On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide open.'Free, Messer,' he said; 'and summoned under urgency to the palace.'Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and dreaded by a gentler soul.The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and whispered for Messer Topo.The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him (the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy), apostrophised him face to face:—'My true, mine only friend at last,' he said (his voice was thick and choking). 'I must go, leaving him to thee. Be reverent with him for my sake—ah! if I return not anon, to carry out and plant that sweet corse in the daisied grass he loved—not dust to dust, but flower to the dear flowers. Look to it. Shall I never see him more—nor thee? I know not. I've that to do first may part us to eternity—yet must I do it. Come, kiss me God-be-with-ye. Nay, that's a false word. How can He, and this bloody ensign on my brow? My brain in me doth knell already like a leper's bell. Canst hear it, red-eyes? No God for me. Why should I need Him—tell me that? Christ could not save His friend. I must go alone—quite alone at last. Only remember I loved thee—always remember that. And so, thou fond and pretty thing, farewell.'He put his lips to the little furry head; put the animal gently down; longed to it a moment; then, as it disappeared into its run, turned with a wet and burdened sigh.But, even with the sound, a black and gripping frost seemed to fall upon him. He drew himself up, set his face to the door, and passed out and on to freedom and the woful deed he contemplated.CHAPTER XXIVA despotism (Messer Bembo invitus) is the only absolute expression of automatic government. The fly-wheel moves, and every detail of the machinery, saw, knife, or punch, however distant, responds instantly to its initiative. Galeazzo, for example, had but to make, in Vigevano, the tenth part of a revolution, and behold, in Milan! Messer Jacopo—saw, knife, and punch in one—had 'come down,' automatically, upon the objectives of that movement. Within a few minutes of Tassino's return, Bernardo and his Fool, seized quietly and without resistance as they were taking the air on the battlements, were being lowered with cords into the 'Hermit's Cell.'Sic itur ad astra.The Duke of Milan re-entered his capital on the 20th of December. His Duchess met him with happy smiles and tears, loving complaints over his long absence, a sweet tongue ready with vindication of her trust, should that be demanded of her. The last week had done much to reassure her, in the near return to familiar conditions which it had witnessed; and she felt herself almost in a position to restore to her Bluebeard the key, unviolated, of the forbidden chamber. If only he would accept that earnest of her loyalty without too close a questioning!And, to her joy, he did; inasmuch, you see, as he had his own reasons for a diplomatic silence. It would appear, indeed, that recent great events had altogether banished from his memory the pious circumstances of his departure to them. He had returned to find his duchy as to all moral intents he had left and could have wished to recover it. The fashion of Nature had shed its petals with the summer brocades, and Milan was itself again.For the exquisite, who had set it, was vanished now some seven days gone; and that is a long time for the straining out of a popular fashion. He had departed, carrying his Fool with him, none—save one or two in the secret—knew whither; but surmise was plentiful, and for the most part rabid. That he had fallen out of home favour latterly was obvious and flagrant; now, the report grew that this alienation had received its first impetus from Piedmont. That whisper in itself was Nature's very quietus. Eleven out of a dozen presumed upon it, and themselves, to propitiate tyranny with a very debauch of reactionism to old licence. Moreover, scandal, in mere self-justification, must run intolerable riot. Nothing was too gross for it in its accounting for this secession. The pure love which had striven to redeem it, it tortured into a text for filthy slanders. The Countess of Caprona had her windows stoned in retaliation one day by a resentful crowd; the wretched girl Lucia was dragged from her bed and suffocated in a muddy ditch. The logic of the mob.The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the boy no evil; had acted as she did merely in the interests of the State, she told herself. If, for a moment, her thoughts ever swerved to Tassino—now returned, as it was whispered, to his old quarters with the Provost Marshal, and abiding there a readjustment of affairs—she hid the treason under a lovely blush, and vowed herself for ever more true wife and incorruptible.So for the most part all was satisfactory again; and there remained only to alienate the popular sympathy from its idol. And that the Church undertook to do. The moment the false prophet was exposed and deposed, it rose, shook the crumbs from its lap, and gave him hiscoup de grâcein the public estimation.'He but sought,' it thundered, 'to turn ye over, clods; to cleanse your gross soil for the fairer growing of his roses.' A parable: but so far comprehensible to the demos in that it implied its narrow escape from some cleaning process, a vindication of its prescriptive rights to go unwashed, and therefore convincing. Down sank the threatening swine-monster thereon; and, being further played upon with comfits of a festal Christmas-tide, did yield up incontinent its last breath of revivalism, and kick in joyful reassurance of its sty.So the whole city absolved itself of redemption, and set to making enthusiastic provision for the devil's entertainment against the season of peace and goodwill.Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit: nor lessBona bona erit. Only there was a rift within the happy wife's lute, which somehow put the whole orchestra out of tune. She saw, for all her sweet chastened sense of relief, that the Duke was darkly troubled. The oppression of his mood communicated itself to hers; and she began to dream—horrible visions of cloyed fingers, and clinging shrouds, and ropey cobwebs that would drop and lace her mouth and nostrils, the while she could not fight free a hand to clear them.Then, double-damned in his own depression, by reason of its reacting through his partner on himself, the Duke one day sent for the Provost Marshal.'The season claims its mercies,' gloomed he. 'Take the boy out and send him home to his father.''His father!' jeered Jacopo brusquely, grunting in his beard. 'A's been safe in his bosom these three days.''What!' gasped the tyrant.'Dead, Messer, dead, that's all,' said the other impassively; 'passed in a moment, like a summer shower.'There was nothing more to be said, then. As for poor Patch, he was too cheap a mend-conscience for the ducal mind even to consider. It took instead to brooding more and more on the drawn whiteness of its Duchess's face, hating and sickened by it, yet fascinated. The air seemed full of portents in its ghostly glimmer. His fingers were always itching to strike the hot blood into it. A loathly suspicion seized him that perhaps here, after all, was revealed the illusive face of his long haunting. Constantly he fancied he saw reflected in other faces about him some shadow of its menacing woe. Once he came near stabbing a lieutenant of his guards, one Lampugnani, for no better reason than that he had caught the fellow's eyes fixed upon him.So the jovial season sped, and Christmas day was come and gone, bringing with it and leaving, out of conviviality, some surcease of his self-torment.But, on that holy night, Madonna Bona was visited by a dream, more ugly and more definite than any that had terrified her hitherto. Groping in a vast cathedral gloom, she had come suddenly upon a murdered body prostrate on the stones. Dim, shadowy shapes were thronged around; the organ thundered, and at its every peal the corpse from a hundred hideous wounds spouted jets of blood. She turned to run; the gloating stream pursued her—rose to her hips, her lips—she awoke choking and screaming.That morning—it was St. Stephen's Day—the Duke was to hear Mass in the private chapel of the castello. He rose to attend it, only to find that, by some misunderstanding, the court chaplain had already departed, with the sacred vessels, for the church dedicated to the Saint. The Bishop of Como, summoned to take his place, declined on the score of illness. Galeazzo decided to follow his chaplain.Bona strove frantically to dissuade him from going. He read some confirmation of his shapeless suspicions in her urgency, and was the more determined. She persisted; he came near striking her in his fury, and finally drove her from his presence, weeping and clamorous.She was in despair, turning hither and thither, trusting no one. At length she bethought herself of an honest fellow, always a loyal friend and soldier of her lord, of whom, in this distracting pass, she might make use. She had spoken nothing to the Duke of her disposal of his favourite, Messer Lanti, leaving the explanation of her conduct to an auspicious moment. Now, in her emergency, she sent a message for Carlo's instant release, bidding him repair without delay to the palace. She had no reason, nor logic, nor any particular morality. She was in need, and lusting for help—that was enough.The messenger sped, and returned, but so did not the prisoner with him. Bona, sobbing, feverish, at the wit's end of her resources, went from member to member of her lord's suite, imploring each to intervene. As well ask the jackalls to reprove the lion for his arrogance.At eleven the Duke set out. His valet and chronicler, Bernardino Corio, relates how, at this pass, his master's behaviour seemed fraught with indecision and melancholy; how he put on, and then off, his coat of mail, because it made him look too stout; how he feared, yet was anxious to go, because 'some of his mistresses' would be expecting him in the church (the true explanation of his unharnessing, perhaps); how he halted before descending the stairs; how he called for his children, and appeared hardly able to tear himself away from them; how Madonna Catherine rallied him with a kiss and a quip; how at length, reluctantly, he left the castle on foot, but, finding snow on the ground, decided upon mounting his horse.Viva! Viva! See the fine portly gentleman come forth—tall, handsome, they called him—in his petti-cote of crimson brocade, costly-furred and opened in front to reveal the doublet beneath, a blaze of gold-cloth torrid with rubies; see the flash and glitter that break out all over him, surface coruscations, as it were, of an inner fire; see his face, already chilling to ashes, livid beneath the sparkle of its jewelled berretino! Is it that his glory consumes himself? Viva! Viva!—if much shouting can frighten away the shadow that lies in the hollow of his cheek. It is thrown by one, invisible, that mounted behind him when he mounted, and now sits between his greatness and the sun. Viva! Viva! So, with the roar of life in his ears, he passes on to the eternal silence.As he rides he whips his head hither and thither, each glance of his eyes a quick furtive stab, a veritablecoup d'[oe]il. He is gnawed and corroded with suspicion, mortallynervous—his manner lacks repose. It shall soon find it. He will make a stately recumbent figure on a tomb.The valet, after releasing his master's bridle, has run on by a short cut to the church, where, at the door, he comes across Messers Lampugnani and Olgiati lolling arm in arm. They wearcoats and stockings of mail, and short capes of red satin. Corio wonders to see them there, instead of in their right places among the Duke's escort. But it is no matter of his. There are some gentlemen will risk a good deal to assert their independence—or insolence.In the meanwhile, the motley crowd gathering, the Duke's progress is slow. All the better for discussing him and his accompanying magnificence. He rides between the envoys of Ferrara and Mantua, a gorgeous nucleus to a brilliant nebula. This, after all, is more 'filling' than Nature. Some one likens him, audibly, to the head of a comet, trailing glory in his wake. He turns sharply, with a scowl. 'Uh! Come sta duro!' mutters the delinquent. 'Like a thunderbolt, rather!'At length he reaches the church door and dismounts. He throws his reins to a huge Moor, standing ready, and sets his lips.From within burst forth the strains of the choir—'Sic transit gloria mundi,'Bowing his head, he passes on to his doom.CHAPTER XXV'That being dead yet speaketh'Through the chiming stars, the romp of wind in woods, the gush of spring freshets, the cheery drone of bees; through all happy gales—of innocent frolic, of children's laughter, of sighing, unharmful passion, of joy and gaiety ungrudging; through the associations of his gentle spirit with these, the things it had loved, whereby, by those who had listened and could not altogether forget, came gradually to be vindicated the truth of his kind religion, Bernardo's voice, though grown a phantom voice, spoke on and echoed down the ages. Sweet babble at the hill-head, it was yet the progenitor of the booming flood which came to take the world with knowledge—knowledge of its own second redemption through the humanity which is born of Nature. Already Art, life's nurse and tutor, was, unknown to itself, quickening from the embrace of clouds and sunlight and tender foliage; while, unconscious of the strange destinies in its womb, it was scorning and reviling the little priest who had brought about that union.And, alas! it is always so. Nor profit nor credit are ever to the pioneer who opens out the countries which are to yield his followers both.He perished very soon. Its third night of darkness and starvation saw the passing of that fragile spirit, gentle, innocuous, uncomplaining as it had lived. Frail as a bird that dies of the shock of capture, he broke his heart upon a song.I would have no gloomy obsequies attend his fate. In tears, and strewing of flowers, and pretty plaintive dirges of the fields—in sighs and lutes of love, such as waited on the sweet Fidele, would I have ye honour him. Not because I would belittle that piercing tragedy, but because he would. It was none to him. He but turned his face for home, sorrowing only for his failure to win to his Christ, his comrade, a kingdom he should never have the chance to influence again. What had he else to fear? The star that had mothered, the road that had sped him? All grass and flowers was the latter; of the first, a fore-ray seemed already to have pierced the darkness of his cell, linking it to heaven.'"Let's sing him to the ground.""I cannot sing; I'll weep, and word it with thee;For notes of sorrow, out of tune, are worseThan priests and fanes that lie."'Bring hither, I say, no passion of a vengeful hate. It is the passing of a rose in winter.At near the end, lying in his Fool's arms, he panted faintly:—'My feet are weary for the turning. Pray ye, kind mother, that this road end soon.''What! shall I hurry mine own damnation?' gurgled the other (his tongue by then was clacking in his mouth). 'Trippingly, I warrant, shall ye take that path, unheeding of the poor wretch that lags a million miles behind lashed by a storm of scorpions.''Marry, sweet,' whispered the boy, smiling; 'I'll wait thee, never fear, when once I see my way. How could I forego such witness as thou to my brave intentions? We'll jog the road together, while I shield thy back.''Well, let be,' said Cicca. 'Better they stung that, than my heart through thine arm'—whereat Bernardo nipped him feebly in an ecstasy of tears.In the first hours of their fearful doom he was more full of wonder than alarm—astounded, in the swooning sense. He had not come yet to realise the mortal nature of their punishment. How should he, innocent of harm? Attributing, as he did, this sudden blow to Bona, he marvelled only how so kind a mother could chastise so sharply for a little offence—or none. Indeed he was conscious of none; though conscious enough, latterly, poor child, of an atmosphere of grievance. Well, the provocation had been his, no doubt—somehow. He had learned enough of woman in these months to know that the measure of her resentment was not always the measure of the fault—how she would sometimes stab deeper for a disappointment than for a wrong. He had disappointed her in some way. No doubt, his favour being so high, he had presumed upon it. A useful rebuke, then. He would bear his imposition manly; but he hoped, he did hope, that not too much of it would be held to have purged his misconduct. The Duke was returning shortly. Perhaps he would plead for him.So sweetly and so humbly he estimated his own insignificance. Could his foul slanderers have read his heart then, they had surely raved upon God, in their horror, to strike them, instant and for ever, from the rolls of self-conscious existence.Cicada listened to him, and gnawed his knotted knuckles in the gloom, and wondered when and how he should dare to curse him with the truth. He might at least have spared himself that agony. The truth, to one so true, could not long fail of revealing itself. And when it came, lo! he welcomed it, as always, for a friend.Small birds, small flowers, small wants perish of a little neglect. His sun, his sustenance, were scarce withheld a few hours from this sensitive plant before he began to droop. And ever, with the fading of his mortal tissues, the glow of the intelligence within seemed to grow brighter, until verily the veins upon his temples appeared to stand out, like mystic writing on a lighted porcelain lamp.So it happened that, as he and his companion were sitting apart on the filthy stones late on the noon of the second day of their imprisonment, he ended a long silence by creeping suddenly to the Fool's knees, and, looking up into the Fool's face in the dim twilight, appealed to its despair with a tremulous smile.'Cicca,' he whispered, 'my Cicca; wilt thou listen, and not be frightened?''To what?' muttered the other hoarsely.'Hush, dear!' said the boy, fondling him, and whimpering—not for himself. 'I have been warned—some one hath warned me—that it were well if we fed not our hearts with delusive hopes of release herefrom.''Why not?' said the Fool. 'It is the only food we are like to have.''Ah!'He clung suddenly to his friend in a convulsion of emotion.'You have guessed? It is true. Capello. We might have known, being here; but—O Cicca! are you sorry? We have an angel with us—he spoke to me just now.''Christ?''Yes, Christ, dearest.'The Fool, smitten to intolerable anguish, put him away, and, scrambling to his feet, went up and down, raving and sobbing:—'The vengeance of God on this wicked race! May it fester in madness, living; and, dead, go down to torment so unspeakable, that——'The boy, sprung erect, white and quivering, struck in:—'Ah, no, no! Think who it is that hears thee!'Cicada threw himself at his feet, pawing and lamenting:—'Thou angel! O, woe is me! that ever I were born to see this thing!'So they subsided in one grief, rocking and weeping together.'O, sweet!' gasped the boy—'that ever I were born to bring this thing on thee!'Then, at that, the Fool wrapped him in his arms, adoring and fondling him, to a hurry of sighs and broken exclamations.'On me!—Child, that I am thought worthy!—too great a joy—mightst have been alone—yet did I try to save thee—heaven's mercy that, failing, I am involved!'And so, easing himself for the first time, in an ecstasy of emotion he told all he knew about the fatal ring, and his efforts to recover it.Bernardo listened in wonder.'This ring!' he whispered at the end. 'Right judgment on me for my wicked negligence. Why, I deserve to die. Yet—' he clung a little closer—'Cicca,' he thrilled, 'it is the Duke, then, hath committed us to this?'Cicada moaned, beating his forehead:—'Ay, ay! it is the Duke. So I kill thy last hope!''Nay, thou reviv'st it.''How?' He stared, holding his breath.'O, my dear!' murmured the boy rapturously; 'since thou acquittestherof this unkindness.''Her? Whom?Unkindness!' cried the Fool. 'Expect nothing of Bona but acquiescence in thy fate.''Yet is she guiltless of designing it.''Guiltless? Ay, guiltless as she who, raving, "that my shame should bear this voice and none to silence it!" accepts the hired midwife's word that her womb hath dropped dead fruit! O!' he mourned most bitterly, 'I loved thee, and I love; yet now, I swear I wish thee dead!''Then, indeed, thou lovest me.''Had it come to this, in truth?''Alas! I know not what you mean. My mother is my mother still.''Thy mother! I am thy mother.''Ah!' Laughing and weeping, he caught the gruff creature in his arms:—'Cicca, that sweet, fond comedy!'The other put him away again, but very gently, and rose to his feet.'Comedy?' he muttered; 'ay, a comedy—true—a masque of clowns. Yet I've played the woman for thy sake.'Bernardo stared at him, his face twitching.'Thou hast, dear—so tragically—and in that garb! I would I could have seen thee in it. O! a churl to laugh, dear Cicca; but——''But what?''Thou, a woman!'He fell into a little irresistible chuckle. Strange wafts of tears and laughter seemed to sing in the drowsy chambers of his brain.'Thoua woman!' he giggled hysterically.The Fool gave a sudden cry.'Why not? Have I betrayed my child?'He turned, as if sore stricken, and went up and down, up and down, wringing his hands and moaning.Suddenly he came and threw himself on his knees before the boy, but away from him, and knelt there, rocking and protesting, his face in his hands.'Ah! let me be myself at last. That disguise—thou mockest—'twas none. Worn like a fool—mayhap—unpractised—yet could I have kissed its skirted hem. I am a woman, though a Fool—what's odd in that?—a woman, dear, a woman, a woman!'He bowed himself, lower, lower, as if his shame were crushing him. In the deep silence that followed, Bernardo, trembling all through, crept a foot nearer, and paused.'Mother?' cried the Fool, still crouching, his head deeper abased; 'no name for me. Cry on—cry scorn, in thy hunger, on this lying dam! No drop to cool thy drought in all her withered pastures.'He writhed, and struck his chest, in pain intolerable.'Mother!' thrilled the boy, loud and sudden.The Fool gave a quick gasp, and started, and shrunk away.'Not I. Keep off! I am as Filippo made me—after his own image. He was a God—could name me man or woman. 'Twas but a word; and lo! too hideous for my sex, I leapt, his male Fool. That, of all jests, was his first. He spared me for it. I had been strangled else.''Mother!'Again that moving, rapturous cry,'No, no!' cried the Fool. 'Barren—barren—no woman, even! Still as God wrought me, and human taste condemned. Let be. Forget what I said. Let me go on and serve thee—sexless—only to myself confessing, not thou awarding. I ask no more, nor sweeter—O my babe, my babe!''Mother!''Hush! break not my heart—not yet. This darkness? Speak it once more. Why, I might be beautiful. Will you think it—will you, letting me ply you with my conscious sweets? I could try. I've studied in the markets. Your starving rogue's the best connoisseur of savours. I'll not come near you—only sigh and soothe. I'll tune myself to speak so soft—school myself out of your knowledge. Perchance, God helping, you shall think me fair.''Mother!'Once more—and he was in her arms.Surely the loveliest miracle that could have blossomed in that grave—a breaking of roses from the pilgrim's dead staff!Henceforth Bernardo's path was rapture—a song of love and jubilance—his spirit flamed and trembled out in song.They had spared him his lute; and his fingers, strong in their instinct to the last, were seldom long parted from its strings. He lay much in his Fool mother's lap; and one had scarcely known when their converse melted into music, or out of music into speech, so melodious was their love, so rapt their soul-union, and so triumphant over pain and darkness, as to evoke of fell circumstance its own balm-breathing, illuminating spirits. What was this horror of bleak, black burial, when at a word, a struck chord, one could see it quiver and break into a garden of splendid fancies!Once only was their dying exaltation recalled to earth—to consciousness of their near escape from all its hate and squalor. It happened in a moment; and so shall suffer but a moment's record.There came a sudden laugh and flare—and there was Tassino, torch in hand, looking from the grate above.'Ehi, Messer Bembo!' yapped the cur; 'art there? And I here? What does omnipotence in this reverse? Arise, and prove thyself. Lucia's dead; the Duke's returned; Milan is itself again. The memory of thee rots in the gutter; and stinks—fah! I go to the Duchess soon. What message to her, bastard of an Abbot?'The boy raised his head.'The season's, Tassino,' he whispered, smiling. 'Peace and goodwill.'The filthy creature mouthed and snarled.'Ay. Most sweet. I'll wait thine agony, though, before I give it. She'll cry, then; and I shall be by; and, look you, emotion is the mother of desire. I'll pillow her upon thy corpse, bastard, and quicken her with new lust of wickedness. She'll never have loved me more. God! what a use for a saint!'Cicada crawled, and rose, from under her sweet burden.'Wait,' she hissed; 'the grate's open. A strong leap, and I have him.'An idle threat; but enough to make the whelp start, and clap to the bars, and fly screaming.The Fool returned, panting, to her charge.'Forget him,' she said.'I have forgotten him, my mother. But his lie——''Yes?''Was it a lie?''About Bona? I am a woman now. I'll answer nothing for my sex.''I'll answer for her. About my father, I meant?''As thou'lt answer for her, so will I for him.'Bernardo sighed, and lay a long while silent. Suddenly he moaned in her arms, like a child over-tired, and spoke the words already quoted:—'My feet are weary for the turning.''Death is Love's seed—a sweet child quickened of ourselves. He comes to us, his pink hands full of flowers. "See, father, see, mother," says he, "the myrtles and the orange blooms which made fragrant your bridal bed. I am their fruit—the full maturity of Love's promise. Will you not kiss your little son, and come with him to the wise gardens where he ripened? 'Tis cold in this dark room!"'So, in such rhapsodies, 'in love with tuneful death,' would he often murmur, or melt, through them, into song as strange.'Love and Forever would wedFearless in Heaven's sight.Life came to them and said,"Lease ye my house of light!"He put them on earth to bed,All in the noonday bright:"Sooth," to Forever Love said,"Here may we prosper right."Sudden, day waned and fled:Truth saw Forever in night."We are deceived," he said;"Who shall pity our plight?"Death, winging by o'erhead,Heard them moan in affright."Hold by my hem," he said;"I go the way to light."'All the last day Cicada held him in her arms, so quiet, so motionless, that the gradual running down of his pulses was steadily perceptible to her. She felt Death stealing in, like a ghostly dawn—watched its growing glimmer with a fierce, hard-held agony. Once, before their scrap of daylight failed them, she stole her wrist to her mouth, and bit at it secretly, savagely, drawing a sluggish trickle of red. She had thought him sunk beyond notice of her; and started, and hid away the wound, as he put up a gentle, exhausted arm, detaining hers.'Sting'st thyself, scorpion?'Cicada gave a thick crow—merciful God! it was meant for a laugh—and began to screak and mumble some legend of a bird that, in difficult times, would bleed itself to feed its young—a most admirable lesson from Nature. The child laughed in his turn—poor little croupy mirth—and answered with a story: how the right and left hands once had a dispute as to which most loved and served the other, each asserting that he would cut himself off in proof of his devotion. Which being impracticable, it was decided that the right should sever the left, and the left the right; whereof the latter stood the test first without a wince. But, lo! when it came to the left's turn, there was no right hand to carve him.'Anan?' croaked Cicada sourly.'Why,' said Bernardo, 'we will exchange the wine of our veins, if you like, to prove our mutual devotion; but, if I suck all thine first, there will be no suck left in thy lips to return the compliment on me.''Need'st not take all; but enough to handicap thee, so that we start this backward journey on fair terms.''Nay, it were so sweet, I 'd prove a glutton did I once begin. Cicca?''My babe?''Canst thou see Christ?''Ay, in the white mirror of thy face.''I see Him so plain. He stands behind thee now—a boy, mine own age. Nay, He puts His finger on His sweet lips, and smiles and goes. "Naughty," that means: "shall I stay to hear thee flatter me?" He blushes, like a boy, to be praised. He's gone no further than the wall. Cicca, thy disguise was deep. I never thought thee beautiful before. O, what an unkind mother, to hide her beauty from her boy!''Am I beautiful?''Dost not know it? As the moon that rises on the night. It was night just now, and my soul was groping in the dark; and, lo! of a sudden thou wert looking down.''Let it be night, I say!''What is that in thy voice? I am so happy—always; only not when I think of Carlo. My dear, dear Carlo! Alas! what have they done with him? He will often think of us, and wonder where we are, and frown and gnaw his lip. If I could but hear him speak once more—cry "Bernardo!" in that voice that made one's eyeballs crack like glass, and tickle in their veins. O, my sweet Carlo! Mother, have I failed in everything?''Let be! Thou'lt kill me with thy prattle. Thy Christ remains behind. He'll see thy seed is honoured in its fruits.''Well, wilt thou kiss me good-night? I'm sleepy.'He seemed to doze a good deal after that. But, about midnight, it might be, he suddenly sat up, and was singing strongly to his lute—a sweet, unearthly song, of home-returning and farewell. Cicada clung and held him, held to him, pierced all through with the awful rapture of that moment.'Leave me not: wait for me!' she whispered, sobbing.Suddenly, in a vibrating pause, a faint far cry was wafted to their ears:—'Bernardo! Bernardo!'The fingers tumbled on the lute, plucking its music into a tangle of wild discords. A string snapped.'Carlo!' he screamed—'it is Carlo!'The cry leapt, and fell, and eddied away in a long rosary of echoes. The Fool fumbled for his lips with hers.But who might draw death from that sweet frozen spring!She feared nothing now but that they would come and take him from her—snarled, holding him, when her one sick glint of day stole in to cross her vigil—was in love with utter solitude and blind night. Once, after a little or a long time—it was all one to her—she saw a thread of ghostly whiteness moving on the floor; watched it with basilisk eyes; thought, perhaps, it was his soul, lingering for hers according to its promise. The moving spot came on—stole into the wan, diffused streak of light cast from the grating;—and it was a great rat, with something bound about its neck.She understood on the instant. Long since, her instinctive wit had told her—though she had not cared or been concerned to listen to it—that that sudden voice in the darkness had signified that Carlo was imprisoned somewhere hard by. Well, he had found this means to communicate with her—near a miracle, it might be; but miracles interested her no longer. No harm to let him know at last.Hecould not rob her of her dead.She coaxed the creature to her; found him tame; read the message; re-fastened on the paper, and, by its glimmer, marked the way of his return.Then she rose, and spoke, and, speaking, choked and died.In the dark all cats are grey, and all women beautiful. But I think the countenance of this one had no need to fear the dawn.CHAPTER XXVIAmongst all her costly possessions in the Casa Caprona, there had once been none so loved, so treasured, so often consulted by Beatrice as a certain portrait of the little Parablist of San Zeno, which she had bought straight from the studio of its limner, Messer Antonello da Messina, at that time temporarily sojourning in Milan. This was the artist, pupil of Jan Van Eyck, who had been the first to introduce oil-painting into Italy; and the portrait was executed in the new medium. It was a work perpetratedcon amore—one of the many in which the exaltation of the moment had sought to express itself in pigments, or marble, or metal. For, indeed, during that short spring of his promise, Bernardo's flower-face had come to blossom in half the crafts of the town.Technically, perhaps, a little wan and flat, the head owed something, nevertheless, to inspiration. Through the mere physical beauty of its features, one might read the sorrow of a spiritual incarnation—the wistfulness of a Christ-converted Eros of the ancient cosmogonies. Here were the right faun's eyes, brooding pity out of laughter; the rather square jaw, and girlish pointed chin; the baby lips that seemed to have kissed themselves, shape and tint, out of spindle-berries; the little strutting cap and quill even, so queerly contrasted with the staid sobriety of the brow beneath. It was the boy, and the soul of the boy, so far as enthusiasm, working through a strange medium, could interpret it.Beatrice, having secured, had hung the picture in a dim alcove of her chamber; and had further, to ensure its jealous privacy from all inquisition but her own, looped a curtain before. Here, then, a dozen times a day, when alone, had she been wont to pray and confess herself; lust with her finger-tips to charm the barren contours of the face into life; lay her hot cheek to the painted flesh, and weep, and woo, and appeal to it; seek to soften by a hundred passionate artifices the inflexible continence of its gaze.But that had been all before the shock and frenzy of her final repulse. Not once since had she looked on it, until...Came upon her, still crouching self-absorbed, that white morning of the Duke's tragedy; and, on the vulture wings of it, Narcisso.The beast crept to her, fulsome, hoarse, shaken with a heart-ague. She conned him with a contemptuous curiosity, as he stood unnerved, trembling all through, before her.'Well?' she said at last.He grinned and gobbled, gulping for articulation.'It's come, Madonna.'She half rose on her couch, frowning and impatient.'What, thou sick fool?''Sick!' he echoed loudly; and then his voice fell again. 'Ay, sick to death, I think. The Duke——''What of him?''Rides to San Stefano.''Does he?''He'll not ride home again.'She stared at him in silence a moment; then suddenly breathed out a little wintry laugh.'So?' she whispered—'So? Well, thou art not the Duke.'He struggled to clear, and could not clear, his throat. His low forehead, for all the cold, was beaded with sweat.'All's one for that,' he muttered thickly. 'There's no class in carrion.'She still conned him, with that frigid smile on her lips.'Dost mean they'll seek to kill thee too?'He clawed at his head in a frenzy.'Ay, I mean it.''Why?''Why? quotha. Why, won't they have held me till this moment for one of themselves?''Till this moment?' she murmured. 'Ah! I see; this Judas who hath not the courage to play out his part.''My part!' He almost screamed it at last. 'Was death my part?' He writhed and snuffled. 'I tell thee, I've but now left them, on pretence of going before to the church. Shall I be there? God's death! Let but this stroke win through and gain the people, and my life's not worth a stinking sprat.'She sank back with a sigh.'Better, in that case, to have joined thy friends at San Stefano.'The rogue, staring at her a moment, uttered a mortal cry:—'Thou say'st it—thou?—Judas?—Who made me so?—Show me my thirty pieces—Judas? Ay; and what for wages?—Thy tool and catspaw—I see it all at last—thine and Ludovic's—bled, and my carcass thrown to swine!—Judas? Why, I might have been Judas to some purpose with the Duke—a made man by now. And all for thee foregone; and in the end by thee betrayed. I asked nothing—gave all for nothing—ass—goose—cried quack and quack, as told—decoy to these fine fowl, and, being used, my neck wrung with the rest. Now——'She put up a hand peremptorily. The fury simmered down on his lips.'You presume, fellow,' she said. 'Ibetraythee?'She raised her brows, amazed. Too stupendous an instance of condescension, indeed.He slunk down on his knees before her, cringing and praying.'No, Madonna, no! I spake out of my great madness.''Answer me,' she said disdainfully, 'out of thy little reason. What wouldst thou of me?'He lifted his shaking hands.'Sanctuary, sanctuary. Let me hide here.'He crawled to her, pawing like a beaten dog.'Sanctuary,' he reiterated brokenly. 'You owe it me—that at least. I've bided, bided—and ye made no sign—yielded all for guerdon of a sweet word, the whiles I thought thyself and Ludovic were stalking that conspiracy to cut it off betimes. God's death! Not you. And now I know the reason. Now comes the reckoning, and I'm left to face it as I will. God's death!' His panic mastered him again. 'What of my substance have I changed for nothing! There was Bona's ring—I might have lived ten year on't. And I parted with it—for what? O, you're a serpent, mistress! You worm your way—and get it too. What! Bona may bide a little, and Simonetta? They're but the bleeding trunk. The head's lopped while I talk.'His voice rose to a screech—broke—and he grovelled before her.'Mercy, Madonna. Spare me to be thy slave. All comes thy way—love, and revenge, and power. The boy's dead—the Duke's to die——'He had roused her at last, and in a flash. She sprang to her feet, white, hardly breathing.'The boy?' she hissed; 'what boy?'He whimpered, sprawling:—'God a' mercy! Lady, lady! the boy, the very boy you sped the ring to kill.''Dead!' she whispered.'Ay,' he snivelled from the ground; 'what would you? dead as last Childermas—starved to death, in the "Hermit's Cell" they call it, by the Duke's orders.'Her fingers battled softly with her throat.'Dead!' she said again. 'Narcisso, good Narcisso, who hath gulled thee with this lie?''No lie,' he answered, squatting, reassured, on his hams. ''Twas Messer Tassino, no less, that carried thy token to Vigevano. 'Twas no later than yesternight I met our fine cockerel louping from the stews. A' was drunk as father Noah—babbled and blabbed, a' did—perked up a's comb, and cursed me for presuming fellowship with a duke's minion. I plied him further, e'en to tears and confidence—had it all out of him; how a'd carried the ring for Messer Ludovic, and brought back the deadly order. Jacopo nipped the Saint that noon. A's singing in paradise these days past.'Beatrice stood and listened. A dreadful smile was on her lips. But, when she spoke, it was with wooing softness.'Good trust—always the faithful trust. Why, Narcisso, what should I do betraying thee? We'll work and end together, and take our wages. Dead, do you say? Why, then, all's said. Now go, and tuck thyself within the roof till the storm pass. This lightning's all below. Go, comrade, do you hear?'He dwelt a moment only to gasp and mumble out his thanks; then turned and slouched away.For minutes she dwelt as he had left her, rigid, smiling, bloodless. Presently, still standing motionless, she moved her lips and was muttering:—'Dead? So swift? Made sure against all chances? Starved? He said starved. Not to that I betrayed him. Inhuman hound! Thou mightst have spared him bread!—left sorrow and cold durance to work their lingering end. What then? Why, Bona then—Bona made widow; free to work her will. ShouldIbe the better?—Dead? was he not always dead to me? Starved to death! O, hell heat Lampugnani's dagger scarlet, that it hiss and bubble in his flesh! Galeazzo! Galeazzo! I'll follow soon to nurse thy pains to ecstasy!'She fell silent; presently began to sway; then, with a sudden shriek, had leapt upon the picture, and torn aside its curtain.'Bernardo!' she moaned and sobbed—'Bernardo, I loved thee! O God! he eats me with his eyes. Here, here! fasten with thy starved lips. I'll not speak or cry, though they burrow to my heart. All thine—hold on—I'll smile and pet mine agony—Bernardo——!'In the tumult of her passion she heard a sound at the door; caught her breath; caught herself to knowledge of herself, and, instinctively closing the curtain, stood panting, dishevelled, its hem in her hand.Someone, something, had entered—a haggard, unshorn ghost of ancient days. It came very softly, closing the door behind; then, set and silent, moved upon her. Her pulses seemed to sink and wither.'Carlo!' she shuddered softly.It was fearful that the thing never spoke as it came on. Nor did she speak again. Love that has once joined keeps understanding without words. What has it bred but death? Here was the natural fruit of a sin matured—she saw it gleam suddenly in his clutch.She watched fascinated. As he drew near, without a word she slowly raised her hands, and rent from her bosom its already desecrated veil. Then at last she spoke—or whispered:—'I'm ready. Here's where you kissed and sighed. Bloody thy bed.'He took her to his remorseless grasp. She had often thrilled to know her helplessness therein—wondered what it would be to feel it closed in hate. Now she had her knowledge—and instantly, in an ecstasy of terror, succumbed to it.'No, no!' she gasped. 'Carlo, don't kill me!'Voiceless still, he raised his hand. She gave a fearful scream.'I never meant it. I'm innocent. Not without a word. Carlo! Carlo!—I loved him!'Writhing in her agony, she tore herself free a moment, and sank at his feet, rending, as she fell, the curtain from its rings. His back was to the wall. In a mirror opposite he caught the sudden vision of his intent, and, looking down upon it, dim and spiritual, the sweet face of the Saint.The dagger dropped from his hand.The silence of a minute seemed to draw into an age.Suddenly he was groping and stumbling like a drunken man. Words came to him in a babble:—'Let be!—I'll go—spare her?—Where's thy Christ? He forgave too—I'm coming—answer for me—here!'And he drove a staggering course from the room.Tears began to gush from her as she lay prone. Then suddenly, in a quick impulse, she rose to her feet, and re-veiling the picture, turned with her back to it.'Ludovic remains,' she whispered.
On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide open.
'Free, Messer,' he said; 'and summoned under urgency to the palace.'
Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and dreaded by a gentler soul.
The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and whispered for Messer Topo.
The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him (the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy), apostrophised him face to face:—
'My true, mine only friend at last,' he said (his voice was thick and choking). 'I must go, leaving him to thee. Be reverent with him for my sake—ah! if I return not anon, to carry out and plant that sweet corse in the daisied grass he loved—not dust to dust, but flower to the dear flowers. Look to it. Shall I never see him more—nor thee? I know not. I've that to do first may part us to eternity—yet must I do it. Come, kiss me God-be-with-ye. Nay, that's a false word. How can He, and this bloody ensign on my brow? My brain in me doth knell already like a leper's bell. Canst hear it, red-eyes? No God for me. Why should I need Him—tell me that? Christ could not save His friend. I must go alone—quite alone at last. Only remember I loved thee—always remember that. And so, thou fond and pretty thing, farewell.'
He put his lips to the little furry head; put the animal gently down; longed to it a moment; then, as it disappeared into its run, turned with a wet and burdened sigh.
But, even with the sound, a black and gripping frost seemed to fall upon him. He drew himself up, set his face to the door, and passed out and on to freedom and the woful deed he contemplated.
CHAPTER XXIV
A despotism (Messer Bembo invitus) is the only absolute expression of automatic government. The fly-wheel moves, and every detail of the machinery, saw, knife, or punch, however distant, responds instantly to its initiative. Galeazzo, for example, had but to make, in Vigevano, the tenth part of a revolution, and behold, in Milan! Messer Jacopo—saw, knife, and punch in one—had 'come down,' automatically, upon the objectives of that movement. Within a few minutes of Tassino's return, Bernardo and his Fool, seized quietly and without resistance as they were taking the air on the battlements, were being lowered with cords into the 'Hermit's Cell.'
Sic itur ad astra.
The Duke of Milan re-entered his capital on the 20th of December. His Duchess met him with happy smiles and tears, loving complaints over his long absence, a sweet tongue ready with vindication of her trust, should that be demanded of her. The last week had done much to reassure her, in the near return to familiar conditions which it had witnessed; and she felt herself almost in a position to restore to her Bluebeard the key, unviolated, of the forbidden chamber. If only he would accept that earnest of her loyalty without too close a questioning!
And, to her joy, he did; inasmuch, you see, as he had his own reasons for a diplomatic silence. It would appear, indeed, that recent great events had altogether banished from his memory the pious circumstances of his departure to them. He had returned to find his duchy as to all moral intents he had left and could have wished to recover it. The fashion of Nature had shed its petals with the summer brocades, and Milan was itself again.
For the exquisite, who had set it, was vanished now some seven days gone; and that is a long time for the straining out of a popular fashion. He had departed, carrying his Fool with him, none—save one or two in the secret—knew whither; but surmise was plentiful, and for the most part rabid. That he had fallen out of home favour latterly was obvious and flagrant; now, the report grew that this alienation had received its first impetus from Piedmont. That whisper in itself was Nature's very quietus. Eleven out of a dozen presumed upon it, and themselves, to propitiate tyranny with a very debauch of reactionism to old licence. Moreover, scandal, in mere self-justification, must run intolerable riot. Nothing was too gross for it in its accounting for this secession. The pure love which had striven to redeem it, it tortured into a text for filthy slanders. The Countess of Caprona had her windows stoned in retaliation one day by a resentful crowd; the wretched girl Lucia was dragged from her bed and suffocated in a muddy ditch. The logic of the mob.
The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the boy no evil; had acted as she did merely in the interests of the State, she told herself. If, for a moment, her thoughts ever swerved to Tassino—now returned, as it was whispered, to his old quarters with the Provost Marshal, and abiding there a readjustment of affairs—she hid the treason under a lovely blush, and vowed herself for ever more true wife and incorruptible.
So for the most part all was satisfactory again; and there remained only to alienate the popular sympathy from its idol. And that the Church undertook to do. The moment the false prophet was exposed and deposed, it rose, shook the crumbs from its lap, and gave him hiscoup de grâcein the public estimation.
'He but sought,' it thundered, 'to turn ye over, clods; to cleanse your gross soil for the fairer growing of his roses.' A parable: but so far comprehensible to the demos in that it implied its narrow escape from some cleaning process, a vindication of its prescriptive rights to go unwashed, and therefore convincing. Down sank the threatening swine-monster thereon; and, being further played upon with comfits of a festal Christmas-tide, did yield up incontinent its last breath of revivalism, and kick in joyful reassurance of its sty.
So the whole city absolved itself of redemption, and set to making enthusiastic provision for the devil's entertainment against the season of peace and goodwill.
Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit: nor lessBona bona erit. Only there was a rift within the happy wife's lute, which somehow put the whole orchestra out of tune. She saw, for all her sweet chastened sense of relief, that the Duke was darkly troubled. The oppression of his mood communicated itself to hers; and she began to dream—horrible visions of cloyed fingers, and clinging shrouds, and ropey cobwebs that would drop and lace her mouth and nostrils, the while she could not fight free a hand to clear them.
Then, double-damned in his own depression, by reason of its reacting through his partner on himself, the Duke one day sent for the Provost Marshal.
'The season claims its mercies,' gloomed he. 'Take the boy out and send him home to his father.'
'His father!' jeered Jacopo brusquely, grunting in his beard. 'A's been safe in his bosom these three days.'
'What!' gasped the tyrant.
'Dead, Messer, dead, that's all,' said the other impassively; 'passed in a moment, like a summer shower.'
There was nothing more to be said, then. As for poor Patch, he was too cheap a mend-conscience for the ducal mind even to consider. It took instead to brooding more and more on the drawn whiteness of its Duchess's face, hating and sickened by it, yet fascinated. The air seemed full of portents in its ghostly glimmer. His fingers were always itching to strike the hot blood into it. A loathly suspicion seized him that perhaps here, after all, was revealed the illusive face of his long haunting. Constantly he fancied he saw reflected in other faces about him some shadow of its menacing woe. Once he came near stabbing a lieutenant of his guards, one Lampugnani, for no better reason than that he had caught the fellow's eyes fixed upon him.
So the jovial season sped, and Christmas day was come and gone, bringing with it and leaving, out of conviviality, some surcease of his self-torment.
But, on that holy night, Madonna Bona was visited by a dream, more ugly and more definite than any that had terrified her hitherto. Groping in a vast cathedral gloom, she had come suddenly upon a murdered body prostrate on the stones. Dim, shadowy shapes were thronged around; the organ thundered, and at its every peal the corpse from a hundred hideous wounds spouted jets of blood. She turned to run; the gloating stream pursued her—rose to her hips, her lips—she awoke choking and screaming.
That morning—it was St. Stephen's Day—the Duke was to hear Mass in the private chapel of the castello. He rose to attend it, only to find that, by some misunderstanding, the court chaplain had already departed, with the sacred vessels, for the church dedicated to the Saint. The Bishop of Como, summoned to take his place, declined on the score of illness. Galeazzo decided to follow his chaplain.
Bona strove frantically to dissuade him from going. He read some confirmation of his shapeless suspicions in her urgency, and was the more determined. She persisted; he came near striking her in his fury, and finally drove her from his presence, weeping and clamorous.
She was in despair, turning hither and thither, trusting no one. At length she bethought herself of an honest fellow, always a loyal friend and soldier of her lord, of whom, in this distracting pass, she might make use. She had spoken nothing to the Duke of her disposal of his favourite, Messer Lanti, leaving the explanation of her conduct to an auspicious moment. Now, in her emergency, she sent a message for Carlo's instant release, bidding him repair without delay to the palace. She had no reason, nor logic, nor any particular morality. She was in need, and lusting for help—that was enough.
The messenger sped, and returned, but so did not the prisoner with him. Bona, sobbing, feverish, at the wit's end of her resources, went from member to member of her lord's suite, imploring each to intervene. As well ask the jackalls to reprove the lion for his arrogance.
At eleven the Duke set out. His valet and chronicler, Bernardino Corio, relates how, at this pass, his master's behaviour seemed fraught with indecision and melancholy; how he put on, and then off, his coat of mail, because it made him look too stout; how he feared, yet was anxious to go, because 'some of his mistresses' would be expecting him in the church (the true explanation of his unharnessing, perhaps); how he halted before descending the stairs; how he called for his children, and appeared hardly able to tear himself away from them; how Madonna Catherine rallied him with a kiss and a quip; how at length, reluctantly, he left the castle on foot, but, finding snow on the ground, decided upon mounting his horse.
Viva! Viva! See the fine portly gentleman come forth—tall, handsome, they called him—in his petti-cote of crimson brocade, costly-furred and opened in front to reveal the doublet beneath, a blaze of gold-cloth torrid with rubies; see the flash and glitter that break out all over him, surface coruscations, as it were, of an inner fire; see his face, already chilling to ashes, livid beneath the sparkle of its jewelled berretino! Is it that his glory consumes himself? Viva! Viva!—if much shouting can frighten away the shadow that lies in the hollow of his cheek. It is thrown by one, invisible, that mounted behind him when he mounted, and now sits between his greatness and the sun. Viva! Viva! So, with the roar of life in his ears, he passes on to the eternal silence.
As he rides he whips his head hither and thither, each glance of his eyes a quick furtive stab, a veritablecoup d'[oe]il. He is gnawed and corroded with suspicion, mortallynervous—his manner lacks repose. It shall soon find it. He will make a stately recumbent figure on a tomb.
The valet, after releasing his master's bridle, has run on by a short cut to the church, where, at the door, he comes across Messers Lampugnani and Olgiati lolling arm in arm. They wearcoats and stockings of mail, and short capes of red satin. Corio wonders to see them there, instead of in their right places among the Duke's escort. But it is no matter of his. There are some gentlemen will risk a good deal to assert their independence—or insolence.
In the meanwhile, the motley crowd gathering, the Duke's progress is slow. All the better for discussing him and his accompanying magnificence. He rides between the envoys of Ferrara and Mantua, a gorgeous nucleus to a brilliant nebula. This, after all, is more 'filling' than Nature. Some one likens him, audibly, to the head of a comet, trailing glory in his wake. He turns sharply, with a scowl. 'Uh! Come sta duro!' mutters the delinquent. 'Like a thunderbolt, rather!'
At length he reaches the church door and dismounts. He throws his reins to a huge Moor, standing ready, and sets his lips.
From within burst forth the strains of the choir—
'Sic transit gloria mundi,'
'Sic transit gloria mundi,'
'Sic transit gloria mundi,'
Bowing his head, he passes on to his doom.
CHAPTER XXV
'That being dead yet speaketh'
Through the chiming stars, the romp of wind in woods, the gush of spring freshets, the cheery drone of bees; through all happy gales—of innocent frolic, of children's laughter, of sighing, unharmful passion, of joy and gaiety ungrudging; through the associations of his gentle spirit with these, the things it had loved, whereby, by those who had listened and could not altogether forget, came gradually to be vindicated the truth of his kind religion, Bernardo's voice, though grown a phantom voice, spoke on and echoed down the ages. Sweet babble at the hill-head, it was yet the progenitor of the booming flood which came to take the world with knowledge—knowledge of its own second redemption through the humanity which is born of Nature. Already Art, life's nurse and tutor, was, unknown to itself, quickening from the embrace of clouds and sunlight and tender foliage; while, unconscious of the strange destinies in its womb, it was scorning and reviling the little priest who had brought about that union.
And, alas! it is always so. Nor profit nor credit are ever to the pioneer who opens out the countries which are to yield his followers both.
He perished very soon. Its third night of darkness and starvation saw the passing of that fragile spirit, gentle, innocuous, uncomplaining as it had lived. Frail as a bird that dies of the shock of capture, he broke his heart upon a song.
I would have no gloomy obsequies attend his fate. In tears, and strewing of flowers, and pretty plaintive dirges of the fields—in sighs and lutes of love, such as waited on the sweet Fidele, would I have ye honour him. Not because I would belittle that piercing tragedy, but because he would. It was none to him. He but turned his face for home, sorrowing only for his failure to win to his Christ, his comrade, a kingdom he should never have the chance to influence again. What had he else to fear? The star that had mothered, the road that had sped him? All grass and flowers was the latter; of the first, a fore-ray seemed already to have pierced the darkness of his cell, linking it to heaven.
'"Let's sing him to the ground.""I cannot sing; I'll weep, and word it with thee;For notes of sorrow, out of tune, are worseThan priests and fanes that lie."'
'"Let's sing him to the ground.""I cannot sing; I'll weep, and word it with thee;For notes of sorrow, out of tune, are worseThan priests and fanes that lie."'
'"Let's sing him to the ground."
"I cannot sing; I'll weep, and word it with thee;
For notes of sorrow, out of tune, are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie."'
Bring hither, I say, no passion of a vengeful hate. It is the passing of a rose in winter.
At near the end, lying in his Fool's arms, he panted faintly:—
'My feet are weary for the turning. Pray ye, kind mother, that this road end soon.'
'What! shall I hurry mine own damnation?' gurgled the other (his tongue by then was clacking in his mouth). 'Trippingly, I warrant, shall ye take that path, unheeding of the poor wretch that lags a million miles behind lashed by a storm of scorpions.'
'Marry, sweet,' whispered the boy, smiling; 'I'll wait thee, never fear, when once I see my way. How could I forego such witness as thou to my brave intentions? We'll jog the road together, while I shield thy back.'
'Well, let be,' said Cicca. 'Better they stung that, than my heart through thine arm'—whereat Bernardo nipped him feebly in an ecstasy of tears.
In the first hours of their fearful doom he was more full of wonder than alarm—astounded, in the swooning sense. He had not come yet to realise the mortal nature of their punishment. How should he, innocent of harm? Attributing, as he did, this sudden blow to Bona, he marvelled only how so kind a mother could chastise so sharply for a little offence—or none. Indeed he was conscious of none; though conscious enough, latterly, poor child, of an atmosphere of grievance. Well, the provocation had been his, no doubt—somehow. He had learned enough of woman in these months to know that the measure of her resentment was not always the measure of the fault—how she would sometimes stab deeper for a disappointment than for a wrong. He had disappointed her in some way. No doubt, his favour being so high, he had presumed upon it. A useful rebuke, then. He would bear his imposition manly; but he hoped, he did hope, that not too much of it would be held to have purged his misconduct. The Duke was returning shortly. Perhaps he would plead for him.
So sweetly and so humbly he estimated his own insignificance. Could his foul slanderers have read his heart then, they had surely raved upon God, in their horror, to strike them, instant and for ever, from the rolls of self-conscious existence.
Cicada listened to him, and gnawed his knotted knuckles in the gloom, and wondered when and how he should dare to curse him with the truth. He might at least have spared himself that agony. The truth, to one so true, could not long fail of revealing itself. And when it came, lo! he welcomed it, as always, for a friend.
Small birds, small flowers, small wants perish of a little neglect. His sun, his sustenance, were scarce withheld a few hours from this sensitive plant before he began to droop. And ever, with the fading of his mortal tissues, the glow of the intelligence within seemed to grow brighter, until verily the veins upon his temples appeared to stand out, like mystic writing on a lighted porcelain lamp.
So it happened that, as he and his companion were sitting apart on the filthy stones late on the noon of the second day of their imprisonment, he ended a long silence by creeping suddenly to the Fool's knees, and, looking up into the Fool's face in the dim twilight, appealed to its despair with a tremulous smile.
'Cicca,' he whispered, 'my Cicca; wilt thou listen, and not be frightened?'
'To what?' muttered the other hoarsely.
'Hush, dear!' said the boy, fondling him, and whimpering—not for himself. 'I have been warned—some one hath warned me—that it were well if we fed not our hearts with delusive hopes of release herefrom.'
'Why not?' said the Fool. 'It is the only food we are like to have.'
'Ah!'
He clung suddenly to his friend in a convulsion of emotion.
'You have guessed? It is true. Capello. We might have known, being here; but—O Cicca! are you sorry? We have an angel with us—he spoke to me just now.'
'Christ?'
'Yes, Christ, dearest.'
The Fool, smitten to intolerable anguish, put him away, and, scrambling to his feet, went up and down, raving and sobbing:—
'The vengeance of God on this wicked race! May it fester in madness, living; and, dead, go down to torment so unspeakable, that——'
The boy, sprung erect, white and quivering, struck in:—
'Ah, no, no! Think who it is that hears thee!'
Cicada threw himself at his feet, pawing and lamenting:—
'Thou angel! O, woe is me! that ever I were born to see this thing!'
So they subsided in one grief, rocking and weeping together.
'O, sweet!' gasped the boy—'that ever I were born to bring this thing on thee!'
Then, at that, the Fool wrapped him in his arms, adoring and fondling him, to a hurry of sighs and broken exclamations.
'On me!—Child, that I am thought worthy!—too great a joy—mightst have been alone—yet did I try to save thee—heaven's mercy that, failing, I am involved!'
And so, easing himself for the first time, in an ecstasy of emotion he told all he knew about the fatal ring, and his efforts to recover it.
Bernardo listened in wonder.
'This ring!' he whispered at the end. 'Right judgment on me for my wicked negligence. Why, I deserve to die. Yet—' he clung a little closer—'Cicca,' he thrilled, 'it is the Duke, then, hath committed us to this?'
Cicada moaned, beating his forehead:—
'Ay, ay! it is the Duke. So I kill thy last hope!'
'Nay, thou reviv'st it.'
'How?' He stared, holding his breath.
'O, my dear!' murmured the boy rapturously; 'since thou acquittestherof this unkindness.'
'Her? Whom?Unkindness!' cried the Fool. 'Expect nothing of Bona but acquiescence in thy fate.'
'Yet is she guiltless of designing it.'
'Guiltless? Ay, guiltless as she who, raving, "that my shame should bear this voice and none to silence it!" accepts the hired midwife's word that her womb hath dropped dead fruit! O!' he mourned most bitterly, 'I loved thee, and I love; yet now, I swear I wish thee dead!'
'Then, indeed, thou lovest me.'
'Had it come to this, in truth?'
'Alas! I know not what you mean. My mother is my mother still.'
'Thy mother! I am thy mother.'
'Ah!' Laughing and weeping, he caught the gruff creature in his arms:—'Cicca, that sweet, fond comedy!'
The other put him away again, but very gently, and rose to his feet.
'Comedy?' he muttered; 'ay, a comedy—true—a masque of clowns. Yet I've played the woman for thy sake.'
Bernardo stared at him, his face twitching.
'Thou hast, dear—so tragically—and in that garb! I would I could have seen thee in it. O! a churl to laugh, dear Cicca; but——'
'But what?'
'Thou, a woman!'
He fell into a little irresistible chuckle. Strange wafts of tears and laughter seemed to sing in the drowsy chambers of his brain.
'Thoua woman!' he giggled hysterically.
The Fool gave a sudden cry.
'Why not? Have I betrayed my child?'
He turned, as if sore stricken, and went up and down, up and down, wringing his hands and moaning.
Suddenly he came and threw himself on his knees before the boy, but away from him, and knelt there, rocking and protesting, his face in his hands.
'Ah! let me be myself at last. That disguise—thou mockest—'twas none. Worn like a fool—mayhap—unpractised—yet could I have kissed its skirted hem. I am a woman, though a Fool—what's odd in that?—a woman, dear, a woman, a woman!'
He bowed himself, lower, lower, as if his shame were crushing him. In the deep silence that followed, Bernardo, trembling all through, crept a foot nearer, and paused.
'Mother?' cried the Fool, still crouching, his head deeper abased; 'no name for me. Cry on—cry scorn, in thy hunger, on this lying dam! No drop to cool thy drought in all her withered pastures.'
He writhed, and struck his chest, in pain intolerable.
'Mother!' thrilled the boy, loud and sudden.
The Fool gave a quick gasp, and started, and shrunk away.
'Not I. Keep off! I am as Filippo made me—after his own image. He was a God—could name me man or woman. 'Twas but a word; and lo! too hideous for my sex, I leapt, his male Fool. That, of all jests, was his first. He spared me for it. I had been strangled else.'
'Mother!'
Again that moving, rapturous cry,
'No, no!' cried the Fool. 'Barren—barren—no woman, even! Still as God wrought me, and human taste condemned. Let be. Forget what I said. Let me go on and serve thee—sexless—only to myself confessing, not thou awarding. I ask no more, nor sweeter—O my babe, my babe!'
'Mother!'
'Hush! break not my heart—not yet. This darkness? Speak it once more. Why, I might be beautiful. Will you think it—will you, letting me ply you with my conscious sweets? I could try. I've studied in the markets. Your starving rogue's the best connoisseur of savours. I'll not come near you—only sigh and soothe. I'll tune myself to speak so soft—school myself out of your knowledge. Perchance, God helping, you shall think me fair.'
'Mother!'
Once more—and he was in her arms.
Surely the loveliest miracle that could have blossomed in that grave—a breaking of roses from the pilgrim's dead staff!
Henceforth Bernardo's path was rapture—a song of love and jubilance—his spirit flamed and trembled out in song.
They had spared him his lute; and his fingers, strong in their instinct to the last, were seldom long parted from its strings. He lay much in his Fool mother's lap; and one had scarcely known when their converse melted into music, or out of music into speech, so melodious was their love, so rapt their soul-union, and so triumphant over pain and darkness, as to evoke of fell circumstance its own balm-breathing, illuminating spirits. What was this horror of bleak, black burial, when at a word, a struck chord, one could see it quiver and break into a garden of splendid fancies!
Once only was their dying exaltation recalled to earth—to consciousness of their near escape from all its hate and squalor. It happened in a moment; and so shall suffer but a moment's record.
There came a sudden laugh and flare—and there was Tassino, torch in hand, looking from the grate above.
'Ehi, Messer Bembo!' yapped the cur; 'art there? And I here? What does omnipotence in this reverse? Arise, and prove thyself. Lucia's dead; the Duke's returned; Milan is itself again. The memory of thee rots in the gutter; and stinks—fah! I go to the Duchess soon. What message to her, bastard of an Abbot?'
The boy raised his head.
'The season's, Tassino,' he whispered, smiling. 'Peace and goodwill.'
The filthy creature mouthed and snarled.
'Ay. Most sweet. I'll wait thine agony, though, before I give it. She'll cry, then; and I shall be by; and, look you, emotion is the mother of desire. I'll pillow her upon thy corpse, bastard, and quicken her with new lust of wickedness. She'll never have loved me more. God! what a use for a saint!'
Cicada crawled, and rose, from under her sweet burden.
'Wait,' she hissed; 'the grate's open. A strong leap, and I have him.'
An idle threat; but enough to make the whelp start, and clap to the bars, and fly screaming.
The Fool returned, panting, to her charge.
'Forget him,' she said.
'I have forgotten him, my mother. But his lie——'
'Yes?'
'Was it a lie?'
'About Bona? I am a woman now. I'll answer nothing for my sex.'
'I'll answer for her. About my father, I meant?'
'As thou'lt answer for her, so will I for him.'
Bernardo sighed, and lay a long while silent. Suddenly he moaned in her arms, like a child over-tired, and spoke the words already quoted:—'My feet are weary for the turning.'
'Death is Love's seed—a sweet child quickened of ourselves. He comes to us, his pink hands full of flowers. "See, father, see, mother," says he, "the myrtles and the orange blooms which made fragrant your bridal bed. I am their fruit—the full maturity of Love's promise. Will you not kiss your little son, and come with him to the wise gardens where he ripened? 'Tis cold in this dark room!"'
So, in such rhapsodies, 'in love with tuneful death,' would he often murmur, or melt, through them, into song as strange.
'Love and Forever would wedFearless in Heaven's sight.Life came to them and said,"Lease ye my house of light!"He put them on earth to bed,All in the noonday bright:"Sooth," to Forever Love said,"Here may we prosper right."Sudden, day waned and fled:Truth saw Forever in night."We are deceived," he said;"Who shall pity our plight?"Death, winging by o'erhead,Heard them moan in affright."Hold by my hem," he said;"I go the way to light."'
'Love and Forever would wedFearless in Heaven's sight.Life came to them and said,"Lease ye my house of light!"
'Love and Forever would wed
Fearless in Heaven's sight.
Fearless in Heaven's sight.
Life came to them and said,
"Lease ye my house of light!"
"Lease ye my house of light!"
He put them on earth to bed,All in the noonday bright:"Sooth," to Forever Love said,"Here may we prosper right."
He put them on earth to bed,
All in the noonday bright:
All in the noonday bright:
"Sooth," to Forever Love said,
"Here may we prosper right."
"Here may we prosper right."
Sudden, day waned and fled:Truth saw Forever in night."We are deceived," he said;"Who shall pity our plight?"
Sudden, day waned and fled:
Truth saw Forever in night.
Truth saw Forever in night.
"We are deceived," he said;
"Who shall pity our plight?"
"Who shall pity our plight?"
Death, winging by o'erhead,Heard them moan in affright."Hold by my hem," he said;"I go the way to light."'
Death, winging by o'erhead,
Heard them moan in affright.
Heard them moan in affright.
"Hold by my hem," he said;
"I go the way to light."'
"I go the way to light."'
All the last day Cicada held him in her arms, so quiet, so motionless, that the gradual running down of his pulses was steadily perceptible to her. She felt Death stealing in, like a ghostly dawn—watched its growing glimmer with a fierce, hard-held agony. Once, before their scrap of daylight failed them, she stole her wrist to her mouth, and bit at it secretly, savagely, drawing a sluggish trickle of red. She had thought him sunk beyond notice of her; and started, and hid away the wound, as he put up a gentle, exhausted arm, detaining hers.
'Sting'st thyself, scorpion?'
Cicada gave a thick crow—merciful God! it was meant for a laugh—and began to screak and mumble some legend of a bird that, in difficult times, would bleed itself to feed its young—a most admirable lesson from Nature. The child laughed in his turn—poor little croupy mirth—and answered with a story: how the right and left hands once had a dispute as to which most loved and served the other, each asserting that he would cut himself off in proof of his devotion. Which being impracticable, it was decided that the right should sever the left, and the left the right; whereof the latter stood the test first without a wince. But, lo! when it came to the left's turn, there was no right hand to carve him.
'Anan?' croaked Cicada sourly.
'Why,' said Bernardo, 'we will exchange the wine of our veins, if you like, to prove our mutual devotion; but, if I suck all thine first, there will be no suck left in thy lips to return the compliment on me.'
'Need'st not take all; but enough to handicap thee, so that we start this backward journey on fair terms.'
'Nay, it were so sweet, I 'd prove a glutton did I once begin. Cicca?'
'My babe?'
'Canst thou see Christ?'
'Ay, in the white mirror of thy face.'
'I see Him so plain. He stands behind thee now—a boy, mine own age. Nay, He puts His finger on His sweet lips, and smiles and goes. "Naughty," that means: "shall I stay to hear thee flatter me?" He blushes, like a boy, to be praised. He's gone no further than the wall. Cicca, thy disguise was deep. I never thought thee beautiful before. O, what an unkind mother, to hide her beauty from her boy!'
'Am I beautiful?'
'Dost not know it? As the moon that rises on the night. It was night just now, and my soul was groping in the dark; and, lo! of a sudden thou wert looking down.'
'Let it be night, I say!'
'What is that in thy voice? I am so happy—always; only not when I think of Carlo. My dear, dear Carlo! Alas! what have they done with him? He will often think of us, and wonder where we are, and frown and gnaw his lip. If I could but hear him speak once more—cry "Bernardo!" in that voice that made one's eyeballs crack like glass, and tickle in their veins. O, my sweet Carlo! Mother, have I failed in everything?'
'Let be! Thou'lt kill me with thy prattle. Thy Christ remains behind. He'll see thy seed is honoured in its fruits.'
'Well, wilt thou kiss me good-night? I'm sleepy.'
He seemed to doze a good deal after that. But, about midnight, it might be, he suddenly sat up, and was singing strongly to his lute—a sweet, unearthly song, of home-returning and farewell. Cicada clung and held him, held to him, pierced all through with the awful rapture of that moment.
'Leave me not: wait for me!' she whispered, sobbing.
Suddenly, in a vibrating pause, a faint far cry was wafted to their ears:—
'Bernardo! Bernardo!'
The fingers tumbled on the lute, plucking its music into a tangle of wild discords. A string snapped.
'Carlo!' he screamed—'it is Carlo!'
The cry leapt, and fell, and eddied away in a long rosary of echoes. The Fool fumbled for his lips with hers.
But who might draw death from that sweet frozen spring!
She feared nothing now but that they would come and take him from her—snarled, holding him, when her one sick glint of day stole in to cross her vigil—was in love with utter solitude and blind night. Once, after a little or a long time—it was all one to her—she saw a thread of ghostly whiteness moving on the floor; watched it with basilisk eyes; thought, perhaps, it was his soul, lingering for hers according to its promise. The moving spot came on—stole into the wan, diffused streak of light cast from the grating;—and it was a great rat, with something bound about its neck.
She understood on the instant. Long since, her instinctive wit had told her—though she had not cared or been concerned to listen to it—that that sudden voice in the darkness had signified that Carlo was imprisoned somewhere hard by. Well, he had found this means to communicate with her—near a miracle, it might be; but miracles interested her no longer. No harm to let him know at last.Hecould not rob her of her dead.
She coaxed the creature to her; found him tame; read the message; re-fastened on the paper, and, by its glimmer, marked the way of his return.
Then she rose, and spoke, and, speaking, choked and died.
In the dark all cats are grey, and all women beautiful. But I think the countenance of this one had no need to fear the dawn.
CHAPTER XXVI
Amongst all her costly possessions in the Casa Caprona, there had once been none so loved, so treasured, so often consulted by Beatrice as a certain portrait of the little Parablist of San Zeno, which she had bought straight from the studio of its limner, Messer Antonello da Messina, at that time temporarily sojourning in Milan. This was the artist, pupil of Jan Van Eyck, who had been the first to introduce oil-painting into Italy; and the portrait was executed in the new medium. It was a work perpetratedcon amore—one of the many in which the exaltation of the moment had sought to express itself in pigments, or marble, or metal. For, indeed, during that short spring of his promise, Bernardo's flower-face had come to blossom in half the crafts of the town.
Technically, perhaps, a little wan and flat, the head owed something, nevertheless, to inspiration. Through the mere physical beauty of its features, one might read the sorrow of a spiritual incarnation—the wistfulness of a Christ-converted Eros of the ancient cosmogonies. Here were the right faun's eyes, brooding pity out of laughter; the rather square jaw, and girlish pointed chin; the baby lips that seemed to have kissed themselves, shape and tint, out of spindle-berries; the little strutting cap and quill even, so queerly contrasted with the staid sobriety of the brow beneath. It was the boy, and the soul of the boy, so far as enthusiasm, working through a strange medium, could interpret it.
Beatrice, having secured, had hung the picture in a dim alcove of her chamber; and had further, to ensure its jealous privacy from all inquisition but her own, looped a curtain before. Here, then, a dozen times a day, when alone, had she been wont to pray and confess herself; lust with her finger-tips to charm the barren contours of the face into life; lay her hot cheek to the painted flesh, and weep, and woo, and appeal to it; seek to soften by a hundred passionate artifices the inflexible continence of its gaze.
But that had been all before the shock and frenzy of her final repulse. Not once since had she looked on it, until...
Came upon her, still crouching self-absorbed, that white morning of the Duke's tragedy; and, on the vulture wings of it, Narcisso.
The beast crept to her, fulsome, hoarse, shaken with a heart-ague. She conned him with a contemptuous curiosity, as he stood unnerved, trembling all through, before her.
'Well?' she said at last.
He grinned and gobbled, gulping for articulation.
'It's come, Madonna.'
She half rose on her couch, frowning and impatient.
'What, thou sick fool?'
'Sick!' he echoed loudly; and then his voice fell again. 'Ay, sick to death, I think. The Duke——'
'What of him?'
'Rides to San Stefano.'
'Does he?'
'He'll not ride home again.'
She stared at him in silence a moment; then suddenly breathed out a little wintry laugh.
'So?' she whispered—'So? Well, thou art not the Duke.'
He struggled to clear, and could not clear, his throat. His low forehead, for all the cold, was beaded with sweat.
'All's one for that,' he muttered thickly. 'There's no class in carrion.'
She still conned him, with that frigid smile on her lips.
'Dost mean they'll seek to kill thee too?'
He clawed at his head in a frenzy.
'Ay, I mean it.'
'Why?'
'Why? quotha. Why, won't they have held me till this moment for one of themselves?'
'Till this moment?' she murmured. 'Ah! I see; this Judas who hath not the courage to play out his part.'
'My part!' He almost screamed it at last. 'Was death my part?' He writhed and snuffled. 'I tell thee, I've but now left them, on pretence of going before to the church. Shall I be there? God's death! Let but this stroke win through and gain the people, and my life's not worth a stinking sprat.'
She sank back with a sigh.
'Better, in that case, to have joined thy friends at San Stefano.'
The rogue, staring at her a moment, uttered a mortal cry:—
'Thou say'st it—thou?—Judas?—Who made me so?—Show me my thirty pieces—Judas? Ay; and what for wages?—Thy tool and catspaw—I see it all at last—thine and Ludovic's—bled, and my carcass thrown to swine!—Judas? Why, I might have been Judas to some purpose with the Duke—a made man by now. And all for thee foregone; and in the end by thee betrayed. I asked nothing—gave all for nothing—ass—goose—cried quack and quack, as told—decoy to these fine fowl, and, being used, my neck wrung with the rest. Now——'
She put up a hand peremptorily. The fury simmered down on his lips.
'You presume, fellow,' she said. 'Ibetraythee?'
She raised her brows, amazed. Too stupendous an instance of condescension, indeed.
He slunk down on his knees before her, cringing and praying.
'No, Madonna, no! I spake out of my great madness.'
'Answer me,' she said disdainfully, 'out of thy little reason. What wouldst thou of me?'
He lifted his shaking hands.
'Sanctuary, sanctuary. Let me hide here.'
He crawled to her, pawing like a beaten dog.
'Sanctuary,' he reiterated brokenly. 'You owe it me—that at least. I've bided, bided—and ye made no sign—yielded all for guerdon of a sweet word, the whiles I thought thyself and Ludovic were stalking that conspiracy to cut it off betimes. God's death! Not you. And now I know the reason. Now comes the reckoning, and I'm left to face it as I will. God's death!' His panic mastered him again. 'What of my substance have I changed for nothing! There was Bona's ring—I might have lived ten year on't. And I parted with it—for what? O, you're a serpent, mistress! You worm your way—and get it too. What! Bona may bide a little, and Simonetta? They're but the bleeding trunk. The head's lopped while I talk.'
His voice rose to a screech—broke—and he grovelled before her.
'Mercy, Madonna. Spare me to be thy slave. All comes thy way—love, and revenge, and power. The boy's dead—the Duke's to die——'
He had roused her at last, and in a flash. She sprang to her feet, white, hardly breathing.
'The boy?' she hissed; 'what boy?'
He whimpered, sprawling:—
'God a' mercy! Lady, lady! the boy, the very boy you sped the ring to kill.'
'Dead!' she whispered.
'Ay,' he snivelled from the ground; 'what would you? dead as last Childermas—starved to death, in the "Hermit's Cell" they call it, by the Duke's orders.'
Her fingers battled softly with her throat.
'Dead!' she said again. 'Narcisso, good Narcisso, who hath gulled thee with this lie?'
'No lie,' he answered, squatting, reassured, on his hams. ''Twas Messer Tassino, no less, that carried thy token to Vigevano. 'Twas no later than yesternight I met our fine cockerel louping from the stews. A' was drunk as father Noah—babbled and blabbed, a' did—perked up a's comb, and cursed me for presuming fellowship with a duke's minion. I plied him further, e'en to tears and confidence—had it all out of him; how a'd carried the ring for Messer Ludovic, and brought back the deadly order. Jacopo nipped the Saint that noon. A's singing in paradise these days past.'
Beatrice stood and listened. A dreadful smile was on her lips. But, when she spoke, it was with wooing softness.
'Good trust—always the faithful trust. Why, Narcisso, what should I do betraying thee? We'll work and end together, and take our wages. Dead, do you say? Why, then, all's said. Now go, and tuck thyself within the roof till the storm pass. This lightning's all below. Go, comrade, do you hear?'
He dwelt a moment only to gasp and mumble out his thanks; then turned and slouched away.
For minutes she dwelt as he had left her, rigid, smiling, bloodless. Presently, still standing motionless, she moved her lips and was muttering:—
'Dead? So swift? Made sure against all chances? Starved? He said starved. Not to that I betrayed him. Inhuman hound! Thou mightst have spared him bread!—left sorrow and cold durance to work their lingering end. What then? Why, Bona then—Bona made widow; free to work her will. ShouldIbe the better?—Dead? was he not always dead to me? Starved to death! O, hell heat Lampugnani's dagger scarlet, that it hiss and bubble in his flesh! Galeazzo! Galeazzo! I'll follow soon to nurse thy pains to ecstasy!'
She fell silent; presently began to sway; then, with a sudden shriek, had leapt upon the picture, and torn aside its curtain.
'Bernardo!' she moaned and sobbed—'Bernardo, I loved thee! O God! he eats me with his eyes. Here, here! fasten with thy starved lips. I'll not speak or cry, though they burrow to my heart. All thine—hold on—I'll smile and pet mine agony—Bernardo——!'
In the tumult of her passion she heard a sound at the door; caught her breath; caught herself to knowledge of herself, and, instinctively closing the curtain, stood panting, dishevelled, its hem in her hand.
Someone, something, had entered—a haggard, unshorn ghost of ancient days. It came very softly, closing the door behind; then, set and silent, moved upon her. Her pulses seemed to sink and wither.
'Carlo!' she shuddered softly.
It was fearful that the thing never spoke as it came on. Nor did she speak again. Love that has once joined keeps understanding without words. What has it bred but death? Here was the natural fruit of a sin matured—she saw it gleam suddenly in his clutch.
She watched fascinated. As he drew near, without a word she slowly raised her hands, and rent from her bosom its already desecrated veil. Then at last she spoke—or whispered:—
'I'm ready. Here's where you kissed and sighed. Bloody thy bed.'
He took her to his remorseless grasp. She had often thrilled to know her helplessness therein—wondered what it would be to feel it closed in hate. Now she had her knowledge—and instantly, in an ecstasy of terror, succumbed to it.
'No, no!' she gasped. 'Carlo, don't kill me!'
Voiceless still, he raised his hand. She gave a fearful scream.
'I never meant it. I'm innocent. Not without a word. Carlo! Carlo!—I loved him!'
Writhing in her agony, she tore herself free a moment, and sank at his feet, rending, as she fell, the curtain from its rings. His back was to the wall. In a mirror opposite he caught the sudden vision of his intent, and, looking down upon it, dim and spiritual, the sweet face of the Saint.
The dagger dropped from his hand.
The silence of a minute seemed to draw into an age.
Suddenly he was groping and stumbling like a drunken man. Words came to him in a babble:—
'Let be!—I'll go—spare her?—Where's thy Christ? He forgave too—I'm coming—answer for me—here!'
And he drove a staggering course from the room.
Tears began to gush from her as she lay prone. Then suddenly, in a quick impulse, she rose to her feet, and re-veiling the picture, turned with her back to it.
'Ludovic remains,' she whispered.