The Unreported Incident

MADAME OLGA DE BARONOWSKY, who was as tall and stout as little Miss Lane was short and thin, came into the latter’s room bringing some closely written pages, “ I am going to impose upon you once more,” she said, “ and to-day my story is about your opposite neighbor. You don’t very much mind reading it, do you ? It is not long.”

“ Oh, no, indeed,” answered Miss Lane. “ I shall just have time before dinner.”

Across the canal separating the buildings of this Venetian byway arose a brown-tiled roof with a belfry, whose restless bell was forever calling the dwellers below to some daily duty of work or prayer. The dwellers were poor old Italian ladies, gathered out of the storms of life into the sheltering refuge. In the room directly opposite Miss Lane could see the crimson light of a swinging lamp burning before a Madonna on the wall, and below it a shelf decorated with paper roses.

There were likewise a swinging lamp, a Madonna on the wall, a shelf holding its row of paper roses, and a brown-tiled roof possessing a belfry and a restless bell in the story which Miss Lane sat reading. As she turned the last page, she put the manuscript down and went to the window.

The sky was changing from blue to tender lilac and rose, and the opposite neighbor stood leaning out, her hands folded, and both elbows resting on the paintless sill.

“ Good-evening, you poor old Italian thing ! ” exclaimed Miss Lane cordially. “ I hope your lot has not been quite as uncomfortable as Madame de Baronowsky’s pen has chosen to make it ! How are you feeling to-night, you poor old Italian thing ? ”

The opposite neighbor smiled and nodded in answer to the greeting, whose friendliness alone she understood. Then the bell, which had stopped to take breath, resumed its activity, and the two women turned away to their respective evening meals.

In the hall below, a middle-aged man, with gray in his hair, was intently reading the names in the strangers’ book. Miss Lane saw this man on the following afternoon standing in a corner of St. Mark’s, and still later she saw him again at the evening concert on the Piazza. He was sitting by one of the little tables, an untouched ice before him and an unread paper in his hand. As she watched him, he arose suddenly and vanished in the crowd.

Meanwhile, Madame de Baronowsky, who had accompanied Miss Lane to the concert, was busily writing in a little red buok.

“ I am taking notes on that gentleman.” she explained. “ My last heroine has mysteriously disappeared, and I need a father for her. Did you notice how nothing escaped his keen eyes, how he studied every face ? I have written : ' A young girl went by, resting on the arm of an Italian officer. Blank arose hurriedly, overtook and passed them ; then, retracing his steps, he came slowly back. He could see her face now ; it was young and fair, but it was not the face he sought, and with the weary air of a man to whom days, weeks, months, and years had brought only bitter disappointment he sank into his seat. The musicians were playing a mad galop. To Blank the strains seemed breathlessly repeating, Lost, lost, lost, even to eternity! ’ ”

“ I saw your unhappy ' father ’ at St. Mark’s this afternoon,” observed Miss Lane.

“ I have been seeing him all day,” said Madame de Baronowsky. "I have met him in no less than seven different places, and always wearing the expression of a person seeking for some one. How did he impress you ? ”

“ I noticed that he was neither a worshiper nor a sight-seer; he did not kneel with the others, nor did he appear interested in the mosaics of the floor and ceiling, and he shook his head when the old sacristan proposed to show him the treasures. He was at our house last evening, looking over the names in the strangers’ book. In a vague way I think I received the impression that he had brought a message to some one, and could know nothing of rest or peace until he had delivered it.”

“ Excellent! ” exclaimed Madame de Baronowsky. “ You are simply invaluable ! ”

“ The man may be himself in search of ideas,” suggested Miss Lane. “ Ideas are not always easy to find ; at least I judge so, from various things you have told me. It is even possible that he too is writing a novel, in which you are to figure as a heart-broken mother in search of her long-lost son.”

“ It is a thousand pities that I am obliged to go away to-morrow,” said Madame de Baronowsky. “ I should not think of going, were I not engaged for that lecture in Vienna; but I am announced, and unfortunately I am not important enough to be able to break my engagements. I want you to promise to keep your eyes open; to be sure and tell me if you see anything developing, — tell me if he meets friends here, if he buys flowers, if he spends much time before certain pictures. I am convinced you will see him doing something unusual. You might follow him into the shops.”

A young girl occupied Madame de Baronowsky’s place the next evening, at dinner.

Miss Lane had a curious feeling come over her as she looked across the table. Four years before, in a German city, she had sat facing this same young girl during a week of dinners and suppers. Beyond the exchange of daily greetings the two had never spoken.

At that time, Miss Lane, being in a quiet way also a woman of literary pursuits, wrote anonymously a little novel which people liked then, and still like. She had adopted this fair-haired girl as her heroine, and made her happy and unhappy through twelve chapters of changing fortunes. Madame de Baronowsky had mentioned this book to her companion, asking if she had read it, if she thought it clever, and if it were suitable for translation. To these questions Miss Lane had answered, that she knew the book, that she loved the heroine, but concerning the merits of the production she did not feel capable of giving an opinion.

Presently the girl spoke, in the gentle voice with which she had also been accustomed to speak in the little novel.

“You do not remember me, I am sure. We sat at the same table for a week in Dresden. It was such a happy week, and I always think of you as a part of it.”

“ Certainly I remember you,” returned Miss Lane, rather consciously. “ You used to wear a heliotrope-colored gown.”

“ Oh, do you remember that too ? I was very much attached to that gown.”

“ And so was I. I wish you would let me call you ‘ Miss Heliotrope,’ for the sake of its memory.”

The girl came around the table and held out her hand.

“ I am being introduced to you,” she said. “ but would you be so kind as to act as if you had already known me a long time ? I am alone here. I expected to meet my aunt, but instead I found a letter saying that she was detained in Munich by the illness of a friend. I fear she may not be able to come for several days.”

Miss Lane replied that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to consider this acquaintance one of a lifetime, and she proposed that they should immediately go out together.

“ I will take you by the narrow streets to the Piazza. It is very amusing to walk in Venice.”

“ Yes,” said the girl, “ and it would be very pleasant to go. I know the attractions of a Venetian street, but I have promised myself to do a little work before my aunt comes ; it is so seldom that one is sure of a few uninterrupted days. I want to paint an old Venetian well with a girl drawing water.”

Miss Lane approved of the plan, and said if one had any especial work to do it was best to grasp the opportunity when one had no friends about.

A well was found, a regular museum well, with a wreath of stone roses around it, and on one side the figure of an angel. A suitable model also wandered into the garden.

“ Suitable all but her dress, which has not enough color,”commented Miss Heliotrope, as she led Miss Lane into a mouldy court; “ but I have hired a very desirable petticoat: it is dull blue with a band of faded gold embroidery.”

The court contained a tree and the well beneath it, a stone bench against the wall, an accumulation of rubbish, and air, several centuries old.

Miss Heliotrope worked industriously, and saw even less of the outside world than the old Italian ladies over the way.

It seemed to Miss Lane that the girl was growing pale, and with this thought in her mind she knocked one day at Miss Heliotrope’s door.

“ I came to invite you to a cup of tea. You have not yet been in my room. I want to show you the view, and my old neighbor at her window. There are hundreds of things I should like to show you ; it makes me quite unhappy to see you so indifferent.”

The girl smiled a little, and said Miss Lane reminded her of an old French lady who had been her traveling companion.

“ She was from Brittany, she told me. All her life she had longed to see Venice. As the train drew nearer, her eyes overflowed with tears, and she kept repeating in a grieved voice, ‘ Mademoiselle n'est pas émue ! ’ To her it was an inconceivable condition that one could approach Venice unmoved.”

“ Dear old thing,” said the other; " I can quite appreciate her feelings.”

Miss Heliotrope was lying upon the sofa. She had a headache ; she thought she had been painting too steadily.

“ All the more reason for the tea,” insisted her visitor. “ But don’t move. I will bring it to you.”

The girl protested. “ Please stay and talk with me instead,—that will do me more good than anything; or, if you do not feel like talking, look at my books and sketches. It makes me feel better to have you in the room.”

Miss Lane sat down before the table, idly opening the books, one after another.

Outside, on the lagoon, boats with sails were passing and repassing: sails that were brown, dull red, and orange ; sails from Chioggia, covered with strange symbols. The girl could see them from her sofa.

“ I always did feel interested in the power of that little geranium leaf,” said the woman at the table ; " it seems that some one else has shared my feelings, for the passage is marked and underlined.”

“ What little geranium leaf ? ” A sudden color came into the young face, then left it very pale.

“ The one that was placed in the hand of beautiful Evelyn Hope; don’t you remember ?

“ Oh ! ” exclaimed Miss Heliotrope ; and after a little she added, " If you believe that, you have a very pleasant belief.”

The sail that was passing now was golden-brown in color, and its symbol was that of a cross.

“ Speaking of understanding,” she continued, " would you understand what I meant, or rather what a person meant who told you she had died, and could never live again ? ”

“ Yes,” said Miss Lane, " I should understand.”

The other raised her head, and looked away from the sail to the woman who, without question or comment, had made this simple answer.

“ What else do you believe ? ”

“ I believe that the dead shall live again.”

“ I do not mean that kind of dead; I mean a kind that can never live again.”

“ Why not ? ” asked Miss Lane gently. She had closed the book, and stood by the window watching the sail with the cross upon it, until the boat drifted out of sight.

“ I don’t know. Perhaps because the dead I mean is so verily dead that it could not hear the message of life, even were it spoken. It is a fearful thing to be dead in the way I mean. The other way must be very sweet,—asleep with the little geranium leaf safe in one’s hand. It would be good to be dead in that way.”

“I did not come entirely to invite you to drink tea with me,” said the older woman, breaking the silence that followed these words. “ I came to say that I think it very wrong for you to spend so much time in your room and down in that musty old court. When I am out in the evening, the thought of you at home alone often spoils my enjoyment.”

“ You are very kind, you are always kind; but at home alone, as you call it, has also its charms. There is so much to see from my window that I sometimes sit there until midnight.”

“Yes, but you lose the drifting, and the snatches of music on the water, and the sound of your gondolier’s voice. Pietro and I have very interesting conversations. Last night he said, ‘ Shall I tell the signorina the story of Venice ? ’ and thereupon he repeated the names and the number of all the bridges, canals, and churches; not much of a story, to be sure, but told in his manner it had quite the sound of a little poem. I had an adventure, too, last evening. Are you listening ? ”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“ There is an interesting stranger in Venice, — a man who can know no joy nor peace until he has delivered a message ; at least that is what I think. Madame de Baronowsky thinks he is a distracted father in search of a lost daughter. You should hear an impromptu description she has written regarding his feelings. It contains sentences like this : ' Lost, lost, lost, even to eternity ! ’ Last night his gondola followed mine. I had a lace shawl wrapped about me, and from a distance one had no way of telling that I was not young and beautiful. Pietro’s opinion differs from Madame de Baronowsky’s and mine. He thinks the man is an artist in search of a subject. Pietro has had great experience with artists. He says they are all alike in a certain way, — they never quite know what they want. They think they do, but when he has brought them to the spot they always wish to go somewhere else, and after he has shown them all the picturesqueness of the place they are quite sure to settle down before a couple of old posts. It seems he has taken this man to every corner of Venice, and to-night he is to take him to the station. According to Pietro, he is going away without having settled upon anything.”

“ He might have liked the well with the roses and the angel,” said the girl. “ I suppose it did not occur to him to look out of back windows. Who is this Madame de Baronowsky ? Have I seen her ? ”

“ Madame de Baronowsky is an acquaintance of mine. She left the day that you came. She gives lectures and writes stories. I have been reading the stories in manuscript all summer. She is writing a novel now, and in it she introduces the man as one of the characters. She happened to meet him in seven different places on the same day, which was quite enough to excite her imagination. I promised to keep her informed regarding his movements. I have already given her a number of hints ; she pretends that my impressions are very valuable.”

“ Why not tell her about me ? ” suggested Miss Heliotrope. "Let the stranger wander into a shady courtyard, where he finds his long-lost daughter painting a well.”

“ Never ! ” exclaimed Miss Lane, with a sudden warmth in her voice; " you are mine. I do not intend to give you to any foreign woman.”

“ Not if the man were thus to lose his daughter, even to eternity ? I believe that was what you said, ‘ Lost, lost, lost, even to eternity ’ ? ”

“ Not under any circumstances.”

Miss Heliotrope arose and came to the window.

“ If I am yours,” she said, “ take me and keep me; do what you like with me, — just what you like : give me the tea, show me the view from your window, tell me about your opposite neighbor, and to-morrow we must undertake something together. Shall we not go to the Academy and see the pictures ?”

The woman took the girl’s hands in her own ; they were very cold little hands. “ I am so fond of you,” she said. “ I appropriated you without permission four years ago, and I have been growing fonder of you ever since.”

Miss Lane and Miss Heliotrope went to the Academy ; and being familiar with the paintings from earlier visits, it happened quite naturally that the two should enter the building only to separate, since each had come to renew acquaintance with old friends. Miss Lane was therefore alone when she reached the room where St. Ursula’s story is outspread upon the wall. Before the scene of the martyrdom sat an English lady, overpowered by the drowsiness so easily encouraged by the heat of an Italian summer.

Miss Lane felt her own eyes closing, as she looked from the unconscious visitor to the maiden saint placidly dreaming in the stiffly unruffled bed, and with the fear of adding to the number of sleeping ladies she walked on until she came to the room in which Titian’s Mother Mary rises upward into light. At the head of the short stairway leading to this room Miss Lane stopped suddenly. Below sat Miss Heliotrope, also sleeping, her head turned towards Titian’s great picture. A shadow rested on the girl’s face. — a shadow that, unlike the heliotrope gown and the gentle voice, had not helped to furnish the details of the little novel. There had been no shadow in the Dresden week.

Some one had gone down the steps as Miss Lane was crossing the inner room, and now stood on one side, so that the woman had not at first observed him. When she did she saw that he was Madame de Baronowsky’s hero, and she knew that the man, the girl, and the shadow belonged to one another.

A strange dread came into her heart lest the girl’s eyes should open ; she remembered what had been said about being so verily dead that one could not hear the message of life even were it spoken. It would be better to sleep on than to awake unable to understand.

She walked slowly back to the pictured St. Ursula, and began with her a mute, one-sided conversation.

“ You evidently had a very hard time, my dear, especially towards the end ; it is not pleasant to be martyred, conventionally or non-conventionally ; but it is a satisfaction to see you here in glory, and one must acknowledge that all is well that ends well. I suppose you wished a good many times you were able to straighten out your affairs. I wish I could straighten out those of my heroine; it was easy enough on paper, when I had a clue to the situation, and knew in what relationship the heroine stood to the hero, which is more than I know to-day.”

The English lady was still sleeping when Miss Heliotrope finally appeared in the room.

“ I believe I have been asleep myself,” she said.

“ Yes,” answered Miss Lane. “You made a very sweet picture, with all the saints and angels watching over you, and Carpaccio’s quaint musicians softly playing on their instruments.”

“ I am so ashamed ; why did you not waken me ? Do you think many people went through the room ? ”

“ Sleeping in Venice on a hot day is not such an unusual event as to attract attention ; there really was no reason why you should not have your nap out.”

The girl did not ask any more questions, but said it was near lunch time and they would better be going.

Outside the door was an old woman with a basket of flowers. Miss Lane bought some pinks, and continued on to the water-steps.

Miss Heliotrope lingered behind a little, bending over the fragrant wares and speaking with the woman.

“ It is so good to see flowers in Venice,” she said, rejoining her companion ; “ one grows hungry for them.”

She spoke but once more on the way home, and that was to inquire if Miss Lane had seen anything since the night before which she thought worth writing to the Russian lady, and Miss Lane replied briefly that she did not intend to write again.

When the gondola touched the landing the two went directly to their rooms. The restless bell had already begun to ring for the noonday meal.

Miss Lane stood for a time at the window, arranging her pinks.

“ You poor old Italian things,” she said over and over, as if addressing the invisible dwellers over the way, of whom, however, she was not at that moment thinking, but rather of the mistakes and miseries and misunderstandings of the world in general, — “you poor, poor old Italian things ! ” Then she went with her flowers to Miss Heliotrope’s door. No one answered the knock.

“ The signorina has gone out with a letter,” said one of the maids, who was busy in the hall. “ I offered to carry it, but the signorina only shook her head.”

Miss Lane entered the room. On the table a book lay open at the poem with the underlined passage, and over the latter a geranium leaf had been hastily fastened, — a leaf that was still fresh and fragrant, although a little crumpled.

Miss Lane rapidly combined possibilities. She remembered that the girl’s hand hung ungloved and closed at her side when she came into the room where the English lady was sleeping, and that she had held it ungloved and closed all the way home.

Then the woman said aloud, as if to contradict some unwelcome suggestion of her conscience, “ No, I shall not write again to Madame de Baronowsky, not even if her unhappy father has to go on searching for his imaginary daughter through all eternity.”

Harriet Lewis Bradley.