Part 15 (2/2)
”Don't you think the archaeologists are rather stupid to have given up the riddle?” she asked, as she and her escort turned away and stepped out again into the Piazza.
”I dare say they are,” Geof laughed, ”but I'm sure that those flat-nosed fellows are much more entertaining than they would be if they had been labelled. Jove! What a sight that is!”
He had suddenly turned and looked up at the front of San Marco, gleaming in the brilliant illumination, like a shrine studded with precious stones. In the concentrated light of hundreds of gas-jets, each exquisite detail, each s.h.i.+ning gold mosaic and lavish carving stood out with marvellous distinctness. The golden-winged angels that mount a mystic stairway above the great central arch, the bronze horses prancing so harmlessly over the main portal, even the quaint bas-relief of St.
George, sitting, with such unimpeachable dignity, upon his camp-stool,--each and all were far more clearly enunciated than ever they are in the impartial splendour of daylight. Against the darkly luminous, unfathomable sky, the outline of the domes showed clear-cut and harmonious, and over yonder, above the great Palazzo, whose columns, for that evening at least, were surely carved in ivory and wrought with lace, a remote, half-grown moon looked wonderingly down.
”The moon is rather out of it, to-night,” May observed, with the bright crispness that gave everything she said a flavour of originality. She had taken in the beauty of the scene with a completeness that would have astonished her companion; not a detail had been lost upon her. Yet it was clear that the total effect had not produced an overpowering impression. Geof, for his part, had been really stirred by it, but he had no intention of owning it.
”I don't think we need waste any sympathy on the moon,” he replied.
”It's usually c.o.c.k of the walk here in Venice.”
Having thus satisfactorily disposed of that subject, the young people turned their steps toward the clock-tower, Geof wondering resignedly why May made no motion to rejoin her family.
”I don't think I agree with you about mysteries,” she said, presently; ”I can't bear them. There's Nanni, now, the brother of our gondolier,”
she continued; and then, turning, and looking her companion full in the face: ”Can you make him out?”
”What is it about him that puzzles you?” Geof asked, returning her glance with equal frankness.
”I don't know that I can explain it. He seems somehow--different. There is something wrong about him. I don't think he is happy.”
”And what if he is not?” said Geof tentatively. ”There need be no mystery about that. I don't suppose many men are really happy.”
”You don't?” May exclaimed, in nave surprise.
Geof, to whom happiness had come to seem almost incredible, since he had got a glimpse of what it might be, was himself rather taken aback at his own utterance.
”I rather think,” he said, laughing uneasily, ”that I only meant that not many people are superlatively happy. As for commonplace, every-day happiness, I suppose that depends upon temperament. Perhaps the man is of a melancholy temperament.”
”Perhaps that is it,” May answered, thoughtfully; and with one accord they turned into the quiet paved s.p.a.ce north of San Marco, where they stood, a few moments, looking out into the brilliant Piazza.
”I suppose it was very silly of me,” May went on, laying her hand upon the haunches of a great stone lion that crouches there, polished smooth with the pa.s.sage of centuries; ”but I had a notion that he was unhappy because he had to live in exile, a mere servant, you know, in a dreadful hospital in Milan. And so I went and offered to give him a gondola, and he wouldn't accept it. He was thanking me the other day, at Torcello, when you came up. I suppose that was why he was so--melodramatic,” and she laughed a little forced laugh, and looked Geoffry straight in the face again.
He saw her embarra.s.sment, and understood that she had been setting him right, and that it had cost her an effort to refer to the matter. And so he said the kindest thing possible under the circ.u.mstances.
”If you mean his kissing your hand,” he replied, with an air of discussing a matter of no consequence, ”there's nothing melodramatic in that, at least when a gondolier does it. It is the custom of their cla.s.s. Old Pietro kisses mine and makes me feel like an ancient doge.”
He could see that she was relieved.
”I wonder where the others are,” she said. ”Let us go and look them up.
I didn't feel like anything so fine as a doge,” she added, lightly, as they came out into the square again. ”I felt like a very interfering and foolish kind of person. I don't think I shall do anything so silly again.”
”There is nothing silly about a generous action,” Geof protested, looking with great kindness at the young girl, to whom the garment of humility was not unbecoming. ”I rather think, though, that the man is better off than you imagine. At any rate, I'm very sure he is better off for the goodwill you have shown him.”
Then, with a return of his previous solicitude, somewhat stimulated by a new realisation of the unusual beauty of this experimenter in mysteries, he added:
”These Italians are impressionable fellows. They sometimes feel things more than we cold-blooded Northerners appreciate.”
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