CHAPTER TWELVE

The simple meal came to an end quicker than any of the party expected, and Scherer was thinking how difficult its preparation must have been, for Herr von Wassilko lived in two rambling, scantily furnished rooms lacking all the amenities that would have tended to make guests comfortable. And yet, in spite of obvious drawbacks, everything had gone off without a hitch. The very simplicity of the entertainment was a factor of its success. Mary had noiselessly attended to every one's needs, and talk flowed easily around the table under the red-shaded lamp, the only spot of light in a room where the shadows lingered. The old gentleman and Scherer had contributed most to the conversation, for they found one another congenial. Diana's attention was divided, for she had to play hostess and see that Mary provided all that was needed for the comfort of her father's guests. Eduard could not take his eyes off her as, sitting there in her flowing lilac gown, she acquitted herself of her part with so much ease and dignity. Before him arose visions of her presiding at other tables, not at official banquets so much, as at homely gatherings, homely both in the worldly and in the idyllic meaning of the word. He fancied himself unobserved, but Diana felt his eyes upon her, and she knew (since she had so suddenly plumbed the depths of his thoughts that morning) that this evening he would come to certain conclusions concerning her, conclusions which would be the result of long previous cogitation.

Kyril, taciturn by nature and only able to give vent to his ideas in spontaneous debates, had met so many party members since his arrival in Venice and had learned of so many underground intrigues, that his tendency to keep silence in the presence of others was accentuated this evening. In addition, his host's appearance fascinated him, and he sat observing the old gentleman attentively. Wilhelm, alone of the company, appeared to be disappointed. He had expected to meet an astrologer, a man who could read the meaning of the stars, or, at least, an alchemist, some wonder-worker whose house would be full of maps and globes, of bottles, retorts, and measuring glasses. Yet in the hall, as he entered this sometime wealthy palace which had now fallen on evil days, instead of armour and chains, all he saw was a row of pegs each bearing a hat belonging to the master of the house. To this display, the newcomers reacted differently. Kyril sneered inwardly at so much needless formality; Scherer mentally appraised their cost; and the prince noted the absence of the tall hat, which might of course be in safe keeping in one of the old man's boxes.

As Herr von Wassilko rose from table, he said:

"I trust you will excuse so primitive an entertainment, it is all the impoverished descendant of an old family can afford. But I prefer to rent a couple of rooms such as these, rather than put up in a hotel. I cannot help envisaging the persons who have been there before me, perhaps vacated the premises an hour before, sat upon the same chairs, eaten from the same spoons, and set the air tingling with the sound of their senseless talk. I cannot help being aware of this as I sit at table; the whole atmosphere is full of it."

They took their places in a semicircle before the open glass doors leading to the balcony, two of the chairs being comfortable modern ones, and the remainder stiff and austere, recalling the furniture of an earlier period. The host, though his guests had pressed him to take one of the easy chairs, elected to sit in a large Gothic chair devoid of any kind of upholstering. Eduard and Scherer, loath to make themselves more comfortable than the old man, had ensconced themselves in equally rigid seats, while Diana, throwing a huge Venetian shawl about her shoulders, had pulled a dumpty to the step leading on to the balcony and had settled down there out of range of the lamp and of Eduard's persistent eyes. Only from time to time was she for a moment lit up in the flickering light of a passing gondola.

"Thus it remains for the two young gentlemen to play the grandfather," said the host pleasantly.

Wilhelm, who had expected as much, immediately threw himself into the depths of one of the arm-chairs, exclaiming:

"That's just what I feel too! And we'll have to be taken great care of for we are the hope of the nation."

"I accept the rôle with pleasure," said Kyril, suiting the action to the word. "It seems to me the only thing I can do under the circumstances, though I don't feel in the least bit grandfatherly. Those other chairs take us back to earlier centuries, reminding us of the might wielded by long extinct courts. At best they should be in a museum, where a protective cord would intimate to the man of the twentieth century that he may only gaze on them from afar--if, that is to say, he ever finds time in this age of hustle to study such antiquities."

"You would thus appear to be the most advanced among us, and so, I suppose, the youngest, Doctor?"

"His Highness is no older," said Kyril grumpily.

"And now you must draw their horoscopes," cried Wilhelm eagerly. "You have all the necessary apparatus, haven't you?" He sprang up from his chair, ready to fetch the supposed implements, and burning with curiosity to see them. But Scherer held him back.

"We must not trouble Herr von Wassilko today."

"Ah, my daughter has been giving me away! I gather the young gentleman looks upon me as a second Swedenborg."

"Was Swedenborg in Venice once?" asked Diana dreamily. She had paid no heed to the rest of the conversation, but the seer's name had caught her attention, and she sensed an affinity between him and her father, though the latter had seemed inclined to repudiate anything of the kind.

"Yes," he said, "Swedenborg was here, anno 1718. That's nearly two hundred years ago, Diana."

Eduard pricked up his ears. The quiet way in which the words were spoken, the mystery surrounding the Swedish mystic, the old-fashioned use of the Latin word, the affectionate tone in which he had pronounced Diana's beautiful name, the resemblance of his manner of speech to hers, so pensive and comfortable, as if the best had been left unsaid; his movements, as he leaned forward in his high-backed Gothic chair, to address his daughter sitting at the open door; his flowing, white beard, lit up in the rays of the lamp which had been brought over to where they sat; the contrast between this venerable countenance and her face, lifted in childlike expectancy to his, questioning and eager, suffused with a ruddy glow from the shaded lamp--all these things combined to fill Eduard with a sudden rush of tender impatience, and his lonely heart longed to be linked for ever with such fellow mortals as these, persons who realized freedom through self-restraint. Now, for the first time, he wished that Diana might read his feelings clearly in his eyes. He stepped forward towards the circle of light, intending, while turning his back upon the others, to be visible to her alone. But he was arrested half way by a sonorous voice inquiring:

"What, actually, did this man Swedenborg achieve?"

It was Kyril who spoke from the encompassing shadows. Diana turned her eyes from the contemplation of her father towards the spot whence the voice had come, and Eduard perceived that her brows were puckered where a moment before they had been serene. But Wassilko answered unperturbed:

"He left us twenty volumes of natural science, dealing in especial with mineralogy; he was a member of many learned societies; and, on account of his achievements, his name has been entered in the annals of science."

Kyril stirred uneasily. Imbued with a fanatical conception of an imaginary future, ever in conflict with prejudice and tradition, he had found no time, pressed as he was with the tasks imposed by his own spirit and by the position he held in the party, to bring equipoise into his nature. Thus it was that, with all the powers of his mind, he had resisted the daimonic forces within him, banishing them whenever he felt that they were raising their heads, looking upon them as some out-worn conceit that must at all cost be overcome. And yet he was attracted by that other world, lured by the unreasoning realm of emotion, especially by the realm of music; the cosmos of impenetrable laws fascinated him, drawing him away from the tangible laws of economics, and subjecting him against his will to its caprices. Now, when he learned for the first time that a visionary, a man towards whom he felt a fundamental mistrust, had likewise been an investigator in the field of positive science, he realized (for gifted natures almost invariably apply the lessons from the life histories of notable personalities to themselves) that there was a possibility that he himself might some day lapse into a similar state of spiritual depravity. He said after a pause:

"Yet had he produced nothing more than these works of science, he would hardly have penetrated into the ranks of the famous and dwelt in the memories of men. I had myself never heard of his achievements in this field, nor do I fancy have most people."

"That's true enough," confirmed Scherer. "I remember when Professor Somebody-or-Other was giving the memorial lecture at the Stockholm academy, he stated that he himself was far from knowing all the works of the master whose memory he was honouring."

A laugh rippled round the circle, and the old gentleman added:

"You are right, and I, too, am no wiser than that laudator officialis."

Kyril stuck to his point.

"But what about those other works of his which dealt with the occult? His so-called 'supernatural' ideas must be familiar to you. Tell me whether in these there is anything tangible, anything of lasting value."

Diana turned away and gazed down upon the canal, thinking: "He should be climbing in the rigging, using his splendid limbs, or biting into an apple with his dazzling teeth. He is a fish out of water in Venice and in my father's company."

Eduard, who had followed her movement and had dimly caught the expression on her face as she turned away, was thinking: "If I were sitting beside her in that gondola now drifting by, I would try to whisper away all the things that are causing her pain at this moment."

"Such a question is very difficult to answer," said Herr von Wassilko, sitting upright in his high-backed chair. "These things are impalpable, and durability is hardly one of their characteristics. They do not seem bound by time, but only to men (and there have been such since man first began to think) who, following the laws of their own nature, aspire to bring them into closer relation with their own humanity."

"Very ably put," thought Scherer, whose habit it was to evade such transcendental questions by similar generalizations. He felt the old man was his equal as a man of the world, and entirely failed to perceive that the reticence of the reply masked a believing soul and was not the result, as it would have been in Scherer's case, of consideration for a cultured, though thoroughly rational, outlook which had to be upheld from two sides at once.

Kyril was silent. He felt that he had been worsted, and since the others felt the same, they were grateful to Wilhelm for his intervention when he said innocently:

"If only I knew whether one could learn the art of seeing spirits! I once asked an expert in Berlin after a séance, and he said: 'Your friends tell me you play the lute. Well, if one has music in one's heart one is not far from the occult world.'"

"Where is your lute, Wilhelm?" asked Diana.

There was a general sigh of relief at this change of subject. They spoke of musical instruments; and when Wilhelm came back with his lute in his hand (he rarely went out of an evening without it and Venice was the last place in the world where he would neglect to take it), Wassilko said:

"I'm sorry there is neither a piano nor a violin here. But my landlord possesses a wonderful 'cello, and, since I used to play the instrument long ago, he always leaves it in its case in my room whenever I come to stay."

He got up, and after a short absence, returned with the 'cello. His guests hastened to relieve him of his burden, and gathered round to examine it and pass their comments. Wilhelm alone had not risen. He was back in the huge arm-chair, which he had vacated for no more than a minute to fetch the lute. Now he said very softly to Diana:

"No one is going to take this chair from me this evening, after what he said about them--unless, of course, you have a fancy for it, Diana."

His gentle considerateness went to her heart. She felt sundered from Eduard, wounded by Kyril, disturbed by the course the talk had taken; she had more and more cut herself adrift from them all, giving herself up to her own train of thought as she gazed into the darkness without, and was dimly aware from time to time of the lap of waters, the emergent lights, and the cadenced calls, arising from the canal below. The boyish words spoken to her by the young man lounging in the easy chair had fallen with so friendly a lilt upon her ear that she was grateful. Franklin's image rose before her, and she wondered why he had stayed away, whether he dreaded being together with her and her father; then, again, her thoughts turned to the prince.

Meanwhile Kyril had possessed himself of the 'cello, had sat down, tuned it, and had become wholly absorbed in the instrument.

"Will you play something?" asked Scherer.

"Alone?"

"Wilhelm's lute will replace the piano as accompaniment."

Every one was delighted. Wilhelm, who could not read music, playing by ear and adapting his accompaniment to almost any song, agreed to do his best, but insisted he be allowed to remain seated where he was in the "revolutionist's chair" as he called it. Kyril exchanged with the prince so as to sit more commodiously with the instrument. He glanced with misgivings at Wilhelm and the lute; then, without preface or explanation, started to play Bach's suite for 'cello. Wilhelm, who knew it well, was too alarmed to venture an accompaniment. He would not dare to make up something out of his own head to music such as this. So he laid his lute aside. Kyril glanced up for a moment, looked his appreciation, and continued to play alone. As the mellow tones fell into the quietude of this warm spring night, Diana sat up and turned towards the player. At first her blood surged wrathfully through her veins, as if she had been touched with a fencing foil. Then the music subjected her to its mighty melodies. She sat very straight on her low stool, her black shawl slipping unheeded from her shoulders.

The music penetrated her whole being, sapping her combativeness, and luring her eyes to the figure of the Russian as he played his 'cello in the ruddy glow of the lamp. She saw his powerful right hand wielding the bow, the fingers of his left, agile and dexterous, drawing vibrant notes from the strings, his muscular legs pressing the red-brown wood between his knees, and, silhouetted against the carved back of a chair once occupied by a Venetian nobleman, the fair head of a fanatical Russian peasant bent over the instrument as if over a woman he held against him while with his right hand he caressed her to responsiveness and with his left he toyed with her curving throat....

Eduard was all too aware of her absorption in the man who was ravishing the company with his music, and at this minute he would gladly have exchanged the realm of his father and his brothers for the spiriting of his fiddle to his side that he might pit his musicianship against this alien's.

A long silence followed upon the final notes of the suite, broken at last by Wilhelm, who said: "I'm sorry, but I really could not give you any assistance in that. I had thought you were going to give us some Chopin."

They laughed at the speaker's naïve excuses, and the host together with Scherer and Eduard, gave voice to their appreciation. But Diana, awaking as it were from a spell, rose and stepped out on to the balcony, shaking off the magic which had bound her and to which she had surrendered against her will. She leaned for a moment against the iron balustrade, then turned, and, stretching her arms towards the glass door (a gesture which suggested a longing to embrace this evening so pregnant with melancholy) picked up the wrap which had fallen from her shoulders, saying:

"Wilhelm is right! The day itself and all the ardours of the sun are in your playing--and yet here we are encompassed by night."

Kyril looked at her, and in his heart he told himself that what she said was true, for through the medium of music every hesitancy of the spirit was revealed to him who, in theory, denied that any such insight existed. He began playing Chopin's nocturne in E-flat major, and Wilhelm accompanied him throughout, while Diana stood leaning upon the rail of the balcony gazing down on the darkened water.

"All this is good," thought she. "So is this town, and my father, and the prince, and Wilhelm. So, too, maybe is the Russian at times. And even if things are to be otherwise in the future, yet for tonight I will that they be as they are!"

Soon after this the party broke up, for the yacht was to put to sea at peep of day. Wassilko stopped Diana when she reached the middle of the great room, and, taking her face between his hands, he kissed his daughter on the top of her head. The four men watched him in silence: Scherer and Wilhelm as if they were assisting at a ceremony which they would, undoubtedly, have performed better than any of those who were present; Kyril with vague recollections of the Russian parental blessing; Eduard once again with the feeling that his own father was before him, his father, kissing Diana.

Their farewells were more genial than their greetings had been, and yet there was something aloof in the manner of the four men as they bade their host good-night. They divided forces as they approached the two gondolas, the prince pairing off with Diana while Scherer and Kyril took their places in the other boat. Wilhelm stood hesitant on the landing-stage, pondering the alternatives: should he please Scherer by stepping into the foremost boat and thus preventing the prince and Diana from being alone, or should he please Eduard by leaving the field free? Scherer, guessing his dilemma, was determined to bring no pressure to bear upon the young man's decision. Finally Diana signalled to him her wish to have the prince all to herself, and so it was that Wilhelm sprang in beside Scherer. He instantly struck up one of those light-hearted ditties that are the rage in Venice, and make one feel they must have been composed in Vicenza, so gay and debonair is their lilt. Old Mary, in company with one of the yacht's crew, followed in a third gondola.

"Shall I tell him to stop?" asked Eduard softly.

"Oh no! It is sweet to hear his lute over the water...."

"Is Herr von Wassilko a good player?"

"His heart plays well, but his fingers are clumsy and out of practice."

"And yet they were dextrous enough when it was a question of bringing ancient statues out of the earth...."

"Yes, and glass-ware too; that's a far more delicate business."

"He seems more vigorous than my father, and yet is much the same age."

"Is the prince still ailing? Have you any news of his health?"

She was never the one to start a conversation about his relatives, always waiting for him to begin.

"He has been in a precarious condition ever since my mother died. I have not much confidence either in the bulletins or in his doctor," said Eduard softly, turning away.

"I, too, love my father," murmured Diana.

Eduard, profoundly moved by her unuttered thought, again reminded of the scenes he had witnessed on the steps of the museum and in the room at the moment of farewell, seized her hand as it lay in her lap. She made no protest, and he whispered her name: "Diana..."

He had never yet called her by name, and now, very slowly, he bent his head and kissed her hand, pressing his lips to it long and tenderly.

"How gentle are this young man's kisses," she mused. "I would like to kiss him... Yet he is silent, and seems to be enclosing me in a great circle ... slowly... Behind us, in our wake, Wilhelm trills his song of love, as if life were nothing but an Eden of amoretti, short-kilted in pale blue raiment... Have I dreamed all this before?..."

And, as if the prince had drunk in her reverie through the pores of her bronzed skin, he raised his head, still holding her hand in his, and leaned back once more among the black cushions, saying dreamily, as if musing on things long past:

"One night we were in a gondola together, and, for the first time, I called you by your name ... Diana... Do you remember? It was the same evening that your father had entertained us at his rooms. The Russian had tried to draw him into a discussion on Swedenborg ... that fair-haired Russian who was born on the same day as I ... He plays Bach as only a man can play... Is he still alive? ... Has he been hanged? ... Scherer, too, was one of the party, young still, and hospitable and active ... Wilhelm played and sang in a gondola that followed us, a song about a Venetian woman and her lout of a husband and her handsome cousin... It was amid this queer medley of voyaging, do you recollect? ... The 'Excelsior' ... and the journey was not yet at an end..."

"And as we passed by the Piazzetta," Diana took up the tale in the same key, as she, too, leaned back among the cushions, "the two giants were just striking the clock in the tower to the leftward, for it was midnight... But the journey was not yet at an end... Do you remember, Prince?"

They were very still, hand lay in hand, but they did not turn to look at one another. Then, close in the rear of San Marco, the gondola swung round a bend, and the lights of the "Excelsior" shone through the darkness.

The prince sprang on to the gangway and helped her up. At the top, he kissed her hand. Diana turned, and bade good-night to the others who had followed close on her heels.

BOOK SIX