But from time to time, in this routine, a searing memory would recur and he would see in shifting chiaroscuro, the scene on the Piazza San Marco: the faces of the maskers, the slight, shrinking form of Teresa, the angry dark eyes of the Fornarina, a hand snatching at a veil—then the streaming moonlight tangling to a halo about a girl’s shocked face so innocently touched with horror, a face that would always be distinct to him!
If he could have spared her the indignity of that one coarse scene! If he could only have told her himself, and gently! But even that, Fate had denied him—the dogging Nemesis that stalked him always! But for its decree, they had not met that night. He would have remained in her mind as she had seen him by the side of little Pasquale—a kindly shadow, a mystery beckoning her sympathy, then haply forgot. Now she would remember him always. Not as the wretched and misunderstood being for whom she had prayed at La Mira, but with shrinking and self-reproach, as a veritable agency of evil—the true milord maligno, who had bought her interest with the spurious coin of hypocrisy. So his tormented thought raced out along the barren grooves of surmise.
As he walked under the orchard’s rosy roof, the prior called to him:
“A wedding party is coming to the south landing,” he said. “Our monastery is fortunate this month. This is the third.”
Gordon looked. There, rounding the sea-wall, was a procession of gondolas, decked superbly, the foremost draped wholly in white and trailing bright streamers in the water, like some great queen bird leading a covey of soberer plumage. By the richness of the banners and embroidered tenda, it was the cortège of some noble bridal. As he gazed, the faint music of stringed instruments drifted across the walls.
Gathering closer the coarse brown monastery robe he had thrown about him, Gordon followed the padre through the garden to the further entrance, where the brethren, girdled and cowled, were drawn up, a benign row. The bride would wait among the ladies on the beach, since beyond that portal no woman’s foot must go; the bridegroom would enter, to leave his gifts and to drink a glass of home-pressed violet-scented wine in the great hall.
Gordon paused a little way from the water-stairs and looked down over the low wall at the white gondola. One day, he mused, Teresa would marry—some noble like this no doubt, for she had rank and station—one whom she would love as she might have loved him. Perhaps she would celebrate her marriage in the Venetian way, come in a gondola procession maybe to this very monastery, never guessing that he once had been within it! In what corner of the world would he be then?
Under the edge of the tenda he could see the shimmering wedding-gown of the bride, cloth of gold heavy with seed pearls. The gentlemen had already entered the close. As he gazed, the gondola swung round and he caught a fleeting glimpse of her face.
“Teresa!” he gasped, and his hand clutched the wall.
She—so soon! A sudden pain, not vague but definite, seized him. She had not cared, then. Her heart had not suffered, after all! On that night, when she had swayed forward into the gondolier’s arms, it had been only horror at her discovery, not a nearer grief! What for that quivering instant he had thought he read in her exclamation had not been there. Fool! To think his face could have drawn her for an hour! Doubly fool to sorrow for her hurt! Better so. She must not see him; no reminder of shame and affront should mar this day for her.