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

now, and if Mr. Dod has not agreed to the conditions I mention by that time we will leave him upon the shore. That's all I have to say, and between now and then I don't expect you or anybody else to have the nerve to mention the matter to me again."

After that it was impossible to wink at poppa, or in any way to give him the assurance that my regard for him was unimpaired. There are things that can't be passed over with a smile in one's poppa without doing him harm, and this was one of them. It was a regular manifesto, and I felt exactly like Lord Salisbury. I couldn't take him seriously, and yet I had to tell him to come on, if he wanted to, and devote his spare time to learning the language of diplomacy. So I merely bowed with what magnificence I could command and filed it, so to speak; and walked to the other side of the deck, leaving poppa to his conscience and momma and his Aunt Caroline. I left him with confidence, not knowing which would give him the worst time. Mrs. Portheris began it, before I was out of earshot. "For an American parent," she said blandly, "it strikes me, Joshua, that you are a little severe."

I found Mr. Mafferton interfering, as I expected, with Dicky and Isabel in their appreciation of the west shore. He was pointing out the Villa Carlotta at Caddenabbia, and explaining the beauties of the sculptures there and dwelling on the tone of blue in the immediate Alps and reminding them that the elder Pliny once picked wild flowers on these banks, and generally making himself the intelligent nuisance that nature intended him to be. In spite of it Isabel was radiant. She said a number of things with the greatest ease; one saw that language, after all, was not difficult to her, she only wanted practice and an untroubled mind. I looked at Dicky and saw that a weight had been removed from his, and it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that peace and satisfaction in this life would date for these two, if all went well for the next few days, from the Lake of Como. But all could not be relied upon to go well so long as Mr. Mafferton hovered, quoting Claudian on the mulberry tree, upon the brink of a proposal, so I took him away to translate his quotation for me in the stern, which naturally suggested the past and its emotions. We could now refer quite sympathetically to the altogether irretrievable and gone by, and Mr. Mafferton was able to mention Lady Torquilan without any trace of his air that she was a person, poor dear, that brought embarrassment with her. Indeed, I sometimes thought he dragged her in. I asked him, in appropriate phrases, of course, whether he had decided to accept Mrs. Portheris's daughter, and he fixed mournful eyes upon me and said he thought he had, almost. The news of my engagement to Mr. Dod had apparently done much to bring him to a conclusion; he said it pointed so definitely to the unlikelihood of his ever being able to find a more stimulating companion than Miss Portheris, with all her charms, was likely to prove. It was difficult, of course, to see the connection, but I could not help confiding to Mr. Mafferton, as a secret, that there was hardly any chance of my union with Dicky--after what poppa had said. When I assured him that I had no intention whatever of disobeying my parent in a matter of which he was so much better qualified to be a judge than I, it was impossible not to see Mr. Mafferton's good opinion of me rising in his face. He said he could not help sympathising with the paternal view, but that was all he _would_ say; he refrained magnificently from abusing Dicky. And we parted mutually more deeply convinced than ever of the undesirability of doing anything rash in the all important direction we had been discussing.

As we disembarked at Colico to take the train for Chiavenna, Mrs. Portheris, after seeing that Mr. Mafferton was collecting the portmanteaux, gave me a word of comfort and of admonition. "Take my advice, my child," she said, "and be faithful to poor dear Richard. Your father must, in the end, give way. I shall keep at him in your interests. When you left us this afternoon," continued the lady mysteriously, "he immediately took out his fountain pen and wrote a letter. It was directed--I saw that much--to a Mr. Arthur Page. Is he the creature who is to be forced upon you, my child?" Mrs. Portheris in the sentimental view was really affecting.

"I think it very likely," I said calmly, "but I have promised to be faithful to Richard, Mrs. Portheris, and I will."

But I really felt a little nervous.


CHAPTER XXIII.

The instant we saw the diligence momma declared that if she had to sit anywhere but in the middle of it she would remain in Chiavenna until next day. Mrs. Portheris was of the same mind. She said that even the _interieur_ would be dangerous enough going down hill, but if the Senator would sit there too she would try not to be nervous. The _coupe_ was terrifying--one saw everything the poor dear horses did--and as to the _banquette_ she could imagine herself flying out of it, if we so much as went over a stone. As a party we were strangers to the diligence; we had all the curiosity and hesitation about it, as Dicky remarked, of the animals when Noah introduced them to the Ark. I asked Dicky to describe the diligence for the purpose of this volume, thinking that it might, here and there, have a reader who had never seen one, and he said that, as soon as he had made up his mind whether it was most like a triumphal chariot in a circus procession or a boudoir car in an ambulance, he would; but then his eyes wandered to Isabel, who was pinker than ever in the mountain air, and his reasoning faculties left him. A small German with a very red nose, most incoherent in his apparel--he might have been a Baron or again a hair-dresser--already occupied one of the seats in the _interieur_, so after our elders had been safely deposited beside him the _banquette_ and the _coupe_ were left, as Mrs. Portheris said, to the adventurous young people. Dicky and I had conspired, for the sustained effect on Mrs. Portheris, to sit in the _banquette_, while Isabel was to suffer Mr. Mafferton in the _coupe_--an arrangement which her mother viewed with entire complacency. "After all," said Mrs. Portheris to momma, "we're not in Hyde Park--and young people will be young people." We had not counted, however, with the Senator, who suddenly realised, as Dicky was handing me up, that it was his business, in the capacity of Doge, to interfere. It is to his credit that he found it embarrassing, on account of his natural, almost paternal, dislike to make things unpleasant for Dicky. He assumed a sternly impenetrable expression, thought about it for a moment, and then approached Mr. Mafferton.

"I'd be obliged to you," he said, "if you could arrange, without putting yourself out any, to change places with young Dod, there, as far as St. Moritz. I have my reasons--but not necessarily for publication. See?"

Mr. Mafferton's eye glistened with appreciation of the confidence reposed in him. "I shall be most happy," he said, "if Dod doesn't mind." But Dicky, with indecent haste, was already in the _coupe_. "Don't mention it, Mafferton," he said out of the window. "I'm delighted--at least--whatever the Senator says has got to be done, of course," and he made an attempt to look hurt that would not have imposed upon anybody but a self-constituted Doge with a guilty conscience. I took my bereavement in stony calm, with possibly just a suggestion about my eyebrows and under-lip that some day, on the far free shores of Lake Michigan, a downtrodden daughter would re-assert herself; poppa re-entered an _interieur_ darkened by a thunder-cloud on the brow of his Aunt Caroline; and we started.

It was some time before Mr. Mafferton interfered in the least with the Engadine. He seemed wrapped in a cloud of vain imaginings, sprung, obviously, from poppa's ill-considered request. I understood his emotions and carefully respected his silence. I was unwilling to be instructed about the Engadine either botanically or geologically--it was more agreeable not to know the names of the lovely little foreign flowers, and quite pleasant enough that every turn in the road showed us a white mountain or a purple one without having to understand what it was made of. Besides, I particularly did not wish to precipitate anything, and there are moments when a mere remark about the weather will do it. I had been suffering a good deal from my conscience since Mrs. Portheris had told me that poppa had written to Arthur--I didn't mind him enduring unnumbered pangs of hope deferred, but it was quite another thing that he should undergo the unnecessary martyrdom of imagining that he had been superseded by Dicky Dod. On reflection, I thought it would be safer to start Mr. Mafferton on the usual lines, and I nerved myself to ask him whether he could tell me anything about the prehistoric appearance of these lovely mountains.

"I am glad," he responded absently, "that you admire my favourite Alps." Nothing more. I tried to prick him to the consideration of the scenery by asking him which were his favourite Alps, but this also came to nothing. Having acknowledged his approval of the Alps, he seemed willing to let them go unadorned by either fact or fancy. I offered him sandwiches, but he seemed to prefer his moustache. Presently he roused himself.

"I'm afraid you must think me very uninteresting, Miss Wick," he said.

"Dear me, no," I replied. "On the contrary, I think you are a lovely type."

"Type of an Englishman?" Mr. Mafferton was not displeased.

"Type of some Englishmen. You would not care to represent the--ah, commercial classes?"

"If I had been born in that station," replied Mr. Mafferton modestly, "I should be very glad to represent them. But I should _not_ care to be a Labour candidate."

"It wouldn't be very appropriate, would it?" I suggested. "But do you ever mean to run for anything, really?"

"Certainly not," Mr. Mafferton replied, with slight resentment. "In our family we never run. But, of course, I will succeed my uncle in the Upper House."

"Dear me!" I exclaimed. "So you will! I should think it would be simply lovely to be born a legislator. In our country it is attained by such painful degrees." It flashed upon me in a moment why Mr. Mafferton was so industrious in collecting general information. He was storing it up against the day when he would be able to make speeches, which nobody could interrupt, in the House of Lords.

The conversation flagged again, and I was driven to comment upon the appearance of the little German down in the _interieur_. It was quite remarkable, apart from the bloom on his nose, his pale-blue eyes wandered so irresponsibly in their sockets, and his scanty, flaxen beard made such an unsuccessful effort to disguise the amiability of his chin. He wore a braided cotton coat to keep cool, and a woollen comforter to keep warm, and from time to time he smilingly invited the attention of the other three to vast green maps of the country, which I could see him apologising for spreading over Mrs. Portheris's capacious lap. It was interesting