"The world's a queer place, though," said Rupert, not heeding the palace front.
"What are you thinking of?"
"This city, for one thing. I've been, reading that book you lent me.
Hasn't there been confusion enough, though, up and down these canals, and in and out of those palaces! and the rest of the world is pretty much in the same way. Only in America it ain't quite so bad. I suppose because we haven't had time enough."
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE WINE-SHOP.
It was past twelve by the clock tower when the two left the gondola and entered the Place of St. Mark. The old church with its cupolas, the open Place, the pillars with St. Theodore and the dragon, the palace of the Doges with its open stone work, showed like a scene out of another world; so unearthly beautiful, so weird and so stately. There had been that day some festival or public occasion which had called the multitude together, and lingerers were still to be seen here and there, and the windows of cafes and trattorie were lighted, and the buzz of voices came from them. Dolly and Rupert crossed the square, however, without more than a moment's lingering, and plunged presently into what seemed to her a labyrinth of confused ways. Such ways! an alley in New York would be broad in comparison; two women in hoops would have been obliged to use some skill to pass each other; they threaded the old city in the strangest manner. Rupert went steadily and without hesitation, Dolly wondered how he could, through one into another, up and down, over bridge after bridge, clearly knowing his way; yet it was a nervous walk to her, for more than one reason. Sometimes the whole line of one of these narrow streets, if they could be called so, would be perfectly dark; the moonlight not getting into it, and only glittering on a palace cornice or a street corner in view; others, lying right for the moonbeams, were flooded with them from one turning to another. Most of the shops were closed; but the sellers of fruit had not shut up their windows yet, and now and then a cook-shop made a most peculiar picture, with its blazing fire at the back, and its dishes of cooked and uncooked viands temptingly displayed at the street front.
Steadily and swiftly Rupert and Dolly passed on; saw these things without stopping to look at them, but yet saw them so that in all after-life those peculiar effects of light and shade, fireshine and moonlight, Italian fruits and vegetables, and fish coloured by the one or the other illumination, were never lost from memory. Here there would be a red Vulcanic glow in the interior of a shop where the furnace fire was flaming up about the pots and pans of cookery; and at the street front, at the window, the moonlight glinting white from the edge of a dish, or glancing from a pane of glass; and then again reflected from the still waters of a canal. The two saw these things, and never forgot; but Dolly was silent and Rupert did not know what to say. Yet he thought he felt her arm tremble sometimes, and would have given a great deal to be able to speak to the purpose. Perhaps Dolly at length found the need of distraction to her thoughts, for she it was that first said anything.
"I hope mother will not wake up!"
"Why?"
"She would not understand my being away."
"Then she does not know?"
"I did not dare tell her. I had to risk it. I do not want her ever to know, Rupert, if it can be helped."
"She'll be no wiser for me. What are you going to do now, Miss Dolly?
We ain't far off the place."
"I am going to get my father to go home with me. You needn't come in.
Better not. You go back to the gondola and wait there for a little say--a quarter or half an hour; if I do not come before that, then go on home."
"But you cannot go anywhere alone?"
"Oh no; I shall have father; but I cannot tell which way he may take to get home. You go back to the gondola,--or no, be in front of St.
Mark's; that would be better."
"I am afraid to leave you, Miss Dolly."
"You need not. One gets to places where there is nothing to fear any more."
Rupert was not sure what she meant; her voice had a peculiar cadence which struck him. Then they turned another corner, and a few steps ahead of them saw the light from a window making a strip of illumination across the street, which here was unvisited by the moonbeams.
"That is the place," said Rupert.
Dolly slackened her walk, and the next minute paused before the window and looked in. The light was not brilliant, yet sufficient to show several men within, some sitting and drinking, some in attendance; and Dolly easily recognised one among the former number. She drew her arm from Rupert's.
"Now go back to St. Mark's," she whispered. "I wish it. Yes, I would rather go in alone. Wait for me a little while in front of St. Mark's."
She stood still yet half a minute, making her observations or getting up her resolution; then with a light, swift step passed into the shop.
Rupert could not obey her and go at once; he felt he must see what she did and what her reception promised to be; he came a little nearer to the window and gazed anxiously in. The minutes he stood there burned the scene for ever into his memory.
The light shone in a wide, spacious apartment, which it but gloomily revealed. There was nothing whatever of the outward attractions with which in New York or London a drinking saloon, not of a low order, would have been made pleasant and inviting. The wine had need to be good, thought Rupert, when men would come to such a place as this and spend time there, simply for the pleasure of drinking it. Yet several men were there, taking that pleasure, even so late as the hour was; and they were respectable men, at least if their dress could be taken in testimony. They sat with mugs and glasses before them; one had a plate of olives also, another had some other tit-bit or provocative; one seemed to be in converse with Mr. Copley, who was not beyond converse yet, though Rupert saw he had been some time drinking. His face was flushed a little, his eyes dull, his features overspread with that inane stupidity which comes from long-continued and purely sensual indulgence of any kind, especially under the fumes of wine. To the side of this man, Rupert saw Dolly go. She went in, as I said, with a light, quick step, looked at nobody else, made straight to her father, and laid a hand upon his shoulder. With that she threw back her head-covering a little,--it was some sort of a scarf, of white and brown worsted knitting, which lay around her head like a glory, in Rupert's eyes,--and showed her face to her father. Fair and delicate and sweet, bright and grave at once, for she _did_ look bright even there, she stood at his side like his good angel, with her little hand upon his shoulder. No wonder Mr. Copley started and looked frightened; that was the first look; and then confused. Rupert understood it all, though he could not hear what was said. He saw the man was embarrassed.
"Dolly!" said Mr. Copley, falling back upon his first thought, as the easiest to speak of,--"what is the matter?"
"Nothing with me, father. Will you take me home?"
"Where's your mother?"
"She is at home. But it is pretty late, father."
"Where's Lawrence?"
"I don't know."
"Where is Rupert, then?"
"He is out, somewhere. Will you go home with me, father?"
"How did you come here?" said Mr. Copley, sitting a little straighter up, and now beginning to replace or conceal confusion with displeasure.
"I will tell you. I will tell you on the way. But shall we go first, father? I don't like to stay here."
"Here? What in the name of ten thousand devils---- Who brought you here?"
"I am alone," said Dolly. "Hadn't we better go, father? and then we can talk as we go."
At this point a half tipsy Venetian rose, and stepping before the pair with a low reverence, said something to Mr. Copley, of which Dolly only understood the words, "La bella signorina;" they made her, however, draw her scarf forward over her face and brought Mr. Copley to his feet. He could stand, she saw, but whether he could walk very well was open to question.
"Signer, signor"---- he began, stammering and incensed. Dolly seized his arm.
"Shall we go, father? It is so late, and mother might want me. It is very late, father. Never mind anything, but come!"
Mr. Copley was sufficiently himself to see the necessity; nevertheless, his score must be paid; and his head was in a bad condition for reckoning. He brought out some silver from his pocket, and stood somewhat helplessly looking at it and at the shopman alternately; then with an awkward movement of his elbow contrived to throw over a glass, which fell on the floor and broke. Everybody was looking now at the father and daughter, and words came to Dolly's ears which made her cheek burn. But she stood calm, self-possessed, waiting with a somewhat lofty air of maidenly dignity; helped her father solve the reckoning, paid for the glass, and at last got hold of his arm and drew him away; after a gentle, grave salutation to the attendant which he answered profoundly, and which brought everybody in the little shop to his feet in involuntary admiration and respect. Dolly looked at nobody, yet with sweet courtesy made a distant sign of acknowledgment to their homage, and the next minute stood outside the shop in the dark little street and the mild, still air. I think, even at that minute, with the strange, startling inappropriateness of license which thoughts give themselves, there flashed across her a sense of the ironical contrast of things without and within her; without, Venice and her historical past and her monumental glory; within, a trembling little heart and present danger and a burden of dishonour. But that was only a flash; the needs of the minute banished all thinking that was not connected with action; and the moment's business was to get her father home. She had no thought now for the picturesque revealings of the moonlight and obscurings of the shadow. Yet she was conscious of them, in that sharp flash of contrast.
At getting upon his feet and out into the air and gloom of the little street, Mr. Copley's head was very contused; or else he had taken more wine than his daughter guessed. He was not fit to guide himself, or to take care of her. As he seemed utterly at a standstill, Dolly naturally and unconsciously set her face to go the way she had come; for one or two turnings at least she was sure of it. Before those one or two turnings were made, however, she was shocked and scared to find that her father's walk was wavering; he swayed a little on his feet. The street was empty; and if it had not been, what help could Dolly ask for? A pang of great terror shot through her. She took her father's arm, to endeavour to hold him fast; a task rather too much for her little hands and slight frame; and feeling that in spite of her he still moved unsteadily, and that she was an insufficient help, Dolly's anguish broke forth in a cry; natural enough in its unreasoningness--
"O father, don't!--remember, I am all alone!"
How much was in the tone of those last words Dolly could not know; they hardly reached Mr. Copley's sense, though they went through and through another hearer. The next minute Rupert stood before the pair, and was offering his arm to Mr. Copley. Not trusting his patron, in the circumstances, to take care of his young mistress, Rupert had disobeyed her orders so far as to keep the two figures in sight; he had watched them from one turning to another, and had seen that his help was needed, even before he heard Dolly's cry. Then, with a spring, he was there. Mr. Copley leaned now upon his arm, and Dolly fell behind, thankful unspeakably for the relief. She knew by this time that she could never have found her way; and it was plain her father could not.
"Rupert," said Mr. Copley, half recognising the assistance afforded him, "you're a good fellow, and always in the way when you aren't wanted, by George!" But he leaned on his arm heavily.
Dolly followed close; she could not well keep beside them; and felt in that hour more thoroughly lonely perhaps than at any other of her life before or after. Rupert was a relief; and yet so the shame was increased. She stepped along through moonlight and shadow, feeling that light was gone out of her pathway of life for ever, as far as this world was concerned. What was left, when her father was lost to her?--her father!--and not by death; _that_ would not have been to lose him utterly; but now his very identity was gone. Her father, whom all her life she had loved; manly, frank, able, active, taking the lead in every society where she had seen him, making other men do his bidding always, until the passion of gaining and the lust of drink got hold of him! Was it the same, that figure in front of her, leaning on somebody's arm and glad to lean, and going with lame, unsteady gait whither he was led, so like the way his mental course had been lately?
Was that her father? The bitterness of Dolly's feeling it is impossible to put into words. Tears could bring no relief, and nature did not summon them to the impossible service. The fire at her heart would have burnt them up; for there was a strange passion of resistance and sense of wrong mixed with Dolly's bitter pain. The way was not short, and it seemed threefold the length it was; every step was so hard, and the crowd of thoughts was so disproportionately great.
They were rather ruminating thoughts of grief and pain, than considerative of what was to be done. For the first, the thing was to get Mr. Copley home. Dolly did not look beyond that. She was glad to find herself arrived at St. Mark's again; and presently they were all three in the gondola. Mr. Copley leaned in a corner, laid his head against a cushion, and slept, or seemed to sleep. The other two were as silent; but I think both felt at the moment as if they would never sleep again. Rupert's face was in shadow; he watched Dolly's face which was in light. She forgot it could be watched; her eyes stared into the moonshine, not seeing it, or looking through it; the sweet face was so very grave that the watcher felt his heart ache. Not the gentle gravity of young maidenhood, looking into the vague light; but the anxious, searching gaze of older life looking into the vague darkness. Rupert did not dare speak to her, though he longed. What would he not have given for the right and the power to comfort! But he knew he had neither. He had sense enough not to try.
It was customary for Mr. Copley, after he had been late out at night, to keep to his room until a late hour the next morning; so Dolly knew what she had to expect. It suited her very well this time, for she must think what she would say to her father when she next saw him. She took care that a cup of coffee such as he liked was sent him; and then, after her own slight breakfast, sat down to plan her movements. So Rupert found her, with her Bible in her lap, but not reading; sitting gazing out upon the bright waters of the lagoon. He came up to her, with a depth of understanding and sympathy in his plain features which greatly dignified them.