TERESA’S AWAKENING
Teresa, meanwhile, had been facing her problem--how to warn the
Englishman of his danger. During the slow hours while Gordon sat gazing
into the distorted mirror of his own thought, she had traversed every
causeway of risk, sounded every well of possibility. To a young girl of
the higher class in Venice, a night trip, uncavaliered, held elements
of grave peril. Discovery spelled lasting disgrace perhaps, certainly
the anger of her father. All this she was ready to hazard. But beyond
was the looming probability that she could not find the object of her
search after all. However, it was a chance, and fear, with another
sentiment that she did not analyze, impelled her to take it.
It was an easy task to win Tita, for he would have denied her nothing.
To him, however, she told only a part of the truth--that she wished
once to see the Piazza by night. Only an hour in the music and lights
in his care, and then quick and safe return to the Palazzo Albrizzi.
The house servants she could answer for. Who would be the wiser?
So, a little while after Gordon had been set down that night at the
Molo, another gondola, lampless and with drawn _tenda_, stole swiftly
to a side landing, and Teresa, closely veiled, with Tita by her side,
stepped into the square, beneath the flare of its flambeaux, into its
currents of eddying maskers where the white _fazzioli_ of the lower
orders mingled with the rich costumes of patricians, all alike stung
by the tarantula of gaiety: a flashing sea of motion and color surging
endlessly beneath a sky alive with winged spots of gray and black--the
countless pigeons that circled there undisturbed.
She had chosen the Piazza after much deliberation. It was the last
night of the carnival, when all the world of Venice was on the streets.
At the new Fenice Theater the latest opera of Rossini’s was playing,
and there was the ball of the Cavalchina, the final throb before the
dropping of the pall of Lent. The sadness in Gordon’s face and speech,
she felt, had no part in these things. She felt instinctively that he
would be spectator rather than actor, would choose the open air of the
square rather than the indoors. The danger she feared for him would
not seek him in a crowd; it would lurk in some silent byway and strike
unseen. The thought made her tremble as she peered about her.
The center of the Piazza was a pool, fed and emptied by three streams
of people: one flowing under the clock-tower with its blue and gold
dial and bronze figures, one through the west entrance under the Bocca
di Piazza, and still another rounding the Doges’ Palace and meeting the
thronged Riva. It was on the fringe of this second stream that she saw
him, when the hour was almost ended. He was standing in the shadow of
the pillars, watching, she thought, yet abstracted. With a whispered
word to Tita she ran and touched the moveless figure on the arm.
Gordon turned instantly, and turning, spoke her name half-aloud.
“Teresa!” The utterance was almost automatic, the lips, startled,
voicing the word that was in his mind at the moment.
She thought he recognized her through the veil, and answered with a
cry expressing at one time her relief at finding him, and a quick
delight that thrilled her at the sound of her name on his lips. Many
things had wrought together to produce this new miracle of gladness.
The strangeness and romance of their first meeting, the tragedy of
loneliness she had guessed in the scene at the shop, her dread and the
physical risk entailed in her adventure of this night, all had combined
with cunning alchemy. When he spoke she forgot to be surprised that
he had called her by name, forgot that she did not know his, forgot
everything save his presence and her errand.
He leaned forward, breathing deeply. It _was_ she! She put her veil
aside quickly--her eyes were like sapphire stones!--and told him
hurriedly of the threat she had heard, of her dread, all in a rush of
sentences incoherent and unstudied.
“And so you came to warn me?”
“He would do it, Signore! Ah, I saw his face when he said it. You must
be guarded! You must not go abroad alone!”
His mind was busy. How much she had jeopardized to reach him in that
fancied danger! She, in Venice, a young girl of noble rank, with no
escort save a gondolier! Risk enough for her in any case; what an
enduring calamity if she should be seen and recognized there, _with
him_!
He led her back between the pillars, put out his hand and drew the veil
again across her face, speaking gravely and gently:
“What you have done is a brave and noble thing; one I shall be glad
of always. It was no less courageous, nor am I less grateful, though
what you heard was a mistake. Little Pasquale is not dead. I spoke with
the surgeon here less than a half-hour ago. He had just come from the
piazzetta. The child will recover.”
“Oh, thank God!” she breathed. She clasped her hands in very
abandonment. “The blessed Virgin has heard me!”
His heart seemed suddenly to cease beating. The exclamation was a
revelation far deeper than she divined. It was not joy at the life
of the child that was deepest in it--it was something else: a great
relief for _him_! He felt the blood tingle to his finger-tips. Only one
emotion could speak in such an accent--only one!
With an uncontrollable impulse he leaned to her and clasped both her
hands.
“You cared, Teresa,” he said. “You risked so much--for me?”
He had spoken her name again. Again she felt the stab of that quivering
spear of gladness. Her fingers fluttered in his.
“Yes--yes!” she whispered. The shouts, the music, the surge and
laughter around, faded. She felt herself, unafraid, drifting on a sea
of unplummetted depths.
A shock of fright brought her to herself. A man bent and dressed
richly, with an affectation of youth, was passing, attended by a
servant. As they approached, the keen-eyed servitor had pointed out
Gordon. “That is the evil Englishman, Excellence, of whom you have
heard,” he had said, and the old noble he led had set his keen eyes on
the other with a chuckling relish.
Teresa, in the momentary pause they made, hardly repressed a cry, for
that moment discovery seemed to her imminent. The old man was the Count
Guiccioli--he who had leaned that afternoon from the palazzo balcony.
Her pulses leaped to panic. She felt as if that sharp gaze must go
through the veil, and pressed closer to Gordon.
But master and servant passed on, and her fear fainted out.
The man beside her had felt that quick pressure, and instinctively the
touch of his arm reassured her, though he had not surmised her alarm.
In that instant Gordon had been thinking like lightning. A temptation
had sprung full-statured before him. In a flash he had read the dawning
secret behind those eyes, the sweet unspoken things beneath those
trembling lips crimson-soft as poppy leaves. To possess this heart
for his own! Not to tell her who he was--not yet, when her purity
would shrink--to nurture this budding regard with meetings like this,
stolen from fate--to cherish it till it burst into flower for him, all
engrossing, supreme! To make this love, fluttering to him unsought in
the purlieus of his soul’s despair, his solace and his sanctuary!
Coincidence grappled with him--a stealthy persuasion. In the crisis
of his madness, when at Geneva he had cursed every good thing, her
pictured face had sought him out to go with him. Into the nadir of his
degradation there in Venice it had dropped like a falling star to call
him to himself. Fate had led him to her in the woods of La Mira--had
brought them both face to face at the shop in the piazzetta--and now
had led her to him again here in the midst of the maskers. It was
Kismet!
“I did not think there was more than one in all the world who would
have done what you have to-night!” he said; “that would have cared if I
lived or died! Why do you care?”
“Ah!” she answered hurriedly. “Is there one who would not? I do not
know why. One does not reason of such things. One feels. I know I have
cared--ever since that morning in the wood, when you found the book,
when I gave you the prayer!”
He started, releasing her hands. “_Intercede and obtain for me of thy
Son, our Lord, this grace!_” It seemed to come to him from the air,
a demoniac echo to his desire. His breath choked him. She had prayed
for him, purely, unselfishly. How should he requite? To-night, for his
sake she had risked reputation. How did he purpose to repay? Would not
the doing of this thing sink him a thousand black leagues below the
sky she breathed? No matter how much she might come to love, could it
recompense for what he would take away? Between those two lay a gulf
as deep as that which stretched between cool water and a tortured
Dives. What had he, George Gordon, dragging the chain and ball of a
life sentence of despair, to do with her in her purity? He yearned for
her because she _was_ an immaculate thing; because she reincarnated
for him all the white, unspotted ideals that he had thrown away, that
he longed to touch again. It was the devil tempting in the plea of an
angel!
The mist fell from his eyes.
“Child!” he said. “What you have done to-night I can never repay. I
shall remember it until I die. But I am not worthy of your thought--not
worthy of a single throb of that heart of yours!”
She shook her head protesting.
“That cannot be true,” she contended. “But if it were, Signore, one
cannot say ‘I will,’ or ‘I will not care’ when one chooses.” Her tone
was naïve, and arch with a smiling, shy rebellion.
“Listen,” he went on. “Do not think me jesting. What I say now
I say because I must. I want you to promise me you will do
something--something only for your good, I swear that!”
The smile faded from her lips, chilled by his earnestness.
“When you go from here you must forget that day at La Mira, forget that
you came to-night--that we have ever met! Will you promise this?”
Her whole mind was a puzzled question now. Did he mean she should see
him no more? Was he quitting Venice? The thought came like a pang. But
to forget! Could she if she would? Why did he say it was for her good?
A fear, formless and vague, ran through her.
“Why do you ask that, Signore?”
He turned his face away. It was so much harder than he thought. Must he
tell her who he was? Could he not carry with him this one memory? Must
he drink this cup of abnegation to its last dregs? The very kindness of
silence would be cruelty for her! The seed fate had sown, watered by
mystery, would germinate in thorns! He must tell her--tell her now!
The press of maskers flooding the square, circled nearer, and she drew
close. Her hand from under her cloak, found his own, suddenly fearful,
feeling bold looks upon them.
“_Bravo la Fornarina!_” rose a jeering cry. An exclamation broke from
Gordon’s lips. A woman had burst from the throng like a beautiful
embodied storm. Teresa shrank with a sob of dismay at the vision of
flashing black eyes and dark hair streaming across jealous brows.
The crowd laughed.
“It is _l’Inglese maligno_!” said a voice.
Evading Gordon’s arm, with a spring like a tiger’s, the infuriate
figure reached the girl, snatching at the veil.
“So he prefers you for his _donna_!” she sneered savagely. “Let us see,
white face!”
The rent gauze dropped to the ground.
Sudden stillness fell. The jests and jeers hushed. Teresa stood
motionless, her features frozen to sculpture; a passing cloud had
slipped from the moon, and the silvery light above and behind her
caught and tangled to a glistening aureole in her amber hair that fell
in a mist about her shoulders. The illusion of a halo was instant and
awe-inspiring. More than one, gazing, made the sign of the cross.
There was a cry--the _Fornarina_ had flung herself on her knees on the
flagging. A stir came from the crowd.
_L’Inglese maligno!_ For the girl who stood so moveless, the
exclamation had blotted joy from the universe. It was as though all
terrors gripped her bodily in a molten midnight. Dreams, faiths,
prayer, and tender things unguessed, seemed to be shrivelling in her.
She shivered, put out her hands and wavered on her feet.
“_Dio!_” she said in a low voice. “You, the wicked milord!”
Gordon, in aching misery, stretched out his arms toward her, though he
saw her eyes were closed, with a broken word that was lost in a tumult,
as a gigantic form plowed through the circle, a form from whose rush
maskers fell away like tenpins.
It was Tita, enraged, bull-like. He gathered the crumpling, veilless
figure in his arms, thrust his burly shoulder against the crowd and
bore her quickly to the water-stairs where lay the dark gondola.
He set her on the cushions and plied the oar till it smoked in its
socket.
The bright canals fled by--she had not moved. By darker passages he
went now and very slowly, threading stagnant unlighted alleys. The way
opened out, a swish of trailing tendrils swept across the oar--they
were under a vine-trellised bridge. The lampless gondola crept along
the wall, stole with sudden swiftness across a patch of moonbeams and
darted into the shadowy water-gate.
Tita had thought the canal quite deserted. But beyond the moonlight
another craft had been drowsing by. The old man under its _tenda_ had
been musing on the loveliness of a girl within those walls whom he
should soon possess, and with her a dowry, set aside at her birth,
which the waning fortunes of her family had preserved intact. He saw
the dark bulk shoot into the gilded water-gate and peered out.
[Illustration: THE ILLUSION OF A HALO WAS INSTANT AND AWE-INSPIRING.
_p. 215._]
“What was that?” he demanded.
“A gondola, surely, Excellence.”
Garden water-gates seldom swung in Venice at night. For a moment he
watched. “Some servant’s errand,” he reflected, and leaned back on the
cushions.
* * * * *
In the orchid-scented garden, Tita’s brawny arms lifted Teresa out and
set her upon the marble steps. He was thinking of the Englishman.
“_Illustrissima!_” he whispered. “Shall I kill him?”
Then something broke in Teresa’s breast. She clasped the broad neck,
sobbing:
“No, no, Tita! Dear Tita! Not that! I would rather die myself!”