Part 62 (1/2)
”Send in my resignation by the next post--and d.a.m.n the fellow that did it! Look here, Kitty!” He came to stand over her--a fine formidable figure, his hands in his pockets. ”Don't you ever try that kind of thing--there's a darling.”
”Would you d.a.m.n me?”
She smiled at him--with a tremor of the lip.
He caught up her hand and kissed it. ”Blow out my own brains, more like,” he said, laughing. Then he turned away. ”What on earth have we got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams are there--male and female--aren't they?--and we've got to put up with them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh, by-the-way”--he looked back at a letter in his hands--”mother says Polly Lyster will probably be here before we go--she seems to be touring around with her father.”
”Charming prospect!” said Kitty. ”Does mother expect me to chaperon her?”
Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the sofa, and walked up and down the room in a pa.s.sionate preoccupation. A tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.
”What can I do?” she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and tortured the lower one.
Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza.
William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself safe.
She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before--a little, terror-stricken figure, pa.s.sing in a miserable abstraction through the intricate backways which took her home.
”It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question of money,” she said to herself, feverishly--”only a question of money!”
All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid that to amuse her was difficult. Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.
As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo. Once or twice she went half-way to the door--eagerly--with hand out-stretched--as though she expected a letter.
”No other English post to-night, Kitty!” said Ashe, at last, raising his head from the finely printed _Poetae Minores_ he had just purchased at Ongania's. ”You don't mean to say you're not thankful!”
The evening arrived--clear and mild, but moonless. Ashe went off to dine with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it.
They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame d'Estrees' party.
Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cus.h.i.+ons of the gondola. Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of Venice began to work.
City of rest!--as it seems to our modern senses--how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should have gone to the making and the fas.h.i.+oning of Venice! The easy pa.s.sage of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea, carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now firm earth, now s.h.i.+fting sea, that bind the city into one social whole, where the industrial and the n.o.ble alike are housed in palaces, equal often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations of the _lidi_ in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the purple intensity of the sky!--through each phase of the hours and the seasons, _rest_ is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed no pain.
It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into William's arms, and he _must_ forgive her!--because she was so foolish and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing melancholy and charm.
At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their head the _barca_, which carried the musicians.
”You are late, Kitty!” cried Madame d'Estrees, waving to them. ”Shall we draw out and come to you?--or will you just join on where you are?”
For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats in the wake of the _barca_.
”Never mind us,” said Kitty. ”We'll tack on somehow.”
And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrees seemed to be surrounded.
Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow pointing to the ca.n.a.l.
The _barca_ began to move, and the ma.s.s of gondolas followed. Round them, and behind them, other boats were pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, each with its slim black body, its swanlike motion, its poised oarsman, and its twinkling light. The lagoon towards the Guidecca was alive with these lights; and a magnificent white steamer adorned with flags and lanterns--the yacht, indeed, of a German prince--shone in the mid-channel.