The Venetians (eBook)

CHAPTER II.

AFTER-THOUGHTS.

There was nothing but fair weather for the P. and O. steamer Berenice between Venice and Alexandria—fair weather and a calm sea; and John Vansittart had ample leisure in which to think over what he had done, and to live again through all the sensations of his last night in Venice.

He had to live through it all again, and again, in those long days at sea, out of sight of land, with nothing between him and his own dark thoughts but that monotony of cloudless sky and rolling waters. What did it matter whether the boat made eighteen or twenty knots an hour, whether progress were fast or slow? Each day meant an eternity of thought to him who sat apart in his canvas chair, staring blankly eastward, or brooding with bent head, and melancholy eyes fixed on the deck, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, irritated and miserable when some officious fellow-passenger insisted upon plumping down by his side in another deck chair, and talking to him about the weather, or his destination, with futile questionings as to whether this was his first voyage to the East, and all the idle inquisitiveness of the traveller who has nothing to do, and very little to think about.

Captain and steward had been very good to him. The former had asked him no questions after that first inquiry, content to know that he was a gentleman, and had a well-filled purse; the latter had put him to bed in the most comfortable of berths, and had given him a hot drink, and dried his clothes ready for the next morning. And in that one suit of clothes, with changes of linen borrowed from the captain, he made the voyage to Alexandria in the bright spring weather, under the vivid blue that canopies the Mediterranean. Perhaps the fact of living in that one suit of clothes all through those hot days intensified his sense of being a pariah among the other passengers; he who had come among them with a hand red with murder.

Hour after hour he would sit in his corner of the deck, always the most secluded spot he could find, and brood over the thing that he had done.

He had an open book upon his knee for appearance’s sake, and pretended to be absorbed in it whenever a curious saunterer passed his way. He smoked all day long for comfort’s sake, the only comfort possible for his troubled brain, and all day long he thought of his last evening in Venice and the thing that he had done there.

To think that he, a gentleman by birth and education, should have slain a man in a tavern row; that he, who in his earliest boyhood had been taught to use his fists, and to defend himself after the manner of Englishmen, should have yielded to a tigerish impulse, and stabbed an unarmed foe to the heart! He, the well-bred Englishman, had behaved no better than a drunken Lascar.

He scorned—he hated—himself for that blind fury which had made him grip the weapon that accident had placed in his way.

He was not particularly sorry for the man he had killed; a violent, drunken brute, who for the sake of the rest of humanity was better dead than alive. A profligate who had betrayed that lovely ignoramus under a promise of marriage, a promise which he had never meant to keep. He hated himself for the manner of the brute’s death rather than for the death itself. If he had killed the man in fair fight he would have felt no regret at having made an end of him; but to have stabbed an unarmed man! There was the sting, there was the shame of it. All night long, between snatches of troubled sleep, he writhed and tossed in his berth, wishing that he were dead, wondering whether it were not the best thing he could do to throw himself overboard before daybreak and so make an end of these impotent regrets, this maddening reiteration of details, this perpetual representation of the hateful scene, for ever beginning and ending and beginning again in his tortured brain.

He would have decided upon suicide, perhaps, not having any strong religious convictions at this stage of his existence; but his life was not his own to fling away, however unpleasant he might have made it for himself.

He had a mother who adored him, and to whom he, for his part, was warmly attached. She was a widow, and he was the head of the house, sole master of the estate, and to him she looked for dignity and comfort. Were he to die the landed property would pass to his uncle, a dry old bachelor, and though his mother would still have her income, she would be banished from the house in which her wedded life had been spent, and she would be the loser in social status. He had an only sister, too, a fair, frivolous being, of whom, in a lesser degree, he was fond; a sister who had made her appearance in Society at the pre-Lenten Drawing-Room, and had been greatly admired, and who was warranted to make a good match.

Poor little Maud! What would become of Maud if he were to throw himself off a P. and O. steamer? Think of the scandal of it. And yet, if he lived, and that brutal business in the Venetian caffè were to be brought home to him—murder, or manslaughter—it would be even worse for his sister. Society would look askance at a girl with such a ruffian for a brother—an Englishman who used the knife against his fellow-man. Daggers and stilettos might be common wear among Venetians; but the knife was not the less odious in the sight of an Englishman because he happened to be in a city where traditions of treachery and secret murder were interwoven with all her splendour and her beauty. It would be horrible, humiliating, disgraceful for his people if ever that story came to be known—a choice topic for the daily papers, with just that spice of romance and adventure which would justify exhaustive treatment.

Thinking over the question from the Society point of view—and in most of the great acts of life Society stands with the modern Christian in the place which the religious man gives his Creator—Vansittart told himself that every effort of his intelligence must be bent upon dissociating himself from that tragedy in the Venetian caffè. He had got clear of the city by a wonderful bit of luck; for had the steamer started five minutes earlier, or a quarter of an hour later, escape that way would have been impossible.

He had heard the men giving chase on the Piazzetta as he jumped from the quay; heard them shouting when he was in the water. Had the steamer been stationary those men would have boarded her, and the whole story would have been known. She had weighed anchor in the nick of time for him. But what then? A telegram to the police at Brindisi or Alexandria might stop him, as other fugitive felons are caught every month in the year—men who get clear off at Liverpool, to be arrested before they step ashore at New York.

He paid his passage on the morning after his flight, and gave his name as John Smith, of London. The captain scrutinized him rather suspiciously on hearing that name of Smith; but Vansittart did not look like a swindler or a blackguard. He was under a cloud, perhaps, the captain thought, and Smith was most likely an alias; but anyhow he was a gentleman, and the captain meant to stand his friend.

“Are you going to stay long in Cairo?” he asked Vansittart, when they were within sight of Alexandria.

“Not long. Perhaps only till I get my luggage. I shall go up the Nile.”

“You’ll find it rather hot before you’ve been a long way.”

“Oh, I don’t mind heat. I’m not a feverish subject,” said Vansittart, lightly, having no more idea of going up the Nile than of going to the moon.

“You’ll stop at Sheppard’s, of course?”

“Yes, decidedly. I’m told it’s a very good hotel.”

While they were nearing their port he contrived to get a good deal of information about the steamers that touched there. He meant to get off on the first boat that sailed after he landed. All the interval he wanted was the time to buy some ready-made clothes and a valise, so that he might not appear on board the homeward-bound steamer in the miserable condition in which he had introduced himself to the captain of the P. and O.

He parted with that officer with every expression of friendliness.

“I shan’t forget how good you’ve been to a traveller in distress,” he said lightly; “you may not hear of me for a month or two, perhaps. I may be up the Nile——”

“Take care of the climate,” interjected the captain.

“But as soon as I go back to London I shall write to you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Smith, and good luck to you for a fine swimmer wherever you go.”

“Oh, I won a cup or two at Oxford,” answered the other. “We rather prided ourselves on our swimming in my set.”

He went to a restaurant where he could sit under an awning and read the latest papers that had found their way to Alexandria. There were plenty of Paris papers—Galignani, Le Figaro, Le Temps. There was a Turin paper, very stale—and there was a copy of the Daily Telegraph that had been left by some traveller, and which was a fortnight old. Nothing to fear there. Vansittart breathed more freely, and thought of going on to Cairo. But second thoughts warned him that Cairo was very English, and that he might meet some one he knew there. Better to stick to his first plan, and go back to England by the first steamer that would take him.

He had to think of his possessions at Danieli’s, and whether the things he had left there would provide a clue to his identity. He thought not. He had not given his name to the hall porter.

The hotel was crowded, and he had—like a convict—been simply known as “150,” the number of his room.

Clothes, portmanteau,...