The Veiled Lady, and Other Men and Women Part 4

Their minds were made up. Father Garola had promised, and they knew exactly what to do, and when and where to do it. In the meantime the Riva was a pathway of rose-tinted clouds constructed for the especial use of two angels, one of whom wore a straw hat with a red ribbon canted over his sunburnt face, and the other a black shawl with silken fringe, whose every movement suggested a caress.

The one disgruntled person was Francesco.

He had supposed at first that, like the others, Vittorio would find out his mistake;--certainly when he looked closely into the pure eyes of the girl, and that then, like the others, he would give up the chase;--he not being the first gay Lothario who had been taught just such a lesson.

Loretta's answer to the schemer, given with a toss of her head and a curl of her lips, closed Francesco's mouth and set his brain in a whirl. In his astonishment he had long talks with his father, the two seated in their boat against the Garden wall so no one could overhear.

Once he approached Luigi and began a tale, first about Vittorio and his escapades and then about Loretta and her coquetry, which Luigi strangled with a look, and which he did not discuss or repeat to me, except to remark--"They have started in to bite, Signore," the meaning of which I could but guess at. At another time he and his a.s.sociates concocted a scheme by which Vittorio's foot was to slip as he was leaving Loretta at the door, and he be fished out of the ca.n.a.l with his pretty clothes begrimed with mud;--a scheme which was checked when they began to examine the young gondolier the closer, and which was entirely abandoned when they learned that his father was often employed about the palace of the king. In these projected attacks, strange to say, the girl's mother took part. Her hope in keeping her home was in Loretta's marrying Francesco.

Then, dog as he was, he tried the other plan--all this I got from Luigi, he sitting beside me, sharpening charcoal points, handing me a fresh brush, squeezing out a tube of color on my palette: nothing like a romance to a staid old painter; and then, were not both of us in the conspiracy as abettors, and up to our eyes in the plot?

This other plan was to traduce the girl. So the gondoliers on the traghetto began to talk,--behind their hands, at first: She had lived in Francesco's house; she had had a dozen young fishermen trapesing after her; her mother, too, was none too good. Then again, you could never trust these Neapolitans,--the kitten might be like the cat, etc., etc.

Still the lovers floated up and down the Riva, their feet on clouds, their heads in the heavens. Never a day did he miss, and always with a wave of her hand to me as they pa.s.sed: down to Malamocco on Sundays with another girl as chaperon, or over to Mestre by boat for the festa, coming home in the moonlight, the tip of his cigarette alone lighting her face.

One morning--the lovers had only been waiting for their month's pay--Luigi came sailing down the ca.n.a.l to my lodgings, his gondola in gala attire,--bunches of flowers tied at each corner of the tenda; a ma.s.s of blossoms in the lamp socket; he himself in his best white suit, a new red sash around his waist--his own colors--and off we went to San Rosario up the Giudecca. And the Borodinis turned out in great force, and so did all the other 'inis, and 'olas, and 'ninos--dozens of them--and in came Loretta, so beautiful that everybody held his breath; and we all gathered about the altar, and good Father Garola stepped down and took their hands; and two candles were lighted and a little bell rang; and then somebody signed a book--somebody with the bearing of a prince--Borodini, I think--and then Luigi, his rich, sunburned face and throat in contrast with his white s.h.i.+rt, moved up and affixed his name to the register; and then a door opened on the side and they all went out into the sunlight.

I followed and watched the gay procession on its way to the waiting boats. As I neared the corner of the church a heavily-built young fellow ran past me, crouched to the pavement, and hid himself behind one of the tall columns. Something in his dress and movement made me stop. Not being sure, I edged nearer and waited until he turned his head. It was Francesco.

III

The skies were never more beautiful that May, the blossoms of the oleanders and the almond trees never more lovely. Not only was my own ca.n.a.l alive with the stir and fragrance of the coming summer, but all Venice bore the look of a bride who had risen from her bath, drawn aside the misty curtain of the morning, and stood revealed in all her loveliness.

The sun shone everywhere, I say, but to me its brightest rays fell on a garden full of fig trees and flat arbors interwoven with grapevines, running down to the water where there was a dock and a gondola--two, sometimes,--our own and Vittorio's--and particularly on a low, two-story, flat-roofed house,--a kaleidoscope of color--pink, yellow, and green, with three rooms and a portico, in which lived Vittorio, a bird in a cage, a kitten-cat and the Rose of the s.h.i.+pyards.

It is a long way round to my ca.n.a.l through San Trovaso to the Zattere and across the Giudecca to Ponte Lungo, and then along the edge of the lagoon to this garden and dovecote, but that is the precise route Luigi, who lived within a stone's throw of the couple, selected morning after morning. He always had an excuse:--he had forgotten the big bucket for my water cups, or the sail, or the extra chair; and would the Signore mind going back for his other oar? Then again the tide was bad, and after all we might as well row down the lagoon; it was easier and really shorter with the wind against us--all nonsense, of course, but I never objected.

"Ah, the Signore and dear Luigi!" she would cry when she caught sight of our gondola rounding into the landing. Then down the path she would skip, the joyous embodiment of beauty and grace, and help me out, Luigi following; and we would stroll up under the fig trees, and she would begin showing me this and that new piece of furniture, or pot, or kettle, or new bread knife, or scissors, or spoon, which Vittorio had added to their store since my last visit. Or I would find them both busy over the gondola,--he polis.h.i.+ng his bra.s.ses and ferro, and she rehanging the curtains of the tenda which she had washed and ironed with her own hands.

In truth it was a very happy little nest that was tucked away in one corner of that old abandoned garden with its outlook on the broad water and its connecting link with the row of neighbors' houses flanking the side ca.n.a.l,--and no birds in or out of any nest in all Venice ever sang so long and so continuously nor were there any others so genuinely happy the livelong day and night as these two.

Did I not know something of the curious mixture of love, jealousy, and suspicion which goes into the making-up of an Italian, it would be hard for me to believe that so lovely a structure as this dovecote, one built with so much hope and alight with so much real happiness, could ever come tumbling to the ground. We Anglo-Saxons flame up indignantly when those we love are attacked, and we demand proofs. "Critica," that bane of Venetian life--what this, that, or the other neighbor tattles to this, that, and the other listener, we dismiss with a wave of the hand, or with fingers tight clenched close to the offender's lips, or by a blow in the face. Not so the Italian. He also blazes, but he will stop and wonder when his anger has cooled; think of this and that; put two and two together, and make ten of what is really only four. This is what happened to the nest under the grapevines.

I was in my own garden at the Britannia leaning over the marble balcony, wondering what kept Luigi--it was past ten o'clock--when the news reached me. I had caught sight of his white s.h.i.+rt and straw hat as he swung out behind the Salute and headed straight toward me, and saw from the way he gripped his oar and stretched his long body flat with the force of each thrust, that he had a message of importance, even before I saw his face.

"A Dio, Signore!" he cried. "What do you think? Vittorio has cursed Loretta, torn her wedding ring from her finger, and thrown it in her face!"

"Vittorio!"

"Yes,--he will listen to nothing! He is a crazy fool and I have done all I could. He believes every one of the lies that crab-catching brute of a Francesco is telling. It would be over by to-night, but Loretta does not take it like the others: she says nothing. You know her eyes--they are not like our Giudecca girls. They are burning now like two coals of fire, and her cheeks are like chalk."

I had stepped into the gondola by this time, my first thought being how best to straighten out the quarrel.

"Now tell me, Luigi--speak slowly, so I do not miss a word. First, where is Loretta?"

"She was putting on her best clothes when I left--those she bought herself. She will touch nothing Vittorio gave her. She is going back to her mother in an hour."

"But what happened? Has Francesco--?"

"Francesco has not stopped one minute since the wedding. He has been talking to the fish-people,--to everybody on the side street, saying that Loretta was his old shoes that he left at his door, and the fool Vittorio found them and put them on--that sort of talk."

"And Vittorio believes it?"

"He did not at first,--but twice Francesco came to see Loretta with messages from her mother, and went sneaking off when Vittorio came up in his boat, and then that night some one would tell him--'that fellow meets Loretta every day;' that he was her old lover. These people on the Giudecca do not like the San Giuseppe people, and there is always jealousy. If Vittorio had married any one from his own quarter it would have been different. You don't know these people, Signore,--how devilish they can be and how stupid."

"That was why he threw the ring in her face?"

"No and yes. Yesterday was Sunday, and some people came to see her from San Giuseppe, and they began to talk. I was not there; I did not get there until it was all over, but my wife heard it. They were all in the garden, and one word led to another, and he taunted her with seeing Francesco, and she laughed, and that made him furious; and then he said he had heard her mother was a n.o.body; and then some one spoke up and said that was true--fools all. And then Loretta, she drew herself up straight and asked who it was had said so, and a woman's voice came--'Francesco,--he told me--' and then Vittorio cried--'And you meet him here. Don't deny it! And you love him, too!--' and then the fool sprang at her and caught her hand and tore the ring from her finger and spat on it and threw it on the ground. He is now at his father's house."

"And she said nothing, Luigi?" The story seemed like some horrible dream.

"No, nor shed a tear. All she did was to keep repeating--'Francesco!

Francesco! Francesco!' I got there at daylight this morning and have been there ever since. I told her I was coming for you. She was sitting in a chair when I went in,--bolt up; she had not been in her bed. She seems like one in a trance--looked at me and held out her hand. I tried to talk to her and tell her it was all a lie, but she only answered--'Ask Francesco,--it is all Francesco,--ask Francesco.' Hurry, Signore,--we will miss her if we go to her house. We will go at once to our ca.n.a.l and wait for her. They have heard nothing down there at San Giuseppe, and you can talk to her without being interrupted, and then I'll get hold of Vittorio. This way, Signore."

I had hardly reached the water landing of my ca.n.a.l ten minutes later when I caught sight of her, coming directly toward me, head up, her lips tight-set, her black shawl curving and floating with every movement of her body--(nothing so wonderfully graceful and nothing so expressive of the wearer's moods as these black shawls of the Venetians). She wore her gala dress--the one in which she was married--white muslin with ribbons of scarlet, her wonderful hair in a heap above her forehead, her long gold earrings glinting in the suns.h.i.+ne. All the lovelight had died out of her eyes. In its place were two deep hollows rimmed about by dark lines, from out which flashed two points of cold steel light.

I sprang from my gondola and held out my hand:

"Sit down, Loretta, and let me talk to you."

She stopped, looked at me in a dazed sort of way, as if she was trying to focus my face so as to recall me to her memory, and said in a determined way:

"No, let me pa.s.s. It's too late for all that, Signore. I am--"

"But wait until you hear me."

"I will hear nothing until I find Francesco."

"You must not go near him. Get into the gondola and let Luigi and me take you home."

A dry laugh rose to her lips. "Home! There is no home any more. See! My ring is gone! Francesco is the one I want--now---NOW! He knows I am coming,--I sent him word. Don't hold me, Signore,--don't touch me!"

She was gone before I could stop her, her long, striding walk increasing almost to a run, her black shawl swaying about her limbs as she hurried toward her old home at the end of the quay. Luigi started after her, but I called him back. Nothing could be done until her fury, or her agony, had spent itself. These volcanoes are often short-lived.

We looked after her until she had reached the door and had flung herself across the threshold. Then I sent Luigi for my easel and began work.

The events that have made the greatest impression upon me all my life have been those which have dropped out of the sky,--the unexpected, the incomprehensible,--the unnecessary--the fool things--the d.a.m.nably idiotic things.

First we heard a cry that caused Luigi to drop canvas and easel, and sent us both flying down the quay toward the rookery. It came from Loretta's mother;--she was out on the sidewalk tearing her hair; calling on G.o.d; uttering shriek after shriek. The quay and bridge were a ma.s.s of people--some looking with staring eyes, the children hugging their mothers' skirts. Two brawny fishermen were clearing the way to the door. Luigi and I sprang in behind them, and entered the house.

On the stone floor of the room lay the body of Francesco, his head stretched back, one hand clutching the bosom of his s.h.i.+rt. Against the wall stood Loretta; not a quiver on her lips; ghastly white; calm,--the least excited person in the room.

"And you killed him!" I cried.

"Yes,--he thought I came to kiss him--I did, WITH THIS!" and she tossed a knife on the table.

The days that followed were gray days for Luigi and me. All the light and loveliness were gone from my ca.n.a.l.