He stood before her then bare-headed, and the water ran down upon the marble floor from his drenched clothes. He had neither hat nor cloak, and his dark hair was matted with the rain; but his face was radiant.
‘You are frozen! you are soaked through and through!’ she cried anxiously. ‘You will get an illness, and I can do nothing! There is not even a little wine here to warm you.’
He smiled and shook his head.
‘Never mind me,’ he answered. ‘Or let me take your hand in mine for a moment and the chill will pass!’
He put out his own, and when she felt that it was cold and wet, she took it in both of hers and tried to dry it, and chafed it between her palms, till he drew it away rather suddenly with a low laugh.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That is enough!’
‘No, let me warm it better, or give me the other!’
‘There is too much fire in your touch,’ he answered. ‘It burns through cold and wet. It would burn through ice itself!’
His tone made her forget her first anxiety for him; but she felt that she must explain why she was there, if only to quiet her own conscience.
‘I would not have come if it had not rained,’ she said, avoiding his eyes, ‘and now I must not stay with you. As soon as it stops you must let yourself out and go away. It was only when I heard the rain — —’
‘Blessings on the rain!’ answered Stradella devoutly. ‘I never loved it before!’
‘You should not have come on such a night — I mean — —’
She stopped and he saw her blush in the faint light that came up from the lamp on the floor.
‘I had no choice, since I had promised,’ he answered. ‘And I promise you I will come to-morrow again — —’
‘Oh, do not promise — please!’ She seemed distressed.
‘Yes, I will come to-morrow and every night, until you come away with me. I will bring you a disguise in which you can travel safely till we are over the Venetian border and free.’
‘But I cannot — I will not!’ she protested. ‘You speak as if — as if — —’
‘As if we loved each other, heart and soul, for life or death,’ he said, not letting her go on, and taking her hand again. ‘I speak as if we had been born into the world only for that, to love and live and die together! As if there were no woman for me but you in all the earth, and no man for you but me! As if our lips had promised and had met!’
She was drinking his words, and her eyes were in his as he bent to her face. But then she started, in returning consciousness, and tried to draw back.
‘No, no!’ she cried, in sudden maiden distress. ‘Not yet! It is too soon!’
He drew her nearer to him in spite of herself, with both her hands in his, till he could speak close to her ear.
‘Tell me you do not love me, love! Tell me you will not feel one little regret if you never see me again! Come, say it in my ear, sweetheart! Say that if I fall and am killed in climbing down when I leave you, it will make no more difference to you than if a dog were drowned in the canal! Is it not true, dear? Then say it quickly! Only whisper it in my ear, and I will go away and never come back. But you must say it — —’
‘Yes — please go!’ she answered faintly. ‘Go at once — —’
‘No, you must say the rest first,’ he insisted, and his lips were almost touching her ear. ‘Say it after me: “I hate you, I despise you, I loathe you, I do not care whether you live or die.” Why do you not begin to repeat the words, heart of my heart?’
She turned suddenly in his hold, holding her head far back, wide-eyed and very pale. But she could not speak, or would not, foreknowing what must happen now that had never happened to her before.
He smiled faintly, and when he spoke again it was a sweet breath she felt, rather than a sound that reached her ear.
‘Will you not say it?’ he said, and his face came slowly nearer to hers. ‘Would it not be true? No? Then say “I love you, love,” or speak no word aloud but let your lips make syllables on mine, and, like the blind, the touch will tell me what you say.’
Her eyes closed of themselves, the speaking breath came nearer, and then, as lightning flashes through a summer’s night, flame ran from her lips to her feet, and to her heart from her hands that lay in his and felt his life stirring.
It was innocent enough, a girl’s first love-kiss, and the kiss of a man who loved in earnest for the first time, but it seemed a great and a fearful thing to her, irrevocable as lost innocence itself; and he, whose masculine light-heartedness made not much of mere kisses, and laughed at the thought that love could do much wrong, felt that he had given a pledge he must redeem and a promise he must honourably keep.
It was innocent enough. He held her by the hands as he bent and kissed her, for the water was still trickling down his drenched clothes, and her pretty dressing-gown would have been spoiled if he had even put one arm round her waist. There was a dash of the ridiculous in that, which would have made them both laugh if they had not been so simply and utterly in earnest. And then when he let her hands go and she sank upon a chair, he could not even sit down beside her, because the velvet seat would have been ruined. So he stood bolt upright in the midst of the little puddle the water had made round his feet.
She covered her face with her hands for a moment, not in any shame, but trying to make herself think.
‘You must go now,’ she said presently, looking up at him. ‘It is enough to make the strongest man fall ill, to be drenched as you are. You will lose your voice — —’
‘What does that matter, if I have found you?’ he asked. ‘But I will do as you wish, for it has stopped raining at last, and it is growing late — you will lose half your sleep to-night.’
‘Or all of it!’ she answered softly, thinking of his kiss. ‘How did you get up to the loggia? Have you a ladder?’
He had none. He had got over the outer wall by means of a rope with a grappling-hook fastened to it, which he had thrown up from the canal. Thence he had reached the loggia without much difficulty, for in the short intervals during the lessons he had more than once looked down and had seen that it was quite possible, and more a question of steady nerves than of great strength and activity. At the level of the loggia a stone ledge ran round the palace, and along this it was easy to creep on hands and knees. He had drawn himself up to it from the top of the wall, which joined the building at the corner of the garden.
‘It is easy enough,’ Stradella answered. ‘And now good-bye. To-morrow night again, love, an hour before midnight.’
She rose and they joined hands again.
‘I ought to tell you not to come,’ she said in a weak voice, like a child’s. ‘But how can I say it — now — now that — —’
If any other word would have followed, it could not. Once more her closed eyes saw sweet summer lightnings, and the thrill of the flame ran from her lips through every vital part.
He turned from her at last to unfasten the window, and for a moment she was too dazed to stop him, though she would have kept him still. Then she tried to follow him out into the loggia, but he would not let her.
‘No, love,’ he said, ‘your wet shoes would tell tales.’
‘But there is danger!’ answered Ortensia, holding him by his drenched sleeve. ‘I must know you are safe!’
‘When I reach my boat I will whistle softly,’ he said.
He was gone in the dark, and she was listening by the open window, her heart beating so that it seemed as if it must drown any other sound. But he made no noise as he crept along the ledge to the corner, and then cautiously let himself down upon the top of the wall, dropping astride of it then to pull himself along in that position by his hands till he found the grappling-hook of his rope. The wall rose perpendicularly from the canal, and he had moored his little skiff to the only ring he could find at the base of it, some distance from the corner.
Ortensia listened anxiously for the promised signal, and peered into the darkness, her hand
on the window, ready to close it as soon as she knew he was safe.
But suddenly she heard the sound of oars striking the water, and a yellow glare rose above the wall from the other side.
‘Who goes there?’ asked a deep voice.
No one answered, but instantly there was a heavy splash, as of a body falling into the canal.
Half-an-hour later Ortensia was lying on her back again, staring up at the rosette in the canopy. But her face was distorted with horror now, and was whiter than the pillow itself.
In the day-room, by the light of Ortensia’s little lamp, Pina was on her knees, carefully mopping up the water that had run down from Stradella’s clothes, and drying the marble floor.
CHAPTER IV
SOON AFTER SUNRISE the Senator came and unlocked the doors of Ortensia’s day-room. That had always been his custom, for he kept the key under his pillow, as has been said, and he would as soon have thought of sending a servant to liberate the girl and the woman in the morning as of letting any one but himself lock them in at night.
‘The master’s eye fattens the horse,’ he said to himself, quoting a Spanish proverb without much regard for metaphors.
It was his wont to open the door, and to look into the large room before going away, for he was sure that his eye would at once detect the slightest disarrangement of the furniture, or anything else unusual which might warrant suspicion.
But this morning he did more: he entered the room, shut the door behind him and looked about. He went to the window and examined the fastenings carefully, opened it wide, went out into the loggia and looked down into the garden. Everything was in order there, not one flower-pot had been upset by the squall, not a branch of the cypress-tree was broken or even bent.
Then he came in again and tapped sharply at the door of the dressing-room where Pina slept. She appeared instantly, already dressed; but she laid one finger on her lips, to keep him silent, and came out into the room before she spoke.
She said that Ortensia had been kept awake half the night by the storm, and was now sound asleep.
‘A thief tried to get into the house after midnight,’ said Pignaver. ‘Did you hear any noise?’
‘I should think I did!’ cried Pina promptly. ‘I was going to tell your lordship of it. I was up with the young lady, and when the first squall was over and she was more quiet, I thought I would just come in here to see if any water had run in under the window as it sometimes does. Just then I saw a glare of light beyond the garden wall, and I opened the window at once and heard the Signor of the Night challenging a thief, and directly afterwards there was a splash in the canal, and then silence, and the light went away slowly. I hope the man was drowned, my lord!’
While she was speaking, Pignaver had nodded repeatedly, for her little story bore the stamp of truth.
‘I grieve to say that the villain got away,’ he answered. ‘At daybreak an officer from the Signors of the Night was waiting downstairs to inform me of the attempt. The Signors’ boat searched the canal for the body of the man during more than an hour, but found nothing. He must have been on the garden wall when he was seen, and he threw himself into the water to escape, leaving the rope by which he had climbed up.’
‘Mercy!’ cried Pina. ‘We might have all been murdered in our beds!’
‘No one shall get upon that wall again,’ answered the master of the house. ‘I will have the coping stuck full of broken glass from end to end before night.’
‘Would it not be well to set a watch in the garden, too, my lord? We should sleep soundly then!’
‘We shall see, we shall see,’ answered Pignaver, repeating the words slowly, as he went off. ‘We shall see,’ he said once more, as he went out.
As soon as he was gone, Pina hastened to Ortensia’s room.
‘He is safe!’ she cried as she entered. ‘They searched the canal for a whole hour, and could not find him!’
Ortensia uttered a little cry and sat up in bed suddenly; but she could scarcely believe the news, till Pina had repeated all that the Senator had said. When she heard that the wall was to be crowned with broken glass, however, her face fell, for she saw in a flash of imagination how Stradella would climb up confidently in the dark and would cut his hand to the bone when he grasped the jagged points on the top.
‘You must warn him!’ cried Ortensia. ‘You must go out and find him, and tell him not to come again!’
‘I will find him,’ answered Pina.
They had never spoken of Stradella before the night that was just past. Day after day, while the lessons were going on, Pina had left the two together, and Ortensia had silently accepted the nurse’s conduct without understanding its cause; she was too proud to speak of it when they were together, or too shy, but she was sure from the first that Pina would stand by her, though it was the woman’s sole business never to let her be out of her sight for a moment.
‘And what shall I tell him?’ Pina asked. ‘What message shall he have from you? I will faithfully deliver your words.’
Ortensia covered her eyes with one hand, leaning on the other behind her, to steady herself as she sat up.
‘Tell him that — that we must wait — and hope — —’
‘For what?’ asked Pina bluntly. ‘For the end of the world?’
Ortensia uncovered her eyes and looked up, surprised at the change of tone.
‘Will you wait till you are the Senator’s wife?’ Pina asked, her grey eyes hardening suddenly. ‘Will you hope that by that time the broken glass on the wall will have softened in the rain till it will not cut his hands? Or that you will be more free when you are married? You will not be. That is not the way in Venice. I am a serving-woman, and, besides, I am neither young nor pretty — I was once! — so I may go and come on your business and walk alone from the Piazza to Santa Maria dell’ Orto. But you noble ladies, you are born in a cage, you live in bondage, and you die in prison! Will you wait? Will you hope? What for?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Ortensia in a frightened voice. ‘Am I never to see him again? Is my message to him to be a good-bye?’
‘Good-bye is easily said,’ Pina answered, shaking her head enigmatically.
The young girl let herself sink back on her pillow, and turned her face against her bare arm, so that at least her eyes were hidden from the nurse.
‘I cannot!’ she whispered to herself, drawing a breath that almost choked her.
‘Yes,’ Pina repeated harshly, ‘it is easy to say farewell; and as for any hope after that, the devil lends it us at usury, and if we cannot pay on the day of reckoning he takes possession!’
‘What cruel things you say!’ Ortensia cried in a half-broken tone, turning her head slowly from side to side, with her face hidden in the soft hollow of her elbow.
‘What hope will there be for you, child, when you are your uncle’s wife? The hope of dying young — that is all the hope you will have left!’
The woman laughed bitterly, and Ortensia felt that she was going to cry, or wished that she could, she was not quite sure which.
‘Therefore I say it is folly to send a man such a message. “Wait and hope,” indeed! How long? His lifetime? Yours? You are both young, and you may wait and hope fifty years, till your hair and teeth fall out, and you discover that there is nothing in hope after all! Better say good-bye outright, though it kill you! Better try and forget than make a martyrdom of remembering! Better anything than hope!’
The grey-eyed woman’s voice shook with an emotion which Ortensia could not have understood if she had noticed it, for she was dreadfully miserable just then. Pina bent down over her, smoothed her hair and patted her bare arm softly.
‘Why hope for what you can take, if you have the courage?’ she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper, as she glanced behind her towards the door.
Ortensia lifted her head and looked up, her lips parting in surprise.
‘Why should you waste time in waiting?’ Pina asked, still whispering. ‘That is the
message I would send if I were you,’ she added. ‘Shall I take it?’
‘But how? — I do not understand — he cannot come to me here.’
‘We can go to him,’ answered the nurse. ‘Is it not easy? The next time you confess at the Frari he will meet us. It is simple enough. Two long brown cloaks with hoods, such as old women wear, a few hundred yards to walk from the Frari to the Tolentini, his gondola there, and out by Santa Chiara to the mainland and Padua — who shall catch us then? You are young and strong, and I am tough; we shall not die of the fatigue; and by the next morning we shall all three be out of Venetian territory. What is easier?’
Ortensia listened to this bold plan in silence, too much surprised to ask why Pina was so ready to propose it, and a little frightened too, for she was a mere girl, and all the world beyond Venice was a mysterious immensity of Cimmerian gloom in the midst of which little pools of brilliant light marked the great and wonderful places she had heard described, such as Rome, Florence, and Milan, and royal Paris, and imperial Vienna.
‘But my uncle would send men after us,’ Ortensia objected. ‘The Council of Ten will do anything he asks! They will give him soldiers, ships, anything! How can we possibly escape from him? We shall be caught and brought back!’
Pina smiled at such fears.
‘Beyond the Venetian border they can do nothing,’ she said. ‘Do we mean to rob the Senator or murder him, that Venice should send an ambassador to claim us for trial under the laws of the Republic? Is it a crime for young people to love, and to run away and marry?’
‘You do not know how powerful my uncle is,’ Ortensia said.
Pina’s face changed at once, and her expression became stony and impenetrable.
‘You are wrong,’ she answered in a hard voice. ‘I know he is powerful. But if you fear him, as I do not, then wait and hope! Wait and hope!’
She laughed very strangely as she repeated the words, and her voice cracked on the last one, with a discordant note that frightened Ortensia, who was weary and overwrought.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1289