A Voyage of Consolation Part 13

"Mr. Bebbini," said poppa, "if you go around contradicting Americans on the subject of Christopher Columbus your business will decrease. As a matter of fact, Christopher wasn't born, he was made, and America made him. He has every right to claim to be considered an American, and it was a little careless of him not to have founded a family there. We make excuses for him--it's quite true he had very little time at his disposal--but we feel it, the whole nation of us, to this day."

The Via Balbi was cheerfully crooked and crowded, it had the modern note of the street car, and the mediaeval one of old women, arms akimbo, in the nooks and recesses, selling big black cherries and bursting figs.

Even the old women though, as momma complained, wore postilion basques and bell skirts, certainly in an advanced stage of usefulness, but of unmistakable genesis--just what had been popular in Chicago a year or two before.

"Really, my love," said momma, "I don't know _what_ we shall do for description in Genoa, the people seem to wear no clothes worth mentioning whatever." We concluded that all the city's characteristically Italian garments were in the wash; they depended in novel cut and colour from every window that did not belong to a bank or a university; and sometimes, when the side street was narrow and the houses high, the effect was quite imposing. Poppa asked Alessandro Bebbini whether they were expecting royalty or anything, or whether it was like this every was.h.i.+ng day, and we gathered that there was nothing unusual about it. But poppa said I had better mention it so that people might be prepared. Personally, I rather liked the display, it gave such unexpected colour and incident to those high-shouldering, narrow by-ways we looked down into from the upper level of the Via Balbi, where only here and there the sun strove through, and all the rest was a rich toned mystery; but there may be others like momma, who prefer the clothes line of the Occident and the privacy of the back yard.

The two sides of the _Via Poverina_ almost touched foreheads. "Yes,"

said Alessandro Bebbini apologetically, "it is a _ver'_ tight street."

Poppa was extremely pleased with the appearance of the house of Christopher Columbus, which Alessandro pointed out in the Via a.s.sorotti.

It was a comfortable looking edifice, with stone giants supporting the arch of the doorway, in every respect suitable as the residence of a retired navigator of distinction. Poppa said it was very gratifying to find that Cristoforo had been able, in his declining years, when he was our only European representative, to keep his end up with credit to America.

You so often found the former abodes of glorious names with a modern rental out of all proportion with their historic interest. This house, poppa calculated, would let to-day at a figure discreditable neither to Cristoforo himself, nor to the United States of America. Mr. Bebbini, unfortunately, could not tell him what that figure was.

On the steps of San Lorenzo Cathedral momma paused and cast a searching glance into all the corners.

"Where are the beggars?" she inquired, not without injury. "I have _always_ been given to understand that church entrances in Italy were disgracefully thronged with beggars of the lowest type. I have never seen a picture of a sacred building without them!"

"So that was why you wanted so much small change, Augusta," said the Senator. "Mr. Bebbini says there's a law against them nowadays. Now that you mention it, I'm disappointed there too. Munic.i.p.al progress in Italy is something you've not prepared for somehow. I daresay if we only knew it, they're thinking of lighting this town with electricity, and the Board of Aldermen are considering contracts for cable cars."

"Do not inquire, Alexander," begged momma, but the Senator had fallen behind with Mr. Bebbini in earnest conversation, and we gathered that its import was entirely modern.

It was our first Italian church and it was impressive, for a President of the French Republic had just fallen to the knife of an Italian a.s.sa.s.sin, and from the altar to the door San Lorenzo was in mourning and in penance. Ma.s.ses for his soul's repose had that day been said and sung; near the door hung a request for the prayers of all good Christians to this end. Many of the grave-eyed people that came and went were doubtless about this business, but one, I know, was there on a private errand. He prayed at a chapel aside, kneeling on the floor beside the railings, his cap in his hands, grasping it just as the peasant in The Angelus grasps his. Inside the altar hung a picture of a pitying woman, and there were candles and foolish flowers of tinsel, but beside these, many tokens of hearts, gold and silver, thick below the altar, crowding the part.i.tion walls. The hearts were grateful ones--Alessandro explained in an undertone--brought and left by many who had been preserved from violent death by the saint there, and he who knelt was a workman just from hospital, who had fallen, with his son, from a building. The boy had been killed, the father only badly hurt.

His heart token was the last--a little common thing--and tied with no rejoiceful ribbon but with a sc.r.a.p of c.r.a.pe. I hoped Heaven would see the c.r.a.pe as well as the tribute. When we went away he was still kneeling in his patched blue cotton clothes, and as the saint had very beautiful kind eyes, and all the tinsel flowers were standing in the glowing light of stained gla.s.s, and the voice of the Church had begun to speak too, through the organ, I daresay he went away comforted.

Momma says there is only one thing she recollects clearly about San Lorenzo, and that is the Chapel of St. John the Baptist. This does not remain in her memory because of the _Cinquecento_ screen or the altar-canopy's porphyry pillars which we know we must have seen because the guide-book says they are there, but because of the fact that Pope Innocent the Eighth had it closed to our s.e.x for a long time, except on one day of the year, on account of Herodias. Momma considered this extremely invidious of Innocent the Eighth, and said it was a thing no man except a Pope would have thought of doing. What annoyed poppa was that she seemed to hold Alessandro Bebbini responsible, and covered him with reproaches, in the guise of argument, which he neither deserved nor understood. And when poppa suggested that she was probably as much to blame for Herodias's conduct as Mr. Bebbini was for the Pope's, she said that had nothing whatever to do with it, and she thanked Heaven she was born a Protestant anyway, distinctly implying that Herodias was a Roman Catholic. And if poppa didn't wish her back to give out altogether, would he please return to the carriage.

We wandered through a palace or two and thought how interesting it must have been to be rich in the days of "Sir Horatio Palavasene, who robbed the Pope to pay the Queen." Wealth had its individuality in those days, and expressed itself with truth and splendour in sculpture, and picture, and tapestry, and precious things, with the picturesqueness of contrast and homage. As the Senator said, a banquet hall did not then suggest a Fifth Avenue hairdresser's saloon. But now the Genoese merchant-princes would find that their state had lost its ident.i.ty in machine made imitations, and that it would be more distinguished to be poor, since poverty is never counterfeited. But poppa declined to go as far as that.

Alessandro, as we drove round and up the winding roads that take one to the top of Genoa--the hotels and the palaces and the churches are mostly at the bottom--was full of joyous and rapid information. Especially did he continue to be communicative on the subject of Christopher Columbus, and if we are not now a.s.sured of the school that discoverer attended in his youth, and the altar rails before which he took the first communion of his early manhood, and the occupation of his wife's parents, and many other matters concerning him, it is the fault of history and not that of Alessandro Bebbini. After a cathedral and a palace and a long drive, this was bound to have its effect, and I very soon saw resentment in the demeanour of both my parents. So much so, that when we pa.s.sed the family group in memory of Mazzini, and Alessandro explained dramatically that "the daughter he sitta down and cryo because his father is a-dead,"

poppa said, "Is that so?" without the faintest show of excitement, and momma declined even to look round.

It was not until the evening, however, when we were talking to some Milwaukee people, that we remembered, with the a.s.sistance of Baedeker and the Milwaukee people, a number of facts about Columbus that deprived Alessandro's information of its commercial value, while leaving his ingenuity, so to speak, at par. The Senator was so much annoyed, as he had made a special note of the state of preservation in which he had found the dwelling of our discoverer, that he had recourse to the most unscrupulous means of relieving us of Alessandro--who was to present himself next morning at eleven. He wrote an impulsive letter to "A.

Bebbini, Esq.," which ran:

"SIR: I find that we are too credulous a family to travel in safety with a courier. When you arrive at the hotel to-morrow, therefore, you will discover that we have fled by an earlier train. We take it from no personal objection to your society, but from a rooted and unconquerable objection to bra.s.s facts. I enclose your month's salary and a warning that any attempt to follow me will be fruitless and expensive."

"Yours truly,"

"J.P. WICK."

The Senator a.s.sured me afterwards that this was absolutely necessary--that A. Bebbini, if we introduced him in any quant.i.ty, would ruin the sale of our work, and if he accompanied us it would be impossible to keep him out. He said we ought to apologize for having even mentioned him in a book of travels which we hope to see taken seriously. And we do.

CHAPTER IX.

Momma wishes me to state that the word Italy, in any language, will for ever be a.s.sociated in her mind with the journey from Genoa to Pisa. We had our own lunch basket, so no baneful antic.i.p.ation of cutlets fried in olive oil marred the perfect satisfaction with which we looked out of the windows. One window, almost the whole way, opened on a low embankment which seemed a garden wall. Olives and lemon trees grew beyond it and dropped over, and it was always dipping in the sunlight to show us the roses and the shady walks of the villas inside, white and remote; now and then we saw the pillared end of a verandah or a plaster Neptune ruling a restricted fountain area. Out of the other window stretched the blue Gulf of Genoa all becalmed and smiling, with freakish little points and headlines, and here and there the white blossom of a sail. The Senator counted eighty tunnels--he wants that fact mentioned too--some of them so short that it was like shutting one's eyes for an instant on the olives and the sea. Nevertheless it was an idyllic journey, and at four o'clock in the afternoon we saw the Leaning Tower from afar, describing the precise angle that it does in the ill.u.s.trated geographies. Momma was charmed to recognise it, she blew it a kiss of adulation and acclaim, while we yet wound about among the environs, and hailed it "Pisa!" It was as if she bowed to a celebrity, with the homage due.

What the Senator called our attention to as we drove to the hotel was the conspicuous part in munic.i.p.al politics played by that little old brown river Arno. In most places the riparian feature of the landscape is not insisted on--you have usually to go to the suburbs to find it, but in Pisa it is a sort of main street, with the town sitting comfortably and equally on each side of it looking on. Momma and I both liked the idea of a river in town scenery, and thought it might be copied with advantage in America, it afforded such a good excuse for bridges. Pisa's three arched stone ones made a reason for settling there in themselves in our opinion. The Senator, however, was against it on conservancy grounds, and asked us what we thought of the population of Pisa. And we had to admit that for the size of the houses there weren't very many people about. The Lungarno was almost empty except for desolate cabmen, and they were just as eager and hospitable to us and our trunks as they had been in Genoa.

In the Piazza del Duomo we expected the Cathedral, the Leaning Tower, the Baptistry, and the Campo Santo. We did not expect Mrs. Portheris; at least, neither of my parents did--I knew enough about d.i.c.ky Dod not to be surprised at any combination he might effect. There they all were in the middle of the square bit of meadow, apparently waiting for us, but really, I have no doubt, getting an impression of the architecture as a whole. I could tell from Mrs. Portheris's att.i.tude that she had acknowledged herself to be gratified. Strange to relate, her gratification did not disappear when she saw that these mediaeval circ.u.mstances would inconsistently compel her to recognise very modern American connections. She approached us quite blandly, and I saw at once that d.i.c.ky Dod had been telling her that poppa's chances for the Presidency were considered certain, that the Spanish Infanta had stayed with us while she was in Chicago at the Exhibition, and that we fed her from gold plate. It was all in Mrs. Portheris's manner.

"Another unexpected meeting!" she exclaimed. "My dear Mrs. Wick, you _are_ looking worn out! Try my sal volatile--I insist!" and in the general greeting momma was seen to back violently away from a long silver bottle in every direction. Poppa had to interfere. "If it's all the same to you, Aunt Caroline," he said, "Mrs. Wick is quite as usual, though I think the Middle Agedness of this country is a little trying for her at this time of year. She's just a little upset this morning by seeing the cook plucking a rooster down in the backyard before he'd killed it. The rooster was in great affliction, you see, and the way he crowed got on momma's nerves. She's been telling us about it ever since.

But we hope it will pa.s.s off."

Mrs. Portheris expanded into that inevitable British story of the officer who reported of certain tribes that they had no manners and their customs were abominable, and I, at a mute invitation from d.i.c.ky, stepped aside to get the angle of the Tower from a better point of view.

Mr. Dod was depressed, so much so that he came to the point at once. "I hope you had a good time in Genoa," he said. "We should have been there now, only I knew we should never catch up to you if we didn't skip something. So I heard of a case of cholera there, and didn't mention that it was last year. Quite enough for Her Ex. I say, though--it's no use."

"Isn't it?" said I. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty confoundedly certain. The British lion's getting there, in great shape--the brute. All the widow's arranging. With the widow it's 'Mr.

Dod, you will take care of _me_, won't you?' or 'Come now, Mr. Dod, and tell me all about buffalo shooting on your native prairies'--and Mr. Dod is a rattled jay. There's something about the mandate of a middle-aged British female."

"I should think there was!" I said.

"Then Maffy, you see, walks in. They don't seem to have much conversation--she regularly brightens up when I come along and say something cheerful--but he's gradually making up his mind that the best isn't any too good for him."

"Perhaps we don't begin so well in America," I interrupted thoughtfully. "But then, we don't develop into Mrs. P.'s either."

d.i.c.ky seemed unable to follow my line of thought. "I must say," he went on resentfully, "I like--well, just a _smell_ of constancy about a man.

A fellow that's thrown over ought to be in about the same shape as a widower. But not much Maffy. I tried to work up his feelings over the American girl the other night--he was as calm!"

"d.i.c.ky," said I, "there are subjects a man _must_ keep sacred. You must not speak to Mr. Mafferton of his first--attachment again. They never do it in England, except for purposes of fiction."

"Well, I worked that racket all I knew. I even told him that American girls as often as not changed their minds."

"_Richard!_ He will think I--what _will_ he think of American girls! It was excessively wrong of you to say that--I might almost call it criminal!"

d.i.c.ky looked at me in pained surprise. "Look here, Mamie," he said, "a fellow in my fix, you know! Don't get excited. How am I going to confide in you unless you keep your hair on!"

"What, may I ask, did Mr. Mafferton say when you told him that?" I asked sternly.

"He said--now you'll be madder than ever. I won't tell you."

"Mr. Dod--d.i.c.ky, haven't we been friends from infancy!"

"Played with the same rattle. Cut our teeth together."

"Well then----"

"Well then," he said, "do you mind putting your parasol straight? I like to see the person I'm talking to, and besides the sun is on the other side. He said he didn't think it was a privilege that should be extended to all cases."

"He did, did he?" I rejoined calmly. "That's like the British--isn't it?"

"It would have made such a complication if I'd kicked him," confessed Mr. Dod.