CHAPTER XXI

WE ARE WHIRLED AWAY BY THE 2.20 FROM CHARING CROSS AND MEET THE QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC

We went straight through, leaving Charing Cross by the 2.20 which has carried so many happy travellers away from London through the smiling valleys of Kent. Were I a poet, I would address an ode to that romantic liberating train.

It was after midnight on the following day when we drew up at last at Venice, tired and dusty and hungry and stained and not a little wondering why we had left London. But the next few minutes set that right, for all our weariness rolled away as we sat in the gondola under a soft starry sky, and watched the lights in the water, and heard the porters in fluent altercation, and at last got away and began to thread the narrow canal to Danieli's, where we were staying for that night.

The next morning we moved on, by Dollie's advice, to the large hotel by the landing-stage at the Lido. I will not say that there are no mosquitoes--zanzare--there, but I am prepared to admit that the manager's theory is correct, and that we brought them with us from Venice.

The secret of the peculiar buoyancy of the Lido waters I do not know; but they are wonderful. "Like bathing in champagne," Alderley said; and that, though a vile sophisticated simile, comes near the mark. Other sands may be gayer; but for its gift of exuberant gladness the Lido comes first.

Drusilla's face, as we met, on our way to the sea down the wooden gangway, on the first afternoon, an Italian gentleman clad almost entirely in his own hair, was worth its weight in kodak films.

"Why can't he wear a bath towel like Kent and father?" she asked indignantly.

"Because he's an Italian," was Naomi's unanswerable reply, which, however Drusilla may have resented its insufficiency then, she was bound to agree with later; for the sea was full of such shameless happy monsters and their ladies, gambolling in the waves with both feet planted firmly and frankly on the bed of the ocean, and none of the Briton's shame at being found out no swimmer or any of his acrobatic efforts to convey to the shore an illusion of buoyancy.

Perhaps, when all is said, the profoundest difference between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin is the Latin's indifference to public opinion. There is no true civilisation without it--if by civilisation is meant the art of enjoying life.

As a general rule, after our bathing was done we lunched and then crossed to Venice, where we spent the rest of the day very lazily and very happily. Venice indeed imposes laziness. Even Americans doing Europe approach restfulness there. There is no hurrying a gondolier.

My stepsister, who had not sketched for years, once more produced her paint-box and block, and we used to establish her comfortably in a corner and leave her for an hour or so; Drusilla and Alderley paired off, and Naomi and I. Drusilla had of course to see all the pictures, and we let her and her father find them for us and take us only to those which they thought very good. Venice is not rich in good pictures; the best work of the Venetian school is elsewhere. Venice has the sprawling Tintorettos in abundance, some of which are magnificent and all miracles of virility; but she has few portraits from his hand to set, for example, against the old Admiral and the warrior in armour at Vienna, and nothing quite like the "Origin of the Milky Way," in our own National Gallery. Titian, again, after the "Assumption," may now be better studied away from his old home than in it, and there are more exquisite Guardis in London. In the Museo Civico, however, we found a great collection of Guardi's pen and pencil sketches, light as air. Giovanni Bellini, again, save for the little glowing allegories in the Accademia, is not represented in Venice by anything so beautiful as his best pictures in Trafalgar Square; but for his brother Gentile (if you want him), as for Carpaccio, a journey to Venice is indispensable. Nor does one any longer see a Venetian maturing into a Robusti or Vecellio. The Venetians that throng the piazza of San Marco when the band is playing are not like that. Shrewd they seem to be, self-contained, masters of their narrow lives: but no more. Perhaps they account for the appalling deterioration of modern Venetian art.

As for Naomi and me, we preferred the real life of Venice to its show life, and we spent most of the time, after reaching the city, on foot. For one may walk about Venice all day, and by following the little narrow paths and bridges at random not only get lost but come upon fascinating little squares and churches, family groups at the doorsteps, and richly coloured fruit baskets. Being lost is, however, no inconvenience, for the Grand Canal is never far away, with some adjacent pier where one can board a steamer that will in time come to the Molo again.

We did not even see all the show places. The Doges' Palace spread its nets for Naomi and me in vain; but I cannot say how many times we found our way to the statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni on horseback in the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and more than twice did we cross to San Giorgio Maggiore to be taken round the choir stalls by a courtly priest and hear him explain in fascinating broken English the carved scenes in the crowded life of St. Bernard; and more than twice did we glide on from San Giorgio to the Redentore, where a tall monk with a long grey beard unveiled one after the other the treasured paintings of the sacristy, and set us, with all the solicitude of an enthusiast, in the best light for each, enlarging earnestly, in easy, companionable Latin, on their beauties. A simple, kindly creature, who surely will be seated high in heaven after a life thus spent.

Meeting some English friends one day, we heard that the angel with a flaming sword no longer stood at the gate of the Edens' garden, but instead, the family being away, their compatriots were admitted on the presentation of a visiting card, and off we voyaged thither, across the canal della Giudecca into the narrow rio whence this paradise is gained: a tangled tropical place, lacking no charm but undulation. One walks on the flat between flowers and fruit along paths that seem never-ending, beneath a sun whose beams carry a fragrance of their own to add to that of the vegetation. The south-west boundary is the still and magical lagoon.

Here we loitered careless as man in his first state, while the lizards darted between our feet, flashing in and out of the beds and the stone-work by thousands. That is the ultimate impression conveyed by this Venetian garden--lizards. Large lizards and small, green and yellow, swift as arrows on the wing, and stopping as suddenly as arrows in the target, bright-eyed, wary, daring, silent as shadows, clear and radiant as jewels. Lizards. Oranges and peaches, figs and nectarines may grow here like weeds; but it remains in the mind a garden of lizards.

Oft the days when we did not cross to Venice we would have tea either at the casino or in our hotel, watching the steamers empty and fill, and the arrival or departure of that prince in exile, Don Carlos, Duke of Madrid, whose habit it was every afternoon to visit the Lido in his motor launch with the ensign of Spain, accompanied, like a figure in the _Arabian Nights_, by a lady, a huge dog, and a black page. Tall and massive and bearded, I see him still, as he returned to his boat, pausing to open his purse and distribute alms, as a prince should, to all the beggars of the quay.

Usually in the evening we returned to Venice again to hear the music and eat an ice and recognise our countrymen. For Venice between eight and ten is concentrated into so small a space that it becomes a mere annexe of Piccadilly and Broadway.

When we had pored over Baedeker in Queen Anne's Gate, we had planned a score of excursions to neighbouring places--to Verona and Treviso, even to Bergamo; but Venice was too much for us. We had no such energy. Life was too sweet for sight-seeing, and we said, "If we make an expedition, let it be to-morrow and not to-day," and loafed and loafed.

One afternoon we had a very unexpected meeting. Naomi and I were in the last room in the Accademia, where Bellini's Madonna of the Two Trees hangs; and who should be already there studying the little gay series of allegories but Mr. Dabney of _The Balance_? He looked up with a face radiant with pleasure--not a trace for the moment of his usual critical discontent.

"At last!" he said.

"Then you have been expecting to find us?" I asked.

"I have been to all the hotels," he replied, "and no one had ever heard of you. I found I could snatch a fortnight, and I came right out at once."

From that time Mr. Dabney was constantly near us or with us, and was good company in the mass, but I found him no particular addition on such rambles as Naomi and I had been accustomed to take together. He had, however, not been in Venice before, and we, with our brief familiarity with it, being in the very agreeable position of comparatively oldest inhabitants, found a certain pleasure in showing him the sights.

In France he would have been, I think, a sad bore, for there he would have discovered so many points of superiority to the English: but not even so keen a censor of his own country and countrymen as Mr. Dabney could find aught in Venice, except such forgivable and inimitable advantages as crumbling and picturesque architecture and clear skies, to hold up as a model for home adoption.

And so, although a few walks with Naomi were ruined, I did not think hardly of Mr. Dabney or suspect danger, until one evening, after he had returned to the city in the last steamer, Drusilla remarked that he was evidently hard hit.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"By Naomi," she answered; and straightway the soft languorous moon left the sky and the delicate stars were blotted out....

Of course....

Why had I been so blind?

Returning to the hotel, I said good-night to the others, and again walked out. I sat on the quay and looked over towards the mainland, and realised, as one can realise only on very beautiful nights, how empty life is if it holds not one's desire.

What was my desire?

Did I want Naomi?

I had never put the question to myself in so many words; I hardly put it now. But I knew, as I had known when Miss Gold made that remark about Trist and Naomi just before we came away, that I did not want any one else to want her.

Eternal dog in the eternal manger, that will not claim for itself, and equally dislikes others to claim!

I was not a philanderer: I had hated philandering almost more than any of the selfish vices; I was not a coward, or at any rate I was sufficiently a fatalist to have no fear of the future. These things I knew. What, then, was it that I suddenly recognised was making me loathe myself and my kind?

Could I really be one of those hesitants in love who had so puzzled me, and against whom I had in my perplexity, my imperfect knowledge, directed so many a hard adjective?

Strange how gradually one has to come to the understanding not only of other men but of oneself! In a flash now I realised their tragedy and felt for them a great sorrow, none the less intense for its inclusion of myself.

They truly are food rather for our sympathy than contempt, who have not loved enough to demand, but have loved too much or have too much hated the thought of others loving, to be able to renounce. How that worm must gnaw!

There is no end to the subtle tortures which civilisation has devised and is devising, but surely not the least is this modern hesitancy, which increases and will increase as we become more complex and believe less in another world and therefore more in enjoying this: this terror lest the step we are taking should produce anything less than the maximum of happiness. In one life, so short, to make a false move, how can one bear to contemplate it?--and thus terrified, we make none at all.

Was I like that? I asked myself, and repudiated the charge. No: I was not like that; nor must I be.

I grew calmer as I decided thus, and calmer still as I realised that such fears, such panics, were common to those on the brink of a passion.

As I was?

Was I? Is it possible to reach one's first passion at the age of fifty-five? I laughed aloud at the use of such a novelist's word. But one thing was certain, and that was that Naomi was the dearest companion I could ever know, I who had never much wanted a companion at all--Naomi's quiet presence and alert interest, Naomi's serene face, Naomi's atmosphere. I could not indeed think calmly of life without Naomi at all.

And she? Had she any such thoughts of me as a companion? I knew nothing, less than nothing. How should I know? I had never studied women. I had got on with them very well; had had a few friends among them in the Argentine: but always, I realised now, with the gloves on. Naomi was my first frank companion--since Agnes Gold those many years ago. Agnes Gold. What was she thinking, as she lay there on her poor back, about Naomi and me? She had mentioned Trist as the ideal husband, but it was Naomi and me whom she had invited to control her affairs.

That thought gave me comfort, and I braced myself under it. I drew a long breath and turned my back on the soft stars and the lights of Venice and the pitiless, lovely, still lagoon, and went to bed convinced of two things: one being that it was fortunate our visit to this accursed beauty-spot was nearly done, and the other that I would do all I could to keep out of the black pit of melancholia, for I saw swiftly down a vista of very dark possibilities.