Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/339

1885.] gondola, which, if several degrees less uncomfortable than the other benches, were also, in this case, naturally several degrees further from the prevailing divinity. It was a relief to every one, when somebody suggested that Madame Facchino should sing one of her amusing French songs, which that obliging little person at once proceeded to do, – the shrill little voice, so brimful of chic, so absolutely devoid of charm, pealing like some small metal alarum across the dreamy stillness, where an occasional fisherman, knee-deep in the shallows, lifted his head in mild astonishment to see from whence the unaccountable sound proceeded.

After a great deal of futile tacking, the useless sail was at last dropped, and the men took to their oars, but the tide was very low, and it was therefore necessary to make the entire circuit of the piles set to mark the deeper channels, and which took them in a long succession of snake-like divagations, the advanced boat being often full broadside to the island while the other was still pointed towards it. It got colder and colder too, the clouds which had hung about all day condensing more and more, and threatening both wind and rain.

They arrived at last in the midst of a regular burasque, which now came down in earnest. The ladies were hurried up the narrow path to the monastery, between two rows of acacia-bushes, swept like plumes of cocks' feathers, and bent nearly double by the gale. A brown-frocked brother came hospitably to the door to meet them, and led them through the cloister into a little bare room where there was a deal table and half-a-dozen of chairs, and where he hastened to shut the window lest the ladies should

suffer from the draught. It was much more like arriving at some mountain hospice, wearied and battered with the toils and dangers of a mountain - pass, than after a couple of hours' sail across the placid lagunes in the middle of a Venetian May. The little sanctuary was swept from end to end with wild gusts of wind, which sent the leaves of the acacias huddling into the corners of the cloister, and collecting in a small green drift round the foot of the tall black crosses. One of the gondoliers carrying the provisions from the boat had his hat blown into the sea. Every one looked more or less cold, out of temper, buffeted; Madame Facchino least so, her indomitable ugliness defying the utmost rigour of the elements to injure its perennial bloom. With a cigarette in her mouth, she sat on the low wall outside the cloisters – her hat on one side, her yellow shawl around her neck, her white teeth and green eyes gleaming the – very picture of good-humour and insouciance. Mrs Markham meanwhile retired into the interior of the apartment allotted to them. If she looked like a swan now, it was certainly like a swan which had been roughly assailed by the tempest. Her beautiful hair was disarranged, her dress crumpled, that repose which was so large an ingredient in her charm seriously invaded; there was no doubt at all, too, that, to put it plainly, she was extremely cross.

Happily luncheon produced its usual ameliorating influences; and after luncheon, the storm being past, and the sun having reappeared, most of the party started to explore the island, the Colonel and Mrs Markham leading the way at some little distance in advance of the rest.