A Voyage of Consolation Part 18

"If I must speak of myself believe me it is not a n.o.body the Count Filgiatti," he went on at last. "Two Cardinals I have had in my family and one is second cousin to the Pope."

"Fancy the Pope's having relations!" I said, "but I suppose there is nothing to prevent it."

"Nothing at all. In my family I have had many amba.s.sadors, but that was a little formerly. Once a Filgiatti married with a Medici--but these things are better for Mistra and Madame Wick to inquire."

"Poppa is very much interested in antiquities, but I'm afraid there will hardly be time, Count Filgiatti."

"Listen, I will say all! Always they have been much too large, the families Filgiatti. So now perhaps we are a little _re_duce. But there is still somethings-ah--signorina, can you pardon that I speak these things, but the time is so small--there is fifteen hundred lire yearly revenue to my pocket."

"About three hundred dollars," I observed sympathetically. Count Filgiatti nodded with the smile of a conscious capitalist. "Then of course," I said, "you won't marry for money." I'm afraid this was a little unkind, but I was quite sure the Count would perceive no irony, and said it for my own amus.e.m.e.nt.

"_Jamais!_ In Italy you will find that never! The Italian gives always the heart before--before----"

"The arrangimento," I suggested softly.

"Indeed, yes. There is also the seat of the family."

"The seat of the family," I repeated. "Oh--the family seat. Of course, being a Count, you have a castle. They always go together. I had forgotten."

"A castle I cannot say, but for the country it is very well. It is not amusing there, in Tuscany. It is a little out of repairs. Twice a year I go to see my mother and all those brothers and sisters--it is enough!

And the Countess, my mother, has said to me two hundred times, 'Marry with an Americaine, Nicco--it is my command.' 'Nicco,' she calls me--it is what you call jack-name."

The Count smiled deprecatingly, and looked at me with a great deal of sentiment, twisting his moustache. Another pause ensued. It's all very well to say I should have dismissed him long before this, but I should like to know on what grounds?

"I wish very much to write my mother that I have found the American lady for a new Countess Filgiatti," he said at last with emotion.

"Well," I said awkwardly, "I hope you will find her."

"Ah, Mees Wick," exclaimed the Count recklessly, "you are that American lady. When I saw you in the railway I said, 'It is my vision!' At once I desired to embrace the papa. And he was not cold with me--he told me of the soda. I had courage, I had hope. At first when I see you to-day I am a little derange. In the Italian way I speak first with the papa.

Then came a little thought in my heart--no, it is propitious! In America the daughter maka always her own arrangimento. So I am spoken."

At this I rose immediately. I would not have it on my conscience that I toyed with the matrimonial proposition of even an Italian Count.

"I think I understand you, Count Filgiatti," I said--There is something about the most insignificant proposal that makes one blush in a perfectly absurd way. I have never been able to get over it--"and I fear I must bring this interview to a close. I----"

"Ah, it is too embarra.s.sing for you! It is experience very new, very strange."

"No," I said, regaining my composure, "not at all. But the fact is, Count Filgiatti, the transaction you propose doesn't appeal to me. It is too business-like to be sentimental, and too sentimental to be business-like. I'm sorry to seem disobliging, but I really couldn't make up my mind to marry a gentleman for his ancestors who are dead, even if he was willing to marry me for my income which may disappear. Poppa is very speculative. But I know there's a certain percentage of Americans who think a count with a family seat is about the only thing worth bringing away from Europe, now that we manufacture so much for ourselves, and if I meet any of them I'll bear you in mind."

"_Upon my word!_"

It was Mrs. Portheris, in the doorway behind us, just arrived from Siena.

I mentioned the matter to my parents, thinking it might amuse them, and it did. From a business point of view, however, poppa could not help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the Count. "I hope, daughter,"

he said, "you didn't give him the ha-ha to his face."

CHAPTER XIII.

There is the very tenderness of desolation upon the Appian Way. To me it suggested nothing of the splendour of Roman villas and the tragedy of flying Emperors. It spoke only of itself, lying over the wide silence of the noon-day fields, historic doubtless, but noon-day certainly.

Something lives upon the warm stretches of the Appian Way, something that talks of the eternal and unchangeable, and yet has the pathos of the fragmentary and the lost. Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows instead. Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower, that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside--both quite alone in the sunlight--and perhaps of a meek, young, marble Cecilia, unquestioningly prostrate, submissive to the axe.

We were on our way to the Catacombs, momma, the Senator, and Mrs.

Portheris in one carriage, R. Dod, Mr. Mafferton, Isabel, and I in the other. I approved of the arrangement, because the mutually distant understanding that existed between Mr. Mafferton and me had already been the subject of remark by my parents. ("For old London acquaintances you and Mr. Mafferton seem to have very little to say to each other," momma had observed that very morning.) It was borne in upon me that this was absurd. People have no business to be estranged for life because one of them has happened to propose to the other, unless, of course, he has been accepted and afterwards divorced, which is quite a different thing.

Besides, there was d.i.c.ky to think of. I decided that there was a medium in all things, and to help me to find it I wore a blouse from Madame Valerie in the Rue de l'Opera, which cost seven times its value, and was naturally becoming. Perhaps this was going to extreme measures; but he was a recalcitrant Englishman, and for d.i.c.ky's sake one had to think of everything.

Englishmen have a genius for looking uncomfortable. Their feelings are terribly mixed up with their personal appearance. It was some time before Mr. Mafferton would consent to be even tolerably at his ease, though I made a distinct effort to show that I bore no malice. It must have been the mere memory of the past that embarra.s.sed him, for the other two were as completely unaware of his existence as they well could be in the same carriage. For a time, as I talked in commonplaces, Mr.

Mafferton in monosyllables, and Mr. Dod and Miss Portheris in regards, the most sordid realist would have hesitated to chronicle our conversation.

"When," I inquired casually, "are you thinking of going back, Mr.

Mafferton?"

"To town? Not before October, I fancy!"

"Even in Rome," I observed, "London is 'town' to you, isn't it? What a curious thing insular tradition is!"

"I suppose Rome was invented first," he replied haughtily.

"Why yes," I said; "while the ancestors of Eaton-square were running about in blue paint and bear-skins, and Albert Gate, in the directory, was a mere cave. What do you suppose," I went on, following up this line of thought, "when you were untutored savages, was your subst.i.tute for the Red Book?"

"Really," said this Englishman, "I haven't an idea. Perhaps as you have suggested they had no ad_dresses_."

For a moment I felt quite depressed. "Did you think it was a conundrum?"

I asked. "You so often remind me of _Punch_, Mr. Mafferton."

I shouldn't have liked anyone to say that to me, but it seemed to have quite a mollifying effect upon Mr. Mafferton. He smiled and pulled his moustache in the way Englishmen always do, when endeavouring to absorb a compliment.

"Dear old London," I went on reminiscently, "what a funny experience it was!"

"To the Transatlantic mind," responded Mr. Mafferton stiffly, "one can imagine it instructive."

"It was a revelation to mine," I said earnestly--"a revelation." Then, remembering Mr. Mafferton's somewhat painful connection with the revelation, I added carefully, "From a historic point of view. The Tower, you know, and all that."

"Ah!" said Mr. Mafferton, with a distant eye upon the Campagna.

It was really very difficult.

"Do you remember the day we went to Madame Tussaud's?" I asked. Perhaps my intonation was a little dreamy. "I shall _never_ forget William the Conqueror--never."

"Yes--yes, I think I do." It was clearly an effort of memory.

"And now," I said regretfully, "it can never be the same again."