Chapter XI

Adrianis went out on the following day to make some purchases of glass and metal work for which one of his sisters had written to him. He thought that when they were completed it would be but courtesy to go and tell Damer that he himself was about to leave the city, and offer him his yacht to go in, if he desired it, to Trieste. Their last words had been chafing and cold. The indulgent kindliness of his nature made him wish to part friends with a man to whom he considered that he owed his life.

He bade his gondolier steer northwards to the Fondamenti. He had never been to the chambers occupied by Damer in the old watch-tower; the other had always discouraged all visits; but now he thought that he had better go there, or he might wholly miss seeing the Englishman again before his departure, for of late Damer had come but rarely to the Ca’ Zaranegra. But before he could give the order to his gondolier, in passing the Ponte del Paradiso, a sandalo, in which there was one person alone, fouled his own in the narrow channel, and that solitary person was Damer.

“I was just going to your apartments,” cried Adrianis, whilst his gondolier swore loudly as his prow grazed the wall of Palazzo Narni.

“I am going to the hospital, and shall not be at home till dark,” replied Damer, ungraciously.

“I was coming to tell you,” said Adrianis, “that I am about to leave Venice.”

“And are going to Goritz, no doubt,” said Damer, with a brief smile.

“I may be and I may not,” replied Adrianis, in a tone which implied that wherever he chose to go was no business of any one’s. “Anyhow, I wished to say that the schooner is entirely at your disposition if you remain here or if you cross to Trieste.”

“Thanks. Yachts are rich men’s toys for which I have no use,” answered Damer, without saying where he was going or what he intended to do. “Send yours to her docks in Messina, if you do not require her yourself.”

“You might be a little more polite,” said Adrianis, half angrily, half jestingly. “I should be glad to do you any services.”

“Poor men cannot accept such services.”

“Why do you constantly speak of your poverty? You have intellect; that is much rarer than riches.”

“And much less esteemed,” said Damer, with that brief, icy smile which always depressed and troubled Adrianis. “I fear I cannot stay to gossip,” he added, “I am already rather late for a conference at the hospital with my esteemed Venetian colleague.”

They were about to part, Damer to pass underneath the bridge, Adrianis to pursue his way to a coppersmith’s workshop, when a weak, infantine cry smote on their ears, echoed by other shriller childish voices.

There was a row of barges moored along the wall under the old grim Narni palace which stands just beyond the bridge, with its massive iron-studded doors, unaltered in appearance since the time when Tiziano walked a living presence over the Paradiso, and the sunshine shone on the golden hair of Palma Vecchio’s daughter.

Some children were playing on the black barges which were laden with firewood and coal. They were small creatures, half naked in the warm air and sportive as young rabbits; they ran, leaped, climbed the piles of fuel, caught each other in mimic wrestling and screamed with glad laughter; there was only one who did not join in the games, a little boy who lay languidly and motionless on some sacks, and watched the sports of others with heavy eyes.

There was no grown man or woman near, there were only the children, and the old palace, like a grey beard with closed eyes; it looked as if it had been shut when Dandolo was young, and had never been opened since; its white statues gazed down over the iron fencing of its garden wall; they, too, were very old.

As the gondola passed under that wall the sporting children growing wilder and more reckless, rushed in their course past and over the little sick boy, and jostled him so roughly that they pushed him over the edge of the barge, and he fell, with a shrill cry, into the water. The others, frightened at what had befallen them, gathered together, whimpering and afraid, irresolute and incapable. The fallen child disappeared. The water hereabouts is thick and dark, and sewage flows unchecked into it. It was in that instant of his fall that his cry, and the shrieks of his companions, rose shrilly on the morning silence.

In a second Adrianis sprang from the gondola, dived for the child, who had drifted underneath the barge, and brought him up in his arms. He was a boy of some five years old, with a pretty pale face and naked limbs, his small, curly head fell in exhaustion on the young man’s shoulder, his ragged clothes were dripping.

Damer looked at him with professional insight. “That boy is ill,” he said to Adrianis. “You had better put him out of your arms.”

“Poor little man!” said Adrianis, gently, holding the child closer. “What shall we do with him? We cannot leave him here with only these children.”

“You are wet through yourself. You must go to your hotel,” said Damer.

Adrianis was still standing in the water. At that moment a woman rose up from the cabin of the farthest barge, and came leaping wildly from one barge to another screaming, “The child, the child! my Carlino!”

She was his mother. Adrianis gave him to her outstretched arms, and slipped some money into the little ragged shirt.

“I will come and see how he is in an hour,” he said to her, amidst her prayers and blessings. “He is not well. You must take more care of him; you should not leave him alone.”

The child opened his eyes and smiled.

Adrianis stooped and kissed him.

“Go home by yourself. I will stay and see what is the matter with him,” said Damer. Adrianis went. Damer, bidding the woman go before him, walked over the barges until he reached the one to which there was attached a rude deck-house, or cabin, in which she and five children lived. There he examined the little boy.

“A sore throat,” he said, simply. “I will bring you remedies.”

He returned to his sandolo, and went on his way to the hospital conference.

“What is amiss with him?” said Adrianis, later in the day.

“You would have done better to leave him in the canal water,” replied Damer. “He is a weak little thing, he has never had any decent food, he will never recover.”

“But what is his illness?”

“A sore throat,” replied Damer, as he had replied to the mother; and added, “It is what the Faculty call Boulogne sore throat.”

They went both to the Ca’ Zaranegra that evening. There were several people there; the night was very warm; the tall lilies and palms on the balcony glistened in the light of a full moon; there was music. Veronica held out the lute to Adrianis.

“Will you not sing with me to-night?”

“Alas! You must forgive me. I am rather hoarse. I have no voice,” he answered, with regret.

“I heard of what you did this morning,” she murmured, in a low tone. “Your gondolier told mine. Perhaps you have taken a chill. I will go and see the little child to-morrow.”

“We will go together,” he replied, in the same soft whisper, while his hand touched hers in seeming only to take the lute. Damer saw the gesture where he sat in the embrasure of a window speaking of a frontier question of the hour with a German Minister who was passing through Venice.

When they left the house two or three other men accompanied them on to the water-steps. Warm though the night was, Adrianis shivered a little as he wrapped his overcoat round him. “I could bear my sables,” he said, as he descended the stairs. Damer looked at him in the moonlight, which was clear as the light of early morning.

“You should not plunge into sewage water, and embrace little sick beggars,” he said, coldly, as he accompanied one of the Venetian gentlemen whose palace was near the Fondamenti, and who had offered him a seat in his gondola.

Adrianis, refusing the entreaties of his companions to go and sup with them at Florian’s, went to his rooms at the hotel. He had a flood of happiness at the well-springs of his heart, but in his body he felt feverish and cold.

“It is the sewage water. It got down my throat as I dived,” he thought, recalling the words of his friend. “I shall sleep this chill off and be well again in the morning.”

But he did not sleep; he drank some iced drinks thirstily, and only fell into a troubled and heavy slumber as the morning dawned red over the roofs of Venice, and the little cannon on the Giudecca saluted a new day.

He felt ill when he rose, but he bathed and dressed, and, though he had no appetite for breakfast, went down to his gondola, which he had bidden to be before the hotel at nine o’clock.

At parting from her he had arranged with Veronica that they should go at that hour to see the little child of the Bridge of Paradise.

As he stood on the steps and was about to descend Damer touched him on the arm.

“You are going to take the Countess Zaranegra to the sick boy?”

“Yes,” said Adrianis, with a haughty accent; he did not like the tone of authority in which he was addressed.

“I forbid you to do so, then,” said Damer. “She would only see a dead body, and that body infectious with disease.”

Adrianis was pained.

“Is the little thing dead?” he said, in a hushed voice. “Dead already?”

“He died twenty minutes ago. He had been ill for three days.”

“Poor little pretty thing!” murmured Adrianis. “I am sorry; I will go to the mother.”

“You had better go to your bed. You are unwell. You did a foolish act yesterday.”

“I am quite well. When I require your advice I will ask it,” said Adrianis, impatiently; and he entered his gondola and went to the Ca’ Zaranegra. Damer, standing on the steps of the hotel, looked after him with a gaze which would have killed him could a look have slain.

Her house was bright in the morning radiance, the green water lapping its marbles, the lilies and palms fresh from the night’s dew, the doors standing open showing the blossoming acacias in the garden behind.

She came to him at once in one of the smaller salons.

“I am ready,” she said, gaily. “Look! I have got these fruits and toys for your little waif.”

Then something in his expression checked her gladness.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The child is dead,” said Adrianis.

“Oh, how sad!”

She put down the little gifts she had prepared on a table near her; she was tender-hearted and quickly moved; the tears came into her eyes for the little boy whom she had never seen.

Adrianis drew nearer to her.

“Mia cara,” he murmured. “Do not play with me any longer. Death is so near us always. I have told you a hundred times that I love you. I will make you so happy if you will trust to me. Tell me—tell me——”

She was softened by emotion, conquered by the answering passion which was in her; she did not speak, but her breast heaved, her lips trembled; she let him take her hands.

“You will be mine—mine—mine!” he cried, in delirious joy.

“I love you,” she answered, in a voice so low that it was like the summer breeze passing softly over the lilies. “Hush! Leave me! Go now. Come back at three. I shall be alone.”

The doors were open and the windows; in a farther chamber two liveried servants stood; approaching through the ante-room was the figure of the major-domo of the palace.

Adrianis pressed her hands to his lips and left her. He was dizzy from ecstasy, or so he thought, as the busts and statues of the entrance-hall reeled and swam before his sight, and his limbs felt so powerless and nerveless that, if one of his gondoliers had not caught and held him, he would have fallen headlong down the water-steps.