Mrs.Herriton did not proceed.She was not one to detect the hidden charms of Baedeker.Some of the information seemed to her unnecessary, all of it was dull.Whereas Philip could never read "The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset"without a catching at the heart.Restoring the book to its place, she went downstairs, and looked up and down the asphalt paths for her daughter.
She saw her at last, two turnings away, vainly trying to shake off Mr.
Abbott, Miss Caroline Abbott's father.Harriet was always unfortunate.
At last she returned, hot, agitated, crackling with bank-notes, and Irma bounced to greet her, and trod heavily on her corn.
"Your feet grow larger every day," said the agonized Harriet, and gave her niece a violent push.Then Irma cried, and Mrs.Herriton was annoyed with Harriet for betraying irritation.
Lunch was nasty; and during pudding news arrived that the cook, by sheer dexterity, had broken a very vital knob off the kitchen-range."It is too bad," said Mrs.Herriton.Irma said it was three bad, and was told not to be rude.After lunch Harriet would get out Baedeker, and read in injured tones about Monteriano, the Mons Rianus of Antiquity, till her mother stopped her.
"It's ridiculous to read, dear.She's not trying to marry any one in the place.Some tourist, obviously, who's stopping in the hotel.The place has nothing to do with it at all.""But what a place to go to! What nice person, too, do you meet in a hotel?""Nice or nasty, as I have told you several times before, is not the point.Lilia has insulted our family, and she shall suffer for it.And when you speak against hotels, I think you forget that I met your father at Chamounix.You can contribute nothing, dear, at present, and I think you had better hold your tongue.Iam going to the kitchen, to speak about the range."She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she could not give satisfaction--she had better leave.A small thing at hand is greater than a great thing remote, and Lilia, misconducting herself upon a mountain in Central Italy, was immediately hidden.
Mrs.Herriton flew to a registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came home, was told by the housemaid that things seemed so unsettled that she had better leave as well; had tea, wrote six letters, was interrupted by cook and housemaid, both weeping, asking her pardon, and imploring to be taken back.In the flush of victory the door-bell rang, and there was the telegram: "Lilia engaged to Italian nobility.Writing.
Abbott."
"No answer," said Mrs.Herriton."Get down Mr.Philip's Gladstone from the attic."She would not allow herself to be frightened by the unknown.Indeed she knew a little now.The man was not an Italian noble, otherwise the telegram would have said so.It must have been written by Lilia.None but she would have been guilty of the fatuous vulgarity of "Italian nobility." She recalled phrases of this morning's letter: "We love this place--Caroline is sweeter than ever, and busy sketching--Italians full of simplicity and charm."And the remark of Baedeker, "The inhabitants are still noted for their agreeable manners," had a baleful meaning now.If Mrs.Herriton had no imagination, she had intuition, a more useful quality, and the picture she made to herself of Lilia's fiancé did not prove altogether wrong.
So Philip was received with the news that he must start in half an hour for Monteriano.He was in a painful position.
For three years he had sung the praises of the Italians, but he had never contemplated having one as a relative.He tried to soften the thing down to his mother, but in his heart of hearts he agreed with her when she said, "The man may be a duke or he may be an organ-grinder.That is not the point.If Lilia marries him she insults the memory of Charles, she insults Irma, she insults us.Therefore I forbid her, and if she disobeys we have done with her for ever.""I will do all I can," said Philip in a low voice.
It was the first time he had had anything to do.He kissed his mother and sister and puzzled Irma.The hall was warm and attractive as he looked back into it from the cold March night, and he departed for Italy reluctantly, as for something commonplace and dull.
Before Mrs.Herriton went to bed she wrote to Mrs.
Theobald, using plain language about Lilia's conduct, and hinting that it was a question on which every one must definitely choose sides.
She added, as if it was an afterthought, that Mrs.Theobald's letter had arrived that morning.
Just as she was going upstairs she remembered that she never covered up those peas.It upset her more than anything, and again and again she struck the banisters with vexation.Late as it was, she got a lantern from the tool-shed and went down the garden to rake the earth over them.The sparrows had taken every one.
But countless fragments of the letter remained, disfiguring the tidy ground.
