He waited for a sign from the Giudecca. He told himself that Theodosia
Barton was not done with him yet, nor he with her.
The tourist-stream, turning northward from Rome and Florence, met in
Venice a new stream of Germans. The paved passage beside the hotel
garden was alive with a cosmopolitan picnic party. Lawrence lingered
and watched; perhaps when the current set strongly to the north again,
it would carry him along with it.
He had not seen Caspar Severance. Each day of delay made it more
awkward to meet him, made the confession of disappointment more
obvious, he reflected. Each day it was easier to put out to the lagoons
for a still dream, and return when the Adriatic breeze was winding into
the heated calles. Over there, in the heavy-scented garden on the
Giudecca, lined against a purplish sea, she was resting; she had given
free warning for him to go, but she was there----.
"She holds me here in the Mare Morto, where the sea-weeds wind about
and bind."
And he believed that he should meet her somewhere in the dead lagoon,
out yonder around the city, in the enveloping gloom of the waters which
held the pearl of Venice.
So each afternoon his gondola crept out from the Fondamenta del Zattere
into the ruffling waters of the Giudecca canal, and edged around the
deserted Campo di Marte. There the gondolier labored in the viscous
sea-grass.
One day, from far behind, came the plash of an oar in the channel. As
the narrow hull swept past, he saw a hand gather in the felza curtains,
and a woman kneel to his side.
"So Bastian takes you always to the dead sea," she tossed aboard.
"Bastian might convoy other forestieri," Lawrence defended.
"Really? here to the laguna morta?" and as his gondola slid into the
channel, she added:
"I knew you were in Venice; you could not go without--another time."
"What would that bring?" he questioned her with his eyes.
"How should I know?" she answered, evasively. "Come with me out to the
San Giorgio in Alga. It is the loneliest place in Venice!"
Lawrence sat at her feet. The gondola moved on between the sea-weed
banks. Away off by Chioggia, filmy gray clouds grew over the horizon.
"Rain."
She shook her head. "For the others, landward. Those opalescent clouds
streaking the sky are merely the undertone of Venice; they are always
_here_."
"The note of sadness," he suggested.
"You thought to have ended with _me_."
She rested her head on her hands and looked at him. He preferred to
have her mention Caspar Severance.
"Whenever I was beyond your eyes, you were not quite sure. You went
back to your hotel and wondered. The wine was over strong for your
temperate nerves, and there was so much to do elsewhere!" she mocked
him.
"After all, I was a fragment. And you judged in your wise new-world
fashion that fragments were--useless."
Just ahead was a tiny patch of earth, rimmed close to the edge by
ruined walls. The current running landward drew them about the corner,
under the madonna's hand, and the gondola came to rest beside the
lichens and lizards of a crumbling wharf.
"No," she continued, "I shall not let you go so easily." One hand fell
beside his arm, figuratively indicating her thought.
"And I shall carry you off," he responded, slowly. "It lies between
you--and all, everything."
The gondolier had gone ashore. Silence had swallowed him up.
"All, myself and the others; effort, variety--for the man who loves
_you_, there is but one act in life."
"Splendid!" Her lips parted as if savoring his words.
His voice went on, low, strained to plunge his words into her heart.
"You are the woman, the curious thing that God made to stir life. You
would draw all activities to you, and through you nothing may pass.
Like the dead sea of grass you encompass the end of desire. You have
been with me from my manhood, the fata morgana that laughed at my love
of other creatures. I must meet you, I knew, face to face!"
His lips closed.
"Go on!"
"I have met you," he added, sullenly, "and should I turn away, I should
not forget you. You will go with me, and I shall hunger for you and
hate you, and you will make it over, my life, to fill the hollow of
your hand."
"To fill the hollow of my hand," she repeated softly, as if not
understanding.
"You will mould it and pat it and caress it, until it fits. You will
never reason about it, nor doubt, nor talk; the tide flows underneath
into the laguna morta, and never wholly flows out. God has painted in
man's mind the possible; and he has painted the delusions, the
impossible--and that is woman?"
"Impossible," she murmured. "Oh, no, not that!"
Her eyes compelled him; her hand dropped to his hand. Venice sank into
a gray blot in the lagoon. The water was waveless like a deep night.
"Possible for a moment," he added, dreamily, "possible as the unsung
lyric. Possible as the light of worlds behind the sun and moon.
Possible as the mysteries of God that the angels whisper----"
"The only possible," again her eyes flamed; the dark hair gleamed black
above the white face.
"And that is enough for us forever!"
V
The heavy door of the Casa Lesca swung in, admitting Lawrence to a damp
stone-flagged room. At the farther end it opened on a little cortile,
where gnarled rose-bushes were in bloom. A broken Venus, presiding over
a dusty fountain, made the centre of the cortile, and there a strapping
girl from the campagna was busy trimming the stalks of a bunch of
roses. The signorina had not arrived; Lawrence lounged against the
gunwale of a gondola, which lay on one side of the court.
A pretentious iron gate led from the cortile to the farm, where the
running vines stretched from olive-stump to trellis, weaving a mat of
undulating green. It was so quiet, here in the rear of the palace, that
one could almost hear the hum of the air swimming over the broad vine
leaves.
Lawrence, at first alert, then drowsy, reclined in the shade, and
watched the girl. From time to time she threw him a soft word of
Venetian. Then, gathering her roses, she shook them in his face and
tripped up the stairs to the palace above.
He had made the appointment without intention, but he came to fulfil it
in a tumult of energy.
_She_ must choose and _he_ arrange--for that future which troubled his
mind. But the heated emptiness of the June afternoon soothed his will.
He saw that whatever she bade, that he would do. Still here, while he
was alone, before her presence came to rule, he plotted little things.
When he was left with himself he wondered about it; no, he did not want
her, did not want it! His life was over there, beyond her, and she must
bend to that conception. People, women, anyone, this piece of beauty
and sense, were merely episodic. The sum was made from all, and greater
than all.
The door groaned, and he turned to meet her, shivering in the damp
passage. She gathered a wrap about her shoulders.
"Caspar would not go," she explained, appealingly.
"Which one is to go?" the young man began. She sank down on a bench and
turned her head wearily to the vineyard. Over the swaying tendrils of
the vine, a dark line, a blue slab of salt water, made the horizon.
"Should I know?" her face said, mutely.
"He thinks you should," she spoke, calmly. "He has been talking two
hours about you, your future, your brilliant performances----"
"That detained you!"
"He is plotting to make you a great man. You belong to the world, he
said, and, the world would have you. They need you to plan and exhort,
I believe."
"So you come to tell me--"
"Let us go out to the garden." She laid her hand reprovingly on his
arm. "We can see the pictures later."
She took his arm and directed him down the arched walk between the
vines, toward the purple sea.
"I did not realize that--that you were a little Ulysses. He warned me!"
"Indeed!"
"That you would love and worship at any wayside shrine; that the spirit
of devotion was not in you."
"And you believed?"
She nodded.
"It seemed so. I have thought so. Once a few feet away and you are
wondering!"
The young man was guiltily silent.
"And I am merely a wayside chapel, good for an idle prayer."
"Make it perpetual."
Her arm was heavy.
"Caspar wants you--away. He will try to arrange it. Perhaps you will
yield, and I shall lose."
"You mean he will make them recall me."
She said nothing.
"You can end it now." He stopped and raised her arm. They stood for a
moment, revolving the matter; a gardener came down the path. "You will
get the message tonight," she said, gloomily. "Go! The message will say
'come,' and you will obey."
Lawrence turned.
"Shall we see the pictures?"
The peasant girl admitted them to the hall, and opened, here and there,
a long shutter. The vast hall, in the form of a Latin cross, revealed a
dusky line of frescoes.
"Veronese," she murmured. Lawrence turned to the open window that
looked across the water to the piazza. Beneath, beside the quay, a
green-painted Greek ship was unloading grain. Some panting, half-naked
men were shovelling the oats.
"We might go," he said; "Caspar is probably waiting for his report. You
can tell him that he has won."
Suddenly he felt her very near him.
"No, not that way!"
"You are good to--love," she added deliberatively, placing her hands
lightly on his heart.
"You do not care enough; ah! that is sad, sad. Caspar, or denial, or
God--nothing would stand if you cared, more than you care for the
little people and things. See, I can take you now. I can say you are
mine. I can make you love--as another may again. But love me, now, as
if no other minute could ever follow."
She sighed the words.
"Here I am, to be loved. Let us settle nothing. Let us have this minute
for a few kisses."
The hall filled with dusk. The girl came back again. Suddenly a bell
began ringing.
"Caspar," she said. "Stay here; I will go."
"We will go together."
"No," she waved him back. "You will get the message. Caspar is right.
You are not for any woman for always."
"Go," he flung out, angrily.
The great doors of the hall had rattled to, leaving him alone half
will-less. He started and then returned to the balcony over the
fondamenta. In the half-light he could see her stepping into a waiting
gondola, and certain words came floating up clearly as if said to
him----
"To-morrow evening, the Contessa Montelli, at nine." But she seemed to
be speaking to her companion. The gondola shot out into the broad canal.