'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 acquittest _her_
of 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.
'_Thou_ a 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 wed
Fearless 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. _He_ could
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 perpetrated _con 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.'