A Voyage of Consolation by Sara Jeannette Duncan (best way to read books .TXT) 📕

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