"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."

"Poppa," remarked Emmeline, "is not so foolish as he looks."

"We were just wondering," exclaimed momma, "who that table was laid for. But we never thought of you. Isn't it strange?"

We agreed that it was little short of marvellous.

The tall waiter strolled up for the commands of the Malt party. His demeanour showed that he resented the Malts, who were, nevertheless, innocent respectable people. As Emmeline ordered "cafe au lait pour tous" he scowled and made curious contortions with his lower jaw. "Anything else you want?" he inquired, with obvious annoyance.

"Yes," said Miss Callis. He further expressed his contempt by twisting his moustache, and waited in silent disdain.

"I want," said Miss Callis sweetly, leaning forward with her chin artlessly poised in her hand, "to know if you are paid to make faces at the guests of this hotel."

There was laughter, above which Emmeline's crow rose loud and clear, and as the waiter hastened away, suddenly transformed into a sycophant, poppa remarked, "I see you've got those hotel tickets, too. Let me give you a little pointer. Say nothing about it until next day. They are like that sometimes. In being deprived of the opportunity of swindling us, they feel that they've been done themselves."

"Oh," said Mr. Malt, "we never reveal it for twenty-four hours. That fellow must have smelled 'em on us. Now, how were you proposing to spend the day?"

"We're going to the Forum," remarked Emmeline. "Do come with us, Mr. Wick. We should love to have you."

"We mustn't forget the Count," said momma to the Senator.



"What Count?" Emmeline inquired. "Did you ever, momma! Mis' Wick knows a count. She's been smarter than we have, hasn't she? Introduce him to us, Mis' Wick."

"Emmeline," said her mother severely, "you are as personal as ever you can be. I don't know whatever Mis' Wick will think of you."

"She's merely full of intelligent curiosity, Mis' Malt," said Mr. Malt, who seemed to be in the last stage of infatuated parent. "I know you'll excuse her," he added to momma, who said with rather frigid emphasis, "Oh yes, we'll excuse her." But the hint was lost and Emmeline remained. Poppa looked in his memorandum book and found that the Count was not to arrive until 3 P.M. There was, therefore, no reason why we should not accompany the Malts to the Forum, and it was arranged.

A quarter of an hour later we were rolling through Rome. As a family we were rather subdued by the idea that it was Rome, there was such immense significance even in the streets with tramways, though it was rather an atmosphere than anything of definite detail; but no such impression weighed upon the Malts. They took Rome at its face value and refused to recognise the unearned increment heaped up by the centuries. However, as we were divided in two carriages, none of us had all the Malts.

It was warm and dusty, the air had a malarious taste. We drove first, I remember, to the American druggist's in the Piazza di Spagna for some magnesia Mrs. Malt wanted for Emmeline, who had prickly heat. It was annoying to have one's first Roman impressions confused with Emmeline and magnesia and prickly heat; but Mrs. Malt appeared to think that Rome attracted visitors chiefly by means of that American druggist. She said she was perfectly certain we should find an American dentist there, too, if we only took the time to look him up. I can't say whether she took the time. We didn't.

It was interesting, the Piazza di Spagna, because that is where everybody who has read "Roba di Roma" knows that the English and Americans have lived ever since the days when dear old Mr. Story and the rest used to coach it from Civita Vecchia—in hotels, and pensions, and apartments, the people in Marion Crawford's novels. We could only decide that the plain, severe, many-storied houses with the shops underneath had charms inside to compensate for their outward lack. Not a tree anywhere, not a scrap of grass, only the lava pavement, and the view of the druggist's shop and the tourists' agency office. Miss Callis said she didn't see why man should be for ever bound up with the vegetable creation—it was like living in a perpetual salad—and was disposed to defend the Piazza di Spagna at all points, it looked so nice and expensive. But Miss Callis's tastes were very distinctly urban.

That druggist's establishment was on the Pincian Hill! It seemed, on reflection, an outrage. We all looked about us, when we discovered this, for the other six, and another of the foolish geographical illusions of the school-room was shattered for each of us. The Rome of my imagination was as distinctly seven-hilled as a quadruped is four-legged, the Rome I saw had no eminences to speak of anywhere. Perhaps, as poppa suggested, business had moved away from the hills and we should find them in the suburbs, but this we were obliged to leave unascertained.

Through the warm empty streets we drove and looked at Rome. It was driving through time, through history, through art, and going backward. And through the Christian religion, for we started where the pillar of Pius IX., setting forth the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, reaffirmed a modern dogma of the great church across the Tiber; and we rattled on past other and earlier memorials of that church thick-built into the Middle Ages, and of the Early Fathers, and of the very Apostles. All heaped and crowded and over-built, solid and ragged, decaying and defying decay, clinging to her traditions with both hands, old Rome jostled before us. Presently uprose a great and crumbling arch and a difference, and as we passed it the sound of the life of the city died indistinctly away and a silence grew up, with the smell of the sun upon grasses and weeds, and we stopped and looked down into Caesar's world, which lay below us, empty. We gazed in silence for a moment, and then Emmeline remarked that she could make as good a Forum with a box of blocks.

"I shouldn't wonder but what you express the sentiments of all present," said her father admiringly. "Now is it allowable for us to go down there and make ourselves at home amongst those antique pillars, or have we got to take the show in from here?"

"No, Malt," said the Senator, helping the ladies out, "I can't say I agree with you. It's a dead city, that's what it is, and for my part I've never seen anything so impressive."

"Mr. Wick," remarked Miss Callis, "has not visited Philadelphia."

"Well, for a municipal cemetery," returned Mr. Malt, "it's pretty uncared for. If there was any enterprise in this capital it would be suitably railed in with posts and chains, and a monument inscribed 'Here lies Rome's former greatness' or something like that. But the Italians haven't got a particle of go—I've noticed that all through."

We went down the wooden stair, a century at a step, and presently walked and talked, we seven Americans, in that elder Rome that most people know so much better than the one with St. Peter's and the Corso, because of the clinging nature of those early impressions which we construe for ourselves with painful reference to lists of exceptions. We all felt that it was a small place to have had so much to say to history, and were obliged to remind ourselves that we weren't looking at the whole of it. Poppa acknowledged that his tendency to compare it unfavourably, in spite of the verdict of history, with Chicago was checked by a smell from the Cloaca Maxima, which proved that the Ancient Romans probably enjoyed enteric and sewer gas quite as much as we do, although under names that are to be found only in dictionaries now. Mrs. Malt said the place surprised her in being so yellow—she had always imagined pictures of it to have been taken in the sunset, but now she saw that it was perfectly natural. Acting upon Mr. Malt's advice, we did not attempt to identify more than the leading features, and I remember distinctly, in consequence, that the temple of Castor had three columns standing and the temple of Saturn had eight, while of the Basilica Julia there was nothing at all but the places where they used to be. Mrs. Malt said it made her feel quite idolatrous to look at them, and for her part she couldn't be sorry they had fallen so much into decay—it was only right and proper. This launched Mr. and Mrs. Malt and my parents upon a discussion which threatened to become unwisely polemic if Emmeline had not briefly decided it in favour of Christianity.

Momma and Mrs. Malt expressed a desire above all things to see the temple and apartments of the Vestal Virgins, which Miss Callis with some surprise begged them on no account to mention in the presence of the gentlemen.

"There are some things," remarked Miss Callis austerely, "from which no respectable married lady would wish to lift the veil of the classics."

Momma was inclined to argue the point, but Miss Callis looked so shocked that she desisted.

"Perhaps, Mrs. Wick," she said sarcastically, "you intend to go to see the Baths of Caracallus!"

To which momma replied certainly not, that was a very different thing. And if I am unable to describe the Baths of Caracallus in this history, it is on account of Miss Callis's personal influence and the remarkable development of her sense of propriety.

At momma's suggestion we walked slowly all round the Via Sacra, looking steadily down at its little triangular original paving-stones, and tried to imagine ourselves the shackled captives of Scipio. If the party had not consisted so largely of Emmeline the effort might have been successful. Fragments of exhumed statuary, discoloured and featureless, stood tipped in rows along the shorn foundations and inspired in Mr. Malt a serious curiosity.

"The ancients," said Mr. Malt with conviction, "were every bit as smart as the moderns, meaning born intelligence. Look at that ear—that ear took talent. There isn't a terra-cotta factory in the United States that could turn out a better ear to-day. But they hadn't what we call gumption, they put all their capital into one line of business, and you may be sure they swamped the market. If they'd just done a little inventing now, instead—worried out the idea of steam, or gas, or electricity—why Rome might never have fallen to this day." And no one interfered with Mr. Malt's idea that the fall of Rome was a purely commercial disaster. Doubtless it was out of regard for his feelings, but he was exactly the sort of man to compel you to prove your assertion.

We found the boundaries of the first Forum of the Republic, and poppa, pacing it in a soft felt hat and a silk duster, offered a Senatorial contrast to history. He looked round him with dignity and made the gesture which goes with his most sustained oratorical flights. "I wouldn't have backed up Cato in everything," he said thoughtfully. "No. There were occasions on which I should have voted against the old man, and the little American school-boys of to-day would have had to decline 'Mugwumpus' in consequence." And at the thought of Cannae and Trasimene the nineteenth century Senator from Illinois fiercely pulled his beard.

We turned our pilgrim feet to where the Colosseum wheels against the sky and gives up the world's eternal supreme note of splendour and of cruelty; and along the solitary dusty Appian Way, as if it were a country lane of the time we know, came a ragged Roman urchin with a basket. Under the triumphal arch of Titus, where his forefathers jeered at the Jews in manacled procession, we bargained with him for his purple plums. He had the eyes and the smile of immemorial Italy for his own, and the bones of Imperial Rome in equal inheritance, which he also wished to sell, by the way, in jagged fragments from his trouser pockets. And it linked up those early days with that particular afternoon in a curiously simple way to think that from the Caesars to King Humbert there has never been a year without just such brown-cheeked, dark-eyed, imperfectly washed little Roman boys upon the Appian Way.



CHAPTER XII.

We were too late for the hotel dejeuner, and had to order it, I remember, a la carte. That was why the Count was kept waiting. We were kept waiting, too, which seemed at the moment of more importance, since the atmosphere of the classics had given us excellent appetites. Emmeline decided upon ices and petits fours in the Corso for her party, after which they were going to let nothing interfere with their inspection of the prison of St. Paul; but we came back and ordered a haricot. In the cavernous recesses beyond the door which opened kitchen-ward, commands resounded, and a quarter of an hour later a boy walked casually through the dining-room bearing beans in a basket. Time went on, and the Senator was compelled to send word that he had not ordered the repast for the following day. The small waiter then made a pretence of activity, and brought vinegar and salt, and rolls and water. "The peutates is notta-cooks," said he in deprecation, and we were distressed to postpone the Count for those peutates. But what else was possible?

The dismaying part was that after luncheon had enabled us to regard a little thing like that with equanimity, my parents abandoned it to me. Momma said she knew she was missing a great deal, but she really didn't feel equal to entertaining the Count; her back had given out completely. The Senator wished to attend to his mail. With the assistance of his letters and telegrams he was beginning to bear up wonderfully, and, as it was just in, I hadn't the heart to interfere. "You can apologise for us, daughter," said poppa, "and say something polite about our seeing him later. Don't let him suppose we've gone back on him in any way. It's a thing no young fellow in America would think of, but with these foreigners you never can tell."

I saw at once that the Count was annoyed. He was standing in the middle of the salon, fingering his sword-hilt in a manner which expressed the most absurd irritation. So I said immediately that I was awfully sorry, but it seemed so difficult to get anything to eat in Rome at that time of year, that the head-waiter was really responsible, and wouldn't he sit down?

"I don't know what you will think of us," I went on as we shook hands. "How long have you been kind enough to wait, anyway?"

"Since a quarter of an hour—only," replied the Count, with a difficult smile, "but now that I see you it is forgotten all."

"That's very nice of you," I said. "I assure you momma was quite worked up about keeping you waiting. It's rather trying to the American temperament to be obliged to order a hurried luncheon from the market-gardener."

"So! In America you have him not—the market garden? You are each his own vegetable. Yes? Ah, how much better than the poor Italian! But Mistra and Madame Wick, they have not, I hope, the indisposition?"

"Well, I'm afraid they have, Count—something like that. They said I was to ask you to excuse them. You see they've been sight-seeing the whole morning, and that's something that can't be done by halves in your city. The stranger has to put his whole soul into it, hasn't he?"

"Ah, the whole soul! It is too fatiguing," Count Filgiatti assented. He glanced at me uncertainly, and rose. "Kindly may I ask that you give my deepest afflictions to Mistra and Madame Wick for their health?"

"Oh," I said, "if you must! But I'm here, you know." I put no hauteur into my tone, because I saw that it was a misunderstanding.

He still hesitated and I remembered that the Filgiatti intelligence probably dated from the Middle Ages, and had undergone very little alteration since. "You have made such a short visit," I said. "I must be a very bad substitute for momma and poppa."

A flash of comprehension illuminated my visitor's countenance. "I pray that you do not think such a wrong thing," he said impulsively. "If it is permitted, I again sit down."

"Do," said I, and he did. Anything else would have seemed perfectly unreasonable, and yet for the moment he twisted his moustache, apparently in the most foolish embarrassment. To put him at his ease, I told him how lovely I thought the fountains. "That's one of your most ideal connections with ancient history, don't you think?" I said. "The fact that those old aqueducts of yours have been bringing down the water to sparkle and ripple in Roman streets ever since."

"Idealissimo! And the Trevi of Bernini—I hope you threw the soldi, so that you must come back to Rome!"

"We weren't quite sure which it was," I responded, "so poppa threw soldi into all of them, to make certain. Sometimes he had to make two or three shots," and I could not help smiling at the recollection.

"Ah, the profusion!"

"I don't suppose they came to a quarter of a dollar, Count. It is the cheapest of your amusements."

The Count reflected for a moment.

"Then you wish to return to Rome," he said softly; "you take interest here?"

"Why yes," I said, "I'm not a barbarian. I'm from Illinois."

"Then why do you go away?"

"Our time is so limited."

"Ah, Mees Wick, you have all of your life." The Italians certainly have exquisite voices.

"That is true," I said thoughtfully.

"Many young American ladies now live always in Italy," pursued Count Filgiatti.

"Is that so?" I replied pleasantly. "They are domiciled here with their parents?"

"Y—yes. Sometimes it is like that. And sometimes——"

"Sometimes they are working in the studios. I know. A delightful life it must be."

The Count looked at the carpet. "Ah, signorina, you misunderstand my poor English," he said; "she means quite different."

It was not coquetry which induced me to cast down my eyes.

"The American young lady will sometimes contract alliance."

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. And if it is a good arrangimento it is always quite quite happy."

"We are said," I observed thoughtfully, "to be able, as a people, to accommodate ourselves to circumstances."

"You approve this idea! Signorina, you are so amiable, it is heavenly."

"I see no objection to it," I said. "It is entirely a matter of taste."

"And the American ladies have much taste," observed Count Filgiatti blandly.

"I'm afraid it isn't infallible," I said, "but it is charming to hear it approved."

"The American lady comes in Italy. She is young, beautiful, with a grace—ah! And perhaps there is a little income—a few dollar—but we do not speak of that—it is a trifle, only to make possible the arrangimento."

"I see," I said.

"The American lady is so perceiving—it is also a charm. The Italian gentleman has a dignity of his. He is perhaps from a family a little old. It is nothing—the matter is of the heart—but it makes possible the arrangimento."

"I have read of such things before," I said, "in the newspapers. It is most amusing to hear them corroborated on the spot. But that is one of the charms of travel, Count Filgiatti."

The Count hesitated and a shade of indecision crossed his swarthy little features. Then he added simply, "For me she has always been a vision, that American lady. It is for this that I study the English. I have thought, 'When I meet one of those so charming Americans, I will do my possible.'"

I could not help thinking of that family of eleven and the father with the saints. It was pathetic to feel one's self a realised vision without any capacity for beneficence—worse in some respects than being obliged to be unkind to hopes with no financial basis. It made one feel somehow so mercenary. But before I could think of anything to say—it was such a difficult juncture—the Count went on.

"But in the Italian idea it is better first one thing to know—the agreement of the American signorina. If she will not, the Italian nobleman is too much disgrace. It is not good to offer the name and the title if the lady say no, I do not want—take that poor thing away."

How artless it was! Yet my sympathy ebbed immediately. Not my curiosity, however. Perhaps at this or an earlier point I should have gone blushing away and forever pondered in secret the problem of Count Filgiatti's intentions. I confess that it didn't even occur to me—it was such a little Count and so far beyond the range of my emotions. Instead, I smiled in a non-committal way and said that Count Filgiatti's prudence was most unique.

"With a friend to previously discover then it is easy. But perhaps the lady will have no friends in Italy."

"You would have to be prepared for that," I said. "Certainly."

"Also she perhaps quickly go away. The Americans are so instantaneous. Maybe my vision fade like—like anything."

"In a perspective of tourists' coupons," I suggested.

For a moment there was silence, through which we could hear the scrubbing-brush of the chambermaid on the marble hall of the first floor. It seemed a final note of desolation.

"If I must speak of myself believe me it is not a nobody 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 ambassadors, 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 reduce. 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 amusement.

"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 embarrassing 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 Dicky 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 Dicky'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 embarrassed 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 substitute for the Red Book?"

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

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."

"Certainly not." He used quite unnecessary emphasis.

"William and the others having been since destroyed by fire," I continued. Mr. Mafferton looked foolish. "What a terrible scene that must have been! Didn't you feel when all that royal wax melted as if the dynasties of England had been wrecked over again! What effect did it have on dear old Victoria?"

"One question at a time," said Mr. Mafferton, and I think he smiled.

"Now you remind me of Sandford and Merton," I said, "and a place for everything and everything in its place. And punctuality is the thief of time. And many others."

"You haven't got it quite right," said Mr. Mafferton with incipient animation. "May I correct you? 'Procrastination,' not 'punctuality.'"

"Thanks," I said. I could not help observing that for quite five minutes Mr. Mafferton had made no effort to overhear the conversation between Mr. Dod and Miss Portheris. It was a trifle, but life is made up of little things.

"I don't believe we adorn our conversation with proverbs in America as much as we did," I continued. "I guess it takes too long. If you make use of a proverb you see, you've got to allow for reflection first, and reflection afterwards, and a sigh, and very few of us have time for that. It is one of our disadvantages."

Mr. Mafferton heard me with attention.

"Really!" he said in quite his old manner when we used to discuss Presidential elections and peanuts and other features of life in my republic. "That is a fact of some interest—but I see you cling to one little Americanism, Miss Wick. Do you remember"—he actually looked arch—"once assuring me that you intended to abandon the verb to 'guess'?"

"I don't know why we should leave all the good words to Shakespeare," I said, "but I was under a great many hallucinations about the American language in England, and I daresay I did."

If I responded coldly, it was at the thought of my last interview with poor dear Arthur, and his misprised larynx. But at this moment a wildly encouraging sign from Dicky reminded me that his interests and not my own emotions were to be considered.

"We mustn't reproach each other, must we," I said softly. "I don't bear a particle of malice—really and truly."

Mr. Mafferton cast a glance of alarm at Mr. Dod and Miss Portheris, who were raptly exchanging views as to the respective merits of a cleek and a brassey shot given certain peculiar bunkers and a sandy green—as if two infatuated people talking golf would have ears for anything else!

"Not on any account," he said hurriedly.

"The best quality of friendship sometimes arises out of the most unfortunate circumstances," I added. The sympathy in my voice was for Dicky and Isabel.

Mr. Mafferton looked at me expressively and the carriage drew up at the Catacombs of St. Callistus. Mrs. Portheris was awaiting us by the gate, however, so in getting out I gave my hand to Dicky.

Inside and outside the gate, how quiet it was. Nothing on the Appian Way but dust and sunlight, nothing in the field within the walls but yellowing grass and here and there a field-daisy bending in the silence. It made one think of an old faded water-colour, washed in with tears, that clings to its significance though all its reality is gone. Then we saw a little bare house to the left with an open door, and inside found Brothers Demetrius and Eusebius in Trappist gowns and ropes, who would sell us beads for the profitable employment of our souls, and chocolate and photographs, and wonderful eucalyptus liqueur from the Three Fountains, and when we had well bought would show us the city of the long, long dead of which they were custodians. They were both obliging enough to speak English, Brother Demetrius imperfectly and haltingly, and without the assistance of those four front teeth which are so especially necessary to a foreign tongue, Brother Eusebius fluently, and with such richness of dialect that we were not at all surprised to learn that he had served his Pope for some years in the State of New York.

"For de ladi de chocolate. Ith it not?" said Brother Demetrius, with an inducive smile. "It ith de betht in de worl', dis chocolate."

"Don't you believe him," said Brother Eusebius, "he's known as the oldest of the Roman frauds. Wants your money, that's what he wants." Brother Demetrius shook his fist in amicable, wagging protest. "That's the way he goes on, you know—quarrelsome old party. But I don't say it's bad chocolate. Try it, young lady, try it."

He handed a bit to Isabel, who looked at her momma.

"There is no possible objection, my dear," said Mrs. Portheris, and she nibbled it.

Dicky invested wildly.

"Dese photograff dey are very pritty," remarked Brother Demetrius to momma, who was turning over some St. Stephens and St. Cecilias.

"He'd say anything to sell them," put in Brother Eusebius. "He never thinks of his immortal soul, any more than if he was a poor miserable heretic. He'll tell you they're originals next, taken by Nero at the time. You're all good Catholics, of course?"

"We are not any kind of Catholics," said Mrs. Portheris severely.

"I'll give you my blessing all the same, and no extra charge. But the saints forbid that I should be selling beads made out of their precious bones to Protestants."

"I'll take that string," said momma.

"I wouldn't do it on any account," continued Brother Eusebius, as he wrapped them up in blue paper, but momma still attaches a certain amount of veneration to those beads.

"And what can I do for you, sir?" continued Brother Eusebius to the Senator, rubbing his hands. "What'll be the next thing?"

"The Early Christians," replied poppa laconically, "if it's all the same to you."

"Just in half a shake. Don't hurry yourselves. They'll keep, you know—they've kept a good long while already. Now you, madam," said Brother Eusebius to Mrs. Portheris, "have never had the influenza, I know. It only attacks people advanced in life."

"Indeed I have," replied that lady. "Twice."

"Is that so! Well, you never would have had it if you'd been protected with this liqueur of ours. It's death and burial on influenza," and Brother Eusebius shook the bottle.

"I consider," said Mrs. Portheris solemnly, "that eucalyptus in another form saved my life. But I inhaled it."

"Tho," ventured Brother Demetrius, "tho did I. But the wine ith for internal drinking."

"Listen to him! Eternal drinking, that's what he means. You never saw such an old boy for the influenza—gets it every week or so. How many bottles, madam? Just a nip, after dinner, and you don't know how poetic it will make you feel into the bargain."

"One bottle," replied Mrs. Portheris, "the larger size, please. Anything with eucalyptus in it must be salutary. And as we are going underground, where it is bound to be damp, I think I'll have a little now."

"That's what I call English common-sense," exclaimed Brother Eusebius, getting out a glass. "Will nobody keep the lady company? It's Popish, but it's good."

Nobody would. Momma observed rather uncautiously that the smell of it was enough, at which Mrs. Portheris remarked, with some asperity, that she hoped Mrs. Wick would never be obliged to be indebted to the "smell." "It is quite excellent," she said, "most cordial. I really think, as a precaution, I'll take another glass."

"Isn't it pretty strong?" asked poppa.



"The influenza is stronger," replied Mrs. Portheris oracularly, and finished her second potation.

"And nothing," said Brother Eusebius sadly, "for the gentleman standing outside the door, who doesn't approve of encouraging the Roman Catholic Church in any respect whatever. Dear me! dear me! we do get some queer customers." At which Mr. Mafferton frowned portentously. But nothing seemed to have any effect on Brother Eusebius.

"There are such a lot of you, and you are sure to be so inquisitive, that we'll both go with you," said he, and took candles from a shelf. Not ordinary candles at all—coils of long, slender strips, with one end turned up to burn. At the sight of them momma shuddered and said she hadn't thought it would be dark, and took the Senator's arm as a precautionary measure. Then we followed the monks Eusebius and Demetrius, who wrapped shawls round their sloping shoulders and hurried across the grass towards the little brick entrance to the Catacombs, shading their candles from the wind that twisted their brown gowns round their legs, with all the anxiety to get it over shown by janitors of buildings of this world.



CHAPTER XIV.

At first through the square chambers of the early Popes and the narrow passages lined with empty cells, nearest to the world outside, we kept together, and it was mainly Eusebius who discoursed of the building of the Catacombs, which he informed us had a pagan beginning.

"But our blessed early bishops said, 'Why should the devil have all the accommodations?' and when once the Church got its foot in there wasn't much room for him. But a few pagans there are here to this day in better company than they ever kept above ground," remarked Brother Eusebius.

"Can you tell them apart?" asked Mr. Dod, "the Christians and the Pagans?"

"Yes," replied that holy man, "by the measurements of the jaw-bone. The Christians, you see, were always lecturing the other fellows, so their jaw-bones grew to an awful size. Some of 'em are simply parliamentary."

"Dat," said Brother Demetrius anxiously—as nobody had laughed—"ith a joke."

"I noticed the intention," said poppa. "It's down in the guide-book that you've been 'absolved from the vow of silence'—is that correct?"

"Right you are," said Brother Eusebius. "What about it?"

"Oh, nothing—only it explains a good deal. I guess you enjoy it, don't you?"

But Brother Eusebius was bending over a cell in better preservation than most of them, and was illuminating with his candle the bones of the dweller in it. The light flickered on the skull of the Early Christian and the tonsure of the modern one and made comparisons. It also cut the darkness into solid blocks, and showed us broken bits of marble, faint stains of old frescoes, strange rough letters, and where it wavered furthest the uncertain lines of a graven cross.

"Here's one of the original inhabitants," remarked Eusebius. "He's been here all the time. I hope the ladies don't mind looking at him in his bones?"

"Thee, you can pick him up," said old Demetrius, handing a thigh-bone to momma, who shrank from the privilege. "It ith quite dry."

"It seems such a liberty," she said, "and he looks so incomplete without it. Do put it back."

"That's the way I feel," remarked Dicky, "but I don't believe he'd mind our looking at a toe-bone. Are his toe-bones all there?"

"No," replied Demetrius, "I have count another day and he ith nine only. Here ith a few."

"It is certainly a very solemn and unusual privilege," remarked Mr. Mafferton, as the toe-bones went round, "to touch the mortal remnant of an Early Christian."

"That altogether depends," said the Senator, "upon what sort of an Early Christian he was. Maybe he was a saint of the first water, and maybe he was a pillar of the church that ran a building society. Or, maybe, he was only an average sort of Early Christian like you or me, in which case he must be very uncomfortable at the idea of inspiring so much respect. How are you going to tell?"

"The gentleman is right," said Brother Eusebius, and in considering poppa's theory in its relation to the doubtful character before them nobody noticed, except me, the petty larceny, by Richard Dod, of one Early Christian toe-bone. His expression, I am glad to say, made me think he had never stolen anything before; but you couldn't imagine a more promising beginning for a career of embezzlement. As we moved on I mentioned to him that the man who would steal the toe-bone of an Early Christian, who had only nine, was capable of most crimes, at which he assured me that he hadn't such a thing about him outside of his boots, which shows how one wrong step leads to another.

We fell presently into two parties—Dicky, Mrs. Portheris, and I holding to the skirts of Brother Demetrius. Brother Demetrius knew a great deal about the Latin inscriptions and the history of Pope Damasus and the chapel of the Bishops, and how they found the body of St. Cecilia, after eight hundred years, fresh and perfect, and dressed in rich vestments embroidered in gold; but his way of imparting it seriously interfered with the value of his information, and we looked regretfully after the other party.

"Here we have de tomb of Anterus and Fabianus——"

"I think we should keep up with the rest," interrupted Mrs. Portheris.

"Oh, I too, I know all dese Catacomb—I will take you everywheres—and here, too, we have buried Entychianus."

"Where is Brother Eusebius taking the others?" asked Dicky.

"Now I tell you: he mith all de valuable ting, he is too fat and lazy; only joke, joke, joke. And here we has buried Epis—martyr. Epis he wath martyr."

The others, with their lights and voices, came into full view where four passages met in a cubicle. "Oh," cried Isabel, catching sight of us, "do come and see Jonah and the whale. It's too funny for anything."

"And where Damathuth found here the many good thainth he——"

"We would like to see Jonah," entreated Dicky.

"Well," said Brother Demetrius crossly, "you go thee him—you catch up. I will no more. You do not like my Englis' very well. You go with fat old joke-fellow, and I return the houth. Bethide, it ith the day of my lumbago." And the venerable Demetrius, with distinct temper, turned his back on us and waddled off.

We looked at each other in consternation.

"I'm afraid we've hurt his feelings," said Dicky.

"You must go after him, Mr. Dod, and apologize," commanded Mrs. Portheris.

"Do you suppose he knows the way out?" I asked.

"It is a shame," said Dicky. "I'll go and tell him we'd rather have him than Jonah any day."

Brother Demetrius was just turning a corner. Darkness encompassed him, lying thick between us. He looked, in the light of his candle, like something of Rembrandt's suspended for a moment before us. Dicky started after him, and, presently, Mrs. Portheris and I were regarding each other with more friendliness than I would have believed possible across our flaring dips in the silence of the Catacombs.

"Poor old gentleman," I said; "I hope Mr. Dod will overtake him."

"So do I, indeed," said Mrs. Portheris. "I fear we have been very inconsiderate. But young people are always so impatient," she added, and put the blame where it belonged.

I did not retaliate with so much as a reproachful glance. Even as a censor Mrs. Portheris was so eminently companionable at the moment. But as we waited for Dicky's return neither of us spoke again. It made too much noise. Minutes passed, I don't know how many, but enough for us to look cautiously round to see if there was anything to sit on. There wasn't, so Mrs. Portheris took my arm. We were not people to lean on each other in the ordinary vicissitudes of life, and even under the circumstances I was aware that Mrs. Portheris was a great deal to support, but there was comfort in every pound of her. At last a faint light foreshadowed itself in the direction of Dicky's disappearance, and grew stronger, and was resolved into a candle and a young man, and Mr. Dod, very much paler than when he left, was with us again. Mrs. Portheris and I started apart as if scientifically impelled, and exclaimed simultaneously, "Where is Brother Demetrius?"

"Nowhere in this graveyard," said Dicky. "He's well upstairs by this time. Must have taken a short cut. I lost sight of him in about two seconds."

"That was very careless of you, Mr. Dod," said Mrs. Portheris, "very careless indeed. Now we have no option, I suppose, but to rejoin the others; and where are they?"

They were certainly not where they had been. Not a trace nor an echo—not a trace nor an echo—of anything, only parallelograms of darkness in every direction, and our little circle of light flickering on the tombs of Anterus, and Fabianus, and Entychianus, and Epis—martyr—and we three within it, looking at each other.

"If you don't mind," said Dicky, "I would rather not go after them. I think it's a waste of time. Personally I am quite contented to have rejoined you. At one time I thought I shouldn't be able to, and the idea was trying."

"We wouldn't dream of letting you go again," said Mrs. Portheris and I simultaneously. "But," continued Mrs. Portheris, "we will all go in search of the others. They can't be very far away. There is nothing so alarming as standing still."

We proceeded along the passage in the direction of our last glimpse of our friends and relatives, passing a number of most interesting inscriptions, which we felt we had not time to pause and decipher, and came presently to a divergence which none of us could remember. Half of the passage went down three steps, and turned off to the left under an arch, and the other half climbed two, and immediately lost itself in blackness of darkness. In our hesitation Dicky suddenly stooped to a trace of pink in the stone leading upward, and picked it up—three rose petals.

"That settles it," he exclaimed. "Isa—Miss Portheris was wearing a rose. I gave it to her myself."

"Did you, indeed," said Isabel's mamma coldly. "My dear child, how anxious she will be!"

"Oh, I should think not," I said hopefully. "I am sure she can trust Mr. Dod to take care of himself—and of us, too, for the matter of that."

"Mr. Dod!" exclaimed Mrs. Portheris with indignation. "My poor child's anxiety will be for her mother."

And we let it go at that. But Dicky put the rose petals in his pocket with the toe-bone, and hopefully remarked that there would be no difficulty about finding her now. I mentioned that I had parents also, at that moment, lost in the Catacombs, but he did not apologize.

The midnight of the place, as we walked on, seemed to deepen, and its silence to grow more profound. The tombs passed us in solemn grey ranges, one above the other—the long tombs of the grown-up people, and the shorter ones of the children, and the very little ones of the babies. The air held a concentrated dolor of funerals sixteen centuries old, and the four dim stone walls seemed to have crept closer together. "I think I will take your arm, Mr. Dod," said Mrs. Portheris, and "I think I will take your other arm, Mr. Dod," said I.

"Thank you," replied Dicky, "I should be glad of both of yours," which may look ambiguous now, but we quite understood it at the time. It made rather uncomfortable walking in places, but against that overwhelming majority of the dead it was comforting to feel ourselves a living unit. We stumbled on, taking only the most obvious turnings, and presently the passage widened into another little square chamber. "More bishops!" groaned Dicky, holding up his candle.

"Perhaps," I replied triumphantly, "but Jonah, anyway," and I pointed him out on the wall, in two shades of brown, a good deal faded, being precipitated into the jaws of a green whale with paws and horns and a smile, also a curled body and a three-forked tail. The wicked deed had two accomplices only, who had apparently stopped rowing to do it. Underneath was a companion sketch of the restitution of Jonah, in perfect order, by the whale, which had, nevertheless, grown considerably stouter in the interval, while an amiable stranger reclined in an arbor, with his hand under his head, and looked on.

"As a child your intelligence promised well," said Dicky; "that is Jonah, though not of the Revised Version. I don't think Bible stories ought to be illustrated, do you, Mrs. Portheris? It has such a bad effect on the imagination."

"We can talk of that at another time, Mr. Dod. At present I wish to be restored to my daughter. Let us push on at once. And please explain how it is that we have had to walk so far to get to this place, which was only a few yards from where we were standing when Brother Demetrius left us!" Mrs. Portheris's words were commanding, but her tone was the tone of supplication.

"I'm afraid I can't," said Dicky, "but for that very reason I think we had better stay where we are. They are pretty sure to look for us here."

"I cannot possibly wait to be looked for. I must be restored to my daughter! You must make an effort, Mr. Dod. And, now that I think of it, I have left the key of our boxes in the drawer of the dressing-table, and the key of that is in it, and the housemaid has the key of the room. It is absolutely necessary that I should go back to the hotel at once."

"My dear lady," said Dicky, "don't you realize that we are lost?"

"Lost! Impossible! Shout, Mr. Dod!"

Dicky shouted, and all the Early Christians answered him. There are said to be seven millions. Mrs. Portheris grasped his arm convulsively.

"Don't do that again," she said, "on any account. Let us go on!"

"Much better not," protested Dicky.

"On! on!" commanded Mrs. Portheris. There was no alternative. We put Dicky in the middle again, and cautiously stepped out. A round of blue paper under our chaperone's arm caught the eye of Mr. Dod. "What luck!" he exclaimed, "you have brought the liqueur with you, Mrs. Portheris. I think we'd better all have some, if you don't mind. I've been in warmer cemeteries."

As she undid the bottle, Mrs. Portheris declared that she already felt the preliminary ache of influenza. She exhorted us to copious draughts, but it was much too nasty for more than a sip, though warming to a degree.

"Better take very little at a time," Dicky suggested, but Mrs. Portheris reaffirmed her faith in the virtues of eucalyptus, and with such majesty as was compatible with the neck of the bottle, drank deeply. Then we stumbled on. Presently Mrs. Portheris yawned widely twice, thrice, and again. "I beg your pardon," said she, "I don't seem able to help it."

"It's the example of these gaping sepulchres," Dicky replied. "Don't apologize."

The passages grew narrower and more complex, the tombs more irregular. We came to one that partly blocked the path, tilted against the main wall like a separate sarcophagus, though it was really part of the solid rock. Looking back, a wall seemed to have risen behind us; it was a distinctly perplexing moment, hard upon the nerves. The tomb was empty, except for a few bones that might have been anything huddled at the bottom, and Mrs. Portheris sat down on the lower end of it. "I really do not feel able to go any further," she said; "the ascent is so perpendicular."

I was going to protest that the place was as level as a street, but Dicky forestalled me. "Eucalyptus," he said soothingly, "often has that effect."

"We are lost," continued Mrs. Portheris lugubriously, "in the Catacombs. We may as well make up our minds to it. We came here this morning at ten o'clock, and I should think, I should think—thish mus' be minnight on the following day."

"My watch has run down," said Dicky, "but you are probably quite right, Mrs. Portheris."

"It is doubtful," Mrs. Portheris went on, pulling herself together, "whether we are ever found. There are nine hundred miles of Catacombs. Unless we become cannibals we are likely to die of starvation. If we do become cannibals, Mr. Dod," she added, sternly endeavouring to look Dicky in the eye, "I hope you will remember what ish due to ladies."

"I will offer myself up gladly," said he, and I could not help reflecting upon the comfort of a third party with a sense of humour under the circumstances.

"Thass right," said Mrs. Portheris, nodding approvingly, and much oftener than was necessary. "Though there isn't much on you—you won't go very far." Then after a moment of gloomy reflection she blew out her candle, and, before I could prevent it, mine also. Dicky hastily put his out of reach.

"Three candles at once," she said virtuously, "in a room of this size! It is wicked extravagance, neither more nor less."

I assure you you would have laughed, even in the Catacombs, and Dicky and I mutually approached the borders of hysteria in our misplaced mirth. Mrs. Portheris smiled in unison somewhat foolishly, and we saw that slumber was overtaking her. Gradually and unconsciously she slipped down and back, and presently rested comfortably in the sepulchre of her selection, sound asleep.

"She is right in it," said Dicky, holding up his candle. "She's a lulu," he added disgustedly, "with her eucalyptus."

This was disrespectful, but consider the annoyance of losing a third of our forces against seven million Early Christian ghosts. We sat down, Dicky and I, with our backs against the tomb of Mrs. Portheris, and when Dicky suggested that I might like him to hold my hand for a little while I made no objection whatever. We decided that the immediate prospect, though uncomfortable, was not alarming, that we had been wandering about for possibly an hour, judging by the dwindling of Dicky's candle, and that search must be made for us as soon as ever the others went above ground and heard from Brother Demetrius the tale of our abandonment. I said that if I knew anything about momma's capacity for underground walking, the other party would have gone up long ago, and that search for us was, therefore, in all likelihood, proceeding now, though perhaps it would be wiser, in case we might want them, to burn only one candle at a time. We had only to listen intently and we would hear the voices of the searchers. We did listen, but all that we heard was a faint far distant moan, which Dicky tried to make me believe was the wind in a ventilating shaft. We could also hear a prolonged thumping very close to us, but that we could each account for personally. And nothing more.

"Dicky," said I after a time, "if it weren't for the candle I believe I should be frightened."

"It's about the most parsimonious style of candle I've ever seen," replied Dicky, "but it would give a little more light if it were trimmed." And he opened his pocket-knife.

"Be very careful," I begged, and Dicky said "Rather!"

"Did you ever notice," he asked, "that you can touch flame all right if you are only quick enough? Now, see me take the top off that candle." If Dicky had a fault it was a tendency to boastfulness. He took the lighted wick between his thumb and his knife-blade, and skilfully scooped the top off. It blazed for two seconds on the edge of the blade—just long enough to show us that all the flame had come with it. Then it went out, and in the darkness at my side I heard a scuffling among waistcoat pockets, and a groan.

"No matches?" I asked in despair.

"Left 'em in my light overcoat pockets, Mamie. I'm a bigger ass than—than Mafferton."

"You are," I said with decision. "No Englishman goes anywhere without his light overcoat. What have you done with yours?"

"Left it in the carriage," replied Dick humbly.

"That shows," said I bitterly, "how little you have learned in England. Propriety in connection with you is evidently like water and a duck's back. An intelligent person would have acquired the light overcoat principle in three days, and never have gone out without it afterward."

"Oh, go on!" replied Dick fiercely. "Go on. I don't mind. I'm not so stuck on myself as I was. But if we've got to die together you might as well forgive me. You'll have to do it at the last moment, you know."

"I suppose you have begun to review your past life," I said grimly, "and that's why you are using so much American slang."

Then, as Dicky was again holding my hands, I maintained a dignified silence. You cannot possibly quarrel with a person who is holding your hand, no matter how you feel.

"There's only one thing that consoles me in connection with those matches," Dicky mentioned after a time. "They were French ones."

"I don't know what that has to do with it," I said.

"That's because you don't smoke," Dicky replied. And I had not the heart to pursue the inquiry. Time went on, black and silent, as it had been doing down there for sixteen centuries. We stopped arguing about why they didn't come to look for us, each privately wondering if it was possible that we had strayed too ingeniously ever to be found. We talked of many things to try to keep up our spirits, the conviction of the St. James's Gazette that American young ladies live largely upon chewing-gum, and other topics far removed from our surroundings, but the effort was not altogether successful. Dicky had just permitted himself to make a reference to his mother in Chicago when a sound behind us made us both start violently, and then cheered us immensely—a snore from Mrs. Portheris within the tomb. It was not, happily, a single accidental snore, but the forerunner of a regular series, and we hung upon them as they issued, comforted and supported. We were vaguely aware that we could have no better defence against disembodied Early Christians, when, in the course of an hour, Mrs. Portheris sat up suddenly among the bones of the original occupant and asked what time it was. We felt a pang of regret at losing it.

After the first moment or two that lady realized the situation completely. "I suppose," she said, "we have been down here about two days. I am quite faint with hunger. I have often read that candles, under these terrible circumstances, are sustaining. What a good thing we have got the candles."

Dicky squeezed my hand nervously, but our chaperone had slept off the eucalyptus and had no longer one cannibal thought.

"I don't think it is time for candles yet," he said reassuringly. "You have been asleep, you know, Mrs. Portheris."

"If you have eaten them already, I consider that you have taken an unfair advantage, a very unfair advantage."

"Here is mine!" exclaimed Dicky nobly. "I hope I can deny myself, Mrs. Portheris, to that extent."

"And mine," I echoed; "but really, Mrs. Portheris——"

Another pressure of Dicky's hand reminded me—I am ashamed to confess it—that if Mrs. Portheris was bent upon the unnecessary consumption of Roman tallow there was nothing in her past treatment of either of us to induce us to prevent her. The dictates of humanity, I know, should have influenced us otherwise, in connection with tallow, but they seemed for the moment to have faded as completely out of our bosoms as they did out of the early Roman persecutors! It seemed to me that all my country's wrongs at the hands of Mrs. Portheris rose up and clamoured to be avenged, and Dicky told me afterward that he felt just the same way.

"Then I have done you an injustice," she continued; "I apologize, I am sure, and I find that I have my own candle, thank you. It is adhering to the side of my bonnet."

We were perfectly silent.

"Perhaps I ought to try and wait a little longer," Mrs. Portheris hesitated, "but I feel such a sinking, and I assure you I have fallen away. My garments are quite loose."

"Of course it depends," said Dicky scientifically, "upon the amount of carbon the system has in reserve. Personally I think I can hold out a little longer. I had an excellent breakfast this m——, the day we came here. But if I felt a sinking——"

"Waugh!" said Mrs. Portheris.

"Have you—have you begun?" I exclaimed in agony, while Dicky shook in silence.

"I have," replied Mrs. Portheris hurriedly; "where—where is the eucalyptus? Ah! I have it!"

"Ben-en-euh! It is nutritive, I am sure, but it requires a cordial."

The darkness for some reason seemed a little less black and the silence less oppressive.

"I have only eaten about three inches," remarked Mrs. Portheris presently. Dicky and I were incapable of conversation—"but I—but I cannot go on at present. It is really not nice."

"An overdone flavour, hasn't it?" asked Dicky, between gasps.

"Very much so! Horribly! But the eucalyptus will, I hope, enable me to extract some benefit from it. I think I'll lie down again." And we heard the sound of a cork restored to its bottle as Mrs. Portheris returned to the tomb. It was quite half an hour before she woke up, declaring that a whole night had passed and that she was more famished than ever. "But," she added, "I feel it impossible to go on with the candle. There is something about the wick——"

"I know," said Dicky sympathetically, "unless you are born in Greenland, you cannot really enjoy them. There is an alternative, Mrs. Portheris, but I didn't like to mention it——"

"I know," she replied, "shoe leather. I have read of that, too, and I think it would be an improvement. Have you got a pocket-knife, Mr. Dod?"

Dicky produced it without a pang and we heard the rapid sound of an unbuttoning shoe. "I had these made to order at two guineas, in the Burlington Arcade," said Mrs. Portheris regretfully.

"Then," said Dicky gravely, groping to hand her the knife, "they will be of good kid, and probably tender."

"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Portheris; "we must all have some. Will you—will you carve, Mr. Dod?"

I remembered with a pang how punctilious they were in England about asking gentlemen to perform this duty, and I received one more impression of the permanence of British ideas of propriety. But Dicky declined; said he couldn't undertake it—for a party, and that Mrs. Portheris must please help herself and never mind him, he would take anything there was, a little later, with great hospitality. However, she insisted, and my portion, I know, was a generous one, a slice off the ankle. Mrs. Portheris begged us to begin; she said it was so cheerless eating by one's self, and made her feel quite greedy.

"Really," she said, "it is much better than candle—a little difficult to masticate perhaps, but, if I do say it myself, quite a tolerable flavour. If I only hadn't used that abominable French polish this morning. What do you think, Mr. Dod?"

"I think," said Dicky, jumping suddenly to his feet, while my heart stood still with anticipation, "that if there's enough of that shoe left, you had better put it on again, for I hear people calling us," and then, making a trumpet with his hands, Dicky shouted till all the Roman skeletons sufficiently intact turned to listen. But this time the answer came back from their descendants, running with a flash of lanterns.



* * * * *

I will skip the scene of our reunion, because I am not good at matters which are moving, and we were all excessively moved. It is necessary to explain, however, that Brother Demetrius, when he went above ground, felt his lumbago so acutely that he retired to bed, and was therefore not visible when the others came up. As we had planned beforehand, the Senator decided to go on to the Jewish Catacombs, taking it for granted that we would follow, while Brother Eusebius, when he found Demetrius in bed, also took it for granted that we had gone on ahead. He did not inquire, he said, because the virtue of taciturnity being denied to them in the exercise of their business, they always diligently cultivated it in private. My own conviction was that they were not on speaking terms. Our friends and relatives, after looking at the Jewish Catacombs, had driven back to the hotel, and only began to feel anxious at tea time, as they knew the English refreshment-rooms were closed for the season, like everything else, and Isabel asserted with tears that if her mother was above ground she would not miss her tea. So they all drove back to the Catacombs, and effected our rescue after we had been immured for exactly seven hours. I wish to add, to the credit of Mr. Richard Dod, that he has never yet breathed a syllable to anybody about the manner in which Mrs. Portheris sustained nature during our imprisonment, although he must often have been strongly tempted to do so. And neither have I—until now.



CHAPTER XV.

"The thing that struck me on our drive to the hotel," remarked momma, "was that Naples was almost entirely inhabited by the lower classes."

"That is very noticeable indeed," concurred Mr. Mafferton, who was also there for the first time. "The people of the place are no doubt in the country at this time of the year, but one would naturally expect to see more respectable persons about."

"Now you'll excuse me, Mafferton," said the Senator, "but that's just one of those places where I lose the trail of the English language as used by the original inventors. Where do you draw the line of distinction between people and persons?"

"It's a mere Briticism, poppa," I observed. Mr. Mafferton loathed being obliged to defend his native tongue at any point. That very morning the modus vivendi between us, that I had done so much for Dicky's sake to establish, had been imperilled by my foolish determination to know why all Englishmen pronounced "white" "wite."

"I daresay," said poppa gloomily, "but I am not on to it and I don't suppose I ever shall be. What struck me on the ride up through the city was the perambulating bath. Going round on wheels to be hired out, just the ordinary tin tub of commerce. The fellows were shouting something—'Who'll buy a wash!' I suppose. But that's the disadvantage of a foreign language; it leaves so much to the imagination."

"The goats were nice," I said, "so promiscuous. I saw one of them looking out of a window."

"And the dear little horses with bells round their necks," momma added, "and the tall yellow houses with the stucco dropping off, and especially the fruit shops and the flower stalls that make pictures down every narrow street. Such masses of colour!"

"We might have hit on a worse hotel," observed Mr. Mafferton. "Very tolerable soup, to-night."

"I can't say I noticed the soup," said the Senator. "Fact is, soup to me is just—soup. I presume there are different kinds, but beyond knowing most of them from gruel I don't pretend to be a connoisseur."

"What nonsense, Alexander!" said momma sternly.

"Some are saltier than others, Augusta, I admit. But what I was going on to say was that for clear monotony the dinner programmes ever since Paris have beaten the record. Bramley told me how it would be. Consommy, he said—that's soup—consommy, the whole enduring time. Fish frite or fried, roast beef a l'Italienne or mixed up with vegetables. Beans—well, just beans, and if you don't like 'em you can leave 'em, but that fourth course is never anything but beans. After that you get a chicken cut up with lettuce, because if it was put on the table whole some disappointed investigator might find out there was nothing inside and file a complaint. Anything to support that unstuffed chicken? Nope. Finishing up with a compote of canned fruit, mostly California pears that want more cooking, and after that cheese, if you like cheese, and coffee charged extra. Thanks to Bramley, I can't say I didn't know what to expect, but that doesn't increase the variety any. Now in America—I understand you have been to America, sir?"

"I have travelled in the States to some extent," responded Mr. Mafferton.

"Seen Brooklyn Bridge and the Hudson, I presume. Had a look at Niagara Falls and a run out to Chicago, maybe. That was before I had the pleasure of meeting you. Get as far as the Yosemite? No? Well, you were there long enough anyhow to realise that our hotels are run on the free will system."

"I remember," said Mr. Mafferton. "All the luxuries of the coming season, printed on a card usually about a foot long. A great variety, and very difficult to understand. When I had finished trying to translate the morning paper, I used to attack the card. I found that it threw quite a light upon early American civilisation from the aboriginal side. 'Hominy,' 'Grits,' 'Buckwheats,' 'Cantelopes,' are some of the dishes I remember. 'Succotash,' too, and 'creamed squash,' but I think they occurred at dinner generally. I used to summon the waiter, and when he came to take my orders I would ask him to derive those dishes. I had great difficulty after a time in summoning a waiter. But the plan gave me many interesting half hours. In the end I usually ordered a chop."

"I don't want to run down your politics," poppa said, "but that's what I call being too conservative. Augusta, if you have had enough of the Bay of Naples and the moon, I might remind you of the buried city of Pompeii, which is on for to-morrow. It's a good long way out, and you'll want all your powers of endurance. I'm going down to have a smoke, and a look at the humorous publications of Italy. There's no sort of sociability about these hotels, but the head portier knows a little English."

"I suppose I had better retire," momma admitted, "though I sometimes wish Mr. Wick wasn't so careful of my nervous system. Delicious scene, good-night." And she too left us.

We were sitting in a narrow balcony that seemed to jut out of a horn of the city's lovely crescent. Dicky and Isabel occupied chairs at a distance nicely calculated to necessitate a troublesome raising of the voice to communicate with them. Mrs. Portheris was still confined to her room with what was understood to be the constitutional shock of her experiences in the Catacombs. Dicky, in joyful privacy, assured me that nobody could recover from a combination of Roman tallow and French kid in less than a week, but I told him he did not know the British constitution.



The moon sailed high over Naples, and lighted the lapping curve of her perfect bay in the deepest, softest blue, and showed us some of the nearer houses of the city, sloping and shouldering and creeping down, that they were pink and yellow and parti-coloured, while the rest curved and glimmered round the water in all tender tones of white holding up a thousand lamps. And behind, curving too, the hills stood clear, with the grey phantom of Vesuvius in sharp familiar lines, sending up its stream of steady red, and now and then a leaping flame. It was a scene to wake the latent sentiment of even a British bosom. I thought I would stay a little longer.

"So you usually ordered a chop?" I said by way of resuming the conversation. "I hope the chops were tender."

(I have a vague recollection that my intonation was.)

"There are worse things in the States than the mutton," replied Mr. Mafferton, moving his chair to enable him, by twisting his neck not too ostentatiously, to glance occasionally at Dicky and Isabel, "but the steaks were distinctly better than the chops—distinctly."

"So all connoisseurs say," I replied respectfully. "Would you like to change seats with me? I don't mind sitting with my back to—Vesuvius."

Mr. Mafferton blushed—unless it was the glow from the volcano.

"Not on my account," he said. "By any means."

"You do not fear a demonstration," I suggested. "And yet the forces of nature are very uncertain. That is your English nerve. It deserves all that is said of it."

Mr. Mafferton looked at me suspiciously.

"I fancy you must be joking," he said.

He sometimes complained that the great bar to his observation of the American character was the American sense of humour. It was one of the things he had made a note of, as interfering with the intelligent stranger's enjoyment of the country.

"I suppose," I replied reproachfully, "you never pause to think how unkind a suspicion like that is? When one wishes to be taken seriously."

"I fear I do not," Mr. Mafferton confessed. "Perhaps I jump rather hastily to conclusions sometimes. It's a family trait. We get it through the Warwick-Howards on my mother's side."

"Then, of course, there can't be any objection to it. But when one knows a person's opinion of frivolity, always to be thought frivolous by the person is hard to bear. Awfully."

And if my expression, as I gazed past this Englishman at Vesuvius, was one of sad resignation, there was nothing in the situation to exhilarate anybody.

The impassive countenance of Mr. Mafferton was disturbed by a ray of concern. The moonlight enabled me to see it quite clearly. "Pray, Miss Wick," he said, "do not think that. Who was it that wrote——"

"A little humour now and then Is relished by the wisest men."

"I don't know," I said, "but there's something about it that makes me think it is English in its origin. Do you really endorse it?"

"Certainly I do. And your liveliness, Miss Wick, if I may say so, is certainly one of your accomplishments. It is to some extent a racial characteristic. You share it with Mr. Dod."

I glanced in the direction of the other two. "They seem desperately bored with each other," I said. "They are not saying anything. Shall we join them?"

"Dod is probably sulking because I am monopolising you. Mrs. Portheris, you see, has let me into the secret"—Mr. Mafferton looked very arch—"By all means, if you think he ought to be humoured."

"No," I said firmly, "humouring is very bad for Dicky. But I don't think he should be allowed to wreak his ill-temper on Isabel."

"I have noticed a certain lack of power to take the initiative about Miss Portheris," said Mr. Mafferton coldly, "especially when her mother is not with her. She seems quite unable to extricate herself from situations like the present."

"She is so young," I said apologetically, "and besides, I don't think you could expect her to go quite away and leave us here together, you know. She would naturally have foolish ideas. She doesn't know anything about our irrevocable Past."

"Why should she care?" asked Mr. Mafferton hypocritically.

"Oh," I said. "I don't know, I'm sure. Only Mrs. Portheris——"

"She is certainly a charming girl," said Mr. Mafferton.

"And so well brought up," said I.

"Ye-es. Perhaps a little self-contained."

"She has no need to rely upon her conversation." I observed.

"I don't know. The fact is——"

"What is the fact?" I asked softly. "After all that has passed I think I may claim your confidence, Mr. Mafferton." I had some difficulty afterwards in justifying this, but it seemed entirely appropriate at the time.

"The fact is, that up to three weeks ago I believed Miss Portheris to be the incarnation of so many unassuming virtues and personal charms that I was almost ready to make a fresh bid for domestic happiness in her society. I have for some time wished to marry——"

"I know," I said sympathetically.

"But during the last three weeks I have become a little uncertain."

"There shouldn't be the slightest uncertainty," I observed.

"Marriage in England is such a permanent institution."

"I have known it to last for years even in the United States," I sighed.

"And it is a serious responsibility to undertake to reciprocate in full the devotion of an attached wife."

"I fancy Isabel is a person of strong affections," I said; "one notices it with her mother. And any one who could dote on Mrs. Portheris would certainly——"

"I fear so," said Mr. Mafferton.

"I understand," I continued, "why you hesitate. And really, feeling as you do, I wouldn't be precipitate."

"I won't," he said.

"Watch the state of your own heart," I counselled, "for some little time. You may be sure that hers will not alter;" and, as we said good-night, I further suggested that it would be a kindness if Mr. Mafferton would join my lonely parent in the smoking-room.

I don't know what happened on the balcony after that.



CHAPTER XVI.

"Mamma," said Isabel, as we gathered in the hotel vestibule for the start to Pompeii, "is really not fit to undertake it."

"You'll excuse me, Aunt Caroline," remarked the Senator, "but your complexion isn't by any means right yet. It's a warm day and a long drive. Just as likely as not you'll be down sick after it."

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Portheris. "I thank my stars I have got no enfeebled American constitution. I am perfectly equal to it, thank you."

"It's most unwise," observed Mr. Mafferton.

"Darned—I mean extremely risky," sighed Dicky.

Mrs. Portheris faced upon them. "And pray what do you know about it?" she demanded.

Then momma put in her oar, taking most unguardedly a privilege of relationship. "Of course, you are the best judge of how you feel yourself, Aunt Caroline, but we are told there are some steps to ascend when we get there—and you know how fleshy you are."

In the instant of ominous silence which occurred while Mrs. Portheris was getting her chin into the angle of its greatest majesty, Mr. Mafferton considerately walked to the door. When it was accomplished she looked at momma sideways and down her nose, precisely in the manner of the late Mr. Du Maurier's ladies in Punch, in the same state of mind. She might have sat or stood to him. It was another ideal realised.

"That is the latest, the very latest Americanism which I have observed in your conversation, Augusta. In your native land it may be admissible, but please understand that I cannot permit it to be applied to me personally. To English ears it is offensive, very offensive. It is also quite improper for you to assume any familiarity with my figure. As you say, I may be aware of its corpulence, but nobody else—er—can possibly know anything about it."

Momma was speechless, and, as usual, the Senator came to the rescue. He never will allow momma to be trampled on, and there was distinct retaliation in his manner. "Look here, aunt," he said, "there's nothing profane in saying you're fleshy when you are, you know, and you don't need to remove so much as your bonnet strings for the general public to be aware of it. And when you come to America don't you ever insult anybody by calling her corpulent, which is a perfectly indecent expression. Now if you won't go back to bed and tranquillise your mind—on a plain soda——"

"I won't," said Mrs. Portheris.

"De carriages is already," said the head porter, glistening with an amiability of which we all appreciated the balm. And we entered the carriages—Mrs. Portheris and the downcast Isabel and Mr. Mafferton in one, and momma, poppa, Dicky, and I in the other. For no American would have been safe in Mrs. Portheris's carriage for at least two hours, and this came home even to Mr. Dod.

"Never again!" exclaimed momma as we rattled down among the narrow streets that crowd under the Funicular railway. "Never again will I call that woman Aunt Caroline."

"Don't call her fleshy, my dear, that's what really irritated her," remarked the Senator. The Senator's discrimination, I have often noticed, is not the nicest thing about him.

Hours and hours it seemed to take, that drive to Pompeii. Past the ambitious confectioner with his window full of cherry pies, each cherry round and red and shining like a marble, and the plate glass dry-goods store where ready-made costumes were displayed that looked as if they might fit just as badly as those of Westbourne Grove, and so by degrees and always down hill through narrower and shabbier streets where all the women walked bareheaded and the shops were mostly turned out on the pavement for the convenience of customers, and a good many of them went up and down in wheelbarrows. And often through narrow ways so high-walled and many-windowed that it was quite cool and dusky down below, and only a strip of sun showed far up along the roofs of one side. Here and there a wheelbarrow went strolling through these streets too, and we saw at least one family marketing. From a little square window a prodigious way up came, as we passed, a cry with custom in it, and a wheelbarrow paused beneath. Then down from the window by a long, long rope slid a basket from the hands of a young woman leaning out in red, and the vendor took the opportunity of sitting down on his barrow handle till it arrived. Soldi and a piece of paper he took out of the basket and a cabbage and onions he put in, and then it went swinging upwards and he picked up his barrow again, and we rattled on and left him shouting and pushing his hat back—it was not a soft felt but a bowler—to look up at the other windows. In spite of the bowler it was a picturesque and Neapolitan incident, and it left us much divided as to the contents of the piece of paper.

"My idea is," said the Senator, "that the young woman in the red jersey was the hired girl and that note was what you might call a clandestine communication."

"Since we are in Naples," remarked Mr. Dod, "I think, Senator, your deduction is correct. Where we come from a slavey with any self-respect would put her sentiments on a gilt-edged correspondence card in a scented envelope with a stamp on the outside and ask you to kindly drop it into the pillar box on your way to business; but this chimes in with all you read about Naples."

"Perfectly ridiculous!" said momma. "Mark my words, that note was either a list of vegetables wanted, or an intimation that if they weren't going to be fresher than the last, that man needn't stop for orders in future. And in a country as destitute of elevators as this one is I suppose you couldn't keep a servant a week if you didn't let her save the stairs somehow. But I must say if I were going to have cabbage and onions the same day I wouldn't like the neighbours to know it."

I entirely agreed with momma, and was reflecting, while they talked of something else, on the injustice of considering ours the sentimental sex, when the Senator leaned forward and advised me in an undertone to make a note of the market basket.

"And take my theory to account for the piece of paper," said he; "your mother's may be the most likely, but mine is what the public will expect."

And always the shadows of the narrow streets crooked in the end into a little plaza full of sun and beggars, and lemonade stands, and hawkers of wild strawberries, and when the great bank of a flower-stall stood just where the shadow ended sharply and the sun began, it made something to remember. After that our way lay through a suburban parish fete, and we pursued it under strings and strings of little glass lanterns, red, and green, and blue, that swung across the streets; and there were goats and more children, and momma vainly endeavoured to keep off the smells with her parasol. Then a region of docks and masts rising unexpectedly, and many little fish shops, and a glitter of scales on the pavement, and disconnected coils of rope, and lounging men with earrings, and unkempt women with babies, and above and over all the warm scent, standing still in the sun, of hemp, and tar, and the sea.

"The city," said the Senator, casting his practised eye on a piece of dead wall that ran along the pavement, "is evidently in the turmoil of a general election, though you mightn't notice it. It's the third time I've seen those posters 'Viva il Prefetto!' and 'Viva L'opposizione! That seems to be about all they can do, just as if we contented ourselves with yelling ''Rah for Bryan!' 'One more for McKinley!' I must say if they haven't any more notion of business than that they don't either of 'em deserve to get there."

"In France," observed Mr. Dod, "they stick up little handbills addressed to their 'chers concitoyens' as if voters were a lot of baa-lambs and willie-boys. It makes enervating reading."

"Young man," said poppa in a burst of feeling, "they say the American eagle might keep her beak shut with advantage, more than she does; but I tell you," and the Senator's hand came down hard on Dicky's knee, "a trip around Europe is enough to turn her into a singing bird, sir, a singing bird."