The prison chills made Olimpia shiver, the prison silences made her
afraid. The wavering moan of the page-boy, who had been tumbled on to a
straw bed after his first bout of the question, drove home the reality
of her situation, and made her sick. Olimpia was one of your snug pretty
women; she loved to be warmed, coaxed, petted; liked her bed, her fire;
liked sweetmeats, and to see people about her go smiling. Mostly, too,
she had had her way in these matters, for she was a beautiful creature,
smooth and handsome as a Persian cat. Jealousy, on this account, was a
new experience; she had never suffered it before, did not realise it
now. Besides, it was over; she had killed her faithless lover. But the
dark, the cold, the silence, the calm enmity of the dim walls--these
were but an intensification of familiar discomforts. She had always been
afraid of the dark, often cold, often quelled by quiet, made sullen by
indifference. She hated all this, and felt it all, in spite of the glory
of the Captain's killing. It seemed more awful now, more unendurable
than ever, because--she knew there was no good disguising it--because it
stood for something else. Ah, ah! she was in danger. So sure as she
thought of this, Olimpia's heart stood still, and then suddenly throbbed
as if it must break. It surged up into her throat. Her tongue clove to
her palate, she felt the bristling of her flesh, could hear her heart
quite loud making double knocks at her side. The page-boy moaned to
himself through it all; a rat hidden somewhere bore him company by
scratching most diligently at the brickwork. She could not hear anything
of Bellaroba--the only familiar thing in this vast black horror. The
panic gained upon her till her head swam in it. She could not die! Ah,
never, never, never, by Christ on His throne!
The sickening futility of that final word, Never, in the face of the
dead certainty announced by the inexorable walls, served to make the
wretch's case the more desperate. Panic, chalk-white, staring
panic-fear, swallowed her up: the next few hours flew by as minutes,
while she was cowering and gibbering in a corner. Before the inevitable
you either resign or rave yourself mad--there is no middle course.
Bellaroba took the first. Sitting in her cell with her cheek pressed
against the wall which (though she knew it not) penned also her
Angioletto, she never opened her eyes, nor cried, nor moaned; but where
she settled herself at her entry there she was found when they came to
hale her to the judgment. She gave no trouble, made no sign; but she let
down her hair to cover her bare neck, and if she blushed it was that
folks should see her blood-smirched evening finery by the light of day.
She was a very decent girl always, and this seemed to her horrible even
in a pit of horrors. Olimpia, clinging to life, was driven upon the
second course. It took two halberdiers to hold her up.
Borso had before him the deposition of the page-boy and the report of
the watch. From the words of the first he suspected that both women were
concerned--until he had heard the second. This was to the effect that
the Captain's head had been cut off.
"No, no," said Borso to himself, "I am heartily sorry for my young
friend the chimney-sweeping poet, but I can't think him a fool. He would
never have married a woman who could cut off a man's head. Yet stay! It
may be that she floored the Captain and that the other rounded off the
job with that gratuitous touch. She--that other--was eating walnuts when
the watch came, I gather. She could have cut a dead man's head off,
never doubt it. Well, let us see, let us see."