CHAPTER 8
Venice
ALL IS NOT LOST
Cynthia was sleepy when she stumbled into the station at Genoa. She hadn’t been too sure that the hotel keeper would wake her in time to get the train for Venice. So all night long she had dozed fitfully, waking to sit bolt upright and flash on the light to see her watch, then finally been waked from a sound sleep at five, just an hour before train time by the sharp summoning knuckles of the garçon on her bedroom door.
And it must have been because her eyes were still blurred with sleep that she took the rapide instead of the express for Venice. They were standing directly opposite each other, and both of them had “Venezia” in letters a foot high along the carriages. An Italian rapide does not necessarily move with great rapidity. By the best of expresses it is a long day’s journey across the width of Italy and by the time she had discovered, with the half dozen native phrases that she knew, that she had taken the wrong train it was too late to do anything about it. They were already an hour east of Genoa.
“What time do we get to Venezia,” she begged. “Venezia ... Venezia. ...”
“Si...si...si...si...si,” hissed the beaming conductor as he punched her ticket.
“Yes, but what time? Tempo? Tempo?” she pleaded.
The conductor shook his head and shrugged. Probably mad, this pretty signorina. But he had no English, and what did she in third class, in that expensive dress of real silk, with leather shoes upon her feet, a hat, and a suitcase also of veritable leather? He gave it up and sauntered down the crowded aisle between the wooden benches to examine the biglietto of a wizened little great-grandmother traveling, with six great-grandchildren, to Milan.
Cynthia grinned and settled philosophically against the frame of the open window. Ten hours was a pretty long time, and it would be more than that now in this poky old train, but anyway it was an adventure and all part of traveling. She was certainly going in the right direction, there was no one to meet her at the other end, no one to worry when she didn’t arrive, and she would have all day to observe and to make sketches.