The winter came and went, wrapping Venice in its mists, driving the
sea-birds into the inland canals, making the pigeons sit ruffled and
sad on the parapets of the palaces, and leaving many a gondolier
unemployed, to warm his hands over little fires of driftwood under
the snow-sprinkled rafters and naked vine-branches of his traghetto.
The gondoliers of the Ca’ Zaranegra were more fortunate; they could
sit round the great bronze brazier in the hall of their lady’s
house, and the gondola was laid up high and dry to await the spring,
and their wages were paid with regularity and liberality by the
silent and austere major-domo who reigned in the forsaken palace,
for their lady was away on warmer shores than the wind-beaten,
surge-drowned, sea-walls of their city.
[Illustration: The gondoliers of the Ca’ Zaranegra were more
fortunate; they could sit round the great bronze brazier in the hall
of their lady’s house.... Their wages were paid with regularity and
liberality by the silent and austere major-domo.]
The winter was hard; snow lay long on the Istrian hills and on the
Paduan pastures; there was ice on the rigging of the Greek brigs
in the Giudecca, and the huge ocean steamers from the east looked
like uncouth prehistoric beasts, black and gigantic, as they loomed
through the fogs, moving slowly towards the docks under cautious
pilotage. There were laughter and warmth in the theatres, and the
sounds of music came from some of the palaces; but in the Calle,
in the fishermen’s quarters, on the islands, on board the poor rough
sailing craft, and amongst the maritime population generally, there
were great suffering and much want; and by the bar of Malomocco and
off the coast of Chioggia there were wrecks which strewed the waters
with broken timbers and dashed drowning sailors like seaweed on to
the wooden piles. Stout boats were broken like shells, and strong
seafaring men were washed to and fro like driftwood. But the frail
opal necklace of the Countess Zaranegra was safe in the midst of the
strife; it had fallen into a hollow in a sunken pile and lay there,
unharmed, whilst above it the stormy tides rose and fell, and the
winds churned the cream of the surf. There it lay, all through the
rough winter weather, whilst the silvery gulls died of hunger, and
the sea swallows were hurled by the hurricane on to the lanterns of
lighthouses and against the timbers of vessels.
It weathered many storms, this frail toy, made to lie on the warm
breasts of women, whilst the storm kings drew down to their death the
bread-winners for whom wife and children vainly prayed on shore, and
the daring mariners for whom the deep had had no terrors.
In the hollow of the old oak pile the opals remained all winter long,
lying like bird’s eggs in a nest, whilst the restless waters washed
and swirled above its sanctuary. The worn stump of the wood had
kept its place for centuries, and many a corpse had drifted past it
outward to the sea in days when the white marbles of St. Mark’s city
had run red with blood. It had once been the base of a sea-shrine, of
a Madonna of the waters to whom the boatmen passing had invoked the
Stella Maris Virgine so dear to fishermen and sailors.
But the painted shrine had long disappeared, and only the piece of
timber, down underneath the waters, rooted in the sand amongst the
ribbon weed and mussels, had had power to resist the forces of tide
and tempest.
All the winter long the old wood kept the opals safe and sound. When
the cold passed, and the blasts from the Dolomite glaciers softened,
and the orchards of the fruit islands were in bud, the opals were
still in their hollow, covered from the sea by the bend of the wood
above them, so that, though often wet, they were never washed away.
But one day, when the peach and pear and plum trees had in turn burst
into blossom on the isles, and the flocks of gulls who had survived
the stress of famine and frost had returned to their feeding-places
on the outer lagoons, a large iron ship coming from the Black Sea
gave a rude shock in passing to the old oak pile; the top of it under
the blow parted and fell asunder; the necklace was washed out of
its hiding-place, and, carried in the heavy trough of the steamer’s
path, was floated nearer to the isles, farther from the city. It
became entangled with some algæ, and, rocked on the weed as on a
little raft, was borne to and fro by a strong wind rushing from the
north-east, and so was driven round past San Cristoforo and Burano,
and was finally carried ashore up the creeks into the long grasses
and reeds beneath the Devil’s Bridge at Torcello. The yellow water
iris was then flowering, and two little reed warblers were nesting
amongst the flags, as the opals were drifted up under some hemlock
leaves and there rested.
“I think they are eggs, but they are all strung together,” said the
warbler to his mate.
“They look more like the spawn of a fish,” said the little winged
lady, with scorn.
A water-rat came up and smelt at them, then went away disdainfully;
they were not good to eat. For birds and beasts do not care for
jewels: it is only humanity, which thinks itself superior to them,
which sees any value in stones, and calls such toys precious.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]