they passed under a bridge and came out in front of the square of San
Paolo and San Giovanni, where the superb statue of Coleoni on his
magnificent charger stands clear-cut against the sky.
"Glorious thing, that," the Colonel remarked, as he invariably did, as
often as his eye fell upon it.
"Yes," she replied; "it is the very apotheosis of success. And yet,--one
sometimes questions whether a perfectly successful man is as enviable as
he seems. What do you think about it, Colonel?"
"Signora," the Colonel answered, with a flash of feeling in his rugged
features that would have done credit to Vittorio's expressive face, "I
have had my promotion, and I envy no man!"
XIII
Illuminations
If Geoffry Daymond had known no more about Nanni than was known to May
herself, the little incident which had caused such perturbation in the
young girl's mind would not have made any special impression upon him.
The scene itself, indeed, might have lingered in his mind as one of
those charming surprises that lurk in the enchanted atmosphere of the
lagoons. The striking beauty of Nanni's countenance is the possession of
many an honest gondolier, nor would the glow of feeling which animated
the face, have been anything unprecedented in a man of his class. Old
Pietro himself, slumbering at that moment on the floor of his gondola,
often exhibited a startling power of facial expression, which fairly
transfigured his weather-worn features. No, in a simple gondolier both
beauty of face and brilliancy and depth of expression are quite in the
natural order. And if it is not often that one sees these advantages
heightened by so admirable a foil as was provided on this occasion, it
is simply because such vivid grace of the contrasting type is rare.
Geoffry's first sensation then, as he caught sight of the two figures,
was one of gratification to his artistic sense; and even when May
extended her hand, and Nanni, after the custom of the gondolier, raised
it to his lips, it did not at once strike the young man as other than
natural and fitting. In an instant, however, he recalled the fact, which
he had learned of Pietro a month previous, that this was no mere
gondolier, but a man of education and consequence in the world; a
circumstance which, undeniably, put a different face upon the matter. It
accounted too, perhaps, for the curiously appealing impression of the
man's personality. There was undoubtedly something pathetic in this son
of a line of gondoliers, reaching back farther than many a titled
family, this man with an innate love for the craft, a genuine passion
for the lagoons, placed in the artificial environment of modern
society, constrained to deal with the hard-and-fast exactions of modern
science. No wonder that there was that about him that excited the
imagination. Geof had himself felt it; his mother had spoken of it. Who
could know how powerful the appeal might be to one who had not the key
to the puzzle?
When, therefore, Geof came upon the little drama being enacted among the
alders at Torcello, with a grace and fervour which was for an instant,
but only for an instant captivating, he experienced a feeling of vague
dissatisfaction, which was much accentuated by the sight of the young
girl's evident emotion, as she turned and faced him unexpectedly.
He did a good deal of pondering in the course of that day and the next,
and, as he was quite unable to justify, or even to formulate his
anxieties, he wished that he might at least find out whether the truth
in regard to the gondolier were known to May. That might throw some
light upon the subject.
He was aware, to be sure, of the Colonel's studied secrecy in the
matter, but secrets are ticklish things at the best, and no stray hint
was likely to have been lost upon a girl of May's intelligence. He had
a notion that, if he could get a word with Nanni himself, it would be
easy to sound him on the point; a delusion that was destined to be early
dissipated.
On the second morning following the Torcello trip, Geof was swimming in
the Adriatic, far out beyond the line of bathers, shouting and
splashing; in the shallows. There, under a dazzling sky, with a strong
wind blowing, and whitecaps careering about, he came face to face with
the subject of his speculations. The incongruity of catechising a man of
his countenance was instantly apparent.
"_Buon giorno, Signore_," said Nanni, and Daymond found himself
returning the salutation with a courtesy that was little short of
deferential. The two men had met upon a common footing,--if the watery
deep may be said to furnish one,--and Geof had found himself at a
disadvantage.
The incident did not altogether allay his friendly solicitude; on the
contrary, he was abashed and confounded at this evidence of the power of
the Italian's personality; and yet, he was more definitely conscious
than he had hitherto been, of a certain racial nobility in the man
which commanded confidence.
The wind, that had been a sportive, if somewhat riotous breeze in the
morning, gained in force as the day went on. There were few gondolas out
in the afternoon, and Geof went about on foot. He walked the length of
the wind-swept Riva degli Schiavoni, and then he struck across the city,
by narrow alleys and picturesque, out-of-the-way squares, and looked in
at certain churches for which the guide-books recommend the afternoon
light. Toward the end of the day he found his way back to the Piazza.
The great square was in holiday guise, in honour of some guest of the
city. From the three famous flag-staffs in front of San Marco the
colours of Italy were floating, rolling and unrolling upon the breeze,
in gracefully undulating folds. Men were affixing additional gas-jets to
the great candelabra, making ready for the evening illumination.
Just as Geof arrived upon the scene, a boy, with a paper of corn in each
outstretched hand, came running down the length of the Piazza, followed
by a fluttering swarm of pigeons, hundreds of them on the wing, in hot
pursuit of the flying provender. The wings made a sound of multitudinous
flapping that was singularly agreeable to the ear. Geof watched their
laughing tormenter until he stopped for breath near the base of the
_campanile_, and, in an instant, the pigeons were alighting on his arms
and shoulders, and gathering in an eager, gurgling mass about his feet.
The corn fell in a golden shower among them, and great was the jostling
and gobbling and short was the duration of that golden shower.
Geof turned in at the open door of San Marco, and found his way to one
of his favourite haunts, a certain dimly sumptuous side-chapel, where a
hint of incense always hovers, and a whispered echo, as of long-past
_aves_ and _salves_, lingers on the air. Curious carvings are there, and
bits of gleaming gold and silver, and, between the pillars, enchanting
vistas open out into the transept, or down the mosaic-laid floor of the
nave, polished smooth by the feet of generations of worshippers.
As he tarried there, the familiar sense of passive content which he had
had of late stole upon him, and he was aware that a certain face and
voice were again present with him. Why, he wondered, since it was of
other things he had been thinking all day long,--why did that face and
voice come to him? Was it merely a habit of mind, a trick of thought
engendered by this idle, aimless Venetian life? Or was it a natural
association of pure and lovely impressions?
And there, in the rich gloom of the great basilica, traced out and
accentuated, as it were, by long bars of light that made a golden
pathway down from the high western windows, a light entered into his
mind, and he knew what his mother had divined long ago.
There was no shock of surprise in the discovery, only a deep, vitalising
satisfaction. It seemed as natural, as inevitable, that he should love
Pauline Beverly, as that he should love his life. He knew that he had
loved her from the hour of their first meeting; it seemed to him that he
had loved her all his life. He was glad that the realisation of it had
come to him here in the beautiful church where he had first seen her
face. Yet, as he stood looking down the marvellous perspectives of the
great sanctuary, only dimly seen in the veiled and brooding light, he
felt that the time was past for idle musings, that it behooved him to
bestir himself, to get out into the daylight and begin to live.
He walked down the nave, and out into the gay Piazza, where he was not
surprised to find that the aspect of things had changed. The flags were
still rising and falling on the breeze, unfolding their radiant colours
to the declining sun; the deep-throated bell of the _campanile_, which
has sounded so many a summons to great deeds, was solemnly tolling the
hour; a Franciscan brother stepped across the pavement, bent doubtless
upon an errand of mercy. The young man read a new suggestion in each of
these familiar sights and sounds. He turned and looked back at San
Marco, at the outline of its clustering domes, at its carvings and
mosaics, gleaming in full sunshine. In his exalted frame of mind, all
these things seemed translated into large and significant meanings;
patriotism, philanthropy, art,--his own art, architecture. He wondered
what fine thing it would be vouchsafed him to do, to win the girl he
loved.
Geoffry Daymond was by nature modest; the accident of worldly
prosperity, of personal success, had not changed that; but he was
equally by nature determined. Though he felt that something very
tremendous would be required of him before he could enter into his
kingdom, he never for an instant doubted that he should win. And so it
happened, that, as he walked away across the Piazza, his step rang
firmer and sharper than ever, and he held his head with the air of a man
not easily daunted.
The wind did not go down with the sun, and, when evening came, Geof felt
pretty sure that he should find Pauline in the Piazza. Accordingly, he
went there in search of her; yet when he came upon her, sitting with May
and the Colonel at a little round table in front of Florian's, he found
very little to say for himself, in response to her friendly greeting. He
joined them at their after-dinner coffee, but he said he had had his
smoke, and when, presently, May expressed a laudable desire to go and
see what the moon was about, he could do no less than offer to escort
her.
"Won't you come, Miss Beverly?" he asked, but there was a constraint in
his tone, which to Pauline's mind could have but one interpretation.
"Thank you, no," she said. "I will keep Uncle Dan company. We have not
finished our coffee yet."
As they walked away, Uncle Dan looked after the two comely figures, with
a newly acquired intelligence of observation. Presently he coughed
discreetly, and asked, with a great effort at being merely
conversational: "Did it ever strike you, Polly, that young Daymond was
getting--er--attentive?"
Pauline, too, had followed them with a look of affectionate goodwill,
which deepened to a very sweet and wistful smile, as she answered: "Yes,
Uncle Dan; I think he likes May. How could he help it?"
"Now that's odd," the Colonel exclaimed. "Do you know, I had never
thought of such a thing. It was the Signora that put it into my head."
"And you are glad, are you not, Uncle Dan? You would like to have it
happen?"
"Yes, yes; of course,--for his mother's sake."
Pauline was still watching May and her companion. They had walked on,
easily distinguishable in the crowd by reason of their height, and now
they were standing a little apart, near the base of the _campanile_, in
the full light of the illumination. May was talking, her skirts and
ribbons fluttering in the breeze. Geof stood beside her listening, his
head bent slightly, with a certain chivalry of bearing which was
characteristic of him. The wind made no more impression upon his firm,
close-reefed figure, than upon the mighty shaft of the great bell-tower.
"I wish it for his own sake, Uncle Dan," Pauline said. "I do not know
any one I should be more willing to trust."
"You don't say so! Well, he's his mother's son, and that is half the
battle."
"Yes," Pauline admitted; "that is the way I felt too, at first. But now
I know him better it is for himself I like him. He is so strong, and
steady, and--good evening, Mr. Kenwick!"
"Ah, good evening! I was sure that unless you had blown away in the
course of the day, I should find you in these classic precincts. No,
thanks; I've had my coffee, or something answering remotely to that
description. What has become of your sister, Miss Beverly? She is
getting as chary of herself as an Italian pronoun."
"She was here a moment ago," Pauline replied; "she has gone with Mr.
Daymond to pay her respects to the moon."
"Really," said Kenwick, with a hint of annoyance in his manner, to
conceal which he continued talking volubly. "Now, I should have thought
you would have been the one to go moon-gazing. I should not have
associated your sister with the pale and melancholy orb."
"You are very penetrating, Mr. Kenwick. But I don't think you would find
the moon especially pale or melancholy this evening. It seemed in high
good humour as we caught a glimpse of it on our way over here."
"Mr. Kenwick's penetration is too subtle for a plain man's
comprehension," Uncle Dan observed. The persistency with which the
Colonel be-mistered Kenwick was an unmistakable sign of disapproval.
"Colonel Steele, I am guiltless of subtlety," Kenwick declared in his
most humorous manner; "I, too, am a plain man. But, if you will pardon
the platitude, we all know that there is one beauty of the sun, and
another beauty of the moon, and it would be pure affectation to ignore
the fact."
"Apropos of the heavenly bodies,--when is the _Urania_ to sail?" Pauline
asked. She feared that Kenwick might go in pursuit of Geof and May, who
had disappeared round the corner into the Piazzetta, and knowing that he
liked to talk of his millionaire friends and their steam-yacht, she
proceeded to draw him out upon the subject.
May and Geof, meanwhile, secure from interruption, thanks to Pauline's
little strategy, were strolling in the Piazzetta, now facing the
moon-lit, wind-swept lagoon, glittering beyond the pillars in a thousand
broken reflections; now studying the figures of the four porphyry
conspirators, engaged in their eternal task of mystification at the
corner of San Marco. That all attempts should have failed to settle the
character and social standing of those red-complexioned, rather
dull-witted gentlemen, who clasped one another in such undecipherable
opacity, was almost more than May could bear.
"Don't you think the archaeologists are rather stupid to have given up
the riddle?" she asked, as she and her escort turned away and stepped
out again into the Piazza.
"I dare say they are," Geof laughed, "but I'm sure that those flat-nosed
fellows are much more entertaining than they would be if they had been
labelled. Jove! What a sight that is!"
He had suddenly turned and looked up at the front of San Marco, gleaming
in the brilliant illumination, like a shrine studded with precious
stones. In the concentrated light of hundreds of gas-jets, each
exquisite detail, each shining gold mosaic and lavish carving stood out
with marvellous distinctness. The golden-winged angels that mount a
mystic stairway above the great central arch, the bronze horses prancing
so harmlessly over the main portal, even the quaint bas-relief of St.
George, sitting, with such unimpeachable dignity, upon his
camp-stool,--each and all were far more clearly enunciated than ever
they are in the impartial splendour of daylight. Against the darkly
luminous, unfathomable sky, the outline of the domes showed clear-cut
and harmonious, and over yonder, above the great Palazzo, whose columns,
for that evening at least, were surely carved in ivory and wrought with
lace, a remote, half-grown moon looked wonderingly down.
"The moon is rather out of it, to-night," May observed, with the bright
crispness that gave everything she said a flavour of originality. She
had taken in the beauty of the scene with a completeness that would have
astonished her companion; not a detail had been lost upon her. Yet it
was clear that the total effect had not produced an overpowering
impression. Geof, for his part, had been really stirred by it, but he
had no intention of owning it.
"I don't think we need waste any sympathy on the moon," he replied.
"It's usually cock of the walk here in Venice."
Having thus satisfactorily disposed of that subject, the young people
turned their steps toward the clock-tower, Geof wondering resignedly why
May made no motion to rejoin her family.
"I don't think I agree with you about mysteries," she said, presently;
"I can't bear them. There's Nanni, now, the brother of our gondolier,"
she continued; and then, turning, and looking her companion full in the
face: "Can you make him out?"
"What is it about him that puzzles you?" Geof asked, returning her
glance with equal frankness.
"I don't know that I can explain it. He seems somehow--different. There
is something wrong about him. I don't think he is happy."
"And what if he is not?" said Geof tentatively. "There need be no
mystery about that. I don't suppose many men are really happy."
"You don't?" May exclaimed, in naive surprise.
Geof, to whom happiness had come to seem almost incredible, since he had
got a glimpse of what it might be, was himself rather taken aback at his
own utterance.
"I rather think," he said, laughing uneasily, "that I only meant that
not many people are superlatively happy. As for commonplace, every-day
happiness, I suppose that depends upon temperament. Perhaps the man is
of a melancholy temperament."
"Perhaps that is it," May answered, thoughtfully; and with one accord
they turned into the quiet paved space north of San Marco, where they
stood, a few moments, looking out into the brilliant Piazza.
"I suppose it was very silly of me," May went on, laying her hand upon
the haunches of a great stone lion that crouches there, polished smooth
with the passage of centuries; "but I had a notion that he was unhappy
because he had to live in exile, a mere servant, you know, in a dreadful
hospital in Milan. And so I went and offered to give him a gondola, and
he wouldn't accept it. He was thanking me the other day, at Torcello,
when you came up. I suppose that was why he was so--melodramatic," and
she laughed a little forced laugh, and looked Geoffry straight in the
face again.
He saw her embarrassment, and understood that she had been setting him
right, and that it had cost her an effort to refer to the matter. And
so he said the kindest thing possible under the circumstances.
"If you mean his kissing your hand," he replied, with an air of
discussing a matter of no consequence, "there's nothing melodramatic in
that, at least when a gondolier does it. It is the custom of their
class. Old Pietro kisses mine and makes me feel like an ancient doge."
He could see that she was relieved.
"I wonder where the others are," she said. "Let us go and look them up.
I didn't feel like anything so fine as a doge," she added, lightly, as
they came out into the square again. "I felt like a very interfering and
foolish kind of person. I don't think I shall do anything so silly
again."
"There is nothing silly about a generous action," Geof protested,
looking with great kindness at the young girl, to whom the garment of
humility was not unbecoming. "I rather think, though, that the man is
better off than you imagine. At any rate, I'm very sure he is better off
for the goodwill you have shown him."
Then, with a return of his previous solicitude, somewhat stimulated by
a new realisation of the unusual beauty of this experimenter in
mysteries, he added:
"These Italians are impressionable fellows. They sometimes feel things
more than we cold-blooded Northerners appreciate."
"Do they?" said May, in her most matter-of-fact voice, giving Geof a
glance of quick intelligence, and putting herself instantly on the
defensive; "I should have said it was rather touch and go with their
feelings. Ah! There's Mr. Kenwick, pretending he doesn't see us!"
XIV
A Summer's Day
May had been quite correct in her surmise that Kenwick was shamming,
though this was merely based on general theories. Not only did he see
her as she emerged with Geoffry Daymond from the comparative obscurity
of the stone lion's neighbourhood, but he had been for some moments
furtively watching them both, himself lost to view in the crowd about
the band-stand. She would have been surprised indeed if she could have
guessed the effect upon the sprightly cavalier of this new evidence of
the confidential relations existing between herself and his friend; and
indeed, when a moment later he met them, with a facetious sally, it is
doubtful whether anything short of clairvoyance could have divined his
true state of mind.
For Oliver Kenwick was experiencing something as closely resembling
genuine feeling as was like to befall him in the course of his
discreetly regulated career. He had played with fire once too often, and
he had discovered, not without a slight accession of self-respect, that
he was perceptibly scorched. He had supposed his interest in May Beverly
to be purely impersonal; he had been mistaken. He had admired her in his
character of connoisseur, as a man of the world he had found amusement
and relaxation in her society. For May had the unique advantage of
combining that degree of conventionality which is admissibly essential,
with a refreshing lack of conventionality in non-essentials. She had
repeatedly surprised and stimulated him, she had never yet offended his
taste. And Kenwick was nothing if not fastidious. Her attraction had
been undeniably heightened by his imagined discovery of Geoffry
Daymond's interest in her; but quite independently of that artificial
stimulus, she did exercise a strong fascination over him.
It was not in Oliver Kenwick's scheme of life to sacrifice his
independence to any claim, even to that of his own unchastened fancies.
He would not have known himself in any other role than that of
free-lance, and life would indeed have lost its savour if he had been
betrayed into the purchase of an indulgence of feeling at the cost of
his self-approval. He possessed an ideal of himself which he prized and
guarded; if the ideal was a questionable one, judged by ordinary
standards, he was at least consistent in its cultivation. If, impelled
by a spirit of rivalry, if, goaded to something approaching rashness by
the contemplation of Geof's quiet, masterful way of taking possession of
the things he coveted, he resolved to retaliate where retaliation was
peculiarly palatable, this indicated no change whatever in his ultimate
intentions.
For a day or two after the little episode of the stone lion Kenwick
succeeded in cutting Geof out, as he termed it, very neatly, by the
simple device of interesting May in a certain sketch which she undertook
at his suggestion. The subject was a common enough one in Venice; a
tranquil _rio_ between ruinous walls,--here, a bit of quaint mediaeval
sculpture,--there, a splash of verdure over the arch of a gateway,--a
pointed church tower in remote perspective. The clever craftsman found
no difficulty in inventing reasons why a similar combination of
advantages was not to be found elsewhere. In his own mind he was
perfectly well aware that he chose it because the proper point of view
was only to be obtained by disembarking and planting the easels on a bit
of quay that stopped abruptly in front of a deserted house. Here, in
this isolated position, the two painted together for three successive
afternoons, and Kenwick, by dint of a judicious combination of
encouragement and criticism, which he, as a practised artist had always
at command, succeeded in arousing in the young girl an enthusiasm for
the work, and an appreciation of his own mastery of his craft, which
could not but be gratifying and stimulating to him. In truth she had
never liked him so well, and, having on her part nothing to conceal, she
was as outspoken in her gratitude as in all things else.