Quite so! And a sporting gamble on my knowledge of Arsenio, of his picturesque instinct, his eye for a situation! As a minor attraction, there were the needy aristocrats, his father’s old set, whom he had been wont to “touch” in days of adversity; it would be fine to flaunt his money in their eyes; they would not sniff, Frost-like, at three million francs. Here I felt even confident that he would speak gracefully of repayment, though with care not to wound Castilian pride by pressing the suggestion unduly. But the great thing would be the association, the memory, the two floors at the top of the palazzo. Surely she would go there with him if she would go anywhere? Surely there, if anywhere, she would come back to him? That, beyond all others, was the place to offer the pearl necklace, to spread the carpet of bank notes. If the two were to be found anywhere in the world together, it would be at Venice, at the palazzo.
So to Venice I went—on an errand never defined to myself, urged by an impulse, a curiosity, a longing, to which many things in the past united to give force, which the present position sharpened. “I must know; I must see for myself.” That feeling, which had made me unable to rest at Villa San Carlo, now drove me to Venice. Putting money in my pocket and giving my Paris bankers the name of my hotel, I set out, on a road the end of which I could not see, but which I was determined to tread, if I could, and to explore.
In spite of my “facilities”—I had them again, and certainly this time Lady Dundrannan, if she knew my errand, would not have offered to secure them—my journey was slow, and interrupted at one point by a railway strike. When I arrived at my hotel on the Grand Canal—Arsenio’s palazzo was just round the corner by water, to be reached by land through a short but tortuous network of alleys with a little high stone bridge to finish up the approach to its back door—a telegram had been waiting forty-eight hours for me, forwarded from Cragsfoot by way of Paris. In it Waldo told me of Aunt Bertha’s death; influenza had swooped down on the weakened old body, and after three days’ illness made an end. It was hopeless to think of getting back in time for the funeral; I could have done it from Paris; I could not from Venice. I despatched the proper reply, and went out to the Piazza. My mind was for the moment switched off from what I had come about; but I thought more about Sir Paget than about poor old Aunt Bertha herself. He would be very lonely. Would Briarmount allay his loneliness?
It was about eleven o’clock on a bright sunny morning. They were clearing away the protective structures that had been erected round the buildings—St. Mark’s, the Ducal Palace, the new Campanile. I sat in a chair outside Florian’s and watched. There on that fine morning the war seemed somehow just a bad dream—or, rather, a play that had been played and was finished; a tragedy on which the curtain had fallen. See, they were clearing away the properties, and turning to real ordinary life again. So, for a space, it seemed to a man seduced by beauty into forgetfulness.
They came and went, men, women and children, all on their business and their recreations; there were soldiers too in abundance, some draggled, dirty, almost in rags, some tidy, trim and new, but all with a subtle air of something finished, a job done, comparative liberty at least secured; even the prisoners—several gangs of them were marched by—had that same air of release about them. Hawkers plied their wares—women mostly, a few old men and young boys; baskets were thrust under my nose; I motioned them away impatiently. I had traveled all night, and uncomfortably, with little sleep. Here was peace; I wanted peace; I was drowsy.
Thus, half as though in a dream, half as if it were an answer to what my mood demanded,—beauty back into the world, that was it—she came across the Piazza towards the place where I sat. Others sat there too—a row of them on my left hand; I had taken a chair rather apart, at the end of the row. She wore the little black frock—the one she had worn at Ste. Maxime, the one Godfrey had seen her in at Cimiez, or the fellow of it. On her left arm hung an open basket; it was full of fine needlework. I saw her take out the pieces, unfold them, wave them in the air. She found customers; distant echoes of chaff and chaffering reached my ears. From chair to chair she passed, coming nearer to me always.
I had upon me at this moment no surprise at seeing her, no wonder why she, wife of the now opulent Don Arsenio Valdez, was hawking fine needlework on the Piazza. The speculation as to the state of affairs, with which my mind had been so insatiably busy, did not now occupy it. I was just boyishly wrapped up in the anticipation of the joke that was going to happen—that must happen unless—horrible thought!—she sold out all her stock before she got to me. But no! She smiled and joked, but she stood out for her price. The basket would hold out—surely it would!—As she came near, I turned my head away—absorbed in the contemplation of St. Mark’s—just of St. Mark’s!
I felt her by me before she spoke. Then I heard, “Julius!” and a little gurgle of laughter. I turned my head with an answering laugh; her eyes were looking down at my face with their old misty wonder.
“You here! I can’t sit down by you here. I’ll walk across the Piazzetta, along to the quay. Follow me in a minute. Don’t lose sight of me!”
“I don’t propose to do that,” I whispered back, as she swung away from me. I paid my account, and followed her some fifty yards behind. I did not overtake her till we were at the Danieli Hotel. “Where shall we go to talk?” I asked.