_ CHAPTER XII
The permission of the Maggior Consiglio, under favor of this imperious government, was equivalent to a command and a public betrothal, and for a few ecstatic days the heir of the Ca' Giustiniani went about in a state of exaltation too great to be aware of any home shadows--the slumbering anger of the Capo of the Ten and an inharmonious atmosphere wherein each was intensely conscious of an individual estimate of the great event which touched them all so nearly.
For suddenly the betrothal of this only son of an old patrician family had assumed almost the proportions of a State marriage; and a young fellow for whom time-honored observances of the realm could be set aside, and who had won so extreme a proof of favor by his own wit and grace, was surely a figure that might well occupy public attention.
But the decree would soon be a state paper; it was already an accepted fact in the halls of the Council and in the salons of the nobility, and the disappointed great ladies from the neighboring palaces were calling, with curious questions decorously dressed in congratulatory form.
"When should they have the pleasure of welcoming the
new Lady of the Giustiniani?"
"Was it not true that the Lady Marina--that was to be," there was always some little stinging emphasis in the gracious speech, "had given a votive offering to the convent of the Servi? She was a devote then--quite unworldly--this beautiful maiden of Murano?"
"What a joy for the Lady Laura that so soon there would be a bride in the Ca' Giustiniani!"
"The Lady Laura had never been more stately," they told each other when they entered their gondolas again, "nor more undisturbed. There were no signs of displeasure; it must be that the lowly maid was very beautiful."
"Was it a thing to make one sad, to have a son who could twist the rulers round his little finger, and break the very laws of the Republic? Nay, but cause for much stateliness!" said a matron with two sons in the Consiglio.
"The bridal must be soon," said the Lady Laura to herself, as she sat alone in her boudoir, "for the ceasing of this endless gossip." And, because she could think of nothing else, she was already weary with the planning of a pageant which made her heart sick.
But Giustinian Giustiniani had no words, for the case was hopeless--only a face of gloom, and much that was imperative to keep him in the Council Chamber.
For these few blissful days the lovers had heaven to themselves, floating about at twilight on the shores of the Lido, where there were none to trouble the clear serenity of their joy by the chilling breath of criticism. "That white rose which I brought thee was in sign of my mother's favor," Marcantonio reminded Marina more than once; "and for the rest--all will be well; and for a little, we can wait."
Ah, yes, they could wait--in such a smiling world, under a sky so exquisite, gliding over the opal of the still lagoons at twilight.
But old Girolamo, sure now of the decree which should number his daughter among the patricians of this Republic where, through long generations, his family had made their boast that they represented the people, was in a feverish mood--grave, elated, sad by turns, unwilling to confess to the loneliness which was beginning to gnaw at his heart, for Marina was his life; he did not think he could live without her; he
knew he could not live and see her unhappy beside him; and he was old to learn the new, pathetic part he must play--the waiting for death, quite alone in the old home.
And those others,--in the sumptuous palace on the Canal Grande,--would they prize the treasure which was the very light of his life, that he should break his heart to yield her up?
He could have cried aloud in his anguish, as he sat waiting for the happy plash of the returning gondola, the princely gondola of the Ca' Giustiniani, bringing those two before whom life was opening in a golden vista; but as the slow ripples breaking over the water brought them nearer, his heart girded itself again with all his chivalrous strength, lest he should dim the glad light in his beloved one's eyes--lest he should seem ungenerous to the brave young knight who had dared the displeasure of his house and of the Republic for the love he bore his daughter.
And the shadows in that other home, the palazzo on the Canal Grande, in these days of waiting, were colder, hasher,--born of selfishness rather than love, of disappointed ambition perhaps,--but they were very real shadows nevertheless, obscuring the clear-cut traditions of centuries, out of which one should struggle through increase of pride, the other through the broadening of a more generous love.
Meanwhile the gondola floated in light--between shadow and shadow--so slight is the realization of the throes by which joy is sometimes born; and the pathos of the change which made their gladness possible was for the two young people still an unrecognized note.
But waiting was now over; more positive steps must be taken. Two Secretaries had been sent from the Senate to bring the news of the filing of the decree.
"Madre mia!" cried Marcantonio eagerly, when they were gone; "it has come even before our hope!"
"Even sooner than thy hope," she echoed, feeling dreary, though he was sitting with his arm around her, as if for a confidential talk.
But he was too happy to interpret her tone.
"The token!" he pleaded; "for Marina--and thou wilt come to see how beautiful she is!"
She looked at him searchingly. He did not mean to urge her; he seemed too happy to understand.
She rose and going slowly to her cabinet brought him her token--a string of great Oriental pearls.
"These," she said, sitting down beside her son and opening the case, "have I made ready for thy bride, since thou wert a little lad--at one time one pearl, at another more, as I have found the rarest lustre. Some of these, they say, have been hidden in Venice since the time of John of Constantinople, who left them for his ransom; it may be but a tale, yet they are rare in tint; and I have gleaned them, Marco, since thou wert a little lad, not knowing who should wear them--not knowing, Marco----"
She broke off suddenly, touching the gems wistfully, endearingly, with trembling, tapering fingers.
He laid his firm young hand upon hers lovingly. "How good thou art, my mother; how good to think of thy boy through all these years! But thy pearls are superb--they will almost frighten Marina. Later thou wilt give them to her. Mother, dearest, let me take this rose which thou hast worn, with thy little word of love--sweet mother----"
"They are fit for a princess, Marco," she said, still toying with the pearls, apparently unheeding his request; "I chose them with that thought--since they are for thy bride."
"And she will wear them worthily," Marcantonio answered, flushing, "and like a queen, for none hath greater dignity, else could I not have chosen her--I, who have learned a lady's grace by thee, my mother!"
She drew him to her with sudden emotion, for these days had been very hard for her. "My boy--my boy! Does she love thee well for all thy faith and devotion--for all that we are yielding her?"
"Madre mia, thou shalt see, if thou wilt let me take thee to her!"
"I had not thought--" she said, and stopped. "Would she not come with thee?"
Marcantonio walked suddenly away to a window and stepped out on the balcony for a breath of air; he was beginning to comprehend the under side of his great joy, and it had come with a shock, on this very day which he had thought would have been filled with a rush of gladness. He grasped the cool marble of the parapet and tried to reason with himself; he suddenly foresaw that many days of reasoning had entered into his life, and always he must be ready to meet them with cool wisdom, since enthusiasm was one-visioned. It was like taking a vow against youth, but he himself had chosen it for his lot in life; his love was not less to him, but the sudden realization had come that it was hard to fight against the traditions of centuries. Yet how bravely she, his mother, was trying to surrender her social creed for his happiness; it was not a little thing that he had asked of her, but it seemed to him that her soul had been nearer to her eyes than ever before during these days when she had been suffering. At all costs these women--his dearest in the world--must love each other, must bless each other's lives.
He went back with some comprehension of the barrier he had thought so lightly to remove, with a vow in his soul to be more to each; because of it neither should lose aught for his sake. He seemed suddenly older, though his face was very tender.
"That which seemeth best to thee, my mother, in the matter of the meeting, Marina would surely do; for it is thou who must guard for us these little matters of custom, which none knoweth better. But her father--never have I known one more courtly, nor more proud----"
"Marco, it is much to ask that we should think of him!"
"Ay, mother, it is much. Yet if thou knewest him thou wouldst understand. For Marina is all the world to him, and I would take her from him. Yet so he loveth her that never hath he said me nay. Naught hath he asked for her of gold nor jewels, but only this--that she shall not come unbidden to our home."
He spoke the last words very low and with an effort, as if they held a prayer.
"And so--?"
"And so, sweet mother, none knoweth half so well as thou how best to greet her whom I long to bring to thee, that she may know and love thee as she doth love her father--with a great love, very beautiful and tender."
She looked up as if she would have answered him, but she could not speak.
"More than ever I think I love thee, now that I am grieving thee," he added after a pause, in a tone so full of comprehension that it smote her.
"Nay, Marco--nay," she said, and drew him closer, clasping her hand in his. But they sat quite silent, while the mother's love intensified, displacing selfishness.
He raised her hand to his lips with a new reverence. "In all this have I asked so much of thee I think thou never canst forgive me, madre mia, until--until thou knowest Marina!"
She touched his hair with her beautiful white hand caressingly, as she had often done when he was a little child; but now, in this sudden deepening of her nature, with a new yearning.
"Marco, when thou wert a babe," she said, "there was little I would not give for thine asking. And now, when my soul is bound up in thine, I seem not to care for the things I once sought for thee--but more for happiness and love. Yet, if I go with thee--I seem to know thou wilt not change to me--?" She paused, wistfully.
"Save but to prove a truer knight!" he cried radiantly. "So more than gracious hast thou been!"
"Nay, it will be sweet to have part in thy happiness," she cried bravely. "To-night, at sunset, will I go with thee, quite simply, in thy gondola, to bid my daughter welcome--as our custom is. I will not fail in honor to my Marco's bride! And since it is love that her father asketh, I will give her this rose, for thy dear sake. But the bridal must be soon, to make this endless talking cease. And before we leave her--for she will learn to love me, Marco mio, and she will not take thee from me?--I will give her the token that is fitting for a daughter of our house."
* * * * *
Among the members of the Senate, meeting by twos and threes in the Broglio, Marcantonio's name was often heard. "It would be well when this marriage was over, for verily it was likely to turn the heads of Venice--the pageant, and the beauty of the maid, and the favor of the Collegio----"
"Nay, not that," said an older senator, resentfully; "those are but trifles. But the young fellow himself is the danger; too positive and outspoken, revolutionary and of overturning methods, withal persuasive----"
"He would be a power in an ambassade," suggested another, "for he hath a gift in diplomacy and law which, verily, did astound the old Giustinian. The eloquence of his great-uncle Sebastiano hath fallen upon him.--If he were not so young--! Here in Venice he is rolling up influence, and the charm of his inamorata is also a danger; and already in the Consiglio all eyes are upon him."
"For a secretary to an ambassade is the age not set," answered the other warily, "and the office hath space for diplomacy, which, it were better for our privileges, were used elsewhere than in Venice. And the honor of it would blind the eyes of his partizans--for the boy is young."
The winds, wandering through the Piazza, sometimes blew lightest whispers from the Broglio into the Council Chambers of the Republic; and so it was decreed that when the beautiful wedding pageant should be over, just as the whole of Venice would have laid itself at the feet of the charming bride--would have made the young nobles of the palazzo Giustiniani the idols of the hour--these dangers to Venice should be honorably removed by the appointment of Marcantonio Giustiniani, di Maggior Consiglio, as Secretary to the Venetian Resident in Rome, with the gracious permission of the Senate for the Lady Marina to bear him company.
"It is well," answered Giustinian Giustiniani, as the Lady Laura made her little moan on hearing of the appointment which the Senator reported with such pride. "Marcantonio hath the head of a diplomat and the bearing of a courtier. It is the way of distinction for such a man."
"That is justly spoken," said the mother; "and nobly hath our boy fulfilled our hope. In Venice, or elsewhere, must he ever win distinction. But to keep them in their palazzo near us--of this and of their happiness was I thinking--the sight of it is so beautiful."
The filing of the decree of the Senate had acted like a charm upon our Capo of the Ten: the importance thus accorded to the Ca' Giustiniani soothed every vestige of wounded pride, while the beauty and grace of his prospective daughter-in-law had filled him with a triumph which only the frigid stateliness of his habitual demeanor enabled him to conceal, so great was the revulsion from his former state of feeling.
"I tell thee, Lady Laura," said her husband, coming nearer and speaking low, "we may well be proud. All this trifling in art and knickknacks in which it hath pleased the boy to spend himself, like so many of his hose,[2] hath fluttered off from him like silken ribbons hanging harmless in the wind, and hath left him with a head quite clear of nonsense for the Senate's work.
That day"--he had referred to it so often that it had become an acknowledged division of time--"
that day when he made his speech not one arose to answer him; for the cunning of it was so simple one listened, fearing naught, until the end was reached; and the words of it were so few that the end was a surprise; and, lo! the Counsellors were confounded by the weight of his demand, and the reason for the justice of it, and the wit of its presentation--lying folded in a sentence scarce long enough for a preamble! And the boy! Holding himself like a prince and winning them all by his grace, as if he were a child! Nay, but I do forget he is a man, wearing honors from his country!"
[2] The young nobles were called "the gay company of the hose."
"Giustinian, I fain would keep them here!"
"That is the woman's side of it," said the Chief of the Ten, easily dismissing her plea. "But for Marcantonio the appointment is good. When the late-returned Ambassador to His Most Christian Majesty did render his report before our Maggior Consiglio--an oration diplomatic and of weight--I noted many of our graver men with eyes observing Marcantonio closely, as they would mark how he weighed the speech of the old diplomatist."
"And Marco?"
"He seemed not to take note of them. Or it may be a grace that he hath, that he seemeth not to see; for he weareth the 'pensieri stretti e viso sciolto'[3] meet for a Venetian councillor--age could not teach him better to guard his thought, but it would make the wearing of his careless face less easy. Or it may be that his mind hath space for the speech only--one knows not! Save that all things come easily to him--even the most beautiful bride in Venice, raised from the ranks of the people to suit his whim!"
[3] Close-locked thoughts and open countenance.
"Giustinian! She will be our daughter, and none need question her dignity and grace."
"My Lady Laura, none knoweth better of her beauty and none so proud of her as I, who had thought to hide my head for the disgrace of it! But the daring of this son of ours doth make me gay! I am ready to give thee a compliment on thy bringing up, which often I had feared was over frivolous. And now, he hath the Republic before him, where to choose."
"Giustinian?"
She rested both hands on his shoulders and looked full in his eyes with the gravity of her question which was the dream of his life, and was often tacitly touched, when they conferred together in confidence.
"Ay," he answered, "even that, the highest--by favor of San Marco--he may win. For the grace of him maketh his head seem less."
But the shadow of the coveted Lion's paw had suddenly overclouded him and changed his mood. _