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.
'What is it, Pina?' asked the young girl quickly. 'What has happened?'
The nurse was already herself again, and pretended to cough a little.
'It is nothing,' she said presently. 'Something in my throat, just as I
was speaking. It often happens. And as for what we were speaking of,
there is no hurry. I will find the Maestro Alessandro before noon, and
warn him not to come near our garden wall again, and I will tell him
from you anything you wish, except that you do not care what becomes of
him, for that would not be true!'
She laughed again, but quite gently this time, and began to busy herself
about the room, making preparations for Ortensia to dress. The girl had
laid her head on her pillow again, looking up at the little pink silk
rosette in the middle of the canopy, and she was sure that it had a much
less sad look now than it had worn in the small hours by the flickering
night light. This seemed quite natural to Ortensia, for the familiar
little objects in a girl's own room have a different expression for
every hour of her life, to sympathise with each joy and sorrow, great or
small, and with every hope, and surprise, and disappointment.
But Ortensia herself could not have told what she felt just then, for it
was a sensation of startled unrest, in which great happiness and great
fear were striving with each other to possess her; and she knew that if
she yielded to the fear, she would lose the happiness, but that if she
opened her heart to the happiness, the fear would at once become a
terror so awful that she must certainly die of it.
She did not ask why her nurse was so ready to help her to run away. The
fact was enough. The plan looked easy, and Stradella was the man to
carry it out. She had only to consent, and in a week, or less, all would
be done, and she would be joined to him for ever. If she refused, she
must inevitably become the wife of Pignaver in a few months. She writhed
on her pillow at the mere thought.
Two hours later she was standing before the big open window, watching
three masons who were working on the top of the garden wall; they
spread thick layers of stiff grey mortar over the old coping, and then
stuck in sharp bits of broken glass, patting and pressing down the
cement against each piece, to make the hold quite firm. The murderous
splinters gleamed in the sunshine, and the men set them so near together
that one could hardly have laid a finger anywhere between them.
Ortensia watched the work, and now and then she looked at the top of the
cypress-tree, half-unconsciously wondering how many days would pass
before she saw it for the last time. But in the broad daylight she lived
over and over again every instant of that short night meeting that was
the greatest event in all her life. If she only drooped her lids a
little she saw Stradella there before her in his dripping clothes by the
rays of the little lamp, his face was close to hers again, her lips
touched his, and a delicate thrill ran through all her body and reminded
her faintly but very sweetly of what she had felt when he kissed her.
Meanwhile, Pina had found the musician's lodging, near Santa Maria dell'
Orto, which was a long way from the Senator's palace, for that quarter
lies on the extreme outer edge of Venice, looking across the lagoon
towards Murano. The door was opened for her by a hunchback, with a
large, intellectual face, beardless and strongly modelled, such a face
as Giotto would have taken as a model for a Doctor of the Church. The
sad blue eyes looked up to Pina's with cold gravity; but when she
explained that she came from the Palazzo Pignaver with a message, they
brightened a little, and the man at once stood aside for her to enter.
She touched his hump lightly for luck in passing, as every Italian woman
will to this day if she finds herself close to a hunchback in the
street, and this act is rarely resented. Pina thought it a piece of
unexampled good-fortune and of the best possible augury that the door
should have been opened by a 'bringer-of-fortune,' and the deformed
servant smiled gently at her touch, quite understanding. As he led the
way in, after shutting the outer door, Pina saw that nature had meant
him for a man of large proportions, and that his short stature was
chiefly due to the terrible deformity of his back and chest, for his
slightly bowed legs looked as sturdy as a street porter's, and his
powerful arms were so long that his hands swung well below his knees
when he walked. He wore plain brown clothes, and a broad white collar,
and Pina, who was observant, noticed the neatness of his dress.
Stradella received her with a politeness to which, as a serving-woman,
she was little accustomed, and he made her sit down in a comfortable
chair before asking for news of Ortensia. He himself was none the worse
for his wetting. The hunchback waited a moment as if expecting some
order, but Stradella only nodded to him, and he went out.
'My young lady is well, and greets you, sir,' Pina said in answer to the
Maestro's question, when the door was shut. 'She bids you be warned and
not try to climb the wall again, for it is already being crowned with
broken glass, which would cut your hands; and, moreover, the Senator
will probably set a watch in the garden, since you were fortunately
mistaken for a thief last night.'
Stradella listened to this business-like statement attentively, and
watched Pina's face while she was speaking. Her hard grey eyes met his
with perfect frankness.
'I see that you know everything,' he said. 'Tell me, then, how can I see
the lady Ortensia? Surely you are not come to tell me that I am not to
see her again.'
Pina unfolded her plan with a clearness and precision that first
surprised him, and then roused his suspicion. For a few moments after
she had ceased speaking he was silent, and examined his left hand with
thoughtful interest, gently rubbing with his thumb the callous places
made on the tips of his fingers by playing on stringed instruments. The
woman puzzled him, for he understood well enough from her tone that she
was not moved to help him merely by affection for her mistress, and she
could certainly not be supposed to be actuated by any sudden devotion to
himself. Besides, she must be aware that he was not a rich man, and
could not requite with any large sum of money such a service as she
offered. Her motive was a mystery. At last he spoke.
'Listen to me,' he said, watching her eyes. 'Your plan is good, and
perfectly feasible. If you are in earnest, it can be carried out
to-morrow, or whenever the lady Ortensia is ready. I will reward you as
well as I can, but you must remember that I am a poor musician and not a
Venetian senator----'
Pina's grey eyes were like steel, and her tone was cold, and not without
a certain dignity.
'Have I asked money of you, sir?'
'Oh, no!' answered Stradella readily. 'I only wished----'
She interrupted him, as if she were his equal.
'Even a servant may love something better than a bribe!' she said.
'I beg your pardon,' Stradella found himself saying, a good deal to his
own surprise, for he had not expected to hurt a serving-woman's feelings
by speaking of money. 'I misunderstood you.'
'You did indeed, sir!' answered Pina. 'All I ask of you is that you will
take me with you in your flight, for the Senator will certainly have me
murdered if I am left behind. Afterwards, if my lady does not want me, I
will look for another place, or live by lace-making.'
Stradella did not like the answer. The Sicilian character has grave
defects: it is revengeful, over-proud, violent, and sometimes cruel; but
it is generally truthful, and it is, above all, direct.
'You talk lightly of leaving your mistress,' said the musician. 'It is
not for love of her that you are ready to help us.'
Pina faced him fearlessly.
'You are right,' she answered. 'And yet she is the one living being I
love at all. Affection is not the only motive one may have, sir.'
'Nor love of money either,' Stradella said thoughtfully. 'The third is
hate. Last of all comes charity!'
'I am not a saint, sir,' said Pina. 'So you are answered. I hate my
master, and I have the right to hate him. That is my affair. If I dared
kill him, I would, but I should not have the courage to bear being
tortured if I were arrested and tried. I am only a woman, and I fear
bodily pain more than anything. That is why I did not kill the Senator
twenty years ago.'
The musician watched the cold, resentful face that had once been so
handsome, and though he could not guess her story he partly understood
her.
'You are frank,' he said. 'I see that you are in earnest, and that I can
trust you.'
'Trust me for anything, sir, except to resist torture,' Pina answered.
'I know what it is,' she added in a low voice, and avoiding his eyes as
if she were suddenly ashamed. 'As for my master,' she went on, turning
to Stradella again a moment later, 'I believe he would rather die than
be made a laughing-stock. I know that he yesterday announced to his
friends his betrothal to his niece, which has been a secret for several
weeks. I can hear the fine ladies and gentlemen laughing at him when
they learn that she has run away with her music-master on the eve of her
marriage! I can fancy the jests and the sarcasms the Senator will have
to put up with!'
She laughed herself, rather savagely, and Stradella smiled. Provided he
could carry off Ortensia, he did not even object to becoming the
instrument of a serving-woman's vengeance.
They agreed upon the details of the flight. On the next day but one,
being the feast of one of the many Franciscan saints, Stradella was to
sing an air at Vespers in the Church of the Frari. It was therefore
arranged that Ortensia and Pina should go to the church at that hour on
pretence of confession. At the monument of Pietro Bernardini, near the
main entrance, Stradella's hunchback servant would be waiting for them
with two brown cloaks and hoods, which they were to put on immediately.
They were then to kneel down quietly in the shadow and to wait till
Stradella had finished singing, when they were to leave the church
without waiting for him; his man would lead them through by-ways to the
gondola, which was to wait on the farther side of the Tolentini.
Stradella himself would slip away from the loft as soon as the
Benediction began, after Vespers, just when all the other musicians
would be very busy. He would probably reach the gondola almost as soon
as Ortensia and the two servants, and in five minutes they would be well
out of the city.
'And pray, sir,' asked Pina, 'what is your man's name?'
'Cucurullo,' Stradella answered.
'What a strange name!' Pina exclaimed.
'It is common enough in Naples.'