It is an April day, and Venice is lying under a brilliant sun, which brings out all the beryl sheen of its translucent waterways, the gleam of its marvelous domes, the Byzantine color that still clings to the front of its palaces, and all the life of its picturesque and varied humanity. It is the last which specially appeals to the interest of a man who has strolled from the Piazza San Marco into the Piazzetta, and watches the animated movement along the Riva de’ Schiavoni, that meeting-place of Italy and the Orient, with eyes that take in every variety of the types passing before him. And when they grow tired of water-carriers and gondoliers, of soldiers and sailors, of Italians, Greeks, Austrians, and Orientals, they have but to look beyond on the fairest scene in the world—the wide, green plain of shining water,as the Grand Canal opens into the lagoon, the isle of San Giorgio with its cluster of picturesque buildings, and far to seaward the Armenian Convent of San Lazare.
But the picture grows too dazzling after a while, and the observer, turning, walks toward the palace of the Doges, entered under the Saracenic arches into its great court, and ascending the Giant’s Stairway passed into those gorgeous saloons where the sumptuous life of old Venice still glows on the walls in that Venetian art which in glory of coloring excels every other school. The usual number of tourists, with open guide-books, were scattered through the apartments, filling even the dread chamber of the Council of Ten with their light chatter; but the newcomer avoided them, lingered only in comparatively empty rooms, and presently wandered into the Hall of the Great Council, whence he passed out of an empty window to a balcony, where he found himself on a level with the top of the column which bears the winged lion, and overlooking from this higher elevation the same wide, beautiful picture of sea and sky, of glitteringdomes and sun-tinted campanili, which he had lately seen from below.
On a seat conveniently placed in a corner of the balcony he sat down, and with his back against the stone wall of the Ducal Palace, with the famous lion smiling familiarly upon him, and with the scene of all the past glory and triumphs of Venice before his eyes, he fell easily into that waking dream which Venice above all places has power to produce. For where else is the setting of the past so perfectly preserved? From the gorgeous frescoes of Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, one steps forth to look on the unchanged scene—palaces, columns, quays, luminous sea, and dazzling sky—of the great events they represent, and to ask one’s self if the stately pageants will not soon come forth to meet the victorious galleys laden with the spoils of the East, or to accompany the Doge when he goes forth in state to wed the Adriatic?
Into some such dream this man had fallen, when his pleasant solitude suffered an interruption. Through the open window a figure suddenly stepped, and advancing to the balustradestood before him outlined against the horizon of sea and sky. For a moment he was inclined to regard with impatience this new object, obtruded into the foreground of the picture he had been contemplating with so much satisfaction; then it dawned upon him that, so far from marring, it rather added a new and charming element to this picture. For it was the figure of a young girl, tall and graceful, with an indescribable beauty in the carriage of the small, shapely head and the lines of the neck and shoulders. Her attitude, too, was full of unconscious grace, as she stood gazing seaward; and since her back was turned toward him, he could admire this grace at his leisure, together with the picturesque drapery of her dress, which was made of some fabric as soft and clinging in quality as it was harmonious in color.
But presently she turned her face toward the great lion of St. Mark, and presented to his view what he instantly decided to be the loveliest profile he had ever seen—a profile as clearly cut as that of a head on an antique cameo, but with a peculiarly delicate grace of its own, andwith coloring as exquisite as the tints of a flower. She was smiling as she looked at the lion—who stonily regarded her from his pedestal—and she made such a delightful picture in her youth and beauty, that the man behind her held his breath, fearing lest some chance movement should betray his presence and cause her to disappear.
But, instead of this, she was presently joined by another figure, that of a young man, who stepped through the window and walked up to her side with an air of easy familiarity.
“By Jove!” said the newcomer, “I don’t wonder that you come out here for relief from those miles of pictures! Their effect is positively stupefying.”
“Toyou, perhaps, it may be,” said the young lady, in a very sweet voice, with a slightly mocking accent. “But it was not becauseIfelt stupefied that I came out, but because the greater picture tempted me. When one has Venice before one’s eyes, one hardly cares to look at paintings.”
“That is exactly my opinion,” said the young man, “so let us go down and get intoa gondola and float about. That is the principal thing to do, besides lounging in the piazza.”
“Then suppose you go and lounge in the piazza,” said the young lady. “I am very well satisfied where I am,” and as she spoke she turned again toward the railing, with the air of one who did not mean to stir.
“Oh, I am very well satisfied to stay here—with you,” said her companion, leaning beside her.
At this point it occurred to the unobserved listener behind that the time had come for him to retire. Solitude was charming, and charming also was the contemplation of a single graceful figure in the foreground of a noble picture; but a conventional pair of young people engaged in a conventional flirtation was more than he could endure. With a sense of disgust and vexation he rose, and entered again the Hall of Council.
Over this magnificent apartment various groups were scattered, some studying the frescoes of battles and triumphs, others followingthe frieze of Doges’ portraits, and pausing before the vacant panel across which is thrown a black curtain and on which is painted the name of Marino Faliero, and the short sentence, “Decapitati pro criminibus,” while others were occupied with Tintoretto’s vastParadiso. Among the latter was a pretty, fashionably dressed young woman, who, seated on a chair before the immense picture, had transferred her attention from it to the costumes of a pair of English girls, whose dresses were as ill-fitting as their complexions were blooming, and who appeared to be studying the great composition in detail, unconscious of the critical glances of the animated fashion-plate behind them.
This little scene attracted the notice of the idler from the balcony, and as he advanced, drawn rather by amusement than by any special interest on his own part in theParadiso, the lady of the chair turned her eyeglass upon him. A moment later she had dropped it and risen to her feet, exclaiming:
“What, Lennox—Mr. Kyrle!”
Lennox Kyrle—for it was he—started andlooked at her for an instant; then he held out his hand, saying, quietly:
“This is a very unexpected pleasure, Mrs. Meredith.”
Fanny Meredith turned from white to red, and red to white again. His composure seemed to rebuke her agitation and that slip of the tongue—“Lennox.” Moreover, she could not forget that this was the first time they had met since parting as lovers. But she recovered herself quickly, and, glancing up as she gave him her hand, said, a little reproachfully:
“I knew you at once, though you have changed, but you were not sure of me.”
“Yet you havenotchanged,” said he, smiling and wondering—so quick is thought!—as he looked into her upturned face, where he had found the charm which once enslaved him. She had not changed, he was quite right about that; but where was there inspiration for any of the rapture and agony of passion in this blooming, piquant, commonplace countenance? As he held the hand which he had once so eagerly coveted, he thankedHeaven for that old disappointment, while he said, “But I could not expect to meet you here.”
“As easily as I could expect to meet you,” she answered, “though it is true I heard that you had gone to Egypt as a war correspondent. But the war has been over for some time.”
“For something like half a year,” he replied; “but I have been up the Nile, and, had it not been for a sudden summons calling me home, I might be emulating Stanley in equatorial Africa now.”
“I should think you would rather be here,” said Mrs. Meredith, with a little shudder. “We have lately come, and I am delighted with Venice.”
“Most people are,” said Lennox; “and by ‘we’ you mean, I presume, Mr. Meredith and yourself?”
“And the Joscelyns. We joined them in Paris. You know the Joscelyns? No? Well, at least”—with a sudden laugh and blush—“you remember Aimée?”
“Aimée!” he repeated, in a puzzled tone.Then suddenly there flashed upon him the memory of the old sea wall of St. Augustine, of the tide murmuring at his feet, of the stars shining overhead, and of a sweet, frightened voice saying, “I am sent to tell you that Fanny can not come.” The name, which he had forgotten, brought the scene back like a picture, and with it also another scene—an orange grove at sunset, its alleys filled with golden light, its glistening foliage meeting like an arcade above, and a pair of dark eyes gazing half-beseechingly, half-defiantly into his, while the same sweet voice said, “As for me, I will never speak!” Remember her! How could he ever forget the delicate, childlike creature, with her unbending loyalty? His eyes, which time had not rendered less brilliant and keen, gave a flash of recollection as he turned them on Mrs. Meredith, saying, “You mean the young cousin whom you sent—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, looking around with a quick glance. “Pray, be more cautious. If it were suspected, there would be trouble even yet. It is a great boreto have a jealous husband! And you know you are supposed to have been Aimée’s lover.”
Mr. Kyrle drew his brows together, and lifted a head which was not without natural haughtiness a little higher. He thought that the bad taste of this speech was only equaled by its impertinence.
“I am aware,” he said, stiffly, “of the deception which you induced your cousin to assist you in practicing at the time of which you speak; but I hardly thought it possible that even you could have allowed such an impression to remain until now.”
“You are as flattering as ever, I perceive,” said Fanny, coolly. “‘Even you’—that means, I suppose, that you consider me bad enough for anything, and yet are a little surprised that I have been bad enough for this! But, you see, if it was a matter of necessity at the time, it has been equally a matter of necessity ever since. And it did Aimée no harm; whereas to have told the truth, then or later, would have donemegreat harm.”
“I remember that she described herself asof no importance,” said Kyrle, “and it seems that you fully shared the opinion.”
“Yes,” answered Fanny, calmly, “that was what we both thought, she and I, when I sent her on that unlucky errand. I shall never forgive Mr. Meredith for not going home and to bed like a Christian that night! But, as it turned out, she was really a person of much importance. She inherited a great South American fortune, and she is now an heiress and beauty of the first rank.”
“And yet,” cried Kyrle, with the old indignation rushing over him, “you have suffered her to rest under—”
“The aspersion of having been on the point of eloping with you,” said Fanny, with a subdued, wicked laugh. “Yes, it was a necessity of the situation, and I will say for Aimée that she is the most generous creature I ever knew. I really can not see why you should look so indignant. Pray, do you think it such a horrible thing to have been on the point of eloping with you?”
“I think,” he answered, haughtily, “that it is a shameful injustice to allow a young girlto rest under the imputation of having been about to elope with any one when she is altogether innocent of it.”
“We went over all that and settled it at the time,” said Mrs. Meredith, impatiently, “and it is much too late to unsettle it now. It is ancient history—dead, buried, forgotten. Besides, no one knows anything about it except Mr. Meredith; and there is surely not much to harm Aimée in one person’s knowledge. Percy Joscelyn suspects something—you may remember that he found you with Aimée on that awfully unlucky day—but he does notknowanything. He will, however, look upon you as having been her lover, and the whole Joscelyn clan will be thrown into consternation by your appearance. They watch the poor child, and every man who approaches her, like so many dragons. How amusing”—with another irrepressible laugh—“it is that you should have turned up just now!”
“At the cost of depriving you of some amusement,” he said, coldly, “I shall not renew my acquaintance with your cousin—if acquaintanceit could be called. The last thing I am capable of is of annoying one who has already been the victim of such an injustice.”
“But why should you annoy her?” inquired Fanny—whom time had evidently not robbed of any of her volatile qualities—opening her eyes. “And you don’t know, really, what you will lose. She is charming! Every one admires her immensely.”
“I shall not have the opportunity of doing so,” replied Kyrle, more stiffly than ever, for he said to himself that this woman was insufferable. “I am leaving Venice almost immediately, and since I may not have the pleasure of seeing you again, I shall therefore bid you adieu—”
“Not just yet,” said Fanny, with a note of malicious triumph in her voice. “Here is an old friend to whom you must speak first.—Aimée, my dear, let me recall Mr. Kyrle to your recollection.”