Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion Crawford (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📖

of him; but she was a defenceless girl, fighting for the liberty of her whole life. That might excuse much, she thought. By this time Beroviero was very angry; he stalked up and down beside the furnace, trailing his thin silk gown behind him, stroking his beard with a quick, impatient movement, and easting fierce glances at Marietta from time to time.

He was not used to being at the mercy of circumstances, still less to having his mind made up for him by his son and his daughter. Giovanni had made him believe that Zorzi had turned traitor and thief, after five years of faithful service, and the conviction had cut him to the quick; and now Marietta had demonstrated Zorzi's innocence almost beyond doubt, but had made matters worse in other ways, and was taking the high hand with him. He did not realise that from the moment when she had boldly confessed what she had done and had declared her love for Zorzi, his confidence in her had returned by quick degrees, and that the atrocious crime of having come secretly at night to the laboratory had become in his eyes, and perhaps against his will, a mere pardonable piece of rashness; since if Zorzi was innocent, anything which could save him from unjust imprisonment might well be forgiven. He had borne what seemed to him very great misfortunes with fortitude and dignity; but his greatest treasures were safe, his daughter and Paolo Godi's manuscript, and he became furiously angry with Marietta, because she had him in her power.

If a man is seated, a woman who intends to get the better of him generally stands; but if he loses his temper and begins to walk about, she immediately seats herself and assumes an exasperating calmness of manner. Accordingly Marietta sat down on a small chair near the table and watched her father in silence, persuaded that he would be obliged to yield in the end.

"No one has ever dared to browbeat me in this way, in my whole life!" cried the old man fiercely, and his voice shook with rage.

"Will you listen to me?" asked Marietta with sudden meekness.

"Listen to you?" he repeated instantly. "Have I not been listening to you for hours?"

"I do not know how long it may have been," answered the girl, "but I have much more to say. You are so angry that you will not hear me."

"Angry? I? Are you telling me that I am so beside myself with rage, that I cannot understand reason?"

"I did not say that."

"You meant it, then! What did you say? You have forgotten what you said already! Just like a girl! And you pretend to argue with me, with your own father! It is beyond belief! Silence, I say! Do not answer me!"

Marietta sat quite still, and began to look at her nails, which were very pink and well shaped. After a short silence Beroviero stopped before her.

"Well!" he cried. "Why do you not speak?" His eyes blazed and he tapped the pavement with his foot. She raised her eyebrows, smiled a little wearily and sighed.

"I misunderstood you," she said, with exasperating patience. "I thought you told me to be silent."

"You always misunderstand me," he answered angrily and walking off again. "You always did, and you always will! I believe you do it on purpose. But I will make you understand! You shall know what I mean!"

"I should be so glad," said Marietta. "Pray tell me what you mean."

This was too much. He turned sharply in his walk.

"I mean you to marry Contarini," he cried out, with a stamp of the foot.

"And you mean never to see Paolo Godi's manuscript again," suggested Marietta quietly.

"Perdition take the accursed thing!" roared the old man. "If I only knew where you have put it—"

"It is where you can never, never find it," Marietta answered. "So it is of no use to be angry with me, is it? The more angry you are, the less likely it is that I shall tell you. But I will tell you something else, father—something you never understood before. My marriage was to have been a bargain, a great name for a fortune, half your fortune for a great name and an alliance with the Contarini. Perhaps one was worth the other. I know very little of such things. But it chances that I can have a word to say about the bargain, too. Would any one say that I was doing very wrong if I gave that book to my brother, for instance? Giovanni would not give it back to you, as Zorzi would, I am quite sure."

"What abominable scheme is this?" Beroviero fairly trembled in his fury.

"I offer you a simple bargain," Marietta answered, unmoved. "I will give you your manuscript for my freedom. Will you take it, father? Or will you insist upon trying to marry me by force, and let me give the book to Giovanni? Yes, that is what I will do. Then I will marry Zorzi, and go away."

"Silence, child! You! Marry a stranger, a Dalmatian—a servant!"

"But I love him. You may call him a servant, if you choose. It would make no difference to me if it were true. He would not be less brave, less loyal or less worthy if he were forced to clean your shoes in order to live, instead of sharing your art with you. Did he ever lie to you?"

"No!" cried the old man. "I would have broken his bones!"

"Did he ever betray a secret, since you know that the book is safe?"

"No."

"Have you trusted him far more than your own sons, for many years?"

"Yes—of course—"

"Then call him your servant if you like, and call your sons what you please," concluded Marietta, "but do not tell me that such a man is not good enough to be the husband of a glass-blower's daughter, who does not want a great name, nor a palace, nor a husband who sits in the Grand Council. Do not say that, father, for it would not be true—and you never told a lie in your life."

"I tell you that marriage has nothing to do with all this!" He began walking again, to keep his temper hot, for he was dimly conscious that he was getting the worst of the encounter, and that her arguments were good.

"And I tell you that a marriage that has nothing to do with love, and with honour, and with trust, is no marriage at all!" answered the girl. "Say what you please of customs, and traditions, and of station, and all that! God never meant that an innocent girl should be bought and sold like a slave, or a horse, for a name, nor for money, nor for any imaginary advantage to herself or to her father! I know what our privilege is, that the patricians may marry us and not lose their rank. I would rather keep my own, and marry a glass-worker, even if I were to be sold! Do you know what your money would buy for me in Venice? The privilege of being despised and slighted by patricians and great ladies. You know as well as I that it would all end there, in spite of all you may give. They want your money, you want their name, because you are rich and you have always been taught to think that the chief use of money is to rise in the world."

"Will you teach me what I am to think?" asked old Beroviero, amazed by her sudden flow of words.

"Yes," she answered, before he could say more. "I will teach you what you should think, what you should have always thought—a man as brave and upright and honest in everything as you are! You should think, you should know, that your daughter has a right to live, a right to be free, and a right to love, like every living creature God ever made!"

"This is the most abominable rebellion!" retorted Beroviero. "I cannot imagine where you learned—"

"Rebellion?" she cried, interrupting him in ringing tones. "Yes, it is rank rebellion, sedition and revolt against slavery, for life and love and freedom! You wonder where I have learned to turn and face this oppression of the world, instead of yielding to it, one more unhappy woman among the thousands that are bought and sold into wifehood every year! I have learned nothing, my heart needed no teaching for that! It is enough that I love an honest man truly—I know that it is wrong to promise my faith to another, and that it is a worse wrong in you to try to get that promise from me by force. A vow that could be nothing but a solemn lie! Would the ring on my finger be a charm to make me forget? Would the priest's words and blessing be a spell to root out of my heart what is the best part of my life? Better go to a nunnery, and weep for the truth, than to hope for peace in such a lie as that—better a thousand, thousand times!"

She had risen now, and was almost eloquent, facing her father with flashing eyes.

"Oh, you have always been kind to me, good to me, dear to me," she went on quickly. "It is only in this that you will not understand. Would it not hurt you a little to feel that you had sent me to a sort of living death from which I could never come back to life? That I was imprisoned for ever among people who looked down upon me and only tolerated me for my fortune's sake? Yet that would be the very least part of it all! I could bear all that, if it were for any good. But to become the creature, the possession, the plaything of a man I do not love, when I love another with all my heart—oh, no, no, no! You cannot ask me that!"

His anger had slowly subsided, and he was listening now, not because she had him in her power, but because what she said was true. For he was a just and honourable man.

"I wish that you might have loved any man but Zorzi," he said, almost as if speaking to himself.

"And why another?" she asked, following up her advantage instantly. "You would have had me marry a Trevisan, perhaps, or the son of any of the other great glass-makers? Is there one of them who can compare with Zorzi as an artist, let alone as a man? Look at those things he has made, there, on the table! Is there a man living who could make one of them? Not you, yourself; you know it better than I do!"

"No," answered Beroviero. "That is true. Nor is there any one who could make the glass he used for them without the secrets that are in the book—and more too, for it is better than my own."

Marietta looked at him in surprise. This was something she had not known.

"Is it not your glass?" she asked.

"It is better. He must have added something to the composition set down in the book."

"You believe that although the book itself is safe, he has made use of it."

"Yes. I cannot see how it could be otherwise."

"Was the book sealed?"

"Yes, and looked in an iron box. Here is the key. I always wear it."

He drew out the small iron key, and showed it to her.

"If you find the box locked, and the seals untouched, will you believe that Zorzi has not opened the manuscript?" asked Marietta.

"Yes," answered Beroviero after a moment's thought. "I showed him the seal, and I remember that he said a man might make one like it. But I should know by the wax. I am sure I could tell whether it had been tampered with. Yes, I should believe he had not opened the book, if I found it as I left it."

"Then you will be convinced that Zorzi is altogether innocent of all the charges Giovanni made against him. Is that true?"

"Yes. If he has learnt the art in spite of the law, that is my fault, not his. He was unwise in selling the beaker to Giovanni. But what is that, after all?"

"Promise me then," said Marietta, laying her hand upon her father's arm, "promise me that if Zorzi comes back, he shall be safe, and that you will trust him as you always have."

"Though he dares to be in love with you?"

"Though I dare to love him—or apart from that. Say that if it were not for that, you would treat him just as before you went away."

"Yes, I would," answered Beroviero thoughtfully.

"The book is there," said Marietta.

She pointed to the big earthen jar that contained the broken