And now, now, in the beginning of the end, Eve knowing there was no time to lose, the sisters were here in the spring sunset, their gondola moving with the smooth, delicious motion which serves as a balm for troubled spirits, a cure for all the agitations of life, moving in and out of the labyrinthine rios, as the hansom cabman of Venice takes his short cut to the Riva degli Schiavoni, and the comfortable hostelry of Danieli, where at Benson’s advice rooms had been secured on the entresol facing the lagoon, Benson professing familiarity with almost every hotel in Europe. She had stayed at Danieli’s with her Duchess, stayed there for a month, occupying the piano nobilissimo, in the most palatial wing of that patchwork of palaces, where the traveller may either find himself ushered into the mediæval splendour of a kingly chamber, or may be conducted by a labyrinth of passages to a garret looking out upon a slum that recalls St. Giles’s. The wise traveller, of course, is he who gives Danieli ample notice of his coming, and for him the noble floors are reserved.
The entresol was cosy rather than palatial; the rooms were spacious, although low; and the windows opened directly upon all the life and movement of this noisiest and gayest spot of Venice, curiously suggestive of Margate in the Cockney season, save that it is cosmopolitan instead of Cockney, and that instead of the Jew of Houndsditch one may meet the Jew from Damascus or Cairo, from Ispahan or Hungary, from Frankfort or Rome. Here all nations meet and mingle, and all tongues are heard in the voices that mix with the tramp of passing footsteps from morning till midnight. For people who want the silence of the city by the sea, this entresol would be hardly the choicest portion of Danieli’s rambling caravanserai; but to Hetty’s mind those windows opened on a scene of enchantment.
The fishing-boats were coming in, their painted sails gaudier than the sunset, and an Italian man-of-war was lying between the Riva and the Island church yonder. How familiar that church of St. George the Greater seemed to Hetty, and the Custom House, and the dome of Santa Maria della Salute. She had known them all her life in pictures and photographs—sham Canalettis, books of engravings—but the glory of light and colour were as new to her dazzled eyes as if she had died unawares and had come to life again in Paradise.
“Lovely, lovely; quite too lovely,” was all she could say, not having a Ruskinesque vocabulary at her command.
When she looked round, appealing to her sister for sympathy in this new delight, it was a shock to find the room empty.
She ran into the adjoining bedroom, where Benson was unpacking, and then into her own little room further on; but there was no sign of Eve.
“She must have gone out for a stroll,” Hetty said ruefully. “She might as well have told me she was going. She ought to know that I am dying to see St. Mark’s.”
Hetty knew her sister’s dislike of all public rooms in hotels, so she had very little hope of finding her in any of those lounges—reading-room, hall, salon—which Signor Campi has provided for his guests. There was no doubt in Hetty’s mind that Eve had gone to look at St. Mark’s, before the twilight shadows began to veil the splendour of the façade. Hetty went back to the window, and amused herself with the perpetual movement on the quay, and on the water, man-of-war, P. and O., fishing-boats, barges, gondolas moving diagonally across the crimsoned water towards the crimson sky, light and colour reflected upon all things, save where the dark cool shadows accentuated that sunset splendour.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
“BOTH TOGETHER, HE HER GOD, SHE HIS IDOL.”