A Golden Book of Venice. Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
help me!"
"There are two in every marriage," Piero retorted sullenly, for he was angry now.
"It is just that—oh, it is just that!" Marina cried, clasping her hands passionately. "Thou art so strong and so compelling, and thou dost not stop for the right of it. She was such a child, she knew no better, poverina! And thou—a man—not for love, nor right, nor any noble thing"—the words came with repressed scorn—"to coax her to it, just for a little triumph! To expose a child to such endless critica!"
Only a Venetian of the people could comprehend the full sting of this word, which conveyed the searching, persistent disapproval of an entire class, whose code, if viewed from the moral point of view, was painfully slack, though from its own standard of decorum it was immutable.
"It has been said, once for all—thou dost not forgive."
"It is the last time, for this also, Piero; I meant never to speak of it again, but those words of thine of the festa in San Pietro in Castello made me forget. It came over me quite suddenly, that this is how thou spendest the beautiful, great strength God gave thee to make a leader of thee in real things. But whether it be great or small, or good or ill, thou always wilt have thy way!"
"It's a poor fool of a fellow that wouldn't keep himself uppermost, like oil," he cried, hesitating only for a moment between anger and gratification, and choosing the way that ministered to his pride. "Santa Maria! I'll butter thy macaroni with fine cheese every time!"
"Nay, spare thy pains, Piero, and be serious for one moment. There is no barcariol in all Venice who hath greater opportunities, but thou must use them well. They spoil thee at the traghetto; and if a man hath his will always, it will either spoil him or make him noble."
"What wouldst thou have me to do?" he questioned sullenly.
"They would be afraid of thee—thou couldst quiet these troubles in the traghetti—thou must use thy strength and thy will for the good of the people. It is terrible to have power and to use it wrongly."
Piero moved back to his place again and took up his oar, throwing himself in position for a forward stroke. "Forget not," he said, poising, "that I need not listen to thee if I do not choose. I may not stay in casa Magagnati—not any more, if thou art always scolding."
"I shall scold—always—until thou dost quiet this disorder of the traghetti," she answered, undaunted.
"And thou wilt return; for there is always the bambino."
"If I come back," he said in a softer tone, responding to the appeal for his child, "I must speak of what I will."
"Of all but one thing, Piero;" for it was not possible to misunderstand him, and she was resolute. "If this is not the end I shall speak with my father—and the bambino——"
They were both silent. He knew that no one could ever care for his invalid child as she had done; and all that he owed her and must continue to owe her restrained him under her chiding, for the baby could not live away from her. Sometimes, too, there were moments of strange tenderness within him for this helpless, suffering morsel of humanity that called him "babbo!" He did not know what might happen if the wrath of the redoubtable Magagnati were to be invoked against him, for this quarrel could not be disposed of as those small matters with the gondoliers had invariably been. So far from threatening this before, Marina had hitherto shielded Piero, in her unanswerable way, from everything that might hasten the rupture that seemed always impending between these two dissimilar natures; and Messer Magagnati had two thoughts only, his daughter and his stabilimento—the great glass furnaces which were the pride of Venice.
Piero had no suspicion that Marina always touched the best that was in him; he thought she made him weaker, and it was not easy to yield the point that had become a habit. No one else had ever moved him from any purpose, but now he perceived that there would be no reversal of that sentence—that he should continue to come to see his child, and that he must continue to submit to Marina's influence. It was she who had, in some unaccountable way, persuaded him out of his unlawful trade of barcariol toso, and had forced his reluctant acceptance of the overtures that were made to him from the Guild of Santa Maria Zobenigo, where he had risen to be one of the bancali or governors, his qualities of force and daring making him useful in this age when lawlessness was on the increase. He was beginning to feel a sense of satisfaction, not all barbaric, in the position he had won among men who had some views of order, and to perceive that there might be a lawful use, almost as pleasant, for those very attributes which had rendered him so formidable a foe outside the pale of traghetto civilization.
"Ecco!" he announced, with a slow, sullen emphasis which declared his unwilling surrender, while he plied his oar with quick, wrathful strokes. "It will take more than aves to make a saint of thee! And thou mayst hold thy head too high, looking for better than wheaten bread! But I'm not the man to wear a curb, nor to put up with thorns where I looked for roses! Thou hast no right to mind what chances to me—yet thou hast made me give up the old life."
"Because I knew thou couldst do better. See where thou standest to-day!
It is not a little thing to be a governor of the Nicolotti!"
"It is a truth," Piero confessed, "upside down, and not to boast of, for whoever tries it would wish it less. The bancali are 'like asses who carry wine and drink water,' for the good of the clouts, in days like these."
"I heard them talking to-day, Piero. The barcarioli tosi are worse than Turks; one must pay, to suit their whim, in the middle of the Canal Grande, or one may wait long for the landing! And there was a scandal about a friar of San Zanipolo, of whom they had asked a fare for the crossing; I know not the truth of it! And at Santa Sofia the great cross with the beautiful golden lustre is gone, and one says it is the 'tosi.'"
Piero winced, for, to an ancient "toso," or even to a "bancalo" of to-day, such enormities had not the exciting novelty that might have been expected, and Marina had a curious habit of seeming entirely to forget his past when she wished to exact his best of him.
"And Gabriele—"
"Fash not thyself for a man of his measure, that is fitter to 'beat the fishes' like a galley-slave than to serve an honest gondola!" Piero interrupted scornfully.
"But Piero, Gabriele hath sold his license to one worse than he, and there was great talk of quarrels along the Riva, and how that yesterday they sent for Padre Gervasio from San Gregorio to bring the Host to quiet them."
"Ah, the Castellani!" said Piero, with the contempt that was always ready for any mention of this great rival faction of the people whose division into one or other of these factions was absolute.
"But the Nicolotti have their scandal also," Marina asserted, uncompromisingly; "among themselves it is told they break the laws like men not bound by vows! Some say there will be an appeal to the Consiglio."
"Nay," said Piero, with an ominous frown; "the bancali and gastaldi are enough; we need no bossing by crimson robes."
This question of the traghetti and their abuses had lately grown to large proportions among the people, and it possessed a deep interest for all classes quite apart from the antiquity and picturesqueness of these honorable institutions of the Republic—since all must use the ferries and wish for safety in their water-streets. For centuries these confraternities of gondoliers who presided over the ferries, or traghetti, of Venice had been corporations, self-governing, with officers and endowments recognized by the Republic, and with a standard of gondolier morals admirably defined in their codes—those "Mariegole" which were luxuriously bound and printed, with capitals of vermilion, a page here and there glowing like an illuminated missal with the legend of the patron saint of the traghetto, wherein one might read such admonitions as would make all men wiser.
But of late there had been much unruliness among the younger members of the traghetti, and a growing inability among their officers to cope with increasing difficulties, because of these barcarioli tosi, who lived in open rebellion against this goodly system of law, poaching upon the dearly bought rights of the