'How glad you are to have him to relieve guard!'

Renee bent on Nevil one of her singular looks of raillery. She had hitherto been fencing at a serious disadvantage.

'Not so very glad,' she said, 'if that deprived me of the presence of his friend.'

Roland was her tower. But Roland was not yet on board. She had peeped from her citadel too rashly. Nevil had time to spring the flood of crimson in her cheeks, bright as the awning she reclined under.

'Would you have me with you always?'

'a.s.suredly,' said she, feeling the hawk in him, and trying to baffle him by fluttering.

'Always? forever? and--listen-give me a t.i.tle?'

Renee sang out to Roland like a bird in distress, and had some trouble not to appear too providentially rescued. Roland on board, she resumed the attack.

'M. Nevil vows he is a better brother to me than you, who dart away on an impulse and leave us threading all Venice till we do not know where we are, naughty brother!'

'My little sister, the spot where you are,' rejoined Roland, 'is precisely the spot where I left you, and I defy you to say you have gone on without me. This is the identical riva I stepped out on to buy you a packet of Venetian ballads.'

They recognized the spot, and for a confirmation of the surprising statement, Roland unrolled several sheets of printed blotting-paper, and rapidly read part of a Canzonetta concerning Una Giovine who reproved her lover for his extreme addiction to wine:

'Ma se, ma se, Cotanto beve, Mi no, mi no, No ve sposero.'

'This astounding vagabond preferred Nostrani to his heart's mistress.

I tasted some of their Nostrani to see if it could be possible for a Frenchman to exonerate him.'

Roland's wry face at the mention of Nostrani brought out the chief gondolier, who delivered himself:

'Signore, there be hereditary qualifications. One must be born Italian to appreciate the merits of Nostrani!'

Roland laughed. He had covered his delinquency in leaving his sister, and was full of an adventure to relate to Nevil, a story promising well for him.

CHAPTER VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH

Renee was downcast. Had she not coquetted? The dear young Englishman had reduced her to defend herself, the which fair ladies, like besieged garrisons, cannot always do successfully without an attack at times, which, when the pursuer is ardent, is followed by a retreat, which is a provocation; and these things are coquettry. Her still fresh convent-conscience accused her of it pitilessly. She could not forgive her brother, and yet she dared not reproach him, for that would have inculpated Nevil. She stepped on to the Piazzetta thoughtfully. Her father was at Florian's, perusing letters from France. 'We are to have the marquis here in a week, my child,' he said. Renee nodded.

Involuntarily she looked at Nevil. He caught the look, with a lover's quick sense of misfortune in it.

She heard her brother reply to him: 'Who? the Marquis de Rouaillout? It is a jolly gaillard of fifty who spoils no fun.'

'You mistake his age, Roland,' she said.

'Forty-nine, then, my sister.'

'He is not that.'

'He looks it.'

'You have been absent.'

'Probably, my arithmetical sister, he has employed the interval to grow younger. They say it is the way with green gentlemen of a certain age. They advance and they retire. They perform the first steps of a quadrille ceremoniously, and we admire them.'

'What's that?' exclaimed the Comte de Croisnel. 'You talk nonsense, Roland. M. le marquis is hardly past forty. He is in his prime.'

'Without question, mon pere. For me, I was merely offering proof that he can preserve his prime unlimitedly.'

'He is not a subject for mockery, Roland.'

'Quite the contrary; for reverence!'

'Another than you, my boy, and he would march you out.'

'I am to imagine, then, that his hand continues firm?'

'Imagine to the extent of your capacity; but remember that respect is always owing to your own family, and deliberate before you draw on yourself such a chastis.e.m.e.nt as mercy from an accepted member of it.'

Roland bowed and drummed on his knee.

The conversation had been originated by Renee for the enlightenment of Nevil and as a future protection to herself. Now that it had disclosed its burden she could look at him no more, and when her father addressed her significantly: 'Marquise, you did me the honour to consent to accompany me to the Church of the Frari this afternoon?' she felt her self-accusation of coquettry biting under her bosom like a thing alive.

Roland explained the situation to Nevil.

'It is the mania with us, my dear Nevil, to marry our girls young to established men. Your established man carries usually all the signs, visible to the mult.i.tude or not, of the stages leading to that eminence.

We cannot, I believe, unless we have the good fortune to boast the paternity of Hercules, disconnect ourselves from the steps we have mounted; not even, the priests inform us, if we are ascending to heaven; we carry them beyond the grave. However, it seems that our excellent marquis contrives to keep them concealed, and he is ready to face marriage--the Grandest Inquisitor, next to Death. Two furious matchmakers--our country, beautiful France, abounds in them--met one day; they were a comtesse and a baronne, and they settled the alliance.

The bell was rung, and Renee came out of school. There is this to be said: she has no mother; the sooner a girl without a mother has a husband the better. That we are all agreed upon. I have no personal objection to the marquis; he has never been in any great scandals. He is Norman, and has estates in Normandy, Dauphiny, Touraine; he is hospitable, luxurious. Renee will have a fine hotel in Paris. But I am eccentric: I have read in our old Fabliaux of December and May. Say the marquis is November, say October; he is still some distance removed from the plump Spring month. And we in our family have wits and pa.s.sions.

In fine, a bud of a rose in an old gentleman's b.u.t.ton-hole! it is a challenge to the whole world of youth; and if the bud should leap?

Enough of this matter, friend Nevil; but sometimes a friend must allow himself to be bothered. I have perfect confidence in my sister, you see; I simply protest against her being exposed to... You know men. I protest, that is, in the privacy of my cigar-case, for I have no chance elsewhere. The affair is on wheels. The very respectable matchmakers have kindled the marquis on the one hand, and my father on the other, and Renee pa.s.ses obediently from the latter to the former. In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins.'

Roland proceeded to relate his adventure. Nevil's inattention piqued him to salt and salt it wonderfully, until the old story of He and She had an exciting savour in its introductory chapter; but his friend was flying through the circles of the Inferno, and the babble of an ephemeral upper world simply affected him by its contrast with the overpowering horrors, repugnances, despairs, pities, rushing at him, surcharging his senses. Those that live much by the heart in their youth have sharp foretastes of the issues imaged for the soul. St. Mark's was in a minute struck black for him. He neither felt the sunlight nor understood why column and campanile rose, nor why the islands basked, and boats and people moved. All were as remote little bits of mechanism.

Nevil escaped, and walked in the direction of the Frari down calle and campiello. Only to see her--to compare her with the Renee of the past hour! But that Renee had been all the while a feast of delusion; she could never be resuscitated in the shape he had known, not even clearly visioned. Not a day of her, not an hour, not a single look had been his own. She had been sold when he first beheld her, and should, he muttered austerely, have been ticketed the property of a middle-aged man, a worn-out French marquis, whom she had agreed to marry, unwooed, without love--the creature of a transaction. But she was innocent, she was unaware of the sin residing in a loveless marriage; and this restored her to him somewhat as a drowned body is given back to mourners.

After aimless walking he found himself on the Zattere, where the lonely Giudecca lies in front, covering mud and marsh and lagune-flames of later afternoon, and you have sight of the high mainland hills which seem to fling forth one over other to a golden sea-cape.

Midway on this unadorned Zattere, with its young trees and spots of shade, he was met by Renee and her father. Their gondola was below, close to the riva, and the count said, 'She is tired of standing gazing at pictures. There is a Veronese in one of the churches of the Giudecca opposite. Will you, M. Nevil, act as parade-escort to her here for half an hour, while I go over? Renee complains that she loses the vulgar art of walking in her complaisant attention to the fine Arts. I weary my poor child.'

Renee protested in a rapid chatter.

'Must I avow it?' said the count; 'she damps my enthusiasm a little.'

Nevil mutely accepted the office.

Twice that day was she surrendered to him: once in his ignorance, when time appeared an expanse of many sunny fields. On this occasion it puffed steam; yet, after seeing the count embark, he commenced the parade in silence.

'This is a nice walk,' said Renee; 'we have not the steps of the Riva dei Schiavoni. It is rather melancholy though. How did you discover it?

I persuaded my papa to send the gondola round, and walk till we came to the water. Tell me about the Giudecca.'