NEXT evening Betsey and I went to dinner with Mrs. Moses Fraley, of Terre Haute, at a fashionable hotel. There we saw a show-window in one of the greatest matrimonial department stores in Europe. Buyers and sellers and bought and sold were there in full force to inspect the bargains, and we were able to note reliably the undertone of the market; and our observations had some effect, I believe, on the fortunes of Miss Norris.
Nothing was said of “the count” in our invitation, but we hoped to have at least a look at him. We put on our best clothes, and our plain, agricultural natures were well disguised when the impressive head porter at our destination helped us out of Norris's car and almost touched his forehead on the pavement at sight of us. That bow was easily worth a two-franc piece, and he got it.
“The Yank and his franc are easily parted,” Betsey remarked, as we entered the great whirling door.
We were in the game, and I was firmly resolved to keep pace with our compatriots from Terre Haute for one evening, anyhow. Two more double-franc pieces in the coat-room established my reputation. With a good suit of clothes and the sudden expenditure of two dollars and a half you can acquire a reputation in any European hotel. Reputations are the cheapest things in Europe, but the costs for upkeep are considerable. Every young man in the place was trying to do something for us and I began to feel the rich, blue blood in my veins.
Mrs. Fraley and her niece, in long trains, received and presented us to their guests. Among them was the lady from Flint who had got the cramp in her leg at Hadrian's Villa, and who lived at the same boarding-house with Mrs. Fraley. Her name was Sampf—“Mrs. Sampf,” they called her. I always have to go to my note-book when I try to think of that name. We always refer to her as the lady whose name sounded like boiling mush. There were also a sad but handsome young woman of the name of Rantone, a Minnesota girl who had married an Italian doctor; Mr. Pike, the whiskered lumber king who was studying the history of the world and whose bust we had surveyed in the studio of De Langueville, and a certain young man connected with one of the embassies.
“The count couldn't come,” said Mrs. Fraley. “He wrote that nothing would please him more than to meet Mr. and Mrs. Socrates Pot ter, but that he was, unfortunately, quite ill.”
I did not know until then that these good people had come to meet us.
“Perhaps you'll help us to appraise our loss by giving me his name,” I suggested.
“Oh, it is the wonderful Count Carola!” said she. “He is about the most fascinating creature that I ever saw.”
My brain reeled and fell at her feet and called silently for help. In half a second it had picked itself up again.
We went into the dining-room. What a fair of jewels and laces and fresh-cut flowers! At eleven o'clock they were going to have a dance—kind of a surprise party! They called it The Ball of the Roses. Our table had a big crop of red and white roses, and in the middle of it was a little fountain among ferns. Its spray fell with a pleasant sound upon water-lilies in a big, mossy bowl.
The retired lumber king sat opposite me, and a retired frog sat between us on a lily-pad at the edge of the fountain-bowl. He was a goodsized real frog who was planning to return to active life, I judged, for he sat with alert eyes as if on the lookout for a business opportunity. I observed that he looked hopefully at me when I sat down at the right of Mrs. Fraley, with Mrs. Sampf at my side, as if willing to abandon the frivolous life any minute if I could suggest an opening for an energetic young frog. Mrs. Fraley explained that the frog was tied to the edge of the bowl by a silk thread which was fastened about his neck. I ceased then to fear and suspect him.
I could not help thinking how much good Terre Haute money had gone into these decorations, and we should have been just as well pleased without the frog and the fountain.
Here we are at last right in the midst of things—grandeur! high life! nobility! abdominal hills and valleys! fair slopes of rolling, open country with their stones imbedded in gold and platinum! toes twinging with gout! faces with the utohel look on them!
What a pantheon of rococo deities was this dining-room—princes and princesses, counts and discounts, countesses and marquises, Wall Street millionaires and millionheiresses, and average American wives and widows with friends and dining-men. What is a dining-man? He's a professional diner-out. He has only to look aristocratic and speak Italian—or English with a Fifth-Avenue accent—and be able to recognize the people worth while. A fat old English duchess with a staff in her hand and the royal purple in her hair made her way to her table with the walk of an apple-woman. There was no nonsense about her, no illusions, no clinging to a vanished youth. She was a real woman, and I could have kissed the hem of her garments for joy.
A lady sat at one of the tables who suggested the chloride of nitrogen, being so fat and fetched in at the waist that her shoulders heaved at every breath, and one could not look at her without fearing that she would explode and fill the air with hooks and eyes and buttons.
A large, swell-front, fully furnished Pennsylvania widow sat near us with her young daughter and a marquis and a well-earned reputation for great wealth. It seemed to be a busy, popular, agreeable reputation, with many acquaintances in the room. The widow's costume pleaded for observation and secured it, for she sat serene and prodigious in jeweled fat and satin, dripping pearls and emeralds and diamonds. There was a battlement of diamonds on her brow and a cinch of them on her neck, surrounded by a stone wall of pearls as big as the marbles that I used to play with as a boy. Hanging from her ears were two mammoth pearls, either of which in a sling might have slain Goliath. Her shoulders glowed with gems, and a stomacher of diamonds adorned her intemperate zone. What a fresco of American abundance she made in the remarkable decorations of that room. By and by she drew a wallet from her breast and paid her bill.
“How wonderful!” our hostess exclaimed, suddenly.
A princess in red slippers and with no stockings on her feet, as Mrs. Fraley informed me, strode in with her young man and took a table near us. She had been a Wisconsin girl, and her happy Fifth Avenue dialect rose like the spray of a fountain and fell lightly on our ears.
“We had a sockless statesman in our country, but I never heard of a sockless princess before,” Mrs. Sampf sputtered. “They tell me that some of these aristocrats are very poor.”
Mrs. Sampf had been to Egypt and the Holy Land, and talked freely of her travels.
“Yes, we went up the Nile to see the dam,” she said. “It's a good dam, I guess, but I didn't care much for it. What I wanted to see was the life. The folks are awful dirty; I wanted to take a scrubbing-brush and some Pearline and go at 'em.”
“A few American women with scrubbing-brushes would improve the Egyptian race,” I suggested. “How about the food?”
“Heavens! I've et everything there is going, I guess; it would take you a month to learn the names of the vittles. I've got 'em all in my diary.”
“I suppose you enjoyed the ruins,” I said.
And she went on:
“I saw a bull temple; it was very nice. You know, they used to worship bulls. I don't know what for. They must have been hard up for something to worship. There was five of us traveling on our own hooks. We saw one temple that was quite nicely carved—had crows and goats on it. I love goats. Sometimes I think that I must have been a goat in some previous life.”
I disagreed with her.
“The pyramids were curious things,” she continued. “Some folks never slid down into 'em at all after traveling all that distance, but I slid. Since I was a child I have always loved sliding. The most interesting thing I saw was three baby camels and some Highland soldiers in Jerusalem with no pants on and funny little skirts that came down to their knees,” she continued. “In the Holy Land I saw a lot of men in skirts with baggy pants reaching from their knees down.”
She was apparently much interested in the subject of pants, and hurried on:
“I found a wonderful old knocker there. By the way, I'm making a collection of knockers. Have you seen any good ones here in Rome?”
“Not a knocker! But I haven't been looking for them.” And I added, “I wonder some one doesn't make a collection of pants—pants of every age and clime.”
“What kind of pants did the ancient Romans wear?” she asked.
“The same as Adam—the style hadn't changed in ages.”
This woman had got a knocker in Jerusalem, and seen some baby camels and a number of pantless men; she had seen a bull temple and slid into a pyramid in Egypt; she had “et vittles” everywhere, and suffered from cramp in sundry places, and languished in a hot, stuffy state-room with a quarrelsome lady from Connecticut, all for sixteen hundred dollars and four months of time. Yet far more than half of the great caravan of American tourists invading Europe and the East get no more than she did. The poetry and beauty of the Old World and the money of the New are thus wasted on each other.
“America is a pretty good country,” I suggested. “There are buildings in New York as wonderful as any you will see here, and our scenery is excellent.”
“But we have no ruins,” said Mrs. Fraley.
“On the contrary, we have the grandest ruins in the world,” I insisted. “We have the ruins of slavery and of the old error of unequal, rights; there all our feudal inheritance has been turned into ruins. Even that everlasting lake of fire, which is still needed in Europe, is with us a cold and mossy ruin. Nothing in it but garbage these days. We have physical ruins, too, and very ancient ones, but we are a working community, not a show. In our structures, like the Pennsylvania Station, is the sublimity of hope and promise, not the sublimity of death and decay.”
My friends looked at me with surprise. They had heard only the lyrical chorus of their countrymen accompanied by the jingle of francs.
“You're right,” said the lumber king. “I thought that I'd try to live here a few years because I can't find enough playmates in America; every one is busy there. So I thought I'd come over here and study and fool around. It's done me good.”
“Fooling around is better than nothing if done with energy and vigor,” I suggested. “A capable fool-arounder isn't worth much, but he can keep his liver busy. Here they have professional fool-arounders with gold letters on their caps to set the pace. It's all right for a while, but you'll want to get back to the lumber business.”
“Maybe you're right, but Europe has done me a lot o' good,” said Mr. Pike. “The cure up at Kissingen fixed my stomach trouble. Cost like Sam Hill, but it knocked it out.”
“What was the cure?” I asked.
“Made me walk ten miles a day, and take baths and give up pastry, and go to bed at nine.”
“And you had to travel four thousand miles and give up a lot of good American money to learn that?” I asked. “Old Doctor Common Sense, assisted by a little will-power, would have done that for you without charge right in your own home. Is it possible that the old doctor has gone out of business in Prairie du Chien?”
“He died long ago,” said the lumber king. “We have to be led to water like a horse these days.”
“We follow Cook in the trails of Baedeker instead of following the hired man, and we value everything according to its cost,” I answered. “But it's good for the Yankee to travel in a pieless world.”
“Travel is such a wonderful thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Fraley, who preferred to paddle in the heavenly gush-ways. “Don't you love Italy?”
I took off my mental shoes and stockings and began to paddle with her.
“Grand country!” I splashed.
Then she lay down in the stream and got wet all over as follows:
“It's so wonderful! I love the churches and their music, and mosaics and statues, and the palaces and the nobility,” Mrs. Fraley chanted. “These well-bred Italians look so aristocratic!”
“And they act so aristocratic—nothing to do but eat and drink and sleep and dance and get married!” was my answer. “We're rather careless about those things in America. A real aristocrat always gets married very carefully and so rescues himself from the curse of toil if need be. We don't take any pains with our marrying. We marry in the most offhand, reckless fashion just to gratify our emotions.”
“We forget that a dollar married is better than two dollars earned,” said Betsey.
“And isn't soiled by perspiration,” I said. “In this room are some of the shrewdest marryers in the world—men who by careful attention to the business have amassed fortunes. Here, too, are some of the most promising young marryers in Italy. They are sure to make their mark.”
“Indeed! You must tell me of them,” said the good soul.
“I shall tell you of one only—not now but before I leave you,” I answered.
There was a high, moral purpose back of this remark, but it seemed to get me into trouble, for I had no sooner finished it than the frog gave a swift leap, broke his halter, and landed on me. I suppose that he was an Italian frog. Possibly he had only slipped his halter—I never learned the precise facts. Anyhow, he had got on the edge of the bowl unobserved, and picked out a partner. He could not have chosen a worse place to land, for he struck my shirt with a noisy thud just under my necktie, and bounded into a dish of French dressing and out of it. I saw him bracing, and was about to seize him when he fetched a leap that took him over the head of the lumber king. The frog landed with a wet thump on the bare back of the sockless princess—who sat close behind Mr. Pike—and tumbled into her train. He was not much of a bareback-rider, that's a sure thing. The princess gave a rebel yell and jumped to her feet and in honest Wisconsin English wanted to know what in God's name it was. The frog had got his toe-nails caught in some lace, and was captured by a waiter. Ladies who had not spoken the American language in years used it freely.
The princess left the room with her friends and a quantity of French dressing on her back. The diplomat looked at me and smiled and said:
“The princess is in hard luck, and I can't help speaking of it. If a meteor should fall into Italy it would land on the princess. Her husband gets drunk now and then and beats her up. I believe that he has worn out several canes on her person. I saw her once when she had been beaten black and blue. She decided then to leave him.”
“But didn't?” I asked.
“No; her husband made love to her again, and she couldn't resist him. He's a great love-maker. Two or three times she has been on the point of going back to her people, but hasn't. Poor thing! She's too proud to go home and acknowledge the truth—that she has been a fool and her husband a brute.”
I was now pretty well prepared for my next talk with Mrs. Norris.
We left the dining-room, and I took Mrs. Fraley to a seat in the corridor and told her of the knight-like temperament of the young Count Carola, and of his high rank as a discoverer of wealth and beauty.
She showed no surprise, but said: “We had heard that he was engaged to Miss Norris, but the count says that the report is untrue. He has not really asked my niece to marry him yet, but he calls her the most beautiful woman he ever saw. Do you blame him?”
“Not a bit, although your niece is the second girl to whom he has awarded the first premium within three days. There may be others, but that is going some.”
All this had no effect on the armor-clad, brain-proof lady to whom it was addressed.
“It's his natural chivalry,” she said, as I rose to go.
“And discovering the most beautiful woman in the world is his daily habit,” was my answer; and we bade each other good night.
When Betsey and I were going home she gave me an account of her talk with Mrs. Rantone. The young woman's father had been a successful Minnesota grocer. The family came to Italy on a Cook's tour. The young man fell in love with the grocer's daughter, and they met him everywhere they went. He followed them to Minnesota, and the two were married there. Mrs. Rantone had said that he was a fine man and an excellent doctor, but that his friends would have nothing to do with her because she was the daughter of a tradesman of moderate means. They had supposed that every American who traveled abroad was rich, as indeed such travelers ought to be. After living nearly eight years in Rome she had only three Italian friends. She naturally felt that she was a dead weight on the shoulders of her husband; that she could contribute nothing to his success and she was most unhappy.
“Are your parents still living in Minnesota?” Betsey asked.
“They're all alone in the old home,” said the poor expatriate.
“They must miss you terribly.”
“Well, why did they bring me here?” was her pathetic answer.
I could see that Betsey was recovering from the fascinations of the marriage market.
“The 'devil-op-ments' of this night should have some effect on the price of Romeos,” I remarked.
“And the insanity of Juliets,” said Betsey. “I'm going to spring this on Gwen and her mother. But they won't believe it.”
When we arrived at our hotel its porter gave me a note from Norris which said:
“Please come to my room on receipt of this.”
I FOUND Norris in bed, propped up with pillows and looking very pale. His mother and nurse were with him; the ladies had gone out to dinner with Forbes and would spend an hour or so at the ball.
“I had a bad turn at ten o'clock,” said Norris, “but the doctor came and patched me up, and has gone out for a walk. Mother, will you and the nurse go into the other room until I call you? I want to talk with Mr. Potter.”
Mrs. Norris, the elder, was a slim, tender little woman, with a flavor of the old-time Yankee folks in her customs and conversation. When she was not doing something for her “boy,” as she called him, I often found her sitting in her rocking-chair by the window with her fancy-work or her Bible. Once when I sat waiting to see Norris, while he was napping, she sang “The Old, Old Story” in a low voice as she rocked.
Before leaving the room that night, when I had been summoned to his bedside, she went to his bed and leaned over him and looked thoughtfully into his face. Then she gently touched it with her hand.
“How is my boy feeling now?” she asked.
“Oh, I'm better, mother,” he answered, cheerfully.
“You look more and more like your father,” she said, standing by the bed, with her hands on her hips, reluctant to leave him.
“I wish I were as good a man as my father,” said Norris.
“Your father! He is one of the saints of heaven,” she answered.
Then she turned away and went through the door which the nurse had left open in her departure.
“I am glad that you heard her say that,” said Norris. “It will help you to understand my father. I remember hearing a man say once that my father would go to Hades for a friend. Of course that overdrew it, but he was a most generous man, and what a woman my mother is! I often wake in the night and find her looking down at me, and she's up at daylight every morning. Wherever she is there's a home—something not made with hands, and it is very dear to me.”
“The old, old sort—there's not many of them left,” I said.
“Now, for the new sort,” he whispered, as he drew a letter from his breast pocket and passed it to me.
It was from the young Count Carola, and I was not in the least surprised by this message in English which, with all its impurity, was better than the count knew:
It has become possible for me to render you a service, and I am glad to do the same, knowing that you are one of nature's noblemen. As you know, my income is not large, and I sometimes write articles for a newspaper here in Rome and for another in Naples, being fond of literature and politics. To-day a man asked me to read a story which they had and translate it into the Italian language. I found that it was an account of your career and told of things which, if they were published, would injure you and your family. I could not believe them, knowing, as I do, that you are the soul of honor. I told the man that it was false, and that he had better not publish it. After some arguments he gave up all idea of publishing the story, and gave it over to me. I was glad to do what I did, because I love you and the dear madame and your beautiful daughter, Miss Gwendolyn.
It would not be consistent with the honesty of a gentleman of my standing to take anything from a friend for such a favor, and I ask you to offer me no reward but your friendship. So please do not think of it again. But may I not hope that you will let me try to win your heart. Mine is an ancient name and family, and every member of it has lived honest to this day. I would like to go to America and go to work in some business. I am tired of living idle and would be thankful for your advice. I am also very much worried, and I speak of it with regrets. I hear that Mrs. Norris is favorable to the Count Raspagnetti. You would not, I am sure, permission your daughter to marry him without securing information about his character, which you can accomplish it so easily here in Rome.
I made light of the whole matter to save him worry, but what I saw in it was a conspiracy between Muggs and the count; Muggs had dictated most of the letter. The thumb-print of Muggs was unmistakable. “Nature's nobleman,” “the soul of honor,” “a gentleman of my standing,” “lived honest!” Who but the nugiferous Muggs, with his cheap, learned-by-rote polish, would express himself in that fashion? Any one who had known Muggs for an hour would see his hand in this letter. There were his stock phrases and that peculiar adverbial weakness of his. Who but Muggs could have written that sentence calculated to answer Norris's chief objection to such a man—idleness? He had delivered the whip into the hands of the count, but was holding the reins. The business part of the thing being over, Muggs had let him finish the letter in his own way.
“Who is the Count Raspagnetti?” Norris asked.
“I do not know him.”
“A new candidate of whom I have not heard!”
“And another discoverer of wealth and beauty,” I said. “Refer him to me. Above all, don't have any communication with the slim count.”
“Potter, you are a great friend,” he said. “What the Count Carola wants is to marry my daughter, and I shall not submit to it.” His anger had risen as he spoke. He whispered his determination with a clenched fist.
“At last we have come to a parting of the ways,” he went on. “I don't know how I shall do it, but I'm going to confess my sins. We'll get the family together, and I'll lay my heart bare. It's the only thing to do. It will be hard on Gwendolyn, but not so hard as marrying a reprobate. It will be hard on my wife, but there are things worse than disgrace.”
“I welcome you back to happiness and sanity,” I said, giving him my hand.
“Do you think I have been crazy?”
“Well, you haven't been right in your head on this subject, not quite sane about it. You have reminded me of a woman I knew who threw her cat out of a second-story window. The cat with open claws landed on top of a bald-headed gentleman. Then she tumbled down a flight of stairs and broke a clavicle and the nose of a man who was coming up. And what do you think it was all about?”
He smiled as he looked up at me and shook his head.
“Nothing,” I said. “She thought the house was afire when it wasn't. If you stand up to this thing like a man you'll be surprised by what happens and by the immensity of your former folly. Women are not playthings. They are built to carry trouble. A good woman can walk off, like a pack-horse, with a burden of trouble. You haven't been fair to your women. You have treated them as if they were too good to be human. It's a gross injustice.”
“Call my mother,” said Norris, “and then go down and meet Gwendolyn and Mary and bring them here. I'm going to make an end of this thing to-night.”
“Please remember this—don't get excited, keep cool, and take it easy. I'll stand by you.”
“Oh, I'm quite calm now that my mind is made up,” said he. “If it kills me I couldn't die in a better cause.”
I called his mother and went below stairs. As I waited I thought of the new plan of Muggs. The count's letter clearly intimated that Norris must be his friend or he would publish the facts. If he could force a marriage he would share the financial end in some manner with Muggs. A little after one o'clock the ladies arrived with Richard Forbes. I took charge of Gwendolyn and her mother, and the boy bade us good night.
We sat down together for a moment.
“We had a wonderful time,” said Gwendolyn. “All the aristocracy of Rome was there.”
“Including the wonderful Count Raspagnetti,” her mother added. “The young Count Carola stood near as we got into our car. He is the most pathetic thing!”
“We must have nothing more to say to him,” I said. “He has discovered another most beautiful woman in the world in Miss Muriel Fraley, of Terre Haute. He is one of the greatest beauty-finders that I have ever seen. But we must have nothing more to say to him. He has resorted to blackmail to achieve his purpose.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Norris. Before I could answer she suddenly opened her heart to me.
“So many things have happened and are happening which I cannot understand,” said she. “My husband has never taken me into his confidence. I have long known that he was troubled about something. It has always seemed to annoy him if I rapped ever so softly on the door of his mystery. Now I do not dare to come near it for fear of making him worse. You seem to know the man Wilton. Who is he? Why does he turn up in Italy? I detest him, and I am sure that my husband does also.”
“Mr. Norris has had business relations with him, but they are now at an end,” I answered.
“So I had hoped,” said she. “But he called here to see my husband yesterday. Of course he didn't succeed. The nurse gave Mr. Norris the card, and his symptoms changed suddenly and were alarming. I am terribly worried and nervous. I love my husband, and I've felt often that I haven't been a good wife to him, but he would not let me.”
Her eyes had filled with tears.
“Your unhappiness will end this night. Come with me to Whitfield's room. He has something to tell you. He asked me to meet you here.”
“How strange!” said Mrs. Norris, as she rose with a frightened look.
I led the way, and we proceeded in silence to the room where Norris lay. His mother sat beside him on the bed.
“Mary and Gwendolyn, come here,” he said.
He took a hand of each in his as they stood by his bedside.
“Potter, I want you to stay with us and hear what I have to say,” he called to me.
A little moment of silence followed in which his spirit seemed to be breaking its fetters.
“Mary, I have sinned against you,” he said. “It was your right to know long since what I have now to tell you. But I was a coward. I loved you and feared to lose your love, and so I kept you from knowing the truth about me. Then came Gwendolyn, and the lovelier she grew the more cowardly I became. I hadn't the heart to tell either of you what I now must tell, that I went to prison long ago for a crime. It was not a very bad crime, but bad enough to disgrace you.”
In a flash the thought came to me that he was not going to tell the whole' truth; he would protect his father's good name.
Mrs. Norris put her arm about her husband's neck and kissed him tenderly. “My love,” said she, “I knew all that years ago, but for fear of hurting you I've never spoken of it. Long, long ago I knew all about your trouble.”
His mother rose from the bed where she had been calmly sitting with bowed head and tearful eyes.
“Not all,” said she. “You do not know that he took my husband's sin upon him, and that all these years he has been suffering in silence for the sake of another. I am sure there is no greater saint in heaven than this man.”
“Oh, Whitfield! Why didn't you let me help you?” said his wife, as she sank to her knees beside him.
The scene had suddenly become too sacred for any words of mine.
Not one of us spoke for a while, but there was something above all words in the silence. It was feebly expressed at length in these of Norris, and I like to recall them when I begin to feel a bit cynical:
“I'm no saint. I'm just an average American businessman—very human, very foolish! But there are many who would do more than I have done for the love of a friend. My father was such a man.”
Gwendolyn came and kissed me when I bade them good night, and I drew her aside and said to her:
“With such men in America why are we looking for counts in Italy?”
She made no answer, but I understood the little squeeze of gratitude which my hand felt.
NEXT morning a note came to Betsey from Mrs. Norris saying that she and Gwendolyn had decided to spend the whole day at home with their patient, and would, therefore, be unable to ride out as they had planned to do. She inclosed another letter of dog-like servility from the slim count and asked me to see what I could do to suppress him. In this letter he referred to me as a vulgar fellow who had disregarded his challenge. This she did not understand, and rightly thought that I would know what he meant.
So I was reminded that the pitchforks and the time to use them had arrived. I informed De Langueville of the fact. He invited me to call at his studio at noon, and added that he hoped it would be convenient to bring the forks with me. I sent Betsey out shopping and 'phoned for Richard, and when he came to my room I met him with one of those weapons in my hands.
“I am ready for the stern arbitrament of the pitchfork,” I said. “Will you come with me?”
“Certainly,” said he.
“Come on,” I said, as I started with one of the forks in my hands. “I'm going to get through with my haying to-day if possible.”
“Hadn't we better send the forks by messenger?” said Richard.
“No, I'd rather carry them myself,” I answered. “I don't want them to be delayed or lost in transit.”
“They are not so elegant as swords or guns,” he said, as he took one of the forks.
“They are more reputable,” I assured him.
We made our way into the crowded street and soon entered a drug shop to buy some first-aid materials, and deposited our forks in a corner near a small boy who sat on a stool devouring primes. He soon discovered a better use for his prunes and amused himself by-impaling them on the fork tines. When we were ready to go we gathered the fruit and gave it back to the boy.
I never had so much fun with a pitchfork in all my life. In fact, I can think of no more promising field for the pitchfork than the city of Rome. It is an exciting tool, and as an inspirer of reminiscence the fork is even mightier than the sword or the pen. Mine rose above me like a lightning-rod, and currents of thought began to play around the burnished tines. I never dreamed that there were so many ex-farmers of our own land in Italy. A number of them stopped us to indulge in stories of the hay-field. We might have learned of many a busy and exciting day on “the old farm,” but time pressed and we sprang into a cab and soon entered the studio of the sculptor with the forks in our hands.
“Here we are,” I said, as De Langueville opened the door.
To my painful surprise, the young count was there. He was looking at a sword when we caught sight of him. He sheathed and laid it down on a table and joined the sculptor, who had begun to examine the forks. The end of each tine excited their interest. De Langueville felt them, and then there was a little dialogue in Italian between him and his friend which was not wholly lost upon me.
“They use it to fight Indians,” said the sculptor.
“They are poisoned,” said the count, as his eye detected some stains on the steel which had been made by the prime-juice.
“I think so,” the other answered, and then, addressing me in English, he asked:
“Will you kindly name the day and hour?”
“Here and now,” was my answer.
Another dialogue in Italian followed, and then De Langueville said to me:
“It is impossible. The count requests for more time.”
“I have no more time to waste on this little matter,” I said. “If he wishes to call it off—” But he didn't—no such luck for me! I had talked too much. The count had taken exception to the words “call it off.” They must have sounded highly insulting, for he flew mad, as they say in Connecticut, and stepped forward with a fine flourish and seized one of the forks. “Call it off” was apparently the one thing which the count could not stand, and I had meant to be careful. His rich Italian blood mounted to his face. I began to like him better.
“I will fight you here and at present if my friend the baron will give to us the permission,” he declared.
“One moment,” said the baron, as he hurried away.
We sat in silence for five minutes or so when he returned with a surgeon.
I could not run now, and there were no trees to climb, although there was an heroic figure of the New Italy with a kind of staging that rose to her chin. There was also a long alley that was lined with busts and statues.
“It looks as if we are in for it,” Forbes whispered.
“I'm ready,” I assured him. “A man who talks as much as I do ought to be willing to fight, especially when there's no chance to run. I enjoy life and safety as much as any one, but you can carry it too far.”
Forbes turned away and conferred with the sculptor, and placed us about fifteen feet apart.
“I will count three, and at the last number you will approach together and fight,” said De Langueville.
The young count had no lack of courage, for I have since learned that he regarded me as a kind of human cobra with poisoned fangs more than a foot long. He was rather pale when we stood face to face.
I am a man a little past fifty, and not so quick as when I was a boy, no doubt, but I have always kept myself in good shape—tramped and chopped wood and hoed beans enough to feed Boston for a month of Saturdays; so I think that I am as strong as ever. I had no sanguinary designs upon the count; I chiefly harbored preservative designs upon myself. I had got into this trouble in a good cause, and my white feathers were carefully dyed. Of course I couldn't acknowledge that a count was better than a mister.
So I faced the blue-blooded warrior as if he were a cock in a field of good timothy, with rain-clouds in the sky. We stood with our forks raised, and the six tines rang upon one another as soon as the word was given. He was overwrought by his fear of poison, I suppose, and had not the power of arm and shoulder that I had. We shoved and twisted, and then he broke away and came on with little stabs at the air. Suddenly I caught his tines in mine and wrenched the fork from his hands. Forbes has said that I looked savage, and I believe him, for I was getting hot.
“First blood!” I shouted, as I rushed toward him, intending to pick up his fork and put it back in his hands. But he did not stop to learn my intentions. “First blood!” meant murder to him. I had taken but a step in his direction when he was in full flight. I didn't blame him a bit. I would have fled; any one would have fled. That yell and the prune-juice did it.
“Hold on!” I shouted, with a fork in each hand, as I chased him a hundred feet or more down a long aisle lined with the busts of grocers, butchers, brokers, and lumber kings. The words “Hold on!” must have sounded nasty, for he put on more steam. I did not mean to hurt him; I only wished to take his hand and congratulate him on his speed. But I couldn't go fast enough. Before I was half down the aisle he had got to the end of it and jumped over the high shelf between the marble presentments of the missing actress and the Michigan lumber dealer. I knew better than to laugh—it was ill-bred—but I could not help it. Now I could hear the feet of the count hurrying toward me. I ought to have kept still.
“We cannot fight with such weapons,” said the baron; “it is barbarous.”
“If you will fight me with the sword I shall prove to you my grand courage,” said the young count, as he emerged, panting, from behind a group of statues.
“I need no further proof of your courage,” I said, gently. “You act brave enough to suit me.”
“Try me with the sword,” he urged. “You are one coward; you are one coward. You have attacka me when the weapon was not in my hand.”
Richard came forward coolly and put his hand on the count's arm.
“You are wrong, and you ought to apologize,” he said, firmly.
The count turned upon him with a polite bow, and said:
“Perhaps you will give me the satisfaction.”
“If you like, I'll take it up for him,” said Forbes, with admirable coolness. “He is older than you, and not accustomed to the sword.”
“Look here—I won't let you fight for me,” I said. “These fellows are used to the sword and pistol. They have nothing else to do and are looking for a sure thing. Fight him with your fists—if he's bound to fight again.”
“Him! That would be too sure a thing, I'm afraid,” said Richard. “I've practised this game of fencing at college and the Fencers' Club. I'm not afraid of the count.”
I had observed that a number of swords had been lying on a table near us. Before Richard's remark was finished the count had picked up one of them and said to my friend:
“Come—you are not fearful—like a lady. Give me one chance.”
Before anything more could be done or said the young men were at it, and, to my great relief, I saw that Forbes was able to take care of himself. The count was a clever swordsman, but my friend was stronger and just as quick.
It is about the prettiest survival of feudal times, this bloody game of the sword.
I observed that the clock in the studio indicated the moment of 12.18 when the contest began. It lasted for an hour or more, as I thought, when it ended with blood-flowing from the sword-arm of the count at 12.21. The count was satisfied and breathing heavily. Forbes was fresh and strong.
“It is enough,” the slim count shouted, and the battle was over.
“You play with the sword so skilful,” the latter panted, as De Langueville and the surgeon began to dress his wound.
“All you need is a pair of lungs,” said Forbes. “The pair you have may do for sucking cigarettes, but not for fighting.”
“And I politely request that you do not use them again in making love to Miss Norris,” I said. “Hereafter I shall carry a fork with me, and any man who follows us again will get it run into him. But now that you know that they do not want to graft you on their family tree you will, of course, annoy them no more. I expect you're a much better fellow than you seem to be.”
“And they will permission her to marry Raspagnetti?” he demanded.
“Why not?” was my query.
“Well, he has been married already and has amuse himself by dragging his wife around his palace by the hairs of her head.”
“It's a bad fashion,” I said; “it wears out the carpets.”
He looked puzzled.
“But it's an ancient diversion of the Romans,” I went on, remembering that panel in one of the galleries which portrayed the extraction of the whiskers of a captive who was tied hand and foot—one of the basest amusements I can think of.
As we talked the surgeon was at work on the arm of the young man.
“Let's go and get a bite to eat,” Richard proposed, and we made our escape.
While we were eating he said:
“Don't say anything of my part in this little scrap. I'm ashamed of it. To draw blood from him is like taking candy from a child.” At the hotel Richard found a cable that summoned him to New York. Late that afternoon Gwendolyn and her mother and Betsey went with him to the station where he took a train for the north. I bade the boy good-by and said as I did so:
“Leave the case in my hands again.”
“It's hopeless!” said he.
“Not exactly!” I answered.
“She has turned me down.”
“Turned you down?”
“Yes, I had a talk with her last evening.”
“You'll have to try it again some other evening,” I said.
“She doesn't want to marry any one. That's about the way she puts it—but more politely. I told her that if she didn't want to be proposed to again she'd better avoid me. I expect to convince her that she's wrong.”
He left me, and I went to see Norris, who had sent word that he wished to talk with me.