Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, as has been mentioned, had no idea of planting
themselves on Dora and her husband in their visit to Venice, and since
the visit was to be thoroughly Bohemian in character, and they hoped and
expected to rough it, it had seemed to them equally unsuitable to go to
an hotel, where no doubt mediævalism would have been supplanted by
modern conveniences. They both wanted, with that inexpressible
elasticity and love of experience which was characteristic of them, to
“behave native fashion and do like the Venetians,” as Mrs. Osborne put
it, and indeed the phrase pleased her husband no less than herself. So
they had taken the Palazzo Dandoli for a fortnight, at a prodigious
weekly rent, which included, however, the wages of the servants and the
use of the gondolas. With a view to roughing it thoroughly, Mrs. Osborne
had only brought her maid with her, and her husband was completely
unattended. It was to be a jaunt, a wedding trip, a renewal of old
times. Probably there would be little to eat and drink, and heaven only
knew what kind of a bed to sleep in, while an Italian manservant would
probably not know how to fold trousers. But all these possible
inconveniences were part of behaving “native-fashion,” and were not only
to be expected but welcomed as being part of the genuine article.
The house stood on the eastern outskirts of Venice, with a garden
facing San Michele and the lagoon, and here Dora strolled with her
father-in-law on the morning after their arrival, waiting for the
appearance of Mrs. Osborne, who, since they had arrived late the night
before, was taking it easy, and was not expected down till lunch time at
half-past twelve. Dora knew the owner of the place and had been there
before, but never in these early days of summer, while yet the gardens
were unscorched and the magic of spring had woven its ultimate spell.
All the past was redolent in the walls of mellowed brick, the niches
empty for the most part, save where a bust or two of stained Carrara
marble still lingered, in the gray of the ivy-hung fountain, in the
grilles of curving ironwork that gave view across the lagoon to the
cypresses of San Michele, and, farther away, the dim tower of Torcello.
Long alleys of cut and squared hornbeam, with hop-like flowers, led like
green church aisles down the garden, and spaces of grass between them
were hedged in by more compact walls of yew and privet, with its pale
spires of blossom faintly sweet. Round the fountain stood three
serge-coated sentinels of cypress, encrusted over with their nut-like
fruits, and, flame-like against their sombre foliage, were azaleas in
bright green tubs, and the swooning whiteness of orange blossom.
Elsewhere, the formality of the cut hornbeam alleys and clipped hedges
gave place to a gayer and more sunny quarter, though even there Italy
lingered in the pavement of red and white stone that led between the
more English-looking flower beds. Peach trees, in foam of pink flower,
and white waterfalls of spiræa were background here; in front of them
stood rows of stiff fox-gloves and in front again a riot of phlox and
columbine and snapdragon covered the beds to the edge of the path. To
the left lay the rose garden, approached by a walk of tall Madonna
lilies, already growing fat-budded, and prepared to receive the torch of
flower-life from the roses, when their part in the race should be done,
and homely pansies, with quaint, trustful faces, made a velvet-like
diaper of deeper colour. Here, too, stood another fountain that from
leaden pipe shed freshness on the basin below, where clumps of Japanese
iris were already beginning to unfold their great butterfly flowers,
imperial in purple or virginal in white, and over the green marble edge
of it quick lizards flicked and vanished.
Dora had arrived at the palazzo while yet the morning was young and
dewy, and, leaving word that she had come, passed through the white
shady courtyard of the house and down the long alleys of the garden to
look out on the lagoon from the far end of it. The tide was high and the
cool water shimmered over the flats that an hour or two ago were still
exposed and lay in expanse of glistening ooze, or green with fields of
brilliant seaweeds. But the red-sailed fishing boats had to pass between
the rows of _pali_ that marked the channels, and a little company of
them were even now going seaward. The wind blew gently from the north,
tempering the heat, and to the north were visible the remote summits of
snow-clad Alps. Just opposite were the orange walls and black cypresses
of San Michele, but in the gaiety of the gay day even those associations
were gladdened. It was good to be anything in Venice, even to be dead,
and resting there in sound of the whispering lagoon.
Then came the interruption she had waited for: her name was jovially
called, and down the pergola of vines which led to the grille, between
the clumps of syringa and riot of rambler, came Mr. Osborne.
He had left England with the intention of roughing it and enjoying the
experience, and was clad in the way that had seemed to him appropriate.
He wore a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, below which his short fat
calves looked like turned oak posts clad in thick worsted and set in
strong brown boots. On his head he wore a felt hat with a puggaree
attached to it, and round his shoulders was a strap that carried a large
binocular glass. In a word, he appeared like a man deerstalking in the
tropics. Like this he was equal to any foreigneering vicissitudes and
provided against all accidents that might happen in a town where,
instead of walking from one place to another, you went in a black sort
of punt with a strange battleaxe at the prow.
“Well, dearie, and here we are,” he said, “and pleased we are to be
here, I do assure you. Passed a comfortable night, too, and so I warrant
you has Mrs. O., for she was asleep still when I came downstairs. But,
my dear, they’ve got but a paltry notion of furnishing these rooms. We
had supper last night when we got in, in a great room as big as the hall
at Grote, and nothing there but a table and a few chairs and some
painted canvas on the walls, and on the floor a rug or two as you could
scarcely get both feet upon. However, we were hungry, and the food was
good enough. Macaroni they gave us, and a bit of veal and some cheese
and strawberries. And this seems a pretty bit of garden, where Mrs. O.
can sit and be cool if she finds the heat oppressive. And it’s good to
see you, my dear, and blooming you look.”
He gave her a loud, kind kiss, and continued to pour forth his first
impressions of Venice.
“Claude met us at Milan, as he’ll have told you,” he said, “and saw us
safe here last night. It’s strange, though, going to your house in a
boat, and such a smell as there was at the last corner but one before we
got here I never encountered. I should have had it looked into in no
time if such a thing had occurred in the works at Sheffield. But it
seems fine and open here, and I’ve no doubt we shall be well enough off.
But to think of those old Doges with never a bathroom in their houses,
nor hot water laid on nor nothing. But I enjoy that, my dear; I want to
see the old life as they had it, and look at their palaces, ah! and live
in one, and see their pictures, and think what manner of folk they was,
being born and getting married and dying and all, in the very rooms we
now occupy.”
Dora suddenly laughed.
“Oh, Dad,” she said, “you are too heavenly. But why have you put on
those thick clothes? It’s going to be a roasting day. I am glad to see
you. I’m sure you will find the house comfortable, and, oh! did you ever
see such a morning? Look out there across the lagoon. It’s Venice, you
know, Venice!”
Mr. Osborne looked out through the iron grille.
“Well, I’m sure it’s pretty enough,” he said, “and talk of sea air, why
the sea’s all round you. We must have come a matter of a mile over the
viaduct last night after we left the mainland. And sea air is what I
want for mother; she wants a bit of setting up, and if she feels
inclined to keep quiet and not look at the galleries and churches and
sights every day, my dear, you’ll know it’s because she isn’t quite up
to the mark. Well, well; no, I’m not anxious about her, for she takes
her food, and was as pleased to come out here, such as never was, but
she’s been a bit tired, and must take a rest.”
“She’s not ill?” asked Dora. “There’s nothing wrong?”
“Not a bit of it. ’Tis true, I wanted her to see the doctor before she
left home, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. Just to go to Venice, so
she said, and see Claude and Dora, and not do much, that’s the
prescription for me, she said. And so here we are, my dear. Lunch at
half-past twelve, too; how strange it seems! But after the breakfast
they gave me, just a bit of toast and an egg, I don’t doubt I shall be
ready for it. But the coffee was prime, though it came up in an
earthenware pot. I suppose it was that way the Doges took it. Lor’, to
think of it all! Wedding the sea, too, every year. I read it in the
guidebook on the journey. A curious custom that was, heathenish, you may
say. It takes one back, doesn’t it?”
It was still an hour before lunch time, and at Dora’s suggestion they
went out for a turn in her gondola which was waiting, since Mrs. Osborne
was not to be expected down till lunch time. Mr. Osborne, still feeling
the insecurity of a foreign land, refused to change into more suitable
clothes, and, already perspiring profusely, embarked with a sense of
being prepared for anything. As they got in Dora gave some short
direction to her gondolier in Italian, and this roused his admiring
curiosity.
“It’s a strange thing too,” he said, “that you say something of which I
can’t understand a syllable, and round the boat goes, as if you’d said,
‘Right about turn.’ Such a bother as we had with luggage and what not,
before Claude met us. But Mrs. O. saw the hang of it, and kept saying,
‘Venice, Palazzo Dandoli,’ whenever one of them brigands looked in on
us, and it seemed they wanted no more than that. Brigands they looked,
my dear, though I dare say they were honest men in the employment of
their company. And what’s that now, that big telegraph-looking thing?”
He pointed at the huge disfiguring posts that brought the electric power
into Venice.
“Oh, electric light, I think,” said Dora. “Or perhaps it’s telephone.”
“My word, and I never expected to find either here,” said Mr. Osborne.
“Do you mean they have got the light and the ’phone? And why, if that’s
so, aren’t they installed in the Dandoli?”
“Oh, Dad,” she said, “where do you want to telephone to?”
“No, dearie, I don’t want to telephone, but you’d have thought that in a
place like that I’ve taken they’d surely have had the modern
conveniences, if such were to be had. And where are we coming to now?”
Dora did not answer at once; this was one of the best places of all in
that city of best places. There was a sharp turn from a narrow canal,
overhung by tall red-stained walls, and they shot out into the Grand
Canal just above the Rialto.
“Oh,” she said, “look, look!”
The bow-shaped bridge lay to their left, as from the huddled houses they
swept into the great waterway; a troubled reflection of palaces gleamed
in the tide, the curve of the Grand Canal was flung outward and onward,
reeling in the heat.
Just opposite was the fish market, newly rebuilt, with columns of
ornamented iron work. Mr. Osborne pointed an admiring forefinger at it.
“Well I never,” he said, “to think to see the fellow of one of Per’s
designs in Venice. I shall have the laugh of Per over that, and tell him
he copied them from some old courtyard of the Doges, or what not.
Beautiful I call them. After all, they were wonderful old folk, weren’t
they, when we think that they put up there a design that might have been
made in Sheffield to-day! I assure you, dearie, they are just like Per’s
drawings for No. 2 light arcade same as is in the showroom at the
works.”
Dora had not been attending very closely: those who love Venice are apt
to be inattentive when some new magic comes into view, and to Dora the
bow-arch of the bridge with the bow-arch of the canal below grew in
wonder the oftener that she saw it.
“Arches?” she asked. “Arches like one of Per’s designs? Oh, do show me.”
“Why, that open place there,” said Mr. Osborne, still immensely
interested. “That arcade just opposite, with the ornamental arches in
open work.”
Dora could not help laughing.
“Oh, dear Dad,” she said, “very likely they are Per’s designs. That’s
the new fish market, just being rebuilt.”
And then it struck her that her laugh might sound unkindly.
“It is quite possible they are Per’s designs,” she said. “Would it not
be thrilling if they were? Giovanni”--again she spoke in Italian--“just
land at the market and ask some of the workmen where the iron arches
came from. I see one not yet put up, wrapped in straw. There is some
label on it. See if it is from Osborne, Sheffield.”
Giovanni floated the gondola to the side of the landing place with the
flick of a quick-turned oar, and got out. In a moment he came back,
having read the stamped label on the packing, and reported the
gratifying news.
“Oh, it’s too thrilling,” cried Dora, “to think that they came from your
works. Dad, you’re a perfect wizard to see that, and guess it was Per’s.
You must write to him and tell him that his ironwork is going up in
Venice, and that you recognized it the first moment you--you saw the
Grand Canal.”
Mr. Osborne gave a little inward tremolo of laughter.
“Oh, I’m not so blind yet,” he said, “and it’s seldom you see work like
Per’s. There’s something, as you may say, so individual about it. God
bless the boy, how he’ll like to hear that I spotted his design right
across the Grand Canal. Eh, he might have been here, my dear, and
studied the style of the architecture, when one sees how it fits in with
the other monuments. I’ll write to tell him that.”
Mr. Osborne remembered that Dora had told him that Venice was the most
beautiful place in the world, and the Grand Canal the most beautiful
thing in Venice. And he made a concession that he did not really feel.
“Not but what he hadn’t got a lot to compete against,” he said. “That
bridge now? That’s a fine thing. And the curve of it looks built for
strength. I warrant there’s no iron girder made that would cause it to
be safer. And the houses, beautiful, I’m sure! But I don’t see any that
I’d sooner take than the Palazzo Dandoli.”
Suddenly Dora felt something dry up inside her. That, at any rate, was
how she mentally phrased the sensation to herself. Her father-in-law was
kind and wise and good; he was anxious to please, he was anxious to be
pleased. But at the concession--for so she felt it to be--that Per had
had a lot to compete with, when the excruciating iron arcade of the fish
market was erected within stone-throw of the Rialto and within
pea-shooting distance of the wondrous canal, she felt for the moment the
impossibility of herself and Mr. Osborne being together at Venice. The
situation was one that she had not faced without a tremor; now, for the
moment, when it was actual and accomplished, it was inconceivable.
But this mercantile discovery had delighted Mr. Osborne; it had clearly
raised his previous estimate of Venice. A town that could so aptly
enshrine this design of Per’s was a town that must receive the best
attention. There was probably more in it than he had been at first
disposed to imagine. He gave it his best attention.
A gray fussing steamboat going seaward on the tide and raising a huge
wash of churned water, next engaged his admiration.
“Well, and if I didn’t think when we took so long to get to the Palazzo
last night that the Italians would be wiser to build a big sea wall
somewhere, and raise the level of the canal so as you could drive a
horse and carriage down them!” he said. “But if you’ve got a ferry
steamer that goes the pace of that--Lor’, my dear, how it makes us
rock--I don’t see what there’s to complain of. And calling first on this
side and then on that, same as they used to do on the Thames, what could
you ask for more convenient?”
Again Dora had to enlist her sympathy on a foreign side.
“I know,” she said, “and they go right out to the Lido, where we’ll go
and bathe this very afternoon, Dad. It will be awfully hot after lunch,
so we’ll join the steamer at San Marco, and send the gondola out to meet
us on the Lido, and take us back when it gets cooler. One gets roasted
in a gondola on the lagoon when it’s as hot as this.”
Mr. Osborne was clearly a little troubled at this suggestion.
“Ah, no doubt there are sets of bathing machines,” he said at length. “A
dip in the briny: very pleasant.”
Dora did not at once grasp the cause of his embarrassment.
“We’ll swim right out together,” she said. “You can swim for ever in
this sea; it’s so buoyant. And then we sit on the sand and eat
strawberries, while the sun dries us again.”
Then she saw that some portentous doubt on the question of propriety was
in Mr. Osborne’s mind, guessed it, and hastened to remove the cause of
it. “Or perhaps, coming straight out from England, you don’t want to
bathe,” she said. “Besides, there’s the mater”--she had adopted this
from Claude. “So we won’t bathe; we’ll take her out for a _giro_--a
row--in the gondola and have tea out on the lagoon. Dad, you’ll love the
lagoon, all gray and green. And the electric light poles cross it to the
Lido.”
“Eh, that will be nice,” said Mr. Osborne quickly and appreciatively.
“And here’s another bridge: why, beautiful, isn’t it? I think I like it
better than that curved one. There seems more sense in it. You don’t
have to mount so high.”
They had passed round the last corner of the canal, and in front of them
lay the straight lower reach of it that passes into the great basin
opposite St. Mark’s and the Doge’s palace. To right and left the stately
houses stood up from the water side, in glimmer of rose and blue and
orange beneath the smiting glory of the noonday. Since yesterday the
north wind, blowing lightly from the Alps, had banished the oppression
of yesterday’s heat and the glitter of the city had awoke again, pearly
in the shadow and jewelled in the sun. And in the immediate foreground
the only blot of disfigurement was the object of Mr. Osborne’s
admiration, the flat, execrable iron bridge opposite the Accademia.
There it lay, convenient and hideous and impossible. And he liked it
better than the curved one! It had more sense in it!
But there was no need for Dora to rack her brains to find some response
which should steer a middle way between lack of cordiality to her
father-in-law on the one hand and artistic perjury on the other. Between
the fish market, the iron bridge, and the vile convenient speed of the
steamboats Venice was going up in his estimation by leaps and bounds,
and he was delighted to find he was almost able to endorse Dora’s
opinion on the town.
“Well, I call it all beautiful, my dear,” he said, “and it’s as I said
to mother. ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘if Dora says Venice is a nice place, you
may be sure there is something in it, and we were right to come out and
have a look at it ourselves.’ But who’d have thought there was so much
of modern convenience and comfort? And these gondolas too. I’m sure I’m
as comfortable sitting here as in my own brougham and, except when the
steamers go by, they glide as smooth as on an asphalt road. Pretty the
water is too, though not clear. I should have thought that here in the
south there’d have been more of blue in it. But I’m a bit surprised, my
dear, that you with your eye for colour shouldn’t have done up the
gondola more brightly, had some blue curtains, maybe, or picked out that
handsome carved work on the prow with a touch of red. There’s a thought
too much black about it for my taste. Seems to tell of a funeral,
almost.”
Dora could not argue about this: she could not give Mr. Osborne eyes
which should see the value of the black blots of boats against the
brightness of the sky mirrored in the canal. But it was easy to find
praise in his speech to which she could respond, though the praise was
expressed in a way that somehow set her teeth on edge.
“Oh, they are the most comfortable things in the world,” she said, “and
I even like the indignant slap they give when the wash of the steamer
crosses them. Beautiful thing, with its arching neck like some great
black swan! Ah, there’s twelve striking. We shall just have time to look
into our house and fetch Claude and then get back to the Dandoli for
lunch. I hope they’ll have put it in the garden. Oh, Dad, how this place
has got into my heart! You never did such a nice thing as when you gave
Claude and me a month here.”
Mr. Osborne did not think much of Dora’s water-entrance to the great
gray palace of which she had the first floor, but the size of the huge
_sala_ (which she remembered to tell him was a hundred and ten feet
long) was most satisfactory to him. But with its polished stone-plaster
floor, and the Venetian emptiness of it, it seemed to him rather bare
and comfortless.
“Well, I’m sure it’s a handsome room enough in point of size,” he said,
“and in this hot weather it looks cool and restful. But it seems strange
to have never a strip of carpet on the floor, and scarce a picture on
the walls. Lord, my dear, don’t it make your teeth chatter to think of
coming down to this of a winter’s morning, when even now it strikes so
cool? But isn’t there some Tintoret now, my dear, that you could fancy,
or if not that, half a dozen big photographs of the canal and the bridge
you liked so much to hang on the walls? And as for the floor, to be
sure, it’s a big job to cover it, but a proper carpet for that end of it
where you’ve got your chairs and table, looking out over the canal, you
shall have, if I have to telegraph to town for one, instead of those few
rugs, or mats I should call them. Fancy advertising this as a house to
be let furnished! I call it misrepresentation.”
Dora took his arm.
“Oh, Dad, you are the kindest man that ever was,” she said. “But indeed
I want neither pictures nor a carpet, though it is darling of you to
offer me them. I like it empty: it’s the--the right style with these
rooms. You found your dining room rather emptier than you liked, you
know, but in a day or two you will get more than used to it, you will
see how suitable it is. And I love this great empty room. Now we’ll just
go into the other rooms, and then we must get back for lunch. Claude
seems to be out: I expect we shall find him at the Dandoli.”
Lunch, as they found when they got back, had been laid, as Dora hoped,
in the garden, in the centre of a gravelled space sheltered from the sun
by the mellow brick wall and a clump of overarching delicate-fingered
acacia trees, and made cool to the ear by the plash of the fountain into
its marble basin. Down the sides and at the corners of this space were
tubs of orange trees, and the heaviness of their drowsy fragrance
mingling with the large dilution of this tide of warm sea-scented air
was translated into something exquisitely light and vigorous. Claude had
already arrived and was waiting with his mother for them, who was in
excellent spirits.
“Why, dearest Dora,” she said, “here we are, and ready I’m sure for
lunch, to speak for myself, though it’s not gone half-past twelve yet,
and in England we shouldn’t be sitting down for another hour. And
Claude’s been telling me that in England now it’s not gone half-past
eleven, and here we are wanting our lunch at such an hour as that. Eh,
what’s that? What did he say to me? ‘Pronto,’ it sounded like.”
Guiseppe, the smiling Italian butler, had approached Mr. Osborne, and
said exactly that.
“Yes, _pronto_,” said Dora, “it means ‘ready.’”
Mrs. Osborne beamed back at Guiseppe.
“And I’m _pronto_, too,” she said. “Let’s sit down.”
“Mrs. O. will be having the whole Italian language by heart before the
week’s out,” said her husband. “And such a morning as I’ve had with
Dora, mother. Bridges and canals and steamers and churches. Ah, and
you’d never guess, so I’ll tell you without teasing you! They are
rebuilding the fish market with arcades of iron pillars, very handsome,
and who do you think supplies them? Osborne, Sheffield, and no other, my
dear, and it’s Per’s No. 2, light arcade, same as is in the showroom, or
I’m the more mistaken.”
Mrs. Osborne was as delighted as her husband.
“I’ll get a photograph of that this very afternoon,” she said, “if
there’s such a thing as a photograph shop in Venice. Dora, my dear, have
they a photograph shop in Venice, or hasn’t that got here yet?”
Dora threw back her head, laughing.
“Oh, mother, how divine of you!” she said. “Considering I sent you
literally hundreds of picture post cards when Claude and I were here in
the autumn!”
“To be sure you did, my dear,” said Mrs. Osborne cordially. “And it had
gone clean out of my poor head. So a photograph of the fish market I’ll
send to Per this very afternoon, if I have to turn over all their
scrapbooks for it. Mr. O., you’ll never manage macaroni that way. Wrap
it round your fork, my dear, as you see Claude doing, and in it goes
without any bother.”
“Well, mother, you’re not so much of a hand at it yourself,” observed
Mr. Osborne in self-defence. “If I’m to take pattern by Claude, you take
pattern by Dora. Now, I call that an excellent dish. You couldn’t have
it better done, not in your own house. What does he say to me, Dora, my
dear? _Banke_, is it?”
“_Bianco_,” said Dora, “white. Will you have white wine or red?”
“That’s another word for Mrs. O.,” said her husband. “I told you she’d
get it all off by heart in no time. Yes, I’ll have a go at the bianco.
One wants something light and cool on a morning like this, especially if
the true time is only half-past eleven.”
“I declare it makes me feel quite greedy,” said Mrs. Osborne, “but such
an appetite as I have to-day I haven’t had since the middle of April.
And what else have you seen this morning, Mr. Osborne? Give an account
of the sights, my dear, or I shall think you’ve had no eye except for
Dora.”
They waited in the cool greenness of the garden till the heat of the day
began to abate, and then went all together in one gondola, at Mrs.
Osborne’s particular wish, to begin the sights of Venice. It was in vain
that Dora suggested that everybody would be much more comfortable if
they took two gondolas, and arranged their rendezvous, for Mrs.
Osborne’s heart was set on a family party and she wasn’t sure that she
would trust Mr. O. with Dora alone any more that day. So, as badinage
loomed on the horizon, Dora hastily and completely withdrew her
opposition, and they all four squeezed into one gondola.
The plan was to row out over the lagoon, and have tea at Santa Rosa. Tea
made the centre of the afternoon, round which the rest appeared to be
grouped in the minds of the Osbornes. Then they were to return to Venice
in time to look in at St. Mark’s, and loiter in the piazza, where Mrs.
Osborne, it was hoped, would find at one of the photograph shops the
representation of the fish market on which she had set her heart.
Accordingly the labouring gondoliers propelled the laden craft across to
the little island, tied up to the bank, and procured strawberries from
the fruit farm to add to their tea. Mrs. Osborne at first had a sort of
vague prejudice against them, for abroad it was impossible to tell “who
hadn’t been touching them,” and, it is to be feared, it was only because
the rest of the party found them remarkably good that she joined them.
But she was charmed with their picnic, and saw a great similarity
between the little waterway of the island and the Regent’s Park Canal.
They dined that evening at Dora’s house--meals somehow had leaped into
sudden importance and preponderance since the arrival of her
father-in-law in Venice, though they had no more meals than usual--and
Mrs. Osborne as well as her husband was voluble over all they had seen.
“Just to think that all the floor of St. Mark’s is in marble!” said she.
“Why, it seems almost a shame, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s not a
cathedral in England that’s got such a grand floor, and St. Mark’s, so
you said--didn’t you, Dora?--was only Roman Catholic?”
“Well, well, mother,” said Mr. Osborne, “it’s the Church of the country,
you see, just as the English Church is ours. You’d think more of the
Roman, if you’d been brought up to it. But I’m surprised at their
letting the floor get into that state: it was all ups and downs, and I’m
sure I scarcely knew where I should be setting my foot next. So dark it
was, too, that one couldn’t see as much as one would like. If I were
them, I should send for some good English architect as knows when a
building’s safe, and when it isn’t, and make him cut half a dozen
sensible windows somewhere, or perhaps take down one of them domes, and
put in a glass roof to it instead. Five domes there are, for I counted
them, and that’s beyond all reason.”
Dora felt that this was too much for her: simply she could not think of
any reply whatever. If somebody proposed putting a glass dome in St.
Mark’s, what answer was possible? But there was no need for one. Mrs.
Osborne instantly joined in again.
“And never did I think to see such shops in Venice,” she said. “Why,
there was electric fittings at one I passed, beautiful they were, with
nymphs and such-like holding up the globes, the same as you might get in
the most superior shops in town. And I need never have brought out
stationery with me, for there was a stationer’s there as I could have
bought the best cream-laid at. And not expensive either, if you
recollect that a _lira_ is but tenpence, though its strange to have your
silver coins worth tenpence instead of a shilling. It wants a deal of
thinking back into pounds and shillings.”
“They seem to have a notion of building, too,” said Mr. Osborne. “I’m
sure that great square tower they were building was as solid a piece of
work as you could find anywhere. And to think that the original had
stood there five hundred years. How it takes you back!”
Claude nodded at Dora.
“What did I tell you?” he said. “Didn’t I say the mater and pater would
like Venice near as much as you do?”
“Yes, dear, you were quite right,” said Dora, with a sort of despairing
acquiescence in even this. “And what should you like to do to-morrow,
Dad?” she asked.
“Eh, there’s more yet to see, is there?” he said. “And to think that
I’ve been sight-seeing all day, and not finished even now! Who would
have thought there was so much in such a small town? Well, my dear, I’m
in your hands, and whatever you show me I’ll be bound I shall like it,
if it comes up to the sample of Venice we’ve had to-day. And what says
Mrs. O.?”
“Well, there’s all the pictures we haven’t seen yet,” said she. “Perhaps
Dora would take us to see the pictures in the morning, but as for the
afternoon I want nothing better than to have another look at St. Mark’s
and do a bit more shopping, and perhaps have a bit of a row afterward,
for I declare it’s a pity not to be out up till it’s time to dress.”
The next three or four days were, it must be confessed, a sort of
nightmare to Dora, for she took Venice too seriously to see anything
humorous in what she had to go through. She took them to the Accademia,
and the Paul Veronese of the “Marriage of Cana” had an instant and
amazing success owing to its size. Mr. Osborne doubted if it would have
got into the picture gallery at Grote at all, and Mrs. Osborne had no
doubt whatever about it; she saw at a glance that it would not,
“without you took its frame off.” Other pictures pleased for other
reasons: the “Procession of the Cross,” because St. Mark’s and the
Campanile came into it; the Tintoret of the “Adoration of the Doges,”
because St. George was sitting by the Virgin, and he was an English
saint. But before Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin” (a picture which,
unfortunately, Dora detested) criticism with regard to its dimensions
and even appreciation was mute, and its size and frame passed without
remark. Mrs. Osborne’s eyes filled with dear, heart-felt tears, and Mr.
Osborne said, “Lor’, Maria, it was worth coming to Venice for to see
this alone, my dear. Well, now, they could paint in those days!” And
immediately thereon, he bought an enormous copy of it, vilely executed,
which an elderly English lady was just finishing with an uncertain
strippling touch. She explained in quavering tones that she was obliged
to charge very high for her copies because she spent weeks in study
before she began to paint, in getting at the spirit of the original. And
Mr. Osborne’s alacrity in securing her work no doubt made her wish that
she had charged higher yet for the spiritual tension required for its
production.
On another day they went to San Rocco, for Mr. Osborne found to his
amazement that it was impossible to see all the pictures in Venice in
one “go,” even if you spent the whole morning at it. This seemed
strange, since you could see the whole of the Royal Academy in a less
time. But the remedy was simple. Why not build a new picture gallery,
hang all the pictures in Venice there, charge two _lire_, and have them
all catalogued in one book? That was the kind of suggestion that
cornered Dora: it seemed scarcely worth while to say that many were in
the churches, and that it would be a pity to move them since they were
painted for the places which they occupied. But, trying to be patient
and kind, she did say so, and Mr. Osborne was fired with the brilliant
thought of having copies made for the churches. Claude thought this an
excellent idea. “The Gov.’s hit the nail on the head this time,” he
said, and was surprised when Dora, turning aside, said, “Oh, Claude!” to
him. But apart from the pictures at San Rocco, which did not have a
great success, the visit was memorable because Mrs. Osborne said “Bon
giorno” to the custodian, just as if she did it every day of her life.
He understood perfectly, and made a suitable reply about the loveliness
of the day. That was a little beyond Mrs. Osborne, so she said “Grazie,”
and her husband admiringly commented, “Lor’, you speak it like a native!
I told you the mother would have it by heart in no time,” he said.
On this morning they had still an hour to spare before lunch, since the
Tintorets were not interesting or beautiful, and they rowed across to
the Giudecca to see a garden. The garden was fairly appreciated, though
to Mrs. Osborne’s mind the borders, where the southern June was rioting,
were not quite so trim as she would have had them; but the great sugar
factory was found to be most attractive, and Mr. Osborne was much
surprised to find that Dora did not know whether it was possible to see
over it or not. However, Claude made inquiries, and found it could be
shown. He took his father there next day, and they were late for lunch.
But Mrs. Osborne and Dora were late too: they had been ordering a very
handsome gilt frame for the copy of “The Assumption,” and the “pattern”
on it wanted a lot of choosing.
Dora and Claude dined that night at the Dandoli, and Mr. Osborne
announced that he and the mother had settled to stay on another week,
for they were both thoroughly delighted with Venice.
“And its grateful to you, my dear, that we both are,” said Mr. Osborne,
“for telling us about it, and making us feel as how we should like to
see it. There’s fifty different things in Venice I should like to see a
score of times, and if we’re spared, my dear, we’ll spend another month
next year as per this sample.”
Now Dora did her best when this little speech was made, but Sirocco had
been blowing all day, and, as usual, it had made her feel rather jerky
and irritable. Also, it must be remembered, Mr. Osborne, with the best
and most appreciative intention in the world, had, as may be conjectured
from the foregoing details of their days, succeeded in spoiling
everything for her. Who could look at and enjoy a picture while he was
wondering why Tintoret hadn’t given St. John something more on, or feel
the magic of the approach across the lagoon when Mrs. Osborne said that
the gray shining mud-flats called to mind the Fal below Truro at low
tide, and Mr. Osborne confirmed the accuracy of this impression? But
Maria had such an eye for likenesses.
In consequence, Dora had a little failed in cordiality of tone on the
receipt of the news, for by this plan they would leave Venice all
together, and every day till their departure would be taken up with
these nightmare excursions, for it was part of the plan that they
should do everything together. Her words, whatever they were, had been
expressive of delight at their remaining, but Claude, at any rate, had
noticed the failure in tone, and on their way back after dinner he spoke
about it in kindly fashion, but so, it seemed to Dora, with a matchless
awkwardness.
“Sorry you’re a bit off colour, dear,” he said. “I know Sirocco always
makes you feel like that.”
Dora saw the obviously tactful intention; her conscience also a little
accused her, and she knew quite well what he had in his mind and was
probably going to say.
“Feel like what?” she said, though she knew this to be useless fencing.
“Oh, feel like what you felt when you said you were so glad the pater
and mater were going to stop here. I don’t say that they noticed, but I
did. I expect I’m quicker than them at feeling what you feel. What you
said was right enough; it was just the way you said it.”
He leaned forward in his seat a little, looking her full in the face.
And somehow the sight of him and the proximity failed for once to make
themselves felt. His presence did not mitigate what he said, or stamp it
with the old magic.
“I wish you would explain,” she said.
“As if there was any need, darling,” he said. “As if you don’t
understand as well as I do. You said you were delighted they were
stopping, but only your voice said it. What’s wrong? There’s something
up. And I thought we were having such jolly days together. Father and
mother are enjoying it ever so much, and if they pretend they find it
just a shade more delightful than they really do, why, it’s just to
please you, and make you feel it’s a success that they do it. They
settled to stop on, I believe, just for that.”
This made matters no better. Dora felt she ought to be delighted they
were doing so, and ought to be touched and pleased with the reason
Claude had conjectured. But she was not: Venice, as a matter of fact, or
rather these days of Venice, were being spoiled for her. She would as
soon, as Claude had once said to her, though with inverted meaning, have
spent them at Clapham Junction if the Osbornes were to be with her. It
was a great pity that they should stop on, if their motive in doing so
was to gratify her. She hoped it was not that.
“Oh, I don’t think that is it, Claude,” she said. “Dad likes--likes the
sun and the--oh, lots of things, Stucki’s sugar factory for instance,
and your mother likes the pigeons and the shops. But it isn’t Venice
they like.”
“That’s just what I say,” said he, “they stop to make you think they do.
They think the world of you, you know.”
“Yes, the darlings,” said Dora quickly. “That--that makes it so
pathetic.”
“Pathetic? You mean that you don’t think so highly of them?”
Dora’s heart suddenly sank. She had not meant that: she had meant only
that it was a pity they stayed in Venice to please her, when in reality
she was not enjoying their stay. She knew well that they were out of
place in Venice ... it was hopeless to try to explain. But even if she
had meant the other, it would have been a fatal error on Claude’s part
to put it into words. He called this kind of frankness “getting at the
bottom of the thing.” She felt he was certain to use that phrase now. He
did so.
“Let’s get at the bottom of it, dear,” he said, “and as we always do, I
shall speak my mind, just like you. Perhaps it will sound harsh to you:
I’m sorry if it does.”
He leaned back again, but without looking at him she could see that he
tilted his head back, and put his chin a little out, the identical
gesture which before she had found so attractive, so fascinating, even.
She had told him so, too, a hundred times: had said she loved a man to
know his mind, to be firm and decided, especially with those he loved
best. No doubt he remembered that at this moment: perhaps even he was
doing it consciously or at least half-consciously, so as to present what
he had to say in the most attractive guise. But, suddenly and
disconcertingly, she found the gesture scarcely less than odious.
“I think the pater’s been awfully good to you, dear,” he said. “He’s
done a lot for you, given you all sorts of things you had no reason to
expect. There’s this month in Venice, to go no further than that. Well,
it will stand him in a pot of money, and it’s just because he doesn’t
grudge you one penny of it that I think you ought to feel rather more
cordial to him about their stopping. I don’t say that you behaved not
cordially, because I think what you said was all right, and neither of
them noticed that anything was awry, but you hadn’t got the right
feelings to back up your tongue. Wait a moment. I’ve not finished;
there’s something more yet, but I want to find words that won’t hurt
you, and yet will express what I mean.”
There was something in this that roused a certain sense in Dora that she
knew had been often present in her mind, but which she hoped would
always remain dormant. But now it began to awake; his words, kind as
they were, implied an impossible attitude. He was judging, so it seemed
to her, making himself jury and judge all rolled into one, and it was
understood that she, put in the dock before him, would make no defence.
He knew that he was right--that was what it came to--and was going to
tell her, as kindly as possible, what was right. And on the instant she
found herself refusing to be judged and condemned by his standards. He
did not know what Venice meant to her, or how essentially his father’s
attitude toward the things and the place that she loved jarred on her.
And unfortunately the affair was typical of hundreds of other affairs.
That Mr. Osborne had no artistic sense of any sort or kind did not
matter, but what was beginning to matter was that Claude, who apparently
could not see that the entire absence of it in a person with whom she
was brought into day-long contact made something rather hard to bear,
had put on his wig and was going to sum up on a matter about which he
knew nothing. Her behaviour had never broken down; he had said that
himself, and she believed it to be true; the matter was that he could
not understand that she had to struggle against the disappointment of
spoiled days, and was yet serenely confident that he had the complete
data.
“Don’t mind about hurting me,” she said quickly. “I want you to say
exactly what you feel.”
They had arrived at the water-gate of their home, without her noticing
it, and Giovanni was already standing, hat in hand, to give her the
support of his arm on to the steps, which were slippery with the
receding tide. Claude was conscious of this first: he was quite
conscious, also, of Dora’s tone.
“Not before the servants,” he said. “Get out, dear, and take Giovanni’s
arm. The steps are like ice!”
Again Dora was in revolt: it seemed to her that he was advising her
against a thing he might have done himself, but which she could not have
dreamed of. She had been absorbed in this--this dispute was it?--had not
noticed. He had noticed, and warned her against an impossible thing.
Giovanni unlocked the door for them, received orders for the next day,
and they went up the stairs together in silence. And as they went up all
the womanhood in Dora--and there was much of it, and it was all sweet
and good--rose, flooding for the time the bitter gray mud flats that had
appeared. And at the top of the stairs she turned to him.
“Oh, Claude,” she said, “we’re not quarrelling, are we?”
“Takes two to make a quarrel,” he said, “and I’m not one. But I want to
say something yet, and I think you’d better hear it. I ask you to, in
fact.”
She unpinned her hat, and led the way to the end of the big _sala_ that
overlooked the canal. She sat down in her accustomed chair, flinging
the window open, for the night was very hot.
“Say it then,” she said.
Again Claude’s head went back: he felt perfectly certain he was right.
“Well, it’s just this. You’ve told me not to choose my words, so I won’t
bother to do so. You haven’t felt right toward the pater and mater all
this time here. When he wanted to go and see a factory, you wondered at
him--and, yes, you despised him a bit for it. When he admired some
picture you didn’t think much of, you wondered again. Now, he never
wondered at you. If you wanted to sit half an hour before some adoring
Doge, he never wondered, any more than I wonder, for there are lots of
people in the world, and they’ve got their different tastes and every
right to them. But he only said to himself: ‘Gosh, there’s something
there, and she’s right, only I don’t know what it is she’s looking at.’
He never thought you wanting in perception because you didn’t admire the
iron in the fish market. He only thought to himself, ‘Let’s go and see
something this afternoon that Dora does like.’ How often has he gone to
the National Gallery in London? Never, you bet: he doesn’t know a
picture from a statue. And how often has he gone to look at some mouldy
old Titian here, because you thought it worth a look? Well, isn’t that
anything? It’s no use you and me not saying things straight out, and so
I say it straight out. He’s been boring himself fit to burst over your
Botticellis, and been trying to admire them, saying this was the biggest
picture he’d ever seen, and this was the smallest. And yet dear old Dad
wasn’t boring himself, because he was with you, and trying to take an
interest in what you showed him. Well then, I ask you!”
There, close in front of her, was the beautiful face, the beautiful
mouth which she loved, saying things which, as far as they went, her
essential nature entirely approved. But at the moment his beauty did not
move her. And the account he had given was correct: she had been having
on her nerves the fact that Mr. Osborne took more pleasure in the
steamboats than in San Rocco, in the fish market than in the Frati. He
might be right: she might be right, but in any case the attitudes were
incompatible. And Claude at the moment clearly took up the attitude that
was incompatible with hers. There was much more, too, he did not see: he
did not see that indifference on Dora’s part did not destroy his
father’s pleasure in the speed of the steamboats, whereas his artistic
criticisms blackened her pictures for her.
And then, womanlike again, she knew only that Claude was her man, that
he was beautiful, that he loved her....
“I dare say I am quite wrong,” she said. “I dare say you are quite
right. Shall we leave it, then, darling? I will try--I will try to do
better. I am sorry.”
“And there speaks my darling girl,” said Claude.