Marietta Part 35

"You understand now," Marietta said at last, holding his face before her with her hands.

"No," he answered lovingly. "I do not understand, I will not even try. If I do, I shall open my eyes, and it will suddenly be daylight, and I shall put out my hands and find nothing! I shall be alone, in my room, just awake and aching with a horrible longing for the impossible. You do not know what it is to dream of you, and wake in the grey dawn! You cannot guess what the emptiness is, the loneliness!"

"I know it well," said Marietta. "I have been perfectly happy, talking to you under the plane-tree, your hand in mine, and mine in yours, our eyes in each other's eyes, our hearts one heart! And then, all at once, there was Nella, standing at the foot of my bed with a big dish in her hands, laughing at me because I had been sleeping so soundly! Oh, sometimes I could kill her for waking me!"

She drew his face to hers, with a little laugh that broke off short. For a kiss is a grave matter.

"How much time we have wasted in all these months!" she said presently. "Why would you never understand?"

"How could I guess that you could ever love me?" Zorzi asked.

"I guessed that you loved me," objected Marietta. "At least," she added, correcting herself, "I was quite sure of it for a little while. Then I did not believe it all. If I had believed it quite, they should never have betrothed me to Jacopo Contarini!"

The name recalled all realities to Zorzi, though she spoke it very carelessly, almost with scorn. Zorzi sighed and looked up at last, and stared at the wall opposite.

"What is it?" asked Marietta quickly. "Why do you sigh?"

"There is reason enough. Are you not betrothed to him, as you say?"

Marietta straightened herself suddenly, and made him look at her. A quick light was in her eyes, as she spoke.

"Do you know what you are saying? Do you think that if I meant to marry Messer Jacopo, I should be here now, that I should let you hold me in your arms, that I would kiss you? Do you really believe that?"

"I could not believe it," Zorzi answered. "And yet-"

"And yet you almost do!" she cried. "What more do you need, to know that I love you, with all my heart and soul and will, and that I mean to be your wife, come what may?"

"How is it possible?" asked Zorzi almost disconsolately. "How could you ever marry me? What am I, after all, compared with you? I am not even a Venetian! I am a stranger, a waif, a man with neither name nor fortune! And I am half a cripple, lame for life! How can you marry me? At the first word of such a thing your father will join his son against me, I shall be thrown into prison on some false charge and shall never come out again, unless it be to be hanged for some crime I never committed."

"There is a very simple way of preventing all those dreadful things," answered Marietta.

"I wish I could find it."

"Take me with you," she said calmly.

Zorzi looked at her in dumb surprise, for she could not have said anything which he had expected less.

"Listen to me," she continued. "You cannot stay here-or rather, you shall not, for I will not let you. No, you need not smile and shake your head, for I will find some means of making you go."

"You will find that hard, dear love, for that is the only thing I will not do for you."

"Is it? We shall see. You are very brave, and you are very, very obstinate, but you are not very sensible, for you are only a man, after all. In the first place, do you imagine that even if Giovanni were to spend a whole week in this room, he would think of looking for the box amongst the broken gla.s.s?"

"No, I do not think he would," answered Zorzi. "That was sensible of me, at all events." She laughed.

"Oh, you are clever enough! I never said that you were not that. I only said that you had no sense. As for instance, since you are sure that my brother cannot find the box, why do you wish to stay here?"

"I promised your father that I would. I will keep my promise, at all costs."

"In which of two ways shall you be of more use to my father? If you hide in a safe place till he comes home, and if you then come back to him and help him as before? Or if you allow yourself to be thrown into prison, and tried, and perhaps hanged or banished, for something you never did? And if any harm comes to you, what do you think would become of me? Do you see? I told you that you had no common sense. Now you will believe me. But if all this is not enough to make you go, I have another plan, which you cannot possibly oppose."

"What is that?" asked Zorzi.

"I will go alone. I will cross the bridge, and take the skiff, and row myself over to Venice and from Venice I will get to the mainland."

"You could not row the skiff," objected Zorzi, amused at the idea. "You would fall off, or upset her."

"Then I should drown," returned Marietta philosophically. "And you would be sorry, whether you thought it was your fault or not. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Very well. If you will not promise me faithfully to escape to the mainland to-night, I swear to you by all that you and I believe in, and most of all by our love for each other, that I will do what I said, and run away from my father's house, to-night. But you will not let me go alone, will you?"

"No!"

"There! You see! Of course you would not let me go alone, me, a poor weak girl, who have never taken a step alone in my life, until to-night! And they say that the world is so wicked! What would become of me if you let me go away alone?"

"If I thought you meant to do that!"

He laughed again, and drew her to him, and would have kissed her; but she held him back and looked at him earnestly.

"I mean it," she said. "That is what I will do. I swear that I will. Yes-now you may."

And she kissed him of her own accord, but quickly withdrew herself from his arms again.

"You have your choice," she said, "and you must choose quickly, for I have been here too long-it must be nearly half an hour since I left my room, and Nella is waiting for me, thinking that I am with my brother and his wife. Promise me to do what I ask, and I will go back, and when my father comes home I will tell him the whole troth. That is the wisest thing, after all. Or, I will go with you, if you will take me as I am."

"No," he answered, with an effort. "I will not take you with me."

It cost him a hard struggle to refuse. There she was, resting against his arm, in the blush and wealth of unspent love, asking to go with him, who loved her better than his life. But in a quick vision he saw her with him, she who was delicately nurtured and used from childhood to all that care and money could give, he saw her with him, sharing his misery, his hunger and his wandering, suffering silently for love's sake, but suffering much, and he could not bear the fancied sight.

"I should be in your way," she said. "Besides, they would send all over Italy to find me."

"It is not that," he answered. "You might starve."

She looked up anxiously to his face.

"And you?" she asked. "Have you no money?"

"No. How should I have money? I believe I have one piece of gold and a little silver. It will be enough to keep me from starvation till I can get work somewhere. I can live on bread and water, as I have many a time."

"If I had only thought!" exclaimed Marietta. "I have so much! My father left me a little purse of gold that I shall never need."

"I would not take your father's money," answered Zorzi. "But have no fear. If I go at all, I shall do well enough. Besides, there is a man in Venice-" He stopped short, not wis.h.i.+ng to speak of Zuan Venier.

"You must not make any condition," she answered, not heeding the unfinished sentence. "You must go at once."

She rose as she spoke.