This is the story that, in the dining-room of the old Beacon Street
house (now the Aldebaran Club), Judge Anthony Bracknell, of the famous
East India firm of Bracknell & Saulsbee, when the ladies had withdrawn
to the oval parlour (and Maria’s harp was throwing its gauzy web of
sound across the Common), used to relate to his grandsons, about the
year that Buonaparte marched upon Moscow.
I
“Him Venice!” said the Lascar with the big earrings; and Tony Bracknell,
leaning on the high gunwale of his father’s East Indiaman, the Hepzibah
B., saw far off, across the morning sea, a faint vision of towers and
domes dissolved in golden air.
It was a rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony, newly
of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of old
Bracknell’s fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city trembled
into shape. VENICE! The name, since childhood, had been a magician’s
wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem there hung
a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard Saulsbee had brought
home from one of his long voyages: views of heathen mosques and palaces,
of the Grand Turk’s Seraglio, of St. Peter’s Church in Rome; and, in
a corner--the corner nearest the rack where the old flintlocks hung--a
busy merry populous scene, entitled: ST. MARK’S SQUARE IN VENICE. This
picture, from the first, had singularly taken little Tony’s fancy. His
unformulated criticism on the others was that they lacked action.
True, in the view of St. Peter’s an experienced-looking gentleman in
a full-bottomed wig was pointing out the fairly obvious monument to a
bashful companion, who had presumably not ventured to raise his eyes to
it; while, at the doors of the Seraglio, a group of turbaned infidels
observed with less hesitancy the approach of a veiled lady on a camel.
But in Venice so many things were happening at once--more, Tony was
sure, than had ever happened in Boston in a twelve-month or in Salem in
a long lifetime. For here, by their garb, were people of every nation
on earth, Chinamen, Turks, Spaniards, and many more, mixed with a
parti-coloured throng of gentry, lacqueys, chapmen, hucksters, and tall
personages in parsons’ gowns who stalked through the crowd with an air
of mastery, a string of parasites at their heels. And all these people
seemed to be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters,
watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing doles
to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by slippery-looking
fellows in black--the whole with such an air of ease and good-humour
that one felt the cut-purses to be as much a part of the show as the
tumbling acrobats and animals.
As Tony advanced in years and experience this childish mumming lost
its magic; but not so the early imaginings it had excited. For the old
picture had been but the spring-board of fancy, the first step of a
cloud-ladder leading to a land of dreams. With these dreams the name
of Venice remained associated; and all that observation or report
subsequently brought him concerning the place seemed, on a sober
warranty of fact, to confirm its claim to stand midway between
reality and illusion. There was, for instance, a slender Venice glass,
gold-powdered as with lily-pollen or the dust of sunbeams, that,
standing in the corner cabinet betwixt two Lowestoft caddies, seemed,
among its lifeless neighbours, to palpitate like an impaled butterfly.
There was, farther, a gold chain of his mother’s, spun of that same
sun-pollen, so thread-like, impalpable, that it slipped through the
fingers like light, yet so strong that it carried a heavy pendant which
seemed held in air as if by magic. MAGIC! That was the word which the
thought of Venice evoked. It was the kind of place, Tony felt, in which
things elsewhere impossible might naturally happen, in which two and two
might make five, a paradox elope with a syllogism, and a conclusion give
the lie to its own premiss. Was there ever a young heart that did not,
once and again, long to get away into such a world as that? Tony, at
least, had felt the longing from the first hour when the axioms in
his horn-book had brought home to him his heavy responsibilities as a
Christian and a sinner. And now here was his wish taking shape before
him, as the distant haze of gold shaped itself into towers and domes
across the morning sea!
The Reverend Ozias Mounce, Tony’s governor and bear-leader, was just
putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon
on Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.’s anchor rattled
overboard. Tony, in his haste to be ashore, would have made one plunge
with the anchor; but the Reverend Ozias, on being roused from his
lucubrations, earnestly protested against leaving his argument in
suspense. What was the trifle of an arrival at some Papistical
foreign city, where the very churches wore turbans like so many
Moslem idolators, to the important fact of Mr. Mounce’s summing up his
conclusions before the Muse of Theology took flight? He should be happy,
he said, if the tide served, to visit Venice with Mr. Bracknell the next
morning.
The next morning, ha!--Tony murmured a submissive “Yes, sir,” winked at
the subjugated captain, buckled on his sword, pressed his hat down
with a flourish, and before the Reverend Ozias had arrived at his next
deduction, was skimming merrily shoreward in the Hepzibah’s gig.
A moment more and he was in the thick of it! Here was the very world of
the old print, only suffused with sunlight and colour, and bubbling
with merry noises. What a scene it was! A square enclosed in fantastic
painted buildings, and peopled with a throng as fantastic: a bawling,
laughing, jostling, sweating mob, parti-coloured, parti-speeched,
crackling and sputtering under the hot sun like a dish of fritters over
a kitchen fire. Tony, agape, shouldered his way through the press, aware
at once that, spite of the tumult, the shrillness, the gesticulation,
there was no undercurrent of clownishness, no tendency to horse-play,
as in such crowds on market-day at home, but a kind of facetious suavity
which seemed to include everybody in the circumference of one huge joke.
In such an air the sense of strangeness soon wore off, and Tony was
beginning to feel himself vastly at home, when a lift of the tide bore
him against a droll-looking bell-ringing fellow who carried above his
head a tall metal tree hung with sherbet-glasses.
The encounter set the glasses spinning and three or four spun off and
clattered to the stones. The sherbet-seller called on all the saints,
and Tony, clapping a lordly hand to his pocket, tossed him a ducat by
mistake for a sequin. The fellow’s eyes shot out of their orbits,
and just then a personable-looking young man who had observed the
transaction stepped up to Tony and said pleasantly, in English:
“I perceive, sir, that you are not familiar with our currency.”
“Does he want more?” says Tony, very lordly; whereat the other laughed
and replied: “You have given him enough to retire from his business and
open a gaming-house over the arcade.”
Tony joined in the laugh, and this incident bridging the preliminaries,
the two young men were presently hobnobbing over a glass of Canary in
front of one of the coffee-houses about the square. Tony counted
himself lucky to have run across an English-speaking companion who was
good-natured enough to give him a clue to the labyrinth; and when he had
paid for the Canary (in the coin his friend selected) they set out
again to view the town. The Italian gentleman, who called himself Count
Rialto, appeared to have a very numerous acquaintance, and was able to
point out to Tony all the chief dignitaries of the state, the men of ton
and ladies of fashion, as well as a number of other characters of a kind
not openly mentioned in taking a census of Salem.
Tony, who was not averse from reading when nothing better offered,
had perused the “Merchant of Venice” and Mr. Otway’s fine tragedy; but
though these pieces had given him a notion that the social usages of
Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising
appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The
gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers,
short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor’s
gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the
President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow
with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather jerkin and a trailing scarlet
cloak that the crowd was careful not to step on.
It was all vastly diverting, and Tony would gladly have gone on forever;
but he had given his word to the captain to be at the landing-place at
sunset, and here was dusk already creeping over the skies! Tony was a
man of honour; and having pressed on the Count a handsome damascened
dagger selected from one of the goldsmiths’ shops in a narrow street
lined with such wares, he insisted on turning his face toward the
Hepzibah’s gig. The Count yielded reluctantly; but as they came out
again on the square they were caught in a great throng pouring toward
the doors of the cathedral.
“They go to Benediction,” said the Count. “A beautiful sight, with many
lights and flowers. It is a pity you cannot take a peep at it.”
Tony thought so too, and in another minute a legless beggar had pulled
back the leathern flap of the cathedral door, and they stood in a
haze of gold and perfume that seemed to rise and fall on the mighty
undulations of the organ. Here the press was as thick as without; and as
Tony flattened himself against a pillar, he heard a pretty voice at his
elbow:--“Oh, sir, oh, sir, your sword!”
He turned at sound of the broken English, and saw a girl who matched the
voice trying to disengage her dress from the tip of his scabbard.
She wore one of the voluminous black hoods which the Venetian ladies
affected, and under its projecting eaves her face spied out at him as
sweet as a nesting bird.
In the dusk their hands met over the scabbard, and as she freed herself
a shred of her lace flounce clung to Tony’s enchanted fingers. Looking
after her, he saw she was on the arm of a pompous-looking graybeard in
a long black gown and scarlet stockings, who, on perceiving the
exchange of glances between the young people, drew the lady away with a
threatening look.
The Count met Tony’s eye with a smile. “One of our Venetian beauties,”
said he; “the lovely Polixena Cador. She is thought to have the finest
eyes in Venice.”
“She spoke English,” stammered Tony.
“Oh--ah--precisely: she learned the language at the Court of Saint
James’s, where her father, the Senator, was formerly accredited as
Ambassador. She played as an infant with the royal princes of England.”
“And that was her father?”
“Assuredly: young ladies of Donna Polixena’s rank do not go abroad save
with their parents or a duenna.”
Just then a soft hand slid into Tony’s. His heart gave a foolish bound,
and he turned about half-expecting to meet again the merry eyes under
the hood; but saw instead a slender brown boy, in some kind of fanciful
page’s dress, who thrust a folded paper between his fingers and vanished
in the throng. Tony, in a tingle, glanced surreptitiously at the Count,
who appeared absorbed in his prayers. The crowd, at the ringing of a
bell, had in fact been overswept by a sudden wave of devotion; and Tony
seized the moment to step beneath a lighted shrine with his letter.
“I am in dreadful trouble and implore your help. Polixena”--he read;
but hardly had he seized the sense of the words when a hand fell on his
shoulder, and a stern-looking man in a cocked hat, and bearing a kind of
rod or mace, pronounced a few words in Venetian.
Tony, with a start, thrust the letter in his breast, and tried to jerk
himself free; but the harder he jerked the tighter grew the other’s
grip, and the Count, presently perceiving what had happened, pushed
his way through the crowd, and whispered hastily to his companion: “For
God’s sake, make no struggle. This is serious. Keep quiet and do as I
tell you.”
Tony was no chicken-heart. He had something of a name for pugnacity
among the lads of his own age at home, and was not the man to stand in
Venice what he would have resented in Salem; but the devil of it was
that this black fellow seemed to be pointing to the letter in his
breast; and this suspicion was confirmed by the Count’s agitated
whisper.
“This is one of the agents of the Ten.--For God’s sake, no outcry.” He
exchanged a word or two with the mace-bearer and again turned to Tony.
“You have been seen concealing a letter about your person--”
“And what of that?” says Tony furiously.
“Gently, gently, my master. A letter handed to you by the page of Donna
Polixena Cador.--A black business! Oh, a very black business! This Cador
is one of the most powerful nobles in Venice--I beseech you, not a word,
sir! Let me think--deliberate--”
His hand on Tony’s shoulder, he carried on a rapid dialogue with the
potentate in the cocked hat.
“I am sorry, sir--but our young ladies of rank are as jealously guarded
as the Grand Turk’s wives, and you must be answerable for this scandal.
The best I can do is to have you taken privately to the Palazzo Cador,
instead of being brought before the Council. I have pleaded your youth
and inexperience”--Tony winced at this--“and I think the business may
still be arranged.”
Meanwhile the agent of the Ten had yielded his place to a sharp-featured
shabby-looking fellow in black, dressed somewhat like a lawyer’s clerk,
who laid a grimy hand on Tony’s arm, and with many apologetic gestures
steered him through the crowd to the doors of the church. The Count held
him by the other arm, and in this fashion they emerged on the square,
which now lay in darkness save for the many lights twinkling under the
arcade and in the windows of the gaming-rooms above it.
Tony by this time had regained voice enough to declare that he would go
where they pleased, but that he must first say a word to the mate of the
Hepzibah, who had now been awaiting him some two hours or more at the
landing-place.
The Count repeated this to Tony’s custodian, but the latter shook his
head and rattled off a sharp denial.
“Impossible, sir,” said the Count. “I entreat you not to insist. Any
resistance will tell against you in the end.”
Tony fell silent. With a rapid eye he was measuring his chances of
escape. In wind and limb he was more than a mate for his captors, and
boyhood’s ruses were not so far behind him but he felt himself equal to
outwitting a dozen grown men; but he had the sense to see that at a cry
the crowd would close in on him. Space was what he wanted: a clear ten
yards, and he would have laughed at Doge and Council. But the throng was
thick as glue, and he walked on submissively, keeping his eye alert for
an opening. Suddenly the mob swerved aside after some new show. Tony’s
fist shot out at the black fellow’s chest, and before the latter could
right himself the young New Englander was showing a clean pair of heels
to his escort. On he sped, cleaving the crowd like a flood-tide in
Gloucester bay, diving under the first arch that caught his eye,
dashing down a lane to an unlit water-way, and plunging across a narrow
hump-back bridge which landed him in a black pocket between walls. But
now his pursuers were at his back, reinforced by the yelping mob. The
walls were too high to scale, and for all his courage Tony’s breath came
short as he paced the masonry cage in which ill-luck had landed him.
Suddenly a gate opened in one of the walls, and a slip of a servant
wench looked out and beckoned him. There was no time to weigh chances.
Tony dashed through the gate, his rescuer slammed and bolted it, and the
two stood in a narrow paved well between high houses.