Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion Crawford (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📕

"No," answered Zorzi, "it is altogether a composition of my own. I do not know how you mix your materials. How should I?"

"I believe you do," said Beroviero. "I believe you have found it out in some way—"

Zorzi had produced a piece of folded paper from his doublet, and now held it up in his hand.

"I am not bargaining with you, sir, for you are a man of honour. Angelo Beroviero will not rob me, after having been kind to me for so many years. This is my secret, which I discovered alone, with no one's help. The quantities are written out very exactly, and I am sure of them. Read what is written there. By an accident, I may have made something like your glass, but I do not believe it."

He held out the paper. Beroviero's manner changed.

"You were always an honourable fellow, Zorzi. I thank you."

He opened the paper and looked attentively at the contents. Marietta saw his surprise and interest and took the opportunity of smiling at Zorzi.

"It is altogether different from mine," said Beroviero, looking up and handing back the document.

"Is there fortune in that, sir, or not?" asked Zorzi, confident of the reply. "But you know that there is, and that whenever I go, if I can get a furnace, I shall soon be a rich man by the glass alone, without even counting on such skill as I have with my hands."

"It is true," answered the master, nodding his head thoughtfully. "There are many princes who would willingly give you the little you need in order to make your fortune."

"The little that Venice refuses me!" said Zorzi with some bitterness. "Am I presuming so much, then, when I ask you for your daughter's hand? Is it not in my power, or will it not be very soon, to go to some other city, to Milan, or Florence—"

"No, no!" cried Beroviero. "You shall not take her away—"

He stopped short, realising that he had betrayed what had been in his mind, since he had seen the two standing there, clasped in one another's arms, namely, that in spite of him, or with his blessing, his daughter would before long be married to the man she loved.

"Come, come!" he said testily. "This is sheer nonsense!"

He made a step forward as if to break off the situation by going away.

"If you would rather that I should not leave you, sir," said Zorzi, "I will stay here and make my glass in your furnace, and you shall sell it as if it were your own."

"Yes, father, say yes!" cried Marietta, clasping her hands upon the old man's shoulder. "You see how generous Zorzi is!"

"Generous!" Beroviero shook his head. "He is trying to bribe me, for there is a fortune in his glass, as he says. He is offering me a fortune, I tell you, to let him marry you!"

"The fortune which Messer Jacopo had made you promise to pay him for condescending to be my husband!" retorted Marietta triumphantly. "It seems to me that of the two, Zorzi is the better match!"

Beroviero stared at her a moment, bewildered. Then, in half-comic despair he clapped both his hands upon his ears and shook himself gently free from her.

"Was there ever a woman yet who could not make black seem white?" he cried. "It is nonsense, I tell you! It is all arrant nonsense! You are driving me out of my senses!"

And thereupon he went off down the garden path to the laboratory, apparently forgetting that his presence alone could prevent a repetition of that very offence which had at first roused his anger. The door closed sharply after him, with energetic emphasis.

At the same moment Marietta, who had been gazing into Zorzi's eyes, felt that her own sparkled with amusement, and her father might almost have heard her sweet low laugh through the open window at the other end of the garden.

"That was well done," she said. "Between us we have almost persuaded him."

Zorzi took her willing hand and drew her to him, and she was almost as near to him as before, when she straightened herself with quick and elastic grace, and laughed again.

"No, no!" she said. "If he were to look out and see us again, it would be too ridiculous! Come and sit under the plane-tree in the old place. Do you remember how you stared at the trunk and would not answer me when I tried to make you speak, ever so long ago? Do you know, it was because you would not say—what I wanted you to say—that I let myself think that I could marry Messer Jacopo. If you had only known what you were doing!"

"If I had only known!" Zorzi echoed, as they reached the place and Marietta sat down.

They were within sight of the window, but Beroviero did not heed them. He was seated in his own chair, in deep thought, his elbows resting on the wooden arms, his fingers pressing his temples on each side, thinking of his daughter, and perhaps not quite unaware that she was talking to the only man he had ever really trusted.

"I must tell you something, Zorzi," she was saying, as she looked up into the face she loved. "My father told me last night what he had done yesterday. He saw Messer Zuan Venier—"

Zorzi showed his surprise.

"Pasquale told my father that he had been here to see you. Very well, this Messer Zuan advised that if you could be found, you should be persuaded to go before the tribunal of the Ten of your own free will, to tell your story. And he promised to use all his influence and that of all his friends in your favour."

"They will not change the law for me," Zorzi replied, in a hopeless way.

"If they could hear you, they would make a special decree," said Marietta. "You could tell them your story, you could even show them some of the beautiful things you have made. They would understand that you are a great artist. After all, my father says that one of their most especial duties is to deal with everything that concerns Murano and the glass-works. Do you think that they will banish you, now that you have a secret of your own, and can injure us all by setting up a furnace somewhere else? There is no sense in that! And if you go of your own free will, they will hear you kindly, I think. But if you stay here, they will find you in the end, and they will be very angry then, because you will have been hiding from them."

"You are wise," Zorzi answered. "You are very wise."

"No, I love you."

She spoke softly and glanced at the open window, and then at his face.

"Truly?"

He smiled happily as he whispered his question in one word, and he was resting a hand on the trunk of the tree, just as he had been standing on the day she remembered so well.

"Ah, you know it now!" she answered, with bright and trusting eyes.

"One may know a song well, and yet long to hear it again and again."

"But one cannot be always singing it oneself," she said.

"I could never make it ring as sweetly as you," Zorzi answered.

"Try it! I am tired of hearing my voice—"

"But I am not! There is no voice like it in the world. I shall never care to hear another, as long as I live, nor any other song, nor any other words. And when you are weary of saying them, I shall just say them over in my heart, 'She loves me, she loves me,'—all day long."

"Which is better," Marietta asked, "to love, or to know that you are loved?"

"The two thoughts are like soul and body," Zorzi answered. "You must not part them."

"I never have, since I have known the truth, and never shall again."

Then they were silent for a while, but they hardly knew it, for the world was full of the sweetest music they had ever heard, and they listened together.

"Zorzi!"

The master was at the window, calling him. He started a little as if awaking and obeyed the summons as quickly as his lameness would allow. Marietta looked after him, watching his halting gait, and the little effort he made with his stick at each step. For some secret reason the injury had made him more dear to her, and she liked to remember how brave he had been.

He found Beroviero busy with his papers, and the results of the year's experiments, and the old man at once spoke to him as if nothing unusual had happened, telling him what to do from time to time, so that all might be put in order against the time when the fires should be lighted again in September. By and by two men came carrying a new earthen jar for broken glass, and all fragments in which the box had lain were shovelled into it, and the pieces of the old one were taken away. The furnace was not quite cool even yet, and the crucibles might remain where they were for a few days; but there was much to be done, and Zorzi was kept at work all the morning, while Marietta sat in the shade with her work, often looking towards the window and sometimes catching sight of Zorzi as he moved about within.

Meanwhile the story of Contarini's mishap had spread in Venice like wildfire, and before noon there was hardly one of all his many relations and friends who had not heard it. The tale ran through the town, told by high and low, by Jacopo's own trusted servant, and the old woman who had waited on Arisa, and it had reached the market-place at an early hour, so that the ballad-makers were busy with it. For many had known of the existence of the beautiful Georgian slave and the subject was a good one for a song—how she had caressed him to sleep and fostered his foolish security while he loved her blindly, and how she and her mysterious lover had bound him and shaved his head and face and made him a laughing-stock, so that he must hide himself from the world for months, and moreover how they had carried away by night all the precious gifts he had heaped upon the woman since he had bought her in the slave-market.

Last of all, his father heard it when he came home about an hour before noon from the sitting of the Council of Ten, of which he was a member for that year. He found Zuan Venier waiting in the hall of his house, and the two remained closeted together for some time. For the young man had promised Jacopo to tell old Contarini, though it was an ungrateful errand, and one which, the latter might remember against him. But it was a kind action, and Venier performed it as well as he could, telling the story truthfully, but leaving out all such useless details as might increase the father's anger.

At first indeed the old man brought his hand down heavily upon the table, and swore that he would never see his son again, that he would propose to the Ten to banish him from Venice, that he would disinherit him and let him starve as he deserved, and much more to the same effect. But Venier entreated him, for his own dignity's sake, to do none of these things, but to send Jacopo to his villa on the Brenta river, where he might devote himself in seclusion to growing his hair and beard again; and Zuan represented that if he reappeared in Venice after many months, not very greatly changed, the adventure would be so far forgotten that his life among his friends would be at least bearable, in spite of the ridicule to which he would now and then be exposed for the rest of his life, whenever any one chose out of spite to mention barbers, shears, razors, specifies for causing the hair to grow, or Georgians, in his presence. Further, Venier ventured to suggest to Contarini that he should at once break off the marriage arranged with Beroviero, rather than expose himself to the inevitable indignity of letting the step be taken by the glass-maker, who, said Venier, would as soon think of giving his daughter to a Turk as to Jacopo, since the latter's graceless doings had been suddenly held up to the light as the laughing-stock of all Venice.

In making this suggestion Venier had followed the suggestion of his own good sense and good feeling, and Contarini not only accepted the proposal but was in the utmost haste to act upon it, fearing lest at any moment a messenger might come over from Murano with the