"Why--it's written to you, my dear," said he, slowly withdrawing his finger.
She smiled. She nodded her head again. It was addressed to her; but in the rightful order of things, it was really his turn. For some unknown reason, John had addressed the last two letters to her. He never did do that. He was always most scrupulously fair in this tacit understanding that he should address his letters alternately, first to his father, then to his mother. This was the only time he had broken the unwritten law. It was really not her letter at all. That was why she had passed it across at once to her husband. He would never have dreamed of asking for the letter out of his turn. His fingers often twitched while her poor hands fumbled with the envelope, but he had never moved an inch to take it, until, of her own accord, she had handed it to him.
Now--knowing that it was his turn, his hand had stretched out for it naturally the moment Claudina had closed the door, and she had as readily given it. But there was a secret exultation in the heart of her.
John had addressed it to her. There was no getting away from that.
For a moment, the old gentleman sat fingering it in dubious hesitation.
Then he passed it back again.
"It's your letter, my dear," he said. "You open it." And picking up his book, he pretended to go on reading. Of course he did not see a single word on the page before him. Every sense in his body was strained to catch the sound of the tearing paper as she broke open the envelope. But there was no sound at all. Another moment of silence and she was bending over him from behind his chair, her arms round his neck and the letter held before his eyes.
"We'll open it together," she said.
It was her way of letting him do it without knowing that he had given way. To be sure, it was his finger that finally broke the flap of the envelope; but then, he retained all the dignity of the sacrifice. And so, as she leant over his shoulder, they read it together, with little exclamations of delight, little interruptions of pleasure, that need a heart for their purer translation, and cannot be written here because of that great gulf which is fixed behind the mind and the pen--because of that greater gulf which lies between the word and the eye that reads it.
"_My dearest----_"
Just those two words beginning; but they were almost the entire letter to her. They set her little brown eyes alight, her heart beating quickly behind the stiff bodice.
"_I have left writing to you until the last moment for fear I should be unable to come on the day that you were expecting me. But it is all right. I am starting to-morrow morning, and shall be with you the usual time the day following, just about sunset. I can't tell you how glad I shall be to get away from here. You know what London can be like in July, and I suppose I want a change as well. I can't work these days at all--but I don't mean to worry you. I expect I am depressed and want different air in my lungs. I shall go up to the bows of the steamer crossing to-morrow, stand there with my mouth open, and get it forced down my throat like a dose._
"_God bless you, dearest. Give my love to father, but don't tell him I can't work. I know he understands it well enough, but I believe it depresses him as much as it does me._"
He looked up simply into her face as he handed back the paper.
"You see, I wasn't meant to read it," he said quietly.
Impulsively, she put her arm round his neck. She knew so well how that had hurt. There had been letters sometimes that she was not meant to see. Of course, she had seen them; but that touch of intimacy which, when you are a lover, or a mother, makes letters such wonderful living things, had been utterly taken from them. They had contained loving messages to her. But the writing itself, that had been meant for another eye to read.
"But it was only because he was thoughtful about you," she whispered--"not because he didn't want you to see. He'll tell you himself quickly enough that he can't work when he comes. You see if he doesn't. He can't keep those sort of things to himself. He can do it in a letter, because he thinks he ought to. But he won't be here five minutes before he's telling you that he can't write a line. And think!
He'll be here the day after to-morrow. Oh--he is such a dear boy! Isn't he? Isn't he the dearest boy two old people ever had in the world?"
So she charmed the smile back into his eyes; never pausing until she saw that passing look of pain vanish completely out of sight. And so Claudina found them, as she had often found them before, poring once again over the letter as she brought in the big box.
Up went the two white heads in amazement and concern.
"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?"
For to old people, you know, the hours pass very quickly; they are scarcely awake, before they are again being put to bed. Time hurries by them with such quiet feet, stepping lightly on the tips of its toes lest it should disturb those peaceful last moments which God gives to the people who are old.
Claudina laid down the big box upon the table. She nodded her head; her earrings shook.
"Si, Signora," she replied, as always.
The little old white-haired lady crumpled the letter into her dress; concealed it behind the stiff black bodice. Then they both stood to their feet, and the procession, of which Claudina was the herald, began.
First of all the big wooden box was opened, and out of it were taken numbers and numbers of little white linen bags of all shapes and sizes.
White? Well, they were white once, but long obedience to the service for which they were required had turned their white to grey.
Each one of them was numbered, the number stitched in thread upon the outside; each one of them had been made to fit some separate little ornament in the room, to wrap it up, to keep the dust from it through the night--a night-cap for it, in fact. At ten o'clock the ornaments were put to bed; after the ornaments, then these two old people--but first of all their treasures. They stood by, watching Claudina tuck them all up, one by one, and it gave them that delicious sensation which only old people and young children know anything about--the sensation that they are sitting up late that others are going to bed before them.
Of course they never knew they had that sensation; they were not aware of it for a moment. But you might have known by the way they turned and smiled at each other when the big Dresden-china shepherdess was popped into her bag, you might have known that in the hearts of them, that was what they felt.
This evening in particular, their smiles were more radiant than ever.
The old lady forgot to make her little exclamations of terror when Claudina could not get the night-cap over the head of the Dresden-china shepherdess, and was in danger of dropping them both together; the old gentleman forgot his quiet--"Be careful, Claudina--be careful." For whenever his wife was very excited, it always made him realise that he was very quiet, very self-possessed. But they felt none of their usual anxiety on this evening in July. In two days--in less--John would be with them. They had waited a whole year for this moment and a whole year, however quickly the separate moments may pass, is a long, long time to old people.
"There is one thing," the old gentleman said, presently, as the last ornaments were being ranged upon the table, standing in readiness for their nightcaps to go on. "There is one thing I don't quite know about."
She slipped her arm into his and asked in a whisper what it was. There was no need to talk in a whisper, for Claudina did not know a word of English; but she guessed he was going to say something concerning John and about him, she nearly always spoke in a whisper.
"It's the--the shop," he replied--"I--I don't like to tell John."
"Oh--but why not?" She clung a little closer to him.
"It isn't that I don't think he would understand--but it's just like that sentence in his letter about me. I feel it would hurt him if he thought I couldn't sell my pictures any more. I believe he would blame himself and think he ought to be giving us money, if he knew that I had had to start this curio shop to make things meet more comfortably."
She nodded her head wisely. She would have been all for telling her son everything. But when he mentioned the fact of John thinking he ought to support them, and when she considered how John would need every penny that he earned to support the woman whom she longed for him to make his wife--it was a different matter. She quite agreed. It was better that John should be told nothing.
"You don't think he'll find out--do you?" she said, and her eyes looked startled at the thought.
"No--no--I shouldn't think so. It isn't as if I had to be there every day. Foscari looks after it quite well. Though I'm always afraid he'll sell the very things I can't bear to part with. He sold the old brass Jewish lamp the other day, and I wouldn't have parted with it for worlds. But I dare say if I tell him to be careful--I dare say----"
It was rather sad, this curio shop. It would have been very sad if his wife had not appreciated the need for it; if she had not made it easier by telling him how brave he was, by sharing with him the sense of shame he felt when it became apparent that his pictures were no longer saleable.
For when he had reached the age of seventy-three, that was what they had told him. If he had not been a landscape painter, it might have been different; but at seventy-three, when one's heart is weak, it is not possible, it is not wise, to go far afield, to tramp the mountains as once he had done, in search of subjects new. So, he had been compelled to stay at home, to try and paint from memory the pictures that lay heaped within his mind. Then it was that they began to tell him that they could not sell his work; then he came to find that there must be other means of support if they were not to appeal to John for aid. And so, having a collection of treasures such as artists find, picked up from all the odd corners of Europe, he bethought him of a curio shop and, finding a little place to let at a quiet corner in the _Merceria_, he took it, called it--The Treasure Shop--and painting the name in a quaint old sign which he hung outside, obliterated his identity from the public eye.
For weeks beforehand, they had discussed this plan. Some of their own treasures, of course, would have to be sacrificed; in fact, Claudina carried many little grey night-caps away with her in the wooden box--night-caps that no longer had Dresden heads to fit them. But the money they were going to make out of the Treasure Shop would make up for all these heart-rending sacrifices. They would even be able to send John little presents now and then. There was nothing like a curio-shop for minting money, especially if the curios were really genuine, as were theirs.
But that was the very rub of it. When he came to open the shop, the old gentleman found it was the very genuineness of the things he had to sell that made it impossible for him to part with them. He loved them too well. And even the most ignorant collectors, British sires with check-cloth caps and heavy ulsters, old ladies with guide books in one hand and cornucopias of maze for the pigeons in the other, even they seemed to pitch upon the very things he loved the most.
He asked exorbitant prices to try and save his treasures from their clutches and mostly this method succeeded; but sometimes they were fools enough to put the money down. For there was one thing he could never do; he could not belittle the thing that he loved. If it was good, if it was genuine, if it really was old, he had to say so despite himself.
Enthusiasm would let him do no otherwise. But then, when he had said all he could in its praise, he would ask so immense a sum that the majority of would-be purchasers left the shop as if he had insulted them.
So it was that the Treasure Shop did not fulfil all the expectations they had had of it. It made just enough money for their wants; but that was all.
And now came the question as to whether they should let John know of it.
Long into the night they discussed the question, their two white heads lying side by side on the pillows, their voices whispering in the darkness.
"And yet--I believe he would understand," said the little old lady on her side--"he's such a dear, good boy, I'm sure he would understand."
"I don't know--I don't know," replied the old gentleman dubiously--"It will be bad enough when he sees my last pictures. No--no--I don't think I'll tell him. Foscari can look after the place. I need hardly be there at all while he's with us."
And then, making the sign of the cross upon each other's foreheads--saying--"God bless you"--as they had done every night their whole lives long, they fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXVI