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When momma reported to me Mrs. Portheris's proposition that we should make the rest of our Continental trip as one undivided party, I found it difficult to understand.
"These sudden changes of temperature," I remarked, "are trying to the constitution. Why this desire for the society of three unabashed Americanisms like ourselves?"
"That's just what I wondered," said momma. "For you can see that she is full of insular prejudice against our great country. She makes no attempt to disguise it."
"She never did," I assented.
"She said it seemed so extraordinary—quite providential—meeting relatives abroad in this way," momma continued, "and she thought we ought to follow it up."
"Are we going to?" I inquired.
"My goodness gracious no, love! There are some things my nerves cannot stand the strain of, and one of them is your poppa's Aunt Caroline. The Senator smoothed it over. He said he was sure we were very much obliged, but our time was limited, and he thought we could get around faster alone."
"Well," I said, "I do not understand it, unless Dicky has persuaded her that poppa is to be our next ambassador to St. James's."
"She was too silly about Dicky," said momma. "She said she really was afraid, before you appeared, that young Mr. Dod was conceiving an attachment for her Isabel, whose affections lay quite in another direction; but now her mind was entirely at rest. I don't remember her words, she uses so many, but she was trying to hint that poor Dicky was an admirer of yours , dearest."
"I fancy she succeeded—as far as that goes," I remarked.
"Well, yes, she made me understand her. So I felt obliged to tell her that, though Dicky was a lovely fellow and we were all very fond of him, anything of that kind was out of the question."
"And what," I asked, "was her reply to that?"
"She seemed to think I was prevaricating. She said she knew what a mother's hopes and fears were. They seem to take a very low view," added momma austerely, "of friendship between a young man and a young woman in England!"
"I should think so!" said I absent-mindedly. "Dicky hasn't made love to me for three years."
" What! "
"Nothing, momma, dear," I replied kindly. "Only I wouldn't contradict Mrs. Portheris again upon that point, if I were you. She will think it so improper if Dicky isn't my admirer, don't you see?"
But Mrs. Portheris's desire to join our party stood revealed. Her constant chaperonage of Dicky was getting a little trying, and she wanted me to relieve her. I felt so deeply for them both, reflecting upon the situation, that I experienced quite a glow of virtue at the thought of my promise to Dicky to stay in Rome till his party arrived. They were going to Siena—why, Mr. Dod could not undertake to explain—he had never heard of anything cheerful in connection with Siena.
"My idea is," said the Senator, "that in Rome"—we were on our way there—"we'll find our work cut out for us. Think of the objects of interest involved from Romulus and Remus down to the present Pope!"
"I should like my salts before I begin," said momma, pathetically.
"Over two thousand years," continued the Senator impressively, "and every year you may be sure has left its architectural imprint."
"Does Baedeker say that, Senator?" I asked, with a certain severity.
"No, the expression is entirely my own; you may take it down and use it freely. Two thousand years of remains is what we've got before us in Rome, and pretty well scattered too—nothing like the convenience of Pisa. I expect we shall have to allow at least four days for it. That Piazza del Duomo," continued poppa, thoughtfully, "seems to have been laid out with a view to the American tourist of the future. But I don't suppose that kind of forethought is common."
"How exquisite it was, that cluster of white marble relics of the past on the bosom of dusky Pisa. It reminded me," said momma, poetically, "of an old maid's pearls."
"I should suggest," said the Senator to me, "that you make a note of that. A little sentiment won't do us any harm—just a little. And they are like an old maid's pearls in connection with that middle-aged, one-horse little city. Or I should say a widow's—Pisa was once a bride of the sea. A grass widow's," improved the Senator. "It's all meadow-land round there—did you notice?"
"I did not," I said coldly; "but, of course, if I'm to call Pisa a grass widow, it will have to be. Although I warn you, poppa, that in case of any critic being able to arise and indicate that it is laid out in oyster beds, I shall make it plain that the responsibility is yours."
We were speeding through Tuscany, and the vine-garlanded trees in the orchards clasped hands and danced along with us. The sky would have told us we were in Italy if we had come on a magic carpet without a compass or a time-table. Poppa says we are not, under any circumstances, to mention it more than once, but that we might as well explode the fallacy that there is anything like it in America. There isn't. Our cerulean is very beautifully blue, but in Italy one discovers by contrast that it is an intellectual blue, filled with light, high, provocative. The sky that bends over Tuscany is the very soul of blue, deep, soft, intense, impenetrable—the sky that one sees in those little casual bits of landscape behind the shoulders of pre-Raphaelite Saints and Madonnas; and here and there a lake, giving it back with delight, and now and then the long slope of a hill, with an old yellow-walled town creeping up, castle crowned, and raggedly trimmed with olives; and so many ruins that the Senator, summoned by momma to look at the last in view, regarded it with disparagement, which he did not attempt to conceal. He wondered, he said, that the Italian Government wasn't ashamed of having such a lot of them. They might be picturesque, but they weren't creditable; they gave you the impression that the country was on the down grade. "You needn't call my attention to any more of them, Augusta," he added; "but if you see any building that looks like progress, now, anything that gives you the idea of modern improvements inside, I shouldn't like to miss it." And he returned to the thirty-second page of the Sunday New York World .
"I sometimes wish," said momma, "that I were not the only person in this family with the artistic temperament."
Sometimes we stopped at the little yellow towns and saw quite closely their queer old defences and belfrys and clock towers, and guessed at the pomegranates and oleanders behind their high courtyard walls. They had musical names, even in the mouths of the railway guards, who sang every one of them with a high note and a full octave on the syllable of stress—"Rosign a no!" "Car m iglia!" The Senator was fascinated with the spectacle of a railway guard who could express himself intelligibly, to say nothing of the charm; he spoke of introducing the system in the United States, but we tried it on "New York," "Washington," "Kansas City," and it didn't seem the same.
It was at Orbatello, I think, that we made the travelling acquaintance of the enterprising little gentleman to whom momma still mysteriously alludes as "il capitano." He bowed ceremoniously as he entered the carriage and stowed the inevitable enormous valise in the rack, and his eye brightened intelligently as he saw we were a family of American tourists. He wore a rather seamy black uniform and a soft felt hat with cocks' feathers drooping over it, and a sword and a ridiculously amiable expression for a man. I don't think he was five feet high, but his moustache and his feathers and his sword were out of all proportion. There was a gentle trustful exuberance about him which suggested that, although it was possibly twenty-five years since he was born, his age was much less than that. He twirled his moustache in voluble silence for ten minutes while we all furtively scrutinised him with the curiosity inspired by a foreigner of any size, and then with a smile of conscious sweetness he asked the Senator if he might take the liberty to give the trouble to see the English newspaper for a few seconds only. "I should be too thankful," he added.
"Why certainly," said poppa, much gratified. "I see you spikkum English," he added encouragingly.
"I speak—um, si . I have learned some—a few of them. But O very baddili I speak them!"
"I guess that's just your modesty," said poppa kindly. "But that's not an English paper, you know—it's published in New York."
"Ah!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "That will be much much the more pleasurable for me." His eyes shone with feeling. "In Italy," he added with an impulsive gesture, "we love the American peoples beyond the Londonian. We always remember that it was an Italian, Cristoforo Col——"
"I know," said poppa. "Very nice of you. But what's your reason now, for preferring Americans as a nation?"
We saw our first Italian shrug. It is more prolonged, more sentimental than French ones. In this case it expressed the direct responsibility of Fate.
"I think," he said, "that they are more simpatica —sympatheticated to us." He seemed to be unaware of me, but his eye rested upon momma at this point, and took her into his confidence.
"We also," said she reciprocally, "are always charmed to see Italians in our country."
I wondered privately whether she was thinking of hand organ men or members of the Mafia society, but it was no opportunity to inquire. My impression is that about this time, in spite of Tuscany outside, I went to sleep, because my next recollection is of the little Captain pouring Chianti out of a large black bottle into momma's jointed silver travelling cup. I remember thinking when I saw that, that they must have made progress. Scraps of conversation floated through my waking moments when the train stopped—I heard momma ask him if his parents were both living and where his home was. I also understood her to inquire whether the Italians were domestic in their tastes or whether they were like the French, who, she believed, had no home life at all. I saw the Senator put a card in his pocket-book and restore it to his breast, and heard him inquire whether his new Italian acquaintance wore his uniform every day as a matter of choice or because he had to. An hour went by, and when I finally awoke it was to see momma sitting by with folded hands and an expression of much gratification while poppa gave a graphic account of the rise and progress of the American baking-powder interest. "I don't expect," said he, "you've ever heard of Wick's Electric Corn-flour?"
"It is my misfortune."
"We sent thousands of cans to Southern Europe last year, sir. Or Wick's Sublimated Soda?"
"I am stupidissimo."
"No, not at all. But I daresay your momma knows it, if she ever has waffles on her breakfast table. Well, it's been a kind of kitchen revolution. We began by making a hundred pounds a week—and couldn't always get rid of it. Now—why the day before I sailed we sent six thousand cans to the Queen of Madagascar. I hope she'll read the instructions!"
"It takes the breath. What splendid revenue must be from that!"
The Senator merely smiled, and played with his watch chain. "I should hate to brag," he said, but anyone could see from the absence of a diamond ring on his little finger that he was a person of weight in his community.
"Oh!" said momma, "my daughter is awake at last! Mamie, let me introduce Count Filgiatti. Count, my daughter. What a pity you went to sleep, love. The Count has been giving us such a delightful afternoon."
The carriage swayed a good deal as the Count stood up to bow, but that had no effect either upon the dignity or the gratification he expressed. His pleasure was quite ingratiating, or would have been if he had been a little taller. As it was, it was amusing, and I recognised an opportunity for the study of Italian character. I don't mean that I made up my mind to avail myself of it, but I saw that the opportunity was there.
"So you've been reading the New York World ," I said kindly.
"I have read, yes, two avertissimi . Not more, I fear. But they are also amusing, the avertissimi ." His voice was certainly agreeably deferential, with a note of gratitude.
"Now, if you wouldn't mind taking the corner opposite my daughter, Count Filgiatti," put in poppa, "you and she could talk more comfortably, and Mrs. Wick could put her feet up and get a little nap."
"I am too happy if I shall not be a trouble to Mees," the Count responded, beaming. And I said, "Dear me, no; how could he?" at which he very obligingly changed his seat.
I hardly know how we drifted into abstract topics. The Count's English was so bad that my sense of humour should have confined him to the weather and the scenery; but it is nevertheless true that about an hour later, while the landscape turned itself into a soft, warm chromo in the fading sunset, and both my parents soundly slept, we were discussing the barrier of religion to marriage between Protestants and Roman Catholics. I did not hesitate to express the most liberal sentiments.
"Since there are to be no marriages in heaven," I said, "what difference can it make, in married life, how people get there?"
"The signor and signora think also so?"
"Oh, I daresay poppa and momma have got their own opinions," I said, "but that is mine."
"You do not think as they!" he exclaimed.
"I don't know what they think," I explained. "I haven't asked them. But I've got my own thinker, you know." I searched for simple expressions, and I seemed to make him understand.
"So! Then this prejudice is dead for you, Senorita— mees ?"
"I like 'Senorita' best," I said. "I believe it is." At that moment I divined that he was a Roman Catholic. How, I don't know. So I added, "But I've never had the slightest reason to give it a thought."
"That must be," he said softly, "because you never met, Senorita—may I say this?—one single gentleman w'at is Catholic."
"That's rather clever of you," I said. "Perhaps that is why."
The Italian character struck me as having interesting phases, but I did not allow this impression to appear. I looked indifferently out of the window. Italian sunsets are very becoming.
"The signora, your mother, has told me that you have no brothers or sisters, Mees Wick. She made me the confidence—it was most kind."
"There never has been any secret about it, Count."
"Then you have not even one?" Count Filgiatti's eyes were full of melancholy sympathy.
"I think," I said with coldness, "that in a matter of that kind, momma's word should hardly need corroboration."
"Ah, it is sad! With me what difference! Can you believe of eleven? And the father with the saints! And I of course am the eldest of all."
"Dear me," I said, "what a responsibility!"
"Ah, you recognise! you understand the—the necessities, yes?"
At that moment the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, and the Senator awoke and put his hat on. "The Eternal City," he remarked when he descried that the name of the station was not Rome, "appears to have an eternal railway to match. There seems to be a feeding counter here though—we might have another try at those slices of veal boiled in tomatoes and smothered with macaroni that they give the pilgrim stranger in these parts. You may lead the world in romance, Count, but you don't put any of it in your railway refreshments."
As we passed out into the smooth-toned talkative darkness, Count Filgiatti said in my ear, "Mistra and Madame Wick have kindly consented to receive my visit at the hotel to-morrow. Is it agreeable to you also that I come?"
And I said, "Why, certainly!"