Part 6

It surprised and in a way it pleased me to learn that I had told him what he already knew. I remembered that he had said, in his walk with me, that the distinguished editor who had got the tragic story from my lips was an uncle of his. So, after all, it was not strange that he should know.

“I presume that he had a wild youth, but he's a good man,” Forbes added.

That was all we said about it.

Our drive, which began at midday, took us through the loveliest vineyards in Italy. I shall never forget the vivid-green valley of the Arno as it looked that day. Lace-like vines spreading over the cresset tops of the olives and between them and filling the air with color; stately poplar rows and dark spires of cypress; distant purple mountain walls and white palaces on misty heights--they were some of the items. Here in these vineyards, and in others like them, are about the best tillers in the world--a simple, honest, beauty-loving people who are the soul of Italy, and, in the main, no country has a better asset.

On the road we met the Litchmans, of Chicago, touring with their yelling-machine and a special car trailing behind them filled with clothes and millinery.

That night we dined together and went to the opera. It was all Greek to me, but it was great! They woke me at one, and we went home. Next morning, having learned that Mrs. Mullet was not at her hotel, we all proceeded to the vast Uffizi Gallery. Grand place!

What a wonderful procession these people in marble and paint see every day in the parade of weary pilgrims, in the moving mosaic of humanity. What a Babel of tongues, all speaking Baedeker! I wonder if the gods, emperors, and painted masterpieces fully appreciate this endless human caravan. It is far more wonderful than they. Who are these people? Ask any of them, and he will be apt to tell you that the rest are fools; that almost every one of them is looking for conversational thunder and--knockers!

Some hurry.

“Two more galleries to see, and the train goes at five,” you hear one of them saying.

I was nearly bowled over and trampled upon by three German women who had lost their party.

Once these marble floors were almost exclusively the highway of the highbrows. Now the sacred children of the imagination are being introduced to a new crowd. Newness is its chief characteristic. Here are the overgrown multitude of the newly rich, the truly rich, and the untruly rich. Here are the newly married, the unmarried, the over-married, and the slightly married, and the well-married from all lands, some of them new recruits in the great army of art.

We passed through the Hall of the Ancient Imperial Shoats into the long corridor filled with statuary.

“The old gods seem to have had desperate battles before they gave up,” Betsey said to me. “Most of them lost either an arm or a leg in the war.”

“Many were beheaded and chucked into the garbage-barrels,” I answered. “The way Jupiter and Minerva were beaten up was a caution. It wasn't right; it wasn't decent. They were a harmless, inoffensive lot; they had never done anything to anybody. A lot of things were laid at their doors, but nothing was ever proved against 'em. These days we know enough to appreciate harmlessness.”

“They were very beautiful,” said Betsey, “but they're a crippled lot now.”

“Yes, most of them have artificial limbs,” I answered. “All they do now is to pose in vaudeville for the entertainment of humanity.” As we neared the room where I was to meet Mrs. Mullet we bade the young people go their way and look for us at the door about twelve-thirty.

We found the lady copying the portraits of our first parents. Her breast began to heave in a storm of emotion as she looked at us.

“Who are your friends?” I quickly asked, by way of diverting her thought.

“This is Adam and Eve,” said she, almost tearfully.

“I'm glad to see that they don't make company of us,” Betsey declared.

“They receive everybody in that same suit of clothes,” I answered. “And Eve's entertainment is so simple--apples right off the tree!”

“I don't see but that they look just as aristocratic as they would if they had sprung from poor but respectable parents,” said Betsey.

“Adam looks like a rather shiftless, good-natured young fellow, easily led, but, on the whole, I like them both,” was my answer. “They're frank and open and aboveboard. If you're looking for your first ancestors and must have them, I don't think you could do better. Certainly Mr. Darwin has nothing to offer that compares with them.”

Betsey and I had our little dialogues about many objects in our way, and now we had got Mrs. Mullet righted, so to speak, and on a firm working basis. She showed us through the gallery. I remember that she was particularly interested in the Botticelli paintings.

Mrs. Mullet said that she adored the Madonna--a case of compound adoration, for in its adoring group Botticelli succeeded in painting the most inhuman piety that the world has seen.

“Isn't that glorious?” Mrs. Mullet asked, as we stopped before his Venus--a tall lady standing on half a cockle-shell, neatly poised on breezy water.

“She has crooked feet,” said Betsey.

“Well, I guess yours would be crooked if you had been to sea on a cockle-shell,” I said, which will prove to the learned reader that we were about as ignorant of art as any in that hurrying crowd of misguided people.

“Oh, I think it's a wonderful thing! Look at the colors!” Mrs. Mullet exclaimed.

“But the toes are so long--they are rippling toes. Those on the right foot look as if they had just finished a difficult run on the piano,” Betsey insisted.

“She might be called the Long-toed Venus,” I suggested. “But she isn't to blame for that. I suppose she was born with that infirmity.”

So we crude and business-like Americans went on, as we flitted here and there, sipping the honey from each flower of art.

Twelve-thirty had arrived, and I suggested to Betsey that she should meet the young people and go with them wherever they pleased, and that they could find me at the hotel at four. She left us, and I asked Mrs. Mullet what I could do for her.

“I'm in perfectly awful trouble,” she sighed, with rising tears.

“Tell me all about it,” I said. “But please do not weep, or people will wonder what this cruel old man has been doing to you.”

“That man insisted that I should have my bust made and my portrait painted and agreed to pay for them, but now of course I shall have to pay for them myself. He has threatened to sue me for a hundred thousand dollars for breach of promise. It will take more than half my property.”

“Don't worry about the suit,” I said. “I'll agree to save you any cost in that matter. As to the bust, you can use it for a milestone in your history. The painting will show you how you looked when you were--not as wise as you are now. You can look at it and take warning.”

“I couldn't bear to look at them. I feel as if I never wanted to see myself again. I have written to everybody at home about this engagement. It's just perfectly dreadful!” Again she was near breaking down.

“You ought to be glad--not sorrowful,” I said. “That man can't even play a guitar. If he had a title or a fortune we wouldn't mind his being a scamp, but he hasn't. He hasn't even a coat of arms.”

“There! I'm not going to cry, after all,” she declared, as she wiped her eyes. “I'm glad you've kept me from breaking down.”

“I wonder that you didn't wait until you knew him better before making this engagement,” I said.

“But he was so gentlemanly and nice,” she went on; “and Mr. Pike, the lumber king from Michigan, introduced him to me and said that he had known him a long time. Then the colonel is acquainted with counts and barons and other grand people. He claimed to be an old friend of yours and of Mr. Norris. He said that the last time he called on you he went away with your hat by mistake, and showed me your initials in the one he wore.”

“He often associates with property of a questionable character, but I was not aware that he had got in with the counts and barons,” I said.

“He knows the Count Carola very well,” she declared.

“Leave them to each other--they deserve it,” I said. “Return to Rome and refer Wilton to me, and refuse to have anything more to do with him.”

She asked for my bill, but I assured her that dollars were too small for such a service, and that I couldn't think of accepting anything less than thanks in a case of that kind.

I left her and got a bite to eat and went to our hotel at three-thirty. Betsey was waiting for me at the door. She was pale and excited.

“We've had a dreadful time,” said she. “Gwendolyn and I had gone on while Richard was paying our bill in a shop. Suddenly a young man came and spoke to Gwendolyn. Richard saw it. In a second I heard a horrible thump and saw the young Italian lying in the mud. He didn't try to get up. Looked as if he was sleeping.”

“It's bad weather for Romeoing,” I answered. “That count should have waited till the streets were dry. Where are they?”

“Gwendolyn is in the parlor. Richard said that we should look for him on the road and took a fiacre and flew. The girl is frightened.”

Betsey brought her out, and we got into the car and sped away.

“One more count!” I exclaimed, with a laugh.

“One less count!” said Gwendolyn. “I'm sure he's dead.”

“Ladies have limited rights outside the house in Italy,” I said.

“I don't mind those silly men,” said Gwendolyn. “I've been spoken to like that a dozen times, but I hurry along and pretend that I do not hear them.”

“That count will be careful after this,” I suggested.

“If he lives,” said Gwendolyn. “I'm afraid that his head is cracked.”

“His head was cracked long ago,” was my answer.

“Uncle Soc,” said Gwendolyn (she had begun to call me Uncle Soc there in Italy), “Richard and Italy could never get along together.”

“Richard, Gwendolyn, and America are a better combination,” I suggested.

“What a pretty thought!” she exclaimed, just as we overtook the young man about a mile out on the highway to Rome.

“Get in here and behave yourself,” I said. “You've had exercise enough.”

“I could stand more, if necessary,” he answered, with a laugh, as he sat down with us.

That ride to Rome was one of the merriest, in my life. For the young people it had been a day of joy and progress, but on the whole it hadn't been a highly creditable day. So let's drop the curtain right here and let it go into history.

XI.--IN WHICH WE GET INTO THE FLASH AND GLITTER OF HIGH LIFE

NEXT evening Betsey and I went to dinner with Mrs. Moses Fraley, of Terre Haute, at a fashionable hotel. There we saw a show-window in one of the greatest matrimonial department stores in Europe. Buyers and sellers and bought and sold were there in full force to inspect the bargains, and we were able to note reliably the undertone of the market; and our observations had some effect, I believe, on the fortunes of Miss Norris.

Nothing was said of “the count” in our invitation, but we hoped to have at least a look at him. We put on our best clothes, and our plain, agricultural natures were well disguised when the impressive head porter at our destination helped us out of Norris's car and almost touched his forehead on the pavement at sight of us. That bow was easily worth a two-franc piece, and he got it.

“The Yank and his franc are easily parted,” Betsey remarked, as we entered the great whirling door.

We were in the game, and I was firmly resolved to keep pace with our compatriots from Terre Haute for one evening, anyhow. Two more double-franc pieces in the coat-room established my reputation. With a good suit of clothes and the sudden expenditure of two dollars and a half you can acquire a reputation in any European hotel. Reputations are the cheapest things in Europe, but the costs for upkeep are considerable. Every young man in the place was trying to do something for us and I began to feel the rich, blue blood in my veins.

Mrs. Fraley and her niece, in long trains, received and presented us to their guests. Among them was the lady from Flint who had got the cramp in her leg at Hadrian's Villa, and who lived at the same boarding-house with Mrs. Fraley. Her name was Sampf--“Mrs. Sampf,” they called her. I always have to go to my note-book when I try to think of that name. We always refer to her as the lady whose name sounded like boiling mush. There were also a sad but handsome young woman of the name of Rantone, a Minnesota girl who had married an Italian doctor; Mr. Pike, the whiskered lumber king who was studying the history of the world and whose bust we had surveyed in the studio of De Langueville, and a certain young man connected with one of the embassies.

“The count couldn't come,” said Mrs. Fraley. “He wrote that nothing would please him more than to meet Mr. and Mrs. Socrates Pot ter, but that he was, unfortunately, quite ill.”

I did not know until then that these good people had come to meet us.

“Perhaps you'll help us to appraise our loss by giving me his name,” I suggested.

“Oh, it is the wonderful Count Carola!” said she. “He is about the most fascinating creature that I ever saw.”

My brain reeled and fell at her feet and called silently for help. In half a second it had picked itself up again.

We went into the dining-room. What a fair of jewels and laces and fresh-cut flowers! At eleven o'clock they were going to have a dance--kind of a surprise party! They called it The Ball of the Roses. Our table had a big crop of red and white roses, and in the middle of it was a little fountain among ferns. Its spray fell with a pleasant sound upon water-lilies in a big, mossy bowl.

The retired lumber king sat opposite me, and a retired frog sat between us on a lily-pad at the edge of the fountain-bowl. He was a goodsized real frog who was planning to return to active life, I judged, for he sat with alert eyes as if on the lookout for a business opportunity. I observed that he looked hopefully at me when I sat down at the right of Mrs. Fraley, with Mrs. Sampf at my side, as if willing to abandon the frivolous life any minute if I could suggest an opening for an energetic young frog. Mrs. Fraley explained that the frog was tied to the edge of the bowl by a silk thread which was fastened about his neck. I ceased then to fear and suspect him.

I could not help thinking how much good Terre Haute money had gone into these decorations, and we should have been just as well pleased without the frog and the fountain.

Here we are at last right in the midst of things--grandeur! high life! nobility! abdominal hills and valleys! fair slopes of rolling, open country with their stones imbedded in gold and platinum! toes twinging with gout! faces with the utohel look on them!

What a pantheon of rococo deities was this dining-room--princes and princesses, counts and discounts, countesses and marquises, Wall Street millionaires and millionheiresses, and average American wives and widows with friends and dining-men. What is a dining-man? He's a professional diner-out. He has only to look aristocratic and speak Italian--or English with a Fifth-Avenue accent--and be able to recognize the people worth while. A fat old English duchess with a staff in her hand and the royal purple in her hair made her way to her table with the walk of an apple-woman. There was no nonsense about her, no illusions, no clinging to a vanished youth. She was a real woman, and I could have kissed the hem of her garments for joy.

A lady sat at one of the tables who suggested the chloride of nitrogen, being so fat and fetched in at the waist that her shoulders heaved at every breath, and one could not look at her without fearing that she would explode and fill the air with hooks and eyes and buttons.

A large, swell-front, fully furnished Pennsylvania widow sat near us with her young daughter and a marquis and a well-earned reputation for great wealth. It seemed to be a busy, popular, agreeable reputation, with many acquaintances in the room. The widow's costume pleaded for observation and secured it, for she sat serene and prodigious in jeweled fat and satin, dripping pearls and emeralds and diamonds. There was a battlement of diamonds on her brow and a cinch of them on her neck, surrounded by a stone wall of pearls as big as the marbles that I used to play with as a boy. Hanging from her ears were two mammoth pearls, either of which in a sling might have slain Goliath. Her shoulders glowed with gems, and a stomacher of diamonds adorned her intemperate zone. What a fresco of American abundance she made in the remarkable decorations of that room. By and by she drew a wallet from her breast and paid her bill.

“How wonderful!” our hostess exclaimed, suddenly.

A princess in red slippers and with no stockings on her feet, as Mrs. Fraley informed me, strode in with her young man and took a table near us. She had been a Wisconsin girl, and her happy Fifth Avenue dialect rose like the spray of a fountain and fell lightly on our ears.

“We had a sockless statesman in our country, but I never heard of a sockless princess before,” Mrs. Sampf sputtered. “They tell me that some of these aristocrats are very poor.”

Mrs. Sampf had been to Egypt and the Holy Land, and talked freely of her travels.

“Yes, we went up the Nile to see the dam,” she said. “It's a good dam, I guess, but I didn't care much for it. What I wanted to see was the life. The folks are awful dirty; I wanted to take a scrubbing-brush and some Pearline and go at 'em.”

“A few American women with scrubbing-brushes would improve the Egyptian race,” I suggested. “How about the food?”

“Heavens! I've et everything there is going, I guess; it would take you a month to learn the names of the vittles. I've got 'em all in my diary.”

“I suppose you enjoyed the ruins,” I said.

And she went on:

“I saw a bull temple; it was very nice. You know, they used to worship bulls. I don't know what for. They must have been hard up for something to worship. There was five of us traveling on our own hooks. We saw one temple that was quite nicely carved--had crows and goats on it. I love goats. Sometimes I think that I must have been a goat in some previous life.”

I disagreed with her.

“The pyramids were curious things,” she continued. “Some folks never slid down into 'em at all after traveling all that distance, but I slid. Since I was a child I have always loved sliding. The most interesting thing I saw was three baby camels and some Highland soldiers in Jerusalem with no pants on and funny little skirts that came down to their knees,” she continued. “In the Holy Land I saw a lot of men in skirts with baggy pants reaching from their knees down.”

She was apparently much interested in the subject of pants, and hurried on:

“I found a wonderful old knocker there. By the way, I'm making a collection of knockers. Have you seen any good ones here in Rome?”

“Not a knocker! But I haven't been looking for them.” And I added, “I wonder some one doesn't make a collection of pants--pants of every age and clime.”

“What kind of pants did the ancient Romans wear?” she asked.

“The same as Adam--the style hadn't changed in ages.”

This woman had got a knocker in Jerusalem, and seen some baby camels and a number of pantless men; she had seen a bull temple and slid into a pyramid in Egypt; she had “et vittles” everywhere, and suffered from cramp in sundry places, and languished in a hot, stuffy state-room with a quarrelsome lady from Connecticut, all for sixteen hundred dollars and four months of time. Yet far more than half of the great caravan of American tourists invading Europe and the East get no more than she did. The poetry and beauty of the Old World and the money of the New are thus wasted on each other.

“America is a pretty good country,” I suggested. “There are buildings in New York as wonderful as any you will see here, and our scenery is excellent.”

“But we have no ruins,” said Mrs. Fraley.

“On the contrary, we have the grandest ruins in the world,” I insisted. “We have the ruins of slavery and of the old error of unequal, rights; there all our feudal inheritance has been turned into ruins. Even that everlasting lake of fire, which is still needed in Europe, is with us a cold and mossy ruin. Nothing in it but garbage these days. We have physical ruins, too, and very ancient ones, but we are a working community, not a show. In our structures, like the Pennsylvania Station, is the sublimity of hope and promise, not the sublimity of death and decay.”

My friends looked at me with surprise. They had heard only the lyrical chorus of their countrymen accompanied by the jingle of francs.

“You're right,” said the lumber king. “I thought that I'd try to live here a few years because I can't find enough playmates in America; every one is busy there. So I thought I'd come over here and study and fool around. It's done me good.”

“Fooling around is better than nothing if done with energy and vigor,” I suggested. “A capable fool-arounder isn't worth much, but he can keep his liver busy. Here they have professional fool-arounders with gold letters on their caps to set the pace. It's all right for a while, but you'll want to get back to the lumber business.”

“Maybe you're right, but Europe has done me a lot o' good,” said Mr. Pike. “The cure up at Kissingen fixed my stomach trouble. Cost like Sam Hill, but it knocked it out.”

“What was the cure?” I asked.

“Made me walk _ten_ miles a day, and take baths and give up pastry, and go to bed at nine.”

“And you had to travel four thousand miles and give up a lot of good American money to learn that?” I asked. “Old Doctor Common Sense, assisted by a little will-power, would have done that for you without charge right in your own home. Is it possible that the old doctor has gone out of business in Prairie du Chien?”

“He died long ago,” said the lumber king. “We have to be led to water like a horse these days.”

“We follow Cook in the trails of Baedeker instead of following the hired man, and we value everything according to its cost,” I answered. “But it's good for the Yankee to travel in a pieless world.”

“Travel is such a wonderful thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Fraley, who preferred to paddle in the heavenly gush-ways. “Don't you _love_ Italy?”

I took off my mental shoes and stockings and began to paddle with her.

“Grand country!” I splashed.

Then she lay down in the stream and got wet all over as follows:

“It's so wonderful! I love the churches and their music, and mosaics and statues, and the palaces and the nobility,” Mrs. Fraley chanted. “These well-bred Italians look so aristocratic!”

“And they act so aristocratic--nothing to do but eat and drink and sleep and dance and get married!” was my answer. “We're rather careless about those things in America. A real aristocrat always gets married very carefully and so rescues himself from the curse of toil if need be. We don't take any pains with our marrying. We marry in the most offhand, reckless fashion just to gratify our emotions.”

“We forget that a dollar married is better than two dollars earned,” said Betsey.

“And isn't soiled by perspiration,” I said. “In this room are some of the shrewdest marryers in the world--men who by careful attention to the business have amassed fortunes. Here, too, are some of the most promising young marryers in Italy. They are sure to make their mark.”

“Indeed! You must tell me of them,” said the good soul.

“I shall tell you of one only--not now but before I leave you,” I answered.