"But the promiscuous audience, the rough company on the barge!" the Colonel urged, struggling but feebly against a premonition of defeat.

Already the old soldier quailed miserably before the enemy.

"They are not a rough company," Polly declared. "I asked Vittorio all about it. He knows nearly all the men, and he says they are _galant'

uomini_. Signor Canti will be there, and he will take beautiful care of me. Signora Canti is to have all the proceeds beyond a certain sum that the others will agree upon."

"The thing seems pretty well settled between you and your _gallant hominies_," growled Uncle Dan, trying to be severe.

"No; it's all settled in my own mind, but I haven't breathed a word of it to anybody but you. And of course you have got to say yes, before I shall take any steps!"

Superficially regarded, this seemed like a concession; but the Colonel knew better. "You have got to say yes!" To his ears it sounded like the fiat of inexorable fate, and he only gazed, with a look of comical deprecation at the youthful orator who was gesticulating with the lace _fichu_, to the destruction of its carefully laid folds.

"Polly, your father would not listen to such a thing for a moment," he jerked out, getting very red in the face.

"But he won't have to; he never need know a word about it!" Alas, that was a line of reasoning that struck a responsive chord.

"But Polly would never consent."

"That's the beauty of it! She's safely out of the way."

"And Mrs. Daymond,--she would be shocked, I am sure," and his fine colour faded with consternation.

"Not if she never knows it!"

"But I shall know it," he protested, faintly. Then, gathering himself together for a last effort:

"No, Polly, I can never consent. Never! You understand! It's useless to talk about it!" and the Colonel got upon his feet and stepped out upon the balcony, breathing fire and slaughter to all revolutionary schemes.

And then Polly knew that she had won the day. When Uncle Dan grew emphatic and peremptory it was a sure sign that he was weakening.

She followed him out upon the balcony, and slipped her hand within his arm.

"O, Uncle Dan," she said, in her most insinuating tone. "You haven't the least idea how I shall sing! You never heard anything so fine as it will be. I shall sing, so that all the gondolas will come gliding up to listen. And there will be the moon sailing up the sky, and the world will be so big and so dark that I can let my voice out without a thought of myself, and--O Uncle Dan! say yes!"

Then a slow, intense flush mounted in the sun-burnt cheek, while a light kindled in the eyes, set deep within the bushy eye-brows. And Uncle Dan looked into the ardent face beside him, and, before he could stop himself, he had exclaimed, half under his breath:

"Gad, Polly! But I should like to hear you!"

XVII

The Serenata

From the moment when the Colonel made his fatal admission, his cause was lost and he knew it. He was too good a soldier to fight for the sake of fighting, but he was not a little shocked at the alacrity with which he went over to the enemy.

Yet the step was not an unprecedented one. It was not for nothing that he had been for years the willing slave of his Pollys, that his whole training as uncle had tended to cultivate in him the grace of obedience.

"As the twig is bent the tree inclines," and he had been the merest twig of an uncle, if not in years, at least in experience, when he had yielded to the sunny persuasiveness of that first faint glimmering of a smile in the baby face of the original Polly. His subjugation, moreover, having hitherto proved beneficial in its results, he was the more excusable, to-day, for letting himself be swept along by the impetus of his tyrant's will.

There was little time for reflection; indeed, as it was, a young person of less executive ability than May could hardly have accomplished what she brought to pa.s.s in the few hours at her disposal. She flew from the _Venezia_ to the Signora Canti for the first unfolding of her plan, from the almost speechless Signora to the Merceria in search of the sulphur shawl, and thence to the Signora Canti again, attended all the while by Uncle Dan, whose cane struck sharply on the pavement of the narrow, reverberating alley-ways. The business was all transacted on foot, that even Vittorio might be kept in ignorance of the great secret. Through the good offices of the Signor Canti the barge musicians were interviewed, and the details of the undertaking arranged. Even a small rehearsal was brought about in the somewhat restricted quarters of the Canti apartment, and great was May's rejoicing, to find how many of her favourite songs were well known to the quartette of accompanists.

As the Colonel looked back upon the afternoon, he had a bewildered sense of having taken part in a general engagement, very brilliant in character, but with the conduct of which he, as private, had had no concern whatever. And now it was evening, and he was floating in the gondola out on the broad basin of St. Mark's, awaiting, with no little trepidation, the progress of events.

No, his nieces would not be with him, he had told Vittorio. One was gone to Torcello, and the other had an engagement for the evening,--which Vittorio thought _peccato_. The _padrone_ proposed to float about in the moonlight for a while, and listen to the music, and this, at least, was _benissimo_ and commanded the gondolier's warmest approval.

Scarcely had Vittorio been thus pacified than the barge with its dangling lanterns, beneath which the Colonel had seen his Polly safely ensconced but a few minutes since, came floating out from a narrow ca.n.a.l, and glided slowly along the Riva, past the Royal Gardens and the Piazzetta, to the outermost of the great hotels. Sitting among the "gallant hominies" was a figure in a sulphur shawl, with a cloud of Spanish lace about the head, so ingeniously disposed that the features were somewhat hidden, yet apparently with no intention of covering the face.

"That looks like the Canti barge, Vittorio," the Colonel remarked. "Let us go nearer and find out who is to do the singing. Do you know the woman?"

"No, Signore. It is a stranger," Vittorio declared. "It is not a Venetian."

"What makes you think so?"

"I do not know her face."

The sunset glow had quite faded from the sky and the great disk of the moon hung like a luminous shield over beyond San Giorgio. Its wonderful light, liquid and silvery as the water of the lagoons, flooded their wide reaches, and touched with a soft splendour each sculptured facade and arching bridge of the Riva, and the masts and hulls and loose-reefed sails of a group of fishing boats lying close alongside the quay. Far up the ca.n.a.l, a tenor voice could be heard, strong and melodious, and stray gondolas were tending toward it.

Suddenly, more than one oar was stayed, and more than one face was turned toward the Canti barge. The music had begun, with a familiar Neapolitan melody, in which all the voices and instruments took part.

But high above them all rose a clear soprano, only the sweeter and the richer for the dull rhythm of the lesser voices. One by one the receding gondolas turned and came nearer, one bright eye gleaming at each prow, as they stole like conspirators upon the gaily lanterned barge. And from farther away still, from the Grand Ca.n.a.l and from the waters of the Giudecca, black barks came floating, and silently joined the growing throng. The chorus had sung twice, thrice, four times,--always the popular airs, so familiar, yet to-night so new, by reason of the lift and brilliancy of the leading voice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Serenata"]

One of the men stepped across the Colonel's gondola and on from one to another, hat in hand. "_Per la musica!_" he entreated, and a goodly shower of nickels and coppers and fluttering _lire_ were gathered in. But still not a gondola moved away, and later comers had to tie on the outskirts, spreading now, fan-shaped, with twinkling eyes, far over toward San Giorgio.

Uncle Dan fell to counting the twinkling eyes, and his heart swelled within him. There must be close upon a hundred people here, drawn hither, held fast, by his little Polly. There she stood, in her sulphur shawl, unrecognisable, to be sure, but natural and self-possessed as if she had been singing in her own parlour.

Somebody called for Gordigiani's _O Santissima Vergine_,--a favourite song of "la Canti." The singer rose again to her feet. The low, pulsing accompaniment sounded on the strings, and presently the voice began, with a softly vibrating tone, different from the resonant quality which had first attracted the listeners.

"_O Santissima Vergine Maria!_"

"I told you it was a trained voice," Uncle Dan heard someone say in a neighbouring gondola. "I believe she's a stage singer. Just listen to that!"

"Hush, don't talk!" the answer came. "It's the sweetest thing I ever heard."

And in truth a delicate, penetrating pathos had come into the fresh young voice, pleading so melodiously for the life of "_mio ben_."

"O Maria, O Maria," was the artless supplication; "I vow to give to thee the ring my mother bought for me four years ago, and the coral necklace, _tanto bello_!" And then, with simple fervour, the Madonna was a.s.sured that, would she but save _il poverino_, a candle should be burned to her every Sat.u.r.day,--"_ogni Sabbato, Maria, Maria_!"

As the last note ceased, sweet and sad, on the night air, a burst of applause went up, and, "_encore, encore_," the forestieri shouted, "_encore_!" And other gondolas came gliding up, and the spreading fan stretched in ever widening compa.s.s, divided now, like the pinions of a great sable bird studded with dots of light. Then, while the flowing moonlight brightened, and a perfumed breeze came wafted over the water from the rose gardens of the Giudecca, the sweet voice again took up the simple and touching strain.

After that it was an ovation,--"an ovation, I tell you," Uncle Dan would declare, when bragging about it to the other Polly. "Why, the people were perfectly carried off their feet! When the hat went round they didn't know what it was they pulled out of their pockets. A ten-franc piece seemed cheap as a copper. And all the time, Polly, standing there, singing her heart out! It was an ovation, I tell you,--an ovation!"

And as Polly sang on and on, light opera airs, rhythmical barcarolles, songs of the people, with their nave, swinging cadence, a new, exultant sense of power seemed lifting her above her own level.

And presently an inspiration seized her, and, leaning forward, she said to Canti: "Make them row out on the lagoon, toward the Lido; I can sing better there."

Then the barge loosed itself from the clinging gondolas, and slowly glided out and away. And all the gondolas followed, with the soft plash of many oars, on and on, after the swinging lanterns and the syren voice.