Chapter 11

"Well, I don't know," was Larry's reply; "I don't know just what to believe. I was talking about it last night at Florian's, while you were writing letters home."

"I did not know Mr. Laughton had friends in Venice."

"Oh, I can make friends anywhere. And this one was lots of fun. He was a priest, an _abbate_, I think he calls himself. He had read five newspapers in the _caffè_ and paid for one tiny cup of coffee. When I finished the _Débats_ I passed it to him for his sixth--and he spoke to me in French, and I wasn't going to let an Italian talk French to me without answering back, so I just sailed in and began to swap stories with him."

"No doubt you gave him much valuable information."

"Well, I did; I just exuded information. Why, the first thing he said, when I told him I was an American, was to wonder whether I hadn't met his brother, who was also in America--in Rio Janeiro--just as if Rio was the other side of the North River!"

John Manning smiled at Larry's disgusted expression, and asked, "What has this _abbate_ to do with the fragile Venetian glass?"

"Only this," answered Larry. "I told him two or three North-westers, just as well as I could in French, and then he said that marvellous things were also done here once upon a time. And he told me about the glass which broke when poison was poured into it."

"It is a pleasant superstition," said John Manning. "I think Poe makes use of it, and I believe Shakespeare refers to it."

"But did either Poe or Shakespeare say anything about the two goblets just alike made for the twin brothers Manin nearly four hundred years ago? Did they tell you how one glass was shivered by poison and its owner killed, and how the other brother had to flee for his life? Did they inform you that the unbroken goblet exists to this day, and is in fact now for sale by an Hebrew Jew who peddles antiquities? Did they tell you that?"

"Neither Edgar Allan Poe nor William Shakespeare ever disturbs my slumbers by telling me anything of the sort," laughed Manning.

"Well, my _abbate_ told me just that, and he gave me the address of the Shylock who has the surviving goblet for sale."

"Suppose we go there and see it," suggested Manning, "and you can tell me the whole story of the twin brothers as we go along."

"Shall we take a gondola or walk?" was Larry's interrogative acceptance of the suggestion.

"It's in the Ghetto, isn't it?"

"Most of the Jew curiosity dealers have left the Ghetto. Our Shylock has a palace on the Grand Canal. I guess we had better take a gondola, though it can't be far."

So they sat themselves down in one of the aquatic cabs which ply the water streets of the city in the sea. The gondolier stood to his oar and put his best foot foremost, and as the boat sped forward on its way along the capital S of the Grand Canal, Larry told the tale of the twin brothers and the shattered goblet.

"Well, it seems that some time in the sixteenth century, say three hundred years ago or thereabout, there were several branches of the great and powerful Manin family--the same family to which the patriotic Daniele Manin belonged, you know. And at the head of one of these branches were the twin brothers Marco Manin and Giovanni Manin. Now, these brothers were devoted to each other, and they had only one thought, one word, one deed. When one of them happened to think of a thing, it often happened that the other brother did it. So it was not surprising that they both fell in love with the same woman. She was a dangerous-looking, yellow-haired woman, with steel-gray eyes--that is, if her eyes were not really green, as to which there was doubt. But there was no doubt at all that she was powerfully handsome. The _abbate_ said that there was a famous portrait of her in one of these churches as a Saint Mary Magdalen with her hair down. She was a splendid creature, and lots of men were running after her besides the twin Manins. The two brothers did not quarrel with each other about the woman, but they did quarrel with some of her other lovers, and particularly with a nobleman of the highest rank and power, who was supposed to belong not only to the Council of Ten but to the Three. Between this man and the Manins there was war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. One day Marco Manin expressed a wish for one of these goblets of Venetian glass so fine that poison shatters it, and so Giovanni went out to Murano and ordered two of them, of the very finest quality, and just alike in every particular of color and shape and size. You see the twins always had everything in pairs. But the people at Murano somehow misunderstood the order, and although they made both glasses they sent home only one. Marco Manin was at table when it arrived, and he took it in his hand at once, and after admiring its exquisite workmanship--you see, all these old Venetians had the art-feeling strongly developed--he told a servant to fill it to the brim with Cyprus wine. But as he raised the flowing cup to his lips it shivered in his grasp and the wine was spilt on the marble floor. He drew his sword and slew the servant who had sought to betray him, and rushing into the street he found himself face to face with the enemy whom he knew to have instigated the attempt. They crossed swords at once, but before Marco Manin could have a fair fight for his life he was stabbed in the back by a glass stiletto, the hilt of which was broken off short in the wound."

"Where was his brother all this time?" was the first question with which John Manning broke the thread of his friend's story.

"He had been to see the yellow-haired beauty, and he came back just in time to meet his brother's lifeless body as it was carried into their desolate home. Holding his dead brother's hand as he had often held it living, he promised his brother to avenge his death without delay and at any cost. Then he prepared at once for flight. He knew that Venice would be too hot to hold him when the deed was done; and besides, he felt that without his brother life in Venice would be intolerable. So he made ready for flight. Twenty-four hours to a minute after Marco Manin's death the body of the hireling assassin was sinking to the bottom of the Grand Canal, while the man who had paid for the murder lay dead on the same spot with the point of a glass stiletto in his heart! And when they wanted to send him the other goblet, there was no one to send it to: Giovanni Manin had disappeared."

"Where had he gone?" queried John Manning.

"That's what I asked the _abbate_, and he said he didn't know for sure, but that in those days Venice had a sizable trade with the Low Countries, and there was a tradition that Giovanni Manin had gone to the Netherlands."

"To Holland?" asked John Manning with unwonted interest.

"Yes, to Amsterdam or to Rotterdam or to some one of those --dam towns, as we used to call them in our geography class."

"It was to Amsterdam," said Manning, speaking as one who had certain information.

"How do you know that?" asked Larry. "Even the _abbate_ said it was only a tradition that he had gone to Holland at all."

"He went to Amsterdam," said Manning; "that I know."

Before Larry could ask how it was that his friend knew anything about the place of exile of a man whom he had never heard of ten minutes earlier, the gondola had paused before the door of the palace in which dwelt the dealer in antiquities who had in his possession the famous goblet of Venetian glass. As they ascended to the sequence of rambling rooms cluttered with old furniture, rusty armor, and odds and ends of statuary, in the which the modern Jew of Venice sat at the receipt of custom, both Larry Laughton and John Manning had to give their undivided attention to the framing in Italian of their wishes. Shylock himself was a venerable and benevolent person, with a look of wonderful shrewdness and an incomprehensibility of speech, for he spoke the Venetian dialect with a harsh Jewish accent, either of which would have daunted a linguistic veteran. Plainly enough, conversation was impossible, for he could barely understand their American-Italian, and they could not at all understand his Jewish-Venetian. But it would not do to let these _Inglesi_ go away without paying tribute.

"Ciò!" said Shylock, smiling graciously at his futile attempts to open communication with the enemy. Then he called Jessica from the deep window where she had been at work on the quaint old account-books of the shop, as great curiosities as anything in it, since they were kept in Venetian, but by means of the Hebrew alphabet. She spoke Italian, and to her the young men made known their wants. She said a few words to her father, and he brought forth the goblet.

It was a marvellous specimen of the most exquisite Venetian workmanship. A pair of green serpents with eyes that glowed like fire writhed around the golden stem of a blood-red bowl, and as the white light of the cloudless sky fell on it from the broad window, it burned in the glory of the sunshine and seemed to fill itself full of some mysterious and royal wine. Shylock revolved it slowly in his hand to show the strange waviness of its texture, and as it turned, the serpents clung more closely to the stem and arched their heads and shot a glance of hate at the strangers who came to gaze on them with curious fascination.

John Manning looked at the goblet long and eagerly. "How did it come into your possession?" he asked.

And Jessica translated Shylock's declaration that the goblet had been at Murano for hundreds of years; it was _antico--antichissimo_, as the signor could see for himself. It was of the best period of the art. That Shylock would guarantee. How came it into his possession? By the greatest good fortune. It was taken from Murano during the troubles after the fall of the Republic in the time of Napoleon. It had gone finally into the hands of a certain count, who, very luckily, was poor. _Conte che non conta, non conta niente._ So Shylock had been enabled to buy it. It had been the desire of his heart for years to own so fine an object.

"How much do you want for it?" asked John Manning.

Shylock scented from afar the battle of bargaining, dear in Italy to both buyer and seller. He gave a keen look at both the _Inglesi_, and took up the glass affectionately, as though he could not bear to part with it. Jessica interpreted. Shylock had intended that goblet for his own private collection, but the frank and generous manner of their excellencies had overcome him, and he would let them have it for five hundred florins.

"Five hundred florins! Phew!" whistled Larry, astonished in spite of his initiation into the mysteries of Italian bargaining. "Well, if you were to ask me the Shakespearian conundrum, Hath not a Jew eyes? I shouldn't give it up; I should say he has eyes--for the main chance."

"Five hundred florins," said John Manning. "Very well. I'll take it."

Shylock's astonishment at getting four times what he would have taken was equalled only by his regret that he had not asked twice as much.

"Can you pack it so that I can take it to New York safely?"

"_Sicuro_, signor," and Shylock agreed to have the precious object boxed with all possible care and despatch, and delivered at the hotel that afternoon.

"Servo suo!" said Jessica, as they stood at the door.

"Bon di, Patron!" responded Larry in Venetian fashion; then as the door closed behind them he said to John Manning, "Seems to me you were in a hurry! You could have had that glass for half the money."

"Perhaps I could," was Manning's quiet reply, "but I was eager to get it back at once."

"Get it back? Why, it wasn't stolen from _you_, was it? I never did suppose _he_ came by it honestly."

"It was not stolen from me personally. But it belonged to my family. It was made for Giovanni Manin, who fled from Venice to Amsterdam three hundred odd years ago. His grandson and namesake left Amsterdam for New Amsterdam half a century later. And when the English changed New Amsterdam into New York, Jan Mannin became John Manning--and I am his direct descendant, and the first of my blood to return to Venice to get the goblet Giovanni Manin ordered and left behind."

"Well, I'm damned!" said Larry, pensively.

"And now," continued John Manning as they took their seats in the gondola, "tell the man to go to the church where the picture of Mary Magdalen is. I want a good look at that woman!"

* * * * *

In the evening, as John Manning sat in a little _caffè_ under the arcades of the Piazza San Marco, sipping a tiny cup of black coffee, Larry entered with a rush of righteous indignation.

"What's the matter, Larry?" was John Manning's calm query.

"There's the devil to pay at home. South Carolina has fired on the flag at Sumter."

* * * * *

Three weeks later Colonel Manning was assigned to duty in the Army of the Potomac.

II.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

In the month of February, 1864, a chance newspaper paragraph informed whom it might concern that Major Laurence Laughton, having three weeks' leave of absence from his regiment, was at the Astor House. In consequence of this advertisement of his whereabouts, Major Laughton received many cheerful circulars and letters, in most of which his attention was claimed for the artificial limb made by the advertiser. He also received a letter from Colonel John Manning urgently bidding him to come out for a day at least to his little place on the Hudson, where he was lying sick, and, as he feared, sick unto death. On the receipt of this Larry cut short a promising flirtation with a war-widow who sat next him at table and took the first train up the river. It was a bleak day, and there was at least a foot of snow on the ground, as hard and as dry as though it had clean forgot that it was made of water. As Larry left the little station, to which the train had slowly struggled at last, an hour behind time, the wind sprang up again and began to moan around his feet and to sting his face with icy shot; and as he trudged across the desolate path which led to Manning's lonely house he discovered that Rude Boreas could be as keen a sharpshooter as any in the rifle-pits around Richmond. A hard walk up-hill for a quarter of an hour brought him to the brow of the cliff on which stood the forlorn and wind-swept house where John Manning lay. An unkempt and hideous old crone as black as night opened the door for him. He left in the hall his hat and overcoat and a little square box he had brought in his hand; and then he followed the ebony hag up-stairs to Colonel Manning's room. Here at the door she left him, after giving a sharp knock. A weak voice said, "Come in!"

Laurence Laughton entered the room with a quick step, but the light-hearted words with which he had meant to encourage his friend died on his lips as soon as he saw how grievously that friend had changed. John Manning had faded to a shadow of his former self; the light of his eye was quenched, and the spirit within him seemed broken; the fine, sensitive, noble face lay white against the pillow, looking weary and wan and hopeless. The effort to greet his friend exhausted him and brought on a hard cough, and he pressed his hand to his breast as though some hidden malady were gnawing and burning within.

"Well, John," said Larry, as he took a seat by the bedside, "why didn't you let me know before now that you were laid up? I could have got away a month ago."

"Time enough yet," said John Manning slowly; "time enough yet. I shall not die for another week, I fear."

"Why, man, you must not talk like that. You are as good as a dozen dead men yet," said Larry, trying to look as cheerful as might be.

"I am as good as dead myself," said the sick man seriously, as befitted a man under the shadow of death; "and I have no wish to live. The sooner I am out of this pain and powerlessness the better I shall like it."

"I say, John, old man, this is no way for you to talk. Brace up, and you will soon be another man!"

"I shall soon be in another world, I hope," and the helpless misery of the tone in which these few words were said smote Laurence Laughton to the heart.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked with as lively an air as he could attain, for the ominous and inexplicable sadness of the situation was fast taking hold on him.

"I have a bullet through the lungs and a pain in the heart."

"But men do not die of a bullet in the lungs and a pain in the heart," was Larry's encouraging response.

"I shall."

"Why should you more than others?"

"Because there is something else--something mysterious, some unknown malady--which bears me down and burns me up. There is no use trying to deceive me, Larry. My papers are made out, and I shall get my discharge from the Army of the Living in a very few days now. But I must not waste the little breath I have left in talking about myself. I sent for you to ask a favor."

Larry held out his hand, and John Manning took it and seemed to gain strength from the firm clasp.

"I knew I could rely on you," he said, "for much or for little. And this is not much, for I have not much to leave. This worn old house, which belonged to my grandmother, and in which I spent the happiest hours of my boyhood, this and a few shares of stock here and there, are all I have to leave. I do not know what the house is worth--and I shall be glad when I am gone from it. If I had not come here, I think I might perhaps have got well. There seems to be something deadly about the place." The sick man's voice sank to a wavering whisper, as though borne down by a sudden weight of impending danger against which he might struggle in vain; he gave a fearful glance about the room as though seeking a mystic foe, hidden and unknown. "The very first day we were here the cat lapped its milk by the fire and then stretched itself out and died without a sign. And I had not been here two days before I felt the fatal influence: the trouble from my wound came on again, and this awful burning in my breast began to torture me. As a boy, I thought that heaven must be like this house; and now I should not want to die if I thought hell could be worse!"

"Why don't you leave the place, since you hate it so?" asked Larry, with what scant cheeriness he could muster; he was yielding himself slowly to the place, though he fought bravely against his superstitious weakness.

"Am I fit to be moved?" was the sick man's query in reply.

"But you will be better soon, and then--"

"I shall be worse before I am better, and I shall never be better in this life or in this place. No, no, I must die in my hole like a dog. Like a dog!" and John Manning repeated the words with a wistful face. "Do you remember the faithful beast who always welcomed me here when we came up before we went to Europe?"

"Of course I do," said Larry, glad to get the sick man away from his sickness, and to ease his mind by talk on a healthy topic; "he was a splendid fellow, too. Cesar, that was his name, wasn't it?"

"Cesar Borgia I called him," was Manning's sad reply. "I knew you could not have forgotten him. He is dead. Cesar Borgia is dead. He was the last living thing that loved me--except you, Larry, I know--and he is dead. He died this morning. He came to my bedside as usual, and he licked my hand gently and looked up in my face and laid him down alongside of me on the carpet here and died. Poor Cesar Borgia--he loved me, and he is dead! And you, Larry, you must not stay here. The air is fatal. Every breath may be your last. When you have heard what I want, you must be off at once. If you like, you may come up again to the funeral before your leave is up. I saw you had three weeks."

Laurence Laughton moved uneasily in his chair and swallowed with difficulty. "John," he managed to say after an effort, "if you talk to me like that, I shall go at once. Tell me what it is you want me to do for you."

"I want you to take care of my wife and of my child, if there be one born to me after my death."

"Your wife?" repeated Larry, in staring surprise.

"You did not know I was married? I knew it at the time, as the boy said," and John Manning smiled bitterly.

"Where is she?" was Larry's second query.

"Here."

"Here?"

"In this house. You shall see her before you go. And after the funeral I want you to get her away from here with what speed you can. Sell this house for what it will bring, and put the money into government bonds. You may find it hard to persuade her to move, for she seems to have a strange liking for this place. She breathes freely in the deadly air that suffocates me. But you must not let her remain here; this is no place for her now that a new life and new duties are before her."

"How was it I did not know of your marriage?" asked Larry.

"I knew nothing about it myself twenty-four hours before it happened," answered John Manning. "You need not look surprised. It is a simple story. I had this shot through the breast at Gettysburg last Fourth of July. I lay on the hill-side a day and a night before relief came. Then a farmer took me into his house. A military surgeon dressed my wounds, but I owed my life to the nursing and care and unceasing attention of a young lady who was staying with the farmer's daughter. She had been doing her duty as a nurse as near to the field as she could go ever since the first Bull Run. She saved my life, and I gave it to her--what there was of it. She was a beautiful woman, indeed I never saw a more beautiful--and she has a strange likeness to--but that you shall see for yourself when you see her. She is getting a little rest now, for she has been up all night attending to me. She _will_ wait on me in spite of all I say; of course I know there is no use wasting effort on me now. She is the most devoted nurse in the world; and we shall part as we met--she taking care of me at the last as she did at the first. Would God our relation had never been other than patient and nurse! It would have been better for both had we never been husband and wife!" And John Manning turned his face to the wall with a weary sigh; then he coughed harshly and raised his hand to his breast as though to stifle the burning within him.

"It seems to me, John, that you ought not to talk like that of the woman you loved," said Laurence Laughton, with unusual seriousness.

"I never loved her," answered Manning, coldly. Then he turned and asked hastily, "Do you think I should want to die, if I loved her?"

"But she loves you," said Laurence.

"She never loved me!" was Manning's impatient retort.

"Then why were you married?"

"That's what I would like to know. It was fate, I suppose. What is to be, is. I never used to believe in predestination, but I know that of my own free will I could never have done what I did."

"I confess I do not understand you," said Larry.

"I do not understand myself. There is so much in this world that is mysterious--I hope the next will be different. I was under the charm, I fancy, when I married her. She is a beautiful woman, as I told you, and I was a man, and I was weak, and I had hope. Why she married me that early September evening, I do not know. It was not long before we both found out our mistake. And it was too late then. We were man and wife. Don't suppose I blame her--I do not. I have no cause of complaint. She is a good wife to me, as I have tried to be a good husband to her. We made a mistake in marrying each other, and we know it--that's all!"