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Page 68
"Look here," said poppa at this, to the interpreter, "you folks are
putting yourselves out on our account a great deal more than is
necessary. We are just ordinary travelling public, and you don't need to
entertain us with side shows that we haven't ordered any more than if we
belonged to your own town. See?" But the interpreter did not see. He
beckoned instead to an engaging daughter of the fat lady, who approached
modestly with a large book of photographs, which she opened before the
Senator, kneeling beside his chair.
"Great Scott!" exclaimed poppa, "I'm not a crowned head. Rise, Miss
Diomede."
Removing his cigar, he assisted the young lady to her feet and led her
to a sofa at the other end of the room, where, as they turned over the
photographs together, I heard him ask her if she objected to tobacco.
"You may go," said momma to the interpreter, "and explain the scenes.
Mr. Wick will enjoy them much more if he understands them." The freedom
from conventional restraint which characterises American society very
seldom extends to married gentlemen.
We had to wait twenty minutes for the other party, on account of their
British objection to anybody's dust. Even Mr. Mafferton looked quelled
when they arrived, and Isabel quite abject, while Mrs. Portheris wore
that air of justification which no circumstance could impair, which was
particularly her own. She would not sit down. "It gives these people a
claim on you," she said. "I did not come here to run up an hotel bill,
but to see Pompeii. Pompeii I demand to see." The players on the flute
and mandolin looked at Mrs. Portheris consideringly and then strolled
away, and the guide, with a sorrowful glance at the landlady, put on his
hat. "I can explain you everything," he said with an inflection that
placed the responsibility for remaining in ignorance upon our own heads,
but Mrs. Portheris waved him away with her fan. "No," she said. "I beg
that this man shall not be allowed to inflict himself upon our party.
I particularly desire to form my own impression of the historic city,
that city that did so much for the reputation of Sir Henry Bulwer
Lytton. Besides, these people mount up ridiculously, and with servants
at home on half wages, and Consols in the state they are, one is really
compelled to economise."
[Illustration: "I'm not a crowned head!"]
It was difficult to protest against Mrs. Portheris's regulations, and
impossible to contravene them, so I have nothing to report of that guide
but his card, which bore the name "Antonio Plicco," and his memory,
which is a blank.
There was an ascent, and Mrs. Portheris mounted it proudly. I pointed
out to poppa half-way up that his esteemed relative hadn't turned a
hair, but he was inclined to be incredulous; said you couldn't tell what
was going on in the Department of the Interior. The Senator often uses a
political reference to carry him over a delicate allusion. Flowering
shrubs and bushes lined the path we climbed, silent in the sunshine,
dustily decorative, and at the top the turning of a key let us into a
strange place. Always a strange place, however often the guide-books
beat their iterations upon it, a place that leaps at imagination,
peering into other days through the mists that lie between, and blinds
it with a rush of light--the place where they have gathered together
what was left of the dead Pompeiians and their world. There they lay
before us for our wonderment as they ran, and tripped, and struggled,
and fell in the night of that day when they and the gods together were
overwhelmed, and they died as they thought in the end of time. And
through an open door Vesuvius sent up its eternal gentle woolly curl
again the daylight sky, and vineyards throve, and birds sang, and we,
who had survived the gods, came curious to look. The figures lay in
glass cases, and Dicky remarked, with unusual seriousness, that it was
like a dead-house.
"Except," said poppa, "that in this mortuary there isn't ever going to
be anybody who can identify the remains. When you come to think of
it--that's kind of hard."
"No chance of Christian burial once you get into a museum," said Dick
with solicitude.
"I should like," remarked Mrs. Portheris, polishing her _pince nez_ to
get a better view of a mother and daughter lying on their faces. "I
should like to see the clergyman who would attempt it. These people were
heathen, and richly deserved their fate. Richly!"
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