found the loveliest Gothic windows and hanging balconies to reflect, and
under innumerable bridges, each more delectable than the last. Now and
then they stopped at some doorway opening upon the water, where they
landed, and, passing through a ware-room golden with heaps of polenta,
or dusky with bronzes and wrought iron, they came out into a court-yard
embellished by an exquisite old stone staircase, with quaint carved
balustrade and leisurely landings, where beauteous dames of by-gone
centuries may have paused, as they descended, decked in rich brocades
and costly jewels. Or again, an antique well-head, half-concealed by
tools and lumber, kept its legend in faithful bronze or marble. The
Madonnas, under their iron canopies looked down, serene and beneficent,
standing, here, above a little frequented court; there, over the gateway
of an old palace. There was one which Pauline was the first to espy, as
they approached it under the arch of a bridge. The figure was upon the
angle of a wall, glassed just where two canals met at her feet. Above
her head was a square canopy, over the edge of which delicate green
vines and tendrils waved, while in and out among them, tiny birds
fluttered and chirped.
[Illustration: "A court-yard embellished by an
exquisite old stone staircase"]
As Vittorio rested on his oar, Kenwick took pains to assure May that
there were no longer any lights burned before these Madonnas, and
Vittorio was called upon to account for the omission. While he eagerly
claimed that the Madonna at his ferry was never left without a light,
between sundown and sunrise;--_mai, mai!_--Pauline replied to a remark
that Geoffry had made an hour previous.
"The feeling one has about your mother," she said, "almost makes a
Catholic of one. You can see how natural it is for these poor fellows to
worship the Madonna, and how much better it must make them."
"It is humanizing," Geoffry admitted. "There's no doubt of it"; and
thereupon it struck him, for the first time, that there was a look of
his mother in Pauline Beverly's face. Perhaps that accounted for
something that had perplexed him of late.
[Illustration: "The Madonnas, under their iron canopies,
looked down, serene and beneficent"]
X
A Benediction
The thing that had perplexed Geoffry Daymond was nothing less
inexplicable than the persistency with which the face of Pauline Beverly
had come to insinuate itself into his thoughts. When in her society, to
be sure, he was not aware of regarding her with an exclusive interest.
Indeed it was, more particularly, May who amused and occupied him, as
often as Kenwick gave her the chance. The individuality of that
surprisingly pretty young person was so sharp-cut and incisive that it
fixed attention. It not infrequently happened that everybody present
desisted from conversation, merely for the pleasure of a placid
contemplation of her mental processes. These were simple, and to the
point, and usually played about visible objects. The vital matter with
May, in each and every experience, was to formulate a judgment and to
compare it with that of other people. If others differed from her, all
the better. Opposition is a sharpener of the wits; and she found Kenwick
invaluable in his character of universal sceptic.
No one but Uncle Dan ever really took her down, and that he did so
neatly, that she was never seriously disconcerted by it. Had it been
otherwise, Uncle Dan would have held his peace, for he prized the
exuberance and unconsciousness of her egotism, which he recognized as
the all too fleeting prerogative of youth, and he would not, for worlds,
have really checked it.
When she informed him that the heroic age was past, and that this was a
mercantile era, the old soldier, remembering the '60's, told her she had
better look up era in the dictionary. When she announced, with all the
zest of discovery, that Titian could not draw, it was Uncle Dan who
observed that he could paint pretty well, which was the main thing.
Yes; she caught the attention, as the most distinct sound, the most
obvious sight is pretty sure to do, when people are taking life easily,
and seeking only amusement, and she was so refreshingly unconscious
that one could look and listen one's fill, and no harm done.
Yet Geoffry Daymond discovered that when he was making believe paint
pictures, in the first freshness of early morning, or when he was
smoking his after-dinner cigar, in the lingering June twilight, the face
that interfered with the one occupation and lent charm to the other, was
not framed in golden hair, nor animated with the lively and bird-like
intelligence which he found so amusing. And not only was it Pauline
Beverly's face, with its softly blending colours, and its quiet,
indwelling light, that floated before his mental vision, but he found
that he remembered her words and even the tones of her voice, when the
gay and occasionally witty talk of the others had gone the way of mortal
breath. He somehow came to associate certain inflections of her voice
with the sweet sounds that make the undertone of Venetian life; the
plash of the oar, the cooing of doves about the Salute, the bells of
Murano, softened in the distance, the sound of the surf beating outside
the Lido of a still evening, when one floats far out on the lagoon, and
the familiar, every-day world seems farther away than those other
worlds, shining overhead. He speculated a good deal over this new
preoccupation, and more still over the sense of passive content that had
come to be associated with it.
For Geof was of an active temperament and possessed of but scant talent
for repose. This was his first real vacation in seven years, yet, in
spite of his good resolve to idle away a month in Venice for his
mother's sake, he had been on the point of finding an outlet for his
surplus energies in that tramp in the Cadore, when,--just what was it
that had deterred him from carrying out the plan? He believed, at the
time, that it was merely the prospect of better acquaintance with the
prettiest and brightest girl it had yet been vouchsafed him to meet. As
he had since heard May remark,--for having once adopted an opinion, she
was fond of testing it in more than one direction,--it is such a comfort
to get hold of anything superlative! He was not aware that the elder
sister, who certainly could not claim a single superlative quality, had
played any part at all in that first impression; yet the thought of her
had gradually come to be the hourly companion of his solitude. And now,
for the first time in his life he found himself luxuriating, not only in
solitude, but in idleness.
When he had been making a desultory sketch, away out toward Malamocco,
or in among the _vignoli_ in the northern lagoon, pausing perhaps, for a
good five minutes, between grassy banks, to listen to the whistle of the
blackbird in the hedge, he felt no imperative call to seize an oar and
double the rate of speed on the homeward way. On the contrary, he found
it a perfectly congenial occupation to lounge among the cushions of the
gondola and let Pietro row him home at his own leisurely rate, while the
two good comrades had a meditative smoke.
It was because Geof was aware that this state of things was abnormal,
that he found it perplexing, and because, much as he enjoyed the
experience itself, he did not relish the sense of having somewhat lost
his bearings, that he was glad to seize upon the clue which he had got
hold of there at the foot of the stone Madonna. Miss Beverly was like
his mother; that was all there was about it. Such a resemblance as that
would make any face linger agreeably in his thoughts.
It had got to be the middle of June, when parish processions are the
order of the day. They were rowing up the Grand Canal, one Sunday
afternoon, Geof and his mother, on their way to the _festa_, which was
timed for the latter part of the day. Pietro and the gondola were in
gala costume, snow-white as to Pietro, and, as to the gondola, the new
brussels carpet of dark blue, to match Pietro's sash and hat-ribbon and
the sea-horse banner floating at the bow. As they passed under the
Rialto, and swung round the great bend of the Canal, Geof observed, in
an unconsciously weighty tone: "Mother, I have made a discovery."
"And that is?"
"Miss Beverly looks like you."
At this simple statement of fact, the face of Geof's listener underwent
one of those subtle changes of expression which the Colonel, in an
inspired moment, had likened to the play of light upon the waters of the
lagoon. For, being gifted with intuition, unhampered by the more
laborious processes of the manly intellect, Mrs. Daymond instantly
perceived that Geof had confessed more than he was himself aware.
She did not reply at once; to her, too, appeared the face of Pauline
Beverly, as unlike her own, she thought, as well might be, and
infinitely more attractive to her for that. Yes, there was only one
thing that could possibly make them seem alike to Geof. She glanced at
the face beside her, so sound, so vigorous, so magnanimous, as it seemed
to her partial eyes. He was gazing straight ahead, with the direct look
that his mother liked. He did not seem impatient for an answer; he had
rather the appearance of being pleasantly absorbed in his own thoughts.
It had evidently never once occurred to him to consider, in this
connection, how often he had declared that he should never lose his
heart until he had found a girl who was like his mother.
For a moment she was tempted to remind him of it,--but only for a
moment. For Geof's mother was not the woman to take unfair advantage of
a defenceless position, even where her own son was concerned. So she
only said, after an interval of silence that Geof had scarcely noticed:
"I am glad you think us alike, for I have never met a young girl who was
as sympathetic to me as Pauline Beverly."
"Sympathetic! That's it; that hits her off exactly!" Geof declared; and
then, with an accession of spirits which rendered him suddenly
loquacious, "And I say, Mother!" he exclaimed, "what a jolly old boy the
Colonel is! I just wish you could have heard him fire up the other day,
when Kenwick got off one of his cynicisms at the expense of Abraham
Lincoln. Tell you what, the sparks flew! Oliver was up a tree like a
cat!--Hullo! There's the flag-ship!" he interrupted his flow of words to
announce, as they came in sight of San Geremia.
The procession, or the component parts of it, not yet reduced to order,
was just issuing from the church; priests and choristers in their gay
vestments, huge candles, flaring bravely in the face of the sun,
brilliant banners and gaudy images, all in a confused mass, and the
people crowding on the flagged _campo_ before the church. Vittorio's
gondola was disappearing down the broad Canareggio Canal, and Pietro
needed no bidding to follow after. The crowd of boats of every kind,
gondolas, sandolos, barchettas, batteias, and the score of floating
things that only your true Venetian knows by name, became so closely
packed in the more restricted limits of the Canareggio, that it was
impossible for Pietro to get near the sea-horse on the red ground,
floating so conspicuous, yet so aggravatingly unapproachable a few rods
ahead. He did succeed, however, in forcing a passage after it, and he
made his way to the three-arched bridge which spans the Canareggio, and
under which he passed to a good point of view. Here they were obliged to
tie to a totally uninteresting gondola, with the width of the closely
packed canal between their own and the Colonel's boat. They had been
carried somewhat farther along the canal than the others, but Pietro
managed to turn his long bark about so that his _padroni_ should face
the bridge, which brought Vittorio's gondola also in their line of
vision, and there were friendly wavings of hats and parasols between the
two.
Presently the procession drew near, and crossed the bridge, banners
waving, candles flaming, priests intoning. The band struck up, and the
voices of the priests were drowned in the songs of the choristers.
The quay, on either hand, was crowded with people in gala dress, and
from every window, the whole length of the canal, bright flags and
stuffs depended, shawls and variegated quilts, table-cloths, and rugs,
whatever would take on a festal air in the sunshine. Beautiful silken
banners, too, waved from lines that spanned the canal, high above the
heads of the floating populace, their painted Saints and Madonnas shot
luminously through by the level rays of the sun.
As the procession passed on down the quay, and the high priest drew
near, bearing the Host under its embroidered canopy, the throngs on the
_fondamenta_ dropped on their knees to catch the scattered blessing,
rising again, an instant later, one group after another, which gave to
the line of figures an undulating motion, as of a long, sinuous body,
coiling and uncoiling.
The pleasure of Vittorio's passengers was not a little heightened by the
proximity of Nanni's old gondola, which lay only one boat's width
removed from their own, and was filled to overflowing with the wives and
children of his two gondolier brothers. The Signorinas were by this time
on terms of intimacy with Vittorio's family, their chief pet among the
children being the smallest boy, always spoken of by his adoring parents
as the _piccolo Giovanni_. "Pickle Johnny," Uncle Dan called him, and,
being a specialist in names, the Colonel had no sooner invented one for
this small and rather obstreperous manikin, than he took him into his
particular favour.
The attention of the girls, meanwhile, was pretty evenly divided between
the moving show upon the quay and the quite as active contingent in
Nanni's gondola. Indeed there were about as many babies in the one as in
the other, for it is a pretty and childlike fancy of the Venetians to
dress up their children as saints and angels, and lead them, with a
becoming reverence, not all untouched by vanity, in the wake of the holy
men. Here were small Franciscans in their brown cowls, tiny St. Johns,
clad in sheepskins and armed with crosses, little queens of heaven in
trailing garments of blue tarleton, and toddling white angels, with
spangled wings and hair tightly crimped.
As the last of these heavenly apparitions disappeared down a dark alley,
"Pickle Johnny" set up a howl of disappointment, which his mother tried
in vain to suppress. In vain did his father scowl upon him over the
heads of his passengers in a semblance of terrible wrath, in vain did
his uncle produce a row-lock for his delectation; "Pickle Johnny"
mourned the loss of the last baby angel and would not be comforted.
May was looking on with an amusement that was not without relish, when,
chancing to glance at the harassed face of Nanni, the most conspicuous
victim of "Pickle Johnny's" ill-judged exhibition of feeling, she
experienced a sudden change of mood, and came instantly to the rescue.
"Let me take the _bambino_," she begged. "I can make him good."
The mother, a stout, comely woman in a plain black gown, demurred
decorously, but was glad enough to yield, and Nanni, taking the child in
his arms, stepped across the intervening gondola, to which his own was
tied, and deposited his wondering burden in the arms of the Signorina
who stood up to receive it. As he did so, that flash of grateful
recognition which he was so chary of, crossed his grave face. Then,
before "Pickle Johnny" could decide upon any definite line of action,
the Signorina made haste to divert his mind by surrendering to him the
cluster of silver trinkets which dangled from her belt. Pencil and
penknife, scent-bottle, glove-buttoner, and, best of all, a tiny mirror,
in which he viewed his still tearful countenance with undisguised
satisfaction.
Uncle Dan looked on indulgently, and Pietro's passengers, over the way,
found the scene worthy of attention, as did others of the floating
audience. The golden head, bent over the swarthy little cherub, was a
sight that would have attracted Oliver Kenwick's notice, for example,
even if he had had no personal interest in the chief actor. He was with
some New York friends, in a gondola three or four boat-lengths away, and
so absorbed was he in the little drama, that, when a remark was
addressed to him that called for a retort, his gift of repartee quite
failed him.
Presently the sound of wind instruments again made itself heard, and
again the procession emerged from the narrow by-ways where the blessing
had been plentifully strewn, and moved up the quay toward the
three-arched bridge. By this time the poor little saints and angels were
pretty tired and draggled. The small St. John, in a very bad temper, was
banging about him with his cross, while the queen of heaven, reduced to
tears of anguished fatigue, had been picked up in the strong arms of her
father, where she was on the point of dropping asleep. "Pickle Johnny,"
too, was getting fretful again, having exhausted the charms of
scent-bottle and toy looking-glass, and May was beginning to repent of
her bargain.
"Give him to me," said Pauline. "He is sleepy, poor little tot!"
She took him in her arms, and in thirty seconds the little tot was fast
asleep. Oliver Kenwick became once more available for social purposes.
There was nothing picturesque, nothing effective about this; it would
not have attracted attention, any more than the sight of a young mother,
holding her sleeping child.
The gondola lay with its stern toward the bridge, which the procession
was crossing, and Pauline sat facing the open lagoon, where the sunset
light already showed warm and mellow. She turned a bit in her seat, to
see the bright banners and the candle-flames cross the bridge, and
presently the high priest with his attendants had paused upon the
central arch. At the stroke of a bell the Host was lifted, and all the
populace fell upon their knees. Vittorio, in his snowy costume, knelt at
the stern of his boat, Nanni, darkly clad, inclined his head and bent
his knee, while the little children in his gondola dropped like a flock
of doves upon the floor, where they huddled together, heads down, and
eyes peering out. Old fishermen in their blue blouses, aged women,
stiff, and slow, managed somehow to get upon their knees. The Colonel
stood, hat in hand, facing the bridge, while May glanced, with bright
interest, from one picturesque figure to another, noting the fact, in
passing, that Geoffry Daymond's hat was lifted, and Oliver Kenwick's was
not.
Pauline sat with her head bent over the sleeping child. At the sound of
the third bell, which was the signal for all that multitude to cross
themselves and rise to their feet, she lifted the chubby hand, and made
the sign of the cross with it upon the little breast. She did it as
simply and naturally as if she had been the best Catholic of them all.
A moment later, "Pickle Johnny," with the blessing upon his drowsy
little person, had been handed back to his uncle, and Vittorio was
skillfully making his way out among the thronging craft toward the
lagoon, which was swimming in a golden mist.
Pietro rowed in the other direction, and there was a friendly exchange
of greetings between the passing gondolas.
"Did you see that?" Geoffry asked, as they came out upon the broad bosom
of the Grand Canal.
"Yes; I saw it, Geof," his mother answered; "I feel as if we had all
received the benediction."
XI
At Torcello
For all the questionings and probings which May Beverly applied to the
successive phenomena of the world about her, she had passed her twenty
years as light of heart and as free of real perplexities as any
fifteenth-century maiden in her turret chamber. Prosperous and sheltered
as her youth had been, she had, up to this time, apprehended scarcely
anything of the real drama of life.
Whether it was due to a seasonable and inevitable development, or to a
quickening of the imagination caused by the potent loveliness of Venice,
it was certainly true that the young girl was passing through a new and
curiously stimulating experience. Many things had been revealed to her
of late, which as yet she only half comprehended; for whereas she had
formerly had an eye only for details, she was now beginning to combine
and interpret; and having hitherto been chiefly occupied with the
surface, she was learning to divine, if not to penetrate, the depths. It
was doubtless due to this general rousing of the imagination, to which
she perhaps owed her unalterable conviction that Vittorio's brother had,
in some mysterious way, been singled out by misfortune, that the thought
of him had come to play so large a part in her consciousness.
It was quite true, as she declared, that neither she nor Pauline had
ever succeeded in attaining to the easy and spontaneous footing with him
which had been established with Vittorio from the very first. Vittorio
was both gay and communicative, and none the less a perfect servant for
that. He would row by the hour, without volunteering a remark, yet a
friendly word never failed to elicit the flashing smile and ready
response which conferred such grace upon him. A little diplomacy on the
part of the girls had effected an entrance to his house, and to his
confidence. They knew that he had married his Ninetta without a dowry
because "she pleased him," and that their eldest child had died of a
fever; that Constanza was the scholar of the family, and Giulia the
caretaker. They knew that the eldest boy was named for one of his
grandfathers, and the second for the other; that the third boy,
Vittorio, wanted to be a soldier, and that the _piccolo Giovanni_ was
going to be the best gondolier of them all. They knew why a light was
always burning, day and night, before the little image of the Madonna on
the stairs, and why the whole family had made a pious pilgrimage to the
church of San Antonio at Padua the previous year. They knew how severe
the father of Vittorio and Nanni had been to his boys; how he had, on
more than one occasion, pitched them overboard, straight into the canal,
yet how he was, nevertheless, "a just man!" They were acquainted with
Vittorio's harmlessly revolutionary views, and with his reasons for not
voting. They were familiar with his simple creed, to hope all things and
leave the rest to the Madonna. And of Nanni's experiences and beliefs
they knew nothing.
During the week when he had served them as gondolier he had never
volunteered a remark and he had given only the shortest possible
answers when addressed. Yet upon the mind of May, at least, his
personality had made a strong impression. His tall, poorly clad figure,
swaying at the oar, his sombre, almost tragic gaze, fixed straight
before him, his deep, grave voice, not more musical, but more perfectly
modulated than his brother's,--all went to form an enigma and an appeal.
Since his release from their service they had met him several times,
rowing quite by himself in his shabby old gondola. Once they had come
upon him out by St. George in the Seaweed where the loveliest of all the
parasol Madonnas keeps guard over the still lagoon. He could have had no
prosaic errand there. Was it because he loved the beauty of the scene,
the grace and poetry of the dear young mother with the child, keeping
their watch of centuries, above the old red wall where the lizards sun
themselves? Or had he gone there to say an _Ave_ as the pretty Catholic
custom is?
Another time they had encountered Nanni's boat when they were rowing out
towards San Clemente in the starlight. There were stars in the water as
in the sky, and the city was hidden behind the Giudecca, but the great
_campanile_, showing pale and mysterious in the lights of the Piazza,
sent its white shaft far down into the water of the lagoon on the hither
side of the dark Giudecca. As the shadowy gondola, with its tiny light,
came stealing over the star-strewn water, May recognized the solitary
oarsman. Something withheld her from commenting on the fact, and when, a
few seconds later, Vittorio exclaimed, "_Ecco, mio fratello!_" Uncle Dan
had remarked what quick eyes these fellows have, and that nobody else
could have recognized a man in the dark, like that. And May had said
nothing, and the fact that she had kept silence gave her a curious pang
of unwilling self-consciousness. So she began talking very fast of the
Bellini Madonnas in the church of the Redentore, whose great dome
towered black against the hovering reflection of the city lights, and of
how they were not Bellinis after all, and since experts could make such
bad blunders, whom were you to trust?
[Illustration: "Where the loveliest of all the parasol
Madonnas keeps guard over the
still lagoon"]