Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories Part 11

"So the message came. You refused, and now you look for a reward. A man must be paid!"

"I tried to keep the other engagement and could not!"

"I shall make you forget it, as if it were some silly boyish dream."

She began to walk over the moonlit gra.s.s. "I was waiting for that--sacrifice. For if you desire _me_, you must leave the other engagements, always."

"I know it."

"I lie in the laguna morta, and the dead are under me, and the living are caught in my sea-weed." She laughed.

"Now, we have several long hours of moonlight. Shall we stay here?"

The young man shivered.

"No, the Lady Dogessa might disturb us. Let us go out toward Murano."

"Are you really--alive and mine, not Severance's?" he threw out, recklessly.

She stopped and smiled.

"First you tell me that I disturb your plans; then you want to know if I am preoccupied. You would like to have me as an 'extra' in the subscription."

As they came out on the flags by the gondola, another boat was pushing a black prow into the rio from the Misericordia ca.n.a.l. It came up to the water-steps where the two stood. Caspar Severance stepped out.

"Caspar!" Miss Barton laughed.

"They told me you were here for dinner," he explained. He was in evening clothes, a Roman cloak hanging from his shoulders. He looked, standing on the steps below the other two, like an impertinent intrusion.

"Lawrence! I thought you were on your way home."

Lawrence shook his head. All three were silent, wondering who would dare to open the final theme.

"The Signora Contessa had a headache," Miss Barton began, nonchalantly.

Severance glanced skeptically at the young American by her side.

"So you fetched il dottore americano? Well, Giovanni is waiting to carry us home."

Miss Barton stepped forward slowly, as if to enter the last gondola whose prow was nuzzling by the steps.

Lawrence took her hand and motioned to his gondola.

"Miss Barton----"

Severance smiled, placidly.

"You will miss the midnight train."

The young man halted a moment, and Miss Barton's arm slipped into his fingers.

"Perhaps," he muttered.

"The night will be cool for you," Severance turned to the woman. She wavered a moment.

"You will miss more than the midnight train," Severance added to the young fellow, in a low voice.

Lawrence knelt beside his gondola. He glanced up into the face of the woman above him. "Will you come?" he murmured. She gathered up her dress and stepped firmly into the boat. Severance, left alone on the fondamenta, watched the two. Then he turned back to his gondola. The two boats floated out silently into the Misericordia Ca.n.a.l.

"To the Cimeterio," Miss Barton said. "To the Ca.n.a.le Grande," Severance motioned.

The two men raised their hats.

For a few moments the man and the woman sat without words, until the gondola cleared the Fondamenta Nuova, and they were well out in the sea of moonlight. Ahead of them lay the stucco walls of the Cimeterio, glowing softly in the white light. Some dark spots were moving out from the city ma.s.s to their right, heading for the silent island.

"There goes the conclusion," Lawrence nodded to the funeral boats.

"But between us and them lies a s.p.a.ce of years--life."

"Who decided?"

"You looked. It was decided."

The city detached itself insensibly from them, lying black behind. A light wind came down from Treviso, touching the white waves.

"You are thinking that back there, up the Grand Ca.n.a.l, lie fame and accomplishment. You are thinking that now you have your fata morgana--nothing else. You are already preparing a grave for her in your mind!"

Lawrence took her head in his hands. "Never," he shot out the word.

"Never--you are mine; I have come all these ocean miles to find you. I have come for an accounting with the vision that troubles man." Her face drew nearer.

"I am Venice, you said. I am set in the mare morto. I am built on the sea-weed. But from me you shall not go. You came over the mountains for this."

The man sighed. Some ultimate conception of life seemed to outline itself on the whitish walls of the Cimeterio--a question of s.e.x. The man would go questioning visions. The woman was held by one.

"Caspar Severance will find his way, and will play your game for you,"

she went on coaxingly. "But this," her eyes were near him, "_this_ is a moment of life. You have chosen. There is no mine and thine."

One by one the campaniles of Venice loomed, dark pillars in the white sky. And all around toward Mestre and Treviso and Torcello; to San Pietro di Castello and the grim walls of the a.r.s.enal, the mare morto heaved gently and sighed.

CHICAGO, January, 1897.

THE PRICE OF ROMANCE

They were paying the price of their romance, and the question was whether they would pay it cheerfully. They had been married a couple of years, and the first flush of excitement over their pa.s.sion and the stumbling-blocks it had met was fading away. When he, an untried young lawyer and delicate dilettante, had married her she was a Miss Benton, of St. Louis, "niece of Oliphant, that queer old fellow who made his money in the Tobacco Trust," and hence with no end of prospects.

Edwards had been a pleasant enough fellow, and Oliphant had not objected to his loafing away a vacation about the old house at Quogue.

Marriage with his niece, the one remaining member of his family who walked the path that pleased him, was another thing. She had plenty of warning. Had he not sent his only son adrift as a beggar because he had married a little country cousin? He could make nothing out of Edwards except that he was not keen after business--loafed much, smoked much, and fooled with music, possibly wrote songs at times.