Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Pray excuse me, sir. It is the first time I have ever heard you say anything playful.”

  “Indeed! The fact is, my dear Zorzi, I never knew you well enough to jest with you, till to-day. Paolo Godi’s secrets in my keeping? I wish they were! Oh, not that anything would induce me to break the seals. I told you that. But I wish they were in my possession. I tell you, I would pay down half my fortune to have them, for they would bring me back four times as much within the year. Half my fortune! And I am not poor, Zorzi.”

  “Half your fortune?” repeated Zorzi. “That is a large sum, I imagine. Pray, sir, how much might half your fortune be, in round numbers? Ten thousand silver lires?”

  “Silver!” sneered Giovanni contemptuously.

  “Gold, then?” suggested Zorzi, drawing him on.

  “Gold? Well — possibly,” admitted Giovanni with caution. “But of course I was exaggerating. Ten thousand gold pounds would be too much, of course. Say, five thousand.”

  “I thought you were richer than that,” said Zorzi coolly.

  “Do you mean that five thousand would not be enough to pay for the manuscript?” asked Giovanni.

  “The profits of glass-making are very large when one possesses a valuable secret,” said Zorzi. “Five thousand—” He paused, as though in doubt, or as if making a mental calculation. Giovanni fell into the trap.

  “I would give six,” he said, lowering his voice to a still more confidential tone, and watching his companion eagerly.

  “For six thousand gold lires,” said Zorzi, smiling, “I am quite sure that you could hire a ruffian to break in and cut the throat of the man who has charge of the manuscript.”

  Giovanni’s face fell, but he quickly assumed an expression of righteous indignation.

  “How can you dare to suggest that I would employ such means to rob my father?” he cried.

  “If it were your intention to rob your father, sir, I cannot see that it would matter greatly what means you employed. But I was only jesting, as you were when you said that you had the manuscript. I did not expect that you would take literally what I said.”

  “I see, I see,” answered Giovanni, accepting the means of escape Zorzi offered him. “You were paying me back in my own coin! Well, well! It served me right, after all. You have a ready wit.”

  “I thought that if my conversation were not as instructive as you had hoped, I could at least try to make it amusing — light, gay, witty! I trust you will not take it ill.”

  “Not I!” Giovanni tried to laugh. “But what a wonderful thing is this human imagination of ours! Now, as I talked of the secrets, I forgot that they were my father’s, they seemed almost within my grasp, I was ready to count out the gold, to count out six thousand gold lires. Think of that!”

  “They are worth it,” said Zorzi quietly.

  “You should know best,” answered the other. “There is no such glass as my father’s for lightness and strength. If he had a dozen workmen like you, my brother and I should be ruined in trying to compete with him. I watched you very closely the other day, and I watched the others, too. By the bye, my friend, was that really an accident, or does the man owe you some grudge? I never saw such a thing happen before!”

  “It was an accident, of course,” replied Zorzi without hesitation.

  “If you knew that the man had injured you intentionally, you should have justice at once,” said Giovanni. “As it is, I have no doubt that my father will turn him out without mercy.”

  “I hope not.” Zorzi would say nothing more.

  Giovanni rose to go away. He stood still a moment in thought, and then smiled suddenly as if recollecting himself.

  “The imagination is an extraordinary thing!” he said, going back to the past conversation. “At this very moment I was thinking again that I was actually paying out the money — six thousand lires in gold! I must be mad!”

  “No,” said Zorzi. “I think not.”

  Giovanni turned away, shaking his head and still smiling. To tell the truth, though he knew Zorzi’s character, he had not believed that any one could refuse such a bribe, and he was trying to account for the Dalmatian’s integrity by reckoning up the expectations the young man must have, to set against such a large sum of ready money. He could only find one solution to the problem: Zorzi was already in full possession of the secrets, and would therefore not sell them at any price, because he hoped before long to set up for himself and make his own fortune by them. If this were true, and he could not see how it could be otherwise, he and his brother would be cheated of their heritage when their father died.

  It was clear that something must be done to hinder Zorzi from carrying out his scheme. After all, Zorzi’s own jesting proposal, that a ruffian should be employed to cut his throat, was not to be rejected. It was a simple plan, direct and conclusive. It might not be possible to find the manuscript after all, but the only man who knew its contents would be removed, and Beroviero’s sons would inherit what should come to them by right. Against this project there was the danger that the murderer might some day betray the truth, under torture, or might come back again and again, and demand more money; but the killing of a man who was not even a Venetian, who was an interloper, who could be proved to have abused his master’s confidence, when he should be no longer alive to defend himself, did not strike Giovanni as a very serious matter, and as for any one ever forcing him to pay money which he did not wish to pay, he knew that to be a feat beyond the ability of an ordinary person.

  One other course suggested itself at once. He could forestall Zorzi by writing to his father and telling him what he sincerely believed to be the truth. He knew the old man well, and was sure that if once persuaded that Zorzi had betrayed him by using the manuscript, he would be merciless. The difficulty would lie in making Beroviero believe anything against his favourite. Yet in Giovanni’s estimation the proofs were overwhelming. Besides, he had another weapon with which to rouse his father’s anger against the Dalmatian. Since Marietta had defied him and had gone to see Zorzi in the laboratory, he had not found what he considered a convenient opportunity of speaking to her on the subject; that is to say, he had lacked the moral courage to do so at all. But it would need no courage to complain of her conduct to their father, and though Beroviero’s anger might fall chiefly upon Marietta, a portion of it would take effect against Zorzi. It would be one more force acting in the direction of his ruin.

  Giovanni went away to his own glass-house, meditating all manner of evil to his enemy, and as he reckoned up the chances of success, he began to wonder how he could have been so weak as to offer Zorzi an enormous bribe, instead of proceeding at once to his destruction.

  Unconscious of his growing danger, Zorzi fed the fire of the furnace, and then sat down at the table before the window, laid his crutches beside him, and began to write out the details of his own experiments, as the master had done for years. He wrote the rather elaborate characters of the fifteenth century in a small but clear hand, very unlike old Beroviero’s. The window was open, and the light breeze blew in, fanning his heated forehead; for the weather was growing hotter and hotter, and the order had been given to let the main furnaces cool after the following Saturday, as the workmen could not bear the heat many days longer. After that, they would set to work in a shed at the back of the glass-house to knead the clay for making new crucibles, and the night boys would enjoy their annual holiday, which consisted in helping the workmen by treading the stiff clay in water for several hours every day.

  A man’s shadow darkened the window while Zorzi was writing, and he looked up. Pasquale was standing outside.

  “There is a pestering fellow at the door,” he said, “who will not be satisfied till he has spoken with you. He says he has a message for you from some one in Venice, which he must deliver himself.”

  “For me?” Zorzi rose in surprise.

  CHAPTER XIII

  ZORZI SWUNG HIMSELF along the dark corridor on his crutches after Pasquale, who opened th
e outer door with his usual deliberation. A little man stood outside in grey hose and a servant’s dark coat, gathered in at the waist by a leathern belt. He was clean shaven and his hair was cropped close to his head, which was bare, for he held his black hat in his hand. Zorzi did not like his face. He waited for Zorzi to speak first.

  “Have you a message for me?” asked the Dalmatian. “I am Zorzi.”

  “That is the name, sir,” answered the man respectfully. “My master begs the honour and pleasure of your company this evening, as usual.”

  “Where?” asked Zorzi.

  “My master said that you would know the place, sir, having been there before.”

  “What is your master’s name?”

  “The Angel,” answered the man promptly, keeping his eyes on Zorzi’s face.

  The latter nodded, and the servant at once made an awkward obeisance preparatory to going away.

  “Tell your master,” said Zorzi, “that I have hurt my foot and am walking on crutches, so that I cannot come this evening, but that I thank him for his invitation, and send greeting to him and to the other guests.”

  The man repeated some of the words in a tone hardly audible, evidently committing the message to memory.

  “Signor Zorzi — hurt his foot — crutches — thanks — greeting,” he mumbled. “Yes, sir,” he added in his ordinary voice, “I will say all that. Your servant, sir.”

  With another awkward bow, he turned away to the right and walked very quickly along the footway. He had left his boat at the entrance to the canal, not knowing exactly where the glass-house was. Zorzi looked after him a moment, then turned himself on his sound foot and set his crutches before him to go in. Pasquale was there, and must have heard what had passed. He shut the door and followed Zorzi back a little way.

  “It is no concern of mine,” he said roughly. “You may amuse yourself as you please, for you are young, and your host may be the Archangel Michael himself, or the holy Saint Mark, and the house to which you are bidden may be a paradise full of other angels! But I would as soon sit down before the grating and look at the hooded brother, while the executioner slipped the noose over my head to strangle me, as to go to any place on a bidding delivered by a fellow with such a jail-bird’s head. It is as round as a bullet and as yellow as cheese. He has eyes like a turtle’s and teeth like those of a young shark.”

  “I am quite of your opinion,” said Zorzi, halting at the entrance to the garden.

  “Then why did you not kick him into the canal?” inquired the porter, with admirable logic.

  “Do I look as if I could kick anything?” asked Zorzi, laughing and glancing at his lame foot.

  “And where should I have been?” inquired Pasquale indignantly. “Asleep, perhaps? If you had said ‘kick,’ I would have kicked. Perhaps I am a statue!”

  Zorzi pointed out that it was not usual to answer invitations in that way, even when declining them.

  “And who knows what sort of invitation it was?” retorted the old porter discontentedly. “Since when have you friends in Venice who bid you come to their houses at night, like a thief? Honest men, who are friends, say ‘Come and eat with me at noon, for to-day we have this, or this’ — say, a roast sucking pig, or tripe with garlic. And perhaps you go; and when you have eaten and drunk and it is the cool of the afternoon, you come home. That is what Christians do. Who are they that meet at night? They are thieves, or conspirators, or dice-players, or all three.”

  Pasquale happened to have been right in two guesses out of three, and Zorzi thought it better to say nothing. There was no fear that the surly old man would tell any one of the message; he had proved himself too good a friend to Zorzi to do anything which could possibly bring him into trouble, and Zorzi was willing to let him think what he pleased, rather than run the smallest risk of betraying the society of which he had been obliged to become a member. But he was curious to know why Contarini kept such a singularly unprepossessing servant, and why, if he chose to keep him, he made use of him to deliver invitations. The fellow had the look of a born criminal; he was just such a man as Zorzi had thought of when he had jestingly proposed to Giovanni to hire a murderer. Indeed, the more Zorzi thought of his face, the more he was inclined to doubt that the man came from Contarini at all.

  But in this he was mistaken. The message was genuine, and moreover, so far as Contarini and the society were concerned, the man was perfectly trustworthy. Possibly there were reasons why Contarini chose to employ him, and also why the servant was so consistently faithful to his master. After all, Zorzi reflected, he was certainly ignorant of the fact that the noble young idlers who met at the house of the Agnus Dei were playing at conspiracy and revolution.

  But that night, when Contarini’s friends were assembled and had counted their members, some one asked what had become of the Murano glass-blower, and whether he was not going to attend their meetings in future; and Contarini answered that Zorzi had hurt his foot and was on crutches, and sent a greeting to the guests. Most of them were glad that he was not there, for he was not of their own order, and his presence caused a certain restraint in their talk. Besides, he was poor, and did not play at dice.

  “He works with Angelo Beroviero, does he not?” asked Zuan Venier in a tone of weary indifference.

  “Yes,” answered Contarini with a laugh. “He is in the service of my future father-in-law.”

  “To whom may heaven accord a speedy, painless and Christian death!” laughed Foscari in his black beard.

  “Not till I am one of his heirs, if you please,” returned Contarini. “As soon after the wedding day as you like, for besides her rich dowry, the lady is to have a share of his inheritance.”

  “Is she very ugly?” asked Loredan. “Poor Jacopo! You have the sympathy of the brethren.”

  “How does he know?” sneered Mocenigo. “He has never seen her. Besides, why should he care, since she is rich?”

  “You are mistaken, for I have seen her,” said Contarini, looking down the table. “She is not at all ill-looking, I assure you. The old man was so much afraid that I would not agree to the match that he took her to church so that I might look at her.”

  “And you did?” asked Mocenigo. “I should never have had the courage. She might have been hideous, and in that case I should have preferred not to find it out till I was married.”

  “I looked at her with some interest,” said Contarini, smiling in a self-satisfied way. “I am bound to say, with all modesty, that she also looked at me,” he added, passing his white hand over his thick hair.

  “Of course,” put in Foscari gravely. “Any woman would, I should think.”

  “I suppose so,” answered Contarini complacently. “It is not my fault if they do.”

  “Nor your misfortune,” added Fosoari, with as much gravity as before.

  Zuan Venier had not joined in the banter, which seemed to him to be of the most atrocious taste. He had liked Zorzi and had just made up his mind to go to Murano the next day and find him out.

  On that evening there was not so much as a mention of what was supposed to bring them together. Before they had talked a quarter of an hour, some one began to throw dice on the table, playing with his right hand against his left, and in a few moments the real play had begun.

  High up in Arisa’s room the Georgian woman and Aristarchi heard all that was said, crouching together upon the floor beside the opening the slave had discovered. When the voices were no longer heard except at rare intervals, in short exclamations of satisfaction or disappointment, and only the regular rattling and falling of the dice broke the silence, the pair drew back from the praying-stool.

  “They will say nothing more to-night,” whispered Arisa. “They will play for hours.”

  “They had not said a word that could put their necks in danger,” answered Aristarchi discontentedly. “Who is this fellow from the glass-house, of whom they were speaking?”

  Arisa led him away to a small divan between the open windows. She sa
t down against the cushions at the back, but he stretched his bulk upon the floor, resting his head against her knee. She softly rubbed his rough hair with the palm of her hand, as she might have caressed a cat, or a tame wild animal. It gave her a pleasant sensation that had a thrill of danger in it, for she always expected that he would turn and set his teeth into her fingers.

  She told him the story of the last meeting, and how Zorzi had been made one of the society in order that they might not feel obliged to kill him for their own safety.

  “What fools they are!” exclaimed Aristarchi with a low laugh, and turning his head under her hand.

  “You would have killed him, of course,” said Arisa, “if you had been in their place. I suppose you have killed many people,” she added thoughtfully.

  “No,” he answered, for though he loved her savagely, he did not trust her. “I never killed any one except in fair fight.”

  Arisa laughed low, for she remembered.

  “When I first saw you,” she said, “your hands were covered with blood. I think the reason why I liked you was that you seemed so much more terrible than all the others who looked in at my cabin door.”

  “I am as mild as milk and almonds,” said Aristarchi. “I am as timid as a rabbit.”

  His deep voice was like the purring of a huge cat. Arisa looked down at his head. Then her hands suddenly clasped his throat and she tried to make her fingers meet round it as if she would have strangled him, but it was too big for them. He drew in his chin a little, the iron muscles stiffened themselves, the cords stood out, and though she pressed with all her might she could not hurt him, even a little; but she loved to try.

  “I am sure I could strangle Contarini,” she said quietly. “He has a throat like a woman’s.”

  “What a murderous creature you are!” purred the Greek, against hex knee. “You are always talking of killing.”

  “I should like to see you fighting for your life,” she answered, “or for me.”

  “It is the same thing,” he said.