Chapter II

The winter came and went, wrapping Venice in its mists, driving the sea-birds into the inland canals, making the pigeons sit ruffled and sad on the parapets of the palaces, and leaving many a gondolier unemployed, to warm his hands over little fires of driftwood under the snow-sprinkled rafters and naked vine-branches of his traghetto. The gondoliers of the Ca’ Zaranegra were more fortunate; they could sit round the great bronze brazier in the hall of their lady’s house, and the gondola was laid up high and dry to await the spring, and their wages were paid with regularity and liberality by the silent and austere major-domo who reigned in the forsaken palace, for their lady was away on warmer shores than the wind-beaten, surge-drowned, sea-walls of their city.

The winter was hard; snow lay long on the Istrian hills and on the Paduan pastures; there was ice on the rigging of the Greek brigs in the Giudecca, and the huge ocean steamers from the east looked like uncouth prehistoric beasts, black and gigantic, as they loomed through the fogs, moving slowly towards the docks under cautious pilotage. There were laughter and warmth in the theatres, and the sounds of music came from some of the palaces; but in the Calle, in the fishermen’s quarters, on the islands, on board the poor rough sailing craft, and amongst the maritime population generally, there were great suffering and much want; and by the bar of Malomocco and off the coast of Chioggia there were wrecks which strewed the waters with broken timbers and dashed drowning sailors like seaweed on to the wooden piles. Stout boats were broken like shells, and strong seafaring men were washed to and fro like driftwood. But the frail opal necklace of the Countess Zaranegra was safe in the midst of the strife; it had fallen into a hollow in a sunken pile and lay there, unharmed, whilst above it the stormy tides rose and fell, and the winds churned the cream of the surf. There it lay, all through the rough winter weather, whilst the silvery gulls died of hunger, and the sea swallows were hurled by the hurricane on to the lanterns of lighthouses and against the timbers of vessels.

It weathered many storms, this frail toy, made to lie on the warm breasts of women, whilst the storm kings drew down to their death the bread-winners for whom wife and children vainly prayed on shore, and the daring mariners for whom the deep had had no terrors.

In the hollow of the old oak pile the opals remained all winter long, lying like bird’s eggs in a nest, whilst the restless waters washed and swirled above its sanctuary. The worn stump of the wood had kept its place for centuries, and many a corpse had drifted past it outward to the sea in days when the white marbles of St. Mark’s city had run red with blood. It had once been the base of a sea-shrine, of a Madonna of the waters to whom the boatmen passing had invoked the Stella Maris Virgine so dear to fishermen and sailors.

But the painted shrine had long disappeared, and only the piece of timber, down underneath the waters, rooted in the sand amongst the ribbon weed and mussels, had had power to resist the forces of tide and tempest.

All the winter long the old wood kept the opals safe and sound. When the cold passed, and the blasts from the Dolomite glaciers softened, and the orchards of the fruit islands were in bud, the opals were still in their hollow, covered from the sea by the bend of the wood above them, so that, though often wet, they were never washed away.

But one day, when the peach and pear and plum trees had in turn burst into blossom on the isles, and the flocks of gulls who had survived the stress of famine and frost had returned to their feeding-places on the outer lagoons, a large iron ship coming from the Black Sea gave a rude shock in passing to the old oak pile; the top of it under the blow parted and fell asunder; the necklace was washed out of its hiding-place, and, carried in the heavy trough of the steamer’s path, was floated nearer to the isles, farther from the city. It became entangled with some algæ, and, rocked on the weed as on a little raft, was borne to and fro by a strong wind rushing from the north-east, and so was driven round past San Cristoforo and Burano, and was finally carried ashore up the creeks into the long grasses and reeds beneath the Devil’s Bridge at Torcello. The yellow water iris was then flowering, and two little reed warblers were nesting amongst the flags, as the opals were drifted up under some hemlock leaves and there rested.

“I think they are eggs, but they are all strung together,” said the warbler to his mate.

“They look more like the spawn of a fish,” said the little winged lady, with scorn.

A water-rat came up and smelt at them, then went away disdainfully; they were not good to eat. For birds and beasts do not care for jewels: it is only humanity, which thinks itself superior to them, which sees any value in stones, and calls such toys precious.