BOOK IITHE TUNNELCHAPTER XXIITHE HEART OF THE SHADOWIdeals in the human being are as the flight of a swallow, now high, now sinking to earth, borne upwards by the bright light of air, pressed downwards by the lowering of a heavy sky.When John had said his last good-bye to Jill, when it seemed to both of them that the Romance was finished--when the City of Beautiful Nonsense had just been seen upon the horizon, like a land of promise viewed from a height of Pisgah, and then faded into the mist of impossible things, John turned back to those rooms in Fetter Lane, with his ideal hugging close to earth and all the loneliness of life stretching out monotonously before him.But not until he had seen the empty tea-cups in their position upon the table just as they had left them, the little piece of bread and butter she had half eaten, upon her plate; not until he had seen the empty chairs standing closely together as though repeating in whispers all the story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense which he had told her, did he come actually to realise that he had lost her--that he was alone.The minutes ticked wearily by as he sat there, staring at it all as though it were an empty stage at the end of a play, which the players had deserted.At the sound of footsteps mounting the stairs, he looked up. Then, as a knock fell upon the door, he started to his feet. She had come back! She could bear the parting no more than he! They were never to be parted! This loneliness was too unendurable, too awful to bear. In hurried strides, he reached the door and flung it open.There stood the little bailiff--the greatMr. Chesterton--with a smile spreading agreeably over his solemn face. In those two hours of his absence, he had thought of three clever things--three! which, having just invented, he found to be in every way as good as that famous simile of Time and Tide. He was longing to say them.But when he saw the look on John's face, he stopped."Yer not expecting another young lady are yer?" he asked.John turned back despairingly into the room, making way for him to enter. He offered no reply to the little man's remark.Mr. Chesterton closed the door behind him."'Ave you 'ad a scrap?" he asked sympathetically.Now, sympathy from a bailiff, may be a very beautiful thing, but when the mind of a man is floundering in the nethermost pit, he has no need of it. John turned on him, his face changed, his whole expression altered."You've come here to do your work, haven't you?" he said thickly--"you've come here to take possession of any confounded thing you like. Well--take it! Take the whole blessed show! I don't want to see a single thing in this room again." He strode to the door. The little man stood staring at him amazed. "You can rip every damned thing off the walls----" he went on wildly. "Make up your fifteen pounds whatever you do. Don't stint yourself! For God's sake don't stint yourself!--Take every damned thing!"The door slammed. He was gone.It was half-past six. Payne and Welcome were just beginning to put up their shutters. John hurried into the side entrance and threw his ticket down on the counter."I want that seventeen pounds," he said, and the ten-shilling-piece twisted a giddy dance on the counter by the side of the ticket, then sank down with a gentle ringing sound.The pawnbroker looked at him in amazement, then went to a little pigeon-hole and produced the packet of money. John snatched it up and went.They stared after him; then stared at one another."He ain't so far off it this time," said one."Next thing I'll do," said the high priest--"I'll cut 'is throat in a barber's shop."But supremely unconscious of all these gentle remarks, John was hurrying on through the streets, scarcely conscious of where he was going, or why he had redeemed the money that was now gripped fiercely in his hand.For what did anything matter now? There must be some colour of reality about the ideal, some red lamp burning before an altar to light up that utter darkness into which the mind inevitably falls, blindly and stumblingly, without such actual guiding flame as this. Where would be the wonderful reality of the Host in the Tabernacle, if it was not for the dim red lamp that burnt silently by day and night before the altar? Who could pray, who could believe in utter darkness?And in utter darkness Jill had surely left him now. It might have been that they could not have married for some years; it might have been that they could never have married at all; but to see her no more--never to feel again the touch of understanding in her hands, the look of understanding in her eyes--that was the gale of the wind which had obliterated the red light of the lamp that burnt before his altar. And now--he was in darkness. Neither could he pray, nor believe.For an hour, he wandered through the streets, then, as a clock struck the half-hour after seven, he turned into a fashionable restaurant and took a table in a corner alone.A waiter came with the menu of the dinners--five shillings, seven and six, ten shillings. He chose the last as it was handed to him. The mere action of spending money needlessly seemed a part of the expression of that bitterness which was tainting all his thoughts.The waiter handed him the wine list with a bow.John shook his head."Water," he said.This was not his way of seeking oblivion. In even the blackest moments of his mind, he must have his senses wide-eyed and awake. The man who drinks to forget, forgets Remorse as well. Remorse is a thing to be learnt of, not to drown.This, if John had known it, was what his father meant by wishing for the sorrow in his life. By such moments as these, he was to come to learn the value of optimism; by such moments as these, he was to come to know, not that there is too much sadness in life already, but that there is too little of the contrast of real happiness to appreciate it.All through the meal, sending away one course after another unfinished, he gave way voluntarily to the passion of bitterness, made no effort to steady the balance of his mind.In a balcony, at the far end of the room, a band of string instruments played the worst of meanings into bad music--the music one hears without listening to. It was not long in finding its way into John's mind, not long in exerting its influence upon his mood. One by one, crowding quickly upon each other, he permitted its suggestions to take a hold upon his thoughts. What did it matter how he thought? What did it matter how low his ideal should fall? He could see nothing beyond the moment, nothing further than that he was alone, deprived of the greatest, the highest hope with which his whole being had associated itself? What did anything matter now that he had lost that.And then, out of a stillness that had fallen since the last playing of the band, the musicians began a selection fromLa Bohème. He laid his knife and fork upon the plate. He sat back in his chair and listened.Why did it sound so different? What had changed in it since that night when he had heard it at the Opera? Now there was sensuality in every note of it. It maddened him. The very passages that he had once found beautiful--found wonderful as he had listened to them with Jill--became charged with the vilest imaginations. Thoughts, the impurest, surged into his mind. The wildest and most incomprehensible desire beat in his brain. Was it the players? Was it their rendering of the music, or was it himself?He called the waiter, ordered his bill, paid--thinking no loss in it--out of the seventeen pounds he had redeemed, and strode out of the place into the street.There was nowhere to go, no friend whom he cared at such a moment to see. At last, without consciously determining upon it, he found himself making his way back to Fetter Lane.With steps almost like those of an old man, he climbed up the stairs, passing the sandy cat without notice--not so much as a good-evening.When he opened the door of his room, there was Mr. Chesterton, comfortably ensconced in his armchair and only saving his presumptuousness of its occupation, by reading one of John's books.But Mr. Chesterton was a man with a certain amount of humility. He rose to his feet as John entered; because there was no doubt as to its being John's particular arm-chair. It was the only armchair in the room. The little bailiff had observed that. In fact, for that very reason, he had considerately omitted it in the making of his inventory."I--I just been reading one of your books, Mr. Grey," he said, "an' if yer don't mind my sayin' so, I've read many a story what was worse. I 'ave, indeed. I like this story first rate. It's no more like a thing you'd hear of in life than I'm like the photograph my son took of me last week with a five-shilling camera. 'Ow on earth you manage to do it is a marvel to me. Do you get a plot in yer 'ead like and just stick it down just as it comes to yer--what my old woman calls when the spirit moves? 'The spirit moves,' she says, and then she goes out and gets a jug of beer. But that's only figurative, of course. What I mean is, do you go on writing what's in your 'ead, or do you get bits of it out of other books? 'He threw his arms around her neck and held her in a passionate embrace.' I've read that in 'eaps of books. I suppose they get it from each other.""Did you find it in mine?" asked John."Well, no--I can't say as I 'ave yet. But then, they've only just been introduced. I expect you'll 'ave to come to it sooner or later. They all do.""That's quite right," said John--"we all do. There's something inevitable about it. Have you had a meal yet?""No--but I've got a little something here in a basket. I'll eat it on the landing if you like.""Oh, no," said John--"eat it here. It makes no difference to me."So Mr. Chesterton pulled out the basket with the little something inside. Two cold sausages and some bread and butter were the extent of his meal which he ate with evident relish, and table manners that, perhaps, a fastidious person might have objected to. You could, for example, hear him eating. Sometimes he exclaimed how excellent were sausages when they were cold. He went so far as to say he loved them. He also expanded on the way his old woman cooked tripe; but when he talked about the brains of certain animals being cheap and at the same time a great delicacy, John found that his hands wanted washing and went into the other room."They've had a tiff," said the little man as he bit into the second sausage--"they've 'ad a tiff. He's that down in the mouth, there's nothin' I can say as'll buck him up. Why, if I talk about sheep's brains to my old woman, she gets as chirpy as a cock-sparrer."When John came back, Mr. Chesterton had finished; the basket was put away and he was doing things with his teeth and a bent pin in a far corner of the room."'Ave yer got a box of draughts, Mr. Grey?" he asked, when he was at liberty. John nodded his head."Then come along," said the little man--"let's have a game!"CHAPTER XXIIIAMBERBut there is no oblivion to be found in a game of draughts. For some days, John bore with the society of the amiable Mr. Chesterton. He listened to his stories of visits that he had paid in other establishments, where they had prevailed upon him to do odd jobs about the house, even to the cleaning of the knives and boots. The only time when he seemed to have resolutely refused to do anything, was on the occasion he had spent seven days with the lady journalist who had a beard and a fair tidy moustache."I wouldn't even have shaved her if she'd asked me to," he said.This sort of thing may be amusing; but it needs the time, it needs the place. In those rooms of his, where only a few days before, Jill had been sitting--at that period of his life when hope was lowest and despair triumphant, John found no amusement in it at all.He wanted his oblivion. His whole desire was to forget. The life that had held all promise for him, was gone--irrevocably broken. He sought for that, which would, by contrast, close the memory of it, as you shut a book that is read. It was not to be done by playing draughts with Mr. Chesterton. It was not to be done in the ways that the crowd of men will choose. He had attempted that--found it impossible and flung it aside.It was then that he thought of Amber. She had had a rightful place once, a place that had accorded with his ideas of the cleanliness of existence. Only that he had met Jill--only that he had loved--only that he had found the expression of his ideal in her, Amber would still have been there. And now--now that he had lost everything--why not return? It was the most human thing in the world. Life was not possible of such ideals.So he argued, the darkness slowly diminishing--the light of some reason creeping again into his mind. But the bitterness was still there. He still did not care and, as yet, his mind did not even rebel against such callousness.One evening, then, he left Mr. Chesterton finishing the reading of his book. He hailed the first hansom he saw and, screwing himself into the corner of the seat, took a deep breath of relief as he drove away.Then began the fear as he drove, the fear that he would not find Amber, that since she had gone out of his life, she would have readjusted her mind, found other interests, or even that she might not be there when he arrived. And now, once his destination was made, he dreaded the thought that Circumstance should balk his desire.Jumping quickly out of the hansom, he paid his fare, hurried up the steps and rattled the flap of the letter-box. This was the knocker of friends. All those who used the proper means were creditors, not answered until inspected carefully from behind lace curtains.For a few moments, his heart beat tentatively. There was no sound, no light from within. Then came the quick tapping of high-heels. He took a breath. The door opened. He saw her face of amazement in the darkness."You!" she exclaimed. The door opened wider to her hand. "Come in."He took off his hat and stepped in. His manner was strange. He knew it was strange; he understood the look of question in her eyes as she stared at him--it reflected the look in his own mind."Are you alone?" he asked.She nodded her head."My aunt is staying with me," she explained, "but she's gone to bed. She's got my bedroom. The mater's gone to bed. I'm sleeping on the floor in the drawing-room. I was sitting there. Come in."He followed her into the drawing-room. There was her bed upon the floor--a mattress, sheets and blanket. That was all."You're sleeping there?" he said.She said--"hm" with a little jerk of the head, in the most natural way in the world. If he thought he knew what it was to be poor, he flattered himself. He had been without meals, but he had never slept on the floor."Isn't it hard?" he questioned. "Do you go to sleep at all?"She laughed gently under her breath."Good heavens, yes! I'm used to it. But what have you come for?"She sat down in a heap, like a journeyman tailor, upon her bed, and gazed up at him. At first, he did not know how to say it. Then he blurted it out."I want you to come back again to see me in Fetter Lane."She smiled with pride. Her mind reached for its box of bricks. He had sent her away from Fetter Lane. That was all over--past--done with."That's rather unexpected--isn't it?""I can't help that," he exclaimed, with a moment of wildness."But after all you've said?""I can't help what I've said. It holds good no longer. I take it all back. It means nothing."She knelt up quickly on her knees. Dignity comes often before humanity with a woman, but pity will always outride the two. Something had happened to him. He was in trouble. The old appeal he had once made to her rose out of the pity that she felt. She stretched up her hands to his shoulders."What's happened?" she asked--"tell me what's happened."He dropped on to the mattress on the floor. He told her everything. He told her how far his ideals had fallen in those last few days. He stripped the whole of his mind for her to lash if she chose; he stripped it, like a child undressing for a whipping.When he had finished, she sat back again in her former position. She stared into the empty grate."I wonder," said she--"I wonder does the man exist who can bear disappointment without becoming like that."That was the only lash that fell from her. And she did not direct it upon him, but it whipped across the nakedness of his mind with a stinging blow. He winced under it. It made him long to be that man. Yet still, there was his desire; still there was the fear, that circumstance would balk him of his oblivion."Why do you say that?" he asked."Because, I thought you would be different," she said."I'm as human as the rest," said he. "I'm the crank, of course--but I'm a human crank. Will you come back to me again?"She rose to her knees again. She was trembling, but she took his hand in hers and gripped it hard to hide it from him."What will you say afterwards?" she asked gently. "What will you feel? You'll be full of remorse. You'll hate me. You'll hate yourself. What about your ideal?""I have none," he exclaimed blindly."I said that once," she whispered--"and you said I was wrong, that I had an ideal, that everybody had, only they lost sight of it."He remembered all that. He remembered the reasoning of his mind. He knew it was true. He knew it was true even then."Now you've lost sight of yours," she continued. "But you'll see it again, you'll realise it again to-morrow, and then--heavens! How you'll hate me! How you'll hate yourself."He stared at her. Were women as good, as fine as this? Was he the only vile thing in existence then? What would Jill think if she could see into the pit of his mind now? So low had he fallen that he thought it impossible to struggle upwards; so low, that it seemed he must touch the utmost depth before he could get the purchase to regain his feet. And if he touched the lowest, he might rise again, but it would not be so high as before.Amber watched all the thoughts in his face. She had done her utmost. She could not do more. If he did not fight it out from this, then, what must be, must be.Yet one more thing she could do. If she spoke of Venice. But why should she say it? It was his battle, not hers. She had given him every weapon to wage it but this. Why should she say it? The battle was against herself. Yet she answered to the best. There was her ideal as well, however unconscious it may have been."When are you going to Venice?" she asked hoarsely.He told her how he had spent some of the money--more than a pound of it was gone.She pulled out her purse, quickly, fiercely, feverishly."Then won't you be able to go?" she asked."Not for a while.""Won't your mother be disappointed,--the little old white-haired lady?"He tried to beat back the emotion in his throat, then felt something cold and hard in his hand. He looked down. It was a sovereign."You must take that," she said breathlessly. "Pay it back some other time and go--go to Venice to-morrow."John looked full in her eyes."And you called yourself the fly in the amber," he said. Then he tightened her fingers round the coin--kissed them and walked to the door."I'll go to Venice," he said--"I'll go--somehow or other. I'll be the man who can bear things without becoming like that. You shan't be disappointed."He came back again and seized her hand. Then he hurried out.She listened to the door slamming. She heard his footsteps in the quiet street, then she dropped down on the mattress on the drawing-room floor."Oh, you fool!" she whispered under her breath. "Oh, you fool!"But wisdom and folly, they are matters of environment. Behind it all, there was the most wonderful satisfaction in the world in saying--"Oh, you fool!"BOOK IIITHE CITYCHAPTER XXIVTHE PALAZZO CAPELLOThey tell you--come to Venice by night; that then you will drift silently into the marvellous mystery of it all; that then you will feel the weight of the centuries in every shadow that lurks in the deep set doorways; that then you will realise the tragedies that have been played, the romances woven, and the dark deeds that have been done in the making of its history--all this, if you come to Venice by night.They tell you, you will never see Venice as the tourist sees it, if you will but do this; that the impression of mystery will outlast the sight of the Philistines crowding in the Square of St. Mark's, will obliterate the picture of a fleet of gondolas tearing through the Grand Canal, led by a conductor shouting out the names of the Palaces as they pass. Your conception of the city of mystery will last for ever, so they tell you, if you do but come to Venice by night.But there is another Venice than this, a Venice you see as you come to it in the early morning--a city of light and of air, a city of glittering water, of domes in gossamer that rise lightly above the surface, finding the sun, as bubbles that melt all the prisms of light into their liquid shells.Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a city bathed in a sea of light; for it is not only that the sun shines upon it, but that, like the white shoulders of a mermaid, glittering with the water drops as she rises out of the sea, this wonderful city is not illuminated only, but is drenched in light itself. It is no city of shadow and mysteries then. There are no dark water-ways, no deepening gloom beneath the bridges. In the early morning, it lies, as yet unwakened, blinking, flashing, burning--a rose opal, set clear against the sun.Then the deepest shadow is in a tone of gold, the highest light in a mist of glittering silver. The domes of San Marco and Santa Maria della Salute are caught up in the brilliancy and melt shapelessly into the glow.Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a smelter's furnace into which has been cast the gold and silver from a boundless treasure hoard. You will see all that white and yellow metal running in molten streams of light; you will see the vibrating waves of air as the flames leap upward, curling and twisting to the very gates of heaven itself. You will see a city of gold and silver, of light and air all made liquid in one sea of brilliance, if you do but come to Venice in the early morning.* * * * *In the Grand Canal, just at the corner of thePalazzo Babarigo, there appears the entrance to one of those myriad little ways that shoot secretly away from the great, wide water street. Turning into this, theRio San Polo, following its course under the bridges and taking the second turning on the left, an obedient gondolier will swing you round with one sweep of his long oar into theRio Marin.Being human, assuming your love of the beautiful, taking time also as his perquisite, he will probably choose more devious ways than this. But, everyone will tell you that, by theRio San Polo, it is the shortest.On each side of theRio Marin, there runs a narrow little pathway. Here, the houses do not dip down to the water's edge, the space of light is wider, and the hurrying of the pedestrian on the footway seems to concentrate life for a moment and give it speech, in a place where everything is mute, where everything is still.Idlers gather lazily on the bridges to watch the swaying gondolas as they pass beneath. Here, even the mystery you will find by night, is driven away. The sun, the broad stretch of heaven, no longer a ribbon-strip of blue tying together the house-tops, these combine to defy mystery in theRio Marin. Rose trees and flowering bushes top the grey walls; lift up their colours against a cloudless sky and smile down to you of gardens concealed on the other side.Towards the end of this little water-way, almost opposite theChiesa Tedeschi, stands thePalazzo Capello, a broad and somewhat unbeautiful house, looking placidly down upon the quiet water. No great history is attached to it. No poet has ever written there, seated at its windows; no tragedy has been played that the guide books know of, no blood has been splashed against its walls. You will not find it mentioned in any of the descriptions of Venice, for it has no history to detain the ear; it bears no show of ornament without to attract the eye. Yet, with that pomp and vanity that breathed in Venice in the middle centuries, it was called--a palace--and only to those who know it from within, can this dignity of name seem justified.A great, wide door divides the front of grey stone, up to which lead steps from the pathway--steps, in the crevices of which a patch of green lies here and there in a perfect harmony of contrast to the well-worn slabs. This door is always closed and, with no windows on either side, only the broad stretch of masonry, there is a stern appearance about the place, suggesting a prison or a barracks in its almost forbidding aspect. But when once that wide, wooden gate is opened, the absence of windows upon the ground floor is partly explained and the mind is caught in a breath of enchantment. It does not give entrance to a hall, but to an archway--an archway tunnelling under the house itself, at the end of which, through the lace-work of wonderful wrought-iron palings, you see the fairy-land of an old Italian garden, glittering in the sun.The shadows that lie heavily under the archway only serve to intensify the brilliance of the light beyond. Colours are concentrated to the essence of themselves and the burst of sunshine, after the darkness, brings a haze, as when you see the air quivering over a furnace.But, having gained entrance and passed that doorway, you are not yet within the house. On either side of this cool damp tunnel, making way to the right and left on the palace, which is divided into two houses, there are smaller archways cut into the wall. Taking that on your left, and before your eyes have grown accustomed to the confusion of lights and shadows, you might think it was a passage burrowing down into some secret corners of the earth. Your feet stumble, you feel your way, fingers touching the cold walls, suddenly realising that there are steps to mount, not to descend and, groping onwards, you reach another door confronting you impassably in the blackness.There is a bell here, but it is by chance you find it--a long chain, like that at a postern gate, which depends from somewhere above your head. As you pull it, there is a clanging and a jangling quite close to your ear, shattering in a thousand little pieces the stillness that reigns all round.After a moment or so, a small door opens within the bigger door, a curtain is pulled and, stepping through the tiny entrance for which your head must be bent low, you find yourself in a vast, big room--a room stretching from back to front of the whole house--a room that makes the meaning of the word palace seem justified a thousand times.At either end are windows, so broad, so high, that the great stretch of this vast chamber, with its lofty ceiling, is flooded by one swift stream of light. Upon the polished floor of wood, the generous sunlight is splashed in daring brightness, throwing all near it into comparative shade, yet reflecting from the shining surface of the ground a glow that fills the air with a mist of light.Along the walls of a dull, cool grey, big pictures are hung. Many there are, yet so spacious is the room, that they do not appear crowded; there is no suggestion of a well-stocked gallery. And on each side of the room two rich, warm-coloured curtains hang, concealing behind them silent, heavy, doors, deep set within the wall.One of these, if you open it, will give you admittance to a tiny little room--so tiny, so small, that its smallness laughs at you, as for the moment it peers through the open space into the vast chamber beyond.Close the door and the smallness seems natural enough then. For there, sitting perhaps over their afternoon tea, or their cups of coffee in the evening, chatting and gossiping as tho' they had just met to keep each other company, are two small figures; small because they are old--one, that of an old man, whose eyes are somewhat dimmed behind the high cheek bones and the shaggy eyebrows, the other, crumpled and creased like a silk dress that has lain long-folded in a camphor-scented drawer, the figure of a little old white-haired lady.CHAPTER XXVTHE LETTER--VENICEIn the daily affairs of those two old people in the Palazzo Capello, there was one undeviating ceremony, performed with the regularity and precision of those mechanical figures that strike the great bell on the clock tower in the square of St. Mark's.As the bells of the churches rang out the hour of ten at night, Claudina, the old dame who looked after all the wants of this worthy pair, entered the little room, carrying a large box in her hands.Whatever their occupation may have been, whether they were playing at cribbage, or merely writing letters, up went their white heads together and one or the other would say--in Italian--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"And Claudina would bend her head, with a sudden jerk, like a nodding mandarin, her big earrings would swing violently in her ears, and she would plant the box down gently upon the table."Si, signora," she said--always in the same tone of voice, as though she had suddenly realised that her nod of the head was not quite as respectful as it ought to be.One cannot describe this as a ceremony; but it was the prelude to all the serious business that followed. Claudina was the mace bearer. Her entrance with the wooden box was the heralding of the quaint little procession of incidents that followed.It was an evening in July, in that self-same year which has so successfully hidden itself in the crevices of our calendar. Thejalousieshad not long been closed upon a sky of primrose, in which the stars were set like early drops of dew. Claudina had just brought in a letter by the post. It was half-past nine."A letter, signora," Claudina had said and, knowing quite well who the letter was from, she had not laid it down upon the table as ordinary letters were treated, but had given it directly into her mistress's hand.If the old Italian servant knows curiosity, she does not show it. Claudina, once the letter was delivered, discreetly left the room. The moment the door had closed, there followed as pretty a play of courtesy as you might have wished to see.The old gentleman laid down his book."It is from John?" he said quickly.She nodded her head and passed it across to him. Had she rolled the world to his feet, it could not have been more generously done. And had it been the world, he could not have taken it more eagerly.His finger was just trembling inside the flap of the envelope, when he read the address."Why--it's written to you, my dear," said he, slowly withdrawing his finger.She smiled. She nodded her head again. It was addressed to her; but in the rightful order of things, it was really his turn. For some unknown reason, John had addressed the last two letters to her. He never did do that. He was always most scrupulously fair in this tacit understanding that he should address his letters alternately, first to his father, then to his mother. This was the only time he had broken the unwritten law. It was really not her letter at all. That was why she had passed it across at once to her husband. He would never have dreamed of asking for the letter out of his turn. His fingers often twitched while her poor hands fumbled with the envelope, but he had never moved an inch to take it, until, of her own accord, she had handed it to him.Now--knowing that it was his turn, his hand had stretched out for it naturally the moment Claudina had closed the door, and she had as readily given it. But there was a secret exultation in the heart of her. John had addressed it to her. There was no getting away from that.For a moment, the old gentleman sat fingering it in dubious hesitation. Then he passed it back again."It's your letter, my dear," he said. "You open it." And picking up his book, he pretended to go on reading. Of course he did not see a single word on the page before him. Every sense in his body was strained to catch the sound of the tearing paper as she broke open the envelope. But there was no sound at all. Another moment of silence and she was bending over him from behind his chair, her arms round his neck and the letter held before his eyes."We'll open it together," she said.It was her way of letting him do it without knowing that he had given way. To be sure, it was his finger that finally broke the flap of the envelope; but then, he retained all the dignity of the sacrifice. And so, as she leant over his shoulder, they read it together, with little exclamations of delight, little interruptions of pleasure, that need a heart for their purer translation, and cannot be written here because of that great gulf which is fixed behind the mind and the pen--because of that greater gulf which lies between the word and the eye that reads it."My dearest----"Just those two words beginning; but they were almost the entire letter to her. They set her little brown eyes alight, her heart beating quickly behind the stiff bodice."I have left writing to you until the last moment for fear I should be unable to come on the day that you were expecting me. But it is all right. I am starting to-morrow morning, and shall be with you the usual time the day following, just about sunset. I can't tell you how glad I shall be to get away from here. You know what London can be like in July, and I suppose I want a change as well. I can't work these days at all--but I don't mean to worry you. I expect I am depressed and want different air in my lungs. I shall go up to the bows of the steamer crossing to-morrow, stand there with my mouth open, and get it forced down my throat like a dose."God bless you, dearest. Give my love to father, but don't tell him I can't work. I know he understands it well enough, but I believe it depresses him as much as it does me."He looked up simply into her face as he handed back the paper."You see, I wasn't meant to read it," he said quietly.Impulsively, she put her arm round his neck. She knew so well how that had hurt. There had been letters sometimes that she was not meant to see. Of course, she had seen them; but that touch of intimacy which, when you are a lover, or a mother, makes letters such wonderful living things, had been utterly taken from them. They had contained loving messages to her. But the writing itself, that had been meant for another eye to read."But it was only because he was thoughtful about you," she whispered--"not because he didn't want you to see. He'll tell you himself quickly enough that he can't work when he comes. You see if he doesn't. He can't keep those sort of things to himself. He can do it in a letter, because he thinks he ought to. But he won't be here five minutes before he's telling you that he can't write a line. And think! He'll be here the day after to-morrow. Oh--he is such a dear boy! Isn't he? Isn't he the dearest boy two old people ever had in the world?"So she charmed the smile back into his eyes; never pausing until she saw that passing look of pain vanish completely out of sight. And so Claudina found them, as she had often found them before, poring once again over the letter as she brought in the big box.Up went the two white heads in amazement and concern."You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"For to old people, you know, the hours pass very quickly; they are scarcely awake, before they are again being put to bed. Time hurries by them with such quiet feet, stepping lightly on the tips of its toes lest it should disturb those peaceful last moments which God gives to the people who are old.Claudina laid down the big box upon the table. She nodded her head; her earrings shook."Si, Signora," she replied, as always.The little old white-haired lady crumpled the letter into her dress; concealed it behind the stiff black bodice. Then they both stood to their feet, and the procession, of which Claudina was the herald, began.First of all the big wooden box was opened, and out of it were taken numbers and numbers of little white linen bags of all shapes and sizes. White? Well, they were white once, but long obedience to the service for which they were required had turned their white to grey.Each one of them was numbered, the number stitched in thread upon the outside; each one of them had been made to fit some separate little ornament in the room, to wrap it up, to keep the dust from it through the night--a night-cap for it, in fact. At ten o'clock the ornaments were put to bed; after the ornaments, then these two old people--but first of all their treasures. They stood by, watching Claudina tuck them all up, one by one, and it gave them that delicious sensation which only old people and young children know anything about--the sensation that they are sitting up late that others are going to bed before them.Of course they never knew they had that sensation; they were not aware of it for a moment. But you might have known by the way they turned and smiled at each other when the big Dresden-china shepherdess was popped into her bag, you might have known that in the hearts of them, that was what they felt.This evening in particular, their smiles were more radiant than ever. The old lady forgot to make her little exclamations of terror when Claudina could not get the night-cap over the head of the Dresden-china shepherdess, and was in danger of dropping them both together; the old gentleman forgot his quiet--"Be careful, Claudina--be careful." For whenever his wife was very excited, it always made him realise that he was very quiet, very self-possessed. But they felt none of their usual anxiety on this evening in July. In two days--in less--John would be with them. They had waited a whole year for this moment and a whole year, however quickly the separate moments may pass, is a long, long time to old people."There is one thing," the old gentleman said, presently, as the last ornaments were being ranged upon the table, standing in readiness for their nightcaps to go on. "There is one thing I don't quite know about."She slipped her arm into his and asked in a whisper what it was. There was no need to talk in a whisper, for Claudina did not know a word of English; but she guessed he was going to say something concerning John and about him, she nearly always spoke in a whisper."It's the--the shop," he replied--"I--I don't like to tell John.""Oh--but why not?" She clung a little closer to him."It isn't that I don't think he would understand--but it's just like that sentence in his letter about me. I feel it would hurt him if he thought I couldn't sell my pictures any more. I believe he would blame himself and think he ought to be giving us money, if he knew that I had had to start this curio shop to make things meet more comfortably."She nodded her head wisely. She would have been all for telling her son everything. But when he mentioned the fact of John thinking he ought to support them, and when she considered how John would need every penny that he earned to support the woman whom she longed for him to make his wife--it was a different matter. She quite agreed. It was better that John should be told nothing."You don't think he'll find out--do you?" she said, and her eyes looked startled at the thought."No--no--I shouldn't think so. It isn't as if I had to be there every day. Foscari looks after it quite well. Though I'm always afraid he'll sell the very things I can't bear to part with. He sold the old brass Jewish lamp the other day, and I wouldn't have parted with it for worlds. But I dare say if I tell him to be careful--I dare say----"It was rather sad, this curio shop. It would have been very sad if his wife had not appreciated the need for it; if she had not made it easier by telling him how brave he was, by sharing with him the sense of shame he felt when it became apparent that his pictures were no longer saleable.For when he had reached the age of seventy-three, that was what they had told him. If he had not been a landscape painter, it might have been different; but at seventy-three, when one's heart is weak, it is not possible, it is not wise, to go far afield, to tramp the mountains as once he had done, in search of subjects new. So, he had been compelled to stay at home, to try and paint from memory the pictures that lay heaped within his mind. Then it was that they began to tell him that they could not sell his work; then he came to find that there must be other means of support if they were not to appeal to John for aid. And so, having a collection of treasures such as artists find, picked up from all the odd corners of Europe, he bethought him of a curio shop and, finding a little place to let at a quiet corner in theMerceria, he took it, called it--The Treasure Shop--and painting the name in a quaint old sign which he hung outside, obliterated his identity from the public eye.For weeks beforehand, they had discussed this plan. Some of their own treasures, of course, would have to be sacrificed; in fact, Claudina carried many little grey night-caps away with her in the wooden box--night-caps that no longer had Dresden heads to fit them. But the money they were going to make out of the Treasure Shop would make up for all these heart-rending sacrifices. They would even be able to send John little presents now and then. There was nothing like a curio-shop for minting money, especially if the curios were really genuine, as were theirs.But that was the very rub of it. When he came to open the shop, the old gentleman found it was the very genuineness of the things he had to sell that made it impossible for him to part with them. He loved them too well. And even the most ignorant collectors, British sires with check-cloth caps and heavy ulsters, old ladies with guide books in one hand and cornucopias of maze for the pigeons in the other, even they seemed to pitch upon the very things he loved the most.He asked exorbitant prices to try and save his treasures from their clutches and mostly this method succeeded; but sometimes they were fools enough to put the money down. For there was one thing he could never do; he could not belittle the thing that he loved. If it was good, if it was genuine, if it really was old, he had to say so despite himself. Enthusiasm would let him do no otherwise. But then, when he had said all he could in its praise, he would ask so immense a sum that the majority of would-be purchasers left the shop as if he had insulted them.So it was that the Treasure Shop did not fulfil all the expectations they had had of it. It made just enough money for their wants; but that was all.And now came the question as to whether they should let John know of it. Long into the night they discussed the question, their two white heads lying side by side on the pillows, their voices whispering in the darkness."And yet--I believe he would understand," said the little old lady on her side--"he's such a dear, good boy, I'm sure he would understand.""I don't know--I don't know," replied the old gentleman dubiously--"It will be bad enough when he sees my last pictures. No--no--I don't think I'll tell him. Foscari can look after the place. I need hardly be there at all while he's with us."And then, making the sign of the cross upon each other's foreheads--saying--"God bless you"--as they had done every night their whole lives long, they fell asleep.
BOOK II
THE TUNNEL
CHAPTER XXII
THE HEART OF THE SHADOW
Ideals in the human being are as the flight of a swallow, now high, now sinking to earth, borne upwards by the bright light of air, pressed downwards by the lowering of a heavy sky.
When John had said his last good-bye to Jill, when it seemed to both of them that the Romance was finished--when the City of Beautiful Nonsense had just been seen upon the horizon, like a land of promise viewed from a height of Pisgah, and then faded into the mist of impossible things, John turned back to those rooms in Fetter Lane, with his ideal hugging close to earth and all the loneliness of life stretching out monotonously before him.
But not until he had seen the empty tea-cups in their position upon the table just as they had left them, the little piece of bread and butter she had half eaten, upon her plate; not until he had seen the empty chairs standing closely together as though repeating in whispers all the story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense which he had told her, did he come actually to realise that he had lost her--that he was alone.
The minutes ticked wearily by as he sat there, staring at it all as though it were an empty stage at the end of a play, which the players had deserted.
At the sound of footsteps mounting the stairs, he looked up. Then, as a knock fell upon the door, he started to his feet. She had come back! She could bear the parting no more than he! They were never to be parted! This loneliness was too unendurable, too awful to bear. In hurried strides, he reached the door and flung it open.
There stood the little bailiff--the greatMr. Chesterton--with a smile spreading agreeably over his solemn face. In those two hours of his absence, he had thought of three clever things--three! which, having just invented, he found to be in every way as good as that famous simile of Time and Tide. He was longing to say them.
But when he saw the look on John's face, he stopped.
"Yer not expecting another young lady are yer?" he asked.
John turned back despairingly into the room, making way for him to enter. He offered no reply to the little man's remark.
Mr. Chesterton closed the door behind him.
"'Ave you 'ad a scrap?" he asked sympathetically.
Now, sympathy from a bailiff, may be a very beautiful thing, but when the mind of a man is floundering in the nethermost pit, he has no need of it. John turned on him, his face changed, his whole expression altered.
"You've come here to do your work, haven't you?" he said thickly--"you've come here to take possession of any confounded thing you like. Well--take it! Take the whole blessed show! I don't want to see a single thing in this room again." He strode to the door. The little man stood staring at him amazed. "You can rip every damned thing off the walls----" he went on wildly. "Make up your fifteen pounds whatever you do. Don't stint yourself! For God's sake don't stint yourself!--Take every damned thing!"
The door slammed. He was gone.
It was half-past six. Payne and Welcome were just beginning to put up their shutters. John hurried into the side entrance and threw his ticket down on the counter.
"I want that seventeen pounds," he said, and the ten-shilling-piece twisted a giddy dance on the counter by the side of the ticket, then sank down with a gentle ringing sound.
The pawnbroker looked at him in amazement, then went to a little pigeon-hole and produced the packet of money. John snatched it up and went.
They stared after him; then stared at one another.
"He ain't so far off it this time," said one.
"Next thing I'll do," said the high priest--"I'll cut 'is throat in a barber's shop."
But supremely unconscious of all these gentle remarks, John was hurrying on through the streets, scarcely conscious of where he was going, or why he had redeemed the money that was now gripped fiercely in his hand.
For what did anything matter now? There must be some colour of reality about the ideal, some red lamp burning before an altar to light up that utter darkness into which the mind inevitably falls, blindly and stumblingly, without such actual guiding flame as this. Where would be the wonderful reality of the Host in the Tabernacle, if it was not for the dim red lamp that burnt silently by day and night before the altar? Who could pray, who could believe in utter darkness?
And in utter darkness Jill had surely left him now. It might have been that they could not have married for some years; it might have been that they could never have married at all; but to see her no more--never to feel again the touch of understanding in her hands, the look of understanding in her eyes--that was the gale of the wind which had obliterated the red light of the lamp that burnt before his altar. And now--he was in darkness. Neither could he pray, nor believe.
For an hour, he wandered through the streets, then, as a clock struck the half-hour after seven, he turned into a fashionable restaurant and took a table in a corner alone.
A waiter came with the menu of the dinners--five shillings, seven and six, ten shillings. He chose the last as it was handed to him. The mere action of spending money needlessly seemed a part of the expression of that bitterness which was tainting all his thoughts.
The waiter handed him the wine list with a bow.
John shook his head.
"Water," he said.
This was not his way of seeking oblivion. In even the blackest moments of his mind, he must have his senses wide-eyed and awake. The man who drinks to forget, forgets Remorse as well. Remorse is a thing to be learnt of, not to drown.
This, if John had known it, was what his father meant by wishing for the sorrow in his life. By such moments as these, he was to come to learn the value of optimism; by such moments as these, he was to come to know, not that there is too much sadness in life already, but that there is too little of the contrast of real happiness to appreciate it.
All through the meal, sending away one course after another unfinished, he gave way voluntarily to the passion of bitterness, made no effort to steady the balance of his mind.
In a balcony, at the far end of the room, a band of string instruments played the worst of meanings into bad music--the music one hears without listening to. It was not long in finding its way into John's mind, not long in exerting its influence upon his mood. One by one, crowding quickly upon each other, he permitted its suggestions to take a hold upon his thoughts. What did it matter how he thought? What did it matter how low his ideal should fall? He could see nothing beyond the moment, nothing further than that he was alone, deprived of the greatest, the highest hope with which his whole being had associated itself? What did anything matter now that he had lost that.
And then, out of a stillness that had fallen since the last playing of the band, the musicians began a selection fromLa Bohème. He laid his knife and fork upon the plate. He sat back in his chair and listened.
Why did it sound so different? What had changed in it since that night when he had heard it at the Opera? Now there was sensuality in every note of it. It maddened him. The very passages that he had once found beautiful--found wonderful as he had listened to them with Jill--became charged with the vilest imaginations. Thoughts, the impurest, surged into his mind. The wildest and most incomprehensible desire beat in his brain. Was it the players? Was it their rendering of the music, or was it himself?
He called the waiter, ordered his bill, paid--thinking no loss in it--out of the seventeen pounds he had redeemed, and strode out of the place into the street.
There was nowhere to go, no friend whom he cared at such a moment to see. At last, without consciously determining upon it, he found himself making his way back to Fetter Lane.
With steps almost like those of an old man, he climbed up the stairs, passing the sandy cat without notice--not so much as a good-evening.
When he opened the door of his room, there was Mr. Chesterton, comfortably ensconced in his armchair and only saving his presumptuousness of its occupation, by reading one of John's books.
But Mr. Chesterton was a man with a certain amount of humility. He rose to his feet as John entered; because there was no doubt as to its being John's particular arm-chair. It was the only armchair in the room. The little bailiff had observed that. In fact, for that very reason, he had considerately omitted it in the making of his inventory.
"I--I just been reading one of your books, Mr. Grey," he said, "an' if yer don't mind my sayin' so, I've read many a story what was worse. I 'ave, indeed. I like this story first rate. It's no more like a thing you'd hear of in life than I'm like the photograph my son took of me last week with a five-shilling camera. 'Ow on earth you manage to do it is a marvel to me. Do you get a plot in yer 'ead like and just stick it down just as it comes to yer--what my old woman calls when the spirit moves? 'The spirit moves,' she says, and then she goes out and gets a jug of beer. But that's only figurative, of course. What I mean is, do you go on writing what's in your 'ead, or do you get bits of it out of other books? 'He threw his arms around her neck and held her in a passionate embrace.' I've read that in 'eaps of books. I suppose they get it from each other."
"Did you find it in mine?" asked John.
"Well, no--I can't say as I 'ave yet. But then, they've only just been introduced. I expect you'll 'ave to come to it sooner or later. They all do."
"That's quite right," said John--"we all do. There's something inevitable about it. Have you had a meal yet?"
"No--but I've got a little something here in a basket. I'll eat it on the landing if you like."
"Oh, no," said John--"eat it here. It makes no difference to me."
So Mr. Chesterton pulled out the basket with the little something inside. Two cold sausages and some bread and butter were the extent of his meal which he ate with evident relish, and table manners that, perhaps, a fastidious person might have objected to. You could, for example, hear him eating. Sometimes he exclaimed how excellent were sausages when they were cold. He went so far as to say he loved them. He also expanded on the way his old woman cooked tripe; but when he talked about the brains of certain animals being cheap and at the same time a great delicacy, John found that his hands wanted washing and went into the other room.
"They've had a tiff," said the little man as he bit into the second sausage--"they've 'ad a tiff. He's that down in the mouth, there's nothin' I can say as'll buck him up. Why, if I talk about sheep's brains to my old woman, she gets as chirpy as a cock-sparrer."
When John came back, Mr. Chesterton had finished; the basket was put away and he was doing things with his teeth and a bent pin in a far corner of the room.
"'Ave yer got a box of draughts, Mr. Grey?" he asked, when he was at liberty. John nodded his head.
"Then come along," said the little man--"let's have a game!"
CHAPTER XXIII
AMBER
But there is no oblivion to be found in a game of draughts. For some days, John bore with the society of the amiable Mr. Chesterton. He listened to his stories of visits that he had paid in other establishments, where they had prevailed upon him to do odd jobs about the house, even to the cleaning of the knives and boots. The only time when he seemed to have resolutely refused to do anything, was on the occasion he had spent seven days with the lady journalist who had a beard and a fair tidy moustache.
"I wouldn't even have shaved her if she'd asked me to," he said.
This sort of thing may be amusing; but it needs the time, it needs the place. In those rooms of his, where only a few days before, Jill had been sitting--at that period of his life when hope was lowest and despair triumphant, John found no amusement in it at all.
He wanted his oblivion. His whole desire was to forget. The life that had held all promise for him, was gone--irrevocably broken. He sought for that, which would, by contrast, close the memory of it, as you shut a book that is read. It was not to be done by playing draughts with Mr. Chesterton. It was not to be done in the ways that the crowd of men will choose. He had attempted that--found it impossible and flung it aside.
It was then that he thought of Amber. She had had a rightful place once, a place that had accorded with his ideas of the cleanliness of existence. Only that he had met Jill--only that he had loved--only that he had found the expression of his ideal in her, Amber would still have been there. And now--now that he had lost everything--why not return? It was the most human thing in the world. Life was not possible of such ideals.
So he argued, the darkness slowly diminishing--the light of some reason creeping again into his mind. But the bitterness was still there. He still did not care and, as yet, his mind did not even rebel against such callousness.
One evening, then, he left Mr. Chesterton finishing the reading of his book. He hailed the first hansom he saw and, screwing himself into the corner of the seat, took a deep breath of relief as he drove away.
Then began the fear as he drove, the fear that he would not find Amber, that since she had gone out of his life, she would have readjusted her mind, found other interests, or even that she might not be there when he arrived. And now, once his destination was made, he dreaded the thought that Circumstance should balk his desire.
Jumping quickly out of the hansom, he paid his fare, hurried up the steps and rattled the flap of the letter-box. This was the knocker of friends. All those who used the proper means were creditors, not answered until inspected carefully from behind lace curtains.
For a few moments, his heart beat tentatively. There was no sound, no light from within. Then came the quick tapping of high-heels. He took a breath. The door opened. He saw her face of amazement in the darkness.
"You!" she exclaimed. The door opened wider to her hand. "Come in."
He took off his hat and stepped in. His manner was strange. He knew it was strange; he understood the look of question in her eyes as she stared at him--it reflected the look in his own mind.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
She nodded her head.
"My aunt is staying with me," she explained, "but she's gone to bed. She's got my bedroom. The mater's gone to bed. I'm sleeping on the floor in the drawing-room. I was sitting there. Come in."
He followed her into the drawing-room. There was her bed upon the floor--a mattress, sheets and blanket. That was all.
"You're sleeping there?" he said.
She said--"hm" with a little jerk of the head, in the most natural way in the world. If he thought he knew what it was to be poor, he flattered himself. He had been without meals, but he had never slept on the floor.
"Isn't it hard?" he questioned. "Do you go to sleep at all?"
She laughed gently under her breath.
"Good heavens, yes! I'm used to it. But what have you come for?"
She sat down in a heap, like a journeyman tailor, upon her bed, and gazed up at him. At first, he did not know how to say it. Then he blurted it out.
"I want you to come back again to see me in Fetter Lane."
She smiled with pride. Her mind reached for its box of bricks. He had sent her away from Fetter Lane. That was all over--past--done with.
"That's rather unexpected--isn't it?"
"I can't help that," he exclaimed, with a moment of wildness.
"But after all you've said?"
"I can't help what I've said. It holds good no longer. I take it all back. It means nothing."
She knelt up quickly on her knees. Dignity comes often before humanity with a woman, but pity will always outride the two. Something had happened to him. He was in trouble. The old appeal he had once made to her rose out of the pity that she felt. She stretched up her hands to his shoulders.
"What's happened?" she asked--"tell me what's happened."
He dropped on to the mattress on the floor. He told her everything. He told her how far his ideals had fallen in those last few days. He stripped the whole of his mind for her to lash if she chose; he stripped it, like a child undressing for a whipping.
When he had finished, she sat back again in her former position. She stared into the empty grate.
"I wonder," said she--"I wonder does the man exist who can bear disappointment without becoming like that."
That was the only lash that fell from her. And she did not direct it upon him, but it whipped across the nakedness of his mind with a stinging blow. He winced under it. It made him long to be that man. Yet still, there was his desire; still there was the fear, that circumstance would balk him of his oblivion.
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Because, I thought you would be different," she said.
"I'm as human as the rest," said he. "I'm the crank, of course--but I'm a human crank. Will you come back to me again?"
She rose to her knees again. She was trembling, but she took his hand in hers and gripped it hard to hide it from him.
"What will you say afterwards?" she asked gently. "What will you feel? You'll be full of remorse. You'll hate me. You'll hate yourself. What about your ideal?"
"I have none," he exclaimed blindly.
"I said that once," she whispered--"and you said I was wrong, that I had an ideal, that everybody had, only they lost sight of it."
He remembered all that. He remembered the reasoning of his mind. He knew it was true. He knew it was true even then.
"Now you've lost sight of yours," she continued. "But you'll see it again, you'll realise it again to-morrow, and then--heavens! How you'll hate me! How you'll hate yourself."
He stared at her. Were women as good, as fine as this? Was he the only vile thing in existence then? What would Jill think if she could see into the pit of his mind now? So low had he fallen that he thought it impossible to struggle upwards; so low, that it seemed he must touch the utmost depth before he could get the purchase to regain his feet. And if he touched the lowest, he might rise again, but it would not be so high as before.
Amber watched all the thoughts in his face. She had done her utmost. She could not do more. If he did not fight it out from this, then, what must be, must be.
Yet one more thing she could do. If she spoke of Venice. But why should she say it? It was his battle, not hers. She had given him every weapon to wage it but this. Why should she say it? The battle was against herself. Yet she answered to the best. There was her ideal as well, however unconscious it may have been.
"When are you going to Venice?" she asked hoarsely.
He told her how he had spent some of the money--more than a pound of it was gone.
She pulled out her purse, quickly, fiercely, feverishly.
"Then won't you be able to go?" she asked.
"Not for a while."
"Won't your mother be disappointed,--the little old white-haired lady?"
He tried to beat back the emotion in his throat, then felt something cold and hard in his hand. He looked down. It was a sovereign.
"You must take that," she said breathlessly. "Pay it back some other time and go--go to Venice to-morrow."
John looked full in her eyes.
"And you called yourself the fly in the amber," he said. Then he tightened her fingers round the coin--kissed them and walked to the door.
"I'll go to Venice," he said--"I'll go--somehow or other. I'll be the man who can bear things without becoming like that. You shan't be disappointed."
He came back again and seized her hand. Then he hurried out.
She listened to the door slamming. She heard his footsteps in the quiet street, then she dropped down on the mattress on the drawing-room floor.
"Oh, you fool!" she whispered under her breath. "Oh, you fool!"
But wisdom and folly, they are matters of environment. Behind it all, there was the most wonderful satisfaction in the world in saying--"Oh, you fool!"
BOOK III
THE CITY
CHAPTER XXIV
THE PALAZZO CAPELLO
They tell you--come to Venice by night; that then you will drift silently into the marvellous mystery of it all; that then you will feel the weight of the centuries in every shadow that lurks in the deep set doorways; that then you will realise the tragedies that have been played, the romances woven, and the dark deeds that have been done in the making of its history--all this, if you come to Venice by night.
They tell you, you will never see Venice as the tourist sees it, if you will but do this; that the impression of mystery will outlast the sight of the Philistines crowding in the Square of St. Mark's, will obliterate the picture of a fleet of gondolas tearing through the Grand Canal, led by a conductor shouting out the names of the Palaces as they pass. Your conception of the city of mystery will last for ever, so they tell you, if you do but come to Venice by night.
But there is another Venice than this, a Venice you see as you come to it in the early morning--a city of light and of air, a city of glittering water, of domes in gossamer that rise lightly above the surface, finding the sun, as bubbles that melt all the prisms of light into their liquid shells.
Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a city bathed in a sea of light; for it is not only that the sun shines upon it, but that, like the white shoulders of a mermaid, glittering with the water drops as she rises out of the sea, this wonderful city is not illuminated only, but is drenched in light itself. It is no city of shadow and mysteries then. There are no dark water-ways, no deepening gloom beneath the bridges. In the early morning, it lies, as yet unwakened, blinking, flashing, burning--a rose opal, set clear against the sun.
Then the deepest shadow is in a tone of gold, the highest light in a mist of glittering silver. The domes of San Marco and Santa Maria della Salute are caught up in the brilliancy and melt shapelessly into the glow.
Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a smelter's furnace into which has been cast the gold and silver from a boundless treasure hoard. You will see all that white and yellow metal running in molten streams of light; you will see the vibrating waves of air as the flames leap upward, curling and twisting to the very gates of heaven itself. You will see a city of gold and silver, of light and air all made liquid in one sea of brilliance, if you do but come to Venice in the early morning.
* * * * *
In the Grand Canal, just at the corner of thePalazzo Babarigo, there appears the entrance to one of those myriad little ways that shoot secretly away from the great, wide water street. Turning into this, theRio San Polo, following its course under the bridges and taking the second turning on the left, an obedient gondolier will swing you round with one sweep of his long oar into theRio Marin.
Being human, assuming your love of the beautiful, taking time also as his perquisite, he will probably choose more devious ways than this. But, everyone will tell you that, by theRio San Polo, it is the shortest.
On each side of theRio Marin, there runs a narrow little pathway. Here, the houses do not dip down to the water's edge, the space of light is wider, and the hurrying of the pedestrian on the footway seems to concentrate life for a moment and give it speech, in a place where everything is mute, where everything is still.
Idlers gather lazily on the bridges to watch the swaying gondolas as they pass beneath. Here, even the mystery you will find by night, is driven away. The sun, the broad stretch of heaven, no longer a ribbon-strip of blue tying together the house-tops, these combine to defy mystery in theRio Marin. Rose trees and flowering bushes top the grey walls; lift up their colours against a cloudless sky and smile down to you of gardens concealed on the other side.
Towards the end of this little water-way, almost opposite theChiesa Tedeschi, stands thePalazzo Capello, a broad and somewhat unbeautiful house, looking placidly down upon the quiet water. No great history is attached to it. No poet has ever written there, seated at its windows; no tragedy has been played that the guide books know of, no blood has been splashed against its walls. You will not find it mentioned in any of the descriptions of Venice, for it has no history to detain the ear; it bears no show of ornament without to attract the eye. Yet, with that pomp and vanity that breathed in Venice in the middle centuries, it was called--a palace--and only to those who know it from within, can this dignity of name seem justified.
A great, wide door divides the front of grey stone, up to which lead steps from the pathway--steps, in the crevices of which a patch of green lies here and there in a perfect harmony of contrast to the well-worn slabs. This door is always closed and, with no windows on either side, only the broad stretch of masonry, there is a stern appearance about the place, suggesting a prison or a barracks in its almost forbidding aspect. But when once that wide, wooden gate is opened, the absence of windows upon the ground floor is partly explained and the mind is caught in a breath of enchantment. It does not give entrance to a hall, but to an archway--an archway tunnelling under the house itself, at the end of which, through the lace-work of wonderful wrought-iron palings, you see the fairy-land of an old Italian garden, glittering in the sun.
The shadows that lie heavily under the archway only serve to intensify the brilliance of the light beyond. Colours are concentrated to the essence of themselves and the burst of sunshine, after the darkness, brings a haze, as when you see the air quivering over a furnace.
But, having gained entrance and passed that doorway, you are not yet within the house. On either side of this cool damp tunnel, making way to the right and left on the palace, which is divided into two houses, there are smaller archways cut into the wall. Taking that on your left, and before your eyes have grown accustomed to the confusion of lights and shadows, you might think it was a passage burrowing down into some secret corners of the earth. Your feet stumble, you feel your way, fingers touching the cold walls, suddenly realising that there are steps to mount, not to descend and, groping onwards, you reach another door confronting you impassably in the blackness.
There is a bell here, but it is by chance you find it--a long chain, like that at a postern gate, which depends from somewhere above your head. As you pull it, there is a clanging and a jangling quite close to your ear, shattering in a thousand little pieces the stillness that reigns all round.
After a moment or so, a small door opens within the bigger door, a curtain is pulled and, stepping through the tiny entrance for which your head must be bent low, you find yourself in a vast, big room--a room stretching from back to front of the whole house--a room that makes the meaning of the word palace seem justified a thousand times.
At either end are windows, so broad, so high, that the great stretch of this vast chamber, with its lofty ceiling, is flooded by one swift stream of light. Upon the polished floor of wood, the generous sunlight is splashed in daring brightness, throwing all near it into comparative shade, yet reflecting from the shining surface of the ground a glow that fills the air with a mist of light.
Along the walls of a dull, cool grey, big pictures are hung. Many there are, yet so spacious is the room, that they do not appear crowded; there is no suggestion of a well-stocked gallery. And on each side of the room two rich, warm-coloured curtains hang, concealing behind them silent, heavy, doors, deep set within the wall.
One of these, if you open it, will give you admittance to a tiny little room--so tiny, so small, that its smallness laughs at you, as for the moment it peers through the open space into the vast chamber beyond.
Close the door and the smallness seems natural enough then. For there, sitting perhaps over their afternoon tea, or their cups of coffee in the evening, chatting and gossiping as tho' they had just met to keep each other company, are two small figures; small because they are old--one, that of an old man, whose eyes are somewhat dimmed behind the high cheek bones and the shaggy eyebrows, the other, crumpled and creased like a silk dress that has lain long-folded in a camphor-scented drawer, the figure of a little old white-haired lady.
CHAPTER XXV
THE LETTER--VENICE
In the daily affairs of those two old people in the Palazzo Capello, there was one undeviating ceremony, performed with the regularity and precision of those mechanical figures that strike the great bell on the clock tower in the square of St. Mark's.
As the bells of the churches rang out the hour of ten at night, Claudina, the old dame who looked after all the wants of this worthy pair, entered the little room, carrying a large box in her hands.
Whatever their occupation may have been, whether they were playing at cribbage, or merely writing letters, up went their white heads together and one or the other would say--in Italian--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"
And Claudina would bend her head, with a sudden jerk, like a nodding mandarin, her big earrings would swing violently in her ears, and she would plant the box down gently upon the table.
"Si, signora," she said--always in the same tone of voice, as though she had suddenly realised that her nod of the head was not quite as respectful as it ought to be.
One cannot describe this as a ceremony; but it was the prelude to all the serious business that followed. Claudina was the mace bearer. Her entrance with the wooden box was the heralding of the quaint little procession of incidents that followed.
It was an evening in July, in that self-same year which has so successfully hidden itself in the crevices of our calendar. Thejalousieshad not long been closed upon a sky of primrose, in which the stars were set like early drops of dew. Claudina had just brought in a letter by the post. It was half-past nine.
"A letter, signora," Claudina had said and, knowing quite well who the letter was from, she had not laid it down upon the table as ordinary letters were treated, but had given it directly into her mistress's hand.
If the old Italian servant knows curiosity, she does not show it. Claudina, once the letter was delivered, discreetly left the room. The moment the door had closed, there followed as pretty a play of courtesy as you might have wished to see.
The old gentleman laid down his book.
"It is from John?" he said quickly.
She nodded her head and passed it across to him. Had she rolled the world to his feet, it could not have been more generously done. And had it been the world, he could not have taken it more eagerly.
His finger was just trembling inside the flap of the envelope, when he read the address.
"Why--it's written to you, my dear," said he, slowly withdrawing his finger.
She smiled. She nodded her head again. It was addressed to her; but in the rightful order of things, it was really his turn. For some unknown reason, John had addressed the last two letters to her. He never did do that. He was always most scrupulously fair in this tacit understanding that he should address his letters alternately, first to his father, then to his mother. This was the only time he had broken the unwritten law. It was really not her letter at all. That was why she had passed it across at once to her husband. He would never have dreamed of asking for the letter out of his turn. His fingers often twitched while her poor hands fumbled with the envelope, but he had never moved an inch to take it, until, of her own accord, she had handed it to him.
Now--knowing that it was his turn, his hand had stretched out for it naturally the moment Claudina had closed the door, and she had as readily given it. But there was a secret exultation in the heart of her. John had addressed it to her. There was no getting away from that.
For a moment, the old gentleman sat fingering it in dubious hesitation. Then he passed it back again.
"It's your letter, my dear," he said. "You open it." And picking up his book, he pretended to go on reading. Of course he did not see a single word on the page before him. Every sense in his body was strained to catch the sound of the tearing paper as she broke open the envelope. But there was no sound at all. Another moment of silence and she was bending over him from behind his chair, her arms round his neck and the letter held before his eyes.
"We'll open it together," she said.
It was her way of letting him do it without knowing that he had given way. To be sure, it was his finger that finally broke the flap of the envelope; but then, he retained all the dignity of the sacrifice. And so, as she leant over his shoulder, they read it together, with little exclamations of delight, little interruptions of pleasure, that need a heart for their purer translation, and cannot be written here because of that great gulf which is fixed behind the mind and the pen--because of that greater gulf which lies between the word and the eye that reads it.
"My dearest----"
Just those two words beginning; but they were almost the entire letter to her. They set her little brown eyes alight, her heart beating quickly behind the stiff bodice.
"I have left writing to you until the last moment for fear I should be unable to come on the day that you were expecting me. But it is all right. I am starting to-morrow morning, and shall be with you the usual time the day following, just about sunset. I can't tell you how glad I shall be to get away from here. You know what London can be like in July, and I suppose I want a change as well. I can't work these days at all--but I don't mean to worry you. I expect I am depressed and want different air in my lungs. I shall go up to the bows of the steamer crossing to-morrow, stand there with my mouth open, and get it forced down my throat like a dose.
"God bless you, dearest. Give my love to father, but don't tell him I can't work. I know he understands it well enough, but I believe it depresses him as much as it does me."
He looked up simply into her face as he handed back the paper.
"You see, I wasn't meant to read it," he said quietly.
Impulsively, she put her arm round his neck. She knew so well how that had hurt. There had been letters sometimes that she was not meant to see. Of course, she had seen them; but that touch of intimacy which, when you are a lover, or a mother, makes letters such wonderful living things, had been utterly taken from them. They had contained loving messages to her. But the writing itself, that had been meant for another eye to read.
"But it was only because he was thoughtful about you," she whispered--"not because he didn't want you to see. He'll tell you himself quickly enough that he can't work when he comes. You see if he doesn't. He can't keep those sort of things to himself. He can do it in a letter, because he thinks he ought to. But he won't be here five minutes before he's telling you that he can't write a line. And think! He'll be here the day after to-morrow. Oh--he is such a dear boy! Isn't he? Isn't he the dearest boy two old people ever had in the world?"
So she charmed the smile back into his eyes; never pausing until she saw that passing look of pain vanish completely out of sight. And so Claudina found them, as she had often found them before, poring once again over the letter as she brought in the big box.
Up went the two white heads in amazement and concern.
"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"
For to old people, you know, the hours pass very quickly; they are scarcely awake, before they are again being put to bed. Time hurries by them with such quiet feet, stepping lightly on the tips of its toes lest it should disturb those peaceful last moments which God gives to the people who are old.
Claudina laid down the big box upon the table. She nodded her head; her earrings shook.
"Si, Signora," she replied, as always.
The little old white-haired lady crumpled the letter into her dress; concealed it behind the stiff black bodice. Then they both stood to their feet, and the procession, of which Claudina was the herald, began.
First of all the big wooden box was opened, and out of it were taken numbers and numbers of little white linen bags of all shapes and sizes. White? Well, they were white once, but long obedience to the service for which they were required had turned their white to grey.
Each one of them was numbered, the number stitched in thread upon the outside; each one of them had been made to fit some separate little ornament in the room, to wrap it up, to keep the dust from it through the night--a night-cap for it, in fact. At ten o'clock the ornaments were put to bed; after the ornaments, then these two old people--but first of all their treasures. They stood by, watching Claudina tuck them all up, one by one, and it gave them that delicious sensation which only old people and young children know anything about--the sensation that they are sitting up late that others are going to bed before them.
Of course they never knew they had that sensation; they were not aware of it for a moment. But you might have known by the way they turned and smiled at each other when the big Dresden-china shepherdess was popped into her bag, you might have known that in the hearts of them, that was what they felt.
This evening in particular, their smiles were more radiant than ever. The old lady forgot to make her little exclamations of terror when Claudina could not get the night-cap over the head of the Dresden-china shepherdess, and was in danger of dropping them both together; the old gentleman forgot his quiet--"Be careful, Claudina--be careful." For whenever his wife was very excited, it always made him realise that he was very quiet, very self-possessed. But they felt none of their usual anxiety on this evening in July. In two days--in less--John would be with them. They had waited a whole year for this moment and a whole year, however quickly the separate moments may pass, is a long, long time to old people.
"There is one thing," the old gentleman said, presently, as the last ornaments were being ranged upon the table, standing in readiness for their nightcaps to go on. "There is one thing I don't quite know about."
She slipped her arm into his and asked in a whisper what it was. There was no need to talk in a whisper, for Claudina did not know a word of English; but she guessed he was going to say something concerning John and about him, she nearly always spoke in a whisper.
"It's the--the shop," he replied--"I--I don't like to tell John."
"Oh--but why not?" She clung a little closer to him.
"It isn't that I don't think he would understand--but it's just like that sentence in his letter about me. I feel it would hurt him if he thought I couldn't sell my pictures any more. I believe he would blame himself and think he ought to be giving us money, if he knew that I had had to start this curio shop to make things meet more comfortably."
She nodded her head wisely. She would have been all for telling her son everything. But when he mentioned the fact of John thinking he ought to support them, and when she considered how John would need every penny that he earned to support the woman whom she longed for him to make his wife--it was a different matter. She quite agreed. It was better that John should be told nothing.
"You don't think he'll find out--do you?" she said, and her eyes looked startled at the thought.
"No--no--I shouldn't think so. It isn't as if I had to be there every day. Foscari looks after it quite well. Though I'm always afraid he'll sell the very things I can't bear to part with. He sold the old brass Jewish lamp the other day, and I wouldn't have parted with it for worlds. But I dare say if I tell him to be careful--I dare say----"
It was rather sad, this curio shop. It would have been very sad if his wife had not appreciated the need for it; if she had not made it easier by telling him how brave he was, by sharing with him the sense of shame he felt when it became apparent that his pictures were no longer saleable.
For when he had reached the age of seventy-three, that was what they had told him. If he had not been a landscape painter, it might have been different; but at seventy-three, when one's heart is weak, it is not possible, it is not wise, to go far afield, to tramp the mountains as once he had done, in search of subjects new. So, he had been compelled to stay at home, to try and paint from memory the pictures that lay heaped within his mind. Then it was that they began to tell him that they could not sell his work; then he came to find that there must be other means of support if they were not to appeal to John for aid. And so, having a collection of treasures such as artists find, picked up from all the odd corners of Europe, he bethought him of a curio shop and, finding a little place to let at a quiet corner in theMerceria, he took it, called it--The Treasure Shop--and painting the name in a quaint old sign which he hung outside, obliterated his identity from the public eye.
For weeks beforehand, they had discussed this plan. Some of their own treasures, of course, would have to be sacrificed; in fact, Claudina carried many little grey night-caps away with her in the wooden box--night-caps that no longer had Dresden heads to fit them. But the money they were going to make out of the Treasure Shop would make up for all these heart-rending sacrifices. They would even be able to send John little presents now and then. There was nothing like a curio-shop for minting money, especially if the curios were really genuine, as were theirs.
But that was the very rub of it. When he came to open the shop, the old gentleman found it was the very genuineness of the things he had to sell that made it impossible for him to part with them. He loved them too well. And even the most ignorant collectors, British sires with check-cloth caps and heavy ulsters, old ladies with guide books in one hand and cornucopias of maze for the pigeons in the other, even they seemed to pitch upon the very things he loved the most.
He asked exorbitant prices to try and save his treasures from their clutches and mostly this method succeeded; but sometimes they were fools enough to put the money down. For there was one thing he could never do; he could not belittle the thing that he loved. If it was good, if it was genuine, if it really was old, he had to say so despite himself. Enthusiasm would let him do no otherwise. But then, when he had said all he could in its praise, he would ask so immense a sum that the majority of would-be purchasers left the shop as if he had insulted them.
So it was that the Treasure Shop did not fulfil all the expectations they had had of it. It made just enough money for their wants; but that was all.
And now came the question as to whether they should let John know of it. Long into the night they discussed the question, their two white heads lying side by side on the pillows, their voices whispering in the darkness.
"And yet--I believe he would understand," said the little old lady on her side--"he's such a dear, good boy, I'm sure he would understand."
"I don't know--I don't know," replied the old gentleman dubiously--"It will be bad enough when he sees my last pictures. No--no--I don't think I'll tell him. Foscari can look after the place. I need hardly be there at all while he's with us."
And then, making the sign of the cross upon each other's foreheads--saying--"God bless you"--as they had done every night their whole lives long, they fell asleep.