The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
WHEN Captain Jimmy arose in the morning at his customary early hour, following the habit of the sea, and strolled out into the scarcely awakened Riva in front of the hotel, he walked as usual to the edge of the stone escarpment and stared reflectively out toward the Giudecco. He observed that the Adventure still lay there, floating light and with her bow turned toward him as if eying him with reproach for such base desertion. He grinned at the thought and mentally saluted her with, “That's all right, old girl. I understand, and I'm not certain that you haven't some right to be jealous. Affections do have a way of getting divided, sooner or later!”
The gilded God of Fortune on the Dogna di Mare, resting on its globe of gilded copper and upheld by its two bronze kneeling athletes, still held a steady motionless sail and stared seaward, the morning sun reflecting from its surface and making it shine like polished gold. The huge old Church of the Salute, majestic and imposing, was reflected in the waters at the mouth of the Grand Canal and the early gondola ferries were plying busily across carrying men, women and children to the larger island for their day's tasks. Captain Jimmy lazily stared at and admired the picture presented to him, and was turning back to the hotel for his breakfast when he discovered another lounging man, whose gaze was fixed calmly on the same hotel entrance. It suddenly occurred to Jimmy that he had seen that man several times within the last few days and he recalled that each time there had been something familiar about him. And now, in one of these peculiar flashes of memory that so strangely identifies, aided perhaps by a shift of the light on a profile, he mentally exclaimed, “Oh! Now I've got him! That was the guide to whom Pietro was talking on the first night I ever saw that young scalawag. That's the man he called Giuseppe. Suppose he's hanging around either in hope of an engagement, or waiting for some appointment. Looks a bit of a rascal, too.”
And then, consulting his watch, and finding time advancing, he speedily dismissed the lounging Giuseppe from his mind and went for breakfast with a well-developed sailor's appetite. But that was not the last he was to see of Giuseppe that day; for when after a cruise rendered marvelous by the company of Miss Tommie Cardell he landed at the Lido and strolled around with her while listening to the instructive comments of Pietro, he saw Giuseppe for the second time, engrossed in conversation with an old dame who had curios for sale. He saw him again, an hour later, when, having escaped Pietro for a while, he strolled through the long, shaded gardens leading to the terrace of a great hotel and returning that way discovered Pietro and Giuseppe in vehement conversation. Their arms waved and shook, their slender hands gesticulated beneath each other's noses, and they appeared almost on the point of quarreling when the captain and his companion approached.
“Bah! Giuseppe, take this from me—you ask too many questions. It must stop!” Jimmy heard Pietro declare as with a final snap of his thumb and finger he turned and joined them.
“You seem frightfully disturbed about something,” Miss Cardell remarked with a smile and her excited guide doffed his hat, thrust his fingers through his hair and asserted, “Disturbed, signorina? Yes, I am. That pig of a guide, Giuseppe, becomes too—what you Americans call—the fresh—that's it! Too fresh with me. Pfaugh! What is he, the swine? Just a guide! Nothing but a guide! He does not understand me, for I am not only a guide, but a poet! The signorina will bear out my assertion, I am certain.”
And then with one of the sudden changes of temper that made him so boyishly attractive his face suddenly broke into smiles and he laughed heartily.
“We quarreled over the first stanza of Dante's immortal work, and I should have known it was useless to be disturbed by such an ignorant clod as my friend Giuseppe, who is always wrong. He laughs at my poem which I shall publish at my own expense on the next Feast of Il Redentore, which of course you understand.”
Ware looked blank and Pietro scornful at such ignorance.
“The Feast of the Redeemer,” he said severely, as if speaking to a child “commemorates the deliverance from the great plague of 1537 and is celebrated the third Sunday of every July by our greatest municipal procession on the canals, because in that terrible time tens of thousands of our citizens, to escape the plague, took refuge in boats on the canals and lived there till the plague, through the efficacy of prayer, was checked. The poem which I am composing endeavors to be worthy of such a tragic event and solemn commemoration. It is nearly completed, and needs to be, for there are but ten days more until it must be issued.”
Captain Jimmy had difficulty in retaining his smiles at the grandiloquence and self-assurance of Pietro, this child of Venice, who took his city, and its fêtes, and his own work with such prodigious seriousness. He was spared comment by Miss Cardell, who straightway won a still warmer place in Pietro's heart by declaring, with the utmost kindliness, “And I am certain, Pietro, that your poem will be worthy.”
“The signorina appreciates my genius,” Pietro declared gravely. “And now if I can be of no further service, perhaps the signorina will excuse me for the day—that is, unless she wishes me to accompany her and the signor to the concert this evening.”
He looked at Jimmy almost as severely as if he thought the girl might need a cicerone or a knight-errant, and appeared so boyishly eager to protect her that again Ware was tempted to laughter.
“No, I shall not need you, Pietro,” his employer said in that same kindly and tolerant tone, much as if she were speaking to a child. “Mr. Ware will take good care of me. You may go now, if you wish.”
He murmured his thanks with an elaborate bow, and would have started away had she not halted him with a suggestion.
“There is no need for you to take one of the ferries,” she said. “Use my launch and have it return here after it has landed you on the other side.”
“The signorina is ever thoughtful,” Pietro declared with a dazzling smile of gratitude and again started away; but again, as if recalling something, the girl turned swiftly to Ware, said, “Please excuse me a moment. There is something I must say to him,” and called to her retainer in her clear voice arresting his departure. Ware seated himself on one of the benches and watched her as she hurried across the intervening space and addressed Pietro, who listened to whatever she had to say with an almost exaggerated gravity and deference.
“She's making a frightful mistake with that boy, I'm afraid,” Ware meditated, as he observed the guide's air of adoration. “He is infatuated with her. If it weren't for his constant attitude of respect I'd be tempted to advise her to send him on his way; to get rid of him; to tell him to shove off! But he gives her the same look that I notice he gives to the Madonna whenever he goes into one of these musty old churches and begins to rave about the glories of Venice. He's Venetian, all right! I'll hand that to him. And somehow, although he distrusts me, I like him.”
The girl well groomed, beautiful, so typically American thoroughbred, and as tall as Pietro, was walking back and forth along a garden path as if considering something and uncertain about it. Now and then she stopped and faced the Venetian with a question, which he answered volubly, his dark face energetic, alight, eloquent. Apparently he was attempting to impress something upon her and once he pointed with a graceful sweeping gesture that embraced the opposite shores that lay shrouded and peaceful in the late afternoon light. It was as if he were calling attention to the beauties of the “Queen of the Adriatic” that lay languidly on her hundred and a half islands out there in the blue seas. Pietro paused and looked at her as if in appeal. Her words came vaguely to the involuntary listener:
“I believe you are right, Pietro. And, anyway, I shall decide and give you an answer to-morrow morning when you come to the hotel. I can't feel as you do about” She paused and glanced in Ware's direction, flushed when she saw that his eyes were fixed upon her and then lowered her voice to conclude her sentence. Pietro shrugged his shoulders, glanced at Ware, and then with another typically Latin bow turned and made his way down to the launch. Ware felt a vague resentment that was immediately dissipated when she advanced toward him hurriedly, smiling and apologetic for keeping him in waiting so long.
“Now,” she said gayly, “all my serious business for to-day is done and I'm going to forget about it and have a good time with you.”
He could not doubt that she expressed her feelings. He was flattered and joyful, because of her impulsive surrender to the moment. He did not pause to note that it was the first time that they had ever been together alone with no intention of having anything but a “good time.”
When the launch returned it was in that quiet hour when twilight comes so fast over the great lagoon and its islands, and they boarded it and went over the placid reach between the Lido and the Punta della Motta, where they landed, dismissed the launch and strolled up the wide street to the broad and inviting entrance of the gardens. They paid their respects to Benventuni's statue of Garibaldi and stopped to stare at Tamburlini's bust of that unlucky and lost explorer Francesco Querini, after which they made their way to the quaint little open-air restaurant and chose a table beneath trees that were old when Napoleon Bonaparte made plans for enlarging this beauty spot of the Adriatic. They wondered if he might not have sat there himself, beneath those same trees, when the idea of that great extension germinated in his mind, and were as happy as children in their speculations. But it was not until night had fallen and the huge military band, playing with Italian fervor, had exercised its spell that they fell silent and somewhat absorbed. They strolled away, by mutual but unexpressed impulse, and sought the old sea wall at the extreme end of the island. From there they stared at the few moving lights that could be seen in that somewhat isolated view. The true city of Venice with its dense population lay far away on its myriad islands and it was as if they were alone and the sole occupants of an island of their own.
“Do you know,” she said, quite as if to herself, or speaking to one of whose sympathetic understanding she was confident, “this all seems familiar and old to me. It's—it's as if I had known it all my life.” She turned and looked at him in the starlight and said abruptly, “I suppose you wonder what I am doing here in Venice, all alone, don't you?”
“I couldn't be that impertinent,” he asserted gallantly. “That you are here is sufficient for me.”
For a time she regarded him and then said, with nearly a sigh, as if perplexed, “I suppose I ought to resent that as being too personal, but what's the use? I feel that—that you like being with me—and—and I like being with you. For some reason I don't understand you give me a tremendous feeling of support and confidence, quite as if, should it become necessary, I should find in you a very stalwart friend. You've got that air about you, you know, although you are most always rather a sobersides, aren't you?”
“I'm afraid I am,” he admitted with such an air of gloom that she laughed openly at him, much to his confusion. And this too was for him a strange experience, amounting to revelation, for it had been many years since any woman or girl had been able to provoke that form of perturbation. “Is it possible,” he asked, hesitant, “that I can help you in any way in whatever it is that keeps you here, as you say—alone?”
She did not answer immediately but leaned over the wall and threw pebbles that some one had left on its top into the quiet waters of the lagoon below.
“If I could” he began, and then stopped as she turned toward him with a tiny gesture. Her face seemed dim and pathetic in the light of the stars as he bent toward her.
“No,” she said slowly, “I don't think you could help. And, furthermore, I don't think I should want you to do so. It might get you into trouble. I'm rather a—rather a reckless person, I'm afraid. If I weren't a little reckless I doubt if I should tell you what I'm going to; which is that I'm over here to commit a burglary, and, if the police don't stop me, I'm going to do it, too!”
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Commit a burglary? You don't mean that literally, do you?”
“I do! Word of honor! That's what I'm here for, and I've come across the Atlantic to do it,” she asserted.
The nervous laugh with which she broke the spell of his astonishment perplexed him. He could not but be certain that she was in earnest about the projected burglary, yet could not surmise why on earth she should have such a plan, or why, even then, she should in a confidential moment confide in him. That wasn't the sort of thing that burglars, as he had always heard of them, did. It certainly wasn't professional or according to the traditions of the craft.
“Well,” he said at last, “if you're out to commit a burglary you can count me in on it. I'm inexperienced, but of this I'm sure—that if you desire something fervently enough to steal it I'm game to help grab it, whatever it is!”
“You think I'm joking,” she retorted. “Well, I'm not! There's something over there in Venice that I want. I ought to have it. It belongs to me. The only way I can get it is to steal it and—Pietro is all right, but he's such an impetuous, uncertain, wildfire sort of helper that I'm afraid he will get everything mixed up, and so I'd like to have your advice. You're the only one I've met over here whom I can feel I can trust. You seem so sane, so calm, and so capable, and Oh, to tell you the truth my heart is set on this thing!”
“On this burglary?” he asked, smiling a little in the darkness now that her barriers of reserve had been thrown down.
“Yes—for I suppose we must call it that,” she replied.
“Isn't—isn't there any other and more legitimate way of getting whatever it is that you covet?” he asked, still inclined to accept her words as a whim or jest.
“No, there isn't!” she said bitterly. “If there were, I wouldn't steal it. But I've just got to get it. That's all there is to that!”
She seemed to have forgotten him in the minutes that passed as she still leaned over the wall and looked downward upon the wash of the Adriatic that whispered against the base of the old gray walls. He watched her, half amused and wholly imbued with a desire to take her into his arms.
“I've never yet gone into a burglary,” he said at last, whimsically, “without at least knowing what it was that must be stolen. And so, as I've announced my willingness to become a criminal if you are bent on the game, and there's no other way of getting possession, I suggest that you tell me all about it. If you and I have got to steal something, let's steal it right! Ive got to know, haven't I, what it is we're to steal and where it is situated?”
He spoke with the still predominant feeling that this must be some sort of jest, but to his dumfounding she evidently took his words seriously. She made no laughing retort to prolong it, but, still leaning on her elbows over the sea wall said, “An American here whose name is Lemuel Harnway has got a little casket that belongs to my family, and I'm going to get it!”
He was thankful that she was looking abstractedly into the Adriatic when she spoke, for otherwise his start of bewilderment might have been observed. It required a moment for him to adjust himself to such a serious position and adopt a pose. He bent toward her and in the gloom studied the whiteness of her profile, the shadowy shape of her young shoulders and then looked around to collect himself before answering.
“Well,” he asked, feeling that to her at least there was something vital in all this, “if this man Harnway has got something that belongs to you, or your family, why don't you ask him for it?”
“Ask him? Ask a Harnway for anything?” she exclaimed, suddenly turning as if she had been a spring released from position. “I'd rather die than ask a Harnway anything on earth! Why should I or any of mine ask? He knows it belongs to us, and if he had any decency wouldn't have to be asked. I'd as soon think of asking the devil for holy water.” She stopped for a moment, then turned back across the sea wall and added, “And that's not all of it, either. I—I did ask him one time, and he refused. Brutally refused! Worst of all, he ridiculed me, because after I had left his house and was walking past his library window I heard him laughing as if he would burst.”
“But—but what did he say when you asked him for—whatever it is—this casket you want?”
Her indignation was extreme, absurdly so he thought, when she replied:
“He told me that if I was a year younger he would put me over his knee and spank me! That shows what a brute he is! I tried to get my brother Bill to go and shoot him; but—pshaw!—Bill is nearly as bad. He laughed, too, until I scratched his face!”
“And since then you, and your brother”
“Since then I've never told him any of my plans. If I'm the only one left to maintain the family honor I'll do it! I swear I will!”
He was inclined to laugh at her agitation, but was too patient and wise to thus imperil her further confidences, and so, after looking around and peering through the starlit gloom suggested, “Come. There's a seat over there, I think. Suppose we go and sit where you can be comfortable while you tell me as much as you wish of this quest of yours. For I suppose you call it a quest, don't you?”
“Yes, it's nothing less than that,” she asserted; but willingly walked with him until they reached and sat on a-fine old bench whose arms comfortably and shieldingly portrayed the Winged Lions of St. Mark's.
“I've been considering this taking you into my confidence for several days now,” she admitted. “So I may as well tell you all about it. First—I'm afraid you'll think I'm an awful little liar—my name isn't Cardell at all. That is merely one I took to keep that old villain, Lemuel Harnway, from knowing that I was registered at a hotel in Venice. My real name is Powell. And my first name isn't Tommie, either. That's just a nickname. My real name is Tania, which is an old family name in my tribe. What is it? Did you hear some one?”
Even in the darkness she had observed the sudden start and restless movement that, in his surprise, he had been unable to check.
“I must have been mistaken,” he said, recovering himself and peering around as if to assure himself that he had been needlessly alarmed.
“Of course you will understand, when I explain, why I had to take a false name. Then there was another reason for it. My brother Bill is one of those good-natured things, 'Laughing Billy' they used to call him at William and Mary when he was on the football team, because no matter how rough the game got he always laughed. He's like a—like a—big, good-natured St. Bernard dog, except that when he gets really in earnest and puts his foot down about something he's right emphatic. He kept his foot on me after that time I told old man Harnway what I thought of him, and until I came of age and could do what I pleased with my own money. I gritted my teeth and waited, after I saw that there was no use in depending on Bill to uphold the family traditions. Then I told him I was going to carry on myself without any help of his and—we had a bit of a scene, Bill and I did!—he told me that if he ever heard of my doing anything foolish in this matter he would telegraph Harnway, himself, and telegraph the police and—oh well!—do all sorts of mighty foolish things. So when I made up my mind to act I told Bill I was going to spend the summer with some friends up in the Maine woods, and came over here under another name so he couldn't do anything to stop me. I suppose he thinks I'm up around Moosehead Lake fishing, right now! But I'm not. You can see that! I'm over here to square accounts with this man Harnway, who laughed at me and who has got what belongs to my family—not his, or him!”
She was so vehement that she was slapping her white hand on the winged lion's head to emphasize her words; but the lion, being of marble, did not show signs of resentment and seemed a benevolent lion, indeed, that enjoyed a caress.
Ware was smiling in the darkness and watching her, absorbed and quite as benevolent as the lion. Furthermore, he felt that he would no more have resented it had she slapped him on the head in the same familiar way. She sat brooding over her wrongs until, still secretly smiling, he urged her to further explanation.
“If I'm to be a partner of yours in this restoration of rights, or stolen property, or vindication of family honor,” he said, “I think you should tell me what it's all about. That's the way things are done in a real partnership of any sort, aren't they?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Only I get so angry when I think it all over that I forget that I've taken you into partnership. But it's a pretty long story and I don't intend to bother you with a lot of it.”
She paused a moment as if to collect her thoughts and settled back into the corner of the bench with an arm resting on the back-turned and friendly wing of the marble lion, and the moon that had climbed up across the far hills to lend its light to the glow of the stars shone on her face so that, bending slightly forward and watching her, he could see the profoundly serious expression in her face and eyes. He saw that, no matter how absurd her quest might appear to her brother and to Harnway, to her, at least, it was as vital as was ever the quest of the Grail to an early and fanatical crusader.
“My great-grandfather was a Colonel Yancey Powell, and he fought for Venice in 1849. He was one of the last guards of the treasury and when the Austrians had defeated the Venetians and were entering the city he took from the treasury a historical box called the Crusader's Casket, a very old relic which I won't bother telling you about; but it had a sentimental value with it that appealed to him so much that he didn't want it to fall into Austrian hands. He wouldn't surrender, but succeeded in escaping to America. And he brought the box with him. It's of gold and very, very old, and no one can open it. They say there's a curse rests on whoever does open it, but that's neither here nor there with what happened afterward. Naturally, Yancey Powell felt that he was its custodian and thought a lot of it. He was that sort of a man, was my great-grandfather.”
Ware, listening, gave no indication that the story thus far was old.
He traced idle patterns in the gravel with his stick, bent forward and listening.
“Well, when the war in America came on he fought for the Confederacy, and there's a dispute about how the Crusader's box came into the hands of the Harnways. Yancey Powell was a careless man about money matters. He borrowed some money from a Harnway who was a banker in our town, and that Harnway, being a miserly sort of person as some bankers naturally are, claimed that the chattel mortgage my great-grandfather gave as security covered everything in Yancey Powell's house, and so he kept the Crusader's box when he foreclosed. When the war was over my great-grandfather called for it, and they quarreled and my great-grandfather challenged and killed that Harnway. Which of course served the old miser right. You can see that. Then that Harnway's brother shot my great-grandfather and They must have been terrible years! One or the other side was always finding an excuse to shoot the other!”
“A regular Kentucky feud, I reckon,” Captain Jimmy remarked dryly. “Nonsensical way of settling things!
“Nonsensical nothing!” she declared heatedly. “When two families fall out because one is entirely mean and despicable and wrong, and the law won't do anything, what else is there for the wronged one to do, if they've any honor at all, but fight it out? People who are in the right can't lay down and let themselves be walked over, can they? Well, I should say not—if they've got any spirit! Thank Heaven, my people had spirit.”
“Well, who got the best of it?” Ware asked, still looking at the gravel and the point of his stick.
“That's the unfair part of it. The Harnways did,” she admitted reluctantly. “Not because they were right, but because there were more of them and maybe they were better shots. Anyhow, they kept, and still keep that box that belonged to my great-grandfather.”
“And so”
“That's why I'm over here. Lemuel Harnway is a ridiculous old man! He never did have an awful lot of family pride, I take it, because he was educated up North, and then he traveled a lot and Of course the Harnways are rich. Mighty rich! And he's been like his tribe, money grabbing, and so made a lot more until he's worth millions and millions. He stopped living the year round at Rocky Crossing where we all come from and moved over here and bought a palace for himself. Then after a time he moved a lot of his things over her and I suspected that he had brought back our box—the box that belongs to my family, and I told Bill about it; but Bill is no good. I've been told that he actually talks to old Lemuel Harnway when they meet, and a friend of mine swears he saw Bill and Harnway drinking mint juleps together when that old thief was a senator down in Washington. But you can bet I'd never do it! I've got too much pride for that. Bill and Harnway think the family feud is foolish and done with; but I don't!”
“You don't mean to say that you believe in those old-fashioned feuds sufficiently to wish to kill Mr. Harnway, do you?” he asked, amazed and amused by her vehemence.
“No-o-o,” she admitted with a touch of reluctance, or repulsion, and perhaps relenting a trifle, “I can't say that I'd like to have him killed. That does seem rather foolish. But I'm not going to let him keep that casket that really belongs to us if I can help it. And I'll never, never forgive him for what he said to me, and for laughing at me! The idea of his threatening to spank me”
She stopped, bit her lip and concluded with a gesture of anger.
“I can quite understand your feelings in the matter,” Ware declared, and she turned toward him with quick gratitude.
“I knew you could and would,” she said impulsively. “You see, my intuition about you was right, after all. But I don't know whether I ought to ask you to do anything, even in the way of advice, to help me recover that box.”
“We've sort of—sort of made a compact of friendship, haven't we?” he asked. “Well, friends stick to each other, support each other, and if necessary fight for each other, don't they? That being so, I'm going to help you get that box. Old Lemuel has got to dig up. That is determined.”
“If you help me get that casket,” she exclaimed bending toward him until she was so temptingly near that he could fancy the warm fragrance of her hair and breath were gently wafted by the lazy night breeze across his face, “if you get me that casket”—she repeated—“I'll be your friend for life!”
“Then we have a long friendship ahead of us,” he stoutly asserted. “It seems an absurdly easy way to win it.”
“Not so easy as you might think,” she said dubiously, and then sighed deeply and leaned back into her corner, evidently sobered by recollection. “There are a lot of obstacles in the way. First of all, I'm afraid some one suspects me, because I'm quite certain that a few nights ago when Pietro and I were reconnoitering Harnway's palace a boat followed us.” She hesitated laughed and then added gleefully, “We ran it down and upset it.”
Again he smiled to himself in the darkness, but offered no confession.
“The second great obstacle is that there is a law in Italy, particularly and stringently applied here in Venice, that no art treasures can be taken out of the country without government consent. In fact, they practically confiscate articles of great historical. or artistic value, by reserving the right to purchase. Venice would pay a fortune for that Crusader's Casket, for its history and appearance are thoroughly well known. Why, do you know, there are about a half dozen famous old paintings that have it in the composition, and one by a very distinguished painter, called, 'The Lady and the Casket,' which I believe is a portrait of the wife of one of the old-time doges.”
“So, if we stole it from old Lemuel, we'd then have to turn round and steal it from Venice, then from Italy, eh? Sounds promising,” he remarked.
“It does seem like—like quite a lot of stealing, doesn't it?” she replied, with a sigh of perplexity. “And another feature is that although I can depend on Pietro for the first theft, I'm not so certain that he would care to have the casket leave Venice. He's so frightfully patriotic, so wrapped up in his beloved Venezia that he might at the last moment—well—balk.”
He laughed, amused at her prodigious gravity, and then said, cheerfully, “One thing at a time. Step by step. Perhaps we'll get so accomplished in the art of burglary after out first experience of looting old Lemuel's house that we can find a way to rob Venice with ease.”
“You aren't laughing at me, are you?” she demanded coldly.
“No-o-o; but—by the way, didn't the casket belong to Venice in the first place, and didn't your great-grandfather, Colonel Yancey Powell—didn't he—er—do a little bit in the burglary line himself when he took it?”
“Mr. Ware, I'm afraid I must resent that,” she exclaimed with some heat in her quiet voice. “My great-grandfather was not a thief. He was a great soldier of liberty. He took the Crusader's Casket to keep it from falling into the profane hands of those unspeakable Austrians! Can't you see that? It wasn't theft. It was protection.”
“Let's call it confiscation in a worthy cause under war conditions,” he said, turning toward her with a disarming smile, and after studying his face for a moment as if to reassure herself that he was not ridiculing her sophistry she said:
“That's a much nicer way to put it. Besides, I hadn't thought so much about that part of it as I have about getting it away from that impossible—that horrid old swine—that old villain who is the head of the Harnways!”
“He does sound like rather an old ruffian,” Jim remarked, and could see that he was regaining her approval. “But it strikes me that before I can give any advice or assistance I should look the ground over, discover the location of his palace, how the waterways run, and all that. I understand that a good general always studies his field of battle before making a plan.”
“Good!” she exclaimed, clapping her slender white hands together. “Good! That is just what I have been doing! I have made a map of all the rios and main canals of that locality. If you wish I can give them to you to study.”
“No,” he said, still regarding her with whimsical but wholly admiring eyes, “I think it best that I myself go and explore all that region. It wouldn't do for me to be—er—biased by your judgments, I think. Of course, your plans may prove the ones we will adopt—quite possibly so—but we ought to form independent judgments, hadn't we?”
“That sounds reasonable,” she agreed after a moment's rumination.
She started to speak again when the distant ringing of a mellow, musical bell became audible.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet. “I had no idea it was so late. That is the warning bell to clear the gardens for the night. We must hurry lest we be locked in.”
He did not dare tell her that such a contretemps would be welcomed by him, and that he could find no more enjoyable way of passing the soft Venetian night than seated with her on the cool old bench with its winged lions, or dawdling through the great groves amid fragrant, somnolent flowers, or leaning over aged sea walls to watch the waves, and be together to welcome the pallor of the vivid and whispering Adriatic dawn. He did not tell her that the bell's voice, singing and ringing like the voice of a great contralto, sounded to him like the strident and disturbing clangor of a mere policeman's gong, distracting, unwelcome, and officiously interfering. But the spell was broken. He arose and accompanied her down through the long promenade shaded on one side by great and friendly old trees, on the other by the dim wall that faced the quiet, surging sea, and thence across the ancient bridge and out through the great bronze gates. They strolled quietly down to the Riva, and at his shout of “Poppe!” a gondola, black, slender, with no tomblike felza to cut off the now brilliant light of the moon, slid placidly alongside and took them aboard.
The oar seemed to caress the water. The high prow with its likeness of a Phœnician blade and quaint studs swung outward and, accompanied by other late-returning craft, on some of which the musically inclined sang in soft Venetian voices the old, old songs of the gondoliers, they swam toward the sleeping city. For no reason that he could define both he and the girl from Rocky Crossing, Kentucky, were silent; but once he felt that she moved a little closer to him in the lazy, comfortable, and well-cushioned seat, and his heart beat with a warm sense of protection, and a great wish to take her into his arms as lovers do in that quaint old city of the seas.
It was not until they parted in the dim vestibule of the hotel that she suddenly put out her hand and said softly, as if in fear that her confession might be overheard by prying ears, “Do you know, I've been thinking it all over, and I'm glad—mighty glad—that I trusted and took you into my confidence, because now I feel that I—that is, that we—are going to succeed. I've been right dubious these last few days and felt that I needed one of my own kind of folks to help me out. And I'm glad I found you, Mr. Ware!”
Before he could make a reply she was gone—off up the dim hallway. It swallowed her in its gloom but some of the fragrance of her seemed left behind and for a moment he stood staring into the inner twilight that had enveloped her and straining his ears to hear the last faint sounds of her steps as she retired. He was not certain but that he should have been amused, although delighted by her wholly foolish and wholly absurd continuance of a feud that was in itself wholly foolish and wholly absurd; but all his practical, sober sense and judgment were swept aside by a tenderness that was new; that had come to him after he had believed such tenderness indurated and dead.
“By Heaven!” he muttered. “This is a silly thing. But if she wants old Lemuel's golden box, she shall have it, if I have to steal it myself!”