The enraged little deputy understood. And she got Miss Senter out of the drawing-room without attracting notice. "The master wishes to see the signorina," she said, in a concentrated undertone. "I burn with indignation, for it is an insolent intrusion; it is an insult to his Excellency, who no doubt is a prince in his own country. But theywouldnot go, in spite of all I could say. Nor would they tell me their errand—brutes!" And with her skirts quivering she led the way to the outer hall.
"Find out what these men want, Barly," said Peter, when his sister appeared.
And then the chief officer again told his story.
"Mercy!" said Miss Senter, "how dreadful. Somebody was killed, Peter, about seven o'clock this evening, in a café near the Rialto, and they say they have just found a clew which appears to track the assassin to this very door! And they wish to search."
"What an absurd idea! With the whole place crowded and blazing with lights, as it is to-night, a mouse couldn't hide," said Peter. "Tell them so."
"They repeat that they must search," said Miss Senter. "But if you will exert your authority, Peter—make use of your official position—I am sure we need not submit to such a thing."
Peter, however, was helpless without his vice-consul; he had no clear idea as to what his powers were or were not; he had never informed himself.
Carmela, greatly excited, had drawn Miss Senter aside. "There was a sixth man with those musicians!" she whispered. "I saw him. He did not play, but he sat behind them. And he has only just gone. Five minutes ago."
Miss Senter repeated the information to the chief officer. The officer immediately detached two men to follow this important clew; he himself, with the third, would remain to go through the apartment, as a matter of form.
"As the rooms are all open and lighted," said Miss Senter in English to her brother, "it will only take a few minutes, if go they must, and no one need know anything about it. But whom shall we send with them? If we call Ercole, it will attract attention; and Florian's men, who were due at another place, have alreadygone. We could have Andrea come up. But no; Giorgio will do best of all. Call Giorgio to go with these men," she added in Italian to Carmela.
"Letmeconduct them!" answered the deputy.
"Yes; on the whole, she will be better than any one," said Miss Senter to Peter. "She is so angry at what she calls the insult to you, and so excited about the mysterious person who was with the musicians, that she will bully them and hurry them off to look for him in no time. They can begin with a peep into the drawing-room; I'll tell them to keep themselves hidden." She turned and explained her idea in Italian to the officer; they could glance into the drawing-room first, and then Carmela would take them through all the other rooms; the Consul, though he had the power of refusal, would permit this liberty in the cause of justice. Their search, however, would be unavailing; under the circumstances, it was impossible that any one should have taken refuge there, unless it was that one extra man who had been admitted with the musicians to the gallery. And he was already gone.
"Perhaps he only pretended to go?" suggested the officer. "With permission, I will lock this door." And he did so.
"A SMALL CHILD PERCHED ON EACH OF HIS SHOULDERS""A SMALL CHILD PERCHED ON EACH OF HIS SHOULDERS"
They went to the drawing-room, the policemen moving quietly, close to the wall. When the last anteroom was reached, the two men hid themselves behind the tapestries that draped the door, and, making loop-holes among the folds, peeped into the ball-room. For it was at that moment a ball-room. The children had again taken up their whirling dance around Ercole, and the gondolier, who had now a small child perched on each of his shoulders, was singing with them in a cleartenor, having caught the syllables from having heard them shouted about fifty times:
Miss Senter had sent Peter back to his guests. She herself, standing between the tapestries as though she were looking on from the doorway, named to the hidden policemen, as well as she could amid the loud singing within, all the persons present, one by one. Finally her list came to a close. "And that is Mr. Barlow, the American who lives at the Danieli; and the one near the Christmas-tree is Mr. Douglas, who has the Palazzo Dario. And the tall, large gentleman with silver hair is Sir William Kay. That is all, except the clown, who is our gondolier, and the five musicians up in the gallery; can you see them from here? If not, Carmela can take you up." And then she thought, with a sudden little shudder, that perhaps the officer's idea was not, after all, impossible; perhaps, indeed, that extra man had only pretended to go!
The policemen signified that this was enough as regarded the drawing-room; they withdrew softly, and waited outside the door.
"Now take them through all the other rooms, Carmela," whispered the Consuless. "Be as quiet about it as you can, so that no one need know. And when they have finally gone, come and stand for a moment between these curtains, as a sign. If, by any chance, theyshoulddiscover any one—"
"The signorina need not be frightened; I saw theman go myself! And he could not have re-entered without my knowledge. As for these beasts of policemen—" And Carmela's eyes flashed, while her set lips seemed to say, "Trustmeto hustle them out!"
"Run up first and tell the musicians to play the music I sent them," said the Consuless. And then she rejoined her guests.
For the next dance was to be a Virginia Reel, and some of the elders were to join the children; the two lines, when arranged, extended down half the length of the long room. It began with great spirit, the clown and the three Kings of Orient dancing at the end of the file.
"It is really Sir Roger de Coverley, an English dance," said Lady Kay to the Russian princess, who was looking on from the chair next her own. "But the Senters like to call it a Virginia Reel, they are so patriotic. And we never contradict the Senters, you know," added the English lady, laughing; "we let them have their way."
"It seems to me a vurra good way," answered the princess, who was a plain-looking old woman with a charming smile. "I have nowhere seen so many reech toyees" (here she glanced at the costly playthings heaped on a table near by). "Nor haf I, inItaly, seen so many tings to eat. With so moche champagne."
"Yes, they always do that," answered the baronet's wife. "They are so very lavish. And very kind."
Miss Senter herself was dancing the reel. Once she thought there was a quaver in the music, and, glancing up quickly towards the gallery, she perceived the heads of the policemen behind the players. The players, however, recovered themselves immediately, and uponlooking up again a moment afterwards she saw with relief that the sinister apparition had vanished. Ten minutes later the trim little figure of the deputy appeared between the tapestries of the doorway. Miss Senter, still dancing, nodded slightly, as a signal that she perceived her, and then Carmela, with an answering nod and one admiring look at Ercole, disappeared. After all, now that there had been a suspicion about that extra man, itwasa comfort to have had the apartment searched; it would make the moment of going to bed easier, the American lady reflected.
It was now half-past eleven. By midnight the last sleepy child had been carried down the marble stairway, the music ceased, and the musicians departed. The elders, glad that the noise was over, remained half an hour longer; then they took leave. Only Lady Kay and her husband were left; they had waited to take a closer look at Miss Senter's Christmas present to her brother, which was a large and beautifully executed copy of Tintoretto's "Bacchus and Ariadne," from the Anticollegio of the Doge's Palace. It had been placed temporarily on the wall behind the Christmas-tree.
"How exquisite!" said Lady Kay, with a long sigh. "You are most fortunate, Mr. Senter."
"Oh yes. Though I don't quite know what they will think of it in Rochester, New York," answered Peter, chuckling.
Sir William and his wife intended to walk home. When it was cold they preferred to walk rather than go to and fro in a gondola; and as they were old residents, they knew every turn of the intricate burrowing chinks in all the quarters that serve as footways. When they took leave at one o'clock, Peter and Miss Senter, withAmerican friendliness, accompanied them to the outer door. Peter was about to open this door when it was swung back, and a figure reeled in—Ercole. He had taken off his clown's dress, and wore now his gondolier's costume; but this costume was in disorder, and his face was darkly red—a purple red.
"Why, Ercole, is it you? What is the matter?" said Miss Senter, as he staggered against the wall.
"Oh, her Excellency the Consuless, I have beenbeaten!"
"Beaten? Where have you been? I thought you were down at the landing with Andrea," said Miss Senter.
"The antiquity-dealer suffocates," muttered Ercole. "And Giorgio—dead!"
This "dead" (morto!) even Peter understood. "Dead! What is he saying, Barly?"
"The man is saying, Mr. Senter, that an antiquity-dealer is suffocating, and that somebody he calls Giorgio is dead," translated the pink-cheeked, portly Lady Kay, in her sweet voice. "It's your gondolier, isn't it—the one who played the clown so nicely? What a pity! He has been drinking, I fear."
While she was saying this, Sir William was leading Ercole farther away from the ladies.
"Yes, he is drunk," said Peter, looking at him. "Too bad! We must have help. Let's see; Andrea is down at the landing. I'll get him. And you call Giorgio, Barly."
Here Ercole, held by Sir William, gave a maddened cry, and threw his head about violently.
"Oh, don't leave my husband alone with him, Mr. Senter," said Lady Kay, alarmed. "He is a very powerfulyoung man, and his eyes are dreadful. To me he looks as if he were mad. Those somersaults have affected his head."
And the gondolier's eyes were indeed strangely bloodshot and wild. Miss Senter had hurried to the kitchen. But Giorgio was not there. She came back, and found Ercole struggling with the Englishman and her brother.
"Let me try," she said. "I am not afraid of him. Ercole," she continued, speaking gently in Italian, "go to your room now, and go to bed quietly; everything will be all right to-morrow."
Ercole writhed in Sir William's grasp. "The antiquity-dealer! And Giorgio—dead!"
"Where is Giorgio, Barly?" said Peter, angrily, as he helped Sir William in securing the gondolier. "And where are the other servants? Where's Carmela? Find them, and send one down to the landing for Andrea, and the other for Giorgio. Quick!"
"Oh, Peter, I've been, and I couldn't find Giorgio or any one."
"Carmela was in your bedroom not long ago," said Lady Kay, watching the gondolier's contortions nervously; "she helped me put on my cloak."
Miss Senter ran to her bedroom, her train flying in the haste she made. But in a moment she was back again. "There is no one there. Oh, where are they all?"
Ercole, hearing her voice, peered at her with his crimsoned eyes, and then, breaking loose suddenly, he came and caught hold of her arm. "The antiquity-room.Willshe come?"
Peter and Sir William dragged him away by main force.
"The gentlemen, then. Willtheycome?" said the gondolier, hoarsely. And again freeing himself with two strokes of his powerful arms, he passed out (for the door was still open), and began to descend the outside staircase.
"Oh, thank Heaven, he has gone!" "Oh, lock the door!" cried the two ladies together.
"We must follow him, Mr. Senter," said Sir William. "He is plainly mad from drink, and may do some harm."
"Yes; and down there Andrea can help us," answered Peter.
And the two gentlemen hastened down the staircase. It was a very long flight with three turns. The court below was brilliantly lighted by many wall lamps.
"Idon'tlike my husband's going down," said Lady Kay, in a tremor, as she stood on the landing outside. "If they are going to seize him, the more of us the better; don't you think so? For while they are holding him, you and I could run across and get that other man in from the riva."
But Miss Senter was not there. She had rushed back into the house, and was now calling with all her strength: "Giorgio! Carmela! Assunta! Beppa!" There was no answer, and, seized with a fresh panic by the strangeness of this silence, she hastened out again and joined Lady Kay, who was already half-way down the stairs. The gondolier had not turned towards the water entrance; he had crossed the court in the opposite direction, and now he was passing through a broad, low door which led into the hall on the ground-floor behind the show-room of Z. Pelham, throwing open as he did so both wings of this entrance, so that the lightfrom the court entered in a broad beam across the stone pavement.
"My dear,don'tgo in!" "Oh, Peter, stop! stop!" cried the two ladies, as they breathlessly descended the last flight.
But Peter and Sir William had paid no attention. Quickly detaching two of the lamps from the wall, they had followed the madman.
"The other gondolier!" gasped Lady Kay.
And the two women ran swiftly to the water-door and threw it open, Miss Senter calling, in Italian: "Andrea! comeinstantly!"
The little riva along the small canal was also brightly lighted. But there was no one there. And opposite there was only a long blank wall.
"Oh, we must not leave them a moment longer," said Lady Kay.
And again they rushed across the broad court, this time entering the dark water-story; for it was better to enter, dreadful though it was, than to remain outside, not knowing what might be happening within. Ercole meanwhile had made his way into Mr. Pelham's show-room, and here he had struck a match and lighted a candle. As he had left the door of the show-room open, those who were without could see him, and they stopped for a moment to watch what he would do next. It was now a group of four, for the ladies had joined the other two, Miss Senter whispering to her brother:
"Andrea isn't there!"
The gondolier bent down, and began to drag something across the floor and out to the open space behind. "Here!" he said, turning his purple face towards their lamps. "I can no more." And he sat downsuddenly on the pavement, and let his head and arms fall forward over his knees.
Peter and Sir William, giving their lamps to the ladies, were approaching cautiously, in order to secure him while he was quiet, when they saw, to their horror, two human legs and feet protruding from the object which he had dragged forth.
"Why, it's the second-hand dealer; it's Z. Pelham!" said Peter, in fresh excitement. "I know his arctics. Bring the lamp, Barly. Quick!"
The two ladies came nearer, keeping one eye upon Ercole. Peter and Sir William with some difficulty cut the rope, and unwound two woollen coverlids and a sheet. Within, almost suffocated, with his hands tied behind him, was the dealer.
"I supposehedid this!" whispered Lady Kay to Miss Senter, her pink face white, as she indicated the motionless gondolier.
Sir William lifted the dealer's head, while Peter loosened his collar.
"Now will Excellencies look for Giorgio," muttered Ercole, without changing his position.
"He says now will you look for Giorgio," translated Lady Kay. "That hetellshis crimes shows that he reallyismad!" she added, in a whisper.
"No; I think he has come to for the moment, and that's why he tells," said Peter, hastily rubbing Z. Pelham's chest. "Ask him where we shall look, Barly; ask while he's lucid."
"Where must we look for Giorgio, Ercole?" quavered Miss Senter, her Italian coming out with the oddest pronunciation.
"Back stairs," answered the gondolier.
"Back stairs, he says," translated Lady Kay.
"There are no back stairs," replied Peter.
"I'll put this coverlid under his back. That will make him breathe better," said the Englishman, his sympathies roused by the forlorn plight of the little dealer, whose carefully strapped arctic shoes gave ironical emphasis to his helplessness.
Meanwhile Miss Senter, saying "Yes, therearestairs," had run across the pavement with her lamp, found the door at the back of the hall, and opened it. Z. Pelham began to breathe more regularly, although he had not yet opened his eyes. Sir William drew him farther away from the gondolier, and then he and Peter hastened across and looked up the spiral. "It goes to the attics," explained Miss Senter.
"You two stand here at the bottom with one lamp, and Sir William and I will go up with the other," said Peter. "Keep your eye on Ercole, Barly, and if he so much asmoves, come right up and join us."
"Wait an instant," said the Englishman. "Stay here with Mr. Senter, Gertrude." Making a détour so as not to rouse the gondolier, he entered the antiquity-dealer's show-room and tried to open the outer door. But it was locked, and the key was not there. "No use," he said, coming hurriedly back; "I had hoped to get help from outside to watch him while we go up. Now remember, Gertrude, you and Miss Senter are to come up and join usinstantlyif he leaves his place." And then he and Peter ascended the winding steps, carrying one of the lamps. Round and round went the gleam of their light, and the two ladies at the bottom, standing with their skirts caught up ready to run, watched the still form of the gondolier in the distance,visible in the gleam of the candle burning in the show-room. It seemed an hour. But a full minute had not gone when Peter's voice above cried out:
"It's Giorgio! Good God! Killed! Bring up the other light."
And the two ladies rushed up together. There on the landing lay the poor old cook, his eyes closed, his face ghastly, his white jacket deeply stained with blood. Miss Senter, who was really attached to the old man, began to cry.
"He isn't quite dead," said Peter, who had been listening for the heart. "But we must get him out of this icy place. Then we'll tie up Ercoly—we can use that rope—and after he is secured, I can go for help. Here, you take his head and shoulders, Sir William; you are the strongest. And I'll take his body. Barly can take the feet."
"It will be difficult," said the Englishman. "These steep stairs—"
But Peter, when roused, was a veritable little lion. "Come on," he said; "we can do it."
"Please go down first and see if Ercole is still quiet," begged Miss Senter of Lady Kay. And the Englishwoman, who now had both lamps, went down and came back in thirty seconds; she never knew how she did it. "He has not stirred," she said. And then old Giorgio was borne down, and out to the brilliantly lighted court beyond.
"Now," said Peter, whose face was bathed with great drops of perspiration, "we'll first secure him," and he indicated Ercole by pointing his thumb backward over his shoulder towards the water-story, "and then I'll go for a doctor and the police."
But as he spoke, coming out of the door upon his hands and knees, appeared Z. Pelham, who, as soon as he saw the cook's prostrate body, called back, hoarsely, in Italian: "Ercole, get my brandy-flask."
"Oh, don't call him!" said Lady Kay, in terror, clapping a fold of her skirt tightly over the dealer's mouth and holding it there. "He is mad—quite mad!"
Mr. Pelham collapsed.
"Good heavens! Gertrude, don't suffocate the poor creature a second time," said Sir William, pulling his wife away.
Z. Pelham, released, raised his head. "Ercole has been bad beat, and that makes him not genteel," he explained. "Ercole, bring my brandy-flask," he called again, in Italian, and the effort he made to break through his hoarseness brought out the words in a sudden wild yell. "My voice a little deranged is," he added, apologetically, in English.
They could now hear the steps of the gondolier within, and the ladies moved to a distance as he appeared, walking unsteadily, the flask in his hand. "Not dead?" he said, trying to see Giorgio. But his eyes closed convulsively, and as soon as the dealer had taken the flask, down he went, or half fell, on the pavement as before, with his head thrown forward over his knees. Sir William placed himself promptly by his side, while Peter ran within to get the rope. Z. Pelham, uncorking the flask, poured a little brandy between Giorgio's pale lips. "You have all mistake," he said to Sir William as he did this. "Ercole was bad beat by a third partee who has done it all—me and he and this died cook; a third partee was done it all." And he chafed the cook's temples with brandy.
"A third party?" said Peter, who had returned with the rope. "Who?"
"I know not; they knocked me from behind. It was lightning to me, inmyhead also," answered Z. Pelham, going on with his chafing.
"Come here, Barly," said Peter, taking command. "Say what I tell you. Don't be afraid; Sir William and I will grab him if he stirs. Say, 'Ercoly, who hurt you?'"
"Ercole, who hurt you?" said Miss Senter, tremulously.
"Non so. Un demonio," answered the gondolier, his head still on his knees.
"He says he doesn't know. A demon," said Lady Kay.
"Ask when it happened."
"It was after he had taken the presents from the tree," translated Lady Kay again. "He was struck, dragged down the back stairs, gagged, and left in the antiquity-room. He has only just now been able to free himself."
"How could he act the clown, then?" pursued Peter.
"He says he hasn't been a clown or seen a clown. Oh, Peter, it was some one else disguised! Who could it have been?" cried Miss Senter, running away as if to fly up the staircase, and then in her terror running back again.
The cook's eyes had now opened. "He says see what is stoled," said Mr. Pelham, administering more brandy. Mr. Pelham was seated, tailor fashion, on the pavement, his feet in their arctics under him.
"Giorgio knows something about it, too," said Peter. "Ask him, Barly."
But Miss Senter was incapable of speaking; she had hidden her face on Lady Kay's shoulder, shuddering. The clown with whom she had talked, who had danced all the evening with the children, was an assassin! A strange and savage murderer!
"I'll do it," said the Englishman. And bending over Giorgio, he asked, in correct, stiff Italian: "Do you know who hurt you?"
"A tall, dark man. I never saw him before," answered the cook, or rather his lips formed those words. "He stabbed me after he had struck down Ercole."
"Now he is again gone," soliloquized Z. Pelham, as Giorgio's eyes closed; "I have fear this time he is truly died!" And he chafed the cook's temples anew.
"It's all clear now," said Peter, "and Ercoly isn't mad; only hurt in some way. So I'll go for help at once."
"Oh, Peter, you always get lost!" moaned his sister.
And it was true that the Consul almost invariably lost his way in the labyrinth of chinks behind the palace.
"I'll go," said the Englishman. "It's not very late" (he looked at his watch); "I shall be sure to find some one."
"You must let me go with you, my dear," urged Lady Kay.
In three minutes they were back with two men. "I've brought these two, and there's a doctor coming. And I sent word to the police," said the Englishman.
And following very soon came a half-dressed youth, a young American doctor, who had been roused bysomebody. The cook was borne up the stairway and into the salon, where the chandeliers were shedding their soft radiance calmly, and where all the fairy-lamps were still burning on the Christmas-tree; for only twenty minutes had passed since the host and his guests had left the room. Behind the group of the two men from outside, who with Peter and the doctor were carrying Giorgio, came Sir William leading the gondolier, who seemed now entirely blind, while Z. Pelham followed, last of all, on his hands and knees.
"This old man has a deep cut—done with a knife; he has lost a good deal of blood; pretty bad case," said the doctor. "Your gondolier has been dreadfully beaten about the head, but it won't kill him; he is young and strong. This third man seems to be only sprained. Get me something for bandages and compresses, and bring cold water."
"Get towels, Barly," said the Consul.
"Oh, Peter, I'm afraid to go," said Miss Senter, faintly. "The man may still be hidden here somewhere. And I know he has murdered Carmela and the other servants, too!"
Peter ran to his own chamber, and came back with a pile of towels, a sheet from his bed, a large jug of water, and a scissors. "Now, doctor, you stay here and do what you can for all three," he said, as he hurried round the great drawing-room, locking all the doors but one. "And the ladies will stay here with you. The rest of us will search the whole apartment immediately! Lock this last door as soon as we're out, will you?"
"Oh, Peter, don't go!" cried his sister. "Let those two men do it. Or wait for the police."
"My dear, pray consider," said Lady Kay to her husband; "if any oneishidden, it is some desperate character—"
But the Englishman and Peter were already gone, and the ladies were left with the doctor, who, comprehending everything quickly, locked the last door, and then hurried back to the cook. Old Giorgio's mind was now wandering; he muttered incoherently, and seemed to be suffering greatly. The gondolier, his head enveloped in wet towels, was lying in a stupor on one of the sofas. Z. Pelham quietly tied up his own sprained ankles with a portion of the torn sheet, and then assisted with much intelligence in the making of the bandages which the doctor needed for Giorgio.
Sir William, Peter, and the two men from outside began with the kitchen; no one. The pantries and store-rooms; no one. The supper-room; no one. The bedrooms; no one. The anterooms and small drawing-room; no one. As the whole house was still brightly lighted, this did not take long. They now crossed to four rooms on the north side; no one. Then came a large store-room for linen. This was not lighted, so they took in a lamp; no one.
"There's a second door here," said Sir William, perceiving one of those masked flat portals common in Italy, which are painted or frescoed so exactly like the wall that they seem a part of it.
"It opens into a little recess only a foot deep," said Peter, going on with the lamp to the second store-room. "No one could possibly hide there. Now after we have finished on this side, there is only the wood-room left; that is off by itself in a wing."
The Englishman had accompanied his host. But having a strong bent towards thoroughness, he was not satisfied, and he quietly returned alone and opened that masked door. There, flattened against the wall, not clearly visible in the semi-darkness, was the outline of a woman's figure. His exclamation brought back the others with the lamp. It was Carmela.
She stood perfectly still for an instant or two, so motionless, and with such bright eyes staring at them, that she looked like a wax figure. Then she sprang from her hiding-place and made a swift rush down the corridor towards the outer door. They caught her. She fought and struggled dreadfully, still without a sound. So frantic were her writhings that her apron and cap were torn away, and the braids of her hair fell down and finally fell off, leaving only, to Peter's astonishment, a few locks of thin white hair in their place. It took the four men to hold her, for she threw herself from side to side like a wild-cat; she even dragged the four as far as the anteroom nearest the drawing-room in her desperate efforts to reach that outer door. But here, as she felt herself at last over-powered, a terrible shriek burst from her, her face became distorted, her eyes rolled up, and froth appeared on her lips.
The shriek, an unmistakably feminine one, had brought the doctor and two ladies from the drawing-room.
"A fit!" exclaimed the doctor as soon as he saw the froth. "Here, get open that tight dress." He unbuttoned a few buttons of the black bodice, and tore off the rest. "Gracious! corsets like steel." He took out his knife, and hastily cutting the cashmere across the shoulders, he got his hand in and severed the corsetstrings. "Now, ladies, just help me to get her out of this harness."
And with trembling fingers Lady Kay and Miss Senter gave their aid, and after a moment the whole edifice—for it was an edifice—sank to the floor. What was left was an old, old woman, small and withered, her feeble chest rising and falling in convulsions under her coarse chemise, and the rest of her little person scantily covered with a patched, poverty-stricken under-skirt.
"Oh,poorcreature!" said Lady Kay, the tears filling her eyes as all the ribs of the meagre, wasted body showed in the straining, spasmodic effort of the lungs to get breath.
"Bring something to cover her, Barly," said Peter.
And Miss Senter, forgetting her fears, ran to her room, and brought back the first thing she could find—a large white shawl.
"All right now; she's coming to," said the doctor.
The convulsions gradually ceased, and Carmela's eyes opened. She looked at them all in silence as she sat, muffled in the shawl, where they had placed her. Finally she spoke. "The Consul is too late," she said, with mock respect. "The Consuless also. Did they admire the dancing of the clown? A fine fellow that clown! You need not hold me," she added to the two men from outside, who were acting as guards. "I have nothing more to do. My son is safe, and that was all I cared for. They will never find him; he is far from here now. He is very clever, and he has, besides, to help him, all the money which the Consuless so kindly provided for him by keeping it in a secret drawer, whose 'secret' every Italian not an idiotknows. But the Consuless has always had a singular self-conceit. I had only to mention that extra man with the musicians—poor little Tonio the tailor it was—and she swallowed him down whole. I could have got away myself if I had cared to. But I waited, in order to keep back the alarm as long as possible; I waited. Oh yes, I helped all the ladies to put on their cloaks; I helped this English ladyship to put on hers last of all, as she knows. When their Excellencies went down to the water-story, I then tried to go; but I found that they could still see the staircase, so I came back. What matters it? They may do with me what they please. For myself I care not. My son is safe." On her old cheeks, under the falling white hair, were still the faint pink tinges of rouge, and from beneath the wretched petticoat came the two young-looking high-heeled shoes. She folded her thin hands on her lap, and refused to say more.
Assunta and Beppa were found in the wood-room, gagged and bound like the others, but not hurt. And in the morning the Consul's gondola was discovered floating out with the tide, and within it Andrea in the same helpless state. The man, who was an ex-convict, a burglar, suspected of worse crimes, after committing the murder at the café, had fled to the palace. Here he and his intrepid little mother had invented and carried out the whole scheme in the one hour which had followed the distribution of the presents from the tree, before the dancing began. Carmela had even left the house to obtain a clown's costume from a dealer in masquerade dresses who lived near by. And she had herself opened for her son's use the disused door which led to the spiral steps.
That son was never caught. His mother, who had worked for him indefatigably through her whole life—worked so hard that her hands were worn almost to claws—who had supported him and supplied him, who had made herself young and active like a girl, though she was seventy-four, in order to be able to send him money—his mother, who had allowed herself nothing in the world but the few smart clothes necessary for her disguise, who was absolutely honest, but who had stolen for him three thousand francs from the secret drawer, and had stood by and aided him when he beat, stabbed, and gagged her fellow-servants—this mother was not arrested. She should have been, of course. But somehow, very strangely, she escaped from the palace before morning.
Poor old Giorgio was never able to work again. But as Peter pensioned him handsomely, he led an easy life, while Ercole became a magnate among gondoliers.
It was not until three years afterwards, in Rochester, New York, that Peter, surrounded by Z. Pelham's entire collection (which he had purchased, though thinking it hideous, at large prices), confessed to his sister that he had connived at Carmela's escape. "Somehow I couldn't stand it, Barly. That thin white hair and those poor old arms of hers, and that wretched, wasted, gasping little chest—in prison!"
"YES, we came over again in February, and have been here in Venice since the last of March. For some reasons I was sorry to come back—oneisso much more comfortable at home! What I have suffered in these wretchedly cold houses over here words, Mr. Blake, can never express. For in England, you know, they consider fifty-eight Fahrenheit quite warm enough for their drawing-rooms, while here in Italy—well, one neverisso cold, I think, as in a warm climate. Yes, we should have been more comfortable, as far asthatgoes, in my own house in New York, reading all those delightful books on Art in a properly warmed atmosphere (and I must say a properly warmed spirit too), and looking at photographs of the pictures (you can have them as large as you like, you know), instead of freezing our feet over the originals, which half the time the eyes of a lynx could not see. But it is not always winter, of course. And then I have lived over here so long that I have, it seems, acquired foreign ways that are very unpopular at home. You may smile, and itistoo ridiculous; but it is so. For instance, last summer we went to Carley Ledge (you know Carley; pretty little place), and we found out afterwards that the people came near mobbing us! Not exactly that, of course, but they took the most violent dislike to us;and why? It is too comical. Because we had innocently treated Carley as we treat a pretty village over here. One lady said, and, I am told, with indignation, that we had been stopping, 'more than once, right in the main street, and standing there, in thatpublicplace, to look at a cloud passing over the mountain!' And another reported that she had herself discovered us 'sitting on thegrass, no farther away from the main street than the open space in front of Deacon Seymour's, just as though it was out in the country!' That 'out in the country' is rather good, isn't it? Always that poor little main street!"
"Still, I think, on the whole, that the cold houses are worse than the village comments," replied Mrs. Marcy's visitor. "A New-Yorker I know, a confirmed European too, always goes home to spend the three months of winter. When he comes back in the spring his English friends say, 'I hear you have had so many degrees of frost over there—fancy!'—meaning, perhaps, zero or under. To which he assents, but always inflexibly goes back. They look upon him as a kind of Esquimau. But how does Miss Marcy like exile?"
"Oh, Claudia is very fond of Italy. You have not seen her, by-the-way, since she was a child, and she is now twenty. Do you find her altered?"
"Greatly."
"At home she was never thought pretty—when she was younger, I mean. She was thought too—too—vigorous is perhaps the best word; she had not that graceful slenderness one expects to see in a young girl. But over here, I notice, the opinion seems to be different," continued the lady, half questioningly. "And, of course, too, she has improved."
"My dear Miss Sophy—improved? Miss Marcy is a wonderfully beautiful woman."
"Yes, yes, I know; Mr. Lenox thinks so too, I believe," answered Mrs. Marcy, half pleased, half irritated. "It seems she is a Venetian—that is, of the sixteenth century; and dressed in dark-green velvet, with those great puffed Venetian sleeves coming down over her knuckles, a gold chain, and her hair closely braided, she would be, they tell me, a perfect Bonifazio. In fact, Mr. Lenox is painting her as one. Only he has to imagine the dress."
Mrs. Marcy was a widow, and fifty-five. It had pleased her to hear again the old "Miss Sophy" of their youth from Rodney Blake; but as she had been one of those tall, slender, faintly lined girls who are called lilies, and who are associated with pale blues and lavender, she naturally found it difficult to realize a beauty, even if it was that of a niece, so unlike her own. Mrs. Marcy was now less than slender; the blue eyes which had once mildly lighted her countenance were faded. But she still remained lily-like and willowy, and her attire adapted itself to that style; there was a gleam of the lavender still—she wore long shawls and scarfs.
In the easy-chair opposite, Rodney Blake leaned back. He was fifty-six, long and thin, with a permanent expression on his face of half-weary, half-amused cynicism, which, however, seemed to concern itself more with life in general than with people in particular, and thus prevented personal applications. He was well-to-do, well dressed. There was a generally received legend that he was rather brilliant. This was the more remarkable because he seldom said much. But perhapsthat was the reason. Miss Marcy had entered as her aunt finished her sentence.
"The sitting is over, then," said the elder lady. "Has Mr. Lenox gone?"
"Not yet," answered the niece, giving her hand to Mr. Blake as he rose to greet her.
She was, as he had said, a beautiful woman. Yet at home there were still those who would have dissented from this opinion, as, secretly, her aunt dissented. She was of about medium height, with the form of a Juno. She had a rich complexion, slowly moving eyes of deep brown, and very thick, curling, low-growing hair of a bright gold color, which showed a warmer reddish tinge in the light. She was the personification of healthy life and vigor, but not of the nervous or active sort; of the reflective. Wherever the sun touched her it struck a color: whether the red of cheek or lip, or the beautiful tint of her forehead and throat, which was not fair but clear; whether the brown of her eyes, or the gold of eyebrows, eyelashes, and the heavy, low-coiled hair. Her features were fairly regular, but not of the pointed type; they were short rather than long, clearly, almost boldly, outlined. Her forehead was low; her mouth not small, the lips beautifully cut. She was attired in black velvet—she affected rich materials—and as she talked she twisted and untwisted a string of large pearls which hung loosely round her throat and down upon the velvet of her dress.
"Mr. Lenox does not have to imagine much, after all," observed Mr. Blake in his slow way to Mrs. Marcy. "In velvet, with those pearls, she does very well as it is."
"They are only Roman beads," said Claudia. "I don't know what you mean, of course."
"I had been telling Mr. Blake that they say that if you had a green velvet, with those big sleeves, you know, and your hair braided close to the head, to make it look too small in comparison with the shoulders, it would be a Bonifazio," explained the aunt.
"Your pearls are not so effective as they might be, Miss Marcy," continued the visitor, scanning her as she took a seat.
"I do not wear them in this way, but so." She unfastened the clasp, and rewound the long string in three close rows, one above the other, round her throat, above the high-coming black of her dress.
"That is better," said her critic.
"It feels like a piece of armor, so I unloosen it as soon as I can," she answered.
Here the artist came in, hat in hand. "I am on my way home," he said. "Good-morning, Mr. Blake. I have only stopped to ask about our expedition this afternoon, Mrs. Marcy."
"Oh, I suppose we shall go," answered that lady, "the day is so fine. How are they at home this morning, Mr. Lenox?"
"Elizabeth is quite well, thanks; Theocritus as usual. Shall I order gondolas, then?"
"If you will be so good; at four. Mr. Blake will, I hope, go with us."
And then Mr. Lenox bowed, and withdrew.
"Does the—the idyllic personage accompany us?" asked the gentleman in the easy-chair.
"It is only a child appended to the name," said Claudia, laughing. "For some reason Mrs. Lenox always pronounces it in full; she could just as well call him Theo."
"It is her nephew, and she is devoted to him," explained Mrs. Marcy. "He is nearly ten years old, but does not look more than five. His health is extremely delicate, and he is at times rather—rather babyish."
"Peevish, isn't it?" said Claudia. She had taken up two long black needles entangled in a mass of crimson worsted, and, disengaging them, was beginning to knit another row on an unfinished stripe. Her beautifully moulded hands, full and white, with one antique gem on each, contrasted with the tint of the wool. The thin fingers of Mrs. Marcy were decked with fine diamonds, and diamonds alone; in spite of the "foreign ways" of which that lady had accused herself, she remained sufficiently American for that. She could buy diamonds, and Claudia an antique ring or two; both aunt and niece enjoyed inherited incomes, that of Claudia being comfortable, that of Mrs. Marcy large.
These ladies occupied rooms on the third floor of a palace on the Grand Canal, not far below the Piazzetta. The palace was a stately example of Renaissance architecture, with three rows of majestic polished columns extending one above the other across its front. Between these columns the American tenant, who had once been called "the lily," and her niece, who was so like a Bonifazio, looked out upon the golden Venetian light—a light whose shadows are colors: mother-of-pearl, emerald, orange, amber, and all the changing gradations between them—thrown against and between the reds, browns, and fretted white marbles of the buildings rising from the water; that ever-moving water which mirrors it all—here a sparkling, glancing surface, there a mysterious darkness, both of them contrasting with the serene blue of the sky above,which is barred towards the riva by the long, lean, sharply defined lateen spars of the moored barks, and made even more deep in its hue over the harbor by the broad sails of the fishing-sloops outlined against it, as they come slowly up the channel, rich, unlighted sheets of tawny yellow and red, with a great cross vaguely defined upon them.
Next to the Renaissance palace was a smaller one, narrow and high, of mediæval Gothic, ancient and weather-stained; it had lancet-windows, adorned above with trefoil, and a little carved balcony like old Venetian lace cut in marble. Here Mr. and Mrs. Lenox occupied the floor above that occupied by the ladies in the larger palace. Communication was direct, however, owing to a hallway, like a little covered bridge, that crossed the canal which flowed between—a canal narrow, dark, and still, that worked away silently all day and all night at its life-long task of undermining the ponderous walls on each side; gaining perhaps a half-inch in a century, together with the lighter achievement of eating out the painted wooden columns which, like lances set upright in the sand at a tent's door, the old Venetians were accustomed to plant in the tide round their water-washed entrances. At four o'clock the little company started, the three from the Gothic palace having come across the hall bridge to join the others. Two gondolas were in waiting; as the afternoon was warm, they had light awnings instead of the antique black tops, with the sombre drapery sweeping out behind.
"I like the black tops better," observed Claudia. "Any one can have an awning, but the black tops are Venetian."
"They can easily be changed," said Lenox.
"Oh no; not in this heat," objected Mrs. Marcy. "We should stifle. Mr. Blake, shall you and I, as the selfish elders, take this one, and let the younger people go together in that?"
"I want to go in the one with the red awning—thebrightred," said Theocritus. This was the one Mrs. Marcy had selected.
"No, no, my boy; the other will do quite as well for you," said Lenox.
"It won't," replied the child, in a decided little voice.
"It is not of the slightest consequence," graciously interposed Mrs. Marcy, signalling to the other gondola, and, with Blake's assistance, taking her place within it.
Mr. Lenox glanced at his wife. She was occupied in folding a shawl closely over the boy's little overcoat. "Come, then," he said, giving his hand first to Miss Marcy, then to his wife and the child. The gondolas floated out on the broad stream.
Claudia talked; she talked well, and took the Venetian tone. "The only thing that jars upon me," she said, after a while, "is that these Venetians of to-day—those men and women we are passing on the riva now, for instance—do not appreciate in the least their wonderful water-city—scarcely know what it is."
"They don't study 'Venice' because they are Venice—isn't that it?" said Mrs. Lenox. She had soothed the little boy into placidity, and he sat beside her quietly, with one gloved hand in hers, a small muffled figure, with a pale face whose delicate skin was lined like that of an old man. His eyes were narrow, deep-set, and dark under his faintly outlined fair eyebrows; his thinhair so light in hue and cut so closely to his head that it could scarcely be distinguished.
"I hope not," said Claudia, answering Mrs. Lenox's remark—"at least, I hope the old Venetians were not so; I like to think that they felt, down to their very finger-tips, all the richness and beauty about them."
"You may be sure the feeling was unconscious compared with ours," replied Mrs. Lenox. "They did not consult authorities about the pictures; they were the pictures. They did not study history; they made it. They did not read romances; they lived them."
"I wish I could have lived then," murmured Miss Marcy, her eyes resting thoughtfully on the red tower of San Giorgio, rising from the blue. No veil obscured the beautiful tints of her face; Claudia's complexion could brave the brightest light, the wind, and the sun. The dark-blue plume of the round hat she wore curled down over the rippled sunny braids of her hair. Mr. Lenox was looking at her. But Mr. Lenox was often looking at her.
"That would not be at all nice for us," said Mrs. Lenox, in her pleasant voice, answering the young lady's wish. "If you, Miss Marcy, can step back into the fifteenth century without trouble, we cannot; Stephen and I are very completely of this poor nineteenth."
"I don't know," said Claudia, slowly; she looked at "Stephen" with meditative eyes. "He could have been one of the soldiers. You remember that Venetian portrait in the Uffizi at Florence—General Gattamelata? Mr. Lenox does not look like it; but in armor he would look quite as well."
"I don't remember it," said Mrs. Lenox, turning tosee why Theocritus was beating upon her knees with his right fist.
"You must remember—it is so superb!" said Claudia.
"I want to sit on the other side," announced Theocritus.
"When we come back, dear. See, the church is quite near; we shall soon be there now," answered his aunt.
"You remember it, don't you?" said Claudia to Lenox.
"Perfectly."
"No—now," piped Theocritus. "The wind is blowing down my back."
"If he is cold, Stephen—" said Mrs. Lenox.
"I will change places with him," replied her husband. "Do not move, Miss Marcy."
"No; Aunt Lizzie must go too!" said the boy. He had wrinkled up his little face until he looked like an aged dwarf in a temper; he stretched back his lips over his little square white teeth, and glared at his uncle and Miss Marcy.
"Let me change—do," said Claudia, rising as she spoke. And Mrs. Lenox accepted the offer.
"When you have finished my portrait, suppose you paint yourself as a fifteenth-century Venetian general," continued Miss Marcy, taking up again the thread of conversation which had been broken by Theocritus's obstinacy. "The portrait of a man painted by himself is always interesting; you can see then what he thinks he is."
"And is not?" said Lenox.
"Possibly. Still, what he might be. It is his idealview of himself, and I believe in ideals. It is only our real, purified—what we shall all attain, I hope, in another world."
Thus she talked on. And the man to whom she talked thought it a loveliness of nature that she passed so naturally and unnoticingly over the demeanor of the spoiled child who accompanied them. Mrs. Lenox could, for the present take no further part in the conversation, as Theocritus had demanded that she should relate to him the legend of St. Mark, St. George, and St. Theodore climbing down from their places over the church porch, the palace window, and the crocodile column to fight the demons of the lagoons. This she did, but in so low a tone that the conversation of the others was not interrupted.
They reached the island and landed; Mrs. Marcy and Blake were already there, sitting on the sun-warmed steps of the church whose smooth white façade and red campanile are so conspicuous from Venice. "We were discussing the shape of the prow of the gondola," said Mrs. Marcy, as they came up. "To me it looks like the neck of a swan." Mrs. Marcy never sought for new terms; if the old ones were only poetical—she was a stickler for that—she used them as they were, contentedly.
Mr. Blake, who always took the key-note of the conversation in which he found himself, advanced the equally veteran comparison of the neck of a violin.
"It is the shining blade of St. Theodore, the patron of the gondolas," suggested Claudia.
"To me it looks a good deal like the hammer of a sewing-machine," observed Mrs. Lenox, lightly. This was so true that they all had to laugh.
"But this will never do, Mrs. Lenox," said Blake, turning to look at her as she stood on the broad marble step, holding the little boy's hand; "you will destroy all our carefully prepared atmosphere with your modern terms. Here we have all been reading up for this expedition, and we know just what Ruskin thinks; wait a bit, and you will hear us talk! And not one will be so rude as to recognize a single adjective."
"You admire him, then—Ruskin?" said the lady.
"Admire? That is not the word; he is the divinest madman! Ah, but he makes us work! In some always inaccessible spot he discovers an inscrutably beautiful thing, and then he goes to work and writes about it fiercely, with all his nouns in capitals, and his adjectives after the nouns instead of before them—which naturally awes us. But what produces an even deeper thrill is his rich way of spreading his possessive cases over two words instead of one, as, 'In the eager heart of him,' instead of 'In his eager heart.' This cows us completely."
"I want to go in the church. I don't want to stay out here any longer," announced Theocritus. And, as his aunt let him have his way, the others followed her, and they all went in together.
Compared with the warm sunshine without, the silent aisles seemed cool. After ten minutes or so Mrs. Marcy and Blake came out, and seated themselves on the step again. "You have known her for some time?" Blake was saying.
"Mrs. Lenox? No; only since we first met here, six—I mean seven—weeks ago. But Stephen Lenox I have always known, or rather known about; he is a distant connection of mine. His history has been ratherunusual. His mother, a widow, managed to educate him, but that was all; they were really very poor, and Stephen was hard at work before he was twenty. He had some sort of a clerkship in an iron-mill, and was kept at it, I was told, twelve and thirteen hours a day. Before he was twenty-two he married. He worked harder than ever then, although he had, I believe, in time a better place. His wife had no money, either, and she was not strong. Their two little children died. Well, after twelve years of this, most unexpectedly, by the will of an uncle by marriage, he came into quite a nice little fortune; the uncle said, I was told, that he admired a man who, in these days, had never had or asked for the least help from his relatives. And so Stephen could at last do as he pleased, and very soon afterwards they came abroad. For he had been an artist at heart all this time, it seems—at least, he has a great liking for painting, and even, I think, some skill."
"I doubt if he is a creative artist," answered Blake. "He is too well balanced for that—a strong, quiet fellow. His wife is of about his age, I presume?"
"Yes; he is thirty-six, and she the same. They have been over here already nearly two years. She is a very nice little woman" (Mrs. Lenox was tall and slender; but Mrs. Marcy always patronized Mrs. Lenox), "although onedoesget extremely tired of that spoiled boy she drags about. Do you know," added the lady, deeply, "I feel sure it would be much better for Elizabeth Lenox if she would remember her present circumstances more; there is no longer any necessity for an invariable untrimmed gray gown."
"Doesn't she dress well?" said Blake. "I thought she always looked very neat."
"That is the very word—neat. But there is no flow, no richness. She has been rather pretty once; that is, in that style—gray eyes and dark hair; and she might be so still if she had the proper costumes. Of course, going about Venice in this way one does not want to dress much; but she has not even got anything put away."
"If one does not wear it, what difference does that make?" asked the gentleman.
"All the difference in the world!" replied Mrs. Marcy. "Let me tell you that the verystepof a woman who knows she has two or three nice dresses in the bottom of her trunk is different from that of a woman who knows she hasn't."
"But perhaps Mrs. Lenox does not know that she 'hasn't,'" remarked Blake. This, however, went over Mrs. Marcy's head.
Within, the others were looking at the beautiful Tintorettos in the choir. After a while the ill-favored but gravely serene young monk who had admitted them approached and mentioned solemnly "the view from the campanile;" this not because he cared whether they went up or not, but simply as part of his duty.
"I should like to go," said Claudia; "I love to look off over the lagoons."
They turned to leave the choir. "Idon't want to go," said Theocritus, holding back. "I want to stay here and see that picture some more; and I'm going to!"
This time Miss Marcy did not yield her wish. "Do not come with me," she said to Mr. and Mrs. Lenox; "it is not in the least necessary. I have been up before, and know the way. I will not be gone fifteen minutes."
"I really think that he ought not to climb all those stairs," said Mrs. Lenox to her husband, looking at the child, who had gone back to his station before the picture.
"Of course not," answered Lenox. Then, after a moment, "I will stay with him," he added; "you go up with Miss Marcy."
"I want Aunt Lizzie to stay—not Uncle Stephen!" called the boy, overhearing this, and turning round to scowl at them.
"He will not be good with any one but me," said Mrs. Lenox, in a low tone. "You two go up; I will wait for you here."
"The question is, Is he ever good, even with her?" said Claudia, following Lenox up the long flight of steps that winds in square turns up, up, to the top of the campanile.
"She says he is sometimes very sweet and docile—even affectionate," replied Lenox. "She thinks he has quite a remarkable mind, and will distinguish himself some day if we can only tide his poor, puny little body safely over its childish weakness, and give him a fair start."
"She is very fond of him."
"Yes; his mother was her dearest friend, his father her only brother."
Claudia considered that she had now given sufficient time to this subject (not an interesting one), and they talked of other things, but in short sentences, for they were still ascending. Twice she stopped to rest for a minute or two; then Lenox came down a step, and stood beside her. There was no danger; still, if a person should be seized with giddiness, the thoughtof the near open well in the centre, going darkly down, was a dizzy one.
At the top they had the view: wide green flatness towards the east, northeast, southeast, with myriad gleaming, silvery channels; the Lido and the soft line of the Adriatic beyond; towns shining whitely in the north; to the west, Venice, with its long bridge stretching to the mainland; in port, at their feet, a large Italian man-of-war; on the south side, the point of the Giudecca.
quoted Claudia. "I chant it because I have just discovered that the Zuecca means the Giudecca yonder."
"What is the verse?" said Lenox.
"Don't you know it? It is Musset."
"I have read but little, Miss Marcy."
"You have not hadtimeto read," said Claudia, with a shade of emphasis; "your time has been given to better things."
"Yes, to iron rails!"
"To energy and to duty," she answered. Then she turned the subject, and talked of the tints on the water.
Down below, in the still church, the little boy sat beside his aunt, her arm round him, his head leaning against her. The monk had withdrawn.
"The angels were all there, no doubt," she was saying; "but only a few painters have ever tried to represent them in the picture. It is not easy to paint an angel if you have never seen one."
"Pooh! I have seen them," said Theocritus, "hundreds of times. I have seen their wings. They come floating in when the sunshine comes through a crack—all dusty, you know. How many of them there do you suppose saw the angels? Not that big girl with the plate, anyhow,Iknow!" Thus they talked on.
When the two from the campanile returned, and they went out to embark, a slight breeze had risen. The little boy lifted his shoulders uneasily, and seemed almost to shiver. Mrs. Lenox felt of his head and hands. "I think I had better take him back in one of those covered gondolas, Stephen," she said. "He seems to be cold; he might have a chill."
"Surely it is very warm," said Mrs. Marcy.
"Yes, but he is so delicate," replied the other lady.
"I will go with you, Mrs. Lenox," said Claudia.
"Oh no; the gondolas here are the small ones, I see, and Stephen could not come with us. Do not leave him to go back alone; if one of us sees to the child, that is enough."
It ended, therefore, according to her arrangement: she went back with Theocritus in a covered gondola, Mrs. Marcy and Blake returned as they had come, while Claudia and Lenox had the third boat to themselves.
Rodney Blake being added, this little party continued its Venetian life. Lenox made some progress with his portrait of Claudia, but it was not thought, at least by the others, that his wife made any with Theocritus, that child remaining as delicate as ever, and, if possible, more troublesome. In Mrs. Marcy's mind there had sprung up, since Mr. Blake's arrival, an aftermath of interest in Venetian art and architecture which wasricher even than the first crop; she went contentedly to see the pictures, churches, and palaces a fourth and even fifth time.
Claudia had a great liking for St. Mark's. "But who has not?" said Mrs. Marcy, reproachfully, when Blake commented upon the younger lady's fancy.
"Yes; but it is not every liking that is strong enough to take its possessor there every day through eight long, slow weeks," answered the gentleman.
"Not so slow," said Claudia. "But how do you know? You have been here through only one of them."
"That leanest mosaic in the central dome is an old friend of mine; he has told me many things in his time (I am an inveterate Venetian lounger, you know), bending down from his curved abode, his glassy eyes on mine, and a long, thin finger pointed. Be careful; he has noticed you."
Several days later, strolling into the church, he found her there. "As usual," he said.
"Yes, as usual," she answered. Miss Marcy liked Blake; his slow remarks often amused her. And she liked to be amused—perhaps because she was not one of those young ladies who find everything amusing. She was sitting at the base of the last of the great pillars of the nave, where she could see the north transept with the star-lights of the chapel at the end, the old pulpit of colored marbles with its fretted top and angel, and the deep, gold-lined dimness of the choir-dome, into which the first horizontal ray of sunset light was now stealing—a light which would soon turn into miraculous splendor its whole expanse.
"It always seems to me like a cave set with gold andgems," said Blake, taking a seat beside her. "And, in reality, that is what it is, you know—a wonderful robbers' cavern. As somebody has said, it is the church of pirates—of the greatest sea-robbers the world has ever known; and they have adorned it with the magnificent mass of treasure they stole from the whole Eastern hemisphere."
"I wish they had stolen a little for me—one of those Oriental chains, for instance. But what pleases me best here is the light. It isn't the bright, vast clearness of St. Peter's that makes one's small sins of no sort of consequence; it isn't the sombreness of the Duomo at Florence, where one soon feels such a dreadful repentance that the new virtue becomes acute depression. It is a darkness, I admit, but of such a warm, rich hue that one feels sumptuous just by sitting in it. I do believe that if some of our thin, anxious-faced American women could only be induced to come and sit here quietly several hours a day they would soon grow serene and physically opulent, like—"
"Like yourself?"
"Like the women of Veronese. (Of course I shall have to admit that I do not need this process. Unfortunately, I love it.) But those Veronese pictures, Mr. Blake—after all, what do they tell us? Blue sky and balconies, feasts and brocades, pages and dogs, colors and splendor, and those great fair women, with no expression in their faces—what does it all mean?"
"Simply beauty."
"Beauty without mind, then."
"A picture does not need mind. But, to be worth anything, beauty it must have."
"I don't know; a picture is a sort of companion.One of those pictures would not be that; you might as well have a beautiful idiot."
"Ah, but apictureis silent," replied Blake.
Claudia laughed. "You are incorrigible." Then, going back to her first subject, "I wish Mrs. Lenox would come here more," she said.
"You think she needs this enriching process you have suggested?"
"In one way—yes. All this beauty here in Venice is so much to her husband; while she—is forever with that child!"
"But she does not keep him from the beauty."
"No; but she might make it so much more to him if she would."
"Why don't you suggest it to her?"
"There is no use. She does not understand me, I think. We speak a different language."
"That may be. But I fancy she understands you."
"Perhaps she does," answered Claudia, with the untroubled frankness which was one of her noticeable traits. She spoke as though she thought, indeed, that Claudia Marcy's nature was a thing which Mrs. Lenox, or any one, might observe. Claudia rather admired her nature. It was not perfect, of course, but at least it was large in its boundaries, and above the usual feminine pettinesses; she felt a calm pride in that. She was silent for a while. The first sunset ray had now been joined by others, and together they had lighted up one-half of the choir-dome; its gold was all awake and glistening superbly, and the great mosaic figure enthroned there began to glow with a solemn, mysterious life.
"Men should not marry until they are at least thirty,I think," resumed Claudia; "and especially those of the imaginative or artistic temperament. Three-quarters of the incongruous marriages one sees were made when the husband was very young. It is not the wife's fault; at the time of the marriage she is generally the superior, the generous one; the benefit is conferred by her. But—she does not advance, and he does."
"What would you propose in the way of—of an amelioration?" asked her listener.
"There can, of course, be no amelioration in actual cases. But there might be a prevention. I think that a law could be passed—such as now exists, for instance, against the marriage of minors. If a man could not marry until he was thirty or older, he would at that time naturally select a wife who was ten years or so his junior rather than one of his own age."
"And the women of thirty?"
"They would be already married to the men of fifty, you know."
Here a figure emerging from the heavy red-brown shadows of the north aisle, and seeming to bring some of them with it, as it advanced, crossed the billowy pavement, and stopped before them. It was Mr. Lenox. He took a seat on the other side of Blake, and they talked for a while of the way the chocolate-hued walls met the gold of the domes solidly, without shading, and of the total absence of white—two of the marked features of the rich interior of the old pirate cathedral. At length Blake rose, giving up his place beside Miss Marcy to the younger man. "I think we have still a half-hour before that jailer of a janitor jangles his keys," she said.
"Yes; but for the men of fifty it is time to be going,"answered Blake. "They take cold rather easily, you know, those poor fellows of fifty."
He went away. Claudia and Lenox remained until the keys jangled.
Every day the weather and the water-city grew more divinely fair. June began. And now even Mrs. Marcy saw no objection to their utilizing the moonlight, and no longer spoke of "wraps." The evenings were haunted by music; everybody seemed to be floating about singing or touching guitars. The effect of the mingled light and shadows across the fronts of the palaces was enchanting; they could not say enough in its praise.
"Still, do you know sometimes I would give it all for the fresh odor of the fields at home, in the country, and the old scent of lilacs," said Mrs. Lenox.
"Do you care for lilacs?" said Claudia. "If you had said roses—"
"No, I mean lilacs—the simple country lilacs. And I want to see some currant bushes, too; yes, and even an old wooden garden fence," replied Mrs. Lenox, laughing, but nevertheless as if she meant what she said. She went with them only that once in the evening, for when she reached home she found that the little boy had been wakeful, and that he had refused to go to sleep again because she was not there. After this the others went without her in a gondola holding four. At last, although the moonlight lingers longer in Venice than anywhere else, there was, for that month at least, no more. Yet still the evening air was delicious, and the music did not cease; the effect of the shadows was even more marvellous than the mingled light and shade had been. They continued to go out and float aboutfor an hour or two in the warm, peopled darkness. They went also, but by daylight, to Torcello, and this time Theocritus was of the party. During half of the day he was more despotic than he had ever been, but later he seemed very tired; he slept in his aunt's arms all the way home. Once she made an effort to transfer him to her husband, as the weight of his little muffled figure lay heavily on her slender arm; but Theocritus was awake immediately, and began to beat off his uncle's hands with all his might.