Part 30 (2/2)

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.

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