Part 15 (1/2)

”Oh!” said Peter.

”It is a very little way to the San Georgio,” volunteered Luigi as they remained, master and man, looking down into the water in the leisurely Venetian fas.h.i.+on. ”Across the Piazza,” said Luigi, ”a couple of turns, a bridge or two and there you are;” and after a long pause, ”_The signore_ is looking very well this morning. Exercise in the sea air is excellent for the health.”

”Very,” said Peter. ”I shall go for a walk, I think. I shall not need you, Luigi.”

Nevertheless Luigi did not lose sight of him until he was well on his way to Saint George of the Sclavoni which announced itself by the ramping fat dragon over the door. There was the young knight riding him down as of old, and still no Princess.

”She must be somewhere on the premises,” said Peter to himself. ”No doubt she has preserved the traditions of her race by remaining indoors.” He had not, however, accustomed his eyes to the dusk of the little room when he heard at the landing the sc.r.a.pe of the gondola and the voices of the women disembarking.

”If we'd known you wanted to come,” explained Mrs. Merrithew heartily, ”we could have brought you in the boat.” That was the way she oftenest spoke of it, and other times it was the gon_do_la.

Peter explained his old acquaintance with the charging saint and his curiosity about the lady, but when the custodian had brought a silver paper screen to gather the little light there was upon the mellow old Carpaccio, he looked upon her with a vague dissatisfaction.

”It's the same dragon and the same young man,” he admitted. ”I know him by the hair and by the determined expression. But I'm not sure about the young lady.”

”You are looking for a fairy-tale Princess,” Miss Da.s.sonville declared, ”but you have to remember that the knight didn't marry this one; he only made a Christian of her.”

They came back to it again when they had looked at all the others and speculated as to whether Carpaccio knew how funny he was when he painted Saint Jerome among the brethren, and whether in the last picture he was really in heaven as Ruskin reported.

”So you think,” said Peter, ”she'd have been more satisfactory if the painter had thought Saint George meant to marry her?”

”More personal and convincing,” the girl maintained.

”There's one in the Belle Arti that's a lot better looking to my notion,” contributed Mrs. Merrithew.

”Oh, but that Princess is running away,” the girl protested.

”It's what any well brought up young female would be expected to do under the circ.u.mstances,” declared the elder lady; ”just look at them fragments. It's enough to turn the strongest.”

”It does look a sort of 'After the Battle,'” Peter admitted. ”But I should like to see the other one,” and he fell in very readily with Mrs.

Merrithew's suggestion that he should come in the gondola with them and drop into the Academy on the way home. They found the Saint George with very little trouble and sat down on one of the red velvet divans, looking a long time at the fleeing lady.

”And you think,” said Peter, ”she would not have run away?”

”I think she shouldn't; when it's done for her.”

”But isn't that--the running away I mean--the evidence of her being worth doing it for, of her fineness, of her superior delicacy?”

”Well,” Miss Da.s.sonville was not disposed to take it lightly, ”if a woman has a right to a fineness that's bought at another's expense. They can't all run away, you know, and I can't think it right for a woman to evade the disagreeable things just because some man makes it possible.”

”I believe,” laughed Peter, ”if you had been the Princess you would have killed the dragon yourself. You'd have taken a little bomb up your sleeve and thrown it at him.” He had to take that note to cover a confused sense he had of the conversation being more pertinent than he could at that moment remember a reason for its being.

”Oh, I've been delivered to the dragons before now,” she said. ”It's going on all the time.” She moved a little away from the picture as if to avoid the personal issue.

”What beats me,” commented Mrs. Merrithew, ”is that there has to be a young lady. You'd think a likely young man, if he met one of them things, would just kill it on general principles, the same as a snake or a spider.”

”Oh,” said Peter, ”it's chiefly because they are terrifying to young ladies that we kill them at all. Yes, there has to be a young lady.” He was aware of an accession of dreariness in the certainty that in his case there never could be a young lady. But Miss Da.s.sonville as she began to walk toward the entrance gave it another turn.

”There _is_ always a young lady. The difficulty is that it must be a particular one. No one takes any account of those who were eaten up before the Princess appeared.”

”But you must grant,” said Peter, with an odd sense of defending his own position, ”that when one got done with a fight like that, one would be ent.i.tled to something particular.”