THE LAGOON OF VENICE.
Towards evening, one day late in the summer, the sun was shining, as
its manner is, on that marvellous combination of domes, arches, mosaics
and carvings which goes by the name of St. Mark's at Venice. The soft
Italian sky, glowing and rich, gave a very benediction of colour; all
around was the still peace of the lagoon city; only in the great square
there was a gentle stir and flutter and rustle and movement; for
thousands of doves were flying about, and coming down to be fed, and a
crowd of varied human nature, but chiefly not belonging to the place,
were watching and distributing food to the feathered multitude. People
were engaged with the doves, or with each other; few had a look to
spare for the great church; nobody even glanced at the columns bearing
St. Theodore and the Lion.
That is, speaking generally. For under one of the arcades, leaning
against one of the great pillars of the same, a man stood whose look by
turns went to everything. He had been standing there motionless for
half an hour; and it passed to him like a minute. Sometimes he studied
that combination aforesaid, where feeling and fancy and faith have made
such glorious work together; and to which, as I hinted, the Venetian
evening was lending such indescribable magnificence. His eye dwelt on
details of loveliness, of which it was constantly discovering new
revelations; or rested on the whole colour-glorified pile with
meditative remembrance of what it had seen and done, and whence it had
come. Then with sudden transition he would give his attention to the
motley crowd before him, and the soft-winged doves fluttering up and
down and filling the air. And, tiring of these, his look would go off
again to the bronze lion on his place of honour in the Piazzetta, his
thought probably wandering back to the time when he was set there. The
man himself was noticed by nobody. He stood in the shade of the pillar
and did not stir. He was a gentleman evidently; one sees that by slight
characteristics, which are nevertheless quite unmistakeable and not to
be counterfeited. His dress of course was the quiet, unobtrusive, and
yet perfectly correct thing, which dress ought to be. His attitude was
that of a man who knew both how to move and how to be still, and did
both easily; and further, the look of him betrayed the habit of travel.
This man had seen so much that he was not moved by any young curiosity;
knew so much, that he could weigh and compare what he knew. His figure
was very good; his face agreeable and intelligent, with good observant
grey eyes; the whole appearance striking. But nobody noted him.
And he had noted nobody; the crowd before him was to him simply a
crowd, which excited no interest except as a whole. Until, suddenly, he
caught sight of a head and shoulders in the moving throng, which
started him out of his carelessness. They were but a few yards from
him, seen and lost again in the swaying mass of human beings; but
though half seen he was sure he could not mistake. He spoke out a
little loud the word "Tom!"
He was not heard, and the person spoken to moved out of sight again.
The speaker, however, now left his place and plunged among the people.
Presently he had another glimpse of the head and shoulders, and was yet
more sure of his man; lost sight of him anew, but, following in the
direction taken by the chase, gradually won his way nearer, and at
length overtook the man, who was then standing between the pillars of
the Lion and St. Theodore, and looking out towards the water.
"Tom!" said his pursuer, clapping him on the shoulder.
"Philip Dillwyn!" said the other, turning. "Philip! Where did you come
from? What a lucky turn-up! That I should find you here!"
"I found you, man. Where have _you_ come from?"
"O, from everywhere."
"Are you alone? Where are your people?"
"O, Julia and Lenox are gone home. Mamma and I are here yet. I left
mamma in a _pension_ in Switzerland, where I could not hold it out any
longer; and I have been wandering about--Florence, and Pisa, and I
don't know all--till now I have brought up in Venice. It is so jolly to
get you!"
"What are you doing here?"
"Nothing."
"What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. O, I have done everything, you know. There is nothing left to
a fellow."
"That sounds hopeless," said Dillwyn, laughing.
"It is hopeless. Really I don't see, sometimes, what a fellow's life is
good for. I believe the people who have to work for it, have after all
the best time!"
"They work to live," said the other.
"I suppose they do."
"Therefore you are going round in a circle. If life is worth nothing,
why should one work to keep it up?"
"Well, what is it worth, Dillwyn? Upon my word, I have never made it
out satisfactorily."
"Look here--we cannot talk in this place. Have you ever been to
Torcello?"
"No."
"Suppose we take a gondola and go?"
"Now? What is there?"
"An old church."
"There are old churches all over. The thing is to find a new one."
"You prefer the new ones?"
"Just for the rarity," said Tom, smiling.
"I do not believe you have studied the old ones yet. Do you know the
mosaics in St. Mark's?"
"I never study mosaics."
"And I'll wager you have not seen the Tintorets in the Palace of the
Doges?"
"There are Tintorets all over!" said Tom, shrugging his shoulders
wearily.
"Then have you seen Murano?"
"The glass-works, yes."
"I do not mean the glass-works. Come along--anywhere in a gondola will
do, such an evening as this; and we can talk comfortably. You need not
look at anything."
They entered a gondola, and were presently gliding smoothly over the
coloured waters of the lagoon; shining with richer sky reflections than
any mortal painter could put on canvas. Not long in silence.
"Where have you been, Tom, all this while?"
"I told you, everywhere!" said Tom, with another shrug of his
shoulders. "The one thing one comes abroad for, you know, is to run
away from the winter; so we have been doing that, as long as there was
any winter to run from, and since then we have been running away from
the summer. Let me see--we came over in November, didn't we? or
December; we went to Rome as fast as we could. There was very good
society in Rome last winter. Then, as spring came on, we coasted down
to Naples and Palermo. We staid at Palermo a while. From there we went
back to England; and from England we came to Switzerland. And there we
have been till I couldn't stand Switzerland any longer; and I bolted."
"Palermo isn't a bad place to spend a while in."
"No;--but Sicily is stupid generally. It's all ridiculous, Philip.
Except for the name of the thing, one can get just as good nearer home.
I could get _better_ sport at Appledore last summer, than in any place
I've been at in Europe."
"Ah! Appledore," said Philip slowly, and dipping his hand in the water.
"I surmise the society also was good there?"
"Would have been," Tom returned discontentedly, "if there had not been
a little too much of it."
"Too much of it!"
"Yes. I couldn't stir without two or three at my heels. It's very kind,
you know; but it rather hampers a fellow."
"Miss Lothrop was there, wasn't she?"
"Of course she was! That made all the trouble."
"And all the sport too; hey, Tom? Things usually are two-sided in this
world."
"She made no trouble. It was my mother and sister. They were so awfully
afraid of her. And they drilled George in; so among them they were too
many for me. But I think Appledore is the nicest place I know."
"You might buy one of the islands--a little money would do it--build a
lodge, and have your Europe always at hand; when the winter is gone, as
you say. Even the winter you might manage to live through, if you could
secure the right sort of society. Hey, Tom? Isn't that an idea? I
wonder it never occurred to you. I think one might bid defiance to the
world, if one were settled at the Isles of Shoals."
"Yes," said Tom, with something very like a groan. "If one hadn't a
mother and sister."
"You are heathenish!"
"I'm not, at all!" returned Tom passionately. "See here, Philip. There
is one thing goes before mother and sister; and that you know. It's a
man's wife. And I've seen my wife, and I can't get her."
"Why?" said Dillwyri dryly. He was hanging over the side of the
gondola, and looking attentively at the play of colour in the water;
which reflecting the sky in still splendour where it lay quiet, broke
up in ripples under the gondolier's oar, and seemed to scatter diamonds
and amethysts and topazes in fairy-like prodigality all around.
"I've told you!" said Tom fretfully.
"Yes, but I do not comprehend. Does not the lady in question like
Appledore as well as you do?"
"She likes Appledore well enough. I do not know how well she likes me.
I never had a chance to find out. I don't think she _dis_likes me,
though," said Tom meditatively.
"It is not too late to find out yet," Philip said, with even more
dryness in his tone.
"O, isn't it, though!" said Tom. "I'm tied up from ever asking her now.
I'm engaged to another woman."
"Tom!" said the other, suddenly straightening himself up.
"Don't shout at a fellow! What could I do? They wouldn't let me have
what I wanted; and now they're quite pleased, and Julia has gone home.
She has done her work. O, I am making an excellent match. 'An old
family, and three hundred thousand dollars,' as my mother says. That's
all one wants, you know."
"Who is the lady?"
"It don't matter, you know, when you have heard her qualifications.
It's Miss Dulcimer--one of the Philadelphia Dulcimers. Of course one
couldn't make a better bargain for oneself. And I'm as fond of her as I
can be; in fact, I was afraid I was getting _too_ fond. So I ran away,
as I told you, to think over my happiness at leisure, and moderate my
feelings."
"Tom, Tom, I never heard you bitter before," said his friend, regarding
him with real concern.
"Because I never _was_ bitter before. O, I shall be all right now. I
haven't had a soul on whom I could pour out my mind, till this hour. I
know you're as safe as a mine. It does me good to talk to you. I tell
you, I shall be all right. I'm a very happy bridegroom expectant. You
know, if the Caruthers have plenty of money, the Dulcimers have twice
as much. Money's really everything."
"Have you any idea how this news will touch Miss--the other lady you
were talking about?"
"I suppose it won't touch her at all. She's different; that's one
reason why I liked her. She would not care a farthing for me because
I'm a Caruthers, or because I have money; not a brass farthing! She is
the _real_est person I ever saw. She would go about Appledore from
morning to night in the greatest state of delight you ever saw anybody;
where my sister, for instance, would see nothing but rocks and weeds,
Lois would have her hands full of what Julia would call trash, and what
to her was better than if the fairies had done it. Things pulled out of
the shingle and mud,--I can just see her,--and flowers, and stones, and
shells. What she would make of _this_ now!--But you couldn't set that
girl down anywhere, I believe, that she wouldn't find something to make
her feel rich. She's a richer woman this minute, than my Dulcimer with
her thousands. And she's got good blood in her too, Philip. I learned
that from Mrs. Wishart. She has the blood of ever so many of the old
Pilgrims in her veins; and that is good descent, Philip?"
"They think so in New England."
"Well, they are right, I am ready to believe. Anyhow, I don't care--"
He broke off, and there was a silence of some minutes' length. The
gondola swam along over the quiet water, under the magnificent sky; the
reflected colours glanced upon two faces, grave and self-absorbed.
"Old boy," said Philip at length, "I hardly think you are right."
"Right in what? I am right in all I have told you."
"I meant, right in your proposed plan of action. You may say it is none
of my business."
"I shall not say it, though. What's the wrong you mean?"
"It seems to me Miss Dulcimer would not feel obliged to you, if she
knew all."
"She doesn't feel obliged to me at all," said Tom. "She gives a good as
she gets."
"No better?"
"What do you mean?"
"Pardon me, Tom; but you have been frank with me. By your own account,
she will get very little."
"All she wants. I'll give her a local habitation and a name."
"I am sure you are unjust."
"Not at all. That is all half the girls want; all they try for. She's
very content. O, I'm very good to her when we are together; and I mean
to be. You needn't look at me," said Tom, trying to laugh.
"Three-quarters of all the marriages that are made are on the same
pattern. Why, Phil, what do the men and women of this world live for?
What's the purpose in all I've been doing since I left college? What's
the good of floating round in the world as I have been doing all summer
and winter here this year? and at home it is different only in the
manner of it. People live for nothing, and don't enjoy life. I don't
know at this minute a single man or woman, of our sort, you know, that
enjoys life; except that one. And _she_ isn't our sort. She has no
money, and no society, and no Europe to wander round in! O, they would
_say_ they enjoy life; but their way shows they don't."
"Enjoyment is not the first thing," Philip said thoughtfully.
"O, isn't it! It's what we're all after, anyhow; you'll allow that."
"Perhaps that is the way we miss it."
"So Dulcimer and I are all right, you see," pursued Tom, without
heeding this remark. "We shall be a very happy couple. All the world
will have us at their houses, and we shall have all the world at ours.
There won't be room left for any thing but happiness; and that'll
squeeze in anywhere, you know. It's like chips floating round on the
surface of a whirlpool--they fly round and round splendidly--till they
get sucked in."
"Tom!" cried his companion. "What has come to you? Your life is not so
different now from what it has always been;--and I have always known
you for a light-hearted fellow. I can't have you take this tone."
Tom was silent, biting the ends of his moustache in a nervous way,
which bespoke a good deal of mental excitement; Philip feared, of
mental trouble.
"If a friend may ask, how came you to do what is so unsatisfactory to
you?" he said at length.
"My mother and sister! They were so preciously afraid I should ruin
myself. Philip, I _could not_ make head against them. They were too
much for me, and too many for me; they were all round me; they were
ahead of me; I had no chance at all. So I gave up in despair. Women are
the overpowering when they take a thing in their head! A man's nowhere.
I gave in, and gave up, and came away, and now--they're satisfied."
"Then the affair is definitely concluded?"
"As definitely as if my head was off."
Philip did not laugh, and there was a pause again. The colours were
fading from sky and water, and a yellow, soft moonlight began to assert
her turn. It was a change of beauty for beauty; but neither of the two
young men seemed to take notice of it.
"Tom," began the other after a time, "what you say about the way most
of us live, is more or less true; and it ought not to be true."
"Of course it is true!" said Tom.
"But it ought not to be true."
"What are you going to do about it? One must do as everybody else does;
I suppose."
"_Must_ one? That is the very question."
"What can you do else, as long as you haven't your bread to get?"
"I believe the people who _have_ their bread to get have the best of
it. But there must be some use in the world, I suppose, for those who
are under no such necessity. Did you ever hear that Miss--Lothrop's
family were strictly religious?"
"No--yes, I have," said Tom. "I know _she_ is."
"That would not have suited you."
"Yes, it would. Anything she did would have suited me. I have a great
respect for religion, Philip."
"What do you mean by religion?"
"I don't know--what everybody means by it. It is the care of the
spiritual part of our nature, I suppose."
"And how does that care work?"
"I don't know," said Tom. "It works altar-cloths; and it seems to mean
church-going, and choral music, and teaching ragged schools; and that
sort of thing. I don't understand it; but I should never interfere with
it. It seems to suit the women particularly."
Again there fell a pause.
"Where have _you_ been, Dillwyn? and what brought you here again?" Tom
began now.
"I came to pass the time," the other said musingly.
"Ah! And where have you passed it?"
"Along the shores of the Adriatic, part of the time. At Abazzia, and
Sebenico, and the islands."
"What's in all that? I never heard of Abazzia."
"The world is a large place," said Philip absently.
"But what is Abazzia?"
"A little paradise of a place, so sheltered that it is like a nest of
all lovely things. Really; it has its own climate, through certain
favouring circumstances; and it is a hidden little nook of delight."
"Ah!--What took you to the shores of the Adriatic, anyhow?"
"Full of interest," said Philip.
"Pray, of what kind?"
"Every kind. Historical, industrial, mechanical, natural, and artistic.
But I grant you, Tom, that was not why I went there. I went there to
get out of the ruts of travel and break new ground. Like you, being a
little tired of going round in a circle for ever. And it occurs to me
that man must have been made for somewhat else than such a purposeless
circle. No other creature is a burden to himself."
"Because no other creature thinks," said Tom.
"The power of thought can surely be no final disadvantage."
"I don't see what it amounts to," Tom returned. "A man is happy enough,
I suppose, as long as he is busy thinking out some new
thing--inventing, creating, discovering, or working out his
discoveries; but as soon as he has brought his invention to perfection
and set it going, he is tired of it, and drives after something else."
"You are coming to Solomon's judgment," said the other, leaning back
upon the cushions and clasping his hands above his head,--"what the
preacher says--'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'"
"Well, so are you," said Tom.
"It makes me ashamed."
"Of what?"
"Myself."
"Why?"
"That I should have lived to be thirty-two years old, and never have
done anything, or found any way to be of any good in the world! There
isn't a butterfly of less use than I!"
"You weren't made to be of use," said Tom.
"Upon my word, my dear fellow, you have said the most disparaging
thing, I hope, that ever was said of me! You cannot better that
statement, if you think an hour! You mean it of me as a human being, I
trust? not as an individual? In the one case it would be indeed
melancholy, but in the other it would be humiliating. You take the
race, not the personal view. The practical view is, that what is of no
use had better not be in existence. Look here--here we are at Murano; I
had not noticed it. Shall we land, and see things by moonlight? or go
back to Venice?"
"Back, and have dinner," said Tom.
"By way of prolonging this existence, which to you is burdensome and to
me is unsatisfactory. Where is the logic of that?"
But they went back, and had a very good dinner too.