PART IV

TOLD BY MAIDA DESTREY

XVII

A CHAPTER OF MOTOR MANIA

What becomes of the beautiful army of days marching away from us into

the past? The wonderful days, each one differing from all the others:

some shining in our memory, in glory of purple and gold, that we saw

only as they passed, with the setting of the sun; some smiling back at

us, in their pale spring dress of green and rose; some weeping in grey;

but all moving at the same pace along the same road? The strange days

that have given us everything they had to give, and yet have taken from

us little pieces of our souls. Where do the days go? There must be some

splendid world where, when they have passed down to the end of the long

road, they all live together like queens, waited upon by those black

slaves, the nights that have followed them like their shadows, holding

up their robes.

I've had this thought in my mind often since I have been flashing across

Europe in an automobile, grudging each day that slipped from me and

would not stay a moment longer because I loved it. I wish I knew the way

to the land where the days that have passed live; for when those that

are to come seem cold to me, I would like to go and pay the old ones a

visit. How well I would know their faces, and how glad I would be to see

them again in their own world!

Well, perhaps, even though I can never find the way there, I can see the

days' portraits painted in rows in the picture gallery of a house I own.

It isn't a very big house yet, but at least one new room is being built

onto it every year, and lately it has grown faster than ever before,

though the architecture has improved. Fancy my being a householder! But

I am, and so is everybody. We all have the House of our Past, of which

we alone have a key, and whenever we wish, we can steal softly, secretly

in, by dim passages, to enter rooms sealed to the whole world except

ourselves.

I have been making the picture gallery in mine, since I left America;

but the pictures I care for most have been put up since I began

motoring.

I suppose some very rich natures can be rich without travel, for they

are born with caskets already full of jewels; but ordinary folk have

empty caskets if they keep them shut up always in one safe, and I begin

to see that mine were but poor things. I keep them wide open now, and

every day, every hour, a beautiful new pearl or diamond drops in.

It seems strange to remember how reluctant I was to come away. I thought

there could be nothing more beautiful, more satisfying to eyes and

heart, than my home. The white, colonial house set back from the broad

Hudson River among locust trees and tall, rustling maples; the sloping

lawn, with the beds of geranium and verbena; the garden with its dear,

old-fashioned flowers--holly-hocks, sweet-williams, bleeding-hearts,

grass pinks, and yellow roses; the grey-green hills across the water;

that picture stood to me for all that was ideal on earth. And then, the

Sisters, with their soft ways and soft voices, their white robes and

pale blue, floating veils; how their gracious figures blended with and

accentuated the peaceful charm of the scene, shut away from the storms

of this world throughout their lives!

I was partly right, for of its kind there could be nothing more

beautiful than that picture, but my mistake was in the narrow-minded

wish to let one suffice. I rejoice now in every new one I have hung up,

and shall rejoice all the more when I am back again myself--just one of

those white figures that flit across the old canvas.

Yes, I shall be one of those figures, of course. The Mother has always

told me it was my true vocation; that peace and leisure for reflection

and concentration of mind were the greatest earthly blessings a woman

could have. Ever since, as a very small girl, I longed for the day when

I should be allowed to wear one of those pretty, trailing, white

cashmere dresses and long, pale blue veils, I have looked forward to

joining the Sisterhood of good women who alone have ever given me love

and the protection of home.

Nothing has happened to change my intentions, and they are _not_

changed. Only, I'm not homesick any more, as I used to be in the

feverish Paris days, or even on the Riviera, when we did very little but

rush back and forth between Monte Carlo and Cap Martin, with Prince

Dalmar-Kalm and his friends.

I shall go home and carry out the plans I've had for all these years,

but--I shall live--live--live--every single minute till the time comes

for my good-bye to the world.

I should have liked to stay a month at Bellagio (with the wonderful

garden of Serbelloni to explore from end to end), instead of the two

days that we did stop; still, the moment our start was arranged, I was

perfectly happy at the thought of being in the car again.

There was a discussion as to how we should begin the journey to Lecco

and Desenzano, where we were to sleep one night, for our difficulty lay

in the fact that there's but one road on which you can drive away from

the wooded, wedge-like promontory which Bellagio pushes out into the

lake; the steep, narrow road up to Civenna and down again to Canzo and

Asso, by which we had come. As our car had done the climb and descent so

well, Mr. Barrymore wanted to do it again, perhaps with a wicked desire

to force the Prince into accompanying us or seeming timid about the

capabilities of his automobile. But when Aunt Kathryn discovered how

easy the alternative was (simply to put the car on a steamer as far as

Varenna, then running along a good road from there southward to Lecco),

she said that Mr. Barrymore's way would be tempting Providence, with

whose designs, I must say she appears to have an intimate acquaintance.

Heaven had spared us the first time, she argued, but now if we

deliberately flew in its face, it would certainly not be considerate on

a second occasion.

I was ready so much earlier on the last morning than Aunt Kathryn or

Beechy, that I ordered coffee and rolls for myself alone on the terrace;

and they had just appeared when Mr. Barrymore came out. He was going

presently to see to the car, so naturally we had breakfast together,

with an addition of some exquisite wild strawberries, gleaming like

_cabouchon_ rubies under a froth of whipped cream. It was only eight

o'clock, when we finished, and he said there would be time for one last

stroll through the divinest garden in Italy, if I cared for it. Of

course I did care, so we walked together up the rose-bordered path from

the sweet-smelling flower-zone to the pine-belt that culminates in the

pirates' castle. While we stood looking down over the three arms of the

lake in their glittering blue sleeves, a voice spoke behind us: "Ah,

Miss Destrey, I've found you at last. Your cousin asked me to look for

you and bring you back as soon as possible. You are urgently wanted for

something, though what was not confided to me."

The Prince used to be troublesome when he first attached himself to our

party. If ever he happened to meet me in the big hall or the garden of

the hotel at Cap Martin, when neither Aunt Kathryn nor Beechy was with

me, he always made some pretext to talk and pay me stupid compliments,

though he would flee if my relations came in sight. After the trip

began, however, his manner was suddenly different, and he showed no more

desire for my society than I for his; therefore I was surprised by an

equally sudden change this morning. It was hardly to be defined in

words, but it was very noticeable. Even his way of looking at me was not

the same. At Cap Martin it used to be rather bold, as if I were the kind

of person who ought to be flattered by any attention from a Prince

Dalmar-Kalm. Later, if he glanced at me at all, it was with an odd

expression, as if he wished me to regret something, I really couldn't

imagine what. But now there was a sort of reverence in his gaze and

manner, as if I were a queen and he were one of my courtiers. As I'm not

a queen, and wouldn't care to have him for a courtier if I were, I

wasn't pleased when he attempted to keep at my side going down by the

narrow path up which Mr. Barrymore and I had walked together. He didn't

precisely thrust Mr. Barrymore out of the way, but seemed to take it for

granted, as it were by right of his rank, that it was for him, not the

others to walk beside me.

I resented this, for to my mind it is horribly caddish for a person to

snub another not his equal in fortune; and as Mr. Barrymore never pushes

himself forward when people behave as if he were their inferior, I

determined to show unmistakably which man I valued more. Consequently,

when the Prince persisted in keeping at my shoulder, I turned and talked

over it to Mr. Barrymore following behind. But on the terrace level with

the hotel he had to leave us, for the automobile was to be shipped on

board a cargo-boat that sailed for Varenna some time before ours.

"Why are you always unkind to me? Have I been so unfortunate as to vex

you in any way?" asked the Prince, when we were alone.

"I am neither kind nor unkind," I replied in a practical, dry sort of

tone. "I am going in now to see why they want me."

"Please don't be in such a hurry," said the Prince. "Perhaps I made Miss

Beechy's message too urgent, for I had seen you with the chauffeur, and

I could not bear that you should be alone with him."

"It is stupid to speak of Mr. Barrymore as the chauffeur," I exclaimed

in a rage. "And it's not your affair Prince, to concern yourself with my

actions."

With that I darted into the long corridor that opens from the terrace,

and left him furiously tugging at his moustache.

"Did you send the Prince to call me in, Beechy?" I asked, after I had

tapped at her door.

"I happened to see the Prince and have a little talk with him in the

garden a few minutes ago," said she, "and I told him if he saw you he

might say we'd be glad if you'd come. Mamma's in such a stew finishing

her packing, and it would be nice if you'd help shut the dressing-bag."

Aunt Kathryn hadn't been herself, it seemed to me, during our two days

at Bellagio. This morning she had a headache, and though I'd hoped that

she would walk down to the boat with the Prince, she decided to take the

hotel omnibus, so I was pestered with him once more. Beechy and Sir

Ralph were having an argument of some sort (in which I heard that funny

nickname "the Chauffeulier" occur several times), and as Mr. Barrymore

had gone ahead with the car and our luggage, the Prince kept with me all

the way through the terraced garden, then down the quaint street of

steps past the bright-coloured silk-shops, to the crowded little quay. I

should have thought that after my last words he would have avoided me,

but apparently he hadn't understood that he was being snubbed. He even

put himself out to be nice to the black dog from Airole, which is my

shadow now, and detests the Prince as openly as he secretly detests it.

It was scarcely half an hour's sail to Varenna, and ten minutes after

landing there, we were in the car, bowling smoothly along a charming

road close by the side of Lecco, the eastern arm of the triple lake of

Como.

For a time we ran opposite the promontory of Bellagio, with the white

crescent of the Villa Serbelloni conspicuous on the darkly wooded

hillside. Near us was an electric railway which burrowed into tunnels,

as did our own road now and then, to save itself from extinction in a

wall of rock. As we went on, we found the scenery of Lecco more wild and

rugged than that of Como with its many villas, each one of which might

have been Claude Melnotte's. Villages were sparsely scattered on the

sides of high, sheer mountains which reared their bared shoulders up to

a sky of pure ultramarine, but Lecco itself was big and not picturesque,

taking an air of up-to-date importance from the railway station which

connects this magic land with the rest of Italy.

"I shouldn't care to stop in this town," said Beechy, when Mr. Barrymore

slowed down before an imposing glass-fronted hotel with gorgeous

ornamentations of iron and a wonderful gateway. "After what we've come

from, Lecco _does_ look unromantic and prosaic, though I daresay this

hotel is nice and will give us a good lunch."

"Nevertheless it's the _Promessi Sposi_ country," answered Mr.

Barrymore.

"What's that?" asked Beechy and Aunt Kathryn together. But I knew; for

in the garret at home there's an old, old copy of "The Betrothed," which

is Manzoni's _I Promessi Sposi_ in English, and I found and read it when

I was a small girl. It was very long, and perhaps I should find it a

little dull now though I hope not, for I loved it then, reading in

delicious secrecy and stealth, because the Sisterhood doesn't allow

youthful pupils to batten on love stories, no matter how old-fashioned.

I hadn't thought of the book for years; but evidently its story had been

lying all this time carefully put away in a parcel, gathering dust on

some forgotten shelf in my brain, for down it tumbled at the mention of

the name. As Mr. Barrymore explained to Aunt Kathryn that this was the

country of _I Promessi Sposi_ because the scenes of Manzoni's romance

had been laid in the neighbourhood, I could see as plainly as if they

lay before my eyes the quaint woodcuts representing the beautiful

heroine, Lucia, her lover, Renzo, and the wicked Prince Innominato.

Nevertheless I took some credit to myself for remembering the old book

so well, and fancied that there weren't many other travellers nowadays

who would have it. But pride usually goes before a fall, as hard-hearted

nurses tell vain little girls who have come to grief in their prettiest

dresses; and at lunch it appeared that the humblest, most youthful

waiter at Lecco knew more about the classic romance of the country than

I did. Indeed, not a character in the book that wasn't well represented

in a picture on the wall or a painted post-card, and all seemed at

least as real to the people of Lecco as any of their modern

fellow-citizens.

The landlord was so shocked at the idea of our going on without driving

a few kilometres to Acquate, the village where Renzo and Lucia had

lived, and visiting the wayside shrine where Don Roderigo accosted

Lucia, that Aunt Kathryn was fired with a desire to go, though the

Prince (who had come the same way we had) would have dissuaded her by

saying there was nothing worth seeing. "I believe you don't approve of

stories about wicked Princes like Innominato," said Beechy, "and that's

why you don't want us to go. You're afraid we'll get suspicious if we

know too much about them." After that speech the Prince didn't object

any more, and even went with us in his car, when we had rounded off our

lunch with the Robiolo cheese of the country.

It was a short drive to Lucia's village; we could have walked in less

than an hour, but that wouldn't have pleased Aunt Kathryn.

Appropriately, we passed a statue of Manzoni on the way--a delightful

Manzoni seated comfortably on a monument (with sculptured medallions

from scenes in his books) almost within sight of the road to Acquate,

and quite within sight of Monte Resegno, where the castle of wicked

Innominato still stands. Then no sooner had we turned into the narrow

road leading up to the little mountain hamlet than our intentions became

the property of every passer-by, every peasant, every worker from the

wire factories.

"_I Promessi Sposi_," they would say to each other in a matter-of-course

way, with an accompanying nod that settled our destination without a

loophole of doubt.

In Acquate itself, a tiny but picturesque old village (draped with

wistaria from end to end, as if it were _en fête_), everything was

reminiscent and commemorative of the romance that had made its fame.

Here was Via Cristoforo; there Via Renzo; while naturally Via Lucia led

us up to the ancient grey _osteria_ where the virtuous heroine was born

and lived. We went in, of course, and Sir Ralph ordered red wine of the

country, to give us an excuse to sit and stare at the coloured

lithographs and statuettes of the lovers, and to peep into the really

beautiful old kitchen with the ruddy gleams of copper in its dusky

shadows, its bright bits of painted china, its pretty window and huge

fireplace.

On a shelf close by the fire sat a cat, and I attempted to stroke it,

for it looked old enough and important enough to have belonged to Lucia

herself. But I might have known that it would not suffer my caresses,

for it's nearly always so with foreign cats and dogs, I find. The lack

of confidence in their own attractions which they show is as pathetic as

that of a neglected wife; they never seem to think of themselves as

pets.

Aunt Kathryn would persist in talking of Innominato as "Abominato"

(which was after all more appropriate), and the generous display of

Lucia's charms in the pictures caused her basely to doubt that most

virtuous maiden's genuine merit. "If the girl hadn't worn such dresses,

they wouldn't have painted her in them," she argued. "If she _did_ wear

them, she was a minx who got no more than she might have expected,

prancing about lonely mountain roads in such shameless things. And I

don't want a piece of wood from the shutter of her bedroom to take away

with me. I should be mortified to tell any ladies in Denver what it was;

and what's the good of carting souvenirs of your travels around with

you, if you can't tell people about them?"

We got back to our lakeside hotel sooner than we had thought, and the

landlord prayed us to see one more of Lecco's great sights. "It is not

as if I asked you to go out of your way to look at some fine old ruin or

a beautiful view," he pleaded. "You have seen many such on your journey,

and you will see many more; but this thing to which I would send you is

unique. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world; and to go

will take you five minutes."

This excited Aunt Kathryn's curiosity, but when she heard that "it" was

only a wonderful model of the cathedral at Milan, exact in every

smallest detail and made by one man, she thought that she would seize

the opportunity of lying down while the others went, and be fresh for

our start, in an hour's time.

The idea of a model in wood of such a masterpiece as the Milan Cathedral

didn't particularly recommend itself to me; but when we had arrived at a

curiosity shop, and been ushered into a huge inner room, I suddenly

changed my mind, for what I saw there was wonderful--as wonderful in its

way as the great Cathedral itself.

It was the father of the man who showed us the model, and owned the

shop, who had made the miniature _duomo_. His name was Giacomo

Mattarelli, and he was an extraordinary genius, worthy of a tomb in the

Cathedral to the worship of whose beauty he devoted twenty years of his

life and sacrificed those which remained.

The story of his self-appointed task struck me as being as marvellous as

the task's result, which stood there in the dim room, perfect in

proportion and delicately wrought as ivory carved by Chinese experts. I

don't know what the others thought, but the tale as told by the artist's

son was for me full of pathos and beautiful sentiment.

The man had been a cabinet-maker by trade, but he had money and could

gratify his craving for art. The glory of the Milan Cathedral, seen

once, became an obsession for him, and he went again and again. At last

the idea grew in his mind to express his homage in a perfect copy of the

great church which, as he said, "held his heart." There was no train

between Milan and Lecco in his day (1840), and he used to walk all those

miles to make drawings of the Cathedral. At first he meant to do the

work in iron, but iron was too heavy; then he began casting plates in

copper, but they were hollow behind, and he could not get the effect he

wanted, so after several wasted months he began again with olive wood.

Often he would work all night; and no trouble was too much for his

inexhaustible patience. Each statue, each gargoyle was copied, first in

a drawing, then with the carving tools, and no hand but that of the

artist ever touched the work. At the end of twenty-two years it was

completed; not a detail missing inside or out; and then when all was

done the modeller went blind.

Now his son had lighted up the model for us to see, and I was almost

aghast at the thought of the incredible labour it had meant--literally a

labour of love, for the artist had given his eyes and his best years to

his adoration of the beautiful. And the whole thing seemed the more of a

marvel when I remembered how Mr. Barrymore had called Milan Cathedral

the most highly ornamented building in the world. Nowhere else, he said,

existed a church so smothered with carving. Every point, every niche has

its statue. There, in the model, one could find each one. Through

magnifying glasses the little carved faces (hardly larger, some of them,

than a pin's head) looked at one with the same expression as the

original, and not a mistake had been made in a fold of drapery. Each

sculptured capital, each column, each decorative altar of the interior

had been carved with loving fidelity. All that, in the vast Cathedral

had taken centuries and many generations of men to plan and finish, this

one infinitely patient man had copied in miniature in twenty-two years.

It would have been worth visiting the town to see the model alone, even

if we had turned miles out of our path.

To go from there to Desenzano by way of Bergamo and Brescia was to go

from lake to lake--Lecco to Garda; and the road was beautiful. Castles

and ancient monasteries had throned themselves on hills to look down on

little villages cringing at their august feet. Along the horizon

stretched a serrated line of pure white mountains, sharply chiselled in

marble, while a thick carpet of wild flowers, blue and gold, had been

cut apart to let our road pass through. It was a biscuit-coloured road,

smooth as uncut velvet, and fringed on either side with a white spray of

heavenly-fragrant acacia, like our locust-trees at home. Rustic fences

and low hedges defining rich green meadows, were inter-laced with wild

roses, pink and white, and plaited with pale gold honeysuckle, a magnet

for armies of flitting butterflies. Every big farmhouse, every tiny

cottage was curtained with wistaria and heavy-headed roses. Wagons

passed us laden with new-mown hay and crimson sorrel; and we had one odd

adventure, which might have been dangerous, but was only poetic.

A horse drawing some kind of vehicle, piled high with fragrant clover,

took it into his head just as were side by side, that it was his duty to

punish his mechanical rival for existing. Calculating his distance

nicely, he gave a bound, flung the cart against our car, and upset half

his load of clover on our heads. What he did afterwards we had no means

of knowing, for we were temporarily extinguished.

It was the strangest sensation I ever had, being suddenly overwhelmed by

a soft, yet heavy wave of something that was like a ton of perfumed

feathers.

Instantly the car stopped, for Mr. Barrymore, buried as he was, didn't

forget to put on the brakes. Then I felt that he was excavating me, and

almost before I knew what had swallowed me up I was emerging from green

and pink billows of clover, laughing, gasping, half-dazed, but wholly

delighted. "You're not drowned?" he asked quickly.

"No, I can swim," I answered, and set myself promptly to help him and

Sir Ralph rescue Beechy and Aunt Kathryn, which was rather like looking

for needles in a haystack.

By the time we had all got our breath and wiped the clover out of our

eyes, horse and cart had vanished comet-like into the horizon, leaving a

green trail behind. We bailed out the car and started gaily on once

more, but presently our speed slackened. Without a sigh the automobile

stopped precisely in the middle of the road, and gently, though firmly,

refused to go on again.

When Mr. Barrymore saw that this was more than a passing whim, he called

Sir Ralph to the rescue, Beechy and I jumped out, and the car was pushed

to one side. Then, with all of us standing round, he proceeded to search

for the mischief. Apparently nothing was wrong. The engine was cool;

the pump generously inclined, and fat yellow fireflies flew out of the

sparking-plugs when they were tested. Then Mr. Barrymore remembered the

cause of the Prince's first accident, and looked at the carburetter; but

there was not so much as a speck of dust. For a while he continued to

poke, and prod, and hammer, Sir Ralph offering humorous advice, and

pretending to be sure that, if his housekeeper Félicité were on the

spot, the car would start for her in an instant. The mystery only

thickened, however, and to make matters worse the Prince, who had been

proudly spinning on ahead, came tearing back to see what had happened.

Though he pretended to be sympathetic, he was visibly overjoyed at our

misfortune, which turned the tables upon us for once, and his

suggestions were enough to wreck the valvular system of a motor-car; not

to mention the nervous system of a distracted chauffeur.

"Perhaps the petrol's dead," said Mr. Barrymore, paying no heed to the

Prince's ideas. He opened a new tin and was about to empty its contents

into the reservoir, when he uttered an exclamation. "By Jove! Just look

at that, Miss Destrey!" he said; and I couldn't help feeling flattered

that he should appeal to me on a subject I didn't know anything about.

He was peering at the small round air-hole leading down to the

reservoir, so I peered too, and in spite of my ignorance I saw what he

meant. The hole was entirely stopped up with the body of a pinkish-grey

caterpillar, and Mr. Barrymore explained that the poor car had simply

stopped because it couldn't breathe. No air had been able to reach the

petrol in the reservoir, and therefore no spirit had trickled through to

the carburetter.

We had been delayed for more than half an hour by a mere worm, which had

probably arrived with the clover; but when the automobile could fill her

lungs again she started on at a great pace. We passed a wonderful old

riverside town, that had one of the most remarkable churches we had seen

yet; and by-and-by a fine city, set like a tiara on the forehead of a

distant hill, seemed to spring up, peer at us from its eminence, and

then dip down out of sight among other hills which made a dark

foreground against white mountains.

It was Bergamo; and not once did we see it again until we were almost in

the place, when it deigned to show itself once more--an old, old city on

a height, a newer city extended at its feet in a plain.

"This town is packed full of interesting things," said Mr. Barrymore. "I

stayed here two days once, at a nice old-fashioned hotel with domed,

painted ceilings, marble walls and mahogany mantle-pieces which would

have delighted you. And even then I hadn't half time for the two or

three really fine churches, and the Academy, where there are some

Bellinis, a Palma Vecchio, and a lot of splendid Old Masters. Bergamo

claims Tasso, perhaps you remember, because his father was born here;

and Harlequin, you know, was supposed to be a Bergamese."

"Oughtn't we to stop and see the pictures?" I asked.

"We ought. But one never does stop where one ought to, motoring.

Besides, you'll see the best work of the same artists at Venice and as

we want to reach Desenzano for dinner we had better push on."

We did push on but not far. Unless the main road runs straight into a

town and out of it again it is often difficult to discover the exit from

Italian cities like those through which we passed, and Mr. Barrymore

seemed always reluctant to inquire. When I remarked on this once,

thinking it simpler to ask a question of some one in the street rather

than take a false turn, he answered that automobilists never asked the

way; they found it. "I can't explain," he went on, "but I believe other

men who drive cars share the same peculiarity with me; I never ask help

from a passer-by if I can possibly fish out the way for myself. It isn't

rational of course. Sometimes I could save a détour if I would stop and

ask; but I prefer to plunge on and make a mistake rather than admit that

a mere man on legs can teach me anything I don't know. It seems somehow

to degrade the automobile."

The argument was too subtle for me, not being an automobilist; and on

trying to get out of Bergamo, Mr. Barrymore made one of his little

détours. The road twisted; and instead of finding the one towards

Brescia it happened that we went down a broad way which looked like a

high road, but happened to be only a _cul de sac_ leading to the railway

station. We were annoyed for a minute, but we were to rejoice in the

next.

Seeing his error, Mr. Barrymore had just turned the car and was circling

round, when two men stepped into the middle of the road and held up

their hands. They appeared so suddenly that they made me start. They

were very tall and very grave, dressed alike, in long black coats

buttoned to their chins, black gloves, and high black hats. Each carried

an oaken staff.

"They're mutes," said Sir Ralph as Mr. Barrymore put on the brake.

"They've come to warn us that there's going to be a funeral, and we must

clear out for the procession."

The pair looked so sepulchral, I thought he must be right, though I'd

never seen any "funeral mutes." But Mr. Barrymore answered in a low

voice, "No, they're policemen. I wonder what's up?" Then, aloud, he

addressed the melancholy black beanpoles; but to my surprise, instead of

using his fluent Italian to lubricate the strained situation, he spoke

in English.

"Good day. Do you want something with me?"

Of course they didn't understand. How could they have been expected to?

But they did not look astonished. Their black coats were too tight round

their necks for them to change expression easily. One began to explain

his object or intention, with gentle patience, in soft Italian--so soft

that I could have burst out laughing at the thought of the contrast

between him and a New York policeman.

Now almost my whole knowledge of Italian has been gained since Aunt

Kathryn decided to take this trip, for then I immediately bought a

phrase-book, a grammar, and "Doctor Antonio" translated into the native

tongue of hero and author, all of which I've diligently studied every

evening. Mr. Barrymore, on the contrary, speaks perfectly. I believe he

could even think in Italian if he liked; nevertheless _I_ could

understand a great deal that the thin giant said, while _he_ apparently

was hopelessly puzzled.

Even without an accompaniment of words, the policeman's pantomime was so

expressive, I fancy I should have guessed his meaning. With the grieved

dignity of a father taking to task an erring child, he taxed us with

having damaged a cart and injured a horse, causing it to run away. He

pointed to the distance. With an arching gesture he illustrated a mound

of hay (or clover?) rising from the vehicle; with a quick outward thrust

of hands and widespread fingers he pictured the alarm and frantic rush

of the horse; he showed us the creature running, then falling, then

limping as if hurt; he touched his knees to indicate the place of the

wound. What could the most elementary intelligence need more to

comprehend? Certainly it was enough for the crowd collected about us;

but it was not enough for Mr. Barrymore, who is an Irishman, and

cleverer about everything than any man I ever met. He sat still, with an

absolutely vacant though conscientious look on his face, as if he were

trying hard to snatch at an idea, but hadn't succeeded. When the

policeman finished, Mr. Barrymore sadly shook his head. "I wonder what

you mean?" he murmured mildly in English.

The Italian retold the story, his companion throwing a word into a pause

now and then. Both patient men articulated with such careful nicety that

the syllables fell from their mouths like clear-cut crystals. But Mr.

Barrymore shook his head again; then, suddenly, with a joyous smile he

seized a pocket-book from inside his coat. From this he tore out an

important-looking document stamped with a red seal, and pointed from it

to a lithographed signature at the foot.

"Foreign Secretary; Lansdowne--Lord Lansdowne," he repeated. "Inglese.

Inglese and Italiani sempre amici. Yes?" His smile embraced not only the

long-suffering policemen but the crowd, who nodded their heads and

laughed. Having made this effect, Mr. Barrymore whipped out another

impressive paper, which I could see was his _permis de Conduire_ from

the Department of Mines in Nice.

He pointed to the official stamp on this document, and with the

childlike pride of one who stammers a few words of a foreign tongue, he

exclaimed, "Nizza. Nizza la bella." With this, he looked the giants so

full and kindly in the face, and seemed to be so greatly enjoying

himself, that every one laughed again, and two young men cheered,

appearing to be rather ashamed of themselves afterwards. Then, as if

every requirement must at last be satisfied, he made as if to go on. But

the conscientious comrades, though evidently faint and discouraged,

hadn't yet given up hope or played their last card, despite the yards of

English red tape with which those two stamped papers had fed their

appetite for officialism.

The taller of the pair laid his black glove on our mud-guard, cracked by

the flapping tyre days ago, and to be mended (I'd heard Mr. Barrymore

say) at the garage in Mestre. With such dramatic gestures as only the

Latin races command, he attempted to prove that the mud-guard must have

been broken in the collision near Bergamo, of which his mind was full.

At last our Chauffeulier comprehended something. He jumped out of the

throbbing car, and in his turn went through a pantomime. From a drawer

under the seat he produced the rubber skin that had come off our tyre,

showed how it fitted on, how it had become detached, and how it had

lashed the mud-guard as we moved. Everybody, including the policemen,

displayed the liveliest interest in this performance. The instant it was

over, Mr. Barrymore took his place again, coiled up the rubber snake,

and this time without asking leave, but with a low bow to the

representatives of local law, drove the car smartly back into the town.

What could the thwarted giants do after such an experience but stand

looking after us and make the best of things?

"It was our salvation that we'd lost our way and were driving towards

Bergamo instead of out," said the conqueror triumphantly. "You see, they

thought probably they'd got hold of the wrong car, as the accused one

had been coming from Lecco. What with that impression, and their despair

at my idiocy, they were ready to give us the benefit of the doubt and

save their faces. Otherwise, though we were innocent and the driver of

the cart merely 'trying it on,' we might have been hung up here for ten

days."

"Oh, could they have hung us?" gasped Aunt Kathryn. "What a dreadful

thing Italian law must be."

Then we all laughed so much that she was vexed, and when Beechy called

her a "stupid little Mamma," snapped back that anyhow she wasn't stupid

enough to forget her Italian--if she knew any--just when it was needed.

She is too sweet-tempered to be cross for long, however, and the way

towards Brescia was so charming that she forgot her annoyance. Though

the surface was not so good as it had been, it was not too bad; and our

noble tyres, which had borne so much, seemed to spurn the slight

irregularities. With every twenty yards we had a new view, as if the

landscape slowly turned, to assume different patterns like the pieces in

a kaleidoscope. On our left the mountains appeared to march on with us

always, white and majestic, with strange, violet shadows floating

mysteriously.

Set back from the roadside, behind rich meadows rippling with gold and

silver grain, were huge farmhouses, with an air of dignity born of

self-respect and venerable age. We had pretty garden glimpses, too, and

once in a while passed a fine mansion, good enough to call itself a

château so long as there were no real ones in the neighbourhood. Often

chestnut-trees in full glory of white blossom, as if blazing with fairy

candles, lined our way for miles. There was snow of hawthorne

too--"May," our two men called it--and ranks of little feathery white

trees, such as I knew no name for, looking like a procession of brides,

or young girls going to their first communion. Then, to brighten the

white land with colour, there were clumps of lilac, clouds of rose-pink

apple blossoms, blue streaks that meant beds of violets, and a yellow

fire of iris rising straight and bright as flame along the edges of

green, roadside streams.

Just as we came into a splendid old Italian town, thunder began to growl

like a lion hiding in the mountains. A few drops of rain splashed on our

motor-hoods, and a sudden chill wind gathered up the sweet country

scents into one bouquet to fling at us.

"Here we are at Brescia. Shall we stop for the storm and have tea?"

asked Mr. Barrymore.

Aunt Kathryn said "yes" at once, for she doesn't like getting wet, and

can't bear to have the rain spray on her face, though I love it. So we

drove quickly through streets, each one of which made a picture with its

old brown palaces, its stone steps with pretty women chatting in groups

under red umbrellas, its quaint bridge flung across the river, or its

pergola of vines. Past a magnificent cathedral we went as the bells rang

for vespers, and children, young girls, old black-shawled women, smart

soldiers, and gallant-looking, tall officers answered their call. Thus

we arrived at a quaint hotel, with a garden on the river's edge; and

under a thick arbour of chestnut-trees (impervious to floods) we drank

coffee and ate heart-shaped cakes, while the thunder played wild music

for us on a vast cathedral organ in the sky.

"No wonder the soldiers are smart and the officers fine," said the

Chauffeulier, in answer to a remark of mine which Beechy echoed.

"Brescia deserves them more than most towns of Italy, for you know she

has always been famous for the military genius and courage of her men,

and once she was second only to Milan in importance. Venice--whose

vassal she was--had a right to be proud of her. The history of the great

siege, wherein Bayard got the wound which he thought would be mortal, is

as interesting as a novel. 'The Escape of Tartaglia' and 'The Generosity

of Bayard' are bits that make you want to shout aloud."

"And yet we'll pass on, and see nothing, except those panorama-like

glimpses," I sighed. "Oh motoring, motoring, and motor maniacs!"

"How often one has that half-pleasant, half-regretful feeling about

things or people one flashes by on the road," soliloquized Sir Ralph,

pleasantly resigned to the pain of parting. I have it continually,

especially about some of the beautiful, dark-eyed girls I see, and leave

behind before I've fairly catalogued their features. I say to myself,

"Lovely flower of beauty, wasted in the dust of the roadside. Alas! I

leave you for ever. What is to be your fate? Will you grow old soon,

under your peasant-burdens and cares? How sad it is that I shall never

know your history."

"It wouldn't be a bit interesting," said Beechy. "But I suppose that

theory won't comfort you any more than it did Maida the other day, when

she tried too late to save a fly from dying in some honey, and I

consoled her by saying it probably wasn't at all a nice fly, if one had

known it."

"No, it doesn't console me," Sir Ralph complained. "Still, there's a

certain thrill in the thought of bursting like a thunder-bolt into the

midst of other people's tragedies, comedies, or romances, just catching

a fleeting glimpse of their possibilities and tearing on again. But

there are some creatures we meet that I'm glad to lose sight of. Not

those who glare anarchically, unconsciously betraying their outlook on

life; not the poor slow old people who blunder in the way, and stare

vacantly up at our fiery chariot--so strange a development of the world

for them; not the dogs that yelp, and are furious if we don't realize

that they're frightening us. No, but the horrid little jeering boys, who

run beside the car at their best speed when we're forging up

perpendicular hills on _our_ lowest. These are the creatures I would

wipe out of existence with one fierce wish, if I had it in me. To think

that they--_they_--should have the power to humiliate us. I don't get

back my self-respect till we're on a level, or my _joie de vivre_ until

we're shooting downhill, and can hold our own with a forty horse-power

motor, to say nothing of a one-horse, Italian village boy."

"What a revelation of vindictiveness, where one would least expect it!"

exclaimed Mr. Barrymore. "But the rain's over. Shall we go on?" And we

all agreed eagerly, as we probably should in Paradise, if it were a

question of motoring.

XVIII

A CHAPTER ACCORDING TO SHAKSPERE

"Another Cuneo!" groaned Aunt Kathryn, at sight of the hotel in the

steep little town of Desenzano, on Lake Garda; but later she apologized

to the quaint courtyard for her misunderstanding, and was more than

tolerant of her vast bedroom draped with yellow satin, and opening on an

arboured terrace worthy even of a Countess Dalmar.

For miles our way towards Verona next morning was pink and white with

chestnut bloom. Even the shadows seemed warmly pink under the long

unbroken arch of flowering trees. Far away, behind the green netting of

their branches, we caught blue flashes of lake and mountain peaks of

amethyst, while Beechy wished for a dozen noses dotted about here and

there at convenient intervals on her body, so that she might make the

most of the perfumed air. "But you would want them all cut off when you

got to the nearest town," remarked Aunt Kathryn.

Ever since Brescia, the road had been so smooth and well kept that it

was as if we had come into a different country; but Mr. Barrymore said

it was because we were now under the jurisdiction of Venice--Venice, as

rich and practical as romantic. And I had to repeat the name over and

over in my mind--Verona and Padua too--to make myself believe that we

were actually so near.

Horses were better trained in this district, and "knew a motor when they

saw it." Even a drove of sheep (near the wonderful fortress of Peschiera

with its coiled python of a river) seemed comparatively indifferent as

they surged round us in a foaming wave of wool. But then, sheep have no

facial expression. All other four-footed things show emotion by a change

of countenance, just as human beings do--more, because they don't

conceal their feelings--but sheep look as if they wore foolishly smiling

masks. Even when, as their ranks closed in around the automobile, we

broke a chain with a pretty little tinkling noise, and some of the sheep

tripped up on it, they did nothing but smile and merely mention "ba-a"

in an indifferent, absent-minded way.

"If you only _knew_ how much nicer you are with mint sauce!" Beechy

taunted them, as we swept round a corner and were in the labyrinth of

the fortress, which was, our men told us, part of the once famous

quadrilateral that made trouble for Italy in '48.

"There's something pathetic about old, obsolete forts as grand as

Peschiera," Mr. Barrymore said to me. "So much thought and money spent,

the best military science of the day employed to make a stronghold as

feeble against modern arms as a fort of cards. Such a fortress seems

like an aged warrior, past his fighting days, or an old hunting dog, as

keen on the chase as ever, poor fellow, but too old to move from before

the fire, where he can only lie and dream of past triumphs."

"I was thinking almost exactly the same!" I exclaimed, and I liked Mr.

Barrymore all the better; for it draws you nearer to a person when you

find that your thoughts resemble each other in shape and colour. Oddly

enough, it's often so with Mr. Barrymore and me; which is the reason

it's so agreeable to have the place beside him when he drives.

No more than half a dozen miles from Peschiera we saw the Tower of San

Martino, raised on the great battlefield of Solferino. By this time we

had left the lake behind; but we had exchanged the low, amethyst

mountains for tall white ones, glorious pinnacles of snow which were the

higher Austrian Alps. Everything was impressive on this road to Verona,

even the farmhouses, of an entirely different character from those of

the "yesterday country;" and then, at last, we came in sight of Verona

herself, lying low within a charmed circle of protecting hills, on which

castles and white villas looked down from among cypresses and rose-pink

almond trees.

I was glad that the gateway by which we entered Verona was the finest

through which we had passed, for though Mr. Barrymore called the town

"an inn for the great travellers of history," it was more for me. It was

the home of romance; for was it not Juliet's home and Romeo's?

That gateway, and the splendid old crenellated bridge of dark red brick

(toning deliciously with the clear, beryl-green of the swift-rushing

Adda) made a noble, preface for the city. And then, each old, old street

into which we turned was a new joy. What lessons for modern architects

in those time-softened brick façades, with the moulded arches of

terra-cotta framing the green open-work of the shutters!

I began to feel a sense of exaltation, as if I had listened to an anthem

played by a master hand on a cathedral organ. I couldn't have told any

one, but I happened to glance at Mr. Barrymore, and he at me, just as he

had driven into the _piazza_ where Dante's house looks down over the

tombs of the Scaligers. Then he smiled, and said, "Yes, I know. I always

feel like that, too, when I come here--but even more in Venice."

"How _am_ I feeling?" I asked, smiling with him.

"Oh, a little bit as if your soul had got out of your body and taken a

bath in a mountain spring, after you'd been staggering up some of the

steep paths of life in the dust and sun. Isn't that it?"

"Yes. Thank you," I answered. And we seemed to understand each other so

well that I was almost frightened.

"I want all these streets for mine," said Beechy, in a chattering mood.

"Oh, and especially the market-place, with that strange old fountain,

and the booths under the red umbrellas like scarlet mushrooms. Mamma,

have you got money enough to buy them for me, and have them packed up in

a big box with dried moss, like the toy villages, and expressed to

Denver?"

"Speaking of dried moss, all these lovely old churches and palaces and

monuments look as if history had covered them with a kind of delicate

lichen," I said, more to Mr. Barrymore than to Beechy. "And it enhances

their beauty, as the lace of a bride's veil enhances the beauty of her

face."

"Or a nun's veil," cut in Beechy. I wonder why she says things like that

so often lately? Well, perhaps it's best that I should be reminded of my

vocation, but it gives me a cold, desolate feeling for a minute, and

seems to throw a constraint upon us all.

We had made the Chauffeulier stop three or four times in every street to

look at some beautiful bit; a gate of flexible iron-work that even

Ruskin must have admired, the doorway of a church, the wonderful windows

of a faded palace; but suddenly I felt ready to go to the hotel, where

we were to stop for the night, that we might do our sight-seeing slowly.

It was a delightful hotel, itself once a palace, and to be there was to

be "in the picture," in such a place as Verona. The Prince had arrived

before us, as his motor is retrieving its reputation, and we all lunched

together, making plans for the afternoon.

As usual, he was _blasé_--so different from Mr. Barrymore, who has seen

the best things in Italy as often as Prince Dalmar-Kalm has, yet never

tires; indeed, finds something new each time.

The Prince began by announcing that Verona bored him. But one could

always go to sleep.

"That's what I mean to do," said Aunt Kathryn, who generally takes her

cue from him. "I consider that I've seen Verona now, and I shall lie

down this afternoon. Perhaps later I shall write a few letters in the

hall."

I was unkind enough to fancy this a hint for the Prince, but perhaps I

wronged her. And anyway, why should she not give him hints if she likes?

He has been very attentive to her, although for the last few days I

don't think they have been quite so much in "each others' pockets" (as

Beechy calls it) as before.

A little attention was needed by the automobile, it appeared--such as a

tightening up of chains, and a couple of lost grease-cups to replace;

therefore Mr. Barrymore's time would be filled up without any

sight-seeing. But Sir Ralph offered to take Beechy and me anywhere we

liked to go. I was very glad that the Prince said nothing about

accompanying us, for somehow I'd been afraid he would.

We consulted guide-books until we were bewildered, but in the midst of

confusion I held fast to two things. We had seen Romeo's house, towering

picturesquely behind the Scaligers' tombs; but I wanted to see where

Juliet had lived, and where she had been buried.

"The Prince says it's all nonsense," exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "If there

was a slight foundation for the story in a great family scandal here

about Shakspere's time, anyhow there's none for the houses or the

tomb--"

Beechy stopped her ears. "You're _real mean_," she said, "you and the

Prince both. It's just as bad as when you thought it your duty to tell

me there was no Santa Claus. But I don't care; there _is_. I shall

believe it when I'm _seventeen_; and I believe in the Romeo and Juliet

houses too."

But when we were in the street of Juliet's house--she and Sir Ralph and

I--Beechy pouted. Standing with her hands behind her, her long braids of

hair dangling half-way down her short skirt as she threw back her head

to gaze up, she looked incredibly modern and American. "There were no

tourists' agencies in those days," she remarked, regretfully, "so I

suppose Shakspere _had_ to trust to hearsay, and somebody must have told

him a big tarradiddle. I guess Juliet was really on a visit to an aunt

in the country when she first met Romeo, for fancy a girl in her senses

yelling down from that balcony up at the top of a tall house to _any_

lover, let alone a secret one? Besides, there wouldn't have been enough

rope in Verona to make the ladder for Romeo to climb up."

After this speech, I decided that, fond as I really am of her, I could

_not_ visit Juliet's tomb in Beechy's society. I gave no hint of my

intentions, but after an exquisite hour (which nobody could spoil) in

that most adorable of churches, San Zenone, and another in Sant'

Anastasia, I slipped away while Beechy and Sir Ralph were picking out

the details of St. Peter's life on the panels of a marvellous pilaster.

We had had a cab by the hour; and when they should discover my absence,

they would take it for granted that I had got tired and gone home. They

would then proceed to carry out their programme of sight-seeing very

happily without me, for Beechy amuses Sir Ralph immensely, child as she

is, and she makes no secret of taking pleasure in his society. She

teases him, and he likes it; he draws her out, and her wit brightens in

the process.

I hurried off when their backs were turned. Not far away I found a

prowling cab, and told the man to drive me to Juliet's tomb. He stared,

as if in surprise, for I suppose girls of our class don't go about much

alone in Italian towns; but he condescended to accept me as a fare.

However, to show his disapproval maybe, he rattled me through streets

old and beautiful, ugly and modern (why should most modern things be

ugly, even in Italy?) at a tremendous pace. At last he stopped before a

high, blank wall, in a most dismal region, apparently the outskirts of

the town. I would hardly believe that he had brought me to the right

place, but he reassured me. In the distance another cab was approaching,

probably on the same errand. I rang a bell, and a gate was opened by a

nice-looking woman, who knew well what I wanted without my telling, and

she spoke so clearly that I was able to understand much of what she

said. Instead of feeling that the romance of visiting Juliet's

burial-place was destroyed by traversing the great open square of the

communal stables, where an annual horse show is held, I was conscious of

a strange charm in the unsuitable surroundings. It was like coming upon

a beautiful white pearl in a battered old oyster-shell, to pass through

this narrow gateway at the far end of a dusty square, and find myself

face to face with a glimmering tomb in a quiet cloister.

The strong contrast between the sordid exterior and this dainty, hidden

interior was nothing less than dramatic. The lights and shadows played

softly at hide-and-seek, like dumb children, over the grass, among the

pillars of the little cloister, over the tomb itself. I was thankful to

be alone, troubled by no fellow-tourists, safe from little Beechy's too

comical fancies, free to be as sentimental as I liked. And I liked to be

very sentimental indeed.

I stood by the tomb, feeling almost like a mourner, when a voice made me

start. "Is it Juliet's spirit?" asked Prince Dalmar-Kalm.

I would rather it had been any one else. "How odd that you should come

here!" I exclaimed, while my face must have shown that the surprise was

not too pleasant.

"It is not at all odd. You are here," answered the Prince. "You said at

_déjeuner_ that you were coming, if you had to come alone. _Eh bien?_ I

saw Miss Beechy and Sir Ralph Moray driving together, deep in Baedeker.

My heart told me where you were; and I arrive to find you looking like

Juliet come to life again. Perhaps it is so indeed. Perhaps you were

Juliet in another incarnation. Yes, I feel sure you were. And I was

Romeo."

"I'm sure you were not," I replied; but I could not help laughing at his

stagey manner, though I was more annoyed than ever now, and annoyed with

myself too. "I particularly wished to be alone here, or I wouldn't have

slipped away from Beechy and Sir Ralph, so--"

"And I particularly wished to be alone here with you, or I wouldn't have

followed when you _had_ slipped away from them," he broke in. "Oh, Miss

Destrey--my Madeleine, you must listen to me. There could be no place in

the world more appropriate to the tale of a man's love for a woman than

this, where a man and woman died for love of one another."

"I thought you called all this 'nonsense'?" I cut him short. "No,

Prince, neither here nor anywhere must you speak of love to me, for I

don't love you, and never could."

"I know that you mean to shut yourself away from the world," he

interrupted me again. "But you shall not. It would be sacrilege.

You--the most beautiful, the most womanly girl in the world--to--"

"No more, please!" I cried. "It doesn't matter what my future is to be,

for you will not be in it. I--"

"I must be in it. I adore you. I can't give you up. Haven't you seen

from the first how I loved you?"

"I _thought_ I saw you liked trying to flirt when no one was looking.

That sounds rather horrid, but--it's the truth."

"You misjudged me cruelly. Have you no human ambition? I could place you

among the highest in any land. With me, your beauty should shine as it

never could in your own country. Is it nothing to you that I can make

you a Princess?"

"Less than nothing," I answered, "though perhaps it would be pretty of

me to thank you for wanting to make me one. So I do thank you; and I'll

thank you still more if you will go now, and leave me to my thoughts."

"I cannot go till I have made you understand how I love you, how

indispensable you are to me," he persisted. And I grew really angry; for

he had no right to persecute me, when I had refused him.

"Very well, then, _I_ shall go," I said, and would have passed him, but

he seized my hand and held it fast.

It was this moment that Mr. Barrymore chose for paying his respects to

Juliet's tomb; and I blushed as I have never blushed in my life, I

think--blushed till the tears smarted in my eyes. I was afraid he would

believe that I'd been letting Prince Dalmar-Kalm make love to me. But

there was nothing to say, unless I were willing to have a scene, and

that would have been hateful. Nor was there anything to do except the

obvious thing, snatch my hand away; and that might seem to be only

because some one had come. But how I should have loved to box the

Prince's ears! I never dreamed that I had such a temper. I suppose,

though, there must be something of the fishwife in every

woman--something that comes boiling up to the surface once in a while,

and makes _noblesse oblige_ hard to remember.

The one relief to my feelings in this situation was given by my queer

little new pet--the wisp of a black doggie I've named Airole, after the

village where he grew. I'd brought him into the cloister in my arms

hidden under a cape, because he had conceived a suspicious dislike of

the cabman. Now he said all the things to the Prince that I wanted to

say, and more, and would have snapped, if the Prince had not retired his

hand in time.

The process of quieting Airole gave me the chance to make up my mind

what I should do next. If I went away, I couldn't prevent Prince

Dalmar-Kalm from going with me, and Mr. Barrymore would have a right to

imagine that I wished to continue the interrupted scene. If I stayed it

was open for him to fancy that I wanted to be with _him_; but between

two evils one chooses the less; besides, a nice thing about Mr.

Barrymore is that, notwithstanding his good looks and cleverness, he's

not conceited--not conceited enough, I sometimes think, for he lets

people misunderstand his position and often seems more amused than angry

at a snub.

Acting on my quick decision, I said, "Oh, I'm glad you've come. You know

so much about Verona. Please talk to me of this place--only don't say it

isn't authentic, for that would be a jarring note."

"I'm afraid I don't care enough whether things are authentic or not," he

answered, both of us ignoring the Prince. "You know, in my country,

legend and history are a good deal mixed, which makes for romance.

Besides, I'm inclined to believe in stories that have been handed down

from generation to generation--told by grandfathers to their

grandchildren, and so on through the centuries till they've reached us.

When they're investigated by the cold light of reason, at least they can

seldom be disproved."

I agreed, and the conversation went on, deliberately excluding the

Prince. Each minute I said to myself, "Surely he'll go." But he did not.

He stayed while Mr. Barrymore and I discussed the genius of Shakspere,

chiming in now and then as if nothing had happened, and remaining until

we were ready to go.

At the cab there was another crisis. I hadn't yet entirely realized the

Prince's stupendous capacity for what Beechy would put into one short,

sharp word "Cheek." But I fully appreciated it when he calmly manifested

his intention of getting into my cab, as if we had come together.

Something had to be done instantly, or it would be too late.

Leaning from my seat so that the Prince had to wait with his foot on the

step, I exclaimed, "Oh! Mr. Barrymore, won't you let me give you a lift?

Prince Dalmar-Kalm has his own cab, and I'm alone in this."

"Thanks very much, I shall be delighted," said the Chauffeulier.

Even the Prince's audacity wasn't equal to the situation created by

these tactics. He retired, hat in hand, looking so furious that I could

hardly help laughing. Mr. Barrymore got in beside me, and we drove off

leaving the Prince with nobody but his own cabman to vent his rage on.

I rather hoped, for a minute, that Mr. Barrymore would say something

which would give me the chance for a vague word or two of explanation;

but he didn't. He simply talked of indifferent things, telling me how

the work on the car was finished, and how he had had time after all to

wander among his favourite bits of Verona. And then, in a flash of

understanding, I saw how much more tactful and manly it was in him not

to mention the Prince.

XIX

A CHAPTER OF PALACES AND PRINCES

What a pity clocks don't realize the interesting work they do in the

making of history, as they go on ticking out moments which never before

have been and never will be again! It would be such a reward for their

patience; and I should like my watch to know how often I've thanked it

lately for the splendid moments it has given me.

Some of those I had in Verona (no thanks to the Prince!) have really

helped to develop my soul, and it used to need developing badly, poor

dear; I see that now, though I didn't then. I never thought much about

the development of souls, except that one must try hard to be good and

do one's duty. But now I begin dimly to see many things, as if I caught

glimpses of them, far away, and high up on some of the snowy

mountain-tops we pass.

Must one live through several incarnations, I wonder, for true

development? Are some people great-minded because they have gone through

many such phases, and are the wondrous geniuses of the world--such as

Shakspere--the most developed of all? Then the poor commonplace or

stupid people, who never have any real thoughts of their own, are they

the undeveloped souls who haven't had their chance yet? If they are, how

kind those who have gone further ought to be to them, and what generous

allowances they ought to make, instead of being impatient, and pleased

with themselves because they are cleverer.

I think I should like to send whole colonies of those poor "beginners"

to Italy to live for a while, because it might give them a step up for

their next phase. As for myself, I'm going further every day, almost as

fast, I hope, as the automobile goes.

"She," as the Chauffeulier affectionately calls her, went especially

fast and well the morning we swept out of Verona. There was an

entrancing smell of Italy in the air. There is no other way to describe

it--it is that and nothing else.

As long as Verona was still within sight, I kept looking back, just as

you drink something delicious down to the last drop, when you know there

can be no dregs. Only to see how the town lay at the foot of the

mountains of the north, was to understand its powers of defence, and its

importance to the dynasties and princes of the past. With Mr.

Barrymore's help, I could trace one line of fortification after another,

from the earliest Roman, through Charlemagne and the Scaligers, down to

the modern Austrian.

No wonder that Verona was the first halting-place for the tribes of

Germans, pouring down from their cold forests in the north to cross the

Alps and rejoice in the sunshine of Italy! For Verona's nearness to the

north and her striking difference to the north impressed me sharply, as

a black line of shadow is cut out by the sun. Up a gap in the dark

barrier of mountains I gazed where Mr. Barrymore pointed, towards the

great Brenner Pass, leading straight to Innsbruck through Tyrol. How

close the northern nations lay, yet in the warm Italian brightness how

far away they seemed.

But soon Verona disappeared, and we were speeding along a level road

with far-off purple peaks upon our left, and away in front some floating

blue shapes which it thrilled me to hear were actually the Euganean

Hills. The Chauffeulier set them to music by quoting from Shelley's

"Lines Written in Dejection in the Euganean Hills"--a sweet

old-fashioned title of other days, and words so beautiful that for a

moment I was depressed in sympathy--though I couldn't help feeling that

_I_ should be happy in the Euganean Hills. They called across the plain

with siren voices, asking me to come and explore their fastnesses of

blue and gold, but Aunt Kathryn couldn't understand why. "They're not

half so imposing as lots of mountains we've passed," she said. "And

anyway, I think the beauty of mountains is overestimated. What are they

to admire so much, anyhow, when you think of it, more than flat places?

They are only great lumps at best."

"Well," replied Sir Ralph, "if it comes to that, what's the sea but a

big wet thing?"

"And what are people but a kind of superior ant, and the grandest

palaces but big anthills?" Beechy chimed in. "I've often thought,

supposing there were--well, Things, between gods and men, living here

somewhere, invisible to us as we are to lots of little creatures, what

kind of an idea _would_ They get of us and our ways? They'd be always

spying on us, of course, and making scientific observations, as we do on

insects. I used to believe in Them, and be awfully afraid, when I was

younger, because I used to think all the accidents and bad things that

happened might be due to Their experiments. You see They'd be wondering

why we did certain things; why lots of us all run to one place--like

Venice, or any show city--instead of going to another nest of anthills;

or why we all crowded into one anthill (like a church or theatre) at a

particular time. So a theatre-fire would be when They'd touched the

anthill with one of their cigars, to make the ants run out. Or a volcano

would have an eruption because They'd poked the mountain with a great

pin to see what would happen. Or when we're cut or hurt in any way, it's

because They've marked us to know one from the other, as we run about. I

do hope They're not thinking about _us_ now, or They'll drop something

and smash the automobile."

"Oh, don't, Beechy! You make my blood run cold!" cried Aunt Kathryn. "Do

let's talk of something else quickly. How gracefully the vines are

trained here, draped along those rows of trees in the meadows. It's much

prettier than ordinary vineyards. You might imagine fairies playing tag

under these arbours."

"Or fauns chasing nymphs," said Sir Ralph. "No doubt they did a few

years ago and caught them too."

"I'm glad they don't now," replied Aunt Kathryn, "or this would be no

fit place for ladies to motor."

But I wasn't glad, for the whole country was one wide background for a

pre-Raphaelite picture, and the mountains to which Aunt Kathryn had

applied so insulting a simile were even grander in size and nobler in

shape than before. We had seen many old châteaux (though never a

surfeit), but the best of all had been reserved for to-day. Far away on

our left, as we drove towards Padua, it rose above the little town that

crawled to the foot of the castle's hill to beg protection; and it was

exactly like a city painted by Mantegna or Carpaccio, Mr. Barrymore

said. Up the hill ran the noblest and biggest wall that an Old Master's

imagination could have conceived. Many men might walk on it abreast; and

at every few yards it bristled with sturdy watch-towers, not ruined, but

looking as ready to defy the enemy to-day as they were six hundred years

ago. The culmination was the castle itself, so magnificently

proportioned, so worthily proud of its place, that it seemed as if the

spirit of the Middle Ages were there embodied, gazing down in haughty

resignation upon a new world it did not even wish to understand.

The name of the castle was Soave; but when I heard that nothing

startling enough to please me had happened there, I wouldn't know its

history, for my fancy was equal to inventing one more thrilling. There

was plentiful sensation, though, in the stories the Chauffeulier could

tell of Napoleon's battles and adventures in this neighbourhood. I

listened to them eagerly, especially to that which covered his falling

into a marsh while fighting the Austrians, and standing there, unable to

get out, while the battle of Arcole raged around him. We were at the

point of the rescue and the victory of the French, when we arrived at

another gateway, another octroi, another city, to enter which was like

driving straight into an old, old picture.

In a long street of palaces, all with an elusive family resemblance to

one another, we paused for consultation. This was Vicenza, the

birthplace and beloved town of Palladio; these palaces with fronts

crusted with bas relief; these Corinthian pillars, these Arabesque

balconies, these porticoes that might have been stolen from Greek

temples, all had been designed by Palladio the Great. And the beautiful

buildings seemed to say pensively, like lovely court ladies whose day is

past, "We are not what we were. Time has changed and broken us, it is

true; but even so we are worth seeing."

It was that view which our Chauffeulier urged, but Aunt Kathryn was for

going on without a stop, until Sir Ralph said, "It's not patriotic of

you to pass by. Palladio built your Capitol at Washington, and all the

fine old colonial houses you admire so much in the East."

"Dear me, did he?" exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "Why, I never heard of him."

"Moray doesn't mean his words to be taken undiluted," said Mr.

Barrymore. "If it hadn't been for Palladio, there would have been no

Inigo Jones and no Christopher Wren, therefore if you'd had a Capitol at

all, it wouldn't be what it is now. And to understand the colonial

architecture of America, you have to go back to Palladio."

"Well, here we are at him," sighed Aunt Kathryn. "But I hope we won't

have to get _out_?"

Mr. Barrymore laughed. "The Middle Ages revisited, _en automobile_!

However, I'll do my best as showman in the circumstances."

So he drove us into a splendid square, where Palladio was at his

grandest with characteristic façades, galleries, and stately colonnades.

Then, slowly, through the street of palaces and out into the open

country once more--a rich country of grain-fields (looking always as if

an unseen hand softly stroked their silver hair) and of hills swelling

into a mountainous horizon. There was a bright little flower-bordered

canal too, and I've grown fond of canals since the neighbourhood of

Milan, finding them as companionable as rivers, if more tame. Indeed,

they seem like rivers that have gone to live in town, where they've

learned to be a bit stilted and mechanical in manner.

The farmhouses, standing but a short distance back from the level of the

road, were manorial in a queer way; two or three of them, exquisite old

things, their great roofed balconies covered with ivy and blossoming

creepers. The women we met were pretty, too--so pretty often that, as

Sir Ralph said, it wouldn't have been safe for them to walk out in the

feudal ages, as they would promptly have been kidnapped by the nearest

seignior. We might have guessed that we were not far out from Venice by

the gorgeous Titian hair of the peasant children playing by the wayside,

or a copper coil twisted above a girl's dark eyes.

"How long a time shall we spend in Padua, Countess?" asked the

Chauffeulier as we came within sight of a gateway, some domes and

campanili.

"Oh, don't let's make up our mind till we get there," replied Aunt

Kathryn comfortably.

"But we are there," said he. "In another minute the little men of the

_dazio_ will be tapping our bags as a doctor taps his patient's lungs."

Padua! Each time that we actually arrived in one of these wonderful old

places, it was an electric shock for me. I had to shake myself,

mentally, to make it seem true. But if it was like a dream to enter the

place of Petruchio's love story, what would it be by-and-by--oh, a very

quick-coming by-and-by--to see Venice? I hardly dared let my thoughts go

on to that moment for fear they should get lost in it, and refuse to

come back. Sufficient for the day was the Padua thereof.

Not so beautiful as Verona, still the learned and dignified old city had

a curiously individual charm of its own, which I felt instantly. I loved

the painted palaces, especially those where most of the paint had worn

off, leaving but a lovely face, or some folds of a velvet robe, or a

cardinal's hat to hint its story to the imagination. The old arcaded

streets were asleep, and grass sprouted among the cobbles. Where they

followed the river we had glimpses of gardens and arbours backed with

roses, or an almond tree--like a rosy bride leaning on a

soldier-lover's neck--peeped at us, side by side with a dark ilex, over

a high brick wall.

"How long _ought_ we to stay in Padua?" Aunt Kathryn deigned to ask, as

if in delayed answer to the Chauffeulier's question, when he helped her

out of the car at the Stella d'Oro, where we were to lunch.

"A week," said Mr. Barrymore, his eyes twinkling.

Her face fell, and he took pity.

"If we weren't motor maniacs," he went on. "In that case we would have

come here on a solemn pilgrimage to do full justice to the adorable

Giotto, to the two best churches--not to be surpassed anywhere--and the

dozen and one other things worth seeing. But as we are mad we shall be

able to 'do' Padua, and satisfy our consciences though not our hearts,

in three hours. My one consolation in this deplorable course, lies in

the thought that it will make it possible to give you your first sight

of Venice between sunset and moonrise."

Beechy clapped her hands, and my heart gave a throb. Somehow, my eyes

happened to meet Mr. Barrymore's. But I must not get into the habit of

letting them do that, when I'm feeling anything deeply. I can't think

why it seems so natural to turn to him, as if I'd known him always; but

then we have _all_ got to be great friends on this trip, and know each

other better than if we'd been meeting in an ordinary way for a year.

All except the Prince. I leave him out of that statement, as I would

leave him out of everything concerning me nearly, if I could. I believe

that _none_ of us know him, or what is in his mind. But sometimes

there's a look in his eyes if one glances up suddenly, which would

almost frighten one, if it were not silly and melodramatic. That is the

only way in which he has troubled me since the horrid little incident at

Juliet's tomb--with these occasional, strange looks; and as he wrote me

a note of apology for his bad conduct then, I ought to forgive and

forget.

The hotel where we lunched was not in a quaint riverside street, but in

a square so modern it was hard to realize for the moment that we were

in the oldest city of Northern Italy, dating from before Roman days.

However, the Stella d'Oro was old enough to satisfy us, and I should

have been delighted with the nice Italian dishes Mr. Barrymore knew so

well how to order, if I hadn't been longing to rush off with a bit of

bread in my hand, not to waste a Paduan moment on so dull a deed as

eating.

It was only twelve when we arrived, and before one we were out of the

huge, cool dining-room, and in the May sunlight again. The Prince was

with us; had been just ahead of us, or just behind us, all through the

journey from Verona. But I thought by keeping close to Aunt Kathryn and

Beechy there would be no danger that he would trouble me. Unfortunately,

the pattern of our progress arranged itself a little differently from my

plan.

All was simple enough in the churches, which we visited first, not to

give them time to close up for their afternoon siesta. Mr. Barrymore was

of the party, and we all listened to him--the Prince because he must, we

others because we wished--while he ransacked his memory for bits of

Paduan history, legend or romance. He showed us the Giottos (which he

had done well to call adorable) at the Madonna of the Arena; he took us

to pay our respects to St. Anthony of Padua (that dear, obliging Saint

who gives himself so much trouble over the lost property of perfect

strangers) in his extraordinary and well-deserved Basilica of bubbly

domes and lovely cloisters. He guided us to Santa Giustina, where I

would stop at the top of the steps, to pet two glorious old red marble

beasts which had crouched there for four centuries. One of them--the

redder of the two--had been all that time wrestling with an

infinitesimal St. George whom he ought to have polished off in a few

hours; while the other--the one with an unspeakable beard under his chin

and teeth like the gearing of our automobile--had been engaged for the

same period in eating a poor little curly lion.

The inside of the church--too strongly recommended by Baedeker to

commend itself to me--made me feel as if I had eaten a lemon water-ice

before dinner, on a freezing cold day; and it was there that the

Chauffeulier departed to get ready the motor-car. There it was, too,

that the pattern disarranged itself.

When we had finished looking at a splendid Paolo Veronese, we hurried

out into the Prato della Valle (which has changed its name to something

else not half so pretty, though more patriotic), and Sir Ralph took

Beechy away, so that Aunt Kathryn and I were left to the Prince. He

hardly talked to her at all, which hurt her feelings so much that she

turned suddenly round, and said she must speak to Beechy.

I could have cried, for the piazza was so beautiful that I wanted some

one congenial with me, to whom I could exclaim about it. It was girdled

by a belt of clear water, with four stone bridges and a double wall on

which stood a goodly company of noble gentlemen. There was the history

of Padua's greatness perpetuated in marble--charming personages, one and

all, if you could believe their statues, and it would have seemed

treacherous not to. Each stood to be admired or revered in the attitude

most expressive of his profession: Galileo pointing up, graceful,

spiritual, enthusiastic; a famous bishop blessing his flock; some great

poet dreaming over a book--his own, perhaps, just finished; and so on,

all along the happy circle of writers, priests, scientists, soldiers,

artists. I felt as if I wanted to know them--those faithful friends of

all who love greatness, resting now in each others' excellent society,

their sole reflection those in the watery mirror.

But Prince Dalmar-Kalm thought himself of importance even in this king's

garden. "Did you get my letter?" he asked. "And do you forgive me?" he

said. "And will you trust me, and not be unkind, now that I've promised

to think of you only as a friend?" he persisted.

I didn't see why he should look upon me even as a friend; but a cat may

look at a king, if it doesn't fly up and scratch; so why not a prince at

an American girl? To save argument and not to be unchristian, I pledged

myself to some kind of superficial compact almost before I knew. When it

was done, it would have been too complicated to undo again; and so I let

it go.

XX

A CHAPTER IN FAIRYLAND

"Nobody can ever quite know Venice who goes by rail from Padua," said

the Chauffeulier to me, when we had started in the car. "The sixteen

miles of road between the two places is a link in Venetian history, and

you'll understand what I mean without any explanation as you pass

along."

This made me post my wits at the windows of my eyes, and tell them not

to dare sleep for an instant, lest I should disappoint expectations.

But, after all, the meaning I had to understand was not subtle, though

it was interesting.

The way was practically one long street of time-worn palaces and

handsome villas which had once been the summer retreats of the rich

Venetians; and I guessed it without being told. I guessed, too, that the

owners came no more or seldom; that they were not so rich as they had

been, or that, because of railways and automobiles, it was easier and

more amusing to go further afield. But what I didn't know without

telling was that the proprietors had been accustomed, in the good old

leisurely days, to step into their gondolas in front of their own

palaces in Venice and come up the Brenta to their summer homes without

setting foot to ground.

If I hadn't been told, too, that the Brenta was a river big in Venetian

history if not in size, I should have taken it for one of my favourite

canals, with its slow traffic of lazy barges, and its hundred canals

crossing it with long green arms that stretched north and south to the

horizon. But at Stra I must have respected it in any case; and it was

near Stra, also, that we passed the most important palace of any on that

strange, flat road. The very garden wall told that here was a house

which must have loomed large in historic eyes, and through magnificent

gateways we caught flashing glimpses of a noble building in a neglected

park.

"It belonged to the Pisani, a famous family of Venice," said the

Chauffeulier as we sailed by. "But Napoleon took it--as he took so many

other good things in this part of the world--and gave it to his stepson

Eugène Beauharnais."

"I've never thought about Napoleon in connection with Venice, somehow,"

I said.

"But you will, when your gondola takes you under the huge palace where

he lived," he answered.

"Talking of gondolas, I forgot to tell you what a nice plan the Prince

has for us," said Aunt Kathryn, with the air of breaking news. "As soon

as I mentioned at what time you had arranged to leave Padua, he said he

would telegraph to some dear friends of his at Venice, the Conte and

Contessa Corramini, to send their beautiful gondola to meet us at Mestre

(wherever that is) so that we needn't go into Venice by train across the

bridge. Isn't that lovely of him?"

No one would have answered if it hadn't been for Mr. Barrymore. He said

that it was a very good plan indeed, and would be pleasanter for us than

the one he had made, which he'd meant for a surprise. He had telegraphed

from Padua to the Hotel Britannia, where we would stay, ordering

gondolas to the tram-way station in Mestre to save our sneaking into

Venice by the back-door. Now those gondolas would do very well for our

luggage, while the party of five made the journey more luxuriously.

"Party of six, you mean, unless the Prince has had an accident," amended

Beechy.

"No; for I shan't be with you. I must drive the car to the garage at

Mestre, and see that she's all right. Moray'll be with you to arrange

everything at the Britannia, which you'll find one of the nicest places

in the world, and I'll come when I can. Now, here's the turning for

Mestre, and you must look for something interesting on the sky-line to

the right, before long."

I couldn't help being disappointed, because I'd wanted the Chauffeulier

to be with us when I saw Venice first; but I couldn't say that; and I'm

afraid he thought, as everybody was silent, that nobody cared.

There was nothing to show the turning to Mestre, except a small tablet

that we might easily have missed; and the road was laughably narrow,

running along a causeway with a deep ditch on either hand. Aunt Kathryn

was so afraid that a horse would come round one of the sharp bends

walking on its hind legs, that she was miserable, but I trusted Mr.

Barrymore and enjoyed the country--real country now, with no more

palaces, villas, or beautiful arcaded farmhouses.

The distance was hidden by long, waving grasses, over which the blue

line of the Corinthian Alps seemed to hover like a cloud. There was a

pungent smell of salt and of seaweed in the air, that meant the nearness

of the lagoon--and Venice. Then, suddenly, the "something" Mr. Barrymore

had told us to look for, grew out of the horizon--dim and mysterious,

yet not to be mistaken; hyacinth-blue streaks that were pinnacles and

campanili, bubbles that were domes, floating between the gold of the

sunset and the grey-green of the tall grass, for no water was visible

yet.

"Venice!" I whispered; but though Beechy and Aunt Kathryn each cried:

"Oh, there it is! _I_ saw it first!" they were so absorbed in a

discussion as to what the Prince's friends ought to be called, and they

soon lost interest in the vision.

"Conte! It's like Condy's Fluid!" said Beechy. "I won't call him

'Conte.' I should laugh in his face. If plain Count isn't good enough

for him, and Countess for her, I shall just say 'You'--so there!"

Soon we saw a great star-shaped fortress as we ran into a town, which

was Mestre; and at the same time we lost shadow-Venice. Passing a

charming villa set back behind an avenue of cypresses and plane trees

that gave an effect of dappling moonlight even in full day, some one in

the tall gateway waved his hand.

"By Jove, it's Leo Bari, the artist!" exclaimed Sir Ralph. "I forgot his

people lived here. I know him well; he comes to the Riviera to paint. Do

slow down, Terry."

So "Terry" slowed down, and a handsome, slim young man ran up, greeting

Sir Ralph gaily in English. He was introduced to us, and his sister, a

lovely Italian girl with Titian hair, was invited to leave the becoming

background of the gateway to make our acquaintance.

They were interested in the details of our tour, especially when they

heard that, after a week in Venice, we were going into Dalmatia.

"Why, I'm going down to Ragusa to paint," said he. "I've been before,

but this time I take my sister Beatrice. She paints too. We go by the

Austrian Lloyd to-morrow. Perhaps we see you there?"

"Have you ever been down as far as Cattaro?" asked Aunt Kathryn, from

whose tongue the names of Dalmatian towns fall trippingly, since she

"acquired" a castle and a title there.

"Oh, yes, and to Montenegro," replied the artist.

"And do you remember the houses of the neighbourhood?" went on Aunt

Kathryn.

"It is already but two years I was there, so a house would have to be

young for me not to remember," replied the young man, unconscious of the

funny little twist of his English.

"I am thinking of a very old house; Slosh--er--the Castle of Hrvoya.

Have you seen it?"

"Ah, that old ruin!" exclaimed the artist. "I seen it, yes. But there is

not more much Schloss Hrvoya to see, only the rock for it to stand."

Poor Aunt Kathryn! I was sorry for her. But she bore the blow well, and,

after all, it's the title, not the castle for which she cares

most--that, and the right to smear everything with crowns.

"Perhaps I'll ask you to paint Hrvoya for me some day," she said. But

afterwards, when we had bidden the handsome brother and sister _au

revoir_, she remarked that she was afraid Mr. Bari hadn't an artistic

eye.

The good-byes said, we swept through the picturesque town to make up for

lost time, and presently encountered a little electric tram running

seaward on a causeway. We followed over a grass-grown road, and suddenly

found Venice again, so near that we could actually distinguish one

building from another. Beyond a broad stretch of water the dream city

floated on the sea.

"Look; I did this for _you_, so that you would go into Venice in a way

worthy of yourself," the Prince murmured in my ear, when the car had

stopped, joining his which was waiting. He waved his hand towards a

wonderful gondola, with a gesture such as Aladdin's Genie might have

used to indicate the magic palace. The glossy black coat of the

swan-like thing brought out the full value of the rich gold ornaments. A

long piece of drapery trailed into the water behind, and two gondoliers,

like bronze statues dressed in dark blue, crimson, and white, stood up

tall and erect against a background of golden sea and sky.

They helped us in, hat in hand; and not the Chauffeulier's absence nor

the Prince's presence could spoil for me the experience that followed.

Sunk deep in springy cushions, I half sat, half lay, while the bronze

statues swayed against the gold, softly plying their long oars, and

wafting me--_me_--to Venice.

I felt as if I were moving from the wings of a vast theatre onto the

stage to play a heroine's part. Evening bells, chanting a paen to the

sunset, floated across the wide water faint as spirit-chimes, and they

were the _leitmotif_ for my entrance.

"What a shame to be in motoring things!" I said to Beechy. "Women should

have special gondola dresses; I see that already--a different one each

day. I should like to have a deep crimson gown and a pale green

one--lilac too, perhaps, and sunrise-pink, all made picturesquely, not

in any stiff modern way."

"The costume of your Sisterhood would be pretty in a gondola," Beechy

answered. And again that coldness fell upon me which I always feel at a

reminder, intentional or unintentional, of the future. But the chill was

gone in a moment--lost in the luminous air, which had a strange

brilliancy, as if reflected from a stupendous mirror. I had never seen

anything even remotely resembling it before. It was as though we were

living inside a great opal, like flies in amber. And it seemed that in a

world so wonderful everything one did, or looked, or thought, ought to

be wonderful too, lest it should be out of tune with all surrounding

beauty.

Sea and sky were of one colour, except that the sea appeared to be on

fire underneath its glassy surface. The violet sky was strewn with blown

rose-petals and golden feathers; the tiny waves were of violet ruffled

with rose and gold, and spattered with jewelled sparks which might be

flashes from a Doge's vanished ring.

In the distance, sails of big ships were beaten into gold leaf by the

sinking sun; and nearer, there were other sails bright as flowers--a sea

picture-gallery of Madonnas, of arrow-wounded hearts, of martyred

saints, or bright-robed earthly ladies.

We were rowing straight into the sunset, straight into fairy-land, and I

knew it; but--what would happen when the rose-and-golden glory had

swallowed us up?

The sparkle of the water and air got into my blood, and I felt that it

must be sparkling too, like champagne. I was more alive than I had ever

been when I was on earth; for of course this was not earth--this Venice

to which I was going.

No other road but this water-road could have consoled me for the thought

that there would be no more motoring for a week. And clearly it was a

road of which it was necessary for the gondoliers to know every

oar-length; for it was defined by stakes, standing up out of the lagoon

singly, or gathered into clusters like giant bunches of asparagus.

Turning my back to the arched railway bridge, which accompanied us too

far, I looked only at sky and water, and at Venice rising from the sea.

The tide was running out, the Prince said (among other chatterings,

while I wished everybody woven in a magic spell of silence) and the

gondola made swift progress, rocking lightly like a shell, over the

bright ripples of the lagoon.

The nearer we drew to Venice the more like a vision of enchantment did

the city seem. Not a sound came to us, for the music of the bells had

died. All was still as in a dream--for in dreams, does one ever hear a

sound? I think I never have. And now the gold had faded from the clouds,

leaving them pink and violet, transparent as gauze, through which the

rising moon sifted silver dust. How could the others talk? I did not

understand.

Aunt Kathryn was saying, "If I hire a gondolier, I want to get a

singer." As if he were a sewing-machine, or a canary-bird! And Beechy

was complaining that she felt "very funny;" she believed the motion of

the gondola was making her seasick, just as she used to be in her

cradle, when she was too young to protest except by a howl.

It was a relief to my feelings when we turned out of the wide lagoon

into a canal, for then they did at least speak of the scene around them,

asking questions about the tall palaces that walled us in; who lived

here; who lived there; what was the name or history of that?

The odour of seaweed was more pungent, and there was a smell of water

mingling with it too; something like fresh cucumbers, and the roots of

flowers when they have just been pulled out of the earth. I could not

have believed that water could have such clearness and at the same time

hold so many colours, as the water in this, my first canal of Venice. It

was like a greenish mirror, full of lights, and wavering reflected tints

from the crumbling palaces whose old bricks, mellow pink, gold, and

purple, showed like veins through the skin of peeling stucco. Down

underneath the shining mirror, one could see the old marble steps,

leading up to the shut mystery of water gates. There were shimmering

gleams of pearly white and ivory yellow, under beardy trails of moss old

as the marble out of which it grew. And over high walls, delicate

branches of acacia and tamarisk beckoned us, above low-hung drapery of

wistaria, that dropped purple tassels to the lapping water's edge.

So we wound through one narrow, palace-walled Rio after another, until

Venice began to seem like a jewelled net, with its carved precious

stones intricately strung on threads of silver; and then suddenly, to my

surprise, we burst into a great canal.

I saw a bridge, which I knew from many pictures must be the Rialto, but

there was no disappointment, no flatness in the impression of having

seen this all before, for not the greatest genius who ever lived could

paint Venice at her every day best. Palace after palace; and by-and-by a

church with a front carved in ivory by the growing moonlight, thrown up

against a background of rose.

"Palladio, it must be!" I cried.

"Yes; it's San Georgio Maggiore, Terry Barrymore's favourite church in

Venice," said Sir Ralph, who had been almost as silent as I. "And here

we are at the Hotel Britannia."

"Why, it has a garden!" exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "I never thought of a

garden in Venice."

"There are several of the loveliest in Italy," replied Sir Ralph. "But

the Britannia's the only hotel that has one."

"My friend's palazzo has a courtyard garden with a wonderful old marble

well-head, and beautiful statues," said the Prince. "He and his wife are

coming to call on you to-morrow, and you will have the opportunity of

thanking them for their gondola. Also, they will probably invite you to

leave the hotel, and visit them during the rest of your stay, as they

are very hospitable."

"I'll wager you won't want to leave the Britannia, once you are settled

there," said Sir Ralph quickly. "It's the most comfortable hotel in

Venice, and Terry and I have wired for rooms with balconies overlooking

the Grand Canal, and the garden. There isn't a palace going that I

would forsake the Britannia for."

By this time the gondola had slipped between some tall red posts, and

brought us to the steps of the hotel. I was glad that they were marble

steps and that the house had once been a palace, otherwise I should not

have felt I was making the most of Venice.

If I live to be a hundred (one of the Sisters is close on eighty) I

shall never forget that first night in the City of the Sea.

It was good to see Mr. Barrymore back again for dinner in the big red

and gold, brightly frescoed dining-room; and it was he who suggested

that we should have coffee in the garden, at a table on a balcony built

over the water, and then go out in gondolas.

We hired three; and as there are only two absolutely delightful seats in

a gondola, I was trembling lest the Prince should fall to my unlucky

lot, when Aunt Kathryn called to him, "Oh, do sit with me, please. I

want to ask about your friends who are coming to see us." So of course

he went to her, and Sir Ralph jumped in with Beechy; therefore the

Chauffeulier was obliged to be nice to me, whether he liked or not. We

all kept close together, and soon the three gondolas, following many

others, grouped round a lighted music-barge like a pyramid of

illuminated fruit floating on the canal.

Either the voices were sweet, or they had the effect of being sweet in

the moonlight on the water; but the airs they sang got strangely tangled

with the songs in other barges, so that I longed to unwind one skein of

tunes from another, and wasn't sorry to steal away into the silence at

last.

We were not the only ones who flitted. The black forms of gondolas moved

soundlessly hither and thither on the surface of the dark lagoon, their

single lights like stars in the blue darkness.