on the lungarno in florence, in the cool of the evening, we walked together, the senator, momma, dicky, and i. dicky radiated depression, if such a thing is atmospherically possible; we all moved in it. mr. dod had been banished from the portheris party, and he groaned over the reflection that it was his own fault. at pompeii i had exerted myself in his interest to such an extent that mr. mafferton detached himself from mrs. portheris and attached himself to momma for the drive home. little did i realise that one could be too agreeable in a good cause. dicky insinuated himself with difficulty into mr. mafferton's vacant place opposite mrs. portheris, and even before the carriages started i saw that he was going to have a bad time. his own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel. the unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy was most discreet.
"there is something biblical," said mrs. portheris (so dicky related), "that those pompeiian remains remind me of, and i cannot think what it is."
"lot's wife, mamma?" said isabel.
"quite right, my child—what a memory you have! that wretched woman who stopped to look back at the city where careless friends and relatives were enjoying themselves, indifferent to their coming fate, in direct disobedience to the command. of course, she turned to salt, and these people to ashes, but she must have looked very much like them when the process was completed."
that was dicky's opportunity for restraint and submission, but he seemed to have been physically unable to take it. he rushed, instead, blindly to perdition. "i don't believe that yarn," he said.
there was a moment's awful silence, during which dicky said he counted his heart-beats and felt as if he had announced himself an atheist or a jew, and then his sentence fell.
"in that case, mr. dod, i must infer that you are opposed to the doctrine of the complete inspiration of holy writ. if you do not believe in that, i shudder to think of what you may not believe in. i will say no more now, but after dinner i will be obliged to speak to you for a few minutes, privately. thank you, i can get out without assistance."
and after dinner, privately, dicky learned that mrs. portheris had for some time been seriously considering the effect of his, to her, painfully flippant views, upon the opening mind of her daughter—the child had only been out six months—and that his distressing announcement of this morning left her in no further doubt as to her path of duty. she would always endeavour to have as kindly a recollection of him as possible, he had really been very obliging, but for the present she must ask him to make some other travelling arrangements. cook, she believed, would always change one's tickets less ten per cent., but she would leave that to dicky. and she hoped, she sincerely hoped, that time would improve his views. when that was accomplished she trusted he would write and tell her, but not before.
"and while i'm getting good and ready to pass an examination in noah, jonah, and methuselah," remarked dicky bitterly, as we discussed the situation on the lungarno for the seventh time that day, "mafferton sails in."
"why didn't you tell her plainly that you wanted to marry isabel, and would brook no opposition?" i demanded, for my stock of sympathy was getting low.
"now that's a valuable suggestion, isn't it?" returned mr. dod with sarcasm. "good old psychological moment that was, wasn't it? talk about girls having tact! besides, i've never told isabel herself yet, and i'm not the american to give in to the effete and decaying custom of asking a girl's poppa, or momma if it's a case of widow, first. not richard dod."
"what on earth," i exclaimed, "have you been doing all this time?"
"now go slow, mamie, and don't look at me like that. i've been trying to make her acquainted with me—explaining the kind of fellow i am—getting solid with her. see?"
"showing her the beauties of your character!" i exclaimed derisively.
"i said something about the defects, too," said dicky modestly, "though not so much. and i was getting on beautifully, though it isn't so easy with an english girl. they don't seem to think it's proper to analyse your character. they're so maidenly."
"and so unenterprising," i said, but i said it to myself.
"isabel was actually beginning to lead up to the subject," dicky went on. "she asked me the other day if it was true that all american men were flirts. in another week i should have felt that she would know what was proposing to her."
"and you were going to wait another week?"
"well, a man wants every advantage," said dicky blandly.
"did you explain to isabel that you were only joining our party in the hope of meeting her accidentally soon again?"
"what else," asked he in pained surprise, "should i have joined it for? no, i didn't; i hadn't the chance, for one thing. you took the first train back to rome next morning, you know. she wasn't up."
"true," i responded. "momma said not another hour of her husband's aunt caroline would she ever willingly endure. she said she would spend her entire life, if necessary, in avoiding the woman." but dicky had not followed the drift of my thought.
i added vaguely, "i hope she will understand it"—i really couldn't be more definite—and bade mr. dod good-night. he held my hand absent-mindedly for a moment, and mentioned the effectiveness of the ponte vecchio from that point of view.
"i didn't feel bound to change my tickets less ten per cent.," he said hopefully, "and we're sure to come across them early and often. in the meantime you might try and soften me a little—about lot's wife."
next day, in the ufizzi, it was no surprise to meet the miss binghams. we had a guilty consciousness of fellow-citizenship as we recognised them, and did our best to look as if two weeks were quite long enough to be forgotten in, but they seemed charitable and forgiving on this account, said they had looked out for us everywhere, and had we seen the cuttings in the vatican?
"the statues, you know," explained miss cora kindly, seeing that we did not comprehend. "marvellous—simply marvellous! we enjoyed nothing so much as the marble department. it takes it out of you though—we were awfully done afterwards."
i wondered what phidias would have said to the "cuttings," and whether the miss binghams imagined it a briticism. it also occurred to me that one should never mix one's colloquialisms; but that, of course, did not prevent their coming round with us. i believe they did it partly to diffuse their guide among a larger party. he was hanging, as they came up, upon miss cora's reluctant earring, so to speak, and she was mechanically saying, "yes! yes! yes!" to his representations. "i suppose," said she inadvertently, "there is no way of preventing their giving one information," and after that when she hospitably pressed the guide upon us we felt at liberty to be unappreciative.
i regret to write it of two maiden ladies of good new york family, and a knowledge of the world; but the miss binghams capitulated to dicky dod with a promptness and unanimity which would have been very bad for him if nobody had been there to counteract its effects. he walked between them through the vestibules, absorbing a flow of tribute from each side with a complacency which his recent trying experiences made all the more profound. there was always a something, miss nancy declared, about an american who had made his home in england—you could always tell. "in your case, mr. dod, there is an association of bond street. i can't describe it, but it is there. i hope you don't mind my saying so."
"oh, no," said dicky, "i guess it's my tailor. he lives in bond street;" but this was artless and not ironical. miss cora went further. "i should have taken mr. dod for an englishman," she said, at which the miscalculated mr. dod looked alarmed.
"is that so?" he responded. "then i'll book my passage back at once. i've been over there too long. you see i've been kind of obliged to stay for reasons connected with the firm, but you ladies can take my word for it that when you get through this sort of ridiculous veneer i've picked up you'll find a regular all-wool-and-a-yard-wide city-of-chicago american, and i'm bound to ask you not to forget it. this english way of talking is a thing that grows on a fellow unconsciously, don't you know. it wears off when you get home."
at which miss cora and miss nancy looked at each other smilingly and repeated "don't you know" in derisive echo, and we all felt that our young friend had been too modest about his acquirements.
"but we mustn't neglect our old masters," cried miss nancy as those of the first corridor began to slip past us on the walls, with no desire to interrupt. "what do you think of this greek byzantine style, mr. wick? somehow it doesn't seem to appeal to me, though whether it's the flatness—or what——"
"it is flat, certainly," agreed the senator, "but that's a very popular style of angel for christmas cards—the more expensive kinds. here, i suppose, we get the original."
"that is tuscan school, sir—madam," put in the guide, "and not angel—saint cecilia. fourteen century, but we do not know that artiss his name. in the book you will see cimabue, but it is not cimabue—unknown artiss."
"dear me!" cried momma. "st. cecilia, of course. don't you remember her expression—in the catacombs?"
"she's sweet, always and everywhere," said miss cora, as we moved on, leaving the guide explaining st. cecilia with his hands behind his back. "and you did go to capri after all? now i wonder, nancy, if they had our experience about the oysters?"
"a horrid little man!" cried momma.
"who showed you the way to the steamer——"
"and hung around doing things the whole enduring time," continued my parent, as mark antony's daughter turned her head aside, and drusus, the brother of tiberius, frowned upon our passing.
"he must have been our man!" cried both the misses bingham, with excitement.
"in the manner of taddeo gaddi," interrupted the guide, surprising us on the flank with a holy family.
"all right," said the senator. "well, this fellow proposed to bring our party oysters on the steamer, and we took him, of course, for the steward's tout——"
"exactly what we thought."
"since you are going to tell the story, alexander, i may remind you that he said they were the best in the world," remarked momma, with several degrees of frost.
"my dear, the anecdote is yours. but you remember i told him they wouldn't be in it with blue points."
"now what," exclaimed miss nancy, with excitement, "did he ask you for them?"
"three francs a head, nancy, wasn't it, mrs. wick? and you gave the order, and the man disappeared. and you thought he'd gone to get them; at least, we did. nancy here had perfect confidence in him. she said he had such dog-like eyes, and we were both perfectly certain they would be served when the steamer stopped at the blue grotto——" miss cora paused to smile.
"but they weren't," suggested momma feebly.
"no, indeed, and hadn't the slightest intention of being." miss nancy took up the tale. "not until we were taking off our gloves in the hotel verandah, and making up our minds to a good hot lunch, did those oysters appear—exactly half a dozen, and bread and butter extra! and we couldn't say we hadn't ordered them. and the lunch was only two francs fifty, complet. but we felt we ought to content ourselves with the oysters, though, of course, you wouldn't with gentlemen in your party. now, what course did you pursue, mrs. wick?"
"really," said momma distantly, "i don't remember. i believe we had enough to eat. surely that is little moses being taken from the bulrushes! how it adds to one's interest to recognise the subject."
"by b. luti," responded miss nancy. "i hope he isn't very well known, for i never heard of him before. now, there's a domenichino; i can tell it from here. i do love domenichino, don't you?"
i suppose the senator knew that momma didn't love domenichino, and would possibly be at a loss to say why; at all events, he remarked that, talking of capri, he hoped the miss binghams had not felt as badly about inconveniencing the donkeys that took them to the top of the cliff as momma had. "mrs. wick," he informed them, "rode an ass by the name of michael angelo, perfectly accustomed to the climate, and, do you believe it, she held her parasol over that animal's head the whole way." at which everybody laughed, and momma, invested with an original and amiable weakness, was appeased.
"of michelangelo we have not here much," said the guide patiently. "drawings yes, and one holy family—magnificent! but all in another room w'ich——"
"now what bramley said about the ufizzi was this," continued the senator. "'you'll see on those walls,' he said, 'the best picture show in the world, both for pedigree and quality of goods displayed. i'd go as far as to say they're all worth looking at, even those that have been presented to the institution. but don't you look at them,' bramley said, 'as a whole. you keep all your absorbing-power for one apartment,' he said—'the tribune. you'll want it.' bramley gave me to understand that it wasn't any use he didn't profess to be able to describe his sublimer emotions, but when he sat down in the tribune he had a sort of instinctive idea that he'd got the cream of it—he didn't want to go any further."
we decided, therefore, in spite of such minor attractions as those of niobe and her daughters, at once to achieve the tribune, feeling, as poppa said, that it would be most unfortunate to have our admiration all used up before we reached it. the guide led the way, and it was beguiled with the fascinating experience of the miss binghams, who had met queen marguerite driving in the villa borghese at rome and had received a bow from her majesty of which nothing would ever be able to deprive them. "of course we drew up to let her pass," said miss nancy, "and were careful not to make ourselves in any way conspicuous, merely standing up in the carriage as an ordinary mark of respect. and she looked charming, all in pink and white, with a faded old maid of honour that set her off beautifully, didn't she, cora? and such a pretty smile she gave us—they say she likes the better class of americans."
"oh, we've nothing to regret about rome," rejoined cora. "even peter's toe. i wouldn't have kissed it at the time if the guide hadn't said it was really jupiter's. i was sure our dear vicar wouldn't mind my kissing jupiter's toe. but now i'm glad i did it in any case. people always ask you that."
when we arrived at the little octagonal treasure chamber mr. dod and miss cora sat down together on one of the less conspicuous sofas, and i saw that dicky was already warmed to confidence. momma at once gave up her soul to the young st. john, having had an engraving of it ever since she was a little girl, and the senator went solemnly from canvas to canvas on tip-toe with a mind equally open to job and the fornarina. he assured miss nancy and me that bramley was perfectly right in thinking everything of the tribune, and with reference to the dancing fawn, that it was worth a visit to see michael angelo's notion of executing repairs to statuary alone. he gave the place the benefit of his most serious attention, pulling his beard a good deal before titian's venus (which poppa always did in connection with this goddess, however, entirely apart from the merit of the painting) and obviously making allowances for her of medici on account of her great age. at the end of the hour we spent there it had the same effect upon him as upon colonel bramley, he did not wish to go any further; and we parted from the miss 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."
