'If I understand your Grace.'
She put the quibble by.
'We, you and I, are in a manner his guardians--accountable to the Duke.'
'I can understand your Grace's anxiety,' he said shortly.
'Nevertheless, it was not I introduced him to the court,' she said.
'But only to some of its secrets,' he responded.
'I do not understand you.'
'It is very plain, Madonna. You gave him the key to that discovery.'
She rose at once, breathing quickly, her cheeks white.
'Ah, Messer! in heaven's name procure me the return of my ring!'
Her voice was quite pitiful, entreating. He looked at her gloomily,
gnawing his upper lip.
'Madonna commands? I will do my best to find and take it from him,
alive or dead.'
She fell back with a little crying gasp.
'Find him--yes.'
'No more?' he demanded grimly.
'I thought you loved him?' she gulped.
'Too well,' he answered, 'to be your go-between.'
She uttered a fierce exclamation, and clenched her hands.
'Go, sir!' she said.
He turned at once. She came after him, fawning.
'Good Messer Carlo, dear lord,' she breathed weepingly; 'nay, thou art a
loyal and honest friend. Forgive me. We are all in need of
forgiveness.'
He faced about again.
'Penitence is blasphemy without reform,' he said.
'Ah me! it is. How well thou hast caught the sweet preacher's style.
Hast _thou_ reformed?'
'Ay, in the worst.'
'Thou hast made an enemy of thy mistress? Poor Bembo, poor child! He
will need a mother.'
'Wouldst thou be that to him?'
'What else? Get me my ring.'
'Beatrice hates him----'
'She would, the wretch, for his parting you and her.'
'Or loves him--I don't know which.'
'Wanton! how dare she?'
'Well, if you will play the mother to him----'
'Is he not a child to adore? Ah me! to be foster-parent to that
boon-comrade of the Christ!'
Carlo looked at her with some satisfaction darkling out of gloom. His
honest hot brain was no Machiavellian possession; his temper was the
travail of a warm heart. He believed this woman meant honestly; and so,
no doubt, she did in her loss, not considering, or choosing not to
consider, the emotionalism of regain.
'Ay, Madonna,' said he, kindling, ''tis the most covetable relation.
Who but a Potiphar's wife would associate what we call love with this
Joseph? God! a look of him will make me blush as I were a brat caught
stealing sugar. There is that in him, we blurt out the truth in the
very act of hiding it. A child to adore? Is he not, now, the dear put?
and to hearken to and imitate what we can. Ay, and more--to shield with
this arm--let men beware. Only the women harass me, this way and that.
Their loves and hates be like twin babes. None but their dam can tell
each from the other. Therefore, would ye mother him--'
'Yes--'
'And cherish and protect--'
'Yes--'
'And of your woman's wisdom keep skirts at a distance--'
'I will promise that most.'
'Why, I will bring him back to thee, ring and all, though I turn Milan
upside down first.'
He bowed and was going; but she detained him, with sycophant velvet
eyes.
'Dear lord, so kind and loyal. Tell him that without him we find
ourselves astray.'
'Ay.'
'Tell him that from this moment his Duchess will aid and abet him in all
his reforms.'
'I will tell him.'
'Ask him--' she hesitated, and turned away her sweet head--'doth he seek
to retaliate on his mistress's innocent confidence, that, by absenting
himself, he would turn it to her undoing?'
Carlo grunted.
'By your Grace's leave, an I find him, I will put it my way.'
She acquiesced with a meek, lovely smile, and the words of the Mass:
'_Ite, missa est!_'
And when he was gone, she sighed, and looked in a mirror and murmured to
herself in a semi-comedy of grief: 'Alas! too weak to be Messalina! I
must be good if he asks me.'
And, being weak, she let her thoughts drift.
*CHAPTER XII*
In a street of the quarter Giovia the armourer Lupo had his smithy. He
had been a notable artisan in a town famous for its steel and niello
work; but in his age, as in any, a plethora of fine production must
cheapen the value of the individual producer. Therefore when a vengeful
caprice blinded him, and his door remained shut and his chimney ceased
to smoke, patronage transferred its custom to the next house or street
without a qualm; and his achievements in his particular business were
forgotten, or confounded with those of fellow-craftsmen, deriving,
perhaps, in their art from him. It was a sample of that banal
heartlessness of society, which in a moral age breeds collectivists, and
desperadoes in an age of lawlessness. And of the two one may pronounce
the latter the more logical.
In Milan men came quickly to maturity, whether in the art of forging a
blade or using it. Life flamed up and out on swift ideals of passion.
Parental love, high education, the intricate cults of beauty and
chivalry, were all gambling investments in a speculative market. The
odds were always in favour of that old broker Death. Yet the knowledge
abated nothing of the zeal. It was strange to be so fastidious of the
terms of so hazardous a lease. One might be saving, just,
virtuous--one's life-tenancy was not made thereby a whit securer. The
ten commandments lay at the mercy of a dagger-point; wherefore men
hurried to realise themselves timely, and to cram the stores of years
into a rich banquet or two.
Master Lupo, a sincere workman and a conscientious, was flicked in one
moment off his green leaf into the dust. There, maimed and helpless,
the tears for ever welling in his empty sockets, he cogitated
tremulously, fiercely, the one sentiment left to him, revenge--revenge
not so primarily on the instrument of his ruin, as on Tassino _through_
the system which had made such a creature possible. He lent his
darkened abode to be the nest to one of those conspiracies, which are
never far to gather in despotic governments, and which opportunity in
his case showed him actually at hand.
Cola Montano, it has been said, had been borne away after his scourging
by some women of the people. Grace, or pity, or fear was in their
hearts, and they nursed him. Scarcely for his own sake; for, democracy
being impersonal, he was at no trouble to be a grateful patient. He took
their ministries as conceded to a principle, and individually was as
surly and impatient with them as any ill-conditioned cur.
Recovering betimes (the dog had a tough hide), he learned of neighbour
Lupo's condition, and walked incontinently into that wretched
artificer's existence. He found a blind and hopeless wreck, shelves of
rusting armour, a forge of dead embers, and, brooding sullen beside it,
a girl too plainly witnessing to her own dishonour. He heard the rain
on the roof; he saw the set grey mother creeping about her work; and he
sat himself down by the sightless armourer, and peered hungrily into his
swathed face.
'Dost know me, Lupo? I am Montano.'
The miserable man groaned.
'Master Collegian? Stands yet thy school of philosophy? A' God's name,
lay something of that on this hot bandage!'
'The school stands in its old place, armourer; but its doors, like
thine, are shut. What then? Its principles remain open to all.'
The poor wretch put out a hand, feeling.
'Where art thou? Have thy wounds healed so quickly? Mine are
incurable.'
'What!' croaked Montano jeeringly, 'with such a salve to allay them! I
heard of it--logic meet to an angel--to renew thine image through her
yonder. Marry, sir! conception runs before the law. Hast chased thy
likeness down and taken it to church? Mistress Lucia there would seem a
sullen bride. Hath her popinjay come and gone again? Well, you must be
content with the legitimising.'
The armourer writhed in answering.
'What think you? There has been none. Mock not our misery. Is it the
concern of angels to see their sentences enforced?'
'No, but to be called angels. Heaven is not easy surfeited with
adulation.'
'He was glorified in his judgment; and there, for us, the matter ended.'
'Not quite.'
The pedagogue bent his evil head to look again into that woful face.
'Lupo, my school is closed; alumnus loiters in the streets. Shall he
come in here?'
There was something so significant in his tone that the broken man he
addressed started, as if a hand had been laid on his eyes.
'For what? Who is he?' he muttered.
'I will tell you anon,' answered Montano. 'No prelector but hath his
favourite pupils. He, alumnus, is in this case threefold--three dear
homeless scholars of mine, Lupo, needing a rallying-place in which to
meet and mature some long-discussed theory of social cure. I have heard
from them since--since my illness. They chafe to resume their studies
and their mentor--honest, good fellows, confessing, perhaps, to a heresy
or so.'
'Master,' muttered the armourer, 'you will do no harm to be explicit.'
'Shall I not? Well, if you will, and by grace of an example, such a
heresy, say, as that, when the devil rules by divine right, the God who
nominated him is best deposed.'
'Yes, yes, to be sure. That is blasphemy as well as heresy. But I
think of Messer Bembo, who is still His minister, and I believe your
pupils go too far.'
'Why, what hath this minister done for you?'
'Very much, in intention.'
'Well, I thought that was said to pave the other place; but, in truth,
the issues of all things are confounded, since we have an angel for the
Lord's minister and a devil for His vicegerent.'
'Pity of God! are they not? And ye would resolve them by deposing the
Christ--by knocking out the very keystone of hope?'
'Nay, by substituting a rock for a crumbling brick.'
'What rock?'
'The people.'
'Might they not, too, elect a tyrant to be their representative?'
'How could tyranny represent a commonwealth?'
'A commonwealth! It is out, then! It is not God ye would depose, but
Galeazzo. Commonwealth! Is that a name for keeping all men under a
certain height? But the giant will dictate the standard, and any one may
reach to him who can. Messer Montano, I seem to have heard of a
republican called Caesar.'
'Then you must have heard of another called Brutus?'
'Ay, to be sure; and of a third called Octavian.'
'Those were distracted times, my friend.'
'And what are these? Have you ever heard of the times when a man's
interest was one with his neighbour's? Besides, the flame of art burns
never so sprightly as under a despot. It finds no fuel in
uniformity--each man equal to his neighbour.' He put out groping hands
pitifully. 'I loved my art,' he quavered. 'They might have spared me to
it!'
Montano bit his lip scornfully. It was on his tongue to spurn this
spiritless creature. But he suppressed himself.
'What would you, then?' he demanded; 'you, the wretched victim of the
system you commend?'
'Ah!' sighed Lupo, 'ideally, Messer, an autocracy, with an angel at its
head.'
The philosopher laughed harshly.
'Why,' he sneered, 'there is your ideal come to hand. Be plain. Shall
we depose a tyrant, and elect in his place this new-arrived, this divine
boy, as ye all title him?'
'Why not?'
Montano started and stared at the speaker. There was suggestion
here--of a standard for innovation; of a rallying-point for reform. A
republic, like a despotism, might find its telling battle-cry in a
saint. The boy, as representing the liberty of conscience, was already
a subject of popular adoration. Why should they not use him as a
fulcrum to the lever of revolution, and, having done with, return him to
the cloisters from which he drew? There was suggestion here.