Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  But there was no need for Dora to rack her brains to find some response which should steer a middle way between lack of cordiality to her father-in-law on the one hand and artistic perjury on the other. Between the fish market, the iron bridge, and the vile convenient speed of the steamboats Venice was going up in his estimation by leaps and bounds, and he was delighted to find he was almost able to endorse Dora’s opinion on the town.

  “Well, I call it all beautiful, my dear,” he said, “and it’s as I said to mother. ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘if Dora says Venice is a nice place, you may be sure there is something in it, and we were right to come out and have a look at it ourselves.’ But who’d have thought there was so much of modem convenience and comfort? And these gondolas too. I’m sure I’m as comfortable sitting here as in my own brougham and, except when the steamers go by, they glide as smooth as on an asphalt road. Pretty the water is too, though not clear. I should have thought that here in the south there’d have been more of blue in it. But I’m a bit surprised, my dear, that you with your eye for colour shouldn’t have done up the gondola more brightly, had some blue curtains, maybe, or picked out that handsome carved work on the prow with a touch of red. There’s a thought too much black about it for my taste. Seems to tell of a funeral, almost.”

  Dora could not argue about this: she could not give Mr. Osborne eyes which should see the value of the black blots of boats against the brightness of the sky mirrored in the canal. But it was easy to find praise in his speech to which she could respond, though the praise was expressed in a way that somehow set her teeth on edge.

  “Oh, they are the most comfortable things in the world,” she said, “and I even like the indignant slap they give when the wash of the steamer crosses them. Beautiful thing, with its arching neck like some great black swan! Ah, there’s twelve striking. We shall just have time to look into our house and fetch Claude and then get back to the Dandoli for lunch. I hope they’ll have put it in the garden. Oh, Dad, how this place has got into my heart! You never did such a nice thing as when you gave Claude and me a month here.”

  Mr. Osborne did not think much of Dora’s water-entrance to the great gray palace of which she had the first floor, but the size of the huge sala (which she remembered to tell him was a hundred and ten feet long) was most satisfactory to him. But with its polished stone-plaster floor, and the Venetian emptiness of it, it seemed to him rather bare and comfortless.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s a handsome room enough in point of size,” he said, “and in this hot weather it looks cool and restful. But it seems strange to have never a strip of carpet on the floor, and scarce a picture on the walls. Lord, my dear, don’t it make your teeth chatter to think of coming down to this of a winter’s morning, when even now it strikes so cool? But isn’t there some Tintoret now, my dear, that you could fancy, or if not that, half a dozen big photographs of the canal and the bridge you liked so much to hang on the walls? And as for the door, to be sure, it’s a big job to cover it, but a proper carpet for that end of it where you’ve got your chairs and table, looking out over the canal, you shall have, if I have to telegraph to town for one, instead of those few rugs, or mats I should call them. Fancy advertising this as a house to be let furnished! I call it misrepresentation.”

  Dora took his arm.

  “Oh, Dad, you are the kindest man that ever was,” she said. “But indeed I want neither pictures nor a carpet, though it is darling of you to offer me them. I like it empty: it’s the — the right style with these rooms. You found your dining room rather emptier than you liked, you know, but in a day or two you will get more than used to it, you will see how suitable it is. And I love this great empty room. Now we’ll just go into the other rooms, and then we must get back for lunch. Claude seems to be out: I expect we shall find him at the Dandoli.”

  Lunch, as they found when they got back, had been laid, as Dora hoped, in the garden, in the centre of a gravelled space sheltered from the sun by the mellow brick wall and a clump of overarching delicate-fingered acacia trees, and made cool to the ear by the plash of the fountain into its marble basin. Down the sides and at the comers of this space were tubs of orange trees, and the heaviness of their drowsy fragrance mingling with the large dilution of this tide of warm sea-scented air was translated into something exquisitely light and vigorous. Claude had already arrived and was waiting with his mother for them, who was in excellent spirits.

  “Why, dearest Dora,” she said, “here we are, and ready I’m sure for lunch, to speak for myself, though it’s not gone half-past twelve yet, and in England we shouldn’t be sitting down for another hour. And Claude’s been telling me that in England now it’s not gone half-past eleven, and here we are wanting our lunch at such an hour as that. Eh, what’s that? What did he say to me? ‘Pronto,’ it sounded like.”

  Guiseppe, the smiling Italian butler, had approached Mr. Osborne, and said exactly that.

  “Yes, pronto,” said Dora, “it means ‘ready.’”

  Mrs. Osborne beamed back at Guiseppe.

  “And I’m pronto, too,” she said. “Let’s sit down.”

  “Mrs. O. will be having the whole Italian language by heart before the week’s out,” said her husband. “And such a morning as I’ve had with Dora, mother. Bridges and canals and steamers and churches. Ah, and you’d never guess, so I’ll tell you without teasing you! They are rebuilding the fish market with arcades of iron pillars, very handsome, and who do you think supplies them? Osborne, Sheffield, and no other, my dear, and it’s Per’s No. 2, light arcade, same as is in the showroom, or I’m the more mistaken.”

  Mrs. Osborne was as delighted as her husband.

  “I’ll get a photograph of that this very afternoon,” she said, “if there’s such a thing as a photograph shop in Venice. Dora, my dear, have they a photograph shop in Venice, or hasn’t that got here yet?”

  Dora threw back her head, laughing.

  “Oh, mother, how divine of you!” she said. “Considering I sent you literally hundreds of picture post cards when Claude and I were here in the autumn!”

  “To be sure you did, my dear,” said Mrs. Osborne cordially. “And it had gone clean out of my poor head. So a photograph of the fish market I’ll send to Per this very afternoon, if I have to turn over all their scrapbooks for it. Mr. O., you’ll never manage macaroni that way. Wrap it round your fork, my dear, as you see Claude doing, and in it goes without any bother,”

  “Well, mother, you’re not so much of a hand at it yourself,” observed Mr. Osborne in self-defence. “If I’m to take pattern by Claude, you take pattern by Dora. Now, I call that an excellent dish. You couldn’t have it better done, not in your own house. What does he say to me, Dora, my dear? Banke, is it?”

  “Bianco” said Dora, “white. Will you have white wine or red?”

  “That’s another word for Mrs. O.,” said her husband. “I told you she’d get it all off by heart in no time. Yes, I’ll have a go at the bianco. One wants something light and cool on a morning like this, especially if the true time is only half-past eleven.”

  “I declare it makes me feel quite greedy,” said Mrs. Osborne, “but such an appetite as I have to-day I haven’t had since the middle of April. And what else have you seen this morning, Mr. Osborne? Give an account of the sights, my dear, or I shall think you’ve had no eye except for Dora.”

  They waited in the cool greenness of the garden till the heat of the day began to abate, and then went all together in one gondola, at Mrs. Osborne’s particular wish, to begin the sights of Venice. It was in vain that Dora suggested that everybody would be much more comfortable if they took two gondolas, and arranged their rendezvous, for Mrs. Osborne’s heart was set on a family party and she wasn’t sure that she would trust Mr. O. with Dora alone any more that day. So, as badinage loomed on the horizon, Dora hastily and completely withdrew her opposition, and they all four squeezed into one gondola.

  The plan was to row out over the lagoon, and have tea at Sant
a Rosa. Tea made the centre of the afternoon, round which the rest appeared to be grouped in the minds of the Osbornes. Then they were to return to Venice in time to look in at St. Mark’s, and loiter in the piazza, where Mrs. Osborne, it was hoped, would find at one of the photograph shops the representation of the fish market on which she had set her heart. Accordingly the labouring gondoliers propelled the laden craft across to the little island, tied up to the bank, and procured strawberries from the fruit farm to add to their tea. Mrs. Osborne at first had a sort of vague prejudice against them, for abroad it was impossible to tell “who hadn’t been touching them,” and, it is to be feared, it was only because the rest of the party found them remarkably good that she joined them. But she was charmed with their picnic, and saw a great similarity between the little waterway of the island and the Regent’s Park Canal.

  They dined that evening at Dora’s house — meals somehow had leaped into sudden importance and preponderance since the arrival of her father-in-law in Venice, though they had no more meals than usual — and Mrs. Osborne as well as her husband was voluble over all they had seen.

  “Just to think that all the floor of St. Mark’s is in marble!” said she. “Why, it seems almost a shame, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s not a cathedral in England that’s got such a grand floor, and St. Mark’s, so you said —— didn’t you, Dora? — was only Roman Catholic?”

  “Well, well, mother,” said Mr. Osborne, “it’s the Church of the country, you see, just as the English Church is ours. You’d think more of the Roman, if you’d been brought up to it. But I’m surprised at their letting the floor get into that state: it was all ups and downs, and I’m sure I scarcely knew where I should be setting my foot next. So dark it was, too, that one couldn’t see as much as one would like. If I were them, I should send for some good English architect as knows when a building’s safe, and when it isn’t, and make him cut half a dozen sensible windows somewhere, or perhaps take down one of them domes, and put in a glass roof to it instead. Five domes there are, for I counted them, and that’s beyond all reason.”

  Dora felt that this was too much for her: simply she could not think of any reply whatever. If somebody proposed putting a glass dome in St. Mark’s, what answer was possible? But there was no need for one. Mrs. Osborne instantly joined in again.

  “And never did I think to see such shops in Venice,” she said. “Why, there was electric fittings at one I passed, beautiful they were, with nymphs and such-like holding up the globes, the same as you might get in the most superior shops in town. And I need never have brought out stationery with me, for there was a stationer’s there as I could have bought the best cream-laid at. And not expensive either, if you recollect that a lira is but tenpence, though its strange to have your silver coins worth tenpence instead of a shilling. It wants a deal of thinking back into pounds and shillings.”

  “They seem to have a notion of building, too,” said Mr. Osborne. “I’m sure that great square tower they were building was as solid a piece of work as you could find anywhere. And to think that the original had stood there five hundred years. How it takes you back!” Claude nodded at Dora.

  “What did I tell you?” he said. “Didn’t I say the mater and pater would like Venice near as much as you do?”

  “Yes, dear, you were quite right,” said Dora, with a sort of despairing acquiescence in even this. “And what should you like to do to-morrow, Dad?” she asked.

  “Eh, there’s more yet to see, is there?” he said. “And to think that I’ve been sight-seeing all day, and not finished even now! Who would have thought there was so much in such a small town? Well, my dear, I’m in your hands, and whatever you show me I’ll be bound I shall like it, if it comes up to the sample of Venice we’ve had to-day. And what says Mrs. O.?”

  “Well, there’s all the pictures we haven’t seen yet,” said she. “Perhaps Dora would take us to see the pictures in the morning, but as for the afternoon I want nothing better than to have another look at St. Mark’s and do a bit more shopping, and perhaps have a bit of a row afterward, for I declare it’s a pity not to be out up till it’s time to dress.”

  The next three or four days were, it must be confessed, a sort of nightmare to Dora, for she took Venice too seriously to see anything humorous in what she had to go through. She took them to the Accademia, and the Paul Veronese of the “Marriage of Cana” had an instant and amazing success owing to its size. Mr. Osborne doubted if it would have got into the picture gallery at Grote at all, and Mrs. Osborne had no doubt whatever about it; she saw at a glance that it would not, “without you took its frame off.” Other pictures pleased for other reasons: the “Procession of the Cross,” because St. Mark’s and the Campanile came into it; the Tintoret of the “Adoration of the Doges,” because St. George was sitting by the Virgin, and he was an English saint. But before Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin” (a picture which, unfortunately, Dora detested) criticism with regard to its dimensions and even appreciation was mute, and its size and frame passed without remark. Mrs. Osborne’s eyes filled with dear, heart-felt tears, and Mr. Osborne said, “Lor’, Maria, it was worth coming to Venice for to see this alone, my dear. Well, now, they could paint in those days!” And immediately thereon, he bought an enormous copy of it, vilely executed, which an elderly English lady was just finishing with an uncertain strippling touch. She explained in quavering tones that she was obliged to charge very high for her copies because she spent weeks in study before she began to paint, in getting at the spirit of the original. And Mr. Osborne’s alacrity in securing her work no doubt made her wish that she had charged higher yet for the spiritual tension required for its production.

  On another day they went to San Rocco, for Mr. Osborne found to his amazement that it was impossible to see all the pictures in Venice in one “go,” even if you spent the whole morning at it. This seemed strange, since you could see the whole of the Royal Academy in a less time. But the remedy was simple. Why not build a new picture gallery, hang all the pictures in Venice there, charge two lire, and have them all catalogued in one book? That was the kind of suggestion that cornered Dora: it seemed scarcely worth while to say that many were in the churches, and that it would be a pity to move them since they were painted for the places which they occupied. But, trying to be patient and kind, she did say so, and Mr. Osborne was fired with the brilliant thought of having copies made for the churches. Claude thought this an excellent idea. “The Gov.’s hit the nail on the head this time,” he said, and was surprised when Dora, turning aside, said, “Oh, Claude!” to him. But apart from the pictures at San Rocco, which did not have a great success, the visit was memorable because Mrs. Osborne said “Bon giomo” to the custodian, just as if she did it every day of her life. He understood perfectly, and made a suitable reply about the loveliness of the day. That was a little beyond Mrs. Osborne, so she said “Grazie,” and her husband admiringly commented, “Lor’, you speak it like a native! I told you the mother would have it by heart in no time,” he said.

  On this morning they had still an hour to spare before lunch, since the Tintorets were not interesting or beautiful, and they rowed across to the Giudecca to see a garden. The garden was fairly appreciated, though to Mrs. Osborne’s mind the borders, where the southern June was rioting, were not quite so trim as she would have had them; but the great sugar factory was found to be most attractive, and Mr. Osborne was much surprised to find that Dora did not know whether it was possible to see over it or not. However, Claude made inquiries, and found it could be shown. He took his father there next day, and they were late for lunch. But Mrs. Osborne and Dora were late too: they had been ordering a very handsome gilt frame for the copy of “The Assumption,” and the “pattern” on it wanted a lot of choosing.

  Dora and Claude dined that night at the Dandoli, and Mr. Osborne announced that he and the mother had settled to stay on another week, for they were both thoroughly delighted with Venice.

  “And its grateful to
you, my dear, that we both are,” said Mr. Osborne, “for telling us about it, and making us feel as how we should like to see it. There’s fifty different things in Venice I should like to see a score of times, and if we’re spared, my dear, we’ll spend another month next year as per this sample.”

  Now Dora did her best when this little speech was made, but Sirocco had been blowing all day, and, as usual, it had made her feel rather jerky and irritable. Also, it must be remembered, Mr. Osborne, with the best and most appreciative intention in the world, had, as may be conjectured from the foregoing details of their days, succeeded in spoiling everything for her. Who could look at and enjoy a picture while he was wondering why Tintoret hadn’t given St. John something more on, or feel the magic of the approach across the lagoon when Mrs. Osborne said that the gray shining mud-flats called to mind the Fal below Truro at low tide, and Mr. Osborne confirmed the accuracy of this impression? But Maria had such an eye for likenesses.

  In consequence, Dora had a little failed in cordiality of tone on the receipt of the news, for by this plan they would leave Venice all together, and every day till their departure would be taken up with these nightmare excursions, for it was part of the plan that they should do everything together. Her words, whatever they were, had been expressive of delight at their remaining, but Claude, at any rate, had noticed the failure in tone, and on their way back after dinner he spoke about it in kindly fashion, but so, it seemed to Dora, with a matchless awkwardness.

  “Sorry you’re a bit off colour, dear,” he said. “I know Sirocco always makes you feel like that.”

  Dora saw the obviously tactful intention; her conscience also a little accused her, and she knew quite well what he had in his mind and was probably going to say.