Part 4

Adrianis returned to the city, not wholly discouraged, but vexed and impatient of continual probation and uncertainty.

If he could not persuade her to promise herself to him in Venice he would follow her to the hills above Goritz, and there decide his fate. He had little doubt that he would succeed before the summer should have wholly fled.

“It is getting too warm here; let us go to the mountains,” said her companion.

“In a few days,” she answered. But the days passed, the weeks passed, the temperature grew higher, and she still did not move; and Adrianis stayed also, living chiefly on board his yacht, and Damer still delayed his departure, passing most of his time behind bolted doors in his two chambers on the Fondamenti.

What harm could he do? What harm should he do? He was going to the German university; he would pass out of her existence with the steamship which should bear him from the Giudecca to Trieste; he would vanish in the cold, grim, dark north, and she would remain in the sunshine and laughter and mirth of the south. They had nothing in common: could have nothing. He belonged to his ghastly pursuits, his sickening experiments, his merciless ambitions, and she belonged to herself—and another. So she told herself a hundred times, and out of his presence her reasoning served to reassure her. But whenever she saw him a vague, dull fear turned her heart cold. She felt as helpless as the blythe bird feels when suddenly in the flowering meadow, where it has made its nest, it sees a snake come gliding through the grass. The bird trembles, but does not fly away; dares not fly away. So she dared not dismiss this man from her house, and had not courage to go herself out of the city, out of reach from his magnetism. Her nerves felt the same cold terror as was felt by those of the Venetian brides who were borne away from the feasting on Castello by the brown arms of the Moorish sea-ravishers. She endeavoured to conceal what she felt, for she was ashamed of her own groundless and harmless fears, but they dulled for her the gaiety, the mirth, the beauty of the summer cruise on the emerald seas.

“You play with your happiness,” said her duenna, angrily, to her.

“I do not play, indeed,” she answered, seriously. “We will go to the hills the day after to-morrow.”

XI.

Adrianis went out on the following day to make some purchases of glass and metal work for which one of his sisters had written to him. He thought that when they were completed it would be but courtesy to go and tell Damer that he himself was about to leave the city, and offer him his yacht to go in, if he desired it, to Trieste. Their last words had been chafing and cold. The indulgent kindliness of his nature made him wish to part friends with a man to whom he considered that he owed his life.

He bade his gondolier steer northwards to the Fondamenti. He had never been to the chambers occupied by Damer in the old watch-tower; the other had always discouraged all visits; but now he thought that he had better go there, or he might wholly miss seeing the Englishman again before his departure, for of late Damer had come but rarely to the Ca’ Zaranegra. But before he could give the order to his gondolier, in passing the Ponte del Paradiso, a sandalo, in which there was one person alone, fouled his own in the narrow channel, and that solitary person was Damer.

“I was just going to your apartments,” cried Adrianis, whilst his gondolier swore loudly as his prow grazed the wall of Palazzo Narni.

“I am going to the hospital, and shall not be at home till dark,” replied Damer, ungraciously.

“I was coming to tell you,” said Adrianis, “that I am about to leave Venice.”

“And are going to Goritz, no doubt,” said Damer, with a brief smile.

“I may be and I may not,” replied Adrianis, in a tone which implied that wherever he chose to go was no business of any one’s. “Anyhow, I wished to say that the schooner is entirely at your disposition if you remain here or if you cross to Trieste.”

“Thanks. Yachts are rich men’s toys for which I have no use,” answered Damer, without saying where he was going or what he intended to do. “Send yours to her docks in Messina, if you do not require her yourself.”

“You might be a little more polite,” said Adrianis, half angrily, half jestingly. “I should be glad to do you any services.”

“Poor men cannot accept such services.”

“Why do you constantly speak of your poverty? You have intellect; that is much rarer than riches.”

“And much less esteemed,” said Damer, with that brief, icy smile which always depressed and troubled Adrianis. “I fear I cannot stay to gossip,” he added, “I am already rather late for a conference at the hospital with my esteemed Venetian colleague.”

They were about to part, Damer to pass underneath the bridge, Adrianis to pursue his way to a coppersmith’s workshop, when a weak, infantine cry smote on their ears, echoed by other shriller childish voices.

There was a row of barges moored along the wall under the old grim Narni palace which stands just beyond the bridge, with its massive iron-studded doors, unaltered in appearance since the time when Tiziano walked a living presence over the Paradiso, and the sunshine shone on the golden hair of Palma Vecchio’s daughter.

Some children were playing on the black barges which were laden with firewood and coal. They were small creatures, half naked in the warm air and sportive as young rabbits; they ran, leaped, climbed the piles of fuel, caught each other in mimic wrestling and screamed with glad laughter; there was only one who did not join in the games, a little boy who lay languidly and motionless on some sacks, and watched the sports of others with heavy eyes.

There was no grown man or woman near, there were only the children, and the old palace, like a grey beard with closed eyes; it looked as if it had been shut when Dandolo was young, and had never been opened since; its white statues gazed down over the iron fencing of its garden wall; they, too, were very old.

As the gondola passed under that wall the sporting children growing wilder and more reckless, rushed in their course past and over the little sick boy, and jostled him so roughly that they pushed him over the edge of the barge, and he fell, with a shrill cry, into the water. The others, frightened at what had befallen them, gathered together, whimpering and afraid, irresolute and incapable. The fallen child disappeared. The water hereabouts is thick and dark, and sewage flows unchecked into it. It was in that instant of his fall that his cry, and the shrieks of his companions, rose shrilly on the morning silence.

In a second Adrianis sprang from the gondola, dived for the child, who had drifted underneath the barge, and brought him up in his arms. He was a boy of some five years old, with a pretty pale face and naked limbs, his small, curly head fell in exhaustion on the young man’s shoulder, his ragged clothes were dripping.

Damer looked at him with professional insight. “That boy is ill,” he said to Adrianis. “You had better put him out of your arms.”

“Poor little man!” said Adrianis, gently, holding the child closer. “What shall we do with him? We cannot leave him here with only these children.”

“You are wet through yourself. You must go to your hotel,” said Damer.

Adrianis was still standing in the water. At that moment a woman rose up from the cabin of the farthest barge, and came leaping wildly from one barge to another screaming, “The child, the child! my Carlino!”

She was his mother. Adrianis gave him to her outstretched arms, and slipped some money into the little ragged shirt.

“I will come and see how he is in an hour,” he said to her, amidst her prayers and blessings. “He is not well. You must take more care of him; you should not leave him alone.”

The child opened his eyes and smiled.

Adrianis stooped and kissed him.

“Go home by yourself. I will stay and see what is the matter with him,” said Damer. Adrianis went. Damer, bidding the woman go before him, walked over the barges until he reached the one to which there was attached a rude deck-house, or cabin, in which she and five children lived. There he examined the little boy.

“A sore throat,” he said, simply. “I will bring you remedies.”

He returned to his sandolo, and went on his way to the hospital conference.

“What is amiss with him?” said Adrianis, later in the day.

“You would have done better to leave him in the canal water,” replied Damer. “He is a weak little thing, he has never had any decent food, he will never recover.”

“But what is his illness?”

“A sore throat,” replied Damer, as he had replied to the mother; and added, “It is what the Faculty call Boulogne sore throat.”

They went both to the Ca’ Zaranegra that evening. There were several people there; the night was very warm; the tall lilies and palms on the balcony glistened in the light of a full moon; there was music. Veronica held out the lute to Adrianis.

“Will you not sing with me to-night?”

“Alas! You must forgive me. I am rather hoarse. I have no voice,” he answered, with regret.

“I heard of what you did this morning,” she murmured, in a low tone. “Your gondolier told mine. Perhaps you have taken a chill. I will go and see the little child to-morrow.”

“We will go together,” he replied, in the same soft whisper, while his hand touched hers in seeming only to take the lute. Damer saw the gesture where he sat in the embrasure of a window speaking of a frontier question of the hour with a German Minister who was passing through Venice.

When they left the house two or three other men accompanied them on to the water-steps. Warm though the night was, Adrianis shivered a little as he wrapped his overcoat round him. “I could bear my sables,” he said, as he descended the stairs. Damer looked at him in the moonlight, which was clear as the light of early morning.

“You should not plunge into sewage water, and embrace little sick beggars,” he said, coldly, as he accompanied one of the Venetian gentlemen whose palace was near the Fondamenti, and who had offered him a seat in his gondola.

Adrianis, refusing the entreaties of his companions to go and sup with them at Florian’s, went to his rooms at the hotel. He had a flood of happiness at the well-springs of his heart, but in his body he felt feverish and cold.

“It is the sewage water. It got down my throat as I dived,” he thought, recalling the words of his friend. “I shall sleep this chill off and be well again in the morning.”

But he did not sleep; he drank some iced drinks thirstily, and only fell into a troubled and heavy slumber as the morning dawned red over the roofs of Venice, and the little cannon on the Giudecca saluted a new day.

He felt ill when he rose, but he bathed and dressed, and, though he had no appetite for breakfast, went down to his gondola, which he had bidden to be before the hotel at nine o’clock.

At parting from her he had arranged with Veronica that they should go at that hour to see the little child of the Bridge of Paradise.

As he stood on the steps and was about to descend Damer touched him on the arm.

“You are going to take the Countess Zaranegra to the sick boy?”

“Yes,” said Adrianis, with a haughty accent; he did not like the tone of authority in which he was addressed.

“I forbid you to do so, then,” said Damer. “She would only see a dead body, and that body infectious with disease.”

Adrianis was pained.

“Is the little thing dead?” he said, in a hushed voice. “Dead already?”

“He died twenty minutes ago. He had been ill for three days.”

“Poor little pretty thing!” murmured Adrianis. “I am sorry; I will go to the mother.”

“You had better go to your bed. You are unwell. You did a foolish act yesterday.”

“I am quite well. When I require your advice I will ask it,” said Adrianis, impatiently; and he entered his gondola and went to the Ca’ Zaranegra. Damer, standing on the steps of the hotel, looked after him with a gaze which would have killed him could a look have slain.

Her house was bright in the morning radiance, the green water lapping its marbles, the lilies and palms fresh from the night’s dew, the doors standing open showing the blossoming acacias in the garden behind.

She came to him at once in one of the smaller salons.

“I am ready,” she said, gaily. “Look! I have got these fruits and toys for your little waif.”

Then something in his expression checked her gladness.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The child is dead,” said Adrianis.

“Oh, how sad!”

She put down the little gifts she had prepared on a table near her; she was tender-hearted and quickly moved; the tears came into her eyes for the little boy whom she had never seen.

Adrianis drew nearer to her.

“Mia cara,” he murmured. “Do not play with me any longer. Death is so near us always. I have told you a hundred times that I love you. I will make you so happy if you will trust to me. Tell me—tell me——”

She was softened by emotion, conquered by the answering passion which was in her; she did not speak, but her breast heaved, her lips trembled; she let him take her hands.

“You will be mine—mine—mine!” he cried, in delirious joy.

“I love you,” she answered, in a voice so low that it was like the summer breeze passing softly over the lilies. “Hush! Leave me! Go now. Come back at three. I shall be alone.”

The doors were open and the windows; in a farther chamber two liveried servants stood; approaching through the ante-room was the figure of the major-domo of the palace.

Adrianis pressed her hands to his lips and left her. He was dizzy from ecstasy, or so he thought, as the busts and statues of the entrance-hall reeled and swam before his sight, and his limbs felt so powerless and nerveless that, if one of his gondoliers had not caught and held him, he would have fallen headlong down the water-steps.

XII.

When three of the clock chimed from the belfries of St. Mark she awaited him, alone in her favourite room, clothed in white with a knot of tea-roses at her breast; she was full of gladness; she looked at herself in the many mirrors and saw that she was as fair as the fair June day.

“How beautiful our lives will be!” she thought. “Poor little dead child! It was his little hands joined ours. Perhaps he is an angel of God now, and will be always with us!”

She heard the swish of oars at the water-stairs below; she heard steps ascending those stairs; she heard the voice of her head servant speaking. It was he! She put her hand to her heart; it beat so wildly that the leaves of the roses fell; she crossed herself and murmured a prayer; such happiness seemed to merit gratitude.

Through the vista of the antechambers came the figure of a man. But it was not that of Adrianis.

Damer came up to her with his calm, expressionless face, his intent eyes, his air of authority and of indifference.

“You expected the Prince Adrianis,” he said to her. “I regret to tell you, madame, that he is unable to keep his appointment with you. He has taken the disease of which that child on the barge died this morning. He has what the vulgar call diphtheria.”

XIII.

Adrianis lay in the large salon where, two months earlier, they had dined together in the evening after finding the opal necklace. Damer had caused a bed to be taken into it and placed in the centre of the room, as affording more air from the four large windows than was to be obtained from the inner bedchamber adjoining. He did not give the true name to the disease in speaking to the people of the hotel; he spoke merely of cold and fever from a plunge in the hot noonday into foul canal water; on the local doctor, whom he paid the compliment of calling in, he enjoined the same reserve.

“The Prince is very rich,” he said, “he will pay for any loss which may be incurred, any renewal of furniture and of draperies.”

From Adrianis he did not conceal the truth.

Indeed, Adrianis himself said, in a hoarse, faint voice, “I have the disease which the child had. Cure me if you can, for——”

He did not add why life was more than ever beautiful to him, but the tears rose into his eyes; the other understood what remained unspoken.

When three in the afternoon sounded from the clock-tower on the south side of the hotel he raised his head, and, with a despairing gesture, said to Damer, “She expects me. Go, and explain to her; say I am ill. Tell her I would get up and keep my tryst if I died at her feet, but I fear—I fear—the contagion—for her.”

“Lie where you are and you will probably be well in a few days,” said Damer. “I will leave Stefanio with you and take your message. I shall soon return. Meanwhile your man knows what to do.”

Stefanio was the valet.

The eyes of Adrianis followed him from the room with longing and anguish. He was not yet so ill that the apathy of extreme illness dulled his desires and stilled his regrets. Both were intense as life still was intense in him. He would have risen and dragged himself to the Ca’ Zaranegra; but, as he had said, he feared the infection for her which would be in his voice, in his touch, in his breath, in his mere presence.

He lay on his back gazing wistfully at the great sunny windows, only veiled by the gauze of mosquito curtains. He could hear the churning of the water below as the canal steamers passed up and down; the softer ripple as oars parted it; he could see a corner of the marbles of the Salute, with two pigeons sitting side by side on it pruning their plumage in the sun.

He was not yet afraid, but he was very sorry; he longed to be up and out in the bright air, and he longed to be in the presence of his beloved, to ask again and again and again for the confession so dear to him; to hear it from her lips, to read it in her eyes.

“She loves me, she loves me,” he thought, and he, like a coward, like a knave, must be untrue to the first meeting she had promised him!

“Why is it,” he thought, as the tears welled up under his closed eyelids, “that our better, kinder impulses always cost us so much more heavily than all our egotisms and all our vices?”

If he had left the little child underneath the barge to drown, would it not have been better even for the child? The little thing had only suffered some eighteen hours longer through his rescue.

“Let us do what we ought,” he murmured, in words his mother had often spoken to him. “The gods will pay us.”

But the gods had been harsh in their payment to him.

He counted the minutes until Damer’s return, holding his watch in his hot hand. He took docilely what his servant gave him, though to swallow was painful and difficult.

“What a while he stays!” he thought, restlessly. He envied the other every moment passed at the Ca’ Zaranegra.

“What did you tell her?” he asked, breathlessly, when Damer at last returned.

“I told her the truth,” replied Damer, as he placed the thermometer under the sick man’s armpit. “You have worried and fretted; your fever has increased.”

“What did she say? She is not angry, or offended?”

“Who can be so at the misfortune of disease? Of course she knows that you have incurred this misfortune through your own folly.”

“Did she say so?”

“No; I am not aware that she said so. But she no doubt thought it. She bade me tell you not to agitate yourself.”

“Was that all?”

“She added—for her sake,” said Damer, with a cold, slight smile. He was truthful in what he repeated; he scorned vulgar methods of misrepresentation and betrayal. The heavy eyes of Adrianis gleamed and lightened with joy.

“Thanks,” he said softly, and his hot hand pressed that of his friend.

“I will write to her,” he added. “You can disinfect a note?”

“Yes. But do not exert yourself. Try to sleep.”

He crossed the room and closed the green wooden blinds; he gave an order to Stefanio, and dipped his hands in a disinfecting fluid; then he sat down and took up a book. But he could not read. He saw before him that blanched and frightened face, which a little while before had been raised to his as the voice of Veronica had cried to him, “Save him! You will save him? You have so much knowledge, so much power. You will save him for my sake!”

He had promised her nothing; he had only said briefly, in the language of people who were fools, that the issue of life and of death was in the hands of Deity. He had promised her nothing; in his own way he was sincere. Up to that time he had done everything which science and experience could suggest to combat the disease.

Adrianis wrote at intervals various pencilled notes to her; indistinct, feebly scrawled, but still coherent. He pointed to each when it was written and looked at his friend with supplicating eyes. He could not speak, for the false membrane filled his throat. Damer took each little note with apparent indifference.

“To the Countess Zaranegra?” he asked.

Adrianis signed a mute assent. Damer carried each scrap of paper to the next room, disinfected it, then sent it to its destination. He was of too proud a temper to use the usual small arts of the traitor.

Once she wrote in reply.

This he did thrice.

“I cannot see, my eyes are too weak,” Adrianis scrawled on its envelope as the letter was given to him. “Read it to me.”

Damer opened it, and read it aloud. It was short, timid, simple, but a deep love and an intense anxiety spoke in it. Adrianis took it and laid his cheek on it with a smile of ineffable peace. It seemed to give him firmer hold on life.

Adrianis slept peacefully, his cheek on the little letter, as a child falls to sleep with a favourite toy on its pillow.

He called in a second medical man of the town and two sisters of charity to replace Stefanio, who grew alarmed for his own safety and would no longer approach the bed.

“Send for my mother,” said Adrianis, in his choked voice.

“Certainly,” answered his friend. The disease which had fastened on Adrianis was not one which waits. But Damer telegraphed only to the Adrianis’ palace in Palermo, and he knew that it was unlikely she would be in that city in the summer heats of the end of June.

The telegram might be forwarded or it might not; Italian households are careless in such matters.

But when he murmured once and again, “Send for my mother!” Damer could, with a clear conscience, reply, “I have telegraphed.”

He sat by the bedside and watched the sick man.

He believed that he would recover.

In the dusk he was told that a lady who was below in her gondola desired to see him. He descended the stairs, prepared to find Veronica Zaranegra. She was veiled; he could not see her features, but he knew her by the turn of her head, the shape of her hand, before she spoke.

“You come for news of the Prince?” he said, coldly and harshly. “I can give you none. The disease is always uncertain and deceptive.”

“Let me see him! oh, let me see him!” she murmured. “I came for that. No matter what they say. No matter what danger there be. Only let me see him!”

“That is wholly impossible,” replied Damer, in an unchanged tone. “Why do you come on such errands?”

“Who should see him if not I? Who are you that you should keep me from him?”

“I am a man of science whose duty it is to protect you from yourself. Go home, madame, and pray for your betrothed. That is all that you can do.”

She burst into tears. He heard her sobs, he saw the heaving of her shoulders and her breast.

“Take your mistress home. She is unwell,” he said to the gondolier, who waited a moment for his lady’s orders, then, receiving none, pushed his oar against the steps and slowly turned the gondola round to go back up the canal.

“Why does she love him?” thought Damer. “Like to like. Fool to fool. Flower to flower!”