Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “I wonder if you can’t help us,” said the consul. “My friend here is the victim of a curious annoyance;” and he stated the case in language so sympathetic and decorous as to restore some small shreds of the colonel’s self-respect.

  “Ah,” said their new acquaintance, who was mercifully not a man of humor, or too polite to seem so, “that’s another trick of those scamps of fiacre-drivers. He took you purposely to the wrong hotel, and was probably feed by the landlord for bringing you. But why should you make yourselves so much trouble? You know Colonel Kenton’s landlord had to send his name to the police as soon as he came, and you can get his address there at once.”

  “Good-by!” said the consul very hastily, with a crestfallen air. “Come along, Kenton.”

  “What did he send my name to the police for?” demanded the colonel, in the open air.

  “Oh, it’s a form. They do it with all travellers. It’s merely to secure the imperial government against your machinations.”

  “And do you mean to say you ought to have known,” cried the colonel, halting him, “that you could have found out where I was from the police at once, before we had walked all over this moral vineyard, and wasted half a precious lifetime?”

  “Kenton,” contritely admitted the other, “I never happened to think of it.”

  “Well, Davis, you’re a pretty consul!” That was all the colonel said, and though his friend was voluble in self-exculpation and condemnation, he did not answer him a word till they arrived at the police office. A few brief questions and replies between the commissary and the consul solved the long mystery, and Colonel Kenton had once more a hotel over his head. The commissary certified to the respectability of the place, but invited the colonel to prosecute the driver of the fiacre in behalf of the general public, — which seemed so right a thing that the colonel entered into it with zeal, and then suddenly relinquished it, remembering that he had not the rogue’s number, that he had not so much as looked at him, and that he knew no more what manner of man he was than his own image in a glass. Under the circumstances, the commissary admitted that it was impossible, and as to bringing the landlord to justice, nothing could be proved against him.

  “Will you ask him,” said the colonel, “the outside price of a first-class assault and battery in Vienna?”

  The consul put as much of this idea into German as the language would contain, which was enough to make the commissary laugh and shake his head warningly.

  “It wouldn’t do, he says, Kenton; it isn’t the custom of the country.”

  “Very well, then, I don’t see why we should occupy his time.” He gave his hand to the commissary, whom he would have liked to embrace, and then hurried forth again with the consul. “There is one little thing that worries me still,” he said. “I suppose Mrs. Kenton is simply crazy by this time.”

  “Is she of a very — nervous — disposition?” faltered the consul.

  “Nervous? Well, if you could witness the expression of her emotions in regard to mice, you wouldn’t ask that question, Davis.”

  At this desolating reply the consul was mute for a moment. Then he ventured: “I’ve heard — or read, I don’t know which — that women have more real fortitude than men, and that they find a kind of moral support in an actual emergency that they wouldn’t find in — mice.”

  “Pshaw!” answered the colonel. “You wait till you see Mrs. Kenton.”

  “Look here, Kenton,” said the consul seriously, and stopping short. “I’ve been thinking that perhaps — I — I had better dine with you some other day. The fact is, the situation now seems so purely domestic that a third person, you know—”

  “Come along!” cried the colonel. “I want you to help me out of this scrape. I’m going to leave that hotel as soon as I can put my things together, and you’ve got to browbeat the landlord for me while I go up and reassure my wife long enough to get her out of that den of thieves. What did you say the scoundrelly name was?”

  “The Gasthof zum Wilden Manne.”

  “And what does Wildun Manny mean?”

  “The Sign of the Savage, we should make it, I suppose, — the Wild Man.”

  “Well, I don’t know whether it was named after me or not; but if I’d found that sign anywhere for the last four or five hours, I should have known it for home. There hasn’t been any wilder man in Vienna since the town was laid out, I reckon; and I don’t believe there ever was a wilder woman anywhere than Mrs. Kenton is at this instant.”

  Arrived at the Sign of the Savage, Colonel Kenton left his friend below with the portier, and mounting the stairs three steps at a time flew to his room. Flinging open the door, he beheld his wife dressed in one of her best silks, before the mirror, bestowing some last prinks, touching her back hair with her hand and twitching the bow at her throat into perfect place. She smiled at him in the glass, and said, “Where’s Captain Davis?”

  “Captain Davis?” gasped the colonel, dry-tongued with anxiety and fatigue. “Oh! He’s down there. He’ll be up directly.”

  She turned and came forward to him: “How do you like it?” Then she advanced near enough to encounter the moustache: “Why, how heated and tired you look!”

  “Yes, yes, — we’ve been walking. I — I’m rather late, ain’t I, Bessie?”

  “About an hour. I ordered dinner at six, and it’s nearly seven now.” The colonel started; he had not dared to look at his watch, and he had supposed it must be about ten o’clock; it seemed years since his search for the hotel had begun. But he said nothing; he felt that in some mysterious and unmerited manner Heaven was having mercy upon him, and he accepted the grace in the sneaking way we all accept mercy. “I knew you’d stay longer than you expected, when you found it was Davis.”

  “How did you know it was Davis?” asked the colonel, blindly feeling his way.

  Mrs. Kenton picked up her Almanach de Gotha. “It has all the consular and diplomatic corps in it.”

  “I won’t laugh at it any more,” said the colonel, humbly. “Weren’t you — uneasy, Bessie?”

  “No. I mended away, here, and fussed round the whole afternoon, putting the trunks to rights; and I got out this dress and ran a bit of lace into the collar; and then I ordered dinner, for I knew you’d bring the captain; and I took a nap, and by that it was nearly dinner-time.”

  “Oh!” said the colonel.

  “Yes; and the head-waiter was as polite as peas; they’ve all been very attentive. I shall certainly recommend everybody to the Kaiserin Elisabeth.”

  “Yes,” assented the wretched man. “I reckon it’s about the best hotel in Vienna.”

  “Well, now, go and get Captain Davis. You can bring him right in here; we’re only travellers. Why, what makes you act so queerly? Has anything happened?” Mrs. Kenton was surprised to find herself gathered into her husband’s arms and embraced with a rapture for which she could see no particular reason.

  “Bessie,” said her husband, “I told you this morning that you were amiable as well as bright and beautiful; I now wish to add that you are sensible. I’m awfully ashamed of being gone so long. But the fact is we had a little accident. Our sleigh broke down out in the country, and we had to walk back.”

  “Oh, you poor old fellow! No wonder you look tired.”

  He accepted the balm of her compassion like a candid and innocent man: “Yes, it was pretty rough. But I didn’t mind it, except on your account. I thought the delay would make you uneasy.” With that he went out to the head of the stairs and called, “Davis!”

  “Yes!” responded the consul; and he ascended the stairs in such trepidation that he tripped and fell part of the way up.

  “Have you been saying anything to that man about my going away?”

  “No, I’ve simply been blowing him up on the fiacre driver’s account. He swears they are innocent of collusion. But of course they’re not.”

  “Well, all right. Mrs. Kenton is waiting for us to go to dinner. And look here,” whispered the colonel, “
don’t you open your mouth, except to put something into it, till I give you the cue.”

  The dinner was charming, and had suffered little or nothing from the delay. Mrs. Kenton was in raptures with it, and after a thimbleful of the good Hungarian wine had attuned her tongue, she began to sing the praises of the Kaiserin Elisabeth.

  “The K — —” began the consul, who had hitherto guarded himself very well. But the colonel arrested him at that letter with a terrible look. He returned the look with a glance of intelligence, and resumed: “The Kaiserin Elisabeth has the best cook in Vienna.”

  “And everybody about has such nice, honest faces,” said Mrs. Kenton. “I’m sure I couldn’t have felt anxious if you hadn’t come till midnight: I knew I was perfectly secure here.”

  “Quite right, quite right,” said the consul. “All classes of the Viennese are so faithful. Now, I dare say you could have trusted that driver of yours, who brought you here before daylight this morning, with untold gold. No stranger need fear any of the tricks ordinarily practised upon travellers in Vienna. They are a truthful, honest, virtuous population, — like all the Germans in fact.”

  “There, Ned! What do you say to that, with your Black Forest nonsense?” triumphed Mrs. Kenton.

  Colonel Kenton laughed sheepishly: “Well, I take it all back, Bessie. I wasn’t quite satisfied with the appearance of the Black Forest country when I came to it,” he explained to the consul, “and Mrs. Kenton and I had our little joke about the fraudulent nature of the Germans.”

  “Our little joke!” retorted his wife. “I wish we were going to stay longer in Vienna. They say you have to make bargains for everything in Italy, and here I suppose I could shop just as at home.”

  “Precisely,” said the consul; the Viennese shopkeepers being the most notorious Jews in Europe.

  “Oh, we can’t stop longer than till the morning,” remarked the colonel. “I shall be sorry to leave Vienna and the Kaiserin Elizabeth, but we must go.”

  “Better hang on awhile; you won’t find many hotels like it, Kenton,” observed his friend.

  “No, I suppose not,” sighed the colonel; “but I’ll get the address of their correspondent in Venice and stop there.”

  Thus these craven spirits combined to delude and deceive the helpless woman of whom half an hour before they had stood in such abject terror. If they had found her in hysterics they would have pitied and respected her; but her good sense, her amiability, and noble self-control subjected her to their shameless mockery.

  Colonel Kenton followed the consul downstairs when he went away, and pretended to justify himself. “I’ll tell her one of these days,” he said, “but there’s no use distressing her now.”

  “I didn’t understand you at first,” said the other. “But I see now it was the only way.”

  “Yes; saves needless suffering. I say, Davis, this is about an even thing between us? A United States consul ought to be of some use to his fellow-citizens abroad; and if he allows them to walk their legs off hunting up a hotel which he could have found at the first police-station if he had happened to think of it, he won’t be very anxious to tell the joke, I suppose?”

  “I don’t propose to write home to the papers about it.”

  “All right.” So, in the court-yard of the Wild Man, they parted.

  Long after that Mrs. Kenton continued to recommend people to the Kaiserin Elisabeth. Even when the truth was made known to her she did not see much to laugh at. “I’m sure I was always very glad the colonel didn’t tell me at once,” she said, “for if I had known what I had been through, I certainly should have gone distracted.”

  TONELLI’S MARRIAGE.

  There was no richer man in Venice than Tommaso Tonelli, who had enough on his florin a day; and none younger than he, who owned himself forty-seven years old. He led the cheerfullest life in the world, and was quite a monster of content; but when I come to sum up his pleasures, I fear that I shall appear to my readers to be celebrating a very insipid and monotonous existence. I doubt if even a summary of his duties could be made attractive to the conscientious imagination of hard-working people; for Tonelli’s labors were not killing, nor, for that matter, were those of any Venetian that I ever knew. He had a stated employment in the office of the notary Cenarotti; and he passed there so much of every working day as lies between nine and five o’clock, writing upon deeds and conveyances and petitions and other legal instruments for the notary, who sat in an adjoining room, secluded from nearly everything in this world but snuff. He called Tonelli by the sound of a little bell; and, when he turned to take a paper from his safe, he seemed to be abstracting some secret from long-lapsed centuries, which he restored again, and locked back among the dead ages when his clerk replaced the document in his hands. These hands were very soft and pale, and their owner was a colorless old man, whose silvery hair fell down a face nearly as white; but, as he has almost nothing to do with the present affair, I shall merely say that, having been compromised in the last revolution, he had been obliged to live ever since in perfect retirement, and that he seemed to have been blanched in this social darkness as a plant is blanched by growth in a cellar. His enemies said that he was naturally a timid man, but they could not deny that he had seen things to make the brave afraid, or that he had now every reason from the police to be secret and cautious in his life. He could hardly be called company for Tonelli, who must have found the day intolerably long but for the visit which the notary’s pretty granddaughter contrived to pay every morning in the cheerless mezzà. She commonly appeared on some errand from her mother, but her chief business seemed to be to share with Tonelli the modest feast of rumor and hearsay which he loved to furnish forth for her, and from which doubtless she carried back some fragments of gossip to the family apartments. Tonelli called her, with that mingled archness and tenderness of the Venetians, his Paronsina; and, as he had seen her grow up from the smallest possible of Little Mistresses, there was no shyness between them, and they were fully privileged to each other’s society by her mother. When she flitted away again, Tonelli was left to a stillness broken only by the soft breathing of the old man in the next room, and by the shrill discourse of his own loquacious pen, so that he was commonly glad enough when it came five o’clock. At this hour he put on his black coat, that shone with constant use, and his faithful silk hat, worn down to the pasteboard with assiduous brushing, and caught up a very jaunty cane in his hand. Then, saluting the notary, he took his way to the little restaurant, where it was his custom to dine, and had his tripe soup and his risotto, or dish of fried liver, in the austere silence imposed by the presence of a few poor Austrian captains and lieutenants. It was not that the Italians feared to be overheard by these enemies; but it was good dimostrazione to be silent before the oppressor, and not let him know that they even enjoyed their dinners well enough, under his government, to chat sociably over them. To tell the truth, this duty was an irksome one to Tonelli, who liked far better to dine, as he sometimes did, at a cook-shop, where he met the folk of the people (gente del popolo), as he called them; and where, though himself a person of civil condition, he discoursed freely with the other guests, and ate of their humble but relishing fare. He was known among them as Sior Tommaso; and they paid him a homage, which they enjoyed equally with him, as a person not only learned in the law, but a poet of gift enough to write wedding and funeral verses, and a veteran who had fought for the dead Republic of Forty-eight. They honored him as a most travelled gentleman, who had been in the Tyrol, and who could have spoken German, if he had not despised that tongue as the language of the ugly Croats, like one born to it. Who, for example, spoke Venetian more elegantly than Sior Tommaso? or Tuscan, when he chose? and yet he was poor, — a man of that genius! Patience! When Garibaldi came, we should see! The facchini and gondoliers, who had been wagging their tongues all day at the church corners and ferries, were never tired of talking of this gifted friend of theirs, when, having ended some impressive discourse or some dramatic story,
he left them with a sudden adieu, and walked quickly away toward the Riva degli Schiavoni.

  Here, whether he had dined at the cook-shop, or at his more genteel and gloomy restaurant of the Bronze Horses, it was his custom to lounge an hour or two over a cup of coffee and a Virginia cigar at one of the many caffès, and to watch all the world as it passed to and fro on the quay. Tonelli was gray, he did not disown it; but he always maintained that his heart was still young, and that there was, moreover, a great difference in persons as to age, which told in his favor. So he loved to sit there, and look at the ladies; and he amused himself by inventing a pet name for every face he saw, which he used to teach to certain friends of his, when they joined him over his coffee. These friends were all young enough to be his sons, and wise enough to be his fathers; but they were always glad to be with him, for he had so cheery a wit and so good a heart that neither his years nor his follies could make any one sad. His kind face beamed with smiles, when Pennellini, chief among the youngsters in his affections, appeared on the top of the nearest bridge, and thence descended directly towards his little table. Then it was that he drew out the straw which ran through the centre of his long Virginia, and lighted the pleasant weed, and gave himself up to the delight of making aloud those comments on the ladies which he had hitherto stifled in his breast. Sometimes he would feign himself too deeply taken with a passing beauty to remain quiet, and would make his friend follow with him in chase of her to the Public Gardens. But he was a fickle lover, and wanted presently to get back to his caffè, where, at decent intervals of days or weeks, he would indulge himself in discovering a spy in some harmless stranger, who, in going out, looked curiously at the scar Tonelli’s cheek had brought from the battle of Vicenza in 1848.