CHAPTER TEN

The "Excelsior" while at sea had appeared to be the sanctuary of orderliness: here, in port, she had cast her virtues to the wind. No one came punctually to meals; the steward had gone ashore and his substitute proved a broken reed; the captain was invisible; the cabins were hot and stuffy, with port-holes tightly shut; above all, everything was grimed with coal dust, for the yacht was replenishing her bunkers, and the air was filled with the rattle of the operation.

When Scherer arrived, half an hour late, and went to the dining saloon, he found Wilhelm the solitary occupant, waiting patiently before his empty plate, and whiling away the time till his comrades should put in an appearance by cutting initials in the skin of an orange and gently whistling as he worked.

"You must be awfully hungry, my dear fellow," said Scherer apologetically. "I see you are trying to make the best of my unpunctuality by carving the emblems of love. May I have a look?"

Wilhelm turned the fruit towards his host, so that the letters D. W. became visible.

"Are you so very deeply in love?" Scherer asked with a blend of gravity and amusement.

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, you've joined your initial to that of the young lady."

"My initial? Oh no. The letters stand for Diana de Wassilko. When I was cutting the little 'd' which marks her rank, the knife slipped; but one can still make it out if one looks close enough. I meant to put the orange at her place, so that we all might know where she would sit if she happened to turn up for lunch."

Scherer took his seat at the table, and, after a word of excuse, buried himself in the letters he had fetched at the post office.

"If I were to set about carving initials in real earnest," continued Wilhelm, when the meal was at last served, "a number of other letters would have to be grouped round the D."

"What other letters?" asked Scherer pleasantly.

"You are not going to lure any secrets out of me, Herr Scherer," said Wilhelm, trying to copy his host's worldly manner. "All I will tell you is that I'd put an E. and a K. and also an S. under the D."

"An S. too?"

"Of course. But they'd only be there as liabilities, you know, not as assets in relation to the D. Not that, certainly not that."

"And which would be assets?"

"Assets? None at all. Nothing but a D. I seem to be giving a double meaning to everything I say. Honour bright, the D. stands alone."

Eduard and Kyril followed close on one another's heels. The Russian was agitated, he threw his letters down higgledy-piggledy, growling to himself in his native tongue, and all because a packet he had been expecting had failed to come. He asked if Scherer would not like to meet Salvatore, the leader of the socialist press in the town. Scherer countered by offering to introduce Kyril to Ricci. Both men were aware that their two spheres of interest could never be reconciled.

The prince, for his part, was pensive, taciturn, saying he had seen nothing, and that Dimiter had bored him. Kyril laughed, and begged the prince to forgive him his desertion. This was the first day Eduard had seen the Russian laugh, and the splendid teeth that were disclosed in the act made the prince uneasy.

Finally came Franklin, making what speed he could, his necktie askew, preoccupied and uncompanionable.

"I'm afraid I can't raise your spirits by handing you some pleasant correspondence," said Scherer. "There were no letters for you."

"I fetched them myself," answered Franklin mendaciously, as he continued to eat in silence.

One of the crew stepped up to Scherer at that moment, and handed him a letter, telling him that the messenger was awaiting an answer. Scherer tore open the envelope, ran his eyes over the note, and then read it aloud to the company.

"I have met my father ashore. Till the yacht sails, I should like to stay with him. Please ask Mary to come to me. You, dear Herr Scherer, and your friends are cordially invited to come and see us tomorrow.

"Yours, "D. W."

Wilhelm was the first to break the silence which had fallen upon the party, completely taken aback by the news. He lifted the orange he had carved, saying:

"You see, Gentlemen, there are the letters, prophetic, D. W., as in the note."

Scherer opened another envelope, enclosed within Diana's, and read:

"Grigori de Wassilko

asks the pleasure of your company ... tomorrow evening at seven o'clock. Palazzo Tiepoletto."

"There are four similar cards, one for each of you," continued Scherer, dealing the invitations out to his guests.

Wilhelm took his, read it, turned it over, endeavouring to solve the mystery of a visiting card, and to infuse with poesy the display of a name on an oblong of white pasteboard.

"Tiepoletto," queried Scherer, "are there not three palaces of that name?"

"This one is the last as you leave the harbour," explained Eduard, pocketing his card.

"You know...?"

All eyes were raised from the cards and fixed on Eduard's face.

"Elderly gentleman, white beard, carefully tended," explained the prince with assumed indifference. "I propose that we, too, send an avalanche of cards!"

Scherer undertook to accept the invitation in the name of his guests, and while he was penning his note, the others stood about the dining saloon, chary of words, reserved, while the coal rattled into the bunkers, a hostile symbol as it were, racking to ears accustomed for many days to the monotonous bourdon of seas and winds. Wilhelm, submissive young simpleton that he was, had got over his pastoral adventure with Diana in the best way he could, by forcing himself to regard it in silence as a bitter-sweet jest--for never since she had on that first evening, rejected his advances in a friendly enough fashion, had he again ventured to approach her as a lover. Eduard, at a loose end like a wooer who just before declaring himself has to leave his beloved if only for a day, was a bundle of nerves, restlessness, and impatience. Kyril and Franklin had had strange and disquieting news. Nothing was to be got from the latter, but when all the others had gone ashore he had his trunks carried down the gangway, and when his host returned that same evening a note was all that was left to tell of Franklin's presence.

"A letter was awaiting me here which summoned me to Vienna, urging me to use the utmost speed as the matter concerned my official duties. I am thus constrained to leave the white ship earlier than we had planned, a step I regret all the more when I remember how generously you have played your part as host. Forgive me for departing in this unceremonious way without a personal leave-taking, but it is expedient that I should catch the night train; now it is already six o'clock, and there is no sign of your return.

"A day will come when I shall be able to thank you in person.

"FRANKLIN."

Folded within this sheet was another, written in a more youthful hand, the lines running in curves, rhapsodic and divided into rhythmical versicles:

"No! There must be truth between friends. May I count you my friend, today? There was no letter, no night train at all. A meeting merely. Just fancy! A meeting in a little street... Languid embraces, melancholy, staring eyes... Forgetting culture, ambition, knowledge! You smile? At my age one does not find that the gods often trouble to bestow ecstatic hours. Yes, it is true, during these last days, when it has seemed that a greater intimacy has sprung up between me and the girl, my senses have become confused, I have felt rejuvenated--and I am happy to acknowledge the fact: it is the huntress who has sent me into this Venetian beggar-woman's arms, has sent me to this queen. Her hair is like what one sees in the elder Palma's pictures, but her skin is like Franklin's the younger."

After lunch, Eduard had tried to get a siesta, but he was still agitated with his morning adventure, and presently decided to leave the noisy, dusty ship. He was pulled ashore in company with Kyril and Wilhelm, the two latter having agreed to explore a distant quarter of the town together, each wishing, though from very different motives, to rub shoulders with the common people. The Russian spoke very little Italian, but Wilhelm had bicycled all over Italy, learning old songs and new, and in the process becoming a master of the language. Now they had cajoled Giorgino into acting as guide, for though the lad had come originally from Vicenza, he knew Venice very well.

Eduard, though attracted by the excursion, could not bring himself to make one of the party. It seemed to him impossible to walk with this Russian among people whom, no more than a couple of hours ago, he had regarded with a blend of envy and timidity as aboriginals. When he turned to leave his two companions, Wilhelm's faithful, doglike glance smote him to the heart, and he asked himself why it was that people should find it so hard to understand one another. He went on his way aimlessly, dreading the long afternoon that lay ahead, and suddenly realizing that all the hours till seven the following evening had to be spent somehow. "I ought to have joined forces with Scherer," he thought as he strolled along streets which at this hour were always empty.--"Women... One could spend the time in a woman's company... Adelheid might be better than nothing... They have a lovely house ... and even if Umberto, the husband, does talk exclusively of Principe Doria, she herself is a fine figure of a woman, and invariably gracious...." Now he found himself accosted by a flower girl whose nosegays of narcissus suggested a lady's boudoir.... Hailing a gondola, he asked to be taken to the palazzo....

"Eduard," cried a plump and handsome woman entering the little salon precipitately, his card still in her hand. "Eduard the Confessor! How nice to see you again."

"1042 to 1066, my dear Adelaide," said Eduard, allowing himself to be embraced. "I have not come here as a confessor this time, but as a true and faithful knight, to lay these narcissi upon your ever youthful breast!"

She took the proffered nosegay, and, without a look at the flowers, stuck them in her bodice. The whole thing was done in so matter-of-fact a way, in so stereotyped a manner, that Eduard could not help thinking how different Diana's reaction would have been, how graciously she would have taken a bouquet from the hands that offered it. He could not now understand how he had managed to be even a little in love with this woman a few years ago, though she was amiability personified, and at that time had been slim and graceful.

"On the contrary, I am no longer old enough to act the mother confessor as I did when you were here before, because your noble family has unfortunately determined to turn so Protestant a face to the world. But, Dio mio, what are you doing now? How's uncle Heinrich? And Elisabeth? And Katharina? And where do you come from now?"

Eduard gave a pithy report of these family matters, and then turned the conversation to the lady's husband and children. The former, he learned, had gone to Rome, the latter had gone for a day's excursion to the country. He was shown countless photographs of the youngsters, indeed every table was laden with these effigies, so that his cup of steaming tea, as he pleasantly remarked, looked like an offering of incense at the shrine of Margherita, his little cousin. This cheerful, worldly-wise woman had a wholesome effect upon Eduard, relieving him from his depression; and, after half an hour in which she had made many more references to the days of their youth, he congratulated himself on the impulse which had made him come to see her, and on finding her alone.

"The view from here is really too Baedekerish, Adelaide," he said, looking through the slats of the green Venetian blind.

"Please use the German version of my name."

"The other is Beethoven's version," bowing profoundly and then coming towards her again. "I recollect that when I was still a little boy in sailor suits and Therese sang the song I always conceived of the beloved lady as having red-gold hair like yours."

"Caro mio, one is doomed to become grey, and that very soon now; that much-praised landscape is not a little to blame in the process. When I first came here, a young and inexperienced girl, everything seemed like heaven to me. But, dear cousin, to have nothing to look out upon during fifteen years beyond water and black boats, with never a motor car to relieve the monotony, not even a motor boat allowed on the canals--it becomes melancholy in the long run! In fact when one sees these romantic Venetians at close quarters, it puts a gloom on one's spirits. It's all very well to love in such melancholy surroundings, but when it comes to marriage--I'm all for dry land, my dear."

"Neither damp nor dry, Adelheid! Unmated one can fly freely in the third element."

"Or one roasts in the fourth," cried she, drawing him down to her side on the blue baroque sofa. "And now your confession, Eduard the Confessor, just as in old times, on this very sofa. Tell me, when is it to be, and, above all, on whom has your choice fallen?"

"Stefan must lead the way," he said, evasively.

"Stefan is a sick man, and, though Heinrich has been married these three years, he has no children. It's up to you, Eduard, to make the succession safe. You surely ought to do it for the throne's sake, even if the claims of the altar mean nothing to you."

"My younger brothers will cater for countless heirs, it's such a delightful society game!"

"Fi donc," she protested, laughing.

"Why? Don't you agree?"

She laughed more heartily, saying:

"No doubt you have had experiences of the sort?"

"Only theoretical knowledge."

"No young sprigs of your own?"

"I am alone; am unfortunately not in a position..."

"But there must be beautiful young women about, who will pose with as little on as Phidias's statues--or was it Michelangelo?"

Eduard was honestly pleased that Diana should have been introduced into the conversation. His thoughts lingered upon the vision of her as Atalanta, he saw her ankles, her throat, again, and the dauntless line of her profile. Hard upon the vision came one of her in a close-fitting sweater, standing in the bows of a ship; then, another, when she wore a black evening dress, low-cut; he lost all sense of the passage of time as a hundred other postures, talks, looks, and thoughts drifted by, till at last the scene enacted this very morning on the flight of steps, between the two guardian lions, rose to his mind.... He sat brooding longer than Adelheid had expected, and it was with instinctive delicacy that she asked very softly:

"Or am I perhaps indiscreet?"

Eduard, who had lost his mother early and had no sisters, had from childhood been on brotherly terms of affection with this cousin. As a lieutenant, then eighteen years of age, he had confided his first and only love affair to Adelheid who was ten years his senior and the mother of two boys. The confidence had taken place on this very sofa, as she had just reminded him. After the manner of young men, his avowal to a woman who was still charming with the freshness of youth and who had not yet become resigned to her fate, moved him to a deeper sentiment towards his confidante, so that his regard for her, hitherto quasi-filial, became sublimer, verging on love. Yet it was all no more than a breath, a sigh, on a September day, as evening was drawing near.

This afternoon, in the dimly lit room, as he sat near so good a friend, after the strange happenings of the morning, after the cruise in which the tides of love had ebbed and flowed along his lonely shores, the old-time trust revived in his heart, and he said, as he leaned back among the cushions, a cigarette between his teeth, with unwonted gravity in his voice:

"Don't you worry on my account, dear Adelheid. But, since rumour has travelled to your lagoon, I will make the fatal confession that I do not like the lady spoken of casually--at least I would prefer if you did not do so..."

"Oh," she cried softly, taken aback.

"Well, you see," he continued tranquilly, "this is a far more serious affair than that other long ago, although at that time we had to do with a young duchess. Meanwhile, for these ten years, calm has prevailed, no wind has stirred to fill the sails of my outlandish vessel. And even now--I hardly know if I dare venture on the voyage..."

She was all ears, eager and inspired.

"Is it to be a long journey?" she inquired at length.

He stood up, saying curtly:

"It will be this journey, dear Adelheid, or not at all."

He frightened her. Eduard was looked upon by his family as a crank and a libertarian, but one nevertheless who would guard the old traditions from tarnish or decay. Now it seemed all at once as if he were resolved to break with the conventions proper to a ruling house. Confused and perplexed, she asked:

"Does your--does anyone know?..."

"No one can know what does not yet exist--although Papa has had his medicine to swallow already... But I wanted you to know what a jade fate is. As for me," and now he spoke with his customary persiflage, "usque ad naufragium I'll sail alone--a simpler and cheaper way. Please forgive me the melodramatic intermezzo I've been inflicting upon you. The danger is not great.... Have you heard from Papa? Heinrich writes me that the doctor finds him much as usual. Don't you think I ought to go and see him?"

"Are you then on the homeward road? You told me, did you not, that you have been yachting, with friends.... Where have you been, and how has the cruise pleased you, if one may ask?"

"Mediterranean, Adriatic. Exquisite aimlessness, sometimes under sail, at others by steam. No museums; nothing but wind and deck chairs. When we leave here, we're to cruise down the Dalmatian coast...."

"That reminds me. Last Tuesday Countess Münsterberg was here. You remember, the woman with the feline movements, and the rather mad vagaries. Ah, you were the more fortunate onlooker!"

"On her way home?"

"She wanted to take the steamer to Ragusa next day; it's a tiresome journey via Trieste, you know. I can't understand how any one can bear to live in so out-of-the-way a place!"

Eduard made some quick mental calculations: If we call on Olivia, Diana will at length find a background. A unique opportunity to see her in such surroundings. What for, though? Know everything beforehand. All the same...

Then he said:

"Yes, my dear Adelheid! How can anyone bear to live in so out-of-the-way a place?"