III
In the afternoon Lawrence and Severance were dawdling over coffee in the Piazza. A strident band sent up voluminous notes that boomed back and forth between the palace and the stone arches of the procurate.
"And Burano?" Lawrence suggested, idly. The older man nodded.
"We lunched there—convent—Miss Barton bought lace."
He broke the pause by adding, negligently:
"I think I shall marry her."
Lawrence smoked; he could see the blue water about San Giorgio.
"Marry her," he repeated, vaguely. "You are engaged?"
Severance nodded.
The young man reached out a bony hand. One had but to wait to still the problems of life. They strolled across the piazza.
"When do you leave?" Severance inquired.
"To-night," almost slipped from the young man's lips. He was murmuring to himself. "I have played with Venice and lost. I must return to my busy village."
"I can't tell," he said.
Severance daintily stepped into a gondola. "La Giudecca."
Lawrence turned into the swarming alleys leading to the Rialto.
Streams of Venetians were eddying about the cul-de-sacs and enclosed squares, hurrying over the bridges of the canals, turning in and out of the calles, or coming to rest at the church doors. Lawrence drifted tranquilly on. He had slipped a cable; he was free and ready for the open sea. Following at random any turning that offered, he came out suddenly upon Verocchio's black horseman against the black sky. The San Zanipolo square was deserted; the cavernous San Zanipolo tenanted by tombs. Stone figures, seated, a-horse, lying carved in death, started out from the silent walls.
"Condottieri," the man muttered, "great robbers who saw and took! Briseghella, Mocenigo, Leonardo Loredan, Vittore Capello." He rolled the powerful names under his breath. "They are right—Take, enjoy; then die." And he saw a hill sleeping sweetly in the mountains, where the sun rested on its going down, and a villino with two old trees where the court seemed ever silent. In the stealthy, passing hours she came and sat in the sun, and was. And the two remembered, looking on the valley road, that somewhere lay in the past a procession of storms and mornings and nights which was called the world, and a procession of people which was called life. But she looked at him and smiled.
Outside in the square the transparent dusk of Venice settled down. In the broad canal of the Misericordia a faint plash and drip from a passing gondola; then, in a moment, as the boat rounded into the rio, a resounding "Stai"; again silence and the robber in bronze.