The Beautiful Lady Part 4

What a ride it was to Venice that day! What magical airs we rode through, and what a thieving old trickster was time, as he always becomes when one wishes hours to be long! I think Poor Jr. had made himself forget everything except that he was with her and that he must be a friend. He committed a thousand ridiculousnesses at the stations; he filled one side of the compartment with the pretty chianti-bottles, with terrible cakes, and with fruits and flowers; he never ceased his joking, which had no tiresomeness in it, and he made the little journey one of continuing, happy laughter.

And that evening another of my foolish dreams came true! I sat in a gondola with the lady of the grey pongee to hear the singing on the Grand Ca.n.a.l;--not, it is true, at her feet, but upon a little chair beside her mother. It was my place--to be, as I had been all day, escort to the mother, and guide and courier for that small party. Contented enough was I to accept it! How could I have hoped that the Most Blessed Mother would grant me so much nearness as that? It was not happiness that I felt, but something so much more precious, as though my heart-strings were the strings of a harp, and sad, beautiful arpeggios ran over them.

I could not speak much that evening, nor could Poor Jr. We were very silent and listened to the singing, our gondola just touching the others on each side, those in turn touching others, so that a musician from the barge could cross from one to another, presenting the hat for contributions. In spite of this extreme propinquity, I feared the collector would fall into the water when he received the offering of Poor Jr. It was "Gra-a-az', Mi-lor! Graz'!" a hundred times, with bows and grateful smiles indeed!

It is the one place in the world where you listen to a bad voice with pleasure, and none of the voices are good--they are harsh and worn with the night-singing--yet all are beautiful because they are enchanted.

They sang some of our own Neapolitan songs that night, and last of all the loveliest of all, "La Luna Nova." It was to the cadence of it that our gondoliers moved us out of the throng, and it still drifted on the water as we swung, far down, into sight of the lights of the Ledo:

"Luna d'ar-gen-to fal-lo so-gnar-- Ba-cia-lo in fron-te non lo de-star...."

Not so sweetly came those measures as the low voice of the beautiful lady speaking them.

"One could never forget it, never!" she said. "I might hear it a thousand other times and forget them, but never this first time."

I perceived that Poor Jr. turned his face abruptly toward hers at this, but he said nothing, by which I understood not only his wisdom but his forbearance.

"Strangely enough," she went on, slowly, "that song reminded me of something in Paris. Do you remember"--she turned to Poor Jr.--"that poor man we saw in front of the Cafe' de la Paix with the sign painted upon his head?"

Ah, the good-night, with its friendly cloak! The good, kind night!

"I remember," he answered, with some shortness. "A little faster, boatman!"

"I don't know what made it," she said, "I can't account for it, but I've been thinking of him all through that last song."

Perhaps not so strange, since one may know how wildly that poor devil had been thinking of her!

"I've thought of him so often," the gentle voice went on. "I felt so sorry for him. I never felt sorrier for any one in my life. I was sorry for the poor, thin cab-horses in Paris, but I was sorrier for him. I think it was the saddest sight I ever saw. Do you suppose he still has to do that, Rufus?"

"No, no," he answered, in haste. "He'd stopped before I left. He's all right, I imagine. Here's the Danieli."

She fastened a shawl more closely about her mother, whom I, with a ringing in my ears, was trying to help up the stone steps. "Rufus, I hope," the sweet voice continued, so gently,--"I hope he's found something to do that's very grand! Don't you? Something to make up to him for doing that!"

She had not the faintest dream that it was I. It was just her beautiful heart.

The next afternoon Venice was a bleak and empty setting, the jewel gone. How vacant it looked, how vacant it was! We made not any effort to penetrate the galleries; I had no heart to urge my friend. For us the whole of Venice had become one bridge of sighs, and we sat in the shade of the piazza, not watching the pigeons, and listening very little to the music. There are times when St. Mark's seems to glare at you with Byzantine cruelty, and Venice is too hot and too cold. So it was then.

Evening found us staring out at the Adriatic from the terrace of a cafe'

on the Ledo, our coffee cold before us. Never was a greater difference than that in my companion from the previous day. Yet he was not silent.

He talked of her continually, having found that he could talk of her to me--though certainly he did not know why it was or how. He told me, as we sat by the grey-growing sea, that she had spoken of me.

"She liked you, she liked you very much," he said. "She told me she liked you because you were quiet and melancholy. Oh Lord, though, she likes everyone, I suppose! I believe I'd have a better chance with her if I hadn't always known her. I'm afraid that this d.a.m.n Italian--I beg your pardon, Ansolini!--"

"Ah, no," I answered. "It is sometimes well said."

"I'm afraid his picturesqueness as a Kentucky Colonel appeals to her too much. And then he is new to her--a new type. She only met him in Paris, and he had done some things in the Abyssinian war--"

"What is his rank?" I asked.

"He's a prince. Cheap down this way; aren't they? I only hope"--and Poor Jr. made a groan--"it isn't going to be the old story--and that he'll be good to her if he gets her."

"Then it is not yet a betrothal?"

"Not yet. Mrs. Landry told me that Alice had liked him well enough to promise she'd give him her answer before she sailed, and that it was going to be yes. She herself said it was almost settled. That was just her way of breaking it to me, I fear."

"You have given up, my friend?"

"What else can I do? I can't go on following her, keeping up this play at second cousin, and she won't have anything else. Ever since I grew up she's been rather sorrowful over me because I didn't do anything but try to amuse myself--that was one of the reasons she couldn't care for me, she said, when I asked her. Now this fellow wins, who hasn't done anything either, except his one campaign. It's not that I ought to have her, but while I suppose it's a real fascination, I'm afraid there's a little glitter about being a princess. Even the best of our girls haven't got over that yet. Ah, well, about me she's right. I've been a pretty worthless sort. She's right. I've thought it all over. Three days before they sail we'll go down to Naples and hear the last word, and whatever it is we'll see them off on the 'Princess Irene.' Then you and I'll come north and sail by the first boat from Cherbourg.

"I--I?" I stammered.

"Yes," he said. "I'm going to make the aged parent shout with unmanly glee. I'm going to ask him to take me on as a hand. He'll take you, too.

He uses something like a thousand Italians, and a man to manage them who can talk to them like a Dutch uncle is what he has always needed. He liked you, and he'll be glad to get you."

He was a good friend, that Poor Jr., you see, and I shook the hand that he offered me very hard, knowing how great would have been his embarra.s.sment had I embraced him in our own fas.h.i.+on.

"And perhaps you will sail on the 'Princess Irene,' after all," I cried.

"No," he shook his head sadly, "it will not happen. I have not been worth it."

Chapter Seven

That Naples of mine is like a soiled coronet of white gems, sparkling only from far away. But I love it altogether, near or far, and my heart would have leaped to return to it for its own sake, but to come to it as we did, knowing that the only lady in the world was there.... Again, this is one of those things I possess no knowledge how to tell, and that those who know do know. How I had longed for the time to come, how I had feared it, how I had made pictures of it!

Yet I feared not so much as my friend, for he had a dim, small hope, and I had none. How could I have? I--a man whose head had been painted?

I--for whom her great heart had sorrowed as for the thin, beaten cab-horses of Paris! Hope? All I could hope was that she might never know, and I be left with some little shred of dignity in her eyes!

Who cannot see that it was for my friend to fear? At times, with him, it was despair, but of that brave kind one loves to see--never a quiver of the lip, no winking of the eyes to keep tears back. And I, although of a people who express everything in every way, I understood what pa.s.sed within him and found time to sorrow for him.

Most of all, I sorrowed for him as we waited for her on the terrace of the Bertolini, that perch on the cliff so high that even the noises of the town are dulled and mingle with the sound of the thick surf far below.

Across the city, and beyond, we saw, from the terrace, the old mountain of the warm heart, smoking amiably, and the lights of Torre del Greco at its feet, and there, across the bay, I beheld, as I had nightly so long ago, the lamps of Castellamare, of Sorrento; then, after a stretch of water, a twinkling which was Capri. How good it was to know that all these had not taken advantage of my long absence to run away and vanish, as I had half feared they would. Those who have lived here love them well; and it was a happy thought that the beautiful lady knew them now, and shared them. I had never known quite all their loveliness until I felt that she knew it too. This was something that I must never tell her--yet what happiness there was in it!

I stood close to the railing, with a rambling gaze over this enchanted earth and sea and sky, while my friend walked nervously up and down behind me. We had come to Naples in the late afternoon, and had found a note from Mrs. Landry at our hotel, asking us for dinner. Poor Jr. had not spoken more than twice since he had read me this kind invitation, but now I heard a low exclamation from him, which let me know who was approaching; and that foolish trembling got hold of me again as I turned.

Mrs. Landry came first, with outstretched hand, making some talk excusing delay; and, after a few paces, followed the loveliest of all the world. Beside her, in silhouette against the white window lights of the hotel, I saw the very long, thin figure of a man, which, even before I recognized it, carried a certain ominousness to my mind.

Mrs. Landry, in spite of her florid contentedness, had sometimes a fluttering appearance of trivial agitations.

"The Prince came down from Rome this morning," she said nervously, and I saw my friend throw back his head like a man who declines the eye-bandage when they are going to shoot him. "He is dining with us. I know you will be glad to meet him."

The beautiful lady took Poor Jr.'s hand, more than he hers, for he seemed dazed, in spite of the straight way he stood, and it was easy to behold how white his face was. She made the presentation of us both at the same time, and as the other man came into the light, my mouth dropped open with wonder at the singular chances which the littleness of our world brings about.

"Prince Caravacioli, Mr. Poor. And this is Signor Ansolini."

It was my half-brother, that old Antonio!