The Water Ghost and Others, John Kendrick Bangs [tharntype novel english .txt] 📗

silvery surface of the moonlit water--"this reminds me of it. All is so still, so romantic, so beautiful. I arrived late at night, and my first sensations were those of a man who has entered a city of the dead. The bustle, the noise and clatter, of a great city were absent; nothing was there but the massive buildings rising up out of the still, peaceful waters like gigantic tombs, and as my gondolier guided the sombre black craft to which I had confided my safety and that of my valise, gliding in and out along those dark unlit streams, a great wave of melancholy swept over me, and then, passing from the minor streets into the Grand Canal, the melancholy was dispelled by the brilliant scene that met my eyes--great floods of light coming from everywhere, the brilliance of each ray re-enforced by its reflection in the silent river over which I was speeding. It was like a glimpse of paradise, and when I reached my palace I was loath to leave the gondola, for I really felt as though I could glide along in that way through all eternity."

"You lived in a palace in Venice?" I asked, somewhat amused at the magnificence of this imaginary tour.

"Certainly. Why not?" he replied. "I could not bring myself to staying in a hotel, Phil, in Venice. Venice is of a past age, when hotels were not, and to be thoroughly _en rapport_ with my surroundings, I took up my abode in a palace, as I have said. It was on one of the side streets, to be sure, but it was yet a palace, and a beautiful one. And that street! It was a rivulet of beauty, in which could be seen myriads of golden-hued fish at play, which as the gondola passed to and fro would flirt into hiding until the intruder had passed out of sight in the Grand Canal, after which they would come slowly back again to render the silver waters almost golden with their brilliance."

"Weren't you rather extravagant, Tom?" I asked. "Palaces are costly, are they not?"

"Oh no," he replied, with as much gravity as though he had really taken the trip and was imparting information to a seeker after knowledge. "It was not extravagant when you consider that anything in Venice in the way of a habitable house is called a palace, and that there are no servants to be tipped; that your lights, candles all, cost you first price only, and not the profit of the landlord, plus that of the concierge, plus that of the maid, plus several other small but aggravatingly augmentative sums which make your hotel bills seem like highway robbery. No, living in a palace, on the whole, is cheaper than living in a hotel; incidentals are less numerous and not so costly; and then you are so independent. Mine was a particularly handsome structure. I believe I have a picture of it here."

Here Bragdon fumbled in his satchel for a moment, and then dragged forth a small unmounted photograph of a Venetian street scene, and, pointing out an ornate structure at the left of the picture, assured me that that was his palace, though he had forgotten the name of it.

"By-the-way," he said, "let me say parenthetically that I think our foreign trips will have a far greater _vraisemblance_ if we heighten the illusion with a few photographs, don't you? They cost about a quarter apiece at Blank's, in Twenty-third Street."

"A good idea that," I answered, amused at the thoroughness with which Bragdon was "doing" Venice. "We can remember what we haven't seen so very much more easily."

"Yes," Bragdon said, "and besides, they'll keep us from exaggeration."

And then he went on to tell me of his month in Venice; how he chartered a gondola for the whole of his stay there from a handsome romantic Venetian youth, whose name was on a card Tom had had printed for the occasion, reading:

GIUSEPPE ZOCCO Gondolas at all Hours Cor. Grand Canal and Garibaldi St.

"Giuseppe was a character," Bragdon said. "One of the remnants of a by-gone age. He could sing like a bird, and at night he used to bring his friends around to the front of my palace and hitch up to one of the piles that were driven beside my doorstep, and there they'd sing their soft Italian melodies for me by the hour. It was better than Italian opera, and only cost me ten dollars for the whole season."

"And did this Giuseppe speak English, Tom?" I queried, "or did you speak Italian? I am curious to know how you got on together in a conversational sense."

"That is a point, my dear Phil," Bragdon replied, "that I have never decided. I have looked at it from every point of view, and it has baffled me. I have asked myself the question, which would be the more likely, that Giuseppe should speak English, or that I should speak Italian? It has seemed to me that the latter would be the better way, for, all things considered, an American produce-broker is more likely to be familiar with the Italian tongue than a Venetian gondola-driver with the English. On the other hand, we want our accounts of these trips to seem truthful, and you _know_ that I am not familiar with Italian, and we do not either of us know that a possible Zocco would not be a fluent speaker of English. To be honest with you, I will say that I had hoped you would not ask the question."

"Well," I answered, "I'll withdraw it. As this is only a spirit trip we can each decide the point as it seems best to us."

"I think that is the proper plan," he said, and then, proceeding with his story, he described to me the marvellous paintings that adorned the walls of his palace; how he had tried to propel a gondola himself, and got a fall into the "deliciously tepid waters of the canal," as he called them, for his pains; and it seemed very real, so minute were the details into which he entered.

But the height of Bragdon's realism in telling his story of Venice was reached when, diving down into the innermost recesses of his vest pocket, he brought forth a silver filigree effigy of a gondola, which he handed me with the statement that it was for me.

"I got that in the plaza of St. Marc's. I had visited the cathedral, inspected the mosaic flooring, taken a run to the top of the campanile, fed the pigeons, and was just about returning to the palace, when I thought of you, Phil, getting ready to do Rome with me, and I thought to myself 'what a dear fellow he is!' and, as I thought that, it occurred to me that I'd like you to know I had you in mind at the time, and so I stopped in one of those brilliant little shops on the plaza, where they keep everything they have in the windows, and bought that. It isn't much, old fellow, but it's for remembrance' sake."

I took it from him and pressed his hand affectionately, and for a moment, as the little sharpie rose and fell with the rising and falling of the slight undulating waves made by the passing up to anchorage of a small steam-tug, I almost believed that Tom had been to Venice. I still treasure the little filigree gondola, nor did I, when some years later I visited Venice, see there anything for which I would have exchanged that sweet token of remembrance.

Bragdon, as will already have been surmised by you who read, was more of a humorist than anything else, but the enthusiasm of his humor, its absolute spontaneity and kindliness, gave it at times a semblance to what might pass for true poetry. He was by disposition a thoroughly sweet spirit, and when I realized that he had gone before, and that the trips he and I had looked forward to with such almost boyish delight year by year were never more to be had, my eyes grew wet, and for a time I was disconsolate; and yet one week later I was laughing heartily at Bragdon.

He had appointed me, it was found when his will was read, his literary executor. I fairly roared with mirth to think of Bragdon's having a literary executor, for, imaginative and humorous as he undoubtedly was, he had been so thoroughly identified in my mind with the produce business that I could scarcely bring myself to think of him in the light of a literary person. Indeed, he had always seemed to me to have an intolerance of literature. I had taken but half of a spirit trip with him when I discovered that he relied more upon his own imagination for facts of interest than upon what could be derived from books. He showed this trait no more strongly than when we came, upon this same Italian tour of which I have already written at some length, to do Rome together, for I then discovered how imaginary indeed the trips were from his point of view. What seemed to him as proper to be was, and neither history nor considerations of locality ever interfered with the things being as he desired them to be. Had it been otherwise he never would have endeavored to make me believe that he had stood upon the very spot in the Colosseum where Caesar addressed the Roman mob in impassioned words, exhorting them to resist the encroachment upon their liberties of the Pope!

At first it seemed to me that my late friend was indulging in a posthumous joke, and I paid his memory the compliment of seeing the point. But when, some days later, I received a note from his executors stating that they had found in the store-room of Bragdon's house a large packing-box full of papers and books, upon the cover of which was tacked a card bearing my address, I began to wonder whether or not, after all, the imagination of my dead friend had really led him to believe that he possessed literary ability.

I immediately sent word to the executors to have the box forwarded to me by express, and awaited its coming with no little interest, and, it must be confessed, with some anxiety; for I am apt to be depressed by the literary lucubrations of those of my friends who, devoid of the literary quality, do yet persist in writing, and for as long a time as I had known Bragdon I had never experienced through him any sensations save those of exhilaration, and I greatly feared a posthumous breaking of the spell. Poet in feeling as I thought him, I could hardly imagine a poem written by my friend, and while I had little doubt that I could live through the reading of a novel or short prose sketch from his pen, I was apprehensive as to the effect of a possible bit of verse.

It seemed to me, in short, that a poem by Bragdon, while it might easily show the poet's fancy, could not fail to show also the produce-broker's clumsiness of touch. His charm was the spontaneity of his spoken words, his enthusiastic personality disarming all criticism; what the labored productions of his fancy might prove to be, I hardly dared think. It was this dread that induced me, upon receipt of the box, appalling in its bulk and unpleasantly suggestive of the departure to other worlds of the original consignor, since it was long and deep like the outer oaken covering of a casket, to delay opening it for some days; but finally