“I foretold all this,” said Charles Heathcote, peevishly, as a servant
presented a number of visiting-cards with a polite request from the
owners to be allowed to visit the villa and its gardens. “I often warned
you of the infliction of inhabiting one of these celebrated places,
which our inquisitive countrymen _will_ see and their wives _will_ write
about.”
“Who are they, Charley?” said May, gayly. “Let us see if we may not know
some of them.”
“Know them. Heaven forbid! Look at the equipages they have come in; only
cast an eye at the two leathern conveniences now before the door, and
say, is it likely that they contain any acquaintances of ours?”
“How hot they look, broiling down there! But who are they, Charley?”
“Mrs. Penthony Morris,--never heard of her; Mr. Algernon Mosely,--
possibly the Bond Street man; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Rice Morgan, of
Plwmnwrar,--however that be pronounced; Mr. Layton and friend,--discreet
friend, who will not figure by name; Mr. Gorman O'Shea, by all the
powers! and, as I live, our Yankee again!”
“Not Quackinboss, surely?” broke in Sir William, good-humoredly.
“Yes. There he is: 'U. S. A., Colonel Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss;' and
there's the man, too, with his coat on his arm, on that coach-box.”
“I'll certainly vote for my Transatlantic friend,” said the Baronet,
“and consequently for any party of which he is a member.”
“As for me!” cried May,--“I 've quite a curiosity to see him; not to say
that it would be downright churlishness to refuse any of our countrymen
the permission thus asked for.”
“Be it so. I only stipulate for not playing cicerone to our amiable
visitors; and the more surely to escape such an indignity, I 'm off till
dinner.”
“Let Fenton wait on those gentlemen,” said the Baronet, “and go round
with them through the house and the grounds. Order luncheon also to be
ready.” There was a little, a very little, irritation, perhaps, in his
voice, but May's pleasant smile quickly dispelled the momentary chagrin,
and his good-humored face was soon itself again.
If I have not trespassed upon my reader's patience by minute
descriptions of the characters I have introduced to him, it is in the
expectation that their traits are such as, lying lightly on the surface,
require little elucidation. Nor do I ask of him to bestow more attention
to their features than he would upon those of travelling acquaintances
with whom it is his fortune to journey in company for a brief space.
Strange enough, indeed, is that intimacy of travelling acquaintanceship
--familiar without friendship, frank without being cordial. Curious
pictures of life might be made from these groups thrown accidentally
together in a steamboat or railroad, at the gay watering-place, or the
little fishing-village in the bathing-season.
How free is all the intercourse of those who seem to have taken a vow
with themselves never to meet each other again! With what humorous zest
do they enjoy the oddities of this one, or the eccentricities of that,
making up little knots and cliques, to be changed or dissolved within
the day, and actually living on the eventualities of the hour, for their
confidences! The contrasts that would repel in ordinary life, the
disparities that would discourage, have actually invited intimacy; and
people agree to associate, even familiarly, with those whom, in the
recognized order of their daily existence, they would have as coldly
repelled.
There was little to bind those together whom we have represented as
seated under the chestnut-trees at the Bagni de Lucca. They entertained
their suspicions and distrusts and misgivings of each other to a liberal
extent; they wasted no charities in their estimate of each other; and
wherever posed by a difficulty, they did not lend to the interpretation
any undue amount of generosity; nay, they even went further, and argued
from little peculiarities of dress, manner, and demeanor, to the whole
antecedents of him they criticised, and took especial pains in their
moments of confidence to declare that they had only met Mr.------ for
the first time at Ems, and never saw Mrs.------ till they were overtaken
by the snow-storm on the Splugen.
Such-like was the company who now, headed by the obsequious butler,
strolled leisurely through the spacious saloons of the Villa Caprini.
Who is there, in this universal vagabondage, has not made one of such
groups? Where is the man that has not strolled, “John Murray” in hand,
along his Dresden, his Venice, or his Rome; staring at ceilings, and
gazing ruefully at time-discolored frescos,--grieved to acknowledge to
his own heart how little he could catch of a connoisseur's enthusiasm or
an antiquarian's fervor,--wondering within himself wherefore he could
not feel like that other man whose raptures he was reading, and with
sore misgivings that some nice sense had been omitted in his nature?
Wonderfully poignant and painful things are these little appeals to an
inner consciousness. How far such sentiments were distributed amongst
those who now lounged and stared through _salon_ and gallery, we must
leave to the reader's own appreciation. They looked pleased, convinced,
and astonished, and, be it confessed, “bored” in turn; they were called
upon to admire much they did not care for, and wonder at many things
which did not astonish them; they were often referred to histories which
they had forgotten, if they ever knew them, and to names of whose
celebrity they were ignorant; and it was with a most honest sense of
relief they saw themselves reach the last room of the suite, where a few
cabinet pictures and some rare carvings in ivory alone claimed their
attention.
“A 'Virgin and Child,' by Murillo,” said the guide.
“The ninth 'Virgin and Child,' by all that's holy!” said Mr. O'Shea.
“The ninth we have seen to-day!”
“The blue drapery, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the inexorable
describer, “is particularly noticed. It is 'glazed' in a manner only
known to Murillo.”
“I 'm glad of it, and I hope the secret died with him,” cried Mr.
Morgan. “It looks for all the world like a bathing-dress.”
“The child squints. Don't he squint?” exclaimed Mosely.
“Oh, for shame!” cried Mrs. Morris. “Mr. Layton is quite shocked with
your profane criticism.”
“I did not hear it, I assure you,” said that gentleman, as he arose from
a long and close contemplation of a “St. John,” by Salvator.
“'St. John preaching in the Wilderness!'” said Quackinboss; “too tame
for my taste. He don't seem to roll up his sleeves to the work,--does
he?”
“It's not stump-oratory, surely?” said Layton, with a quiet smile.
“Ain't it, though! Well, stranger, I'm in a considerable unmixed error
if it is not! You'd like to maintain that because a man does n't rise up
from a velvet cushion and lay his hand upon a grand railing, all carved
with grotesque intricacies, all his sentiments must needs be commonplace
and vulgar; but I 'm here to tell you, sir, that you 'd hear grander
things, nobler things, and greater things from a moss-covered old tree-
stump in a western pine-forest, by the mouth of a plain, hardy son of
hard toil, than you've often listened to in what you call your place in
Parliament Now, that's a fact!”
There was that amount of energy in the way these words were uttered that
seemed to say, if carried further, the discussion might become
contentious.
Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle,
but turned to seek for his pupil.
“You 're looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton,” asked Mrs. Morris, “ain't
you? I think you'll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this
only bored him, and he 'd go and look for a cool spot to smoke his
cigar.”
“That's what it all comes to,” said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left
the room; “that's the whole of it! You pay a fellow--a 'double first'
something or other from Oxford or Cambridge--five hundred a year to go
abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot.”
“And smoke it, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan.
“There ain't no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?” said Quackinboss. “The
thinkers of this earth are most of 'em smoking men. What do you say,
sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from
John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his
lips, he as good as says, 'I 'm a-reflecting,--I 'm not in no ways to be
broke in upon.' It's his own fault, sir, if he does n't think, for he
has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders.”
“Filthy custom!” muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which
the word “America” was half audible.
“What's this he's saying about eating,--this Italian fellow?” said Mr.
Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language.
“It is a polite invitation to a luncheon,” said Mrs. Morris, modestly
turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision.
“Do any of us know our host?” asked Mr. OShea. “He is a Sir William
Heathcote.”
“There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed
for half a million sterling,” whispered Morgan; “should n't wonder if it
were he.”
“All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!” chuckled
Mosely. “I vote we accept.”
“That of course,” said Mrs. Morris.
“Well, I know him, I reckon,” drawled out Quackinboss; “and I rayther
suspect you owe this here politeness to _my_ company. Yes, sir!” said
he, half fiercely, to O'Shea, upon whose face a sort of incredulous
smile was breaking,--“yes, sir!”
“Being our own countryman, sir,--an Englishman,--I suspect,” said Mr.
Morgan, with warmth, “that the hospitality has been extended to us on
wider grounds.”
“But why should we dispute about the matter at all?” mildly remarked
Mrs. Morris. “Let us say yes, and be grateful.”
“There's good sense in that,” chimed in Mosely, “and I second it.”
“Carried with unanimity,” said O'Shea, as, turning to the servant, he
muttered something in broken French.
“Well, I'm sure, I never!” mumbled Quackinboss to himself; but what he
meant, or to what new circumstance in his life's experience he alluded,
there is unhappily no explanation in this history; but he followed the
rest with a drooping head and an air of half-melancholy resignation that
was not by any means unusual with him.