The Royal End. Harland Henry
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ROYAL END
I
BALZATORE, by many coquetries, had long been trying to attract their attention. At last he had succeeded.
“You have an admirer,” Ruth, with a gleam, remarked to her companion. “Mercy, how he's ogling you.”
“Yes,” answered Lucilla Dor, untroubled, in that contented, caressing voice of hers, while, her elbow on the table, with the “languid grace,” about which Ruth chaffed her a good deal, she pensively nibbled a fig. “The admiration is reciprocal. What a handsome fellow he is!”
And her soft blue eyes smiled straight into Balzatore's eager brown ones.
Quivering with emotion, Balzatore sprang up, and in another second would have bounded to her side.
“Sit down, sir; where are you going?” sternly interposed Bertram. Placed with his back towards the ladies, he was very likely unaware of their existence.
Balzatore sat down, but he gave his head a toss that clearly signified his opinion of the restraint put upon him: senselessly conventional, monstrously annoying. And he gave Lucilla Dor a look. Disappointment spoke in it, homage, dogged—'tis a case for saying so—dogged tenacity of purpose. “Never fear,” it promised, “I'll find an opportunity yet.”
He found it, sure enough, some twenty minutes later.
II
Ruth and Lucilla had been dining at the Lido, at the new hotel there, I forget its name, the only decent hotel, in a sandy garden near the Stabilimento. They had dined in the air, of course, on the terrace, whence they could watch the sunset burn and die over Venice, and the moon come up out of the Adriatic. Balzatore had been dining with Bertram at a neighbouring table.
But now, her eyes intently lifted, as in prayer, Lucilla began to adjust her veil.
“We can't stop here nibbling figs forever,” she premised, with the drawl, whimsically plaintive, that she is apt to assume in her regretful moods. “I think it's time to return to our mosquitoes.”
So they paid their bill, and set off, through the warm night and the moonlight and the silence, down the wide avenue of plane-trees that leads from the sea to the lagoon. In the moonlight and the silence, they were themselves silent at first, walking slowly, feeling the pleasant solemnity of things. Then, all at once, Lucilla softly sighed.
“Poor Byron,” she said, as from the depths of a pious reverie.
“Byron?” wondered Ruth, called perhaps from reveries of her own. “Why?”
“He used to come here to ride,” explained Lucilla, in a breaking voice.
I'm afraid Ruth tittered. Afterwards they were silent again, the silence of the night reasserting itself, and holding them like music, till, by and by, their progress ended at the landing-stage where they had left their gondola.
“But what has become of the wretched thing?” asked Lucilla, looking blankly this way and that. For the solitary gondola tied up there wasn't theirs. She turned vaguely to the men in charge of it, meditating enquiries: when one of them, with the intuition and the aplomb of his race, took the words out of her mouth.
“Pardon, Lordessa,” he said, touching his hat. “If you are seeking the boatmen who brought you here, they went back as soon as they had put you ashore.”
Lucilla eyed him coldly, distrustfully.
“Went back?” she doubted. “But I told them to wait.”
The man shrugged, a shrug of sympathy, of fatalism. “Ech!” he said. “They could not have understood.”
Lucilla frowned, weighing credibilities; then her brow cleared, as in sudden illumination.
“But I did not pay them,” she remembered, and cited the circumstance as conclusive.
The man, however, made light of it. “Ech!” he said, with genial confidence. “They belong to your hotel. You will pay them to-morrow.”
“And, anyhow, my dear,” suggested Ruth, intervening, “as they're nowhere in mortal sight …”
“Don't you see that this is a trick?” Lucilla stopped her, in a heated whisper. “What you call collusion. They're lurking somewhere round a corner, so that we shall have to engage these creatures, and be let in for two fares.”
“Dear me,” murmured Ruth, admiring. “Who would have thought them so imaginative?”
Lucilla sniffed. “Oh, they're Italians,” she scornfully pointed out. “Ah, well, the gods love a cheerful victim. You will do,” she said to the man. “Take us to the Britannia.” And she motioned to Ruth to place herself under the tent.
But the man, touching his hat again, stood, very deferentially, with bent back, so as to bar the way.
“Pardon, Lordessa,” he said, “so many excuses—we are private;” while his glance, not devoid of vainglory, embracing himself and his colleague, invited attention to the spruce nautical liveries they were wearing, and to the silver badges on their arms.
For a moment Lucilla Dor stared stonily at him. “Bother!” she pronounced, with fervour, under her breath. Then her blue eyes gazed, wide and wistful, at the moonlit waters, beyond which the lamps along the Riva twinkled pallid derision. “How are we to get to Venice?” she demanded helplessly of the universe.
“We must go back for the night to the hotel here,” said Ruth.
“With no luggage? Two women alone? Never heard of such a thing,” scoffed Lucilla.
“Well then,” Ruth submitted, “I believe the lagoon is nowhere very deep. We might try to ford it.”
“Oh, if you think it's a laughing matter!” Lucilla, with an ominous lilt, threw out.
Meanwhile the two gondoliers had been conferring together; they conducted their conference with so much vehemence, one might have fancied they were quarelling, but that was only the gondolier of it; and now, he who had heretofore remained in the background, stepped forward, and in a tone, all Italian, of respectfully benevolent protection, addressed Lucilla.
“Scusi, Madama, we will ask our Signore to let you come with us. There is plenty of room. Only, we must wait till he arrives.”
“Ah,” sighed she, with relief. But in a minute, “Who is your Signore?” caution prompted her to ask.
“He is a signorino,” the man replied, and I'm sure he thought the reply enlightening. “He is very good-natured. He will let you come.”
And it happened just at this point, while they stood there hesitating, that Balzatore found his opportunity.
III
One heard a tattoo of scampering paws, a sibilance of swift breathing; and a cold wet nose, followed by a warm furry head, was thrust from behind under Lucilla's hand.
Startled, she gave an inevitable little feminine cry, and half turned round—to recognise her late admirer. “Hello, old fellow—is this you?” she greeted him, patting