When he came back from having conducted her to the waterside, he
was followed by Balzatore and Rampicante. Rampicante leaped upon his
shoulder, rubbed his bristly moustaches approvingly against his cheek,
curled his tail about his collar, and, sublimely indifferent to any
one's mood but his own, purred an egoist's satisfaction. Balzatore sat
down before him, resting his long pointed muzzle on his knee and looked
up into his face from alert, troubled, wistful eyes. “What is the
matter? What is it that's worrying you?” they asked. For Balzatore knew
that his master was not happy.
No, his master was not happy. All round him were the light, the lucent
colour, the shimmering warmth of Venice in early autumn, woven together
in a transparent screen of beauty. The palaces opposite glowed pale
gold, pale rose, pale amethyst, in the sun; the water below was dull
blue-green and glassy, shot with changing reds and purples, like dark
mother-of-pearl; the sky above was like blue-royal velvet; and where
he sat, on his marble balcony, amid its ancient, time-worn carvings and
traceries, all was cool blue shadow. But I doubt if he saw any of these
things. What he saw was the face of Ruth Adgate, that odd, pretty,
witty, frank, clear face of hers, those clear frank eyes, with their
glint of red, their hint of inner laughter. He saw also the brown,
lined, bony, good-humoured, clever, wholesome face of Harry Pontycroft,
and the fair, soft, friendly face of Ponty's sister. The charge against
these people was very trifling, if you will: it implied no devastating
moral turpitude, but it was more ignominious than far graver charges
might have been: it implied such petty aims, such sordid doings. To buy
“social influence”--to sell services that should in their nature be the
spontaneous offerings of kindness,--frequently indeed as one had heard
of this branch of commerce, what, when it came to an actual transaction,
could be on the part of buyer and seller more contemptible? Bertram
vowed in his soul, “No, I don't believe it, I won't believe it.” And
yet, for all his firm unfaith, he was not happy. A feeling of malaise,
of disgust, almost of physical nausea, possessed him. Oh, why was every
one so eager to rub the bloom from the peach? “The worst of it is that
Mrs. Wilberton is not a malicious woman,” he said. “She's worldly,
frivolous, superficial, anything you like, but not malicious. If one
could only dispose of her as malicious, her words wouldn't stick.” And
again, by and by, “After all, it's none of my business,--why should
I take it to heart?” But somehow he did take it to heart; so that, at
last, “Bah!” he cried, “I must go out and walk it off--I must get rid of
the nasty taste of it.”
He went out to walk it off, Balzatore scouting a zig-zag course before
him, down narrow alleys, over slender bridges. He went out to walk
it off, and he walked into the very arms of it. In the multitude of
wayfarers--beggars, hawkers, soldiers, priests, and citizens; English
tourists, their noses in Baedeker, Dalmatian sailors, piratical-looking,
swartskinned, wearing their crimson fezes at an angle that seemed a
menace; bare-legged boys, bare-headed girls (sometimes with hair of
the proper Venetian red); women in hats, and women in mantillas--in
the vociferous, many-hued multitude that thronged the Mercerie, he met
Stuart Seton.
Do you know Stuart Seton? He is a small, softly-built, soft-featured,
pale, kittenish-looking man, with softly-curling hair and a soft little
moustache, with a soft voice and soft languorous manners. A woman's man,
you guess at your first glimpse of him, a women's pet; a man whom women
will fondle and coddle, and send on errands, and laugh at to his face,
and praise to other men; a man, for he has the unhallowed habit of using
scent, who actually seems to smell of boudoirs. Bertram did not like
him, and now, at their conjunction, stiffened instantly, from the fellow
mortal, into the great personage.
“I was on my way to call on you,” said Seton, softly, languidly.
“I am unfortunate in not being at home,” returned Bertram, erect, aloof.
“I wanted to get you to give me an evening to dine,” Seton explained. “I
am at the Britannia, and I have some friends there I'd like to present
to you.”
“Ah?” said Bertram, his head very much in the air. “Who are your
friends?”
“Only two,” said Seton. “One is Lady Dor, a charming woman, sister of
Harry Pontycroft, and the other is Pontycroft's Faithful John--a very
amusing gel named Adgate.”
Faithful John? The phrase was novel to Bertram, and struck him as
unpleasant. “Pontycroft's _what?_” he asked, rather brusquely.
“Yes,” drawled Seton, undisturbed. “It's quite the joke of the period,
in England. She is one of those preposterously rich Americans, you
know,--hundred and fifty thousand a year, and that sort of thing. Pooty
too, and clever, with a sense of humour. But she's gone and fallen
desperately in love with poor old Harry Pontycroft, and when he's
present, upon my word, she eyes him exactly as a hungry dog eyes a bone.
Which must make him feel a trifle queerish, seeing that he's twenty
years her senior, and by no means a beauty, and not at all in the
marrying line. If he were, you can trust the British mamma to have
snapped him up long before this. So she worships him from afar with a
hopeless, undying flame. Poor old Ponty! Most fellows, of course, would
think themselves in luck, but Ponty has all the tin he knows what to
do with, and a wife would suit his book about as well as a tame white
elephant. He is dog-in-the-manger in spite of himself. No others need
apply.”
Bertram passed his hands across his brow, asking the spirits of the air,
I daresay, where is truth? He passed his hand across his brow, while his
lips uttered a kind of guttural and enigmatic _Mumph._
“There was Newhampton, for instance,” Seton complacently babbled on,
“the little Duke. Of course, with her supplies, she's had more or less
the whole unmarried peerage after her, to pick and choose from; but she
never turned a hair till Newhampton offered himself. Then she regularly
broke down, and blew the gaff. A Duke! Well, a Duke's a Duke, and human
nature couldn't stand it. She told him with tears in her eyes that he'd
given her the hardest day's work she'd ever had to do. For I'd marry
you like a shot, she said, only I'm unlucky enough to be in love with
another man. Pontycroft for a fiver, said Newhampton, who's not such a
fool as he looks. And, by Jove, if she didn't coolly up and tell him he
was right! But the fun of it is that meantime Ponty's sister comes in
for the reversion. If not the rose, she's near the rose, and she gets
the golden dew. A private portable millionaire, who loves you for your
brother and never shies at a bill, is a jolly convenient addition to a
Christian family.”
Bertram said nothing. He stood looking down the exiguous thoroughfare,
over the heads of the passers-by, a cloud of preoccupation on his
brow. Lewis Vincent, Mrs. Wilberton, and now this little cad of a
Seton--three witnesses. But where was truth?
“Anyhow,” the little cad, never scenting danger, in a minute went
blandly on, “I hope you'll give me an evening. Miss Adgate is sure to
amuse you, and Lady Dor is a person you really ought to know.”
“Thank you,” said Bertram, deliberately weighting his rudeness with a
ceremonious bow, “I don't think I should care to make their acquaintance
under your auspices.”
And therewith he resumed his interrupted walk, leaving Seton,
open-mouthed, roundeyed, to the enjoyment of a fine view of his back.
By and bye, having (to cool his anger) marched twice round the Piazza,
he entered San Marco, bidding Balzatore await his return outside. In the
sombre loveliness of one of the chapels a rosary was being said. Among
the score or so of women kneeling there, he saw, with a strange jump of
the heart, Ruth Adgate and Lady Dor.
He turned hastily away, not to spy upon their devotions. But what he had
seen somehow restored the natural sweetness of things. And the vision of
a delicate head bowed in prayer accompanied him home.