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STRADELLA
[Illustration: 'But Ortensia did not even hear him, and sat quite still
in her chair' (_See p. 271._)]
STRADELLA
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "FAIR MARGARET,"
ETC., ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1909.
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
'But Ortensia did not even hear him, and sat quite still
in her chair' _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
'"This is the celebrated Maestro Alessandro Stradella
of Naples"' 11
'The footman came back at last with a white face' 87
'The two Bravi faced the watch side by side' 243
'"The profession has two branches. We take lives, you
take purses"' 282
'He began to look about for lodgings' 307
'Trombin advanced upon him slowly, looking more like an
avenging demon than a man' 373
'She sat up in his arms and framed his face in her hands' 406
CHAPTER I
The Senator Michele Pignaver, being a childless widower of several
years' standing and a personage of wealth and worth in Venice, made up
his mind one day that he would marry his niece Ortensia, as soon as her
education was completed. For he was a man of culture and of refined
tastes, fond of music, much given to writing sonnets and to reading the
works of the elegant Politian, as well as to composing sentimental airs
for the voice and lute. He patronised arts and letters with vast credit
and secret economy; for he never gave anything more than a supper and a
recommendation to the poets, musicians, and artists who paid their court
to him and dedicated to him their choicest productions. The supper was
generally a frugal affair, but his reputation in aesthetic matters was so
great that a word from him to a leader of fashion, or a letter of
introduction to a Venetian Ambassador abroad, often proved to be worth
more than the gold he abstained from giving. He spoke Latin, he could
read Greek, and his taste in poetry was so highly cultivated that he
called Dante's verse rough, uncouth, and vulgar--precisely as Horace
Walpole, seventy or eighty years later, could not conceive how any one
could prefer Shakespeare's rude lines to the elegant verses of Mr. Pope.
For the Senator lived in the age when Louis XIV. was young, and Charles
II. had been restored to the throne only a few years before the
beginning of this story.
Pignaver was about fifty years old. There is no good reason why a
widower of that age, robust and temperate, and hardly grey, should not
take a wife; perhaps there is really no reason, either, why he should
not marry a girl of eighteen, if she will have him, and where neither
usage nor ecclesiastical ordinances are opposed to it, the young lady
may even be his niece. Besides, in the present case, the Senator would
appear to his peers and associates to be conferring a favour on the
object of his elderly affections, and to be crowning the series of
favours he had already conferred. For Ortensia was the penniless child
of his brother-in-law, a scapegrace who had come to a bad end in Crete.
The Senator's wife had taken the child to her heart, having none of her
own, and had brought her up lovingly and wisely, little dreaming that
she was educating her own successor. If she had known it, she might have
behaved differently, for her lord had never succeeded in winning her
affections, and she regarded him to the end with mingled distrust and
dislike, while he looked upon her as an affliction and a thorn in his
side. Yet they were both very good people in their way. She died
comparatively young, and he deemed it only just that after enduring the
thorn so long, he should enjoy the rose for the rest of his life.
When Ortensia was seventeen and a half her uncle announced his
matrimonial intentions to her, fastened a fine string of pearls round
her throat, kissed her on the forehead, and left her alone to meditate
on her good fortune.
Her reflections were of a mixed character, however, and not all
pleasant. The idea that she could disobey or resist did not occur to
her, of course, for the Senator had always appeared to her as the
absolute lord of his household, against whose will it was useless to
make any opposition, and she knew what an important person he was
considered to be amongst his equals.
But in her inmost heart she knew that he was not really what he made
people think he was. She had a ready sense of humour, and she felt that
under his ponderous disguise of importance he was quite a ridiculous
person. He was miserly to meanness; he was as vain as an ape; he was a
man who had flattered himself, and had been flattered by others, into a
sort of artificially inflated doll that imposed on many people and
deceived almost all. And yet Ortensia was aware of something in him that
frightened her a little, though she could not quite tell what it was.
Possibly, like many externally artificial people, there was a cruel side
to his character. There are men who become ridiculous as soon as they
cease to be dangerous, and who are most dangerous when they fear that
they are just going to become a laughing-stock.
Ortensia reflected on these things after her uncle had given her the
pearls and had kissed her on the forehead. The pearls were very
beautiful, but the kiss had been distinctly disagreeable. The Senator
waxed his moustaches to make them stay up, as many men did then, and
she thought that if a cold hard-boiled egg, surrounded with bristles
like a hair-brush, had touched her forehead, the sensation would have
been very much the same, and she shook her delicate shoulders in disgust
at the thought, and slowly rubbed the offended spot with two fingers,
while her other hand played with the string of pearls in her lap.
It would be a great thing, of course, to be a senator's wife and the
mistress of such a house as the Palazzo Pignaver, which she had first
entered as a little orphan waif ten years ago. But to be kissed daily,
even on the forehead, by her Uncle Michele, would be a high price to pay
for greatness. She supposed that he would kiss her every day when she
was married, for that was probably a part of marriage, which had always
seemed to her a mysterious affair at best. Young girls looked forward to
it with delight, and old women seemed to look back on it with
disappointment, while those who were neither old nor young never said
anything about it, but often seemed to be on bad terms with their
husbands.
But Ortensia was a fatalist, like most Venetian maidens of her time.
Whatever the master of the house and the head of the family decided
would be done, and there could be no question of resistance. In due
course she would marry her uncle, she would hold her tongue like other
married women while he lived, and when he was dead she would be at
liberty to tell her friends that her marriage had been a disappointment.
Of course Uncle Michele would die long before her--that was one
consolation--and the position of a rich widow in Venice was enviable.
Happily she had six months before her, during which time her education
was to be completed; happily, too, a large part of it now consisted in
music lessons, for she had a sweet voice, and the Senator meant that she
should astound Venetian society by singing his own compositions to them,
accompanying herself. She had great beauty, as well as some real talent,
and he judged that the effect of his verses and music, when rendered by
her, would be much enhanced by the magic light in her hazel eyes, by the
contrasted splendour of her auburn hair and ivory complexion, and by the
pretty motion of her taper fingers as they fluttered over the strings.
He looked forward to exhibiting the loveliest young woman in Venice, who
should sing his own songs divinely to an admiring circle of envious
friends. That would be a magnificent and well-deserved triumph, after
his long career as a gifted amateur and critic--and it would cost
nothing. Why should a wife be more expensive than a niece? His first
wife's brocades and velvets could easily be made over for Ortensia; and
for that matter the young girl expected nothing better, since she had no
family of her own to give her a great carved chest full of beautiful new
clothes and laces.
Uncle Michele did not condescend to honour her with another kiss, after
the formal occasion on which he had announced her betrothal to himself.
But he showed a growing interest in her music-lessons as the weeks
passed, and he frequently made her sing pieces of his own to him,
correcting each shade of expression most fastidiously, and occasionally
performing the more difficult passages himself, with many affected
gestures and self-approving waggings of his head, though his voice was
tuneless and harsh, and his ear anything but perfect.
'Of course,' he would say, 'it is only to give you an idea!'
The idea which he conveyed to Ortensia was that of a performing bear
eating strawberries; but she managed to keep her countenance, and not to
mimic him when she repeated the passage herself, profiting by his
instruction. It was the sort of music that rich amateurs used to write
by the ream, subject to the unacknowledged 'corrections' of a well-paid
professional; but the girl's sweet voice and genuine talent made the
airs sound passable, while her dreamy eyes and her caressing
pronunciation of the trivial words did the rest. It was mere talent, for
she hardly understood what she was saying, or singing, and she felt not
the least emotion, but she seemed to kiss the syllables as they passed
her lips.
The first bloom of young womanhood was already on her cheek, but the
frosts of childhood's morning had not melted from her maiden heart.
One day she was sitting just at the edge of the sunshine that poured
upon the eastern carpet from the high loggia. The room overlooked the
garden court of the palace, and the palms and young orange-trees, in
vast terra-cotta pots, laden with yellow fruit, had already been
brought out and set in their places, for it was the spring-time; the
sunshine fell slanting on the headless Ariadne, which was one of the
Senator's chief treasures of art, and the rays sparkled in the clear
water in the beautiful sarcophagus below. The lilies had already put out
young leaves too, that lay rocking on the ripples made by the tiny jet
of the fountain. There were long terra-cotta troughs full of white
violets, arranged as borders along the small paved paths, and red
flower-pots were set symmetrically in squares and rings and curves with
roses just blooming, and mignonette, and carnations that still lingered
in the bud. It was a formal little garden, but in the midst of its
regularity, neither in the centre, nor at any of the artificially
planned corners and curves, but out of line with all, one cypress reared
up its height. Even as Ortensia saw it, looking out from her loggia, it
overtopped the high wall that divided the garden from the canal and the
low houses on the other side, showing its dark plume sharp and clear
against the sunlit sky; but when the morning and the evening breezes
blew in spring and summer, it swayed lazily, and the feathery top waved
from side to side, and bent to the caressing air like a live thing.
Ortensia loved the tree better than anything else in the garden; even
better than the beautiful Greek Ariadne, which her uncle had himself
brought from Crete in one of his ships.
She was watching it now, and where the sunlight played in the tip, she
could see the golden and reddish lights of the cypress twigs through
the deep green. On her knees she held a large musical instrument all
made of ivory, and inlaid with black, a lute with eleven strings, but of
the shorter kind with the head of the keyboard turned back at a right
angle. It lay in her lap, in the ample straw-coloured folds of her silk
skirt, and its broad white ribband was passed over her shoulder, and
pressed on her lace collar on the left side of her neck.
At a considerable distance from her, a small, middle-aged woman in grey
sat in a high chair, bending forward over the little green pillow on
which she was making bobbin lace.
There was a good deal of furniture in the large room, and it belonged to
different periods; some of it was carved, some inlaid, some gilt in the
new French fashion. A great Persian carpet of most exquisite colours
softened and blended by age lay on the floor, and the curtains of the
doors were of rich old Genoa velvet, with palm leaves woven in gold
thread on a faded claret ground.
The time lacked about an hour of noon, and in the deep stillness the
trickling of the tiny fountain came up distinctly from the garden.
Something had just happened which Ortensia did not understand, and she
had let her lute sink in her lap, to lean back and think, and wonder,
watching the familiar outline of the dark cypress against the open sky.
She had been learning a song by a new composer, of whom she had never
heard till now, and the manuscript lay open on a cushioned stool beside
her. For a time she had followed the notes and words carefully with her
voice, picking out the accompaniment on her lute from the figured bass,
as musicians did in those days. At first it had not meant much to her;
it was difficult, the intervals were unexpected and strange, she could
not find the right chords, the words would not quite make sense, and
some of them were unfamiliar to her.
But she was patient, and she had talent, and she had tried again and
again, very soft and low, so that the woman in grey had nearly fallen
asleep over her lace, nodding visibly and recovering herself each time
with a little grunt.
Then, all at once, the breath of spring came in, like the breath of
life, with the warm scent of the garden below, and the sunlight had
stolen across the Persian carpet to her feet. She turned from the
manuscript she had been studying, and without it her fingers suddenly
found the chords, and her lips the words, and the melody floated out
with them into the stillness, low, trembling, and passionate as the
burden of a love-dream, a wonder to hear.
But she scarcely heard it herself, for it came unconsciously. The
meaning had dawned upon her unawares, and she understood without ears,
as if the music were all in her heart, and much nearer to her life than
it could come by hearing alone.
It stirred delicious depths within her; the spring and the sun and the
melody waked that in her which had slept the long sleep of childhood,
while her beautiful outward self was maturing to the blossom.
She understood, and yet she did not; it was a bewildering joy, but it
was a longing; it was an exquisite satisfaction, yet it was also a
secret, unspeakable wish; it was the first thrill of a feeling too
exquisite for words to describe, but with it there came a mysterious
forelightening of something unknown that troubled her maiden peace.
Her lips quivered, her voice died away to a whisper, while her body
vibrated still, like the last string she touched on the lute; a sudden
warmth came to her face then, and sank suddenly away, and all at once it
was all past, and she was gazing at the dark top of the cypress, and a
strange, listless, half-sweet loneliness had come upon her, wherein
nothing mattered any more, nor could anything ever matter again.
That was what had just happened. But the woman in grey had not noticed
it, though she was wide awake now and busily plying her bobbins.
Then the heavy velvet curtain before the door was lifted, and a man's
footstep was heard on the marble floor, and there was another step after
it. Ortensia turned her head carelessly against the back of the chair to
see who was coming, and then rose quickly to her feet.
The Senator had entered and was ushering in a man she had never seen, a
handsome young man of five-and-twenty or so, with a thoughtful face and
deep-set eyes, of a rather dark complexion, as if he came from the
south; his manner was grave, and he was soberly dressed in a black
velvet coat with purple silk facings, and wore a plain broad collar of
linen instead of the fashionable lace; he was a man of middle height and
well made, and he moved easily. In his left hand he carried a musical
instrument in a purple bag.
[Illustration: '"This is the celebrated Maestro Alessandro Stradella of
Naples"']
He bowed very low as soon as the Senator stood still before Ortensia.
'This,' said the master of the house, 'is the celebrated Maestro
Alessandro Stradella of Naples, by far the greatest musician and
composer in Italy, who has very kindly consented to hear you sing, and
to give you a few lessons if he finds you sufficiently advanced.'
Ortensia was surprised, and anything but displeased, but she showed no
emotion. The young man before her was the composer of the song she had
been studying, the very one that had so strongly disturbed her a few
minutes ago; this of itself would have been interesting, even if he had
not been such a singularly handsome young man.
The woman in grey, who was her nurse, had risen too, and was looking at
the musician with more curiosity than might have been expected in a
sober person of her years.
Ortensia bent her head a little, in acknowledgment of the introduction,
but said nothing. She saw, however, that Stradella had already noticed
the manuscript of his own music on the stool beside her.
'You may sing "Amor mi dice" to the Maestro,' said the Senator, taking a
seat. 'A little composition of my own,' he added, with a self-satisfied
smile, for the musician's information. 'I have taught it to my niece
myself.'
For one instant Stradella's eyes met the young girl's and she returned
their glance. It was enough; they already understood each other.
Doubtless the composer had met his patron more than once and knew his
weakness and what to expect now. Ortensia resumed her seat, and drew her
full skirt into folds on her knee, for her lute to rest on. Stradella
sat down at a little distance and looked at the Persian carpet, and she
could not help seeing that he had remarkably well-turned legs and
ankles, and wore very well-made shoes of soft purple leather with
handsome chiselled silver buckles. She felt inclined to raise her eyes
to his face again, but resisted the temptation, and turned resolutely
towards her uncle as she struck the opening chords of the accompaniment.
The musician now looked up and watched her. At first he put on the
amiable smile which professionals keep especially for amateurs, and as a
matter of politeness he listened attentively, till he had convinced
himself that the song, as he had expected, belonged to that large class
of which the chief characteristic is a general resemblance to everything
of the kind that was ever written before, and will ever be written
hereafter. This being settled after hearing a few bars, Stradella
quietly gave himself up to the pleasure of looking at the young girl,
though he often turned towards the Senator, who expected admiration at
every full close, and meant to get it.
He thought he did; for the effect of watching Ortensia was to bring to
the musician's own face an expression of such genuine delight that
Pignaver could not fail to be pleased, since he attributed it to the
charm of his composition. He was in the seventh heaven. Here, at last,
was a true genius, able to appreciate his talent as it deserved. Here
was a master fit to teach such noble music, as it should really be sung.
Ortensia should profit by the opportunity, even if Stradella asked a
silver ducat for each lesson. For once, money was no object to the
Senator. The triumph his young bride would certainly bring him, in
singing his songs after being taught by Alessandro Stradella, would be
worth much more than gold.
She sang the stuff as creditably as it deserved, her voice was fresh and
true, and her touch on the lute was at once light and sure. With such a
face, what did it matter that the song was exactly like a thousand
others? The musician praised it so enthusiastically that the Senator was
almost satisfied for once.
'You flatter me,' he said, bowing a little in his chair, spreading out
his hands in a gesture of deprecation and grinning like a pleased
monkey.
'Not in the least, my lord, I assure you,' answered Stradella with great
emphasis. 'If I were capable of flattering you, I should not deserve the
confidence you place in me, in desiring me to give this gifted young
lady a few lessons.'
Ortensia pretended to be busy with her lute, bending over it and softly
trying the upper strings, though they were already perfectly in tune.
But she was listening to the young master, and she thought she had
rarely heard a voice that had more winning tones in speaking, or an
accent that pleased her better. And as she bent down she could just see
his well-turned ankles and purple leather shoes.
'It would be my wish,' the Senator said, 'that you should give her some
hints as to the performance of a number of my songs. Yes, I have devoted
much time to your art as well as to poetry. Hitherto I have written
ninety-seven songs, both words and music. Yes, I have been industrious.
If my niece had my industry she would know them all by this time.'
Ortensia bent still lower, till her face almost touched the frets of the
instrument, and she was biting her lip; but Stradella was imperturbable.
'I trust you may be spared to contribute many more beautiful
compositions to the art treasures of our country,' he said politely.
'I hope so,' answered Pignaver with gravity.
And then--Ortensia looked up, and for the second time her eyes met the
musician's, and she felt that he and she already understood each other.
With many patronising smiles on the Senator's part, and many flattering
expressions of admiration and respectful salutations from Stradella, the
two parted and Pignaver took himself off, leaving his niece to take her
first lesson under the guardianship of the nurse, who moved her chair so
that she could watch the pair while she was busy with her lace.
For a few seconds neither spoke, and they looked at each other in
silence as if making better acquaintance through their eyes alone, by
which they had quickly reached a first degree of understanding.
Stradella's face was quite grave, while Ortensia's lips were just
parted, as if she were ready to smile, if he would. But he would not,
and he was the first to speak.
'How shall we begin?' he asked.
Ortensia hesitated and touched the strings of her lute idly, as it lay
across her knee, just kept from slipping down by the broad ribband.
'When you came,' she said at last, 'I had been trying to learn a song of
yours. It is beautiful. Will you show me how to sing it?'
She blushed faintly, and he smiled; but he shook his head.
'I saw it lying there as soon as I came in,' he said. 'But I understand
it to be the Senator's wish that we should study his music rather than
mine.'
She was disappointed, and did not try to hide it; but she was not used
to asserting her own will, and her uncle's word had always been law in
his house, to be obeyed whether he were present or not. As for
Stradella, he would have sung his own song for her with delight, but he
distrusted the woman in grey, who might be a spy for all he knew. He
carefully withdrew his lute from the purple bag and began to tune the
strings. It was a fine instrument, made in Cremona, but by no means so
handsome in appearance as Ortensia's ivory one. It was differently
designed, too, being much longer, with a double fret-board and no less
than nineteen strings.
'Let me see,' Stradella said, when he was ready. 'That song of the
Senator's you just sang--how was it?'
He struck chords, bent low over the lute, softly hummed a few snatches
of the melody, and then, to Ortensia's surprise, he began to sing the
piece as if he knew it well. He sang softly, without the least effort,
and his voice seemed neither high nor deep, but there was a tone in it
that the young girl had never heard before, and that sent a thrill to
her heart at the very first note. She bent forwards, watching him with
parted lips and eyes full of wonder, scarcely breathing till he finished
the stanza and spoke to her again.
'Is that it?' he asked quietly, and he smiled as he looked at her.
'But you know it!' she cried. 'If I had ever heard you I should not have
dared to try to sing before you!'
'I never heard it before,' Stradella answered, 'but I catch any tune
easily. Shall we study it a little?' he went on, before she could speak
again. 'I will accompany you at first, and I will stop you now and then,
where I think you might do better. Shall we?'
Again he smiled, but this time it was by way of encouragement, and he at
once began a little prelude on the lute.
'You will sing better if you stand up,' he suggested.
She rose, took her own lute from her neck, and stood resting one hand on
the high back of her chair, turning her face from him; for she was
afraid, now that she had heard him. It was as bad as the worst
stage-fright; her tongue was paralysed, her limbs shook under her, she
shivered with cold in the sunshine, and her forehead was damp. Yet she
had not felt the slightest shyness a quarter of an hour earlier, when
she had first sung the piece.
'Sing with me,' he said quietly, and he began the song again.
Presently she took courage and the notes came, unsteadily at first, but
then true and clear; and Stradella's own voice died to a whisper, and
she went on alone, to the accompaniment he played.
'You see,' he said, as she paused, 'it is better to stand. Now I will
show you how to make one or two little improvements.'
So the lesson went on, and she conscientiously tried to do exactly what
he taught her; and their eyes met often, but that could not be helped,
for he showed her how to vary the quality of her tone by movements of
the mouth, and to do this she had to watch his lips and he was obliged
to look at hers, which is sometimes a dangerous exercise for young
people, even at a first meeting. For acquaintance grows and ripens
precociously when two people are busy together so that they depend on
each other at every instant, as teacher and pupil, or as the chief actor
and actress in a play, or as a man and a woman who are suddenly thrown
together in adventure or danger.
When Stradella put his lute back into the purple bag at last, telling
Ortensia that she had sung enough for one morning and that she must not
tire her voice, she felt as if this could not possibly have been her
first meeting with him. His face, his tone, his gestures, the way he
held his lute, were all as familiar to her already as if he had given
her half-a-dozen lessons; and when he was gone and she sat once more in
her chair looking at the top of the cypress tree against the noonday
sky, she saw and heard all again, and then again; but she neither saw
nor heard her nurse, who had laid aside the lace-pillow and was standing
at her elbow telling her that it was time for the mid-day meal and that
her uncle did not like to be kept waiting. The nurse spoke three times
before Ortensia heard her and looked up.
'They say well that music is a thief,' observed the middle-aged woman in
grey, enigmatically, as she stood with her hands folded under her black
apron, gazing intently at Ortensia's face.
The young girl laughed as she rose.
'Poor old Pina!' she answered, tapping her forehead with one finger as
if to say that the nurse was weak-minded.
But Pina smiled, and made three gestures, without saying a word: first
she pointed to herself, then she shook her forefinger, and lastly she
jerked her thumb back in the direction of the door that led to the
Senator's apartments. The weak-minded body was not Pina, but her master,
since he had brought that handsome singer to teach Ortensia, who had
never before exchanged two words with any young man, handsome or plain,
except under the nose of the Senator himself; and that had always been
at those great festivals to which the Venetian nobles took their wives
and daughters, even when the latter were very young, to show off their
fine clothes and jewels, though it meant comparing them publicly with
quite another class of beauties.
For the Venetian maxim was that women and girls were safe in public or
under lock and key, but that there was no salvation for them between
those two extremes.
But, in the eyes of Pignaver, a musician was not a man, any more than a
servant or a gondolier could be. Where a Venetian lady was concerned,
nothing was a man that had not a seat in the Grand Council; that was the
limit, below which the male population consisted of sexless creatures
like domestics, shopkeepers, and workmen.
Furthermore, the vanity of Pignaver raised him above all other
competitors as high as the Campanile stood above Saint Mark's and the
Ducal Palace, not to mention the rest of Venice, and the idea that
Ortensia, who had been informed that she was to be the wife of his
transcendently gifted and desirable self, could stoop to look at a
Sicilian music-master, would have struck him as superlatively comic,
though his sense of humour was imperfect, to say the least of it.
Even if the great man could have set aside all these considerations for
a moment, so as to look upon Stradella as a possible rival, he would
still have believed that the presence of Pina during the lessons was a
trustworthy safeguard against any 'accident to Ortensia's affections,'
as he would have expressed the danger. He had unbounded faith in Pina's
devotion to him and in her severity as a chaperon. On the rare
occasions when the young girl was allowed to leave the palace without
her uncle, Pina accompanied her in the gondola, and sometimes on foot as
far as the church of the Frari, where she went to confession once a
month; but, as a rule, she had her daily airing with the Senator
himself, meekly sitting on his left, and pretending to keep her eyes
fixed on an imaginary point directly ahead, as he insisted that she
must, lest she should look at any of the handsome young nobles who were
only too anxious to pass as near as possible on her side of the gondola.
For, though she was not eighteen years old, the reputation of her beauty
was already abroad; and as it was said that she was to inherit her
uncle's vast wealth, there were at least three hundred young gentlemen
of high degree who desired her now, since no one knew that the Senator
had determined to marry her himself. Their offers were constantly
presented to him, sometimes by their fathers or mothers, and sometimes
by ingenious elderly friends who undertook such negotiations for a
financial consideration. But Pignaver always returned the same answer,
politely expressing his thanks for the honour done his niece, but saying
that he had 'other views for her.'
Pina, however, hated him for reasons of her own, which he had either
forgotten, or which he disregarded because, in his opinion, she was
under the greatest obligation to the house. Pina's hatred of her master
was more sincere, if possible, than her affection for Ortensia, and her
contempt for his intelligence was almost as profound as his own belief
in its superiority over that of other men.
These facts explain why Pina acted as she did, though they could not
possibly excuse her evil conduct in the eyes of righteous persons like
the Senator and others of his class, who would have thought it a
monstrous and unnatural thing that a noble Venetian girl should fall in
love with a music-master, though he were the most talented and famous
musician of his day.
This was what Pina did. In the middle of the fourth lesson she
deliberately laid aside her lace-pillow and left the room, well knowing
that her master would have her thrown out of the house at once, and
ducked in the canal besides, if he ever heard of it. But he was a man of
unchanging habits. Each time that Stradella came he led him in, sat
down, listened while Ortensia sang one of his own pieces, and then went
away, not to return that morning. So when Pina was quite sure that his
coming and going had settled to a habit, she boldly ran the risk, if it
was one, and left the two together.
Alessandro Stradella was a Sicilian on both sides, though he had been
born in Naples, and he wasted no time when his chance came. He tried no
little trick of word or glance, he did not gaze into Ortensia's eyes and
sigh, still less did he boldly try to take her hand and pour out a
fervid declaration of his love; for by this time, without the exchange
of a word, the girl had taken hold of his heart, and he saw her eyes
before him everywhere, in the sunlit streets and canals, and at night,
in the dark, and in his dreams.
He did none of these things. He was the master singer of his age, and he
himself had made divine melodies that still live; he knew his power, and
he trusted to that alone. The velvet curtain had scarcely fallen behind
Pina as she went out, when he bent over his lute, and with one look at
Ortensia began to sing. But it was not one of those ninety-seven
compositions on which the Senator prided himself: it was a love-song of
Stradella's own that he had made within the week in the secrecy of his
own room, and no one had heard it yet; and it was his masterpiece.
Ortensia felt that it was hers. That strange voice of his that was not
deep, yet never seemed high-pitched, breathed softly through and through
her being, as a spring breeze through young leaves, more felt than
heard, yet a wonder to hear. The notes vibrated, but did not tremble;
they swelled and grew strong and rang out fiercely, but were never loud;
and again they died away, but were not quite silent, and lingered
musically in the air, though a whisper would have drowned them.
The girl's eyes grew dark under their drooping lids, and her face was
luminously pale; her delicate young lips moved now and then
unconsciously, and they were icy cold; but she felt a wild pulse beating
at her throat, as if her heart were there and breaking to be free.
She felt his look on her too, but she could not answer it, and when the
song ended she turned from him and laid her white cheek against the high
back of the chair, looking out at the cypress against the sky. She
could not tell whether it was pain or pleasure she felt, but it was
almost more than she could bear, and her hands strained upon each other,
clasped together just on her two knees.
In the silence the velvet curtain was lifted and fell again, and Pina's
step was heard on the marble floor.
'I have brought you some water to drink,' said the nurse quietly; and
speaking to both, 'Your throats must be dry with so much singing!'
Ortensia took one of the tall glasses and drank eagerly before she
turned her face from the window.
'Thank you,' she said, recovering herself and smiling at Pina.
'And you, Maestro?' asked the latter, offering Stradella the drink.
'Thank you,' he said, 'but it is too much. With your permission!'
And then, with the effrontery of youth in love, he deliberately took the
almost empty glass from which Ortensia had drunk, poured a little into
it from the other, and drank out of it with a look of undisguised
gratitude on his handsome face. Thereupon a little colour came to
Ortensia's ivory-pale cheek, and Pina smiled pleasantly. Instead of
setting down the salver, however, she took it away, leaving the room
again.
'How beautiful that song is!' Ortensia said in a low voice, and glancing
at Stradella almost timidly, when they were again alone. 'How more than
beautiful!'
'It is yours,' answered the musician. 'I made it for you--it is not even
written down yet.'
'For me!' The exquisite colour deepened twice in her face and faded
again as her heart fluttered.
'For you,' Stradella answered, so softly that she barely heard.
The nurse came back just then, having merely left the salver outside to
be taken away. In her judgment things had gone far enough for the
present. Then the mid-day bells clanged out, and it was time to end the
lesson, and Stradella put his lute into its purple bag and bowed himself
out as he always did; but to-day he kept his eyes on Ortensia's, and
hers did not turn from him while she could see his face.