Beroviero smiled thoughtfully. Zorzi was silent, for he was suffering.
“You may wonder why I sent that message last night,” began the master again, “since matters are already so far settled with Jacopo’s father. You would suppose that nothing more remained but to marry the couple in the presence of both families, should you not?”
“I know little of such affairs, sir,” answered Zorzi.
“That would be the usual way,” continued Beroviero. “But I will not marry Marietta against her will. I have always told her so. She shall see her future husband before she is betrothed, and persuade herself with her own eyes that she is not being deceived into marrying a hunchback.”
“But supposing that after all the lord Jacopo should not be to her taste,” suggested Zorzi, “would you break off the match?”
“Break off the match?” cried Beroviero indignantly. “Never! Not to her taste? The handsomest man in Venice, with a great name and a fortune to come? It would not be my fault if the girl went mad and refused! I would make her like him if she dared to hesitate a moment!”
“Even against her will?”
“She has no will in the matter,” retorted Beroviero angrily.
“But you have always told her that you would not marry her against her will—”
“Do not anger me, Zorzi! Do not try your specious logic with me! Invent no absurd arguments, man! Against her will, indeed? How should she know any will but mine in the matter? I shall certainly not marry her against her will! She shall will what I please, neither more nor less.”
“If that is your point of view,” said Zorzi, “there is no room for argument.”
“Of course not. Any reasonable person would laugh at the idea that a girl in her senses should not be glad to marry Jacopo Contarini, especially after having seen him. If she were not glad, she would not be in her senses, in other words she would not be sane, and should be treated as a lunatic, for her own good. Would you let a lunatic do as he liked, if he tried to jump out of the window? The mere thought is absurd.”
“Quite,” said Zorzi.
Sad as he was, he could almost have laughed at the old man’s inconsequent speeches.
“I am glad that you so heartily agree with me,” answered Beroviero in perfect sincerity. “I do not mean to say that I would ask your opinion about my daughter’s marriage. You would not expect that. But I know that I can trust you, for we have worked together a long time, and I am used to hearing what you have to say.”
“You have always been very good to me,” replied Zorzi gratefully.
“You have always been faithful to me,” said the old man, laying his hand gently on Zorzi’s shoulder. “I know what that means in this world.”
As soon as there was no question of opposing his despotic will, his kindly nature asserted itself, for he was a man subject to quick changes of humour, but in reality affectionate.
“I am going to trust you much more than hitherto,” he continued. “My sons are grown men, independent of me, but willing to get from me all they can. If they were true artists, if I could trust their taste, they should have had my secrets long ago. But they are mere money-makers, and it is better that they should enrich themselves with the tasteless rubbish they make in their furnaces, than degrade our art by cheapening what should be rare and costly. Am I right?”
“Indeed you are!” Zorzi now spoke in a tone of real conviction.
“If I thought you were really capable of making coloured drinking-cups like that abominable object you made this morning, with the idea that they could ever be used, you should not stay on Venetian soil a day,” resumed the old man energetically. “You would be as bad as my sons, or worse. Even they have enough sense to know that half the beauty of a cup, when it is used, lies in the colour of the wine itself, which must be seen through it. But I forgive you, because you were only anxious to blow the glass thin, in order to show me the tint. You know better. That is why I mean to trust you in a very grave matter.”
Zorzi bent his head respectfully, but said nothing.
“I am obliged to make a journey before my daughter’s marriage takes place,” continued Beroviero. “I shall entrust to you the manuscript secrets I possess. They are in a sealed package so that you cannot read them, but they will be in your care. If I leave them with any one else, my sons will try to get possession of them while I am away. During my last journey I carried them with me, but I am growing old, life is uncertain, especially when a man is travelling, and I would rather leave the packet with you. It will be safer.”
“It shall be altogether safe,” said Zorzi. “No one shall guess that I have it.”
“No one must know. I would take you with me on this journey, but I wish you to go on with the experiments I have been making. We shall save time, if you try some of the mixtures while I am away. When it is too hot, let the furnace go out.”
“But who will take charge of your daughter, sir?” asked Zorzi. “You cannot leave her alone in the house.”
“My son Giovanni and his wife will live in my house while I am away. I have thought of everything. If you choose, you may bring your belongings here, and sleep and eat in the glass-house.”
“I should prefer it.”
“So should I. I do not want my sons to pry into what we are doing. You can hide the packet here, where they will not think of looking for it. When you go out, lock the door. When you are in, Giovanni will not come. You will have the place to yourself, and the boys who feed the fire at night will not disturb you. Of course my daughter will never come here while I am away. You will be quite alone.”
“When do you go?” asked Zorzi.
“On Monday morning. On Sunday I shall take Marietta to Saint Mark’s. When she has seen her husband the betrothal can take place at once.”
Zorzi was silent, for the future looked black enough. He already saw himself shut up in the glass-house for two long months, or not much less, as effectually separated from Marietta by the narrow canal as if an ocean were between them. She would never cross over and spend an hour in the little garden then, and she would be under the care of Giovanni Beroviero, who hated him, as he well knew.
CHAPTER VI
ARISTARCHI ROSE EARLY, though it had been broad dawn when he had entered his home. He lived not far from the house of the Agnus Dei, on the opposite side of the same canal but beyond the Baker’s Bridge. His house was small and unpretentious, a little wooden building in two stories, with a small door opening to the water and another at the back, giving access to a patch of dilapidated and overgrown garden, whence a second door opened upon a dismal and unsavoury alley. One faithful man, who had followed him through many adventures, rendered him such services as he needed, prepared the food he liked and guarded the house in his absence. The fellow was far too much in awe of his terrible master to play the spy or to ask inopportune questions.
The Greek put on the rich dress of a merchant captain of his own people, the black coat, thickly embroidered with gold, the breeches of dark blue cloth, the almost transparent linen shirt, open at the throat. A large blue cap of silk and cloth was set far back on his head, showing all the bony forehead, and his coal-black beard and shaggy hair had been combed as smooth as their shaggy nature would allow. He wore a magnificent belt fully two hands wide, in which were stuck three knives of formidable length and breadth, in finely chased silver sheaths. His muscular legs were encased in leathern gaiters, ornamented with gold and silver, and on his feet he wore broad turned-up slippers from Constantinople. The dress was much the same as that which the Turks had found there a few years earlier, and which they soon amalgamated with their own. It set off the captain’s vast breadth of shoulder and massive limbs, and as he stepped into his hired boat the idlers at the water-stairs gazed upon him with an admiration of which he was well aware, for besides being very splendidly dressed he looked as if he could have swept them all into the canal with a turn of his hand.
Without saying whither he was bound he directed
the oarsman through the narrow channels until he reached the shallow lagoon. The boatman asked whither he should go.
“To Murano,” answered the Greek. “And keep over by Saint Michael’s, for the tide is low.”
The boatman had already understood that his passenger knew Venice almost as well as he. The boat shot forward at a good rate under the bending oar, and in twenty minutes Aristarchi was at the entrance to the canal of San Piero and within sight of Beroviero’s house.
“Easy there,” said the Greek, holding up his hand. “Do you know Murano well, my man?”
“As well as Venice, sir.”
“Whose house is that, which has the upper story built on columns over the footway?”
“It belongs to Messer Angelo Beroviero. His glass-house takes up all the left aide of the canal as far as the bridge.”
“And beyond the bridge I can see two new houses, on the same side. Whose are they?”
“They belong to the two sons of Messer Angelo Beroviero, who have furnaces of their own, all the way to the corner of the Grand Canal.”
“Is there a Grand Canal in Murano?” asked Aristarchi.
“They call it so,” answered the boatman with some contempt. “The Beroviero have several houses on it, too.”
“It seems to me that Beroviero owns most of Murano,” observed the Greek. “He must be very rich.”
“He is by far the richest. But there is Alvise Trevisan, a rich man, too, and there are two or three others. The island and all the glass-works are theirs, amongst them.”
“I have business with Messer Angelo,” said Aristarchi. “But if he is such a great man he will hardly be in the glass-house.”
“I will ask,” answered the boatman.
In a few minutes he made his boat fast to the steps before the glass-house, went ashore and knocked at the door. Aristarchi leaned back in his seat, chewing pistachio nuts, which he carried in an embroidered leathern bag at his belt. His right hand played mechanically with the short string of thick amber beads which he used for counting. The June sun blazed down upon his swarthy face.
At the grating beside the door the porter’s head appeared, partially visible behind the bars.
“Is Messer Angelo Beroviero within?” inquired the boatman civilly.
“What is your business?” asked the porter in a tone of surly contempt, instead of answering the question.
“There is a rich foreign gentleman here, who desires to speak with him,” answered the boatman.
“Is he the Pope?” asked the porter, with fine irony.
“No, sir,” said the other, intimidated by the fellow’s manner. “He is a rich—”
“Tell him to wait, then.” And the surly head disappeared.
The boatman supposed that the man was gone to speak with his master, and waited patiently by the door. Aristarchi chewed his pistachio nut till there was nothing left, at which time he reached the end of his patience. He argued that it was a good sign if Angelo Beroviero kept rich strangers waiting at his gate, for it showed that he had no need of their custom. On the other hand the Greek’s dignity was offended now that he had been made to wait too long, for he was hasty by nature. Once, in a fit of irritation with a Candiot who stammered out of sheer fright, the captain had ordered him to be hanged. Having finished his nut, he stood up in the boat and stepped ashore.
“Knock again,” he said to the boatman, who obeyed.
There was no answer this time.
“I can hear the fellow inside,” said the boatman.
The grating was too high for a man to look through it from outside. Aristarchi laid his knotty hands on the stone sill and pulled himself up till his face was against the grating. He now looked in and saw the porter sitting in his chair.
“Have you taken my message to your master?” inquired the Greek.
The porter looked up in surprise, which increased when he caught sight of the ferocious face of the speaker. But he was not to be intimidated so easily.
“Messer Angelo is not to be disturbed at his studies,” he said. “If you wait till noon, perhaps he will come out to go to dinner.”
“Perhaps!” repeated Aristarchi, still hanging by his hands. “Do you think I shall wait all day?”
“I do not know. That is your affair.”
“Precisely. And I do not mean to wait.”
“Then go away.”
But the Greek had come on an exploring expedition in which he had nothing to lose. Hauling himself up a little higher, till his mouth was close to the grating, he hailed the house as he would have hailed a ship at sea, in a voice of thunder.
“Ahoy there! Is any one within? Ahoy! Ahoy!”
This was more than the porter’s equanimity could bear. He looked about for a weapon with which to attack the Greek’s face through the bars, heaping, upon him a torrent of abuse in the meantime.
“Son of dogs and mules!” he cried in a rising growl. “Ill befall the foul souls of thy dead and of their dead before them.”
“Ahoy — oh! Ahoy!” bellowed the Greek, who now thoroughly enjoyed the situation.
The boatman, anxious for drink money, and convinced that his huge employer would get the better of the porter, had obligingly gone down upon his hands and knees, thrusting his broad back under the captain’s feet, so that Aristarchi stood upon him and was now prepared to prolong the interview without any further effort. His terrific shouts rang through the corridor to the garden.
The first person to enter the little lodge was Marietta herself, and the Greek broke off short in the middle of another tremendous yell as soon as he saw her. She turned her face up to him, quite fearlessly, and was very much inclined to laugh as she saw the sudden change in his expression.
“Madam,” he said with great politeness, “I beg you to forgive my manner of announcing myself. If your porter were more obliging, I should have been admitted in the ordinary way.”
“What is this atrocious disturbance?” asked Zorzi, entering before Marietta could answer. “Pray leave the fellow to me,” he added, speaking to Marietta, who cast one more glance at Aristarchi and went out.
“Sir,” said the captain blandly, “I admit that my behaviour may give you some right to call me ‘fellow,’ but I trust that my apology will make you consider me a gentleman like yourself. Your porter altogether refused to take a message to Messer Angelo Beroviero. May I ask whether you are his son, sir?”
“No, sir. You say that you wish to speak with the master. I can take a message to him, but I am not sure that he will see any one to-day.”
Aristarchi imagined that Beroviero made himself inaccessible, in order to increase the general idea of his wealth and importance. He resolved to convey a strong impression of his own standing.
“I am the chief partner in a great house of Greek merchants settled in Palermo,” he said. “My name is Charalambos Aristarchi, and I desire the honour of speaking with Messer Angelo about the purchase of several cargoes of glass for the King of Sicily.”
“I will deliver your message, sir,” said Zorzi. “Pray wait a minute, I will open the door.”
Aristarchi’s big head disappeared at last.
“Yes!” growled the porter to Zorzi. “Open the door yourself, and take the blame. The man has the face of a Turkish pirate, and his voice is like the bellowing of several bulls.”
Zorzi unbarred the door, which opened inward, and Aristarchi turned a little sideways in order to enter, for his shoulders would have touched the two door-posts. The slight and gracefully built Dalmatian looked at him with some curiosity, standing aside to let him pass, before barring the door again. Aristarchi, though not much taller than himself, was the biggest man he had ever seen. He thanked Zorzi, who pushed forward the porter’s only chair for him to sit on while he waited.
“I will bring you an answer immediately,” said Zorzi, and disappeared down the corridor.
Aristarchi sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and took a pistachio nut from his pouch.
“Master porter,” he began in a friendly tone, “can you tell me who that beautiful lady is, who came here a moment ago?”
“There is no reason why I should,” snarled the porter, beginning to strip the outer leaves from a large onion which he pulled from a string of them hanging by the wall.
Aristarchi said nothing for a few moments, but watched the man with an air of interest.
“Were you ever a pirate?” he inquired presently.
“No, I never served in your crew.”
The porter was not often at a loss for a surly answer. The Greek laughed outright, in genuine amusement.
“I like your company, my friend,” he said. “I should like to spend the day here.”
“As the devil said to Saint Anthony,” concluded the porter.
Aristarchi laughed again. It was long since he had enjoyed such amusing conversation, and there was a certain novelty in not being feared. He repeated his first question, however, remembering that he had not come in search of diversion, but to gather information.
“Who was the beautiful lady?” he asked. “She is Messer Angelo’s daughter, is she not?”
“A man who asks a question when he knows the answer is either a fool or a knave. Choose as you please.”
“Thanks, friend,” answered Aristarchi, still grinning and showing his jagged teeth. “I leave the first choice to you. Whichever you take, I will take the other. For if you call me a knave, I shall call you a fool, but if you think me a fool, I am quite satisfied that you should be the knave.”
The porter snarled, vaguely feeling that the Greek had the better of him. At that moment Zorzi returned, and his coming put an end to the exchange of amenities.
“My master has no long leisure,” he said, “but he begs you to come in.”
They left the lodge together, and the porter watched them as they went down the dark corridor, muttering unholy things about the visitor who had disturbed him, and bestowing a few curses on Zorzi. Then he went back to peeling his onions.
As Aristarchi went through the garden, he saw Marietta sitting under the plane-tree, making a little net of coloured beads. Her face was turned from him and bent down, but when he had passed she glanced furtively after him, wondering at his size. But her eyes followed Zorzi, till the two reached the door and went in. A moment later Zorzi came out again, leaving his master and the Greek together. Marietta looked down at once, lest her eyes should betray her gladness, for she knew that Zorzi would not go back and could not leave the glass-house, so that site should necessarily be alone with him while the interview in the laboratory lasted.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 986
