The Front Yard Part 35

"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 a _picture_ is 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 pa.s.sed--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 about for 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 m.u.f.fled 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.

"Do let me take him, Elizabeth; he will soon fall asleep again," said Lenox. He looked annoyed. "You are overtaxing your strength; I can see that you are tired out."

"It will not harm me; I know when I am really too tired," answered his wife. She gave him a little trusting smile as she spoke, and his frown pa.s.sed off.

They were all together in one of the large gondolas; Blake noted this little side-scene.

That night Theocritus had a slight attack of fever. Mrs. Lenox said that it came from over-fatigue, and that he must not go on any of the longer expeditions. When they went to Murano, therefore, and down to Chioggia, she did not accompany them, but remained at home with her charge.

Mrs. Marcy was enjoying this last month in Venice greatly. "Naturally, it is much pleasanter when one has some one to attend to one, and one too who knows one's tastes and looks after one's little comforts," she remarked to her niece, with some intricacy of impersonal p.r.o.nouns. The lily did not observe that the attentions she found so agreeable were being offered to her niece also by another impersonal p.r.o.noun. As she would herself have said, "naturally," when they went here and there together, the two elders often sat down to rest awhile when Claudia and Lenox did not feel the need of it.

"Of course, with her beauty, her attractive qualities, and her fortune, Miss Marcy has had many suitors," said Blake to the aunt during one of these rests.

"Several," answered that lady, moderately. "But Claudia is not at all susceptible. Neither is she so--so generally attractive as you might suppose. She has too little thought for the opinions of others. She says, for instance, just what she thinks, and that, you know, is seldom agreeable."

"True; we much prefer that people should say what they don't. I have myself noticed some plainly evident faults in her: a most impolitic honesty; and, when stirred, an impulsiveness which is sure to be unremunerative in the long-run. I should say, too, that she had an empyrean sort of pride."

"Yes," replied the lily, not knowing what he meant, but concluding on the whole that he spoke in reprobation. "As I said before, she has not _quite_ enough of that true feminine softness one likes so much to see--I mean, of course, in a woman."

"Her pride will be her bane yet. It will make her blind to the most obvious pitfall. However, I'll back her courage against it when once she sees where she has dropped."

"What?" said the lily.

"She will in time learn from you; she could not follow a more lovely example," said Blake, coming back from his reflections.

Towards the last of June a long expedition was planned, an expedition into "t.i.tian's country," which was to last three days. This little pilgrimage had been talked about for a long time, Mrs. Lenox being as much interested in it as the others. Whether she would have had the courage to take Theocritus, even in his best estate, is a question; but after the time was finally set and all the arrangements made, his worst a.s.serted itself, and so markedly that it was plain to all that she could not go. Something was said about postponement, but it was equally plain that if they were to go at all they should go at once, as the weather was rapidly approaching a too great heat. Claudia wished particularly to take this little journey; she had set her heart upon seeing the t.i.tians and reputed t.i.tians said to be still left in that unvisited neighborhood. Blake a.s.serted that she even expected to discover one. It was next proposed (although rather faintly) that Mr. Lenox should be excused from the pilgrimage. But it could not be denied that the little boy had been quite as ill (and irritable) several times before in Venice, and that he had always recovered in a day or two. Not that Mrs.

Lenox denied it; on the contrary, she was the one to mention it. She urged her husband's going; it was the excursion of all others to please him the most. It ended in his consenting; it seemed, indeed, too much to give up for so slight a cause.

"She looks a little anxious," observed Blake, as they waited for him in the gondola which was to take them to the railway station. Lenox had said good-bye to her, and was now coming down the long stairway within, while she had stepped out on her balcony to see them start.

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Marcy. "To me she always looks just the same, always so unmoved."

Lenox now came out, and the gondola started. Claudia looked back and waved her hand, Mrs. Lenox returning the salutation.

On the evening of the third day, at eleven o'clock, a gondola from the railway station stopped at the larger palace's lower door, and three persons ascended the dimly lighted stairs.

At the top Mrs. Lenox's servant was waiting for them. "Oh, where is signore? Is he not with you? He has not come? Oh, the poor signora--may the sweet Madonna help her now!" cried the girl, with tears in her sympathetic Italian eyes. "The poor little boy is dead."

They rushed up the higher stairway and across the hall bridge. But it was as the woman had said. There, on his little white bed, lay the child; he would be troublesome no more on this earth; he was quiet at last. Mrs. Lenox stood in the lighted doorway of her room as they came towards her. When she saw that her husband was not with them, when they began hurriedly to explain that he had not come, that he had stayed behind, that he had sent a note, she swayed over without a word and fainted away.

It was only over-fatigue, she explained later. The child had lain in her arms for thirty hours, most of the time in great pain, and she had suffered with him. She soon recovered consciousness and was quite calm--more calm than they had feared she would be. They were anxiously watchful; they tended her with the most devoted care. Blake did what he could, and then waited. After a while, when Mrs. Lenox had in a measure recovered, he softly beckoned Mrs. Marcy out.

"You must tell her that her husband will not be back in time for--that he will not be back for at least six days, and very likely longer. And as his route was quite uncertain, we cannot reach him; there is no telegraph, of course, and even if I were to go after him I could only follow his track from village to village, and probably come back to Venice behind him."

"How can I tell her!" said the tearful lady. "Perhaps Claudia--"

"No, on no account. You are the one, and you must do it," replied Blake, and with so much decision that she obeyed him. Thus the wife was told.

What Blake had said was true; it was hopeless to try to reach Lenox before the time when he would probably be back of his own accord. He had started on a hunt after some early drawings of t.i.tian's, of which they had unearthed dim legends. One was said to be in an old monastery, among others of no importance; two more were vaguely reported as now here, now there. Lenox had not been certain of his own route, but expected to be guided from village to village according to indications. It was not even certain whether he would come back by Conegliano or strike the railway at another point. "It certainly is an inexorable fate!" exclaimed poor Mrs. Marcy, in the emergency driven to unusual expressions.