'Carlo!'
No more. The sweet heart seemed to break, the broken spirit to wing on
it. Thereafter was silence, awful and eternal.
He called again and again--no response. He rose, and resumed his
maddened race, to and fro, praying, weeping, clutching at his throat.
At length worn out, he threw himself once more by the wall, his ear to
the hole, and lying there, sank into a sort of swoon.
Messer Topo, sniffing sympathetically at his face, awoke him. He sat
up; remembered; stooped down; sought to cry the dear name again, and
found his voice a mere whisper. That crowned his misery. But he could
still listen.
No sound, however, rewarded him. He spent the day in a dreadful tension
between hope and despair--snarled over the periodic visits of his
gaolers--snarled them from his presence--was for ever crouching and
listening. They fancied his wits going, and nudged one another and
grinned. He never thought to question them; was always one of those
strong souls who find, not ask, the way to their own ends. He knew they
would lie to him, and was only impatient of their company. Seeing his
state, they were at the trouble to take some extra precautions, always
posting a guard on the stairs before entering his cell. Messer Lanti,
normal, was sufficiently formidable; possessed, there was no foretelling
his possibilities.
But they might have reassured themselves. Escape, at the moment, was
farthest from his thoughts or wishes. He would have stood for his
dungeon against the world; he clung to his wall, like a frozen
ragamuffin to the outside of a baker's oven.
Presently he bethought himself of an occupation, at once suggestive and
time-killing. He had been wearing his spurs when captured--weapons, of
a sort, overlooked in the removal of deadlier--and these, in view of
vague contingencies, he had taken off and hidden in his bed. His
precaution was justified; he saw a certain use for them now; and so,
procuring them, set to work to enlarge with their rowels the opening of
the rat hole. He wrought busily and energetically. Messer Topo sat by
him a good deal, watching, with courteous and even curious forbearance,
this really insolent desecration of his front door. They dined together
as usual; and then Carlo returned to his work. His plan was to enlarge
the opening into a funnel-like mouth, meeter for receiving and conveying
sounds. It had occurred to him that the point of the tiny passage's
issue into the next cell might be difficult of localisation by one
imprisoned there, especially if the search--as he writhed to picture
it--was to be made in a blinding gloom. If he could only have continued
to help by his voice--to cry 'Here! Here!' in this tragic game of
hide-and-seek! He wrought dumbly, savagely, nursing his lungs against
that moment. But still by night it had not come to be his.
Then, all in an instant, an inspiration came to him. He sat down, and
wrote upon a slip of paper: '_From Carlo Lanti, prisoner and neighbour.
Mark who brings thee this--whence he issues, and whither returns.
Speak, then, by that road_--' and having summoned Messer Topo, fastened
the billet by a thread about his neck, and, carrying him to his run,
dismissed him into it. Wonder of wonders! the great little beast
disappeared upon his errand. Henceforth kill them for vermin that
called the rat by such a name!
Messer Topo did not return. What matter, if he had sped his mission?
Only, had he? There was the torture. Hour after hour went by, and still
no sign.
Carlo fell asleep, with his ear to the funnel. That night the music did
not visit him. He awoke--to daylight, and the knowledge of a sudden cry
in his brain. Tremulous, he turned, and found his voice had come back to
him, and cleared it, and quavered hoarsely into the hole, 'Who speaks?
Who's there?'
He dwelt in agony on the answer--thin, exhausted, a croaking gasp, it
reached him at length:--
'Cicca--the Fool--near sped.'
'The Fool! Thou--thou and none other?' His cry was like a wolf's at
night; 'none other? Bernardo!' he screeched.
A pause--then: 'Dead, dead, dead!' came wheezing and pouring from the
hole.
'Ah!'
He fell back; swayed in a mortal vertigo; rallied. He was quite calm on
the instant--calm?--a rigid, bloodless devil. He set his mouth and
spoke, picking his words:--
'So? Is it so? All trapped together, then? When did he die?'
'Quick!' clucked the voice; 'quick, and let me pass. When, say'st?
Time's dead and rotten here. I know not. A' heard thee call--and
roused--and shrieked thy name. His heart broke on it. A' spoke never
again. All's said and done. What more? I could not find the hole--till
thy rat came. Speak quick.'
What more? What more to mend or mar? Nothing, now. Hope was as dead as
Time--a poxed and filthy corpse. Love, Faith, and Charity--dead and
putrid. Only two things remained--two things to hug and fondle: revenge
and Messer Topo. He bent and spoke again:--
'Starved to death?'
'Starved----'
The queer, far little mutter seemed to reel and swerve into a tinkle--an
echo--was gone. Carlo called, and called again--no answer. Then he set
himself to ruminate--a cud of gall and poison.
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 his _coup de grace_
in 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 less _Bona 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 veritable _coup d'[oe]il_. He is gnawed
and corroded with suspicion, mortally _nervous_--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 wear _coats 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.