Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine — page 169: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE HAMMER. He changed his voice, and something of his former awe came back in his eyes. “And to think this devil could have power over you!” he said. ‘‘ Peter, can you tell me how the impulse came?” “‘T can’t tell. I had done the rest of the figure and waited for the head—waited until some great idea for the face should come to me—waited to find a soul in Beatrice, if you will have it so! And I never found one!” “ Instead of finding her soul, you put the face of another woman on the Venus?” ° He leaned forward in his earnestness. “Tell me more about the singing girl. Can you remember any strangeness about her? Any unearthly light behind her eyes?” “Yes; golden stars shining through a deep-blue sky.” “So! So! But tell me what was in your mind when.you carved the head?”’ “It was like a dream to me,” said Peter slowly—‘ a great thought came to me. I suddenly saw the head of the Venus. |. I went to my shop and threw a veil over the model of Beatrice. I don’t know. I thought I was making her face, if. I thought of it at all—but I felt that I had seen in a vision the true Venus—-the goddess of love. “1 worked with a blind fury all the day. The face of the vision grew out of the stone of its own accord. And the hammer and chisel in my hand seemed to have volition and intelligence‘of their own. I was mere- ly the involuntary force which held them. The statue was done with the day. I turned. There stood the girl. The Venus was the singing girl—Sonia!” “ Ba! » “T had known her in England. followed me here.” ‘“* Alone?” “Yes. I knew that I had ruined the Pope’s marble. I, did not care. I do not care now. I am happy. For I stood in front of her and told her that I loved her.” “ But Beatrice—oh, ye saints! She will be crazed—” ‘And presently the door opened. It was night. I was taken here. Now, Guido, I have no care for myself, but for the girl. It may be that in their madness they will find some fault in her—” She had 511 “ Yes,” said Strochini, with a sinister dryness, ‘“ that is quite possible. By the saints, I begin to think Beatrice may be wrong. Love might be witchcraft enough to work this miracle!” ‘“ What do you mean?” “ Nothing, nothing, dear Peter. But I must go back to a certain proud lady with a message that will break her heart. Be- shrew me if I am ever again a messenger in such affairs! Farewell! I shall be present at your trial before the Pope.” He took Peter’s hand in a strong grasp and went from the room into the corridor where the guard stood watch. ‘Have you the care of Messer Warbur- ton?” he asked. “Yes, I am Jacopo.” . “Here’s money for you. See that he has everything he wants—except rope to hang himself. He may speak strangely— and particularly of a woman called Sonia —the girl who was taken with him.” ““T understand, sir.” “Humor him in everything. Let him un- derstand that he has his will.” The man winked and grinned broadly. ‘And now tell me, what have they done with the girl Sonia?” “She was put first in an upper cham- ber, much like this.” ‘“ Aye—at first.” ‘But then a charge was brought against her—”’ “ Of witchcraft?” “Yes. And now she is lodged in the lowest range of the dungeons.”’ The fellow shivered in disgust and made a grimace. ‘A place of rats and mold and water, sir!” Strochini stared at him, then shrugged his shoulders and went off slowly down the corridor, pausing several times and shaking his head. The guard looked after him with some concern. “To my eye,” he said at last, “ the girl is as right a-lass as walks in Rome!” He eyed the coins in his hand and then slipped them into his pouch. ‘“ But if she has sold her soul to the devil, have I the money to ransom her back?” Strochini went directly from the castle to comiclooolks.conn