Front matter (continued 4)

That was the only lash that fell from her. And she did not direct it upon him, but it whipped across the nakedness of his mind with a stinging blow. He winced under it. It made him long to be that man. Yet still, there was his desire; still there was the fear, that circumstance would balk him of his oblivion.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Because, I thought you would be different," she said.

"I'm as human as the rest," said he. "I'm the crank, of course--but I'm a human crank. Will you come back to me again?"

She rose to her knees again. She was trembling, but she took his hand in hers and gripped it hard to hide it from him.

"What will you say afterwards?" she asked gently. "What will you feel? You'll be full of remorse. You'll hate me. You'll hate yourself. What about your ideal?"

"I have none," he exclaimed blindly.

"I said that once," she whispered--"and you said I was wrong, that I had an ideal, that everybody had, only they lost sight of it."

He remembered all that. He remembered the reasoning of his mind. He knew it was true. He knew it was true even then.

"Now you've lost sight of yours," she continued. "But you'll see it again, you'll realise it again to-morrow, and then--heavens! How you'll hate me! How you'll hate yourself."

He stared at her. Were women as good, as fine as this? Was he the only vile thing in existence then? What would Jill think if she could see into the pit of his mind now? So low had he fallen that he thought it impossible to struggle upwards; so low, that it seemed he must touch the utmost depth before he could get the purchase to regain his feet. And if he touched the lowest, he might rise again, but it would not be so high as before.

Amber watched all the thoughts in his face. She had done her utmost. She could not do more. If he did not fight it out from this, then, what must be, must be.

Yet one more thing she could do. If she spoke of Venice. But why should she say it? It was his battle, not hers. She had given him every weapon to wage it but this. Why should she say it? The battle was against herself. Yet she answered to the best. There was her ideal as well, however unconscious it may have been.

"When are you going to Venice?" she asked hoarsely.

He told her how he had spent some of the money--more than a pound of it was gone.

She pulled out her purse, quickly, fiercely, feverishly.

"Then won't you be able to go?" she asked.

"Not for a while."

"Won't your mother be disappointed,--the little old white-haired lady?"

He tried to beat back the emotion in his throat, then felt something cold and hard in his hand. He looked down. It was a sovereign.

"You must take that," she said breathlessly. "Pay it back some other time and go--go to Venice to-morrow."

John looked full in her eyes.

"And you called yourself the fly in the amber," he said. Then he tightened her fingers round the coin--kissed them and walked to the door.

"I'll go to Venice," he said--"I'll go--somehow or other. I'll be the man who can bear things without becoming like that. You shan't be disappointed."

He came back again and seized her hand. Then he hurried out.

She listened to the door slamming. She heard his footsteps in the quiet street, then she dropped down on the mattress on the drawing-room floor.

"Oh, you fool!" she whispered under her breath. "Oh, you fool!"

But wisdom and folly, they are matters of environment. Behind it all, there was the most wonderful satisfaction in the world in saying--"Oh, you fool!"

BOOK III

THE CITY

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PALAZZO CAPELLO

They tell you--come to Venice by night; that then you will drift silently into the marvellous mystery of it all; that then you will feel the weight of the centuries in every shadow that lurks in the deep set doorways; that then you will realise the tragedies that have been played, the romances woven, and the dark deeds that have been done in the making of its history--all this, if you come to Venice by night.

They tell you, you will never see Venice as the tourist sees it, if you will but do this; that the impression of mystery will outlast the sight of the Philistines crowding in the Square of St. Mark's, will obliterate the picture of a fleet of gondolas tearing through the Grand Canal, led by a conductor shouting out the names of the Palaces as they pass. Your conception of the city of mystery will last for ever, so they tell you, if you do but come to Venice by night.

But there is another Venice than this, a Venice you see as you come to it in the early morning--a city of light and of air, a city of glittering water, of domes in gossamer that rise lightly above the surface, finding the sun, as bubbles that melt all the prisms of light into their liquid shells.

Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a city bathed in a sea of light; for it is not only that the sun shines upon it, but that, like the white shoulders of a mermaid, glittering with the water drops as she rises out of the sea, this wonderful city is not illuminated only, but is drenched in light itself. It is no city of shadow and mysteries then. There are no dark water-ways, no deepening gloom beneath the bridges. In the early morning, it lies, as yet unwakened, blinking, flashing, burning--a rose opal, set clear against the sun.

Then the deepest shadow is in a tone of gold, the highest light in a mist of glittering silver. The domes of San Marco and Santa Maria della Salute are caught up in the brilliancy and melt shapelessly into the glow.

Come to Venice in the early morning and you will see a smelter's furnace into which has been cast the gold and silver from a boundless treasure hoard. You will see all that white and yellow metal running in molten streams of light; you will see the vibrating waves of air as the flames leap upward, curling and twisting to the very gates of heaven itself. You will see a city of gold and silver, of light and air all made liquid in one sea of brilliance, if you do but come to Venice in the early morning.

* * * * *

In the Grand Canal, just at the corner of the Palazzo Babarigo, there appears the entrance to one of those myriad little ways that shoot secretly away from the great, wide water street. Turning into this, the Rio San Polo, following its course under the bridges and taking the second turning on the left, an obedient gondolier will swing you round with one sweep of his long oar into the Rio Marin.

Being human, assuming your love of the beautiful, taking time also as his perquisite, he will probably choose more devious ways than this. But, everyone will tell you that, by the Rio San Polo, it is the shortest.

On each side of the Rio Marin, there runs a narrow little pathway. Here, the houses do not dip down to the water's edge, the space of light is wider, and the hurrying of the pedestrian on the footway seems to concentrate life for a moment and give it speech, in a place where everything is mute, where everything is still.

Idlers gather lazily on the bridges to watch the swaying gondolas as they pass beneath. Here, even the mystery you will find by night, is driven away. The sun, the broad stretch of heaven, no longer a ribbon-strip of blue tying together the house-tops, these combine to defy mystery in the Rio Marin. Rose trees and flowering bushes top the grey walls; lift up their colours against a cloudless sky and smile down to you of gardens concealed on the other side.

Towards the end of this little water-way, almost opposite the Chiesa Tedeschi, stands the Palazzo Capello, a broad and somewhat unbeautiful house, looking placidly down upon the quiet water. No great history is attached to it. No poet has ever written there, seated at its windows; no tragedy has been played that the guide books know of, no blood has been splashed against its walls. You will not find it mentioned in any of the descriptions of Venice, for it has no history to detain the ear; it bears no show of ornament without to attract the eye. Yet, with that pomp and vanity that breathed in Venice in the middle centuries, it was called--a palace--and only to those who know it from within, can this dignity of name seem justified.

A great, wide door divides the front of grey stone, up to which lead steps from the pathway--steps, in the crevices of which a patch of green lies here and there in a perfect harmony of contrast to the well-worn slabs. This door is always closed and, with no windows on either side, only the broad stretch of masonry, there is a stern appearance about the place, suggesting a prison or a barracks in its almost forbidding aspect. But when once that wide, wooden gate is opened, the absence of windows upon the ground floor is partly explained and the mind is caught in a breath of enchantment. It does not give entrance to a hall, but to an archway--an archway tunnelling under the house itself, at the end of which, through the lace-work of wonderful wrought-iron palings, you see the fairy-land of an old Italian garden, glittering in the sun.

The shadows that lie heavily under the archway only serve to intensify the brilliance of the light beyond. Colours are concentrated to the essence of themselves and the burst of sunshine, after the darkness, brings a haze, as when you see the air quivering over a furnace.

But, having gained entrance and passed that doorway, you are not yet within the house. On either side of this cool damp tunnel, making way to the right and left on the palace, which is divided into two houses, there are smaller archways cut into the wall. Taking that on your left, and before your eyes have grown accustomed to the confusion of lights and shadows, you might think it was a passage burrowing down into some secret corners of the earth. Your feet stumble, you feel your way, fingers touching the cold walls, suddenly realising that there are steps to mount, not to descend and, groping onwards, you reach another door confronting you impassably in the blackness.

There is a bell here, but it is by chance you find it--a long chain, like that at a postern gate, which depends from somewhere above your head. As you pull it, there is a clanging and a jangling quite close to your ear, shattering in a thousand little pieces the stillness that reigns all round.

After a moment or so, a small door opens within the bigger door, a curtain is pulled and, stepping through the tiny entrance for which your head must be bent low, you find yourself in a vast, big room--a room stretching from back to front of the whole house--a room that makes the meaning of the word palace seem justified a thousand times.

At either end are windows, so broad, so high, that the great stretch of this vast chamber, with its lofty ceiling, is flooded by one swift stream of light. Upon the polished floor of wood, the generous sunlight is splashed in daring brightness, throwing all near it into comparative shade, yet reflecting from the shining surface of the ground a glow that fills the air with a mist of light.

Along the walls of a dull, cool grey, big pictures are hung. Many there are, yet so spacious is the room, that they do not appear crowded; there is no suggestion of a well-stocked gallery. And on each side of the room two rich, warm-coloured curtains hang, concealing behind them silent, heavy, doors, deep set within the wall.

One of these, if you open it, will give you admittance to a tiny little room--so tiny, so small, that its smallness laughs at you, as for the moment it peers through the open space into the vast chamber beyond.

Close the door and the smallness seems natural enough then. For there, sitting perhaps over their afternoon tea, or their cups of coffee in the evening, chatting and gossiping as tho' they had just met to keep each other company, are two small figures; small because they are old--one, that of an old man, whose eyes are somewhat dimmed behind the high cheek bones and the shaggy eyebrows, the other, crumpled and creased like a silk dress that has lain long-folded in a camphor-scented drawer, the figure of a little old white-haired lady.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LETTER--VENICE

In the daily affairs of those two old people in the Palazzo Capello, there was one undeviating ceremony, performed with the regularity and precision of those mechanical figures that strike the great bell on the clock tower in the square of St. Mark's.

As the bells of the churches rang out the hour of ten at night, Claudina, the old dame who looked after all the wants of this worthy pair, entered the little room, carrying a large box in her hands.

Whatever their occupation may have been, whether they were playing at cribbage, or merely writing letters, up went their white heads together and one or the other would say--in Italian--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"

And Claudina would bend her head, with a sudden jerk, like a nodding mandarin, her big earrings would swing violently in her ears, and she would plant the box down gently upon the table.

"Si, signora," she said--always in the same tone of voice, as though she had suddenly realised that her nod of the head was not quite as respectful as it ought to be.

One cannot describe this as a ceremony; but it was the prelude to all the serious business that followed. Claudina was the mace bearer. Her entrance with the wooden box was the heralding of the quaint little procession of incidents that followed.

It was an evening in July, in that self-same year which has so successfully hidden itself in the crevices of our calendar. The jalousies had not long been closed upon a sky of primrose, in which the stars were set like early drops of dew. Claudina had just brought in a letter by the post. It was half-past nine.

"A letter, signora," Claudina had said and, knowing quite well who the letter was from, she had not laid it down upon the table as ordinary letters were treated, but had given it directly into her mistress's hand.

If the old Italian servant knows curiosity, she does not show it. Claudina, once the letter was delivered, discreetly left the room. The moment the door had closed, there followed as pretty a play of courtesy as you might have wished to see.

The old gentleman laid down his book.

"It is from John?" he said quickly.

She nodded her head and passed it across to him. Had she rolled the world to his feet, it could not have been more generously done. And had it been the world, he could not have taken it more eagerly.

His finger was just trembling inside the flap of the envelope, when he read the address.

"Why--it's written to you, my dear," said he, slowly withdrawing his finger.

She smiled. She nodded her head again. It was addressed to her; but in the rightful order of things, it was really his turn. For some unknown reason, John had addressed the last two letters to her. He never did do that. He was always most scrupulously fair in this tacit understanding that he should address his letters alternately, first to his father, then to his mother. This was the only time he had broken the unwritten law. It was really not her letter at all. That was why she had passed it across at once to her husband. He would never have dreamed of asking for the letter out of his turn. His fingers often twitched while her poor hands fumbled with the envelope, but he had never moved an inch to take it, until, of her own accord, she had handed it to him.

Now--knowing that it was his turn, his hand had stretched out for it naturally the moment Claudina had closed the door, and she had as readily given it. But there was a secret exultation in the heart of her. John had addressed it to her. There was no getting away from that.

For a moment, the old gentleman sat fingering it in dubious hesitation. Then he passed it back again.

"It's your letter, my dear," he said. "You open it." And picking up his book, he pretended to go on reading. Of course he did not see a single word on the page before him. Every sense in his body was strained to catch the sound of the tearing paper as she broke open the envelope. But there was no sound at all. Another moment of silence and she was bending over him from behind his chair, her arms round his neck and the letter held before his eyes.

"We'll open it together," she said.

It was her way of letting him do it without knowing that he had given way. To be sure, it was his finger that finally broke the flap of the envelope; but then, he retained all the dignity of the sacrifice. And so, as she leant over his shoulder, they read it together, with little exclamations of delight, little interruptions of pleasure, that need a heart for their purer translation, and cannot be written here because of that great gulf which is fixed behind the mind and the pen--because of that greater gulf which lies between the word and the eye that reads it.

"My dearest----"

Just those two words beginning; but they were almost the entire letter to her. They set her little brown eyes alight, her heart beating quickly behind the stiff bodice.

"I have left writing to you until the last moment for fear I should be unable to come on the day that you were expecting me. But it is all right. I am starting to-morrow morning, and shall be with you the usual time the day following, just about sunset. I can't tell you how glad I shall be to get away from here. You know what London can be like in July, and I suppose I want a change as well. I can't work these days at all--but I don't mean to worry you. I expect I am depressed and want different air in my lungs. I shall go up to the bows of the steamer crossing to-morrow, stand there with my mouth open, and get it forced down my throat like a dose.

"God bless you, dearest. Give my love to father, but don't tell him I can't work. I know he understands it well enough, but I believe it depresses him as much as it does me."

He looked up simply into her face as he handed back the paper.

"You see, I wasn't meant to read it," he said quietly.

Impulsively, she put her arm round his neck. She knew so well how that had hurt. There had been letters sometimes that she was not meant to see. Of course, she had seen them; but that touch of intimacy which, when you are a lover, or a mother, makes letters such wonderful living things, had been utterly taken from them. They had contained loving messages to her. But the writing itself, that had been meant for another eye to read.

"But it was only because he was thoughtful about you," she whispered--"not because he didn't want you to see. He'll tell you himself quickly enough that he can't work when he comes. You see if he doesn't. He can't keep those sort of things to himself. He can do it in a letter, because he thinks he ought to. But he won't be here five minutes before he's telling you that he can't write a line. And think! He'll be here the day after to-morrow. Oh--he is such a dear boy! Isn't he? Isn't he the dearest boy two old people ever had in the world?"

So she charmed the smile back into his eyes; never pausing until she saw that passing look of pain vanish completely out of sight. And so Claudina found them, as she had often found them before, poring once again over the letter as she brought in the big box.

Up went the two white heads in amazement and concern.

"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"

For to old people, you know, the hours pass very quickly; they are scarcely awake, before they are again being put to bed. Time hurries by them with such quiet feet, stepping lightly on the tips of its toes lest it should disturb those peaceful last moments which God gives to the people who are old.

Claudina laid down the big box upon the table. She nodded her head; her earrings shook.

"Si, Signora," she replied, as always.

The little old white-haired lady crumpled the letter into her dress; concealed it behind the stiff black bodice. Then they both stood to their feet, and the procession, of which Claudina was the herald, began.

First of all the big wooden box was opened, and out of it were taken numbers and numbers of little white linen bags of all shapes and sizes. White? Well, they were white once, but long obedience to the service for which they were required had turned their white to grey.

Each one of them was numbered, the number stitched in thread upon the outside; each one of them had been made to fit some separate little ornament in the room, to wrap it up, to keep the dust from it through the night--a night-cap for it, in fact. At ten o'clock the ornaments were put to bed; after the ornaments, then these two old people--but first of all their treasures. They stood by, watching Claudina tuck them all up, one by one, and it gave them that delicious sensation which only old people and young children know anything about--the sensation that they are sitting up late that others are going to bed before them.

Of course they never knew they had that sensation; they were not aware of it for a moment. But you might have known by the way they turned and smiled at each other when the big Dresden-china shepherdess was popped into her bag, you might have known that in the hearts of them, that was what they felt.

This evening in particular, their smiles were more radiant than ever. The old lady forgot to make her little exclamations of terror when Claudina could not get the night-cap over the head of the Dresden-china shepherdess, and was in danger of dropping them both together; the old gentleman forgot his quiet--"Be careful, Claudina--be careful." For whenever his wife was very excited, it always made him realise that he was very quiet, very self-possessed. But they felt none of their usual anxiety on this evening in July. In two days--in less--John would be with them. They had waited a whole year for this moment and a whole year, however quickly the separate moments may pass, is a long, long time to old people.

"There is one thing," the old gentleman said, presently, as the last ornaments were being ranged upon the table, standing in readiness for their nightcaps to go on. "There is one thing I don't quite know about."

She slipped her arm into his and asked in a whisper what it was. There was no need to talk in a whisper, for Claudina did not know a word of English; but she guessed he was going to say something concerning John and about him, she nearly always spoke in a whisper.

"It's the--the shop," he replied--"I--I don't like to tell John."

"Oh--but why not?" She clung a little closer to him.

"It isn't that I don't think he would understand--but it's just like that sentence in his letter about me. I feel it would hurt him if he thought I couldn't sell my pictures any more. I believe he would blame himself and think he ought to be giving us money, if he knew that I had had to start this curio shop to make things meet more comfortably."

She nodded her head wisely. She would have been all for telling her son everything. But when he mentioned the fact of John thinking he ought to support them, and when she considered how John would need every penny that he earned to support the woman whom she longed for him to make his wife--it was a different matter. She quite agreed. It was better that John should be told nothing.

"You don't think he'll find out--do you?" she said, and her eyes looked startled at the thought.

"No--no--I shouldn't think so. It isn't as if I had to be there every day. Foscari looks after it quite well. Though I'm always afraid he'll sell the very things I can't bear to part with. He sold the old brass Jewish lamp the other day, and I wouldn't have parted with it for worlds. But I dare say if I tell him to be careful--I dare say----"

It was rather sad, this curio shop. It would have been very sad if his wife had not appreciated the need for it; if she had not made it easier by telling him how brave he was, by sharing with him the sense of shame he felt when it became apparent that his pictures were no longer saleable.

For when he had reached the age of seventy-three, that was what they had told him. If he had not been a landscape painter, it might have been different; but at seventy-three, when one's heart is weak, it is not possible, it is not wise, to go far afield, to tramp the mountains as once he had done, in search of subjects new. So, he had been compelled to stay at home, to try and paint from memory the pictures that lay heaped within his mind. Then it was that they began to tell him that they could not sell his work; then he came to find that there must be other means of support if they were not to appeal to John for aid. And so, having a collection of treasures such as artists find, picked up from all the odd corners of Europe, he bethought him of a curio shop and, finding a little place to let at a quiet corner in the Merceria, he took it, called it--The Treasure Shop--and painting the name in a quaint old sign which he hung outside, obliterated his identity from the public eye.

For weeks beforehand, they had discussed this plan. Some of their own treasures, of course, would have to be sacrificed; in fact, Claudina carried many little grey night-caps away with her in the wooden box--night-caps that no longer had Dresden heads to fit them. But the money they were going to make out of the Treasure Shop would make up for all these heart-rending sacrifices. They would even be able to send John little presents now and then. There was nothing like a curio-shop for minting money, especially if the curios were really genuine, as were theirs.

But that was the very rub of it. When he came to open the shop, the old gentleman found it was the very genuineness of the things he had to sell that made it impossible for him to part with them. He loved them too well. And even the most ignorant collectors, British sires with check-cloth caps and heavy ulsters, old ladies with guide books in one hand and cornucopias of maze for the pigeons in the other, even they seemed to pitch upon the very things he loved the most.

He asked exorbitant prices to try and save his treasures from their clutches and mostly this method succeeded; but sometimes they were fools enough to put the money down. For there was one thing he could never do; he could not belittle the thing that he loved. If it was good, if it was genuine, if it really was old, he had to say so despite himself. Enthusiasm would let him do no otherwise. But then, when he had said all he could in its praise, he would ask so immense a sum that the majority of would-be purchasers left the shop as if he had insulted them.

So it was that the Treasure Shop did not fulfil all the expectations they had had of it. It made just enough money for their wants; but that was all.

And now came the question as to whether they should let John know of it. Long into the night they discussed the question, their two white heads lying side by side on the pillows, their voices whispering in the darkness.

"And yet--I believe he would understand," said the little old lady on her side--"he's such a dear, good boy, I'm sure he would understand."

"I don't know--I don't know," replied the old gentleman dubiously--"It will be bad enough when he sees my last pictures. No--no--I don't think I'll tell him. Foscari can look after the place. I need hardly be there at all while he's with us."

And then, making the sign of the cross upon each other's foreheads--saying--"God bless you"--as they had done every night their whole lives long, they fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RETURN--VENICE

It was sunset when John arrived. The gondolas were riding on a sea of rose; the houses were standing, quietly, silently, as you will see cattle herd, knee-deep in the burning water. Here and there in the distance, the fiery sun found its reflection in some obscure window, and burnt there in a glowing flame of light. Then it was a city of rose and pink, of mauve and blue and grey, one shading into the other in a texture so delicate, so fine that the very threads of it could not be followed in their change.

John took a deep breath as he stepped into his gondola. It needed such colour as this to wash out the blackness of that night in London. It needed such stillness and such quiet to soothe the rancour of his bitterness; for the stillness of Venice is the hushed stillness of a church, where all anger is drugged to sleep and only the sorrow that one learns of can hold against the spell and keeps its eyes awake.

Now, in the desolation of his mind, John was learning, of the things that have true value and of those which have none. It is not an easy lesson to acquire, for the sacrifice of pre-conceived ideas can only be accomplished on the altar of bitterness and only the burning of despair can reduce them to the ashes in which lies the truth concealed.

Having deposited his belongings in his rooms in the Rio della Sacchere, where he always stayed, he set off on foot by the narrow little pathways to the Palazzo Capello.

That was always a moment in John's life when, upon his arrival every year, he first opened the big gate that closed on to the fondamenta. It was always a moment to be remembered when first he beheld, from beneath the archway, the glow of the flaming sunset in that old Italian garden, framed in the lace-worked trellises of iron.

Life had these moments. They are worth all the treasure of the Indies. The mind of a man is never so possessed of wealth as when he comes upon them; for in such moments as these, his emotions are wings which no sun of vaunted ambition can melt; in such moments as these, he touches the very feet of God.

Closing the big door behind him, John stood for a moment in contemplation. The great disc of the sun had just sunk down behind the cypress trees. Their deep black forms were edged with a bright thread of gold. Everything in that old garden was silhouetted against the glowing embers of the sunset, and every bush and every shrub was rimmed with a halo of light.

This was the last moment of his warfare. Had his ideal not lifted again before the sight of such magnificence as this, it would inevitably have been the moment of defeat. Through the blackness of the tunnel, it is inviolably decreed that a man must pass before he shall reach the ultimate light; but if, when that journey is accomplished, the sight of beauty, which is only the symbol of the good, if that does not touch him and, with a beckoning hand, raise his mind into the mystery of the infinite, then that immersion in the darkness has not cleansed his soul. He has been tainted with it. It clings like a mist about his eyes, blurring all vision. He has been weighed in the balance that depends from the nerveless hand of Fate, and has been found--wanting.

But as a bird soars, freed from the cage that held it to earth, John's mind rose triumphantly. Acknowledging all the credit that was Amber's due--and but for her, he could not have seen the true beauty, the beauty of symbolism, in that sunset there--he yet had passed unscathed from the depth of the shadow into the heart of the light.

Here was a moment such as they would have known had the story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense come true. Here was a moment when they would have stood, hands touching, hearts beating, seeing God. And yet, though she was hundreds of miles from him then, John's mind had so lifted above the bitterness of despair, had so outstripped the haunting cries of his body, that he could conjure Jill's presence to his side and, in an ecstasy of faith, believe her with him, seeing the beauty that he saw; there.

In the text-books of science, they have no other name for this than hysteria; but in those unwritten volumes--pages unhampered by the deceptive sight of words--a name is given to such moments as these which we have not the eyes to read, nor the simplicity of heart to understand.

Forcing back the rush of tears to his eyes, John passed under the little archway in the wall, mounted the dark stone steps, dragged down the chain, and with the clanging of the heavy bell was brought back, tumbling to reality.

With a rattling of the rings, the heavy curtain was pulled, the little door was thrown open. The next moment, he was gripping Claudina's hand--shaking it till her earrings swung violently to and fro.

Then came his father, the old white-haired gentleman, looking so old to have so young a son.

They just held hands, gazing straight, deep down into each other's eyes.

"God bless you, my boy," said the old man jauntily. He stood with his back to the light. He would not for the world have shown that his eyes were filled with tears. Old men, like little boys, think it babyish to cry--perhaps it is partly because the tears rise so easily.

And last of all, walking slowly, because her paralysis had affected her whole body, as well as rendering powerless her hands, came the little old white-haired lady. There was no attempt from her to hide the tears. They were mixed up in a confusion of happiness with smiles and with laughter in the most charming way in the world.

She just held open her thin, frail arms, and there John buried himself, whispering over and over again in her ear--

"My dearest--my dearest--my dearest----"

And who could blame him if Jill were there still in his mind. There comes a time when a man loves his mother because she is a woman, just as the woman he loves. There comes a time when a mother loves her son, because he is a man just as the man she has loved.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE TRUE MOTHER

It was not that evening that she plied her questions, this gentle, white-haired old lady. That first evening of his arrival, there was John's work to talk of, the success of his last book to discuss, the opinions upon his criticisms to lay down. The old gentleman had decided views upon such matters as these. He talked affirmatively with wise nods of the head, and the bright brown eyes of his wife followed all his gesticulations with silent approval. She nodded her head too. All these things he was saying then, he had said before over and over again to her. Yet they every one of them seemed new when he once more repeated them to John.

This critic had not understood what he had been writing about; that critic had hit the matter straight on the head. This one perhaps was a little too profuse in his praise; that one had struck a note of personal animosity which was a disgrace to the paper for which he wrote.

"Do you know the man who wrote that, John?" he asked in a burst of righteous anger.

John smiled at his father's enthusiasm. One is so much wiser when one is young--one is so much younger when one is old.

"I know him by sight," he said--"we've never met. But he always reviews me like that. I suppose I irritate him."

His mother felt gently for his hand. Without looking down, he found the withered fingers in his.

"How could you irritate him, my darling?" she asked. It seemed an impossibility to her.

"Well--there are always some people whom we irritate by being alive, my dearest. I'm not the only one who annoys him. I expect he annoys himself."

"Ah, yes!" The old gentleman brought down his fist emphatically upon the arm of his chair--"But he should keep these personal feelings out of his work. And yet--I suppose this kind of thing will always exist. Oh--if it only pleased the Lord that His people should be gentlemen!"

So his father talked, giving forth all the enthusiasm of his opinions which for so long had been stored up in the secret of his heart.

It was no longer his own work that interested him; for whatever contempt the artist may have for his wage, he knows his day is past when the public will no longer pay him for his labour. All the heart of him now, was centred in John. It was John who would express those things his own fingers had failed to touch. He had seen it exultantly in many a line, in many a phrase which this last book had contained; for though the mind which had conceived it was a new mind, the mind of another generation than his own, yet it was the upward growth from the thoughts he had cherished, a higher understanding of the very ideas that he had held. He, Thomas Grey, the artist, was living again in John Grey, the writer, the journalist, the driver of the pen. In the mind of his son, was the resurrection of his own intellect, the rejuvenescence of his own powers, the vital link between him, passing into the dust, and those things which are eternal.

It was not until John had been there two or three days, that his mother found her opportunity.

The old gentleman had gone to the Merceria to look after the Treasure Shop. Foscari, it seemed, had been selling some more of his beloved curios. A packet of money had been sent to him the evening before for a set of three Empire fans, treasures he had bought in Paris twenty years before. With a smothered sigh, the little old lady had consented to their going to the Merceria. Only to make a show, he had promised her that. They should never be purchased by anyone, and he put such a price upon them as would frighten the passing tourist out of his wits. It was like Foscari to find a man who was rich enough and fool enough to buy them. With his heart thumping and, for the first time in his life, not quite being able to look John in the eyes, he had made some excuse--a picture to be framed--and gone out, leaving them alone.

This was the very moment John had dreaded. He knew that those bright brown eyes had been reading the deepest corners of his heart, had only been biding their time until such moment as this. He had felt them following him wherever he went; had realised that into everything he did, they were reading the hidden despair of his mind with an intuition so sure, so unerring, that it would be quite useless for him to endeavour to hide anything from her.

And now, at last they were alone. The sun was burning in through the windows into the little room. The old garden below was pale in the heat of it.

For a little while, he stood there at the window in nervous suspense, straining to think of things to say which might distract her mind from that subject which he knew to be uppermost in her thoughts. And all the time his face was turned away as he gazed down on to the old garden, he could still feel her eyes watching him, until at last the growing anticipation that she would break the silence with a question to which he could not reply, drove him blindly to speak.

He talked about his father's pictures; tried in vain to discover whether he had sold enough for their wants, whether the orders he had received were as numerous, whether his strength permitted him to carry them all out. He talked about the thousand things that must have happened, the thousand things they must have done since last he was with them. And everything he said, she answered gently, disregarding all opportunity to force the conversation to the subject upon which her heart was set. But in her eyes, there was a mute, a patient look of appeal.

The true mother is the last woman in the world to beg for confidence. She must win it; then it comes from the heart. In John's silence on that one subject that was so near as to be one with the very centre of her being, it was as though she had lost the power of prayer in that moment of her life when she must need it most.

At last she could bear it no longer. It could not be want of confidence in her, she told herself. He was hurt. Some circumstance, some unhappiness had stung him to silence. Instinctively, she could feel the pain of it. Her heart ached. She knew his must be aching too.

"John," she said at length and she laid both those poor withered hands in his--"John--you're unhappy."

He tried to meet her eyes; but they were too bright; they saw too keenly, and his own fell. The next moment, with straining powerless efforts, she had drawn him on to his knees beside her chair, his head was buried in her lap and her hands were gently stroking his hair in a swift, soothing motion.

"You can tell me everything," she whispered; and oh, the terrible things that fond heart of hers imagined! Terrible things they seemed to her, but they would have brought a smile into John's face despite himself, had he heard them. "You can tell me everything," she whispered again.

"There's nothing to tell, dearest," he replied.

For there was nothing to tell; nothing that she would understand. The pain of his losing Jill, would only become her pain as well, and could she ever judge rightly of Jill's marriage with another man, if she knew? She would only take his side. That dear, good, gentle heart of hers was only capable of judging of things in his favour. She would form an utterly false opinion and, he could not bear that. Much as he needed sympathy, the want of it was better than misunderstanding.

"There's nothing to tell," he repeated.

Still she stroked his head. There was not even one thought of impatience in the touch of her fingers. It may be said without fear or hesitation that a mother at least knows her own child; and this is the way with children when they are in trouble. They will assure you there is nothing to tell. She did not despair at that. For as with John asking his question of Jill in Kensington Gardens, so she asked, because she knew.

"Isn't it about the Lady of St. Joseph?" she said presently. "Isn't that why you're unhappy?"

He rose slowly to his feet. She watched him as he moved aimlessly to the window. It was a moment of suspense. Then he would tell her, then at that moment, or he would close the book and she would not see one figure that was traced so indelibly upon its pages. She held her breath as she watched him. Her hands assumed unconsciously a pathetic gesture of appeal. If she spoke then, it might alter his decision; so she said nothing. Only her eyes begged mutely for his confidence.

Oh--it is impossible of estimate, the worlds, the weight of things infinite, that swung, a torturing balance, in the mind of the little old white-haired lady then. However much emotion may bring dreams of it to the mind of a man, his passion is not the great expression by which he is to be judged; is the woman who loves. It is the man who is loved. He may believe a thousand times that he knows well of the matter; but the great heart, the patience, the forbearance, these are all the woman's and, from such are those little children who are of the kingdom of heaven.

If these qualities belonged to the man, if John had possessed them, he could not have resisted her tender desire for confidence. But when the heart of a man is hurt, he binds his wounds with pride and it is of pride, when one loves, that love knows nothing.

Turning round from the window, John met his mother's eyes.

"There's nothing to tell, dear," he said bitterly. "Don't ask me--there's nothing to tell."

Her hands dropped their pathetic gesture. She laid them quietly in her lap. If the suffering of pain can be reproach, and perhaps that is the only reproach God knows of in us humans, then, there it was in her eyes. John saw it and he did not need for understanding to answer to the silence of its cry. In a moment he was by her side again, his arms thrown impulsively about her neck, his lips kissing the soft, wrinkled cheek. What did it matter how he disarranged the little lace cap set so daintily on her head, or how disordered he made her appearance in his sudden emotion? Nothing mattered so long as he told her everything.

"Don't think I'm unkind, little mother. I can't talk about it--that's all. Besides--there's nothing--absolutely nothing to say. I don't suppose I shall ever see her again. We were just friends, that's all--only friends."

Even this was more than he could bear to say. He stood up again quickly to force back the tears that were swelling in his throat. Tears do not become a man. It is the most reasonable, the most natural thing in the world that he should abominate them, and so he seldom, if ever, knows the wonderful moment it is in the life of a woman when he cries like a baby on her shoulder. It is only right that it should be so. Women know their power well enough as it is. And in such a moment as this, they realise their absolute omnipotence.

And this is just why nature decrees that it is weak, that it is foolish for a man to shed tears in the presence of a woman. Undoubtedly nature is right.

Before they had well risen to his eyes, John had left the room. In the shadows of the archway beneath the house, he was brushing them roughly from his cheek while upstairs the gentle old lady sat just where he had left her, thinking of the thousands of reasons why he would never see the lady of St. Joseph again.

She was going away. She did not love him. They had quarrelled. After an hour's contemplation, she decided upon the last. They had quarrelled.

Then she set straight her cap.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE TREASURE SHOP

At a quiet corner in the Merceria, stood the Treasure Shop. In every respect it had all the features which these little warehouses of the world's curiosities usually present. Long chains of old copper vessels hung down, on each side of the doorway, reaching almost to the ground. Old brass braziers and incense burners stood on the pavement outside and, in the window, lay the oddest, the wildest assortment of those objects of antiquity--brass candlesticks, old fans, hour-glasses, gondola lamps, every conceivable thing which the dust of Time has enhanced in value in the eyes of a sentimental public.

At the back of the window were hung silk stuffs and satin, rich old brocades and pieces of tapestry--just that dull, burnished background which gives a flavour of age as though with the faint scent of must and decay that can be detected in its withering threads.

All these materials, hanging there, shut out the light from the shop inside. Across the doorstep, the sun shone brilliantly, but, as though there were some hand forbidding it, it advanced no further. Within the shop, was all the deepest of shadow--shadow like heavy velvet from which permeated this dry and dusty odour of a vanished multitude of years.

The Treasure Shop was a most apt name for it. In that uncertain light within, you could just imagine that your fingers, idly fumbling amongst the numberless objects, might chance upon a jewelled casket holding the sacred dust of the heart of some Roman Emperor or the lock of some dead queen's hair.

Atmosphere has all the wizardry of a necromancer. In this dim, faded light, in this faint, musty smell of age, the newest clay out of a living potter's hands would take upon itself the halo of romance. The touch of dead fingers would cling to it, the scent of forgotten rose leaves out of gardens now long deserted would hover about the scarce cold clay. And out of the sunshine, stepping into this subtle atmospheric spell, the eyes of all but those who know its magic are wrapt in a web of illusion; the Present slips from them as a cloak from the willing shoulders; they are touching the Past.

Just such a place was the Treasure Shop. Its atmosphere was all this and more. Sitting there on a stool behind his heaped-up counter, in the midst of this chaos of years, the old gentleman was no longer a simple painter of landscape, but an old eccentric, whose every look and every gesture were begotten of his strange and mysterious acquaintance with the Past.

It came to be known of him that he was loth to part with his wares. It came to be told of him in the hotels that he was a strange old man who had lived so long in his musty environment of dead people's belongings that he could not bring himself to sell them; as though the spirits of those departed owners abode with him as well, and laid their cold hands upon his heart whenever he would try to sell the treasures they once had cherished.

And all this was the necromancy of the atmosphere in that little curio shop in the Merceria. But to us, who know all about it, whose eyes are not blinded with the glamour of illusion, there is little or nothing of the eccentric about Thomas Grey.

It is not eccentric to have a heart--it is the most common possession of humanity. It is not eccentric to treasure those things which are our own, which have shared life with us, which have become a part of ourselves; it is not eccentric to treasure them more than the simpler necessities of existence. We all of us do that, though fear of the accusation of sentimentality will not often allow us to admit it. It is not eccentric to put away one's pride, to take a lower seat at the guest's table in order that those we love shall have a higher place in the eyes of the company. We all would do that also, if we obeyed the gentle voice that speaks within everyone of us.

But if by chance this judgment is all at fault; if by chance it is eccentric to do these things, then this was the eccentricity of that white-haired old gentleman--Thomas Grey.

Whenever a customer--and ninety per cent. of them were tourists--came into the shop, he treated them with undisguised suspicion. They had a way of hitting upon those very things which he valued most--those very things which he only meant to be on show in his little window.

Of course, when they selected something which he had only recently acquired, his manner was courtesy itself. He could not say very much in its favour, but then, the price was proportionately small. Under circumstances such as these, they found him charming. But if they happened to cast their eyes upon that Dresden-china figure which stood so boldly in the fore-front of the window; if by hazard they coveted the set of old ivory chess men, oh, you should have seen the frown that crossed his forehead then! It was quite ominous.

"Well--that is very expensive," he always said and made no offer to remove it from its place.

And sometimes they replied----

"Oh, yes--I expect so. I didn't think it would be cheap. It's so beautiful, isn't it? Of course--really--really old."

And it was so hard to withstand the flattery of that. A smile of pleasure would lurk for a moment about his eyes. He would lean forward through the dark curtains of brocades and tapestries and reach it down for inspection.

"It is," he would say in the gratified tone of the true collector--"It is the most perfect specimen I have ever seen. You see the work here--this glaze, that colour----" and in a moment, before he was aware of what he was doing, he would be pointing out its merits with a quivering finger of pride.

"Oh, yes--I think I must have it," the customer would suddenly say--"I can't miss the opportunity. It would go so well with the things in my collection."

Then the old gentleman realised his folly. Then the frown returned, redoubled in its forbidding scowl. He began putting the Dresden figure back again in the window from whence it had come.

"But I said I'd take it," the customer would exclaim more eager than ever for its possession.

"Yes--yes--I know--but the price is--well it's prohibitive. I want seventy-five pounds for that figure."

"Seventy-five!"

"Yes--I can't take anything less."

"Oh----" and a look of disappointment and dismay.

"You don't want it?" he would ask eagerly.

"No--I can't pay as much as that."

Then the smile would creep back again into his eyes.

"Of course--it's a beautiful thing," he would say clumsily--"a beautiful thing."

And when he went home, he would tell the little old white-haired lady how much it had been admired, and they would call back to memory the day when they had bought it--so long ago that it seemed as though they were quite young people then.

So it fell out that this old gentleman of the curio shop in the Merceria came to be known for his seeming eccentricities. People talked of him. They told amusing stories of his strange methods of doing business.

"Do you know the Treasure Shop in the Merceria," they said over the dinner tables in London when they wanted to show how intimately they knew their Europe. "The old man who owns that--there's a character for you!" They even grew to making up anecdotes about him, to show how keenly observant they were when abroad. Everyone, even Smelfungus and Mundungus, would be thought sentimental travellers if they could.

It was the most natural coincidence in the world then, that John, strolling aimlessly in the arcades of the Square of St. Mark's that morning after he had left his mother, should overhear a conversation in which the eccentric old gentleman in the Merceria was introduced.

Outside Lavena's two women were taking coffee, as all well-cultured travellers do.

"--my shopping in Kensington----" he heard one of them say, concluding some reference to a topic which they were discussing.

John took a table near by. It is inevitable with some people to talk of Kensington and Herne Hill when abroad. John blessed them for it, nevertheless. There was that sound in the word to him then, which was worth a vision of all the cities of Europe.

He ordered his cup of coffee and listened eagerly for more. But that was the last they said of Kensington. The lady flitted off to other topics. She spoke to her friend of the curio shop in the Merceria.

Did she know the place? Well, of course not, if she had not been to Venice before. It was called the Treasure Shop. She had found it out for herself. But, then, it always was her object, when abroad, to become intimate with the life of the city in which she happened to be staying. It was the only way to know places. Sight-seeing was absolutely waste of time. And this old gentleman was really a character--so unbusiness-like--so typically Italian! Of course, he spoke English perfectly--but, then, foreigners always do. No--she could not speak Italian fluently--make herself understood at table, and all that sort of thing--anyhow, enough to get along. But, to go back to the old gentleman in the Treasure Shop, she ought to go and see him before she left Venice. She was going early the next week? Oh--then, she ought to go that morning. He was such a delightful personality. So fond of the curios in his shop that he could scarcely be persuaded to part with them. There was one thing in particular, a Dresden figure, which he had in the front of the window. He would not part with that to anyone. Well--asked such a price for it that, of course, no one bought it.

But would it not be rather amusing if someone did actually agree to pay the price--not really, of course, only in fun, restoring it the next day, but just to see how he would take it? Was she really going next week? Then why not go and see the Treasure Shop at once? She would? Oh--that was quite splendid!

And off they went, John following quietly at their heels. This old Italian who could not bear to part with his wares because he loved them so much, there was something pathetic in that; something that appealed to John's sense of the colour in life. This was a little incident of faded brown, that dull, warm tint of a late October day when life is beginning to shed its withering leaves, when the trees, with that network of bare, stripped branches, are just putting on their faded lace. However unsympathetic had been the telling, he had seen the colour of it all with his own eyes. He followed them eagerly, anxious to behold this old Italian gentleman for himself, to confirm his own judgment of the pathos of it all.

Letting them enter first, for he had no desire to listen to their dealings, he took his position outside the window, intending to wait till they came out.

There was the Dresden figure the lady had mentioned. Ah! No wonder that he asked a large price for it! They had one just like that at the Palazzo Capello. His father had often said that if he could get a pair of them, they would be almost priceless. Supposing he bought it for his father? Would it be cruel to the old gentleman inside? Perhaps, if he knew that it was to make a pair, he would be more reconciled to its loss.

John waited patiently, gazing about him until the ladies should come out and leave the field free for him to make his study--his study in a colour of brown.

Presently the draperies in the back of the window were pulled aside. An old man leaned forward, hands trembling in the strain of his position, reaching for the Dresden figure. John bit on the exclamation that rose to his lips.

It was his father! Had he seen him? No! He slipped back again into the darkness of the shop and the brocades and the tapestries fell together once more into their place as though nothing had happened.

What did it mean? Was it true? With an effort, he held back from his inclination to rush into the shop, making sure of the reality of what he had seen. If it were true, then he knew that his father had not meant him to know. If it were true, he knew what the pain of such a meeting would be.

Crossing to the opposite side of the street, he tried to peer in through the shop door; but there was that clear-cut ray of sunshine on the step, barring the entrance. Only vaguely, like dim, black shadows on a deep web of gloom, could he see the moving figures of the two ladies who had entered. On an impulse, he turned into the magazzino by which he was standing.

Who was the owner of the curio shop on the other side? They did not know. What was his name? They could not say? Had he been there long? Not so very long. About a year. He was an Englishman, but he spoke Italian. He lived in Venice. They had heard some say in the Rio Marin. He was not used to the trade. It was quite true that he did not like to sell his things. They had been told he was a painter--but that was only what people said.

That was sufficient. They needed to say no more. This answered the questions that John had put that morning to his mother. His father could no longer sell his pictures. In a rush of light, he saw the whole story, far more pathetic to him than he had imagined with his study in brown.

One by one, they were selling the treasures they had collected. Now, he understood the meaning of those empty night-caps which Claudina carried away with her every evening. They said the things were broken; they had said it with nervous little glances at each other and then at Claudina. At the time, he had read those glances to mean that it was Claudina who had broken them. But no--it was not Claudina. This was the work of the heavy, the ruthless hand of cruel circumstance in which the frailest china and the sternest metal can be crushed into the dust of destruction.

In a moment, as it was all made clear, John found the tears smarting in his eyes. As he stood there in the little shop opposite, he painted the whole picture with rapid strokes of the imagination.

The day had come when his father could no longer sell his pictures. Then the two white heads had nodded together of an evening before Claudina came in with the night-caps. More emphatically than ever, they had exclaimed--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?" And Claudina, laying the box on the table, beginning to take out the night-caps and place forth the treasures before she tucked them up, would vouchsafe the answering nod of her head. At last, one evening, watching the Dresden figure being put to bed, his father had thought of the way out of the difficulty.

They had not decided upon it at once. Such determinations as these come from the head alone and have to pass before a stern tribunal of the heart before license is given them. He could just imagine how bitter a tribunal that had been; how inflexibly those two brave hearts had sat in judgment upon so hard a matter; how reluctantly in the end they had given their consent.

Then, with the moment once passed, the license once granted, John could see them so vividly, questioning whether they should tell him, their decision that it would not be wise, his father fearing that it would lessen his esteem, his mother dreading that he would feel called upon to help them. Finally, that first day, when the Treasure Shop had been opened and his father, the artist, the man of temperament, with all the finest perceptions and sensibilities that human nature possesses, had gone to business.

So truly he could see the moment of his departure. Nothing had been said. He had just taken the little old white-haired lady in his arms and kissed her. That was all. It might have been that he was merely going out, as he had quietly said that morning, to see about the framing of a picture. No one would ever have thought that he was about to pass through the ordeal of becoming a shop-keeper, because, in his old age he had failed as an artist.

All this, incident by incident, he painted, a sequence of pictures in his mind.

Presently the curtains in the shop-window stirred again. John's eyes steadied, his lips parted as he held his breath. The Dresden figure appeared, like a marionet making its bow to the public. Then followed the head and shoulders of his father. There was a smile on his face, a glow of genial satisfaction. They had not bought it. The price had been too much. That little Dresden figure, playing upon its lute, decoyed many a customer into the Treasure Shop, with its living tunes; but like a will-o'-the-wisp, it always evaded them. Back it danced again into the fore-front of the window where the old ivory chess-men stood stolidly listening to its music of enchantment. You might almost have seen them nodding their heads in approval.

John felt a lump rise quickly in his throat. He knew just what his father was feeling; he knew just what was in his mind. He realised all his sense of relief when the Dresden figure made its reappearance. If it had not come back into the window, he could not have restrained his desire to march into the shop and repeat every word of the conversation to which he had listened.

But it was safe once more and, with a breath of satisfaction, he moved away towards the Rialto, his head hanging as he walked.

That afternoon at tea, with the little cups that had no handles, he made no comment on his father's absence. The little old white-haired lady was trembling that he would ask, but he said not a word.

Only that evening, after Claudina had come in for her ceremony and he was saying good-night, he put both hands on his father's shoulders and, impulsively drawing him forward, kissed his forehead. Then he left the room.

The two old people sat staring at each other after he had gone. What did it mean? Why had he done it?

"Why, he hasn't kissed you since he was eight years old," said his mother.

The old gentleman shook his head thoughtfully--"No--I can't understand it. Don't you remember that first evening he refused, when I bent down to kiss him and he blushed, drew back a little and held out his hand?"

She smiled.

"You were hurt about it at first," she reminded him.

"Yes--but then when you said--'John's thinking about becoming a man'--of course, it seemed natural enough then. And he's never done it since--till now. I wonder why."

The old gentleman went to bed very, very silent that night, and long after Claudina had taken away the lamp, he could feel John's lips burning on his forehead and the blood burning in his cheeks. Something had happened. He could not quite understand what it was. Some change had taken place. He felt quite embarrassed; but he fell asleep before he could realise that he was feeling just what John had felt that night when he was eight years old. That was what had happened--that was the change. The child was now father to the man--and the man was feeling the first embarrassment of the child--so the last link had been forged between the irrevocable past and the eternal present.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CANDLE FOR ST. ANTHONY

If you know aught of the history of Venice; if the strenuous efforts of all those little lives that have done their work and lived their day in that vast multitude of human ephemera should have any meaning for you; if, in the flames of colour that have glowed and vanished in the brazier of Time, you can see faces and dream dreams of all that romantic story, then it is no wasting of a sunny morning to sit alone upon the Piazetta, your face turned towards San Giorgio Maggiore and, with the sun glinting upwards from the glittering water, weave your visions of great adventure in the diaphanous mist of light.

It was in such a way as this that John was spending one day when he could not work, when the little old white-haired lady was busy with Claudina over the duties of the house, when his father had departed upon that engrossing errand of seeing to the framing of a picture.

The sun was a burning disc, white hot in a smelter's furnace. A few white sails of cloud lay becalmed, inert, asleep in a sky of turquoise. John sat there blinking his eyes and the windows in the houses on San Giorgio blinked back in sleepy recognition as though the heat was more than they could bear. Away down the Giudecca, the thin bare masts of the clustering vessels tapered into the still air--giant sea-grass, which the sickle of a storm can mow down like rushes that grow by the river's edge. Their reflections wriggled like a nest of snakes in the dancing water, the only moving thing in that sleepy day. Everything else was noiseless; everything else was still.

John gazed at it all through half-closed eyes, till the point of the Campanile across the water seemed to melt in the quivering haze, and the dome of the chiesa was lost in the light where the sun fell on it. What had changed? What was different to his eyes that had been for the eyes of those thousands of workers who had toiled and fought, lived and died, like myriads of insects to build this timeless city of light, this City of Beautiful Nonsense? What had altered? A few coping stones, perhaps, a few mosaics renewed; but that was all. It was just the same as it had been in the days of the Council of Ten; just the same as when Petrarch, from his window on the Riva degli Schiavona, sat watching the monster galleys ride out in all their pomp and blazonry across the pearl and opal waters of the lagoons.

In another moment the present would have slipped from him; he would have been one of the crowd upon the Piazetta, watching the glorious argosy of Domenico Michieli returning from the Holy Land, with its sacred burdens of the bodies of St. Isidore from Chios and S. Donato from Cephalonia; in another moment he would have been seeing them unload their wondrous spoils of the East, their scents and their spices, their silks and their sandalwood, had not a most modern of modern hawkers, his little tray slung by straps from his shoulder, chosen him out for prey.

"Rare coins, signor," he said--"coins from every country in the world."

And for the price of one lira, he offered John an English penny.

John looked him up and down.

"Is this your idea of humour?" he asked in Italian.

The man emphatically shook his head.

"Oh, no, signor! It is a rare coin."

John turned away in disgust.

"You'd better go and learn your business," he said. "That's an English penny. It's only worth ten centesimi."

The hawker shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He had got the coin from a Greek whose ship lay in the Giudecca there. It was no good saying what the Greek had said. The signor would never believe him. He cast a wandering eye at the ships and shrugged his shoulders once more.

John watched his retreating figure with a sense of irritation--irritation because the man had gone away thinking him an English fool--irritation because, unasked, the hawker had betrayed to him his loss of a sense of humour.

To be offered an English penny for one lira! To be told quite seriously that it was a rare coin! And to take it in all seriousness; to go to the trouble of saying in an injured voice that it was only worth ten centesimi! Was this what he had fallen to? Was his sense of humour so far gone as this? Of course it was a rare coin! Had there not been times when an English penny would have saved him from the dire awkwardness of an impossible position. How about the chair in Kensington Gardens? How about the friend who mounted the 'bus with him in the cheerful expectation that he was going to pay? Of course it was a rare coin! Why, there were times when it was worth a hundred lire!

He called the hawker back.

"Give me that coin," he said.

The man took it out with a grin of surprise.

"It cost me half a lira, signor," he said, which was a lie. But he told it so excellently that John paid him his price.

"Do you think they'll find it worth a candle at the shrine of St. Anthony?" asked John.

"You have lost something, signor?"

He said it so sympathetically.

"My sense of humour," said John, and off he strode to St. Mark's, the hawker gazing after him.

Without laughter in it, the voice is a broken reed; without laughter in it, the heart is a stone, dullened by a flaw; without laughter in it, even a prayer has not the lightness or the buoyancy of breath to rise heavenwards.

Can there be one woman in the world who has never prayed to St. Anthony in all seriousness for some impossible request which, by rights, she should have enquired for at the nearest lost property office--for a lost lock of hair that was not her own--one of those locks of hair that she ties to the wardrobe in the morning and combs out with all the seriousness in the world? Surely there must have been one out of the thousands? Then why not for a lost sense of humour? There is no office in the world that will return you such valuable property as that, once it has slipped your fingers. He has the sense himself, has St. Anthony. Think of the things he has found for you in your own hands, the jewels that he has discovered for you clasped about your own neck! Why, to be sure, he must have a sense of humour. And if it is impossible to pay an English penny for his candle in an Italian church--an English penny, mind you, which has profited some poor beggar by the sum of one lira; if it is a sacrilege, a levity, to ask him for the return of so invaluable a quality as a lost gift of laughter, then why pray at all, for without laughter in it, even a prayer has not the lightness or the buoyancy of breath to rise heavenwards.

If, when one drops upon one's knees at night and, beginning to deceive oneself in one's voluntary confessions, making oneself seem a fine fellow by tardy admissions of virtue and tactful omissions of wrong, if when one shows such delightful humanity in one's prayers as this, and cannot laugh at oneself at the same time, cannot see that it is but a cheating at a game of Patience, then it might be as well not to pray at all. For the humour in which a prayer is prayed, is the humour in which a prayer will be judged, and if, seriously, one deceives oneself into believing that one is a fine fellow, just so seriously will that deceit be weighed; for there are mighty few of us who are fine fellows, which is a great pity, for so mighty few of us to know it.

By the time John had reached the shrine of St. Anthony in the Duomo, by the time his English penny had rattled in the box along with all the other Italian coins, by the time the first words of his prayer were framed upon his lips, a laugh began to twinkle in his eyes; he had found his sense of humour, he had found his gift of laughter once more. It was in his own prayer. Before he could utter it, he was smiling to think how St. Anthony must be amused by the whole incident. Then, all it needed was for him to be grateful and, dropping his head in his hands, he expressed his gratitude by asking for other things.

St. Mark's is one of the few churches in the world where you can pray--one of the few churches in the world where they have not driven God out of the Temple, like a common money-changer, driven Him out by gaudy finery, by motley and tinsel. Mass at the High Altar there, is the great Passion Play it was meant to be, performed upon a stage unhung with violent colours, undecked with tawdry gems. They had no pandering fear of the God they worshipped, when they built that theatre of Christianity in the great Square of St. Mark's. The drama of all that wonderful story has a fit setting there. No stage is lit quite like it; no tragedy is so tragic in all its awful solemnity as when they perform the Mass in the duomo of St. Mark's. As the Host is elevated, as that sonorous bell rings out its thrilling chime and as the thousand heads sink down within two thousand hands, a spirit indeed is rushing upwards in a lightning passage to its God.

Once his head was bowed, once his eyes were closed, John was lost in the contemplation of his prayer. He did not observe the party of people who came by. He raised his head, but his eyes were fixed before him towards the little shrine. He did not see one separate herself from the party, did not notice her slip away unobserved and, coming back when they had gone on, seat herself on the chair close by his side.

Only when his thoughts were ended, when St. Anthony had listened to all that he had lost, to all the aching story of his heart, did he turn to find what St. Anthony had brought him.

His lips trembled. He rubbed and rubbed his eyes.

There on the seat beside him, her hands half pleading, her eyes set ready to meet his own, sat Jill.

CHAPTER XXX

THE QUALITIES OF IGNATIA

In amazement, John put out his hand. He touched her to see if she was real. Her hand answered. She caught his finger. Then she let it fall.

"Are you sorry?" she whispered.

He looked up at the image of St. Anthony, then back at her; around the church, then back once more at her.

"Where have you come from?" he asked.

"From home--from London."

"When?"

"I arrived last night."

"Alone?"

"No! No! With the Crossthwaites."

"Then what has happened?"

"Why--nothing has happened--and----" her voice dropped below the whisper--that strange pitch in which you hear not a syllable, yet know the worst--"and everything has happened."

"You're going to be married?"

It sounded no less terrible in his voice because he knew it.

"Yes."

"Then why have you come here?"

"The Crossthwaites were going. They asked me to come too. It was the only chance I knew I should ever have--our City of Beautiful Nonsense--I had to come."

Still John gazed at her, as though she were unreal. One does not always believe one's own eyes, for there are some things, which the readiness to see will constitute the power of vision. He put out his hand again.

"I can hardly believe it," he said slowly. "Here, just a minute ago, I was telling St. Anthony all I had lost. You--the best thing in my life--my ideal as well--even my sense of humour."

She looked up at his face wondering. There had been strange lost things for which she had prayed to St. Anthony--things to which only a woman can act as valuer. But to pray for a lost sense of humour. She touched the hand that he put out.

"You're very funny," she said gently--"You're very quaint. Do you think you'll find the sense of humour again?"

"I've found it," said John.

"Already?"

"Yes--already." One eye lifted to St. Anthony.

Then he told her about the hawker and that rare, that valuable coin--the English penny--and in two minutes, they were laughing with their heads in their hands.

This is not a reverent thing to do in a church. The least that you can offer, is to hide your face, or, turning quickly to the burial service in the prayer-book--granted that you understand Latin--read that. Failing that of burial, the service of matrimony will do just as well.

But before the image of St. Anthony, to whom you have been praying for a lost gift of laughter--well, you may be sure that St. Anthony will excuse it. After all, it is only a compliment to his powers; and the quality of saintliness, being nothing without its relation to humanity, must surely argue some little weakness somewhere. What better then than the pride that is pardonable?

At length, when she had answered all his questions, when he had answered all hers, they rose reluctantly to their feet.

"I must go back to them," she said regretfully.

"But I shall see you again?"

"Oh, yes."

"Does Mrs. Crossthwaite know that you have seen me?"

"Yes. Her husband doesn't. He wouldn't understand."

John smiled.

"Men never do," said he. "They have too keen a sense of what is wrong for other people. When shall I see you?"

"This afternoon."

"Where?"

"Anywhere----" she paused.

"You were going to say something," said John quickly. "What is it?"

She looked away. In the scheme of this world's anomalies, there is such a thing as a duty to oneself. They have not thought it wise to write it in the catechism, for truly it is but capable of so indefinite a rendering into language, that it would be only dangerous to set it forth. For language, after all, is merely a sound box, full of words, in the noisy rattling of which, the finer expression of all thought is lost.

But a thousand times, Jill had thought of it--that duty. Its phrases form quite readily in the mind; they construct themselves with ease; the words flow merrily.

Why, she had asked herself, should she sacrifice her happiness to the welfare of those who had brought her into the world? What claim had they upon her, who had never questioned her as to a desire for existence?

All this is so simply said. Its justice is so palpably apparent. And if she had gained nothing herself by the transaction, it would have been so easy of following. But the mere knowledge that she stood to win the very heart of her desire at the cost of some others' welfare, filled her with the apprehension that she was only inventing this duty of self for her own gratification, as a narcotic to the sleeplessness of her own conscience.

The education of the sex has so persistently driven out egotism from their natures, that the woman who finds paramount the importance of herself, has but a small place in this modern community.

Fast in her very blood, was bred in Jill that complete annihilation of selfishness, that absolute abandonment to Destiny. Strive as she might, she could not place her own desires before the needs of her father and mother; she could not see the first essential of happiness in that gain to herself which would crush the prospects of her brother Ronald.

To such women as these--and notwithstanding the advent of the tradeswoman into the sex, there are many--to be able to give all, is their embarrassment of riches, to withhold nothing is their conception of wealth.

In the ideal which she had formed of John, Jill knew that he was possessed of more in himself, than ever would be the bounty bequeathed to those three people dependent upon her generosity. And so, she had given her consent of marriage to one, whom she might have valued as a friend, whom, as a man, she respected in every way, but who well, since brevity is invaluable--like poor St. Joseph, had a brown beard.

All this, in the pause that had followed John's question, had passed for the thousandth time through Jill's mind, bringing her inevitably once more to the realisation of her duty to others. And when he pressed her again, offering, not perhaps the penny for her thoughts, but an equivalent, just as valuable as that most valuable of coins, the promise of his eyes, she shook her head.

"Ah, but you were going to say something!" he pleaded.

"I was going to ask you," said she, "if you would take me to see your people." She hesitated. "I--I want to have tea with them out of the little blue and white cups with no handles. I want to go and buy lace with the little old white-haired lady in the arcades."

He seized her hand so that she winced.

"You've not forgotten! You shall come this afternoon." And there, with a smile, she left him, still standing by the silent image of St. Anthony; and, gratitude being that part of prayer which belongs to the heart and has nothing in common with delay, John knelt down again. When Jill looked back over her shoulder, his head was buried in his hands.

The little old white-haired lady was waiting over the mid-day meal for him when he returned. His father had taken his food and gone out again, leaving her alone to keep John company. She was sitting patiently there at the head of the table and, by the side of her empty plate, stood a small bottle containing white pills, over which she hurriedly laid her hand as he entered.

But clever as they are, in their cunning, childish ways, old people lose all the superior craft of deceit. They go back to childhood when they imagine that once a thing is hidden, it is out of sight. That is not at all the case. There comes a moment when it is too late to conceal; when curiosity will bring the hidden thing twice vividly before the eyes. Under the very nose of John, was the best place for that secret bottle of pills, had she needed it not to be seen.

As it was, his eyes travelled more quickly than her hand. She made a gentle little effort to hide her concern as well. She smiled up at him, asking where he had been. But it would not do. The child is parent to the man, he is parent to the woman too--a stern parent, moreover, who will brook no simple trifling with his authority, who overlooks nothing and whose judgments are the blind record of an implacable justice. John could not let that little deception pass. Instead of answering her question, instead of taking his place at the table, he came to her side and put one arm gently round her neck.

"What are you hiding, dearest?" he asked.

Like a child, who is discovered in the act of nefarious negotiations with the good things of this world, she quietly took her hand away. There stood the innocent little bottle in all its nakedness. John stared at it questioningly--then at his mother.

"Is it something that you have to take, dearest?" he asked. "Aren't you well?"

"Yes, I'm quite well," she said, and she played nervously with the cork in the little bottle. It was a delicate subject. She began to wish that she had never embarked upon it at all. But faith brings with it a rare quality of courage, and so firmly did she believe, with the quaint simplicity of her heart, in the course she had determined to adopt, that the wish broke like a bubble on the moment.

"Well, what is in the bottle?" persisted John.

"Ignatia."

There was just the faintness of a whisper in her voice. She had not found full courage as yet. Even in their firmest beliefs, old people are pursued by the fear of being thought foolish. The new generation always frightens them; it knows so much more than they.

"Ignatia?" John repeated.

"Yes--I--I want you to take it."

She began uncorking the bottle.

"Me? What for? I'm all right. I'm not ill."

"No--but----" she paused.

"But what?"

"It'll do you good. Try it, to please me."

She hid her white head against his coat.

"But what for, dearest?"

"Have you never heard of Ignatia?" she asked.

John shook his head.

"It's a plant. It's a homeopathic medicine. It's a cure for all sorts of things. People take it when their nerves are bad, for worry, for insomnia. It's a cure for trouble when--when you're in love."

She said it so simply, in such fear that he would laugh; but when he looked down and found the hopefulness in her eyes, laughter was impossible. He caught it back, but his nostrils quivered.

"And do you want to cure me of being in love?" he asked with a straightened face.

"I thought you'd be happier, my dear, if you could get over it."

"So you recommend Ignatia?"

"I've known it do wonders," she asserted. "Poor Claudina was very much in love with a worthless fellow--Tina--one of the gondolier!--surely you remember him. He lived on the Giudecca."

John nodded smiling.

"Well, she came to me one day, crying her heart out. She declared she was in love with the most worthless man in the whole of Venice. 'Get over it then, Claudina,' I said. But she assured me that it was impossible. He had only to put up his little finger, she said and she had to go to his beckoning, if only to tell him how worthless she thought he was. Well--I prescribed Ignatia, and she was cured of it in a week. She laughs when she talks about him now."

John was forced to smile, but as quickly it died away.

"And is that what you want me to do?" he asked. "Do you want me to be able to laugh when I talk about the lady of St. Joseph? You'd be as sorry as I should, if I did. It would hurt you as much as it would me."

"Then you won't take it, John?" She looked up imploringly into his face.

"No--no charms or potions for me. Besides--" he bent down close to her ear--"the lady of St. Joseph is in Venice. She's coming to see you this afternoon."

With a little cry of delight, she threw the bottle of Ignatia down upon the table and caught his face in her trembling hands.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE SACRIFICE

A belief in Ignatia argues a ready disposition for Romance.

The mind of the little old white-haired lady belonged to that period when love was a visitation only to be cured by the use of simples, herbs, and magic. She called the treatment--homeopathic. It was her gentle way of assuring herself that she marched bravely with the times; that the superstition of the Middle-Ages had nothing whatever to do with it.

This is all very well; but there is no such scientific name for the portents told by the flight of a magpie; you cannot take shelter behind fine-sounding words when you admit to the good fortune brought by a black cat; there is no marching with the times for you, if you are impelled to throw salt over your left shoulder. You are not stepping it with the new generation then. And all these things were essentials in the life of the little old white-haired lady. Certainly there were no flights of magpies over the tiny Italian garden at the back of the Palazzo Capello to disturb the peace of her mind with joyous or terrible prognostications. But the resources of an old lady's suspicions are not exhausted in a flight of magpies. Oh, no! She has many more expedients than that.

The very day before John's announcement of the advent of the lady of St. Joseph to Venice, she had seen the new moon, a slim silver sickle, over her right shoulder. There is good omen in that. She had gone to bed the happier because of it. What it betokened, it was not in the range of her knowledge at the time to conceive. Destiny, in these matters, as in many others, is not so outspoken as it might be. But immediately John told her, she remembered that little slip of a moon. Then this was what it had heralded--the coming of the lady of St. Joseph.

As soon as their meal was finished, John went out to the Piazza, the meeting place which he had arranged with Jill, leaving his mother and Claudina to make all preparations for his return. How fast the heart of the little old white-haired lady beat then, it would be difficult to say. She was as excited as when Claudina put the treasures away to bed in their night-caps. Her little brown eyes sparkled, for a party to old people is much the same as is a party to a child. The preparations for it are the whirlwind that carries the imagination into the vortex of the event. And this, for which she was getting ready, was all illuminated with the halo of Romance.

Sometimes, perhaps, a wave of jealousy would bring the blood warmly to her cheeks. Supposing the lady of St. Joseph was not equal to her expectations? Supposing she did not fulfil her hopes and demands of the woman whom she had destined in her mind to be the wife of her son? How could she tell him? How could she warn him that he was unwise? How could she show him that the woman he loved was unworthy of him? It would be a difficult task to accomplish; but her lips set tight at the thought of it. She would shirk no duty so grave or serious as that.