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Page 42
"And what," I asked, "was her reply to that?"
"She seemed to think I was prevaricating. She said she knew what a
mother's hopes and fears were. They seem to take a very low view," added
momma austerely, "of friendship between a young man and a young woman in
England!"
"I should think so!" said I absent-mindedly. "Dicky hasn't made love to
me for three years."
"_What!_"
"Nothing, momma, dear," I replied kindly. "Only I wouldn't contradict
Mrs. Portheris again upon that point, if I were you. She will think it
so improper if Dicky _isn't_ my admirer, don't you see?"
But Mrs. Portheris's desire to join our party stood revealed. Her
constant chaperonage of Dicky was getting a little trying, and she
wanted me to relieve her. I felt so deeply for them both, reflecting
upon the situation, that I experienced quite a glow of virtue at the
thought of my promise to Dicky to stay in Rome till his party arrived.
They were going to Siena--why, Mr. Dod could not undertake to
explain--he had never heard of anything cheerful in connection with
Siena.
"My idea is," said the Senator, "that in Rome"--we were on our way
there--"we'll find our work cut out for us. Think of the objects of
interest involved from Romulus and Remus down to the present Pope!"
"I should like my salts before I begin," said momma, pathetically.
"Over two thousand years," continued the Senator impressively, "and
every year you may be sure has left its architectural imprint."
"Does Baedeker say that, Senator?" I asked, with a certain severity.
"No, the expression is entirely my own; you may take it down and use it
freely. Two thousand years of remains is what we've got before us in
Rome, and pretty well scattered too--nothing like the convenience of
Pisa. I expect we shall have to allow at least four days for it. That
Piazza del Duomo," continued poppa, thoughtfully, "seems to have been
laid out with a view to the American tourist of the future. But I don't
suppose that kind of forethought is common."
"How exquisite it was, that cluster of white marble relics of the past
on the bosom of dusky Pisa. It reminded me," said momma, poetically, "of
an old maid's pearls."
"I should suggest," said the Senator to me, "that you make a note of
that. A little sentiment won't do us any harm--just a little. And they
_are_ like an old maid's pearls in connection with that middle-aged,
one-horse little city. Or I should say a widow's--Pisa was once a bride
of the sea. A grass widow's," improved the Senator. "It's all
meadow-land round there--did you notice?"
"I did not," I said coldly; "but, of course, if I'm to call Pisa a grass
widow, it will have to be. Although I warn you, poppa, that in case of
any critic being able to arise and indicate that it is laid out in
oyster beds, I shall make it plain that the responsibility is yours."
We were speeding through Tuscany, and the vine-garlanded trees in the
orchards clasped hands and danced along with us. The sky would have told
us we were in Italy if we had come on a magic carpet without a compass
or a time-table. Poppa says we are not, under any circumstances, to
mention it more than once, but that we might as well explode the fallacy
that there is anything like it in America. There isn't. Our cerulean is
very beautifully blue, but in Italy one discovers by contrast that it
is an intellectual blue, filled with light, high, provocative. The sky
that bends over Tuscany is the very soul of blue, deep, soft, intense,
impenetrable--the sky that one sees in those little casual bits of
landscape behind the shoulders of pre-Raphaelite Saints and Madonnas;
and here and there a lake, giving it back with delight, and now and then
the long slope of a hill, with an old yellow-walled town creeping up,
castle crowned, and raggedly trimmed with olives; and so many ruins that
the Senator, summoned by momma to look at the last in view, regarded it
with disparagement, which he did not attempt to conceal. He wondered, he
said, that the Italian Government wasn't ashamed of having such a lot of
them. They might be picturesque, but they weren't creditable; they gave
you the impression that the country was on the down grade. "You needn't
call my attention to any more of them, Augusta," he added; "but if you
see any building that looks like progress, now, anything that gives you
the idea of modern improvements inside, I shouldn't like to miss it."
And he returned to the thirty-second page of the Sunday _New York
World_.
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