THE VENETIANS
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “VIXEN,”
“ISHMAEL,” Etc.
Stereotyped Edition
LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.
LIMITED
STATIONERS’ HALL COURT
1893
[_All rights reserved_]
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. In the City by the Sea 1
II. After-thoughts 14
III. “Fairies!” 30
IV. “The Prelude to some Brighter World” 49
V. Teatime in Arcadia 56
VI. Why should he refrain? 67
VII. He would take his Time 83
VIII. A Face in the Crowd 92
IX. “Though Love, and Life, and Death should come and go” 99
X. “As Things that are not shall these Things be” 106
XI. “One Thread in Life worth spinning” 116
XII. “One born to love you, Sweet” 132
XIII. “The Time of Lovers is Brief” 137
XIV. As a Spirit from Dream to Dream 143
XV. “Love should be Absolute Love” 151
XVI. To Live Forgotten and Love Forlorn 164
XVII. “She was more Fair than Words can say” 179
XVIII. “The Shadow passeth when the Tree shall fall” 190
XIX. “He said, ‘She has a Lovely Face’” 196
XX. Peggy’s Chance 212
XXI. “From the Evil to come” 228
XXII. “So very Wilful” 235
XXIII. The Little Rift 244
XXIV. “Poor Kind Wild Eyes so dashed with Light Quick Tears” 257
XXV. “And every Gentle Passion Sick to Death” 268
XXVI. “Closer and closer swam the Thunder-cloud” 284
XXVII. “Thou mayst be False and yet I know it not” 298
XXVIII. In the Blue Chamber 303
XXIX. “’Tis not the Same now, never more can be” 311
XXX. A Double Exile 321
XXXI. “Oh tell her, Brief is Life, but Love is Long” 325
XXXII. “A Scene of Light and Glory” 333
XXXIII. “Both together, he her God, she his Idol” 335
THE VENETIANS.
CHAPTER I.
IN THE CITY BY THE SEA.
Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging
high up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along
the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golden haze,
and all the westward-facing palace windows flashed and shone with an
illumination which the lamps and lanterns that were to be lighted after
sundown could never equal, burnt they never so merrily. It was Shrove
Tuesday in Venice, Carnival time. The sun had been shining on the city
and on the lagunes all day long. It was one of those Shrove Tuesdays
which recall the familiar proverb--
“Sunshine at Carnival,
Fireside at Easter.”
But who cares about the chance of cold and gloom six weeks hence when
to-day is fair and balmy? A hum of joyous, foolish voices echoed from
those palace façades, and floated out seaward, and rang along the
narrow Calle, and drifted on the winding water-ways, and resounded
under the innumerable bridges; for everywhere in the City by the Sea
men, women, and children were making merry, and had given themselves
up to a wild and childish rapture of unreasoning mirth, ready to
explode into loud laughter at the sorriest jokes. An old man tapped
upon the shoulder by a swinging paper lantern--a boy whose hat had
been knocked off--a woman calling to her husband or her lover across
the gay flotilla--anything was food for mirth on this holiday evening,
while the great gold orb sank in the silvery lagoon, and all the sky
yonder towards Chioggia was dyed with the crimson afterglow, and the
Chioggian fishing-boats were moving westward in all the splendour of
their painted sails.
At Danieli’s the hall and staircase, reading-room, smoking-room, and
saloons were crowded with people; English and American for the most
part, but with a sprinkling of French and German. Shrewd Yankees were
bargaining on the sea-washed steps below the hall-door with gondoliers
almost as shrewd. Quanto per la notte--tutte la notte, sul canale?
To-night the gondoliers would have it all their own way, for every one
wanted a gondola to row up and down the Grand Canal, with gaudy Chinese
lanterns, and singing men, twanging guitar or tinkling mandoline
to that tune which is almost the national melody of Venice fin de
siècle--“Funicoli, funicola.”
The dining-rooms at Danieli’s are capacious enough for all ordinary
occasions, but to-night there was not space for half the number who
wanted to dine. The waiters were flying about wildly, trying to appease
the hungry crowd with promises of tables subito, subito. But travellers
in Italy know what subito means in an Italian restaurant, and were
not comforted by these assurances. Amiable Signor Campi moved about
among his men, and his very presence gave comfort somehow, and finally
everybody had food and wine, and a din of jovial voices rose up from
the table d’hôte to the grand old rooms above, on that upper story
which is called the noble floor, a place of strange histories, perhaps,
in those stern days when these hotels were palaces.
* * * * *
The ubiquitous Signor Campi was near the door when a gondola stopped at
the bottom of the steps, and two ladies came tripping up into the hall,
followed by a young man who was evidently English, handsome, tall,
broad-shouldered, and clad in a suit of rough grey cloth, whose every
line testified to the excellence of an English tailor.
The ladies were as evidently not English, and they had a Carnival air
which was totally different from the gaiety of the American young
ladies in their neat tailor gowns, or the English ladies in their table
d’hôte silks. One wore ruby plush, with a train which trailed on the
wet steps as she came up to the door. The other wore black velvet,
with a wide yellow sash loosely knotted round a supple waist. The ruby
lady was masked, the black velvet lady dangled her lace-fringed mask
on the end of a finger, and looked boldly round the crowded hall with
her big black eyes--eyes which reflected the lamplight in their golden
splendour.
Signor Campi was at the Englishman’s side before the ladies could pass
the threshold.
“You were thinking of dining with those two ladies, sir?” he inquired,
in excellent English.
“Certainly. You can give us a private room, if you like.”
“There is not a room in the house unoccupied;” and then, in a lower
voice, Signor Campi murmured, “Quite impossible. Those ladies cannot
dine here.”
The Englishman laughed lightly.
“You are not fond of your own countrywomen, it seems, Monsieur Campi;”
and then to the hall-porter, “Keep that gondola, will you?” and then in
Italian, to the larger lady in ruby plush, who might have been mother
or aunt to the lovely girl in black velvet, “They have no room for us
anywhere. We should have to wait ages, ages for our dinner. Shall we
try a restaurant?”
“Yes, yes,” cried the girl eagerly. “Ever so much more fun. Let us go
to the Black Hat. No gha megio casa per el disnar.”
“Where is the Black Hat?”
“On the Piazza. We often dine there, la Zia and I. We shan’t want the
gondola, it is only five minutes’ walk.”
“Shall I engage him for the evening?”
“No, no. You are going to take us to the opera.”
“As you will.”
He offered the girl his arm, and left la Zia to follow him across the
hall to the door opening on to the Quay of the Slaves--that quay whose
stones are beaten nowadays chiefly by the footsteps of light-hearted
travellers drunken with the enchantment of Venice. They crossed the
bridge, the girl hanging on the young man’s arm, chatting gaily, and
holding up her long black skirt with the other hand, revealing glimpses
of feet and ankles which were far from fairy-like, feet that had been
widened by the flip-flopping shoe which the damsel had worn when she
was a lace-maker on the island of Burano.
If he wanted a good dinner--a real Venetian dinner--nowhere would he
get it better than at the sign of the Black Hat, and good wine into the
bargain, the girl told her cavalier.
They turned by the Vine Corner, and then threaded their way along the
crowded Piazzetta, whence the sacred pigeons had been banished by the
tumult of the throng. They crossed the Piazza in front of St. Mark’s
Moorish domes, and entered a low doorway under the colonnade, only a
few paces from the Torre del Orologio, with its ultramarine and gold
clock and its bronze giants to beat the time. At the end of a long,
narrow, stuffy passage, they found themselves in a low-ceiled room
where there were numerous small tables, and where the heat from the
flare of the gas, and the steam of cooked viands, was too suggestive of
the torrid zone for comfort.
The waiters were evidently devoted to the dark-eyed Si’ora in black and
yellow, for room was speedily found where there was apparently no room.
Some diners were hustled away from a snug little table in a corner by
a window, where by opening one side of the casement one might get a
breath of cool air--flavoured by sewage, but still a boon.
“May I order the dinner?” pleaded the dark eyes, smiling at the young
man in rough grey woollen, while la Zia looked about her, turning her
head to survey the groups of diners at the tables in the rear.
The waiter set a huge flask of Chiante on the table unbidden,
and stood, napkin in hand, waiting for Fiordelisa’s orders.
Fiordelisa--otherwise Lisa--was the name of the dark-eyed damsel, who
to the Englishman’s eye looked as if she had just stepped out of a
story in the Decameron.
She ordered the dinner, discussing the menu confidentially with the
waiter; she ordered, and the dishes came, and they all ate, Vansittart
being too hungry to be daintily curious as to the food set before him
after a long day on the lagoons and an afternoon on the Lido, and all
the fun and riot of the Grand Canal at sunset. He never knew of what
his dinner at the Black Hat was composed, except that he ate some
oysters and drank a pint of white wine, and helped to finish a couple
of bottles of champagne--which he ordered in lieu of the big flask of
Chiante--that they began with a frittura of minnows, and that the most
substantial dish which the brisk waiter brought them was a savoury mess
of macaroni, with shreds of meat or choppings of liver mixed up in an
unctuous gravy. Lisa was in high spirits, and ate ravenously, and drank
a good many glasses of the sparkling wine, and told him, half in broken
English and half in her Venetian dialect, of the old days when she had
worked in the lace factory, where her earnings were about seven soldi
per diem, and where she lived chiefly on polenta.
This was the sole knowledge Mr. Vansittart had of her history, since he
had only made her acquaintance three or four hours ago at the concert
hall on the Lido, where he had offered this young person and her aunt
a cup of coffee, and whence he had brought them back to Venice in his
gondola. He knew nothing of their histories and characters, cared to
know nothing, had no idea of seeing them ever again after this Carnival
day. He had taken them to his hotel without stopping to consider the
wisdom of such a course, thinking to feast them in one of those grand
upper rooms overlooking the broad sweep of water between the Quay of
the Slaves and St. George the Greater, meaning to feast them upon
Signor Campi’s best; but Signor Campi had willed otherwise, and here
they were feasting just as merrily upon a savoury mess of macaroni and
chopped liver at the sign of the Black Hat.
After the savoury dishes Fiordelisa began upon pastry, with an appetite
as of a giant refreshed. She rested her elbow on the table, and the
loose sleeve of her velveteen gown rolled back and showed the round
white arm. All the little crinkly curls danced upon her pure white
forehead and over her dancing eyes as she ate chocolate éclairs and
creamy choux to her heart’s content, while Vansittart thought what a
pretty creature she was, and what a pity Mr. Burgess or Mr. Logsdaile
was not there with palette and brushes, to fix that gay and brilliant
image upon canvas for ever.
Vansittart was not in love with this chance acquaintance of an idle
afternoon. He was only delighted with her. She amused, she fascinated
him, just as he was amused and fascinated by this enchanting city of
Venice, which had always the same charm and the same glamour for him,
come here at what season he might. She impressed him with a sense of
her beauty, just as one of those wonderful pictures in the Venetian
Academy would have done.
His heart was unmoved by this sensuous, eager, earthly loveliness.
Her vulgarity, all her words and gestures essentially of the people,
interested him, yet kept him worlds away from her.
He was rich, idle, alone in Venice, and he thought it was his right to
amuse himself to the uttermost at this Carnival season. That offer of a
cup of coffee, arising out of mutual laughter at some absurdities among
the crowd, had been the beginning of the friendliest relations.
He strolled on the loose, level sands with Lisa and her aunt, those
sands over which Byron used to ride, the poet of whose existence Lisa
had never heard, yet who had wasted lightest hours with just such
girls as Lisa. And then how could he go back to Venice alone in his
gondola and leave this black-eyed girl and her chaperon to struggle for
standing room among the crowd on the twopenny steamer, in their fine
clothes and jewels, those jewels in which lower-class Venetians love
to invest their savings? No; it was the most natural thing in life to
offer them seats in his gondola, and then to see the fun of the Grand
Canal in their company; and what young man with his note-case plethoric
with limp Italian notes, and a reserve of English bank-notes in a
close-buttoned inside pocket, could refrain from offering dinner, and
then, hearing that Lisa was pining to go to the opera, a box at that
entertainment? No sooner had she expressed her desire, while they were
on the Grand Canal, than he sent off a Venetian guide, whom he knew of
old, to engage a stage box for the evening.
Fiordelisa told him about her life at Burano, while she devoured her
pastry, the aunt listening placidly, replete with dinner and wine,
caring for nothing except that those old days were a thing of the past,
and that neither she nor her handsome niece need toil or starve any
more--not for the present, at any rate; perhaps never. La Zia was not
a woman to peer curiously into the future while the present gave her a
comfortable lodging and meat and drink.
The girl talked her Venetian, and Vansittart, who had spent most of
his holidays in Italy, and had a quick ear for dialects, was able to
understand her. Now and then she spoke English, better than he would
have expected from her youthful ignorance.
“How is it that you can talk English, Signorina mia, and how is it that
you left Burano?” he asked in Italian.
“For one and the same reason. A young English gentleman fell in love
with me, and brought my aunt and me to Venice, and is having me
educated, in order to marry me and take me to England with him.”
Vansittart did not believe in the latter half of the story, but he was
too polite to express his doubt.
“Oh, you are being educated up to our idea of the British matron,
are you, bella mia?” he said, smiling at her, as she wiped her coral
lips with the coarse serviette, and flung herself back in her chair,
satiated with cream and pastry. “And pray in what does the education
consist?”
“I am learning to play on the mandoline. A little old man with a
cracked voice comes to our lodgings twice a week to teach me--and we
sing duets, ‘La ci darem’ and ‘Sul aria.’”
“The mandoline. Ah, that is your English friend’s notion of education,”
said Vansittart, laughing. “Well, I dare say that it is as good as
Greek or Latin, or the pure science that gave Giordano Bruno such a bad
time in this very city.”
He leant back with his head in an angle of the wall, idle, amused,
interested, taking life as it seemed to him life ought to be
taken--very lightly.
He had been in Venice only a few days, days of sunshine and sauntering
in gondolas to this or the other island, to dream away an idle
afternoon. It was his third visit, and he seemed to know every stone
of the city almost as well as Ruskin--every palace front and Saracenic
window, every mouldering flight of steps, every keystone of every
bridge which he passed under almost every day with lazy motion,
drifting as the cabbage leaves and egg-shells drifted on the dark
green water. He never stayed very long anywhere, being free to wander
as he pleased at his present stage of existence, and having a dim
foreshadowing of the time when he would not be free, when he would be
bound and fettered by domestic ties, and travelling would be altogether
a different business from this casual rambling. He pictured himself at
the head of his breakfast table discussing the summer holiday with his
wife, while perhaps his mother-in-law sat by and put various spokes
into the family wheel, opposing every preference of his on principle.
He would have to marry some day, he knew. It was an obligation laid
upon him together with the family seat and comfortable income to which
he had succeeded before his two-and-twentieth birthday. The thing
would have to be done--but he meant to delay the evil hour as long as
he could, and to be monstrously exacting as to the fairy princess for
whose dear sake he should put on those domestic fetters.
He had enjoyed this particular visit to Venice with a keener relish
than either of his previous visits. Though the year was still young,
the weather had been exceptionally lovely. Sun, moon, and stars had
shed all that they have of glory and of glamour over the romantic city,
painting the smooth lagoons with a rare splendour of colouring which
changed city and sea into something supernal, unimaginable, dreamlike.
His windows at Danieli’s looked over an enchanted sea, where the great
modern Peninsular and Oriental steamer moored between the Riva and
St. George the Greater seemed an anachronism in iron. All else was
fairy-like, historic, mediæval.
The steamer was to sail for Alexandria in the afternoon, they had
told him, whenever he made any inquiry about her; but the days and
afternoons had gone, and she was still lying there, blocking out a
little bit of the opposite island and the famous church.
“And so you sing as well as play, Fiordelisa?” he asked, presently,
after a silence in which they all three smoked their cigarettes.
“Sing! I should think she did sing,” answered the aunt. “She warbles
like a nightingale. Signor Zefferino, her master, says she ought to
come out at the opera.”
Vansittart smiled. Idle flattery on the maestro’s part, no doubt;
the flattery of the small parasite who knows where the macaroni is
savouriest, and where the salad reeks with oil.
And yet, if this girl sang at all, she should sing sweetly. Those dark,
sunny eyes of hers gave promise of the artistic temperament. The tones
that came from that round, full throat, ivory white against the tawdry
black and yellow of her gown, should be rich and ripe.
He asked no questions about her English lover. Had he been ever
so little in love with her himself he would have been full of
curiosity--but for this flower of a day, this beautiful stranger, with
whom he ate and drank and made merry to-night, and whom he might never
see again, he had no serious concern. He cared not who were her friends
or followers; whether the life she lived were good or evil. She had
a fresh youthfulness, a look of almost childlike innocence, in spite
of her tousled hair and tawdry raiment, and although Signor Campi’s
keen eye had condemned her. The aunt, too, fat, common, too fine for
respectability, seemed a harmless old thing. No word of evil had come
from her lips. She had not the air of laying snares for the stranger’s
feet. She thought of nothing but the enjoyment of the moment.
“Pray, where may your Englishman be to-day?” asked Vansittart, as it
flashed upon his idle mind that there might be peril in such a city
as Venice in being seen with another man’s sweetheart. “Why didn’t he
escort you to the Lido?”
“He went to Monte Carlo a fortnight ago,” she answered. “I am afraid he
is a gambler.”
“Is he rich?”
“No, not as you English count riches. He is rich for a Venetian. He
gave la Zia and me our gowns--she chose red, I black--last Christmas.
There are few Venetians who would give such handsome presents. He is
very generous.”
“Yes, he is very generous,” echoed the aunt.
“It is time we went to the opera,” cried Fiordelisa. “I want to be
there at the beginning.”
The opera was “Don Giovanni;” the artists were third-rate; but they
sang well enough to lull la Zia into a comfortable slumber and to lift
Lisa to the seventh heaven. She sat with clasped hands, listening in a
rapture of content. She only unclasped her hands to applaud vehemently
when the house applauded. The theatre was crowded, the audience were
noisy, but Fiordelisa craned her long neck out of the box to listen,
and drank in every note with those quick ears of hers, and was perhaps
almost the only person in the Rossini Theatre that night who listened
intently: but before the second act was over the crowd and the heat had
increased to such a degree that women were fainting in the boxes, and
even Fiordelisa was resigned to leaving before “Don Giovanni” was half
done. She wanted to walk in the Piazza before the shops were shut, or
the crowd began to thin, or the bands ceased playing.
There was to be a masked ball at the same theatre on the following
night.
“Shall I take you to the ball, Lisa?” asked Vansittart, as they came
out of the heat and the glare into the cool softness of a Venetian
night.
“No, I don’t care about dancing. I only care for the opera. The girls
at Burano were mad about dancing, but I liked to hear the organ at High
Mass better than all their dances.”
Vansittart thought of bidding his new friends good night at the door
of the theatre. Had Venice not been Venice, and had there been any
vehicles in waiting, he would have put his fair companions into a
coach, paid their fare, and bade them good night for ever, without
so much as inquiring where they lived. But Venice has a romantic
unlikeness to every other city. There was no coach. To say good night
and leave them to walk home unescorted was out of the question.
“In which direction is your house, Signora?” he asked the elder lady.
“Oh, we are not going home,” cried Fiordelisa. “We are going to the
Piazza. This is the time when there will be most fun. You’ll take us,
won’t you?” she asked, slipping her hand through his arm, and boldly
taking possession of him. “Come, come, aunt, we are going to the
Piazza.”
Her feet threaded the narrow ways so swiftly that Vansittart scarcely
knew by which particular windings of the labyrinth they came to the
Bocca di Piazza, and emerged from the shadow of the pillars upon the
broad open square, all aflame with lamps and lanterns, and one roar of
multitudinous voices, squeaking punchinellos, barking dogs, blaring
trumpets, tinkling guitars. They pushed their way through the crowd,
the two women masked, each hanging on to his arm, and making progress
difficult.
The Piazza was a spectacle to remember, full of life and movement,
a military band braying out brazen music, music of Offenbach, loud,
martial, insistent, above the multifarious squeakings and shoutings,
the laughter and the clamour of the crowd. In the long colonnades the
throng pushed thickly; but Vansittart had been one of the strong men
of the ’Varsity, a thrower of hammers, a jumper of long jumps, a man
with a name that was famous at Lillie Bridge as well as at Oxford. He
parted the throng as if it had been water, and would have made his way
quickly to the brightest, largest, and gayest of the caffès, if it had
not been for Lisa, who hung back to look at the lighted shop windows,
windows that she could have seen any night of her life, but which had a
particular attraction at Carnival time.
The touters were touting at the shop doors, with that smiling
persistence which makes the _Procuratie Vecchie_ odious, and recalls
Cranbourne Alley in the dark ages. Lisa made a dead stop before a shop
where gaudy wooden figures of Moorish slaves, garish with crude colour
and much gilding, were grilling in the glare of the gas. It was a kind
of bazaar, half Venetian, half Oriental, and one window was full of
bead necklaces and barbaric jewels. At these Lisa looked with such
childish longing eyes that Vansittart would have been hard as a stone
if he had not suggested making a selection from that sparkling display
of rainbow glass and enamel.
The spider at the door was entreating the flies to go into his web,
a young Venetian with smiling black eyes and a Jewish nose--a lineal
descendant of Jessica, perhaps--a very agreeable young spider,
entreating the Signora and Signorina to go in and look about them.
There would be no necessity for them to buy. “To look costs nothing.”
They all three went in. Fiordelisa fastened upon a tray of jewels,
and lost herself in a bewilderment as to which of all those earrings,
brooches, and necklaces she most desired. Vansittart was interested in
the Moorish things--the bronze cups, the gold and scarlet slippers, the
embroidered curtains, and, most of all, the daggers, of which there
were many curious shapes, in purple-gleaming Damascus steel.
While Fiordelisa and her aunt were choosing brooches and necklaces--
necklaces which by a double twist became bracelets--Vansittart was
cheapening daggers, and, as a young man of ample means, ended by buying
the dearest and perhaps the best, a really serviceable knife, in a red
velvet sheath.
He paid for as many things as Lisa cared to choose; for a bead necklace
and an enamel brooch; for a square of gold-striped gauze to twist about
her head and shoulders; for a dainty little pair of Moorish shoes which
might admit Lisa’s toes, but which would certainly leave the major part
of her substantial foot out in the cold; for a gilded casket to hold
her jewels--for a fan--for a gilt thimble--and for a little set of
Algerian coffee-cups for her aunt.
All these things were to be sent next morning to the Signora’s lodgings
near the Ponte di Rialto. Vansittart paid the bill, which disposed
of a good many of his limp Italian notes, put his dagger in his
breast-pocket, and left the shop, cutting short the compliments and
thanks of the Venetian youth.
The Caffè Florian--of which tradition tells that it closeth not day or
night, winter or summer--was filled with people and ablaze with light.
Lisa pushed her way to a table, making good use of those fine shoulders
and elbows of hers, and a little group of men who had finished their
coffee got up and made way for the brilliant black eyes, and the red
lips, which the little velvet mask did not hide. Those finely moulded
lips looked all the lovelier for the fringe of lace that shadowed them,
and the white teeth flashed as she smiled her thanks.
She talked loud, and laughed gaily while she sipped her chocolate.
Vansittart himself was somewhat exhilarated by champagne, music, and
two or three little glasses of cognac taken between the acts at the
Rossini Theatre, and he was unashamed of his companion’s laughter and
general exuberance, even although she was attracting the attention of
every one within earshot. Beauty and vivacity are not attributes to
make a man ashamed of his companion, although she may be only a Burano
lace-maker disguised in a tawdry velvet gown.
“Show me the dagger you chose after all your bargaining,” she said,
leaning over towards him, with her elbows on the table.
He obeyed. She drew the dagger from its sheath and looked at it
critically. The red velvet sheath, embroidered with gold, took her
fancy much more than the damascened blade.
“It is too heavy to wear in one’s hair,” she said, throwing down the
sheath, and taking up the weapon.
“Take care. The blade is as sharp as a razor. It is not by any means an
ornament for a lady’s toilette table. I bought it against an excursion
to the Zambesi, which I have been thinking about for the last two
years.”
“The Zambesi,” she repeated wonderingly; “is that in Italy?”
“No, Signorina. It is on the Dark Continent.”
She had never heard of the Dark Continent, but she only shrugged her
shoulders, incuriously, and leant further across the table to examine a
black pearl pin, shaped something like a death’s head, which Vansittart
wore in his tie, and thus brought her smiling lips very near his face.
While she leant thus, with the tip of her finger touching the pearl,
and her eyes lifted interrogatively, a heavy hand was laid upon
Vansittart’s shoulder, and he was half twisted out of his chair--tilted
after the manner of chairs on which young men sit--by sheer brute force
on the part of the owner of the hand.
“Come out of that!” said a voice that was thickened by drink.
Vansittart was on his feet in an instant, facing a man as tall as
himself, and a good deal more bulky--a son of Anak, sandy-haired,
pallid, save for red spots on his cheek-bones, spots that burnt like
flame.
He was scowling savagely, breathless with rage. Lisa had risen as
quickly as Vansittart, and Lisa’s aunt had moved towards the new-comer
in evident trouble of mind.
“Signor Giovanni,” she faltered, “who would have thought to see you in
Venice to-night?”
“Not you, evidently, you wicked old hag--nor you, hussy!” cried the
man, furious with jealousy and drink. “I’ve caught you at your games,
have I, you good-for-nothing slut! You couldn’t stay indoors like a
decent woman, but you must needs walk the streets late at night with
this Cockney cad here.”
“Take care what you say to her--or to me,” said Vansittart, in that
muffled bass which means a dangerous kind of anger.
He put his arm round Fiordelisa, drawing her towards him as if
she belonged to him and it were his place to guard her from every
assailant. The crowd made a ring about them, looking on, amused and
interested, with no thought of interference which might spoil sport.
The comedy some of them had seen at the Goldoni Theatre that night was
not half so amusing as this bit out of the comedy of real life--the
cosmopolitan comedy of human passion.
“You infernal blackguard!” cried the stranger, trying to tear the girl
from Vansittart’s protecting clasp; “I’ll teach you to carry on with
my----”
A foul word finished the sentence: a blow from Vansittart, straight
in the stranger’s teeth, punctuated it. Then came other foul words,
and other blows; and the men were grappling each other like pugilists
fighting for the belt. The unknown was of heavier build, and showed
traces of former training, but Vansittart was in much better condition,
and was nearer sobriety, though by no means sober. He had the best
of it for some minutes, till the other man by sheer brute force flung
him against the table, crashing down among the shattered glasses and
coffee-cups, and dealt him a savage blow below the belt, kicking him as
he struck.
The table reeled over and Vansittart fell. Under his open hand as it
struck the floor he felt, the unsheathed dagger which Fiordelisa had
flung down, in careless indifference, after deciding that it was too
big for an ornament.
Infuriated by that foul blow, maddened by the brutality of the attack,
excited to fever heat by the surrounding circumstances, even by the
very atmosphere, which reeked with tobacco and brandy, Vansittart
sprang to his feet, clutched his foe by the collar, and plunged the
dagger into his breast. In the moment of doing it the thing seemed
natural, spontaneous, the inevitable outcome of the assault that had
been made upon him. In the next moment, as those angry eyes grew dim,
and the man fell like a log, Vansittart felt himself a coward and a
murderer.
A sudden silence came upon the crowd, tumultuous a moment ago. A
silence fell upon the scene, like a dull, grey veil, gauzy, impalpable,
that had dropped from the ceiling.
“Dead,” muttered a voice at Vansittart’s elbow, as the man lay in the
midst of them, motionless. “That knife went straight to the heart.”
A shriek rent the air, wild and shrill, and the vibrating glasses
echoed it with a banshee scream. Lisa flung herself upon the body,
and tried to staunch the bubbling blood with her poor wisp of
a handkerchief. A man pushed his way through the crowd with an
authoritative air--a doctor, doubtless; but before he reached the
little clear space where the victim lay with Lisa crouching over him,
and Lisa’s aunt wringing her hands and appealing to the Madonna and all
the Saints, a rough hand pulled Vansittart’s arm, and a man whispered
in Italian, “Run, run, while you have the chance!”
“Run?” Yes, he was a murderer, and his life belonged to the law, unless
he used his heels to save his neck. Quick as lightning he took the
hint, clove his way through the crowd, and made a dash for the door
nearest the Piazzetta. The crowd were busy watching the doctor as he
knelt beside that prostrate form--interested, too, in Fiordelisa, with
her mask flung off, her loosened hair falling about her ivory neck, her
dark eyes streaming, her red lips convulsed and quivering. Vansittart
was at the door, past it, before a man cried--
“Stop him; stop the assassin.”
There was a sudden tumult, and twenty men were giving chase, a pack
of human bloodhounds, perhaps as much for the sake of sport as from
actual horror at the deed. They rushed along the Piazzetta, knocking
down more than one astonished lounger on their way. They made for the
Pillars of St. Mark and St. Theodore--for that spot where of old the
Republic put her felons to death, and where now the gondolas wait in
sunshine and in starshine for the holiday visitors in the dream-city.
He would make for the water naturally, and jump on board the first
gondola he could find, thought his pursuers; but when they reached
the quay there was not a gondola to be seen. The gondoliers had all
got their fares to-night, and all the gondolas were on the Grand
Canal, with flaunting paper lanterns flying at their beaked prows,
and coloured fires burning, and mandolines and guitars tinkling and
twanging, and “Funicoli, funicola,” echoing from boat to boat.
“We shall have him!” cried the foremost of that yelping pack, and even
as he spoke they all heard the sound of a great splash, by the steps
yonder, and knew their quarry had taken to the water.
The Venetians, warm with macaroni and wine, and in no humour for an
improvised bath under those starlit ripples, pulled up, and began to
chatter; then whistled and shouted for gondolas, hopelessly, as to the
empty air; and anon, by common consent, ran to the bridge hard by the
furthermost corner of the Doge’s Palace, and from that vantage point
looked over the water.
It was covered with holiday craft. Far as the eye could see the gaily
decked boats were crossing and recrossing the broad reach between the
Riva and the island church, and in the midst of them, like a sea-girt
fortress, rose the dark hulk of the P. and O. steamer, her lights
showing bright and high above those fantastical Chinese lanterns,
her boilers throbbing, her cables groaning, all prepared for instant
departure.
There was a deep-toned blast of the steamer’s whistle, the clamour of
the donkey engines suddenly ceased, and the beating of the screw lashed
up the water: and, lo, all the gondolas were tossed and swung about
like a handful of rose-leaves on a running brook.
“She’s off!” cried one of Vansittart’s pursuers, almost forgetting the
chase in the pleasures of watching that big ship getting under way.
“Do you think he could have got on board her?” asked another; “he”
meaning their quarry.
“Not he, unless he were a better swimmer than ever I knew.”
* * * * *
He was a better swimmer than anybody among that Venetian’s
acquaintance--or, at any rate, he was good enough to swim out to the
P. and O. steamer and to get himself on board her before the engines
began to beat the water with their first deliberate pulsations. The
last boat had left the side of the vessel; the sailors were drawing up
the accommodation ladder, as he called to them with a voice of command
which they did not question. In three or four minutes he was on deck,
and had made his way, dripping as he was, to the captain of the vessel.
He explained himself briefly. He had got into a row--a Carnival frolic
only--and wanted to get clear of Venice, and knowing the steamer was to
sail for Alexandria that night, had swum out to her at the last moment.
He had plenty of money about him, and as for change of clothes, he must
do the best he could.
“I hope it wasn’t anything very bad,” said the captain doubtfully,
looking at this dripping stranger from top to toe.
“Oh no; a man hit me in a caffè just now, and I hit him.”
The steamer was imperceptibly moving seaward at every steady throb of
those ponderous engines, threading her way along the tortuous channel
so slowly and cautiously at first that Vansittart wondered if she
were ever going to get away. Venice the lamplit, the starlit, the
beautiful, glided into the distance, with all her domes and pinnacles,
her gondolas and Chinese lanterns, torches and sky-rockets, music
and laughter. Vansittart’s heart ached as he watched the fairy city
fading like a vision of the night. He had loved her so well--spent such
happy, light, unthinking days upon those waters, in those labyrinthine
streets, laughing and chaffering with the little merchants of the
Rialto, following Venetian beauty through the mazy ways and over
the innumerable bridges--happy, uncaring. And now he was an escaped
murderer, and would never dare to show his face in Venice again. “Good
God!” he said to himself, in a stupor of horrified shame, “that I,
a gentleman, should have used a knife--like a Colorado miner, or a
drunken sweep in Seven Dials!”