A Voyage of Consolation Part 27

"Far as that goes," said poppa, "we generally manage to complete our contracts within the year; as a rule, I may say within the building season. But I have seen one or two Roman Catholic churches left with the scaffolding hanging round the ceiling for a good deal longer, the altar all fixed up too, and public wors.h.i.+p going on just as usual. It seems to be a way they have. Well, sir, I knew Bologna, by reputation, better than any other Italian city, for years. Your local manufacture did the business. As a boy at school, there was nothing I was more fond of for my dinner. Thirty years ago, sir, the interest was created that brings me here to-day."

The commercial traveller bowed with much gratification. In the meantime he had presented a card to momma, which informed her that Ricardo Bellini represented the firm of Isapetti and Co., Milan, Artificial Flowers and Lace.

"Thirty years, that is a long time to remember Bologna, I cannot say that thirty years I remember New York. You will not believe!" He was obviously not more than twenty-five, so this was vastly humorous.

"Twenty years, yes, twenty years I will say! And have you seen San Stefano? Seven churches in one! Also the most old. And having forty Jerusalem martyrs."

"Forty would go a long way in relics," the Senator observed with discouragement, "but my remarks had reference to the Bologna sausage, sir."

"Sausage--ah! _mortadella_--yes they make here I believe." Mr. Bellini held up his knife and fork to enable his plate to be changed and looked darkly at the succeeding course. "But every Italian cannot like that dish. I eat him never. You will not find in this hotel no." His manner indicated a personal hostility to the Bologna sausage, but the Senator did not seem to notice it.

"You don't say so! Local consumption going off too, eh? Now how do you explain that?"

Mr. Bellini shrugged his shoulders. "It is much eat by the poor people.

They will always have that _mortadella_!"

"That looks," said the Senator thoughtfully, "like the production of an inferior article. But not necessarily, not necessarily, of course."

"Bologna it is very _ecclesiastic_." Mr. Bellini addressed my other parent, recovering a smile. "We have produced here six popes. It is the fame of Bologna."

"You seem to think a great deal of producing popes in Italy," momma replied coldly. "I should consider it a terrible responsibility."

"Now do you suppose," said poppa confidentially, "that the idea of trichinosis had anything to do with slackening the demand?"

Mr. Bellini threw his head back, and pa.s.sionately replaced a section of biscuit and cheese in the middle of his plate.

"I know nossing, any more than you! Why you speak me always that Bologna sausage! _Pazienza!_ What is it that sausage to make the agreeable conversation!"

"Sir," exclaimed the Senator with astonishment and equal heat, "you don't seem to be aware of it, but at one time the Bologna sausage ruled the world!"

Mr. Bellini, however, could evidently not trust himself to discuss the matter further. He rose precipitately with an outraged, impersonal bow, and left the table, abandoning his biscuit and cheese, his half finished bottle of Rudesheimer and the figs that were to follow, with the indifference of a lofty nature.

"I'm sorry I spoiled his dinner," said poppa with concern, "but if a Bologna man can't talk about Bologna sausages, what can he talk about?"

It made the Senator reticent, though, as to sausages of any kind, with the other commercial traveller--the hotel was full of them, and we found it very entertaining after the barren dining rooms of southern Italy--with whom we breakfasted. He spoke to this one exclusively about the architectural and historic features of the city, in a manner which forbade any approach to gastronomic themes, and while the second commercial traveller regarded him with great respect, it must be confessed that the conversation languished. d.i.c.ky might have helped us out, but d.i.c.ky was following his usual custom of having rooms in one hotel and covering as many others as possible with his meals, in the hope of an accidental meeting. This was excellent as a distraction for his mind, but since it occasionally led him into three _dejeuners_ and two dinners, rather bad, we feared, for other parts of him. He had confided his design to me; he intended, on meeting Isabel's eye, to turn very pale, abruptly terminate his repast, ask for his hat and stick, and walk out with conspicuous agitation. As to the course he meant to pursue afterwards he was vague; the great thing was to make an impression upon Isabel. We differed about the nature of the impression. d.i.c.ky took it for granted that she would be profoundly affected, but he made no allowance for the way in which maternal vigilance like that of Mrs.

Portheris can discourage the imagination.

Poppa made two further attempts to inform himself upon the leading manufacturing interest of Bologna. He inquired of the _padrone_, who was pleased to hear that Bologna had a leading manufacturing interest, and when my parent asked where he could see the process, pointed out several shops in the Piazza Maggiore. One of these the Senator visited, note-book in hand, and was shown with great alacrity every variety of _mortadella_, from delicacies the size of a finger to mottled conceptions as thick as a small barrel. He found a difficulty in explaining, however, even with an Italian phrase book, that it was the manufacture only about which he was curious, and that, admirable as the result might be, he did not wish to buy any of it. When the latter fact finally made itself plain, the proprietor became truculent and gave us, although he spoke no English, so vivid an idea of the inconsistency of our presence in his premises, that we retired in all the irritation of the well-meaning and misunderstood. The Senator, however, who had absolute confidence in his phrase book, saw a deeper significance in the remarkable unwillingness of the people of Bologna to expatiate upon the feature which had given them fame. "The fact is," said he gloomily, restoring his note-book to his inside pocket as we entered the terra-cotta doorway of St. Catarina, "they're not anxious to let a stranger into the know of it." And this conviction remaining with him, still inspires the Senator with a contemptuous pity for the porcine methods of a people who refuse to submit them to the light of day and the observation of the world at large.

CHAPTER XIX.

So far, momma said she had every reason to be pleased with the effect on her mind. About the Senator's she would not commit herself, beyond saying that we had a great deal to be thankful for in that his health hadn't suffered, in spite of the indigestibility of that eternal French twist and honey that you were obliged on the Continent to begin the day with. She hoped, I think, that the Senator had absorbed other things beside the French twist equally unconsciously, with beneficial results that would appear later. He said himself that it was well worth anybody's while to make the trip, if only in order to be better satisfied with America for the rest of his life, but why people belonging to the United States and the nineteenth century should want to spend whole summers in the Middle Ages he failed to understand. Both my parents, however, looked forward to Venice with enthusiasm. Momma expected it to be the realization of all her dreams, and poppa decided that it must, at all events, be unique. It couldn't have any Arno or any Campagna in the nature of things--that would be a change--and it was not possible to the human mind, however sophisticated, with a livelong experience of street cars and herdics, to stroll up and take a seat in a gondola and know exactly what would happen, where the fare-box was and everything, and whether they took Swiss silver, and if a gentleman in a crowded gondola was expected to give up his seat to a lady and stand.

Poppa, as a stranger and unaccustomed to the motion, hoped this would not be the case, but I knew him well enough to predict that if it were so he would vindicate American gallantry at all risks.

Thus it was that, from the moment momma put her head out of the car window, after Mestre, and exclaimed, "It's getting wateryer and wateryer," Venice was a source of the completest joy and satisfaction to both my parents. d.i.c.ky and I took it with the more moderate appreciation natural to our years, but it gave us the greatest pleasure to watch the simple and unrestrained delight of momma and poppa, and to revert, as it were, in their experience, to what our own enjoyment might have been had we been born when they were. "No express agents, no delivery carts, no baggage checks," murmured poppa, as our trunks glided up to the hotel steps, "but it gets there all the same." This was the keynote of his admiration--everything got there all the same. The surprise of it was repeated every time anything got there, and was only dashed once when we saw brown-paper parcels being delivered by a boy at the back door of the Palazzo Balbi, who had evidently walked all the way. The Senator commented upon that boy and his groceries as an inconsistency, and thereafter carefully closed his eyes to the fact that even our own hotel, which faced upon the Grand Ca.n.a.l, had communications to the rear by which its guests could explore a large part of commercial Venice without going in a gondola at all. The ca.n.a.ls were the only highways he would recognise, and he went three times to St. Maria della Salute, which was immediately opposite, for the sake of crossing the street in the Venetian way. Momma became really hopeful about the stimulus to his imagination; she told him so. "It appeals to you, Alexander," she said.

"Its poetry comes home to you--you needn't deny it;" and poppa cordially admitted it. "Yes," he said, "Ruskin, according to the guide-book, doesn't seem as if he could say too much about this city, and Bramley was just the same. They're both right, and if we were going to be here long enough I'd be like that myself. There's something about it that makes you willing to take a lot of trouble to describe it. There's no use saying it's the ca.n.a.ls, or the reflections in the water, or the bridges, or the pigeons, or the gargoyles, or the gondolas----"

"Or Salviati, or Jesurum," said momma, in lighter vein.

"Your memory, Augusta, for the names of old masters is perfectly wonderful," continued poppa placidly. "Or Salviati, or Jesurum, or what.

But there's a kind of local spell about this place----"

"There are various kinds of local smells," interrupted d.i.c.ky, whom Mrs.

Portheris still evaded, but this levity received no encouragement from the Senator. He said instead that he hadn't noticed them himself. For his part he had come to Venice to use his eyes, not his nose; and d.i.c.ky, thus discouraged, faded visibly upon his stem.

I could see that poppa was still strongly under the influence of the Venetian sentiment when he invited me to go out in a gondola with him after dinner, and pointedly neglected to suggest that either momma or d.i.c.ky should come too. I had a presentiment of his intention. If I have seemed, thus far, to omit all reference to Mr. Page in Boston, since we left Paris, it is, first, because I believe it is not considered necessary in a book of travels to account for every half hour, and second, because I privately believed him to be in correspondence with the Senator the whole time, and hesitated to expose his duplicity. I had given poppa opportunities for confessing this clandestine business, but in his paternal wisdom he had not taken them. I was not prepared, therefore, to be very responsive when, from a mere desire to indulge his sense of the fitness of things, poppa endeavoured to probe my sentiments with regard to Mr. Page by moonlight on the Grand Ca.n.a.l. To begin with, I wasn't sure of them--so much depended upon what Arthur had been doing; and besides, I felt that the perfect confidence which should exist between father and daughter had already been a good deal damaged at the paternal end. So when poppa said that it must seem to me like a dream, so much had happened since the day momma and I left Chicago at twenty-four hours' notice, six weeks ago, I said no, for my part I had felt pretty wide awake all the time; a person had to be, I ventured to add, with no more time to waste upon Southern Europe than we had.

"You mean you've been sleeping pretty badly," said the Senator sympathetically.

"Where was it," I inquired, "you would give us pounded crabs and cream for supper after we'd been to hear ma.s.ses for the repose of somebody's soul? That was a bad night, but I don't think I've had any others. On the contrary."

"Oh, well," said poppa, "it's a good thing it isn't undermining your const.i.tution," but he looked as if it were rather a disappointment.

"The American const.i.tution can stand a lot of transportation," I remarked. "Railways live on that fact. I've heard you say so yourself, Senator."

Then there was an interval during which the oars of the gondoliers dipped musically, and the moon made a golden pathway to the marble steps of the Palazzo Contarina. Then poppa said, "I refer to the object of our tour."

"The object of our tour wasn't to undermine my const.i.tution," I replied.

"It was to write a book--don't you remember. But it's some time since you made any suggestions. If you don't look out, the author of that volume will practically be momma."

The Senator allowed himself to be diverted. "I think," he said, "you'd better leave the chapter on Venice to me; you can't just talk anyhow about this city. I'll write it one of these nights before I go to bed."

"But the main reason," he continued, "that sent us to glide this minute over the ca.n.a.l system of the Bride of the Adriatic was the necessity of bracing you up after what you'd been through."

"Well," I said, "it's been very successful. I'm all braced up. I'm glad we have had such a good excuse for coming." A fib is sometimes necessary to one's self-respect.

"_Preme!_" cried the gondolier, and we shaved past the gondola of a solitary gentleman just leaving the steps of the Hotel Britannia.

"That was a shave!" poppa exclaimed, and added somewhat inconsequently, "You might just as well not speak so loud."

"I've always liked Arty," he continued, as we glided on.

"So have I," I returned cordially.

"He's in many ways a lovely fellow," said poppa.

"I guess he is," said I.

"I don't believe," ventured my parent, "that his matrimonial ideas have cooled down any."

"I hope he may marry well," I said. "Has he decided on Frankie Turner?"

"He has come to no decision that you don't know about. Of course, I have no desire to interfere where it isn't any of my business, but if you wish to gratify your poppa, daughter, you will obey him in this matter, and permit Arthur once more to--to come round evenings as he used to. He is a young man of moderate income, but a very level head, and it is the wish of my heart to see you reconciled."

"Sorry I can't oblige you, poppa," I said. I certainly was not going to have any reconciliation effected by poppa.