III

The skies were never more beautiful that May, the blossoms of the

oleanders and the almond trees never more lovely. Not only was my own

canal alive with the stir and fragrance of the coming summer, but all

Venice bore the look of a bride who had risen from her bath, drawn

aside the misty curtain of the morning, and stood revealed in all her

loveliness.

The sun shone everywhere, I say, but to me its brightest rays fell on a

garden full of fig trees and flat arbors interwoven with grapevines,

running down to the water where there was a dock and a gondola--two,

sometimes,--our own and Vittorio's--and particularly on a low,

two-story, flat-roofed house,--a kaleidoscope of color--pink, yellow,

and green, with three rooms and a portico, in which lived Vittorio, a

bird in a cage, a kitten-cat and the Rose of the Shipyards.

It is a long way round to my canal through San Trovaso to the Zattere

and across the Giudecca to Ponte Lungo, and then along the edge of the

lagoon to this garden and dovecote, but that is the precise route

Luigi, who lived within a stone's throw of the couple, selected morning

after morning. He always had an excuse:--he had forgotten the big

bucket for my water cups, or the sail, or the extra chair; and would

the Signore mind going back for his other oar? Then again the tide was

bad, and after all we might as well row down the lagoon; it was easier

and really shorter with the wind against us--all nonsense, of course,

but I never objected.

"Ah, the Signore and dear Luigi!" she would cry when she caught sight

of our gondola rounding into the landing. Then down the path she would

skip, the joyous embodiment of beauty and grace, and help me out, Luigi

following; and we would stroll up under the fig trees, and she would

begin showing me this and that new piece of furniture, or pot, or

kettle, or new bread knife, or scissors, or spoon, which Vittorio had

added to their store since my last visit. Or I would find them both

busy over the gondola,--he polishing his brasses and ferro, and she

rehanging the curtains of the tenda which she had washed and ironed

with her own hands.

In truth it was a very happy little nest that was tucked away in one

corner of that old abandoned garden with its outlook on the broad water

and its connecting link with the row of neighbors' houses flanking the

side canal,--and no birds in or out of any nest in all Venice ever sang

so long and so continuously nor were there any others so genuinely

happy the livelong day and night as these two.

Did I not know something of the curious mixture of love, jealousy, and

suspicion which goes into the making-up of an Italian, it would be hard

for me to believe that so lovely a structure as this dovecote, one

built with so much hope and alight with so much real happiness, could

ever come tumbling to the ground. We Anglo-Saxons flame up indignantly

when those we love are attacked, and we demand proofs. "Critica," that

bane of Venetian life--what this, that, or the other neighbor tattles

to this, that, and the other listener, we dismiss with a wave of the

hand, or with fingers tight clenched close to the offender's lips, or

by a blow in the face. Not so the Italian. He also blazes, but he will

stop and wonder when his anger has cooled; think of this and that; put

two and two together, and make ten of what is really only four. This is

what happened to the nest under the grapevines.

I was in my own garden at the Britannia leaning over the marble

balcony, wondering what kept Luigi--it was past ten o'clock--when the

news reached me. I had caught sight of his white shirt and straw hat as

he swung out behind the Salute and headed straight toward me, and saw

from the way he gripped his oar and stretched his long body flat with

the force of each thrust, that he had a message of importance, even

before I saw his face.

"A Dio, Signore!" he cried. "What do you think? Vittorio has cursed

Loretta, torn her wedding ring from her finger, and thrown it in her

face!"

"Vittorio!"

"Yes,--he will listen to nothing! He is a crazy fool and I have done

all I could. He believes every one of the lies that crab-catching brute

of a Francesco is telling. It would be over by to-night, but Loretta

does not take it like the others: she says nothing. You know her

eyes--they are not like our Giudecca girls. They are burning now like

two coals of fire, and her cheeks are like chalk."

I had stepped into the gondola by this time, my first thought being how

best to straighten out the quarrel.

"Now tell me, Luigi--speak slowly, so I do not miss a word. First,

where is Loretta?"

"She was putting on her best clothes when I left--those she bought

herself. She will touch nothing Vittorio gave her. She is going back to

her mother in an hour."

"But what happened? Has Francesco--?"

"Francesco has not stopped one minute since the wedding. He has been

talking to the fish-people,--to everybody on the side street, saying

that Loretta was his old shoes that he left at his door, and the fool

Vittorio found them and put them on--that sort of talk."

"And Vittorio believes it?"

"He did not at first,--but twice Francesco came to see Loretta with

messages from her mother, and went sneaking off when Vittorio came up

in his boat, and then that night some one would tell him--'that fellow

meets Loretta every day;' that he was her old lover. These people on

the Giudecca do not like the San Giuseppe people, and there is always

jealousy. If Vittorio had married any one from his own quarter it would

have been different. You don't know these people, Signore,--how

devilish they can be and how stupid."

"That was why he threw the ring in her face?"

"No and yes. Yesterday was Sunday, and some people came to see her from

San Giuseppe, and they began to talk. I was not there; I did not get

there until it was all over, but my wife heard it. They were all in the

garden, and one word led to another, and he taunted her with seeing

Francesco, and she laughed, and that made him furious; and then he said

he had heard her mother was a nobody; and then some one spoke up and

said that was true--fools all. And then Loretta, she drew herself up

straight and asked who it was had said so, and a woman's voice

came--'Francesco,--he told me--' and then Vittorio cried--'And you meet

him here. Don't deny it! And you love him, too!--' and then the fool

sprang at her and caught her hand and tore the ring from her finger and

spat on it and threw it on the ground. He is now at his father's house."

"And she said nothing, Luigi?" The story seemed like some horrible

dream.

"No, nor shed a tear. All she did was to keep repeating--'Francesco!

Francesco! Francesco!' I got there at daylight this morning and have

been there ever since. I told her I was coming for you. She was sitting

in a chair when I went in,--bolt up; she had not been in her bed. She

seems like one in a trance--looked at me and held out her hand. I tried

to talk to her and tell her it was all a lie, but she only

answered--'Ask Francesco,--it is all Francesco,--ask Francesco.' Hurry,

Signore,--we will miss her if we go to her house. We will go at once to

our canal and wait for her. They have heard nothing down there at San

Giuseppe, and you can talk to her without being interrupted, and then

I'll get hold of Vittorio. This way, Signore."

I had hardly reached the water landing of my canal ten minutes later

when I caught sight of her, coming directly toward me, head up, her

lips tight-set, her black shawl curving and floating with every

movement of her body--(nothing so wonderfully graceful and nothing so

expressive of the wearer's moods as these black shawls of the

Venetians). She wore her gala dress--the one in which she was

married--white muslin with ribbons of scarlet, her wonderful hair in a

heap above her forehead, her long gold earrings glinting in the

sunshine. All the lovelight had died out of her eyes. In its place were

two deep hollows rimmed about by dark lines, from out which flashed two

points of cold steel light.