Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion Crawford (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

than one way," answered Zorzi cautiously. "In the first place, do you mean that if I left the master, it would be to go to another master, or to set up as a master myself?"

"Let us say that you might go to another glass-house for a fixed time, with the promise of then having a furnace of your own. How does that strike you?"

"No one can give such a promise and keep it," said Zorzi, scraping the wet clay from his hands with a blunt knife.

"But suppose that some one could," insisted Giovanni.

"What is the use of supposing the impossible?" Zorzi shrugged his shoulders and went on scraping.

"Nothing is impossible in the Republic, except what the Ten are resolved to hinder. And that is really impossible."

"The Ten will not make new laws nor repeal old ones for the benefit of an unknown Dalmatian."

"Perhaps not," answered Giovanni. "But on the other hand there is no very great penalty if you set up a furnace of your own. If you are discovered, your furnace will be put out, and you may have to pay a fine. It is no great matter. It is a civil offence, not a criminal one."

"What is it that you wish of me?" asked Zorzi with sudden directness. "You are a busy man. You have not come here to pass a morning in idle conversation with your father's assistant. You want something of me, sir. Speak out plainly. If I can do what you wish, I will do it. If I cannot, I will tell you so, frankly."

Giovanni was a little disconcerted by this speech. Excepting where money was concerned directly, his intelligence was of the sort that easily wastes its energy in futile cunning. He had not meant to reach the point for a long time, if he had expected to reach it at all at a first attempt.

"I like your straightforwardness," he said evasively. "But I do not think your conversation idle. On the contrary, I find it highly instructive."

"Indeed?" Zorzi laughed. "You do me much honour, sir! What have you learned from me this morning?"

"What I wished to know," answered Giovanni with a change of tone, and looking at him keenly.

Zorzi returned the glance, and the two men faced each other in silence for a moment. Zorzi knew what Giovanni meant, as soon as the other had spoken. The quick movement of surprise, which was the only indiscretion of which Zorzi had been guilty, would have betrayed to any one that he knew where the manuscript was, even if it were not in his immediate keeping. His instinct was to take the offensive and accuse his visitor of having laid a trap for him, but his caution prevailed.

"Whatever you may think that you have learned from me," he said, "remember that I have told you nothing."

"Is it here, in this room?" asked Giovanni, not heeding his last speech, and hoping to surprise him again.

But he was prepared now, and his face did not change as he replied.

"I cannot answer any questions," he said.

"You and my father hid it together," returned Giovanni. "When you had buried it under the stones in this room, you carried the earth out with a shovel and scattered it about on a flower-bed. You took out three shovelfuls of earth in that way. You see, I know everything. What is the use of trying to hide your secret from me?"

Zorzi was now convinced that Giovanni himself had been lurking in the garden.

"Sir," he said, with ill-concealed contempt for a man capable of such spy's work, "if you have more to say of the same nature, pray say it to your father, when he comes back."

"You misunderstand me," returned Giovanni with sudden mildness. "I had no intention of offending you. I only meant to warn you that you were watched on that night. The person who informed me has no doubt told many others also. It would have been very ill for you, if my father had returned to find that his secret was public property, and if you had been unable to explain that you had not betrayed him. I have given you a weapon of defence. You may call upon me to repeat what I have said, when you speak with him."

"I am obliged to you, sir," said Zorzi coldly. "I shall not need to disturb you."

"You are not wise," returned Giovanni gravely. "If I were curious—fortunately for you I am not!—I would send for a mason and have some of the stones of the pavement turned over before me. A mason would soon find the one you moved by trying them all with his hammer."

"Yes," said Zorzi. "If this were a room in your own glass-house, you could do that. But it is not."

"I am in charge of all that belongs to my father, during his absence," answered Giovanni.

"Yes," said Zorzi again. "Including Paolo Godi's manuscript, as you told me," he added.

"You understand very well why I said that," Giovanni answered, with visible annoyance.

"I only know that you said it," was the retort. "And as I cannot suppose that you did not know what you were saying, still less that you intentionally told an untruth, I really cannot see why you should suggest bringing a mason here to search for what must be in your own keeping."

Zorzi spoke with a quiet smile, for he felt that he had the best of it. Be was surprised when Giovanni broke into a peal of rather affected laughter.

"You are hard to catch!" he cried, and laughed again. "You did not really suppose that I was in earnest? Why, every one knows that you have the manuscript here."

"Then I suppose you spoke ironically," suggested Zorzi.

"Of course, of course! A mere jest! If I had known that you would take it so literally—" he stopped short.

"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