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Page 45
The Italian character struck me as having interesting phases, but I did
not allow this impression to appear. I looked indifferently out of the
window. Italian sunsets are very becoming.
"The signora, your mother, has told me that you have no brothers or
sisters, Mees Wick. She made me the confidence--it was most kind."
"There never has been any secret about it, Count."
"Then you have not even one?" Count Filgiatti's eyes were full of
melancholy sympathy.
"I think," I said with coldness, "that in a matter of that kind, momma's
word should hardly need corroboration."
"Ah, it is sad! With me what difference! Can you believe of eleven? And
the father with the saints! And I of course am the eldest of all."
"Dear me," I said, "what a responsibility!"
"Ah, you recognise! you understand the--the necessities, yes?"
At that moment the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, and the Senator
awoke and put his hat on. "The Eternal City," he remarked when he
descried that the name of the station was not Rome, "appears to have an
eternal railway to match. There seems to be a feeding counter here
though--we might have another try at those slices of veal boiled in
tomatoes and smothered with macaroni that they give the pilgrim stranger
in these parts. You may lead the world in romance, Count, but you don't
put any of it in your railway refreshments."
As we passed out into the smooth-toned talkative darkness, Count
Filgiatti said in my ear, "Mistra and Madame Wick have kindly consented
to receive my visit at the hotel to-morrow. Is it agreeable to you also
that I come?"
And I said, "Why, certainly!"
CHAPTER XI.
We descended next morning to realise how original we were in being in
the plains of Italy in July. The Fulda people and the Miss Binghams and
Mrs. Portheris had prevented our noticing it before, but in the Hotel
Mascigni, Via del Tritone, we seemed to have arrived at a point of arid
solitude, which gave poppa a new and convincing sense of all he was
going through in pursuit of Continental culture. We sat in one corner of
the "Sala di mangiari" at a small square table, and in all the length
and breadth and sumptuousness of that magnificent apartment--Italian
hotel dining-rooms are always florid and palatial--there was only one
other little square table with a cloth on it and an appearance of
expectancy. The rest were heaped with chairs, bottom side up, with their
legs in the air; the chandeliers were tied up in brown holland, and
through a depressed and exhausted atmosphere, suggestive of magnificent
occasions temporarily in eclipse, moved, with a casual languid air, a
very tall waiter and a very short one. At mysterious exits to the rear
occasionally appeared the form of the _chef_ exchanging plates. It was
borne in upon one that in the season the _chef_ would be remanded to the
most inviolable seclusion.
"Do you suppose Pompeii will be any worse than this?" inquired the
Senator.
"Talk about Americans pervading the Continent," he continued, casting
his eye over the surrounding desolation. "Where are they? I should be
glad to see them. Great Scott! if it comes to that, I should be glad to
see a blooming Englishman!"
It wasn't an answer to prayer, for there had been no opportunity for
devotion, but at that moment the door opened and admitted Mr., Mrs., and
Miss Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis. The reunion was as rapt as the
Senator and Emmeline could make it, and cordial in every other respect.
Mr. Malt explained that they had come straight through from Paris, as
time was beginning to press.
"We couldn't leave out Rome," he said, "on account of Mis' Malt's
mother--she made such a point of our seeing the prison of Saint Paul. In
her last letter she was looking forward very anxiously to our safe
return to get an account of it. She's a leader in our experience
meetings, and I couldn't somehow make up my mind to face her without
it."
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