealskins, along the still white road from the Hof to the Bad, and saying one to the other, "Isn't it nice to feel the sun on yo' back?" Or about the curio shops on the ridge where the politest little Frenchwomen endeavour to persuade you that you have come to the very top of the Engadine for the purpose of buying Japanese candlesticks and Italian scarves to carry down again. It was all so clear and sharp and still at St. Moritz; everything drew a double significance from its height and its loneliness. But, as poppa says, a great deal of trouble would be saved if people who feel that they can't describe things would be willing to consider the alternative of leaving them alone; and I will only dwell on St. Moritz long enough to say that it nearly shattered one of Mr. Mafferton's most cherished principles. Never in his life before, he said, had he felt inclined to take warm water in his bath in the morning. He made a note of the temperature of his tub to send to the Times. "You never can tell," he said, "the effect these little things may have." I was beginning to be accustomed to the effect they had on me.
Before we got to Coire the cool rushing night had come and the glaciers had blotted themselves out. I find a mere note against Coire to the effect that it often rains when you arrive there, and also that it is a place in which you may count on sleeping particularly sound if you come by diligence; but there is no reason why I should not mention that it was under the sway of the Dukes of Swabia until 1268, as momma wishes me to do so. We took the train there for Constance, and between Coire and Constance, on the Bodensee, occurred Rorshach and Romanshorn; but we didn't get out, and, as momma says, there was nothing in the least individual about their railway stations. We went on that Bodensee, however, I remember with animosity, taking a small steamer at Constance for Neuhausen. It was a gray and sulky Bodensee, full of little dull waves and a cold head wind that never changed its mind for a moment. Isabel and I huddled together for comfort on the very hard wooden seat that ran round the deck, and the depth of our misery may be gathered from the fact that, when the wind caught Isabel's floral hat under the brim and cast it suddenly into that body of water, neither of us looked round! Mrs. Portheris was very much annoyed at our unhappy indifference. She implied that it was precisely to enable Isabel to stop a steamer on the Bodensee in an emergency of this sort that she had had her taught German. Dicky told me privately that if it had happened a week before he would have gone overboard in pursuit, for the sake of business, without hesitation, but, under the present happy circumstances, he preferred the prospect of buying a new hat. Nothing else actually transpired during the afternoon, though there were times when other events seemed as precipitant, to most of us, as upon the tossing Atlantic, and we made port without having realised anything about the Bodensee, except that we would rather not be on it.
Neuhausen was the port, but Schaffhausen was of course the place, two or three dusty miles along a river the identity of which revealed itself to Mrs. Portheris through the hotel omnibus windows as an inspiration. "Do we all fully understand," she demanded, "that we are looking upon the Rhine?" And we endeavoured to do so, though the Senator said that if it were not so intimately connected with the lake we had just been delivered from he would have felt more cordial about it. I should like to have it understood that relations were hardly what might be called strained at this time between the Senator and myself. There were subjects which we avoided, and we had enough regard for our dignity, respectively, not to drop into personalities whatever we did, but we had a modus vivendi, we got along. Dicky maintained a noble and pained reserve, giving poppa hours of thought, out of which he emerged with the almost visible reflection that a Wick never changed his mind.
There was a garden with funny little flowers in it which went out of fashion in America about twenty years ago. There was also a châlet in the garden, where we saw at once that we could buy cuckoo clocks and edelweiss and German lace if we wanted to. There was a big hotel full of people speaking strange languages—by this time we all sympathised with Mr. Mafferton in his resentment of foreigners in Continental hotels; as he said, one expected them to do their travelling in England. There were the "Laufen" foaming down the valley under the dining room windows, there were the Swiss waitresses in short petticoats and velvet bodices and white chemisettes, and at the dinner table, sitting precisely opposite, there were the Malts. Mr. Malt, Mrs. Malt, Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis, not one of them missing. The Malts whom we had left at Rome, left in the same hotel with Count Filgiatti, and to some purpose apparently, for seated attentively next to Mrs. Malt there also was that diminutive nobleman.
As a family we saw at a glance that America was not likely to be the poorer by one Count in spite of the way we had behaved to him. Miss Callis, with four thousand dollars a year of her own, was going to offer them up to sustain the traditions of her country. A Count, if she could help it, should not go a-begging more than twice. Further impressions were lost in the shock of greeting, but it recurred to me instantly to wonder whether Miss Callis had really gone into the question of keeping a Count on that income, whether she would be able to give him all the luxuries he had been brought up in anticipation of. It was interesting to observe the slight embarrassment with which Count Filgiatti re-encountered his earlier American vision, and his re-assurance when I gave him the bow of the most travelling of acquaintances. Nothing was further from my thoughts than interfering. When I considered the number of engagements upon my hands already, it made me quite faint to contemplate even an arrangimento in addition to them.
We told the Malts where we had been and they told us where they had been as well as we could across the table without seeming too confidential, and after dinner Emmeline led the way to the enclosed verandah which commanded the Falls. "Come along, ladies and gentlemen," said Emmeline, "and see the great big old Schaffhausen Fraud. Performance begins at nine o'clock exactly, and no reserve seats, so unless you want to get left, Mrs. Portheris, you'd better put a hustle on."
Miss Malt had gone through several processes of annihilation at Mrs. Portheris's hands, and had always come out of them so much livelier than ever, that our Aunt Caroline had abandoned her to America some time previously.
"Emmeline!" exclaimed Mrs. Malt, "you are too personal."
"She ought to be sent to the children's table," Mrs. Portheris remarked severely.
"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Portheris. I don't like milk puddings—they give you a double chin. I expect you've eaten a lot of 'em in your time, haven't you, Mis' Portheris? Now, Mr. Mafferton, you sit here, and you, Mis' Wick, you sit here. That's right, Mr. Wick, you hold up the wall. I ain't proud, I'll sit on the floor—there now, we're every one fixed. No, Mr. Dod, none of us ladies object to smoking—Mis' Portheris smokes herself, don't you, Mis' Portheris?"
"Emmeline, if you pass another remark to bed you go!" exclaimed her mother with unction.
"I was fourteen the day before yesterday, and you don't send people of fourteen to bed. I got a town lot for a birthday present. Oh, there's the French gentleman! Bon soir, Monsieur! Comment va-t-il! Attendez!" and we were suddenly bereft of Emmeline.
"She's gone to play poker with that man from Marseilles," remarked Mrs. Malt. "Really, husband, I don't know——"
"You able to put a limit on the game?" asked poppa.
Everybody laughed, and Mr. Malt said that it wasn't possible for Emmeline to play for money because she never could keep as much as five francs in her possession, but if she did he'd think it necessary to warn the man from Marseilles that Miss Malt knew the game.
"And she's perfectly right," continued her father, "in describing this illumination business as a fraud. I don't say it isn't pretty enough, but it's a fraud this way, they don't give you any choice about paying your money for it. Now we didn't start boarding at this hotel, we went to the one down there on the other side of the river. We were very much fatigued when we arrived, and every member of our party went straight to bed. Next day—I always call for my bills daily—what do I find in my account but 'Illumination de la chute de la Rhin' one franc apiece."
"And you hadn't ordered anything of the kind," said poppa.
"Ordered it? I hadn't even seen it! Well, I didn't lose my temper. I took the document down to the office and asked to have it explained to me. The explanation was that it cost the hotel a large sum of money. I said I guessed it did, and it was also probably expensive to get hot and cold water laid on, but I didn't see any mention of that in the bill, though I used the hot and cold water, and didn't use the illumination."
"That's so," said poppa.
"Well, then the fellow said it was done all on my account, or words to that effect, and that it was a beautiful illumination and worth twice the money, and as it was the rule of the hotel he'd have to trouble me for the price of it."
"Did you oblige him?" asked poppa.
"Yes, I did. I hated to awfully, but you never can tell where the law will land you in a foreign country, especially when you can't converse with the judge, and I don't expect any stranger could get justice in Schaffhausen against an hotel anyway. But I sent for my party's trunks, and we moved—down there to that little thing like a castle overhanging the Falls. It was a castle once, I believe, but it's a deception now, for they've turned it into an hotel."
"Find it comfortable there?" inquired the Senator.
"Well, I'm telling you. Pretty comfortable. You could sit in the garden and get as wet as you liked from the spray, and no extra charge; and if you wanted to eat apricots at the same time they only cost you a franc apiece. So when I saw how moderate they were every way, I didn't think I'd have any trouble about the illumination, specially as I heard that the three hotels which compose Schaffhausen subscribed to run the electric plant, and I'd already helped one hotel with its subscription."