Grifone received his swooning lady into his arms and held her there to
his great content, triumphing in her beauty and successful capture.
Truly the adventure had gone by clockwork: he might say (he thought)
that there was not one step in it but had been schemed to an eighth of
an inch; and when you have to bring temperamental differences into
account, the chances of Italian politics, the influence of climate, the
panic alarms of a ridden mob--and still succeed, why, then you may
lawfully be happy. Happy he was, but Molly was tall and he a
light-weight. Moreover, he wanted to wipe his blade and be off. He
judged it prudent, therefore, to bring her to herself again, and so did
by sousing her liberally with cold water.
Molly, as soon as she could see, was aware of him kneeling by her side
and of his arms about her. Before she had done gasping he began to kiss
her.
"My heart of hearts, my lovely soul, my lady Moll! Mine altogether by
the act of my arm!" were some of his fiery words.
There were others yet more explicit, which left no doubt of his passion,
nor any ray of doubt of his intentions. Grifone took everything for
granted, as he had from the beginning.
"My charmer," he said, "I have saved you from ignominious death; but I
have saved myself also from a death by no means agreeable to me. It was
impossible that our love could have held us much longer at a distance
from each other, impossible that we could have still suffered a third
person to usurp our privileges. If that stabbed stabber under the table
had not misunderstood you so grotesquely--the gross-witted hog!--he
would have lived, and I died of jealousy. A far from pleasant death, you
will allow; worse in that it would have involved your own. For I should
have had to kill you too, my dearest joy: so much would have been owing
to my self-respect. Things, you see, could not have turned out more
fortunately; the fellow trapped himself. We may be happy--we will be
wildly happy--you shall see!"
It may be doubted whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she
may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument.
Hers was that state of absorbent lassitude when the words and acts put
to you sink into the floating mass of your weakness. The late shocking
grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold
the spectre off, and so are serviceable--but no more. The cold cheek,
the clay-cold lips, the long, lax limbs of the poor doll were at his
service. She saw nothing through her dim eyes, made no motion with her
lips, sobbed rather than breathed, endured tearlessly rather than lived
awake her misery. Misery is not the word: she had been sent down to hell
and had come back dumb to earth, neither knowing why such torment was
hers, nor thinking how to fly a second questioning. Had she been capable
of a wish, a prayer, or of begging a favour, who can doubt what it would
have been? Death, oh, death!
Grifone's face was so near to hers, that not to kiss her would have been
an affectation; but when he began to make plans, he released her, sat
up, and spoke as though he were discussing theory.
"There is very much to do, my love," said he, "but I think I see my way
clear. It is instant flight, to begin with, for one of the household may
be here any moment, or Don Cesare return. Such an one would have but to
open the window and cry, 'Treason, ho!' to secure our being torn to
pieces--not for any love the Nonesi bear that carrion; but because not
one of them could resist the chance of kicking his benefactors. It is
reasonable, after all. Instant flight, my dear, if you please. But
whither? you will ask. Luckily I can take you to a pretty safe place, of
which I have the key and _custode's_ goodwill in my pocket. You know the
Rocca del Capitan Vecchio outside the Latin Gate? We go there for our
terrestrial paradise. Shawl your lovely head, therefore, stoop your
glorious shoulders, and obey me exactly."
He got up as he made an end of speech, drew her gently to her feet, and
showed her how to muffle herself in the hood of a man's cloak. He bound
the rest of the garment about her waist with his belt, pinned up her
skirt and petticoat as high as her knees, and gave her his own
stockings and shoes. Then he helped himself to his dead master's pair,
to his sword and velvet gown; and--
"Now," he said, "we may start by the privy garden."
He led the way. It was a golden afternoon of late summer; the shadows
were lengthening as the air grew tired and cool, all the place was full
of that vast peace in which a day of strenuous heat sinks to rest. The
faint breeze in the myrtles was like a sleeper's sigh:--
"Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ--" murmured Grifone to
himself, as he slipped among the cypresses over the grass. Molly
followed him with faltering knees, nearly spent. As always, she was at
the mercy of a clear head, never masterless when a man was near her.
Morally, nervously, she seemed to be dead; so she followed her new lord
as meekly as she had followed her old--that one to Nona across the seas,
this one by gloomy, pent ways through the stale-smelling streets of the
city to the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio.
Meekly enough she went, yet not so far nor so meekly but that she gave
Grifone a genuine surprise. It seems that the air, the exercise,
precautions, what-not, had cried back her escaped wits: certain it is
that, once in the storm-bitten old fortress, she thanked her leader and
rescuer with a tremulous sweetness all her own, and then--by Heaven and
Earth!--urged him gently to go back, "lest her honour should be breathed
upon."
Her honour! Grifone, the romancer, turned sick with amazement. He was
dumbfounded, could not believe his ears, nor yet his eyes; that there
before him should stand that drooping, flagged, pitiful beauty, always
at his discretion, now wholly at his mercy within nine-foot walls, and
talk to him with wet eyes and pleading lips of the Cardinal Virtues.
As soon as he could collect himself he put this before her in a whirl of
words.
_Santo Dio!_ Timidity, prejudice, after what had passed! In what
possible way or by what possible quibble of a priest could anything stay
them now from the harvest of a sown love--two years' sowing, by the
Redeemer, two years' torture; and now--a solid square fortress on a
naked rock, deemed impregnable by anything but black treachery! Let him
make assurance incredibly secure: say the word, and he would go and
silence the old _custode_ for ever. It was done in a moment--what more
could he do?
So he prayed; but Molly was a rock at last. She ignored everything but
the fact that she could never survive the night if he stayed in the
fortress-tower. Such, she assured him, was the fixed habit of her
extraordinary race. She made no pretence of mourning her dead husband;
indeed, her horror of him set her shuddering at his mere name; nor did
she affect to deny that she loved Grifone. It made no difference. She
was luminously mild, used her hands like a Madonna in a picture, was
more lovely and winning in the motions of her little head, the wistful
deeps and darks of her eyes, the pathetic curve of her mouth, than any
Madonna short of Leonardo's. Grifone threw up his arms; such a pass
confounded him; he had no tools to pick this sort of lock. Oh, but the
thing was impossible! Two years' longing, the husband dead--why, they
might marry, even, if she would. Perhaps that was what she needed? If
so, he would risk his life in the city again to find a priest. But,
think of it, formalities at this hour!
Molly smiled and blushed; she was sorry for her friend and would have
consoled him if she could; but the thing was so obvious. Did not Grifone
see?
Grifone did not see; he tore his hair, he threatened, prayed, raved,
commanded, coaxed, swore by God and the Devil, clung to her
knees--useless!
"Dear friend," she said, and stroked his hot hair, "you have served me
well. Never serve me now so ill."
She beat him. From that moment, when love was dead, he began to hate
her. She was safe from what she feared. Everything he might have waived
but that, a clean blow at his own conceit. The end was near.
Their colloquy, so frenzied on his part, so staid and generous at once
on hers, was barely over before the hum of many voices crept upon them,
a slow, murmurous advance, out of which, as the hordes drew near, one or
two sharp cries--"Seek, seek!" "Death to the traitor!"--threw up like
the hastier wave-crests in a racing tide. Again they heard (and now more
clearly), "Evviva Madonna! La Madonna di Nona!" and then (more ominous
than all) a cry for Cesare Borgia: "Chiesa! Chiesa!"
At this last Grifone, who had been biting his fingers shrewdly, wrung a
nail apart till the blood came. His was the desperate caught face of a
stoat in a trap.
"What is this crying without?" said Molly in a hush.
"Pest! I must find out," said Grifone.
He climbed to a high window and looked down into the moonlight. "The
Nonesi in force. Cesare Borgia and the troops. Hist! He is going to
speak to them; they are holding him up." He strained to listen--and it
seems that he heard.
"Citizens," said the Borgia, in fact, "I pledge you my sacred word that
the Duchess shall be delivered to you whole and in honour. She shall be
in the Palace within an hour. The Secretary who has her there, who
stabbed his master and (as I learn from Milan) hatched all the plot,
must be left to me. Madonna Maria saved my life at the peril of her own.
She has no more devoted servant than I am. Trust me to prove it."
"Chiesa! Chiesa! Madonna! Heed the Duke!" cried the mob. And then, "Let
the Duke go up and win us our lady."
"That he shall never do," said Grifone, and came down from the window.
Molly, seeing the cunning in his eyes, backed to the wall.
Time does not serve, and pity forbids, that I should dwell upon this
misery. What she may have wailed, what he withstood who loved her once,
I have no care to set down at large. He strangled her with cruel,
vivacious hands, and then (since time had pressed, and all his passion
not been pent in one wicked place) fell to kissing the flouted clay.
Getting up from this tribute, he was faced by Cesare Borgia and his men;
by Cesare who, used to such stratagems as this of late, had had the
whole story out of Ludovic at Milan, and forestalled Nona by buying up
the troop of "Centaurs" before ever he entered the city. Thus had
Amilcare been sold by his own purchase, and thus Grifone griped in his
own springe. Cesare found him, I say, and Grifone knew in the first
crossing of their eyes that his hour had come.
He bore it without a wink, and lucky he might think it that for Cesare
also the time was short. He was sooner dead than he dared to hope, and
died cursing the name of Borgia. But that was a seasoned name.
"The populace is on fire, Highness," reported a breathed captain. "It
clamours for the Duchess of Nona. We can hardly hold them much longer,
strong as we are. We must show her, though I perceive that her
Excellency has fainted."
"She is dead, man," said Cesare shortly, wiping his pair of daggers.
"It is a pity, Highness. _Ma----!_" He shrugged the end to his period.
Cesare looked at the girl and shrugged in his turn.
"Luckily it is dark. We must play them that trick they played on Borgo
San Domino. She must be put in a litter, and at the palace see to it
that the lights are behind her before ever you set her up in the window.
Do what you can for us, Ercole."
They worked their best to compose that pitiful dead. She had suffered
much, and showed it. Her wide eyes were horrible. And there was little
time for more than to order her dress and neck-jewels, and to smooth out
her brown hair.
"H'm," said Cesare, "you have made little of it; but at a distance it
may serve our turn until the troops arrive. Is the litter below? Good.
_Avanti!_"
The church bells rang all night, and all night the Piazza Grande was
alive, a flickering field of torches and passing and repassing throngs.
"Evviva Madonna! Hail, Duchess of Nona!" were the cries they gave. And
above, at an arched window, haloed by candle-light, the staring lady of
the land, stiffened and relaxed, played out the last functions of her
generous body, in return for the people's acclamation.
Bianca Maria, Queen of the Romans by virtue of proxy and the Sacrament,
spurred into the city of Nona next noon at the head of a plumed escort.
There, at the fatal window, she saw the whole truth in a flash.
"_O lasso!_ Her third husband was her last, I see," she said, and bit
her lip to sting the tears back.
"Majesty," said Cesare, hat in hand at her stirrup, "it is not quite so.
Grifone was not quick enough for the other fellow. Messer Death is
actually her second husband."
"Now I have something for which to thank our Lord God," said Bianca
Maria. "Let her be decently buried, but not here."
It was, however, explained that for reasons of policy the Duchess of
Nona must share tombs with the Duke. Serviceable in death as in life,
there where she was marketed lies her fragrant dust; fragrant now, I
hope, since all the passion is out.
I almost despair of winning your applause for poor Molly Lovel, yet will
add this finally in her justification. Women are most loved when they
are lovely, most lovely when they are meek. This is not to say that they
will be worthily loved or loyally: there are two sides to a bargain. Yet
this one thing more: they are neither meek nor lovely unless they love.
And since Molly Lovel, on my showing, was both in a superlative degree,
it follows that she must have loved much. She was ill repaid while she
lived; let now that measure be meted her which was accorded another
Molly whose surname was Magdalene.