he knew at once that she was from home, though as she sat opposite him with the fingers of her mended gloves laced under her chin and her face turned away to miss no point of the cypresses and warm, illumined walls, there was nothing to prove that any one of a hundred towns might not have produced her. peter remembered what sort of people wore gloves like that in bloombury—the minister's wife, the school teacher, his mother and ellen—and was instantly sure she would not have been travelling through italy first-class except at the instigation of the large, widowed and distrustful woman with whom she got on at padua. this lady, also, peter understood very well. he thought it likely she sat in rocking chairs a great deal at home and travelled to improve her mind. she had, moreover, a general air of proclaiming the unwarrantableness of railway acquaintances, which alone would have prevented peter from[pg 187] asking the girl, as he absurdly wanted to, if they had painted the new school-house yet, and if there had been much water that year in miller's pond.
as she sat so with her round hat pushed askew by the window-glass, there was some delicate reminder about her that streaked the rich italian landscape with vestiges of bloombury.
he looked out of the window where she looked and saw the white straight-sided villas change to green-shuttered farmhouses, and fine old roman roads lead on to harmony. it was all there for him in its unexpectedness, as freshly touching as those reminders of his mother which he came upon occasionally where ellen kept them laid by in lavender; as if the girl had shaken from the folds of her jacket of unmistakable bloombury cut, youth for him—his own—anybody's youth—no limp and yellowed keepsake, but all crisply done up and ready for putting on. so sharp for the moment was his sense of accepting the invitation to put it on with her as the best possible traveller's guise, especially for seeing venice in, that catching[pg 188] the speculative eye of the large lady turned upon him, he quailed sensibly. she had the air of having detected him in an attempt to establish a relation with her companion on the ground of their common youngness, and finding herself much more a match for him both in years and in respect to their common origin. whatever passed between the two women, and something did pass wordlessly, with hardly so much substance as a look, remained there, not intrusively, but as proof that what he had been seeking was still going on in some far but attainable place. it was the first movement of an accomplished recovery, for peter to find himself resisting the implication of his appearance in favour of what was coming to him out of the retouched, sensitive surfaces of his past.
he knew so well as he looked at the girl, what had produced her. she was leaning a little from the window in a way that brought more of her face into view, and though from where he sat peter could have very little notion of the points of the nearing landscape, he knew by what he saw of her, that somewhere across[pg 189] the low runnels in the windy reeds she had caught sight of the "sea birds' nest."
he did not on that account change his position so that he might have a glimpse of the dark hills of arqua or the towers of venice repeating themselves in the lustrous, spacious sea. sitting opposite the girl, he saw in her following eyes the silver trails of water and the dim procession down them of old loves, old wars, old splendours, much better than the thin line of the landscape presented them to his weary sense. he leaned back as far as the stiff seat allowed, watching the old world shine on her face, where the low light, striking obliquely on the water, turned it white above black shoals of weed. for the first time since his illness his mind slipped the leash of maimed desire, and as if it parted for him there beyond the window of the railway carriage, struck into the trail to the house. the walls of it rose up straight and shining, gilded purely; the windows arching to summer blueness, let in with them the smell of the wilding rose at the turn of the road and the evening clamour of the birds in bloombury wood.[pg 190]
all this time peter had been sitting in an italian railway carriage, knee to knee with a pirate bearded austrian jew who gave him the greatest possible occasion for wishing the window opened, and when the jar of the checked train drew him into consciousness again, he was at a loss to know what had set him off so far until he caught sight of the girl. she was buttoning on her jacket with fingers that trembled with excitement as she constrained herself to the recapitulation of the two suitcases, the hat box and three parcels which her companion in order to have well in hand, had been alternately picking up and dropping ever since they sighted the tower of san georgio dark against the sea streaked west.
"two and one is three and three is six and the 'baedeker' and the umbrellas," said the girl. "no, i don't have to look in the address book. i have it by heart. casa frolli, the zattera." then the roar of the train split into the sharp cries of the facchinos that carried them forward like an explosion into venice as it rose statelily from the rippling lustre. around it wove the black riders with still,[pg 191] communicating prows, so buoyant, so mysteriously alive and peering, like some superior sea creatures risen magically from below the frayed reflection of the station lights. much as peter felt that he owed to the vivid presence of the girl, his new capacity to see and feel it so as it burst upon them, he hadn't found the courage to address her. so it was with a distinct sense of deprivation that he saw her with her companion grasping the side of the gondola as if by that method to keep it afloat, disappearing down the dim water lanes in the direction of the zattera.
