Marietta was awaiting her father’s return with much anxiety, for every one knew that the master had gone first to the laboratory and then to the Governor’s palace, with Giovanni, so that the two must have been talking together a long time. Marietta waited with her sister-in-law in the lower hall, slowly walking up and down.
When her father came up the low steps at last, she went forward to meet him, and a glance told her that he was in the most extreme anxiety. She took his hand and kissed it, in the customary manner, and he bent a little and touched her forehead with his lips. Then, to her surprise, he put one hand under her chin, and laid the other on the top of her head, and with gentle force made her look at him. Giovanni’s wife was there, and most of the servants were standing near the foot of the staircase to welcome their master.
Beroviero said nothing as he gazed into his daughter’s eyes. They met his own fearlessly enough, and she opened them wide, as she rarely did, as if to show that she had nothing to conceal; but while he looked at her the blood rose blushing in her cheeks, telling that there was something to hide after all, and as she would not turn her eyes from his, they sparkled a little with vexation. Beroviero did not speak, but he let her go and went on towards the stairs, bending his head graciously to the other persons who were assembled to greet him.
He was a man of strong character and of much natural dignity, far too proud to break down under a great loss or a bitter disappointment, and at dinner he sat at the head of the table and spoke affably of the journey he had made, explaining his unexpectedly early return by the fact that the Lord of Rimini had at once approved his designs and accepted his terms. Occasionally Giovanni asked a respectful question, but neither his wife nor Marietta said much during the meal. Zorzi was not mentioned.
“You are welcome at my house, my son,” Beroviero said, when they had finished, “but I suppose that you will go back to your own this evening.”
This was of course a command, and Marietta thought it a good omen. She had felt sure, when her father made her look at him, that Giovanni had spoken to him of the mantle, but in what way she could not tell. Perhaps, though it seemed incredible, he would not make such a serious case of it as she had expected.
He said nothing, when he withdrew to rest during the hot hours of the afternoon, and she went to her own room as every one did at that time. Little as she had slept that night, she felt that it would be intolerable to lie down; so she took her little basket of beads and tried to work. Nella was dozing in the next room. From time to time the young girl leaned back in her chair with half-closed eyes, and a look of pain came over her face; then with an effort she took her needle once more, and picked out the beads, threading them one by one in a regular succession of colours.
She was sure that if Zorzi were near he would have already found some means of informing her that he was really in safety. He must have friends of whom she knew nothing, and who had rescued him at great risk. He would surely trust one of them to take a message, or to make a signal which she could understand. She sat near the window, and the shutters were half closed so as to leave a space through which she could look out. From time to time she glanced at the white line of the footway opposite, over which the shadow of the glass-house was beginning to creep as the sun moved westward. But no one appeared. When it was cool Pasquale would probably come out and look three times up and down the canal as he always did. Giovanni would not go to the laboratory again. Perhaps her father would go, when, he was rested. Then, if she chose, she could take Nella and join him, and since there was to be an explanation with him, she would rather have it in the laboratory, where they would be quite alone.
She had fully made up her mind to tell him at the very first interview that she would not marry Jacopo Contarini under any circumstances, but she had not decided whether she would add that she loved Zorzi. She hated anything like cowardice, and it would be cowardly to put off telling the truth any longer; but what concerned Zorzi was her secret, and she had a right to choose the most favourable moment for making a revelation on which her whole life, and Zorzi’s also, must immediately depend. She felt weak and tired, for she had eaten little and hardly slept at all, but her determination was strong and she would act upon it.
Occasionally she rose and moved wearily about the room, looked out between the shutters and then sat down again. She was in one of those moments of life in which all existence seems drawn out to an endless quivering thread, a single throbbing nerve stretched to its utmost point of strain.
The silence was broken by a man’s footstep in the passage, coming towards her door. A moment later she heard her father’s voice, asking if he might come in. Almost at the same time she opened and Beroviero stood on the threshold. Nella had heard him speaking, too, and she started up, wide awake in an instant, and came in, to see if she were needed.
“Will you go with me to the laboratory, my dear?” asked the old man quietly.
She answered gravely that she would. There was no gladness in her tone, but no reluctance. She was facing the most difficult situation she had ever known, and perhaps the most dangerous.
“Very well,” said her father. “Let Nella give you your silk mantle and we will go at once.”
Before Marietta could have answered, even if she had known what to say, Nella had begun her tale of woe. The mantle was stolen, the sour-faced shrew of a maid who belonged to the Signor Giovanni’s wife had stolen it, the house ought to be searched at once, and so much more to the same effect that Nella was obliged to pause for breath.
“When did you miss it?” asked Beroviero, looking hard at the serving-woman.
“This morning, sir. It was here last night, I am quite sure.”
The truthful little brown eyes did not waver.
“And it cannot have been any one else,” continued Nella. “This is a very evil person, sir, and she sometimes comes here with a message, or making believe that she is helping me. As if I needed help, indeed!”
“Do not accuse people of stealing when you have no evidence against them,” answered Beroviero somewhat sternly. “Give your mistress something else to throw over her.”
“Give me the green silk cloak,” said Marietta, who was anxious not to be questioned about the mantle.
“It has a spot in one corner,” Nella answered discontentedly, as she went to the wardrobe.
The spot turned out to be no bigger than the head of a pin. A moment later Marietta and her father were going downstairs. At the door of the glass-house Pasquale eyed them with approbation, and Marietta smiled and said a word to him as she passed. It seemed strange that she should have trusted the ugly old man with a secret which she dared not tell her own father.
Beroviero did not speak as she followed him down the path and stood waiting while he unlocked the door. Then they both entered, and he laid his cap upon the table.
“There is your mantle, my dear,” he said quietly, and he pointed to it, neatly folded and lying on the bench.
Marietta started, for she was taken unawares. While in her own room, her father had spoken so naturally as to make it seem quite possible that Giovanni had said nothing about it to him, yet he had known exactly where it was. He was facing her now, as he spoke.
“It was found here last night, after Zorzi had been arrested,” said Beroviero. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Marietta answered, gathering all her courage. “We will talk about it by and by. First, I have something to say to you which is much more important than anything concerning the mantle. Will you sit down, father, and hear me as patiently as you can?”
“I am learning patience to-day,” said Beroviero, sitting down in his chair. “I am learning also the meaning of such words as ingratitude, betrayal and treachery, which were never before spoken in my house.”
He sighed and leaned back, looking at the wall. Marietta dropped her cloak beside the mantle on the bench and began to walk up and down before him, trying to begin her speech. But she could not find any words.
/> “Speak, child,” said her father. “What has happened? It seems to me that I could bear almost anything now.”
She stood still a moment before him, still hesitating. She now saw that he had suffered more than she had suspected, doubtless owing to Zorzi’s arrest and disappearance, and she knew that what she meant to tell him would hurt him much more.
“Father,” she began at last, with a great effort, “I know that what I am going to say will displease you very, very much. I am sorry — I wish it were not—”
Suddenly her set speech broke down. She fell on her knees and took his hands, looking up beseechingly to his face.
“Forgive me!” she cried. “Oh, for God’s sake forgive me! I cannot marry Jacopo Contarini!”
Beroviero had not expected that. He sat upright in the chair, in his amazement, and instinctively tried to draw his hands out of hers, but she held them fast, gazing earnestly up to him. His look was not angry, nor cold, nor did he even seem hurt. He was simply astonished beyond all measure by the enormous audacity of what she said. As yet he did not connect it with anything else.
“I think you must be mad!”
That was all he could find to say.
CHAPTER XX
MARIETTA SHOOK HER head. She still knelt at her father’s feet, holding his hands.
“I am not mad,” she said. “I am in earnest. I cannot marry him. It is impossible.”
“You must marry him,” answered Beroviero. “You are betrothed to him, and it would be an insult to his family to break off the marriage now. Besides, you have no reason to give, not the shadow of a reason.”
Marietta dropped his hands and rose to her feet lightly. She had expected a terrific outburst of anger, which would gradually subside, after which she hoped to find words with which to influence him. But like many hot-tempered men, he was sometimes unexpectedly calm at critical moments, as if he were really able to control his nature when he chose. She now almost wished that he would break out in a rage, as women sometimes hope we may, for they know it is far easier to deal with an angry man than with a determined one.
“I will not marry him,” she said at last, with strong emphasis, and almost defiantly.
“My child,” Beroviero answered gravely, “you do not know what you are saying.”
“I do!” cried Marietta with some indignation. “I have thought of it a long time. I was very wrong not to make up my mind from the beginning, and I ask your forgiveness. In my heart I always knew that I could not do it in the end, and I should have said so at once. It was a great mistake.”
“There is no question of your consent,” replied Beroviero with conviction. “If girls were consulted as to the men they were to marry, the world would soon come to an end. This is only a passing madness, of which you should be heartily ashamed. Say no more about it. On the appointed day, the wedding will take place.”
“It will not,” said Marietta firmly; “and you will do better to let it be known at once. It is of no use to take heaven to witness, and to make a solemn oath. I merely say that I will not marry Jacopo Contarini. You may carry me to the church, you may drag me before the altar, but I will resist. I will scream out that I will not, and the priest himself will protect me. That will be a much greater scandal than if you go to the Contarini family and tell them that your daughter is mad — if you really think I am.”
“You are undoubtedly beside yourself at the present moment,” Beroviero answered. “But it will pass, I hope.”
“Not while I am alive, and I shall certainly resist to the end. It would be much wiser of you to send me to a convent at once, than to count on forcing me to go through the marriage ceremony.”
Beroviero stared at her, and stroked his beard. He began to believe that she might possibly be in earnest. Since she talked so quietly of going to a convent, a fate which most girls considered the most terrible that could be imagined. He bent his brows in thought, but watched her steadily.
“You have not yet given me a single reason for all this wild talk,” he said after a pause. “It is absurd to think that without some good cause you are suddenly filled with repulsion for marriage, or for Jacopo Contarini. I have heard of young women who were betrothed, but who felt a religious vocation, and refused to marry for that reason. It never seemed a very satisfactory one to me, for if there is any condition in which a woman needs religion, it is the marriage state.”
He paused in his speech, pleased with his own idea, in spite of all his troubles. Marietta had moved a few steps away from him and stood beside the table, looking down at the things on it, without seeing them.
“But you do not even make religion a pretext,” pursued her father. “Have you no reason to give? I do not expect a good one, for none can have any weight. But I should like to hear the best you have.”
“It is a very convincing one to me,” Marietta replied, still looking down at the table. “But I think I had better not tell it to you to-day,” she added. “It would make you angry.”
“No,” said Beroviero. “One cannot be angry with people who are really out of their senses.”
“I am not so mad as you think,” answered the girl. “I have told you of my decision, because it was cowardly of me not to tell you what I felt before you went away. But it might be a mistake to tell you more to-day. You have had enough to harass you already, since you came back.”
“You are suddenly very considerate.”
“No, I have not been considerate. I could not be, without acting a lie to you, by letting you believe that I meant to marry Messer Jacopo, and I will not do that any longer, since I know that it is a lie. But I cannot see the use of saying anything more.”
“You had better tell me the whole truth, rather than let me think something that may be much worse,” answered Beroviero, changing his attitude.
“There is nothing in the truth of which I am ashamed,” said Marietta, holding up her head proudly. “I have done nothing which I did not believe to be right, however strange it may seem to you.”
Once more their eyes met and they gazed steadily at each other; and again the blush spread over her cheeks. Beroviero put out his hand and touched the folded mantle.
“Marietta,” he said, “Zorzi has stolen my precious book of secrets, and has disappeared with it. They tell me that he also stole this mantle, for it was found here just after he was arrested last night. Is it true, or has he stolen my daughter instead?”
Marietta’s face had darkened when he began to accuse the absent man. At the question that followed she started a little, and drew herself up.
“Zorzi is neither a thief nor a traitor,” she answered. “If you mean to ask me whether I love him — is that what you mean?” She paused, with flashing eyes.
“Yes,” answered her father, and his voice shook.
“Then yes! I love him with all my heart, and I have loved him long. That is why I will not marry Jacopo Contarini. You know my secret now.”
Beroviero groaned aloud, and his head sank as he grasped the arms of the chair. His daughter loved the man who had cheated him, betrayed him and robbed him. It was almost too much to bear. He had nothing to say, for no words could tell what he felt then, and he silently bowed his head.
“As for the accusations you bring against him,” Marietta said after a moment, “they are false, from first to last, and I can prove to you that every one of them is an abominable lie.”
“You cannot make that untrue which I have seen with my eyes.”
“I can, though Zorzi has the right to prove his innocence himself. I may say too much, for I am not as generous as he is. Do you know that when they tried to kill him in the furnace room, and lamed him for life, he told every one, even me, that it was an accident? He is so brave and noble that when he comes here again, he will not tell you that it was your own son who tried to rob you, who did everything in his power to get Zorzi away from this room, in order to search for your manuscript, and who at last, as everything else failed, persuaded the Governor
to arrest him. He will not tell you that, and he does not know that before they had taken him twenty paces from the door, Giovanni was already here, locked in and trying the stones with a hammer to find out which one covered the precious book. Did Giovanni tell you that this morning? No. Zorzi would not tell you all the truth, and I know some of it even better than he. But Zorzi was always generous and brave.”
Beroviero had lifted his head now and was looking hard at her.
“And your mantle? How came it here?” he asked.
There was nothing to be done now, but to speak the truth.
“It is here,” said Marietta, growing paler, “because I came here, unknown to any one except Pasquale who let me in, because I came alone last night to warn the man I love that Giovanni had planned his destruction, and to save him if I could. In my haste I left the mantle in that chair of yours, in which I had been sitting. It slipped from my shoulders as I sat, and there Giovanni must have found it. If you had seen it there you would know that what I say is true.”
“I did see it,” said Beroviero. “Giovanni left it where it was, and I folded it myself this morning. Zorzi did not steal the mantle. I take back that accusation.”
“Nor has he stolen your secrets. Take that back, too, if you are just. You always were, till now.”
“I have searched the place where he and I put the book, and it is not there.”
“Giovanni searched it twelve hours earlier, and it was already gone. Zorzi saved it from your son, and then, in his rage, I suppose that Giovanni accused him of stealing it. He may even have believed it, for I can be just, too. But it is not true. The book is safe.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1006