CHAPTER XII
AT the side of the doorway leading into one of those amazing Venetian glass-shops stood two carabinieri. They were watching the little scene curiously, wondering if they would be called in to take part. In St. Mark's the carabinieri are always watching. There is at least one spot in Italy where a woman may walk alone, assured of protection. So these two watched and waited. The smile on William's face puzzled them. They did not see his eyes as Ruth did.
To her the smile was not a puzzle, but a revelation, for she saw the tiger behind it. The eyes seemed actually to diffuse an electric fluid so strong that it touched and vivified her who stood at least three feet away. He must have looked like this that day when, unarmed, he had gone down boldly into the den of the Black-Handers and fought for Tommaso's boy. The conspicuity of the freckles alone would have marked the high tide of his anger, none the less deadly because of the bantering smile.
And she had patronized him, casually accepted the gift of his friendship as one accepted a book, a box of candy, or a bouquet of flowers! She could not have been more astonished if she had seen a lazy house-cat suddenly transformed into a lord of the jungle. The ridiculous complacency of her previous attitude came home to her forcibly; and instantly she knew that William Grogan was become an integral part of her future. She was able to grasp this fact hazily. Strange are the inconsistencies of human nature. An hour ago he might have passed out of her life and left only a negligible ripple of regret behind. And now she wanted to hold this loyalty in hoops of steel.
As William stared into the dark, handsome face of his prisoner his heart seemed to drop down, down into some bottomless pit over which the winds played gipsy music. Gipsy music! He saw a quiet restaurant, a young woman in flight, a man in evening clothes pursuing, his own intervention. The smile on his face, however, did not waver.
"Well, Sir Hurlbert," he drawled, "we meet again!"
"Take your hands off my shoulders!" cried the stranger, angrily. There was something vaguely familiar about this truculent though smiling face so close to his own, but in that moment he could not recollect where he had seen it.
"Would you like 'em around your throat?" The bantering smile vanished. "You scum! If it wasn't for those cocked hats, I'd break every bone in your body! Can't leave 'em alone, no matter where you travel, can you? Listen. If you ever see me again, cross over to the other side of the street. That's all for this morning, m' lord."
William dropped his hands and stepped back quietly, ready in case the other made a hostile move, which William naturally hoped he would.
But the man of the world merely settled his deranged coat-collar and turned to the carabinieri, who had moved forward. His Italian was good. The carabinieri listened passively.
Ruth knew only a few Italian phrases, not enough to permit her to follow this monologue; but instinct warned her that a very bad case was being made out against William.
She interrupted."Non é vero! non é vero!" ("It is not true!") She laid her hand upon William's arm and smiled with a confidence she did not feel.
One of the carabinieri smiled back at her, looked calmly into the stranger's face, and made a simple gesture with his white-gloved hand. There was a protest. The second gesture was imperative. Recognizing the futility of further argument, the stranger shrugged and walked away.
Then the carabinieri turned their backs upon William and Ruth and strolled across the square. They were always reluctant to arrest these mad Americans, with their strange ideas of personal liberty, their utter disregard of the laws of the countries they rushed into and out of breathlessly. If they could settle such encounters with simple street justice, it was sufficient. Besides, the young woman was pretty.
"Please take me back to the hotel," said Ruth.
"Sure, sister."
William tucked her arm under his and started off, the old familiar smile wrinkling his cheeks. He measured his steps with hers and talked irrelevantly. At the door of the hotel she faced him. She had been crying, and he had not suspected!
"Aw, sister! You mustn't let anything like that bother you. What's a chance encounter with a man like that, when you know I'm coming around the corner? There's only a few of his breed; the rest of us average up fair."
"You … you know who he is?"
"All New York knows Norton Colburton, I guess. I've seen him at boxing-matches. What's the use of talking about him? But it's on the card that when I run into him again it 'll take a regiment of bone-setters to put Hurnpty Dumpty together again."
"Please, no; for my sake."
"I'll think it over. What line of talk was he giving the police?"
"I couldn't understand; and I spoke the only phrase I could think of, trusting to luck."
"And luck it was, sister—Irish luck. I felt it in my bones he was trying to land me in jail. Those cocked hats are all sunshine. I won't laugh at 'em any more. You see, Colburton and I had a clash one night last June. He recognized me as the guy who butted into one of his games. I was coming along just as a young woman came running out of Juneau's. I couldn't see what she looked like, but I had a hunch that she had good reasons for hiking. Colburton came rushing out a minute later, but he didn't go far. Now, you run along to your room and stay there until lunch. Then we'll take the steamer over to the Lido."
"You're a good man, William Grogan."
"Aw! You trust me, sister, don't you?"
She caught his hand between her two small ones and pressed tightly. "Absolutely, as I have never trusted any man but my father."
"Well, when I gave you my hand that day on the Ajax, that was all there was to it."
She let go his hand and ran blindly for the stairs.
William stared at the vacant doorway for a moment, shrugged, and walked down to the end of the Calle, or little street, where the bright ferrules of the gondolas bobbed a howdy-do to him. Several gondoliers raised their black felt hats expectantly, but he shook his head and perched himself upon the rail and glowered across the water at the yacht Elsa.
"Scum!" William growled as he saw a gondola draw alongside the ladder. "But wait; I'm going to get you some day just where I want you, and what the monkey did to the parrot. …"
He gazed on, wishing that he had some secret kind of torpedo, guided solely by the will, to launch at that yacht. Money; he thought he could do these things because he had money! A series of expletives rumbled over William's lips, for when he felt strongly he swore strongly. What would you? He was in many essentials a primitive man; nevertheless, he had a fine code of honor and, what is more, plenty of moral fiber to back it. To cheat, to lie, to borrow money and never pay it back, to break a promise, to play hooky on the job, to waste the pay-envelope across the bar while the landlady waited, to ogle women on the street, to hunt them for amusement—these things went against the straight, clean grain of him.
Women? he mused. He would never understand women, not if he had as many around him as King Solomon had and overtopped Methuselah in the matter of years. So she had run afoul of Norton Colburton, got her fingers in the cobweb, and the spider had nipped them? And then to run four thousand miles, with the idea of running sixteen thousand more! That was the real puzzle. To get rid of the attentions of men like Colburton women did not have to run any farther than the nearest police precinct. But twenty thousand miles! What was the idea?
He slumped forward on the rail.
Why did they do it? Sometimes they went astray for a great love; he could understand that. But what he could not understand was that ordinarily an automobile was enough, a necklace, maybe a little silk and a little fur to excite the envy of her friends. True, often the poor little shop-girl sold out for food and shoes; he could understand that, too. But the automobile? … No, there wasn't any mystery now; nearly all the little blocks of the puzzle fitted in their allotted places. An old story—God alone knew how old—the ancient man-and-woman story. A pinch of poverty, a taste of the winter wind, and they gave up. Sometimes the unattractive one found the river the only way. Always they wanted a warm fire for their pretty shins and the devil for butler. They couldn't hang on just a little longer, could they? They had to give up in the middle of the fight—and always the pretty ones.
His school-teacher! How many times had he watched her trim feet flit one-two-three past his cellar window! And here she was and there he was! She had poked her curious fingers into the web, and hadn't got away quite free. A low crook with women, and all his money couldn't change that.
"Well, somewhere between here and San Francisco I'm going to get you, Handsome-Is. I know your breed. You won't give up until you're broken up; and I'm going to turn that little trick."
After a while he remembered her tears, and the taste of life became less bitter. There might be a block or two in the puzzle that wasn't in its right place. A fragment of the prayer recurred to him. "Give me always strength to be good." He slid off the rail. Maybe that line was open to a new interpretation. Sooner or later she would tell him; it wasn't square to judge a case without having all the evidence. He knew what the matter was, he had seen too much of the seamy side of life, and when confronted by such problems as this his outlook was on the bias, cynical, despite the fact that he knew that circumstantial evidence had ruined more women than it had hanged men.
"Say, I'm a real guy, I am," he burst forth, angrily. "How do I know that it was Ruth that ran out of Juneau's? Suppose it was a chance meeting. He never lets a pretty face go by. What do I know, anyhow? What if he did have hold of her wrist? I've got a whole lot of charity. What has she told me? Nothing. Buck up, Bill, and go buy the little lady some flowers. They may come in handy."
So the upshot of these cogitations, these little excursions into blind alleys, was a visit to the near-by florist's. He purchased a dozen beautiful roses and had them sent up to her room. He loved flowers as he loved children. He never conjured up that fairy-tale house of his without seeing lilac-bushes and ramblers. He had no idea about formal beds, nor did he know the names of more than half a dozen flowers. But he wanted the whole front yard choked with color and perfume. Many a time, in the old days, his newspapers snug under his arm, he had paused before some florist's shop, the bitter snow chilling his thinly clad legs, and wondered how there could be roses in midwinter.
The girl cried over those flowers.
But the gift did not rid him of the infernal speculation. Twice he became lost because he saw only the pavement; and half a dozen times he was brought up sharply by some canal opening unexpectedly at his feet. If his theories had been solids there would have been many a mysterious splash in the Venetian canals that morning; for one by one his theories went overboard. We all have our Ponte del Sospiri, our Bridge of Sighs, and William was crossing his.
At two o'clock that afternoon they took the steamboat for the Lido. William was deeply puzzled, for there was no sign of recent tears. She was gay. He had yet to learn that woman with mortal hurt can laugh. She led him to the bench on the starboard bow, thus placing the Giudecca at their backs. Two birds with one stone was his comment; for this bench was the choicest. From it one saw the rainbow city sink back into the soft veils of the September mists, and a little later, when they were half-way across the lagoon, the lordly snow-crests of the Dolomites came into view.
Throughout the afternoon he found himself being led. In vain he waited for some word regarding the episode of the morning. It seemed incredible that this butterfly creature was the woman he had seen in tears.
She plumped down into the fine white sand and built castles, commented upon the variegated costumes of the bathers and the equally variegated physiques. She recounted amusing incidents among her scholars. His bewilderment continued to grow until it served to render him monosyllabic. There wasn't a crack in this astonishing armor of hers. And he had started out with the idea of making her forget her troubles! But as they sat down in the pavilion for tea and cakes, later, he heard her gasp painfully.
"What is it?"
She pointed out to sea. William turned and saw the yacht Elsa boring southward down the blue Adriatic, serenely beautiful in the September sunshine.
"Forget it, sister. Things like that 'll happen anywhere. When a woman travels alone she's a hard row to hoe, believe me. But there's more good men than bad. Gee! if those cocked hats hadn't been in the way, I'd have whaled the daylights out of him. You can't talk to that kind. They're like hyenas; they don't understand petting. You have to beat 'em up. And now, you're not standing alone; Willie Grogan's in your corner."
He laid his big, warm hand over hers. It was the first time he had ever ventured to touch her in this fashion. She smiled faintly and withdrew her hand.
Presently, as her gaze wandered seaward again, this hand stole up unconsciously and rested where the little chamois bag lay hidden. Upon the observant William the act had the effect of a stab. Why hadn't they left him in his smelly cellar, among his drains and pipes and unspoiled dreams?
What was in that chamois bag? What lay in the past back of it? After all, had it been Ruth that night? Was he letting his imagination establish as fact something which had never happened? She might have met Colburton casually in New York, and he had taken advantage of it that morning in the Piazza. Colburton was not above that; that was his particular style. There was nothing in all this to indicate that Ruth was the young woman who had come flying out of the restaurant.
He stared at the yacht again, somberly. The old wives' prescience, which every Irishman has tucked away somewhere in his soul, warned him that he had not seen the last of the Elsa. This occult knowledge elated rather than depressed him. A good fight somewhere along the route—he had no objections to that.
Ruth, as she studied that homely face, freckled and sunburnt, with its beautiful eyes singularly idealizing the comic background, not too far away, not too near, just the table between, knew that here was a promise of security such as she had never known. And she mused over the oddities of God's distribution of shapes and souls.
"William Grogan," she murmured.
"Huh?" he said, turning.
"I was thinking out loud."
"And taking my name in vain—uh-huh. Sister, I'm going to ask you just two questions. Answer 'em or not, just as you please. Did you ever meet that man before?"
"Yes." Her voice was dull.
"And was it you that came running out of Juneau's that night last June?" With all his soul he hoped she would say no. It would not matter if she lied; anything but evasion.
She nodded affirmatively. He noticed that her agitation was gone; she was only tired and listless. Once more she turned toward the sea.
"That's all I wanted to know, sister. Say, ain't I the little old guardian? Think of me being Johnny-on-the-spot that night!" he added, cheerfully.
In spirit, however, he was already wandering through that human hell whose dimensions are in exact ratio to the strength of one's love. William loved deeply, so he went, down deeply. But he knew how to cover up, to hide pain, to jog along without plaint, without hope. Love is only an exalted kind of torture.