THE STORY OF SALOME.
A few years ago, no matter how many, I, Harcourt Blunt, was travelling with my friend Coventry Turnour, and it was on the steps of our hotel that I received from him the announcement that he was again in love.
"I tell you, Blunt," said my fellow-traveller, "she"s the loveliest creature I ever beheld in my life."
I laughed outright.
"My dear fellow," I replied, "you"ve so often seen the loveliest creature you ever beheld in your life."
"Ay, but I am in earnest now for the first time."
"And you have so often been in earnest for the first time! Remember the innkeeper"s daughter at Cologne."
"A pretty housemaid, whom no training could have made presentable."
"Then there was the beautiful American at Interlaken."
"Yes; but--"
"And the bella Marchesa at Prince Torlonia"s ball."
"Not one of them worthy to be named in the same breath with my imperial Venetian. Come with me to the Merceria and be convinced. By taking a gondola to St. Mark"s Place we shall be there in a quarter of an hour."
I went, and he raved of his new flame all the way. She was a Jewess--he would convert her. Her father kept a shop in the Merceria--what of that?
He dealt only in costliest Oriental merchandise, and was as rich as a Rothschild. As for any probable injury to his own prospects, why need he hesitate on that account? What were "prospects" when weighed against the happiness of one"s whole life? Besides, he was not ambitious. He didn"t care to go into Parliament. If his uncle, Sir Geoffrey, cut him off with a shilling, what then? He had a moderate independence of which no one living could deprive him, and what more could any reasonable man desire?
I listened, smiled, and was silent. I knew Coventry Turnour too well to attach the smallest degree of importance to anything that he might say or do in a matter of this kind. To be distractedly in love was his normal condition. We had been friends from boyhood; and since the time when he used to cherish a hopeless attachment to the young lady behind the counter of the tart-shop at Harrow, I had never known him "fancy-free" for more than a few weeks at a time. He had gone through every phase of no less than three _grandes pa.s.sions_ during the five months that we had now been travelling together; and having left Rome about eleven weeks before with every hope laid waste, and a heart so broken that it could never by any possibility be put together again, he was now, according to the natural course of events, just ready to fall in love again.
We landed at the traghetto San Marco. It was a cloudless morning towards the middle of April, just ten years ago. The Ducal Palace glowed in the hot sunshine; the boatmen were cl.u.s.tered, gossiping, about the quay; the orange-vendors were busy under the arches of the piazzetta; the _flaneurs_ were already eating ices and smoking cigarettes outside the cafes. There was an Austrian military band, strapped, buckled, moustachioed, and white-coated, playing just in front of St. Mark"s; and the shadow of the great bell-tower slept all across the square.
Pa.s.sing under the low round archway leading to the Merceria, we plunged at once into that cool labyrinth of narrow, intricate, and picturesque streets, where the sun never penetrates--where no wheels are heard, and no beast of burden is seen--where every house is a shop, and every shop-front is open to the ground, as in an Oriental bazaar--where the upper balconies seem almost to meet overhead, and are separated by only a strip of burning sky--and where more than three people cannot march abreast in any part. Pushing our way as best we might through the motley crowd that here chatters, cheapens, buys, sells, and perpetually jostles to and fro, we came presently to a shop for the sale of Eastern goods. A few gla.s.s jars, filled with spices and some pieces of stuff, untidily strewed the counter next the street; but within, dark and narrow though it seemed, the place was crammed with costliest merchandise. Cases of gorgeous Oriental jewelry; embroideries and fringes of ma.s.sive gold and silver bullion; precious drugs and spices; exquisite toys in filigree; miracles of carving in ivory, sandal-wood, and amber; jewelled yataghans; scimitars of state, rich with "barbaric pearl and gold,"
bales of Cashmere shawls, China silks, India muslins, gauzes, and the like, filled every inch of available s.p.a.ce from floor to ceiling, leaving only a narrow lane from the door to the counter, and a still narrower pa.s.sage to the rooms beyond the shop.
We went in. A young woman who was sitting reading on a low seat behind the counter, laid aside her book, and rose slowly. She was dressed wholly in black. I cannot describe the fashion of her garments. I only know that they fell about her in long, soft, trailing folds, leaving a narrow band Of fine cambric visible at the throat and wrists; and that, however graceful and unusual this dress may have been, I scarcely observed it, so entirely was I taken up with admiration of her beauty.
For she was indeed very beautiful--beautiful in a way I had not antic.i.p.ated Coventry Turnour, with all his enthusiasm, had failed to do her justice. He had raved of her eyes--her large, l.u.s.trous, melancholy eyes,--of the transparent paleness of her complexion, of the faultless delicacy of her features; but he had not prepared me for the unconscious dignity, the perfect n.o.bleness and refinement, that informed her every look and gesture. My friend requested to see a bracelet at which he had been looking the day before. Proud, stately, silent, she unlocked the case in which it was kept, and laid it before him on the counter. He asked permission to take it over to the light.
She bent her head, but answered not a word. It was like being waited upon by a young Empress.
Turnour took the bracelet to the door and affected to examine it. It consisted of a double row of gold coins linked together at intervals by a bean-shaped ornament studded with pink coral and diamonds. Coming back into the shop he asked me if I thought it would please his sister, to whom he had promised a remembrance of Venice.
"It is a pretty trifle," I replied; "but surely a remembrance of Venice should be of Venetian manufacture. This, I suppose, is Turkish."
The beautiful Jewess looked up. We spoke in English; but she understood, and replied.
"_E Greco, signore_," she said coldly.
At this moment an old man came suddenly forward from some dark counting-house at the back--a grizzled, bearded, eager-eyed Shylock, with a pen behind his ear.
"Go in, Salome--go in, my daughter," he said hurriedly. "I will serve these gentlemen."
She lifted her eyes to his for one moment--then moved silently away, and vanished in the gloom of the room beyond.
We saw her no more. We lingered awhile looking over the contents of the jewel-cases; but in vain. Then Turnour bought his bracelet, and we went out again into the narrow streets, and back to the open daylight of the Gran" Piazza.
"Well," he said breathlessly, "what do you think of her?"
"She is very lovely."
"Lovelier than you expected?"
"Much lovelier. But--"
"But what?"
"The sooner you succeed in forgetting her the better."
He vowed, of course, that he never would and never could forget her. He would hear of no incompatibilities, listen to no objections, believe in no obstacles. That the beautiful Salome was herself not only unconscious of his pa.s.sion and indifferent to his person, but ignorant of his very name and station, were facts not even to be admitted on the list of difficulties. Finding him thus deaf to reason, I said no more.
It was all over, however, before the week was out.
"Look here, Blunt," he said, coming up to me one morning in the coffee-room of our hotel just as I was sitting down to answer a pile of home-letters; "would you like to go on to Trieste to-morrow? There, don"t look at me like that--you can guess how it is with me. I was a fool ever to suppose she would care for me--a stranger, a foreigner, a Christian. Well, I"m horribly out of sorts, anyhow--and--and I wish I was a thousand miles off at this moment!"
We travelled on together to Athens, and there parted, Turnour being bound for England, and I for the East. My own tour lasted many months longer. I went first to Egypt and the Holy Land; then joined an exploring party on the Euphrates; and at length, after just twelve months of Oriental life, found myself back again at Trieste about the middle of April in the year following that during which occurred the events I have just narrated. There I found that batch of letters and papers to which I had been looking forward for many weeks past; and amongst the former, one from Coventry Turnour. This time he was not only irrecoverably in love, but on the eve of matrimony. The letter was rapturous and extravagant enough. The writer was the happiest of men; his destined bride the loveliest and most amiable of her s.e.x; the future a paradise; the past a melancholy series of mistakes. As for love, he had never, of course, known what it was till now.
And what of the beautiful Salome?
Not one word of her from beginning to end. He had forgotten her as utterly as if she had never existed. And yet how desperately in love and how desperately in despair he was "one little year ago!" Ah, yes; but then it _was_ "one little year ago;" and who that had ever known Coventry Turnour would expect him to remember _la plus grande des grandes pa.s.sions_ for even half that time?
I slept that night at Trieste and went on next day to Venice. Somehow I could not get Turnour and his love-affairs out of my head. I remembered our visit to the Merceria. I was haunted by the image of the beautiful Jewess. Was she still so lovely? Did she still sit reading in her wonted seat by the open counter, with the gloomy shop reaching away behind, and the cases of rich robes and jewels all around?
An irresistible impulse prompted me to go to the Merceria and see her once again. I went. It had been a busy morning with me, and I did not get there till between three and four o"clock in the afternoon. The place was crowded. I pa.s.sed up the well-remembered street, looking out on both sides for the gloomy little shop with its unattractive counter; but in vain. When I had gone so far that I thought I must have pa.s.sed it, I turned back. House by house I retraced my steps to the very entrance, and still could not find it. Then, concluding I had not gone far enough at first, I turned back again till I reached a spot where several streets diverged. Here I came to a stand-still, for beyond this point I knew I had not pa.s.sed before.
It was now evident that the Jew no longer occupied his former shop in the Merceria, and that my chance of discovering his whereabouts was exceedingly slender. I could not inquire of his successor, because I could not identify the house. I found it impossible even to remember what trades were carried on by his neighbours on either side. I was ignorant of his very name. Convinced, therefore, of the inutility of making any further effort, I gave up the search, and comforted myself by reflecting that my own heart was not made of adamant, and that it was, perhaps, better for my peace not to see the beautiful Salome again. I was destined to see her again, however, and that ere many days had pa.s.sed over my head.
A year of more than ordinarily fatiguing Eastern travel had left me in need of rest, and I had resolved to allow myself a month"s sketching in Venice and its neighbourhood before turning my face homeward.
As, therefore, it is manifestly the first object of a sketcher to select his points of view, and as no more luxurious machine than a Venetian gondola was ever invented for the use of man, I proceeded to employ the first days of my stay in endless boatings to and fro; now exploring all manner of ca.n.a.ls and ca.n.a.letti; now rowing out in the direction of Murano; now making for the islands beyond San Pietro Castello, and in the course of these pilgrimages noting down an infinite number of picturesque sites, and smoking an infinite number of cigarettes.
It was, I think, about the fourth or fifth day of this pleasant work, when my gondolier proposed to take me as far as the Lido. It wanted about two hours to sunset, and the great sandbank lay not more than three or four miles away; so I gave the word, and in another moment we had changed our route and were gliding farther and farther from Venice at each dip of the oar.
Then the long, dull, distant ridge that had all day bounded the shallow horizon rose gradually above the placid level of the Lagune; a.s.sumed a more broken outline; resolved itself into hillocks and hollows of tawny sand; showed here and there a patch of parched gra.s.s and tangled brake; and looked like the coasts of some inhospitable desert beyond which no traveller might penetrate. My boatman made straight for a spot where some stakes at the water"s edge gave token of a landing-place; and here, though with some difficulty, for the tide was low, ran the gondola aground. I landed. My first step was among graves.
"_E"l Cimiterio Giudaico, signore_," said my gondolier, with a touch of his cap.
The Jewish cemetery! The _ghetto_ of the dead! I remembered now to have read or heard long since how the Venetian Jews, cut off in death as in life from the neighbourhood of their Christian rulers, had been buried from immemorial time upon this desolate waste. I stooped to examine the headstone at my feet. It was but a shattered fragment, crusted over with yellow lichens, and eaten away by the salt sea air. I pa.s.sed on to the next, and the next.