Travelling Companions: Ii
AT the end of my three days’ probation, I spent a week constantly with my friends. Our mornings were, of course, devoted to churches and galleries, and in the late afternoon we passed and repassed along the Grand Canal or betook ourselves to the Lido. By this time Miss Evans and I had become thoroughly intimate; we had learned to know Venice together, and the knowledge had helped us to know each other. In my own mind, Charlotte Evans and Venice had played the game most effectively into each other’s hands. If my fancy had been called upon to paint her portrait, my fancy would have sketched her with a background of sunset-flushed palace wall, with a faint reflected light from the green lagoon playing up into her face. And if I had wished to sketch a Venetian scene, I should have painted it from an open window, with a woman leaning against the casement,—as I had often seen her lean from a window in her hotel. At the end of a week we went one afternoon to the Lido, timing our departure so as to allow us to return at sunset. We went over in silence, Mr. Evans sitting with reverted head, blowing his cigar-smoke against the dazzling sky, which told so fiercely of sea and summer ; his daughter motionless and thickly veiled ; I facing them, feeling the broken swerve of our gondola, and watching Venice grow level and rosy beyond the liquid interval. Near the landing-place on the hither side of the Lido is a small trattoria for the refreshment of visitors. An arbor outside the door, a horizontal vine checkering still further a dirty table-cloth, a pungent odor of frittata, an admiring circle of gondoliers and beggars, are the chief attractions of this suburban house of entertainment, — attractions sufficient, however, to have arrested the inquisitive steps of an elderly American gentleman, in whom Mr. Evans speedily recognized a friend of early years, a comrade in affairs. A hearty greeting ensued. This worthy man had ordered dinner : he besought Mr. Evans at least to sit down and partake of a bottle of wine. My friend vacillated between his duties as a father and the prospect of a rich old-boyish revival of the delectable interests of home ; but his daughter graciously came to his assistance. “ Sit down with Mr. Munson, talk till you are tired, and then walk over to the beach and find us. We shall not wander beyond call.”
She and I accordingly started slowly for a stroll along the barren strand which averts its shining side from Venice and takes the tides of the Adriatic. The Lido has for me a peculiar melancholy charm, and I have often wondered that I should have felt the presence of beauty in a spot so destitute of any exceptional elements of beauty. For beyond the fact that it knows the changing moods and hues of the Adriatic, this narrow strip of sand-stifled verdure has no very rare distinction. In my own country I know many a sandy beach, and many a stunted copse, and many a tremulous ocean line of little less purity and breadth of composition, with far less magical interest. The secret of the Lido is simply your sense of adjacent Venice. It is the salt-sown garden of the city of the sea. Hither came shortpaced Venetians for a meagre taste of terra firma, or for a wider glimpse of their parent ocean. Along a narrow line in the middle of the island are market-gardens and breeze-twisted orchards, and a hint of hedges and lanes and inland greenery. At one end is a series of low fortifications duly embanked and moated and sentinelled. Still beyond these, half over-drifted with sand and over-clambered with rank grasses and coarse thick shrubbery, are certain quaintly lettered funereal slabs, tombs of former Jews of Venice. Toward these we slowly wandered and sat down in the grass. Between the sand-heaps, which shut out the beach, we saw in a dozen places the blue agitation of the sea. Over all the scene there brooded the deep bright sadness of early autumn. I lay at my companion s feet and wondered whether I was in love. It seemed to me that I had never been so happy in my life. They say, I know, that to be in love is not pure happiness ; that in the mood of the unconfessed, unaccepted lover there is an element of poignant doubt and pain. Should I at once confess myself and taste of the perfection of bliss? It seemed to me that I cared very little for the meaning of her reply. I only wanted to talk of love ; I wanted in some manner to enjoy in that atmosphere of romance the woman who was so blessedly fair and wise. It seemed to me that all the agitation of fancy, the excited sense of beauty, the fervor and joy and sadness begotten by my Italian wanderings, had suddenly resolved themselves into a potent demand for expression. Miss Evans was sitting on one of the Hebrew tombs, her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee, watching the broken horizon. I was stretched on the grass on my side, leaning on my elbow and on my hand, with my eyes on her face. She bent her own eyes and encountered mine ; we neither of us spoke or moved, but exchanged a long steady regard ; after which her eyes returned to the distance. What was her feeling toward me ? Had she any sense of my emotion or of any answering trouble in her own wonderful heart ? Suppose she should deny me: should I suffer, would I persist ? At any rate, I should have struck a blow for love. Suppose she were to accept me ; would my joy be any greater than in the mere translation of my heartbeats ? Did I in truth long merely for a bliss which should be of that hour and that hour alone ? I was conscious of an immense respect for the woman beside me. I was unconscious of the least desire even to touch the hem of her garment as it lay on the grass, touching my own. After all, it was but ten days that I had known her. How little I really knew of her ! how little else than her beauty and her wit! How little she knew of me, of my vast outlying, unsentimental, spiritual self ! We knew hardly more of each other than had appeared in this narrow circle of our common impressions of Venice. And yet if into such a circle Love had forced his way, let him take his way ! Let him widen the circle ! Transcendent Venice ! I rose to my feet with a violent movement, and walked ten steps away. I came back and flung myself again on the grass.
“The other day at Vicenza,” I said, “ I bought a picture.”
“ Ah ? an ' original ’ ? ”
“No, a copy.”
“ From whom ?”
“ From you ! ”
She blushed. " Whatdo you mean?”
“ It was a little pretended Correggio ; a Madonna and Child.”
“Is it good ? ”
“ No, it’s rather poor.”
“ Why, then, did you buy it ? ”
“Because the Madonna looked singularly like you.”
“ I’m sorry, Mr. Brooke, you hadn’t a better reason. I hope the picture was cheap.”
“It was quite reason enough. I admire you more than any woman in the world.”
She looked at me a moment, blushing again. “ You don’t know me.”
“I have a suspicion of you. It’s ground enough for admiration.”
“ O, don’t talk about admiration. I’m tired of it all beforehand.”
“ Well, then,” said I, “ I ’m in love.”
“ Not with me, I hope.”
“ With you, On course. With whom else ? ”
“ Has it only just now occurred to you ? ”
“It has just occurred to me to say it.”
Her blush had deepened a little ; but a genuine smile came to its relief. “ Poor Mr. Brooke ! ” she said.
“ Poor Mr. Brooke indeed, if you take it in that way.”
“ You must forgive me if I doubt of your love.”
“ Why should you doubt ? ”
“ Love, I fancy, does n’t come in just this way.”
“It comes as it can. This is surely a very good way.”
“ I know it’s a very pretty way, Mr. Brooke ; Venice behind us, the Adriatic before us, these old Hebrew tombs! Its very prettiness makes me distrust it.”
“ Do you believe only in the love that is born in darkness and pain ? Poor love ! it has trouble enough, first and last. Allow it a little ease.”
“ Listen,” said Miss Evans, after a pause. “It’s not with me you’re in love, but with that painted picture. All this Italian beauty and delight has thrown you into a romantic state of mind. You wish to make it perfect. I happen to be at hand, so you say, ‘ Go to, I ’ll fall in love.’ And you fancy me, for the purpose, a dozen fine things that I ’m not.”
“ I fancy you beautiful and good. I ’m sorry to find you so dogmatic.”
“ You must n’t abuse me, or we shall be getting serious.”
“ Well,” said I, “ you can’t prevent me from adoring you.”
“ I should be very sorry to. So long as you ‘adore’ me. we’re safe! I can tell you better things than that I’m in love with you.”
I looked at her impatiently. “ For instance ? ”
She held out her hand. “ I like you immensely. As for love, I’m in love with Venice.”
“ Well. I like Venice immensely, but I’m in love with you.”
“In that way I am willing to leave it. Pray don’t speak of it again to-day. But my poor father is probably wandering up to his knees in the sand.”
I had been happy before, but I think I was still happier for the words I had spoken. I had cast them abroad at all events ; my heart was richer by a sense of their possible fruition. We walked far along the beach. Mr. Evans was still with his friend.
“What is beyond that horizon?” said my companion.
“ Greece, among other things.”
“Greece! only think of it! Shall you never go there ? ”
I stopped short. “ If you will believe what I say, Miss Evans, we may both go there.” But for all answer she repeated her request that I should forbear. Before long, retracing our steps, we met Mr. Evans, who had parted with his friend, the latter having returned to Venice. He had arranged to start the next morning for Milan. We went back over the lagoon in the glow of the sunset, in a golden silence which suffered us to hear the far off ripple in the wake of other gondolas, a golden clearness so perfect that the rosy flush on the marble palaces seemed as light and pure as the life-blood on the forehead of a sleeping child. There is no Venice like the Venice of that magical hour. For that brief period her ancient glory returns. The sky arches over her like a vast imperial canopy crowded with its clustering mysteries of light. Her whole aspect is one of unspotted splendor. No other city takes the crimson evanescence of day with such magnificent effect. The lagoon is sheeted with a carpet of fire. All torpid. pallid hues of marble are transmuted to a golden glow. The dead Venetian tone brightens and quickens into life and lustre, and the spectator’s enchanted vision seems to rest on an embodied dream of the great painter who wrought his immortal reveries into the ceilings of the Ducal Palace.
It was not till the second day after this that I again saw Miss Evans. I went to the little church of San Cassiano, to see a famous Tintoretto, to which I had already made several vain attempts to obtain access. At the door in the little bustling campo which adjoins the church I found her standing expectant. A little boy, she told me, had gone for the sacristan and his key. Her father, she proceeded to explain, had suddenly been summoned to Milan by a telegram from Mr. Munson, the friend whom he had met at the Lido, who had suddenly been taken ill.
“ And so you ’re going about alone ? Do you think that’s altogether proper? Why did n’t you send for me ?” I stood lost in wonder and admiration at the exquisite dignity of her self-support. I had heard of American girls doing such things ; but I had yet to see them done.
“ Do you think it less proper for me to go about alone than to send for you ? Venice has seen so many worse improprieties that she ’ll forgive me mine.”
The little boy arrived with the sacristan and his key, and we were ushered into the presence of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion. This great picture is one of the greatest of the Venetian school. Tintoretto, the travelled reader will remember, has painted two masterpieces on this tremendous theme. The larger and more complex work is at the Scuola di San Rocco ; the one of which I speak is small, simple, and sublime. It occupies the left side of the narrow choir of the shabby little church which we had entered, and is remarkable as being, with two or three exceptions, the best preserved work of its incomparable author. Never, in the whole range of art, I imagine, has so powerful an effect been produced by means so simple and select; never has the intelligent choice of means to an effect been pursued with such a refinement of perception. The picture offers to our sight the very central essence of Ihe great tragedy which it depicts. There is no swooning Madonna, no consoling Magdalen, no mockery of contrast, no cruelty of an assembled host. We behold the silent summit of Calvary. To the right are the three crosses, that of the Saviour foremost. A ladder pitched against it supports a turbaned executioner. who bends downward to receive the sponge offered him by a comrade. Above the crest of the hill the helmets and spears of a line of soldiery complete the grimness of the scene. The reality of the picture is beyond all words : it is hard to say which is more impressive, the naked horror of the fact represented, or the sensible power of the artist. You breathe a silent prayer of thanks that you, for your part, are without the terrible clairvoyance of genius. We sat and looked at the picture in silence. The sacristan loitered about; but finally, weary of waiting, he retired to the campo without. I observed my companion : pale, motionless, oppressed, she evidently felt with poignant sympathy the commanding force of the work. At last I spoke to her ; receiving no answer, I repeated my question. She rose to her feet and turned her face upon me, illumined with a vivid ecstasy of pity. Then passing me rapidly, she descended into the aisle of the church, dropped into a chair, and, burying her face in her hands, burst into an agony of sobs. Having allowed time for her feeling to ex-pend itself, I went to her and recommended her not to let the day close on this painful emotion. “ Come with me to the Ducal Palace,” I said ; “ let us look at the Rape of Europa.” But before departing we went back to our Tintoretto, and gave it another solemn half-hour. Miss Evans repeated aloud a dozen verses from St. Mark’s Gospel.
“ What is it here,” I asked, “ that has moved you most, the painter or the subject ? ”
“ I suppose it’s the subject. And you ? ”
“ I’m afraid it’s the painter.”
We went to the Ducal Palace, and immediately made our way to that transcendent shrine of light and grace, the room which contains the masterpiece of Paul Veronese, and the Bacchus and Ariadne of his solemn comrade. I steeped myself with unprotesting joy in the gorgeous glow and salubrity of that radiant scene, wherein, against her bosky screen of immortal verdure, the rosy-footed, pearl-circled, nymph-flattered victim of a divine delusion rustles her lustrous satin against the ambrosial hide of bovine Jove. “ It makes one think more agreeably of life,” I said to my friend, " that such visions have blessed the eyes of men of mortal mould. What has been may be again. We may yet dream as brightly, and some few of us translate our dreams as freely.”
“ This, I think, is the brighter dream of the two,” she answered, indicating the Bacchus and Ariadne. Miss Evans, on the whole, was perhaps right. In Tintoretto’s picture there is no shimmer of drapery, no splendor of flowers and gems ; nothing but the broad, bright glory of deep-toned sea and sky, and the shining purity and symmetry of deified human flesh. “ What do you think,” asked my companion, “ of the painter of that tragedy at San Cassiano being also the painter of this dazzling idyl; of the great painter of darkness being also the great painter of light ? ”
“ He was a colorist! Let us thank the great man, and be colorists too. To understand this Bacchus and Ariadne we ought to spend a long day on the lagoon, beyond sight of Venice. Will you come to-morrow to Torcello?” The proposition seemed to me audacious ; I was conscious of blushing a little as I made it. Miss Evans looked at me and pondered. She then replied with great calmness that she preferred to wait for her father, the excursion being one that he would probably enjoy. “ Will you come, then, — somewhere ? ” I asked.
Again she pondered. Suddenly her face brightened. “ I should very much like to go to Padua. It would bore my poor father to go. I fancy he would thank you for taking me. I should be almost willing,” she said with a smile, “ to go alone.”
It was easily arranged that on the morrow we should go for the day to Padua. Miss Evans was certainly an American to perfection. Nothing remained for me, as the good American which I aspired to be, but implicitly to respect her confidence. To Padua, by an early train, we accordingly went. The day stands out in my memory delightfully curious and rich. Padua is a wonderful little city. Miss Evans was an excellent walker, and, thanks to the broad arcades which cover the footways in the streets, we rambled for hours in perpetual shade. We spent an hour at the famous church of St. Anthony, which boasts one of the richest and holiest shrines in all churchburdened Italy. The whole edifice is nobly and darkly ornate and picturesque, but the chapel of its patron saint — a wondrous combination of chiselled gold and silver and alabaster and perpetual flame — splendidly outshines and outshadows the rest. In all Italy, I think, the idea of palpable, material sanctity is nowhere more potently enforced.
“ O the Church, the Church ! ” murmured Miss Evans, as we stood contemplating.
“ What a real pity,” I said, “ that we are not Catholics ; that that dazzling monument is not something more to us than a mere splendid show ! What a different thing this visiting of churches would be for us, if we occasionally felt the prompting to fall on our knees. I begin to grow ashamed of this perpetual attitude of bald curiosity. What a pleasant thing it must be, in such a church as this, for two good friends to say their prayers together ! ”
“ Ecco ! ” said Miss Evans. Two persons had approached the glittering “shrine, — a young woman of the middle class and a man of her own rank, some ten years older, dressed with a good deal of cheap elegance. The woman dropped on her knees ; her companion fell back a few steps, and stood gazing idly at the chapel. “ Poor girl ! ” said my friend, “ she believes ; he doubts.”
“He doesn’t look like a doubter. He’s a vulgar fellow. They ’re a betrothed pair, I imagine. She is very pretty.” She had turned round and flung at her companion a liquid glance of entreaty. He appeared not to observe it ; but in a few moments he slowly approached her, and bent a single knee at her side. When presently they rose to their feet, she passed her arm into his with a beautiful, unsuppressed lovingness. As they passed us, looking at us from the clear darkness of their Italian brows, I keenly envied them. “They are better off than we.” I said. “ Be they husband and wife, or lovers, or simply friends, we, I think, are rather vulgar beside them.”
“ My dear Mr. Brooke,” said Miss Evans, “ go by all means and say your prayers.” And she walked away to the other side of the church. Whether I obeyed her injunction or not, I feel under no obligation to report. I rejoined her at the beautiful frescoed chapel in the opposite transept. She was sitting listlessly turning over the leaves of her Murray. “ I suppose,” she said, after a few moments, “ that nothing is more vulgar than to make a noise about having been called vulgar. But really, Mr. Brooke, don’t call me so again. I have been of late so fondly fancying I am not vulgar.”
“ My dear Miss Evans, you are — ”
“ Come, nothing vulgar ! ”
“ You ’re divine ! ”
“ A la bonne heure ! Divinities need n’t pray. They are prayed to.”
I have no space and little power to enumerate and describe the various curiosities of Padua. I think we saw them all. We left the best, however, for the last, and repaired in the late afternoon, after dining fraternally at a restaurant, to the Chapel of Giotto. This little empty church, standing unshaded and forlorn in the homely market-garden which was once a Roman arena, offers one of the deepest lessons of Italian travel. Its four walls are covered, almost from base to ceiling, with that wonderful series of dramatic paintings which usher in the golden prime of Italian art. I had been so ill-informed as to fancy that to talk about Giotto was to make more or less of a fool of one’s self, and that he was the especial property of the mere sentimentalists of criticism. But you no sooner cross the threshold of that little ruinous temple —a mere empty shell, but coated us with the priceless substance of fine pearls and vocal with a murmured eloquence as from the infinite of art — than you perceive with whom you have to deal : a complete painter of the very strongest sort. In one respect, assuredly, Giotto has never been surpassed, — in the art of presenting a story. The amount of dramatic expression compressed into those quaint little scenic squares would equip a thousand later masters. How, beside him, they seem to fumble and grope and trifle ! And he, beside them, how direct he seems, how essential, how masculine ! What a solid simplicity, what an immediate purity and grace ! The exhibition suggested to my friend and me more wise reflections than we had the skill to utter. “ Happy, happy art,” we said, as we seemed to see it beneath Giotto’s hand tremble and thrill and sparkle, almost, with a presentiment of its immense career, “ for the next two hundred years what a glorious felicity will be yours ! ” The chapel door stood open into the sunny corn-field, and the lazy litter of verdure enclosed by the crumbling oval of Roman masonry. A loutish boy who had come with the key lounged on a bench, awaiting tribute, and gazing at us as we gazed. The ample light flooded the inner precinct, and lay hot upon the coarse, pale surface of the painted wall. There seemed an irresistible pathos in such a combination of shabbiness and beauty. I thought of this subsequently at the beautiful Museum at Bologna, where mediocrity is so richly enshrined. Nothing that we had yet seen together had filled us with so deep a sense of enjoyment. We stared, we laughed, we wept almost, we raved with a decent delight. We went over the little compartments one by one : we lingered and returned and compared ; we studied ; we melted together in unanimous homage. At last the light began to fade and the little saintly figures to grow quaint and terrible in the gathering dusk. The loutish boy had transferred himself significantly to the door-post: we lingered for a farewell glance.
“ Mr. Brooke,” said my companion, " we ought to learn from all this to be real; real even as Giotto is real ; to discriminate between genuine and factitious sentiment ; between the substantial and the trivial ; between the essential and the superfluous ; sentiment and sentimentality.”
“You speak,” said I, “with appalling wisdom and truth. You strike a chill to my heart of hearts.”
She spoke unsmiling, with a slightly contracted brow and an apparent sense of effort. She blushed as I gazed at her.
“Well,” she said, “I’m extremely glad to have been here. Good, wise Giotto ! I should have liked to know you. — Nay, let me pay the boy.” I saw the piece she put into his hand ; he was stupefied by its magnitude.
“ We shall not have done Padua,” I said, as we left the garden, “ unless we have been to the Caffè Pedrocchi. Come to the Cafie Pedrocchi. We have more than an hour before our train, — time to eat an ice.” So we drove to the Caffè Pedrocchi, the most respectable café in the world ; a café monumental, scholastic, classical.
We sat down at one of the tables on the cheerful external platform, which is washed by the gentle tide of Paduan life. When we had finished our ices. Miss Evans graciously allowed me a cigar. How it came about I hardly remember, but, prompted by some happy accident of talk, and gently encouraged perhaps by my smoke-wreathed quietude, she lapsed, with an exquisite feminine reserve, into a delicate autobiographical strain. For a moment she became egotistical; but with a modesty, a dignity, a lightness of touch which filled my eyes with admiring tears. She spoke of her home, her family, and the few events of her life. She had lost her mother in her early years; her two sisters had married young ; she and her father were equally united by affection and habit. Upon one theme she touched, in regard to which I should be at loss to say whether her treatment told more, by its frankness, of our friendship, or, by its reticence, of her modesty. She spoke of having been engaged, and of having lost her betrothed in the Civil War She made no story of it ; but I felt from her words that she had tasted of sorrow. Having finished my cigar, I was proceeding to light another. She drew out her watch. Our train was to leave at eight o’clock. It was now a quarter past. There was no later evening train.
The reader will understand that I tell the simple truth when I say that our situation was most disagreeable and that we were deeply annoyed. “ Of course,” said I, “ you are utterly disgusted.”
She was silent. “ I am extremely sorry,” she said, at last, just vanquishing a slight tremor in her voice.
“ Murray says the hotel is good,” I suggested.
She made no answer. Then, rising to her feet, “ Let us go immediately,” she said. We drove to the principal inn and bespoke our rooms. Our want of luggage provoked, of course, a certain amount of visible surprise. This, however, I fancy, was speedily merged in a more flattering emotion, when my companion, having communed with the chambermaid, sent her forth with a list of purchases.
We separated early. “ I hope,” said I, as I bade her good night, “ that you will be fairly comfortable.”
She had recovered her equanimity. “ I have no doubt of it.”
“ Good night.”
“ Good night.” Thank God, I silently added, for the dignity of American women. Knowing to what suffering a similar accident would have subjected a young girl of the orthodox European training, I felt devoutly grateful that among my own people a woman and her reputation are more indissolubly one. And yet I was unable to detach myself from my OldWorld associations effectually enough not to wonder whether, after all, Miss Evans’s calmness might not be the simple calmness of despair. The miserable words rose to my lips, “ Is she Compromised ?” If she were, of course, as far as I was concerned, there was but one possible sequel to our situation.
We met the next morning at breakfast. She assured me that she had slept, but I doubted it. I myself had not closed my eyes, — not from the excitement of vanity. Owing partly, I suppose, to a natural reaction against our continuous talk on the foregoing day, our return to Venice was attended with a good deal of silence. I wondered whether it was a mere fancy that Miss Evans was pensive, appealing, sombre. As we entered the gondola to go from the railway station to the Hotel Danieli, she asked me to request the gondoliers to pass along the Canalezzo rather than through the short cuts of the smaller canals. “ I feel as if I were coming home,” she said, as we floated beneath the lovely facade of the Ca’ Doro. Suddenly she laid her hand on my arm. “ It seems to me,” she said, “ that I should like to stop for Mrs. L—,’ and she mentioned the wife of the American Consul. “ I have promised to show her some jewelry. This is a particularly good time. I shall ask her to come home with me.” We stopped accordingly at the American Consulate. Here we found, on inquiry, to my great regret, that the Consul and his wife had gone for a week to the Lake of Como. For a moment my companion meditated. Then, “ To the hotel,” she said with decision. Our arrival attracted apparently little notice. I went with Miss Evans to the door of her father’s sitting-room, where we met a servant, who informed us with inscrutable gravity that Monsieur had returned the evening before, but that he had gone out after breakfast and had not reappeared.
“ Poor father,” she said. “It was very stupid of me not to have left a note for him.” I urged that our absence for the night was not to have been foreseen, and that Mr. Evans had in all likelihood very plausibly explained it. I withdrew with a handshake and permission to return in the evening.
I went to my hotel and slept, a long, sound, dreamless sleep. In the afternoon I called my gondola, and went over to the Lido. I crossed to the outer shore and sought the spot where a few days before I had lain at the feet of Charlotte Evans. I stretched myself on the grass and fancied her present. To say that I thought would be to say at once more and less than the literal truth. I was in a tremulous glow of feeling. I listened to the muffled rupture of the tide, vaguely conscious of my beating heart. Was I or was I not in love ? I was able to settle nothing. I wandered musingly further and further from the point. Every now and then, with a deeper pulsation of the heart, I would return to it, but only to start afresh and follow some wire-drawn thread of fancy to a nebulous goal of doubt. That she was a most lovely woman seemed to me of all truths the truest, but it was a hard-featured fact of the senses rather than a radiant mystery of faith. I felt that I was not possessed by a passion ; perhaps I was incapable of passion. At last, weary of self-bewilderment, I left the spot and wandered beside the sea. It seemed to speak more musingly than ever of the rapture of motion and freedom. Beyond the horizon was Greece, beyond and below was the.wondrous Southern world which blooms about the margin of the Midland Sea. To marry, somehow, meant to abjure all this, and in the prime of youth and manhood to sink into obscurity and care. For a moment there stirred in my heart a feeling of anger and pain. Perhaps, after all, I was in love !
I went straight across the lagoon to the Hotel Danieli, and as I approached it I became singularly calm and collected. From below I saw Miss Evans alone on her balcony, watching the sunset. She received me with perfect friendly composure. Her father had again gone out, but she had told him of my coming, and he was soon to return. He had not been painfully alarmed at her absence, having learned through a chambermaid, to whom she had happened to mention her intention, that she had gone for the day to Padua.
“ And what have you been doing all day ? ” I asked.
“ Writing letters, — long, tiresome, descriptive letters. I have also found a volume of Hawthorne, and have been reading ‘ Rappacini’s Daughter.’ You know the scene is laid in Padua.” And what had I been doing ?
Whether I was in a passion of love or not, I was enough in love to be very illogical. I was disappointed, Heaven knows why! that she should have been able to spend her time in this wholesome fashion. “ I have been at the Lido, at the Hebrew tombs, where we sat the other day, thinking of what you told me there.”
“ What I told you ? ”
“ That you liked me immensely.”
She smiled ; but now that she smiled, I fancied I saw in the movement of her face an undercurrent of pain. Had the peace of her heart been troubled ? “ You need n’t have gone so far away to think of it.”
“ It’s very possible,” I said, “ that I shall have to think of it, in days to come, farther away still.”
“ Other places, Mr. Brooke, will bring other thoughts.”
“ Possibly. This place has brought that one.” At what prompting it was that I continued I hardly know ; I would tell her that I loved her. “ I value it beyond all other thoughts.”
“ I do like you, Mr. Brooke. Let it rest there.”
“ It may rest there for you. It can’t for me. It begins there ! Don’t refuse to understand me.”
She was silent. Then, bending her eyes on me, “ Perhaps,” she said, “ I understand you too well.”
“ O, in Heaven’s name, don’t play at coldness and scepticism ! ”
She dropped her eyesgravely on a bracelet which she locked and unlocked on her wrist. “ I think,” she said, without raising them, ‘‘you had better leave Venice.” I was about to reply, but the door opened and Mr. Evans came in. From his hard, grizzled brow he looked at us in turn ; then, greeting me with an extended hand, he spoke to his daughter.
“ I have forgotten my cigar-case. Be so good as to fetch it from my dressing-table.”
For a moment Miss Evans hesitated and cast upon him a faint protesting glance. Then she lightly left the room. He stood holding my hand, with a very sensible firmness, with his eyes on mine. Then, laying his other hand heavily on my shoulder, “ Mr. Brooke,” he said, “ I believe you are an honest man.”
“ I hope so,” I answered.
He paused, and I felt his steady gray eyes. “ How the devil,” he said, “ came you to be left at Padua ? ”
“ The explanation is a very simple one. Your daughter must have told you.”
“ I have thought best to talk very little to my daughter about it.”
“ Do you regard it, Mr. Evans,” I asked, “ as a very serious calamity ? ”
“ I regard it as an infernally disagreeable thing. It seems that the whole hotel is talking about it. There is a little beast of an Italian down stairs — ”
“ Your daughter, I think, was not seriously discomposed.”
“ My daughter is a d—d proud woman ! ”
“ I can assure you that my esteem for her is quite equal to your own.”
“ What does that mean, Mr. Brooke ?” I was about to answer, but Miss Evans reappeared. Her father, as he took his cigar-case from her, looked at her intently. as if he were on the point of speaking, but the words remained on his lips, and, declaring that he would be back in half an hour, he left the room.
His departure was followed by a long silence.
“ Miss Evans,” I said, at last, “will you be my wife ? ”
She looked at me with a certain firm resignation. “ Do you feel that, Mr. Brooke ? Do you know what you ask ? ”
“ Most assuredly.”
“ Will you rest content with my answer ? ”
“It depends on what your answer is.”
She was silent.
“ I should like to know what my father said to you in my absence.”
“ You had better learn from himself.”
“ I think I know. Poor father ! ”
“ But you give me no answer,” I rejoined, after a pause.
She frowned a little. “ Mr. Brooke,” she said, “you disappoint me.”
“ Well, I 'm sorry. Don’t revenge yourself by disappointing me.”
“ I fancied that I had answered your proposal ; that I had, at least, anticipated it, the other day at the Lido.”
“ O, that was very good for the other day ; but do give me something different now.”
“ I doubt of your being more in earnest to-day than then.”
“ It seems to suit you wonderfully well to doubt ! ”
“ I thank you for the honor of your proposal: but I can’t be your wife, Mr. Brooke.”
“ That’s the answer with which you ask me to remain satisfied ! ”
“ Let me repeat what I said just now. You had better leave Venice, otherwise we must leave it.”
“ Ah, that’s easy to say ! ”
“ You must n’t think me unkind or cynical. You have done your duty.”
“ My duty, — what duty ? ”
“ Come,” she said, with a beautiful blush and the least attempt at a smile, “ you imagine that I have suffered an injury by my being left with you at Padua. I don’t believe in such injuries.”
“ No more do I.”
“Then there is even less wisdom than before in your proposal. But I strongly suspect that if we had not missed the train at Padua, you would not have made it. There is an idea of reparation in it. — O Sir!” And she shook her head with a deepening smile.
“ If I had flattered myself that it lay in my power to do you an injury,” I replied, “ I should now be rarely disenchanted. As little almost as to do you a benefit ! ”
“ You have loaded me with benefits. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I may be very unreasonable, but if I had doubted of my having to decline your offer three days ago, I should have quite ceased to doubt this evening.”
“ You are an excessively proud woman. I can tell you that.”
“ Possibly. But I ’m not as proud as you think. I believe in my common sense.”
“ I wish that for five minutes you had a grain of imagination ! ”
“ If only for the same five minutes you were without it. You have too much, Mr. Brooke. You imagine you love me.”
“ Poor fool that I am ! ”
“You imagine that I’m charming. I assure you I ’m not in the least. Here in Venice I have not been myself at all. You should see me at home.”
“ Upon my word, Miss Evans, you remind me of a German philosopher. I have not the least objection to seeing you at home.”
“ Don't fancy that I think lightly of your offer. But we have been living, Mr. Brooke, in poetry. Marriage is stern prose. Do let me bid you farewell ! ”
I took up my hat. “ I shall go from here to Rome and Naples,” I said. “I must leave Florence for the last. I shall write you from Rome and of course see you there.”
“ I hope not. I had rather not meet you again in Italy. It perverts our dear good old American truth ! ”
“ Do you really propose to bid me a final farewell ? ”
She hesitated a moment. “ When do you return home ?”
“ Some time in the spring.”
“ Very well. If a year hence, in America, you are still of your present mind, I shall not decline to see you.
I feel very safe ! If you are not of your present mind, of course I shall be still more happy. Farewell.” She put out her hand ; I took it.
“ Beautiful, wonderful woman ! ” I murmured.
“ That’s rank poetry ! Farewell! ”
I raised her hand to my lips and released it in silence. At this point Mr. Evans reappeared, considering apparently that his half-hour was up. “ Are you going ? ” he asked.
“ Yes. I start to-morrow for Rome.”
“ The deuce ! Daughter, when are we to go ? ”
She moved her hand over her forehead, and a sort of nervous tremor seemed to pass through her limbs. “ O, you must take me home ! ” she said. “ I ’m horribly home-sick ! ” She flung her arms round his neck and buried her head on his shoulder. Mr. Evans with a movement ot his head dismissed me.
At the top of the staircase, however, he overtook me. “ You made your offer ! ” And he passed his arm into mine.
“ Yes ! ”
“ And she refused you ?” I nodded. He looked at me, squeezing my arm. “ By Jove, sir, if she had accepted —”
“ Well! ” said I, stopping.
“ Why, it wouldn’t in the least have suited me ! Not that I don’t esteem you. The whole house shall see it.” With his arm in mine we passed down stairs, through the hall, to the landingplace, where he called his own gondola and requested me to use it. He bade me farewell with a kindly hand-shake, and the assurance that I was too “nice a fellow not to keep as a friend.”
I think, on the whole, that my uppermost feeling was a sense of freedom and relief. It seemed to me on my journey to Florence that I had started afresh, and was regarding things with less of nervous rapture than before, but more of sober insight. Of Miss Evans I forbade myself to think. In my deepest heart I admitted the truth, the partial truth at least, of her assertion of the unreality of my love. The reality I believed would come. The way to hasten its approach was, meanwhile, to study, to watch, to observe, — doubtless even to enjoy. I certainly enjoyed Florence and the three days I spent there. But I shall not attempt to deal with Florence in a parenthesis. I subsequently saw that divine little city under circumstances which peculiarly colored and shaped it. In Rome, to begin with, I spent a week and went down to Naples, dragging the heavy Roman chain which she rivets about your limbs forever. In Naples I discovered the real South—the Southern South, — in art, in nature, in man, and the least bit in woman. A German lady, an old kind friend, had given me a letter to a Neapolitan lady whom she assured me she held in high esteem. The Signora B—— was at Sorrento, where I presented my letter. It seemed to me that “esteem ” was not exactly the word ; but the Signora B——was charming. She assured me on my first visit that she was a “true Neapolitan,” and I think, on the whole, she was right. She told me that I was a true German, but in this she was altogether wrong. I spent four days in her house ; on one of them we went to Capri, where the Signora had an infant— her only one — at nurse. We saw the Blue Grotto, the Tiberian ruins, the tarantella and the infant, and returned late in the evening by moonlight. The Signora sang on the water in a magnificent contralto. As I looked upward at Northern Italy, it seemed, in contrast, a cold, dark hyperborean clime, a land of order, conscience, and virtue. How my heart went out to that brave, rich, compact little Verona ! How there Nature seemed to have mixed her colors with potent oil, instead of as here with crystalline water, drawn though it was from the Neapolitan Bay ! But in Naples, too, I pursued my plan of vigilance and study. I spent long mornings at the Museum and learned to know Pompei; I wrote once to Miss Evans, about the statues in the Museum, without a word of wooing, but received no answer. It seemed to me that I returned to Rome a wiser man. It was the middle of October when I reached it. Unless Mr. Evans had altered his programme, he would at this moment be passing down to Naples.
A fortnight elapsed without my hearing of him, during which I was in the full fever of initiation into Roman wonders. I had been introduced to an old German archæologist, with whom I spent a series of memorable days in the exploration of ruins and the study of the classical topography. I thought, I lived, I ate and drank, in Latin, and German Latin at that. But I remember with especial delight certain long lonely rides on the Campagna. The weather was perfect. Nature seemed only to slumber, ready to wake far on the hither side of wintry death. From time to time, after a passionate gallop, I would pull up my horse on the slope of some pregnant mound and embrace with the ecstasy of quickened senses the tragical beauty of the scene ; strain my ear to the soft low silence, pity the dark dishonored plain, watch the heavens come rolling down in tides of light, and breaking in waves of fire against the massive stillness of temples and tombs. The aspect of all this sunny solitude and haunted vacancy used to fill me with a mingled sense of exaltation and dread. There were moments when my fancy swept that vast funereal desert with passionate curiosity and desire, moments when it felt only its potent sweetness and its high historic charm. But there were other times when the air seemed so heavy with the exhalation of unburied death, so bright with sheeted ghosts, that I turned short about and galloped back to the city. One afternoon after I had indulged in one of these supersensitive flights on the Campagna, I betook myself to St. Peter’s. It was shortly before the opening of the recent Council, and the city was filled with foreign ecclesiastics, the increase being of course especially noticeable in the churches. At St. Peter’s they were present in vast numbers ; great armies encamped in prayer on the marble plains of its pavement: an inexhaustible physiognomical study. Scattered among them were squads of little tonsured neophytes, clad in scarlet, marching and counter-marching, and ducking and flapping, like poor little raw recruits for the heavenly host. I had never before, I think, received an equal impression of the greatness of this church of churches, or, standing beneath the dome, beheld such a vision of erected altitude, — of the builded sublime. I lingered awhile near the brazen image of St. Peter, observing the steady procession of his devotees. Near me stood a lady in mourning, watching with a weary droop of the head the grotesque deposition of kisses. A peasant-woman advanced with the file of the faithful and lifted up her little girl to the well-worn toe. With a sudden movement of impatience the lady turned away, so that I saw her face to face. She was strikingly pale, but as her eyes met mine the blood rushed into her cheeks. This lonely mourner was Miss Evans. I advanced to her with an outstretched hand. Before she spoke I had guessed at the truth.
“ You 're in sorrow and trouble ! ”
She nodded, with a look of simple gravity.
“Why in the world haven’t you written to me ? ”
“There was no use. I seem to have sufficed to myself.”
“Indeed, you have not sufficed to yourself. You are pale and worn ; you look wretchedly.” She stood silent, looking about her with an air of vague unrest. “ I have as yet heard nothing,” I said. “ Can you speak of it ? ”
“O Mr. Brooke!” she said with a simple sadness that went to my heart. I drew her hand through my arm and led her to the extremity of the left transept of the church. We sat down together, and she told me of her father’s death. It had happened ten days before, in consequence of a severe apoplectic stroke. He had been ill but a single day, and had remained unconscious from first to last. The American physician had been extremely kind, and had relieved her of all care and responsibility. His wife had strongly urged her to come and stay in their house, until she should have determined what to do; but she had preferred to remain at her hotel. She had immediately furnished herself with an attendant in the person of a French maid, who had come with her to the church and was now at confession. At first she had wished greatly to leave Rome, but now that the first shock of grief had passed away she found it suited her mood to linger on from day to day. “ On the whole,” she said, with a sober smile, “ I have got through it all rather easily than otherwise. The common cares and necessities of life operate strongly to interrupt and dissipate One’s grief. I shall feel my loss more when I get home again.” Looking at her while she talked, I found a pitiful difference between her words and her aspect. Her pale face, her wilful smile, her spiritless gestures, spoke most forcibly of loneliness and weakness. Over this gentle weakness and dependence I secretly rejoiced ; I felt in my heart an immense uprising of pity, — of the pity that goes hand in hand with love. At its bidding I hastily, vaguely sketched a magnificent scheme of devotion and protection.
“ When I think of what you have been through,” I said, “ my heart stands still for very tenderness. Have you made any plans ? ” She shook her head with such a perfection of helplessness that I broke into a sort of rage of compassion : “ One of the last things your father said to me was that you are a very proud woman.”
She colored faintly. “ I may have been ! But there is not among the most abject peasants who stand kissing St. Peter’s foot a creature more bowed in humility than I.”
“ How did you expect to make that weary journey home ? ”
She was silent a moment and her eyes filled with tears. “ O don’t crossquestion me, Mr, Brooke ! ” she softly cried ; “ I expected nothing. I was waiting for my stronger self.”
“ Perhaps your stronger self lias come.” She rose to her feet as if she had not heard me, and went forward to meet her maid. This was a decent, capable-looking person, with a great deal of apparent deference of manner. As I rejoined them, Miss Evans prepared to bid me farewell. “ You have n’t yet asked me to come and see you,” I said.
“ Come, but not too soon ? ”
“ What do you call too soon? This evening ? ”
“ Come to-morrow.” She refused to allow me to go with her to her carriage. I followed her, however, at a short interval, and went as usual to my restaurant to dine. I remember that my dinner cost me ten francs, — it usually cost me five. Afterwards, as usual, I adjourned to the Caffè Greco, where I met my German archæologist. He discoursed with even more than his wonted sagacity and eloquence ; but at the end of half an hour he rapped his fist on the table and asked me what the deuce was the matter ; he would wager I had n’t heard a word of what he said.
I went forth the next morning into the Roman streets, doubting heavily of my being able to exist until evening without seeing Miss Evans. I felt, however, that it was due to her to make the effort. To help myself through the morning, I went into the Borghese Gallery. The great treasure of this collection is a certain masterpiece of Titian. I entered the room in which it hangs by the door facing the picture. The room was empty, save that before the great Titian, beside the easel of an absent copyist, stood a young woman in mourning. This time, in spite of her averted head, I immediately knew her and noiselessly approached her. The picture is one of the finest of its admirable author, — rich and simple and brilliant with the true Venetian fire. It unites the charm of an air of latent symbolism with a steadfast splendor and solid perfection of design. Beside a low sculptured well sit two young and beautiful women : one richly clad, and full of mild dignity and repose ; the other with unbound hair, naked, ungirdled by a great reverted mantle of Venetian purple, and radiant with the frankest physical sweetness and grace. Between them a little winged cherub bends forward and thrusts his chubby arm into the well. The picture glows with the inscrutable chemistry of the prince of colorists.
“ Does it remind you of Venice ?” I said, breaking a long silence, during which she had not noticed me.
She turned and her face seemed bright with reflected color. We spoke awhile of common things ; she had come alone. “ What an emotion, for one who has loved Venice,” she said, “to meet a Titian in other lands.”
“ They call it,” I answered, -— and as I spoke my heart was in my throat,— “ a representation of Sacred and Profane Love. The name perhaps roughly expresses its meaning. The serious, stately woman is the likeness, one may say, of love as an experience, — the gracious, impudent goddess of love as a sentiment; this of the passion that fancies, the other of the passion that knows.” And as I spoke I passed my arm, in its strength, around her waist. She let her head sink on my shoulders and looked up into my eyes.
“ One may stand for the love I denied,” she said ; “ and the other — ”
“ The other,” I murmured, “ for the love which, with this kiss, you accept.” I drew her arm into mine, and before the envious eyes that watched us from gilded casements we passed through the gallery and left the palace. We went that afternoon to the PamfiliDoria Villa. Saying just now that my stay in Florence was peculiarly colored by circumstances, I meant that I was there with my wife.
H. James Jr.