Part 18 (1/2)

”One of you must give Zorzi his place,” said Giovanni, in a tone of authority.

The little foreman turned quite round in his chair and looked on. There was no reply. The pale men went on with their work as if Giovanni were not there, and Zorzi leaned calmly on his blow-pipe. Giovanni moved a step forward and spoke directly to one of the men who had just dropped a finished gla.s.s into the bed of soft wood ashes, to be taken to the annealing oven.

”Stop working for a while,” he said. ”Let Zorzi have your place.”

”The foreman gives orders here, not you,” answered the man coolly, and he prepared to begin another piece.

Giovanni was very angry, but there were too many of the workmen, and he did not say what rose to his lips, but crossed over to the foreman. Zorzi kept his place, waiting to see what might happen.

”Will you be so good as to order one of the men to give up his place?” Giovanni asked.

The old foreman smiled at this humble acknowledgment of his authority, but he argued the point before acceding.

”The men know well enough what Zorzi can do,” he answered in a low voice. ”They dislike him, because he is not one of us. I advise you to take him to your own gla.s.s-house, sir, if you wish to see him work. You will only make trouble here.”

”I am not afraid of any trouble, I tell you,” replied Giovanni. ”Please do what I ask.”

”Very well. I will, but I take no responsibility before the master if there is a disturbance. The men are in a bad humour and the weather is hot.”

”I will be responsible to my father,” said Giovanni.

”Very well,” repeated the old man. ”You are a gla.s.s-maker yourself, like the rest of us. You know how we look upon foreigners who steal their knowledge of our art.”

”I wish to make sure that he has really stolen something of it.”

The foreman laughed outright.

”You will be convinced soon enough!” he said. ”Give your place to the foreigner, Piero,” he added, speaking to the man who had refused to move at Giovanni's bidding.

Piero at once chilled the fresh lump of gla.s.s he had begun to fas.h.i.+on and smashed it off the tube into the refuse jar. Without a word Zorzi took his place. While he warmed the end of his blow-pipe at the 'bocca' he looked to right and left to see where the working-stool and marver were placed, and to be sure that the few tools he needed were at hand, the pontil, the 'procello,'-that is, the small elastic tongs for modelling-and the shears. Piero's apprentice had retired to a distance, as he had received no special orders, and the workmen hoped that Zorzi would find himself in difficulty at the moment when he would turn in the expectation of finding the a.s.sistant at his elbow. But Zorzi was used to helping himself. He pushed his blow-pipe into the melted gla.s.s and drew it out, let it cool a moment and then thrust it in again to take up more of the stuff.

The men went on with their work, seeming to pay no attention to him, and Piero turned his back and talked to the foreman in low tones. Only Giovanni watched, standing far enough back to be out of reach of the long blow-pipe if Zorzi should unexpectedly swing it to its full length. Zorzi was confident and unconcerned, though he was fully aware that the men were watching every movement he made, while pretending not to see. He knew also that owing to his being partly self-taught he did certain things in ways of his own. They should see that his ways were as good as theirs, and what was more, that he needed no help, while none of them could do anything without an apprentice.

The gla.s.s grew and swelled, lengthened and contracted with his breath and under his touch, and the men, furtively watching him, were amazed to see how much he could do while the piece was still on the blow-pipe. But when he could do no more they thought that he would have trouble. He did not even turn his head to see whether any one was near to help him. At the exact moment when the work was cool enough to stand he attached the pontil with its drop of liquid gla.s.s to the lower end, as he had done many a time in the laboratory, and before those who looked on could fully understand how he had done it without a.s.sistance, the long and heavy blow-pipe lay on the floor and Zorzi held his piece on the lighter pontil, heating it again at the fire.

The men did not stop working, but they glanced at each other and nodded, when Zorzi could not see them. Giovanni uttered a low exclamation of surprise. The foreman alone now watched Zorzi with genuine admiration; there was no mistaking the jealous att.i.tude of the others. It was not the mean envy of the inferior artist, either, for they were men who, in their way, loved art as Beroviero himself did, and if Zorzi had been a new companion recently promoted from the state of apprentices.h.i.+p in the guild, they would have looked on in wonder and delight, even if, at the very beginning, he outdid them all. What they felt was quite different. It was the deep, fierce hatred of the mediaeval guildsman for the stranger who had stolen knowledge without apprentices.h.i.+p and without citizens.h.i.+p, and it was made more intense because the gla.s.s-blowers were the only guild that excluded every foreign-born man, without any exception. It was a shame to them to be outdone by one who had not their blood, nor their teaching, nor their high acknowledged rights.

They were peaceable men in their way, not given to quarrelling, nor vicious; yet, excepting the mild old foreman, there was not one of them who would not gladly have brought his iron blow-pipe down on Zorzi's head with a two-handed swing, to strike the life out of the intruder.

Zorzi's deft hands made the large piece he was forming spin on itself and take new shape at every turn, until it had the perfect curve of those slim-necked Eastern vessels for pouring water upon the hands, which have not even now quite degenerated from their early grace of form. While it was still very hot, he took a sharp pointed knife from his belt and with a turn of his hand cut a small round hole, low down on one side. The mouth was widened and then turned in and out like the leaf of a carnation. He left the cooling piece on the pontil, lying across the arms of the stool, and took his blow-pipe again.

”Has the fellow not finished his tricks yet?” asked Piero discontentedly.

It would have given him pleasure to smash the beautiful thing to atoms where it lay, almost within his reach. Zorzi began to make the spout, for it was a large ampulla that he was fas.h.i.+oning. He drew the gla.s.s out, widened it, narrowed it, cut it, bent it and finished off the nozzle before he touched it with wet iron and made it drop into the ashes. A moment later he had heated the thick end of it again and was welding it over the hole he had made in the body of the vessel.

”The man has three hands!” exclaimed the foreman.

”And two of them are for stealing,” added Piero.

”Or all three,” put in the beetle-browed man who was working next to Zorzi.