Chapter 6

WE ARRIVE IN THE LAND OF LOVE AND SONG

HERE we are in Rome on the tenth day of our journey at three in the afternoon! Jiminy Christmas! How I felt the need of language! I had given my leisure on the train to the careful study of a conversation-book, but the conversation I acquired was not extensive enough to satisfy every need of a man born in northern New England. It was too polite. There were a number of men who quarreled over us and our baggage in the station at Rome, and I had to do all my swearing with the aid of a dictionary. I found it too slow to be of any use. We were rescued soon by Mrs. Norris and her footman, who took us to the Grand Hotel. Gwendolyn met us in the hall of their apartment, and I delivered Forbes’s message.

“You may kiss me!” she exclaimed, joyously.

“I do it for him,” I said.

“Then do it again,” said she.

That’s the kind of a girl she was—up and a-coming!—and that’s the kind of a man I am—obliging to the point of generosity at the proper moment.

The reputation of the Norrises gave us standing, and we were soon marching in step and sowing our francs in a rattling shower with the great caravan of American blood-hunters.

Norris himself was in better health than I had hoped to find him, and three days later he drove me to Tivoli in his motor-car.

As we were leaving the hotel the porter said to Norris:

“An American gentleman called to see you about an hour ago. He was very urgent, and I told him that I thought you had gone to Tivoli.”

“Not gone, but going,” said Norris. “There’s a grain of truth in what you said, but I suppose you meant well.”

He handed the porter a coin and added:

“You must never be able to guess where I am.”

In the course of our long ride across the Campagna I made my report and he made his. I told the whole story of Muggs and how at length the man had given me a good, full excuse for my play-spell.

“I suppose that he will be after us again here,” said Norris.

“Don’t worry,” I answered; “you’ll find me a capable watch-dog. It will only be necessary for me to bark at him once or twice.”

“You’re an angel of mercy,” said my friend. “I couldn’t bear the sight of him now. It isn’t the money involved; it’s his devilish smoothness and the twitch of the bull-ring and the peril I am in of losing my temper and of doing something to—to be regretted.”

“Let me be secretary of your interior also,” I proposed, and added: “I can get mad enough for both of us, and I have a growing stock of cuss words.”

My assurance seemed to set Norris at rest, and I called for his report.

“Mine is a longer story,” he began. “First we went to Saint Moritz—beautiful place, six thousand feet up in the mountains—and it agreed with me. We found two kinds of Americans there—the idle rich who came to play with the titled poor and the homeless. Everywhere in Europe one finds homeless people from our country—a wandering, pathetic tribe of well-to-do gipsies. Among the idle rich are maidens with great prospects and planning mamas, and rich widows looking for live noblemen with the money of dead grocers, rum merchants, and contractors. They’re all searching for ‘blood,’ as they call it.

“‘I can’t marry an American,’ one of them said to me; ‘I want a man of blood. These men are of ancient families that have made history, and they know how to make love, too.’

“Impoverished dukes, marquises, princes, barons, counts, from the purlieus of aristocratic Europe, throng about them. These noblemen are professional marryers, and all for sale. The bob-sled and the toboggan are implements of their craft, symbols of the rapid pace. Unfortunately, they are often the meeting-place of youthful innocence and utter depravity, of glowing health and incurable disease. Maidens and marquises, barons and widows, counts and young married women, traveling alone, sit dovetailed on bob-sleds and toboggans, and, locked in a complex embrace, this tangle of youth and beauty, this interwoven mass of good and evil, rushes down the slippery way. In the swift, curving flight, by sheer hugging, they overcome the tug of centrifugal force. It is a long hug and a strong hug. Thus, courtship is largely a matter of sliding.

“Then there are the dances. I do not need to describe them. At Saint Moritz they go to the limit. Fifteen years ago when Chuck Connors and his friends practised these dances in a Bowery dive respectable citizens turned away with disgust. Since then the idle rich who explore the underworld have begun to imitate its dances, which were intended to suggest the morals of the dog-kennel and the farmyard and which have achieved some success in that direction. Unfortunately, the idle rich are well advertised. If they were to wear rings in their noses the practice would soon become fashionable.

“Well, you see, it was no place for my girl. I sent her away with Mrs. Mushtop to Rome, but not until a young Italian count had got himself in love with my money.”

“Count Carola?” I asked.

“Count Carola!” said he. “How did you know?”

“Saw it in the paper.”

“The paper!” he exclaimed. “God save us from the papers as well as from war, pestilence, and sudden death.”

“Is the count really shot in the heart?” I ventured to ask.

“Oh, he likes her as any man likes a pretty, bright-eyed girl,” Norris went on, “but it was a part of my money that he wanted most. I had kept her out of that crowd, and the young man hadn’t met her. He had only stood about and stared at us, and had finally asked for an introduction to me, which I refused, greatly to my wife’s annoyance. The young man followed them to Rome, but I didn’t know that he had done so until I got there. They went around seeing things, and everywhere they went the count was sure to go. Followed them like a dog, day in and day out. Isn’t that making it a business? His eyes were on them in every room of every art-gallery. One day, when they stood with some friends near the music-stand in the Pincio Gardens, the count approached Mrs. Mushtop. You know Mrs. Mushtop; she is a good woman, but a European at heart and a worshiper of titles. I didn’t suppose that she was such a romantic old saphead of a woman. This is what happened: the count took off his hat and greeted her with great politeness. She was a little flattered. My daughter turned away.

“‘I suspect, myself, that you are the young lady’s chaperon,’ said he.

“‘Yes, sir.’

“‘I am in love with the beautiful, charming young lady. It is so joyful for me to look at her. I am most unhappy unless I am near her. I have the honor to hand you my card; I wish you to make the inquiry about my family and my character. Then I hope that you will permission me to speak to her.’

“Think of Mrs. Mushtop standing there and letting him go on to that extent.

“She said, ‘It would do no good, for I believe that she is engaged.’

“‘That will make not any difference,’ he insisted, with true Italian simplicity; I will take my chances.’

“She foolishly kept his card, but had the good sense to turn away and leave him.

“Mrs. Norris went on to Rome for a few days while I stayed at Saint Moritz with my physician, mother, and secretary. You know women better than I do, probably. Most of them like that Romeo business; that swearing by the sun, moon, and stars—those cosmic, cross-universe measurements of love. I don’t know as I blame them, for, after all, a woman’s happiness is so dependent on the love of a husband.

“Well, those women got their heads together, and my wife thought that, on the whole, she liked the looks of the count. He was rather slim and dusky, but he had big, dark eyes and red cheeks and perfect teeth and a fine bearing. So they drove to Florence, where he lived, and investigated his pedigree and character. It was a very old family, which had played an important part in the campaigns of Mazzini and Cavour, but its estate had been confiscated after the first failure of the great Lombard chief, and its fortunes were now at a low ebb. One of the count’s brothers is the head waiter in a hotel at Naples. He had sense enough to go to work, but the count is a confirmed gentleman who rests on hopes and visions. He reminds me of a house standing in the air with no visible means of support.

“However, the investigation was satisfactory to my wife, and she invited the young man to dinner at her hotel. The ladies were all captivated by his charm, and there’s no denying that the young fellow has pretty manners. It’s great to see him garnish a cup of tea or a plate of spaghetti with conversation. His talk is pastry and bonbons.

“When I came on I found them going about with him and having a fine time. Under his leadership my wife had visited sundry furniture and antique shops and invested some five thousand dollars, on which, I presume, the count received commissions sufficient to keep him in spending-money for a while. I didn’t like the count, and told them so. He’s too effeminate for me—hasn’t the frank, upstanding, full-breasted, rugged, ready-for-anything look of our American boys. But I didn’t interfere; I kept my hands off, for long ago I promised to let my wife have her way about the girl. That reminds me we have invited young Forbes to come over and spend a month with us.”

“Likely young fellow,” I said.

“None better,” said he; “if he had sense enough to ask Gwen to marry him I’d be glad of it. I have refused to encourage the affair with the count, but we find it hard to saw him off. We drove to Florence the other day, and he followed us there and back again. He’s a comer, I can tell you; we can see him coming wherever we are. I swear a little about it now and then, and Gwen says, ‘Well, father, you don’t own the road.’ And Mrs. Norris will say: ‘Poor fellow! Isn’t it pitiful? I’m so sorry for him!’

“His devotion to business is simply amazing—works early and late, and don’t mind going hungry. In all my life I never saw anything like it.”

We had arrived at Tivoli, and as he ceased speaking we drew up at Hadrian’s Villa and entered the ruins with a crowd of American tourists. An energetic lady dogged the steps of the swift-moving guide with a volley of questions which began with, “Was it before or after Christ?” By and by she said: “I wouldn’t like to have been Mrs. Hadrian. Think of covering all these floors with carpets and keeping them clean!”

I left Norris sitting on a broken column and went on with the crowd for a few minutes. I kept close to the energetic lady, being interested in her talk. Suddenly she began to hop up and down on one leg and gasp for breath. I never saw a lady hopping on one leg before, and it alarmed me. The battalion of sightseers moved on; they seemed to be unaware of her distress—or was it simply a lack of time? I stopped to see what I could do for her.

“Oh, my lord! My heavens!” she shouted, as she looked at me, with both hands on her lifted thigh. “I’ve got a cramp in my leg! I’ve got a cramp in my leg!”

I supported the lady and spoke a comforting word or two. She closed her eyes and rested her head on my arm, and presently put down her leg and looked brighter.

“There, it’s all right now,” said she, with a shake of her skirt. “Thanks! Do you come from Michigan?”

“No.”

“Where do you hail from?”

“Pointview, Connecticut.”

“I’m from Flint, Michigan, and I’m just tuckered out. They keep me going night and day. I’m making a collection of old knockers. Do you suppose there are any shops where they keep ‘em here?”

“Don’t know. I’m just a pilgrim and a stranger and am not posted in the knocker trade,” I answered.

The crowd had turned a corner; and with a swift good-by she ran after it, fearful, I suppose, of losing some detail in the domestic life of Hadrian.

So on one leg, as it were, she enters and swiftly crosses the stage. It’s a way Providence has of preparing us for the future. To this moment’s detention I was indebted for an adventure of importance, for as she left me I saw Muggs, the sleek, pestiferous Muggs, coming out of the old baths on his way to the gate. He must have been the man who had called to see Norris that morning. He turned pale with astonishment and nodded.

“Well, Muggs, here you are,” I said.

He handled himself in a remarkable fashion, for he was as cool as a cucumber when he answered:

“I used to resemble a lot of men, and some pretty decent fellows used to resemble me, but as soon as they saw me they quit it—got out from under, you know. Even my photographs have quit resembling me.”

“Well, you have changed a little, but my hat and overcoat look just about as they did,” I laughed. .

“If I didn’t know it was impossible I would say that your name was Potter,” said he.

“And if I knew it was impossible I would swear that your name was Muggs,” I answered.

“Forget it,” said he; “in the name of God, forget it. I’m trying to live honest, and I’m going to let you and your friends alone if you’ll let me alone. Now, that’s a fair bargain.”

I hesitated, wondering at his sensitiveness.

“You owe us quite a balance, but I’m inclined to call it a bargain,” I said. “Only be kind to that hat and coat; they are old friends of mine. I don’t care so much about the two hundred dollars.”

“Thanks,” he answered with a laugh, and went on: “I’ve given you proper credit on the books. You’ll hear from me as soon as I am on my feet.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He answered: “Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to see the Colosseum where men fought with lions.”

“I am sure that you would enjoy a look at Hadrian’s Walk,” I said, pointing to the tourists who had halted there as I turned away.

So we parted, and with a sense of good luck I hurried to Norris.

“I’ve got a crick in my back,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

We proceeded to our motor-car at the entrance.

“This ruin is the most infamous relic in the world,” said Norris, as we got into our car; “it stands for the grandeur of pagan hoggishness. Think of a man who wanted all the treasures and poets and musicians and beauties in the world for the exclusive enjoyment of himself and friends. Millions of men gave their lives for the creation of this sublime swine-yard. Hadrian’s Villa, and others like it, broke the back of the empire. I tell you, the world has changed, and chiefly in its sense of responsibility for riches. Here in Italy you still find the old feudal, hog theory of riches, which is a thing of the past in America and which is passing in England. We have a liking for service. I tell you, Potter, my daughter ought to marry an American who is strong in the modem impulses, and go on with my work.”