A Golden Book of Venice. Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
not often assume as he started forward over the rough planks of the traghetto. "Signora, where shall I bring the flowers to make the little one smile?"
"To Murano, near the Stabilimento Magagnati, Eccellenza," she answered without hesitation, lifting the baby in her arms to escape the rough help of the gondolier, who reached forward to hasten his stumbling movements.
And so they floated off from the traghetto—the Madonna that was to be, into the deepening twilight, while the Veronese, a splendid and incongruous figure amid these lowly surroundings, leaned against the paltry column that supported the shrine, wrapped in a delicious reverie of creation; for he was unused to failure and he had no doubts, though he had not yet proffered his request.
"To-morrow," he said, "I will paint that face!"
* * * * *
"By our Lady of Murano!" the gondolier cried suddenly. "He spoke to thee like a queen—and it was Paolo Cagliari! What did he want with thee?"
"Not me, Piero; it was the child. He wished to give him flowers. I knew he must be great to care thus for our 'bimbo.' It was really he—the Veronese?"
"The child! Santa Maria! He is not too much like a cherub that the great painter should notice him!"
The baby threw out his little clenched fist, striking against the protecting arms that held him closer, his face drawn with sudden pain; for a moment he fought against Marina, and then, the spasm over, settled wearily to sleep in her arms.
"Poverino!" said the gondolier softly, while Marina crooned over him an
Ave Maria, and the gondola glided noiselessly to its cadence.
"Piero," she said, looking up with eyes full of tears, "sometimes I think I cannot bear it! He needs thy prayers as well as mine—wilt thou not ask our Lady of San Donato to be kinder to him? And I have seen to-day, on the Rialto, a beautiful lamp, with angels' heads. Thou shouldst make an offering——"
The gondolier shook his head and shrugged his shoulders; he had little faith or reverence. "I will say my aves, poveriello," he promised; "but the lamps are already too many in San Donato. And for the bambino, I will go not only once, but twice this year to confession—the laws of our traghetto ask not so much, since once is enough. But thou art even stricter with thy rules for me."
She did not answer, and they floated on in silence.
"To-morrow," said Piero at length, "there is festa in San Pietro di
Castello."
She moved uneasily, and her beautiful face lost its softness.
"It is nothing to me," she answered shortly.
"It is a pretty festa, and Messer Magagnati should take thee. By our
Lady of Castello, there are others who will go!"
"It would be better for the bambino," he persisted sullenly, as she did not answer him. His voice was not the pleasanter now that its positive tone was changed to a coaxing one.
"One is enough, Piero," she said. "And for the festa of San Pietro in
Castello—never, never name it to me!"
"Santa Maria!" her companion ejaculated under his breath; "it is the women, the gentle donzelle, who are hard!"
He stood, tall, handsome, well-made, swaying lightly with the motion of the gondola, which seemed to float as in a dream to the ripple and lap of the water; the blue of his shirt had changed to gray in the twilight, the black cap and sash of the "Nicolotti" accentuated the lines of the strong, lithe figure as he sprang forward on the sloping foot-rest of his gondola with that perfect grace and ease which proved him master of a craft whose every motion is a harmony. If he were proud of belonging to the Nicolotti, that most powerful faction of the populace, he knew that they were regarded by the government as the aristocrats of the people.
Marina arranged the child's covering in silence, and stooped her face wistfully to touch his cheek, but she did not turn her head to look at the man behind her.
"L'amor zè fato per chi lo sa fare,"
he sang in the low, slow chant of the familiar folk-song, the rhythm blending perfectly with the movement of the boat in which these two were faring. His voice was pleasanter in singing, and song is almost a needful expression of the content of motion in Venice—the necessary complement of life to the gondolier, a song might mean nothing more. But Piero sang more slowly than his wont, charging the words with meaning, yet it did not soften her.
"Love is for him who knows how to win!"
He could not see how she flushed and paled with anger as he sang, for it was growing dark over the water and her face was turned from him; but she straightened herself uncompromisingly, and he was watching with subtle comprehension.
He could not have told why he persisted in this strange wooing, for there had been but one response during the two years of his widowhood, while his child had been Marina's ceaseless care. Marina had loved the baby the more passionately, perhaps, for the sake of her only sister Toinetta, Piero's child-bride, who had died at the baby's birth, because she was painfully conscious that Toinetta's little flippant life had needed much forgiveness and had been crowned with little gladness. Marina was now the only child of Messer Girolamo Magagnati, which was a patent of nobility in Murano; and she was not the less worth winning because she held herself aloof from the freer life of the Piazza, where she was called the "donzel of Murano," though there were others with blacker eyes and redder cheeks. Piero did not think her very beautiful; he liked more color and sparkle and quickness of retort—a chance to quarrel and forgive. He was not in sympathy with so many aves, such continual pilgrimages to the cathedral, such brooding over the lives of the saints—above all, he did not like being kept in order, and Marina knew well how to do this, in spite of her quiet ways. But he liked the best for himself, and there was no one like Marina in all Murano. During all this time he had been coming more and more under her sway, changing his modes of living to suit her whims, and the only way of safety for him was to marry her and be master; then she should see how he would rule his house! His own way had always been the right way for him—rules of all orders to the contrary—whether he had been a wandering gondolier, a despised barcariol toso, lording it so outrageously over the established traghetti that they were glad to forgive him his bandit crimes and swear him into membership, if only to stop his influence against them; or whether it had been the stealing away of a promised bride, as on that memorable day at San Pietro in Castello, when he had married Toinetta—it was never safe to bear "vendetta" with one so strong and handsome and unprincipled as Piero.
Gabriele, the jilted lover of Toinetta, over whom Piero had triumphed, soon became the husband of another donzel, handsomer than Toinetta had been—poor, foolish Toinetta!—and the retributive tragedy of her little life had warmed the sullen Gabriele into a magnanimity that rendered him at least a safe, if a moody and unpleasant, member of the traghetto in which Piero had since become a rising star. A man with a home to keep may not "cast away his chestnuts," and so when Piero, in that masterful way of his, swept everything before him in the traghetto—never asking nor caring who stood for him or against him, but carrying his will whenever he chose to declare it—to set one's self against such a man was truly a useless sort of fret, only a "gnawing of one's chain," in the expressive jargon of the people.
Piero finished his song, and there was a little pause. They were nearing the long, low line of Murano.
"It is not easy," he said, "when women are in the way, 'to touch the sky with one's finger.'"
She turned with a sudden passionate motion as if she would answer him, and then, struggling for control, turned back without a word, drawing the child closer and caressing him until she was calm again. When she raised her head she spoke in a resolute, restrained voice.
"Since thou wilt have it, Piero—listen. And rest thine oar, for we are almost home; and to-night must be quite the end of all this talk. It can never be. Thou hast no understanding of such matters, so I forgive thee for myself. But for Toinetta—I do not think