IX.—A MODERN AMERICAN MARRYER ENTERS THE SCENE
I HAVE read that there are no fairies in Italy, but I know better. Italy is full of them, and they are the most light-footed, friendly, impartial, democratic fairies in the world. They are liable to make friends with anybody. Like many Italians, they seem to live mostly on the foreign population. A number of them adopted me for a residence. Sometimes, when they were playful, they made me feel like a winter resort. They used to enjoy tobogganing down the slopes of my shoulders and digging their toes in the snow; they held games here and there on my person, which seemed to be well attended. I got a glimpse of one of them now and then, and we became acquainted with each other; and, while he was very shy, I am sure that he knew and liked me. I called him Oberon. He and his kin did me a great service, for they taught me why people move their arms and shrug their shoulders so much in Italy. Then, too, I always had company wherever I happened to be.
So when Betsey and the Norris ladies implored me to go with them to Mrs. Dorsey's palace and hear a prince lecture, I reported that I was engaged to play with the fairies, whereupon they concluded that I wanted the time for meditation and left me out of their plans. So it happened that I was, fortunately, alone with Norris when Forbes arrived, a full day ahead of his schedule.
The boy and I went out for a walk together. Before sailing he had spent two weeks coaching the ball-team of his college and was in fine form. His kindly blue eyes glowed with vitality and his skin was browned by the sunlight. As I looked at that tall, straight column of bone and muscle, with its broad shoulders and handsome head, I could not help saying: “If you were standing on a pedestal here in Rome there'd be a lot of gals in the gallery.”
“Before you say things like that you should teach me how to answer them with wit and modesty,” he said.
“Keep your eye on me and you'll learn all the arts of modesty,” I assured him. “And especially you will learn how to disarm suspicion when you are accused of wit.”
In a shaded walk of the Pincio Gardens he asked, “Is Gwendolyn looking well?”
“She's more beautiful than ever, and very well,” I said. “She will be disappointed when she finds you here.”
He stopped and faced me with a look of surprise, and asked:
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure of it, because she had planned to meet you with proper ceremony at the station and take you off to a real Roman luncheon. I am glad that you have come, for I have worked hard as your attorney and need a rest. I have had some fun with it, but I am delighted to turn the case over to you.”
He did not need a chart to understand me, for he said:
“You must tell me what progress you have made with it.”
“Well, I suppose you have read of the Count Carola.”
“Yes, and so has every one who knows Gwendolyn.”
“He is the plaintiff who seeks to establish the claim that he is a better man than you are. My defense has been so able that he has challenged me, and I have named the weapons; they are to be pitchforks—American pitchforks.”
Forbes laughed and remarked:
“You must take him for a bunch of hay.”
“June grass!” I answered. “We'll need some one to rake after, as we used to say on the farm, and I may ask you to be my second.”
“Does the count amount to much?”
“Not much; I have had him added up and his total properly audited.”
“How are the judge and jury?”
“The judge is in our favor; the jury is in doubt. Gwendolyn insists that you don't want to marry any one at present.”
“I want to, but I probably shall not,” he answered. “When I marry I want to have done something besides having just lived. It seems as if it were due my wife. Besides, when I get married I want to stay married; I don't want any girl to marry me and give her heart to some other fellow. She must have time to be sure of one thing—that I am the right man. That cannot be proven with passionate vows or bouquets or guitar music, but only by sufficient acquaintance. On the other hand, I'd like to know, or think I know, that she is the right girl. If Gwendolyn really wants to marry a count it would be silly for me to try to convince her that I am the better fellow. She must see that for herself. If she doesn't, I should assume that she was right. God knows that I'm not so stuck on myself as to question her judgment. I'm very fond of her, but I have never let her suspect it.”
“If I were you I'd begin to arouse her suspicions.”
“That I propose to do, but delicately and without any guitar music. Love is a very sacred thing to me.”
“And the man who talks much about his love generally hasn't any,” I suggested.
“At least, if he has any love in him the cheapest way of showing it is by talk and song.”
“It's so awful easy to make words lie,” I agreed.
“If she wants me to enter a lying-match with these Romeos I'll agree, but only on condition that it's a lying-match—that we're only playing a game. I won't try to deceive her. Women are not fools or playthings any longer, are they?
“Generally not, if they're born in America,” I agreed.
Here was the modem American lover, and I must acknowledge that I fell in love with him. He stood for honest loving—a new type of chivalry—and against the lying, romantic twaddle which had come down from the feudal world. That kind of thing had been a proper accessory of courts and concubines. It would not do for America.
“I see that I am putting the case in good hands. Go in and win it,” I said.
“I'll make it my business while I'm here,” said he.
“You're a born business man. I know it's fashionable to hate the word 'business,' but I like it. In love it looks for dividends of happiness.”
“And I've observed that a home has got to pay or go out of business,” said he. “If Gwendolyn would put up with me I believe we could stand together to the end of the game.”
“I have some reason for saying that she is very fond of you,” I declared.
“I wouldn't dare ask you to explain, but you tempt me,” he said.
“A good-attorney never tells all he knows unless he is writing a book,” I answered.
We had come to the Spanish Stairs, where converging ways poured a thin, noisy fall of tourists and guide-books into the street below. I had seen the Stairs in my youth.
And I thought how many thousands
Of awe-encumbered men,
Each bearing his Hare and Baedeker,
Had passed the Stairs since then.
We made our way through crowded thoroughfares to the Pantheon and were in the thicket of vast columns when some one touched my arm. Who was this man with a blue monocle over his right eye, whose look was so familiar? Ah, to be sure, it was Muggs.
Again his mustache had disappeared, as had my hat and coat and the old suit of clothes, and how that blue monocle and the new attire and the smooth upper lip had changed the whole effect of Muggs! Evidently the man was prosperous and entering a new career. How does it happen that he has come in my way again, I asked myself, and then I remembered that he knew that I was to be there. What was I to expect now?—violence or——
He smiled.
“Charming day, isn't it?” he said, in his most agreeable tone.
He had neatly and deliberately removed his monocle as he spoke.
“Very! I suppose that stained-glass window of yours is a memorial to Wilton?”
He only smiled.
“As a European you're a great success,” I went on.
“Beginning a new life from the ground up,” said he, and added, with a glance at the great bronze doors, “Isn't this a wonderful place?”
“Yes, it was intended for a mammoth safe where reputations could be stored and embellished and kept, but it didn't work.”
“They cracked it and got away with the reputations,” said he, with a smile.
“Exactly! In my opinion every man should have his own private pantheon, and see that his reputation is as strong as the safe. It's the discrepancy that's dangerous. People won't allow a reputation to stay where it does not belong.”
He stepped closer and said, in a confidential tone, “I'm trying to improve mine, and I wish you would help me.”
“How?”
“Come to a little dinner that I am giving and say a good word for me when you can.”
“Are you trying to marry Mrs. Mullet?”
“Yes, I've fallen in love, and, as God's my witness, I'm living honest.”
“Muggs, I'll help you to get a reputation, but I won't help you to get a wife,” I said. “You must get the reputation first, and it will take you a long time. You'll have to try to pay back the money you've taken and keep it up long enough to prove your good faith.”
Muggs's plan was quite apparent. He wanted an all-around treaty of peace. He was still levying blackmail; the thing he demanded was not cash, but a character.
“That's exactly what I hope to do,” he explained. “I shall have all kinds of money, and I propose to square every account.”
“That's all right, provided Mrs. Mullet knows the whole plan and is willing to undertake the responsibility.”
He looked into my eyes, and said clearly in his smile: “You're the worst ass of a lawyer that I ever saw in my life. I've tried to be decent, and you've wiped your boots on me. Wait and see what happens now.”
All that seemed to be in his smile, but not a word of it passed his lips. He neatly adjusted the blue monocle and lifted his hat and said “Good afternoon,” and walked away.
I, too, had my smile, for I could not help thinking how this biter was being bitten, and how his old friends, the ghosts of the past, were now bearing down upon him.
We tramped to St. Peters, where squads of tourists seemed to be reading prayers out of red prayer-books and where a learned judge from Seattle, who had lost his pocket-book in a crowd near the statue of St. Peter, was delivering impassioned and highly prejudiced views of church and state to the members of his party.
We lunched at Latour's, where a long and limber-looking blond lady, who sat beside a Pomeranian poodle with a napkin tucked under his collar, consumed six cups of coffee and a foot and a half of cigarettes while we were eating. She was one of the most engaging ruins of the feudal world. What a theme for an artist was in the painted face and the sign of the dog! The head waiter told us that she was an American who had been studying art in Italy for years.
She ought to be mentioned in the guidebooks, I thought, as we were leaving.
We tramped miles to an old barracks of a building called the Cancellaria, which, according to Baedeker, was clothed in “majestic simplicity.”
“Baedeker is the Barnum of Europe,” I said, as we went on, “but he is generally more conservative.”
We arrived at the Grand Hotel a little before six. I went with Forbes to the Norris's apartments. Gwendolyn opened the door for us and greeted the young man with enthusiasm and led him to the parlor. Betsey was there, and we went at once to our own room.
“There's a new count in the game,” she remarked, as soon as we had sat down together—“the Count Raspagnetti, whom we met to-day at Mrs. Dorsey's. He's the grandest thing in Rome—six feet tall, with a monocle and a black beard, and is very good-looking. He's no down-at-the-heel aristocrat, either; has quite a fortune and two palaces in good repair, and has passed the guitar-and-balcony stage. He's about thirty-two, and seems to be very nice and sensible. Mrs. Dorsey calls him the dearest man in the world, and she has invited us to dinner to meet him again. It was a dead set for Gwendolyn, and the child was deeply impressed. It isn't surprising; these Italian men are most fascinating.”
“I suppose so,” I said, wearily. “The countless counts of Italy are getting on my nerves. Counts are a kind of bug that gets into the brains of women and feeds there until their heads are as empty as a worm-eaten chestnut.”
“Not at all,” said Betsey; “but if she must have a title—”
“She mustn't,” I said.
“You can't stop her.”
“That remains to be seen,” was my answer.
“Richard had better get a move on him,” said Betsey. “He can't dally along as you did.”
“Let him get his breath—he's only just landed.”
According to my custom I dined with Norris in his suite. Forbes went with the ladies to the dining-room.
“Aren't you about ready to go back?” I asked, as I thought of Muggs's smile.
“I should like to,” he said, “but the girls are having the time of their lives, and this air is making a new man of me. Then the young count seems to have let go; he doesn't annoy us any more. I'm hoping that Forbes will settle this count business.”
While we were eating a telegram was put in my hands which read as follows:
I am stopping at the Bristol in Florence and must have your professional advice immediately.
I cannot go to Rome, so will you kindly come here.
I am in serious trouble. If I am not at hotel look for me third corridor of paintings, Uffizi Gallery. Please regard this as strictly confidential. M. Mullet.
I answered that she should look for me the next day, and said to Norris:
“I have to go to Florence to-morrow.”
“Take the car and your wife and the young people,” said he. “The roads are fine, and you'll enjoy it.”
I thanked him for the suggestion.
“There's one other thing,” said he. “If you think Forbes means business tell him at the first opportunity that I am an ex-convict, and let me know how he takes it. We must be fair to him.”
“Leave it to me.”
“We'll take them down to Naples with the motor-car soon,” said Norris. “Vesuvius is active again, and we must see her in eruption.” He did not suspect that another Vesuvius was beginning to quake beneath us, and I did not have the heart to speak of it. I hoped that I could serve as a shock-absorber in the new eruption and save him any worry.