The Descent of Man and Other Stories

between high houses.

II

THE servant picked up a lantern and signed to Tony to follow her. They climbed a squalid stairway of stone, felt their way along a corridor, and entered a tall vaulted room feebly lit by an oil-lamp hung from the painted ceiling. Tony discerned traces of former splendour in his surroundings, but he had no time to examine them, for a figure started up at his approach and in the dim light he recognized the girl who was the cause of all his troubles.

She sprang toward him with outstretched hands, but as he advanced her face changed and she shrank back abashed.

“This is a misunderstanding—a dreadful misunderstanding,” she cried out in her pretty broken English. “Oh, how does it happen that you are here?”

“Through no choice of my own, madam, I assure you!” retorted Tony, not over-pleased by his reception.

“But why—how—how did you make this unfortunate mistake?”

“Why, madam, if you’ll excuse my candour, I think the mistake was yours—”

“Mine?”—“in sending me a letter—”

“You—a letter?”—“by a simpleton of a lad, who must needs hand it to me under your father’s very nose—”

The girl broke in on him with a cry. “What! It was you who received my letter?” She swept round on the little maid-servant and submerged her under a flood of Venetian. The latter volleyed back in the same jargon, and as she did so, Tony’s astonished eye detected in her the doubleted page who had handed him the letter in Saint Mark’s.

“What!” he cried, “the lad was this girl in disguise?”

Polixena broke off with an irrepressible smile; but her face clouded instantly and she returned to the charge.

“This wicked, careless girl—she has ruined me, she will be my undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended for you—it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother’s, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance—oh, how can I ever excuse myself to you?”

“No excuses are needed, madam,” said Tony, bowing; “though I am surprised, I own, that any one should mistake me for an ambassador.”

Here a wave of mirth again overran Polixena’s face. “Oh, sir, you must pardon my poor girl’s mistake. She heard you speaking English, and—and—I had told her to hand the letter to the handsomest foreigner in the church.” Tony bowed again, more profoundly. “The English Ambassador,” Polixena added simply, “is a very handsome man.”

“I wish, madam, I were a better proxy!”

She echoed his laugh, and then clapped her hands together with a look of anguish. “Fool that I am! How can I jest at such a moment? I am in dreadful trouble, and now perhaps I have brought trouble on you also—Oh, my father! I hear my father coming!” She turned pale and leaned tremblingly upon the little servant.

Footsteps and loud voices were in fact heard outside, and a moment later the red-stockinged Senator stalked into the room attended by half-a-dozen of the magnificoes whom Tony had seen abroad in the square. At sight of him, all clapped hands to their swords and burst into furious outcries; and though their jargon was unintelligible to the young man, their tones and gestures made their meaning unpleasantly plain. The Senator, with a start of anger, first flung himself on the intruder; then, snatched back by his companions, turned wrathfully on his daughter, who, at his feet, with outstretched arms and streaming face, pleaded her cause with all the eloquence of young distress. Meanwhile the other nobles gesticulated vehemently among themselves, and one, a truculent-looking personage in ruff and Spanish cape, stalked apart, keeping a jealous eye on Tony. The latter was at his wit’s end how to comport himself, for the lovely Polixena’s tears had quite drowned her few words of English, and beyond guessing that the magnificoes meant him a mischief he had no notion what they would be at.

At this point, luckily, his friend Count Rialto suddenly broke in on the scene, and was at once assailed by all the tongues in the room. He pulled a long face at sight of Tony, but signed to the young man to be silent, and addressed himself earnestly to the Senator. The latter, at first, would not draw breath to hear him; but presently, sobering, he walked apart with the Count, and the two conversed together out of earshot.

“My dear sir,” said the Count, at length turning to Tony with a perturbed countenance, “it is as I feared, and you are fallen into a great misfortune.”

“A great misfortune! A great trap, I call it!” shouted Tony, whose blood, by this time, was boiling; but as he uttered the word the beautiful Polixena cast such a stricken look on him that he blushed up to the forehead.

“Be careful,” said the Count, in a low tone. “Though his Illustriousness does not speak your language, he understands a few words of it, and—”

“So much the better!” broke in Tony; “I hope he will understand me if I ask him in plain English what is his grievance against me.”

The Senator, at this, would have burst forth again; but the Count, stepping between, answered quickly: “His grievance against you is that you have been detected in secret correspondence with his daughter, the most noble Polixena Cador, the betrothed bride of this gentleman, the most illustrious Marquess Zanipolo—” and he waved a deferential hand at the frowning hidalgo of the cape and ruff.

“Sir,” said Tony, “if that is the extent of my offence, it lies with the young lady to set me free, since by her own avowal—” but here he stopped short, for, to his surprise, Polixena shot a terrified glance at him.

“Sir,” interposed the Count, “we are not accustomed in Venice to take shelter behind a lady’s reputation.”

“No more are we in Salem,” retorted Tony in a white heat. “I was merely about to remark that, by the young lady’s avowal, she has never seen me before.”

Polixena’s eyes signalled her gratitude, and he felt he would have died to defend her.

The Count translated his statement, and presently pursued: “His Illustriousness observes that, in that case, his daughter’s misconduct has been all the more reprehensible.”