CHAPTER XXI

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE

"Then you'll never know my people in Venice," said John presently. He

had suddenly remembered that there was nothing to tell the little old

white-haired lady now. To all the thousand questions which she would

whisper into his ears, only evasive answers could be given her.

"I told my mother about you," he went on slowly. "I told her how we met.

I told her that you were praying to St. Joseph and she's been wondering

ever since--like me"--the emotion rose in his throat--"she's been

wondering what you could have had to ask."

He came back to the arm-chair--the arm-chair in which he did his

work--and quietly sat down. Then, as quietly, as naturally as if she had

done it a thousand times before, Jill seated herself on the floor at his

feet and his arm wound gently round her neck.

"Did your mother know we met again?" she asked presently.

"Yes--I told her about the first time in Kensington Gardens. I haven't

told her any more. I dared not."

"Dared not?" She looked up quickly.

"No--it's the hope of her life to see me happy--to see me married. They

think I make more money than I do, because I won't take anything from

them. They believe I'm in a position to marry and, in nearly every

letter she writes, she makes some quaint sort of allusion to it. I

believe already her mind is set on you. She's so awfully cute. She

reads every single word between the lines, and sometimes sees more what

has been in my mind when I wrote to her, than I even did myself."

Jill's interest wakened. Suddenly this old lady, far away in Venice,

began to live for her.

"What is she like?" she asked--"Describe her. You've never told me what

she's like."

Diffidently, John began. At first it seemed wasting their last moments

together to be talking of someone else; but, word by word, he became

more interested, more absorbed. It was entering Jill into his life,

making her a greater part of it than she would have been had she gone

away knowing nothing more of him than these rooms in Fetter Lane. At

last the little old white-haired lady, with those pathetically powerless

hands of hers, was there, alive, in the room with them.

Jill looked up at him with such eyes as concealed their tears.

"She means a lot to you," she said gently.

"Yes--she means a great deal."

"And yet, do you know, from your description of her, I seemed more to

gather how much you meant to her. She lives in you."

"I know she does."

"And your father? Thomas Grey--of the port of Venice?" She tried to

smile at the remembrance which that brought.

"Yes--he lives in me, too. They both of them do. He, for the work I

shall do, carrying on where he left off; she, for the woman I shall love

and the children I know she prays I may have before she dies. That is

the essence of true fatherhood and true motherhood. They are perfectly

content to die when they are once assured that their work and their love

is going on living in their child."

She thought of it all. She tried in one grasp of her mind to hold all

that that meant, but could only find herself wondering if the little old

white-haired lady would be disappointed in her, would disapprove of the

duty she was about to fulfil, if she knew.

After a long pause, she asked to be told where they lived; to be told

all--everything about them; and in a mood of inspiration, John wove her

a romance.

"You've got to see Venice," he began, "you've got to see a city of

slender towers and white domes, sleeping in the water like a mass of

water lilies. You've got to see dark water-ways, mysterious threads of

shadow, binding all these flowers of stone together. You've got to hear

the silence in which the whispers of lovers of a thousand years ago, and

the cries of men, betrayed, all breathe and echo in every bush. These

are the only noises in Venice--these and the plash of the gondolier's

oar or his call--'Ohe!' as he rounds a sudden corner. You've got to see

it all in the night--at night, when the great white lily flowers are

blackened in shadow, and the darkened water-ways are lost in an

impenetrable depth of gloom. You've got to hear the stealthy creeping

of a gondola and the lapping of the water against the slimy stones as it

hurries by. In every little burning light that flickers in a barred

window up above, you must be able to see plotters at work, conspirators

planning deeds of evil or a lover in his mistress' arms. You've got to

see magic, mystery, tragedy, and romance, all compassed by grey stone

and green water, to know the sort of place where my mother and father

live, to know the place where I should have taken you, if--if things had

been different."

"Should we have gone there together?" she said in a breath.

"Yes--I've always sort of dreamed, when I've thought of the woman with

God's good gift of understanding, I've always sort of dreamed of what we

should do together there."

She looked up into his face. The picture of it all was there in his

eyes. She saw it as well. She saw the vision of all she was losing

and, as you play with a memory that hurts, as a mother handles the tiny

faded shoe of the baby she has lost, she wanted to see more of it.

"Should we have gone there together?" she whispered.

He smiled down at her--mock bravery--a smile that helped him bear the

pain.

"Yes,--every year--as long as they lived and every year afterwards, if

you wished. Every morning, we'd have got up early--you know those early

mornings when the sun's white and all the shadows are sort of misty and

the water looks cleaner and fresher than at any other time because the

dew has purged it. We'd have got up early and come downstairs and

outside in the little Rio, the gondolier would be blowing on his

fingers, waiting for us. They can be cold those early mornings in

Venice. Then we'd have gone to the Giudecca, where all the ships lie

basking in the sun--all the ships that have come from Trieste, from

Greece, from the mysterious East, up through the Adriatic, threading

their way through the patchwork of islands, past Fort San Nicolo and

Lido till they reach the Giudecca Canal. They lie there in the sun in

the early mornings like huge, big water-spiders, and up from all the

cabins you'll see a little curl of pale blue smoke where the sailors are

cooking their breakfasts."

"And how early will that be?" asked Jill in a whisper.

"Oh--six o'clock, perhaps."

"Then I shall be awfully sleepy. I never wake up till eight o'clock and

even then it's not properly waking up."

"Well, then, you'll put your head on my shoulder and you'll go to sleep.

It's a wonderful place to sleep in, is a gondola. We'll go away down

towards Lido and you can go to sleep."

"But the gondolier?"

"Oh"--he laughed gently. "The hood's up--he stands behind the hood. He

can't see. And if he can, what does that matter? He understands. A

gondolier is not a London cabby. He plies that oar of his mechanically.

He's probably dreaming, too, miles away from us. There are some places

in the world where it is natural for a man to love a woman, where it

isn't a spectacle, as it is here, exciting sordid curiosity, and Venice

is one of them. Well, then, you'll go to sleep, with your head on my

shoulder. And when we're coming back again, I shall wake you up--how

shall I wake you?"

He leant over her. Her eyes were in Venice already. Her head was on

his shoulder. She was asleep. How should he wake her? He bent still

lower, till his face touched hers.

"I shall kiss you," he whispered--"I shall kiss your eyes, and they'll

open." And he kissed her eyes--and they closed.

"We'll go back to breakfast, then," he went on, scarcely noticing how

subtly the tense had changed since he had begun. "What do you think

you'd like for breakfast?"

"Oh--anything--it doesn't matter much what one eats, does it?"

"Then we'll eat anything," he smiled--"whatever they give us. But we

shall be hungry, you know. We shall be awfully hungry."

"Well," said Jill under her breath--"I'm sure they'll give us enough.

And what do we do then?"

"After breakfast?"

"Yes."

"Well--I finish just one moment before you do, and then I get up,

pretending that I'm going to the window."

She looked up surprised.

"Pretending? What for?"

"Because I want to get behind your chair."

"But why?"

"Because I want to put my arms round your neck and kiss you again."

He showed her how. He showed her what he meant. She took a deep

breath, and closed her eyes once more.

"When, without complaint, you take whatever is given you, that's the

only grace for such a meal as that. Well--when we've said grace--then

out we go again."

"In the garden?"

"Yes--to the Palazzo Capello in the Rio Marin."

"That's where your people live?"

"Yes. Well, perhaps, we take them out, or we go and sit in the garden.

I expect father will want us to go and sit in the garden and see the

things he's planted; and mother of course'll consent, though she'll be

longing to go out to the Piazza San Marco and look at the lace in the

shops under the Arcade."

"Well, then, I'll go out with her----" said Jill.

"If you go, I go," said John.

She laughed, and forced him to a compromise. He would stay in the garden

for half an hour; it need not be more.

"There might be things we wanted to buy in the shops," she said--"shops

where you might not be allowed to come." So he could understand that it

ought to be half an hour. But it must not be more.

"And then--what then?" she asked.

"Well, then, directly after lunch, we'd take a gondola once more and set

off for Murano."

"Directly after? Wouldn't it be cruel to leave them so soon? If we

only go for a month every year, wouldn't it be cruel?"

This is where a man is selfish. This is where a woman is kind. It was

natural enough, but he had not thought so much of them.

He consented that they should stay till tea-time was over--tea in those

little, wee cups without any handles, which the little old white-haired

lady could just manage to grasp in her twisted hands, and accordingly,

loved so much because they did not jeer at her powerlessness as did the

many things which she had once been able to hold.

"You didn't want not to come out with me--did you?" he asked when the

tea-time picture had passed before his eyes.

"Not--not want--but you'd get tired, perhaps, if you saw too much of me

alone."

"Get tired!"

Three score years and ten were the utmost that a man might hope for in

this life. Get tired!

Well, then, tea was over at last. The light of a pearl was creeping

into the sky. That was the most wonderful time of all to cross the

Lagoon to Murano.

"Then it was much better we stayed to tea," she whispered.

Much better, since the shadows were deepening under the arches, and he

could take her head in his hands and kiss her--as he kissed her

then--without being seen. Oh--it was much better that they had stayed

to tea.

Now they had started, past the Chiesa San Giacomo into the Grand Canal,

down the broad waterway, past the Ca' d'Oro, which the Contarini built,

to the narrow Rio di Felice; then out into the Sacca della Misericordia,

and there, before them, the broad stretch of the silent Lagoon--a lake

of opal water that never ended, but as silently became the sky, with no

line of light or shade to mark the alchemy of change.

"And across this," said John,--"with their hour glasses spilling out the

sand, come the gondolas with the dead, to the cemetery that lies in the

water in the midst of the Lagoon. They churn up the water with the

speed they go, and if you ask a gondolier why they go so fast, he will

tell you it is because the dead cannot pay for that last journey of

theirs. That is their humour in the city they call _La citta del riso

sangue_. But we shall creep through the water--we can pay--at

least----" he thought of his two quarters' rent--"I suppose we can. We

shall steer through the water like the shadow of a little cloud gliding

across the sea. Oh----" he pressed his hands to his eyes--"but it would

be wonderful there with you! And at night, when the whole city is full

of darkness--strange, silent, mysterious darkness--where every lighted

taper that burns and every lamp that is lit seems to illuminate a deed

of mystery, we would go out into the Grand Canal, when we had said

good-night to those dear old people of mine and we'd listen to them

singing--and, oh,--they sing so badly, but it sounds so wonderful there.

At last--one by one, the lights would begin to flicker out. The windows

that were alive and awake would close their eyes and hide in the

mysterious darkness; a huge white lamp of a moon would glide up out of

the breast of the Adriatic, and then----"

"Then?" she whispered.

"Then we should turn back to the little room amongst all those other

little rooms in the great darkness--the gondolier would row home, and I

should be left alone with my arms tight round you and my head resting on

the gentlest place in the world."

He lifted his hands above his head--he laughed bitterly with the

unreality of it all.

"What beautiful nonsense all this is," said he.

She looked up with the tears burning in her eyes. She looked up and her

glance fell upon a picture that his father had painted and given him--a

picture of the Rialto lifting with its white arches over the green

water. She pointed to it. He followed with his eyes the white line of

her finger.

"Then that," said Jill, and her voice quivered--"that's the City--the

City of Beautiful Nonsense."

BOOK II

THE TUNNEL

CHAPTER XXII

THE HEART OF THE SHADOW

Ideals in the human being are as the flight of a swallow, now high, now

sinking to earth, borne upwards by the bright light of air, pressed

downwards by the lowering of a heavy sky.

When John had said his last good-bye to Jill, when it seemed to both of

them that the Romance was finished--when the City of Beautiful Nonsense

had just been seen upon the horizon, like a land of promise viewed from

a height of Pisgah, and then faded into the mist of impossible things,

John turned back to those rooms in Fetter Lane, with his ideal hugging

close to earth and all the loneliness of life stretching out

monotonously before him.

But not until he had seen the empty tea-cups in their position upon the

table just as they had left them, the little piece of bread and butter

she had half eaten, upon her plate; not until he had seen the empty

chairs standing closely together as though repeating in whispers all the

story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense which he had told her, did he

come actually to realise that he had lost her--that he was alone.

The minutes ticked wearily by as he sat there, staring at it all as

though it were an empty stage at the end of a play, which the players

had deserted.

At the sound of footsteps mounting the stairs, he looked up. Then, as a

knock fell upon the door, he started to his feet. She had come back!

She could bear the parting no more than he! They were never to be

parted! This loneliness was too unendurable, too awful to bear. In

hurried strides, he reached the door and flung it open.

There stood the little bailiff--_the great_ Mr. Chesterton--with a smile

spreading agreeably over his solemn face. In those two hours of his

absence, he had thought of three clever things--three! which, having

just invented, he found to be in every way as good as that famous simile

of Time and Tide. He was longing to say them.

But when he saw the look on John's face, he stopped.

"Yer not expecting another young lady are yer?" he asked.

John turned back despairingly into the room, making way for him to

enter. He offered no reply to the little man's remark.

Mr. Chesterton closed the door behind him.

"'Ave you 'ad a scrap?" he asked sympathetically.

Now, sympathy from a bailiff, may be a very beautiful thing, but when

the mind of a man is floundering in the nethermost pit, he has no need

of it. John turned on him, his face changed, his whole expression

altered.

"You've come here to do your work, haven't you?" he said

thickly--"you've come here to take possession of any confounded thing

you like. Well--take it! Take the whole blessed show! I don't want to

see a single thing in this room again." He strode to the door. The

little man stood staring at him amazed. "You can rip every damned thing

off the walls----" he went on wildly. "Make up your fifteen pounds

whatever you do. Don't stint yourself! For God's sake don't stint

yourself!--Take every damned thing!"

The door slammed. He was gone.

It was half-past six. Payne and Welcome were just beginning to put up

their shutters. John hurried into the side entrance and threw his

ticket down on the counter.

"I want that seventeen pounds," he said, and the ten-shilling-piece

twisted a giddy dance on the counter by the side of the ticket, then

sank down with a gentle ringing sound.

The pawnbroker looked at him in amazement, then went to a little

pigeon-hole and produced the packet of money. John snatched it up and

went.

They stared after him; then stared at one another.

"He ain't so far off it this time," said one.

"Next thing I'll do," said the high priest--"I'll cut 'is throat in a

barber's shop."

But supremely unconscious of all these gentle remarks, John was hurrying

on through the streets, scarcely conscious of where he was going, or why

he had redeemed the money that was now gripped fiercely in his hand.

For what did anything matter now? There must be some colour of reality

about the ideal, some red lamp burning before an altar to light up that

utter darkness into which the mind inevitably falls, blindly and

stumblingly, without such actual guiding flame as this. Where would be

the wonderful reality of the Host in the Tabernacle, if it was not for

the dim red lamp that burnt silently by day and night before the altar?

Who could pray, who could believe in utter darkness?

And in utter darkness Jill had surely left him now. It might have been

that they could not have married for some years; it might have been that

they could never have married at all; but to see her no more--never to

feel again the touch of understanding in her hands, the look of

understanding in her eyes--that was the gale of the wind which had

obliterated the red light of the lamp that burnt before his altar. And

now--he was in darkness. Neither could he pray, nor believe.

For an hour, he wandered through the streets, then, as a clock struck

the half-hour after seven, he turned into a fashionable restaurant and

took a table in a corner alone.

A waiter came with the menu of the dinners--five shillings, seven and

six, ten shillings. He chose the last as it was handed to him. The

mere action of spending money needlessly seemed a part of the expression

of that bitterness which was tainting all his thoughts.

The waiter handed him the wine list with a bow.

John shook his head.

"Water," he said.

This was not his way of seeking oblivion. In even the blackest moments

of his mind, he must have his senses wide-eyed and awake. The man who

drinks to forget, forgets Remorse as well. Remorse is a thing to be

learnt of, not to drown.

This, if John had known it, was what his father meant by wishing for the

sorrow in his life. By such moments as these, he was to come to learn

the value of optimism; by such moments as these, he was to come to know,

not that there is too much sadness in life already, but that there is

too little of the contrast of real happiness to appreciate it.

All through the meal, sending away one course after another unfinished,

he gave way voluntarily to the passion of bitterness, made no effort to

steady the balance of his mind.

In a balcony, at the far end of the room, a band of string instruments

played the worst of meanings into bad music--the music one hears without

listening to. It was not long in finding its way into John's mind, not

long in exerting its influence upon his mood. One by one, crowding

quickly upon each other, he permitted its suggestions to take a hold

upon his thoughts. What did it matter how he thought? What did it

matter how low his ideal should fall? He could see nothing beyond the

moment, nothing further than that he was alone, deprived of the

greatest, the highest hope with which his whole being had associated

itself? What did anything matter now that he had lost that.

And then, out of a stillness that had fallen since the last playing of

the band, the musicians began a selection from _La Boheme_. He laid his

knife and fork upon the plate. He sat back in his chair and listened.

Why did it sound so different? What had changed in it since that night

when he had heard it at the Opera? Now there was sensuality in every

note of it. It maddened him. The very passages that he had once found

beautiful--found wonderful as he had listened to them with Jill--became

charged with the vilest imaginations. Thoughts, the impurest, surged

into his mind. The wildest and most incomprehensible desire beat in his

brain. Was it the players? Was it their rendering of the music, or was

it himself?

He called the waiter, ordered his bill, paid--thinking no loss in

it--out of the seventeen pounds he had redeemed, and strode out of the

place into the street.

There was nowhere to go, no friend whom he cared at such a moment to

see. At last, without consciously determining upon it, he found himself

making his way back to Fetter Lane.

With steps almost like those of an old man, he climbed up the stairs,

passing the sandy cat without notice--not so much as a good-evening.

When he opened the door of his room, there was Mr. Chesterton,

comfortably ensconced in his armchair and only saving his

presumptuousness of its occupation, by reading one of John's books.

But Mr. Chesterton was a man with a certain amount of humility. He rose

to his feet as John entered; because there was no doubt as to its being

John's particular arm-chair. It was the only armchair in the room. The

little bailiff had observed that. In fact, for that very reason, he had

considerately omitted it in the making of his inventory.

"I--I just been reading one of your books, Mr. Grey," he said, "an' if

yer don't mind my sayin' so, I've read many a story what was worse. I

'ave, indeed. I like this story first rate. It's no more like a thing

you'd hear of in life than I'm like the photograph my son took of me

last week with a five-shilling camera. 'Ow on earth you manage to do it

is a marvel to me. Do you get a plot in yer 'ead like and just stick it

down just as it comes to yer--what my old woman calls when the spirit

moves? 'The spirit moves,' she says, and then she goes out and gets a

jug of beer. But that's only figurative, of course. What I mean is, do

you go on writing what's in your 'ead, or do you get bits of it out of

other books? 'He threw his arms around her neck and held her in a

passionate embrace.' I've read that in 'eaps of books. I suppose they

get it from each other."

"Did you find it in mine?" asked John.

"Well, no--I can't say as I 'ave yet. But then, they've only just been

introduced. I expect you'll 'ave to come to it sooner or later. They

all do."

"That's quite right," said John--"we all do. There's something

inevitable about it. Have you had a meal yet?"

"No--but I've got a little something here in a basket. I'll eat it on

the landing if you like."

"Oh, no," said John--"eat it here. It makes no difference to me."

So Mr. Chesterton pulled out the basket with the little something

inside. Two cold sausages and some bread and butter were the extent of

his meal which he ate with evident relish, and table manners that,

perhaps, a fastidious person might have objected to. You could, for

example, hear him eating. Sometimes he exclaimed how excellent were

sausages when they were cold. He went so far as to say he loved them.

He also expanded on the way his old woman cooked tripe; but when he

talked about the brains of certain animals being cheap and at the same

time a great delicacy, John found that his hands wanted washing and went

into the other room.

"They've had a tiff," said the little man as he bit into the second

sausage--"they've 'ad a tiff. He's that down in the mouth, there's

nothin' I can say as'll buck him up. Why, if I talk about sheep's

brains to my old woman, she gets as chirpy as a cock-sparrer."

When John came back, Mr. Chesterton had finished; the basket was put

away and he was doing things with his teeth and a bent pin in a far

corner of the room.

"'Ave yer got a box of draughts, Mr. Grey?" he asked, when he was at

liberty. John nodded his head.

"Then come along," said the little man--"let's have a game!"

CHAPTER XXIII

AMBER

But there is no oblivion to be found in a game of draughts. For some

days, John bore with the society of the amiable Mr. Chesterton. He

listened to his stories of visits that he had paid in other

establishments, where they had prevailed upon him to do odd jobs about

the house, even to the cleaning of the knives and boots. The only time

when he seemed to have resolutely refused to do anything, was on the

occasion he had spent seven days with the lady journalist who had a

beard and a fair tidy moustache.

"I wouldn't even have shaved her if she'd asked me to," he said.

This sort of thing may be amusing; but it needs the time, it needs the

place. In those rooms of his, where only a few days before, Jill had

been sitting--at that period of his life when hope was lowest and

despair triumphant, John found no amusement in it at all.

He wanted his oblivion. His whole desire was to forget. The life that

had held all promise for him, was gone--irrevocably broken. He sought

for that, which would, by contrast, close the memory of it, as you shut

a book that is read. It was not to be done by playing draughts with Mr.

Chesterton. It was not to be done in the ways that the crowd of men

will choose. He had attempted that--found it impossible and flung it

aside.

It was then that he thought of Amber. She had had a rightful place

once, a place that had accorded with his ideas of the cleanliness of

existence. Only that he had met Jill--only that he had loved--only that

he had found the expression of his ideal in her, Amber would still have

been there. And now--now that he had lost everything--why not return?

It was the most human thing in the world. Life was not possible of such

ideals.

So he argued, the darkness slowly diminishing--the light of some reason

creeping again into his mind. But the bitterness was still there. He

still did not care and, as yet, his mind did not even rebel against such

callousness.

One evening, then, he left Mr. Chesterton finishing the reading of his

book. He hailed the first hansom he saw and, screwing himself into the

corner of the seat, took a deep breath of relief as he drove away.

Then began the fear as he drove, the fear that he would not find Amber,

that since she had gone out of his life, she would have readjusted her

mind, found other interests, or even that she might not be there when he

arrived. And now, once his destination was made, he dreaded the thought

that Circumstance should balk his desire.

Jumping quickly out of the hansom, he paid his fare, hurried up the

steps and rattled the flap of the letter-box. This was the knocker of

friends. All those who used the proper means were creditors, not

answered until inspected carefully from behind lace curtains.

For a few moments, his heart beat tentatively. There was no sound, no

light from within. Then came the quick tapping of high-heels. He took

a breath. The door opened. He saw her face of amazement in the

darkness.

"You!" she exclaimed. The door opened wider to her hand. "Come in."

He took off his hat and stepped in. His manner was strange. He knew it

was strange; he understood the look of question in her eyes as she

stared at him--it reflected the look in his own mind.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

She nodded her head.

"My aunt is staying with me," she explained, "but she's gone to bed.

She's got my bedroom. The mater's gone to bed. I'm sleeping on the

floor in the drawing-room. I was sitting there. Come in."

He followed her into the drawing-room. There was her bed upon the

floor--a mattress, sheets and blanket. That was all.

"You're sleeping there?" he said.

She said--"hm" with a little jerk of the head, in the most natural way

in the world. If he thought he knew what it was to be poor, he

flattered himself. He had been without meals, but he had never slept on

the floor.

"Isn't it hard?" he questioned. "Do you go to sleep at all?"

She laughed gently under her breath.

"Good heavens, yes! I'm used to it. But what have you come for?"

She sat down in a heap, like a journeyman tailor, upon her bed, and

gazed up at him. At first, he did not know how to say it. Then he

blurted it out.

"I want you to come back again to see me in Fetter Lane."

She smiled with pride. Her mind reached for its box of bricks. He had

sent her away from Fetter Lane. That was all over--past--done with.

"That's rather unexpected--isn't it?"

"I can't help that," he exclaimed, with a moment of wildness.

"But after all you've said?"

"I can't help what I've said. It holds good no longer. I take it all

back. It means nothing."

She knelt up quickly on her knees. Dignity comes often before humanity

with a woman, but pity will always outride the two. Something had

happened to him. He was in trouble. The old appeal he had once made to

her rose out of the pity that she felt. She stretched up her hands to

his shoulders.

"What's happened?" she asked--"tell me what's happened."

He dropped on to the mattress on the floor. He told her everything. He

told her how far his ideals had fallen in those last few days. He

stripped the whole of his mind for her to lash if she chose; he stripped

it, like a child undressing for a whipping.

When he had finished, she sat back again in her former position. She

stared into the empty grate.

"I wonder," said she--"I wonder does the man exist who can bear

disappointment without becoming like that."

That was the only lash that fell from her. And she did not direct it

upon him, but it whipped across the nakedness of his mind with a

stinging blow. He winced under it. It made him long to be that man.

Yet still, there was his desire; still there was the fear, that

circumstance would balk him of his oblivion.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Because, I thought you would be different," she said.

"I'm as human as the rest," said he. "I'm the crank, of course--but I'm

a human crank. Will you come back to me again?"

She rose to her knees again. She was trembling, but she took his hand

in hers and gripped it hard to hide it from him.

"What will you say afterwards?" she asked gently. "What will you feel?

You'll be full of remorse. You'll hate me. You'll hate yourself. What

about your ideal?"

"I have none," he exclaimed blindly.

"I said that once," she whispered--"and you said I was wrong, that I had

an ideal, that everybody had, only they lost sight of it."

He remembered all that. He remembered the reasoning of his mind. He

knew it was true. He knew it was true even then.

"Now you've lost sight of yours," she continued. "But you'll see it

again, you'll realise it again to-morrow, and then--heavens! How you'll

hate me! How you'll hate yourself."

He stared at her. Were women as good, as fine as this? Was he the only

vile thing in existence then? What would Jill think if she could see

into the pit of his mind now? So low had he fallen that he thought it

impossible to struggle upwards; so low, that it seemed he must touch the

utmost depth before he could get the purchase to regain his feet. And

if he touched the lowest, he might rise again, but it would not be so

high as before.

Amber watched all the thoughts in his face. She had done her utmost.

She could not do more. If he did not fight it out from this, then, what

must be, must be.

Yet one more thing she could do. If she spoke of Venice. But why

should she say it? It was his battle, not hers. She had given him

every weapon to wage it but this. Why should she say it? The battle

was against herself. Yet she answered to the best. There was her ideal

as well, however unconscious it may have been.

"When are you going to Venice?" she asked hoarsely.

He told her how he had spent some of the money--more than a pound of it

was gone.

She pulled out her purse, quickly, fiercely, feverishly.

"Then won't you be able to go?" she asked.

"Not for a while."

"Won't your mother be disappointed,--the little old white-haired lady?"

He tried to beat back the emotion in his throat, then felt something

cold and hard in his hand. He looked down. It was a sovereign.

"You must take that," she said breathlessly. "Pay it back some other

time and go--go to Venice to-morrow."

John looked full in her eyes.

"And you called yourself the fly in the amber," he said. Then he

tightened her fingers round the coin--kissed them and walked to the

door.

"I'll go to Venice," he said--"I'll go--somehow or other. I'll be the

man who can bear things without becoming like that. You shan't be

disappointed."

He came back again and seized her hand. Then he hurried out.

She listened to the door slamming. She heard his footsteps in the quiet

street, then she dropped down on the mattress on the drawing-room floor.

"Oh, you fool!" she whispered under her breath. "Oh, you fool!"

But wisdom and folly, they are matters of environment. Behind it all,

there was the most wonderful satisfaction in the world in saying--"Oh,

you fool!"

BOOK III

THE CITY

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PALAZZO CAPELLO

They tell you--come to Venice by night; that then you will drift

silently into the marvellous mystery of it all; that then you will feel

the weight of the centuries in every shadow that lurks in the deep set

doorways; that then you will realise the tragedies that have been

played, the romances woven, and the dark deeds that have been done in

the making of its history--all this, if you come to Venice by night.

They tell you, you will never see Venice as the tourist sees it, if you

will but do this; that the impression of mystery will outlast the sight

of the Philistines crowding in the Square of St. Mark's, will obliterate

the picture of a fleet of gondolas tearing through the Grand Canal, led

by a conductor shouting out the names of the Palaces as they pass. Your

conception of the city of mystery will last for ever, so they tell you,

if you do but come to Venice by night.

But there is another Venice than this, a Venice you see as you come to

it in the early morning--a city of light and of air, a city of

glittering water, of domes in gossamer that rise lightly above the

surface, finding the sun, as bubbles that melt all the prisms of light

into their liquid shells.

Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a city bathed in a

sea of light; for it is not only that the sun shines upon it, but that,

like the white shoulders of a mermaid, glittering with the water drops

as she rises out of the sea, this wonderful city is not illuminated

only, but is drenched in light itself. It is no city of shadow and

mysteries then. There are no dark water-ways, no deepening gloom

beneath the bridges. In the early morning, it lies, as yet unwakened,

blinking, flashing, burning--a rose opal, set clear against the sun.

Then the deepest shadow is in a tone of gold, the highest light in a

mist of glittering silver. The domes of San Marco and Santa Maria della

Salute are caught up in the brilliancy and melt shapelessly into the

glow.

Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a smelter's furnace

into which has been cast the gold and silver from a boundless treasure

hoard. You will see all that white and yellow metal running in molten

streams of light; you will see the vibrating waves of air as the flames

leap upward, curling and twisting to the very gates of heaven itself.

You will see a city of gold and silver, of light and air all made liquid

in one sea of brilliance, if you do but come to Venice in the early

morning.

* * * * *

In the Grand Canal, just at the corner of the _Palazzo Babarigo_, there

appears the entrance to one of those myriad little ways that shoot

secretly away from the great, wide water street. Turning into this, the

_Rio San Polo_, following its course under the bridges and taking the

second turning on the left, an obedient gondolier will swing you round

with one sweep of his long oar into the _Rio Marin_.

Being human, assuming your love of the beautiful, taking time also as

his perquisite, he will probably choose more devious ways than this.

But, everyone will tell you that, by the _Rio San Polo_, it is the

shortest.

On each side of the _Rio Marin_, there runs a narrow little pathway.

Here, the houses do not dip down to the water's edge, the space of light

is wider, and the hurrying of the pedestrian on the footway seems to

concentrate life for a moment and give it speech, in a place where

everything is mute, where everything is still.

Idlers gather lazily on the bridges to watch the swaying gondolas as

they pass beneath. Here, even the mystery you will find by night, is

driven away. The sun, the broad stretch of heaven, no longer a

ribbon-strip of blue tying together the house-tops, these combine to

defy mystery in the _Rio Marin_. Rose trees and flowering bushes top the

grey walls; lift up their colours against a cloudless sky and smile down

to you of gardens concealed on the other side.

Towards the end of this little water-way, almost opposite the _Chiesa

Tedeschi_, stands the _Palazzo Capello_, a broad and somewhat

unbeautiful house, looking placidly down upon the quiet water. No great

history is attached to it. No poet has ever written there, seated at

its windows; no tragedy has been played that the guide books know of, no

blood has been splashed against its walls. You will not find it

mentioned in any of the descriptions of Venice, for it has no history to

detain the ear; it bears no show of ornament without to attract the eye.

Yet, with that pomp and vanity that breathed in Venice in the middle

centuries, it was called--a palace--and only to those who know it from

within, can this dignity of name seem justified.

A great, wide door divides the front of grey stone, up to which lead

steps from the pathway--steps, in the crevices of which a patch of green

lies here and there in a perfect harmony of contrast to the well-worn

slabs. This door is always closed and, with no windows on either side,

only the broad stretch of masonry, there is a stern appearance about the

place, suggesting a prison or a barracks in its almost forbidding

aspect. But when once that wide, wooden gate is opened, the absence of

windows upon the ground floor is partly explained and the mind is caught

in a breath of enchantment. It does not give entrance to a hall, but to

an archway--an archway tunnelling under the house itself, at the end of

which, through the lace-work of wonderful wrought-iron palings, you see

the fairy-land of an old Italian garden, glittering in the sun.

The shadows that lie heavily under the archway only serve to intensify

the brilliance of the light beyond. Colours are concentrated to the

essence of themselves and the burst of sunshine, after the darkness,

brings a haze, as when you see the air quivering over a furnace.

But, having gained entrance and passed that doorway, you are not yet

within the house. On either side of this cool damp tunnel, making way

to the right and left on the palace, which is divided into two houses,

there are smaller archways cut into the wall. Taking that on your left,

and before your eyes have grown accustomed to the confusion of lights

and shadows, you might think it was a passage burrowing down into some

secret corners of the earth. Your feet stumble, you feel your way,

fingers touching the cold walls, suddenly realising that there are steps

to mount, not to descend and, groping onwards, you reach another door

confronting you impassably in the blackness.

There is a bell here, but it is by chance you find it--a long chain,

like that at a postern gate, which depends from somewhere above your

head. As you pull it, there is a clanging and a jangling quite close to

your ear, shattering in a thousand little pieces the stillness that

reigns all round.

After a moment or so, a small door opens within the bigger door, a

curtain is pulled and, stepping through the tiny entrance for which your

head must be bent low, you find yourself in a vast, big room--a room

stretching from back to front of the whole house--a room that makes the

meaning of the word palace seem justified a thousand times.

At either end are windows, so broad, so high, that the great stretch of

this vast chamber, with its lofty ceiling, is flooded by one swift

stream of light. Upon the polished floor of wood, the generous sunlight

is splashed in daring brightness, throwing all near it into comparative

shade, yet reflecting from the shining surface of the ground a glow that

fills the air with a mist of light.

Along the walls of a dull, cool grey, big pictures are hung. Many there

are, yet so spacious is the room, that they do not appear crowded; there

is no suggestion of a well-stocked gallery. And on each side of the

room two rich, warm-coloured curtains hang, concealing behind them

silent, heavy, doors, deep set within the wall.

One of these, if you open it, will give you admittance to a tiny little

room--so tiny, so small, that its smallness laughs at you, as for the

moment it peers through the open space into the vast chamber beyond.

Close the door and the smallness seems natural enough then. For there,

sitting perhaps over their afternoon tea, or their cups of coffee in the

evening, chatting and gossiping as tho' they had just met to keep each

other company, are two small figures; small because they are old--one,

that of an old man, whose eyes are somewhat dimmed behind the high cheek

bones and the shaggy eyebrows, the other, crumpled and creased like a

silk dress that has lain long-folded in a camphor-scented drawer, the

figure of a little old white-haired lady.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LETTER--VENICE

In the daily affairs of those two old people in the Palazzo Capello,

there was one undeviating ceremony, performed with the regularity and

precision of those mechanical figures that strike the great bell on the

clock tower in the square of St. Mark's.

As the bells of the churches rang out the hour of ten at night,

Claudina, the old dame who looked after all the wants of this worthy

pair, entered the little room, carrying a large box in her hands.

Whatever their occupation may have been, whether they were playing at

cribbage, or merely writing letters, up went their white heads together

and one or the other would say--in Italian--"You don't mean to say it's

ten o'clock, Claudina?"

And Claudina would bend her head, with a sudden jerk, like a nodding

mandarin, her big earrings would swing violently in her ears, and she

would plant the box down gently upon the table.

"Si, signora," she said--always in the same tone of voice, as though she

had suddenly realised that her nod of the head was not quite as

respectful as it ought to be.

One cannot describe this as a ceremony; but it was the prelude to all

the serious business that followed. Claudina was the mace bearer. Her

entrance with the wooden box was the heralding of the quaint little

procession of incidents that followed.

It was an evening in July, in that self-same year which has so

successfully hidden itself in the crevices of our calendar. The

_jalousies_ had not long been closed upon a sky of primrose, in which

the stars were set like early drops of dew. Claudina had just brought

in a letter by the post. It was half-past nine.

"A letter, signora," Claudina had said and, knowing quite well who the

letter was from, she had not laid it down upon the table as ordinary

letters were treated, but had given it directly into her mistress's

hand.

If the old Italian servant knows curiosity, she does not show it.

Claudina, once the letter was delivered, discreetly left the room. The

moment the door had closed, there followed as pretty a play of courtesy

as you might have wished to see.

The old gentleman laid down his book.

"It is from John?" he said quickly.

She nodded her head and passed it across to him. Had she rolled the

world to his feet, it could not have been more generously done. And had

it been the world, he could not have taken it more eagerly.

His finger was just trembling inside the flap of the envelope, when he

read the address.

"Why--it's written to you, my dear," said he, slowly withdrawing his

finger.

She smiled. She nodded her head again. It was addressed to her; but in

the rightful order of things, it was really his turn. For some unknown

reason, John had addressed the last two letters to her. He never did do

that. He was always most scrupulously fair in this tacit understanding

that he should address his letters alternately, first to his father,

then to his mother. This was the only time he had broken the unwritten

law. It was really not her letter at all. That was why she had passed

it across at once to her husband. He would never have dreamed of asking

for the letter out of his turn. His fingers often twitched while her

poor hands fumbled with the envelope, but he had never moved an inch to

take it, until, of her own accord, she had handed it to him.

Now--knowing that it was his turn, his hand had stretched out for it

naturally the moment Claudina had closed the door, and she had as

readily given it. But there was a secret exultation in the heart of her.

John had addressed it to her. There was no getting away from that.

For a moment, the old gentleman sat fingering it in dubious hesitation.

Then he passed it back again.

"It's your letter, my dear," he said. "You open it." And picking up

his book, he pretended to go on reading. Of course he did not see a

single word on the page before him. Every sense in his body was

strained to catch the sound of the tearing paper as she broke open the

envelope. But there was no sound at all. Another moment of silence and

she was bending over him from behind his chair, her arms round his neck

and the letter held before his eyes.

"We'll open it together," she said.

It was her way of letting him do it without knowing that he had given

way. To be sure, it was his finger that finally broke the flap of the

envelope; but then, he retained all the dignity of the sacrifice. And

so, as she leant over his shoulder, they read it together, with little

exclamations of delight, little interruptions of pleasure, that need a

heart for their purer translation, and cannot be written here because of

that great gulf which is fixed behind the mind and the pen--because of

that greater gulf which lies between the word and the eye that reads it.

"_My dearest----_"

Just those two words beginning; but they were almost the entire letter

to her. They set her little brown eyes alight, her heart beating

quickly behind the stiff bodice.

"_I have left writing to you until the last moment for fear I should be

unable to come on the day that you were expecting me. But it is all

right. I am starting to-morrow morning, and shall be with you the usual

time the day following, just about sunset. I can't tell you how glad I

shall be to get away from here. You know what London can be like in

July, and I suppose I want a change as well. I can't work these days at

all--but I don't mean to worry you. I expect I am depressed and want

different air in my lungs. I shall go up to the bows of the steamer

crossing to-morrow, stand there with my mouth open, and get it forced

down my throat like a dose._

"_God bless you, dearest. Give my love to father, but don't tell him I

can't work. I know he understands it well enough, but I believe it

depresses him as much as it does me._"

He looked up simply into her face as he handed back the paper.

"You see, I wasn't meant to read it," he said quietly.

Impulsively, she put her arm round his neck. She knew so well how that

had hurt. There had been letters sometimes that she was not meant to

see. Of course, she had seen them; but that touch of intimacy which,

when you are a lover, or a mother, makes letters such wonderful living

things, had been utterly taken from them. They had contained loving

messages to her. But the writing itself, that had been meant for

another eye to read.

"But it was only because he was thoughtful about you," she

whispered--"not because he didn't want you to see. He'll tell you

himself quickly enough that he can't work when he comes. You see if he

doesn't. He can't keep those sort of things to himself. He can do it

in a letter, because he thinks he ought to. But he won't be here five

minutes before he's telling you that he can't write a line. And think!

He'll be here the day after to-morrow. Oh--he is such a dear boy! Isn't

he? Isn't he the dearest boy two old people ever had in the world?"

So she charmed the smile back into his eyes; never pausing until she saw

that passing look of pain vanish completely out of sight. And so

Claudina found them, as she had often found them before, poring once

again over the letter as she brought in the big box.

Up went the two white heads in amazement and concern.

"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"

For to old people, you know, the hours pass very quickly; they are

scarcely awake, before they are again being put to bed. Time hurries by

them with such quiet feet, stepping lightly on the tips of its toes lest

it should disturb those peaceful last moments which God gives to the

people who are old.

Claudina laid down the big box upon the table. She nodded her head; her

earrings shook.

"Si, Signora," she replied, as always.

The little old white-haired lady crumpled the letter into her dress;

concealed it behind the stiff black bodice. Then they both stood to

their feet, and the procession, of which Claudina was the herald, began.

First of all the big wooden box was opened, and out of it were taken

numbers and numbers of little white linen bags of all shapes and sizes.

White? Well, they were white once, but long obedience to the service for

which they were required had turned their white to grey.

Each one of them was numbered, the number stitched in thread upon the

outside; each one of them had been made to fit some separate little

ornament in the room, to wrap it up, to keep the dust from it through

the night--a night-cap for it, in fact. At ten o'clock the ornaments

were put to bed; after the ornaments, then these two old people--but

first of all their treasures. They stood by, watching Claudina tuck

them all up, one by one, and it gave them that delicious sensation which

only old people and young children know anything about--the sensation

that they are sitting up late that others are going to bed before them.

Of course they never knew they had that sensation; they were not aware

of it for a moment. But you might have known by the way they turned and

smiled at each other when the big Dresden-china shepherdess was popped

into her bag, you might have known that in the hearts of them, that was

what they felt.

This evening in particular, their smiles were more radiant than ever.

The old lady forgot to make her little exclamations of terror when

Claudina could not get the night-cap over the head of the Dresden-china

shepherdess, and was in danger of dropping them both together; the old

gentleman forgot his quiet--"Be careful, Claudina--be careful." For

whenever his wife was very excited, it always made him realise that he

was very quiet, very self-possessed. But they felt none of their usual

anxiety on this evening in July. In two days--in less--John would be

with them. They had waited a whole year for this moment and a whole

year, however quickly the separate moments may pass, is a long, long

time to old people.

"There is one thing," the old gentleman said, presently, as the last

ornaments were being ranged upon the table, standing in readiness for

their nightcaps to go on. "There is one thing I don't quite know

about."

She slipped her arm into his and asked in a whisper what it was. There

was no need to talk in a whisper, for Claudina did not know a word of

English; but she guessed he was going to say something concerning John

and about him, she nearly always spoke in a whisper.

"It's the--the shop," he replied--"I--I don't like to tell John."

"Oh--but why not?" She clung a little closer to him.

"It isn't that I don't think he would understand--but it's just like

that sentence in his letter about me. I feel it would hurt him if he

thought I couldn't sell my pictures any more. I believe he would blame

himself and think he ought to be giving us money, if he knew that I had

had to start this curio shop to make things meet more comfortably."

She nodded her head wisely. She would have been all for telling her son

everything. But when he mentioned the fact of John thinking he ought to

support them, and when she considered how John would need every penny

that he earned to support the woman whom she longed for him to make his

wife--it was a different matter. She quite agreed. It was better that

John should be told nothing.

"You don't think he'll find out--do you?" she said, and her eyes looked

startled at the thought.

"No--no--I shouldn't think so. It isn't as if I had to be there every

day. Foscari looks after it quite well. Though I'm always afraid he'll

sell the very things I can't bear to part with. He sold the old brass

Jewish lamp the other day, and I wouldn't have parted with it for

worlds. But I dare say if I tell him to be careful--I dare say----"

It was rather sad, this curio shop. It would have been very sad if his

wife had not appreciated the need for it; if she had not made it easier

by telling him how brave he was, by sharing with him the sense of shame

he felt when it became apparent that his pictures were no longer

saleable.

For when he had reached the age of seventy-three, that was what they had

told him. If he had not been a landscape painter, it might have been

different; but at seventy-three, when one's heart is weak, it is not

possible, it is not wise, to go far afield, to tramp the mountains as

once he had done, in search of subjects new. So, he had been compelled

to stay at home, to try and paint from memory the pictures that lay

heaped within his mind. Then it was that they began to tell him that

they could not sell his work; then he came to find that there must be

other means of support if they were not to appeal to John for aid. And

so, having a collection of treasures such as artists find, picked up

from all the odd corners of Europe, he bethought him of a curio shop

and, finding a little place to let at a quiet corner in the _Merceria_,

he took it, called it--The Treasure Shop--and painting the name in a

quaint old sign which he hung outside, obliterated his identity from the

public eye.

For weeks beforehand, they had discussed this plan. Some of their own

treasures, of course, would have to be sacrificed; in fact, Claudina

carried many little grey night-caps away with her in the wooden

box--night-caps that no longer had Dresden heads to fit them. But the

money they were going to make out of the Treasure Shop would make up for

all these heart-rending sacrifices. They would even be able to send

John little presents now and then. There was nothing like a curio-shop

for minting money, especially if the curios were really genuine, as were

theirs.

But that was the very rub of it. When he came to open the shop, the old

gentleman found it was the very genuineness of the things he had to sell

that made it impossible for him to part with them. He loved them too

well. And even the most ignorant collectors, British sires with

check-cloth caps and heavy ulsters, old ladies with guide books in one

hand and cornucopias of maze for the pigeons in the other, even they

seemed to pitch upon the very things he loved the most.

He asked exorbitant prices to try and save his treasures from their

clutches and mostly this method succeeded; but sometimes they were fools

enough to put the money down. For there was one thing he could never

do; he could not belittle the thing that he loved. If it was good, if

it was genuine, if it really was old, he had to say so despite himself.

Enthusiasm would let him do no otherwise. But then, when he had said

all he could in its praise, he would ask so immense a sum that the

majority of would-be purchasers left the shop as if he had insulted

them.

So it was that the Treasure Shop did not fulfil all the expectations

they had had of it. It made just enough money for their wants; but that

was all.

And now came the question as to whether they should let John know of it.

Long into the night they discussed the question, their two white heads

lying side by side on the pillows, their voices whispering in the

darkness.

"And yet--I believe he would understand," said the little old lady on

her side--"he's such a dear, good boy, I'm sure he would understand."

"I don't know--I don't know," replied the old gentleman dubiously--"It

will be bad enough when he sees my last pictures. No--no--I don't think

I'll tell him. Foscari can look after the place. I need hardly be

there at all while he's with us."

And then, making the sign of the cross upon each other's

foreheads--saying--"God bless you"--as they had done every night their

whole lives long, they fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RETURN--VENICE

It was sunset when John arrived. The gondolas were riding on a sea of

rose; the houses were standing, quietly, silently, as you will see

cattle herd, knee-deep in the burning water. Here and there in the

distance, the fiery sun found its reflection in some obscure window, and

burnt there in a glowing flame of light. Then it was a city of rose and

pink, of mauve and blue and grey, one shading into the other in a

texture so delicate, so fine that the very threads of it could not be

followed in their change.

John took a deep breath as he stepped into his gondola. It needed such

colour as this to wash out the blackness of that night in London. It

needed such stillness and such quiet to soothe the rancour of his

bitterness; for the stillness of Venice is the hushed stillness of a

church, where all anger is drugged to sleep and only the sorrow that one

learns of can hold against the spell and keeps its eyes awake.

Now, in the desolation of his mind, John was learning, of the things

that have true value and of those which have none. It is not an easy

lesson to acquire, for the sacrifice of pre-conceived ideas can only be

accomplished on the altar of bitterness and only the burning of despair

can reduce them to the ashes in which lies the truth concealed.

Having deposited his belongings in his rooms in the _Rio della

Sacchere_, where he always stayed, he set off on foot by the narrow

little pathways to the _Palazzo Capello_.

That was always a moment in John's life when, upon his arrival every

year, he first opened the big gate that closed on to the _fondamenta_.

It was always a moment to be remembered when first he beheld, from

beneath the archway, the glow of the flaming sunset in that old Italian

garden, framed in the lace-worked trellises of iron.

Life had these moments. They are worth all the treasure of the Indies.

The mind of a man is never so possessed of wealth as when he comes upon

them; for in such moments as these, his emotions are wings which no sun

of vaunted ambition can melt; in such moments as these, he touches the

very feet of God.

Closing the big door behind him, John stood for a moment in

contemplation. The great disc of the sun had just sunk down behind the

cypress trees. Their deep black forms were edged with a bright thread of

gold. Everything in that old garden was silhouetted against the glowing

embers of the sunset, and every bush and every shrub was rimmed with a

halo of light.

This was the last moment of his warfare. Had his ideal not lifted again

before the sight of such magnificence as this, it would inevitably have

been the moment of defeat. Through the blackness of the tunnel, it is

inviolably decreed that a man must pass before he shall reach the

ultimate light; but if, when that journey is accomplished, the sight of

beauty, which is only the symbol of the good, if that does not touch him

and, with a beckoning hand, raise his mind into the mystery of the

infinite, then that immersion in the darkness has not cleansed his soul.

He has been tainted with it. It clings like a mist about his eyes,

blurring all vision. He has been weighed in the balance that depends

from the nerveless hand of Fate, and has been found--wanting.

But as a bird soars, freed from the cage that held it to earth, John's

mind rose triumphantly. Acknowledging all the credit that was Amber's

due--and but for her, he could not have seen the true beauty, the beauty

of symbolism, in that sunset there--he yet had passed unscathed from the

depth of the shadow into the heart of the light.

Here was a moment such as they would have known had the story of the

City of Beautiful Nonsense come true. Here was a moment when they would

have stood, hands touching, hearts beating, seeing God. And yet, though

she was hundreds of miles from him then, John's mind had so lifted above

the bitterness of despair, had so outstripped the haunting cries of his

body, that he could conjure Jill's presence to his side and, in an

ecstasy of faith, believe her with him, seeing the beauty that he saw;

there.

In the text-books of science, they have no other name for this than

hysteria; but in those unwritten volumes--pages unhampered by the

deceptive sight of words--a name is given to such moments as these which

we have not the eyes to read, nor the simplicity of heart to understand.

Forcing back the rush of tears to his eyes, John passed under the little

archway in the wall, mounted the dark stone steps, dragged down the

chain, and with the clanging of the heavy bell was brought back,

tumbling to reality.

With a rattling of the rings, the heavy curtain was pulled, the little

door was thrown open. The next moment, he was gripping Claudina's

hand--shaking it till her earrings swung violently to and fro.

Then came his father, the old white-haired gentleman, looking so old to

have so young a son.

They just held hands, gazing straight, deep down into each other's eyes.

"God bless you, my boy," said the old man jauntily. He stood with his

back to the light. He would not for the world have shown that his eyes

were filled with tears. Old men, like little boys, think it babyish to

cry--perhaps it is partly because the tears rise so easily.

And last of all, walking slowly, because her paralysis had affected her

whole body, as well as rendering powerless her hands, came the little

old white-haired lady. There was no attempt from her to hide the tears.

They were mixed up in a confusion of happiness with smiles and with

laughter in the most charming way in the world.

She just held open her thin, frail arms, and there John buried himself,

whispering over and over again in her ear--

"My dearest--my dearest--my dearest----"

And who could blame him if Jill were there still in his mind. There

comes a time when a man loves his mother because she is a woman, just as

the woman he loves. There comes a time when a mother loves her son,

because he is a man just as the man she has loved.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE TRUE MOTHER

It was not that evening that she plied her questions, this gentle,

white-haired old lady. That first evening of his arrival, there was

John's work to talk of, the success of his last book to discuss, the

opinions upon his criticisms to lay down. The old gentleman had decided

views upon such matters as these. He talked affirmatively with wise

nods of the head, and the bright brown eyes of his wife followed all his

gesticulations with silent approval. She nodded her head too. All

these things he was saying then, he had said before over and over again

to her. Yet they every one of them seemed new when he once more

repeated them to John.

This critic had not understood what he had been writing about; that

critic had hit the matter straight on the head. This one perhaps was a

little too profuse in his praise; that one had struck a note of personal

animosity which was a disgrace to the paper for which he wrote.

"Do you know the man who wrote that, John?" he asked in a burst of

righteous anger.

John smiled at his father's enthusiasm. One is so much wiser when one

is young--one is so much younger when one is old.

"I know him by sight," he said--"we've never met. But he always reviews

me like that. I suppose I irritate him."

His mother felt gently for his hand. Without looking down, he found the

withered fingers in his.

"How could you irritate him, my darling?" she asked. It seemed an

impossibility to her.

"Well--there are always some people whom we irritate by being alive, my

dearest. I'm not the only one who annoys him. I expect he annoys

himself."

"Ah, yes!" The old gentleman brought down his fist emphatically upon

the arm of his chair--"But he should keep these personal feelings out of

his work. And yet--I suppose this kind of thing will always exist.

Oh--if it only pleased the Lord that His people should be gentlemen!"

So his father talked, giving forth all the enthusiasm of his opinions

which for so long had been stored up in the secret of his heart.

It was no longer his own work that interested him; for whatever contempt

the artist may have for his wage, he knows his day is past when the

public will no longer pay him for his labour. All the heart of him now,

was centred in John. It was John who would express those things his own

fingers had failed to touch. He had seen it exultantly in many a line,

in many a phrase which this last book had contained; for though the mind

which had conceived it was a new mind, the mind of another generation

than his own, yet it was the upward growth from the thoughts he had

cherished, a higher understanding of the very ideas that he had held.

He, Thomas Grey, the artist, was living again in John Grey, the writer,

the journalist, the driver of the pen. In the mind of his son, was the

resurrection of his own intellect, the rejuvenescence of his own powers,

the vital link between him, passing into the dust, and those things

which are eternal.

It was not until John had been there two or three days, that his mother

found her opportunity.

The old gentleman had gone to the _Merceria_ to look after the Treasure

Shop. Foscari, it seemed, had been selling some more of his beloved

curios. A packet of money had been sent to him the evening before for a

set of three Empire fans, treasures he had bought in Paris twenty years

before. With a smothered sigh, the little old lady had consented to

their going to the _Merceria_. Only to make a show, he had promised her

that. They should never be purchased by anyone, and he put such a price

upon them as would frighten the passing tourist out of his wits. It was

like Foscari to find a man who was rich enough and fool enough to buy

them. With his heart thumping and, for the first time in his life, not

quite being able to look John in the eyes, he had made some excuse--a

picture to be framed--and gone out, leaving them alone.

This was the very moment John had dreaded. He knew that those bright

brown eyes had been reading the deepest corners of his heart, had only

been biding their time until such moment as this. He had felt them

following him wherever he went; had realised that into everything he

did, they were reading the hidden despair of his mind with an intuition

so sure, so unerring, that it would be quite useless for him to

endeavour to hide anything from her.

And now, at last they were alone. The sun was burning in through the

windows into the little room. The old garden below was pale in the heat

of it.

For a little while, he stood there at the window in nervous suspense,

straining to think of things to say which might distract her mind from

that subject which he knew to be uppermost in her thoughts. And all the

time his face was turned away as he gazed down on to the old garden, he

could still feel her eyes watching him, until at last the growing

anticipation that she would break the silence with a question to which

he could not reply, drove him blindly to speak.

He talked about his father's pictures; tried in vain to discover whether

he had sold enough for their wants, whether the orders he had received

were as numerous, whether his strength permitted him to carry them all

out. He talked about the thousand things that must have happened, the

thousand things they must have done since last he was with them. And

everything he said, she answered gently, disregarding all opportunity to

force the conversation to the subject upon which her heart was set. But

in her eyes, there was a mute, a patient look of appeal.

The true mother is the last woman in the world to beg for confidence.

She must win it; then it comes from the heart. In John's silence on

that one subject that was so near as to be one with the very centre of

her being, it was as though she had lost the power of prayer in that

moment of her life when she must need it most.

At last she could bear it no longer. It could not be want of confidence

in her, she told herself. He was hurt. Some circumstance, some

unhappiness had stung him to silence. Instinctively, she could feel the

pain of it. Her heart ached. She knew his must be aching too.

"John," she said at length and she laid both those poor withered hands

in his--"John--you're unhappy."

He tried to meet her eyes; but they were too bright; they saw too

keenly, and his own fell. The next moment, with straining powerless

efforts, she had drawn him on to his knees beside her chair, his head

was buried in her lap and her hands were gently stroking his hair in a

swift, soothing motion.

"You can tell me everything," she whispered; and oh, the terrible things

that fond heart of hers imagined! Terrible things they seemed to her,

but they would have brought a smile into John's face despite himself,

had he heard them. "You can tell me everything," she whispered again.

"There's nothing to tell, dearest," he replied.

For there was nothing to tell; nothing that she would understand. The

pain of his losing Jill, would only become her pain as well, and could

she ever judge rightly of Jill's marriage with another man, if she knew?

She would only take his side. That dear, good, gentle heart of hers was

only capable of judging of things in his favour. She would form an

utterly false opinion and, he could not bear that. Much as he needed

sympathy, the want of it was better than misunderstanding.

"There's nothing to tell," he repeated.

Still she stroked his head. There was not even one thought of

impatience in the touch of her fingers. It may be said without fear or

hesitation that a mother at least knows her own child; and this is the

way with children when they are in trouble. They will assure you there

is nothing to tell. She did not despair at that. For as with John

asking his question of Jill in Kensington Gardens, so she asked, because

she knew.

"Isn't it about the Lady of St. Joseph?" she said presently. "Isn't

that why you're unhappy?"

He rose slowly to his feet. She watched him as he moved aimlessly to

the window. It was a moment of suspense. Then he would tell her, then

at that moment, or he would close the book and she would not see one

figure that was traced so indelibly upon its pages. She held her breath

as she watched him. Her hands assumed unconsciously a pathetic gesture

of appeal. If she spoke then, it might alter his decision; so she said

nothing. Only her eyes begged mutely for his confidence.

Oh--it is impossible of estimate, the worlds, the weight of things

infinite, that swung, a torturing balance, in the mind of the little old

white-haired lady then. However much emotion may bring dreams of it to

the mind of a man, his passion is not the great expression by which he

is to be judged; is the woman who loves. It is the man who is loved.

He may believe a thousand times that he knows well of the matter; but

the great heart, the patience, the forbearance, these are all the

woman's and, from such are those little children who are of the kingdom

of heaven.

If these qualities belonged to the man, if John had possessed them, he

could not have resisted her tender desire for confidence. But when the

heart of a man is hurt, he binds his wounds with pride and it is of

pride, when one loves, that love knows nothing.

Turning round from the window, John met his mother's eyes.

"There's nothing to tell, dear," he said bitterly. "Don't ask

me--there's nothing to tell."

Her hands dropped their pathetic gesture. She laid them quietly in her

lap. If the suffering of pain can be reproach, and perhaps that is the

only reproach God knows of in us humans, then, there it was in her eyes.

John saw it and he did not need for understanding to answer to the

silence of its cry. In a moment he was by her side again, his arms

thrown impulsively about her neck, his lips kissing the soft, wrinkled

cheek. What did it matter how he disarranged the little lace cap set so

daintily on her head, or how disordered he made her appearance in his

sudden emotion? Nothing mattered so long as he told her everything.

"Don't think I'm unkind, little mother. I can't talk about it--that's

all. Besides--there's nothing--absolutely nothing to say. I don't

suppose I shall ever see her again. We were just friends, that's

all--only friends."

Even this was more than he could bear to say. He stood up again quickly

to force back the tears that were swelling in his throat. Tears do not

become a man. It is the most reasonable, the most natural thing in the

world that he should abominate them, and so he seldom, if ever, knows

the wonderful moment it is in the life of a woman when he cries like a

baby on her shoulder. It is only right that it should be so. Women

know their power well enough as it is. And in such a moment as this,

they realise their absolute omnipotence.

And this is just why nature decrees that it is weak, that it is foolish

for a man to shed tears in the presence of a woman. Undoubtedly nature

is right.

Before they had well risen to his eyes, John had left the room. In the

shadows of the archway beneath the house, he was brushing them roughly

from his cheek while upstairs the gentle old lady sat just where he had

left her, thinking of the thousands of reasons why he would never see

the lady of St. Joseph again.

She was going away. She did not love him. They had quarrelled. After

an hour's contemplation, she decided upon the last. They had

quarrelled.

Then she set straight her cap.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE TREASURE SHOP

At a quiet corner in the _Merceria_, stood the Treasure Shop. In every

respect it had all the features which these little warehouses of the

world's curiosities usually present. Long chains of old copper vessels

hung down, on each side of the doorway, reaching almost to the ground.

Old brass braziers and incense burners stood on the pavement outside

and, in the window, lay the oddest, the wildest assortment of those

objects of antiquity--brass candlesticks, old fans, hour-glasses,

gondola lamps, every conceivable thing which the dust of Time has

enhanced in value in the eyes of a sentimental public.

At the back of the window were hung silk stuffs and satin, rich old

brocades and pieces of tapestry--just that dull, burnished background

which gives a flavour of age as though with the faint scent of must and

decay that can be detected in its withering threads.

All these materials, hanging there, shut out the light from the shop

inside. Across the doorstep, the sun shone brilliantly, but, as though

there were some hand forbidding it, it advanced no further. Within the

shop, was all the deepest of shadow--shadow like heavy velvet from which

permeated this dry and dusty odour of a vanished multitude of years.

The Treasure Shop was a most apt name for it. In that uncertain light

within, you could just imagine that your fingers, idly fumbling amongst

the numberless objects, might chance upon a jewelled casket holding the

sacred dust of the heart of some Roman Emperor or the lock of some dead

queen's hair.

Atmosphere has all the wizardry of a necromancer. In this dim, faded

light, in this faint, musty smell of age, the newest clay out of a

living potter's hands would take upon itself the halo of romance. The

touch of dead fingers would cling to it, the scent of forgotten rose

leaves out of gardens now long deserted would hover about the scarce

cold clay. And out of the sunshine, stepping into this subtle

atmospheric spell, the eyes of all but those who know its magic are

wrapt in a web of illusion; the Present slips from them as a cloak from

the willing shoulders; they are touching the Past.

Just such a place was the Treasure Shop. Its atmosphere was all this

and more. Sitting there on a stool behind his heaped-up counter, in the

midst of this chaos of years, the old gentleman was no longer a simple

painter of landscape, but an old eccentric, whose every look and every

gesture were begotten of his strange and mysterious acquaintance with

the Past.

It came to be known of him that he was loth to part with his wares. It

came to be told of him in the hotels that he was a strange old man who

had lived so long in his musty environment of dead people's belongings

that he could not bring himself to sell them; as though the spirits of

those departed owners abode with him as well, and laid their cold hands

upon his heart whenever he would try to sell the treasures they once had

cherished.

And all this was the necromancy of the atmosphere in that little curio

shop in the _Merceria_. But to us, who know all about it, whose eyes

are not blinded with the glamour of illusion, there is little or nothing

of the eccentric about Thomas Grey.

It is not eccentric to have a heart--it is the most common possession of

humanity. It is not eccentric to treasure those things which are our

own, which have shared life with us, which have become a part of

ourselves; it is not eccentric to treasure them more than the simpler

necessities of existence. We all of us do that, though fear of the

accusation of sentimentality will not often allow us to admit it. It is

not eccentric to put away one's pride, to take a lower seat at the

guest's table in order that those we love shall have a higher place in

the eyes of the company. We all would do that also, if we obeyed the

gentle voice that speaks within everyone of us.

But if by chance this judgment is all at fault; if by chance it is

eccentric to do these things, then this was the eccentricity of that

white-haired old gentleman--Thomas Grey.

Whenever a customer--and ninety per cent. of them were tourists--came

into the shop, he treated them with undisguised suspicion. They had a

way of hitting upon those very things which he valued most--those very

things which he only meant to be on show in his little window.

Of course, when they selected something which he had only recently

acquired, his manner was courtesy itself. He could not say very much in

its favour, but then, the price was proportionately small. Under

circumstances such as these, they found him charming. But if they

happened to cast their eyes upon that Dresden-china figure which stood

so boldly in the fore-front of the window; if by hazard they coveted the

set of old ivory chess men, oh, you should have seen the frown that

crossed his forehead then! It was quite ominous.

"Well--that is very expensive," he always said and made no offer to

remove it from its place.

And sometimes they replied----

"Oh, yes--I expect so. I didn't think it would be cheap. It's so

beautiful, isn't it? Of course--really--really old."

And it was so hard to withstand the flattery of that. A smile of

pleasure would lurk for a moment about his eyes. He would lean forward

through the dark curtains of brocades and tapestries and reach it down

for inspection.

"It is," he would say in the gratified tone of the true collector--"It

is the most perfect specimen I have ever seen. You see the work

here--this glaze, that colour----" and in a moment, before he was aware

of what he was doing, he would be pointing out its merits with a

quivering finger of pride.

"Oh, yes--I think I must have it," the customer would suddenly say--"I

can't miss the opportunity. It would go so well with the things in my

collection."

Then the old gentleman realised his folly. Then the frown returned,

redoubled in its forbidding scowl. He began putting the Dresden figure

back again in the window from whence it had come.

"But I said I'd take it," the customer would exclaim more eager than

ever for its possession.

"Yes--yes--I know--but the price is--well it's prohibitive. I want

seventy-five pounds for that figure."

"Seventy-five!"

"Yes--I can't take anything less."

"Oh----" and a look of disappointment and dismay.

"You don't want it?" he would ask eagerly.

"No--I can't pay as much as that."

Then the smile would creep back again into his eyes.

"Of course--it's a beautiful thing," he would say clumsily--"a beautiful

thing."

And when he went home, he would tell the little old white-haired lady

how much it had been admired, and they would call back to memory the day

when they had bought it--so long ago that it seemed as though they were

quite young people then.

So it fell out that this old gentleman of the curio shop in the

_Merceria_ came to be known for his seeming eccentricities. People

talked of him. They told amusing stories of his strange methods of

doing business.

"Do you know the Treasure Shop in the _Merceria_," they said over the

dinner tables in London when they wanted to show how intimately they

knew their Europe. "The old man who owns that--there's a character for

you!" They even grew to making up anecdotes about him, to show how

keenly observant they were when abroad. Everyone, even Smelfungus and

Mundungus, would be thought sentimental travellers if they could.

It was the most natural coincidence in the world then, that John,

strolling aimlessly in the arcades of the Square of St. Mark's that

morning after he had left his mother, should overhear a conversation in

which the eccentric old gentleman in the _Merceria_ was introduced.

Outside Lavena's two women were taking coffee, as all well-cultured

travellers do.

"--my shopping in Kensington----" he heard one of them say, concluding

some reference to a topic which they were discussing.

John took a table near by. It is inevitable with some people to talk of

Kensington and Herne Hill when abroad. John blessed them for it,

nevertheless. There was that sound in the word to him then, which was

worth a vision of all the cities of Europe.

He ordered his cup of coffee and listened eagerly for more. But that

was the last they said of Kensington. The lady flitted off to other

topics. She spoke to her friend of the curio shop in the _Merceria_.

Did she know the place? Well, of course not, if she had not been to

Venice before. It was called the Treasure Shop. She had found it out

for herself. But, then, it always was her object, when abroad, to

become intimate with the life of the city in which she happened to be

staying. It was the only way to know places. Sight-seeing was

absolutely waste of time. And this old gentleman was really a

character--so unbusiness-like--so typically Italian! Of course, he

spoke English perfectly--but, then, foreigners always do. No--she could

not speak Italian fluently--make herself understood at table, and all

that sort of thing--anyhow, enough to get along. But, to go back to the

old gentleman in the Treasure Shop, she ought to go and see him before

she left Venice. She was going early the next week? Oh--then, she

ought to go that morning. He was such a delightful personality. So fond

of the curios in his shop that he could scarcely be persuaded to part

with them. There was one thing in particular, a Dresden figure, which

he had in the front of the window. He would not part with that to

anyone. Well--asked such a price for it that, of course, no one bought

it.

But would it not be rather amusing if someone did actually agree to pay

the price--not really, of course, only in fun, restoring it the next

day, but just to see how he would take it? Was she really going next

week? Then why not go and see the Treasure Shop at once? She would?

Oh--that was quite splendid!

And off they went, John following quietly at their heels. This old

Italian who could not bear to part with his wares because he loved them

so much, there was something pathetic in that; something that appealed

to John's sense of the colour in life. This was a little incident of

faded brown, that dull, warm tint of a late October day when life is

beginning to shed its withering leaves, when the trees, with that

network of bare, stripped branches, are just putting on their faded

lace. However unsympathetic had been the telling, he had seen the

colour of it all with his own eyes. He followed them eagerly, anxious

to behold this old Italian gentleman for himself, to confirm his own

judgment of the pathos of it all.

Letting them enter first, for he had no desire to listen to their

dealings, he took his position outside the window, intending to wait

till they came out.

There was the Dresden figure the lady had mentioned. Ah! No wonder that

he asked a large price for it! They had one just like that at the

_Palazzo Capello_. His father had often said that if he could get a

pair of them, they would be almost priceless. Supposing he bought it for

his father? Would it be cruel to the old gentleman inside? Perhaps, if

he knew that it was to make a pair, he would be more reconciled to its

loss.

John waited patiently, gazing about him until the ladies should come out

and leave the field free for him to make his study--his study in a

colour of brown.

Presently the draperies in the back of the window were pulled aside. An

old man leaned forward, hands trembling in the strain of his position,

reaching for the Dresden figure. John bit on the exclamation that rose

to his lips.

It was his father! Had he seen him? No! He slipped back again into

the darkness of the shop and the brocades and the tapestries fell

together once more into their place as though nothing had happened.

What did it mean? Was it true? With an effort, he held back from his

inclination to rush into the shop, making sure of the reality of what he

had seen. If it were true, then he knew that his father had not meant

him to know. If it were true, he knew what the pain of such a meeting

would be.

Crossing to the opposite side of the street, he tried to peer in through

the shop door; but there was that clear-cut ray of sunshine on the step,

barring the entrance. Only vaguely, like dim, black shadows on a deep

web of gloom, could he see the moving figures of the two ladies who had

entered. On an impulse, he turned into the magazzino by which he was

standing.

Who was the owner of the curio shop on the other side? They did not

know. What was his name? They could not say? Had he been there long?

Not so very long. About a year. He was an Englishman, but he spoke

Italian. He lived in Venice. They had heard some say in the _Rio

Marin_. He was not used to the trade. It was quite true that he did

not like to sell his things. They had been told he was a painter--but

that was only what people said.

That was sufficient. They needed to say no more. This answered the

questions that John had put that morning to his mother. His father

could no longer sell his pictures. In a rush of light, he saw the whole

story, far more pathetic to him than he had imagined with his study in

brown.

One by one, they were selling the treasures they had collected. Now, he

understood the meaning of those empty night-caps which Claudina carried

away with her every evening. They said the things were broken; they had

said it with nervous little glances at each other and then at Claudina.

At the time, he had read those glances to mean that it was Claudina who

had broken them. But no--it was not Claudina. This was the work of the

heavy, the ruthless hand of cruel circumstance in which the frailest

china and the sternest metal can be crushed into the dust of

destruction.

In a moment, as it was all made clear, John found the tears smarting in

his eyes. As he stood there in the little shop opposite, he painted the

whole picture with rapid strokes of the imagination.

The day had come when his father could no longer sell his pictures.

Then the two white heads had nodded together of an evening before

Claudina came in with the night-caps. More emphatically than ever, they

had exclaimed--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?" And

Claudina, laying the box on the table, beginning to take out the

night-caps and place forth the treasures before she tucked them up,

would vouchsafe the answering nod of her head. At last, one evening,

watching the Dresden figure being put to bed, his father had thought of

the way out of the difficulty.

They had not decided upon it at once. Such determinations as these come

from the head alone and have to pass before a stern tribunal of the

heart before license is given them. He could just imagine how bitter a

tribunal that had been; how inflexibly those two brave hearts had sat in

judgment upon so hard a matter; how reluctantly in the end they had

given their consent.

Then, with the moment once passed, the license once granted, John could

see them so vividly, questioning whether they should tell him, their

decision that it would not be wise, his father fearing that it would

lessen his esteem, his mother dreading that he would feel called upon to

help them. Finally, that first day, when the Treasure Shop had been

opened and his father, the artist, the man of temperament, with all the

finest perceptions and sensibilities that human nature possesses, had

gone to business.

So truly he could see the moment of his departure. Nothing had been

said. He had just taken the little old white-haired lady in his arms

and kissed her. That was all. It might have been that he was merely

going out, as he had quietly said that morning, to see about the framing

of a picture. No one would ever have thought that he was about to pass

through the ordeal of becoming a shop-keeper, because, in his old age he

had failed as an artist.

All this, incident by incident, he painted, a sequence of pictures in

his mind.

Presently the curtains in the shop-window stirred again. John's eyes

steadied, his lips parted as he held his breath. The Dresden figure

appeared, like a marionet making its bow to the public. Then followed

the head and shoulders of his father. There was a smile on his face, a

glow of genial satisfaction. They had not bought it. The price had

been too much. That little Dresden figure, playing upon its lute,

decoyed many a customer into the Treasure Shop, with its living tunes;

but like a will-o'-the-wisp, it always evaded them. Back it danced

again into the fore-front of the window where the old ivory chess-men

stood stolidly listening to its music of enchantment. You might almost

have seen them nodding their heads in approval.

John felt a lump rise quickly in his throat. He knew just what his

father was feeling; he knew just what was in his mind. He realised all

his sense of relief when the Dresden figure made its reappearance. If it

had not come back into the window, he could not have restrained his

desire to march into the shop and repeat every word of the conversation

to which he had listened.

But it was safe once more and, with a breath of satisfaction, he moved

away towards the _Rialto_, his head hanging as he walked.

That afternoon at tea, with the little cups that had no handles, he made

no comment on his father's absence. The little old white-haired lady

was trembling that he would ask, but he said not a word.

Only that evening, after Claudina had come in for her ceremony and he

was saying good-night, he put both hands on his father's shoulders and,

impulsively drawing him forward, kissed his forehead. Then he left the

room.

The two old people sat staring at each other after he had gone. What

did it mean? Why had he done it?

"Why, he hasn't kissed you since he was eight years old," said his

mother.

The old gentleman shook his head thoughtfully--"No--I can't understand

it. Don't you remember that first evening he refused, when I bent down

to kiss him and he blushed, drew back a little and held out his hand?"

She smiled.

"You were hurt about it at first," she reminded him.

"Yes--but then when you said--'John's thinking about becoming a man'--of

course, it seemed natural enough then. And he's never done it

since--till now. I wonder why."

The old gentleman went to bed very, very silent that night, and long

after Claudina had taken away the lamp, he could feel John's lips

burning on his forehead and the blood burning in his cheeks. Something

had happened. He could not quite understand what it was. Some change

had taken place. He felt quite embarrassed; but he fell asleep before

he could realise that he was feeling just what John had felt that night

when he was eight years old. That was what had happened--that was the

change. The child was now father to the man--and the man was feeling

the first embarrassment of the child--so the last link had been forged

between the irrevocable past and the eternal present.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CANDLE FOR ST. ANTHONY

If you know aught of the history of Venice; if the strenuous efforts of

all those little lives that have done their work and lived their day in

that vast multitude of human ephemera should have any meaning for you;

if, in the flames of colour that have glowed and vanished in the brazier

of Time, you can see faces and dream dreams of all that romantic story,

then it is no wasting of a sunny morning to sit alone upon the

_Piazetta_, your face turned towards _San Giorgio Maggiore_ and, with

the sun glinting upwards from the glittering water, weave your visions

of great adventure in the diaphanous mist of light.

It was in such a way as this that John was spending one day when he

could not work, when the little old white-haired lady was busy with

Claudina over the duties of the house, when his father had departed upon

that engrossing errand of seeing to the framing of a picture.

The sun was a burning disc, white hot in a smelter's furnace. A few

white sails of cloud lay becalmed, inert, asleep in a sky of turquoise.

John sat there blinking his eyes and the windows in the houses on _San

Giorgio_ blinked back in sleepy recognition as though the heat was more

than they could bear. Away down the _Giudecca_, the thin bare masts of

the clustering vessels tapered into the still air--giant sea-grass,

which the sickle of a storm can mow down like rushes that grow by the

river's edge. Their reflections wriggled like a nest of snakes in the

dancing water, the only moving thing in that sleepy day. Everything else

was noiseless; everything else was still.

John gazed at it all through half-closed eyes, till the point of the

Campanile across the water seemed to melt in the quivering haze, and the

dome of the chiesa was lost in the light where the sun fell on it. What

had changed? What was different to his eyes that had been for the eyes

of those thousands of workers who had toiled and fought, lived and died,

like myriads of insects to build this timeless city of light, this City

of Beautiful Nonsense? What had altered? A few coping stones, perhaps,

a few mosaics renewed; but that was all. It was just the same as it had

been in the days of the Council of Ten; just the same as when Petrarch,

from his window on the _Riva degli Schiavona_, sat watching the monster

galleys ride out in all their pomp and blazonry across the pearl and

opal waters of the lagoons.

In another moment the present would have slipped from him; he would have

been one of the crowd upon the Piazetta, watching the glorious argosy of

Domenico Michieli returning from the Holy Land, with its sacred burdens

of the bodies of St. Isidore from Chios and S. Donato from Cephalonia;

in another moment he would have been seeing them unload their wondrous

spoils of the East, their scents and their spices, their silks and their

sandalwood, had not a most modern of modern hawkers, his little tray

slung by straps from his shoulder, chosen him out for prey.

"Rare coins, signor," he said--"coins from every country in the world."

And for the price of one lira, he offered John an English penny.

John looked him up and down.

"Is this your idea of humour?" he asked in Italian.

The man emphatically shook his head.

"Oh, no, signor! It is a rare coin."

John turned away in disgust.

"You'd better go and learn your business," he said. "That's an English

penny. It's only worth ten centesimi."

The hawker shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He had got the coin

from a Greek whose ship lay in the _Giudecca_ there. It was no good

saying what the Greek had said. The signor would never believe him. He

cast a wandering eye at the ships and shrugged his shoulders once more.

John watched his retreating figure with a sense of

irritation--irritation because the man had gone away thinking him an

English fool--irritation because, unasked, the hawker had betrayed to

him his loss of a sense of humour.

To be offered an English penny for one lira! To be told quite seriously

that it was a rare coin! And to take it in all seriousness; to go to the

trouble of saying in an injured voice that it was only worth ten

centesimi! Was this what he had fallen to? Was his sense of humour so

far gone as this? Of course it was a rare coin! Had there not been

times when an English penny would have saved him from the dire

awkwardness of an impossible position. How about the chair in Kensington

Gardens? How about the friend who mounted the 'bus with him in the

cheerful expectation that he was going to pay? Of course it was a rare

coin! Why, there were times when it was worth a hundred lire!

He called the hawker back.

"Give me that coin," he said.

The man took it out with a grin of surprise.

"It cost me half a lira, signor," he said, which was a lie. But he told

it so excellently that John paid him his price.

"Do you think they'll find it worth a candle at the shrine of St.

Anthony?" asked John.

"You have lost something, signor?"

He said it so sympathetically.

"My sense of humour," said John, and off he strode to St. Mark's, the

hawker gazing after him.

Without laughter in it, the voice is a broken reed; without laughter in

it, the heart is a stone, dullened by a flaw; without laughter in it,

even a prayer has not the lightness or the buoyancy of breath to rise

heavenwards.

Can there be one woman in the world who has never prayed to St. Anthony

in all seriousness for some impossible request which, by rights, she

should have enquired for at the nearest lost property office--for a lost

lock of hair that was not her own--one of those locks of hair that she

ties to the wardrobe in the morning and combs out with all the

seriousness in the world? Surely there must have been one out of the

thousands? Then why not for a lost sense of humour? There is no office

in the world that will return you such valuable property as that, once

it has slipped your fingers. He has the sense himself, has St. Anthony.

Think of the things he has found for you in your own hands, the jewels

that he has discovered for you clasped about your own neck! Why, to be

sure, he must have a sense of humour. And if it is impossible to pay an

English penny for his candle in an Italian church--an English penny,

mind you, which has profited some poor beggar by the sum of one lira; if

it is a sacrilege, a levity, to ask him for the return of so invaluable

a quality as a lost gift of laughter, then why pray at all, for without

laughter in it, even a prayer has not the lightness or the buoyancy of

breath to rise heavenwards.

If, when one drops upon one's knees at night and, beginning to deceive

oneself in one's voluntary confessions, making oneself seem a fine

fellow by tardy admissions of virtue and tactful omissions of wrong, if

when one shows such delightful humanity in one's prayers as this, and

cannot laugh at oneself at the same time, cannot see that it is but a

cheating at a game of Patience, then it might be as well not to pray at

all. For the humour in which a prayer is prayed, is the humour in which

a prayer will be judged, and if, seriously, one deceives oneself into

believing that one is a fine fellow, just so seriously will that deceit

be weighed; for there are mighty few of us who are fine fellows, which

is a great pity, for so mighty few of us to know it.

By the time John had reached the shrine of St. Anthony in the Duomo, by

the time his English penny had rattled in the box along with all the

other Italian coins, by the time the first words of his prayer were

framed upon his lips, a laugh began to twinkle in his eyes; he had found

his sense of humour, he had found his gift of laughter once more. It was

in his own prayer. Before he could utter it, he was smiling to think

how St. Anthony must be amused by the whole incident. Then, all it

needed was for him to be grateful and, dropping his head in his hands,

he expressed his gratitude by asking for other things.

St. Mark's is one of the few churches in the world where you can

pray--one of the few churches in the world where they have not driven

God out of the Temple, like a common money-changer, driven Him out by

gaudy finery, by motley and tinsel. Mass at the High Altar there, is

the great Passion Play it was meant to be, performed upon a stage unhung

with violent colours, undecked with tawdry gems. They had no pandering

fear of the God they worshipped, when they built that theatre of

Christianity in the great Square of St. Mark's. The drama of all that

wonderful story has a fit setting there. No stage is lit quite like it;

no tragedy is so tragic in all its awful solemnity as when they perform

the Mass in the duomo of St. Mark's. As the Host is elevated, as that

sonorous bell rings out its thrilling chime and as the thousand heads

sink down within two thousand hands, a spirit indeed is rushing upwards

in a lightning passage to its God.

Once his head was bowed, once his eyes were closed, John was lost in the

contemplation of his prayer. He did not observe the party of people who

came by. He raised his head, but his eyes were fixed before him towards

the little shrine. He did not see one separate herself from the party,

did not notice her slip away unobserved and, coming back when they had

gone on, seat herself on the chair close by his side.

Only when his thoughts were ended, when St. Anthony had listened to all

that he had lost, to all the aching story of his heart, did he turn to

find what St. Anthony had brought him.

His lips trembled. He rubbed and rubbed his eyes.

There on the seat beside him, her hands half pleading, her eyes set

ready to meet his own, sat Jill.

CHAPTER XXX

THE QUALITIES OF IGNATIA

In amazement, John put out his hand. He touched her to see if she was

real. Her hand answered. She caught his finger. Then she let it fall.

"Are you sorry?" she whispered.

He looked up at the image of St. Anthony, then back at her; around the

church, then back once more at her.

"Where have you come from?" he asked.

"From home--from London."

"When?"

"I arrived last night."

"Alone?"

"No! No! With the Crossthwaites."

"Then what has happened?"

"Why--nothing has happened--and----" her voice dropped below the

whisper--that strange pitch in which you hear not a syllable, yet know

the worst--"and everything has happened."

"You're going to be married?"

It sounded no less terrible in his voice because he knew it.

"Yes."

"Then why have you come here?"

"The Crossthwaites were going. They asked me to come too. It was the

only chance I knew I should ever have--our City of Beautiful Nonsense--I

had to come."

Still John gazed at her, as though she were unreal. One does not always

believe one's own eyes, for there are some things, which the readiness

to see will constitute the power of vision. He put out his hand again.

"I can hardly believe it," he said slowly. "Here, just a minute ago, I

was telling St. Anthony all I had lost. You--the best thing in my

life--my ideal as well--even my sense of humour."

She looked up at his face wondering. There had been strange lost things

for which she had prayed to St. Anthony--things to which only a woman

can act as valuer. But to pray for a lost sense of humour. She touched

the hand that he put out.

"You're very funny," she said gently--"You're very quaint. Do you think

you'll find the sense of humour again?"

"I've found it," said John.

"Already?"

"Yes--already." One eye lifted to St. Anthony.

Then he told her about the hawker and that rare, that valuable coin--the

English penny--and in two minutes, they were laughing with their heads

in their hands.

This is not a reverent thing to do in a church. The least that you can

offer, is to hide your face, or, turning quickly to the burial service

in the prayer-book--granted that you understand Latin--read that.

Failing that of burial, the service of matrimony will do just as well.

But before the image of St. Anthony, to whom you have been praying for a

lost gift of laughter--well, you may be sure that St. Anthony will

excuse it. After all, it is only a compliment to his powers; and the

quality of saintliness, being nothing without its relation to humanity,

must surely argue some little weakness somewhere. What better then than

the pride that is pardonable?

At length, when she had answered all his questions, when he had answered

all hers, they rose reluctantly to their feet.

"I must go back to them," she said regretfully.

"But I shall see you again?"

"Oh, yes."

"Does Mrs. Crossthwaite know that you have seen me?"

"Yes. Her husband doesn't. He wouldn't understand."

John smiled.

"Men never do," said he. "They have too keen a sense of what is wrong

for other people. When shall I see you?"

"This afternoon."

"Where?"

"Anywhere----" she paused.

"You were going to say something," said John quickly. "What is it?"

She looked away. In the scheme of this world's anomalies, there is such

a thing as a duty to oneself. They have not thought it wise to write it

in the catechism, for truly it is but capable of so indefinite a

rendering into language, that it would be only dangerous to set it

forth. For language, after all, is merely a sound box, full of words,

in the noisy rattling of which, the finer expression of all thought is

lost.

But a thousand times, Jill had thought of it--that duty. Its phrases

form quite readily in the mind; they construct themselves with ease; the

words flow merrily.

Why, she had asked herself, should she sacrifice her happiness to the

welfare of those who had brought her into the world? What claim had

they upon her, who had never questioned her as to a desire for

existence?

All this is so simply said. Its justice is so palpably apparent. And

if she had gained nothing herself by the transaction, it would have been

so easy of following. But the mere knowledge that she stood to win the

very heart of her desire at the cost of some others' welfare, filled her

with the apprehension that she was only inventing this duty of self for

her own gratification, as a narcotic to the sleeplessness of her own

conscience.

The education of the sex has so persistently driven out egotism from

their natures, that the woman who finds paramount the importance of

herself, has but a small place in this modern community.

Fast in her very blood, was bred in Jill that complete annihilation of

selfishness, that absolute abandonment to Destiny. Strive as she might,

she could not place her own desires before the needs of her father and

mother; she could not see the first essential of happiness in that gain

to herself which would crush the prospects of her brother Ronald.

To such women as these--and notwithstanding the advent of the

tradeswoman into the sex, there are many--to be able to give all, is

their embarrassment of riches, to withhold nothing is their conception

of wealth.

In the ideal which she had formed of John, Jill knew that he was

possessed of more in himself, than ever would be the bounty bequeathed

to those three people dependent upon her generosity. And so, she had

given her consent of marriage to one, whom she might have valued as a

friend, whom, as a man, she respected in every way, but who well, since

brevity is invaluable--like poor St. Joseph, had a brown beard.

All this, in the pause that had followed John's question, had passed for

the thousandth time through Jill's mind, bringing her inevitably once

more to the realisation of her duty to others. And when he pressed her

again, offering, not perhaps the penny for her thoughts, but an

equivalent, just as valuable as that most valuable of coins, the promise

of his eyes, she shook her head.

"Ah, but you were going to say something!" he pleaded.

"I was going to ask you," said she, "if you would take me to see your

people." She hesitated. "I--I want to have tea with them out of the

little blue and white cups with no handles. I want to go and buy lace

with the little old white-haired lady in the arcades."

He seized her hand so that she winced.

"You've not forgotten! You shall come this afternoon." And there, with

a smile, she left him, still standing by the silent image of St.

Anthony; and, gratitude being that part of prayer which belongs to the

heart and has nothing in common with delay, John knelt down again. When

Jill looked back over her shoulder, his head was buried in his hands.

The little old white-haired lady was waiting over the mid-day meal for

him when he returned. His father had taken his food and gone out again,

leaving her alone to keep John company. She was sitting patiently there

at the head of the table and, by the side of her empty plate, stood a

small bottle containing white pills, over which she hurriedly laid her

hand as he entered.

But clever as they are, in their cunning, childish ways, old people lose

all the superior craft of deceit. They go back to childhood when they

imagine that once a thing is hidden, it is out of sight. That is not at

all the case. There comes a moment when it is too late to conceal; when

curiosity will bring the hidden thing twice vividly before the eyes.

Under the very nose of John, was the best place for that secret bottle

of pills, had she needed it not to be seen.