Part 5 (1/2)
Contarini started and looked up at her face in the dim light. She was bending down to him with a very loving look.
”Why should you not marry?” she asked again. ”Why do you start and look at me so strangely? Do you think I should care? Or that I am afraid of another woman for you?”
”Yes. I should have thought that you would be jealous.” He still gazed at her in astonishment.
”Jealous!” she cried, and as she laughed she shook her beautiful head, and the gold of her hair glittered in the flickering candle-light. ”Jealous? I? Look at me! Is she younger than I? I was eighteen years old the other day. If she is younger than I, she is a child-shall I be jealous of children? Is she taller, straighter, handsomer than I am? Show her to me, and I will laugh in her face! Can she sing to you, as I sing, in the summer nights, the songs you like and those I learned by the Kura in the shadow of Kasbek? Is her hair brighter than mine, is her hand softer, is her step lighter? Jealous? Not I! Will your rich wife be your slave? Will she wake for you, sing for you, dance for you, rise up and lie down at your bidding, work for you, live for you, die for you, as I will? Will she love you as I can love, caress you to sleep, or wake you with kisses at your dear will?”
”No-ah no! There is no woman in the world but you.”
”Then I am not jealous of the rest, least of all, of your young bride. I will wager with myself against all her gold for your life, and I shall win-I have won already! Am I not trying to persuade you that you should marry?”
”I have not even seen her. Her father sent me a message to-night, bidding me go to church on Sunday and stand beside a certain pillar.”
”To see and be seen,” laughed Arisa. ”It is not a fair exchange! She will look at the handsomest man in the world-hus.h.!.+ That is the truth. And you will see a little, pale, red-haired girl with silly blue eyes, staring at you, her wide mouth open and her clumsy hands hanging down. She will look like the wooden dolls they dress in the latest Venetian fas.h.i.+on to send to Paris every year, that the French courtiers may know what to wear! And her father will hurry her along, for fear that you should look too long at her and refuse to marry such a thing, even for Marco Polo's millions!”
Contarini laughed carelessly at the description.
”Give me some wine,” he said. ”We will drink her health.”
Arisa rose with the grace of a young G.o.ddess, her hair tumbling over her bare shoulders in a splendid golden confusion. Contarini watched her with possessive eyes, as she went and came back, bringing him the drink. She brought him yellow wine of Chios in a gla.s.s calix of Murano, blown air-thin upon a slender stem and just touched here and there with drops of tender blue.
”A health to the bride of Jacopo Contarini!” she said, with a ringing little laugh.
Then she set the wine to her lips, so that they were wet with it, and gave him the gla.s.s; and as she stooped to give it, her hair fell forward and almost hid her from him.
”A health to the shower of gold!” he said, and he drank.
She sat down beside him, crossing her feet like an Eastern woman, and he set the empty gla.s.s carelessly upon the marble floor, as though it had been a thing of no price.
”That gla.s.s was made at her father's furnace,” he said.
”A pity he could not have made his daughter of gla.s.s too,” answered Arisa.
”Graceful and silent?”
”And easily destroyed! But if I say that, you will think me jealous, and I am not. She will bring you wealth. I wish her a long life, long enough to understand that she has been sold to you for your good name, like a slave, as I was sold, but that you gave gold for me because you wanted me for myself, whereas you want nothing of her but her gold.”
”But for that-” Contarini seemed to be hesitating. ”I never meant to marry her,” he added.
”And but for that, you would not! But for that! But for the only thing which I have not to give you! I wish the world were mine, with all the rich secret things in it, the myriads of millions of diamonds in the earth, the thousand rivers of gold that lie deep in the mountain rocks, and all mankind, and all that mankind has, from end to end of it! Then you should have it all for your own, and you would not need to marry the little red-haired girl with the fish's mouth!”
Contarini laughed again.
”Have you seen her, that you can describe her so well? She may have black hair. Who knows?”
”Yes. Perhaps it is black, thin and coa.r.s.e like the hair on a mule's tail; and she has black eyes, like ripe olives set in the white of a hard-boiled egg; and she has a dark skin like Spanish leather which s.h.i.+nes when she is hot and is grey when she is cold; and a black down on her upper lip; and teeth like a young horse. I hate those dark women!”
”But you have never seen her! She may be very pretty.”
”Pretty, then! She shall be as you choose. She shall have a round face, round eyes, a round nose and a round mouth! Her face shall be pink and white, her eyes shall be of blue gla.s.s and her hair shall be as smooth and yellow as fresh b.u.t.ter. She shall have little fat white hands like a healthy baby, a double chin and a short waist. Then she will be what people call pretty.”