A Venetian June Part 12

Yes; she caught the attention, as the most distinct sound, the most obvious sight is pretty sure to do, when people are taking life easily, and seeking only amus.e.m.e.nt, and she was so refres.h.i.+ngly unconscious that one could look and listen one's fill, and no harm done.

Yet Geoffry Daymond discovered that when he was making believe paint pictures, in the first freshness of early morning, or when he was smoking his after-dinner cigar, in the lingering June twilight, the face that interfered with the one occupation and lent charm to the other, was not framed in golden hair, nor animated with the lively and bird-like intelligence which he found so amusing. And not only was it Pauline Beverly's face, with its softly blending colours, and its quiet, indwelling light, that floated before his mental vision, but he found that he remembered her words and even the tones of her voice, when the gay and occasionally witty talk of the others had gone the way of mortal breath. He somehow came to a.s.sociate certain inflections of her voice with the sweet sounds that make the undertone of Venetian life; the plash of the oar, the cooing of doves about the Salute, the bells of Murano, softened in the distance, the sound of the surf beating outside the Lido of a still evening, when one floats far out on the lagoon, and the familiar, every-day world seems farther away than those other worlds, s.h.i.+ning overhead. He speculated a good deal over this new preoccupation, and more still over the sense of pa.s.sive content that had come to be a.s.sociated with it.

For Geof was of an active temperament and possessed of but scant talent for repose. This was his first real vacation in seven years, yet, in spite of his good resolve to idle away a month in Venice for his mother's sake, he had been on the point of finding an outlet for his surplus energies in that tramp in the Cadore, when,--just what was it that had deterred him from carrying out the plan? He believed, at the time, that it was merely the prospect of better acquaintance with the prettiest and brightest girl it had yet been vouchsafed him to meet. As he had since heard May remark,--for having once adopted an opinion, she was fond of testing it in more than one direction,--it is such a comfort to get hold of anything superlative! He was not aware that the elder sister, who certainly could not claim a single superlative quality, had played any part at all in that first impression; yet the thought of her had gradually come to be the hourly companion of his solitude. And now, for the first time in his life he found himself luxuriating, not only in solitude, but in idleness.

When he had been making a desultory sketch, away out toward Malamocco, or in among the _vignoli_ in the northern lagoon, pausing perhaps, for a good five minutes, between gra.s.sy banks, to listen to the whistle of the blackbird in the hedge, he felt no imperative call to seize an oar and double the rate of speed on the homeward way. On the contrary, he found it a perfectly congenial occupation to lounge among the cus.h.i.+ons of the gondola and let Pietro row him home at his own leisurely rate, while the two good comrades had a meditative smoke.

It was because Geof was aware that this state of things was abnormal, that he found it perplexing, and because, much as he enjoyed the experience itself, he did not relish the sense of having somewhat lost his bearings, that he was glad to seize upon the clue which he had got hold of there at the foot of the stone Madonna. Miss Beverly was like his mother; that was all there was about it. Such a resemblance as that would make any face linger agreeably in his thoughts.

It had got to be the middle of June, when parish processions are the order of the day. They were rowing up the Grand Ca.n.a.l, one Sunday afternoon, Geof and his mother, on their way to the _festa_, which was timed for the latter part of the day. Pietro and the gondola were in gala costume, snow-white as to Pietro, and, as to the gondola, the new brussels carpet of dark blue, to match Pietro's sash and hat-ribbon and the sea-horse banner floating at the bow. As they pa.s.sed under the Rialto, and swung round the great bend of the Ca.n.a.l, Geof observed, in an unconsciously weighty tone: "Mother, I have made a discovery."

"And that is?"

"Miss Beverly looks like you."

At this simple statement of fact, the face of Geof's listener underwent one of those subtle changes of expression which the Colonel, in an inspired moment, had likened to the play of light upon the waters of the lagoon. For, being gifted with intuition, unhampered by the more laborious processes of the manly intellect, Mrs. Daymond instantly perceived that Geof had confessed more than he was himself aware.

She did not reply at once; to her, too, appeared the face of Pauline Beverly, as unlike her own, she thought, as well might be, and infinitely more attractive to her for that. Yes, there was only one thing that could possibly make them seem alike to Geof. She glanced at the face beside her, so sound, so vigorous, so magnanimous, as it seemed to her partial eyes. He was gazing straight ahead, with the direct look that his mother liked. He did not seem impatient for an answer; he had rather the appearance of being pleasantly absorbed in his own thoughts.

It had evidently never once occurred to him to consider, in this connection, how often he had declared that he should never lose his heart until he had found a girl who was like his mother.

For a moment she was tempted to remind him of it,--but only for a moment. For Geof's mother was not the woman to take unfair advantage of a defenceless position, even where her own son was concerned. So she only said, after an interval of silence that Geof had scarcely noticed: "I am glad you think us alike, for I have never met a young girl who was as sympathetic to me as Pauline Beverly."

"Sympathetic! That's it; that hits her off exactly!" Geof declared; and then, with an accession of spirits which rendered him suddenly loquacious, "And I say, Mother!" he exclaimed, "what a jolly old boy the Colonel is! I just wish you could have heard him fire up the other day, when Kenwick got off one of his cynicisms at the expense of Abraham Lincoln. Tell you what, the sparks flew! Oliver was up a tree like a cat!--Hullo! There's the flag-s.h.i.+p!" he interrupted his flow of words to announce, as they came in sight of San Geremia.

The procession, or the component parts of it, not yet reduced to order, was just issuing from the church; priests and choristers in their gay vestments, huge candles, flaring bravely in the face of the sun, brilliant banners and gaudy images, all in a confused ma.s.s, and the people crowding on the flagged _campo_ before the church. Vittorio's gondola was disappearing down the broad Canareggio Ca.n.a.l, and Pietro needed no bidding to follow after. The crowd of boats of every kind, gondolas, sandolos, barchettas, batteias, and the score of floating things that only your true Venetian knows by name, became so closely packed in the more restricted limits of the Canareggio, that it was impossible for Pietro to get near the sea-horse on the red ground, floating so conspicuous, yet so aggravatingly unapproachable a few rods ahead. He did succeed, however, in forcing a pa.s.sage after it, and he made his way to the three-arched bridge which spans the Canareggio, and under which he pa.s.sed to a good point of view. Here they were obliged to tie to a totally uninteresting gondola, with the width of the closely packed ca.n.a.l between their own and the Colonel's boat. They had been carried somewhat farther along the ca.n.a.l than the others, but Pietro managed to turn his long bark about so that his _padroni_ should face the bridge, which brought Vittorio's gondola also in their line of vision, and there were friendly wavings of hats and parasols between the two.

Presently the procession drew near, and crossed the bridge, banners waving, candles flaming, priests intoning. The band struck up, and the voices of the priests were drowned in the songs of the choristers.

The quay, on either hand, was crowded with people in gala dress, and from every window, the whole length of the ca.n.a.l, bright flags and stuffs depended, shawls and variegated quilts, table-cloths, and rugs, whatever would take on a festal air in the suns.h.i.+ne. Beautiful silken banners, too, waved from lines that spanned the ca.n.a.l, high above the heads of the floating populace, their painted Saints and Madonnas shot luminously through by the level rays of the sun.

As the procession pa.s.sed on down the quay, and the high priest drew near, bearing the Host under its embroidered canopy, the throngs on the _fondamenta_ dropped on their knees to catch the scattered blessing, rising again, an instant later, one group after another, which gave to the line of figures an undulating motion, as of a long, sinuous body, coiling and uncoiling.

The pleasure of Vittorio's pa.s.sengers was not a little heightened by the proximity of Nanni's old gondola, which lay only one boat's width removed from their own, and was filled to overflowing with the wives and children of his two gondolier brothers. The Signorinas were by this time on terms of intimacy with Vittorio's family, their chief pet among the children being the smallest boy, always spoken of by his adoring parents as the _piccolo Giovanni_. "Pickle Johnny," Uncle Dan called him, and, being a specialist in names, the Colonel had no sooner invented one for this small and rather obstreperous manikin, than he took him into his particular favour.

The attention of the girls, meanwhile, was pretty evenly divided between the moving show upon the quay and the quite as active contingent in Nanni's gondola. Indeed there were about as many babies in the one as in the other, for it is a pretty and childlike fancy of the Venetians to dress up their children as saints and angels, and lead them, with a becoming reverence, not all untouched by vanity, in the wake of the holy men. Here were small Franciscans in their brown cowls, tiny St. Johns, clad in sheepskins and armed with crosses, little queens of heaven in trailing garments of blue tarleton, and toddling white angels, with spangled wings and hair tightly crimped.

As the last of these heavenly apparitions disappeared down a dark alley, "Pickle Johnny" set up a howl of disappointment, which his mother tried in vain to suppress. In vain did his father scowl upon him over the heads of his pa.s.sengers in a semblance of terrible wrath, in vain did his uncle produce a row-lock for his delectation; "Pickle Johnny"

mourned the loss of the last baby angel and would not be comforted.

May was looking on with an amus.e.m.e.nt that was not without relish, when, chancing to glance at the hara.s.sed face of Nanni, the most conspicuous victim of "Pickle Johnny's" ill-judged exhibition of feeling, she experienced a sudden change of mood, and came instantly to the rescue.

"Let me take the _bambino_," she begged. "I can make him good."

The mother, a stout, comely woman in a plain black gown, demurred decorously, but was glad enough to yield, and Nanni, taking the child in his arms, stepped across the intervening gondola, to which his own was tied, and deposited his wondering burden in the arms of the Signorina who stood up to receive it. As he did so, that flash of grateful recognition which he was so chary of, crossed his grave face. Then, before "Pickle Johnny" could decide upon any definite line of action, the Signorina made haste to divert his mind by surrendering to him the cl.u.s.ter of silver trinkets which dangled from her belt. Pencil and penknife, scent-bottle, glove-b.u.t.toner, and, best of all, a tiny mirror, in which he viewed his still tearful countenance with undisguised satisfaction.

Uncle Dan looked on indulgently, and Pietro's pa.s.sengers, over the way, found the scene worthy of attention, as did others of the floating audience. The golden head, bent over the swarthy little cherub, was a sight that would have attracted Oliver Kenwick's notice, for example, even if he had had no personal interest in the chief actor. He was with some New York friends, in a gondola three or four boat-lengths away, and so absorbed was he in the little drama, that, when a remark was addressed to him that called for a retort, his gift of repartee quite failed him.

Presently the sound of wind instruments again made itself heard, and again the procession emerged from the narrow by-ways where the blessing had been plentifully strewn, and moved up the quay toward the three-arched bridge. By this time the poor little saints and angels were pretty tired and draggled. The small St. John, in a very bad temper, was banging about him with his cross, while the queen of heaven, reduced to tears of anguished fatigue, had been picked up in the strong arms of her father, where she was on the point of dropping asleep. "Pickle Johnny,"

too, was getting fretful again, having exhausted the charms of scent-bottle and toy looking-gla.s.s, and May was beginning to repent of her bargain.

"Give him to me," said Pauline. "He is sleepy, poor little tot!"

She took him in her arms, and in thirty seconds the little tot was fast asleep. Oliver Kenwick became once more available for social purposes.

There was nothing picturesque, nothing effective about this; it would not have attracted attention, any more than the sight of a young mother, holding her sleeping child.

The gondola lay with its stern toward the bridge, which the procession was crossing, and Pauline sat facing the open lagoon, where the sunset light already showed warm and mellow. She turned a bit in her seat, to see the bright banners and the candle-flames cross the bridge, and presently the high priest with his attendants had paused upon the central arch. At the stroke of a bell the Host was lifted, and all the populace fell upon their knees. Vittorio, in his snowy costume, knelt at the stern of his boat, Nanni, darkly clad, inclined his head and bent his knee, while the little children in his gondola dropped like a flock of doves upon the floor, where they huddled together, heads down, and eyes peering out. Old fishermen in their blue blouses, aged women, stiff, and slow, managed somehow to get upon their knees. The Colonel stood, hat in hand, facing the bridge, while May glanced, with bright interest, from one picturesque figure to another, noting the fact, in pa.s.sing, that Geoffry Daymond's hat was lifted, and Oliver Kenwick's was not.

Pauline sat with her head bent over the sleeping child. At the sound of the third bell, which was the signal for all that mult.i.tude to cross themselves and rise to their feet, she lifted the chubby hand, and made the sign of the cross with it upon the little breast. She did it as simply and naturally as if she had been the best Catholic of them all.

A moment later, "Pickle Johnny," with the blessing upon his drowsy little person, had been handed back to his uncle, and Vittorio was skillfully making his way out among the thronging craft toward the lagoon, which was swimming in a golden mist.

Pietro rowed in the other direction, and there was a friendly exchange of greetings between the pa.s.sing gondolas.

"Did you see that?" Geoffry asked, as they came out upon the broad bosom of the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

"Yes; I saw it, Geof," his mother answered; "I feel as if we had all received the benediction."

XI

At Torcello

For all the questionings and probings which May Beverly applied to the successive phenomena of the world about her, she had pa.s.sed her twenty years as light of heart and as free of real perplexities as any fifteenth-century maiden in her turret chamber. Prosperous and sheltered as her youth had been, she had, up to this time, apprehended scarcely anything of the real drama of life.

Whether it was due to a seasonable and inevitable development, or to a quickening of the imagination caused by the potent loveliness of Venice, it was certainly true that the young girl was pa.s.sing through a new and curiously stimulating experience. Many things had been revealed to her of late, which as yet she only half comprehended; for whereas she had formerly had an eye only for details, she was now beginning to combine and interpret; and having hitherto been chiefly occupied with the surface, she was learning to divine, if not to penetrate, the depths. It was doubtless due to this general rousing of the imagination, to which she perhaps owed her unalterable conviction that Vittorio's brother had, in some mysterious way, been singled out by misfortune, that the thought of him had come to play so large a part in her consciousness.

It was quite true, as she declared, that neither she nor Pauline had ever succeeded in attaining to the easy and spontaneous footing with him which had been established with Vittorio from the very first. Vittorio was both gay and communicative, and none the less a perfect servant for that. He would row by the hour, without volunteering a remark, yet a friendly word never failed to elicit the flas.h.i.+ng smile and ready response which conferred such grace upon him. A little diplomacy on the part of the girls had effected an entrance to his house, and to his confidence. They knew that he had married his Ninetta without a dowry because "she pleased him," and that their eldest child had died of a fever; that Constanza was the scholar of the family, and Giulia the caretaker. They knew that the eldest boy was named for one of his grandfathers, and the second for the other; that the third boy, Vittorio, wanted to be a soldier, and that the _piccolo Giovanni_ was going to be the best gondolier of them all. They knew why a light was always burning, day and night, before the little image of the Madonna on the stairs, and why the whole family had made a pious pilgrimage to the church of San Antonio at Padua the previous year. They knew how severe the father of Vittorio and Nanni had been to his boys; how he had, on more than one occasion, pitched them overboard, straight into the ca.n.a.l, yet how he was, nevertheless, "a just man!" They were acquainted with Vittorio's harmlessly revolutionary views, and with his reasons for not voting. They were familiar with his simple creed, to hope all things and leave the rest to the Madonna. And of Nanni's experiences and beliefs they knew nothing.

During the week when he had served them as gondolier he had never volunteered a remark and he had given only the shortest possible answers when addressed. Yet upon the mind of May, at least, his personality had made a strong impression. His tall, poorly clad figure, swaying at the oar, his sombre, almost tragic gaze, fixed straight before him, his deep, grave voice, not more musical, but more perfectly modulated than his brother's,--all went to form an enigma and an appeal.

Since his release from their service they had met him several times, rowing quite by himself in his shabby old gondola. Once they had come upon him out by St. George in the Seaweed where the loveliest of all the parasol Madonnas keeps guard over the still lagoon. He could have had no prosaic errand there. Was it because he loved the beauty of the scene, the grace and poetry of the dear young mother with the child, keeping their watch of centuries, above the old red wall where the lizards sun themselves? Or had he gone there to say an _Ave_ as the pretty Catholic custom is?

Another time they had encountered Nanni's boat when they were rowing out towards San Clemente in the starlight. There were stars in the water as in the sky, and the city was hidden behind the Giudecca, but the great _campanile_, showing pale and mysterious in the lights of the Piazza, sent its white shaft far down into the water of the lagoon on the hither side of the dark Giudecca. As the shadowy gondola, with its tiny light, came stealing over the star-strewn water, May recognized the solitary oarsman. Something withheld her from commenting on the fact, and when, a few seconds later, Vittorio exclaimed, "_Ecco, mio fratello!_" Uncle Dan had remarked what quick eyes these fellows have, and that n.o.body else could have recognized a man in the dark, like that. And May had said nothing, and the fact that she had kept silence gave her a curious pang of unwilling self-consciousness. So she began talking very fast of the Bellini Madonnas in the church of the Redentore, whose great dome towered black against the hovering reflection of the city lights, and of how they were not Bellinis after all, and since experts could make such bad blunders, whom were you to trust?

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Where the loveliest of all the parasol Madonnas keeps guard over the still lagoon"]

They had had no intercourse with Nanni since the day they had rowed out to the Porto del Lido, and May had protested against the ocean swell.

She often thought of the sensation it had caused in her, and a curious longing had come over her to feel once more that strange, disconcerting thrill.

She wondered whether she should ever have a chance to speak to Nanni and make him the offer of a gondola; she wondered if his face would flash with pleasure and grat.i.tude. Would he tell her why he had chosen exile from the life and occupation he loved so well? Would he tell her something about himself, give her the key to his strange melancholy and reserve? She had very little hope of such a consummation, but she was determined to make the attempt at the first opportunity.

And a few days after the Procession at the Canareggio, when he had so gratefully handed "Pickle Johnny" over to her care, the opportunity presented itself. For on that day the red and blue banners made the long-antic.i.p.ated trip to Torcello, that ancient cradle of Venice that rocks on the bosom of the lagoon, miles away to the northward. An extra oar was requisite for each gondola, and Nanni was drafted for the occasion. Old Pietro brought with him a slender slip of a grandson, a boy of sixteen, Angelo by name, who made up in skill and elasticity for the robustness yet to come.

Kenwick was of the party, and in great spirits; but indeed there was not one of them all who was not sensible of that agreeable exhilaration which attends a propitious start. The morning was true Venetian, soft and fair as a dream. Sweet scents were wafted over the water, and no one thought to question whence they came. The men pulled with a will, for it was a long trip, and all too soon they found themselves thridding their way through low banked water-ways to the landing near the quaint old church of Santa Fosca, their coming hailed with joy by a rapidly recruited army of ragam.u.f.fins. Immediately upon landing, Vittorio and Angelo were despatched to a neighbouring cottage in search of chairs and table, and presently the party were established at their luncheon under the beautiful colonnade of the Cathedral.