The long June day, Lawrence sat with the yellow cablegram before his
eyes. The message had come, indeed, and the way had been cleared.
Eleven--the train for Paris! passed; then, two, and now it was dusk
again.
Had she meant those words for him? So carelessly flung back. That he
would prove.
* * * * *
"The signorina awaits you." The man pointed to the garden, and turned
back with his smoking lamp up the broad staircase that clung to one
side of the court. Across the strip of garden lay a bar of moonlight on
the grass.
She was standing over the open well-head at the farther end where the
grass grew in rank tufts. The gloomy wall of the palace cast a shadow
that reached to the well. Just as he entered, a church-clock across the
rio struck the hour on a cracked bell.
"My friend has gone in--she is afraid of the night air," Miss Barton
explained. "Perhaps she is afraid of ghosts," she added, as the young
man stood silent by her side. "An old doge killed his wife and her
children here, some centuries ago. They say the woman walks. Are you
afraid?"
"Of only one ghost----"
"Not yet a ghost!" Indeed, her warm, breathing self threw a spirit of
life into the moonlight and gainsaid his idle words.
"I have come for you," he said, a little peremptorily. "To do it I have
lost my engagement with life."
"So the message came. You refused, and now you look for a reward. A man
must be paid!"
"I tried to keep the other engagement and could not!"
"I shall make you forget it, as if it were some silly boyish dream."
She began to walk over the moonlit grass. "I was waiting for
that--sacrifice. For if you desire _me_, you must leave the other
engagements, always."
"I know it."
"I lie in the laguna morta, and the dead are under me, and the living
are caught in my sea-weed." She laughed.
"Now, we have several long hours of moonlight. Shall we stay here?"
The young man shivered.
"No, the Lady Dogessa might disturb us. Let us go out toward Murano."
"Are you really--alive and mine, not Severance's?" he threw out,
recklessly.
She stopped and smiled.
"First you tell me that I disturb your plans; then you want to know if
I am preoccupied. You would like to have me as an 'extra' in the
subscription."
As they came out on the flags by the gondola, another boat was pushing
a black prow into the rio from the Misericordia canal. It came up to
the water-steps where the two stood. Caspar Severance stepped out.
"Caspar!" Miss Barton laughed.
"They told me you were here for dinner," he explained. He was in
evening clothes, a Roman cloak hanging from his shoulders. He looked,
standing on the steps below the other two, like an impertinent
intrusion.
"Lawrence! I thought you were on your way home."
Lawrence shook his head. All three were silent, wondering who would
dare to open the final theme.
"The Signora Contessa had a headache," Miss Barton began, nonchalantly.
Severance glanced skeptically at the young American by her side.
"So you fetched il dottore americano? Well, Giovanni is waiting to
carry us home."
Miss Barton stepped forward slowly, as if to enter the last gondola
whose prow was nuzzling by the steps.
Lawrence took her hand and motioned to his gondola.
"Miss Barton----"
Severance smiled, placidly.
"You will miss the midnight train."
The young man halted a moment, and Miss Barton's arm slipped into his
fingers.
"Perhaps," he muttered.
"The night will be cool for you," Severance turned to the woman. She
wavered a moment.
"You will miss more than the midnight train," Severance added to the
young fellow, in a low voice.
Lawrence knelt beside his gondola. He glanced up into the face of the
woman above him. "Will you come?" he murmured. She gathered up her
dress and stepped firmly into the boat. Severance, left alone on the
fondamenta, watched the two. Then he turned back to his gondola. The
two boats floated out silently into the Misericordia Canal.
"To the Cimeterio," Miss Barton said. "To the Canale Grande," Severance
motioned.
The two men raised their hats.
* * * * *
For a few moments the man and the woman sat without words, until the
gondola cleared the Fondamenta Nuova, and they were well out in the sea
of moonlight. Ahead of them lay the stucco walls of the Cimeterio,
glowing softly in the white light. Some dark spots were moving out from
the city mass to their right, heading for the silent island.
"There goes the conclusion," Lawrence nodded to the funeral boats.
"But between us and them lies a space of years--life."
"Who decided?"
"You looked. It was decided."
The city detached itself insensibly from them, lying black behind. A
light wind came down from Treviso, touching the white waves.
"You are thinking that back there, up the Grand Canal, lie fame and
accomplishment. You are thinking that now you have your fata
morgana--nothing else. You are already preparing a grave for her in
your mind!"
Lawrence took her head in his hands. "Never," he shot out the word.
"Never--you are mine; I have come all these ocean miles to find you. I
have come for an accounting with the vision that troubles man." Her
face drew nearer.
"I am Venice, you said. I am set in the mare morto. I am built on the
sea-weed. But from me you shall not go. You came over the mountains for
this."
The man sighed. Some ultimate conception of life seemed to outline
itself on the whitish walls of the Cimeterio--a question of sex. The
man would go questioning visions. The woman was held by one.
"Caspar Severance will find his way, and will play your game for you,"
she went on coaxingly. "But this," her eyes were near him, "_this_ is a
moment of life. You have chosen. There is no mine and thine."
One by one the campaniles of Venice loomed, dark pillars in the white
sky. And all around toward Mestre and Treviso and Torcello; to San
Pietro di Castello and the grim walls of the arsenal, the mare morto
heaved gently and sighed.
CHICAGO, January, 1897.