A Voyage of Consolation Part 26

"Oh, no," said d.i.c.ky, "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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing.

"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 b.u.t.ter 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 a.s.s 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 inst.i.tution. 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 pa.s.s," 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 cla.s.s 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 d.i.c.ky 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 a.s.sured 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 t.i.tian's Venus (which poppa always did in connection with this G.o.ddess, 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 d.i.c.ky 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."

CHAPTER XVIII.

Out of indulgence to d.i.c.ky we lingered in Florence three or four days longer than was at all convenient, considering, as the Senator said, the amount of ground we had to cover before we could conscientiously recross the Channel. But neither poppa nor momma were people to desert a fellow-countryman in distress in foreign parts, especially in view of this one's pathetic reliance upon our sympathy and support, as a family.

We all did our best toward the distraction of what momma called his poor mind, though I cannot say that we were very successful. His poor mind seemed wholly taken up with one antic.i.p.ative idea, and whatever failed to minister to that he hadn't, as poppa sadly said, any use for. The cloisters of San Marco had no healing for his spirit, and when we directed his attention to the solitary painting on the wall with which Fra Angelico made a shrine of each of its monastic cubicles he merely remarked that it was more than you got in most hotels, and turned joylessly away. Even the charred stick that helped to martyr Savonarola left him cold. He said, indifferently, that it was only the natural result of mixing up politics and religion, and that certain Chicago ministers who supported Bryan from the pulpit might well take warning.

But his words were apathetic; he did not really care whether those Chicago ministers went to the stake or not. We stood him before the bronze gates of Ghiberti, and walked him up and down between rows of works in _pietra dura_, but without any permanent effect, and when he contemplated the consecrated residences of Cimabue and Cellini, we could see that his interest was perfunctory, and that out of the corner of his eye he really considered pa.s.sing fiacres. I read to him aloud from "Romola," and momma bought him an English and Italian was.h.i.+ng book that he might keep a record of his _camicie_ and his _fazzoletti_--it would be so interesting afterwards, she thought--while the Senator exerted himself in the way of cheerful conversation, but it was very discouraging. Even when we dined at the fas.h.i.+onable open air restaurant in the Cascine, with no less a person than Ouida, in a fluff of grey hair and black lace, at the next table, and the most distinguished gambler of the Italian aristocracy presenting a narrow back to us from the other side, he permitted poppa to compare the quality of the beef fillets unfavourably with those of New York in silence, and drank his Chianti with a lack-l.u.s.tre eye.

Towards the end of the week, however, d.i.c.ky grew remorseful. "It's all very well," he said to me privately, "for Mrs. Wick to say that she could spend a lifetime in Florence, if the houses only had a few modern conveniences. I daresay she could--and as for your poppa, he's as patient as if this were a Was.h.i.+ngton hotel and he had a caucus every night, but it's as plain as Dante's nose that the Senator's dead sick of this city."

"d.i.c.ky," I said, "that is a reflection of your own state of mind. Poppa is willing to take as much more Botticelli and Filippo Lippi as it may be necessary to give him."

"Oh, I know he _would_" d.i.c.ky admitted, "but he isn't as young as he was, and I should hate to feel I was imposing on him. Besides, I'm beginning to conclude that they've skipped Florence."

So it came to pa.s.s that we departed for Venice next day, tarrying one night at Bologna. We had cut a day off Bologna for d.i.c.ky's sake, but the Senator could not be persuaded to sacrifice it altogether on account of its well known manufacture, into the conditions of which he wished to inquire. The shops, as we drove to the hotel, seemed to expose nothing else for sale, but poppa said that, in spite of the local consumption, it had certainly fallen off, and, as an official representative of one of its great rivals in the west, he naturally felt a compunctious interest in the state of the industry. The hotel had a little courtyard, with an orange tree in the middle and palms in pots, and we came down the wide marble stairs, past the statues on the landing, and the paintings on the walls, to find dinner laid on round tables out there, I remember. A note of momma's occurs here to the effect that there is a great deal too much fine art in Italian hotels, with a reference to the fact that the one at Naples had the whole of Pompeii painted on the dining room walls. She considers this practice embarra.s.sing to the public mind, which has no way of knowing whether to admire these things or not, though personally we boldly decided to scorn them all. This, however, has nothing to do with poppa and the commercial traveller. We knew he was a commercial traveller by the way he put his toothpick in his pocket, though poppa said afterwards that he was not exceptionally endowed for that line of business. He was dining at our table, and by his gratified manner when we sat down, it was plain that he could speak English and would be very pleased to do so. Poppa, knowing that his time was short, began at once.

"You belong to Bologna, sir?" he inquired with his first spoonful of soup. For some reason it seems impossible to address a stranger at a _table d'hote_, before the soup takes the baldness off the situation.

The gentleman smiled. He had a broad, open, amiable, red face, with a short black beard and a round head covered with thick hair in curls, beautifully parted. "I do not think I belong," he said; "my house of business, it is at Milan, and I am born at Finalmarina. But I come much to Bologna, yes."

"Where did you say you were born?" asked the Senator.

"Finalmarina. You did not go to there, no? I am sorry."

"It does seem a pity," replied poppa, "but we've been obliged to pa.s.s a considerable number of your commercial centres, sir. This city, I presume, has large manufacturing interests?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose. You 'ave seen that San Petronio, you cannot help.

Very enorm'! More big than San Peter in Rome. But not complete since fourteenth century. In America you 'ave nothing unfinish, is it not?"