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

you do not think such a wrong thing," he said impulsively. "If it is permitted, I again sit down."

"Do," said I, and he did. Anything else would have seemed perfectly unreasonable, and yet for the moment he twisted his moustache, apparently in the most foolish embarrassment. To put him at his ease, I told him how lovely I thought the fountains. "That's one of your most ideal connections with ancient history, don't you think?" I said. "The fact that those old aqueducts of yours have been bringing down the water to sparkle and ripple in Roman streets ever since."

"Idealissimo! And the Trevi of Bernini--I hope you threw the soldi, so that you must come back to Rome!"

"We weren't quite sure which it was," I responded, "so poppa threw soldi into all of them, to make certain. Sometimes he had to make two or three shots," and I could not help smiling at the recollection.

"Ah, the profusion!"

"I don't suppose they came to a quarter of a dollar, Count. It is the cheapest of your amusements."

The Count reflected for a moment.

"Then you wish to return to Rome," he said softly; "you take interest here?"

"Why yes," I said, "I'm not a barbarian. I'm from Illinois."

"Then why do you go away?"

"Our time is so limited."

"Ah, Mees Wick, you have all of your life." The Italians certainly have exquisite voices.

"That is true," I said thoughtfully.

"Many young American ladies now live always in Italy," pursued Count Filgiatti.

"Is that so?" I replied pleasantly. "They are domiciled here with their parents?"

"Y--yes. Sometimes it is like that. And sometimes----"

"Sometimes they are working in the studios. I know. A delightful life it must be."

The Count looked at the carpet. "Ah, signorina, you misunderstand my poor English," he said; "she means quite different."

It was not coquetry which induced me to cast down my eyes.

"The American young lady will sometimes contract alliance."

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. And if it is a good arrangimento it is always quite _quite_ happy."

"We are said," I observed thoughtfully, "to be able, as a people, to accommodate ourselves to circumstances."

"You approve this idea! Signorina, you are so amiable, it is heavenly."

"I see no objection to it," I said. "It is entirely a matter of taste."

"And the American ladies have much taste," observed Count Filgiatti blandly.

"I'm afraid it isn't infallible," I said, "but it is charming to hear it approved."

"The American lady comes in Italy. She is young, beautiful, with a grace--ah! And perhaps there is a little income--a few dollar--but we do not speak of that--it is a trifle, only to make possible the arrangimento."

"I see," I said.

"The American lady is so perceiving--it is also a charm. The Italian gentleman has a dignity of his. He is perhaps from a family a little old. It is nothing--the matter is of the heart--but it makes possible the arrangimento."

"I have read of such things before," I said, "in the newspapers. It is most amusing to hear them corroborated on the spot. But that is one of the charms of travel, Count Filgiatti."

The Count hesitated and a shade of indecision crossed his swarthy little features. Then he added simply, "For me she has always been a vision, that American lady. It is for this that I study the English. I have thought, 'When I meet one of those so charming Americans, I will do my possible.'"

I could not help thinking of that family of eleven and the father with the saints. It was pathetic to feel one's self a realised vision without any capacity for beneficence--worse in some respects than being obliged to be unkind to hopes with no financial basis. It made one feel somehow so mercenary. But before I could think of anything to say--it was such a difficult juncture--the Count went on.

"But in the Italian idea it is better first one thing to know--the agreement of the American signorina. If she will not, the Italian nobleman is too much disgrace. It is not good to offer the name and the title if the lady say no, I do not want--take that poor thing away."

How artless it was! Yet my sympathy ebbed immediately. Not my curiosity, however. Perhaps at this or an earlier point I should have gone blushing away and forever pondered in secret the problem of Count Filgiatti's intentions. I confess that it didn't even occur to me--it was such a little Count and so far beyond the range of my emotions. Instead, I smiled in a non-committal way and said that Count Filgiatti's prudence was most unique.

"With a friend to previously discover then it is easy. But perhaps the lady will have no friends in Italy."

"You would have to be prepared for that," I said. "Certainly."

"Also she perhaps quickly go away. The Americans are so instantaneous. Maybe my vision fade like--like anything."

"In a perspective of tourists' coupons," I suggested.

For a moment there was silence, through which we could hear the scrubbing-brush of the chambermaid on the marble hall of the first floor. It seemed a final note of desolation.

"If I must speak of myself believe me it is not a nobody the Count Filgiatti," he went on at last. "Two Cardinals I have had in my family and one is second cousin to the Pope."

"Fancy the Pope's having relations!" I said, "but I suppose there is nothing to prevent it."

"Nothing at all. In my family I have had many ambassadors, but that was a little formerly. Once a Filgiatti married with a Medici--but these things are better for Mistra and Madame Wick to inquire."

"Poppa is very much interested in antiquities, but I'm afraid there will hardly be time, Count Filgiatti."

"Listen, I will say all! Always they have been much too large, the families Filgiatti. So now perhaps we are a little _re_duce. But there is still somethings-ah--signorina, can you pardon that I speak these things, but the time is so small--there is fifteen hundred lire yearly revenue to my pocket."

"About three hundred dollars," I observed sympathetically. Count Filgiatti nodded with the smile of a conscious capitalist. "Then of course," I said, "you won't marry for money." I'm afraid this was a little unkind, but I was quite sure the Count would perceive no irony, and said it for my own amusement.

"_Jamais!_ In Italy you will find that never! The Italian gives always the heart before--before----"

"The arrangimento," I suggested softly.

"Indeed, yes. There is also the seat of the family."

"The seat of the family," I repeated. "Oh--the family seat. Of course, being a Count, you have a castle. They always go together. I had forgotten."

"A castle I cannot say, but for the country it is very well. It is not amusing there, in Tuscany. It is a little out of repairs. Twice a year I go to see my mother and all those brothers and sisters--it is enough! And the Countess, my mother, has said to me two hundred times, 'Marry with an Americaine, Nicco--it is my command.' 'Nicco,' she calls me--it is what you call jack-name."

The Count smiled deprecatingly, and looked at me with a great deal of sentiment, twisting his moustache. Another pause ensued. It's all very well to say I should have dismissed him long before this, but I should like to know on what grounds?

"I wish very much to write my mother that I have found the American lady for a new Countess Filgiatti," he said at last with emotion.

"Well," I said awkwardly, "I hope you will find her."

"Ah, Mees Wick," exclaimed the Count recklessly, "you are that American lady. When I saw you in the railway I said, 'It is my vision!' At once I desired to embrace the papa. And he was not cold with me--he told me of the soda. I had courage, I had hope. At first when I see you to-day I am a little derange. In the Italian way I speak first with the papa. Then came a little thought in my heart--no, it is propitious! In America the daughter maka always her own arrangimento. So I am spoken."

At this I rose immediately. I would not have it on my conscience that I toyed with the matrimonial proposition of even an Italian Count.

"I think I understand you, Count Filgiatti," I said--There is something about the most insignificant proposal that makes one blush in a perfectly absurd way. I have never been able to get over it--"and I fear I must bring this interview to a close. I----"

"Ah, it is too embarrassing for you! It is experience very new, very strange."

"No," I said, regaining my composure, "not at all. But the fact is, Count Filgiatti, the transaction you propose doesn't appeal to me. It is too business-like to be sentimental, and too sentimental to be business-like. I'm sorry to seem disobliging, but I really couldn't make up my mind to marry a gentleman for his ancestors who are dead, even if he was willing to marry me for my income which may disappear. Poppa is very speculative. But I know there's a certain percentage of Americans who think a count with a family seat is about the only thing worth bringing away from Europe, now that we manufacture so much for ourselves, and if I meet any of them I'll bear you in mind."

"_Upon my word!_"

It was Mrs. Portheris, in the doorway behind us, just arrived from Siena.

* * * * *


I mentioned the matter to my parents, thinking it might amuse them, and it did. From a business point of view, however, poppa could not help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the Count. "I hope, daughter," he said, "you didn't give him the ha-ha to his face."


CHAPTER XIII.

There is the very tenderness of desolation upon the Appian Way. To me it suggested nothing of the splendour of Roman villas and the tragedy of flying Emperors. It spoke only of itself, lying over the wide silence of the noon-day fields, historic doubtless, but noon-day certainly. Something lives upon the warm stretches of the Appian Way, something that talks of the eternal and unchangeable, and yet has the pathos of the fragmentary and the lost. Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows instead. Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower, that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside--both quite alone in the sunlight--and perhaps of a meek, young, marble Cecilia, unquestioningly prostrate, submissive to the axe.

We were on our way to the Catacombs, momma, the Senator, and Mrs. Portheris in one carriage, R. Dod, Mr. Mafferton, Isabel, and I in the other. I approved of the arrangement, because the mutually distant understanding that existed between Mr. Mafferton and me had already been the subject of remark by my parents. ("For old London acquaintances you and Mr. Mafferton seem to have very little to say to each other," momma had observed that very morning.) It was borne in upon me that this was absurd. People have no business to be estranged for life because one of them has happened