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_ "Him Venice!" said the Lascar with the big earrings; and Tony
Bracknell, leaning on the high gunwale of his father's East
Indiaman, the Hepzibah B., saw far off, across the morning sea, a
faint vision of towers and domes dissolved in golden air.
It was a rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony, newly
of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of
old Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city
trembled into shape. _Venice!_ The name, since childhood, had been a
magician's wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at
Salem there hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard
Saulsbee had brought home from one of his long voyages: views of
heathen mosques and palaces, of the Grand Turk's Seraglio, of St.
Peter's Church in Rome; and, in a corner--the corner nearest the
rack where the old flintlocks hung--a busy merry populous scene,
entitled: _St. Mark's Square in Venice_. This picture, from the
first, had singularly taken little Tony's fancy. His unformulated
criticism on the others was that they lacked action. True, in the
view of St. Peter's an experienced-looking gentleman in a
full-bottomed wig was pointing out the fairly obvious monument to a
bashful companion, who had presumably not ventured to raise his eyes
to it; while, at the doors of the Seraglio, a group of turbaned
infidels observed with less hesitancy the approach of a veiled lady
on a camel. But in Venice so many things were happening at
once--more, Tony was sure, than had ever happened in Boston in a
twelve-month or in Salem in a long lifetime. For here, by their
garb, were people of every nation on earth, Chinamen, Turks,
Spaniards, and many more, mixed with a parti-coloured throng of
gentry, lacqueys, chapmen, hucksters, and tall personages in
parsons' gowns who stalked through the crowd with an air of mastery,
a string of parasites at their heels. And all these people seemed to
be diverting themselves hugely, chaffering with the hucksters,
watching the antics of trained dogs and monkeys, distributing doles
to maimed beggars or having their pockets picked by slippery-looking
fellows in black--the whole with such an air of ease and good-humour
that one felt the cut-purses to be as much a part of the show as the
tumbling acrobats and animals.
As Tony advanced in years and experience this childish mumming lost
its magic; but not so the early imaginings it had excited. For the
old picture had been but the spring-board of fancy, the first step
of a cloud-ladder leading to a land of dreams. With these dreams the
name of Venice remained associated; and all that observation or
report subsequently brought him concerning the place seemed, on a
sober warranty of fact, to confirm its claim to stand midway between
reality and illusion. There was, for instance, a slender Venice
glass, gold-powdered as with lily-pollen or the dust of sunbeams,
that, standing in the corner cabinet betwixt two Lowestoft caddies,
seemed, among its lifeless neighbours, to palpitate like an impaled
butterfly. There was, farther, a gold chain of his mother's, spun of
that same sun-pollen, so thread-like, impalpable, that it slipped
through the fingers like light, yet so strong that it carried a
heavy pendant which seemed held in air as if by magic. _Magic!_ That
was the word which the thought of Venice evoked. It was the kind of
place, Tony felt, in which things elsewhere impossible might
naturally happen, in which two and two might make five, a paradox
elope with a syllogism, and a conclusion give the lie to its own
premiss. Was there ever a young heart that did not, once and again,
long to get away into such a world as that? Tony, at least, had felt
the longing from the first hour when the axioms in his horn-book had
brought home to him his heavy responsibilities as a Christian and a
sinner. And now here was his wish taking shape before him, as the
distant haze of gold shaped itself into towers and domes across the
morning sea!
The Reverend Ozias Mounce, Tony's governor and bear-leader, was just
putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon on
Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.'s anchor rattled
overboard. Tony, in his haste to be ashore, would have made one
plunge with the anchor; but the Reverend Ozias, on being roused from
his lucubrations, earnestly protested against leaving his argument
in suspense. What was the trifle of an arrival at some Papistical
foreign city, where the very churches wore turbans like so many
Moslem idolators, to the important fact of Mr. Mounce's summing up
his conclusions before the Muse of Theology took flight? He should
be happy, he said, if the tide served, to visit Venice with Mr.
Bracknell the next morning.
The next morning, ha!--Tony murmured a submissive "Yes, sir," winked
at the subjugated captain, buckled on his sword, pressed his hat
down with a flourish, and before the Reverend Ozias had arrived at
his next deduction, was skimming merrily shoreward in the Hepzibah's
gig.
A moment more and he was in the thick of it! Here was the very world
of the old print, only suffused with sunlight and colour, and
bubbling with merry noises. What a scene it was! A square enclosed
in fantastic painted buildings, and peopled with a throng as
fantastic: a bawling, laughing, jostling, sweating mob,
parti-coloured, parti-speeched, crackling and sputtering under the
hot sun like a dish of fritters over a kitchen fire. Tony, agape,
shouldered his way through the press, aware at once that, spite of
the tumult, the shrillness, the gesticulation, there was no
undercurrent of clownishness, no tendency to horse-play, as in such
crowds on market-day at home, but a kind of facetious suavity which
seemed to include everybody in the circumference of one huge joke.
In such an air the sense of strangeness soon wore off, and Tony was
beginning to feel himself vastly at home, when a lift of the tide
bore him against a droll-looking bell-ringing fellow who carried
above his head a tall metal tree hung with sherbet-glasses.
The encounter set the glasses spinning and three or four spun off
and clattered to the stones. The sherbet-seller called on all the
saints, and Tony, clapping a lordly hand to his pocket, tossed him a
ducat by mistake for a sequin. The fellow's eyes shot out of their
orbits, and just then a personable-looking young man who had
observed the transaction stepped up to Tony and said pleasantly, in
English:
"I perceive, sir, that you are not familiar with our currency."
"Does he want more?" says Tony, very lordly; whereat the other
laughed and replied: "You have given him enough to retire from his
business and open a gaming-house over the arcade."
Tony joined in the laugh, and this incident bridging the
preliminaries, the two young men were presently hobnobbing over a
glass of Canary in front of one of the coffee-houses about the
square. Tony counted himself lucky to have run across an
English-speaking companion who was good-natured enough to give him a
clue to the labyrinth; and when he had paid for the Canary (in the
coin his friend selected) they set out again to view the town. The
Italian gentleman, who called himself Count Rialto, appeared to have
a very numerous acquaintance, and was able to point out to Tony all
the chief dignitaries of the state, the men of ton and ladies of
fashion, as well as a number of other characters of a kind not
openly mentioned in taking a census of Salem.
Tony, who was not averse from reading when nothing better offered,
had perused the "Merchant of Venice" and Mr. Otway's fine tragedy;
but though these pieces had given him a notion that the social
usages of Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for
the surprising appearance and manners of the great people his friend
named to him. The gravest Senators of the Republic went in
prodigious striped trousers, short cloaks and feathered hats. One
nobleman wore a ruff and doctor's gown, another a black velvet tunic
slashed with rose-colour; while the President of the dreaded Council
of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow with a rapier-like nose, a
buff leather jerkin and a trailing scarlet cloak that the crowd was
careful not to step on.
It was all vastly diverting, and Tony would gladly have gone on
forever; but he had given his word to the captain to be at the
landing-place at sunset, and here was dusk already creeping over the
skies! Tony was a man of honour; and having pressed on the Count a
handsome damascened dagger selected from one of the goldsmiths'
shops in a narrow street lined with such wares, he insisted on
turning his face toward the Hepzibah's gig. The Count yielded
reluctantly; but as they came out again on the square they were
caught in a great throng pouring toward the doors of the cathedral.
"They go to Benediction," said the Count. "A beautiful sight, with
many lights and flowers. It is a pity you cannot take a peep at it."
Tony thought so too, and in another minute a legless beggar had
pulled back the leathern flap of the cathedral door, and they stood
in a haze of gold and perfume that seemed to rise and fall on the
mighty undulations of the organ. Here the press was as thick as
without; and as Tony flattened himself against a pillar, he heard a
pretty voice at his elbow:--"Oh, sir, oh, sir, your sword!"
He turned at sound of the broken English, and saw a girl who matched
the voice trying to disengage her dress from the tip of his
scabbard. She wore one of the voluminous black hoods which the
Venetian ladies affected, and under its projecting eaves her face
spied out at him as sweet as a nesting bird.
In the dusk their hands met over the scabbard, and as she freed
herself a shred of her lace flounce clung to Tony's enchanted
fingers. Looking after her, he saw she was on the arm of a
pompous-looking graybeard in a long black gown and scarlet
stockings, who, on perceiving the exchange of glances between the
young people, drew the lady away with a threatening look.
The Count met Tony's eye with a smile. "One of our Venetian
beauties," said he; "the lovely Polixena Cador. She is thought to
have the finest eyes in Venice."
"She spoke English," stammered Tony.
"Oh--ah--precisely: she learned the language at the Court of Saint
James's, where her father, the Senator, was formerly accredited as
Ambassador. She played as an infant with the royal princes of
England."
"And that was her father?"
"Assuredly: young ladies of Donna Polixena's rank do not go abroad
save with their parents or a duenna."
Just then a soft hand slid into Tony's. His heart gave a foolish
bound, and he turned about half-expecting to meet again the merry
eyes under the hood; but saw instead a slender brown boy, in some
kind of fanciful page's dress, who thrust a folded paper between his
fingers and vanished in the throng. Tony, in a tingle, glanced
surreptitiously at the Count, who appeared absorbed in his prayers.
The crowd, at the ringing of a bell, had in fact been overswept by a
sudden wave of devotion; and Tony seized the moment to step beneath
a lighted shrine with his letter.
"I am in dreadful trouble and implore your help. Polixena"--he read;
but hardly had he seized the sense of the words when a hand fell on
his shoulder, and a stern-looking man in a cocked hat, and bearing a
kind of rod or mace, pronounced a few words in Venetian.
Tony, with a start, thrust the letter in his breast, and tried to
jerk himself free; but the harder he jerked the tighter grew the
other's grip, and the Count, presently perceiving what had happened,
pushed his way through the crowd, and whispered hastily to his
companion: "For God's sake, make no struggle. This is serious. Keep
quiet and do as I tell you."
Tony was no chicken-heart. He had something of a name for pugnacity
among the lads of his own age at home, and was not the man to stand
in Venice what he would have resented in Salem; but the devil of it
was that this black fellow seemed to be pointing to the letter in
his breast; and this suspicion was confirmed by the Count's agitated
whisper.
"This is one of the agents of the Ten.--For God's sake, no outcry."
He exchanged a word or two with the mace-bearer and again turned to
Tony. "You have been seen concealing a letter about your person--"
"And what of that?" says Tony furiously.
"Gently, gently, my master. A letter handed to you by the page of
Donna Polixena Cador.--A black business! Oh, a very black business!
This Cador is one of the most powerful nobles in Venice--I beseech
you, not a word, sir! Let me think--deliberate--"
His hand on Tony's shoulder, he carried on a rapid dialogue with the
potentate in the cocked hat.
"I am sorry, sir--but our young ladies of rank are as jealously
guarded as the Grand Turk's wives, and you must be answerable for
this scandal. The best I can do is to have you taken privately to
the Palazzo Cador, instead of being brought before the Council. I
have pleaded your youth and inexperience"--Tony winced at this--"and
I think the business may still be arranged."
Meanwhile the agent of the Ten had yielded his place to a
sharp-featured shabby-looking fellow in black, dressed somewhat like
a lawyer's clerk, who laid a grimy hand on Tony's arm, and with many
apologetic gestures steered him through the crowd to the doors of
the church. The Count held him by the other arm, and in this fashion
they emerged on the square, which now lay in darkness save for the
many lights twinkling under the arcade and in the windows of the
gaming-rooms above it.
Tony by this time had regained voice enough to declare that he would
go where they pleased, but that he must first say a word to the mate
of the Hepzibah, who had now been awaiting him some two hours or
more at the landing-place.
The Count repeated this to Tony's custodian, but the latter shook
his head and rattled off a sharp denial.
"Impossible, sir," said the Count. "I entreat you not to insist. Any
resistance will tell against you in the end."
Tony fell silent. With a rapid eye he was measuring his chances of
escape. In wind and limb he was more than a mate for his captors,
and boyhood's ruses were not so far behind him but he felt himself
equal to outwitting a dozen grown men; but he had the sense to see
that at a cry the crowd would close in on him. Space was what he
wanted: a clear ten yards, and he would have laughed at Doge and
Council. But the throng was thick as glue, and he walked on
submissively, keeping his eye alert for an opening. Suddenly the mob
swerved aside after some new show. Tony's fist shot out at the black
fellow's chest, and before the latter could right himself the young
New Englander was showing a clean pair of heels to his escort. On he
sped, cleaving the crowd like a flood-tide in Gloucester bay, diving
under the first arch that caught his eye, dashing down a lane to an
unlit water-way, and plunging across a narrow hump-back bridge which
landed him in a black pocket between walls. But now his pursuers
were at his back, reinforced by the yelping mob. The walls were too
high to scale, and for all his courage Tony's breath came short as
he paced the masonry cage in which ill-luck had landed him. Suddenly
a gate opened in one of the walls, and a slip of a servant wench
looked out and beckoned him. There was no time to weigh chances.
Tony dashed through the gate, his rescuer slammed and bolted it, and
the two stood in a narrow paved well between high houses. _
Read next: CHAPTER II
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