A Voyage of Consolation Part 25

"Well now, Augusta, I hate to destroy an illusion like that, because they're not to be bought with money, but since you're determined to work yourself up over these unfortunates, I've got to expose them to you.

They're not the genuine remains you take them for. They're mere worthless imitations."

"Alexander," said momma suspiciously, "you never hesitate to tamper with the truth if you think it will make me any more comfortable. I don't believe you."

"All right," returned the Senator; "when we get home you ask Bramley. It was Bramley that put me on to it. Whenever one of those Pompeii fellows dropped, the ashes kind of caked over him, and in the course of time there was a hole where he had been. See? And what you're looking at is just a collection of those holes filled up with composition and then dug out. Mere holes!"

"The illusion is dreadfully perfect," sighed momma. "Fancy dying like a baked potato in hot ashes! Somehow, Alexander, I don't seem able to get over it," and momma gazed with distressed fascination at the grim form of the negro porter.

"We've got no proper grounds for coming to that conclusion either,"

replied poppa firmly. "Just as likely they were suffocated by the gas that came up out of the ground."

"Oh, if I could think that!" momma exclaimed with relief. "But if I find you've been deceiving me, Alexander, I'll never forgive you. It's _too_ solemn!"

"You ask Bramley," I heard the Senator reply. "And now come and tell me if this loaf of bread somebody baked eighteen hundred and twenty something years ago isn't exactly the same shape as the Naples bakers are selling right now."

"Daughter," said momma as she went, "I hope you are taking copious notes. This is the wonder of wonders that we behold to-day." I said I was, and I wandered over to where Mrs. Portheris examined with Mr.

Mafferton an egg that was laid on the last day of Pompeii. Mrs.

Portheris was asking Mr. Mafferton, in her most impressive manner, if it was not too wonderful to have positive proof that fowls laid eggs then just as they do now; and I made a note of that too. d.i.c.ky and Isabel bemoaned the fate of the immortal dog who still bites his flank in the pain extinguished so long ago. I hardly liked to disturb them, but I heard d.i.c.ky say as I pa.s.sed that he didn't mind much about the humans, they had their chance, but this poor little old tyke was tied up, and that on the part of Providence was playing it low down.

Then we all stepped out into the empty streets of Pompeii and Mr.

Mafferton read to us impressively, from Murray, the younger Pliny's letter to Tacitus describing its great disaster. The Senator listened thoughtfully, for Pliny goes into all kinds of interesting details. "I haven't much acquaintance with the cla.s.sics," said he, as Mr. Mafferton finished, "but it strikes me that the modern New York newspaper was the medium to do that man justice. It's the most remarkable case I've noticed of a good reporter _born before his time_."

"A terrible retribution," said Mrs. Portheris, looking severely at the Tavern of Phoebus, forever empty of wine-bibbers. "They wors.h.i.+pped Jupiter, I understand, and other deities even less respectable. Can we wonder that a volcano was sent to destroy them! One thing we may be quite sure of--if the city had only turned from its wickedness and embraced Christianity, this never would have happened."

Momma compressed her lips and then relaxed them again to say, "I think that idea perfectly ridiculous." I scented battle and hung upon the issue, but the Senator for the third time interposed.

"Why no, Augusta," he said, "I guess that's a working hypothesis of Aunt Caroline's. Here's Vesuvius smokin' away ever since just the same, and there's Naples with a bishop and the relics of Saint Januarius. You can read in your guide-book that whenever Vesuvius has looked as if he meant business for the past few hundred years, the people of Naples have simply called on the bishop to take out the relics of Saint Januarius and walk 'em round the town; and that's always been enough for Vesuvius.

Now the Pompeii folks didn't know a saint or a bishop by sight, and Jupiter, as Aunt Caroline says, was never properly qualified to interfere. That's how it was, I _presume_. I don't suppose the people of Naples take much stock in the laws of nature; they don't have to, with Januarius in a drawer. And real estate keeps booming right along."

"You have an extraordinary way of putting things," remarked Mrs.

Portheris to her nephew. "Very extraordinary. But I am glad to hear that you agree with me," and she looked as if she did not understand momma's acquiescent smile.

We went our several ways to see the baths, and the Comic Theatre, the bakehouse and the gymnasium; and I had a little walk by myself in the Street of Abundance, where the little empty houses waited patiently on either side for those to return who had gone out, and the sun lay full on their floors of dusty mosaic, and their gardens where nothing grew.

It seemed to me, as it seems to everybody, that Pompeii was not dead, but asleep, and her tints were so clear and gay that her dreams might be those of a ballet-girl. A solitary yellow dog chased a lizard in the sun, and the pebbles he knocked about made an absurdly disturbing noise.

Beyond the vague tinted roofless walls that stretched over the pleasant little peninsula, the blue sea rippled tenderly, remembering much delight, and the place seemed to smile in its sleep. It was easy to understand why Cicero chose to have his villa in the midst of such light-heartedness, and why the G.o.ds, perhaps, decided that they had lent too much laughter to Pompeii. I made free of the hospitality of Cornelius Rufus and sat for a while in his _exedra_, where he himself, in marble on a little pillar in the middle of the room, made me as welcome as if I had been a client or a neighbour. We considered each other across the centuries, making mutual allowances, and spent the most sociable half-hour. I take a personal interest in the city's disaster now--it overwhelmed one of my friends.

CHAPTER XVII.

On the Lungarno in Florence, in the cool of the evening, we walked together, the Senator, momma, d.i.c.ky, and I. d.i.c.ky 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. d.i.c.ky 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 att.i.tude toward matters of orthodoxy was most discreet.

"There is something _Biblical_," said Mrs. Portheris (so d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky'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 d.i.c.ky 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 a.s.sistance."

And after dinner, privately, d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky. 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 pa.s.s an examination in Noah, Jonah, and Methuselah," remarked d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky 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 a.n.a.lyse 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_," d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky 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-citizens.h.i.+p 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 d.i.c.ky Dod with a promptness and unanimity which would have been very bad for him if n.o.body 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 a.s.sociation of Bond Street. I can't describe it, but it is there. I hope you don't mind my saying so."