“That's his legend.”
“It's just a little ridiculous, isn't it?” said the girl.
“Oh, the poor boy is in love!” Mrs. Norris pleaded, in a begging, purring tone which said, plainly enough, “Of course you are right, but every boy is a fool when he is in love, isn't he?”
“So is Richard in love,” I boldly declared for him, “but he isn't on the bargain-counter; he isn't damaged, shop-worn, or out of date; he hasn't been marked down.”
Two pairs of eyes stared at mine with a prying gaze.
Gwendolyn leaned forward and grasped my hand.
“Who in the world is he in love with?” she asked, eagerly. “Tell me at once.”
“Himself!” Mrs. Norris exclaimed, before I could answer.
“No; with Gwendolyn,” I ventured.
Both seemed to relax suddenly, and their backs touched the upholstery.
“I haven't a doubt of it,” was my firm assertion.
The fair maid leaned toward me again.
“You misguided man!” she exclaimed. “Why do you think that?”
“For many reasons and—one,”
“What is the one?” Gwendolyn asked.
“That is my last shot, and I am not going to throw it away. It's worth something, and if you get it you'll have to pay for it.”
“You cruel wretch!” she said, with a stinging slap on my hand. “What then are your many reasons?”
“They are all in this phrase, 'sundry glances of the eye.'”
“How disappointing you are!”
“And what a spoiled child you are!” I retorted. “Ever since you began to walk you have had about everything that you asked for. The magic lamp of Aladdin was in your hands. You had only to wish and to have. Of course you don't think that you can keep on doing that. You'll soon see that the best things come hard; they have to be earned, and I guess Dick Forbes is one of them. He doesn't seem to be looking for money; what he wants is a real woman. He can love, and with great tenderness and endurance. He's a long-distance lover. His love will keep right along with you to the last. He doesn't go around singing about it with a guitar; he doesn't burst the dam of his affection to inundate an heiress and swear that all the contents of the infinite skies are in his little flood. That kind of thing doesn't go down any longer; it's out of date. With us it's gone the way of the wig and the crown and the knight and the noisome intrigue and the tallow dip and the brush harrow. We know it's mostly mush, twaddle, and mendacity. Here in Europe you will still find the brush harrow, the tallow dip, and the tallow lover, but not in our land. If you get Richard Forbes you'll have to go into training and try to satisfy his ideals, but it will be worth while.”
The ladies changed color a little and sat with looks of thoughtful embarrassment, as if they had on their hands a white elephant whose playfulness had both amused and alarmed them. Twice Betsey and Gwendolyn had broken into laughter, but Mrs. Norris only smiled and looked surprised.
“Perhaps you could tell me what his ideals are,” said Gwendolyn.
Our arrival at the Borghese galleries saved me. We immediately entered them and resumed the study of art. Nothing there interested me so much as the busts of the old emperors. What a lot of human shoats they must have been! Idleness and overeating had created the imperial type of human architecture—eyes set in fat, massive jowls, great necks that seemed to rise to the tops of their heads. With them the title business began to thrive. It was nothing more or less than a license to prey on other people. No wonder that every other man's life was in danger while they lived.
What modesty was theirs! When a man became emperor he caused a statue of himself to be made as father of all the gods. It was probably not so large as he felt, but as large as the rocks would allow—only some fifteen feet high. It was the beginning of the bust and the portrait craze.
We passed from the hall of shoats to the picture-galleries.
I have read of what Beaudelaire calls “the beauty disease,” and there is no place where the young may be more sure of getting it than in these Old-World art-galleries. Gwendolyn and her mother had a mild attack of this disease, “this lust of the art faculties which eats up the moral like a cancer.” The monstrous excesses of the idle rich are symptoms of its progress. In Europe the church, the aristocracy, and the art students have caught the fever of it.
“How lovely! How tender!” said Gwendolyn, as we stood before the Danaë of Correggio.
“How lovely! How tenderloin!” I echoed, by way of an antitoxin.
Here was a fifteenth-century ideal of female attractiveness radiating an utterly morbid sensuality. The picture reeked and groaned with passion.
Young men and women from towns and villages in our land who sat industriously copying the works of old masters were turning money newly made in Zanesville, Keokuk, Cedar Rapids, and like places into weird imitations of Correggio, Titian, and Botticelli. Well, I expect that they were having a good time, but I would rather see them copying the tints and forms of nature near their own doors than worshiping the kings of art, which is another form of the title craze.
Here we met again the elderly lady with the beautiful feet who had crossed on our steamer—Mrs. Fraley from Terre Haute. She presented Betsey and me to Miss Muriel Fraley, her grandniece, a good-looking miss of about twenty-three, who was copying the Danaë. Mrs. Fraley had found new and delightful astonishments in Italy, the chief of which was this Europeanized niece. She drew me aside and whispered:
“She is a lovely child! Just notice the aristocratic pose of her head.”
I allowed that I could see it, for I had to, and ran my mental hand into the grab-bag for something to say and pulled out:
“I like that blond hair—of—hers.”
I observed, as the girl looked up, that her cheeks were just a bit too red and that her eyes had been slightly emphasized. They did not need it, either, for they were capital eyes to start with.
“And she is as good as she is beautiful,” the old lady went on, in a low tone of strict confidence. “And, you know, since she came here a real count has made love to her.”
“A count!” I exclaimed.
There was a touch of awe in her tone as she said, “Belongs to one of the oldest families in Italy!”
I cleared my throat and thought of death and funerals and comic supplements and such mournful things for safety.
“I want you to meet him at dinner,” the good soul went on. “Where are you stopping?”
“At the Grand Hotel.”
“We are near there, at the Pension Pirroni. You and Mrs. Potter must dine with us.”
I gradually separated myself from Mrs. Fraley and hastened to join my friends. I found them with startled looks in a group of the ancient marble gods and others who lived before the invention of trousers.
“If I were to assume the license of Hercules and stand up here on a pedestal, what do you suppose they'd do to me?” I whispered to Betsey.
“You're no work of art!” said she.
“No, I'm a man, and better than any imitation of a man, for when a lady came into the room I should jump down and hide in some sarcophagus.”
I left them with the poetic cattle of Olympus and went on and asked them to look for me at the door. I lingered awhile with the lovely figures of Canova and Bernini, and was glad at last to get out of the chilly atmosphere of the gallery.
I found the count at the door. He approached me and said, in broken English:
“The ladies, I suppose, they are yet inside now.”
I saw my chance and took advantage of it.
“Why do you follow them?”
“Because I have the hope for good devil-op-ments.”
His “devil-op-ments” amused me, and I could not help laughing.
“Ah, Signore, I have very much troubley in my harrit,” he added.
“And you will have trouble in other parts of your system if you do not go away,” I said. “If you follow these ladies again I shall ask the police to protect us. If they cannot keep you away I shall injure you in some manner, or hire a boy to do it.”
“What! You cannot achieve it!” he answered, in some heat. “You have given me the insults. I shall implore my friend to call on you.”
“Send him along,” I said, as he hurried away.
The ladies came out presently, and I observed that Gwendolyn and her mother seemed to miss the count.
“He's discouraged, poor thing!” said Mrs. Norris, as we drove away.
THE count's friend called to see me that evening, as I expected. He was a very good-looking young fellow who had more humor and better English than the count. He was a Frenchman of the name of Vincent Aristide de Langueville. Betsey had gone to the opera with Mrs. Norris and Gwendolyn. I was alone.
“For my friend, the Count Carola, I have the honor to ask you to name the day and the weapons,” he said, with politeness, before he had sat down.
Now I was in for it. After all, I thought for traveling with an heiress in this country one needs a suit of armor.
“I'm a born fighter,” I said, “but almost always my weapons have been words. They are the only weapons with which I am thoroughly familiar. I propose that we have a talking-match. Put us, say, ten paces apart and light the fuse and get back out of the way while we explode. We'll load the guns with Italian, if he prefers it, and I'll give him the first shot. After ten minutes you can carry him off the field. He'll be severely wounded, but it won't hurt him any.”
Vincent Aristide de Langueville laughed a little and said:
“But, my dear sir, this is not one joke. We desire the satisfaction.”
“And I will guarantee it,” was my answer.
“But, sir, we must have the fight until the blood comes.”
“Ah, you are looking for blood also,” I said. “Well, I have thought of another weapon which once upon a time I could handle with some skill. Let's have a duel with pitchforks.”
“Pitchforks! What is it?” he asked. “I do not understand.”
“It's a favorite weapon in New England. My great-grandfather fought the Indians and the British with it, and it was one of the weapons with which I fought against poverty when I was a boy. It's a great blood-letter. I used to kill coons and hedgehogs with the pitchfork.”
“Please tell me what it is. What is it?” he pleaded.
With my pencil I drew a picture of it and said: “This handle is about five feet in length and very strong. These three prongs are of steel and curved a little and long enough to go through the abdomen of the most prosperous mayor in France.”
“My God! It is the devil's weapon!” he exclaimed.
“You may report to him that the American pitchfork is the 'devil-op-ment' of our interview, and I shall name the day and hour as soon as I can get hold of the weapon.”
“I shall tell my friend, and, please, may I take the picture with me?” said Vincent.
“Certainly, and you may say to him that I shall cable for the forks to-night, and that as soon as they arrive I shall appoint the day and hour.”
He gave me his card.
“You live here in Rome?” I asked.
“I do.”
“Do you work for a living?”
“I am a sculptor.”
“I have often thought that I should like to see a sculptor. Sit down till I get you framed and hung in my portrait-gallery.”
“I must go,” said he. “Perhaps you will do me the honor to call.”
I agreed to do so, just to show that I entertained no grudge, and with that he left me.
Before going to bed that night I cabled to my secretary as follows:
“Ship to me immediately four well-made American pitchforks, three tines each.”
I said nothing to Betsey of the proposed duel, but broke the news that I had met a great sculptor, and she wanted to see his studio, and next day we called there. Mrs. Mullet was sitting for a bust, in her dinner gown. Before we had had time to recognize the lady the artist had introduced her as the Madame Mullette, from Sioux City.
“Isn't this an adorable place?” she asked in that lyrical tone which one hears so often in the Italian capital. She pointed at busts of several Americans standing on pedestals and awaiting delivery.
“Look at the whiskers embalmed in marble!” Betsey exclaimed, as she gazed at one of the busts. It had that familiar chin tuft of the Zimmermann hay-seed and a dish collar and string tie. The face wore the brave, defiant, me-against-the-world look that I had observed in the statue of Titus, made after he had turned Palestine into a slaughter-house.
“Why, that is our old friend from Prairie du Chien who came over on the Toltec,” I said. “You remember the man who is studying the history of the world, all about the life of the world, especially the life of the ancients?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Betsey.
“He is one lumber king, and one very rich man,” the artist remarked.
“You are spending some time here in Rome,” I said to Mrs. Mullet.
“Oh, I am devoted to the Eternal City!” she exclaimed, and how she loved the sound of that musty old phrase “Eternal City”! She added, “I have been here four times, and I love every inch of it.”
The sculptor resumed his work with a new sitter, while Mrs. Mullet went with us from end to end of the great studio and whispered at the first opportunity:
“De Langueville is a wonderful man; he is a baron in his own country. If you want a bust he will let you pay for it in instalments. Five hundred dollars down and the remainder within three years.”
The hectic flush of art for Heaven's sake was in her face.
“A bust is a good thing,” I said. “I have often dreamed of having one. There are times when I feel as if I couldn't live without it. If I had a bust where I could look at it every day I suppose it would take some of the conceit out of me. When I had stood it as long as possible I could tie a rope around its neck and use it for an anchor on my rowboat.”
“Perhaps it would scare the fish,” said Betsey.
“In that case I could use it to hold down the pork in the brine of the family barrel,” I suggested.
“Oh, I think that you would sculp beautifully,” said Mrs. Mullet, in a tone of encouragement, as she looked at my head. Then, by way of changing the subject, she added, “I believe that Colonel Wilton is a friend of yours.”
“Colonel Wilton!” I said, puzzling over the name with its new title. Even the American gentlemen enjoy titles.
“Don't you remember meeting us in Saint Paul's? And didn't you trade hats and coats with him in New York?”
“No, he traded with me,” I said. “I know him like a book.”
“Is he not a friend of yours?”
“It would be truer to say that I am a friend of his.”
I was on dangerous ground and thinking hard through all this.
“But he knows Mr. Norris very well. I believe they are great friends.”
“You may believe it, but I don't,” I answered, rather gravely.
I had to decide what to do, and quickly. I had not forgotten my promise to let Muggs alone, and it was of course the safer thing to do—just to let him alone. But he had gone too far in expecting me to furnish him a character.
Mrs. Mullet began to change color, and that led me to ask:
“Is Wilton a friend of yours?”
“We are engaged,” said she.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
I had heard that Mrs. Mullet had money, and she was good game for the neat Mr. Wilton. Now I could see his reason for letting us alone in Italy, where he was four thousand miles from danger. I saw, too, that I must take a course which would inevitably expose us to more trouble, for I could not permit this simple woman to be wronged.
“Don't give him the source of your information,” I said. “I want to speak kindly, and so I shall only say that he's a fugitive from justice. The name Wilton is assumed.”
Mrs. Mullet fell into a chair and seemed to find it hard work to breathe. Betsey put her smelling-salts under the lady's nose. She quickly regained her self-possession and rose and said, in a trembling voice:
“Thank you! I am going home.”
She left, and again we paid our compliments to the artist, who politely left his work to speak with us. He asked me for information regarding certain Americans who owed him for busts. An actress had had herself put, life-size and nude, into white marble, and after making her first payment was maintaining a discreet silence in some part of the world unknown to the artist.
“How coy!” Betsey exclaimed as she looked at the marble figure.
A Brooklyn woman and her two daughters had sat for busts and then had weakened on the general proposition and abandoned the country when they were half finished. I made haste to depart for fear that he might wish to engage me as collector for his bust factory.
Just beyond the door we met a young man who had come over on the boat with us, and stopped for a word with him. I was telling him that I was going to see the Pantheon that afternoon, when Muggs greeted me.
“It's a wonderful ruin,” he remarked with a smile.
I made no answer, and he entered the studio, probably to meet Mrs. Mullet. He would get his dismissal soon. Then what?
I HAVE read that there are no fairies in Italy, but I know better. Italy is full of them, and they are the most light-footed, friendly, impartial, democratic fairies in the world. They are liable to make friends with anybody. Like many Italians, they seem to live mostly on the foreign population. A number of them adopted me for a residence. Sometimes, when they were playful, they made me feel like a winter resort. They used to enjoy tobogganing down the slopes of my shoulders and digging their toes in the snow; they held games here and there on my person, which seemed to be well attended. I got a glimpse of one of them now and then, and we became acquainted with each other; and, while he was very shy, I am sure that he knew and liked me. I called him Oberon. He and his kin did me a great service, for they taught me why people move their arms and shrug their shoulders so much in Italy. Then, too, I always had company wherever I happened to be.
So when Betsey and the Norris ladies implored me to go with them to Mrs. Dorsey's palace and hear a prince lecture, I reported that I was engaged to play with the fairies, whereupon they concluded that I wanted the time for meditation and left me out of their plans. So it happened that I was, fortunately, alone with Norris when Forbes arrived, a full day ahead of his schedule.
The boy and I went out for a walk together. Before sailing he had spent two weeks coaching the ball-team of his college and was in fine form. His kindly blue eyes glowed with vitality and his skin was browned by the sunlight. As I looked at that tall, straight column of bone and muscle, with its broad shoulders and handsome head, I could not help saying: “If you were standing on a pedestal here in Rome there'd be a lot of gals in the gallery.”
“Before you say things like that you should teach me how to answer them with wit and modesty,” he said.
“Keep your eye on me and you'll learn all the arts of modesty,” I assured him. “And especially you will learn how to disarm suspicion when you are accused of wit.”
In a shaded walk of the Pincio Gardens he asked, “Is Gwendolyn looking well?”
“She's more beautiful than ever, and very well,” I said. “She will be disappointed when she finds you here.”
He stopped and faced me with a look of surprise, and asked:
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure of it, because she had planned to meet you with proper ceremony at the station and take you off to a real Roman luncheon. I am glad that you have come, for I have worked hard as your attorney and need a rest. I have had some fun with it, but I am delighted to turn the case over to you.”
He did not need a chart to understand me, for he said:
“You must tell me what progress you have made with it.”
“Well, I suppose you have read of the Count Carola.”
“Yes, and so has every one who knows Gwendolyn.”
“He is the plaintiff who seeks to establish the claim that he is a better man than you are. My defense has been so able that he has challenged me, and I have named the weapons; they are to be pitchforks—American pitchforks.”
Forbes laughed and remarked:
“You must take him for a bunch of hay.”
“June grass!” I answered. “We'll need some one to rake after, as we used to say on the farm, and I may ask you to be my second.”
“Does the count amount to much?”
“Not much; I have had him added up and his total properly audited.”
“How are the judge and jury?”
“The judge is in our favor; the jury is in doubt. Gwendolyn insists that you don't want to marry any one at present.”
“I want to, but I probably shall not,” he answered. “When I marry I want to have done something besides having just lived. It seems as if it were due my wife. Besides, when I get married I want to stay married; I don't want any girl to marry me and give her heart to some other fellow. She must have time to be sure of one thing—that I am the right man. That cannot be proven with passionate vows or bouquets or guitar music, but only by sufficient acquaintance. On the other hand, I'd like to know, or think I know, that she is the right girl. If Gwendolyn really wants to marry a count it would be silly for me to try to convince her that I am the better fellow. She must see that for herself. If she doesn't, I should assume that she was right. God knows that I'm not so stuck on myself as to question her judgment. I'm very fond of her, but I have never let her suspect it.”
“If I were you I'd begin to arouse her suspicions.”
“That I propose to do, but delicately and without any guitar music. Love is a very sacred thing to me.”
“And the man who talks much about his love generally hasn't any,” I suggested.
“At least, if he has any love in him the cheapest way of showing it is by talk and song.”
“It's so awful easy to make words lie,” I agreed.
“If she wants me to enter a lying-match with these Romeos I'll agree, but only on condition that it's a lying-match—that we're only playing a game. I won't try to deceive her. Women are not fools or playthings any longer, are they?
“Generally not, if they're born in America,” I agreed.
Here was the modem American lover, and I must acknowledge that I fell in love with him. He stood for honest loving—a new type of chivalry—and against the lying, romantic twaddle which had come down from the feudal world. That kind of thing had been a proper accessory of courts and concubines. It would not do for America.
“I see that I am putting the case in good hands. Go in and win it,” I said.
“I'll make it my business while I'm here,” said he.
“You're a born business man. I know it's fashionable to hate the word 'business,' but I like it. In love it looks for dividends of happiness.”
“And I've observed that a home has got to pay or go out of business,” said he. “If Gwendolyn would put up with me I believe we could stand together to the end of the game.”
“I have some reason for saying that she is very fond of you,” I declared.
“I wouldn't dare ask you to explain, but you tempt me,” he said.
“A good-attorney never tells all he knows unless he is writing a book,” I answered.
We had come to the Spanish Stairs, where converging ways poured a thin, noisy fall of tourists and guide-books into the street below. I had seen the Stairs in my youth.
And I thought how many thousands
Of awe-encumbered men,
Each bearing his Hare and Baedeker,
Had passed the Stairs since then.
We made our way through crowded thoroughfares to the Pantheon and were in the thicket of vast columns when some one touched my arm. Who was this man with a blue monocle over his right eye, whose look was so familiar? Ah, to be sure, it was Muggs.
Again his mustache had disappeared, as had my hat and coat and the old suit of clothes, and how that blue monocle and the new attire and the smooth upper lip had changed the whole effect of Muggs! Evidently the man was prosperous and entering a new career. How does it happen that he has come in my way again, I asked myself, and then I remembered that he knew that I was to be there. What was I to expect now?—violence or——
He smiled.
“Charming day, isn't it?” he said, in his most agreeable tone.
He had neatly and deliberately removed his monocle as he spoke.
“Very! I suppose that stained-glass window of yours is a memorial to Wilton?”
He only smiled.
“As a European you're a great success,” I went on.
“Beginning a new life from the ground up,” said he, and added, with a glance at the great bronze doors, “Isn't this a wonderful place?”
“Yes, it was intended for a mammoth safe where reputations could be stored and embellished and kept, but it didn't work.”
“They cracked it and got away with the reputations,” said he, with a smile.
“Exactly! In my opinion every man should have his own private pantheon, and see that his reputation is as strong as the safe. It's the discrepancy that's dangerous. People won't allow a reputation to stay where it does not belong.”
He stepped closer and said, in a confidential tone, “I'm trying to improve mine, and I wish you would help me.”
“How?”
“Come to a little dinner that I am giving and say a good word for me when you can.”
“Are you trying to marry Mrs. Mullet?”
“Yes, I've fallen in love, and, as God's my witness, I'm living honest.”
“Muggs, I'll help you to get a reputation, but I won't help you to get a wife,” I said. “You must get the reputation first, and it will take you a long time. You'll have to try to pay back the money you've taken and keep it up long enough to prove your good faith.”
Muggs's plan was quite apparent. He wanted an all-around treaty of peace. He was still levying blackmail; the thing he demanded was not cash, but a character.
“That's exactly what I hope to do,” he explained. “I shall have all kinds of money, and I propose to square every account.”
“That's all right, provided Mrs. Mullet knows the whole plan and is willing to undertake the responsibility.”
He looked into my eyes, and said clearly in his smile: “You're the worst ass of a lawyer that I ever saw in my life. I've tried to be decent, and you've wiped your boots on me. Wait and see what happens now.”
All that seemed to be in his smile, but not a word of it passed his lips. He neatly adjusted the blue monocle and lifted his hat and said “Good afternoon,” and walked away.
I, too, had my smile, for I could not help thinking how this biter was being bitten, and how his old friends, the ghosts of the past, were now bearing down upon him.
We tramped to St. Peters, where squads of tourists seemed to be reading prayers out of red prayer-books and where a learned judge from Seattle, who had lost his pocket-book in a crowd near the statue of St. Peter, was delivering impassioned and highly prejudiced views of church and state to the members of his party.
We lunched at Latour's, where a long and limber-looking blond lady, who sat beside a Pomeranian poodle with a napkin tucked under his collar, consumed six cups of coffee and a foot and a half of cigarettes while we were eating. She was one of the most engaging ruins of the feudal world. What a theme for an artist was in the painted face and the sign of the dog! The head waiter told us that she was an American who had been studying art in Italy for years.
She ought to be mentioned in the guidebooks, I thought, as we were leaving.
We tramped miles to an old barracks of a building called the Cancellaria, which, according to Baedeker, was clothed in “majestic simplicity.”
“Baedeker is the Barnum of Europe,” I said, as we went on, “but he is generally more conservative.”
We arrived at the Grand Hotel a little before six. I went with Forbes to the Norris's apartments. Gwendolyn opened the door for us and greeted the young man with enthusiasm and led him to the parlor. Betsey was there, and we went at once to our own room.
“There's a new count in the game,” she remarked, as soon as we had sat down together—“the Count Raspagnetti, whom we met to-day at Mrs. Dorsey's. He's the grandest thing in Rome—six feet tall, with a monocle and a black beard, and is very good-looking. He's no down-at-the-heel aristocrat, either; has quite a fortune and two palaces in good repair, and has passed the guitar-and-balcony stage. He's about thirty-two, and seems to be very nice and sensible. Mrs. Dorsey calls him the dearest man in the world, and she has invited us to dinner to meet him again. It was a dead set for Gwendolyn, and the child was deeply impressed. It isn't surprising; these Italian men are most fascinating.”
“I suppose so,” I said, wearily. “The countless counts of Italy are getting on my nerves. Counts are a kind of bug that gets into the brains of women and feeds there until their heads are as empty as a worm-eaten chestnut.”
“Not at all,” said Betsey; “but if she must have a title—”
“She mustn't,” I said.
“You can't stop her.”
“That remains to be seen,” was my answer.
“Richard had better get a move on him,” said Betsey. “He can't dally along as you did.”
“Let him get his breath—he's only just landed.”
According to my custom I dined with Norris in his suite. Forbes went with the ladies to the dining-room.
“Aren't you about ready to go back?” I asked, as I thought of Muggs's smile.
“I should like to,” he said, “but the girls are having the time of their lives, and this air is making a new man of me. Then the young count seems to have let go; he doesn't annoy us any more. I'm hoping that Forbes will settle this count business.”
While we were eating a telegram was put in my hands which read as follows:
I am stopping at the Bristol in Florence and must have your professional advice immediately.
I cannot go to Rome, so will you kindly come here.
I am in serious trouble. If I am not at hotel look for me third corridor of paintings, Uffizi Gallery. Please regard this as strictly confidential. M. Mullet.
I answered that she should look for me the next day, and said to Norris:
“I have to go to Florence to-morrow.”
“Take the car and your wife and the young people,” said he. “The roads are fine, and you'll enjoy it.”
I thanked him for the suggestion.
“There's one other thing,” said he. “If you think Forbes means business tell him at the first opportunity that I am an ex-convict, and let me know how he takes it. We must be fair to him.”
“Leave it to me.”
“We'll take them down to Naples with the motor-car soon,” said Norris. “Vesuvius is active again, and we must see her in eruption.” He did not suspect that another Vesuvius was beginning to quake beneath us, and I did not have the heart to speak of it. I hoped that I could serve as a shock-absorber in the new eruption and save him any worry.
NEXT morning I found Betsey and the young people eager for the trip to Florence. Richard and I had breakfast together at eight-thirty.
“There's a new count in the game,” said he, as soon as we were seated together. “He came to our table last evening. He's a grand chap and in favor with the king, to whom he is going to present Gwendolyn and her mother. He knows how to talk to women, and I don't. I shall not be in it with him.”
“As to which is the best man it's her judgment, not yours, that's important,” I said. “So long as I am managing the case you must take nothing for granted. Put her on the witness-stand, and let's know what she has to say about it. Before that I must tell ye something—in confidence. Norris is about the best fellow that I ever knew, but he got into trouble when he was a boy. He was the victim of circumstances and went to prison—served a year.”
“I heard of that long ago,” said Forbes.
“What!” I exclaimed, in astonishment.
“Nobody cares anything about that. Everybody knows that he's a good man now—that is enough in America.”
“Do many know it?”
“Probably not. I have heard that even Gwendolyn and her mother do not know it.”
It surprised and in a way it pleased me to learn that I had told him what he already knew. I remembered that he had said, in his walk with me, that the distinguished editor who had got the tragic story from my lips was an uncle of his. So, after all, it was not strange that he should know.
“I presume that he had a wild youth, but he's a good man,” Forbes added.
That was all we said about it.
Our drive, which began at midday, took us through the loveliest vineyards in Italy. I shall never forget the vivid-green valley of the Arno as it looked that day. Lace-like vines spreading over the cresset tops of the olives and between them and filling the air with color; stately poplar rows and dark spires of cypress; distant purple mountain walls and white palaces on misty heights—they were some of the items. Here in these vineyards, and in others like them, are about the best tillers in the world—a simple, honest, beauty-loving people who are the soul of Italy, and, in the main, no country has a better asset.
On the road we met the Litchmans, of Chicago, touring with their yelling-machine and a special car trailing behind them filled with clothes and millinery.
That night we dined together and went to the opera. It was all Greek to me, but it was great! They woke me at one, and we went home. Next morning, having learned that Mrs. Mullet was not at her hotel, we all proceeded to the vast Uffizi Gallery. Grand place!
What a wonderful procession these people in marble and paint see every day in the parade of weary pilgrims, in the moving mosaic of humanity. What a Babel of tongues, all speaking Baedeker! I wonder if the gods, emperors, and painted masterpieces fully appreciate this endless human caravan. It is far more wonderful than they. Who are these people? Ask any of them, and he will be apt to tell you that the rest are fools; that almost every one of them is looking for conversational thunder and—knockers!
Some hurry.
“Two more galleries to see, and the train goes at five,” you hear one of them saying.
I was nearly bowled over and trampled upon by three German women who had lost their party.
Once these marble floors were almost exclusively the highway of the highbrows. Now the sacred children of the imagination are being introduced to a new crowd. Newness is its chief characteristic. Here are the overgrown multitude of the newly rich, the truly rich, and the untruly rich. Here are the newly married, the unmarried, the over-married, and the slightly married, and the well-married from all lands, some of them new recruits in the great army of art.
We passed through the Hall of the Ancient Imperial Shoats into the long corridor filled with statuary.
“The old gods seem to have had desperate battles before they gave up,” Betsey said to me. “Most of them lost either an arm or a leg in the war.”
“Many were beheaded and chucked into the garbage-barrels,” I answered. “The way Jupiter and Minerva were beaten up was a caution. It wasn't right; it wasn't decent. They were a harmless, inoffensive lot; they had never done anything to anybody. A lot of things were laid at their doors, but nothing was ever proved against 'em. These days we know enough to appreciate harmlessness.”
“They were very beautiful,” said Betsey, “but they're a crippled lot now.”
“Yes, most of them have artificial limbs,” I answered. “All they do now is to pose in vaudeville for the entertainment of humanity.” As we neared the room where I was to meet Mrs. Mullet we bade the young people go their way and look for us at the door about twelve-thirty.
We found the lady copying the portraits of our first parents. Her breast began to heave in a storm of emotion as she looked at us.
“Who are your friends?” I quickly asked, by way of diverting her thought.
“This is Adam and Eve,” said she, almost tearfully.
“I'm glad to see that they don't make company of us,” Betsey declared.
“They receive everybody in that same suit of clothes,” I answered. “And Eve's entertainment is so simple—apples right off the tree!”
“I don't see but that they look just as aristocratic as they would if they had sprung from poor but respectable parents,” said Betsey.
“Adam looks like a rather shiftless, good-natured young fellow, easily led, but, on the whole, I like them both,” was my answer. “They're frank and open and aboveboard. If you're looking for your first ancestors and must have them, I don't think you could do better. Certainly Mr. Darwin has nothing to offer that compares with them.”
Betsey and I had our little dialogues about many objects in our way, and now we had got Mrs. Mullet righted, so to speak, and on a firm working basis. She showed us through the gallery. I remember that she was particularly interested in the Botticelli paintings.
Mrs. Mullet said that she adored the Madonna—a case of compound adoration, for in its adoring group Botticelli succeeded in painting the most inhuman piety that the world has seen.
“Isn't that glorious?” Mrs. Mullet asked, as we stopped before his Venus—a tall lady standing on half a cockle-shell, neatly poised on breezy water.
“She has crooked feet,” said Betsey.
“Well, I guess yours would be crooked if you had been to sea on a cockle-shell,” I said, which will prove to the learned reader that we were about as ignorant of art as any in that hurrying crowd of misguided people.
“Oh, I think it's a wonderful thing! Look at the colors!” Mrs. Mullet exclaimed.
“But the toes are so long—they are rippling toes. Those on the right foot look as if they had just finished a difficult run on the piano,” Betsey insisted.
“She might be called the Long-toed Venus,” I suggested. “But she isn't to blame for that. I suppose she was born with that infirmity.”
So we crude and business-like Americans went on, as we flitted here and there, sipping the honey from each flower of art.
Twelve-thirty had arrived, and I suggested to Betsey that she should meet the young people and go with them wherever they pleased, and that they could find me at the hotel at four. She left us, and I asked Mrs. Mullet what I could do for her.
“I'm in perfectly awful trouble,” she sighed, with rising tears.
“Tell me all about it,” I said. “But please do not weep, or people will wonder what this cruel old man has been doing to you.”
“That man insisted that I should have my bust made and my portrait painted and agreed to pay for them, but now of course I shall have to pay for them myself. He has threatened to sue me for a hundred thousand dollars for breach of promise. It will take more than half my property.”
“Don't worry about the suit,” I said. “I'll agree to save you any cost in that matter. As to the bust, you can use it for a milestone in your history. The painting will show you how you looked when you were—not as wise as you are now. You can look at it and take warning.”
“I couldn't bear to look at them. I feel as if I never wanted to see myself again. I have written to everybody at home about this engagement. It's just perfectly dreadful!” Again she was near breaking down.
“You ought to be glad—not sorrowful,” I said. “That man can't even play a guitar. If he had a title or a fortune we wouldn't mind his being a scamp, but he hasn't. He hasn't even a coat of arms.”
“There! I'm not going to cry, after all,” she declared, as she wiped her eyes. “I'm glad you've kept me from breaking down.”
“I wonder that you didn't wait until you knew him better before making this engagement,” I said.
“But he was so gentlemanly and nice,” she went on; “and Mr. Pike, the lumber king from Michigan, introduced him to me and said that he had known him a long time. Then the colonel is acquainted with counts and barons and other grand people. He claimed to be an old friend of yours and of Mr. Norris. He said that the last time he called on you he went away with your hat by mistake, and showed me your initials in the one he wore.”
“He often associates with property of a questionable character, but I was not aware that he had got in with the counts and barons,” I said.
“He knows the Count Carola very well,” she declared.
“Leave them to each other—they deserve it,” I said. “Return to Rome and refer Wilton to me, and refuse to have anything more to do with him.”
She asked for my bill, but I assured her that dollars were too small for such a service, and that I couldn't think of accepting anything less than thanks in a case of that kind.
I left her and got a bite to eat and went to our hotel at three-thirty. Betsey was waiting for me at the door. She was pale and excited.
“We've had a dreadful time,” said she. “Gwendolyn and I had gone on while Richard was paying our bill in a shop. Suddenly a young man came and spoke to Gwendolyn. Richard saw it. In a second I heard a horrible thump and saw the young Italian lying in the mud. He didn't try to get up. Looked as if he was sleeping.”
“It's bad weather for Romeoing,” I answered. “That count should have waited till the streets were dry. Where are they?”
“Gwendolyn is in the parlor. Richard said that we should look for him on the road and took a fiacre and flew. The girl is frightened.”
Betsey brought her out, and we got into the car and sped away.
“One more count!” I exclaimed, with a laugh.
“One less count!” said Gwendolyn. “I'm sure he's dead.”
“Ladies have limited rights outside the house in Italy,” I said.
“I don't mind those silly men,” said Gwendolyn. “I've been spoken to like that a dozen times, but I hurry along and pretend that I do not hear them.”
“That count will be careful after this,” I suggested.
“If he lives,” said Gwendolyn. “I'm afraid that his head is cracked.”
“His head was cracked long ago,” was my answer.
“Uncle Soc,” said Gwendolyn (she had begun to call me Uncle Soc there in Italy), “Richard and Italy could never get along together.”
“Richard, Gwendolyn, and America are a better combination,” I suggested.
“What a pretty thought!” she exclaimed, just as we overtook the young man about a mile out on the highway to Rome.
“Get in here and behave yourself,” I said. “You've had exercise enough.”
“I could stand more, if necessary,” he answered, with a laugh, as he sat down with us.
That ride to Rome was one of the merriest, in my life. For the young people it had been a day of joy and progress, but on the whole it hadn't been a highly creditable day. So let's drop the curtain right here and let it go into history.