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

/> "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!"


CHAPTER XI.

We descended next morning to realise how original we were in being in the plains of Italy in July. The Fulda people and the Miss Binghams and Mrs. Portheris had prevented our noticing it before, but in the Hotel Mascigni, Via del Tritone, we seemed to have arrived at a point of arid solitude, which gave poppa a new and convincing sense of all he was going through in pursuit of Continental culture. We sat in one corner of the "Sala di mangiari" at a small square table, and in all the length and breadth and sumptuousness of that magnificent apartment--Italian hotel dining-rooms are always florid and palatial--there was only one other little square table with a cloth on it and an appearance of expectancy. The rest were heaped with chairs, bottom side up, with their legs in the air; the chandeliers were tied up in brown holland, and through a depressed and exhausted atmosphere, suggestive of magnificent occasions temporarily in eclipse, moved, with a casual languid air, a very tall waiter and a very short one. At mysterious exits to the rear occasionally appeared the form of the _chef_ exchanging plates. It was borne in upon one that in the season the _chef_ would be remanded to the most inviolable seclusion.

"Do you suppose Pompeii will be any worse than this?" inquired the Senator.

"Talk about Americans pervading the Continent," he continued, casting his eye over the surrounding desolation. "Where are they? I should be glad to see them. Great Scott! if it comes to that, I should be glad to see a blooming Englishman!"

It wasn't an answer to prayer, for there had been no opportunity for devotion, but at that moment the door opened and admitted Mr., Mrs., and Miss Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis. The reunion was as rapt as the Senator and Emmeline could make it, and cordial in every other respect. Mr. Malt explained that they had come straight through from Paris, as time was beginning to press.

"We couldn't leave out Rome," he said, "on account of Mis' Malt's mother--she made such a point of our seeing the prison of Saint Paul. In her last letter she was looking forward very anxiously to our safe return to get an account of it. She's a leader in our experience meetings, and I couldn't somehow make up my mind to face her without it."

"Poppa," remarked Emmeline, "is not so foolish as he looks."

"We were just wondering," exclaimed momma, "who that table was laid for. But we never thought of _you_. Isn't it strange?"

We agreed that it was little short of marvellous.

The tall waiter strolled up for the commands of the Malt party. His demeanour showed that he resented the Malts, who were, nevertheless, innocent respectable people. As Emmeline ordered "_cafe au lait pour tous"_ he scowled and made curious contortions with his lower jaw. "Anything else you want?" he inquired, with obvious annoyance.

"Yes," said Miss Callis. He further expressed his contempt by twisting his moustache, and waited in silent disdain.

"I want," said Miss Callis sweetly, leaning forward with her chin artlessly poised in her hand, "to know if you are paid to make faces at the guests of this hotel."

There was laughter, above which Emmeline's crow rose loud and clear, and as the waiter hastened away, suddenly transformed into a sycophant, poppa remarked, "I see you've got those hotel tickets, too. Let me give you a little pointer. Say nothing about it until next day. They are like that sometimes. In being deprived of the opportunity of swindling us, they feel that they've been done themselves."

"Oh," said Mr. Malt, "we never reveal it for twenty-four hours. That fellow must have smelled 'em on us. Now, how were you proposing to spend the day?"

"We're going to the Forum," remarked Emmeline. "Do come with us, Mr. Wick. We should love to have you."

"We mustn't forget the Count," said momma to the Senator.

"What Count?" Emmeline inquired. "Did you ever, momma! Mis' Wick knows a count. She's been smarter than we have, hasn't she? Introduce him to us, Mis' Wick."

"Emmeline," said her mother severely, "you are as personal as ever you can be. I don't know whatever Mis' Wick will think of you."

"She's merely full of intelligent curiosity, Mis' Malt," said Mr. Malt, who seemed to be in the last stage of infatuated parent. "I know you'll excuse her," he added to momma, who said with rather frigid emphasis, "Oh yes, we'll excuse her." But the hint was lost and Emmeline remained. Poppa looked in his memorandum book and found that the Count was not to arrive until 3 P.M. There was, therefore, no reason why we should not accompany the Malts to the Forum, and it was arranged.

A quarter of an hour later we were rolling through Rome. As a family we were rather subdued by the idea that it was Rome, there was such immense significance even in the streets with tramways, though it was rather an atmosphere than anything of definite detail; but no such impression weighed upon the Malts. They took Rome at its face value and refused to recognise the unearned increment heaped up by the centuries. However, as we were divided in two carriages, none of us had all the Malts.

It was warm and dusty, the air had a malarious taste. We drove first, I remember, to the American druggist's in the Piazza di Spagna for some magnesia Mrs. Malt wanted for Emmeline, who had prickly heat. It was annoying to have one's first Roman impressions confused with Emmeline and magnesia and prickly heat; but Mrs. Malt appeared to think that Rome attracted visitors chiefly by means of that American druggist. She said she was perfectly certain we should find an American dentist there, too, if we only took the time to look him up. I can't say whether she took the time. We didn't.

It was interesting, the Piazza di Spagna, because that is where everybody who has read "Roba di Roma" knows that the English and Americans have lived ever since the days when dear old Mr. Story and the rest used to coach it from Civita Vecchia--in hotels, and pensions, and apartments, the people in Marion Crawford's novels. We could only decide that the plain, severe, many-storied houses with the shops underneath had charms inside to compensate for their outward lack. Not a tree anywhere, not a scrap of grass, only the lava pavement, and the view of the druggist's shop and the tourists' agency office. Miss Callis said she didn't see why man should be for ever bound up with the vegetable creation--it was like living in a perpetual salad--and was disposed to defend the Piazza di Spagna at all points, it looked so nice and expensive. But Miss Callis's tastes were very distinctly urban.

That druggist's establishment was on the Pincian Hill! It seemed, on reflection, an outrage. We all looked about us, when we discovered this, for the other six, and another of the foolish geographical illusions of the school-room was shattered for each