The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
IN the week following his arrival at the Danieli, Captain Jimmy found himself in what was for him a most peculiar predicament. Very peculiar for him, inasmuch as he found himself more than half in love with a young lady who seemed willing to accept his companionship at odd hours but who never bestowed any confidences regarding herself or her past and asked none of him. He was baffled by her attitude and actions. There would be forenoons when she rambled with him unconcernedly through the delightful old quarters of the delightful old city, and seemed carefree, happy, unconcerned in anything save the pleasure or interest of the moment. She invited him on excursions to Murano, that ancient island home of the glassworkers, whose furnaces still glowed, and rambled with him on other islands of the Lagune, islands scattered prodigally and green on placid blue waters Where romance seemed at home. Sometimes she herself handled the wheel of her launch and displayed a skill that appealed to his seamanship. Once she drove daringly under the counter of his own ship now unloaded and lying in ballast only in the Giudecco, and he pretended interest in the lacing of his shoes, bending his head downward and leaning his broad shoulders forward lest some of his lounging men recognize him. He noted with approval that Barton had taken the opportunity to repaint the Adventure and that she had lost her seaworn look. Evidently Barton was hoping to surprise her owner with his diligence when the latter returned from his shore wandering.
“Look! Look, Mr. Ware,” the girl called
excitedly as her launch slipped away. “That ship is called the Adventure and she carries our flag. Isn't she beautiful? I should think you would take more interest in a ship from home,” she added when he merely gave a quick glance upward and again looked away.
“I am too much interested in the way you handle your boat,” he replied.
“Why? Don't I do it well?” she asked ingenuously. “I raced boats at Miami and Palm Beach and had got rather fond of myself as a sailor. Don't make me doubt myself, please. Besides, I don't suppose you are any better sailor than I am, are you?”
She laughed in his face, and he would have laughed in return had not his eyes at that moment encountered Pietro's in whose glance there was an odd expression of expectancy.
“Of course I'm not,” he asserted. “How can you expect a mere tourist to know anything about the sea?”
“What are you interested in, anyway?” she demanded. “You don't seem to care so very much about palaces, or historical things, or traditions, or”
“Well, get on with it,” he said laughingly when she paused in her arraignment. “You seem to think I'm a frightfully useless dawdler.”
“You haven't said anything to convince me otherwise,” she remarked severely. “For some reason that I can't explain you impress me as one of those who drift aimlessly. A man without a purpose. I don't like aimless people. They annoy me.”
“I suppose then, Miss Cardell, that you have an aim,” he suggested, lazily, and was astonished by the sudden change that came over her face, sobering it, slightly hardening it.
“Yes,” she declared, “I have. I am the last one of my family, I sometimes think, who has an aim or courage. I've got a brother who laughs at me and is too lazy to do anything worth while. I suppose he's at Palm Beach right now, fishing, sailing, dancing and doing all sorts of things that aren't worth a rap. I should have been the man of the family.”
“It's usually the women who have the refinement of brains, and the more steadfast courage,” he remarked.
“That's very nice of you to say that,” she said, mollified and smiling at him. “You tempt me—almost—to take you into my confidence.”
“I wish you would,” he declared, sitting suddenly erect and looking at her with unmistakable admiration in his handsome eyes. And he could have mentally anathematized Pietro, who at that moment interjected himself with a suggestion that it was time they return to the hotel unless they wished to be late for luncheon. They returned and again he felt as if an opportunity had been lost.
He was chafing at his helplessness throughout the afternoon, and stopped on a bench down in the public gardens to consider what the week had brought forth. It had resulted in nothing save that he had been accepted as a casual acquaintance when no other was convenient. Such status annoyed him. Other women he had known had been only too eager to accept and seek his friendship. Sometimes he had been driven to reserve by such attentions. And now when he had found a girl whom he ardently wished to impress he felt a failure. It but increased his determination to get on some other and more intimate footing with Tommie Cardell, to break through that reserve with which she surrounded herself whenever he tried to approach her.
Again, there was something mysterious in her movements. Twice in the week he had seen her in the hotel drawing-room, seated obscurely in the corner behind the palms, holding confidential conversation with the perfervid young guide Pietro Sordillo. He was still thinking of these little happenings that night when, after she had declined to accompany him to the opera, pleading a previous engagement, he loitered in front of the hotel for an hour or two, lonely, and saw the crowd diminish along the Riva degli Schiavoni until the great sea-front way appeared almost deserted. A vagrant impulse impelled him to walk up to the nearest gondola station and step into the first one at the landing.
“The signor wishes to go—where? He can trust me, old Tomaso, to take him,” politely boasted the gray-haired but sturdy old veteran at the oar. For a moment Captain Jimmy hesitated and then with a wave of his hand said, “Oh, anywhere! I don't care. You might cut down through the first canal and get to the Rialto.” And then suddenly he seemed to recall something and said, “No, I'll tell you what to do, Tomaso. Take me into the Rio della Guerra and from there into the Rio dei Baretteri. There's an old palace there I wish to see—the palace of Mascarelli.”
“Oh, the one now owned by the wealthy American, the Signor Harnway?”
“Yes, that's the one,” said Captain Jimmy, settling back into his seat as the gondolier dipped his long oar into the water, swung the high and ornate prow of his black craft sidewise and urged it forward.
For a long time, leisurely, almost silently, the gondola slipped through the narrow waterway bordered by buildings high and as black and still as the water which the prow of the gondola seemed to slip over rather than to part. At that hour of the night no other boats intruded upon them. Once they passed three or four other craft whose owners, tired, lay asleep as if the canals were their homes to which they had come for rest when the day's work was done. Gloomy doorways opened here and there above landing steps whose bases were laved and slapped by the languidly disturbed waters. Here and there a wall was passed whose creepers and vines, flowering dully in the gloom, swayed in the water as if aroused from sleep. Suddenly the gondolier paused and muttered as if in astonishment, “There is another gondola ahead of us that acts peculiarly! As if it didn't wish to be seen and Strange things happen in these rios at night, signor. Perhaps we intrude.”
“How do you know they act peculiarly?” demanded Captain Jimmy, interested.
“They have kept just far enough ahead to keep from sight, signor. I can tell by the wash. Each time when there is a turn where we could have taken another direction they have waited to see whether we would leave them. They do not wish to be seen.”
“All right. Let's have some fun with them. See if you can catch up and come alongside. There's twenty lire extra in it if you can,” Captain Jimmy remarked impulsively. “I've never seen a gondola race and it ought to be worth while. Go to it!”
The gondolier grinned in the darkness, said something about an extra twenty lire being worth striving for, and shot his slender boat ahead with swift strokes of the long oar. It turned a corner in time to see a similar boat making off into an intersection. A few yards more and Captain Jimmy's boat, with a rapid swerve, also had turned into a still narrower rio and now in a patch of light from high windows they saw the pursued gondola making undoubted haste to escape.
“Forty lire if you overtake them,” called Captain Jimmy, with dormant sporting proclivities aroused. “Yes, I'll make it fifty. Shake a blade. Let's see what you can do!”
The veteran at the oar was now swaying his body backward and forward with his foot and stiffened leg keeping time as his stroke increased, and the gondola seemed pulsing with effort. It slowed down to make the next turn around which the escaping boat had disappeared some minutes before and then Captain Jimmy heard an exclamation, felt Tomaso making frantic efforts to alter the course of his craft, and heard his shout, “Signor! Look out for yourself!”
He had but a glimpse of the high, sharp, metal prow of another gondola, manned with two oars, shooting forward to ram his own craft! There was a resounding smash, the gondola in which he stood was overturned and he found himself swimming in the water near his own gondolier, who was swearing steadily with a vigor that proved that he was angry, rather than frightened, and in no danger of drowning. And this surprise was not dulled before he received another; for he heard a woman's voice commanding sharply, “Keep straight on! Straight on and back as fast as you can. A police boat may be called! Quickly!”
“True, signorina! True!” he heard another well-known and recognized voice reply and the two-oared gondola slithered past, its black shape appearing snakelike, its two oars working at racing speed and then in a moment they were gone. He knew that he had been run down by Tommie Cardell and that the man in the head of the attacking gondola had been none other than Pietro Sordillo, the guide, her retainer.
His own gondolier came swimming toward him like a water rat to see if his passenger required assistance, saw that he was well able to care for himself and swam toward the overturned gondola which floated but a few yards away. Captain Jimmy had just gained his side and was resting with an arm on the craft when they heard a shout above them on the narrow ledge of a street near by and knew that the authoritative tones could have come only from an officer:
“What's wrong down there?”
The gondolier was about to shout his expostulations when Jimmy laid a hand on his arm and clutched it savagely, then shouted, “Nothing serious, officer. Just an accident. That's all. We took a turning too abruptly—all my fault. Here, I'll hand you an oar so you can give us a tow down to the first landing.”
“This is too much! What will any policeman say of me with such an excuse as that?” growled Tomaso, but was silenced by his passenger.
“We can tell him I was learning to row. Shut up! I'll pay well if you keep quiet.”
Thus admonished the gondolier fell to a sulky silence but, by the time the officer above had caught the end of the oar and dragged the overturned gondola and its two living burdens along a convenient landing, had recovered his tongue and was as volubly lying as even Jimmy could have wished. A gold coin slipped into the official hand turned the policeman into a messenger to find another gondola and bring it to the scene, and Captain Jimmy and his gondolier sat on the edge of the landing and dumped the water from their shoes.
“Tomaso, did you recognize who it was ran into us?” Jimmy asked thoughtfully.
“I did and—I didn't, signor. The man's face was in blackness, but—that was a familiar voice and once I hear it again—my ear is good. He shall pay for it!” The veteran left no doubt of what he would do to that enemy once identification was certain.
“But mightn't it have been an accident?”
“Accident! I smile, signor! Here in the darkness I smile! No man who ever stood on the running board of a gondola and handled an oar like that man ever rammed another boat in Venice by accident. That man was born to the water, the same as myself.”
“But suppose I don't want you to get him? Suppose I'd rather get him in my own way?”
Jimmy saw the old gondolier stop, bend forward and look at him as if to make certain that this was not a jest, and then turn, whistle softly through his teeth, and give an odd chuckle.
“Ah. The signor heard as I did, that there was a woman in that gondola! Now I begin to understand. The signor wishes, for reasons of his own, to hush this matter up.”
“Exactly,” the captain replied. “No one must know. Not even the gondolier whom the policeman is now bringing around the bend down there. Listen, Tomaso, I was learning to row a gondola. I got flustered and banged her against a corner. That is all. And now listen still closer. I pay you to keep this between ourselves and I'm going to hire you and your boat from now on until I get this matter straightened out. You are to be at my service night and day. Understand?”
The gondolier, who in his forty or fifty years of life on the canals had known of, and perhaps participated in, many strange affairs, chuckled wisely and said, “I am the signor's man. And he may leave it to me to keep any one from knowing anything. But I can't tell until I can get my boat out of water how badly she was rammed. Those metal prows driven by two oars can cut like a knife, sometimes. I think I had better have this man tow me into a little quiet basin over on the other side of the Grand Canal behind the Chiesa della Salute where, when dawn comes, I can hide her if need be until I can repair her.”
“Good. If necessary get a man to help you who can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. Come to the Hotel Danieli to-morrow at noon and ask for Mr. Ware. I shall leave you now and find another gondola. If I cut through this passage where will it take me?”
“Out onto the canal near the Rialto Bridge, signor, and there is a gondola station close by.”
The oncoming gondola drew up alongside, the captain bade the officer and the gondoliers good night, and trudged away through a narrow alleyway, leaving a trail of water behind him. An hour later he surprised the watch on the Adventure by coming aboard and going below to his cabin, from which, later, and well clad, he returned to the shore. Swinging a light stick and appearing as if he had but returned from a most placid evening he entered the hotel and the lounge to find the young lady Tommie engrossed in conversation with that earnest young gentleman Pietro. They looked up as he said, “Good evening,” and he wondered if it were a trick of his imagination, or a fact, that they appeared to exchange glances of relief or surprise even as they responded to his salute. And was he mistaken in wondering if there was a dry irony in Pietro's question:
“Ah, the signor has taken advantage of the balmy night and been to hear the band concert in the public gardens?”
“I'm fond of music,” said Captain Jimmy evasively. “I had rather hoped for the pleasure of company this evening; but I saw neither of you around when I left the hotel. Were you at the concert?”
The cool directness of his question appeared to cause the guide some slight confusion.
“No, signor,” he said, lowering his eyes to the rug at which he stared contemplatively. “The signorina is—er—planning her further explorations in my beloved Venezia.”
Jimmy saw a slight smile curve the corners of Tommie's most charming mouth and was not surprised when she turned from the writing table after folding up a map of the city and smiled openly at him.
“Yes, Mr. Ware,” she said, “I am still unsatisfied. There is much to be seen in Venice. Don't you think so?”
“I do,” he agreed, feeling all the time that perhaps he was fencing with a very charming antagonist. “The canals, by night, are wonderful. There is a mystery about them, a sort of glamour. Quite as if romance were not yet dead in the greatest home of romance that the world has ever known.”
“Ah! The signor too feels that?” cried Pietro, suddenly enthusing. “He sees it to-day? Then think what it must have been in those past centuries when silks and satins rustled in the gondolas and the gondoliers of the rich and powerful wore velvet and gold! Back in those ages of poetry, and song, and love!”
“And perhaps abduction, and the stiletto, and the vendetta also, eh?”
“Possibly,” said Pietro with a shrug of his shoulders and uplift of his hands. “Men of the medieval ages were hot blooded and quick to act.”
“And I fancy that the Venetians are still hot blooded and quick,” retorted the captain, steadily eying the guide to discern if the latter might not in any way betray himself.
“I suppose we are—if we are crossed,” calmly replied Pietro.
“And perhaps as dangerous to-day as they were years ago—in the Dark Ages?”
“And perhaps as dangerous, signor.”
Miss Cardell looked up at the two men as if suspecting some hidden import in their speech and, almost as if thrusting herself between two combatants, intervened.
“To-morrow afternoon, Mr. Ware, I plan to go to the Lido in my launch. Would you like to come along?”
“Nothing could delight me more,” he said sincerely. “With one reservation—which is that in the evening you are to go as my guest to the gardens to hear the very famous military band that is playing there this week.”
He saw that for a moment she hesitated and that Pietro was staring at her as if to suggest that she decline, and he felt a savage desire to tell that young man that it was not the part of a guide to make suggestions to his employer. She glanced up almost casually at Pietro, intercepted his look and then her lips closed firmly as she replied, “I shall be your guest in the evening, with pleasure, Mr. Ware.”
Pietro arose almost sulkily, recovered his poise, and said: “Then it is planned that we leave the hotel at three o'clock, Signorina Cardell.”
“That is the arrangement. Good night,” she said as he bowed, and after making his salutation to Captain Jimmy retired with a swing of his lithe young shoulders that seemed to express something akin to “washing his hands” of something.
The girl watched him go with an amused look in her eyes and seemed almost unaware of Jimmy's presence. He expected her to make some comment, but she did not. He was tempted, under the lure of her eyes, to bluntly ask her the meaning of the night's episode, but fortunately remembered that although friendship grows with an astonishing rapidity between congenial fellow countrymen when they find themselves alone together in a foreign land, there is a limit to inquisitiveness. Moreover, he was aware that within a week he had formed a most astonishing and perplexing desire for this girl's esteem. He contented himself with a reference to the departed guide.
“That young chap seems to be a most competent sort of person, quite above the average run of guides, doesn't he?”
“Ah, you have noticed that too? Well, he amuses me. He does, actually!” she declared. 'He reminds me of some old poet who, all fire and fervor, had stepped out of a frame. But perhaps you don't know that he is a poet? Well, he is. He gave me to-day a bundle of manuscript and—well, it was all I could do to keep from laughing at his earnestness; which would have been dangerous for, Mr. Ware, it is always dangerous to laugh at those who are in earnest, no matter what silly form their earnestness may take. So, I read them and praised them—with some slight mental reservations. I'm afraid he has read his Tasso so reverently that he has unconsciously imitated the Tasso style. But Pietro is a wonderful boy. Yes, just a boy. He is so respectful—almost reverential. And he does so enthuse over his Venice and her traditions.”
“I have observed that,” Jimmy admitted, with a sense of justice and truth. “Also that he appears to be your most willing slave.”
“We—Pietro and I—have a quest together.” She laughed, and then as if it were after all no jesting matter became suddenly grave and frowned absently through the open windows. “He wished me to achieve something that my heart is set on doing,” she said and then, much to Jimmy's amazement, slapped her open palm on the writing table with a feminine air of determination and declared, “And I'll achieve it, too! You can bet on that, as we say down home when we're really in earnest.”
Then suddenly she laughed and said: “But all this means nothing to you, and to tell the truth I felt that I had to promise to accompany you to-morrow night just to show him that I was, after all, somewhat independent of this quest of ours that seems to have become a mutual one.”
“I'm glad of that, for I benefit thereby,” he asserted.
“You are complimentary,” she said, smiling, as she arose and gave him her hand and wished him good night.