Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  She did not know, and, very wisely, forebore to conjecture. Besides, the gross heat of the day was subsiding, and a little breeze had begun to stir; below the window Giovanni had already finished the toilet of the gondola, and was putting in the tea basket, since she had said she would have tea out on the lagoon. Venice called to her, beckoned her away from thoughts where something sombre or agitating might lie concealed, into the sunlight and splendour of the day.

  CHAPTER VI.

  MR. AND MRS. OSBORNE, as has been mentioned, had no idea of planting themselves on Dora and her husband in their visit to Venice, and since the visit was to be thoroughly Bohemian in character, and they hoped and expected to rough it, it had seemed to them equally unsuitable to go to an hotel, where no doubt mediaevalism would have been supplanted by modem conveniences. They both wanted, with that inexpressible elasticity and love of experience which was characteristic of them, to “behave native fashion and do like the Venetians,” as Mrs. Osborne put it, and indeed the phrase pleased her husband no less than herself. So they had taken the Palazzo Dandoli for a fortnight, at a prodigious weekly rent, which included, however, the wages of the servants and the use of the gondolas. With a view to roughing it thoroughly, Mrs. Osborne had only brought her maid with her, and her husband was completely unattended. It was to be a jaunt, a wedding trip, a renewal of old times. Probably there would be little to eat and drink, and heaven only knew what kind of a bed to sleep in, while an Italian manservant would probably not know how to fold trousers. But all these possible inconveniences were part of behaving “native-fashion,” and were not only to be expected but welcomed as being part of the genuine article.

  The house stood on the eastern outskirts of Venice, with a garden facing San Michele and the lagoon, and here Dora strolled with her father-in-law on the morning after their arrival, waiting for the appearance of Mrs. Osborne, who, since they had arrived late the night before, was taking it easy, and was not expected down till lunch time at half-past twelve. Dora knew the owner of the place and had been there before, but never in these early days of summer, while yet the gardens were unscorched and the magic of spring had woven its ultimate spell. All the past was redolent in the walls of mellowed brick, the niches empty for the most part, save where a bust or two of stained Carrara marble still lingered, in the gray of the ivy-hung fountain, in the grilles of curving ironwork that gave view across the lagoon to the cypresses of San Michele, and, farther away, the dim tower of Torcello. Long alleys of cut and squared hornbeam, with hop-like flowers, led like green church aisles down the garden, and spaces of grass between them were hedged in by more compact walls of yew and privet, with its pale spires of blossom faintly sweet. Round the fountain stood three serge-coated sentinels of cypress, encrusted over with their nut-like fruits, and, flame-like against their sombre foliage, were azaleas in bright green tubs, and the swooning whiteness of orange blossom. Elsewhere, the formality of the cut hornbeam alleys and clipped hedges gave place to a gayer and more sunny quarter, though even there Italy lingered in the pavement of red and white stone that led between the more English-looking flower beds. Peach trees, in foam of pink flower, and white waterfalls of spiraea were background here; in front of them stood rows of stiff fox-gloves and in front again a riot of phlox and columbine and snapdragon covered the beds to the edge of the path. To the left lay the rose garden, approached by a walk of tall Madonna lilies, already growing fat-budded, and prepared to receive the torch of flower-life from the roses, when their part in the race should be done, and homely pansies, with quaint, trustful faces, made a velvet-like diaper of deeper colour. Here, too, stood another fountain that from leaden pipe shed freshness on the basin below, where clumps of Japanese iris were already beginning to unfold their great butterfly flowers, imperial in purple or virginal in white, and over the green marble edge of it quick lizards flicked and vanished.

  Dora had arrived at the palazzo while yet the morning was young and dewy, and, leaving word that she had come, passed through the white shady courtyard of the house and down the long alleys of the garden to look out on the lagoon from the far end of it. The tide was high and the cool water shimmered over the flats that an hour or two ago were still exposed and lay in expanse of glistening ooze, or green with fields of brilliant seaweeds. But the red-sailed fishing boats had to pass between the rows of pali that marked the channels, and a little company of them were even now going seaward. The wind blew gently from the north, tempering the heat, and to the north were visible the remote summits of snow-clad Alps. Just opposite were the orange walls and black cypresses of San Michele, but in the gaiety of the gay day even those associations were gladdened. It was good to be anything in Venice, even to be dead, and resting there in sound of the whispering lagoon.

  Then came the interruption she had waited for: her name was jovially called, and down the pergola of vines which led to the grille, between the clumps of syringa and riot of rambler, came Mr. Osborne.

  He had left England with the intention of roughing it and enjoying the experience, and was clad in the way that had seemed to him appropriate. He wore a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, below which his short fat calves looked like turned oak posts clad in thick worsted and set in strong brown boots. On his head he wore a felt hat with a puggaree attached to it, and round his shoulders was a strap that carried a large binocular glass. In a word, he appeared like a man deerstalking in the tropics. Like this he was equal to any foreigneering vicissitudes and provided against all accidents that might happen in a town where, instead of walking from one place to another, you went in a black sort of punt with a strange battleaxe at the prow.

  “Well, dearie, and here we are,” he said, “and pleased we are to be here, I do assure you. Passed a comfortable night, too, and so I warrant you has Mrs. O., for she was asleep still when I came downstairs. But, my dear, they’ve got but a paltry notion of furnishing these rooms. We had supper last night when we got in, in a great room as big as the hall at Grote, and nothing there but a table and a few chairs and some painted canvas on the walls, and on the floor a rug or two as you could scarcely get both feet upon. However, we were hungry, and the food was good enough. Macaroni they gave us, and a bit of veal and some cheese and strawberries. And this seems a pretty bit of garden, where Mrs. O. can sit and be cool if she finds the heat oppressive. And it’s good to see you, my dear, and blooming you look.”

  He gave her a loud, kind kiss, and continued to pour forth his first impressions of Venice.

  “Claude met us at Milan, as he’ll have told you,” he said, “and saw us safe here last night. It’s strange, though, going to your house in a boat, and such a smell as there was at the last corner but one before we got here I never encountered. I should have had it looked into in no time if such a thing had occurred in the works at Sheffield. But it seems fine and open here, and I’ve no doubt we shall be well enough off. But to think of those old Doges with never a bathroom in their houses, nor hot water laid on nor nothing. But I enjoy that, my dear; I want to see the old life as they had it, and look at their palaces, ah! and live in one, and see their pictures, and think what manner of folk they was, being born and getting married and dying and all, in the very rooms we now occupy.”

  Dora suddenly laughed.

  “Oh, Dad,” she said, “you are too heavenly. But why have you put on those thick clothes? It’s going to be a roasting day. I am glad to see you. I’m sure you will find the house comfortable, and, oh! did you ever see such a morning? Look out there across the lagoon. It’s Venice, you know, Venice!”

  Mr. Osborne looked out through the iron grille.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s pretty enough,” he said, “and talk of sea air, why the sea’s all round you. We must have come a matter of a mile over the viaduct last night after we left the mainland. And sea air is what I want for mother; she wants a bit of setting up, and if she feels inclined to keep quiet and not look at the galleries and churches and sights every day, my dear, you’ll know it’s b
ecause she isn’t quite up to the mark. Well, well; no, I’m not anxious about her, for she takes her food, and was as pleased to come out here, such as never was, but she’s been a bit tired, and must take a rest.”

  “She’s not ill?” asked Dora. “There’s nothing wrong?”

  “Not a bit of it. ’Tis true, I wanted her to see the doctor before she left home, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. Just to go to Venice, so she said, and see Claude and Dora, and not do much, that’s the prescription for me, she said. And so here we are, my dear. Lunch at half-past twelve, too; how strange it seems! But after the breakfast they gave me, just a bit of toast and an egg, I don’t doubt I shall be ready for it. But the coffee was prime, though it came up in an earthenware pot. I suppose it was that way the Doges took it. Lor’, to think of it all! Wedding the sea, too, every year. I read it in the guidebook on the journey. A curious custom that was, heathenish, you may say. It takes one back, doesn’t it?”

  It was still an hour before lunch time, and at Dora’s suggestion they went out for a turn in her gondola which was waiting, since Mrs. Osborne was not to be expected down till lunch time. Mr. Osborne, still feeling the insecurity of a foreign land, refused to change into more suitable clothes, and, already perspiring profusely, embarked with a sense of being prepared for anything.

  As they got in Dora gave some short direction to her gondolier in Italian, and this roused his admiring curiosity.

  “It’s a strange thing too,” he said, “that you say something of which I can’t understand a syllable, and round the boat goes, as if you’d said, ‘Right about turn.’ Such a bother as we had with luggage and what not, before Claude met us. But Mrs. O. saw the hang of it, and kept saying, ‘Venice, Palazzo Dandoli,’ whenever one of them brigands looked in on us, and it seemed they wanted no more than that. Brigands they looked, my dear, though I dare say they were honest men in the employment of their company. And what’s that now, that big telegraph-looking thing?”

  He pointed at the huge disfiguring posts that brought the electric power into Venice.

  “Oh, electric light, I think,” said Dora. “Or perhaps it’s telephone.”

  “My word, and I never expected to find either here,” said Mr. Osborne. “Do you mean they have got the light and the ‘phone? And why, if that’s so, aren’t they installed in the Dandoli?”

  “Oh, Dad,” she said, “where do you want to telephone to?”

  “No, dearie, I don’t want to telephone, but you’d have thought that in a place like that I’ve taken they’d surely have had the modem conveniences, if such were to be had. And where are we coming to now?”

  Dora did not answer at once; this was one of the best places of all in that city of best places. There was a sharp turn from a narrow canal, overhung by tall red-stained walls, and they shot out into the Grand Canal just above the Rialto.

  “Oh,” she said, “look, look!”

  The bow-shaped bridge lay to their left, as from the huddled houses they swept into the great waterway; a troubled reflection of palaces gleamed in the tide, the curve of the Grand Canal was flung outward and onward, reeling in the heat.

  Just opposite was the fish market, newly rebuilt, with columns of ornamented iron work. Mr. Osborne pointed an admiring forefinger at it.

  “Well I never,” he said, “to think to see the fellow of one of Per’s designs in Venice. I shall have the laugh of Per over that, and tell him he copied them from some old courtyard of the Doges, or what not. Beautiful I call them. After all, they were wonderful old folk, weren’t they, when we think that they put up there a design that might have been made in Sheffield to-day! I assure you, dearie, they are just like Per’s drawings for No. 2 light arcade same as is in the showroom at the works.”

  Dora had not been attending very closely: those who love Venice are apt to be inattentive when some new magic comes into view, and to Dora the bow-arch of the bridge with the bow-arch of the canal below grew in wonder the oftener that she saw it.

  “Arches?” she asked. “Arches like one of Per’s designs? Oh, do show me.”

  “Why, that open place there,” said Mr. Osborne, still immensely interested. “That arcade just opposite, with the ornamental arches in open work.”

  Dora could not help laughing.

  “Oh, dear Dad,” she said, “very likely they are Per’s designs. That’s the new fish market, just being rebuilt.” And then it struck her that her laugh might sound unkindly.

  “It is quite possible they are Per’s designs,” she said. “Would it not be thrilling if they were? Giovanni” — again she spoke in Italian— “just land at the market and ask some of the workmen where the iron arches came from. I see one not yet put up, wrapped in straw. There is some label on it. See if it is from Osborne, Sheffield.” Giovanni floated the gondola to the side of the landing place with the flick of a quick-turned oar, and got out. In a moment he came back, having read the stamped label on the packing, and reported the gratifying news.

  “Oh, it’s too thrilling,” cried Dora, “to think that they came from your works. Dad, you’re a perfect wizard to see that, and guess it was Per’s. You must write to him and tell him that his ironwork is going up in Venice, and that you recognized it the first moment you —— you saw the Grand Canal.”

  Mr. Osborne gave a little inward tremolo of laughter. “Oh, I’m not so blind yet,” he said, “and it’s seldom you see work like Per’s. There’s something, as you may say, so individual about it. God bless the boy, how he’ll like to hear that I spotted his design right across the Grand Canal. Eh, he might have been here, my dear, and studied the style of the architecture, when one sees how it fits in with the other monuments. I’ll write to tell him that.”

  Mr. Osborne remembered that Dora had told him that Venice was the most beautiful place in the world, and the Grand Canal the most beautiful thing in Venice. And he made a concession that he did not really feel.

  “Not but what he hadn’t got a lot to compete against,” he said. “That bridge now? That’s a fine thing. And the curve of it looks built for strength. I warrant there’s no iron girder made that would cause it to be safer. And the houses, beautiful, I’m sure! But I don’t see any that I’d sooner take than the Palazzo Dandoli.”

  Suddenly Dora felt something dry up inside her. That, at any rate, was how she mentally phrased the sensation to herself. Her father-in-law was kind and wise and good; he was anxious to please, he was anxious to be pleased. But at the concession — for so she felt it to be — that Per had had a lot to compete with, when the excruciating iron arcade of the fish market was erected within stone-throw of the Rialto and within pea-shooting distance of the wondrous canal, she felt for the moment the impossibility of herself and Mr. Osborne being together at Venice. The situation was one that she had not faced without a tremor; now, for the moment, when it was actual and accomplished, it was inconceivable.

  But this mercantile discovery had delighted Mr. Osborne; it had clearly raised his previous estimate of Venice. A town that could so aptly enshrine this design of Per’s was a town that must receive the best attention. There was probably more in it than he had been at first disposed to imagine. He gave it his best attention.

  A gray fussing steamboat going seaward on the tide and raising a huge wash of churned water, next engaged his admiration.

  “Well, and if I didn’t think when we took so get to the Palazzo last night that the Italians would be wiser to build a big sea wall somewhere, and raise the level of the canal so as you could drive a horse and carriage down them!” he said. “But if you’ve got a ferry steamer that goes the pace of that — Lor’, my dear, how it makes us rock — I don’t see what there’s to complain of. And calling first on this side and then on that, same as they used to do on the Thames, what could you ask for more convenient?”

  Again Dora had to enlist her sympathy on a foreign side.

  “I know,” she said, “and they go right out to the Lido, where we’ll go and bathe this very aft
ernoon, Dad. It will be awfully hot after lunch, so we’ll join the steamer at San Marco, and send the gondola out to meet us on the Lido, and take us back when it gets cooler. One gets roasted in a gondola on the lagoon when it’s as hot as this.”

  Mr. Osborne was clearly a little troubled at this suggestion.

  “Ah, no doubt there are sets of bathing machines,” he said at length. “A dip in the briny: very pleasant.”

  Dora did not at once grasp the cause of his embarrassment.

  “We’ll swim right out together,” she said. “You can swim for ever in this sea; it’s so buoyant. And then we sit on the sand and eat strawberries, while the sun dries us again.”

  Then she saw that some portentous doubt on the question of propriety was in Mr. Osborne’s mind, guessed it, and hastened to remove the cause of it. “Or perhaps, coming straight out from England, you don’t want to bathe,” she said. “Besides, there’s the mater” — she had adopted this from Claude. “So we won’t bathe; we’ll take her out for a giro — a row — in the gondola and have tea out on the lagoon. Dad, you’ll love the lagoon, all gray and green. And the electric light poles cross it to the Lido.”

  “Eh, that will be nice,” said Mr. Osborne quickly and appreciatively. “And here’s another bridge: why, beautiful, isn’t it? I think I like it better than that curved one. There seems more sense in it. You don’t have to mount so high.”

  They had passed round the last corner of the canal, and in front of them lay the straight lower reach of it that passes into the great basin opposite St. Mark’s and the Doge’s palace. To right and left the stately houses stood up from the water side, in glimmer of rose and blue and orange beneath the smiting glory of the noonday. Since yesterday the north wind, blowing lightly from the Alps, had banished the oppression of yesterday’s heat and the glitter of the city had awoke again, pearly in the shadow and jewelled in the sun. And in the immediate foreground the only blot of disfigurement was the object of Mr. Osborne’s admiration, the flat, execrable iron bridge opposite the Accademia. There it lay, convenient and hideous and impossible. And he liked it better than the curved one! It had more sense in it!