Chapter 2

Vittorio, accustomed to that particular kind of attention which the tourist bestows impartially upon man or gondola, the _briccoli_ whose clustering posts mark the channels in the lagoon, or the towers of the mad-house rising from yonder island,--had continued his unswerving gaze straight over the head of the Signorina. At the sound of his name his bearing changed. Lifting his hat, he took a step forward, and, still plying the oar with his right hand, he said: "Over yonder is Sant' Elisabetta del Lido, where the tourists go. But the Lido reaches for miles between us and the sea,--as the Signore will tell you," he added, with the careful deference that the Colonel knew so well.

The familiar voice of the gondolier, striking across his meditations, had a singular effect upon the Colonel. It made him aware that this was a different Venice from the one which Vittorio had been wont to show him. What had become of the pensive quality of the atmosphere, the brooding melancholy of its impression upon him? Where, he wondered, half-resentfully, was the dim oppression, the subtle pain he had heretofore associated with these tranquil water spaces? What witch-work were those girls playing with the traditions of twenty-five years? He glanced from one to the other of their unconscious faces, each absorbed after its own fashion. After all, it was pleasant to look upon the world through young eyes. No fear but the old preoccupation would reassert itself in due time. But somehow his mind declined to concern itself with that just now, and with a half-humorous deprecation, he resumed his contemplation of his two Pollys.

His claim to such a unique possession formed in itself an achievement upon which the Colonel prided himself not a little. He often recalled his chagrin when his sister Mary,--Polly as he, and he alone had called her,--failed to give her eldest daughter her own name. How could he, a totally inexperienced uncle, enter into satisfactory relations with a young person encumbered with the stately cognomen of Pauline? She was sure to be haughty and unapproachable. No wonder that she puckered up her face in hostile protest as often as he offered her a perfunctory salutation. He was becoming fairly afraid of the little month-old personage, when one day, he hit upon the reassuring device of turning Pauline, with all its conservative dignity, into Polly. If the testimony of a gentleman and an officer was to be relied upon, their good understanding dated from that hour. For Uncle Dan was willing to take his oath that the very day on which the two soft, ingratiating syllables fell upon the small pink ear, the small pink face relaxed into an expression of kindly tolerance, blossoming out a few days later into that ecstatic first smile which had sealed his subjugation.

Uncle Dan was perhaps not thinking of this circumstance, as he glanced to-day at the serenely blissful young face beside him, a face which had never in all these years begrudged him a smile. Yet such reminiscences were not wholly foreign to his thoughts, and they doubtless lent their own agreeable though unrecognised flavour to his meditations, as he looked upon the Venetian lagoons through the eyes of his Pollys.

In the course of time two other little maids had come upon the scene,--Susan and Isabella were their unsuggestive names. Married now, both of them, Uncle Dan was wont to state, parenthetically; and indeed, if the truth be known, he had always taken a parenthetical view of these unexceptionable little nieces. But when his Polly had remained for seven years without a rival in his affections, a fourth small damsel had presented herself, and had been regarded by her parents as the logical candidate for her mother's name. From that time forth the Colonel was the happy possessor of two Pollys, and it would have been difficult to say which had the more complete ascendency over him. Big Polly and little Polly he called them, and before the little one was well out of long clothes he had formed the project of showing his Pollys the world.

The death of his sister having occurred some years since, his brother-in-law's second marriage, which took place after a due interval, left Uncle Dan with a free hand to carry out his project. He could not but feel indebted to Beverly for taking a step which rendered him independent of daughterly ministrations, though such a proceeding ran counter to one of the Colonel's most perverse and therefore most valued theories. That a woman should take a second husband had long seemed to him both natural and proper, but the reasons were obvious, to his mind at least, why a man should be more constant. Be that as it may, however, here they were, Uncle Dan and his Pollys, and to-day, of all days, the Colonel was little disposed to cavil at anything.

"What good manners this man has!" Pauline remarked, as Vittorio made his answer to the Signorina.

"Yes"; Uncle Dan replied. "He never slips up on that."

"Where does he get it?"

"A family trait. His father had it when he used to row me twenty-five years ago, and I've no doubt his forbears were all like that. It's a matter of race."

"A matter of race!" cried May. "Why, Uncle Dan, when that Italian in the train the other day stared us out of countenance and we asked you to do something about it, you told us it was the custom of the country!"

"That's only Uncle Dan's way of shirking his responsibilities," Pauline explained. "It's lucky for you, May, that I'm getting on in life. I don't know what you would do if you hadn't any better chaperon than Uncle Dan."

"And yet, you don't seem so very old," May remarked, rather doubtfully, tilting her golden head at a critical angle. "I don't believe anybody would suspect you of being twenty-seven."

"That's a comfort," laughed Pauline, with a humorous appreciation that was like Uncle Dan's.

Pauline Beverly had not, like her sister, a reputation for beauty, yet she possessed undeniable charm. Her hair was of a sunny brown, and softly undulating; her eyes were of the same shade as her hair, and capable of a changing light, and, when she smiled, her face, soft and pure, but not brilliant in colouring, had somehow the look of a brook rippling over brown pebbles in a shady place, where the sunshine comes in threads and hints, rather than in an obliterating flood of light. The years, whose sum seemed to May so considerable, had performed their modelling very gently, conferring upon the countenance that winning quality which is the gift of those who habitually think more of others than of themselves.

They were coming in past the red sentinel-tower of San Giorgio, May still sitting on the low steps facing the stern of the gondola. As the young girl looked past her companions, across the silvery spaces of the lagoon, her eyes grew dreamy and far-away. So marked was the phenomenon, that Uncle Dan was moved to exclaim: "A penny for your thoughts, Polly."

May started, for she was not often caught sentimentalising. Then, with the directness which characterised her, she said: "I was wondering whether one might not perhaps find a soul here in Venice."

"A soul? What kind of a soul?"

"Oh, any sort would do, I suppose. You know Signor Firenzo told me my voice was _bellissima_, but that I hadn't any soul."

"Perhaps Signor Firenzo is a better judge of voices than of souls," Pauline suggested, with a confident little smile.

"A young girl like you hasn't any business with a soul," Uncle Dan declared. "If you think you see one coming over the lagoon you had better turn round and look at the Lion of St. Mark's. He hasn't the sign of a soul, yet he's the best of good fellows, as anybody can see."

May promptly turned, and fixed her eyes upon the classic beast in question.

"I didn't know that lions had such long, straight tails," she remarked.

"The wings strike me as being more out of the common," Uncle Dan chuckled, much reassured by Polly's ready return to the judicial attitude.

"I should almost think," said Pauline, musingly, "that a lion that had wings and a taste for literature might perhaps have a soul after all!"

IV

A Reverie

When Vittorio was told to come for them in the evening, he had cast a significant glance at a certain radiant white cloud, billowing in the West, and said: "_Speriamo_"; which, in the vocabulary of the gondolier means: "Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst." Upon which the cloud had gradually taken on more formidable proportions, until, just at dusk, it burst in a torrent of rain, which swept the Grand Canal clear of sight-seers, and sent the nightly serenaders, who usually act as magnets to the wandering gondolas, into the hotels for refuge. A band of them were established in the long, wide corridor of the _Venezia_, where their strong, crude voices and their twanging strings reverberated rather noisily.

Wondering how it must seem to have nerves young enough to sustain such rough treatment, the Colonel abandoned his nieces to their self-inflicted ordeal, and mounted the stairs to his own familiar quarters. And there, as he closed the door behind him, he ceased to speculate upon such ephemeral matters.

He had come up, ostensibly to write some letters, but instead of doing so, he lighted a cigar, and seated himself at the window, watching the swoop of the rain along the hurrying waters of the Canal. The tide was coming in and the wind was with it. One gondola at the ferry was struggling across the current, with difficulty held to its course by the efforts of its straining oarsman. The passengers had taken refuge under the _felze_, or gondola hood. Impatient of the slow progress of the boat, the Colonel looked down into the hotel-garden directly beneath his windows, which was drowned in a moist blur, that only seemed intensified where it focused about the electric lights. Over there again, across the Canal, stood the great Salute, showing ghostly and unreal in its massive whiteness, half obliterated by the driving rain. It would have seemed that the most perfunctory letter-writing might have been an improvement upon such a prospect as that. Yet the Colonel sat on, puffing in a desultory manner at his excellent cigar, and reflecting that another five years had gone by.

A curious thing, he was thinking to himself, how inevitably he found himself in Venice once in five years. It was not in his plan to do so. He would have been just as ready to return after an interval of two years, or of three; but, for one reason or another, he never seemed able to arrange his affairs to that end until the fifth year had come round. Somebody was sure to die and leave him executor of his will; or this or that charity of which he was treasurer made a point of getting into a tight place. To-morrow was the twenty-ninth of the month;--to-morrow always was the twenty-ninth on his first arrival in Venice. Yet that, too, was the merest accident, as he assured himself with some heat. None of these things was premeditated.

He should call upon her to-morrow,--certainly. It would be a downright discourtesy to wait until they had met by chance. He wondered if she were expecting him. Probably not; she had other things to think of, especially now that her son was with her.

It would be a pleasure to see her,--her beautiful, friendly eyes, that enchanting smile, that wonderful turn of the head. As though she could ever have cared for a battered old wreck like him! And yet he knew, with an indubitable knowledge, that he should ask her again. And the answer would be the same as it had been twenty-five years ago, when she was but a three-years' widow.

He had been hasty, he had not sufficiently respected her past. He should have waited. And yet, when he came again, after five years, perhaps that, too, was an error of judgment. Perhaps his coming, after so long an interval, caused the revival of old memories, caused a shock which might have been avoided if he had ventured sooner. And then, when another five years had passed, he had begun to age. A man who has seen field service has not the staying powers of other men. That London doctor knew all about it in a moment. Yes, he had already begun to age, fifteen years ago. And now!

The Colonel relighted his cigar, which had gone out. How the rain kept at it! He could hear the swish of it on the wall of the house across the garden. Even Venice could be dreary.

He had never seen her anywhere else. He did not ask himself why he had refrained from seeking her out in her own home, not five hundred miles from his own,--why he had always come to her here in Venice, where all her married life had been spent. After all, a man does what he must. And to-morrow he should ask her again! He did not wish to, he did not even intend to. He could resolve not to, here, in cold blood, with the disheartening rain blotting out the rose-bushes down below, and a disheartening conviction of failure blotting out his nerve and courage. But to-morrow she would rise to meet him, in her own gracious way; he should touch her beautiful, firm hand, where a single jewel shone. He thought if he could ever see another ring upon that hand, one which, having no significance of its own, might weaken the significance of that diamond, now grown old-fashioned in its low setting, there might be a chance for him. But, no; there would be but the one ring, and there would be no chance for him;--and yet he should ask her!

There was another gondola struggling across the Canal. Why should anyone be out in such weather? It must be a lover, or some such sanguine person, bent, as like as not, upon a fruitless errand. The Colonel had but scant sympathy with lovers; they so rarely had any discrimination.

Yes, she would come forward, with extended hand, to meet him. He wondered whether the streak of grey on the right temple would have widened appreciably. Perhaps it would have spread itself, like a fine white film of lace, over the abundant hair. It would probably be very becoming. That was another curious thing; every time he saw her she had grown more beautiful. The years that had dealt so harshly with him had touched her only to an added grace and tenderness; experience had drawn only noble lines upon her face, and there was an ever-increasing warmth and graciousness of countenance which was infinitely finer than the bloom of youth. People made a great deal of youth, but really, when you came to think of it, what a meagre, paltry thing it was! A man hardly began to live before he was thirty-five!

"Uncle Dan, may we come in?"

The door flew open, and two young persons, with all the disabilities of youth upon their heads, came rustling in upon the old bachelor's misanthropic reverie. Instantly the atmosphere had changed.

"It was very good fun," May remarked, as she perched upon the arm of her uncle's chair. "They shrieked _Margherita_ and _Santa Lucia_ and a lot of opera airs, till we thought we should lose our tympanums, and so we came away."

"We were in quite as much danger of losing our manners," Pauline interposed. "We sat next a delicious English girl, pretty as a picture and unresponsive as a statue, and we simply dragged her into conversation. She took us for English and was terribly shocked to find we were Americans, and not even Canadians at that. 'You don't mean to say that you come from the States!' she cried, quite forgetting that she was a statue. And then May got wicked, as she always does when her patriotism is touched."

"Nonsense!" May broke in; "it isn't patriotism; it's self-respect."

"And how did you work off your self-respect?" asked Uncle Dan, deeply interested.

"I told her I thought it was very strange that English people should mistake us. That we never mistook them; we knew at a glance a person from the Isles. She rose to it like a tennis-ball, and asked what isles I referred to. 'Why, the British Isles,' I answered, innocently. And then she looked mystified, and Pauline discovered that the noise was very fatiguing, and we came away."

For half-an-hour Uncle Dan listened, highly diverted, to the chatter of the girls, and it never once occurred to him to remember the meagreness and paltriness of their condition. After they had left him, he turned to the window, feeling that the dreariness without and within was a very transitory and inconsequent thing. And lo! a change had come. The influx of youth would appear to have put to flight other clouds than those of a morbid mind. The rain had altogether ceased. He could see the roses gleaming moistly in the circles of electric light. The serenaders were just pushing away in their big barge, with coloured lanterns swaying in the breeze. They were beginning to sing, and their voices sounded sweet and melodious in the open air. Above the Salute the clouds were breaking away, and there were stars gleaming in the deep blue clearing.

"Have you seen the stars, Uncle Dan?" came Pauline's voice through the key-hole. "We're going to have a glorious day to-morrow!"

V

The Signora

They had been spending an hour among the wonderful glooms and gleams of St. Mark's, and now they had mounted to the high gallery that spans the space between pillar and pillar. The Colonel had looked twice at his watch, for he had an appointment with himself, so to speak, and he proposed to leave the girls to the study of the gold mosaics which they seemed inclined to take seriously. For the moment they were leaning upon the stone balustrade, looking down into the great dim spaces of the church.

"I wish I knew whether it was really good," said May, lifting her golden head in deprecation of a possibly misguided admiration. "It is so beautiful that I'm dreadfully afraid it is meretricious."

"It is really good," said a voice close at hand. "I think we may set our minds at rest about that."

The voice was its own passport and no one thought of taking the remark amiss. Uncle Dan who had been consulting his watch for the third time, looked up with a twinkle of good understanding, which the appearance of the speaker justified. The young man was possessed of a good figure and a good face, as well as of a good voice.

Somewhat startled, the girls turned and discovered that they had been obstructing the narrow passage.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" they both cried, as they retreated into an angle of the gallery. "You couldn't pass us by."

"I didn't particularly want to," the stranger replied, quite at his ease. "This is one of the best points of view," and it was much to his credit that he did not give the obvious turn to his remark by looking at the two girls as he made it, for neither the beauty of the youthful sceptic nor the quiet distinction of her sister was likely to have been lost upon a man of his stamp. That they were sisters, unlike as they were, could not have escaped the most casual observer.

"Then you know what is good," May remarked, in perfect good faith.

"I know this is good," he answered; "and I am sure it is much too good to be interrupted."

He was at the disadvantage of holding his hat in his hand, in deference to place, so that he was unable to indicate a deference to persons by lifting it. Yet he took his leave with so good a manner that the Colonel was moved to detain him. As the stranger made his way past him, the elder man remarked: "It must be worth while to be up on architecture in this part of the world."

"It's worth while to be up on architecture in any part of the world," the young man replied. "Where there is nothing to see there is all the more to do."

He paused a moment, as if St. Mark's were really more interesting than his own opinions. Then: "Have you travelled much in our own West?" he asked.

"No," was the Colonel's unblushing admission; for he was a New Englander of the New Englanders and valued his own limitations.

"There's good work going on out there; it's a great field."

"But surely you are not a Westerner!" the Colonel protested.

"No; but I sometimes wish I were. It's the thing to be."

There was no challenge in his voice, yet Colonel Steele was half inclined to take umbrage at the unprejudiced statement of fact. The ease, however, with which the young man again indicated a courteous leave-taking without the aid of a hat disarmed criticism, and as the Colonel watched the slowly retreating figure, he willingly accorded to the heresy the indulgence due to youthful vagaries. To be sure, he could not remember that an exaggerated estimate of the Great West had ever been a vagary of his own youth. But then, he supposed that the West had made advances since his day!

A glance at his watch changed the direction of his thoughts, and a few minutes later Vittorio was rowing him swiftly, with the tide, up the Grand Canal. Just as the noon gun roared out from the base of San Giorgio, the Colonel rang the bell of the Palazzo Darino.

She was sitting, the lady of his evening reverie, the lady of a life-long reverie, one might as truly say, just as he had hoped to find her, alone and disengaged. Two or three open letters lay upon the table beside her, but they lay there meekly, as if they knew that they must bide their time.

"Ah! Colonel Steele!"

She spoke his name as no one else had ever done, somehow as if it were a title of nobility, and as she came forward to meet him, the soft rustle of her garments filled him with content. He took the extended hand, and, bending above it, he noted the diamond, in its low, old-fashioned setting, gleaming there alone.

"I am glad you are faithful to Venice," she said. "I hoped you might come this year."

"And you still come every year?"

"Yes."

The white film had spread just as he had anticipated. He could see how complete it was, as she seated herself in the full light of the open window. The Colonel had sometimes been startled to find how his premonitions in regard to her had come true. One year he had said to himself: she will be paler than usual; I wonder if she has been ill. And he had found that she had been ill, and there was a fragility and pallor about her that seemed to him quite heart-breaking. Again he had said to himself: she will be wearing crape as in the old times; I wonder why. And when he had come to her she had told him of her mother's death a few months previous. So to-day he had known of that lace-like whiteness of the beautiful head, and of a certain deepening of the depression of the cheek and chin, which had not been there five years ago.

"Yes," she was saying. "I don't find Venice anywhere else, and so I come over every year. Happily, I like the voyage."

The Colonel did not like the voyage but that was a painful fact which he had never felt called upon to admit.

"This year I have my boy with me," she added. "That is a great pleasure."

"And I have my nieces," he replied, deterred by a curious jealousy from pursuing the subject of the boy.

"How delightful! That is, I suppose you find it so, since you have brought them."

"Oh, yes; it makes quite a different thing of travelling. We came over in October. We have been wintering in Rome."

He wondered how he should put it this time. Five words usually sufficed,--five words that meant so much to him, and so little, so intolerably little to her.

"I am glad you have young people with you," she said. "We need them more and more as we grow older."

"Well, that depends," the Colonel demurred, too loyal to his Pollys, even here and now, to allow them to be regarded generically. "There are not many girls I should want to have on my hands. I think the Pollys are rather exceptional."

"What did you say the name was?"

"Polly--Polly Beverly."

"And what is the other one's name?"

"Same name. They are both Pollys. I named them myself," he added, with a quite unforeseen revival of that agreeable self-satisfaction which he never could conceal in this connection.