Illuminations
XIII[ToC]
Illuminations
If Geoffry Daymond had known no more about Nanni than was known to May herself, the little incident which had caused such perturbation in the young girl's mind would not have made any special impression upon him. The scene itself, indeed, might have lingered in his mind as one of those charming surprises that lurk in the enchanted atmosphere of the lagoons. The striking beauty of Nanni's countenance is the possession of many an honest gondolier, nor would the glow of feeling which animated the face, have been anything unprecedented in a man of his class. Old Pietro himself, slumbering at that moment on the floor of his gondola, often exhibited a startling power of facial expression, which fairly transfigured his weather-worn features. No, in a simple gondolier both beauty of face and brilliancy and depth of expression are quite in the natural order. And if it is not often that one sees these advantages heightened by so admirable a foil as was provided on this occasion, it is simply because such vivid grace of the contrasting type is rare.
Geoffry's first sensation then, as he caught sight of the two figures, was one of gratification to his artistic sense; and even when May extended her hand, and Nanni, after the custom of the gondolier, raised it to his lips, it did not at once strike the young man as other than natural and fitting. In an instant, however, he recalled the fact, which he had learned of Pietro a month previous, that this was no mere gondolier, but a man of education and consequence in the world; a circumstance which, undeniably, put a different face upon the matter. It accounted too, perhaps, for the curiously appealing impression of the man's personality. There was undoubtedly something pathetic in this son of a line of gondoliers, reaching back farther than many a titled family, this man with an innate love for the craft, a genuine passion for the lagoons, placed in the artificial environment of modern society, constrained to deal with the hard-and-fast exactions of modern science. No wonder that there was that about him that excited the imagination. Geof had himself felt it; his mother had spoken of it. Who could know how powerful the appeal might be to one who had not the key to the puzzle?
When, therefore, Geof came upon the little drama being enacted among the alders at Torcello, with a grace and fervour which was for an instant, but only for an instant captivating, he experienced a feeling of vague dissatisfaction, which was much accentuated by the sight of the young girl's evident emotion, as she turned and faced him unexpectedly.
He did a good deal of pondering in the course of that day and the next, and, as he was quite unable to justify, or even to formulate his anxieties, he wished that he might at least find out whether the truth in regard to the gondolier were known to May. That might throw some light upon the subject.