The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 30

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 Ca.n.a.l, led by a conductor shouting out the names of the Palaces as they pa.s.s. 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 sh.e.l.ls.

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 s.h.i.+nes 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, flas.h.i.+ng, 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 h.o.a.rd. 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 Ca.n.a.l, 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, a.s.suming 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.s 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 suns.h.i.+ne, after the darkness, brings a haze, as when you see the air quivering over a furnace.

But, having gained entrance and pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 impa.s.sably 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.p.a.cious 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 pa.s.sed 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.