Chapter 8

I AGREE TO FIGHT A DUEL AND NAME A WEAPON WITH WHICH EUROPEAN GENTLEMEN ARE UNFAMILIAR

THE count’s friend called to see me that evening, as I expected. He was a very good-looking young fellow who had more humor and better English than the count. He was a Frenchman of the name of Vincent Aristide de Langueville. Betsey had gone to the opera with Mrs. Norris and Gwendolyn. I was alone.

“For my friend, the Count Carola, I have the honor to ask you to name the day and the weapons,” he said, with politeness, before he had sat down.

Now I was in for it. After all, I thought for traveling with an heiress in this country one needs a suit of armor.

“I’m a born fighter,” I said, “but almost always my weapons have been words. They are the only weapons with which I am thoroughly familiar. I propose that we have a talking-match. Put us, say, ten paces apart and light the fuse and get back out of the way while we explode. We’ll load the guns with Italian, if he prefers it, and I’ll give him the first shot. After ten minutes you can carry him off the field. He’ll be severely wounded, but it won’t hurt him any.”

Vincent Aristide de Langueville laughed a little and said:

“But, my dear sir, this is not one joke. We desire the satisfaction.”

“And I will guarantee it,” was my answer.

“But, sir, we must have the fight until the blood comes.”

“Ah, you are looking for blood also,” I said. “Well, I have thought of another weapon which once upon a time I could handle with some skill. Let’s have a duel with pitchforks.”

“Pitchforks! What is it?” he asked. “I do not understand.”

“It’s a favorite weapon in New England. My great-grandfather fought the Indians and the British with it, and it was one of the weapons with which I fought against poverty when I was a boy. It’s a great blood-letter. I used to kill coons and hedgehogs with the pitchfork.”

“Please tell me what it is. What is it?” he pleaded.

With my pencil I drew a picture of it and said: “This handle is about five feet in length and very strong. These three prongs are of steel and curved a little and long enough to go through the abdomen of the most prosperous mayor in France.”

“My God! It is the devil’s weapon!” he exclaimed.

“You may report to him that the American pitchfork is the ‘devil-op-ment’ of our interview, and I shall name the day and hour as soon as I can get hold of the weapon.”

“I shall tell my friend, and, please, may I take the picture with me?” said Vincent.

“Certainly, and you may say to him that I shall cable for the forks to-night, and that as soon as they arrive I shall appoint the day and hour.”

He gave me his card.

“You live here in Rome?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Do you work for a living?”

“I am a sculptor.”

“I have often thought that I should like to see a sculptor. Sit down till I get you framed and hung in my portrait-gallery.”

“I must go,” said he. “Perhaps you will do me the honor to call.”

I agreed to do so, just to show that I entertained no grudge, and with that he left me.

Before going to bed that night I cabled to my secretary as follows:

“Ship to me immediately four well-made American pitchforks, three tines each.”

I said nothing to Betsey of the proposed duel, but broke the news that I had met a great sculptor, and she wanted to see his studio, and next day we called there. Mrs. Mullet was sitting for a bust, in her dinner gown. Before we had had time to recognize the lady the artist had introduced her as the Madame Mullette, from Sioux City.

“Isn’t this an adorable place?” she asked in that lyrical tone which one hears so often in the Italian capital. She pointed at busts of several Americans standing on pedestals and awaiting delivery.

“Look at the whiskers embalmed in marble!” Betsey exclaimed, as she gazed at one of the busts. It had that familiar chin tuft of the Zimmermann hay-seed and a dish collar and string tie. The face wore the brave, defiant, me-against-the-world look that I had observed in the statue of Titus, made after he had turned Palestine into a slaughter-house.

“Why, that is our old friend from Prairie du Chien who came over on the Toltec,” I said. “You remember the man who is studying the history of the world, all about the life of the world, especially the life of the ancients?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Betsey.

“He is one lumber king, and one very rich man,” the artist remarked.

“You are spending some time here in Rome,” I said to Mrs. Mullet.

“Oh, I am devoted to the Eternal City!” she exclaimed, and how she loved the sound of that musty old phrase “Eternal City”! She added, “I have been here four times, and I love every inch of it.”

The sculptor resumed his work with a new sitter, while Mrs. Mullet went with us from end to end of the great studio and whispered at the first opportunity:

“De Langueville is a wonderful man; he is a baron in his own country. If you want a bust he will let you pay for it in instalments. Five hundred dollars down and the remainder within three years.”

The hectic flush of art for Heaven’s sake was in her face.

“A bust is a good thing,” I said. “I have often dreamed of having one. There are times when I feel as if I couldn’t live without it. If I had a bust where I could look at it every day I suppose it would take some of the conceit out of me. When I had stood it as long as possible I could tie a rope around its neck and use it for an anchor on my rowboat.”

“Perhaps it would scare the fish,” said Betsey.

“In that case I could use it to hold down the pork in the brine of the family barrel,” I suggested.

“Oh, I think that you would sculp beautifully,” said Mrs. Mullet, in a tone of encouragement, as she looked at my head. Then, by way of changing the subject, she added, “I believe that Colonel Wilton is a friend of yours.”

“Colonel Wilton!” I said, puzzling over the name with its new title. Even the American gentlemen enjoy titles.

“Don’t you remember meeting us in Saint Paul’s? And didn’t you trade hats and coats with him in New York?”

“No, he traded with me,” I said. “I know him like a book.”

“Is he not a friend of yours?”

“It would be truer to say that I am a friend of his.”

I was on dangerous ground and thinking hard through all this.

“But he knows Mr. Norris very well. I believe they are great friends.”

“You may believe it, but I don’t,” I answered, rather gravely.

I had to decide what to do, and quickly. I had not forgotten my promise to let Muggs alone, and it was of course the safer thing to do—just to let him alone. But he had gone too far in expecting me to furnish him a character.

Mrs. Mullet began to change color, and that led me to ask:

“Is Wilton a friend of yours?”

“We are engaged,” said she.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.

I had heard that Mrs. Mullet had money, and she was good game for the neat Mr. Wilton. Now I could see his reason for letting us alone in Italy, where he was four thousand miles from danger. I saw, too, that I must take a course which would inevitably expose us to more trouble, for I could not permit this simple woman to be wronged.

“Don’t give him the source of your information,” I said. “I want to speak kindly, and so I shall only say that he’s a fugitive from justice. The name Wilton is assumed.”

Mrs. Mullet fell into a chair and seemed to find it hard work to breathe. Betsey put her smelling-salts under the lady’s nose. She quickly regained her self-possession and rose and said, in a trembling voice:

“Thank you! I am going home.”

She left, and again we paid our compliments to the artist, who politely left his work to speak with us. He asked me for information regarding certain Americans who owed him for busts. An actress had had herself put, life-size and nude, into white marble, and after making her first payment was maintaining a discreet silence in some part of the world unknown to the artist.

“How coy!” Betsey exclaimed as she looked at the marble figure.

A Brooklyn woman and her two daughters had sat for busts and then had weakened on the general proposition and abandoned the country when they were half finished. I made haste to depart for fear that he might wish to engage me as collector for his bust factory.

Just beyond the door we met a young man who had come over on the boat with us, and stopped for a word with him. I was telling him that I was going to see the Pantheon that afternoon, when Muggs greeted me.

“It’s a wonderful ruin,” he remarked with a smile.

I made no answer, and he entered the studio, probably to meet Mrs. Mullet. He would get his dismissal soon. Then what?