Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Zorzi knew very well that although the young gentlemen who were playing at conspiracy in Jacopo’s house did not constitute a serious danger to the Republic, they were fully aware of their own peril, and would not have hesitated to take his life if it had not occurred to them that he might be useful. His intrepid manner had saved him, but now that the night was over he felt such a weariness and lassitude as he had never known before.

  The adventure had its amusing side, of course. To Zorzi, who knew the people well, it was very laughable to think that a score of dissolute young patricians should first fancy themselves able to raise a revolution against the most firmly established government in Europe, and should then squander the privacy which they had bought at a frightful risk in mere gambling and dice-playing. But there was nothing humorous about the oath he had taken. In the first place, it had been sworn in solemn earnest, and was therefore binding upon him; secondly, if he broke it, his life would not be worth a day’s purchase. He was brave enough to have scorned the second consideration, but he was far too honourable to try and escape the first. He had made the promises to save his life, it was true, and under great pressure, but he would have despised himself as a coward if he had not meant to keep them.

  And he had solemnly bound himself to respect “the betrothed brides” of all the brethren of the company. Marietta was not betrothed to Jacopo Contarini yet, but there was no doubt that she would be before many days; to “respect” undoubtedly meant that he must not try to win her away from her affianced husband; if he had ever dreamt that in some fair, fantastically improbable future, Marietta could be his wife, he had parted with the right to dream the like again. Therefore, when he had stood awhile looking up at her window that morning, he sighed heavily and went away.

  He had never had any hope that she would love him, much less that he could ever marry her, yet he felt that he was parting with the only thing in life which he held higher than his art, and that the parting was final. For months, perhaps for years, he had never closed his eyes to sleep without calling up her face and repeating her name, he had never got up in the morning without looking forward to seeing her and hearing her voice before he should lie down again. A man more like others would have said to himself that no promise could bind him to anything more than the performance of an action, or the abstention from one, and that the right of dreaming was his own for ever. But Zorzi judged differently. He had a sensitiveness that was rather manly than masculine; he had scruples of which he was not ashamed, but which most men would laugh at; he had delicacies of conscience in his most private thoughts such as would have been more natural in a cloistered nun, living in ignorance of the world, than in a waif who had faced it at its worst, and almost from childhood. Innocent as his dream had been, he resolved to part with it, and never to dream it again. He was glad that Marietta had taken back the rose he had picked up yesterday; if she had not, he would have forced himself to throw it away, and that would have hurt him.

  So he began his day in a melancholy mood, as having buried out of sight for ever something that was very dear to him. In time, his love of his art would fill the place of the other love, but on this first day he went about in silence, with hungry eyes and tightened lips, like a man who is starving and is too proud to ask a charity.

  He waited for Beroviero at the door of his house, as he did every morning, to attend him to the laboratory. The old man looked at him inquiringly, and Zorzi bent his head a little to explain that he had done what had been required of him, and he followed his master across the wooden bridge. When they were alone in the laboratory, he told as much of his story as was necessary.

  He had found the lord Jacopo Contarini at his house with a party of friends, he said, and he added at once that they were all men. Contarini had bidden him speak before them all, but he had whispered his message so that only Contarini should hear it. After a time he had been allowed to come away. No — Contarini had given no direct answer, he had sent no reply; he had only said aloud to his friends that the message he received was expected. That was all. The friends who were there? Zorzi answered with perfect truth that he did not remember to have seen, any of them before.

  Beroviero was silent for a while, considering the story.

  “He would have thought it discourteous to leave his friends,” he said at last, “or to whisper an answer to a messenger in their presence. He said that he had expected the message, he will therefore come.”

  To this Zorzi answered nothing, for he was glad not to be questioned further about what had happened. Presently Beroviero settled to his work with his usual concentration. For many months he had been experimenting in the making of fine red glass of a certain tone, of which he had brought home a small fragment from one of his journeys. Hitherto he had failed in every attempt. He had tried one mixture after another, and had produced a score of different specimens, but not one of them had that marvellous light in it, like sunshine striking through bright blood, which he was striving to obtain. It was nearly three weeks since his small furnace had been allowed to go out, and by this time he alone knew what the glowing pots contained, for he wrote down very carefully what he did and in characters which he believed no one could understand but himself.

  As usual every morning, he proceeded to make trial of the materials fused in the night. The furnace, though not large, held three crucibles, before each of which was the opening, still called by the Italian name ‘bocca,’ through which the materials are put into the pots to melt into glass, and by which the melted glass is taken out on the end of the blow-pipe, or in a copper ladle, when it is to be tested by casting it. The furnace was arched from end to end, and about the height of a tall man; the working end was like a round oven with three glowing openings; the straight part, some twenty feet long, contained the annealing oven through which the finished pieces were made to move slowly, on iron lier-pans, during many hours, till the glass had passed from extreme heat almost to the temperature of the air. The most delicate vessels ever produced in Murano have all been made in single furnaces, the materials being melted, converted into glass and finally annealed, by one fire. At least one old furnace is standing and still in use, which has existed for centuries, and those made nowadays are substantially like it in every important respect.

  Zorzi stood holding a long-handled copper ladle, ready to take out a specimen of the glass containing the ingredients most lately added. A few steps from the furnace a thick and smooth plate of iron was placed on a heavy wooden table, and upon this the liquid glass was to be poured out to cool.

  “It must be time,” said Beroviero, “unless the boys forgot to turn the sand-glass at one of the watches. The hour is all but run out, and it must be the twelfth since I put in the materials.”

  “I turned it myself, an hour after midnight,” said Zorzi, “and also the next time, when it was dawn. It runs three hours. Judging by the time of sunrise it is running right.”

  “Then make the trial.”

  Beroviero stood opposite Zorzi, his face pale with heat and excitement, his fiery eyes reflecting the fierce light from the ‘bocca’ as he bent down to watch the copper ladle go in. Zorzi had wrapped a cloth round his right hand, against the heat, and he thrust the great spoon through the round orifice. Though it was the hundredth time of testing, the old man watched his movements with intensest interest.

  “Quickly, quickly!” he cried, quite unconscious that he was speaking.

  There was no need of hurrying Zorzi. In two steps he had reached the table, and the white hot stuff spread out over the iron plate, instantly turning to a greenish yellow, then to a pale rose-colour, then to a deep and glowing red, as it felt the cool metal. The two men stood watching it closely, for it was thin and would soon cool. Zorzi was too wise to say anything. Beroviero’s look of interest gradually turned into an expression of disappointment.

  “Another failure,” he said, with a resignation which no one would have expected in such a man.

  His practised eyes had guessed
the exact hue of the glass, while it still lay on the iron, half cooled and far too hot to touch. Zorzi took a short rod and pushed the round sheet till a part of it was over the edge of the table.

  “It is the best we have had yet,” he observed, looking at it.

  “Is it?” asked Beroviero with little interest, and without giving the glass another glance. “It is not what I am trying to get. It is the colour of wine, not of blood. Make something, Zorzi, while I write down the result of the experiment.”

  He took big pen and the sheet of rough paper on which he had already noted the proportions of the materials, and he began to write, sitting at the large table before the open window. Zorzi took the long iron blow-pipe, cleaned it with a cloth and pushed the end through the orifice from which he had taken the specimen. He drew it back with a little lump of melted glass sticking to it.

  Holding the blow-pipe to his lips, he blew a little, and the lump swelled, and he swung the pipe sharply in a circle, so that the glass lengthened to the shape of a pear, and he blew again and it grew. At the ‘bocca’ of the furnace he heated it, for it was cooling quickly; and he had his iron pontil ready, as there was no one to help him, and he easily performed the feat of taking a little hot glass on it from the pot and attaching it to the further end of the fast-cooling pear. If Beroviero had been watching him he would have been astonished at the skill with which the young man accomplished what it requires two persons to do; but Zorzi had tricks of his own, and the pontil supported itself on a board while he cracked the pear from the blow-pipe with a wet iron, as well as if a boy had held it in place for him; and then heating and reheating the piece, he fashioned it and cut it with tongs and shears, rolling the pontil on the flat arms of his stool with his left hand, and modelling the glass with his right, till at last he let it cool to its natural colour, holding it straight downward, and then swinging it slowly, so that it should fan itself in the air. It was a graceful calix now, of a deep wine red, clear and transparent as claret.

  Zorzi turned to the window to show it to his master, not for the sake of the workmanship but of the colour. The old man’s head was bent over his writing; Marietta was standing outside, and her eyes met Zorzi’s. He did not blush as he had blushed yesterday, when he looked up from the fire and saw her; he merely inclined his head respectfully, to acknowledge her presence, and then he stood by the table waiting for the master to notice him, and not bestowing another glance on the young girl.

  Beroviero turned to him at last. He was so used to Marietta’s presence that he paid no attention to her.

  “What is that thing?” he asked contemptuously.

  “A specimen of the glass we tried,” answered the young man. “I have blown it thin to show the colour.”

  “A man who can have such execrable taste as to make a drinking-cup of coloured glass does not deserve to know as much as you do.”

  “But it is very pretty,” said Marietta through the window, and bending forward she rested her white hands on the table, among the little heaps of chemicals. “Anneal it, and give it to me,” she added.

  “Keep such a thing in my house?” asked Beroviero scornfully. “Break up that rubbish!” he added roughly, speaking to Zorzi.

  Without a word Zorzi smashed the calix off the iron into an old earthen jar already half full of broken glass. Then he put the pontil in its place and went to tend the fire. Marietta left the window and entered the room.

  “Am I disturbing you?” she asked gently, as she stood by her father.

  “No. I have finished writing.” He laid down his pen.

  “Another failure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps I do not bring you good luck with your experiments,” suggested the girl, leaning down and looking over his shoulder at the crabbed writing, so that her cheek almost touched his. “Is that why you wish to send me away?”

  Beroviero turned in his chair, raised his heavy brows and looked up into her face, but said nothing.

  “Nella has just told me that you have ordered my wedding gown,” continued Marietta.

  “We are not alone,” said her father in a low voice.

  “Zorzi probably knows what is the gossip of the house, and what I have been the last to hear,” answered the young girl. “Besides, you trust him with all your secrets.”

  “Yes, I trust him,” assented Beroviero. “But these are private matters.”

  “So private, that my serving-woman knows more of them than I do.”

  “You encourage her to talk.”

  Marietta laughed, for she was determined to be good-humoured, in spite of what she said.

  “If I did, that would not teach her things which I do not know myself! Is it true that you have ordered the gown to be embroidered with pearls?”

  “You like pearls, do you not?” asked Beroviero with a little anxiety.

  “You see!” cried Marietta triumphantly. “Nella knows all about it.”

  “I was going to tell you this morning,” said her father in a tone of annoyance. “By my faith, one can keep nothing secret! One cannot even give you a surprise.”

  “Nella knows everything,” returned the girl, sitting on the corner of the table and looking from her father to Zorzi. “That must be why you chose her for my serving-woman when I was a little girl. She knows all that happens in the house by day and night, so that I sometimes think she never sleeps.”

  Zorzi looked furtively towards the table, for he could not help hearing all that was said.

  “For instance,” continued Marietta, watching him, “she knows that last night some one unlocked the chain that moors the skiff, and rowed away towards Venice.”

  To her surprise Zorzi showed no embarrassment. He had made up the fire and now sat down at a little distance, on one of the flat arms of the glass-blower’s working-stool. His face was pale and quiet, and his eyes did not avoid hers.

  “If I caught any one using my boat without my leave, I would make him pay dear,” said Beroviero, but without anger, as if he were stating a general truth.

  “Whoever it was who took the boat brought it back an hour after midnight, locked the padlock again and went away,” said Marietta.

  “Tell Nella that I am much indebted to her for her watchfulness. She is as good as a house-dog. Tell her to come and wake me if she sees any one taking the boat again.”

  “She says she knows who took it last night,” observed Marietta, who was puzzled by the attitude of the two men; she had now decided that it had not been Zorzi who had used the boat, but on the other hand the story did not rouse her father’s anger as she had expected.

  “Did she tell you the man’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was it?”

  “She said it was Zorzi.” Marietta laughed incredulously as she spoke, and Zorzi smiled quietly.

  Beroviero was silent for a moment and looked out of the window.

  “Listen to me,” he said at last. “Tell your graceless gossip of a serving-woman that I will answer for Zorzi, and that the next time she hears any one taking the boat at night she had better come and call me, and open her eyes a little wider. Tell her also that I entertain proper persons to take care of my property without any help from her. Tell her furthermore that she talks too much. You should not listen to a servant’s miserable chatter.”

  “I will tell her,” replied Marietta meekly. “Did you say that the gown was to be embroidered with pearls and silver, father, or with pearls and gold?”

  “I believe I said gold,” answered the old man discontentedly.

  “And when will it be ready? In about two months?”

  “I daresay.”

  “So you mean to marry me in two months,” concluded Marietta. “That is not a long time.”

  “Should you prefer two years?” inquired Beroviero with increasing annoyance. Marietta slipped from the table to her feet.

  “It depends on the bridegroom,” she answered. “Perhaps I may prefer to wait a lifetime!” She moved towards
the door.

  “Oh, you shall be satisfied with the bridegroom! I promise you that.” The old man looked after her. At the door she turned her head, smiling.

  “I may be hard to please,” she said quietly, and she went out into the garden.

  When she was gone Beroviero shut the window carefully, and though the round bull’s-eye panes let in the light plentifully, they effectually prevented any one from seeing into the room. The door was already closed.

  “You should have been more careful,” he said to Zorzi in a tone of reproach. “You should not have let any one see you, when you took the boat.”

  “If the woman spent half the night looking out of her window, sir, I do not understand how I could have taken the boat without being seen by her.”

  “Well, well, there is no harm done, and you could not help it, I daresay. I have something else to say. You saw the lord Jacopo last night; what do you think of him? He is a fine-looking young man. Should not any girl be glad to get such a handsome husband? What do you think? And his name, too! one of the best in the Great Council. They say he has a few debts, but his father is very rich, and has promised me that he will pay everything if only his son can be brought to marry and lead a graver life. What do you think?”

  “He is a very handsome young man,” said Zorzi loyally. “What should I think? It is a most honourable marriage for your house.”

  “I hear no great harm of Jacopo,” continued Beroviero more familiarly. “His father is miserly. We have spent much time in the preliminary arrangements, without the knowledge of the son, and the old man is very grasping! He would take all my fortune for the dowry if he could. But he has to do with a glass-blower!”