DISASTER
"Light of Light!" he said in a horrible whisper--and again, "Very God--"
"Doctor Lanfranchi," said I seriously, for my passion lifted me up,
"Doctor Lanfranchi, she is better than refined gold."
He did what I suppose he had not done for many years; he crossed himself
over the face. "Bless my soul!" he said.
"Sir, sir," I admonished him, "you little know of what excellent
substance that saint is compact. Sir--"
I might have continued I know not how long upon a theme so noble, but
for his astonishment, which, though it kept him stupid, must have a
vent. "Who the devil--" stammers he, "What the devil--" It amazed me,
and vexed me greatly, that I could not make him understand whom I
praised. I went close to him, I touched him on the shoulder.
"Hearken to me, doctor," said I, "Donna Aurelia, your lady, is as it
were an angel of Heaven--and I"--I said it with sorrowful grimness--"and
I have better reason to know it than you."
He felt my touch, and recoiled from it: he looked at me half askance,
from under knitted brows and between blinking lids, as if he thought me
a spirit. "Paradise of God," says he then, "who is this?" His glance
lighted upon the cupboard doors set open; he frowned and said, with
difference: "And who are you that speak of angels?"
"Sir," I replied, and my convictions were never more firmly in my words,
"my name is Wretch, and I am unworthy to live. I am that vile thing once
called Francis Strelley, now brought to confusion and conscious of his
horrible offence. Sir! Sir!" I said wildly, "Donna Aurelia is the
handmaid of high Heaven.--While I, while I--O God!" emotion poured its
hot flood over me. I fell to my knees.
In the painful silence which ensued, and no doubt seemed longer than it
actually was, I suppose that he collected some half of the truth, and in
the manner of him who sees but half, distorted it to be greater than the
whole. His manner towards me altered very materially; he resumed his
authority.
"Get up," he said, croaking like a raven; and at first I thought that I
dared not, and immediately after knew that I dared. I sprang to my feet,
and faced him, livid as he was. "Doctor Lanfranchi," said I, "I have
overheard you-by accident--as you praised her. I have heard you call her
good. Ah, and in agreeing with you I can testify that you spoke more
truth than you dreamed of. No saint in Heaven is so good as she, but it
has been required of me that I should grope in Hell before I could see
Heaven in her soul."
He held himself from me by doing violence to his own person--caught at
his cravat and gripped it with both hands.
"What are you saying? Say that again. Of what do you accuse yourself?"
"Of sin," I said. He looked at the cupboard, then with chilly rage at
me.
"What were you doing in there?" he asked; and that was a terrible
question, since there I never ought to have been.
I asked him would he hear me? He nodded his head and sat grimly down by
the table, at which of late he had so happily reclined. He covered his
mouth and nose with his hand, but kept his piercing eyes upon me.
Disconcerting! but even so, had he listened in silence I might have made
him see the truth.
"Sir," I began, "it is true that I love, and have always loved, your
wife; and it is true that I have been wicked enough to declare my
passion. But it is also true that by her, and by her alone, I have been
convinced of my presumption." Here he held up his hand.
"Stop there. You say you have been convinced. How were you convinced?
Where were you convinced? Let me understand you. Was it in there?" He
jerked his hand towards the fatal cupboard.
"Yes," I replied, "it was in there. I was forced to overhear your
conversation with Donna Aurelia, which proved to me that I am less than
nothing to her, and that you are all the world."
He snorted, scoffing at the thought. "We shall see soon enough," he said
bitterly, "who and what I am."
I continued: "If you think that I have injured YOU--I say nothing of my
lady or of myself--you are horribly deceived. On the contrary, I have
done you a service. You have the proof to your hand that you are the
husband of a pattern among ladies." Here, once more, he looked at the
cupboard, and "Ma!" he said, and shrugged. After this, so long as I
could speak to him, he tapped his foot.
"Punish me," I advised him; "use me as you will; kill me--I shall not
defend myself. I have never yet refused to take the consequences of my
acts. But over my dead body, if you are a true man, you will give thanks
to God for the gift of such a wife as you have."
I was indignant, honestly, and, as I think, rightly so; but again he
misunderstood me.
He got up and threatened me with his great forefinger. "Enough of your
sermons, sir," he said. "Have I lived and taught sucklings all these
years to be told my duty to God Almighty? Will you teach me, forsooth,
for what I am to give thanks, and whom I am to correct or chastise? Wait
you there, young gentleman--wait you there until I know more about you
and my pattern lady." He turned his back upon me, and, wrenching open
the chamber door, called harshly upon Aurelia. Immediately--and no doubt
she had been quaking for the summons--my adored mistress came trembling
out, her hair tumbled about her shoulders, her hands at her neck. Her
feet were bare upon the flags, her great and mournful eyes loomed hollow
in her face. They were my instant reproof, for now, and now to the full,
I saw a fatal consequence of my enthusiastic action. Unhappy Francis,
what hadst thou done? Thou hadst intended to abase thyself in her
service--and betrayed her. Thou hadst intended to honour, and condemned
her to dishonour! Alas, thou hadst gone near to ruining the purest and
loveliest of women by revealing those very things which proved her so.
The doctor, at his pitch of most savage and relentless calm, pointed to
me and the cupboard--to the criminal and his lurking den together. "Look
at those, woman," he said ominously, deliberately, but she could not or
would not; and, before she could collect her wits, what must need old
Nonna do but make bad worse, and, running, thrust herself in between,
and wag her hand under the doctor's nose.
"Eh, eh, eh, what a bother about nothing!" says this amiable old fool.
"Let us pray all together to the Madonna that you be not sorry for this.
She has done nothing, padron--nothing at all. He alone is wicked--by
Diana the Mighty I swear it--and it was I who put him in the cupboard,
and therefore know what I am saying. She--a lamb of our Saviour's flock!
Madness! Are you jealous of a boy without a beard? Do you conceive that
your lady could listen to a voice that sang among milk-teeth? Ah, do you
listen, rather, padron, to me and the truth, for we are at one together,
the truth and I." She stayed for breath.
"Hag," said the doctor, "you are lying. This fine young man has
confessed to me the agreeable truth. Madam," he turned to Donna Aurelia,
"here is a confessed lover of yours. Pray have you anything to say?"
"He is very foolish, he is very wicked; I have often told him so, often
and often," says Aurelia, twisting her hands about. "To-night he has
said what he should not--and I believe he knows that very well. I had
intended to tell you, if you had come sooner, as I wished--ah, and as I
asked you, Porfirio--you would have heard it all from me. That is all. I
was frightened--Nonna popped him in the cupboard--how he got out, how
you found him there, I know not. But he has done me no harm--nor you
neither, Porfirio. That I swear before the saints in Heaven." The doctor
glared at her--then took her by the wrist.
"Lies, lies, woman!" he said furiously. "He convicts you himself. He
came out of the cupboard of his own act."
She stared in amazement, and forgot the pain he was giving her. "He--
came--out? But----Is he mad?"
"No, madam," said I; and, "No, by Heaven!" cried the doctor, "for I have
no doubt at all but that he intended to provoke me to anger and then to
run me through the body with that sword of his."
I threw up my arms at such a monstrous suspicion. Aurelia, who had been
gazing at me as if she feared for my reason, now looked down.
"Please to let go of my wrist," she said, "you are hurting me, Porfirio.
I know no more than you do why he came out of the cupboard; but of
course you do him a wrong. He did not mean anything of the sort--he is
of a good heart--incapable of murder. And now, please, Porfirio, let go
of my wrist."
But he did not; his rage, gathering in volume, bade fair to convulse
him.
"I intend to have the truth from one of the three of you before I let
you go," said he. "From you I require to know why you put him into the
cupboard."
"It was very silly," said Aurelia, "since he had done no harm. Nonna,
why did you put him into the cupboard?"
"Diana!" cried the old woman, "where else was I to put the boy?" The
doctor's laughter was terrible to me. I took a step forward.
"I will tell you, sir, the reason of both your puzzlements," I said. "I
was put into the cupboard because Donna Aurelia was rightly ashamed of
me, and I came out because I was honestly ashamed of myself."
"Ha!" said he, "so now we have it."
"You shall have it now," I replied. "I was honestly ashamed of myself,
and honestly glorious that I had been rebuked by so noble a lady. Sir,
it is true that I love this lady." Aurelia gave a shocked little cry,
but I went on. "It is true that I kiss her feet. Sir, I worship the
ground she presses with them--it is holy ground."
He scoffed at me. I said, "My feelings overcame me--I sinned--I am
utterly unworthy. Punish me for my sin as you will, I shall not defend
myself. But do not, and do not you, madam, I entreat, punish me for the
one thing I have done this night of which I may be rightly proud."
"Bah," said he, "you are a fool, I see. And now, madam---"
"Yes, Porfirio," said she, poor soul.
"You, and that she-wolf over there--what have you to say?"
"I say," said Nonna, "that the young gentleman is out of his wits."
Aurelia said, "I am wretched. He was very foolish."
"You have deceived me," he thundered at her, "made a fool of me at your
ease. You spoke your wheedling words, and he was in there to listen, and
to laugh, by my soul! You coaxed, you stroked, you sidled, you
whispered, and he was in there laughing, laughing, laughing! Oh, madam,
you talk of his young foolishness, but you make your profit of my old
foolishness."
"It is false," said Aurelia. "I never did it."
"By my soul," says he, "I'll not be contradicted. I say that you do. O
Heaven, is this your duty, your gratitude, your thanks due to me? Why--
why--why--what did I take you from? What did I make of you? Your
wretched mother---"
She looked up with flashing eyes. There was danger to be seen on its
way. "She is not wretched."
"Then she should be, madam," he said. "She is parent of a wicked, false--"
Aurelia, crying, shook to get free. "No, no! Be silent. You shall not
say such things." She stamped her foot. "It is absurd, I won't have it,"
she said. He gave a strangling cry of rage and despair, released her and
rushed towards the cupboard. Dramatically, he flung his arms towards it
as if he would shake off his two hands and leave them there. "Explain
that, woman," he screamed. "Explain it if you dare---"
She was now equally angry, with patches of fire in her cheeks. "I shall
explain nothing more. You will not believe me when I do. My mother will
understand me."
"Then she shall--if she can," says the doctor, "and as soon as you
please." Aurelia peered at him. "What do you mean, sir?"
"Why, madam, that you shall go where you are best understood."
"What!" she cried, "you mean--? You cannot mean--Oh, preposterous!"
The doctor was looking at the cupboard. "Ay, and it is preposterous, and
I do mean it."
She stared at him for a moment, perplexed, then flew into a towering and
ungovernable rage. "Ah," she cried, and she shook in every member. "Ah,
now you may mean what you please, for I have done. Do you dare to
suspect me? Do you dare to treat me as an infamous woman? Oh, oh, do you
dare? You shall have no need to repeat it. I will go to my mother's
house--I will go now--now--now. Nonna, my cloak and shoes--at once. I
have been good--I have always tried to be good--and do you faithful
duty. I have known what I ought to do--I have been proud to be Dr.
Lanfranchi's wife. I thought I would show to my people that a girl of
Siena could be proud, even of a Venetian pig, if he were her husband.
Ah, but no more, no more. No, I will work elsewhere, for better wages--
you have seen the last of Aurelia." She was superbly beautiful as she
turned, pointing to me. "This youth--this mad, incomprehensible youth--
what harm has he done YOU compared to what he has now done to me? He
loves me, he says--I don't understand his love--but why should he not?
Am I to fall in love with everybody who says that? Do you think you are
the only one? And--and--why!--you have never said that you loved me: no,
you have not. You just took to me, and made me work--your servant or
your doll--your plaything when you were done with the cafe--me, a
Gualandi of Siena--and you, a pig of Padua. Good Heaven, for what do you
take me, sir? Did you find me in the street? Is my family one of
wretches? Oh, what a man you are; ungrateful, cruel, hard as the grave.
Yes, yes, Nonna, fold me close in my cloak; it will keep me from such
cold as this." She stood, cloaked and ready: we all stood--the doctor
like a rock, I like a man dead at his prayers.
She looked from one of us to the other, to me second. "You told me that
you loved me, Don Francis," she said. "I am going to my mother. Will you
take me?"
I never loved her so well as at this moment when I said, "Madam, I dare
not do it."
She blushed, I know she was mute with astonishment. I thought old Nonna
would have torn my eyes out. "Dog!" she called me, "son of a dog."
"I dare not go with you, madam," I repeated. "I love you too well. I
have done you so much wrong, meaning to do right, that I dare not now
risk an act which I know to be wrong. Oh," I cried, as my distress grew,
"oh, unsay those words, Aurelia! You could not mean them, they were not
yours."
She tossed her head, and shrugged. "I will be careful not to say them
again, at least," she said. "They evidently distressed you. Come, Nonna--
we will leave these gentlemen." The doctor never moved--I followed her
with my eyes. One more look from hers would have drawn us both to our
destruction. I thank God at this hour that she never showed it me. She
went out and shut the door behind her. Neither of us moved until we
heard the street door bang. We had been waiting for that.
"Now, Dr. Lanfranchi," said I, with a glance at my sword, "I am ready
for you how and when you please."
With a howl like that of a miserable maniac he leapt upon me, tripped
and threw me flat upon the flags. I remember the stunning shock of my
fall, but remember no more. I learned afterwards that he had pitched me
out on to the stairs, and that I fell far.