The Marriage of William Ashe Part 68

Gayly colored birds hovered in blue skies; philosophers and poets in grisaille made a strange background for large-limbed beauties couched on roses, or young warriors amid trophies of s.h.i.+ning arms; and while all this garrulous commonplace lived and breathed above, the walls below, cold in color and academic in treatment, maintained as best they could the dignity of the vast place, thus given up to one of the greatest of artists and emptiest of minds.

On the floor of this magnificent hall stood a few old and broken chairs.

But the candelabra of gla.s.s and ormolu, hanging from the ceiling, were very nearly of the date of the palace, and superb. Meanwhile, through a faded taffeta of a golden-brown shade, the afternoon light from the high windows to the southwest poured into the stately room.

"How it dwarfs us!" said Lord Magellan, looking at his companion. "One feels the merest pygmy! From the age of decadence indeed!" He glanced at the guide-book in his hand. "Good Heavens!--if this was their decay, what was their bloom?"

"Yes--it's big--and jolly. I like it," said Kitty, absently. Then she recollected herself. "This is your way out. Federigo!" she called to an old man, the _custode_ of the palace, who appeared at the magnificent door leading to the grand staircase.

"Commanda, eccellenza!" The old man, bent and feeble, approached. He carried a watering-pot wherewith he was about to minister to some straggling flowers in the windows fronting the Grand Ca.n.a.l. A thin cat rubbed itself against his legs. As he stood in his shabbiness under the high, carved door, the only permanent denizen of the building, he seemed an embodiment of the old shrunken Venetian life, still haunting a city it was no longer strong enough to use.

"Will you show this signor the way out?" said Kitty, in tourists'

Italian. "Are you soon shutting up?"

For the main palazzo, which during the day was often shown to sightseers, was locked at half-past five, only the two _entresols_--one tenanted by Donna Laura, the other by the _custode_--remaining accessible.

The old man murmured something which Kitty did not understand, pointing at the same time to a door leading to the interior of the _piano n.o.bile_. Kitty thought that he asked her to be quick, if she wished still to go round the palace. She tried to explain that he might lock up if he pleased; her way of retreat to the _mezzanino_, down the small staircase, was always open. Federigo looked puzzled, again said something in unintelligible Venetian, and led the way to the grand staircase followed by Lord Magellan.

A heavy door clanged below. Kitty was alone. She looked round her, at the stretches of marble floor, and the streaks of pale suns.h.i.+ne that lay upon its black and white, at the lofty walls painted with a dim superb architecture, at the crowded ceiling, the gorgeous candelabra. With its costly decoration, the great room suggested a rich and festal life; thronging groups below answering to the Tiepolo groups above; beauties patched and masked; gallants in brocaded coats; splendid senators, robed like William at the fancy ball.

Suddenly she caught sight of herself in one of the high and narrow mirrors that filled the s.p.a.ces between the windows. In her mourning dress, with the light behind her, she made a tiny spectre in the immense hall. The image of her present self--frail, black-robed--recalled the two figures in the gla.s.s of her Hill Street room--the sparkling white of her G.o.ddess dress, and William's smiling face above hers, his arm round her waist.

How happy she had been that night! Even her wild fury with Mary Lyster seemed to her now a kind of happiness. How gladly would she have exchanged for it either of the two terrors that now possessed her!

With a s.h.i.+ver she crossed the hall, and pushed her way into the suite of rooms on the northern side. She felt herself in absolute possession of the palace. Federigo no doubt had locked up; her mother and a few guests were still talking in the _salon_ of the _mezzanine_, expecting her to return. She would return--soon; but the solitariness and wildness of this deserted place drew her on.

Room after room opened before her--bare, save for a few worm-eaten chairs, a fragment of tapestry on the wall, or some tattered portraits in the Longhi manner, indifferent to begin with, and long since ruined by neglect. Yet here and there a young face looked out, roses in the hair and at the breast; or a Doge's cap--and beneath it phantom features still breathing even in the last decay of canvas and paint the violence and intrigue of the living man--the ghost of character held there by the ghost of art. Or a lad in slashed brocade, for whom even in this silent palace, and in spite of the gaping crack across his face, life was still young; a cardinal; a nun; a man of letters in clerical dress, the Abbe Prevost of his day....

Presently she found herself in a wide corridor, before a high, closed door. She tried it, and saw a staircase mounting and descending. A pa.s.sion of curiosity that was half romance, half restlessness, drove her on. She began to ascend the marble steps, hearing only the echo of her own movements, a little afraid of the cold s.p.a.ces of the vast house, and yet delighting in the fancies that crowded upon her. At the top of the flight she found, of course, another apartment, on the same plan as the one below, but smaller and less stately. The central hall entered from a door supported by marble caryatids, was flagged in yellow marble, and frescoed freely with faded eighteenth-century scenes--cardinals walking in stiff gardens, a pope alighting from his coach, surrounded by peasants on their knees, and behind him fountains and obelisk and the towering facade of St. Peter's. At the moment, thanks to a last glow of light coming in through a west window at the farther end, it was a place beautiful though forlorn. But the rooms into which she looked on either side were wreck and desolation itself, crowded with broken furniture, many of them shuttered and dark.

As she closed the last door, her attention was caught by a strange bust placed on a pedestal above the entrance. What was wrong with it? An accident? An injury? She went nearer, straining her eyes to see.

No!--there was no injury. The face indeed was gone. Or, rather, where the face should have been there now descended a marble veil from brow to breast, of the most singular and sinister effect. Otherwise the bust was that of a young and beautiful woman. A pleasing horror seized on Kitty as she looked. Her fancy hunted for the clew. A faithless wife, blotted from her place?--made infamous forever by the veil which hid from human eye the beauty she had dishonored? Or a beloved mistress, on whom the mourning lover could no longer bear to look--the veil an emblem of undying and irremediable grief?

Kitty stood enthralled, striving to pierce the ghastly meaning of the bust, when a sound--a distant sound--a shock through her. She heard a step overhead, in the topmost apartment, or _mansarde_ of the palace, a step that presently traversed the whole length of the floor immediately above her head and began to descend the stair.

Strange! Federigo must have shut the great gates by this time--as she had bade him? He himself inhabited the smaller _entresol_ on the farther side of the palace, far away. Other inhabitants there were none; so Donna Laura had a.s.sured her.

The step approached, resonant in the silence. Kitty, seized with nervous fright, turned and ran down the broad staircase by which she had come, through the series of deserted rooms in the _piano n.o.bile_, till she reached the great hall.

There she paused, panting, curiosity and daring once more getting the upperhand. The door she had just pa.s.sed through, which gave access to the staircase, opened again and shut. The stranger who had entered came leisurely towards the hall, lingering apparently now and then to look at objects on the way. Presently a voice--an exclamation.

Kitty retreated, caught at the arm of a chair for support, clung to it trembling. A man entered, holding his hat in one hand and a small white glove in the other.

At sight of the lady in black, standing on the other side of the hall, he started violently--and stopped. Then, just as Kitty, who had so far made neither sound nor movement, took the first hurried step towards the staircase by which she had entered, Geoffrey Cliffe came forward.

"How do you do, Lady Kitty? Do not, I beg of you, let me disturb you. I had half an hour to spare, and I gave the old man down-stairs a franc or two, that he might let me wander over this magnificent old place by myself for a bit. I have always had a fancy for deserted houses. You, I gather, have it, too. I will not interfere with you for a moment. Before I go, however, let me return what I believe to be your property."

He came nearer, with a studied, deliberate air, and held out the white glove. She saw it was her own and accepted it.

"Thank you."

She bowed with all the haughtiness she could muster, though her limbs shook under her. Then as she walked quickly towards the door of exit, Cliffe, who was nearer to it than she, also moved towards it, and threw it open for her. As she approached him he said, quietly:

"This is not the first time we have met in Venice, Lady Kitty."

She wavered, could not avoid looking at him, and stood arrested. That almost white head!--that furrowed brow!--those haggard eyes! A slight, involuntary cry broke from her lips.

Cliffe smiled. Then he straightened his tall figure.

"You see, perhaps, that I have not grown younger. You are quite right. I have left my youth--what remained of it--among those splendid fellows whom the Turks have been harrying and torturing. Well!--they were worth it. I would give it them again."

There was a short silence.

The eyes of each perused the other's face. Kitty began some words, and left them unfinished. Cliffe resumed--in another tone--while the door he held swung gently backward, his hand following it.

"I spent last winter, as perhaps you know, with the Bosnian insurgents in the mountains. It was a tough business--hards.h.i.+ps I should never have had the pluck to face if I had known what was before me. Then, in July, I got fever. I had to come away, to find a doctor, and I was a long time at Cattaro pulling round. And, meanwhile, the Turks--G.o.d blast them!--have been at their fiends' work. Half my particular friends, with whom I spent the winter, have been hacked to pieces since I left them."

She wavered, held by his look, by the coercion of that mingled pa.s.sion and indifference with which he spoke. There was in his manner no suggestion whatever of things behind, no reference to herself or to the past between them. His pa.s.sion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild nature to the lure.

"Are you going back?" She had turned from him and was pulling at the fingers of the glove he had picked up.

"Of course! I am only kicking my heels here till I can collect the money and stores--ay, and the _men_--I want. I give my orders in London, and I must be here to see to the transs.h.i.+pment of stores and the embarkation of my small force! Not meant for the newspapers, you see, Lady Kitty--these little details!"

He drew himself up smiling, his worn aspect expressing just that mingling of dare-devil adventure with subtler and more self-conscious things which gave edge and power to his personality.

"I heard you were wounded," said Kitty, abruptly.

"So I was--badly. We were defending a _polje_--one of their high mountain valleys, against a Beg and his troops. My left arm"--he pointed to the black sling in which it was still held--"was nearly cut to pieces. However, it is practically well."

He took it out of the sling and showed that he could use it. Then his expression changed. He stepped back to the door, and opened it ceremoniously.

"Don't, however, let me delay you, Lady Kitty--by my chatter."

Kitty's cheeks were crimson. Her momentary yielding vanished in a pa.s.sion of scorn. What!--he knew that she had seen him before, seen him with that woman--and he dared to play the mere shattered hero, kept in Venice by these crusader's reasons!

"Have you another volume on the way?" she asked him, as she advanced. "I read your last."

Her smile was the smile of an enemy. He eyed her strangely.

"Did you? That was waste of time."

"I think you intended I should read it."

He hesitated.

"Lady Kitty, those things are very far away. I can't defend myself--for they seem wiped out." He had crossed his arms, and was leaning back against the open door, a fine, rugged figure, by no means repentant.

Kitty laughed.