"Nothing."
"What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. O, I have done everything, you know. There is nothing left to a fellow."
"That sounds hopeless," said Dillwyn, laughing.
"It is hopeless. Really I don"t see, sometimes, what a fellow"s life is good for. I believe the people who have to work for it, have after all the best time!"
"They work to live," said the other.
"I suppose they do."
"Therefore you are going round in a circle. If life is worth nothing, why should one work to keep it up?"
"Well, what is it worth, Dillwyn? Upon my word, I have never made it out satisfactorily."
"Look here--we cannot talk in this place. Have you ever been to Torcello?"
"No."
"Suppose we take a gondola and go?"
"Now? What is there?"
"An old church."
"There are old churches all over. The thing is to find a new one."
"You prefer the new ones?"
"Just for the rarity," said Tom, smiling.
"I do not believe you have studied the old ones yet. Do you know the mosaics in St. Mark"s?"
"I never study mosaics."
"And I"ll wager you have not seen the Tintorets in the Palace of the Doges?"
"There are Tintorets all over!" said Tom, shrugging his shoulders wearily.
"Then have you seen Murano?"
"The gla.s.s-works, yes."
"I do not mean the gla.s.s-works. Come along--anywhere in a gondola will do, such an evening as this; and we can talk comfortably. You need not look at anything."
They entered a gondola, and were presently gliding smoothly over the coloured waters of the lagoon; shining with richer sky reflections than any mortal painter could put on canvas. Not long in silence.
"Where have you been, Tom, all this while?"
"I told you, everywhere!" said Tom, with another shrug of his shoulders. "The one thing one comes abroad for, you know, is to run away from the winter; so we have been doing that, as long as there was any winter to run from, and since then we have been running away from the summer. Let me see--we came over in November, didn"t we? or December; we went to Rome as fast as we could. There was very good society in Rome last winter. Then, as spring came on, we coasted down to Naples and Palermo. We staid at Palermo a while. From there we went back to England; and from England we came to Switzerland. And there we have been till I couldn"t stand Switzerland any longer; and I bolted."
"Palermo isn"t a bad place to spend a while in."
"No;--but Sicily is stupid generally. It"s all ridiculous, Philip.
Except for the name of the thing, one can get just as good nearer home.
I could get _better_ sport at Appledore last summer, than in any place I"ve been at in Europe."
"Ah! Appledore," said Philip slowly, and dipping his hand in the water.
"I surmise the society also was good there?"
"Would have been," Tom returned discontentedly, "if there had not been a little too much of it."
"Too much of it!"
"Yes. I couldn"t stir without two or three at my heels. It"s very kind, you know; but it rather hampers a fellow."
"Miss Lothrop was there, wasn"t she?"
"Of course she was! That made all the trouble."
"And all the sport too; hey, Tom? Things usually are two-sided in this world."
"She made no trouble. It was my mother and sister. They were so awfully afraid of her. And they drilled George in; so among them they were too many for me. But I think Appledore is the nicest place I know."
"You might buy one of the islands--a little money would do it--build a lodge, and have your Europe always at hand; when the winter is gone, as you say. Even the winter you might manage to live through, if you could secure the right sort of society. Hey, Tom? Isn"t that an idea? I wonder it never occurred to you. I think one might bid defiance to the world, if one were settled at the Isles of Shoals."
"Yes," said Tom, with something very like a groan. "If one hadn"t a mother and sister."
"You are heathenish!"
"I"m not, at all!" returned Tom pa.s.sionately. "See here, Philip. There is one thing goes before mother and sister; and that you know. It"s a man"s wife. And I"ve seen my wife, and I can"t get her."
"Why?" said Dillwyri dryly. He was hanging over the side of the gondola, and looking attentively at the play of colour in the water; which reflecting the sky in still splendour where it lay quiet, broke up in ripples under the gondolier"s oar, and seemed to scatter diamonds and amethysts and topazes in fairy-like prodigality all around.
"I"ve told you!" said Tom fretfully.
"Yes, but I do not comprehend. Does not the lady in question like Appledore as well as you do?"
"She likes Appledore well enough. I do not know how well she likes me.
I never had a chance to find out. I don"t think she _dis_likes me, though," said Tom meditatively.
"It is not too late to find out yet," Philip said, with even more dryness in his tone.
"O, isn"t it, though!" said Tom. "I"m tied up from ever asking her now.
I"m engaged to another woman."
"Tom!" said the other, suddenly straightening himself up.