A Voyage of Consolation by Sara Jeannette Duncan (top 10 most read books in the world .txt) 📖

they were just as eager and hospitable to us and our trunks as they had been in Genoa.

In the Piazza del Duomo we expected the Cathedral, the Leaning Tower, the Baptistry, and the Campo Santo. We did not expect Mrs. Portheris; at least, neither of my parents did--I knew enough about Dicky Dod not to be surprised at any combination he might effect. There they all were in the middle of the square bit of meadow, apparently waiting for us, but really, I have no doubt, getting an impression of the architecture as a whole. I could tell from Mrs. Portheris's attitude that she had acknowledged herself to be gratified. Strange to relate, her gratification did not disappear when she saw that these mediaeval circumstances would inconsistently compel her to recognise very modern American connections. She approached us quite blandly, and I saw at once that Dicky Dod had been telling her that poppa's chances for the Presidency were considered certain, that the Spanish Infanta had stayed with us while she was in Chicago at the Exhibition, and that we fed her from gold plate. It was all in Mrs. Portheris's manner.

"Another unexpected meeting!" she exclaimed. "My dear Mrs. Wick, you _are_ looking worn out! Try my sal volatile--I insist!" and in the general greeting momma was seen to back violently away from a long silver bottle in every direction. Poppa had to interfere. "If it's all the same to you, Aunt Caroline," he said, "Mrs. Wick is quite as usual, though I think the Middle Agedness of this country is a little trying for her at this time of year. She's just a little upset this morning by seeing the cook plucking a rooster down in the backyard before he'd killed it. The rooster was in great affliction, you see, and the way he crowed got on momma's nerves. She's been telling us about it ever since. But we hope it will pass off."

Mrs. Portheris expanded into that inevitable British story of the officer who reported of certain tribes that they had no manners and their customs were abominable, and I, at a mute invitation from Dicky, stepped aside to get the angle of the Tower from a better point of view.

Mr. Dod was depressed, so much so that he came to the point at once. "I hope you had a good time in Genoa," he said. "We should have been there now, only I knew we should never catch up to you if we didn't skip something. So I heard of a case of cholera there, and didn't mention that it was last year. Quite enough for Her Ex. I say, though--it's no use."

"Isn't it?" said I. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty confoundedly certain. The British lion's getting there, in great shape--the brute. All the widow's arranging. With the widow it's 'Mr. Dod, you will take care of _me_, won't you?' or 'Come now, Mr. Dod, and tell me all about buffalo shooting on your native prairies'--and Mr. Dod is a rattled jay. There's something about the mandate of a middle-aged British female."

"I should think there was!" I said.

"Then Maffy, you see, walks in. They don't seem to have much conversation--she regularly brightens up when I come along and say something cheerful--but he's gradually making up his mind that the best isn't any too good for him."

"Perhaps we don't begin so well in America," I interrupted thoughtfully. "But then, we don't develop into Mrs. P.'s either."

Dicky seemed unable to follow my line of thought. "I must say," he went on resentfully, "I like--well, just a _smell_ of constancy about a man. A fellow that's thrown over ought to be in about the same shape as a widower. But not much Maffy. I tried to work up his feelings over the American girl the other night--he was as calm!"

"Dicky," said I, "there are subjects a man _must_ keep sacred. You must not speak to Mr. Mafferton of his first--attachment again. They never do it in England, except for purposes of fiction."

"Well, I worked that racket all I knew. I even told him that American girls as often as not changed their minds."

"_Richard!_ He will think I--what _will_ he think of American girls! It was excessively wrong of you to say that--I might almost call it criminal!"

Dicky looked at me in pained surprise. "Look here, Mamie," he said, "a fellow in my fix, you know! Don't get excited. How am I going to confide in you unless you keep your hair on!"

"What, may I ask, did Mr. Mafferton say when you told him that?" I asked sternly.

"He said--now you'll be madder than ever. I won't tell you."

"Mr. Dod--Dicky, haven't we been friends from infancy!"

"Played with the same rattle. Cut our teeth together."

"Well then----"

"Well then," he said, "do you mind putting your parasol straight? I like to see the person I'm talking to, and besides the sun is on the other side. He said he didn't think it was a privilege that should be extended to all cases."

"He did, did he?" I rejoined calmly. "That's like the British--isn't it?"

"It would have made such a complication if I'd kicked him," confessed Mr. Dod.

The Senator, momma, and Mrs. Portheris stood in the cathedral door. Isabel and Mr. Mafferton occupied the middle distance. Mr. Mafferton stooped to add a poppy to a slender handful of wild flowers he held out to her. Isabel was looking back.

"It will be pleasant inside the Duomo," I said. "Let us go on. I feel warm. I agree with you that the situation is serious, Dicky. Look at those poppies! When an Englishman does that you may make up your mind to the worst. But I don't think anybody need have the slightest respect for the affections of Mr. Mafferton."

Inside the Duomo it was pleasant, and cool, and there was a dim religious light that gave one an opportunity for reflection. I was so much engaged in reflection that I failed to notice the shape of the Duomo, but I have since learned that it was a basilica, in the form of a Latin cross, and was simply full of things which should have claimed my attention. Momma took copious notes from which I see that the Madonna and Child holy water basin was perfectly sweet, and the episcopal throne by Uervellesi in 1536 was the finest piece of tarsia work in the world, and the large bronze hanging lamp by Vincenzo Possento was the object which assisted Galileo to invent the oscillations of the pendulum. The Senator was much taken with the inlaid wooden stalls in the choir, the subjects were so lively. He and his Aunt Caroline nearly came to words over a monkey regarding its reflection in a looking glass, done with a realism which Mrs. Portheris considered little short of profane, but which poppa found quite an excusable filip to devotions which must have been such an all day business in the sixteenth century. Outside, however, poppa found it difficult to approve the facade. To throw four galleries over the street door, he said, with no visible means of getting into them or possible object for sitting there, was about the most ridiculous waste of building space he had yet observed.

"But then," said Dicky Dod, who kept his disconsolate place by my side, "they didn't seem to know how to waste enough in those pre-elevator days. Look at the pictures and the bronzes and the marble columns inside there--ten times as much as they had any use for. They just heaped it up."

"That's so, Dicky, my boy," replied poppa; "we could cover more ground with the money in our century. But you've got to remember that they hadn't any other way worth mentioning of spending the taxes. Religion, so to speak, was the boss contractor's only line."

Dicky remarked that it had to be admitted he worked it on the square, and momma said that no doubt people built as well as they knew how at that time, but nothing should induce her to add her weight to the top of the Leaning Tower.

"It is very remarkable and impressive," said momma, "the idea of its hanging over that way all these centuries, just on the drop and never dropping, but who knows that it may not come down this very day!"

"My dear niece, if I may call you so," remarked Mrs. Portheris urbanely, "it was thus that the builders designed this great monument to stand; in its inclination lies the triumph of their art."

"I can't say I agree with you there, Aunt Caroline," said poppa; "that tower was never meant to stand crooked. It's a very serious defect, and if it happened nowadays, it would justify any Municipal Board in repudiating the contract. Even those fellows, you see, were too sick to go on with it, in every case. Begun by Bonanus 1174. Bonanus saw what was going to happen and gave it up at the third storey. Then Benenato had _his_ show, got it up to four, and quit, 1203. The next architect was--let me see--William of Innsbruck. He put on a couple more, and by that time it began to look dangerous. But nothing happened from 1260 to 1350, and it struck Tomaso Pisano that nothing would happen. He risked it anyhow, ran up another storey, put the roof on, and came in for the credit of the whole miracle. I expect Tomaso is at the bottom of that idea of yours, Aunt Caroline. He would naturally give the reporters that view."

Mrs. Portheris listened with a tolerance as badly put on as any garment she was wearing. "I do not usually make assertions," she said when poppa had finished, "without being convinced of the facts," and I became aware for the first time that her upper lip wore a slight moustache.

"Well, you'll excuse me, Aunt Caroline----"

"All my life I have heard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa as a feat of architecture," replied his Aunt Caroline firmly. "I do not propose to have that view disturbed now."

"Perhaps it _was_ so, my dear love," put in momma deprecatingly, and Mr. Dod, with a frenzied wink at poppa, called his attention to the ridiculous Pisan habit of putting immovable fringed carriage-tops on cabs.

"It undoubtedly was," said Mrs. Portheris, with an embattled front.

"But--Great Scott, aunt!" exclaimed poppa, recklessly, "think what this place was like--all marsh, with the sea right alongside; not four miles off as it is now. Why, you couldn't base so much as a calculation on it!"

"I must say," said Mrs. Portheris in severe surprise, "I knew that America had made great advances in the world of invention, but I did not expect to find what looks much like jealousy of the achievements of an older civilisation."

The Senator looked at his aunt, then he put his hat further back on his head and cleared his throat. I prepared for the worst, and the worst would undoubtedly have come if Dicky Dod had not suddenly remembered having seen a man with a foreign telegram looking for somebody in the Cathedral.

"It's a feat!" reiterated Mrs. Portheris as the Senator left us in pursuit of the man with the telegram.

"It's fourteen feet," cried the Senator from a safe distance, "out of the perpendicular!" and left us to take the consequences.


CHAPTER X.

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