Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Zorzi went his way calmly and spent the day in the laboratory. He was in a frame of mind in which such speeches as Giovanni’s could make but little impression upon him, sensitive though he naturally was. Really great sorrows, or great joys or great emotions, make smaller ones almost impossible for the time. Men of vast ambition, whose deeds are already moving the world and making history, are sometimes as easily annoyed by trifles as a nervous woman; but he who knows that what is dearest to him is slipping from his hold, or has just been taken, is half paralysed in his sense of outward things. His own mind alone has power to give him a momentary relief.

  Herein lies one of the strongest problems of human nature. We say with assurance that the mind rules the body, we feel that the spirit in some way overshadows and includes the mind. Yet if this were really true the spirit — that is, the will — should have power against bodily pain, but not against moral suffering except with some help from a higher source. But it is otherwise. If the will of ordinary human beings could hypnotise the body against material sensation, the credit due to those brave believers in all ages who have suffered cruel torments for their faith would be singularly diminished. If the mind could dominate matter by ordinary concentration of thought, a bad toothache should have no effect upon the delicate imagination of the poet, and Napoleon would not have lost the decisive battle of his life by a fit of indigestion, as has been asserted.

  On the other hand, there was never yet a man of genius, or even of great talent, who was not aware that the most acute moral anguish can be momentarily forgotten, as if it did not exist for the time, by concentrating the mind upon its accustomed and favourite kind of work. Johnson wrote Rasselas to pay for the funeral of his yet unburied mother, and Johnson was a man of heart if ever one lived; he could not have written the book if he had had a headache. Saints and ascetics without end and of many persuasions have resorted to bodily pain as a means of deadening the imagination and exalting the will or spirit. Some great thinkers have been invalids, but in every case their food, work has been done when they were temporarily free from pain. Perhaps the truth is on the side of those mystics who say that although the mind is of a higher nature than matter, it is so closely involved with it that neither can get away from the other, and that both together tend to shut out the spirit and to forget its existence, which is a perpetual reproach to them; and any ordinary intellectual effort being produced by the joint activity of mind and the matter through which the mind acts, the condition of the spirit at the time has little or no effect upon them, nor upon what they are doing. And if one would carry the little theory further, one might find that the greatest works of genius have been produced when the effort of mind and matter has taken place under the inspiration of the spirit, so that all three were momentarily involved together. But such thoughts lead far, and it may be that they profit little. The best which a man means to do is generally better than the best he does, and it is perhaps the best he is capable of doing.

  Be these things as they may, Zorzi worked hard in the laboratory, minutely carrying out the instructions he had received, but reasoning upon them with a freshness and keenness of thought of which his master was no longer capable. When he had made the trials and had added the new ingredients for future ones, he began to think out methods of his own which had suggested themselves to him of late, but which he had never been able to try. But though he had the furnace to himself, to use as long as he could endure the heat of the advancing summer, he was face to face with a difficulty that seemed insuperable.

  The furnace had but three crucibles, each of which contained one of the mixtures by means of which he and Beroviero were trying to produce the famous red glass. In order to begin to make glass in his own way, it was necessary that one of the three should be emptied, but unless he disobeyed his orders this was out of the question. In his train of thought and longing to try what he felt sure must succeed, he had forgotten the obstacle. The check brought him back to himself, and he walked disconsolately up and down the long room by the side of the furnace.

  Everything was against him, said the melancholy little demon that torments genius on dark days. It was not enough that he should be forced by every consideration of honour and wisdom to hide his love for his master’s daughter; when he took refuge in his art and tried to throw his whole life into it, he was stopped at the outset by the most impassable barriers of impossibility. The furious desire to create, which is the strength as well as the essence of genius, surged up and dashed itself to futile spray upon the face of the solid rock.

  He stood still before the hanging shelves on which he had placed the objects he had occasionally made, and which his master allowed him to keep there — light, air-thin vessels of graceful shapes: an ampulla of exquisite outline with a long curved spout that bent upwards and then outwards and over like the stalk of a lily of the valley; a large drinking-glass set on a stem so slender that one would doubt its strength to carry the weight of a full measure, yet so strong that the cup might have been filled with lead without breaking it; a broad dish that was nothing but a shadow against the light, but in the shadow was a fair design of flowers, drawn free with a diamond point; there were a dozen of such things on the shelves, not the best that Zorzi had made, for those Beroviero took to his own house and used on great occasions, while these were the results of experiments unheard of in those days, and which not long afterwards made a school.

  In his present frame of mind Zorzi felt a foolish impulse to take them down and smash them one by one in the big jar into which the failures were thrown, to be melted again in the main furnace, for in a glass-house nothing is thrown away. He knew it was foolish, and he held his hands behind him as he looked at the things, wishing that he had never made them, that he had never learned the art he was forbidden by law to practise, that he had never left Dalmatia as a little boy long ago, that he had never been born.

  The door opened suddenly and Giovanni entered. Zorzi turned and looked at him in silence. He was surprised, but he supposed that the master’s son had a right to come if he chose, though he never showed himself in the glass-house when his father was in Murano.

  “Are you alone here?” asked Giovanni, looking about him. “Do none of the workmen come here?”

  “The master has left me in charge of his work,” answered Zorzi. “I need no help.”

  Giovanni seated himself in his father’s chair and looked at the table before the window.

  “It is not very hard work, I fancy,” he observed, crossing one leg over the other and pulling up his black hose to make it fit his lean calf better.

  Zorzi suspected at once that he had come in search of information, and paused before answering.

  “The work needs careful attention,” he said at last.

  “Most glass-work does,” observed Giovanni, with a harsh little laugh. “Are you very attentive, then? Do you remember to do all that my father told you?”

  “The master only left this morning. So far, I have obeyed his orders.”

  “I do not understand how a man who is not a glass-blower can know enough to be left alone in charge of a furnace,” said Giovanni, looking at Zorzi’s profile.

  This time Zorzi was silent. He did not think it necessary to tell how much he knew.

  “I suppose my father knows what he is about,” continued Giovanni, in a tone of disapproval.

  Zorzi thought so too, and no reply seemed necessary. He stood still, looking out of the window, and wishing that his visitor would go away. But Giovanni had no such intention.

  “What are you making?” he asked presently.

  “A certain kind of glass,” Zorzi answered.

  “A new colour?”

  “A certain colour. That is all I can tell you.”

  “You can tell me what colour it is,” said Giovanni. “Why are you so secret? Even if my father had ordered you to be silent with me about his work, which I do not believe, you would not be betraying anything by telling me that. What colour is he trying to m
ake?”

  “I am to say nothing about it, not even to you. I obey my orders.”

  Giovanni was a glass-maker himself. He rose with an air of annoyance and crossed the laboratory to the jar in which the broken glass was kept, took out a piece and held it up against the light. Zorzi had made a movement as if to hinder him, but he realised at once that he could not lay hands on his master’s son. Giovanni laughed contemptuously and threw the fragment back into the jar.

  “Is that all? I can do better than that myself!” he said, and he sat down again in the big chair.

  His eyes fell on the shelves upon which Zorzi’s specimens of work were arranged. He looked at them with interest, at once understanding their commercial value.

  “My father can make good things when he is not wasting time over discoveries,” he remarked, and rising again he went nearer and began to examine the little objects.

  Zorzi said nothing, and after looking at them a long time Giovanni turned away and stood before the furnace. The copper ladle with which the specimens were taken from the pots lay on the brick ledge near one of the ‘boccas.’ Giovanni took it, looked round to see where the iron plate for testing was placed, and thrust the ladle into the aperture, holding it lightly lest the heat should hurt his hand.

  “You shall not do that!” cried Zorzi, who was already beside him.

  Before Giovanni knew what was happening Zorzi had struck the ladle from his hand, and it disappeared through the ‘bocca’ into the white-hot glass within.

  CHAPTER IX

  WITH AN OATH Giovanni raised his hand to strike Zorzi in the face, but the quick Dalmatian snatched up his heavy blow-pipe in both hands and stood in an attitude of defence.

  “If you try to strike me, I shall defend myself,” he said quietly.

  Giovanni’s sour face turned grey with fright, and then as his impotent anger rose, the grey took an almost greenish hue that was bad to see. He smiled in a sickly fashion. Zorzi set the blow-pipe upright against the furnace and watched him, for he saw that the man was afraid of him and might act treacherously.

  “You need not be so violent,” said Giovanni, and his voice trembled a little, as he recovered himself. “After all, my father would not have made any objection to my trying the glass. If I had, I could not have guessed how it was made.”

  Zorzi did not answer, for he had discovered that silence was his best weapon. Giovanni continued, in the peevish tone of a man who has been badly frightened and is ashamed of it.

  “It only shows how ignorant you are of glass-making, if you suppose that my father would care.” As he still got no reply beyond a shrug of the shoulders, he changed the subject. “Did you see my father make any of those things?” he asked, pointing to the shelves.

  “No,” answered Zorzi.

  “But he made them all here, did he not?” insisted Giovanni. “And you are always with him.”

  “He did not make any of them.”

  Giovanni opened his eyes in astonishment. In his estimation there was no man living, except his father, who could have done such work. Zorzi smiled, for he knew what the other’s astonishment meant.

  “I made them all,” he said, unable to resist the temptation to take the credit that was justly his.

  “You made those things?” repeated Giovanni incredulously.

  But Zorzi was not in the least offended by his disbelief. The more sceptical Giovanni was, the greater the honour in having produced anything so rarely beautiful.

  “I made those, and many others which the master keeps in his house,” he said.

  Giovanni would have liked to give him the lie, but he dared not just then.

  “If you made them, you could make something of the kind again,” he said. “I should like to see that. Take your blow-pipe and try. Then I shall believe you.”

  “There is no white glass in the furnace,” answered Zorzi. “If there were, I would show you what I can do.”

  Giovanni laughed sourly.

  “I thought you would find some good excuse,” he said.

  “The master saw me do the work,” answered Zorzi unconcernedly. “Ask him about it when he comes back.”

  “There are other furnaces in the glass-house,” suggested Giovanni. “Why not bring your blow-pipe with you and show the workmen as well as me what you can do?”

  Zorzi hesitated. It suddenly occurred to him that this might be a decisive moment in his life, in which the future would depend on the decision he made. In all the years since he had been with Beroviero he had never worked at one of the great furnaces among the other men.

  “I daresay your sense of responsibility is so great that you do not like to leave the laboratory, even for half an hour,” said Giovanni scornfully. “But you have to go home at night.”

  “I sleep here,” answered Zorzi.

  “Indeed?” Giovanni was surprised. “I see that your objections are insuperable,” he added with a laugh.

  Zorzi was in one of those moods in which a man feels that he has nothing to lose. There might, however, be something to gain by exhibiting his skill before Giovanni and the men. His reputation as a glass-maker would be made in half an hour.

  “Since you do not believe me, come,” he said at last. “You shall see for yourself.”

  He took his blow-pipe and thrust it through one of the ‘boccas’ to melt off the little red glass that adhered to it. Then he cooled it in water, and carefully removed the small particles that stuck to the iron here and there like spots of glazing.

  “I am ready,” he said, when he had finished.

  Giovanni rose and led the way, without a word. Zorzi followed him, shut the door, turned the key twice and thrust it into the bosom of his doublet. Giovanni turned and watched him.

  “You are really very cautions,” he said. “Do you always lock the door when you go out?”

  “Always,” answered Zorzi, shouldering his blow-pipe.

  They crossed the little garden and entered the passage that led to the main furnace rooms. In the first they entered, eight or ten men and youths, masters and apprentices, were at work. The place was higher and far more spacious than the laboratory, the furnace was broader and taller and had four mouths instead of three. The sunlight streamed through a window high above the floor and fell upon the arched back of the annealing oven, the window being so placed that the sun could never shine upon the working end and dazzle the workmen.

  When Giovanni and Zorzi entered, the men were working in silence. The low and steady roar of the flames was varied by the occasional sharp click of iron or the soft sound of hot glass rolling on the marver, or by the hiss of a metal instrument plunged into water to cool it. Every man had an apprentice to help him, and two boys tended the fire. The foreman sat at a table, busy with an account, a small man, even paler than the others and dressed in shabby brown hose and a loose brown coat. The workmen wore only hose and shirts.

  Without desisting from their occupations they cast surprised glances at Giovanni and his companion, whom they all hated as a favoured person. One of them was finishing a drinking-glass, rolling the pontil on the arms of the working-stool; another, a beetle-browed fellow, swung his long blow-pipe with its lump of glowing glass in a full circle, high in air and almost to touch the ground; another was at a ‘bocca’ in the low glare; all were busy, and the air was very hot and close. The men looked grim and ill-tempered.

  Giovanni explained the object of his coming in a way intended to conciliate them to himself at Zorzi’s expense. Their presence gave him courage.

  “This is Zorzi, the man without a name,” he said, “who is come from Dalmatia to give us a lesson in glass-blowing.”

  One of the men laughed, and the apprentices tittered. The others looked as if they did not understand. Zorzi had known well enough what humour he should find among them, but he would not let the taunt go unanswered.

  “Sirs,” he said, for they all claimed the nobility of the glass-blowers’ caste, “I come not to teach you, but to prove to the mas
ter’s son that I can make some trifle in the manner of your art.”

  No one spoke. The workmen in the elder Beroviero’s house knew well enough that Zorzi was a better artist than they, and they had no mind to let him outdo them at their own furnace.

  “Will any one of you gentlemen allow me to use his place?” asked Zorzi civilly.

  Not a man answered. In the sullen silence the busy hands moved with quick skill, the furnace roared, the glowing glass grew in ever-changing shapes.

  “One of you must give Zorzi his place,” said Giovanni, in a tone of authority.

  The little foreman turned quite round in his chair and looked on. There was no reply. The pale men went on with their work as if Giovanni were not there, and Zorzi leaned calmly on his blow-pipe. Giovanni moved a step forward and spoke directly to one of the men who had just dropped a finished glass into the bed of soft wood ashes, to be taken to the annealing oven.

  “Stop working for a while,” he said. “Let Zorzi have your place.”

  “The foreman gives orders here, not you,” answered the man coolly, and he prepared to begin another piece.

  Giovanni was very angry, but there were too many of the workmen, and he did not say what rose to his lips, but crossed over to the foreman. Zorzi kept his place, waiting to see what might happen.

  “Will you be so good as to order one of the men to give up his place?” Giovanni asked.

  The old foreman smiled at this humble acknowledgment of his authority, but he argued the point before acceding.

  “The men know well enough what Zorzi can do,” he answered in a low voice. “They dislike him, because he is not one of us. I advise you to take him to your own glass-house, sir, if you wish to see him work. You will only make trouble here.”