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

Binghams, who did. As I said good-bye to Miss Cora she gave my hand a subtly sympathetic pressure, whispered tenderly, "He's very nice," and roguishly escaped before I could ask who was, or what difference it made. Having thought it over, I took the first opportunity of inquiring of Dicky how much of his private affairs he had unburdened to Miss Cora. "Oh," said he, "hardly anything. She knows a former young lady friend of mine in Syracuse--we still exchange Christmas cards--and that led me on to say I thought of getting married this winter. Of course I didn't mention Isabel."


CHAPTER XVIII.

Out of indulgence to Dicky we lingered in Florence three or four days longer than was at all convenient, considering, as the Senator said, the amount of ground we had to cover before we could conscientiously recross the Channel. But neither poppa nor momma were people to desert a fellow-countryman in distress in foreign parts, especially in view of this one's pathetic reliance upon our sympathy and support, as a family. We all did our best toward the distraction of what momma called his poor mind, though I cannot say that we were very successful. His poor mind seemed wholly taken up with one anticipative idea, and whatever failed to minister to that he hadn't, as poppa sadly said, any use for. The cloisters of San Marco had no healing for his spirit, and when we directed his attention to the solitary painting on the wall with which Fra Angelico made a shrine of each of its monastic cubicles he merely remarked that it was more than you got in most hotels, and turned joylessly away. Even the charred stick that helped to martyr Savonarola left him cold. He said, indifferently, that it was only the natural result of mixing up politics and religion, and that certain Chicago ministers who supported Bryan from the pulpit might well take warning. But his words were apathetic; he did not really care whether those Chicago ministers went to the stake or not. We stood him before the bronze gates of Ghiberti, and walked him up and down between rows of works in _pietra dura_, but without any permanent effect, and when he contemplated the consecrated residences of Cimabue and Cellini, we could see that his interest was perfunctory, and that out of the corner of his eye he really considered passing fiacres. I read to him aloud from "Romola," and momma bought him an English and Italian washing book that he might keep a record of his _camicie_ and his _fazzoletti_--it would be so interesting afterwards, she thought--while the Senator exerted himself in the way of cheerful conversation, but it was very discouraging. Even when we dined at the fashionable open air restaurant in the Cascine, with no less a person than Ouida, in a fluff of grey hair and black lace, at the next table, and the most distinguished gambler of the Italian aristocracy presenting a narrow back to us from the other side, he permitted poppa to compare the quality of the beef fillets unfavourably with those of New York in silence, and drank his Chianti with a lack-lustre eye.

Towards the end of the week, however, Dicky grew remorseful. "It's all very well," he said to me privately, "for Mrs. Wick to say that she could spend a lifetime in Florence, if the houses only had a few modern conveniences. I daresay she could--and as for your poppa, he's as patient as if this were a Washington hotel and he had a caucus every night, but it's as plain as Dante's nose that the Senator's dead sick of this city."

"Dicky," I said, "that is a reflection of your own state of mind. Poppa is willing to take as much more Botticelli and Filippo Lippi as it may be necessary to give him."

"Oh, I know he _would_" Dicky admitted, "but he isn't as young as he was, and I should hate to feel I was imposing on him. Besides, I'm beginning to conclude that they've skipped Florence."

So it came to pass that we departed for Venice next day, tarrying one night at Bologna. We had cut a day off Bologna for Dicky's sake, but the Senator could not be persuaded to sacrifice it altogether on account of its well known manufacture, into the conditions of which he wished to inquire. The shops, as we drove to the hotel, seemed to expose nothing else for sale, but poppa said that, in spite of the local consumption, it had certainly fallen off, and, as an official representative of one of its great rivals in the west, he naturally felt a compunctious interest in the state of the industry. The hotel had a little courtyard, with an orange tree in the middle and palms in pots, and we came down the wide marble stairs, past the statues on the landing, and the paintings on the walls, to find dinner laid on round tables out there, I remember. A note of momma's occurs here to the effect that there is a great deal too much fine art in Italian hotels, with a reference to the fact that the one at Naples had the whole of Pompeii painted on the dining room walls. She considers this practice embarrassing to the public mind, which has no way of knowing whether to admire these things or not, though personally we boldly decided to scorn them all. This, however, has nothing to do with poppa and the commercial traveller. We knew he was a commercial traveller by the way he put his toothpick in his pocket, though poppa said afterwards that he was not exceptionally endowed for that line of business. He was dining at our table, and by his gratified manner when we sat down, it was plain that he could speak English and would be very pleased to do so. Poppa, knowing that his time was short, began at once.

"You belong to Bologna, sir?" he inquired with his first spoonful of soup. For some reason it seems impossible to address a stranger at a _table d'hote_, before the soup takes the baldness off the situation.

The gentleman smiled. He had a broad, open, amiable, red face, with a short black beard and a round head covered with thick hair in curls, beautifully parted. "I do not think I belong," he said; "my house of business, it is at Milan, and I am born at Finalmarina. But I come much to Bologna, yes."

"Where did you say you were born?" asked the Senator.

"Finalmarina. You did not go to there, no? I am sorry."

"It does seem a pity," replied poppa, "but we've been obliged to pass a considerable number of your commercial centres, sir. This city, I presume, has large manufacturing interests?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose. You 'ave seen that San Petronio, you cannot help. Very enorm'! More big than San Peter in Rome. But not complete since fourteenth century. In America you 'ave nothing unfinish, is it not?"

"Far as that goes," said poppa, "we generally manage to complete our contracts within the year; as a rule, I may say within the building season. But I have seen one or two Roman Catholic churches left with the scaffolding hanging round the ceiling for a good deal longer, the altar all fixed up too, and public worship going on just as usual. It seems to be a way they have. Well, sir, I knew Bologna, by reputation, better than any other Italian city, for years. Your local manufacture did the business. As a boy at school, there was nothing I was more fond of for my dinner. Thirty years ago, sir, the interest was created that brings me here to-day."

The commercial traveller bowed with much gratification. In the meantime he had presented a card to momma, which informed her that Ricardo Bellini represented the firm of Isapetti and Co., Milan, Artificial Flowers and Lace.

"Thirty years, that is a long time to remember Bologna, I cannot say that thirty years I remember New York. You will not believe!" He was obviously not more than twenty-five, so this was vastly humorous. "Twenty years, yes, twenty years I will say! And have you seen San Stefano? Seven churches in one! Also the most old. And having forty Jerusalem martyrs."

"Forty would go a long way in relics," the Senator observed with discouragement, "but my remarks had reference to the Bologna sausage, sir."

"Sausage--ah! _mortadella_--yes they make here I believe." Mr. Bellini held up his knife and fork to enable his plate to be changed and looked darkly at the succeeding course. "But every Italian cannot like that dish. I eat him never. You will not find in this hotel no." His manner indicated a personal hostility to the Bologna sausage, but the Senator did not seem to notice it.

"You don't say so! Local consumption going off too, eh? Now how do you explain that?"

Mr. Bellini shrugged his shoulders. "It is much eat by the poor people. They will always have that _mortadella_!"

"That looks," said the Senator thoughtfully, "like the production of an inferior article. But not necessarily, not necessarily, of course."

"Bologna it is very _ecclesiastic_." Mr. Bellini addressed my other parent, recovering a smile. "We have produced here six popes. It is the fame of Bologna."

"You seem to think a great deal of producing popes in Italy," momma replied coldly. "I should consider it a terrible responsibility."

"Now do you suppose," said poppa confidentially, "that the idea of trichinosis had anything to do with slackening the demand?"

Mr. Bellini threw his head back, and passionately replaced a section of biscuit and cheese in the middle of his plate.

"I know nossing, any more than you! Why you speak me always that Bologna sausage! _Pazienza!_ What is it that sausage to make the agreeable conversation!"

"Sir," exclaimed the Senator with astonishment and equal heat, "you don't seem to be aware of it, but at one time the Bologna sausage ruled the world!"

Mr. Bellini, however, could evidently not trust himself to discuss the matter further. He rose precipitately with an outraged, impersonal bow, and left the table, abandoning his biscuit and cheese, his half finished bottle of Rudesheimer and the figs that were to follow, with the indifference of a lofty nature.

"I'm sorry I spoiled his dinner," said poppa with concern, "but if a Bologna man can't talk about Bologna sausages, what can he talk about?"

It made the Senator reticent, though, as to sausages of any kind, with the other commercial traveller--the hotel was full of them, and we found it very entertaining after the barren dining rooms of southern Italy--with whom we breakfasted. He spoke to this one exclusively about the architectural and historic features of the city, in a manner which forbade any approach to gastronomic themes, and while the second commercial traveller regarded him with great respect, it must be confessed that the conversation languished. Dicky might have helped us out, but Dicky was following his usual custom of having rooms in one hotel and covering as many others as possible with his meals, in the hope of an accidental meeting. This was excellent as a distraction for his mind, but since it occasionally led him into three _dejeuners_ and two dinners, rather bad, we feared, for other parts of him. He had confided his design to me; he intended, on meeting Isabel's eye, to turn very pale, abruptly terminate his repast, ask for his hat and stick, and walk out with conspicuous agitation. As to the course he meant to pursue afterwards he was vague; the great thing was to make an impression upon Isabel. We differed about the nature of