“And when the lagoons looked enchanted in the sunset,” said Lisa; “and our dinner at the Cappello Nero, and the champagne, and the pastiti, and the opera afterwards, and the beads you gave me. I have the beads still. I wore the blue necklace to-night. Did you notice it?”
“Indeed, no, Poverina. I was too full of thoughts of you to notice your necklace.”
“Ah, you were surprised to see me, weren’t you—after so long? And was not I surprised to see you? I was looking at all the faces, the pretty dresses, the jewels, like faces in a dream, for they are there every night, and they never come any nearer, or seem any more real; and then in an instant, out of the unreality, your face flashed upon me—your face and the memory of that happy day and evening, that dreadful midnight. Are you sorry to see us again?” she asked, naively, in conclusion.
“Sorry, Lisa? no. I am glad, very glad; for now I hope I may be able to make some atonement to you and your aunt.”
“Atonement! but how? You cannot bring him back to life. While we sit here, he is lying in San Michele, where the gondolas with the black flags are his only visitors, where nothing but sorrow and death ever enters. You cannot bring him back to life.”
“Alas, no, Fiordelisa; but I may do much to make your life easier. I can make sure that you and your aunt shall know no more poverty and deprivation.”
“Ah,” sighed la Zia: “we knew both after that good Signor Smitz was carried to San Michele. He had never been rich, mark you; but while he lived there was always enough for the coffee and macaroni, and for a stufato on Sundays, and a flask of Chiante that lasted all the week. We did not waste his money, and he used to praise his little Lisa as the cleverest manager and best wife a man ever had. And she would have been his wife, mark you, had he lived. Oh, he had promised her again and again, and he meant to keep his word. She would have been an English gentleman’s wife—all in good time.”
“All in good time,” echoed Lisa; “and my son would not have been fatherless.”
“Your son!” exclaimed Vansittart.
“Ah, you do not know,” said la Zia; “her baby was born half a year after his father’s death. It was the late autumn when the bambino came. The leaves were all dying off the vines, the strangers were all leaving Venice, the boats were bringing in the winter fuel, and the cold winds were creeping up from the Adriatic and blowing round all the corners of the Calle. We were very poor. There was a little money in the house when he died—and there was more than enough in his purse when he fell to pay for his funeral—but when the last lira was gone there was nothing but to go back to the lace-making, both of us, and work for the dish of polenta and the garret that lodged us. We did not want to go back to Burano, to see the old faces and hear the old comrades talk about us, after we had lived like ladies and worn velvet gowns, so we went to work at the factory in Venice, and we lived in one little room in the Rialto, right up in the roof of an old, old house, where we could see nothing but the sky; and there Lisa’s baby was born, a beautiful boy. Ah, how proud Signor Smitz would have been had he lived to see that lovely infant!”