THE PLACE OF EYES
Two systems were in force in the Street of the Money to convince, to
convert, and to change the stubborn will.
One, the A B C of all inquisitors, consisted of the indispensable rack,
the attractive pulley with the weights for the feet, the useful hooks,
the thumbkins, the red-hot pincers, the oil-bath, and the water-torture.
Dom Teruel and Frey Tullio, with the aid of Serra the Murcian, used
these as a carpenter uses his tools, coldly, and with method.
But the finer mind of Mariana, working for political ends rather than
controverting heresy by mere physical methods, had evolved a more purely
moral torture. A chamber had been set apart, to which no least noise,
either from the street or from the other guests of the Holy Office,
could possibly penetrate. The walls had been specially doubled. Iron
door after iron door had to be unlocked before even a familiar could
enter. In the space between the walls in every side were spy-holes.
Painted eyes looked down from the ceiling, up from the floor. The whole
chamber was flooded day and night with the light of lamps set deep in
niches, so that the prisoner could not reach them. All that he could
ever see was the placing of another light as often as the old burned
low.
"There is," Mariana explained the matter to his associates, "a
compulsion working in the minds of the well-bred and well-born, of those
who have always experienced only pleasantness and happy society,
breathed the airs of wood and mountain, known the comradeship of street
and class-room and _salle-d'armes_. Such cannot long be without someone
to whom to tell their thoughts. For this unclipped gallant, two or three
weeks will suffice. He has the gloss still on his wings. Wait a little.
I have my own way with such. He will speak. He will tell us both who he
is and all he knows! I will turn him inside out like a glove."
"I am not sure," said Teruel, shaking his head; "after the third
fainting on the rack, when they see Serra oiling the great wheel--that
is what few of them can stand. There is virtue in it. It has a
persuasive force--yes, that is the word, a blessed persuasive force, to
make the most stubborn abjure heresy and receive the truth!"
The Jesuit smiled, and waved a plump, womanish hand.
"I have a better means, and a surer!" he said, in gentle reproof.
They looked him in the face. But as often as it came to the tug of
wills, this smooth, soft-spoken, smiling priest, with his caressing
voice, was master. And well they knew it. He also.
"I have a niece," Mariana murmured, "one altogether devoted to the
service of the Church and the society. I am, for the present, her
nearest parent as well as her spiritual director----"
"Valentine la Nina?" questioned Teruel. And Frey Tullio said nothing,
only Mariana, ever on the watch, caught the oily southern glitter of his
eyes, wicked little black pools, with scum on each, like cooling gravy.
"Ay, indeed, Valentine la Nina, even as you say," responded the Jesuit
of Toledo calmly; "it is not fair that only men should labour for the
good of Holy Church. Did not Mary, the wife of Herod's steward, and that
other Mary, minister to the Son of the Holy Virgin? It is so written.
If, then, sainted women followed Him in life, watched by His cross, and
prepared His body for burial, surely in these evil times, when the
Church of Peter trembles on its rock, we, who fight for the faith, have
not the right to refuse the ministry of Valentine la Nina or another?"
And so, since Mariana was of Toledo and high in favour with Philip the
King, and with the Archbishop Primate of all Spain, besides being more
powerful than the General of his own Order, Dom Teruel and Frey Tullio
bowed their heads and did as they were commanded.
"Give you the order," said Teruel to Mariana, with a faint, hateful
smile, for he would have preferred Serra, a newly-wetted rope, and a
slow fire.
But this was by no means Mariana's way.
"I but advise," he said. "How can I do otherwise, a poor Jesuit
wanderer, dependent on your bounty for hospitality--I and my niece. I
fear I must claim also a place for her here, when she leaves the house
and protection of the Countess of Livia."
So into the chamber of light and silence went the Abbe John, after his
first examination. He saw around him and above walls and ceilings
painted all over with gigantic human eyes--the pupil of each being
hollow--and watchers were set continually without, or, at least, the
Abbe John thought they were. Within twelve hours he was raging madly
about his cell, striving to reach and shiver those watching eyes
everywhere about him. He kicked at the inlaid pavements. He tried to
tear away from his bed-head and from the foot, those huge, open eyes
with the dark, watchful pupils. But his riding-boots had been removed,
and with his hempen _alpargatas_ he could do nothing. No one took the
least notice of his cries. Even the walls seemed echoless and dead, save
for the watching eyes, which, after the first day, followed him about
the room as he paced from end to end, restless as a wild creature newly
caged.
He saw them in his sleep. He dreamed of eyes. They chased him across
great smoking cities, over plains without mark or bound, save the brown
circle of the horizon, through the thick coverts of virgin forests. He
could not shut them out. He could not escape them. He covered his face
with his hand, and they looked in between his fingers, parting them that
they might look. He drew his cloak's hood about his brow, he heaped
coverings on his head. It was all in vain. He began to babble to the
walls, till he realised that these had ears as well as eyes. On the
fourth day he wept aloud. He had long refused to eat, though he drank
much. He began to go mad, and kept repeating the words to himself, "I am
going mad! I am going mad!"
On the fifth night he tried to dash his head against the wall. He
fainted, and lay a long time motionless on the cold floor, till
suddenly, becoming aware that there was a painted eye underneath he
sprang to his feet in that terrible place beset with eyes behind and
before.
There came to him a noise of unbarring doors, the yellow lamp-light went
out in niche after niche.
"Oh, the blessed dark!" cried the Abbe John, "they are going to leave me
in the dark. I shall escape from the eyes."
But no; his tormentors had other purposes with him. A yet greater noise
of rollers and the clang of iron machinery, and lo! on high the whole
roof of the Place of Eyes fell into two parts (like huge eyelids,
thought the Abbe John with a shudder). The sunshine flooded all the
upper part of his cell, midway down the walls. The sweet morning air of
Spain breathed about him. He felt a cool moisture on his lips, the scent
of early flowers. A bee blundered in, boomed round, and went out again
as he had come.
The Abbe John clutched his throat as if at the point of death. He
thought he saw a vision, and prayed for deliverance, but no more
eyes--for judgment, but no more eyes--for damnation even, but no more
eyes!
Then he turned about, and close by the great iron door a woman was
standing, the fairest he had ever seen--yes, fairer even than Claire
Agnew, as fair as they make the pictured angels above the church
altars--Valentine la Nina!