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After two days of the most humid civility Mrs. Portheris had brought momma round. It was not an easy process, momma had such a way of fanning herself and regarding distant objects; and Dicky and I observed its difficulties with great satisfaction, for a family matter would be the last thing anybody would venture to discuss with momma under such circumstances, and we very much preferred that Mrs. Portheris's overflowing congratulations should be chilled off as long as possible. Dicky was for taking my parents into our confidence as a measure of preparation, but with poppa's commands upon me with regard to Arthur, I felt a delicacy as to the subject of engagements generally. Besides, one never can tell whether one's poppa and momma would back one up in a thing like that.
I never could quite understand Mrs. Portheris's increasingly good opinion of us at this point. The Senator declared that it was because some American shares of hers had gone up in the market, but that struck momma and me as somewhat too general in its application. I preferred to attribute it to the Senator's Tariff Bill. Mr. Mafferton brought us the Times one evening in Verona, and pointed out with solemn congratulation that the name of J.P. Wick was mentioned four times in the course of its leading article. That journal even said in effect that, if it were not for the faithfully sustained anti-humorous character which had established it for so many generations in the approbation of the British public, it would go so far as to call the contemplated measure "Wicked legislation." Mr. Mafferton could not understand why poppa had no desire to cut out the article. He said there was something so interesting about seeing one's name in print—he always did it. I was very curious to see instances of Mr. Mafferton's name in print, and finally induced him to show them to me. They were mainly advertisements for lost dogs—"Apply to the Hon. Charles Mafferton," and the reward was very considerable.
But this has nothing to do with the way the plot thickened on the Lake of Como. I was watching Bellagio slip past among the trees on the left shore and wondering whether we could hear the nightingales if it were not for the steamer's engines—which was particularly unlikely as it was the middle of the afternoon—and thinking about the trifles that would sometimes divide lives plainly intended to mingle. Mere enunciation, for example, was a thing one could so soon become reaccustomed to; already momma had ceased to congratulate me on my broad a's, and I could not help the inference that my conversation was again unobtrusively Chicagoan. It was frustrating, too, that I had no way of finding out how much poppa knew, and extremely irritating to think that he knew anything. He was sitting near me as I mused, immersed in the American mail, while momma and his Aunt Caroline insensibly glided towards intimacy again on two wicker chairs close by. Mr. Mafferton was counting the luggage somewhere; he was never happy on a steamer until he had done that; and Isabel was being fervently apologised to by Dicky on the other side of the deck. I hoped she was taking it in the proper spirit. I had the terms all ready in which I should accept an apology, if it were ever offered to me.
"Now, I must not put off any longer telling you how delighted I am at your dear Mamie's re-engagement."
The statement reached us all, though it was intended for momma only. Even Mrs. Portheris's more amiable accents had a quality which penetrated far, with a suggestion of whiskers. I looked again languidly at Bellagio, but not until I had observed a rapid glance between my parents, recommending each other not to be taken by surprise.
"Has she confided in you?" inquired momma.
"No—no. I heard it in a roundabout way. You must be very pleased, dear Augusta. Such an advantage that they have known each other all their lives!"
Poppa looked guardedly round at me, but by this time I was asleep in my camp chair, the air was so balmily cool after our hot rattle to Como.
"How did you hear?" he demanded, coming straight to the point, while momma struggled after tentative uncertainties.
"Oh, a little bird, a little bird—who had it from them both! And much better, I said when I heard it, that she should marry one of her own country-people. American girls nowadays will so often be content with nothing less than an Englishman!"
"So far as that goes," said the Senator crisply, "we never buy anything we haven't a use for, simply because it's cheap. But I don't mind telling you that my daughter's re-engagement, on the old American lines, is a thing I've been wanting to happen for some time."
"And there are some really excellent points about Mr. Dod. We must remember that he is still very young. He has plenty of time to repair his fortunes. Of one thing we may be sure," continued Mrs. Portheris magnanimously, "he will make her a very kind husband."
At this I opened my eyes inadvertently—nobody could help it—and saw the barometrical change in poppa's countenance. It went down twenty degrees with a run, and wore all the disgust of an hon. gentleman who has jumped to conclusions and found nothing to stand on.
"Oh, you're away off there, Aunt Caroline," he said with some annoyance. "Better sell your little bird and buy a telephone. Richard Dod is no more engaged to our daughter than the man in the moon."
"Well, I should say not!" exclaimed momma.
"I have it on the best authority," insisted Mrs. Portheris blandly. "You American parents are so seldom consulted in these matters. Perhaps the young people have not told you."
This was a nasty one for both the family and the Republic, and I heard the Senator's rejoinder with satisfaction.
"We don't consider, in the United States, that we're the natural bullies of our children because we happen to be a little older than they are," he said, "but for all that we're not in the habit of hearing much news about them from outsiders. I'll have to get you to promise not to go spreading such nonsense around, Aunt Caroline."
"Oh, of course, if you say so, but I should be better satisfied if she denied it herself," said Mrs. Portheris with suavity. "My information was so very exact."
I had slumbered again, but it did not avail me. I heard the American mail dispersing itself about the deck in all directions as the Senator rose, strode towards my chair, and shook me much more vigorously than there was any necessity for.
"Here's Aunt Caroline," he said, "wanting us to believe that you and Dicky Dod are engaged—you two that have quarrelled as naturally as brother and sister ever since you were born. I guess you can tell her whether it's very likely!"
I yawned, to gain time, but the widest yawn will not cover more than two seconds.
"What an extraordinary question!" I said. It sounds weak, but that was the way one felt.
"Don't prevaricate, Mamie, love," said Mrs. Portheris sternly.
"I'm not—I don't. But n-nothing of the kind is announced, is it?" I was growing nervous under the Senatorial eye.
"Nothing of the kind exists ," said poppa, the Doge all over, except his umbrella. "Does it?"
"Why no," I said. "Dicky and I aren't engaged. But we have an understanding."
I was extremely sorry. Mrs. Portheris was so triumphant, and poppa allowed his irritation to get so much the better of him.
"Oh," he said, "you've got an understanding! Well, you've been too intelligent, darned if you haven't!" The Senator pulled his beard in his most uncompromising manner. "Now you can understand something more. I'm not going to have it. You haven't got my consent and you're not going to get it."
"But, my dear nephew, the match is so suitable in every respect! Surely you would not stand in the way of a daughter's happiness when both character and position—position in Chicago, of course, but still—are assured!"
Poppa paused, uncertain for an instant whether to turn his wrath upon his aunt, and that, of course, was my opportunity to plead with my angry parent. But the knowledge that the hopes which poppa was reducing to dust and ashes were fervently fixed on a floral hat and a yellow bun over which he had no control, on the other side of the ship, overcame me, and I looked at Bellagio to hide my emotions instead, in a way which they might interpret as obstinate, if they liked.
"Aunt Caroline," said the Senator firmly, "I'll thank you to keep your spoon out of the preserves. My daughter knows where I have given her hand, and that's the direction she's going with her feet. Mary, I may as well inform you that the details of your wedding are being arranged in Chicago this minute. It will take place within three weeks of our arrival, and it won't be any slump. But Richard Dod might as well be told right now that he won't be in it, unless in the capacity of usher. As I don't contemplate breaking up this party and making things disagreeable all round, you'll have to tell him yourself. We sail from Liverpool"—poppa looked at his watch—"precisely one week and four hours from now, and if Mr. Dod has not agreed to the conditions I mention by that time we will leave him upon the shore. That's all I have to say, and between now and then I don't expect you or anybody else to have the nerve to mention the matter to me again."
After that it was impossible to wink at poppa, or in any way to give him the assurance that my regard for him was unimpaired. There are things that can't be passed over with a smile in one's poppa without doing him harm, and this was one of them. It was a regular manifesto, and I felt exactly like Lord Salisbury. I couldn't take him seriously, and yet I had to tell him to come on, if he wanted to, and devote his spare time to learning the language of diplomacy. So I merely bowed with what magnificence I could command and filed it, so to speak; and walked to the other side of the deck, leaving poppa to his conscience and momma and his Aunt Caroline. I left him with confidence, not knowing which would give him the worst time. Mrs. Portheris began it, before I was out of earshot. "For an American parent," she said blandly, "it strikes me, Joshua, that you are a little severe."
I found Mr. Mafferton interfering, as I expected, with Dicky and Isabel in their appreciation of the west shore. He was pointing out the Villa Carlotta at Caddenabbia, and explaining the beauties of the sculptures there and dwelling on the tone of blue in the immediate Alps and reminding them that the elder Pliny once picked wild flowers on these banks, and generally making himself the intelligent nuisance that nature intended him to be. In spite of it Isabel was radiant. She said a number of things with the greatest ease; one saw that language, after all, was not difficult to her, she only wanted practice and an untroubled mind. I looked at Dicky and saw that a weight had been removed from his, and it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that peace and satisfaction in this life would date for these two, if all went well for the next few days, from the Lake of Como. But all could not be relied upon to go well so long as Mr. Mafferton hovered, quoting Claudian on the mulberry tree, upon the brink of a proposal, so I took him away to translate his quotation for me in the stern, which naturally suggested the past and its emotions. We could now refer quite sympathetically to the altogether irretrievable and gone by, and Mr. Mafferton was able to mention Lady Torquilan without any trace of his air that she was a person, poor dear, that brought embarrassment with her. Indeed, I sometimes thought he dragged her in. I asked him, in appropriate phrases, of course, whether he had decided to accept Mrs. Portheris's daughter, and he fixed mournful eyes upon me and said he thought he had, almost. The news of my engagement to Mr. Dod had apparently done much to bring him to a conclusion; he said it pointed so definitely to the unlikelihood of his ever being able to find a more stimulating companion than Miss Portheris, with all her charms, was likely to prove. It was difficult, of course, to see the connection, but I could not help confiding to Mr. Mafferton, as a secret, that there was hardly any chance of my union with Dicky—after what poppa had said. When I assured him that I had no intention whatever of disobeying my parent in a matter of which he was so much better qualified to be a judge than I, it was impossible not to see Mr. Mafferton's good opinion of me rising in his face. He said he could not help sympathising with the paternal view, but that was all he would say; he refrained magnificently from abusing Dicky. And we parted mutually more deeply convinced than ever of the undesirability of doing anything rash in the all important direction we had been discussing.
As we disembarked at Colico to take the train for Chiavenna, Mrs. Portheris, after seeing that Mr. Mafferton was collecting the portmanteaux, gave me a word of comfort and of admonition. "Take my advice, my child," she said, "and be faithful to poor dear Richard. Your father must, in the end, give way. I shall keep at him in your interests. When you left us this afternoon," continued the lady mysteriously, "he immediately took out his fountain pen and wrote a letter. It was directed—I saw that much—to a Mr. Arthur Page. Is he the creature who is to be forced upon you, my child?" Mrs. Portheris in the sentimental view was really affecting.
"I think it very likely," I said calmly, "but I have promised to be faithful to Richard, Mrs. Portheris, and I will."
But I really felt a little nervous.
