'May'st think so, beast; but I know myself damned as an unbaptized one,
to no lower than the first circle of our Father Dante.'
'Wert thou not baptized?'
'Do I not say so? And, therefore, lacking that grace, exonerated.'
'What's that?'
'Not responsible for my acts, pig.'
'Who says so?'
'Dante.'
'Who's he? Has a' been there? I would not believe him. What doth a'
say o' me?'
'_You_? That you shall choke for all eternity in a river of blood.'
'Anan!' said Narcisso, and blew, scowling, on his sausage, which had
become ignited. 'That's neither sense nor justice, master. I kill by
the decalogue, I do. Did I ever put out a man's eyes for sport?'
'It's no matter,' answered Tassino. 'Thou wert baptized.'
'What will they do to thee?'
'I shall be forbidden the Almighty's countenance, no more--punishment
enough, of course, for a person of taste; but I must e'en make shift to
do without.'
'It's not fair,' growled Narcisso. 'I had no hand in my own
christening. Do without? Narry penalty in doing without what you've
never asked nor wanted.'
A figure that had stolen noiselessly into the room as they spoke, and
was standing watching, with its cloak caught to its face, sniggered,
literally, in its sleeve.
Tassino snapped rebelliously at the knife point, and began to eat
without ceremony.
'Punishment enough,' he whined, 'if it means such a life in death as
this.'
He sobbed and munched, quarrelling with his meat.
'How canst thou understand! The foul fiend betray him who condemned me
to it! That saint; O, that saint! If I could only once trip _his_ soul
by the heels!'
'No need, my poor Tassino,' murmured a sympathetic voice; 'indeed, I
think, there is no need.'
The prisoner staggered from his stool, and stood shaking and gulping.
'Messer Ludovico!' he gasped. 'How----'
'By the door, my child--plainly, by the door,' interrupted the Prince
smoothly. And then he smiled: 'Alas! thou hast no ante-room here for
the scotching of undesirable suitors.'
The terrified creature had not a word to say. One could almost hear his
fat heart thumping.
Ludovico, lowering his cloak a little, made an acrid face. The room
offended his particular nostrils: its atmosphere was nothing less than
sticky. But, reflecting on the choice moral of it, he looked at the
little tarnished clinquant before him, and was content to endure. He
even affected a pleasant envy.
'This is worth all the glamour of courts,' he said, waving his hand
comprehensively. 'To eat, or lie down; to go in or out as thou will'st.
Never to know that suspicion of thine own shadow on the wall. To waste
no words in empty phrases, nor need the wealth to waste on empty show.
What a rich atmosphere hath this untroubled, irresponsible freedom; it
is a very meal of itself! I would I could say, For ever rest and grow
fat thereon; but, alas! I bring discomforting news. My poor Tassino. I
fear the fortress at last shows signs of yielding.'
The little wretch opposite him whimpered as if at a whip-cut.
'Is it so indeed? Then, Messer Ludovico, it is a foul shame of her.
She hath betrayed me--may God requite her!' He snivelled like a grieved
child; then, on a sudden thought, looked up, with a child's cunning.
'At least in that case I shall be forgotten. There can be no object in
my hiding here longer.'
The Prince lifted his eyebrows, with an inward-drawn whistle.
'Object? Object?' he protested, acting amazement. 'But more than ever,
my poor simpleton. Thy case is double-damned thereby. Think you the
other would rest on the thought of a rival, and such a rival, at large?
Thy very existence would be a menace to his guilty peace. I come,
indeed, as a friend to warn thee. Lie close; stir not out; the very air
hath knives. Be cautious, even of thy shadow on the wall, of thy hand
in the dish.'
He said it calmly and distinctly, looking towards Narcisso, who all this
time had stood hunched in the background, his dull brain struggling
bewildered in a maze. But the urgency of this innuendo penetrated even
him; the more so when he saw Tassino leap and fling himself on his knees
at the Prince's feet.
'What do you mean?' shrieked the young man. 'Is _he_ in their pay? O
Messer, save me! don't let me be poisoned.'
He pawed and grovelled, looking madly over his shoulder. Ludovico
laughed gently, disregarding him.
'Nay, I know not,' he cooed. 'It is a dog that serves more masters than
one.'
Narcisso slouched forward, and ducked a sort of obeisance between sullen
and deferential.
'What's to-do?' he growled. 'I serve my patron, Messer Duke's son, like
an honest man. What call, I say, to warn 'en of me? Do I not earn my
wages fairly?'
'Scarcely, fellow,' murmured Ludovico--'unless to betray thine employer
be fair.'
Narcisso scowled and lowered.
'Betray!' he protested, but uneasily. 'That is a charge to be proved,
Messer.'
Ludovico suddenly leapt to a blaze.
'Dog! Wouldst bandy with me, dog? Beware, I say! Who blabbed my
secrets to the lady of Casa Caprona?'
He was himself again with the cry. His faculty of instant self-control
was a thing quite fearful. Narcisso cowered before him; shrunk under
the playful wagging of his finger.
'Messer--in the Lord's name!' he could only stammer--'Messer!'
'O thou fond knave!' complained the Prince, showing his teeth in a
smile; 'to think to play that double game, one patron against another,
and stake thine empty wits against the reckoning! Well, thou art
confessed and damned.' He drew back a pace. 'But one word more,' he
said, raising his voice. 'What hast thou to plead that I call not up
those that will silence for ever thy false, treacherous tongue?'
He stood by the door. It was a very reasonable inference that he had
not ventured into such a quarter unattended. Narcisso stood gasping and
intertwining his thick fingers, but he could find no words.
'What!' smiled Ludovico; 'no excuse, no explanation? No answer of any
kind? Shall I call, then?' He seemed to hesitate. 'Yet perhaps one
loop-hole, though undeserved, I'll lease thee on condition.' He moved
again forward a little, and spoke in a lower tone: 'There's news wanted
of a certain stolen ring. Dog! do I not know who thieved it, and for
whom? Now shalt thou undertake to go yet once again, and, robbing the
receiver, bring the spoil to me--or be damned here and now for thy
villainy.'
He thought he had netted at last the quarry of his long, patient
stalking; but for once his confidence was at fault. Watching intently
for the effect of his words, he grew conscious of some change
transfiguring, out of terror and astonishment, the face of his victim.
Foul, ignoble, animal beyond redemption as that was in all its features,
its swinish eyes could yet extract and emit, it seemed, from the thin,
dead ashes of some ancient fire, a stubborn spark of self-renunciation.
He could read it in them unmistakably. The man stood straight before
him, for the first and only time in his life, a hero.
Ludovico gazed in silence. He found, to do him the right justice, this
psychic revelation of acuter interest to him than his own defeat
foreseen in the light of it. But Tassino's subdued whimpering jarred
him out of his abstraction.
'Well, is it agreed?' he asked with a sigh. For the moment he almost
shrunk in the apprehension of an affirmative reply.
The rogue drew himself suddenly together.
'Call, Messer,' he said. 'That is my answer.'
His chin dropped on his breast. Tassino uttered a cry, and hid his face
in his hands. Not a word or apparent movement followed; but when,
goaded by the fearful stillness, the two dared to look up once more,
they found themselves alone.
Then, at that, Tassino shrieked and sprang to the grille.
'My God!' he sobbed; 'he has gone, and left me to my fate!'
He moved to escape by the door, but Narcisso caught and wrenched him
back.
'What ails the fool!' he protested in his teeth. 'My orders be to keep,
not kill thee, man!'
Messer Ludovico, walking enveloped within a little cloud of his
adherents, smiled to himself on his way back to the palace.
'The fascination of the serpent,' mused he, shaking his head--'the
fascination of the serpent! How could that crude organism be expected
to resist the arts of our Lamia, when I myself could fall near swooning
to them? Hath he betrayed me to others? I think not; yet it were well
to have him silenced betimes. The weakness was to threaten where I
dared not yet perform. Yet it may chance, after all, he shall come to
be prevailed on for the ring.'
'The ring!' he muttered, as he climbed presently to his chamber--'the
ring! I think it comes to zone the world in my imagination!'
As he was passing through the ante-room to his private closet, a draped
and voiceless figure moved suddenly out of the shadows to accost him.
He gave the faintest start, then offered his hand, and, without a word,
ushered this strange ghost into his sanctum. The portiere swung back,
the door clanged upon them, and there on the threshold he dwelt, looking
with a silent, smiling inquisition into the eyes of his visitor.
Hast thou ever seen the dead, leafy surface of a woodland pool stir,
scarce perceptibly, to the movement of some secret thing below? So, as
Beatrice stood like a statue before the Prince, did the soul of her
reveal itself to him, writhing somewhere under the surface of that still
mask.
Then suddenly, swiftly, passionately, she thrust out a hand.
'There is the ring,' she said. 'Do what you will with it.'
*CHAPTER XVIII*
That same evening had witnessed, in the dower Casa Caprona, the abortive
finish to a venture long contemplated by its mistress, and at length, in
a moment of desperation, dared. She had wrought herself, or been
wrought at this last, into privately communicating to the little Saint
Magistrate of Milan, how she had certain information where the ring lay,
which if he would learn, he must follow the messenger to her house. She
had claimed his utmost confidence and secrecy, and, on that
understanding alone, had procured herself an interview. And Bernardo
had come, and he had gone--how, her tumbled hair, her self-bruised
bosom, her abandonment to the utter shame and fury of her defeat, were
eloquent witnesses.
She had not been able to realise her own impotence to disarm an
antagonist already half-demoralised, as she believed this one to be.
For, before ever she had precipitated this end, gossip had been busy
whispering to her how the saint was beginning to melt in the sun of
adulation, to confess the man in the angel, to inform with a more than
filial devotion his attitude towards Bona. To have to cherish yet hate
that thought had been her torture; to anticipate its consummation her
frenzy. She had known him first; he was hers by right. Long wasting in
the passion of her desire, she had conceived of its fruition a savour
out of all proportion with her experiences. She must conquer him or
die. He was hers, not Bona's.
She had disciplined herself, in order to propitiate his prejudices, into
the enduring of a decent period of retirement. It must end at last.
She never knew when Ludovico might exact from her that security, held by
her conditionally only, against her ruin by him. For the present indeed
she retained the ring, but any moment might see it claimed from her.
Now, if she could only once lure, and overcome by its means, the object
of her passion, the question of its restoration to, or use by another
against, its owner, must necessarily cease of being an acute one with
either her or Bernardo.
With him, at least--with him, at least. And as for herself?
Turning where she lay, she had seen her own insolent smile reflected
from a mirror.
'He said,' she had whispered, pondering some words of Ludovico's, '_More
impossible things might happen_.'
Then, taking the ring from her bosom, and apostrophising its green
sparkle softly:--
'A little star--a little bribe, to win me both love and a throne!' she
had said, and so had sunk back, closing her eyes, and murmuring:--
'Let it only prove its power here, and it and the heads of that
conspiracy shall be all Ludovico's. He will not claim the latter, I
think, until their purpose is accomplished. And then----'
And then Messer Ludovico himself had been announced. He visited her not
infrequently in these days, though never, it seemed, with any purpose of
foreclosing on that little mortgage of the ring. He came in the fashion
of a confidential gossip, to enlighten her as to the doings of the world
outside. They were very pleasant and intimate together, with a hint, no
more, of closer relations to come. The lion rolled in a silken net, and
affected his subjugation, as the lady affected not to notice the
stealthy claws of her capture. It was a pretty little comedy, which
engaged the sympathies of both, each according to its temperament. But
it ended in tragedy.
Ludovico had, indeed, no interest in dissuading his beautiful gossip's
mind from its tormenting suspicions as to the Messer Saint's gradual
corruption by Bona; a scandal to which, no doubt--the wish in him being
father to the thought--he himself gave ready credence. The report
suited him in every way, both as to his policy and its instruments; and
he only awaited its certain substantiation to let fly the bolt which was
to involve three fortunes in one ruin--under warrant of the ring, if
possible, but timely in any event.
And in the meanwhile it afforded him, whether from jealousy or pure love
of mischief, some wicked gratification to nip and sting this already
tormented lady in sensitive places, and to do it all under an
affectation of the softest sympathy.
Yet, while for his own purpose he hugged and fostered the slander, whose
growth and justification he most desired, the slander itself, for some
inexplicable reason, did not grow, but even began to exhibit signs, for
a time almost imperceptible, of attenuating. Ludovico could not
acknowledge this fact to himself, or even consider it. It is difficult,
no doubt, while we are calculating our probable gains, to admit the
possibility of a blight in the harvest of our hopes. A fervid prospect
blinds us to the road between; and this prince, for all his far-seeing,
because of it rather, may have been less open to immediate impressions
than some others about him.
Yet to souls less acute, there _were_ the signs: the first little shadow
of a smut on the ear--a hitch, just the faintest, in the ecstatic
programme of Nature. Was it that Tassino, the mean worldling, was a
true prophet of his parts, and that the reaction from a starved
continence was already actually threatening? Whispers there certainly
were of a growing impatience of restrictions in the castello; of schisms
from the pure creed of its little priest; of hankerings, even on the
part of the highest, after the old fleshpots. They rose, and died down,
and rose again. There was no melting a certain snow-child, it was said,
into anything but ice water. The Duchess, who had somehow expected to
gather flowers from frost, went about white and smiling, and chafing her
hands as if they were numb. She had once stopped before a new young
courtier, who bore some resemblance to a past favourite, and, while
speaking to him kindly, had been seen to flush as though her cheeks had
caught the sudden warmth of a distant fire. Madam Caterina, it was
certain, waxing bold in impishness, had commisserated her mother on the
bad cold she had caught. 'Madre mia,' she had said, 'you have wandered
too much in the chill woods, and would be the better for a hot brick to
your bed.'
For such tittle-tattle was this after season of the sowing responsible,
when, against all expectations, tares began to appear amidst the crops.
Messer Ludovico, for his part, would recognise no sinister note in the
laughter. It was just the rocking and babbling of empty vessels. Its
justification in fact would not have suited his book at all; and so he
continued in confidence to plant his little shafts in madam's raw
places.
Monna Cat'rina, he had told her on the occasion of this particular
visit, had been very saucy to her mother the evening before, advising
her, this cold weather, to make herself a coverlet of angel down.
'Whereat,' said he, 'Madam our Duchess slapped the chit's pink knuckles,
answering, "Shall I wish him, then, to die of cold for me?" to which
Catherine replied: "No; for to die of love is not to die of cold"'; and
the other had blushed and laughed, and turned away.
And it had been this sting, thrust into the place of a long
inflammation, which had finally goaded Beatrice into writing and sending
her letter.