Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Inconsistent punctuation in the ads section has been
left as printed. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
signs=.
ARETHUSA
[Illustration: ARETHUSA]
ARETHUSA
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "A LADY OF ROME,"
ETC., ETC.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1907
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1907,
BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1907.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
THE STORY-TELLER OF THE BAZAAR
DEDICATES
THIS TALE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
TO HIS DEAR DAUGHTER
ELEANOR
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Arethusa _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
He was talking with an old beggar woman 30
She tenderly kissed the wrinkled face 44
'Yes,' replied the negress. 'Rustan is very affectionate. He
says that I am his Zoë, his "life," because he would surely
die of starvation without me!' 66
'Tell me your story,' he said in a lower tone. 'Do not be afraid!
no one shall hurt you.' 88
'Forty ducats!' cried Omobono, casting up his eyes, and preparing
to bargain for at least half an hour 94
All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat
down on a seat beside the divan 108
There was something so oddly fixed in his look and so dull in his
voice that Omobono began to fear that he might be a lunatic 128
'I know them,' Zoë answered. 'If I am not telling you the
truth, sell me in the market to-morrow.' 164
'I did not mean to love you!' 194
The captain's wife obeyed, less frightened than she had been at
first 218
Saw her sink down there exhausted, and draw a heavy silk shawl
across her body 240
'Tell me what you see,' she said to the maids 262
'Yes!' roared the Tartar. 'Ten thousand ducats! And if I do
not find the money in the house, you two must find it in
yours! Do you understand?' 274
Then, all at once, he felt that she had received one of those
inspirations of the practical sense which visit women who
are driven to extremities 310
'Am I not your bought slave?' she asked. 'I must obey.' 352
CHAPTER I
Carlo Zeno, gentleman of Venice, ex-clerk, ex-gambler, ex-soldier of
fortune, ex-lay prebendary of Patras, ex-duellist, and ex-Greek
general, being about twenty-nine years of age, and having in his tough
body the scars of half-a-dozen wounds that would have killed an
ordinary man, had resolved to turn over a new leaf, had become a
merchant, and was established in Constantinople in the year 1376.
He had bought a house in the city itself because the merchants of
Genoa all dwelt in the town of Pera, on the other side of the Golden
Horn. A Venetian could not have lived in the same place with Genoese,
for the air would have poisoned him, to a certainty; and besides, the
sight of a Genoese face, the sound of the Genoese dialect, the smell
of Genoese cookery, were all equally sickening to any one brought up
in the lagoons. Genoa was not fit to be mentioned within hearing of
polite Venetian ears, its very name was unspeakable by decent Venetian
lips; and even to pronounce the syllables for purposes of business was
horribly unlucky.
Therefore Carlo Zeno and his friends had taken up their abode in the
old city, amongst the Greeks and the Bokharians, the Jews and the
Circassians, and they left the Genoese to themselves in Pera,
pretending that they did not even exist. It was not always easy to
keep up the pretence, it is true, for Zeno had extremely good eyes and
could not help seeing those abominations of mankind on the other side
of the Golden Horn when he sat in his balcony on spring evenings; and
his only consolation was to dream of destroying them wholesale, of
hewing them in pieces by the hundred and the thousand, and of piling
up pyramids of their ugly grinning heads. Why were they Genoese? Carlo
Zeno would rather have taken a box on the ear from Sultan Amurad, the
Turk, over there in Asia Minor, than a civil word from the least
objectionable of those utterly unspeakable monsters of Genoese.
'Behold,' said Tertullian one day in scorn, 'how these Christians love
one another.' Matters had not improved in eleven hundred years, since
that learned Doctor of the Church had departed this life, presumably
for a more charitable world; but Carlo Zeno would have answered that
the Genoese were no more Christians than mules, and much less so than
the pigs, which are all under the special protection of the blessed
Saint Anthony.
At the very time, too, when my story begins, those obnoxious villains
of Genoa were on the successful side of a revolution; for they had
helped Emperor Andronicus to imprison his father, Emperor John, in the
tall Amena tower on the north side of the city, by the Golden Horn,
and to lock up his two younger brothers in a separate dungeon. It was
true that Emperor John had ordered Andronicus and his little son of
five to be blinded with boiling vinegar, but Genoese money had
miraculously converted the vinegar into bland white wine, and had
reduced the temperature from the boiling point to that of a healthful
lotion, so that neither the boy nor the man were any the worse after
the application than before; but Andronicus had resented the mere
intention on the part of his father, and had avenged himself by taking
the Empire, such as it was, for the present, while reserving the
delight of murdering his parent and his brothers at a convenient
season in the future.
All this was very well, no doubt, and Andronicus was undisputed
Emperor for the time being, because the Genoese and Sultan Amurad were
willing that he should be; but Amurad had not always been his friend,
and the Genoese had not always had the upper hand of the Venetians;
the wind might change in a moment and a tempest might whirl him away
from the throne even more quickly than the fair breeze had wafted him
towards it.
Zeno thought so too, and wondered whether it would please fate to make
him the spirit of the storm. He cared very little about Handsome John,
as Paleologus was nicknamed, but he cared a great deal for a possible
chance of driving the Genoese out of Pera and of getting the island of
Tenedos for the Venetian Republic.
And now he had transacted the business of the day, and had dined on a
roasted palamit, for it was a Friday and the palamit is the best fish
that swims, from the Dardanelles to the Black Sea; and Zeno would no
more have eaten meat on a day of abstinence than he would have sat
down to table with a Genoese. He had been brought up to be a
churchman, and though the attempt to make a priest of him had failed
for obvious reasons, he was constant in observing those little rules
and regulations which he had been taught to believe conducive to
salvation, seeing that he was of a rash temper, prone to seek danger,
and never sure of coming home alive when it pleased him to walk
abroad. He was not a quarrelsome man on his own account, but he had a
most wonderful facility for taking up the quarrels of other people who
seemed to be in the right. The more hopeless the just case, or cause,
the more certain it was that Carlo Zeno would take it up and fight for
it as if it were his own.
But now, if ever, he was peacefully inclined; for the palamit had been
done to a turn by the Dalmatian cook; the salad which had followed it
had been composed to his liking, with shredded red peppers, pickled
olives, anchovies, and cardamom seeds, all mixed among the crisp
lettuce; and the draught of wine that had finished the meal had
gleamed in the Murano glass like spirit of gold, and the flavour of
it, as he had thoughtfully sipped it, had made him think of the scent
that still sunshine draws from fruit hanging on vine and tree. He sat
in a deep chair on his covered balcony, and was conscious that for the
moment peace and privacy were almost as delightful as the best fight
in the world. It would have been impossible to say more than that.
The sun was low, for the spring days were not yet long, and the shadow
of the city already fell across the deep blue water of the Golden
Horn. Zeno gazed down at the moving scene; his keen brown eyes
watched the boats gliding by and softened, for what he saw made him
think of Venice, the lagoons, and his home. Of all people, the most
incorrigible wanderer is generally the most hopelessly sentimental
about his native place.
Zeno had brown eyes that could soften like a woman's, but they were
much more often keen and quick, turning suddenly to take in at a
glance all that could be seen at all, until they fixed themselves with
a piercing gaze on whatever interested their owner most for the time
being,--his friend, or his adversary, his quarry if he were hunting, a
woman's face or figure. He was not a big man, but he was thoroughly
well made and well put together, elastic, tough, and active. His small
brown hands, compact and firm, seemed ready to seize or strike at
instant notice--the ideal hands of a fighting man. There was the same
ready and fearless look in his clean-shaven face and small, energetic
head, and when he moved his least motion betrayed the same gifts.
Women did not think him handsome in those days, when the idea of
beauty in man or woman alike was associated with fair or auburn hair
and milk-white skin and cherry lips. In fact, Carlo Zeno hardly showed
his lips at all, his thick hair was almost black, and his complexion
was already as tanned and weather-stained as an old sailor's. But like
many men of action he was careful of his dress, and extremely
fastidious in his ways. In the ranks, the greatest dandies are often
the best soldiers, explain the fact as you will. Some officers say
that such men are far too vain to run away. Many a French noble who
perished on the scaffold in the revolution bestowed more of his last
moments on his toilet than he devoted to his prayers, and died like a
hero and a gentleman. There are defects, like vanity, which may
sometimes pass for virtues. Carlo Zeno was one of those men whose
outward appearance is little affected by what they do, on whom the
dust and heat of travel seem to leave no trace; who are invariably
clean, neat, and fresh, the envy and despair of ordinary people. His
dark-red velvet cap was always set on his thick hair at the same
angle, and its sheen was as speckless as if dust did not exist. The
narrow miniver border of his wine-coloured cloth coat was never ragged
or worn at the edges; the fine linen, gathered at his throat and
wrists, never betrayed the least suspicion of dinginess; the mud of
Constantinople never clung to the soft Bulgarian leather of his
well-made shoes.
Just now, the latter were stuck out in front of him as he leaned back
in his deep chair and stretched his legs, asking himself vaguely
whether he could be contented for any long time with the quiet life he
was leading.
As if in answer to the question, his clerk and secretary, an important
little grey-bearded personage, appeared on the balcony at that very
moment with a letter in his hand.
'From Venice, sir,' said Omobono--that was his name--'and by the
handwriting and the seal I judge it is written by Messer Marco
Pesaro.'
Zeno frowned and then smiled, as he generally did at the
manifestations of Omobono's incorrigible curiosity. It was the only
defect of a most excellent person who was indispensable to Zeno's
daily life, and invaluable in his business. Omobono had the sad and
gentle face of an honest man who has failed on his own account, but
whose excellent qualities are immensely serviceable to stronger men.
Zeno took the letter and glanced towards the harbour, far to the right
of his house. Omobono made a short step backwards, but kept his eyes
fixed on the paper.
'No foreign vessel has anchored to-day,' said the merchant; 'who
brought this?'
'The captain of a Venetian ship, sir, which is anchored outside,
before the Port of Theodosius.'
Zeno nodded carelessly as he cut the string. The letter was written on
strong cotton paper from Padua, folded six times and secured by
twisted hemp threads, of which the final knot had been squeezed into
red wax and flattened under a heavy seal. Omobono watched his employer
quietly, hoping to learn that he had rightly guessed the
correspondent's name. Zeno, intent on reading, paid no attention to
the secretary, who gradually edged nearer until he could almost make
out the words.
This was what Zeno read, in very long sentences and in the Venetian
dialect:--
MOST BELOVED AND HONOURED FRIEND--I despatch this writing by
the opportunity of Sebastian Cornèr's good ship, sailing
to-morrow, with the help of God, for Constantinople with a
cargo of Florence cloth, Dalmatian linen, crossbows, Venetian
lace, straw hats, and blind nightingales. May the Lord preserve
the vessel, the crew, and the cargo from those unmentionable
dogs of Genoese, and bring all safely to the end of the voyage
within two months. The cloth, lace, and straw hats are mine,
the rest of the cargo belongs to Sebastian Cornèr, except the
nightingales, which are a gift from the Most Serene Republic to
his majesty the Emperor, together with the man who takes care
of the birds. What I say of my share in the cargo, most noble
friend, is not as in the way of boasting myself a wealthy
merchant, for indeed I am by no means rich, though by my
constant industry, my sleepless watchfulness, and my honest
dealing I have saved a crust of bread. Nay, I say it rather
because I come with a request to you, and in order that you may
know that there will be money due to me in Constantinople for
the sale of this cargo, through the house of Marin Cornèr, the
brother of Sebastian, who will pay you on your demand, most
beloved and honoured friend, the sum of three hundred gold
ducats. For I feel sure that you will undertake the business I
ask, for love of me and a commission of a lira of piccoli for
each ducat. I desire, in fact, that you will buy for me the
most handsome slave that can be had for the money I offer, or
even, if the girl were surpassingly beautiful, for three
hundred and fifty ducats. The truth is, most noble friend, that
my wife, who is, as you know, ten years older than I, and
impeded by rheumatisms, is in need of a youthful and
accomplished companion to help her to pass the time, and as I
have always made it my duty and my business to fulfil and even,
as in the present case, to anticipate her wishes, I am willing
to spend this large sum of money for the sole purpose of
pleasing her. Moreover I turn to you, most dear sir and friend,
well knowing that your kindness is only matched by your fine
taste. My wife would, I am sure, prefer as a companion a girl
with fine natural hair, either quite black or very fair, the
red auburn colour being so common here as to make one almost
wish that women would not dye their hair at all. My dear and
honoured friend, the teeth are a very important matter; pray
give your most particular attention to their whiteness and
regularity, for my wife is very fastidious. And also, I entreat
you, choose a slave with small ankles, not larger than you can
span with your thumb and middle finger. My wife will care less
about a very small waist, though if it be naturally slender it
is certainly a point of beauty. In all this, dearest sir,
employ for love of me those gifts of discernment with which
heaven has so richly endowed you, and I trust you will consider
the commission a fair one. Sebastian Cornèr, who is an old man,
will take charge of the slave and bring her to Venice, if you
will only see that she is properly protected and fed until he
is ready to sail, and this at the usual rate. I have also
agreed with him that she is not to be lodged in the common
cabin with the other female slaves whom he will bring from the
Black Sea on his own account, but separately and with better
food, lest she should grow unpleasingly thin. Yet it is
understood that his regular slave-master is to be responsible
for her protection, and will watch over her behaviour during
the voyage. This, my most worthy, dear and honourable sir and
friend, is the commission which I beg you to undertake; and in
this and all your other affairs I pray that the hand of
Providence, the intercession of the saints, and the wisdom of
the one hundred and eighteen Nicene fathers may be always with
you. From Venice. Marco Pesaro to the most noble patrician,
Carlo Zeno, his friend. The fourteenth day of March in the year
1376.
Zeno smiled repeatedly as he read the letter, but he did not look up
till he had finished it. His eyes met those of his secretary, who was
now much nearer than before.
'Omobono,' said Zeno gravely, 'curiosity is unbecoming in a man of
your years. With your grey beard and solemn air you are as prying and
curious as a girl.'
Omobono looked contritely at his folded hands and moved the left one
slowly within the right.
'Alas, sir,' he answered, 'I know it. I would that these hands held
but a thousandth part of what my eyes have seen.'
'They would be rich if they did,' observed Zeno bluntly. 'It is
fortunate that with your uncommon taste for other men's affairs you
can at least keep something to yourself. Since you have no doubt
mastered the contents of this letter as well as I----'
The good man protested.
'Indeed, sir, how could I have read a single word at this distance?
Try for yourself, sir, for your eyes are far younger and better than
mine.'
'Younger,' answered Zeno, 'but hardly better. And now send for
Barlaam, the Syrian merchant, and bid him come quickly, for he may do
business with me before the sun sets.'
'He will not do business to-day,' answered Omobono. 'This is Friday,
which the Muslemin keep holy.'
'So much the worse for Barlaam. He will miss a good bargain. Send for
Abraham of Smyrna, the Jewish caravan-broker.'
'He will not do business either,' said Omobono, 'for to-morrow is
Sabbath, and Shabbes begins on Friday evening.'
'In the name of the blessed Mark our Evangelist, then send me some
Christian, for Sunday cannot begin on Friday, even in Constantinople.'
'There is Rustan Karaboghazji, the Bokharian,' suggested Omobono.
Zeno looked sharply at the secretary.
'The slave-dealer?' he enquired.
Omobono nodded, but he reddened a little, poor man, and looked down at
his hands again, for he had betrayed himself, after protesting that he
knew nothing of the contents of the letter. Zeno laughed gaily.
'You are a good man, Omobono,' he said. 'You could not deceive a
child. Do you happen to have heard that Rustan has what Messer Marco
wants?'
But Omobono shook his head and grew still redder.
'Indeed, sir,--I--I do not know what your friend wants--I only
guessed----'
'A very good guess, Omobono. If I could guess the future as you can
the present, I should be a rich man. Yes, send for Rustan. I believe
he will do better for me than the Jew or the Mohammedan.'
'They say here that it takes ten Jews to cheat a Greek, and ten Greeks
to cheat a Bokharian, sir,' said Omobono.
'To say nothing of those Genoese swine who cheat the whole Eastern
Empire! What chance have we poor Venetians in such a place?'
'May heaven send the Genoese the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the
halter of Judas Iscariot!' prayed Omobono very devoutly.
'By all means,' returned Zeno, 'I hope so. Now send for the
Bokharian.'
Omobono bowed and left the balcony, and his employer leaned back in
his chair again, still holding the folded paper in his hand. His
expressive face wore a look of amusement for a while, but presently it
turned into something more like good-natured contempt, as his thoughts
went back from his secretary's last speech, to Marco Pesaro and his
letter.
This Pesaro was a fat little man of forty, who had married a rich
widow ten years older than himself. Carlo Zeno had known him well
before he had been married, a boon companion, a jolly good-for-nothing
who loved the society of younger men, and did them no good by example
or precept. His father and mother had both perished in the great
plague that raged in the year when Zeno was born, and Marco had been
brought up by two old aunts who doted on him. The result usual in such
cases had followed in due time; he had spent his own fortune and what
he inherited from his aunts, who died conveniently, and when near
forty he had found himself penniless, a poor relation of a great
family, none the worse in health for nearly a quarter of a century of
gaiety and feasting, and in temper much inclined to lead the same life
for at least another twenty years. The heart was young yet, the round,
pink face was absurdly youthful still, but the purse was in a state of
permanent collapse, without any prospect of recovery. Then Marco sold
everything he had, down to the sword which he had never drawn, and the
jewelled dagger which had never done any worse damage than to cut the
string of a love-letter; he sold his last silver spoons, his silver
drinking-cup and the gold chain and ball from his cloak, and with the
proceeds he gave a dozen of his friends one last farewell feast. Then,
on the following day, his spirit broken and resigned to his fate, he
offered himself to the very rich, elderly, and devout widow who had
been making eyes at him for six months, and he was promptly accepted.
With some of her money he engaged in the Eastern trade, renounced the
follies of his youth, and became a respectable merchant.
It was affluence, it was luxury, but it was slavery and he knew it,
and accepted the fact at first with much philosophy. Surely, he said
to himself, a good cook and a good cellar, with a fine house at San
Cassian, and a virtuous, if elderly, wife ought to satisfy any man of
forty. The rest was but vanity. Could anything be more absurd, at his
age, than to go on for ever playing the butterfly--such an elderly
butterfly!--from one pair of bright eyes to another?
But he had counted without the fact that the butterfly is the final
development of its genus and cannot turn into anything else. It must
be a butterfly to the end. Poor Marco soon found that his heart was as
susceptible as ever, and could beat like a boy's on very slight
provocation, but that unfortunately it was never his rich wife who
provoked it to such unseemly and lively action. Yet her facial angle
inspired him with a terror even greater than the attraction of a
pretty face and a well-turned figure. She had a way of setting her
thin lips over her prominent teeth which at the same time stretched
the skin upon the bridge of her hooked nose while she looked at him
from under her half-closed lids, that made his blood run cold, robbed
the richest sauce of its delicious flavour, and turned the wine of
Samos to vinegar in his glass. Daily, she grew older, sharper, more
irritable; and daily, too, the heart of Marco Pesaro seemed to grow
younger and the more to crave the companionship of a mate much younger
still, or at least the near presence of those outward, visible, and
tangible gifts of the gods, such as a deep warm eye, and a soft white
hand, with which man has always associated the heart of woman.
Zeno guessed all this and the rest too; the letter he had received
needed no further explanation, and for old acquaintance's sake he had
no objection to executing the commission Marco had thrust upon him.
And now, all you who stop and gather round the story-teller in this
world's great bazaar, to listen, if his tale please you, and to find
fault with him if it does not, you cry out that if Carlo Zeno was
really the hero history describes him to have been, he would have been
very, very grieved at being asked to do anything so inhuman as to buy
a pretty slave abroad to be sent home to a friend, even though the
latter protested that the girl was to be trained as a companion for
his wife. He would have been grieved and angry, he would have torn the
letter to shreds, and would either not have answered it at all, or
would have written to tell Pesaro that he was a brute, that men and
women are all free and equal, and that to buy and sell them is high
treason against the majesty of the rights of men.
But to those protests and outcries the story-teller has many answers
ready. In the first place, no one had even dreamt of the rights of men
in 1376; and secondly, the trade in white slaves was almost as
profitable to Venice then as it is in 1906 to certain great states the
story-teller could name, with the advantage that there was no
hypocritical secret about it, and that it was provided for in
international treaties, in spite of the Pope, who said it was wrong;
and thirdly, heroes are heroes for ever in respect of their heroic
deeds, but in their daily lives they are very much like the other men
of their class and time, as you will soon learn if you read the life
of Bayard, 'without fear or reproach,' written by his Faithful
Servitor; for the faithful one set down some doings of the virtuous
knight which a modern biographer would have altogether left out, but
which were no more a 'reproach' to a man in the year 1500, than
getting drunk was a 'reproach' in 1700, or than stealing anything over
a million is a 'reproach' to-day; fourthly and lastly, if Zeno had
virtuously refused to buy a slave for Marco Pesaro, there would have
been no story to tell, and this seems an excellent argument to the
story-teller himself.
Zeno's thoughts soon wandered from Pesaro and the letter, and followed
the old thread of life in Venice, till it led his soul through the
labyrinth of daily existence far out into the dreamland beyond; and
the place of his dreams was a calm and resplendent water, where
stately palaces rose through vapours of purple and gold against an
evening sky. Over the lagoon came music of old chimes from San
Giorgio, and the deeper bells of Venice answered back again; at the
instant the sunset breeze floated off the land and breathed into the
dyed sails of the Istrians without a sound, so that the boats began to
move by magic, gliding out one by one with a soft, low rush, heard
only for a moment, as of a woman's hand drawn across silk.
The mere thought of Venice called up the vision of her before the
inward eye of his heart; for he loved his native city better than he
had ever loved any woman yet, and much better than his own life. When
he could think of Venice, until the broad expanse of the lagoon seemed
to spread itself over the deeper and darker waters of the Golden Horn,
and when he could fancy himself at home, he was supremely and calmly
happy, and would not have changed his dream for any reality except its
own.