The Miracle of the Images. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

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      Wrapped in his cloak, cigarette in hand, our traveler rested; the hours slipped by unaware. It stopped raining and the canvass was removed. The horizon was visible right round; beneath the somber dome of the sky stretched the vast plain of the empty sea. But immeasurable unarticulated space weakens our power to measure time as well; the time sense falters and grows dim. Strange, shadowy figures passed and repassed-the elderly coxcomb, the goat bearded man from the bowels of the ship-with vague mutterings and gesturing marching through the strangers mind as he lay. He fell asleep.

      At midday he was summoned to luncheon in a corridor like saloon with the sleeping cabins off it. He ate at the head of a long table; the party of clerks, including the old man, sat with the jolly captain at the other end, where they had been carousing since ten o'clock. The meal was awful, and soon done...the stranger thought of the bologna in Covington. The stranger was driven to seek the open and look at the sky...perhaps it would lighten presently above Venice.

      He had not dreamed that it could be otherwise, for the city had always given him a brilliant welcome. But sky and sea remained laidened, with spurts of fine, mist-like rain; he reconciled himself to the idea of seeing a different Venice from that he had always approached on the landward side. He stood by the foremast, his gaze on the distance, alert for the first glimpse of the coast. And he thought of the melancholy and susceptible poet who had once seen the towers and turrets of his dreams rise out of these waves; repeated the rhymes born of his awe, his mingled emotions of joy and suffering-easily susceptible to a presence already shaped within him, he asked his own weary heart if a new enthusiasm, a new preoccupation, some late adventure of the feelings could still be in store for the idle traveler.

      The flat coast showed on the right, the sea was soon populated with fishing boats. The Lido appeared and was left behind as the ship glided at half speed through the narrow harbor of the same name, coming to a full stop on the lagoon in sight of garish, badly built houses, here it waited for the boat bringing the medical inspectors.

      Before long, the examiners apparently satisfied that the ship wasn't rift with disease the engines began to thud again and the ship took up its passage through the Canale di San Marco which had been interrupted so near the goal. Now the stranger saw it once more, that landing place that takes the breath away, that amazing group of incredible structures the Republic set up to meet the awe struck eye of the approaching seafarer; the airy splendor of the palace and Bridge of Siege, the columns of lion and saint on the shore, the glory of the projecting flank of the fairy temple, the vista of gateway and clock. Looking he thought... that to come to Venice, by the station is like entering a palace by the back door. No one should approach, save by the high seas as he was doing now, this most improbable of cities.

      The engines stopped. Gondolas pressed alongside, the landing stairs were let down, customs officials came on board...people went ashore. The stranger ordered a gondola. He meant to take up his abode by the sea and needed to be conveyed with his luggage to the landing stage of the little steamers that ply between the city and Lido. They called down his order to the surface of the water where the gondoliers were quarreling in dialect then came another delay while his trunk was carried down the ladder like stairs. Thus he was forced to endure the importunities of the ghastly young/old man, whose drunken state obscurely urged him to pay the stranger the honor of a formal farewell. "We wish you a very pleasant sojourn," he babbled, bowing and scraping. "Pray keep us in mind. Au revoir, excusez et bon jour, votre Excellance." He drooled, he blinked, he licked the corner of his mouth, and the little imperial bristled on his elderly chin. He put the tips of two fingers to his mouth and said thickly, "Give her our love, will you...here his upper plate fell down on the lower one...the stranger escaped down the stairs into the waiting boat.

      Is there anyone but must repress a secret thrill, on arriving in Venice for the first time...or returning after a long absence...and stepping into a Venetian gondola? That singular conveyance, come down unchanged from ballad times, black as nothing else on earth except a coffin...what pictures it calls up of lawless, silent adventures in the plashing night; or even more what visions of death itself, the bier and solemn rites and last soundless voyage! And has anyone remarked that the seat in such a bark, the arm chair lacquered in coffin black and duly black upholstered, is the softest, most luxurious, most relaxing seat in the world...even the stranger remembered it as he let his mighty frame down at the Gondolier's feet. Even the voices of the disgruntled rowers was quieted by a strange stillness of the water-city seemed to take up their voices gently, to disembody and scatter them over the sea.

      It was warm here in the harbor. The lukewarm air of the sirocco breathed upon the Stranger, he leaned his massive body among the cushions and gave himself to the yielding element, closing his eyes for the very pleasure in an indulgence as unaccustomed as was sweat. "The trip will be short," he remembered, and wished it might last forever. They gently swayed from the boat with its bustle and clamor of voices.

      It grew still and stiller all about. No sound but the splash of the oars, the hollow slap of the wave against the steep, black Halbert-shaped, beak of the vessel, and one sound more-a muttering by fits and starts, expressed as it were by the motion of his arms, from the lips of the gondolier. He was talking to himself, between his teeth. The stranger glanced up and saw to his surprise that the lagoon was widening, his vessel was headed for the open sea. Evidently it would not do to give himself up to sweet far niente; he must see his wishes carried out.

      "Sir, you are to take me to the steamboat landing," he demanded, and this time turned his hulk round and looked up into the face of the gondolier as he stood there on his little elevated deck, high against the pale grey sky. The man had an unpleasing, even brutish face, and wore blue clothes like a sailor, with a yellow sash, a shapeless straw hat with the braid torn at the brim perched rakishly on his head. His facial structure, as well as the curling blond moustache under the short snub nose, showed him to be of non-Italian stock. Physically rather undersized, so that one would not have expected him to be very muscular, he pulled vigorously at the oar, putting all his body-weight behind each stroke. Now and then the effort he made curled back his lips and bared white teeth to the gums. He spoke in a decided, almost curt voice, looking out to sea over his fare's head: "The signore is going to the Lido."

      The traveler answered, "Yes I am but I only took the gondola to cross over to San Marco. I am using the vaporetto from there."

      "But the signore cannot use the vaporetto.""And why not?"

      "Because the vaporetto does not take luggage."

      It was true. The stranger remembered it. He made no answer. But the man's gruff, overbearing manner, so unlike the usual courtesy of his countrymen towards the stranger, was unacceptable and intolerable. The stranger spoke again: "That is my own affair. I may want to give my luggage in deposit. You will turn around."

      No answer. The oar splashed, the wave struck dull against the prow. And the muttering began anew, the gondolier talked to himself, between his teeth.

      This was always the way it seemed to happen...a little man unwilling to accept instruction until some weight was exacted...and the stranger was often forced to violence in order to mitigate his situation. What should he do? Alone on the water with this tongued-tied obstinate, uncanny man, he sought to enforce his will. And if only he did not excite himself, how pleasantly he might rest! Had he not previously wished that it might last forever? The wisest thing-and how much the pleasantest-was to let matters take their own course. A spell of indolence was upon him; it came from the chair he sat in-this low, black upholstered arm-chair, so gently rocked at the hands of the despotic boatman in his rear. The thought passed dreamily through the stranger's brain that perhaps he had fallen into the cloches of a criminal; but that would have been the criminal's worst nightmare and would certainly rouse the stranger to action. More annoying was the simpler explanation: that the man was only trying to extort money. A sense of duty, a recollection, as it were, that this ought to be prevented, made him collect himself to say:

      "How СКАЧАТЬ