Arethusa Part 18

Then she turned her eyes to him and smiled a little maliciously, he fancied, as if she had guessed his timidity from his silence.

'Who told you such nonsense?' Zeno asked, with a laugh, for her question had broken the ice--or perhaps had quenched the fire for a while. 'I am a man like any other!'

'That I doubt, sir,' answered Zoe, laughing too, though not much.

'You have no experience of men,' he said. 'They are all like me, I a.s.sure you. One sheep is not more like another in a flock.'

'I should not have taken you for one of the common herd. Besides, I know of your deeds in Italy and Greece, and how you fought a Turkish army for a whole year with a handful of men----'

'I have seen some fighting, of course,' Zeno replied. 'But that is all in the past. I am a sober, peace-loving Venetian merchant now, and nothing else.'

'It must be very dull to be a sober, peace-loving Venetian merchant,'

said Zoe, faintly mimicking his tone.

'Making money is too hard work to be dull.'

'I suppose so. And then,' she added, with magnificent calm, 'I have always heard that avarice is the pa.s.sion of old age.'

Zeno fell into the trap.

'Dear me!' he cried in astonishment. 'How old do you think I am?'

Zoe looked at him quietly.

'I have no experience of men,' she said, with perfect gravity, 'but from your manner, sir, I should judge you to be--about fifty.'

Zeno's jaw dropped, for she spoke so naturally and quietly that he could not believe she was laughing at him.

'I shall be twenty-nine in August,' he answered.

'Only twenty-nine?' Zoe affected great surprise. 'I should have thought you were much, much older! Are you quite sure?'

'Yes.' Carlo laughed. 'I am quite sure. But I suppose I seem very old to you.'

'Oh yes! Very!' She nodded gravely as she spoke.

'You are seventeen, are you not?' Zeno asked.

'How in the world should I know!' she enquired. 'Is not my age set down in the receipt Rustan gave you with me? How should a slave know her own age, sir? And if we knew it, do you think that any of us could speak the truth, except under torture? It would not be worth while to dislocate my arms and burn my feet with hot irons, just to know how old I am, would it? You could not even sell me again, if I had once been tortured!'

'What horrible ideas you have! Imagine torturing this little thing!'

Thereupon, without warning, he took her hand in his and looked at it.

She made a very slight instinctive movement to withdraw it, and then it lay quite still and pa.s.sive.

'I am sure I could never bear pain,' she said, smiling. 'I should tell everything at once! I should never make a good conspirator. I suppose you must have been wounded once or twice, when you were young. Tell me, did it hurt very much?'

He let her hand fall as he answered, and she drew it back and hid it under her wide sleeve.

'A cut with a sharp sword feels like a stream of icy-cold water,' he answered. 'A thrust through the flesh p.r.i.c.ks like a big thorn, and p.r.i.c.ks again when the point comes out on the other side. One feels very little, or nothing at all, if one is badly wounded in the head, for one is stunned at once; it is the headache afterwards that really hurts. If one is wounded in the lungs, one feels nothing, but one is choked by the blood, and one must turn on one's face at once in order not to suffocate. Broken bones hurt afterwards as a rule, more than at first, but it is a curious sensation to have one's collar bone smashed by a blow from a two-handed sword----'

'Good heavens!' cried Zoe. 'What a catalogue! How do you know how each thing feels?'

'I can remember,' Zeno answered simply.

'You have been wounded in all those different ways, and you are alive?'

Zeno smiled.

'Yes; and you understand now why I look so old.'

'I was not in earnest,' Zoe said. 'You knew that I was not. You need only look at yourself in a mirror to see that I was laughing.'

'I was not very deeply hurt by being taken for a man of fifty,' Zeno answered, not quite truthfully.

'Oh no!' laughed Zoe. 'I cannot imagine that my opinion of your age could make any difference to you. It was silly of me--only, for a man who has had so many adventures, you do look absurdly young!'

'So much the better, since my fighting days are over.'

'And since you are a sober, peace-loving merchant,' said Zoe, continuing the sentence for him. 'But are you so very sure, my lord?

Would nothing make you draw your sword again and risk your life on your fencing? Nothing?'

'Nothing that did not affect my honour, I truly believe.'

'You would not do it for a woman's sake?' She turned to him, to watch his face, but its expression did not change.

'Three things can drive a wise man mad,--wine, women, and dice.'

'I daresay! Your lordship reckons us in good company. But that is no answer to my question.'

'Yes it is,' said Zeno with a laugh. 'Why should I do for a woman what I would not do for dice or wine?'

'But dice and wine never tempted you,' Zoe objected.

Zeno laughed louder.

'Never? When I was a student at Padua I sold everything, even my books, to get money for both. It was only when the books were gone that I turned soldier, and learned the greatest game of hazard in the world. Compared with that, dice are an opiate, and wine is a sleeping-draught.'

He only smiled now, after laughing, but there was a look in his face as he spoke which she saw then for the first time and did not forget, and recognised when she saw it again. It was subtle, and might have pa.s.sed unnoticed among men, but it spoke to the s.e.x in the girl, and made her young blood thrill. For worlds, she would not have had him guess what she felt just then.

'Fighting for its own sake would tempt you, if nothing else could,'

she answered quietly.

'Ah--perhaps, perhaps,' he answered, musing.

'But you would need a cause, though ever so slight, and you have none here, have you?'

'None that I care to take up.'