The simple meal came to an end quicker than any of the party
expected, and Scherer was thinking how difficult its preparation must
have been, for Herr von Wassilko lived in two rambling, scantily
furnished rooms lacking all the amenities that would have tended to
make guests comfortable. And yet, in spite of obvious drawbacks,
everything had gone off without a hitch. The very simplicity of the
entertainment was a factor of its success. Mary had noiselessly
attended to every one's needs, and talk flowed easily around the
table under the red-shaded lamp, the only spot of light in a room
where the shadows lingered. The old gentleman and Scherer had
contributed most to the conversation, for they found one another
congenial. Diana's attention was divided, for she had to play
hostess and see that Mary provided all that was needed for the
comfort of her father's guests. Eduard could not take his eyes off
her as, sitting there in her flowing lilac gown, she acquitted
herself of her part with so much ease and dignity. Before him arose
visions of her presiding at other tables, not at official banquets so
much, as at homely gatherings, homely both in the worldly and in the
idyllic meaning of the word. He fancied himself unobserved, but
Diana felt his eyes upon her, and she knew (since she had so suddenly
plumbed the depths of his thoughts that morning) that this evening he
would come to certain conclusions concerning her, conclusions which
would be the result of long previous cogitation.
Kyril, taciturn by nature and only able to give vent to his ideas in
spontaneous debates, had met so many party members since his arrival
in Venice and had learned of so many underground intrigues, that his
tendency to keep silence in the presence of others was accentuated
this evening. In addition, his host's appearance fascinated him, and
he sat observing the old gentleman attentively. Wilhelm, alone of
the company, appeared to be disappointed. He had expected to meet an
astrologer, a man who could read the meaning of the stars, or, at
least, an alchemist, some wonder-worker whose house would be full of
maps and globes, of bottles, retorts, and measuring glasses. Yet in
the hall, as he entered this sometime wealthy palace which had now
fallen on evil days, instead of armour and chains, all he saw was a
row of pegs each bearing a hat belonging to the master of the house.
To this display, the newcomers reacted differently. Kyril sneered
inwardly at so much needless formality; Scherer mentally appraised
their cost; and the prince noted the absence of the tall hat, which
might of course be in safe keeping in one of the old man's boxes.
As Herr von Wassilko rose from table, he said:
"I trust you will excuse so primitive an entertainment, it is all the
impoverished descendant of an old family can afford. But I prefer to
rent a couple of rooms such as these, rather than put up in a hotel.
I cannot help envisaging the persons who have been there before me,
perhaps vacated the premises an hour before, sat upon the same
chairs, eaten from the same spoons, and set the air tingling with the
sound of their senseless talk. I cannot help being aware of this as
I sit at table; the whole atmosphere is full of it."
They took their places in a semicircle before the open glass doors
leading to the balcony, two of the chairs being comfortable modern
ones, and the remainder stiff and austere, recalling the furniture of
an earlier period. The host, though his guests had pressed him to
take one of the easy chairs, elected to sit in a large Gothic chair
devoid of any kind of upholstering. Eduard and Scherer, loath to
make themselves more comfortable than the old man, had ensconced
themselves in equally rigid seats, while Diana, throwing a huge
Venetian shawl about her shoulders, had pulled a dumpty to the step
leading on to the balcony and had settled down there out of range of
the lamp and of Eduard's persistent eyes. Only from time to time was
she for a moment lit up in the flickering light of a passing gondola.
"Thus it remains for the two young gentlemen to play the
grandfather," said the host pleasantly.
Wilhelm, who had expected as much, immediately threw himself into the
depths of one of the arm-chairs, exclaiming:
"That's just what I feel too! And we'll have to be taken great care
of for we are the hope of the nation."
"I accept the rôle with pleasure," said Kyril, suiting the action to
the word. "It seems to me the only thing I can do under the
circumstances, though I don't feel in the least bit grandfatherly.
Those other chairs take us back to earlier centuries, reminding us of
the might wielded by long extinct courts. At best they should be in
a museum, where a protective cord would intimate to the man of the
twentieth century that he may only gaze on them from afar--if, that
is to say, he ever finds time in this age of hustle to study such
antiquities."
"You would thus appear to be the most advanced among us, and so, I
suppose, the youngest, Doctor?"
"His Highness is no older," said Kyril grumpily.
"And now you must draw their horoscopes," cried Wilhelm eagerly.
"You have all the necessary apparatus, haven't you?" He sprang up
from his chair, ready to fetch the supposed implements, and burning
with curiosity to see them. But Scherer held him back.
"We must not trouble Herr von Wassilko today."
"Ah, my daughter has been giving me away! I gather the young
gentleman looks upon me as a second Swedenborg."
"Was Swedenborg in Venice once?" asked Diana dreamily. She had paid
no heed to the rest of the conversation, but the seer's name had
caught her attention, and she sensed an affinity between him and her
father, though the latter had seemed inclined to repudiate anything
of the kind.
"Yes," he said, "Swedenborg was here, anno 1718. That's nearly two
hundred years ago, Diana."
Eduard pricked up his ears. The quiet way in which the words were
spoken, the mystery surrounding the Swedish mystic, the old-fashioned
use of the Latin word, the affectionate tone in which he had
pronounced Diana's beautiful name, the resemblance of his manner of
speech to hers, so pensive and comfortable, as if the best had been
left unsaid; his movements, as he leaned forward in his high-backed
Gothic chair, to address his daughter sitting at the open door; his
flowing, white beard, lit up in the rays of the lamp which had been
brought over to where they sat; the contrast between this venerable
countenance and her face, lifted in childlike expectancy to his,
questioning and eager, suffused with a ruddy glow from the shaded
lamp--all these things combined to fill Eduard with a sudden rush of
tender impatience, and his lonely heart longed to be linked for ever
with such fellow mortals as these, persons who realized freedom
through self-restraint. Now, for the first time, he wished that
Diana might read his feelings clearly in his eyes. He stepped
forward towards the circle of light, intending, while turning his
back upon the others, to be visible to her alone. But he was
arrested half way by a sonorous voice inquiring:
"What, actually, did this man Swedenborg achieve?"
It was Kyril who spoke from the encompassing shadows. Diana turned
her eyes from the contemplation of her father towards the spot whence
the voice had come, and Eduard perceived that her brows were puckered
where a moment before they had been serene. But Wassilko answered
unperturbed:
"He left us twenty volumes of natural science, dealing in especial
with mineralogy; he was a member of many learned societies; and, on
account of his achievements, his name has been entered in the annals
of science."
Kyril stirred uneasily. Imbued with a fanatical conception of an
imaginary future, ever in conflict with prejudice and tradition, he
had found no time, pressed as he was with the tasks imposed by his
own spirit and by the position he held in the party, to bring
equipoise into his nature. Thus it was that, with all the powers of
his mind, he had resisted the daimonic forces within him, banishing
them whenever he felt that they were raising their heads, looking
upon them as some out-worn conceit that must at all cost be overcome.
And yet he was attracted by that other world, lured by the
unreasoning realm of emotion, especially by the realm of music; the
cosmos of impenetrable laws fascinated him, drawing him away from the
tangible laws of economics, and subjecting him against his will to
its caprices. Now, when he learned for the first time that a
visionary, a man towards whom he felt a fundamental mistrust, had
likewise been an investigator in the field of positive science, he
realized (for gifted natures almost invariably apply the lessons from
the life histories of notable personalities to themselves) that there
was a possibility that he himself might some day lapse into a similar
state of spiritual depravity. He said after a pause:
"Yet had he produced nothing more than these works of science, he
would hardly have penetrated into the ranks of the famous and dwelt
in the memories of men. I had myself never heard of his achievements
in this field, nor do I fancy have most people."
"That's true enough," confirmed Scherer. "I remember when Professor
Somebody-or-Other was giving the memorial lecture at the Stockholm
academy, he stated that he himself was far from knowing all the works
of the master whose memory he was honouring."
A laugh rippled round the circle, and the old gentleman added:
"You are right, and I, too, am no wiser than that laudator
officialis."
Kyril stuck to his point.
"But what about those other works of his which dealt with the occult?
His so-called 'supernatural' ideas must be familiar to you. Tell me
whether in these there is anything tangible, anything of lasting
value."
Diana turned away and gazed down upon the canal, thinking: "He should
be climbing in the rigging, using his splendid limbs, or biting into
an apple with his dazzling teeth. He is a fish out of water in
Venice and in my father's company."
Eduard, who had followed her movement and had dimly caught the
expression on her face as she turned away, was thinking: "If I were
sitting beside her in that gondola now drifting by, I would try to
whisper away all the things that are causing her pain at this moment."
"Such a question is very difficult to answer," said Herr von
Wassilko, sitting upright in his high-backed chair. "These things
are impalpable, and durability is hardly one of their
characteristics. They do not seem bound by time, but only to men
(and there have been such since man first began to think) who,
following the laws of their own nature, aspire to bring them into
closer relation with their own humanity."
"Very ably put," thought Scherer, whose habit it was to evade such
transcendental questions by similar generalizations. He felt the old
man was his equal as a man of the world, and entirely failed to
perceive that the reticence of the reply masked a believing soul and
was not the result, as it would have been in Scherer's case, of
consideration for a cultured, though thoroughly rational, outlook
which had to be upheld from two sides at once.
Kyril was silent. He felt that he had been worsted, and since the
others felt the same, they were grateful to Wilhelm for his
intervention when he said innocently:
"If only I knew whether one could learn the art of seeing spirits! I
once asked an expert in Berlin after a séance, and he said: 'Your
friends tell me you play the lute. Well, if one has music in one's
heart one is not far from the occult world.'"
"Where is your lute, Wilhelm?" asked Diana.
There was a general sigh of relief at this change of subject. They
spoke of musical instruments; and when Wilhelm came back with his
lute in his hand (he rarely went out of an evening without it and
Venice was the last place in the world where he would neglect to take
it), Wassilko said:
"I'm sorry there is neither a piano nor a violin here. But my
landlord possesses a wonderful 'cello, and, since I used to play the
instrument long ago, he always leaves it in its case in my room
whenever I come to stay."
He got up, and after a short absence, returned with the 'cello. His
guests hastened to relieve him of his burden, and gathered round to
examine it and pass their comments. Wilhelm alone had not risen. He
was back in the huge arm-chair, which he had vacated for no more than
a minute to fetch the lute. Now he said very softly to Diana:
"No one is going to take this chair from me this evening, after what
he said about them--unless, of course, you have a fancy for it,
Diana."
His gentle considerateness went to her heart. She felt sundered from
Eduard, wounded by Kyril, disturbed by the course the talk had taken;
she had more and more cut herself adrift from them all, giving
herself up to her own train of thought as she gazed into the darkness
without, and was dimly aware from time to time of the lap of waters,
the emergent lights, and the cadenced calls, arising from the canal
below. The boyish words spoken to her by the young man lounging in
the easy chair had fallen with so friendly a lilt upon her ear that
she was grateful. Franklin's image rose before her, and she wondered
why he had stayed away, whether he dreaded being together with her
and her father; then, again, her thoughts turned to the prince.
Meanwhile Kyril had possessed himself of the 'cello, had sat down,
tuned it, and had become wholly absorbed in the instrument.
"Will you play something?" asked Scherer.
"Alone?"
"Wilhelm's lute will replace the piano as accompaniment."
Every one was delighted. Wilhelm, who could not read music, playing
by ear and adapting his accompaniment to almost any song, agreed to
do his best, but insisted he be allowed to remain seated where he was
in the "revolutionist's chair" as he called it. Kyril exchanged with
the prince so as to sit more commodiously with the instrument. He
glanced with misgivings at Wilhelm and the lute; then, without
preface or explanation, started to play Bach's suite for 'cello.
Wilhelm, who knew it well, was too alarmed to venture an
accompaniment. He would not dare to make up something out of his own
head to music such as this. So he laid his lute aside. Kyril
glanced up for a moment, looked his appreciation, and continued to
play alone. As the mellow tones fell into the quietude of this warm
spring night, Diana sat up and turned towards the player. At first
her blood surged wrathfully through her veins, as if she had been
touched with a fencing foil. Then the music subjected her to its
mighty melodies. She sat very straight on her low stool, her black
shawl slipping unheeded from her shoulders.
The music penetrated her whole being, sapping her combativeness, and
luring her eyes to the figure of the Russian as he played his 'cello
in the ruddy glow of the lamp. She saw his powerful right hand
wielding the bow, the fingers of his left, agile and dexterous,
drawing vibrant notes from the strings, his muscular legs pressing
the red-brown wood between his knees, and, silhouetted against the
carved back of a chair once occupied by a Venetian nobleman, the fair
head of a fanatical Russian peasant bent over the instrument as if
over a woman he held against him while with his right hand he
caressed her to responsiveness and with his left he toyed with her
curving throat....
Eduard was all too aware of her absorption in the man who was
ravishing the company with his music, and at this minute he would
gladly have exchanged the realm of his father and his brothers for
the spiriting of his fiddle to his side that he might pit his
musicianship against this alien's.
A long silence followed upon the final notes of the suite, broken at
last by Wilhelm, who said: "I'm sorry, but I really could not give
you any assistance in that. I had thought you were going to give us
some Chopin."
They laughed at the speaker's naïve excuses, and the host together
with Scherer and Eduard, gave voice to their appreciation. But
Diana, awaking as it were from a spell, rose and stepped out on to
the balcony, shaking off the magic which had bound her and to which
she had surrendered against her will. She leaned for a moment
against the iron balustrade, then turned, and, stretching her arms
towards the glass door (a gesture which suggested a longing to
embrace this evening so pregnant with melancholy) picked up the wrap
which had fallen from her shoulders, saying:
"Wilhelm is right! The day itself and all the ardours of the sun are
in your playing--and yet here we are encompassed by night."
Kyril looked at her, and in his heart he told himself that what she
said was true, for through the medium of music every hesitancy of the
spirit was revealed to him who, in theory, denied that any such
insight existed. He began playing Chopin's nocturne in E-flat major,
and Wilhelm accompanied him throughout, while Diana stood leaning
upon the rail of the balcony gazing down on the darkened water.
"All this is good," thought she. "So is this town, and my father,
and the prince, and Wilhelm. So, too, maybe is the Russian at times.
And even if things are to be otherwise in the future, yet for tonight
I will that they be as they are!"
Soon after this the party broke up, for the yacht was to put to sea
at peep of day. Wassilko stopped Diana when she reached the middle
of the great room, and, taking her face between his hands, he kissed
his daughter on the top of her head. The four men watched him in
silence: Scherer and Wilhelm as if they were assisting at a ceremony
which they would, undoubtedly, have performed better than any of
those who were present; Kyril with vague recollections of the Russian
parental blessing; Eduard once again with the feeling that his own
father was before him, his father, kissing Diana.
Their farewells were more genial than their greetings had been, and
yet there was something aloof in the manner of the four men as they
bade their host good-night. They divided forces as they approached
the two gondolas, the prince pairing off with Diana while Scherer and
Kyril took their places in the other boat. Wilhelm stood hesitant on
the landing-stage, pondering the alternatives: should he please
Scherer by stepping into the foremost boat and thus preventing the
prince and Diana from being alone, or should he please Eduard by
leaving the field free? Scherer, guessing his dilemma, was
determined to bring no pressure to bear upon the young man's
decision. Finally Diana signalled to him her wish to have the prince
all to herself, and so it was that Wilhelm sprang in beside Scherer.
He instantly struck up one of those light-hearted ditties that are
the rage in Venice, and make one feel they must have been composed in
Vicenza, so gay and debonair is their lilt. Old Mary, in company
with one of the yacht's crew, followed in a third gondola.
"Shall I tell him to stop?" asked Eduard softly.
"Oh no! It is sweet to hear his lute over the water...."
"Is Herr von Wassilko a good player?"
"His heart plays well, but his fingers are clumsy and out of
practice."
"And yet they were dextrous enough when it was a question of bringing
ancient statues out of the earth...."
"Yes, and glass-ware too; that's a far more delicate business."
"He seems more vigorous than my father, and yet is much the same age."
"Is the prince still ailing? Have you any news of his health?"
She was never the one to start a conversation about his relatives,
always waiting for him to begin.
"He has been in a precarious condition ever since my mother died. I
have not much confidence either in the bulletins or in his doctor,"
said Eduard softly, turning away.
"I, too, love my father," murmured Diana.
Eduard, profoundly moved by her unuttered thought, again reminded of
the scenes he had witnessed on the steps of the museum and in the
room at the moment of farewell, seized her hand as it lay in her lap.
She made no protest, and he whispered her name: "Diana..."
He had never yet called her by name, and now, very slowly, he bent
his head and kissed her hand, pressing his lips to it long and
tenderly.
"How gentle are this young man's kisses," she mused. "I would like
to kiss him... Yet he is silent, and seems to be enclosing me in a
great circle ... slowly... Behind us, in our wake, Wilhelm trills
his song of love, as if life were nothing but an Eden of amoretti,
short-kilted in pale blue raiment... Have I dreamed all this
before?..."
And, as if the prince had drunk in her reverie through the pores of
her bronzed skin, he raised his head, still holding her hand in his,
and leaned back once more among the black cushions, saying dreamily,
as if musing on things long past:
"One night we were in a gondola together, and, for the first time, I
called you by your name ... Diana... Do you remember? It was the
same evening that your father had entertained us at his rooms. The
Russian had tried to draw him into a discussion on Swedenborg ...
that fair-haired Russian who was born on the same day as I ... He
plays Bach as only a man can play... Is he still alive? ... Has he
been hanged? ... Scherer, too, was one of the party, young still, and
hospitable and active ... Wilhelm played and sang in a gondola that
followed us, a song about a Venetian woman and her lout of a husband
and her handsome cousin... It was amid this queer medley of voyaging,
do you recollect? ... The 'Excelsior' ... and the journey was not yet
at an end..."
"And as we passed by the Piazzetta," Diana took up the tale in the
same key, as she, too, leaned back among the cushions, "the two
giants were just striking the clock in the tower to the leftward, for
it was midnight... But the journey was not yet at an end... Do you
remember, Prince?"
They were very still, hand lay in hand, but they did not turn to look
at one another. Then, close in the rear of San Marco, the gondola
swung round a bend, and the lights of the "Excelsior" shone through
the darkness.
The prince sprang on to the gangway and helped her up. At the top,
he kissed her hand. Diana turned, and bade good-night to the others
who had followed close on her heels.