The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

Dora did not at once grasp the cause of his embarrassment.

“We’ll swim right out together,” she said. “You can swim for ever in this sea; it’s so buoyant. And then we sit on the sand and eat strawberries, while the sun dries us again.”

Then she saw that some portentous doubt on the question of propriety was in Mr. Osborne’s mind, guessed it, and hastened to remove the cause of it. “Or perhaps, coming straight out from England, you don’t want to bathe,” she said. “Besides, there’s the mater”—she had adopted this from Claude. “So we won’t bathe; we’ll take her out for a giro—a row—in the gondola and have tea out on the lagoon. Dad, you’ll love the lagoon, all gray and green. And the electric light poles cross it to the Lido.”

“Eh, that will be nice,” said Mr. Osborne quickly and appreciatively. “And here’s another bridge: why, beautiful, isn’t it? I think I like it better than that curved one. There seems more sense in it. You don’t have to mount so high.”

They had passed round the last corner of the canal, and in front of them lay the straight lower reach of it that passes into the great basin opposite St. Mark’s and the Doge’s palace. To right and left the stately houses stood up from the water side, in glimmer of rose and blue and orange beneath the smiting glory of the noonday. Since yesterday the north wind, blowing lightly from the Alps, had banished the oppression of yesterday’s heat and the glitter of the city had awoke again, pearly in the shadow and jewelled in the sun. And in the immediate foreground the only blot of disfigurement was the object of Mr. Osborne’s admiration, the flat, execrable iron bridge opposite the Accademia. There it lay, convenient and hideous and impossible. And he liked it better than the curved one! It had more sense in it!

But there was no need for Dora to rack her brains to find some response which should steer a middle way between lack of cordiality to her father-in-law on the one hand and artistic perjury on the other. Between the fish market, the iron bridge, and the vile convenient speed of the steamboats Venice was going up in his estimation by leaps and bounds, and he was delighted to find he was almost able to endorse Dora’s opinion on the town.

“Well, I call it all beautiful, my dear,” he said, “and it’s as I said to mother. ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘if Dora says Venice is a nice place, you may be sure there is something in it, and we were right to come out and have a look at it ourselves.’ But who’d have thought there was so much of modern convenience and comfort? And these gondolas too. I’m sure I’m as comfortable sitting here as in my own brougham and, except when the steamers go by, they glide as smooth as on an asphalt road. Pretty the water is too, though not clear. I should have thought that here in the south there’d have been more of blue in it. But I’m a bit surprised, my dear, that you with your eye for colour shouldn’t have done up the gondola more brightly, had some blue curtains, maybe, or picked out that handsome carved work on the prow with a touch of red. There’s a thought too much black about it for my taste. Seems to tell of a funeral, almost.”

Dora could not argue about this: she could not give Mr. Osborne eyes which should see the value of the black blots of boats against the brightness of the sky mirrored in the canal. But it was easy to find praise in his speech to which she could respond, though the praise was expressed in a way that somehow set her teeth on edge.

“Oh, they are the most comfortable things in the world,” she said, “and I even like the indignant slap they give when the wash of the steamer crosses them. Beautiful thing, with its arching neck like some great black swan! Ah, there’s twelve striking. We shall just have time to look into our house and fetch Claude and then get back to the Dandoli for lunch. I hope they’ll have put it in the garden. Oh, Dad, how this place has got into my heart! You never did such a nice thing as when you gave Claude and me a month here.”

Mr. Osborne did not think much of Dora’s water-entrance to the great gray palace of which she had the first floor, but the size of the huge sala (which she remembered to tell him was a hundred and ten feet long) was most satisfactory to him. But with its polished stone-plaster floor, and the Venetian emptiness of it, it seemed to him rather bare and comfortless.