The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories

"I like the black tops better," observed Claudia. "Any one can have an awning, but the black tops are Venetian."

"They can easily be changed," said Lenox.

"Oh no; not in this heat," objected Mrs. Marcy. "We should stifle. Mr. Blake, shall you and I, as the selfish elders, take this one, and let the younger people go together in that?"

"I want to go in the one with the red awning – the bright red," said Theocritus. This was the one Mrs. Marcy had selected.

"No, no, my boy; the other will do quite as well for you," said Lenox.

"It won't," replied the child, in a decided little voice.

"It is not of the slightest consequence," graciously interposed Mrs. Marcy, signalling to the other gondola, and, with Blake's assistance, taking her place within it.

Mr. Lenox glanced at his wife. She was occupied in folding a shawl closely over the boy's little overcoat. "Come, then," he said, giving his hand first to Miss Marcy, then to his wife and the child. The gondolas floated out on the broad stream.

Claudia talked; she talked well, and took the Venetian tone. "The only thing that jars upon me," she said, after a while, "is that these Venetians of to-day – those men and women we are passing on the riva now, for instance – do not appreciate in the least their wonderful water-city – scarcely know what it is."

"They don't study 'Venice' because they are Venice – isn't that it?" said Mrs. Lenox. She had soothed the little boy into placidity, and he sat beside her quietly, with one gloved hand in hers, a small muffled figure, with a pale face whose delicate skin was lined like that of an old man. His eyes were narrow, deep-set, and dark under his faintly outlined fair eyebrows; his thin hair so light in hue and cut so closely to his head that it could scarcely be distinguished.

"I hope not," said Claudia, answering Mrs. Lenox's remark – "at least, I hope the old Venetians were not so; I like to think that they felt, down to their very finger-tips, all the richness and beauty about them."

"You may be sure the feeling was unconscious compared with ours," replied Mrs. Lenox. "They did not consult authorities about the pictures; they were the pictures. They did not study history; they made it. They did not read romances; they lived them."

"I wish I could have lived then," murmured Miss Marcy, her eyes resting thoughtfully on the red tower of San Giorgio, rising from the blue. No veil obscured the beautiful tints of her face; Claudia's complexion could brave the brightest light, the wind, and the sun. The dark-blue plume of the round hat she wore curled down over the rippled sunny braids of her hair. Mr. Lenox was looking at her. But Mr. Lenox was often looking at her.

"That would not be at all nice for us," said Mrs. Lenox, in her pleasant voice, answering the young lady's wish. "If you, Miss Marcy, can step back into the fifteenth century without trouble, we cannot; Stephen and I are very completely of this poor nineteenth."

"I don't know," said Claudia, slowly; she looked at "Stephen" with meditative eyes. "He could have been one of the soldiers. You remember that Venetian portrait in the Uffizi at Florence – General Gattamelata? Mr. Lenox does not look like it; but in armor he would look quite as well."

"I don't remember it," said Mrs. Lenox, turning to see why Theocritus was beating upon her knees with his right fist.

"You must remember – it is so superb!" said Claudia.

"I want to sit on the other side," announced Theocritus.

"When we come back, dear. See, the church is quite near; we shall soon be there now," answered his aunt.

"You remember it, don't you?" said Claudia to Lenox.

"Perfectly."

"No —now," piped Theocritus. "The wind is blowing down my back."

"If he is cold, Stephen – " said Mrs. Lenox.

"I will change places with him," replied her husband. "Do not move, Miss Marcy."

"No; Aunt Lizzie must go too!" said the boy. He had wrinkled up his little face until he looked like an aged dwarf in a temper; he stretched back his lips over his little square white teeth, and glared at his uncle and Miss Marcy.

"Let me change – do," said Claudia, rising as she spoke. And Mrs. Lenox accepted the offer.

"When you have finished my portrait, suppose you paint yourself as a fifteenth-century Venetian general," continued Miss Marcy, taking up again the thread of conversation which had been broken by Theocritus's obstinacy. "The portrait of a man painted by himself is always interesting; you can see then what he thinks he is."

"And is not?" said Lenox.

"Possibly. Still, what he might be. It is his ideal view of himself, and I believe in ideals. It is only our real, purified – what we shall all attain, I hope, in another world."

Thus she talked on. And the man to whom she talked thought it a loveliness of nature that she passed so naturally and unnoticingly over the demeanor of the spoiled child who accompanied them. Mrs. Lenox could, for the present take no further part in the conversation, as Theocritus had demanded that she should relate to him the legend of St. Mark, St. George, and St. Theodore climbing down from their places over the church porch, the palace window, and the crocodile column to fight the demons of the lagoons. This she did, but in so low a tone that the conversation of the others was not interrupted.

They reached the island and landed; Mrs. Marcy and Blake were already there, sitting on the sun-warmed steps of the church whose smooth white façade and red campanile are so conspicuous from Venice. "We were discussing the shape of the prow of the gondola," said Mrs. Marcy, as they came up. "To me it looks like the neck of a swan." Mrs. Marcy never sought for new terms; if the old ones were only poetical – she was a stickler for that – she used them as they were, contentedly.

Mr. Blake, who always took the key-note of the conversation in which he found himself, advanced the equally veteran comparison of the neck of a violin.

"It is the shining blade of St. Theodore, the patron of the gondolas," suggested Claudia.

"To me it looks a good deal like the hammer of a sewing-machine," observed Mrs. Lenox, lightly. This was so true that they all had to laugh.

"But this will never do, Mrs. Lenox," said Blake, turning to look at her as she stood on the broad marble step, holding the little boy's hand; "you will destroy all our carefully prepared atmosphere with your modern terms. Here we have all been reading up for this expedition, and we know just what Ruskin thinks; wait a bit, and you will hear us talk! And not one will be so rude as to recognize a single adjective."

"You admire him, then – Ruskin?" said the lady.

"Admire? That is not the word; he is the divinest madman! Ah, but he makes us work! In some always inaccessible spot he discovers an inscrutably beautiful thing, and then he goes to work and writes about it fiercely, with all his nouns in capitals, and his adjectives after the nouns instead of before them – which naturally awes us. But what produces an even deeper thrill is his rich way of spreading his possessive cases over two words instead of one, as, 'In the eager heart of him,' instead of 'In his eager heart.' This cows us completely."

"I want to go in the church. I don't want to stay out here any longer," announced Theocritus. And, as his aunt let him have his way, the others followed her, and they all went in together.

Compared with the warm sunshine without, the silent aisles seemed cool. After ten minutes or so Mrs. Marcy and Blake came out, and seated themselves on the step again. "You have known her for some time?" Blake was saying.

"Mrs. Lenox? No; only since we first met here, six – I mean seven – weeks ago. But Stephen Lenox I have always known, or rather known about; he is a distant connection of mine. His history has been rather unusual. His mother, a widow, managed to educate him, but that was all; they were really very poor, and Stephen was hard at work before he was twenty. He had some sort of a clerkship in an iron-mill, and was kept at it, I was told, twelve and thirteen hours a day. Before he was twenty-two he married. He worked harder than ever then, although he had, I believe, in time a better place. His wife had no money, either, and she was not strong. Their two little children died. Well, after twelve years of this, most unexpectedly, by the will of an uncle by marriage, he came into quite a nice little fortune; the uncle said, I was told, that he admired a man who, in these days, had never had or asked for the least help from his relatives. And so Stephen could at last do as he pleased, and very soon afterwards they came abroad. For he had been an artist at heart all this time, it seems – at least, he has a great liking for painting, and even, I think, some skill."

"I doubt if he is a creative artist," answered Blake. "He is too well balanced for that – a strong, quiet fellow. His wife is of about his age, I presume?"

"Yes; he is thirty-six, and she the same. They have been over here already nearly two years. She is a very nice little woman" (Mrs. Lenox was tall and slender; but Mrs. Marcy always patronized Mrs. Lenox), "although one does get extremely tired of that spoiled boy she drags about. Do you know," added the lady, deeply, "I feel sure it would be much better for Elizabeth Lenox if she would remember her present circumstances more; there is no longer any necessity for an invariable untrimmed gray gown."

"Doesn't she dress well?" said Blake. "I thought she always looked very neat."

"That is the very word – neat. But there is no flow, no richness. She has been rather pretty once; that is, in that style – gray eyes and dark hair; and she might be so still if she had the proper costumes. Of course, going about Venice in this way one does not want to dress much; but she has not even got anything put away."

"If one does not wear it, what difference does that make?" asked the gentleman.

"All the difference in the world!" replied Mrs. Marcy. "Let me tell you that the very step of a woman who knows she has two or three nice dresses in the bottom of her trunk is different from that of a woman who knows she hasn't."

"But perhaps Mrs. Lenox does not know that she 'hasn't,'" remarked Blake. This, however, went over Mrs. Marcy's head.

Within, the others were looking at the beautiful Tintorettos in the choir. After a while the ill-favored but gravely serene young monk who had admitted them approached and mentioned solemnly "the view from the campanile;" this not because he cared whether they went up or not, but simply as part of his duty.

"I should like to go," said Claudia; "I love to look off over the lagoons."

They turned to leave the choir. "I don't want to go," said Theocritus, holding back. "I want to stay here and see that picture some more; and I'm going to!"

This time Miss Marcy did not yield her wish. "Do not come with me," she said to Mr. and Mrs. Lenox; "it is not in the least necessary. I have been up before, and know the way. I will not be gone fifteen minutes."

"I really think that he ought not to climb all those stairs," said Mrs. Lenox to her husband, looking at the child, who had gone back to his station before the picture.

"Of course not," answered Lenox. Then, after a moment, "I will stay with him," he added; "you go up with Miss Marcy."

"I want Aunt Lizzie to stay – not Uncle Stephen!" called the boy, overhearing this, and turning round to scowl at them.

"He will not be good with any one but me," said Mrs. Lenox, in a low tone. "You two go up; I will wait for you here."

"The question is, Is he ever good, even with her?" said Claudia, following Lenox up the long flight of steps that winds in square turns up, up, to the top of the campanile.

"She says he is sometimes very sweet and docile – even affectionate," replied Lenox. "She thinks he has quite a remarkable mind, and will distinguish himself some day if we can only tide his poor, puny little body safely over its childish weakness, and give him a fair start."

"She is very fond of him."

"Yes; his mother was her dearest friend, his father her only brother."

Claudia considered that she had now given sufficient time to this subject (not an interesting one), and they talked of other things, but in short sentences, for they were still ascending. Twice she stopped to rest for a minute or two; then Lenox came down a step, and stood beside her. There was no danger; still, if a person should be seized with giddiness, the thought of the near open well in the centre, going darkly down, was a dizzy one.

At the top they had the view: wide green flatness towards the east, northeast, southeast, with myriad gleaming, silvery channels; the Lido and the soft line of the Adriatic beyond; towns shining whitely in the north; to the west, Venice, with its long bridge stretching to the mainland; in port, at their feet, a large Italian man-of-war; on the south side, the point of the Giudecca.

"‘À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,Vous étiez bien aise;À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,Nous étions bien là!’"

quoted Claudia. "I chant it because I have just discovered that the Zuecca means the Giudecca yonder."

"What is the verse?" said Lenox.

"Don't you know it? It is Musset."

"I have read but little, Miss Marcy."

"You have not had time to read," said Claudia, with a shade of emphasis; "your time has been given to better things."

"Yes, to iron rails!"

"To energy and to duty," she answered. Then she turned the subject, and talked of the tints on the water.

Down below, in the still church, the little boy sat beside his aunt, her arm round him, his head leaning against her. The monk had withdrawn.

"The angels were all there, no doubt," she was saying; "but only a few painters have ever tried to represent them in the picture. It is not easy to paint an angel if you have never seen one."

"Pooh! I have seen them," said Theocritus, "hundreds of times. I have seen their wings. They come floating in when the sunshine comes through a crack – all dusty, you know. How many of them there do you suppose saw the angels? Not that big girl with the plate, anyhow, I know!" Thus they talked on.

When the two from the campanile returned, and they went out to embark, a slight breeze had risen. The little boy lifted his shoulders uneasily, and seemed almost to shiver. Mrs. Lenox felt of his head and hands. "I think I had better take him back in one of those covered gondolas, Stephen," she said. "He seems to be cold; he might have a chill."

"Surely it is very warm," said Mrs. Marcy.

"Yes, but he is so delicate," replied the other lady.

"I will go with you, Mrs. Lenox," said Claudia.

"Oh no; the gondolas here are the small ones, I see, and Stephen could not come with us. Do not leave him to go back alone; if one of us sees to the child, that is enough."

It ended, therefore, according to her arrangement: she went back with Theocritus in a covered gondola, Mrs. Marcy and Blake returned as they had come, while Claudia and Lenox had the third boat to themselves.

Rodney Blake being added, this little party continued its Venetian life. Lenox made some progress with his portrait of Claudia, but it was not thought, at least by the others, that his wife made any with Theocritus, that child remaining as delicate as ever, and, if possible, more troublesome. In Mrs. Marcy's mind there had sprung up, since Mr. Blake's arrival, an aftermath of interest in Venetian art and architecture which was richer even than the first crop; she went contentedly to see the pictures, churches, and palaces a fourth and even fifth time.

Claudia had a great liking for St. Mark's. "But who has not?" said Mrs. Marcy, reproachfully, when Blake commented upon the younger lady's fancy.

"Yes; but it is not every liking that is strong enough to take its possessor there every day through eight long, slow weeks," answered the gentleman.

"Not so slow," said Claudia. "But how do you know? You have been here through only one of them."

"That leanest mosaic in the central dome is an old friend of mine; he has told me many things in his time (I am an inveterate Venetian lounger, you know), bending down from his curved abode, his glassy eyes on mine, and a long, thin finger pointed. Be careful; he has noticed you."

Several days later, strolling into the church, he found her there. "As usual," he said.

"Yes, as usual," she answered. Miss Marcy liked Blake; his slow remarks often amused her. And she liked to be amused – perhaps because she was not one of those young ladies who find everything amusing. She was sitting at the base of the last of the great pillars of the nave, where she could see the north transept with the star-lights of the chapel at the end, the old pulpit of colored marbles with its fretted top and angel, and the deep, gold-lined dimness of the choir-dome, into which the first horizontal ray of sunset light was now stealing – a light which would soon turn into miraculous splendor its whole expanse.

"It always seems to me like a cave set with gold and gems," said Blake, taking a seat beside her. "And, in reality, that is what it is, you know – a wonderful robbers' cavern. As somebody has said, it is the church of pirates – of the greatest sea-robbers the world has ever known; and they have adorned it with the magnificent mass of treasure they stole from the whole Eastern hemisphere."

"I wish they had stolen a little for me – one of those Oriental chains, for instance. But what pleases me best here is the light. It isn't the bright, vast clearness of St. Peter's that makes one's small sins of no sort of consequence; it isn't the sombreness of the Duomo at Florence, where one soon feels such a dreadful repentance that the new virtue becomes acute depression. It is a darkness, I admit, but of such a warm, rich hue that one feels sumptuous just by sitting in it. I do believe that if some of our thin, anxious-faced American women could only be induced to come and sit here quietly several hours a day they would soon grow serene and physically opulent, like – "

"Like yourself?"

"Like the women of Veronese. (Of course I shall have to admit that I do not need this process. Unfortunately, I love it.) But those Veronese pictures, Mr. Blake – after all, what do they tell us? Blue sky and balconies, feasts and brocades, pages and dogs, colors and splendor, and those great fair women, with no expression in their faces – what does it all mean?"

"Simply beauty."

"Beauty without mind, then."

"A picture does not need mind. But, to be worth anything, beauty it must have."

"I don't know; a picture is a sort of companion. One of those pictures would not be that; you might as well have a beautiful idiot."

"Ah, but a picture is silent," replied Blake.

Claudia laughed. "You are incorrigible." Then, going back to her first subject, "I wish Mrs. Lenox would come here more," she said.

"You think she needs this enriching process you have suggested?"

"In one way – yes. All this beauty here in Venice is so much to her husband; while she – is forever with that child!"

"But she does not keep him from the beauty."

"No; but she might make it so much more to him if she would."

"Why don't you suggest it to her?"

"There is no use. She does not understand me, I think. We speak a different language."

"That may be. But I fancy she understands you."

"Perhaps she does," answered Claudia, with the untroubled frankness which was one of her noticeable traits. She spoke as though she thought, indeed, that Claudia Marcy's nature was a thing which Mrs. Lenox, or any one, might observe. Claudia rather admired her nature. It was not perfect, of course, but at least it was large in its boundaries, and above the usual feminine pettinesses; she felt a calm pride in that. She was silent for a while. The first sunset ray had now been joined by others, and together they had lighted up one-half of the choir-dome; its gold was all awake and glistening superbly, and the great mosaic figure enthroned there began to glow with a solemn, mysterious life.

"Men should not marry until they are at least thirty, I think," resumed Claudia; "and especially those of the imaginative or artistic temperament. Three-quarters of the incongruous marriages one sees were made when the husband was very young. It is not the wife's fault; at the time of the marriage she is generally the superior, the generous one; the benefit is conferred by her. But – she does not advance, and he does."

"What would you propose in the way of – of an amelioration?" asked her listener.

"There can, of course, be no amelioration in actual cases. But there might be a prevention. I think that a law could be passed – such as now exists, for instance, against the marriage of minors. If a man could not marry until he was thirty or older, he would at that time naturally select a wife who was ten years or so his junior rather than one of his own age."

"And the women of thirty?"

"They would be already married to the men of fifty, you know."

Here a figure emerging from the heavy red-brown shadows of the north aisle, and seeming to bring some of them with it, as it advanced, crossed the billowy pavement, and stopped before them. It was Mr. Lenox. He took a seat on the other side of Blake, and they talked for a while of the way the chocolate-hued walls met the gold of the domes solidly, without shading, and of the total absence of white – two of the marked features of the rich interior of the old pirate cathedral. At length Blake rose, giving up his place beside Miss Marcy to the younger man. "I think we have still a half-hour before that jailer of a janitor jangles his keys," she said.

"Yes; but for the men of fifty it is time to be going," answered Blake. "They take cold rather easily, you know, those poor fellows of fifty."

He went away. Claudia and Lenox remained until the keys jangled.

Every day the weather and the water-city grew more divinely fair. June began. And now even Mrs. Marcy saw no objection to their utilizing the moonlight, and no longer spoke of "wraps." The evenings were haunted by music; everybody seemed to be floating about singing or touching guitars. The effect of the mingled light and shadows across the fronts of the palaces was enchanting; they could not say enough in its praise.

"Still, do you know sometimes I would give it all for the fresh odor of the fields at home, in the country, and the old scent of lilacs," said Mrs. Lenox.

"Do you care for lilacs?" said Claudia. "If you had said roses – "

"No, I mean lilacs – the simple country lilacs. And I want to see some currant bushes, too; yes, and even an old wooden garden fence," replied Mrs. Lenox, laughing, but nevertheless as if she meant what she said. She went with them only that once in the evening, for when she reached home she found that the little boy had been wakeful, and that he had refused to go to sleep again because she was not there. After this the others went without her in a gondola holding four. At last, although the moonlight lingers longer in Venice than anywhere else, there was, for that month at least, no more. Yet still the evening air was delicious, and the music did not cease; the effect of the shadows was even more marvellous than the mingled light and shade had been. They continued to go out and float about for an hour or two in the warm, peopled darkness. They went also, but by daylight, to Torcello, and this time Theocritus was of the party. During half of the day he was more despotic than he had ever been, but later he seemed very tired; he slept in his aunt's arms all the way home. Once she made an effort to transfer him to her husband, as the weight of his little muffled figure lay heavily on her slender arm; but Theocritus was awake immediately, and began to beat off his uncle's hands with all his might.

"Do let me take him, Elizabeth; he will soon fall asleep again," said Lenox. He looked annoyed. "You are overtaxing your strength; I can see that you are tired out."

"It will not harm me; I know when I am really too tired," answered his wife. She gave him a little trusting smile as she spoke, and his frown passed off.

They were all together in one of the large gondolas; Blake noted this little side-scene.

That night Theocritus had a slight attack of fever. Mrs. Lenox said that it came from over-fatigue, and that he must not go on any of the longer expeditions. When they went to Murano, therefore, and down to Chioggia, she did not accompany them, but remained at home with her charge.