Part 3

I went down to the office and wrote a cablegram to Norris, in which I said that we were going over to see the country and would call on him within ten days.

To pay the charges I took out my pocket-book. There was no money in it. What had happened to me? There had been two one-hundred-dollar bills in the book when I had paid for last evening's dinner; now it held nothing but a slip of paper neatly folded. I opened it and read these words written with a pencil:

_Thanks. This is the last call. M._

Then I remembered that yesterday's trousers had been hanging in the bath-room with my money in the right-hand pocket when Muggs was there. I had got the book and taken it with me when I went for a walk.

“He may be a busted philanthropist, but he's not a busted thief,” I mused.

V.--IN WHICH WE HAVE AN AMUSING VOYAGE

BETSEY had been a bit disturbed by the swiftness of my plans. On her arrival in town she said to me:

“Look here, Socrates Potter, I'm no longer a colt, and you'll have to drive slower. What are you up to, anyway?”

“A surprise-party!” I answered. “Cheer up! It's our honeymoon trip. I've decided that after a man has married a woman it's his duty to get well acquainted with her. What's the use of having a breastful of love and affection and no time to show it. To begin with we shall have the best dinner this hotel affords.”

Our table, which had been well adorned with flowers, awaited us, and we sat down to dinner. Richard Forbes came while we were eating our oysters and joined us.

We talked of many things, and while we were eating our dessert I sailed into the subject nearest my heart by saying:

“I kind o' guessed that you'd want to send a message.”

“How did you know it?” he asked.

“Oh, by sundry looks and glances of your eye when I saw you last.”

“They didn't deceive you,” said he. “Tell them that they may see me in Rome before long. Miss Norris was kind enough to say in a letter that they would be glad to see me. I haven't answered yet. You might gently break the news of my plan and let me know how they stand it.”

“I'll give them your affectionate regard--that's as far as I am willing to go--and I'll tell them to prepare for your presence. If they show evidence of alarm I'll let you know. I kind o' mistrust that you may be needed there and--and wanted.”

“No joking now!” he warned me.

“Those titled chaps are likely to get after her, and I may want you to help me head 'em off. You'd be a silly feller to let them grab the prize.”

“The trouble is my fortune isn't made,” said he. “I'm getting along, but I can't afford to get married yet.”

“Don't worry about that,” I begged him. “Our young men all seem to be thinking about money and nothing else. Quit it. Keep out of this great American thought-trust. Any girl that isn't willing to take hold and help you make your fortune isn't worth having. Don't let the vine of your thoughts go twining around the money-pole. If you do they'll make you a prisoner.”

“But she is used to every luxury.”

“And probably will be glad to try something new. Her mama is not looking for riches, but noble blood, I suppose. Norris's girl looks good to me--nice way of going, as they used to say of the colts. We ought to be able to offer her as high an order of nobility as there is in Europe.”

“I'm very common clay,” the boy answered, with a laugh.

“And the molding is up to you,” I said, as we rose to go.

“Tell them that Gwendolyn's heart is American territory and that I shall stand for no violation of the Monroe Doctrine,” said he.

We bade him good-by and went aboard the steamer in as happy a mood as if we had spent six months instead of six hours getting ready. So our voyage began.

Going over we felt the strong tides of the spirit which carry so many of our countrymen to the Old World. The _Toltec_ was crowded with tourists of the All-Europe-in-three-weeks variety. There were others, but these were a small minority. Every passenger seemed to be loaded, beyond the Plimsoll mark, with conversation, and in the ship's talk were all the spiritual symptoms of America.

We chose partners and went into the business of visiting. The sea shook her big, round sides, immensely tickled, I should say, by the gossip. Our ship was a moving rialto. We swapped stories and exchanged sentiments; we traded hopes and secrets; we cranked up and opened the gas-valve and raced into autobiography. Each got a memorable bargain. We were almost dishonest with our generosity.

“Ship ahoy!” we shouted to every man who came our way and noted his tonnage and cargo, his home port and destination.

How American! God bless us all!

Within forty-eight hours it seemed to me that everybody knew everybody else, except Lord and Lady Dorris, who were aboard, and the adoring group that surrounded them.

The big, wide-world thought-trust was well represented in the smoking-room. There were business men and boys just out of college, all expressing themselves in terms of profit and loss--the wealth of this or that man and how he got it, the effect of legislation upon business, and all that kind of thing. Thirty-five years ago such a company would have been talking of the last speeches of Conkling and Ingersoll or the last poems of Whittier and Tennyson.

There were many keynotes in the conversation. If one sat down with a book in the reading-room he would abandon it for the better display of human nature in the crowd around him. There were some twoscore women all talking at the same time, each drenching the other in the steady flow of her conversational hose. The plan of it all seemed to be very generous--everybody giving and nobody receiving anything. I used to think that among women talk was for display or relief, and whispering for the transfer of intelligence. Since I got married I know better: women have a sixth sense by which they can acquire knowledge without listening in a talk-fest. They miss nothing.

It was interesting to observe how the edges of the conversations impinged upon one another, like the circles made by a handful of pebbles flung from a bridge into water. Now and then some strong-voiced lady dropped a rock into the pool, and the spatter went to both shores. The spray advertised the thought-trusts of the women:

“I felt so sorry for poor Mabel! There wasn't a young man in the party.”

“It was a capital operation, but I pulled through.”

“Yes, I've wanted to go to Italy ever since I saw 'Romeo and Juliet.' Those Italians are wonderful lovers.”

“It was so ridiculous to be throwing her at his head, and she with a weak heart and only one lung!”

“I don't know how I spend it, but somehow it goes.”

“Oh, they have been abroad, but anybody can do that these days.”

“Poor man! I feel sorry for him--she's terribly extravagant.”

“We don't see much of our home these days.”

“My twentieth trip across the ocean.”

“Our children are in boarding-schools, and my husband is living at his club.”

I wanted to smoke and excused myself from Betsey and went out on the deck, now more than half deserted, and stood looking off at the night. Family history was pouring out of the state-room windows, and I could not help hearing it. Grandma, slightly deaf, was saying to her daughter:

“Lizzie must be more careful when those young men come to the door. This morning she wasn't half dressed when she opened it.”

“Oh yes, she was.”

“No, she wasn't; I took particular notice. And every morning she wets her hair in my perfumery. Then, sadly, It's almost gone.”

I knew enough about the sins of Lizzie, and moved on and took a new stand.

An elderly lumber merchant from Michigan was saying to his companion in a loud voice:

“Yes, I retired ten years ago. I am studying the history of the world--all about the life of the world, especially the life of the ancients.”

I moved on to escape a comparison of the careers of Alexander and Napoleon, and settled down in a dusky corner near which a lady was giving an account of the surgical operations which had been performed upon her. So the conversation, which had begun at daybreak, went on into the night. It was all very human--very American.

The Litchmans of Chicago had rooms opposite ours. Every night six or eight pairs of shoes, each decorated with a colored ribbon to distinguish it from the common run of shoes, were ranged in a row outside their door. The lady had forty-two hats--so I was told--and all of them were neatly aired in the course of the voyage. The upper end of her system was not a head, but a hat-holder.

Their family of four children was established in a room next to ours. As a whole, it was the most harmonious and efficient yelling-machine of which I have any knowledge. Its four cylinders worked like one. At dinner it filled its tanks with cheese and cakes and nuts and jellies and milk, and was thus put into running order for the night. It is wonderful how many yells there are in a relay of cheese and cake and nuts and jelly and milk. When we got in bed the machine cranked up, backed out of the garage, and went shrieking up the hill to midnight and down the slope to breakfast-time, stopping briefly now and then for repairs.

A deaf lady next morning declared that she had heard the fog-whistles blowing all night.

“Fog-whistles! We didn't need 'em,” said Betsey.

It was a symptom of America with which I had been unfamiliar.

We were astonished at the number of manless women aboard that ship. Many were much-traveled widows whose husbands had fallen in the hard battles of American life; some, I doubt not, like the battle of Norris, with hidden worries that feed, like rats, on the strength of a man.

Many of the women were handsome daughters and sleek, well-fed mamas whose husbands could not leave the struggle--often the desperate struggle--for fame and fortune.

There were elderly women--well upholstered grandmamas--generally traveling in pairs.

One of them, a slim, garrulous, and affectionate lady well past her prime, was immensely proud of her feet. She was Mrs. Fraley, from Terre Haute--“a daughter of dear old Missouri,” she explained. It seemed that her feet had retained their pristine beauty through all vicissitudes, and been complimented by sundry distinguished observers. One evening she said to Betsey:

“Come down to my state-room, dearest dear, and I will show you my feet.”

She always seemed to be seeking astonishment, and was often exclaiming “Indeed!” or “How wonderful!” and I hadn't told any lies either.

We met also Mrs. Mullet, of Sioux City, a gay and copious widow of middle age, who appeared in the ship's concert with dark eyes well underscored to give them proper emphasis. She was a well-favored, sentimental lady with thick, wavy, brown hair. Her thoughts were also a bit wavy, but Betsey formed a high opinion of her. Mrs. Mullet was a neat dresser and resembled a fashion-plate. Her talk was well dressed in English accents. She often looked thoughtfully at my chin when we talked together, as if she were estimating its value as a site for a stand of whiskers. It was her apparent knowledge of art which interested Betsey. She talked art beautiful, as Sam Henshaw used to say, and was going to Italy to study it.

There were schoolma'ams going over to improve their minds, and romping, sweetfaced girls setting out to be instructed in art or music, beyond moral boundaries, and knowing not that they would take less harm among the lions and hyenas of eastern Africa. When will our women learn that the centers of art and music in Europe are generally the exact centers of moral leprosy?

There were stately, dignified, and inhuman people of the seaboard aristocracy of the East--the Europeans of America, who see only the crudeness of their own land. They have been dehorned--muleyed into freaks by degenerate habits of mind and body. A certain passenger called them the “Eunuchs of democracy,” but I wouldn't be so intemperate with the truth. One of them was the Lady Dorris, daughter of a New York millionaire, who came out of her own apartments one evening to peer laughingly into the dining-saloon, and say:

“I love to look at them; they're so very, very curious!”

Yes, we have a few Europeans in America, but I suspect that Europe is more than half American.

Then there was Mr. Pike, the lumber king, from Prairie du Chien, who stroked his whiskers when he talked to me and looked me over from head to toe as if calculating the amount of good timber in me. He had retired, jumped from the lumber business into ancient history, and was now reporting the latest news from Tyre and Babylon.

In this environment of character we proceeded with nothing to do but observe it, and with no suspicion that we were being introduced to the persons of a drama in which we were to play our parts in Italy.

So now, then, the orchestra has ceased playing and the curtain is up again, and, with all these people on the stage, in the middle of the ocean word goes around the decks that there is a ship off the port side very near us. We look and observe that we are passing her. It is the _Caronia_, and we ride the seas with a better sense of comfort, knowing that Wilton is behind us.

VI.--WE ARRIVE IN THE LAND OF LOVE AND SONG

HERE we are in Rome on the tenth day of our journey at three in the afternoon! Jiminy Christmas! How I felt the need of language! I had given my leisure on the train to the careful study of a conversation-book, but the conversation I acquired was not extensive enough to satisfy every need of a man born in northern New England. It was too polite. There were a number of men who quarreled over us and our baggage in the station at Rome, and I had to do all my swearing with the aid of a dictionary. I found it too slow to be of any use. We were rescued soon by Mrs. Norris and her footman, who took us to the Grand Hotel. Gwendolyn met us in the hall of their apartment, and I delivered Forbes's message.

“You may kiss me!” she exclaimed, joyously.

“I do it for him,” I said.

“Then do it again,” said she.

That's the kind of a girl she was--up and a-coming!--and that's the kind of a man I am--obliging to the point of generosity at the proper moment.

The reputation of the Norrises gave us standing, and we were soon marching in step and sowing our francs in a rattling shower with the great caravan of American blood-hunters.

Norris himself was in better health than I had hoped to find him, and three days later he drove me to Tivoli in his motor-car.

As we were leaving the hotel the porter said to Norris:

“An American gentleman called to see you about an hour ago. He was very urgent, and I told him that I thought you had gone to Tivoli.”

“Not gone, but going,” said Norris. “There's a grain of truth in what you said, but I suppose you meant well.”

He handed the porter a coin and added:

“You must never be able to guess where I am.”

In the course of our long ride across the Campagna I made my report and he made his. I told the whole story of Muggs and how at length the man had given me a good, full excuse for my play-spell.

“I suppose that he will be after us again here,” said Norris.

“Don't worry,” I answered; “you'll find me a capable watch-dog. It will only be necessary for me to bark at him once or twice.”

“You're an angel of mercy,” said my friend. “I couldn't bear the sight of him now. It isn't the money involved; it's his devilish smoothness and the twitch of the bull-ring and the peril I am in of losing my temper and of doing something to--to be regretted.”

“Let me be secretary of your interior also,” I proposed, and added: “I can get mad enough for both of us, and I have a growing stock of cuss words.”

My assurance seemed to set Norris at rest, and I called for his report.

“Mine is a longer story,” he began. “First we went to Saint Moritz--beautiful place, six thousand feet up in the mountains--and it agreed with me. We found two kinds of Americans there--the idle rich who came to play with the titled poor and the homeless. Everywhere in Europe one finds homeless people from our country--a wandering, pathetic tribe of well-to-do gipsies. Among the idle rich are maidens with great prospects and planning mamas, and rich widows looking for live noblemen with the money of dead grocers, rum merchants, and contractors. They're all searching for 'blood,' as they call it.

“'I can't marry an American,' one of them said to me; 'I want a man of blood. These men are of ancient families that have made history, and they know how to make love, too.'

“Impoverished dukes, marquises, princes, barons, counts, from the purlieus of aristocratic Europe, throng about them. These noblemen are professional marryers, and all for sale. The bob-sled and the toboggan are implements of their craft, symbols of the rapid pace. Unfortunately, they are often the meeting-place of youthful innocence and utter depravity, of glowing health and incurable disease. Maidens and marquises, barons and widows, counts and young married women, traveling alone, sit dovetailed on bob-sleds and toboggans, and, locked in a complex embrace, this tangle of youth and beauty, this interwoven mass of good and evil, rushes down the slippery way. In the swift, curving flight, by sheer hugging, they overcome the tug of centrifugal force. It is a long hug and a strong hug. Thus, courtship is largely a matter of sliding.

“Then there are the dances. I do not need to describe them. At Saint Moritz they go to the limit. Fifteen years ago when Chuck Connors and his friends practised these dances in a Bowery dive respectable citizens turned away with disgust. Since then the idle rich who explore the underworld have begun to imitate its dances, which were intended to suggest the morals of the dog-kennel and the farmyard and which have achieved some success in that direction. Unfortunately, the idle rich are well advertised. If they were to wear rings in their noses the practice would soon become fashionable.

“Well, you see, it was no place for my girl. I sent her away with Mrs. Mushtop to Rome, but not until a young Italian count had got himself in love with my money.”

“Count Carola?” I asked.

“Count Carola!” said he. “How did you know?”

“Saw it in the paper.”

“The paper!” he exclaimed. “God save us from the papers as well as from war, pestilence, and sudden death.”

“Is the count really shot in the heart?” I ventured to ask.

“Oh, he likes her as any man likes a pretty, bright-eyed girl,” Norris went on, “but it was a part of my money that he wanted most. I had kept her out of that crowd, and the young man hadn't met her. He had only stood about and stared at us, and had finally asked for an introduction to me, which I refused, greatly to my wife's annoyance. The young man followed them to Rome, but I didn't know that he had done so until I got there. They went around seeing things, and everywhere they went the count was sure to go. Followed them like a dog, day in and day out. Isn't that making it a business? His eyes were on them in every room of every art-gallery. One day, when they stood with some friends near the music-stand in the Pincio Gardens, the count approached Mrs. Mushtop. You know Mrs. Mushtop; she is a good woman, but a European at heart and a worshiper of titles. I didn't suppose that she was such a romantic old saphead of a woman. This is what happened: the count took off his hat and greeted her with great politeness. She was a little flattered. My daughter turned away.

“'I suspect, myself, that you are the young lady's chaperon,' said he.

“'Yes, sir.'

“'I am in love with the beautiful, charming young lady. It is so joyful for me to look at her. I am most unhappy unless I am near her. I have the honor to hand you my card; I wish you to make the inquiry about my family and my character. Then I hope that you will permission me to speak to her.'

“Think of Mrs. Mushtop standing there and letting him go on to that extent.

“She said, 'It would do no good, for I believe that she is engaged.'

“'That will make not any difference,' he insisted, with true Italian simplicity; I will take my chances.'

“She foolishly kept his card, but had the good sense to turn away and leave him.

“Mrs. Norris went on to Rome for a few days while I stayed at Saint Moritz with my physician, mother, and secretary. You know women better than I do, probably. Most of them like that Romeo business; that swearing by the sun, moon, and stars--those cosmic, cross-universe measurements of love. I don't know as I blame them, for, after all, a woman's happiness is so dependent on the love of a husband.

“Well, those women got their heads together, and my wife thought that, on the whole, she liked the looks of the count. He was rather slim and dusky, but he had big, dark eyes and red cheeks and perfect teeth and a fine bearing. So they drove to Florence, where he lived, and investigated his pedigree and character. It was a very old family, which had played an important part in the campaigns of Mazzini and Cavour, but its estate had been confiscated after the first failure of the great Lombard chief, and its fortunes were now at a low ebb. One of the count's brothers is the head waiter in a hotel at Naples. He had sense enough to go to work, but the count is a confirmed gentleman who rests on hopes and visions. He reminds me of a house standing in the air with no visible means of support.

“However, the investigation was satisfactory to my wife, and she invited the young man to dinner at her hotel. The ladies were all captivated by his charm, and there's no denying that the young fellow has pretty manners. It's great to see him garnish a cup of tea or a plate of spaghetti with conversation. His talk is pastry and bonbons.

“When I came on I found them going about with him and having a fine time. Under his leadership my wife had visited sundry furniture and antique shops and invested some five thousand dollars, on which, I presume, the count received commissions sufficient to keep him in spending-money for a while. I didn't like the count, and told them so. He's too effeminate for me--hasn't the frank, upstanding, full-breasted, rugged, ready-for-anything look of our American boys. But I didn't interfere; I kept my hands off, for long ago I promised to let my wife have her way about the girl. That reminds me we have invited young Forbes to come over and spend a month with us.”

“Likely young fellow,” I said.

“None better,” said he; “if he had sense enough to ask Gwen to marry him I'd be glad of it. I have refused to encourage the affair with the count, but we find it hard to saw him off. We drove to Florence the other day, and he followed us there and back again. He's a comer, I can tell you; we can see him coming wherever we are. I swear a little about it now and then, and Gwen says, 'Well, father, you don't own the road.' And Mrs. Norris will say: 'Poor fellow! Isn't it pitiful? I'm so sorry for him!'

“His devotion to business is simply amazing--works early and late, and don't mind going hungry. In all my life I never saw anything like it.”

We had arrived at Tivoli, and as he ceased speaking we drew up at Hadrian's Villa and entered the ruins with a crowd of American tourists. An energetic lady dogged the steps of the swift-moving guide with a volley of questions which began with, “Was it before or after Christ?” By and by she said: “I wouldn't like to have been Mrs. Hadrian. Think of covering all these floors with carpets and keeping them clean!”

I left Norris sitting on a broken column and went on with the crowd for a few minutes. I kept close to the energetic lady, being interested in her talk. Suddenly she began to hop up and down on one leg and gasp for breath. I never saw a lady hopping on one leg before, and it alarmed me. The battalion of sightseers moved on; they seemed to be unaware of her distress--or was it simply a lack of time? I stopped to see what I could do for her.