Marietta Part 25

"I cannot see well," he answered, straining his neck. "Wait a minute!" he cried, as Marietta took the tongs. "I see now! We have got it! I believe we have got it! Oh, if I could only walk!"

"Patience-you shall see it. It is almost cool. It is quite stiff now."

She took the little flat cake up with the tongs, very carefully, and held it before his eyes. The light fell through it from the window, and her head was close to his, as they both looked at it together.

"I never dreamed of such a colour," said Zorzi, his face flushing with excitement.

"There never was such a colour before," answered Marietta. "It is like the juice of a ripe pomegranate that has just been cut, only there is more light in it."

"It is like a great ruby-the rubies that the jewellers call 'pigeon's blood.'"

"My father always said it should be blood-red," said Marietta. "But I thought he meant something different, something more scarlet."

"I thought so, too. What they call pigeon's blood is not the colour of blood at all. It is more like pomegranates, as you said at first. But this is a marvellous thing. The master will be pleased."

Nella came and looked too, convinced that the gla.s.s had in some way turned out more beautiful by the magic of her mistress's touch.

"It is a miracle!" cried the woman of the people. "Some saint must have made this."

The gla.s.s glowed like a gem and seemed to give out light of its own. As Zorzi and Marietta looked, its rich glow spread over their faces. It was that rare gla.s.s which, from old cathedral windows, casts such a deep stain upon the pavement that one would believe the marble itself must be dyed with unchanging color.

"We have found it together," said Marietta.

Zorzi looked from the gla.s.s to her face, close by his, and their eyes met for a moment in the strange glow and it was as if they knew each other in another world.

"Do not let the red light fall on your faces," said Nella, crossing herself. "It is too much like blood-good health to you," she added quickly for fear of evil.

Marietta lowered her hand and turned the piece of gla.s.s sideways, to see how it would look.

"What shall we do with it?" she asked. "It must not be left any longer in the crucible."

"No. It ought to be taken out at once. Such a colour must be kept for church windows. If I were able to stand, I would make most of it into cylinders and cut them while hot. There are men who can do it, in the gla.s.s-house. But the master does not want them here."

"We had better let the fires go out," said Marietta. "It will cool in the crucible as it is."

"I would give anything to have that crucible empty, or an empty one in the place," answered Zorzi. "This is a great discovery, but it is not exactly what the master expected. I have an idea of my own, which I should like to try."

"Then we must empty the crucible. There is no other way. The gla.s.s will keep its colour, whatever shape we give it. Is there much of it?"

"There may be twenty or thirty pounds' weight," answered Zorzi. "No one can tell."

Nell listened in mute surprise. She had never seen Marietta with old Beroviero, and she was amazed to hear her young mistress talking about the processes of gla.s.s-making, about crucibles and cylinders and ingredients as familiarly as of domestic things. She suddenly began to imagine that old Beroviero, who was probably a magician and an alchemist, had taught his daughter the same dangerous knowledge, and she felt a sort of awe before the two young people who knew such a vast deal which she herself could never know.

She asked herself what was to become of this wonderful girl, half woman and half enchantress, who brought the colour of the saints' blood out of the white flames, and understood as much as men did of the art which was almost all made up of secrets. What would happen when she was the wife of Jacopo Contarini, shut up in a splendid Venetian palace where there were no gla.s.s furnaces to amuse her? At first she would grow pale, thought Nella, but by and by would weave spells in her chamber which would bring all Venice to her will, and turn it all to gold and precious stones and red gla.s.s, and the people to fairies subject to her will, her husband, the Council of Ten, even the Doge himself.

Nella roused herself, and pa.s.sed her hand over her eyes, as if she were waking from a dream. And indeed she had been dreaming, for she had looked too long into the wonderful depths of the new colour, and it had dazed her wits.

CHAPTER XII

On that day Marietta felt once more the full belief that Zorzi loved her; but the certainty did not fill her with happiness as on that first afternoon when she had seen him stoop to pick up the rose she had dropped. The time that had seemed so very distant had come indeed; instead of years, a week had scarcely pa.s.sed, and it was not by letting a flower fall in his path that she had told him her love, as she had meant to do. She had done much more. She had let him take her hand and press it to his heart, and she would have left it there if Nella had not pa.s.sed the window; she had wished him to take it, she had let it hang by her side in the hope that he would be bold enough to do so, and she had thrilled with delight at his touch; she had drawn back her hand when the woman came, and she had put on a look of innocent indifference that would have deceived one of the Council's own spies. Could any language have been more plain?

It was very strange, she thought, that she should all at once have gone so far, that she should have felt such undreamt joy at the moment and then, when it was hers, a part of her life which nothing could ever undo nor take from her, it was stranger still that the remembrance of this wonderful joy should make her suddenly sad and thoughtful, that she should lie awake at night, wishing that it had never been, and tormenting herself with the idea that she had done an almost irretrievable wrong. At the very moment when the coming day was breaking upon her heart's twilight, a wall of darkness arose between her and the future.

Much that is very good and true in the world is built upon the fanciful fears of evil that warn girls' hearts of harm. There are dangers that cannot be exaggerated, because the value of what they threaten cannot be reckoned too great, so long as human goodness rests on the dangerous quicksands of human nature.

Marietta had not realised what it meant to be betrothed to Jacopo Contarini, until she had let her hand linger in Zorzi's. But after that, one hour had not pa.s.sed before she felt that she was living between two alternatives that seemed almost equally terrible, and of which she must choose the one or the other within two months. She must either marry Contarini and never see Zorzi again, or she must refuse to be married and face the tremendous consequences of her unheard-of wilfulness, her father's anger, the just resentment of all the Contarini family, the humiliation which her brothers would heap upon her, because, in the code of those days, she would have brought shame on them and theirs. In those times such results were very real and inevitable when a girl's formal promise of marriage was broken, though she herself might never have been consulted.

It was no wonder that Marietta was sleepless at night, and spent long hours of the day sitting listless by her window without so much as threading a score of beads from the little basket that stood beside her. Nella came and went often, looked at her, and shook her head with a wise smile.

"It is the thought of marriage," said the woman of the people to herself. "She pines and grows pale now, because she is thinking that she must leave her father's house so soon, and she is afraid to go among strangers. But she will be happy by and by, like the swallows in spring."

Nella remembered how frightened she herself had been when she was betrothed to her departed Vito, and she was thereby much comforted as to Marietta's condition. But she said nothing, after Marietta had coldly repelled her first attempt to talk of the marriage, though she forgave her mistress's frigid order to be silent, telling herself that no right-minded young girl could possibly be natural and sweet tempered under the circ.u.mstances. She was more than compensated for what might have seemed harshness, by something that looked very much like a concession. Marietta had not gone back to the laboratory since the discovery of the new gla.s.s, and a week had pa.s.sed since then.

Nella went every other day and did all that was necessary for Zorzi's recovery. Each time she came he asked her about Marietta, in a rather formal tone, as was becoming when he spoke of his master's daughter, but hoping that Nella might have some message to deliver, and he was more and more disappointed as he realised that Marietta did not mean to send him any. She had gone away on that morning with a sort of intimation that she would come back every day, but Nella did not so much as hint that she ever meant to come back at all.

Zorzi went about on crutches, swinging his helpless foot as he walked, for it still hurt him when he put it to the ground. He was pale and thin, both from pain and from living shut up almost all day in the close atmosphere of the laboratory. For a change, he began to come out into the little garden, sometimes walking up and down on his crutches for a few minutes, and then sitting down to rest on the bench under the plane-tree, where Marietta had so often sat. Pasquale came and talked with him sometimes, but Zorzi never went to the porter's lodge.

He felt that if he got as far as that he should inevitably open the door and look up at Marietta's window, and he would not do it, for he was hurt by her apparent indifference, after having allowed him to hold her hand in his. She had not even asked through Nella what had become of the beautiful gla.s.s. What he pretended to say to himself was that it would be very wrong to go and stand outside the gla.s.s-house, where the porter would certainly see him, and where he might be seen by any one else, staring at the window of his master's daughter's room on the other side of the ca.n.a.l. But what he really felt was that Marietta had treated him capriciously and that if he had a particle of self-respect he must show her that he did not care. For if Marietta was very like other carefully brought up girls of her age, Zorzi was nothing more than a boy where love was concerned, and like many boys who have struggled for existence in a more or less corrupt world, he had heard much more of the faithlessness and caprices of women in general than of the sensitiveness and delicate timidity of innocent young girls.

Marietta was his perfect ideal, the most exquisite, the most beautiful and the most lovable creature ever endowed with form and sent into the world by the powers of good. He believed all this in his heart, with the certainty of absolute knowledge. But he was quite incapable of discerning the motives of her conduct towards him, and when he tried to understand them, it was not his heart that felt, but his reason that argued, having very little knowledge and no experience at all to help it; and since his erring reason demonstrated something that offended his self-esteem, his heart was hurt and nursed a foolish, small resentment against what he truly loved better than life itself. At one time or another most very young men in love have found themselves in that condition, and have tormented themselves to the verge of fever and distraction over imaginary hurts and wrongs. Was there ever a true lyric poet who did not at least once in his early days believe himself the victim of a heartless woman? And though long afterwards fate may have brought him face to face with the tragedy of unhappy love, fierce with pa.s.sion and terrible with violent death, can he ever quite forget the fancied sufferings of first youth, the stab of a thoughtless girl's first unkind word, the sickening chill he felt under her first cold look? And what would first love be, if young men and maidens came to it with all the reason and cool self-judgment that long living brings?

Zorzi sought consolation in his art, and as soon as he could stand and move about with his crutches he threw his whole pent-up energy into his work. The accidental discovery of the red gla.s.s had unexpectedly given him an empty crucible with which to make an experiment of his own, and while the materials were fusing he attempted to obtain the new colour in the other two, by dropping pieces of copper into each regardless of the master's instructions. To his inexpressible disappointment he completely failed in this, and the gla.s.s he produced was of the commonest tint.

Then he grew reckless; he removed the two crucibles that had contained what had been made according to Beroviero's theories until he had added the copper, and he began afresh according to his own belief.

On that very morning Giovanni Beroviero made a second visit to the laboratory. He came, he said, to make sure that Zorzi was recovering from his hurt, and Zorzi knew from Nella that Giovanni had made inquiries about him. He put on an air of sympathy when he saw the crutches.

"You will soon throw them aside," he said, "but I am sorry that you should have to use them at all."

When he entered, Zorzi was introducing a new mixture, carefully powdered, into one of the gla.s.s-pots with a small iron shovel. It was clear that he must put it all in at once, and he excused himself for going on with his work. Giovanni looked at the large quant.i.ty of the mixed ingredients with an experienced eye, and at once made up his mind that the crucible must have been quite empty. Zorzi was therefore beginning to make some kind of gla.s.s on his own account. It followed almost logically, according to Giovanni's view of men, fairly founded on a knowledge of himself, that Zorzi was experimenting with the secrets of Paolo G.o.di, which he and old Beroviero had buried together somewhere in that very room. Now, ever since the boy had told his story, Giovanni had been revolving plans for getting the ma.n.u.script into his possession during a few days, in order to copy it. A new scheme now suggested itself, and it looked so attractive that he at once attempted to carry it out.

"It seems a pity," he said, "that a great artist like yourself should spend time on fruitless experiments. You might be making very beautiful things, which would sell for a high price."

Without desisting from his occupation Zorzi glanced at his visitor, whose manner towards him had so entirely changed within a little more than a week. With a waif's quick instinct he guessed that Giovanni wanted something of him, but the generous instinct of the brave man towards the coward made him accept what seemed to be meant for an advance after a quarrel. It had never occurred to Zorzi to blame Giovanni for the accident in the gla.s.s-house, and it would have been very unjust to do so.

"I can blow gla.s.s tolerably, sir," Zorzi answered. "But none of you great furnace owners would dare to employ me, in the face of the law. Besides, I am your father's man. I owe everything I know to his kindness."

"I do not see what that has to do with it," returned Giovanni; "it does not diminish your merit, nor affect the truth of what I was saying. You might be doing better things. Any one can weigh out sand and kelp-ashes, and shovel them into a crucible!"

"Do you mean that the master might employ me for other work?" asked Zorzi, smiling at the disdainful description of what he was doing.

"My father-or some one else," answered Giovanni. "And besides your astonishing skill, I fancy that you possess much valuable knowledge of gla.s.s-making. You cannot have worked for my father so many years without learning some of the things he has taken great pains to hide from his own sons."

He spoke the last words in a somewhat bitter tone, quite willing to let Zorzi know that he felt himself injured.

"If I have learned anything of that sort by looking on and helping, when I have been trusted, it is not mine to use elsewhere," said Zorzi, rather proudly.