V
How do I know? I don’t. I only know what Michael told me. Which wasn’t much. He was like that, you see! Then he was too mortally afraid of its getting back here. He wouldn’t open up as little as he did till he heard Aurora had married again! And here you ask who and when and where and why. O Lord! If you would only let a man tell his story and stop when he is through!
However, even you must know that Constantinople enjoys quite a reputation for liveliness, of sorts, and that it was particularly lively just before and just after the German War. It was then that I got out there, as a courier—while the armistice was on. Although it was a good bit after the episode of the coffee cup, I saw quite a number of people who remembered Michael. Of course a good many other people and things had disappeared since his day—including, I suppose, the antiquity man and his bombs. A few Turks or Tartars might have told me something about that, if they lived to tell tales. But of course I had yet to hear about the antiquity man—the interesting part of him, I mean. And witnesses had seen Michael drive away from the khan in a closed carriage.
What no witness had seen was the number of the carriage, or the door it drove to. And they told me another yarn about a carriage driving full tilt at dusk into the open draw of the Bridge. I asked myself if poor old Michael were still sitting in it. That version, at any rate, is the one now accepted by Aurora. She has given up her tombstone and her quatrain. She perceives that it isn’t every lady who can boast one husband at home among the stars and another sitting in a brougham at the bottom of the Golden Horn.
So I gave Michael up. Perhaps I did it the more easily because there were so many other things to think about: couriering, relieving, reporting—any number of odd jobs connected with all that mess out there. They took me hither and yon about the Balkans and the Black Sea, on errands that might have sounded quite fantastic before the war plunged thousands of unsuspecting people into adventures a hundred times more so. And one day I landed in Batum.
Everybody who lives in Batum swears it’s the dreariest hole on the face of the earth. An English officer I met even sighed piteously to me over the lost delights of Aden! However, I found Batum very amusing, with its higglety-pigglety air of somebody having stirred up a piece of Turkey with a piece of Russia and having turned the mixture out to cool in a corner of the Riviera. To be sure, there are rather too many Georgians and Lazzes and other queer customers prowling around; and the Hôtel de France does too little to live up to its name. Also, that cooling process will evidently take time. But the setting of cloudy white peaks and a misnamed sea is quite worthy of the Riviera. And I must insist that the Boulevard is a really perfect little park. You should see how close the palms and the cypresses march to the white shingle.
Well, I was warming a tin chair in that park one afternoon, watching the operatic crowd, admiring the great wild hills of their Caucasus through their mannered cypresses, listening to the incantation of their Black Sea through their Glinka, and thinking of nothing in particular, when I suddenly made two discoveries. One was that that Coon song we used to sing about “Lou, Lou, I love you” came out of Life for the Czar. The other was that Michael, our vanished reaper and binder, far from having disappeared in the Golden Horn with Aurora’s phantom coupé or from having otherwise evaporated, sat solid and sunburned in another tin chair of the Boulevard, eyeing me. To be sure he was moustached, uniformed, medalled, booted, disguised as a kind of bastard Cossack with all manner of strange accoutrements and insignia. But it was Michael. What is more he presently grinned, albeit a trifle sheepishly, pulling up his tin chair beside mine.
“I was afraid you were going to be melodramatic,” he said. “As it is, let’s have a chat.”
We had a chat. Tin chairs in parks always remind me of that chat. At the time I thought it the most interesting chat I ever had. That was before I proposed to Alice.
“I suppose they think I took the money, eh?” Michael finally asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “They think you took the money.”
“H’m. I’ve made it up to them without their knowing. So that’s all right. And—what about Aurora?”
I told him about Aurora. He was longer with his “H’m” that time. Do you know? I believe the fellow was human enough to be jealous of an astrologer whom he didn’t envy! However, he ended by letting out another:
“So that’s all right.”
“And you?” I ventured.
He didn’t say anything at first. He sat there fingering his gewgaws and staring at the sea.
“How’s a man to know whether he’s all right or all wrong?” he finally demanded.
“Hell!” objected I. “It isn’t your fault if you happen to be sitting in Batum instead of in Zerbetta—or at the bottom of the Golden Horn. You couldn’t have invented such an end for yourself if you had tried till you were black in the face. That antiquity gang is responsible, not you. But I bet—”
But I concluded not to. As for Michael, he continued to study the afternoon blue of the sea. Down the edge of it a steamer trailed a long dark line of smoke toward the West.
“I suppose I could go back home if I really wanted to,” he said, “now that my antiquity man has pulled off his republic. Yet after all, what good would it do? You can see for yourself—The worst of it, though, is that I don’t really want to. You get interested in people, you know, in spite of yourself—even when they have Jew noses and jabber Armenian. I’d like to see their show through. Then they’ve been no end decent to me. I’ve a vine and fig tree of my own—up Ararat way! I have a house to live in, and a horse to ride, and a wife to beat. I do it, too. I’ve learned that much,” he pronounced darkly, in a tone that struck me at first as irrelevant. On consideration, however, I decided it wasn’t. “Anyhow,” he went on, “I’m alive; and I can’t say I’m sorry. The funny thing about it is that I never knew it till I came so near stepping off. I’ve had some pretty narrow squeaks since then, too. And my chances of dropping in my boots are still a lot brighter than yours. All the same, it’s better than peddling those damned hay-rakes. But once in a while,” the inconsequent devil blurted out, “I come down here and listen to the band.”
Now can you imagine a man being like that? But if you ever breathe a word to a living soul—!
HENRIETTA STACKPOLE REDIVIVA
Thanks to Henry James—on whom be peace—I am a man without a trade. One by one he used to appropriate my most precious models until I came to await each new book with a curiosity which no disinterested reader could imagine. A surprising number of his so-called creations—how little did he create them only he and I could tell!—I knew long before knowing him. Roderick Hudson, for instance, I met at a villa in the Euganean Hills, and regarded as my peculiar prey, in days before the precipice. And, indeed, he has not gone over it yet; but it is only a question of time. The Princess Casamassima, too, is an old friend of mine who oscillates between Paris and Constantinople. She is shortly to be married, I hear, and that is a turn unkinder than any Mr. James has done me. Then there is Osmond. Often as I have seen him, though, he would probably tell you that he dared say but didn’t really recollect. They will never admit that they are fathomable, those people. As for Madame Merle, I believe I have met her once only. Christopher Newman, however, and the Baroness Münster, and Gordon Wright, and poor little Maisie—But I might go on indefinitely, picking out persons of my acquaintance whom Mr. James in some unaccountable way discovered first.
Still, in spite of this purely accidental disadvantage under which I suffer, it must be said that the printed fortunes of these friends of mine afford me, in many cases, a pleasure superior to that of actual intercourse. I have to confess, too, that Mr. James has not seldom lent me the key to mysteries of character which would have remained inscrutable but for his elucidation. It has even happened, furthermore, that an introduction from him has been so complete that when later I came to meet the person in real life it was like being at a play which one has seen before. I knew in advance exactly what to expect.
A cognate case was my encounter with Henrietta Stackpole, the spirited journalist in “The Portrait of a Lady.” As I did not recognise her at first sight, it is quite possible that the reader may fail to do so. Indeed, some to whom I tell the story roundly declare they do not believe a word of it. I can only insist that it happened years and years ago, at a far less sophisticated period of our history; that the name on the card was unmistakable; and that Henrietta was a caprice, if you will, but a perfectly credible one, of a rapid and uneven civilisation.
My second introduction to her came about in this wise. I was staying at the time in Venice—a city in which it has been my good fortune to spend much of my life and in which I would count it perfect happiness to spend the whole. A prevalence of rainy scirocco had for two or three days diminished the enchantments of the summer lagoon. It was therefore natural, on the morning in question, that I should have gone unconsciously to that place which is always aglow when the world is grey, which is always warm when the wind is cold, which is always cool when the sun is hot—the miraculous church of St. Mark’s. There I established myself at the base of my favourite pier and proceeded to the familiar enjoyment of sensations which this is not the place to describe.
Presently there crossed my line of vision a lady. This was not in itself a phenomenon so extraordinary. St. Mark’s, like other churches, usually contains more women than men; in the course of a year I doubt not that more Americans enter it than Italians; and of American travellers, young women—to use the phrase in its most generous sense—vastly outnumber persons of other descriptions. Indeed, it is a tradition implanted in the European mind only more ineradicably by the doughboys of 1918 that ours is a land of Amazons, whence the few indispensable males are seldom allowed to escape. There crossed my line of vision, then, a damsel of my own nationality. A certain peculiarity attached to her from the fact that she carried no Baedeker. Nor did she appear to have ties with any person or group of persons provided with a copy of that useful work. What particularly attracted my attention to her, however, was a large silver ornament which she bore on a revers of her tailor-made costume. It represented—so far as I could make out—a human head and bust, supported in heraldic and highly decorative manner by fluttering streamers and extended wings. In those distant days there was no cavalry of the clouds, to suggest a winged admirer in the Air Service. So, knowing that my countrywomen are insatiable collectors of the curious and the antique, I wondered if this young lady had picked up in the Spadaria some quaint bit of chasing and had adopted this means of transporting it to her hotel.
As if to satisfy my curiosity, the young person obligingly proceeded to seat herself near me on the bench at the foot of the pier. I was thus enabled to devote, at closer range, a covert examination to her treasure. The human representation I accordingly discovered to be that of Col. William Jennings Bryan, as set forth by a legend on the fluttering streamers, which contained further expressions with regard to free silver and crosses of gold. I could not easily decipher them without appearing to transcend the bounds of delicacy.
The completeness of my disillusionment, and the fact that a young and measurably attractive woman should prefer ornaments of free silver to crosses of gold—for which latter I have an especial fancy—led me to consider my companion with more attention than it might perhaps be decorous for a stranger to betray. Her attire was that of a well-to-do person, and she might have passed for one of good taste but for the ornament to which I have referred. That she was of alert mind was evident from the incisive way in which she looked about and then used her pencil upon a small pad, as one making a sketch. I must confess that I had some curiosity to see how St. Mark’s would look to a virgin of political mind, and I was so rude as to let my eye rest for a moment upon her paper. To my surprise I discovered that she was not sketching at all—or that, if she did so, it was with words, and in some dialect to me perfectly unintelligible. The characters with which she rapidly covered her pad resembled those of the Arabic more nearly than anything else with which I was acquainted, unless they had about them something of Scandinavian runes. Altogether I was completely mystified. For whatever traits may distinguish the American girl upon her travels, linguistic facility is not one of them.
As we sat thus in uncommunicative companionship, there approached us that familiar genius of St. Mark’s, the blue and ancient sacristan who rattles the collection box. Me he knew of old as a wanton gentleman much given to passing half hours in the golden church at the side of young and otherwise unprotected ladies. At least I am sure he can have attributed to me no motive other than that which was likely to bring so many whispering couples of his own nationality. Accordingly he approached us with a smile of recognition and held out toward the person at my side one of those cards with which he is so inexhaustibly provided, representing the Nicopeian Madonna. The admirer of Colonel Bryan looked dubiously upon this offering. Finally, however, she was won over by the old man’s irresistible smile and accepted the papistical emblem. No sooner had she done so than the sacristan, as is his wont, produced the collection box, which from force of habit he had kept behind him. At this the young woman tried to hand back the card. But the old man was occupied in passing the box to me, as in such cases was also his wont. And from force of habit I dropped in a coin. At which the cheerful ancient bent his efforts in other directions.
The girl turned instantly to me, opening at the same time the business-like black leather chatelaine which hung at her side.
“How much was it?” she inquired.
“My dear young lady,” I said, “it was nothing at all. I beg of you to put away your purse. Those cards are distributed free. I merely put something in because the old man and I are friends.”
She looked at me a moment with some intensity, and then snapped her bag. It occurred to me that her mind would sound like that—when she made it up, as we say.
“How do you and the old man happen to be friends?” she demanded rather abruptly. “Do you live here?”
“Yes,” I answered, expressing the will for the deed.
“You speak English very well,” she commented, regarding me much as if I had been a Bearded Lady, or a glove worn by Gustavus Adolphus.
“Thank you!” I exclaimed. “That is a great compliment, for I was born in Vermont.”
I suspected that my interlocutress did not altogether appreciate this point. She continued to regard me with such fixedness that I had an immediate intuition of what she was about to say. She would require of me to inform her why I lived abroad when I was privileged to dwell in a country so far superior to every other, and however ingenious might be my pretence she would put me in the wrong. My intuition, however, as too frequently is the case, was mistaken. The young lady opened once more her chatelaine bag, drew forth the receptacle from which she had endeavoured to reimburse my expenditure in her behalf, and produced a neatly printed card which she handed to me. Upon this I read the legend:
Miss Henrietta C. Stackpole
THE OMAHA REVIEWER
I stared at this name in speechless amazement. I had supposed Henrietta long married to Bantling, and by this time the mother of an infinite progeny. And Omaha! But, as I have intimated, much has happened since 1881. And before I could frame some manner of remark, my companion again addressed me:
“I wish you would give me some information.”
“I shall be only too delighted, my dear Miss Stackpole!” I assured her effusively. “I have heard so much about you. This is my name”; and I offered her my card in return.
“Where have you heard about me?” she demanded in surprise.
“Why, from Mr. James,” I replied.
“Mis-ter James?” she repeated in deep mystification. “I don’t remember any Mr. James. Oh, do you mean Mr. Reuben James, of Topeka?”
“No, Mr. Henry James, of London,” I told her.
“I don’t know any Mr. Henry James,” she declared decisively. “He must have seen my letters in the Reviewer.”
“Oh, of course!” I uttered, with considerable confusion. “I beg your pardon. I thought——You see——What information can I give you?”
“Well, would you mind telling me if this is really Venus?” she asked confidentially, sketching a circle in the ambient air.
I regarded my companion with no little uncertainty. What finesses might lurk behind so intriguing a question?
“Ve——?” But even as I began to repeat the name, it flashed into my thick head that so had a gentleman from California once denominated to me some egregious Venice of his native State; and my eyes opened very wide. “Why, yes,” I replied, hesitating. “That is, if ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is Shakespeare. I rather like the water, myself.”
While she neither agreed with nor challenged this remark, I observed that it produced a visible satisfaction in her. And she went on:
“I want to find out all about it. There’s simply no end of things I want to ask—for my letters, you know. I write for a syndicate as well as for the Reviewer, and you’re the first person I’ve met that I can really talk to. I hardly know where to begin. What is this big building next door, for one thing? It’s awfully queer looking.”
“It is rather queer,” I admitted. “The Patriarchate, I suppose you mean? In the Piazzetta dei Leoncini?”
“I don’t know any names, but I mean the checker-board one, with piazzas all around and a picket fence along the top.”
“Oh!” I ejaculated, staring at her very hard. “That is the Doges’ Palace.”
“What palace? These I-talian names are too much for me.”
“Call it the Ducal Palace, then,” I answered, experiencing a profound sensation. The young lady thereupon applied herself anew to her pad; and it dawned upon me that her strange alphabet might be that of stenography. “I should think that you would find a Baedeker convenient,” I added, discovering that the intensity of my gaze had drawn Miss Stackpole’s eye.
“Oh, I guess I’m bright enough to get around by myself, thank you!” she rejoined with some irony. “I’ve travelled enough. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Europe, either—though it’s the first I’ve been to Italy.”
“Oh, indeed! How I envy you! Think of coming to Italy for the first time!”
There was something of voracity in the eagerness with which I turned upon her. This was really too good to be true. It was incomparable. When had anybody ever come to Italy before without knowing exactly what was expected of them? To my astonishment, however, and no small dismay, the eyes of Henrietta suddenly began to swim.
“You wouldn’t envy me,” she said with a catch in her voice, “if you knew how disappointed I was, and what I’ve been through.”
She turned away a moment, as if to look at the great swinging lamp in the form of a branching cross; but I knew she was brushing her hand across her eyes. An unaccountable contrition swept over me. I responded, as sympathetically as I knew how:
“I beg your pardon, Miss Stackpole! I’m so sorry. I am sure you must have been unfortunate.”
“I have been!” she exclaimed, turning to me again. “I——” She stopped short a moment. Then—“You probably think I’m queer, telling you all these things; but you’re the first American I’ve seen for ’most a week.”
“The pleasure is mine, I assure you!” I declared. “It is even longer since I have seen one.” I failed to add what she might have found complimentary, that seeing Americans was not what I came to Venice for, and that I usually took pains to avoid them.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “it just does me good to talk to you.”
“Have you been here long?” I delicately suggested.
“Well, it seems as if it had been forever, but I guess it’s only about two days.” Miss Stackpole herself was evidently more mysterious than her little pad. In spite of my sympathy for an unfortunate lady I felt again an extreme curiosity to hear the story of an original one. Before I had quite made up my mind, however, as to how I might serve God and Mammon with equal zeal, Miss Stackpole’s overburdened heart solved the difficulty. “I’ve been in London all summer,” she volunteered, “reporting the coronation. But I got all het up, and so I broke off and went to Switzerland. I lost big money by it, too. I can afford it, though, and I got a lot better.”
“I hope you are feeling quite right now,” I interposed.
“So far as my digestion goes, yes, thank you!” she returned. “Well, I was just about ready to go back, when I heard some people in the hotel one night talking about Venice—if that’s the way they pronounce it here. They’d left the day before, they said, and they were going on, saying how grand it all was. And the more I listened to them the more it seemed as if I must come down here. Somehow I had no idea it was that near. I’ve always wanted to see the place ever since I read about it in geography at school. There was a picture of it, and underneath it said: ‘Venice, a city of northern Italy, situated upon 117 small islands in the Adriatic Sea.’ I thought that was just wonderful—a hundred and seventeen small islands! And I made up my mind then that whenever I got the chance I’d come here. So I started right off the next day. I knew all about the I-talians, though, and I just made up my mind I’d get ahead of them. I wasn’t going to land in their country at night, and get robbed or stabbed or something. There was a real nice German in the car, and I found out from him which was the last station in Switzerland and I got out there.”
“Oh, my poor lady!” I cried. “You don’t mean to say that you spent the night at Chiasso instead of going on to Milan?”
“That’s exactly what I did, if that’s the way you pronounce it; but I don’t believe Italy itself could have been any worse. The hotel was just the limit, and they charged me more than Claridge does—in London, you know. However, I managed to get on to Milan the next day. And I like to have been there yet.”
“What was the matter?” I inquired.
“Why, when we had to change cars I couldn’t make anybody understand a thing, and they were all so black and horrid and murderous-looking that I ’most wished I’d never tried to come. I was afraid they hadn’t put me in the right car, either; and I hadn’t much idea how far it was, and at every station I’d start up and look for the name because I couldn’t understand a word the conductor said. But as long as I didn’t see those hundred and seventeen small islands I felt pretty sure I was right to stay in the car. Once I almost got out, when we came to some water with mountains all around—as blue as blue! But there didn’t seem to be any islands, and we went on and on, and it grew dark, and by and by it began to rain and I didn’t know what I should do—everything looked so watery and islandy outside. Then the train stopped and a man opened the door, and when I asked him if ’twas Venus he just took my grip and dumped it out. I was that mad I would have put it right back in. When I got out, though, I saw we were at the end of the line—wherever that might be. So, as it was pretty late to start off anywheres else, I thought I might as well try my luck and find out afterwards whether it was Ve—Venice or not. But I don’t believe I ever would, for sure, if I hadn’t met you.”
“Beata Vergine!” I murmured. “Can these things be?” Then aloud: “Why, you seem to have got on very well, Miss Stackpole, for one who didn’t know the language.”
“Well, I always did manage to find my way around pretty well,” she admitted. “But I never had a time like this before. The getting here was bad enough, but after I got here it was worse. I followed the people out of the station and I looked all around for a hotel ’bus. That’s what I always do—get into the slickest one I see, and then I land at a good hotel. But I couldn’t find a single one. There were just those queer boats. A good many people seemed to be getting into them, too; but I didn’t like to, everything was so dark and the men looked so horrid. I didn’t know where to tell them to go, either. Then I saw some more people making for a little steamer, and I almost thought I’d try that. But I hadn’t any idea where it might take me, and I thought it was safer to stick to dry land. A whole lot of the dreadfullest men kept saying things to me, though, and tried to grab my grip, and I just about wished I was dead. But I set my teeth and held on hard and said over some things in good United States, and then I began hunting for a decent-looking hotel near by. It seemed as if I was sure to strike some big street if I just walked on perfectly straight. That’s what I always do when I get lost. But I couldn’t go straight, to begin with. I just kept going round and round in the worst little alleys that landed me up against a stone wall or at the edge of the water or in some creepy place where it was as much as my life was worth to take another step. I got so tired and scared I could have laid right down in the street and cried.
“I’d made up my mind that I’d find a hotel, though, and I did. I finally went up to a man that looked something like a policeman, and I showed him my bag, and said ‘Hotel’ real loud, several times. He understood anyway, for he called a man with a brass check on his arm, and said something, and waved me along quite polite. I was pretty scared, because I didn’t know but what the man would take me off into one of those creepy places and cut my throat. Nobody would ever find out. I was too done up to mind, though. I just followed along, and by and by we came to a cute little street that wasn’t much bigger than the others; but it was real bright, with stores, and lots of people walking, and so we came at last to a hotel. It wasn’t a bit like the kind of hotels I go to. I knew this was Italy, though, and you couldn’t expect much, and I was that tired I would have slept on an ash heap.”
“I wonder what hotel it was,” I said.
“It’s just near here,” replied my companion. “I’ve got the name on a card, so I can show it to people if I get lost.”
She resorted once more to her chatelaine bag and produced a card on which I read the réclame of a very grubby little inn occasionally patronised by travellers anxious to practice an extreme economy. The sole recommendation of the place is its antiquity. There is not a window in it, I believe, or, if such conveniences exist, their prospect is of the narrowest and dingiest calli.
“They told me it was the oldest and best in town,” said Miss Stackpole. “One of them knows a little English.”
“Well, it is conveniently located,” I assured her. “I hope they have treated you right.”
“No!” Her voice died, and this time her eyes flooded so quickly that I saw a splash before she could turn. “You must think me a goose for going on like this,” she said, raising her handkerchief. “But it does seem good to find someone who isn’t trying to do me out of my bottom dollar.” And presently: “How can you live here, among such people?”
The Venetians are with me a very tender point. I have so long been a victim both of their wiles and of their charm! But in the end it is the charm that I remember.
“My poor Miss Stackpole,” I replied, “you have been unfortunate. If some of them are pretty bad, so are some people everywhere. And they improve on acquaintance. Still, of course, it is the place that catches one. Don’t you delight in it, now that you’ve seen it?”
Henrietta cast her eyes doubtfully about.
“This church is pretty fine, though they do let it run down the worst way. Just look at the floor! And the square out there—it’s queer, but it’s nice; especially looking off toward the water. But it isn’t a bit what I thought. Those hundred and seventeen small islands now—I sort of saw them lying around in the sea, with palms and temples and things. Don’t you know? I never expected these horrid slimy little canals, and backyard alleys instead of streets, and such awful shiftless tumble-down houses.”
I gazed at Henrietta aghast. Then I protested:
“But don’t you think many of the little alleys delightful? And the squares, and the palaces, and the carved windows and balconies, and the bridges, and the shine of green below them, and the pictures, and everything?”
Henrietta shook her head sadly.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been around any, except just about here. I’m afraid. I don’t know why. I’ve never felt that way before. But the little alleys are so treacherous-like, and the people look so horrid, and it has rained all the time, and—oh dear, I just wish I’d never come!”
For a moment I thought that the dikes were down and we were lost. But even as my knees began to knock, Henrietta pulled herself together, dried her eyes for the last time, and said:
“Now I feel a lot better—now that I’ve told you all about it. Supposing you go ahead and tell me all about things. I’m going to make this trip pay for itself, if it doesn’t pay me.”
Could Henrietta have read my heart at that moment she might have made a Bantling out of me before I knew what she was up to. The idea of this poor girl so realising the dream of her childhood—of her stumbling blind into the loveliest city in the world, and falling among thieves, and miraculously escaping everything that there was of enchantment—moved me idiotically. And not only did the pathos of Henrietta move me. I was jealous for the honour of my chosen city, whose peerless charms I have been ready ever to maintain against any champion and all.
“My dear Miss Stackpole,” I cried, “you have been unlucky! But you must let me help you to put things right. I shall be your guide, if you don’t mind. And first of all you must change your hotel. I know of one which is just the place. Nobody will rob you there, and everybody speaks English, and you will meet any number of Americans, and your windows will open into the Grand Canal.”
“What is that?” inquired Henrietta, grasping her pencil.
“Madre di Dio!” I gasped. “Why, that is Venice!” This was a banality justified by my companion’s predicament. “Haven’t you been in a gondola yet? A gondóla?,” I emended hastily, detecting a cloud in Henrietta’s eye. “One of those boats?”
“No,” she answered. “They looked so queer; and then I didn’t know as I’d ever get back.”
“My dear lady!” I groaned. “This is too much! Come out with me this instant to row in a gondola. You haven’t seen the fingernail of Venice yet!”
Henrietta looked at me.
“You’re very kind,” she said slowly. “I don’t know but what I will, later on. Just now, though, I want you to tell me about things. I do want to get those letters done. They are, pretty near.” I suppose my face must have betrayed something, for she went on: “Perhaps you think it’s funny for me to write letters before I’ve seen much. But I’m made that way, you know. I really don’t need to see a place to tell about it. When I go into it, it sort of comes over me what sort of a place it is, and I just sit down and write it up as if I’d been all over. You might not think so to hear me talk. I’m not much on talking, same as business men who keep stenographers aren’t much on writing. But I can write two articles about the same thing, and you’d never guess they were by the same person till you came to the name at the end.”
I gazed at Henrietta with deepening interest.
“I hope you will send me your Venetian letters when they come out,” I ventured.
“I will,” declared she courteously.
She thereupon proceeded to ply me with questions the most diverse, the which for brevity’s sake I forbear to transcribe. Each was more amazing than the last, and when finally I found myself escorting her to her hotel, I wondered whether, after all, the rôle of Bantling would suit me. Nevertheless, I had an extreme curiosity to hear her comments upon those aqueous aspects of Venice which had as yet remained concealed from her. I also took occasion to stop at Zanetti’s and purchase a copy of Baedeker’s “Northern Italy,” which I begged of Henrietta to accept as a loan. I knew she would accept it on no other terms, and I assured her that she would find it invaluable in putting her notes into permanent form. She, thanking me warmly for my manifold kindnesses, declared that she would be delighted to accompany me in a gondola at three o’clock, when her letters would surely be ready for the post.
When I called for her at the time appointed, the porter informed me that the signorina had departed on the half-past-two train. In the face of my incredulity he then produced the new Baedeker and the following note:
Dear Friend!
I must beg your pardon for giving you the mitten, especially after you had been so polite. But I finished my letters much sooner than I expected, thanks to your book, and after looking same over there really did not seem to be much use in staying on. So, as I have already found Venice disappointing, and as I heard there was a train to Paris this afternoon, I decided to avail myself of the opportunity.
Thanking you again,
Sincerely,
Henrietta C. Stackpole.