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A VENETIAN JUNE
* * * * * *
_By Anna Fuller_
A Literary Courtship
A Venetian June
Peak and Prairie
Pratt Portraits
Later Pratt Portraits
One of the Pilgrims
Katherine Day
A Bookful of Girls
The Thunderhead Lady
By Anna Fuller and Brian Read
* * * * * *
A VENETIAN JUNE
by
ANNA FULLER
With 16 Illustrations in Color by Frederick S. Coburn
[Illustration: "May watched the yacht until it disappeared
from sight"]
New York & London
G. P. Putnam's Sons
The Knickerbocker Press
Copyright, 1896
by
G. P. Putnam's Sons
Copyright, 1913
by
G. P. Putnam's Sons
23d Printing
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
To
ELENA
If from the flower of thy perfect gift
One drop of cordial be distilled, 'tis thine.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--VENICE 3
II.--A VENETIAN THOROUGHFARE 13
III.--A PAIR OF POLLYS 25
IV.--A REVERIE 37
V.--THE SIGNORA 49
VI.--A FESTA 65
VII.--GATHERING POPPIES 87
VIII.--THE PULSE OF THE SEA 109
IX.--BY-WAYS OF VENICE 129
X.--A BENEDICTION 145
XI.--AT TORCELLO 163
XII.--A PROMOTION 179
XIII.--ILLUMINATIONS 197
XIV.--A SUMMER'S DAY 219
XV.--JUNE ROSES 239
XVI.--A SURRENDER 253
XVII.--THE SERENATA 269
XVIII.--SEARCH-LIGHTS 285
XIX.--"DECUS ET PRAESIDIUM" 301
Illustrations
PAGE
"MAY WATCHED THE YACHT UNTIL IT DISAPPEARED FROM SIGHT" _Frontispiece_
"BETWEEN FROWNING WALLS AND LOW-ARCHED BRIDGES" 4
"TIME-WORN PALACES, AND THE DARKLY DOUBTFUL WATER AT THEIR
BASE" 6
"ON A STONE BRIDGE, LEANING AGAINST THE IRON RAILING, STOOD A
WOMAN IN A SULPHUR SHAWL" 8
"THEY WERE PASSING THE CHARMING LITTLE GOTHIC PALACE KNOWN AS
THE HOUSE OF DESDEMONA" 14
"THEY HAD MOUNTED TO THE HIGH GALLERY THAT SPANS THE SPACE
BETWEEN PILLAR AND PILLAR" 50
"THE GONDOLA IS THE CENTRE OF EVERYTHING; IT IS VENICE AND A
LIVING CREATURE BESIDES" 72
"NOW AND THEN THEY STOPPED AT SOME DOORWAY OPENING UPON THE
WATER, WHERE THEY LANDED" 138
"A COURTYARD EMBELLISHED BY AN EXQUISITE OLD STONE STAIRCASE" 140
"THE MADONNAS, UNDER THEIR IRON CANOPIES, LOOKED DOWN, SERENE
AND BENEFICENT" 142
"WHERE THE LOVELIEST OF ALL THE PARASOL MADONNAS KEEPS GUARD
OVER THE STILL LAGOON" 166
"THE MORNING WAS TRULY VENETIAN, SOFT AND FAIR AS A DREAM" 170
"UNDER THE BEAUTIFUL COLONNADE OF THE CATHEDRAL" 172
"MAY WATCHED THE WATER-LOGGED CRAFT AS IT VANISHED UNDER A
DISTANT BRIDGE" 224
"THE SERENATA" 272
"IT SEEMS AS IF THE LAGOONS BELONGED TO THEM THIS EVENING" 316
I
Venice
"Si, Signore!"
The gondola stirred gently, as with a long, quiet breath, and a moment
later it had pushed its way out from among the thronging craft at the
steps of the railway quay, and was gliding with its own leisurely motion
across the sunlit expanse of the broad Canal. As the prow of the slender
black bark entered a narrow side-canal and pursued its way between
frowning walls and under low arched bridges,--as the deep resonant cry
of the gondolier rang out, and an answer came like an echo from the
hidden recesses of a mysterious watery crossway, the spirit of Venice
drew near to the three travellers, in whose minds its strange and
exquisite suggestion was received with varying susceptibility.
To Pauline Beverly, sitting enthroned among the gondola cushions, this
was the fulfilment of a dream, and she accepted it with unquestioning
delight; her sister May, at the bar of whose youthful judgment each
wonder of Europe was in turn a petitioner for approval, bestowed a far
more critical attention upon the time-worn palaces and the darkly
doubtful water at their base; while to Uncle Dan, sitting stiffly
upright upon the little one-armed chair in front of them, Venice, though
a regularly recurrent experience, was also a memory,--a memory fraught
with some sort of emotion, if one might judge by the severe indifference
which the old soldier brought to bear upon the situation.
Colonel Steele was never effusive, yet a careful observer might have
detected in his voice and manner, as he gave his orders to the
gondolier, the peculiar cut-and-dried quality which he affected when he
was afraid of being found out. Careful observers are, however, rare, and
we may be sure that on their first day in Venice his two companions had
other things to think of than the unobtrusive moods of a life-long
uncle.
Suddenly the gondola swung out again upon the Grand Canal, a little
below the Rialto bridge, and again all was light and life and movement.
Steamboats plied up and down with a great puffing and snorting and a
swashing about of the water, gondolas and smaller craft rising and
falling upon their heaving wake; heavily laden barges, propelled by long
poles whose wielders walked with bare brown feet up and down the gunwale
in the performance of their labour, progressed slowly and stolidly,
never yielding an inch in their course to the importunities of shouting
gondolier or shrieking steam-whistle. Here the light shell of a yellow
_sandolo_ shot by, there a black-hooded gondola crept in and out among
the more impetuous water-folk. Over yonder the stars-and-stripes floated
from a slim black prow, a frank, outspoken note of colour that had its
own part to play among the quieter yet richer hues of the scene. It was
like an instantaneous transition from twilight to broad day, from the
remote past to the busy present, whose children, even in Venice, must be
fed and clothed and transported from place to place.
[Illustration: "Between frowning walls and low-arched
bridges"]
"Yes, that is the Rialto," said Uncle Dan, rousing to the contemplation
of a good substantial fact. "It's everywhere in Venice. You're always
coming out upon it, especially when you have been rowing straight away
from it."
"What a pity it should be all built over on top!" said May, knitting her
smooth young brow, as if, forsooth, wrinkles did not come fast enough
without the aid of any gratuitous concern for the taste of a by-gone
century.
"But just look at the glorious arch of it underneath!" cried Pauline.
"Who cares what is on top? And besides," she declared, after a moment's
reflection, "I like it all!"
"Has Venice changed much, Uncle Dan?" asked May.
"Venice?" Uncle Dan replied. "Venice doesn't change. It's the rest of us
that do that!"--and just at that moment the gondola turned out of the
Grand Canal into another narrow, shadowy water-way. Here and there,
above the dark current, a bit of colour caught the eye; a pot of
geranium on a window-ledge; a pair of wooden shutters painted pink; a
blue apron hung out to dry. On a stone bridge, leaning against the iron
railing, stood a woman in a sulphur shawl, gazing idly at the
approaching gondola. Scarlet, pink, blue, sulphur--how these unrelated
bits of colour were blended and absorbed in the pure poetry of the
picture!
[Illustration: "Time-worn palaces, and the darkly
doubtful water at their base"]
"How wonderful it is, when things come true!" Pauline exclaimed. "Things
you have dreamed of all your life, till they have come to seem less real
than the things you never dreamed of at all! I think I must have known
that that woman in the sulphur shawl would be standing on that bridge,
gazing upon us with her great tragic eyes; so that somehow it seems as if
she might have been a mere apparition."
"I think it very likely, for I am sure she has always been there when I
have passed," said Uncle Dan, with conviction.
"I didn't see anything tragic about her eyes," May objected. "I thought
she looked rather stupid, as if she had forgotten what she came out
for."
"Which was probably the case," Uncle Dan admitted. Whence it will be
seen that Uncle Dan, gallant officer in the past and practical man of
affairs to-day, was as wax in the hands of his nieces, equally ready to
agree with each.
Yet Colonel Steele had not the appearance of a man of wax. On the
contrary, his spare, wiry figure was full of vigour, his glance was as
keen and his speech as imperative as that of the veriest martinet. He
had commanded men in his day; he had fought the stern persistent fight
of a good soldier, and if, when the great cause was won, he had hung up
his sword and sash and laid aside his uniform, he had yet never succeeded
in looking the civilian, and his military title had clung to him through
thirty years of practical life. Furthermore, if it must be admitted that
he looked somewhat older than his sixty years, that fact was not to be
accounted for by any acknowledged infirmity, unless, indeed, the stiff
leg he had brought with him from his four years' service should be
reckoned as such.
"But you like it, May?"
It was Pauline who asked, and she put the question as if she valued her
sister's opinion.
"Yes," May answered, in her most judicial manner; "I like it. As you
say, it is very much what one expected. But of course it is rather
early to judge yet."
[Illustration: "On a stone bridge, leaning against the
iron railing, stood a woman in
a sulphur shawl"]
As if to refute this cautious statement, the gondola quietly glided out
again upon the Grand Canal, in full face of a great white dome, rising
superbly from a sculptured marble octagon against a radiant sky. Sky and
dome and sculptured figure, each cast its image deep down in the tranquil
waters at its base, where, as it chanced, no passing barge or steamboat
was shivering it to fragments.
"Ah!" said Pauline, with inarticulate eloquence.
"That is the Salute," Uncle Dan remarked; while May wondered how she
liked it.
Half-a-dozen strokes of the oar brought them in among the tall,
shielding posts, close alongside the steps of the _Venezia_. As
the hotel porter handed the young ladies from the gondola, the Colonel
paused to have a word with the gondolier. The man was standing, hat in
hand, keeping the oar in gentle motion to counteract the force of the
tide, which was setting strongly seaward.
"Si, Signore!" he answered.
"Why!" May exclaimed, "I had forgotten all about the man!"
II
A Venetian Thoroughfare
"To the bankers', Vittorio."
"Si, Signore. Will the Signore go by the Grand Canal?"
"By all means. And don't hurry. There is plenty of time."
"Si, Signore! The bank will wait!"
The little jest fell as soothingly familiar upon the ear of Vittorio's
one passenger as the dip of the oar or the bell of San Giorgio Maggiore
sounding across the harmonising water spaces. And yet the Colonel was
only half aware that every word, every inflection of the little dialogue
had passed between them on just such an afternoon in May five years ago,
and again five years before that, if the truth must be told.
They were passing the charming little Gothic palace known as the House
of Desdemona, and we may be pretty sure that the two little stone girls
that keep watch there upon the corners of the balcony railing, were
reminded by these words that another lustre had slipped by since last
they heard them. If they were as observant as they should have been,
considering that they had nothing to occupy them but the use of their
eyes and ears, they must have noted the fact that while the soldierly
figure of the old gentleman had not grown a whit less erect, the many
wrinkles upon his clean-cut countenance were perceptibly deepened in the
interval. A curious effect of years, those hard-headed little images
must have thought. They could perceive no such change in one another's
countenances, though they had witnessed the passage of several centuries.
But then, the little stone girls had one marked advantage over people of
flesh and blood, for they stopped short off at the shoulders. Their
creator having made no provision for a heart in their constitutions, they
could never grow old,--any more than they could ever have been truly young.
The tide was still going out, and the gondola moved very slowly up
stream. The Colonel was silent, as he had been silent during the
passage of this particular part of the Canal once in five years since
ever so long ago. Presently the gondola, in its leisurely progress, came
opposite a pretty old palace with charming rose windows to give it
distinction. There were flower-boxes in the balcony, and other signs of
habitation, and the Colonel, quite as if he were rousing from a reverie,
and casting about for something to say, turned half-way toward the
gondolier and asked: "The Signora Daymond, is she here this season?"
[Illustration: "They were passing the charming little
Gothic palace known as the House
of Desdemona"]
"Si, Signore; and her Signor son is also in Venice."
This last statement formed a new departure, the "Signor son" having been
absent on the occasion of the Colonel's more recent visits. The
announcement excited in him a curious and quite unfounded resentment.
Indeed, so disturbing was it, not because of any inherent
objectionableness, but because of its implication of a change, that the
Colonel found himself quite thrown out of his accustomed line of
procedure. That this was the case was made manifest by the fact that he
did not adhere so far to established precedent as to wait until after
they had passed under the iron bridge before looking quite round into
Vittorio's face and asking: "All is well at the little red house? The
wife and the children?"
"All well, Signore; only the mother died last winter."
"Your wife's mother, I think it was?"
"Si, Signore; she died in February."
One less mouth to feed, the Colonel thought to himself; and perhaps the
thought was apparent to the quick perception of the gondolier, although
the _padrone_ only remarked: "An old woman she must have been."
For Vittorio's face grew wistful, and there was a tone of gentle
reproach in his voice, as he said: "We should like well to have the
mother with us again."
"Of course, of course!" the Colonel assented, eager to disclaim his
unspoken disloyalty. "And Nanni? What do you hear from him?"
"He is paying us a visit, the first in three years. He does not forget
the old life, and when the Milan doctors told him he must take a long
rest, that he needed a change, he said: 'I know it; I need to feel an
oar in my hand and the leap of the gondola under my feet.'"
"And does he row?"
"Si, Signore. He has an old tub of a gondola and he paddles about in it
all day long and is content as the king. More content, for he is doing
what he pleases, and the king,--it is said that he cannot always do as
he pleases. If he could we should be better governed."
A puzzled scowl contracted the fine open brow of the gondolier. That a
king should not do as he pleased was as puzzling as it was grievous.
"He is doing well, Nanni?"
"Si, Signore, _benissimo_; and yet he loves the gondola and the old
life."
The Colonel drew his brows together as if the statement had not given
him unmixed pleasure. "Do you think he is ever sorry for the education
and the change?" he asked.
"Sorry? Oh, no! His profession is his life. Even here when he ought to
rest, he goes again and again to the Scuola di San Marco, the great
hospital, to see the sick people and talk with the doctors. Signore,"
and Vittorio's voice sank to a stage whisper: "Nanni is writing a book.
It is about the sanitation of the houses."
The gondolier had stepped forward close behind the cushioned seat, and
was stooping, with bended knee, his head almost on a level with the
_padrone's_. Keeping the oar constantly in motion, and with an
occasional deft turn of the wrist to avoid a collision,--for the Grand
Canal was a crowded thoroughfare at this hour,--he nevertheless seemed
to have eyes only for the erect figure and the grizzled head of his old
friend.
"Our benefactor does not permit us to speak to him of what is in our
hearts," he said, in his stately Italian; and again his voice dropped,
and this time to a wonderfully melodious tone: "But the Madonna listens
to us every morning and every evening. We all remember the _padrone_,
even the _piccolo Giovanni_, whom he has never seen."
A look of comical deprecation crossed the face of the passenger, and he
said, rather abruptly: "I hope Nanni is good to the rest of you."
"Si, Signore; Nanni is a good brother; but we are many and he is not
rich. _Ecco!_ The gondola of the Signora Daymond. Will the Signore
speak with her?"
"Not to-day," the Colonel answered, hastily; and in another instant,
before the occupants of the other boat had looked in their direction,
Vittorio had stepped back to his post at the stern, and had given a
twist of the oar that sent the gondola straight across the prow of a
steamboat coming down stream.
"_Lungo!_" he shouted, as peremptorily as if the great puffing
interloper had been a tiny _sandolo_, and the big boat actually did slow
up a bit, while Vittorio swiftly rounded it, thus placing its great hull
between his own and the Signora's gondola.
"You're a good oarsman, Vittorio," the _padrone_ remarked. "I always
said that I should like to cross the ocean with you."
"I would rather the Signore stayed here," Vittorio exclaimed, while a
flashing smile lit up his handsome face; "I would rather the Signore
took a little palace and stayed here in Venice!"
Before the Signore had had time to give this time-honoured proposition
the consideration which it merited, the gondola was lying alongside the
steps at the bankers' door, and his attention was distracted by a very
ragged, but seraphically beautiful urchin, who was excitedly wriggling
his body through the railing of the adjoining ferry-landing, with a view
to pressing his services upon the foreign gentleman. His efforts were
finally successful, and when, a few minutes later, the Colonel emerged
from the doorway, he found his entry into the gondola relieved of all
supposititious perils by the application of five very brown bare toes to
the gunwale. As he placed his penny in the tattered hat of his small
preserver, he bestowed upon him a smile so benignant that all the rival
ragamuffins assembled upon the ferry-landing took heart of hope and
shouted, as one boy: "_Un soldino, Signor! Un soldino!_"
Vittorio, with a look of superb scorn, calculated to convince the
uninitiated that he himself had never been a Venetian ragamuffin, gave
three long strokes of the oar, which sent the gondola far out upon the
Canal, well beyond the reach of such importunities.
"To the hotel, Signore?"
"Yes; the young ladies will be ready to go out by this time. They are my
nieces, Vittorio."
"And is it their first visit in Venice?"
"Yes; we have spent the winter in Italy, and we left the best for the
last."
"The Signore still loves Venice?"
"Better than any spot in the world. We will take the short cut home,
Vittorio."
Then Vittorio, with the deep joy which may hide in the hearts of other
men, but never shines in full radiance upon any but an Italian face,
turned the gondola into the same narrow _rio_ through which he had rowed
his passengers from the station earlier in the day.
The Colonel had caught the flash in the dark face, and his own
countenance had assumed an answering mobility. The tension of his first
hours in Venice was apt to yield, though not usually as early as this.
But then, he had never before had the pleasure of his two precious
Pollys in anticipation. As the gondola drew near a certain stone bridge
guarded by an iron railing, the sight of a woman in a sulphur shawl,
lingering there to speak with a neighbour, gave him a reminiscent sense
of amused gratification.
Presently they came round in front of the _Venezia_, and Uncle Dan
looked up to a certain high balcony, whence his coming was hailed by a
lively flutter of handkerchiefs.
"_Ecco_, my nieces!" he remarked to Vittorio, with ill-suppressed pride
of ownership; a claim, be it observed, which the two Pollys would have
been inclined to dispute; since, according to their own faith and
practice, it was they who owned Uncle Dan!
III
A Pair of Pollys
Five minutes later Uncle Dan and his two Pollys were once more afloat, a
beatific company. Their graceful craft dipped and courtesied to the
stroke of the oar as it glided swiftly with the out-going tide, past the
gilt ball of the custom-house, past the royal gardens and the Piazzetta
and the Doge's Palace, past the red tower of San Giorgio, on and on, far
out upon the wide lagoons. Pauline, sitting beside her uncle among the
cushions of state, was so absorbed in the mere joy of this gliding,
rhythmic motion, that she scarcely paid due deference to the wonders of
the Piazzetta, past which they fared so swiftly. Yes; there were the
famous pillars of Saint and Lion, and there, beyond the Ducal Palace,
was a passing glimpse of San Marco. It was as it should be, this
delightful verification of travellers' tales; she could afford to hold
all that in reserve. But just to-day, just at this moment, she only
wanted to watch the slender prow, skimming the wonderful opaline waters,
drawing ever nearer to those mystic islands floating over yonder like a
dream within a dream. She wondered vaguely at May's vivid alertness; for
her sister, claiming the privilege of youth, was enjoying the freedom of
the gondola, perching here and there as her fancy prompted, in the ample
forward space, that nothing might escape her eager, critical attention.
"How queer of them to have put those two windows out of line!" May
exclaimed, fixing upon the water-front of the Ducal Palace a glance of
disapproval beneath which the stately old pile blushed rosy red. At
least it was at that moment that she first observed the pinkness of its
complexion. "But it's a lovely colour," she hastened to admit; "and
those columns in the second story are perfectly dear."
"They have been a good deal admired," Uncle Dan observed dryly, yet with
a friendly twinkle that flickered over into the crow's-feet which were
such an important feature of his equipment as uncle. And May, nothing
daunted, pursued her own train of thought with unflagging spirit.
"Vittorio, which way is the Lido?" she asked presently, in her crispest
Italian. She was sitting on the carpeted steps at the prow, whence she
had been regarding, with a quite impersonal interest, the swaying motion
of the supple, picturesque figure at the oar. She was not sure that she
altogether approved of the broad white straw hat, with fluttering ends
of blue ribbon, nor of the blue woollen sash with its white fringe which
waved back and forth as its wearer trod the deck; but these were minor
details, and the total effect was undeniably good.
Vittorio, accustomed to that particular kind of attention which the
tourist bestows impartially upon man or gondola, the _briccoli_ whose
clustering posts mark the channels in the lagoon, or the towers of the
mad-house rising from yonder island,--had continued his unswerving gaze
straight over the head of the Signorina. At the sound of his name his
bearing changed. Lifting his hat, he took a step forward, and, still
plying the oar with his right hand, he said: "Over yonder is Sant'
Elisabetta del Lido, where the tourists go. But the Lido reaches for
miles between us and the sea,--as the Signore will tell you," he added,
with the careful deference that the Colonel knew so well.
The familiar voice of the gondolier, striking across his meditations,
had a singular effect upon the Colonel. It made him aware that this was
a different Venice from the one which Vittorio had been wont to show
him. What had become of the pensive quality of the atmosphere, the
brooding melancholy of its impression upon him? Where, he wondered,
half-resentfully, was the dim oppression, the subtle pain he had
heretofore associated with these tranquil water spaces? What witch-work
were those girls playing with the traditions of twenty-five years? He
glanced from one to the other of their unconscious faces, each absorbed
after its own fashion. After all, it was pleasant to look upon the world
through young eyes. No fear but the old preoccupation would reassert
itself in due time. But somehow his mind declined to concern itself with
that just now, and with a half-humorous deprecation, he resumed his
contemplation of his two Pollys.
His claim to such a unique possession formed in itself an achievement
upon which the Colonel prided himself not a little. He often recalled
his chagrin when his sister Mary,--Polly as he, and he alone had called
her,--failed to give her eldest daughter her own name. How could he, a
totally inexperienced uncle, enter into satisfactory relations with a
young person encumbered with the stately cognomen of Pauline? She was
sure to be haughty and unapproachable. No wonder that she puckered up
her face in hostile protest as often as he offered her a perfunctory
salutation. He was becoming fairly afraid of the little month-old
personage, when one day, he hit upon the reassuring device of turning
Pauline, with all its conservative dignity, into Polly. If the testimony
of a gentleman and an officer was to be relied upon, their good
understanding dated from that hour. For Uncle Dan was willing to take
his oath that the very day on which the two soft, ingratiating syllables
fell upon the small pink ear, the small pink face relaxed into an
expression of kindly tolerance, blossoming out a few days later into
that ecstatic first smile which had sealed his subjugation.
Uncle Dan was perhaps not thinking of this circumstance, as he glanced
to-day at the serenely blissful young face beside him, a face which had
never in all these years begrudged him a smile. Yet such reminiscences
were not wholly foreign to his thoughts, and they doubtless lent their
own agreeable though unrecognised flavour to his meditations, as he
looked upon the Venetian lagoons through the eyes of his Pollys.
In the course of time two other little maids had come upon the
scene,--Susan and Isabella were their unsuggestive names. Married now,
both of them, Uncle Dan was wont to state, parenthetically; and indeed,
if the truth be known, he had always taken a parenthetical view of these
unexceptionable little nieces. But when his Polly had remained for seven
years without a rival in his affections, a fourth small damsel had
presented herself, and had been regarded by her parents as the logical
candidate for her mother's name. From that time forth the Colonel was
the happy possessor of two Pollys, and it would have been difficult to
say which had the more complete ascendency over him. Big Polly and
little Polly he called them, and before the little one was well out of
long clothes he had formed the project of showing his Pollys the world.
The death of his sister having occurred some years since, his
brother-in-law's second marriage, which took place after a due interval,
left Uncle Dan with a free hand to carry out his project. He could not
but feel indebted to Beverly for taking a step which rendered him
independent of daughterly ministrations, though such a proceeding ran
counter to one of the Colonel's most perverse and therefore most valued
theories. That a woman should take a second husband had long seemed to
him both natural and proper, but the reasons were obvious, to his mind
at least, why a man should be more constant. Be that as it may, however,
here they were, Uncle Dan and his Pollys, and to-day, of all days, the
Colonel was little disposed to cavil at anything.
"What good manners this man has!" Pauline remarked, as Vittorio made his
answer to the Signorina.
"Yes"; Uncle Dan replied. "He never slips up on that."
"Where does he get it?"
"A family trait. His father had it when he used to row me twenty-five
years ago, and I've no doubt his forbears were all like that. It's a
matter of race."
"A matter of race!" cried May. "Why, Uncle Dan, when that Italian in the
train the other day stared us out of countenance and we asked you to do
something about it, you told us it was the custom of the country!"
"That's only Uncle Dan's way of shirking his responsibilities," Pauline
explained. "It's lucky for you, May, that I'm getting on in life. I
don't know what you would do if you hadn't any better chaperon than
Uncle Dan."
"And yet, you don't seem so very old," May remarked, rather doubtfully,
tilting her golden head at a critical angle. "I don't believe anybody
would suspect you of being twenty-seven."
"That's a comfort," laughed Pauline, with a humorous appreciation that
was like Uncle Dan's.
Pauline Beverly had not, like her sister, a reputation for beauty, yet
she possessed undeniable charm. Her hair was of a sunny brown, and
softly undulating; her eyes were of the same shade as her hair, and
capable of a changing light, and, when she smiled, her face, soft and
pure, but not brilliant in colouring, had somehow the look of a brook
rippling over brown pebbles in a shady place, where the sunshine comes
in threads and hints, rather than in an obliterating flood of light. The
years, whose sum seemed to May so considerable, had performed their
modelling very gently, conferring upon the countenance that winning
quality which is the gift of those who habitually think more of others
than of themselves.
They were coming in past the red sentinel-tower of San Giorgio, May
still sitting on the low steps facing the stern of the gondola. As the
young girl looked past her companions, across the silvery spaces of the
lagoon, her eyes grew dreamy and far-away. So marked was the phenomenon,
that Uncle Dan was moved to exclaim: "A penny for your thoughts, Polly."
May started, for she was not often caught sentimentalising. Then, with
the directness which characterised her, she said: "I was wondering
whether one might not perhaps find a soul here in Venice."
"A soul? What kind of a soul?"
"Oh, any sort would do, I suppose. You know Signor Firenzo told me my
voice was _bellissima_, but that I hadn't any soul."
"Perhaps Signor Firenzo is a better judge of voices than of souls,"
Pauline suggested, with a confident little smile.
"A young girl like you hasn't any business with a soul," Uncle Dan
declared. "If you think you see one coming over the lagoon you had
better turn round and look at the Lion of St. Mark's. He hasn't the sign
of a soul, yet he's the best of good fellows, as anybody can see."
May promptly turned, and fixed her eyes upon the classic beast in
question.
"I didn't know that lions had such long, straight tails," she remarked.
"The wings strike me as being more out of the common," Uncle Dan
chuckled, much reassured by Polly's ready return to the judicial
attitude.
"I should almost think," said Pauline, musingly, "that a lion that had
wings and a taste for literature might perhaps have a soul after all!"
IV
A Reverie
When Vittorio was told to come for them in the evening, he had cast a
significant glance at a certain radiant white cloud, billowing in the
West, and said: "_Speriamo_"; which, in the vocabulary of the gondolier
means: "Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst." Upon which
the cloud had gradually taken on more formidable proportions, until,
just at dusk, it burst in a torrent of rain, which swept the Grand Canal
clear of sight-seers, and sent the nightly serenaders, who usually act
as magnets to the wandering gondolas, into the hotels for refuge. A band
of them were established in the long, wide corridor of the _Venezia_,
where their strong, crude voices and their twanging strings reverberated
rather noisily.
Wondering how it must seem to have nerves young enough to sustain such
rough treatment, the Colonel abandoned his nieces to their
self-inflicted ordeal, and mounted the stairs to his own familiar
quarters. And there, as he closed the door behind him, he ceased to
speculate upon such ephemeral matters.
He had come up, ostensibly to write some letters, but instead of doing
so, he lighted a cigar, and seated himself at the window, watching the
swoop of the rain along the hurrying waters of the Canal. The tide was
coming in and the wind was with it. One gondola at the ferry was
struggling across the current, with difficulty held to its course by the
efforts of its straining oarsman. The passengers had taken refuge under
the _felze_, or gondola hood. Impatient of the slow progress of the
boat, the Colonel looked down into the hotel-garden directly beneath his
windows, which was drowned in a moist blur, that only seemed intensified
where it focused about the electric lights. Over there again, across the
Canal, stood the great Salute, showing ghostly and unreal in its massive
whiteness, half obliterated by the driving rain. It would have seemed
that the most perfunctory letter-writing might have been an improvement
upon such a prospect as that. Yet the Colonel sat on, puffing in a
desultory manner at his excellent cigar, and reflecting that another
five years had gone by.
A curious thing, he was thinking to himself, how inevitably he found
himself in Venice once in five years. It was not in his plan to do so.
He would have been just as ready to return after an interval of two
years, or of three; but, for one reason or another, he never seemed able
to arrange his affairs to that end until the fifth year had come round.
Somebody was sure to die and leave him executor of his will; or this or
that charity of which he was treasurer made a point of getting into a
tight place. To-morrow was the twenty-ninth of the month;--to-morrow
always was the twenty-ninth on his first arrival in Venice. Yet that,
too, was the merest accident, as he assured himself with some heat. None
of these things was premeditated.
He should call upon her to-morrow,--certainly. It would be a downright
discourtesy to wait until they had met by chance. He wondered if she
were expecting him. Probably not; she had other things to think of,
especially now that her son was with her.
It would be a pleasure to see her,--her beautiful, friendly eyes, that
enchanting smile, that wonderful turn of the head. As though she could
ever have cared for a battered old wreck like him! And yet he knew, with
an indubitable knowledge, that he should ask her again. And the answer
would be the same as it had been twenty-five years ago, when she was but
a three-years' widow.
He had been hasty, he had not sufficiently respected her past. He should
have waited. And yet, when he came again, after five years, perhaps
that, too, was an error of judgment. Perhaps his coming, after so long
an interval, caused the revival of old memories, caused a shock which
might have been avoided if he had ventured sooner. And then, when another
five years had passed, he had begun to age. A man who has seen field
service has not the staying powers of other men. That London doctor knew
all about it in a moment. Yes, he had already begun to age, fifteen years
ago. And now!
The Colonel relighted his cigar, which had gone out. How the rain kept
at it! He could hear the swish of it on the wall of the house across the
garden. Even Venice could be dreary.
He had never seen her anywhere else. He did not ask himself why he had
refrained from seeking her out in her own home, not five hundred miles
from his own,--why he had always come to her here in Venice, where all
her married life had been spent. After all, a man does what he must. And
to-morrow he should ask her again! He did not wish to, he did not even
intend to. He could resolve not to, here, in cold blood, with the
disheartening rain blotting out the rose-bushes down below, and a
disheartening conviction of failure blotting out his nerve and courage.
But to-morrow she would rise to meet him, in her own gracious way; he
should touch her beautiful, firm hand, where a single jewel shone. He
thought if he could ever see another ring upon that hand, one which,
having no significance of its own, might weaken the significance of that
diamond, now grown old-fashioned in its low setting, there might be a
chance for him. But, no; there would be but the one ring, and there
would be no chance for him;--and yet he should ask her!
There was another gondola struggling across the Canal. Why should anyone
be out in such weather? It must be a lover, or some such sanguine person,
bent, as like as not, upon a fruitless errand. The Colonel had but scant
sympathy with lovers; they so rarely had any discrimination.
Yes, she would come forward, with extended hand, to meet him. He wondered
whether the streak of grey on the right temple would have widened
appreciably. Perhaps it would have spread itself, like a fine white film
of lace, over the abundant hair. It would probably be very becoming. That
was another curious thing; every time he saw her she had grown more
beautiful. The years that had dealt so harshly with him had touched her
only to an added grace and tenderness; experience had drawn only noble
lines upon her face, and there was an ever-increasing warmth and
graciousness of countenance which was infinitely finer than the bloom of
youth. People made a great deal of youth, but really, when you came to
think of it, what a meagre, paltry thing it was! A man hardly began to
live before he was thirty-five!
"Uncle Dan, may we come in?"
The door flew open, and two young persons, with all the disabilities of
youth upon their heads, came rustling in upon the old bachelor's
misanthropic reverie. Instantly the atmosphere had changed.
"It was very good fun," May remarked, as she perched upon the arm of her
uncle's chair. "They shrieked _Margherita_ and _Santa Lucia_ and a lot
of opera airs, till we thought we should lose our tympanums, and so we
came away."
"We were in quite as much danger of losing our manners," Pauline
interposed. "We sat next a delicious English girl, pretty as a picture
and unresponsive as a statue, and we simply dragged her into
conversation. She took us for English and was terribly shocked to find
we were Americans, and not even Canadians at that. 'You don't mean to
say that you come from the States!' she cried, quite forgetting that she
was a statue. And then May got wicked, as she always does when her
patriotism is touched."
"Nonsense!" May broke in; "it isn't patriotism; it's self-respect."
"And how did you work off your self-respect?" asked Uncle Dan, deeply
interested.
"I told her I thought it was very strange that English people should
mistake us. That we never mistook them; we knew at a glance a person
from the Isles. She rose to it like a tennis-ball, and asked what isles
I referred to. 'Why, the British Isles,' I answered, innocently. And
then she looked mystified, and Pauline discovered that the noise was
very fatiguing, and we came away."
For half-an-hour Uncle Dan listened, highly diverted, to the chatter of
the girls, and it never once occurred to him to remember the meagreness
and paltriness of their condition. After they had left him, he turned to
the window, feeling that the dreariness without and within was a very
transitory and inconsequent thing. And lo! a change had come. The influx
of youth would appear to have put to flight other clouds than those of a
morbid mind. The rain had altogether ceased. He could see the roses
gleaming moistly in the circles of electric light. The serenaders were
just pushing away in their big barge, with coloured lanterns swaying in
the breeze. They were beginning to sing, and their voices sounded sweet
and melodious in the open air. Above the Salute the clouds were breaking
away, and there were stars gleaming in the deep blue clearing.
"Have you seen the stars, Uncle Dan?" came Pauline's voice through the
key-hole. "We're going to have a glorious day to-morrow!"
V
The Signora
They had been spending an hour among the wonderful glooms and gleams of
St. Mark's, and now they had mounted to the high gallery that spans the
space between pillar and pillar. The Colonel had looked twice at his
watch, for he had an appointment with himself, so to speak, and he
proposed to leave the girls to the study of the gold mosaics which they
seemed inclined to take seriously. For the moment they were leaning upon
the stone balustrade, looking down into the great dim spaces of the
church.
"I wish I knew whether it was really good," said May, lifting her golden
head in deprecation of a possibly misguided admiration. "It is so
beautiful that I'm dreadfully afraid it is meretricious."
"It is really good," said a voice close at hand. "I think we may set our
minds at rest about that."
The voice was its own passport and no one thought of taking the remark
amiss. Uncle Dan who had been consulting his watch for the third time,
looked up with a twinkle of good understanding, which the appearance of
the speaker justified. The young man was possessed of a good figure and
a good face, as well as of a good voice.
Somewhat startled, the girls turned and discovered that they had been
obstructing the narrow passage.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" they both cried, as they retreated into an
angle of the gallery. "You couldn't pass us by."
"I didn't particularly want to," the stranger replied, quite at his
ease. "This is one of the best points of view," and it was much to his
credit that he did not give the obvious turn to his remark by looking at
the two girls as he made it, for neither the beauty of the youthful
sceptic nor the quiet distinction of her sister was likely to have been
lost upon a man of his stamp. That they were sisters, unlike as they
were, could not have escaped the most casual observer.
[Illustration: "They had mounted to the high gallery
that spans the space between
pillar and pillar"]
"Then you know what is good," May remarked, in perfect good faith.
"I know this is good," he answered; "and I am sure it is much too good
to be interrupted."
He was at the disadvantage of holding his hat in his hand, in deference
to place, so that he was unable to indicate a deference to persons by
lifting it. Yet he took his leave with so good a manner that the Colonel
was moved to detain him. As the stranger made his way past him, the
elder man remarked: "It must be worth while to be up on architecture in
this part of the world."
"It's worth while to be up on architecture in any part of the world,"
the young man replied. "Where there is nothing to see there is all the
more to do."
He paused a moment, as if St. Mark's were really more interesting than
his own opinions. Then: "Have you travelled much in our own West?" he
asked.
"No," was the Colonel's unblushing admission; for he was a New
Englander of the New Englanders and valued his own limitations.
"There's good work going on out there; it's a great field."
"But surely you are not a Westerner!" the Colonel protested.
"No; but I sometimes wish I were. It's the thing to be."
There was no challenge in his voice, yet Colonel Steele was half
inclined to take umbrage at the unprejudiced statement of fact. The
ease, however, with which the young man again indicated a courteous
leave-taking without the aid of a hat disarmed criticism, and as the
Colonel watched the slowly retreating figure, he willingly accorded to
the heresy the indulgence due to youthful vagaries. To be sure, he could
not remember that an exaggerated estimate of the Great West had ever
been a vagary of his own youth. But then, he supposed that the West had
made advances since his day!
A glance at his watch changed the direction of his thoughts, and a few
minutes later Vittorio was rowing him swiftly, with the tide, up the
Grand Canal. Just as the noon gun roared out from the base of San
Giorgio, the Colonel rang the bell of the Palazzo Darino.
She was sitting, the lady of his evening reverie, the lady of a
life-long reverie, one might as truly say, just as he had hoped to find
her, alone and disengaged. Two or three open letters lay upon the table
beside her, but they lay there meekly, as if they knew that they must
bide their time.
"Ah! Colonel Steele!"
She spoke his name as no one else had ever done, somehow as if it were a
title of nobility, and as she came forward to meet him, the soft rustle
of her garments filled him with content. He took the extended hand, and,
bending above it, he noted the diamond, in its low, old-fashioned
setting, gleaming there alone.
"I am glad you are faithful to Venice," she said. "I hoped you might
come this year."
"And you still come every year?"
"Yes."
The white film had spread just as he had anticipated. He could see how
complete it was, as she seated herself in the full light of the open
window. The Colonel had sometimes been startled to find how his
premonitions in regard to her had come true. One year he had said to
himself: she will be paler than usual; I wonder if she has been ill. And
he had found that she had been ill, and there was a fragility and pallor
about her that seemed to him quite heart-breaking. Again he had said to
himself: she will be wearing crape as in the old times; I wonder why.
And when he had come to her she had told him of her mother's death a few
months previous. So to-day he had known of that lace-like whiteness of
the beautiful head, and of a certain deepening of the depression of the
cheek and chin, which had not been there five years ago.
"Yes," she was saying. "I don't find Venice anywhere else, and so I come
over every year. Happily, I like the voyage."
The Colonel did not like the voyage but that was a painful fact which he
had never felt called upon to admit.
"This year I have my boy with me," she added. "That is a great pleasure."
"And I have my nieces," he replied, deterred by a curious jealousy from
pursuing the subject of the boy.
"How delightful! That is, I suppose you find it so, since you have
brought them."
"Oh, yes; it makes quite a different thing of travelling. We came over
in October. We have been wintering in Rome."
He wondered how he should put it this time. Five words usually
sufficed,--five words that meant so much to him, and so little, so
intolerably little to her.
"I am glad you have young people with you," she said. "We need them more
and more as we grow older."
"Well, that depends," the Colonel demurred, too loyal to his Pollys,
even here and now, to allow them to be regarded generically. "There are
not many girls I should want to have on my hands. I think the Pollys are
rather exceptional."
"What did you say the name was?"
"Polly--Polly Beverly."
"And what is the other one's name?"
"Same name. They are both Pollys. I named them myself," he added, with a
quite unforeseen revival of that agreeable self-satisfaction which he
never could conceal in this connection.
And then, to his own surprise, he found himself entering with much gusto
upon the story of their christening. By the time he had finished, he
felt quite toned up and invigorated.
"Tell me some more about them," she begged.
She was leaning back in her seat, serenely receptive. The Colonel,
sitting opposite to her in the straight-backed chair such as he always
chose, noted, with a curiously disengaged pleasure, the wonderful
opaline quality of the impression she made. The soft grey folds of her
dress, the still more softened grey of the hair, and the deep grey of
the beautiful eyes,--none of these quiet shades was dull and fixed. A
delicate play of light and shadow made them vital, as the grey of the
lagoons is vital, when there are clouds before the sun, and a strange,
mystic luminousness traverses their tranquil spaces. She had always
reminded him of the lagoons. The association only seemed to make each
more exquisite and apart. And now, as he told her about his Pollys, it
was with very much the same sense of perfect gratification with which
he had taken them out upon the water the day before. There was also the
same singular absence of the old, familiar pain and oppression.
"What are they interested in?" she asked, and there could be no doubt in
the Colonel's mind that she really cared to know.
"Well; they are interested in pretty much everything, though in a
different way. For instance, they are making short work of Italian. They
speak better than I do, after all these years," he declared with
delighted self-depreciation, "though perhaps that's not much to brag of.
One of them has got the accent and the other the grammar, so they pull
very well together. Then the younger one can sing like a bird."
The Colonel was warming to his subject, and the Signora, as he liked to
call her, did not interrupt.