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Page 10
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The traveller will proceed direct from the Siena gate to
the Collegiate Church of Santa Deodata, and inspect (5th
chapel on right) the charming * Frescoes....
Mrs. Herriton did not proceed. She was not one to
detect the hidden charms of Baedeker. Some of the
information seemed to her unnecessary, all of it was dull.
Whereas Philip could never read "The view from the Rocca
(small gratuity) is finest at sunset" without a catching at
the heart. Restoring the book to its place, she went
downstairs, and looked up and down the asphalt paths for her
daughter. She saw her at last, two turnings away, vainly
trying to shake off Mr. Abbott, Miss Caroline Abbott's
father. Harriet was always unfortunate. At last she
returned, hot, agitated, crackling with bank-notes, and Irma
bounced to greet her, and trod heavily on her corn.
"Your feet grow larger every day," said the agonized
Harriet, and gave her niece a violent push. Then Irma
cried, and Mrs. Herriton was annoyed with Harriet for
betraying irritation. Lunch was nasty; and during pudding
news arrived that the cook, by sheer dexterity, had broken a
very vital knob off the kitchen-range. "It is too bad,"
said Mrs. Herriton. Irma said it was three bad, and was
told not to be rude. After lunch Harriet would get out
Baedeker, and read in injured tones about Monteriano, the
Mons Rianus of Antiquity, till her mother stopped her.
"It's ridiculous to read, dear. She's not trying to
marry any one in the place. Some tourist, obviously, who's
stopping in the hotel. The place has nothing to do with it
at all."
"But what a place to go to! What nice person, too, do
you meet in a hotel?"
"Nice or nasty, as I have told you several times before,
is not the point. Lilia has insulted our family, and she
shall suffer for it. And when you speak against hotels, I
think you forget that I met your father at Chamounix. You
can contribute nothing, dear, at present, and I think you
had better hold your tongue. I am going to the kitchen, to
speak about the range."
She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she
could not give satisfaction--she had better leave. A small
thing at hand is greater than a great thing remote, and
Lilia, misconducting herself upon a mountain in Central
Italy, was immediately hidden. Mrs. Herriton flew to a
registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came
home, was told by the housemaid that things seemed so
unsettled that she had better leave as well; had tea, wrote
six letters, was interrupted by cook and housemaid, both
weeping, asking her pardon, and imploring to be taken back.
In the flush of victory the door-bell rang, and there was
the telegram: "Lilia engaged to Italian nobility. Writing.
Abbott."
"No answer," said Mrs. Herriton. "Get down Mr. Philip's
Gladstone from the attic."
She would not allow herself to be frightened by the
unknown. Indeed she knew a little now. The man was not an
Italian noble, otherwise the telegram would have said so.
It must have been written by Lilia. None but she would have
been guilty of the fatuous vulgarity of "Italian nobility."
She recalled phrases of this morning's letter: "We love this
place--Caroline is sweeter than ever, and busy
sketching--Italians full of simplicity and charm." And the
remark of Baedeker, "The inhabitants are still noted for
their agreeable manners," had a baleful meaning now. If
Mrs. Herriton had no imagination, she had intuition, a more
useful quality, and the picture she made to herself of
Lilia's FIANCE did not prove altogether wrong.
So Philip was received with the news that he must start
in half an hour for Monteriano. He was in a painful
position. For three years he had sung the praises of the
Italians, but he had never contemplated having one as a
relative. He tried to soften the thing down to his mother,
but in his heart of hearts he agreed with her when she said,
"The man may be a duke or he may be an organ-grinder. That
is not the point. If Lilia marries him she insults the
memory of Charles, she insults Irma, she insults us.
Therefore I forbid her, and if she disobeys we have done
with her for ever."
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