X.—A DAY OF ADVENTURES WITH TUSCAN ARTISTS AND OTHERS
NEXT morning I found Betsey and the young people eager for the trip to Florence. Richard and I had breakfast together at eight-thirty.
“There's a new count in the game,” said he, as soon as we were seated together. “He came to our table last evening. He's a grand chap and in favor with the king, to whom he is going to present Gwendolyn and her mother. He knows how to talk to women, and I don't. I shall not be in it with him.”
“As to which is the best man it's her judgment, not yours, that's important,” I said. “So long as I am managing the case you must take nothing for granted. Put her on the witness-stand, and let's know what she has to say about it. Before that I must tell ye something—in confidence. Norris is about the best fellow that I ever knew, but he got into trouble when he was a boy. He was the victim of circumstances and went to prison—served a year.”
“I heard of that long ago,” said Forbes.
“What!” I exclaimed, in astonishment.
“Nobody cares anything about that. Everybody knows that he's a good man now—that is enough in America.”
“Do many know it?”
“Probably not. I have heard that even Gwendolyn and her mother do not know it.”
It surprised and in a way it pleased me to learn that I had told him what he already knew. I remembered that he had said, in his walk with me, that the distinguished editor who had got the tragic story from my lips was an uncle of his. So, after all, it was not strange that he should know.
“I presume that he had a wild youth, but he's a good man,” Forbes added.
That was all we said about it.
Our drive, which began at midday, took us through the loveliest vineyards in Italy. I shall never forget the vivid-green valley of the Arno as it looked that day. Lace-like vines spreading over the cresset tops of the olives and between them and filling the air with color; stately poplar rows and dark spires of cypress; distant purple mountain walls and white palaces on misty heights—they were some of the items. Here in these vineyards, and in others like them, are about the best tillers in the world—a simple, honest, beauty-loving people who are the soul of Italy, and, in the main, no country has a better asset.
On the road we met the Litchmans, of Chicago, touring with their yelling-machine and a special car trailing behind them filled with clothes and millinery.
That night we dined together and went to the opera. It was all Greek to me, but it was great! They woke me at one, and we went home. Next morning, having learned that Mrs. Mullet was not at her hotel, we all proceeded to the vast Uffizi Gallery. Grand place!
What a wonderful procession these people in marble and paint see every day in the parade of weary pilgrims, in the moving mosaic of humanity. What a Babel of tongues, all speaking Baedeker! I wonder if the gods, emperors, and painted masterpieces fully appreciate this endless human caravan. It is far more wonderful than they. Who are these people? Ask any of them, and he will be apt to tell you that the rest are fools; that almost every one of them is looking for conversational thunder and—knockers!
Some hurry.
“Two more galleries to see, and the train goes at five,” you hear one of them saying.
I was nearly bowled over and trampled upon by three German women who had lost their party.
Once these marble floors were almost exclusively the highway of the highbrows. Now the sacred children of the imagination are being introduced to a new crowd. Newness is its chief characteristic. Here are the overgrown multitude of the newly rich, the truly rich, and the untruly rich. Here are the newly married, the unmarried, the over-married, and the slightly married, and the well-married from all lands, some of them new recruits in the great army of art.
We passed through the Hall of the Ancient Imperial Shoats into the long corridor filled with statuary.
“The old gods seem to have had desperate battles before they gave up,” Betsey said to me. “Most of them lost either an arm or a leg in the war.”
“Many were beheaded and chucked into the garbage-barrels,” I answered. “The way Jupiter and Minerva were beaten up was a caution. It wasn't right; it wasn't decent. They were a harmless, inoffensive lot; they had never done anything to anybody. A lot of things were laid at their doors, but nothing was ever proved against 'em. These days we know enough to appreciate harmlessness.”
“They were very beautiful,” said Betsey, “but they're a crippled lot now.”
“Yes, most of them have artificial limbs,” I answered. “All they do now is to pose in vaudeville for the entertainment of humanity.” As we neared the room where I was to meet Mrs. Mullet we bade the young people go their way and look for us at the door about twelve-thirty.
We found the lady copying the portraits of our first parents. Her breast began to heave in a storm of emotion as she looked at us.
“Who are your friends?” I quickly asked, by way of diverting her thought.
“This is Adam and Eve,” said she, almost tearfully.
“I'm glad to see that they don't make company of us,” Betsey declared.
“They receive everybody in that same suit of clothes,” I answered. “And Eve's entertainment is so simple—apples right off the tree!”
“I don't see but that they look just as aristocratic as they would if they had sprung from poor but respectable parents,” said Betsey.
“Adam looks like a rather shiftless, good-natured young fellow, easily led, but, on the whole, I like them both,” was my answer. “They're frank and open and aboveboard. If you're looking for your first ancestors and must have them, I don't think you could do better. Certainly Mr. Darwin has nothing to offer that compares with them.”
Betsey and I had our little dialogues about many objects in our way, and now we had got Mrs. Mullet righted, so to speak, and on a firm working basis. She showed us through the gallery. I remember that she was particularly interested in the Botticelli paintings.
Mrs. Mullet said that she adored the Madonna—a case of compound adoration, for in its adoring group Botticelli succeeded in painting the most inhuman piety that the world has seen.
“Isn't that glorious?” Mrs. Mullet asked, as we stopped before his Venus—a tall lady standing on half a cockle-shell, neatly poised on breezy water.
“She has crooked feet,” said Betsey.
“Well, I guess yours would be crooked if you had been to sea on a cockle-shell,” I said, which will prove to the learned reader that we were about as ignorant of art as any in that hurrying crowd of misguided people.
“Oh, I think it's a wonderful thing! Look at the colors!” Mrs. Mullet exclaimed.
“But the toes are so long—they are rippling toes. Those on the right foot look as if they had just finished a difficult run on the piano,” Betsey insisted.
“She might be called the Long-toed Venus,” I suggested. “But she isn't to blame for that. I suppose she was born with that infirmity.”
So we crude and business-like Americans went on, as we flitted here and there, sipping the honey from each flower of art.
Twelve-thirty had arrived, and I suggested to Betsey that she should meet the young people and go with them wherever they pleased, and that they could find me at the hotel at four. She left us, and I asked Mrs. Mullet what I could do for her.
“I'm in perfectly awful trouble,” she sighed, with rising tears.
“Tell me all about it,” I said. “But please do not weep, or people will wonder what this cruel old man has been doing to you.”
“That man insisted that I should have my bust made and my portrait painted and agreed to pay for them, but now of course I shall have to pay for them myself. He has threatened to sue me for a hundred thousand dollars for breach of promise. It will take more than half my property.”
“Don't worry about the suit,” I said. “I'll agree to save you any cost in that matter. As to the bust, you can use it for a milestone in your history. The painting will show you how you looked when you were—not as wise as you are now. You can look at it and take warning.”
“I couldn't bear to look at them. I feel as if I never wanted to see myself again. I have written to everybody at home about this engagement. It's just perfectly dreadful!” Again she was near breaking down.
“You ought to be glad—not sorrowful,” I said. “That man can't even play a guitar. If he had a title or a fortune we wouldn't mind his being a scamp, but he hasn't. He hasn't even a coat of arms.”
“There! I'm not going to cry, after all,” she declared, as she wiped her eyes. “I'm glad you've kept me from breaking down.”
“I wonder that you didn't wait until you knew him better before making this engagement,” I said.
“But he was so gentlemanly and nice,” she went on; “and Mr. Pike, the lumber king from Michigan, introduced him to me and said that he had known him a long time. Then the colonel is acquainted with counts and barons and other grand people. He claimed to be an old friend of yours and of Mr. Norris. He said that the last time he called on you he went away with your hat by mistake, and showed me your initials in the one he wore.”
“He often associates with property of a questionable character, but I was not aware that he had got in with the counts and barons,” I said.
“He knows the Count Carola very well,” she declared.
“Leave them to each other—they deserve it,” I said. “Return to Rome and refer Wilton to me, and refuse to have anything more to do with him.”
She asked for my bill, but I assured her that dollars were too small for such a service, and that I couldn't think of accepting anything less than thanks in a case of that kind.
I left her and got a bite to eat and went to our hotel at three-thirty. Betsey was waiting for me at the door. She was pale and excited.
“We've had a dreadful time,” said she. “Gwendolyn and I had gone on while Richard was paying our bill in a shop. Suddenly a young man came and spoke to Gwendolyn. Richard saw it. In a second I heard a horrible thump and saw the young Italian lying in the mud. He didn't try to get up. Looked as if he was sleeping.”
“It's bad weather for Romeoing,” I answered. “That count should have waited till the streets were dry. Where are they?”
“Gwendolyn is in the parlor. Richard said that we should look for him on the road and took a fiacre and flew. The girl is frightened.”
Betsey brought her out, and we got into the car and sped away.
“One more count!” I exclaimed, with a laugh.
“One less count!” said Gwendolyn. “I'm sure he's dead.”
“Ladies have limited rights outside the house in Italy,” I said.
“I don't mind those silly men,” said Gwendolyn. “I've been spoken to like that a dozen times, but I hurry along and pretend that I do not hear them.”
“That count will be careful after this,” I suggested.
“If he lives,” said Gwendolyn. “I'm afraid that his head is cracked.”
“His head was cracked long ago,” was my answer.
“Uncle Soc,” said Gwendolyn (she had begun to call me Uncle Soc there in Italy), “Richard and Italy could never get along together.”
“Richard, Gwendolyn, and America are a better combination,” I suggested.
“What a pretty thought!” she exclaimed, just as we overtook the young man about a mile out on the highway to Rome.
“Get in here and behave yourself,” I said. “You've had exercise enough.”
“I could stand more, if necessary,” he answered, with a laugh, as he sat down with us.
That ride to Rome was one of the merriest, in my life. For the young people it had been a day of joy and progress, but on the whole it hadn't been a highly creditable day. So let's drop the curtain right here and let it go into history.