\"If I come back,\" he said in a softer tone, responding to the appeal for his child, \"I must speak of what I will.\"
\"Of all but one thing, Piero;\" for it was not possible to misunderstand him, and she was resolute. \"If this is not the end I shall speak with my father—and the bambino——\"
They were both silent. He knew that no one could ever care for his invalid child as she had done; and all that he owed her and must continue to owe her restrained him under her chiding, for the baby could not live away from her. Sometimes, too, there were moments of strange tenderness within him for this helpless, suffering morsel of humanity that called him \"babbo!\" He did not know what might happen if the wrath of the redoubtable Magagnati were to be invoked against him, for this quarrel could not be disposed of as those small matters with the gondoliers had invariably been. So far from threatening this before, Marina had hitherto shielded Piero, in her unanswerable way, from everything that might hasten the rupture that seemed always impending between these two dissimilar natures; and Messer Magagnati had two thoughts only, his daughter and his stabilimento —the great glass furnaces which were the pride of Venice.
Piero had no suspicion that Marina always touched the best that was in him; he thought she made him weaker, and it was not easy to yield the point that had become a habit. No one else had ever moved him from any purpose, but now he perceived that there would be no reversal of that sentence—that he should continue to come to see his child, and that he must continue to submit to Marina''''s influence. It was she who had, in some unaccountable way, persuaded him out of his unlawful trade of barcariol toso , and had forced his reluctant acceptance of the overtures that were made to him from the Guild of Santa Maria Zobenigo, where he had risen to be one of the bancali or governors, his qualities of force and daring making him useful in this age when lawlessness was on the increase. He was beginning to feel a sense of satisfaction, not all barbaric, in the position he had won among men who had some views of order, and to perceive that there might be a lawful use, almost as pleasant, for those very attributes which had rendered him so formidable a foe outside the pale of traghetto civilization.
\" Ecco !\" he announced, with a slow, sullen emphasis which declared his unwilling surrender, while he plied his oar with quick, wrathful strokes. \"It will take more than aves to make a saint of thee! And thou mayst hold thy head too high, looking for better than wheaten bread! But I''''m not the man to wear a curb, nor to put up with thorns where I looked for roses! Thou hast no right to mind what chances to me—yet thou hast made me give up the old life.\"
\"Because I knew thou couldst do better. See where thou standest to-day! \"It is a truth,\" Piero confessed, \"upside down, and not to boast of, for whoever tries it would wish it less. The bancali are ''''like asses who carry wine and drink water,'''' for the good of the clouts, in days like these.\"
\"I heard them talking to-day, Piero. The barcarioli tosi are worse than Turks; one must pay, to suit their whim, in the middle of the Canal Grande, or one may wait long for the landing! And there was a scandal about a friar of San Zanipolo, of whom they had asked a fare for the crossing; I know not the truth of it! And at Santa Sofia the great cross with the beautiful golden lustre is gone, and one says it is the ''''tosi.''''\"
Piero winced, for, to an ancient \"toso,\" or even to a \"bancalo\" of to-day, such enormities had not the exciting novelty that might have been expected, and Marina had a curious habit of seeming entirely to forget his past when she wished to exact his best of him.
\"And Gabriele—\"
\"Fash not thyself for a man of his measure, that is fitter to ''''beat the fishes'''' like a galley-slave than to serve an honest gondola!\" Piero interrupted scornfully.
\"But Piero, Gabriele hath sold his license to one worse than he, and there was great talk of quarrels along the Riva, and how that yesterday they sent for Padre Gervasio from San Gregorio to bring the Host to quiet them.\"
\"Ah, the Castellani!\" said Piero, with the contempt that was always ready for any mention of this great rival faction of the people whose division into one or other of these factions was absolute.
\"But the Nicolotti have their scandal also,\" Marina asserted, uncompromisingly; \"among themselves it is told they break the laws like men not bound by vows! Some say there will be an appeal to the Consiglio.\"
\"Nay,\" said Piero, with an ominous frown; \"the bancali and gastaldi are enough; we need no bossing by crimson robes.\"
This question of the traghetti and their abuses had lately grown to large proportions among the people, and it possessed a deep interest for all classes quite apart from the antiquity and picturesqueness of these honorable institutions of the Republic—since all must use the ferries and wish for safety in their water-streets. For centuries these confraternities of gondoliers who presided over the ferries, or traghetti, of Venice had been corporations, self-governing, with officers and endowments recognized by the Republic, and with a standard of gondolier morals admirably defined in their codes—those \"Mariegole\" which were luxuriously bound and printed, with capitals of vermilion, a page here and there glowing like an illuminated missal with the legend of the patron saint of the traghetto, wherein one might read such admonitions as would make all men wiser.
But of late there had been much unruliness among the younger members of the traghetti, and a growing inability among their officers to cope with increasing difficulties, because of these barcarioli tosi, who lived in open rebellion against this goodly system of law, poaching upon the dearly bought rights of the traghetto gondoliers, yet escaping all taxes. And because of the abuses which had been gradually undermining the fair reputation of the established orders of the traghetti, the Republic, by slow encroachments upon ancient concessions, was surely reducing their wealth and independence.
\"Santa Maria!\" Piero ejaculated after a pause, during which his wrath had been growing. \"The Consiglio hath its own matters for ruling; the traghetti belong to the people!\"
They had reached the little landing of the first long waterway of Murano, where one of the low arcaded houses, with its slender shafts of red Verona marble, was the dwelling of Girolamo Magagnati; the others of this little block of three were used as show-rooms and offices for the great establishment which was connected with them, in the rear, by small courtyards; and the dense smoke of the glass factories always rested over them, although this was the quarter of the aristocrats of Murano.
The buildings looked low and modest if measured by the palaces of the greater city, and their massive marble door- and window-frames increased the impression of gloom. But here and there a portal more ornate, with treble-twisted cords deeply carved, or a window of fourteenth century workmanship relieved the severity of the lines; while in this short arcade, where the houses rose but a storey in height above the square pillars which supported the overhanging fronts, these unexpected columns of rosy marble, delicate and unique, on which the windows seemed to rest, gave singular distinction to these dwellings.
Often the people passing in gondola or bark glanced carelessly into the depth of the open window space framed between those polished marble shafts, for the familiar vision of a wonderful young face, beautiful as a Madonna from some high altar in Venice; often, too, this vision of a maiden bent above a child, with rare golden hair and great eyes full of pain.
There was a little lingering on the landing as they left the gondola; for the baby, waking from his long, refreshing sleep, had claimed his share of petting before the great dark man who tossed him so restfully in his strong arms went away. There was no one who could make the little Zuane laugh like \"babbo,\" though the tremulous, treble echo of the full tones of the gondolier had a pathos for those who listened.