flat across between the two gunwales and balanced himself upon it in
order to look under the flaps of the awning into the face of the
Signorina. Vittorio was of a pre-eminently social disposition, and he
liked to be in visible touch with his listeners. It was indeed
refreshing to see his handsome face and brilliant smile once more. It
quite flashed in upon them, being in full sunshine, as they looked out
upon it from their shady covert.
"The new break-water runs out a very long distance into the open sea on
either side," he explained; "and we shall hardly get to the end of it.
But we can see over it, and there will be the bright sails such as the
Signorina likes."
"How nice he is!" said May; "Now the other one would have said: 'No,
Signorina,' and that would have been the end of it."
Yet, even as she spoke, a quick compunction seized her. She had never
been able to rid her mind of a disquieting conviction that all was not
well with this grave, taciturn being, whose personality was not less
haunting than his bearing was unobtrusive. She did not remember that she
had ever before felt so much concern for an indifferent person, and,
being of an active temperament, she could not be content with a passive
solicitude. It seemed to her that something must be done about it, and
that it devolved upon her to solve the problem. Perhaps if she were to
offer to give the man a gondola he would admit that he was miserable in
that dreary hospital, and that he longed for the free life of the
lagoons. The project appealed, indeed, so strongly, both to her
imagination and to her judgment, that she had already made a mental
readjustment of her finances to that end. There was a certain white silk
trimmed with pale green _miroir_ velvet that she had once dreamed of,
which had somehow transformed itself in her mind into a slim black bark,
fitted out in the most approved style with cushions and sea-horses, and
tufted cords.
"I ought to be willing to dance in my tennis dress the rest of my days,"
she told herself; "for the sake of changing the whole course of a poor
man's life!"
"_Lungo!_"
The familiar call took her quite by surprise, and looking out from under
the awning, she espied the Daymond sea-horse on its blue ground, already
close upon them. Geof was at the oar and Kenwick was sitting beside Mrs.
Daymond.
"What do you say to our making an exchange of prisoners, Colonel
Steele?" asked Mrs. Daymond. "You shall have one of my young men if you
will give me one of your girls."
"Oh, may I come to you?" Pauline begged, mindful of her little
air-castle;--for the Colonel always managed, when he could, to get
Geoffry into his own boat, and the young man was already engaged in an
animated conversation with her sister.
"Do come," said Mrs. Daymond. "And Mr. Kenwick, I shall have to give you
up, for I can't spare an oar."
"Doesn't Mr. Kenwick row?" asked May, lifting a pair of satirical
eye-brows.
"Not for other people," Kenwick laughed. "I keep my strength for
paddling my own canoe." And, having seen Pauline safely established
beside Mrs. Daymond, he stepped into the Colonel's boat, quite
unconscious of the scarcity of encouragement he had received.
The Colonel welcomed him the more hospitably perhaps, for a
consciousness of having been somewhat remiss at the outset. He need have
had no misgivings, however, for Kenwick was so happily constituted as to
consider a slight to himself quite inconceivable.
"It was very sweet of you to come to us," said Mrs. Daymond, as the
gondolas glided away from each other. "We particularly wanted you this
afternoon."
"I am glad of that," said Pauline, with one of her still smiles that
seemed to give out as much warmth as brightness.
They had passed the island of Santa Elena, and were upon the broad path
of the sea-going vessels, which was deserted to-day, save for one yellow
sail, yet a long way off, that stood out in full sunshine against the
quiet northern sky. The tide was coming in, though not yet strongly, and
they were avoiding the current by keeping in toward the shore of the
Lido.
Geof was rowing, with power and precision, as his habit was. It struck
Pauline that he would have been a capital gondolier; and then she
remembered that when he got her Uncle Dan talking about the war the other
day,--a feat, by the way, which few succeeded in accomplishing,--she had
thought to herself, what a superb soldier he would have made. Presently
her eye wandered from the rhythmically swaying figure at the oar to the
wide reaches of the seaward path, where the yellow sail showed, clear
and remote as a golden bugle-note, its reflection dropping like an echo,
far, far down into the depths. The other gondola had fallen back a few
lengths, as was apt to be the case.
"Did you ever wonder why your men give us the right of way?" Mrs.
Daymond asked. Her voice fell in so naturally with the dip of the oars
and the lapping of the tide against the prow, that Pauline suddenly
became aware of those pleasant sounds, which had escaped her notice till
then.
"I should suppose of course your gondola ought to go first," she
answered.
"Oh, no," Mrs. Daymond laughed; "it is not out of deference to me. It is
only because Pietro is an old man, and they don't like to hurry him.
Isn't that a pretty trait?"
"Yes, indeed! Is Pietro very old?"
"He is sixty-four. He rows as well as ever, only he hasn't quite the
endurance he used to have. He was my husband's gondolier."
"And you have had him all these years?"
"Yes; since before Geof was born. Geof is twenty-nine," she added
thoughtfully; "just the age of his father when we first met. He is like
his father, only happier."
"Happier?" Pauline repeated, wonderingly.
"Yes; my husband had peculiar sorrows."
They were close upon the bright sail now, and they found that it was
striped with red and tipped with purple. The slight breeze had dropped
and the sail hung loose, glowing in the sunshine as the boat floated
homeward with the tide. Two men lay asleep in the shadow of the sail,
and the man at the rudder had let his pipe go out. As the gondola came
alongside the boat, a small yellow dog sprang up and barked sharply at
them, his body, from tip to tail, violently agitated with the whirr of
the internal machinery. The helmsman, thus roused, pulled out a match
and lighted his pipe; the sunshine was so bright that the light of the
match was obliterated. Mrs. Daymond and Pauline watched the little drama
rather absently.
"There are more sails," Geof remarked, nodding his head toward the mouth
of the port, where brilliant bits of colour hovered like butterflies in
the sun. Pauline did not say how pretty they were, but Geof, stooping to
look under the awning into her face, did not feel that she was
unresponsive. He had discovered before this that she had other means of
expression than audible speech.
They had come about the end of the Lido, and were following the line of
the break-water, and presently Mrs. Daymond broke the silence:
"My husband was a Southern Unionist," she said. "The war was an
inevitable tragedy to him."
Pauline felt instinctively that it was not often that Mrs. Daymond spoke
in this way of her husband to one who had not known him. She listened
with a sense of being singled out for a great honour.
"He would have given his life for his country," Mrs. Daymond was saying:
"He would have given his life for the Union,--but he was bound hand and
foot, and he came away."
They were far, far out now, still rowing toward the open sea. As Mrs.
Daymond paused, they could hear the voice of the Colonel, speaking to
Vittorio, in his peculiar Italian, only a shade less English than his
own tongue.
"And your husband came to Venice?"
"Yes; it was here that we met. He had been gathering material in many
places for a history of Venice, and he had come; here to write. We spent
three years here, summer and winter. He was fond of rough weather, and
we get plenty of that here. And he was fond of work."
She paused again, watching the measured stroke of her son's oar.
"One summer we went into the Tyrol for a few weeks, and while we were
away there was a fire, and all my husband's notes and manuscripts were
burnt."
"Burnt?" Pauline repeated, with a catch of consternation in her voice.
There was not a trace of bitterness in the speaker's face; on the
contrary, its usual clear serenity seemed touched to something higher
and deeper.
"Then it was," she said, "that my husband had his great opportunity. He
began his work again from the beginning. His courage did not flag for a
single instant."
"He was a brave soldier after all," said Pauline.
"Yes; and he fell on the field. There was a terrible epidemic of fever,
and he went about among the people doing them inestimable service in
many ways. I could not go with him because of Geof, and,--I saw the end
from the beginning. As I was saying, Pietro used to row us as long ago
as that. He has carried Geof in his arms many a time. Ah! Now we feel
the swell!"
As she spoke, the long, slow roll of the sea lifted their light bark
like a piece of drift-wood upon its sweeping crest, letting it sink
again in a strange and solemn rhythm. The actual rise and fall of the
water was so slight that it was scarcely apparent to the eye; yet it had
the reach and significance of an elemental force, and the gondola rose
and sank with a certain tremor, foreign to its usual graceful motion.
"Perhaps we had better turn back, Geof," said Mrs. Daymond.
"Very well; but not until Miss Beverly has seen the sails outside."
Pauline went forward and stood upon the upper step, steadying herself by
the oarsman's proffered shoulder. The motion seemed stronger, now that
she was on her feet.
"Hold harder," said Geof; "you won't enjoy it if you don't feel safe.
There! That's right."
Over the line of the jetty was the deep blue Adriatic, sweeping to the
horizon, its nearer reaches dotted with brilliant sails, shining in
every shade of red and yellow and ruddy brown. The long, outer shore of
the Lido, stretching far away to the tower of Malamocco, was edged with
white, as the gentle curve of the waves broke with a toss of spray upon
the sand.
"You like it?" Geof inquired, looking up into her face.
"It's as pretty as a tune," she said. "A tune with a lot of harmony to
make it really sing. Do you know what I mean?"
"Perfectly," he answered.
Then, as she stepped down and went back to her seat: "I'm going home as
passenger," he announced. "We shall have the tide with us and Pietro
won't need my help."
"That's right," said Mrs. Daymond. "We want you over here."
The sun had got low enough to shine in under the flaps of the awning,
and Geof lifted the canvas from its iron rods, and handed it over to
Pietro, who stowed it away, rods and all, in the stern of the gondola.
The world seemed to open up immensely bright and big, and the sky struck
them with the force of a revelation.
"There, I call this grand!" Geof cried, taking possession of the chair.
"I've been feeling like an outcast or a galley-slave, or some such
unlucky wretch, labouring away at the oar, with you two having the pick
of everything inside."
"You seemed depressed!" his mother said, with amused appreciation of his
lament.
They had turned toward home, and were just coming up with the Colonel's
gondola. The men were resting on their oars, while the passengers stood
up to survey the view beyond the jetty.
"You didn't come out far enough to get the swell," said Pauline.
"Yes, we did," May answered. "But we didn't like it; so we came back."
"Miss May was pretty badly frightened," Kenwick observed, with his most
brilliant smile.
"Nonsense!" cried May; "I was no more frightened than anybody else! But
I didn't like it. It felt so horribly big, and made us seem so little."
"And you were perfectly right, Polly," said Uncle Dan, placing his hand
upon the small, gloveless one that lay on his arm. "The sea is no place
for a gondola. I am sure Mrs. Daymond agrees with us."
"I think we both sympathize with May," she answered, glancing with
interest at the charming young face, which was not quite clear of a
certain puzzled disturbance.
Half-an-hour later they rounded the end of the Lido and came in full
sight of the city, its domes and towers grouping themselves in ever
changing perspective against the western sky. They overtook two or three
of the brilliant sails they had passed on their outward way, still
drifting city-ward with the tide. The men had taken to their oars and
were helping the boats along.
As they drew near the poor, denuded island of Santa Elena, where only
the vine-grown Abbey remains, of all its ancient loveliness, a cascade
of lark-notes came pouring down from the sky. They strained their eyes
to catch a glimpse of the birds, lost to sight in the dazzling ether,
and as they looked, one tiny creature, with wings outspread, came
singing down to earth.
The gondolas were nearing home, when Geof asked abruptly: "How did you
like it, Miss Beverly,--being caught in the ocean swell?"
"I agree with May that it was rather solemn and awful," she answered;
and then, with a slightly deepening colour: "but--I liked it."
IX
By-ways of Venice
"I say, Geof; isn't that Colonel Steele's gondola over there?"
"Why, yes!" Geof cried, with mock surprise; "how clever of you to see
it! And, I say, Oliver, don't you think that looks a little like the
tower of San Giorgio? Red, you know; rather marked, eh?"
The two young men were coming home from an early sketching-bout, as was
evident from a glance at the gondola, which was distinctly in undress.
Old Pietro knew better than to carry his best cushions and brasses on
such occasions; nor did he display the long, black broadcloth,--the
_strassino_--which gives such distinction to a gondola, falling in ample
folds from the carved back of the seat, and hiding the rougher finish of
the stern. Under the awning, on the very rusty and dilapidated
cushions, sat Kenwick, and beside him, face up, was an oil-sketch of a
half-grown boy, sitting at the prow of a fishing-boat, dangling his bare
brown legs over the water, which gave back a broken reflection of the
bony members. A red sail, standing out in full sunshine, furnished the
background to the figure, but somehow, the interest centred in the thin
legs, which the boy himself was regarding with studious approval. The
legs were so extremely well drawn that one did not wonder at their
owner's satisfaction in them.
"Pity you can't paint as well as you can chaff," the artist observed,
glancing from his own clever sketch to his friend's block, which was
leaning, face inward, against the side of the boat.
Geof was lolling on the steps, his legs somewhat entangled among the
easels, paint-boxes, and the like that cumbered the floor of the boat,
one arm resting on the deck of the prow. Like many athletic men, he had
a gift for looking outrageously lazy. At Kenwick's retort, he turned
from the contemplation of San Giorgio, knocked the ashes out of his
pipe, and folding his hands behind his head, bestowed an amiable grin
upon his astute friend. He wondered just why Kenwick found it worth
while to dissemble.
"The best thing _you_ ever did was that poppy sketch," he remarked,
regarding his companion with half-closed, indolent eyes. "But then, you
haven't often the wit to choose such a good subject. I wish you were not
so confoundedly afraid of doing anything pretty."
"My dear fellow," Kenwick retorted, "you may be a very decent architect,
but I'll be hanged if you have the first inkling of what art means."
From which interchange of amenities, the average listener might not have
inferred, what was nevertheless true, that the two men had a high
opinion of each other's talents. Happily, there was no one to be misled,
for Pietro, with all his advantages, had not yet mastered a word of
English. The only feature of the situation intelligible to him, was,
that Kenwick, too, discarded his pipe at this juncture, and the
gondolier was, accordingly, obliged to stow away his own half-finished
cigarette,--4th quality,--in the cavernous recesses of the stern. He
had been counting upon smoking it out before arriving at the Palazzo
Darino, though he had scented danger from the moment his eye fell upon
Vittorio's gondola. A gondolier, however, is early schooled to study any
whim rather than his own, and presently Pietro observed, rather than
inquired: "To San Giorgio, Signore?"
"_Sicuro!_"
The red banner was hanging limp in the lee of the island, the prow of
the boat being tied to a ring in the masonry, while Vittorio sat at the
forward end, holding her off, lest a passing steamboat or outward bound
coaster should drive her against the wall. Under the awning was a
glimpse of light draperies, and, as Pietro's gondola drew near, the
young men could hear a fresh, girlish voice reading aloud.
"We're not in visiting trim," Geof called, gathering himself together,
as they came up; "but we must know what you are improving your minds
upon."
"We are reading Ruskin," May replied, in her most edifying tone of
voice.
"Oh, _St. Mark's Rest_," said Kenwick. "You're getting enlightened about
the pillars."
"It's very interesting," Pauline declared. "You know he tells us to have
our gondola moored over here, and read what he has to say. Doesn't
everybody do it?"
"Well, I don't think you'll ever find San Giorgio fringed with
gondolas," Kenwick mocked; "but I'm sure it shows a beautiful spirit in
those who do come. I recognize Miss May's docility."
"You are quite right," said May, with dignity. "It was I who proposed
it. Do you read Ruskin, Mr. Daymond?"
"Of course I do. One would be lost without him, here in Venice."
"We almost got lost with him the other day," she rejoined. "We poked
about in the rain in search of a San Giorgio on the wall of a house, who
was described as 'vigorous in disciplined career of accustomed conquest.'
We found the right bridge, with an unpronounceable name, and we turned
and looked back, just as we were bid, and never a San Giorgio did we
find. Imagine our disappointment when a shop-keeper told us that San
Giorgio was _partito_!"
"He was probably _partito_ on his 'career of accustomed conquest,'"
Pauline observed. "Is that what you two artists have been about?"
"We have been making a couple of daubs and abusing each other," said
Geof.
"Yes," Kenwick declared; "Daymond spends his time washing in sails and
clouds and watery wastes, and won't take the trouble to draw a figure."
"Oh, well," said Daymond, philosophically, "I know that if I should ever
want to exhibit, which Heaven forbid! Kenwick could well afford to put
in the figures at ten francs the dozen. I don't suppose you mind being
interrupted," he added, tentatively.
"No, indeed," said May. "Our scene was in need of figures, too. Even
Uncle Dan failed us. He hates to be read to, and he wouldn't come and
moor."
"Besides," said Pauline; "he wanted to go and sit at Florian's and watch
the children feeding the pigeons. He says he shouldn't grow old if he
lived in Venice."
"He had better, then," said Daymond. "Venice is very becoming to old
things. Don't you want to come and see some of those Madonnas we were
telling you about, with parasols over their heads?"
"Good," May agreed, promptly giving Ruskin the go-by. "And why don't you
come in our gondola? You don't want all that clutter going about with
you."
"I'm afraid if we don't go home and brush up, we shall have the
appearance of a clutter in your boat," said Geof.
"Speak for yourself," Kenwick protested. He flattered himself that he
was as well dressed in painting rig as under any other circumstances;
and quite right he was, too. For Oliver Kenwick had no mannish contempt
for appearances. He could not have done justice to the ragged shirt and
begrimed legs of a model, if he had been wearing such a superannuated
coat as Geoffry Daymond elected to paint in. Yet, as the two men stepped
into Vittorio's gondola, it was he of the shabby apparel who seemed to
give character to the group, while Oliver Kenwick would have made very
little impression, if he had chosen to refrain from conversation. This
he rarely did, however, and he lost no time in engaging May's attention.
"It's a pity we haven't time this morning to row out to St. George in
the Seaweed," he said. "There's a Madonna there, on the angle of the
wall, that's worth seeing. When we do go, you will have to guess whom it
is like."
"Probably Pauline," May ventured. "One keeps seeing her in the Madonnas
and saints."
"No, it's not your sister," said Kenwick, with unmistakable meaning.
"You don't mean me!" May exclaimed. "No mortal artist could make a
Madonna of me!"
"This may not have been done by a mortal artist. At any rate nobody
knows who did it. But it's a lovely thing"; and Kenwick paused, with a
view to doing full justice to the implication.
"Have you never painted Pietro?" Pauline was asking, as she watched the
striking figure of the old gondolier, rowing homeward. He had rescued
his cigarette, which he was smoking, with a dandified air, as he made
leisurely progress across the basin. Pietro had been a handsome young
blade in his day, and there were moments when he recalled the fact.
"Oh, no; I'm not up to that kind of thing," Geof answered; "you know I
don't pretend to paint. My business is with bricks and mortar. It's only
when I'm loafing that I dabble in colours."
"Yet I liked your sketch of my sister, particularly."
"You don't mean it," Geof exclaimed; "why, that's worth knowing!"
He looked thoughtfully at the graceful young creature in question, once
more engaged in animated conversation. She was pretty,--no doubt of
it,--preposterously pretty! The colouring of face and head was delicious,
and there was nothing slip-shod about the modelling, either. All bright
and clear and significant. She made him think of a perfectly cut jewel.
It was rather odd that it should have been possible to hit off anything
so definite, so almost matter-of-fact, in a mere sketch.
"I suppose it was because I didn't try for too much," he said aloud.
"The sketch was only a hint."
As he turned his eyes from May's face to that of her sister, it was
hardly more than a glance he bestowed upon the latter. He was impressed
with the fact that it was impossible to subject the nevertheless
perfectly unconscious countenance, whose eyes met his so frankly, to the
candid scrutiny he had given her sister.
"I'm afraid I shouldn't succeed as well with you," he remarked.
"I wouldn't try, if I were you," Pauline laughed; "I can't get even a
photograph that my friends will accept. Have you any good portrait of
your mother?"
"No; Kenwick tried her two years ago, but it wasn't a go."
"Of course not."
"Why, of course not?"
"Yes; why, of course not?" Kenwick demanded. The sound of his name had
naturally attracted his attention, and, quite as naturally he was piqued
by what he heard.
Pauline hesitated a moment, not disconcerted, but reflecting.
"Perhaps only because you're not an old master," she said; "Mrs.
Daymond ought to have been painted three or four hundred years ago."
[Illustration: "Now and then they stopped at some
doorway opening upon the water,
where they landed"]
"And whom should you have chosen to do it?" Geoffry asked. It struck him
that this was quite his own view, only he had never thought it out before.
"Let me think," said Pauline. "Not any of the great Venetians. They were
too,--well, too gorgeous."
"Raphael?" May suggested.
"No, not Raphael. Ah! Now I know! Sodoma could have done it."
"That's true," said Geoffry. "It ought to have been Sodoma." Then, "I
believe you feel about my mother something as I do," he added, as May
and Kenwick entered upon a lively discussion of their views upon the
Sienese painter, in which they seemed able to discover nothing in common
beyond a great decision of opinion.