The Royal End. Harland Henry

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      “With no luggage? Two women alone? Never heard of such a thing,” scoffed Lucilla.

      “Well then,” Ruth submitted, “I believe the lagoon is nowhere very deep. We might try to ford it.”

      “Oh, if you think it's a laughing matter!” Lucilla, with an ominous lilt, threw out.

      Meanwhile the two gondoliers had been conferring together; they conducted their conference with so much vehemence, one might have fancied they were quarelling, but that was only the gondolier of it; and now, he who had heretofore remained in the background, stepped forward, and in a tone, all Italian, of respectfully benevolent protection, addressed Lucilla.

      “Scusi, Madama, we will ask our Signore to let you come with us. There is plenty of room. Only, we must wait till he arrives.”

      “Ah,” sighed she, with relief. But in a minute, “Who is your Signore?” caution prompted her to ask.

      “He is a signorino,” the man replied, and I'm sure he thought the reply enlightening. “He is very good-natured. He will let you come.”

      And it happened just at this point, while they stood there hesitating, that Balzatore found his opportunity.

III

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      One heard a tattoo of scampering paws, a sibilance of swift breathing; and a cold wet nose, followed by a warm furry head, was thrust from behind under Lucilla's hand.

      Startled, she gave an inevitable little feminine cry, and half turned round—to recognise her late admirer. “Hello, old fellow—is this you?” she greeted him, patting his shoulder, stroking his silky ears. “You take one rather by surprise, you know. Yes, you are a very beautiful, nice, friendly collie, all the same; and I never saw so handsome a coat, or so splendid a tail, or such soulful poetic eyes. I am very glad to renew your acquaintance.” Balzatore waved his splendid tail as if it were a banner; rubbed his jowl against Lucilla's knee; caracoled and pranced before her, to display his graces; cocked his head, and blinked with self-satisfaction; sat down on his haunches, and, tongue lolling from his black muzzle, panted exultantly, “There! You see how cleverly I have brought it off.”

      “Ecco. That is our Signore's dog,” announced the man who had promised intercession. “He himself will not be far behind.”

      At the word, appeared, approaching, the tall and slender figure of Bertram, to whom, in a sudden contrapuntal outburst, both gondoliers began to speak Venetian. They spoke rapidly, turbulently almost, with many modulations, with lavish gestures, vividly, feelingly, each exposed the ladies' case.

      Bertram, his grey eyes smiling (you know that rather deep-in, flickering smile of goodwill of theirs), removed his panama hat and said, in perfectly English English, with the accent of a man praying a particular favour, “I beg you to let them take you to your hotel.”

      The next instant, the gondoliers steadying their craft, Lucilla murmuring what she could by way of thanks, he had helped them aboard, and, after a quick order to the men, was bowing god-speed to them from the landing-stage, while one hand, by the collar, held captive a tugging, impetuous Balzatore.

      “But you?” exclaimed Lucilla, puzzled. “Do you not also go to Venice?”

      “Oh, they will come back for me,” said Bertram, lightly.

      She gave a slight movement to her head, slight but decisive, a movement that implied finality.

      “We can't think of such a thing,” in the tone of an ultimatum she declared. “It's extremely good of you to offer us a lift—but we simply can't accept it if it means inconvenience to yourself.”

      And Bertram, of course, at once ceded the point.

      Bowing again, “Thank you very much,” he said. “I wasn't sure we shouldn't be in your way.”

      He took his seat, keeping Balzatore restive between his knees.

IV

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      The gondoliers bent rhythmically to their oars, the gondola went gently plump-plump, plash-plash, over the smooth water, stirring faint intermittent breezes; far and wide the lagoon lay dim and blue in a fume of moonlight, silent, secret, even somehow almost sinister in its untranslatable suggestions; and before them rose the domes and palaces of Venice, pale and luminous, with purple blacknesses of shadow, unreal, mysterious, dream-compelling, as a city built of cloud.

      “Perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,” Lucilla—need I mention?—quoted to herself, and if she didn't quote it aloud, that, I suppose, was due to the presence of Bertram. She and Ruth sat close together, with their faces towards the prow, where, like a battle-axe clearing their way of unseen foes, the ferro swayed and gleamed; he, sidewise, removed a little to their left. And all three were mum as strangers in a railway carriage. But, like strangers in a railway carriage, they were no doubt more or less automatically, subconsciously, taking one another in, observing, classifying. “I wonder whether he's really English,” Lucilla thought. He spoke and dressed like an Englishman, to be sure, yet so many Italians nowadays do that; and, with a private gondola, he presumably lived in Venice; and there was something—in the aquiline cut of his features?—in his pointed beard?—that seemed foreign. “Anyhow, he's a gentleman,” she gratefully reflected; and thereat, her imagination taking wing, “Suppose he had been an ogre or a bounder?—or a flamboyant native lady-killer?—or a little fat oily crafaud de Juif? Besides, he has nice eyes.”

      About the nationality of his guests, Bertram, of course, could entertain no question, nor about their place in the world; in their frocks, their hats, their poise of head, turn of hand, in the general unself-conscious selfassurance of their bearing, they wore their social history for daws to peck at; one's eye, as it rested on them, instinctively supplied a background of Mayfair, with a perspective of country houses. A thing that teased him, however, was an absurd sense that he had somewhere seen Lucilla before, seen her, known her, though he perfectly knew he hadn't. Her youthfully mature beauty, her bigness, plumpness, smoothness, her blondeur; those deceptively child-like blue eyes of hers, with their superficial effect of wondering innocence, and their interior sparkle of observant, experienced humour, under those improbably dark and regular brows—such delicate and equal crescents as to avow themselves the creation of her pencil; the glossy abundance of her light-brown hair; her full, soft, pleasure-loving mouth and chin, their affluent good-nature tempered by the danger you divined of a caustic wit in the upward perk of her rather short nose; the whole easygoing, indolent, sensuous—sociable, comfortable, indulgent—watchful, critical, ironic—aura of the woman: no, he told himself, she was not a person he could ever have known and forgotten, she was too distinctly differentiated an individual. Then how account for that teasing sense of recognition? He couldn't account for it, and he couldn't shake it off.

      Of Ruth (egregious circumstance) he was aware at the time of noticing no more than, vaguely, that the young girl under Lucilla's chaperonage was pretty and pleasant-looking!

      All three sat as mum as strangers in a railway carriage, but I can't think it was the mumness of embarrassment. I can hardly imagine a woman less shy than Lucilla, a man less shy than Bertram; СКАЧАТЬ