CHAPTER XXXV.
A FOUNTAIN.
That evening Mr. Churchill dined with his cousin and Mrs. Graham at their hotel, and afterward sat with his cousin in their balcony.
He found Edith wonderfully improved. She was either prettier, or her educated taste made her look so. She knew how to dress now, and her manner was better. She was cheerful, and she carried her head higher. The hair he once had thought red he knew now was the color the Venetian painters loved, and he looked admiringly at the rich coils that crowned her graceful head.
Besides, there was no sign of that too evident love which had driven him from her. She looked at him calmly, and spoke with a familiarity which had an undefined coolness in it.
While they sat there alone, talking pleasantly, a servant brought a note for Mr. Churchill. It had been taken to his house and forwarded to him. Excusing himself, he went into the room to read it by the shaded lamp.
His cousin turned her head, and watched him unseen. She saw his face grow crimson as he read, the veins standing out on his forehead, then grow pale again. She had thought while they sat at dinner that he was looking pale.
He stood bent down, with his eyes fixed on the page, and, without turning the leaf, gazing at what he had read as if he did not understand it.
"My dear friend," Mrs. Lindsay had written, "after a certain conversation which we had some time ago, I think I ought to tell you my news without delay. The Duke of Sassovivo is with us, and this evening he has presented Aurora to us as his future wife."
He stood so long gazing at the words that his cousin went to him.
"Excuse me, Edith, I must go out," he said, in a stifled voice.
"Good-night, Edward," she said, and asked no questions, but held out her hand.
The hand that took hers was cold, and her good-night received not a word of response.
He went out and called a gondola.
"Where to?" the gondolier asked.
"Anywhere!"
They went up and down, and across to the Giudecca, and down again, and turned the point of the Public Garden, and the gondolier was about returning, when for the first time his passenger spoke:
"Go round by San Pietro and inside by San Daniele. Go where it is dark."
"He is disappointed in love, or jealous," the man thought as they threaded the inner ways of the city, now by a lighted piazza, now under shadowing bridges, or along the gloomy, silent walls of palaces that shut them in.
"Where shall I go now?" he ventured to ask, when they had gone the whole length of the city. "We are in the Cannareggio."
The passenger raised himself. He had sat all the time with his head bowed down. "Let her drop down the canal," he said, his voice grown gentler. "Keep well to the left."
They went out into the canal and downward. Passing under the Rialto, there rose a deep sigh from the gondola, and the echoing arch whispered back a sigh.
The passenger was alert now, looking at all the palaces at the left, as though he had never seen them before. As they passed Palazzo Pesaro a gondola touched its steps, and a lady and gentleman got out and walked up to the portone. The moonlight sparkled on, the uniform of one and on the gilded fan of the other. They had been out together, and alone, drawing sweetness from the same air where he had breathed in bitterness.
"Well, it is fitting," he sighed. "Her head was made to wear a coronet.
God bless her!—and him."
He looked at them standing in the archway of the palace saying good-night till distance hid them from him. He was in front of his cousin's hotel, and, looking up, he saw her still sitting in the balcony where he had left her.
Late as it was, he landed and went up to her again. She recognized him when he stepped out of the gondola, and was not too much surprised when he appeared. He seated himself beside her, and looked out over the water without saying a word.
"Are you not well?" she asked at length, timidly.
He started. "Why do you ask?"
"You look pale," she answered.
For a moment he did not speak. Then he said, "I have had a disappointment,
Edith."
She leaned toward him with a sigh and a hand half extended, compassion in all her attitude.
He took the hand, and rose. "Let me tell you all, dear," he said. "I need comfort. Come and let me tell you,—if it will not be a bore,"
She went at once, pain and delight struggling together in her heart. He led her to the sofa, and sank down to the cushion at her feet, bowing his head to her knees. And there he poured out his whole story, sparing her nothing.
Perhaps an instinct of justice and mercy ran through his passion. Perhaps, guessing in the soft, tremulous, soothing hands that touched his hair and forehead the love that he had believed to be dead, and with an unconscious feeling that she was to be the consoler and companion of his future life, he felt also that all the pain she was to suffer for this love of his must be gone through with now.
He could not understand that her only pain was for him, and that for herself she was blest. For she had his confidence, and she could console him.
From that night he became her constant escort and companion. He wrote a brief note in answer to Mrs. Lindsay's, and then he seemed to forget that he knew any one in Palazzo Pesaro.
"For the present I am de trop" he wrote, "but I will see you before you go away. All happiness to Aurora and her chosen husband."
Impossibility is a wonderful extinguisher of desire; and what suffering was left to him was not so much a sickness as the languor of convalescence. He saw Aurora but seldom, and always at a distance; but he knew that Venetian society was rejoicing over the engagement, and that the duke was a devoted lover.
Once, in passing by, he glanced involuntarily at the windows, and saw a group inside, the sight of which gave him a momentary pang. D'Rubiera seemed to be placing something on Aurora's head, and Mrs. Lindsay clapped her hands.
The duke was, in fact, trying a coronet on his future wife. He had sent for the family jewels, and was to have them reset, and Mrs. Lindsay clapped her hands at seeing the diamonds on Aurora's hair.
D'Rubiera was an impatient and peremptory wooer, and he won the day. They were to be married in June; and the Lindsays would stay in Venice a month longer to witness the ceremony.
Fra Antonio came from Sassovivo and joined their hands in Saint Mark's, gold and rank smoothing away all obstacles. Then they went to England for the boy, and came back in time for a week at Bellmar. After Bellmar, they went to Sassovivo, unannounced, to break open the walled-up gate and carry jubilee into the castle, the duke said.
In fact, they spent a whole day long in the castle, tranquilly watching from its windows the visitors who went to the villa in vain to ossequiare the master and his new duchess. It was the last time that they would enter the castle as master and mistress; for the Signora Paula and Martina were coming to live there,—forever, if they pleased.
The Signora Paula had found herself de trop in her brother's house. The Count Clemente had offered himself to the younger of his two first lodgers, the girl of fifty, and been beamingly accepted; and, though months must elapse before all the necessary preparations could be made for their marriage, the Sposa was now mistress of the house. She smiled as before, but she had her way. The sacred dirt of centuries was being cleaned out, and immemorial grime was growing pale before the soap and sand of a civilization to which the Signora Paula was a stranger. Where duchesses had swept their silks in uncomplaining tranquillity, the smiling Americana walked on tiptoe with her skirts upheld, and pointed out her orders to the wondering scrubbers with the toe of her slipper, both hands being employed.
In all these innovations every care was taken that the count should not be disturbed. But he had his cross, and an unexpected one. When it became time to talk of settlements, and it had to be owned that the gentleman had nothing to settle on his wife but the shadow of a coronet, of which she would have to buy the substance if she ever wore it, the lady announced blandly that she would pay all their living-expenses and give her husband five hundred dollars a year spending-money if he would pay the rent to the duke,—this arrangement to hold as long as they should live together.
"But we shall always live together," said the count, with a contortion meant for a smile.
"If we should live," the lady said. "But life is uncertain."
"Oh, in case of death, one makes different arrangements," the count said, somewhat impatiently. "That is another question."
"But I want it so," persisted the lady coquettishly; "and I must have my way. I have always had my way."
And, ever smiling, never appearing to dream that he was in earnest or to suspect the rage that was gnawing his heart, she had her way. She smiled at his coarse and open grasping, smiled at his scarcely hidden anger, and smiled at the half-insulting consent he flung at her, as if it were all a jest. And he believed her the simpleton she seemed, and did not know that he had found a mistress who would rule him with a rod of iron.
On the second day of their stay in Sassovivo the duke and duchess drove down early in the morning to the campagna, and left another brewing of ossequii to fizz itself out in unresponsive air.
Aurora was going to erect a memorial fountain to her mother in the midst of the long, hot, dusty road to the station. A wild spring of delicious water lay back in a rocky pasture. This was to be brought forward and run into marble basins for man and beast. Above should be a carved relief of Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well, with, underneath, "And the woman said, Lord, give me of this water to drink, that I may never thirst again."
An artist had come out from Rome to see the place and make suggestions; and they walked over the green grass, and visited the spring in its own home, and drank of its sparkling tide.
"Would you like to be a missionary, little spring?" Aurora asked, bending toward it. "Many will call you blessed, and the image of your Master will forever look down upon you."
The artist looked at her in surprise and smiling admiration. He had found her a very dignified lady, and this unexpected turn reminded him that she was a poetess as well as a duchess.
"What does it say?" D'Rubiera asked.
She took his arm, smiled into his face, but made no answer.
They went back to the carriage, took leave of their artist, and drove slowly to the town.
"I hope that mamma likes the idea of the fountain," the duchess said thoughtfully.
MARY AGNES TINCKER.
[THE END.]
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