A Jay of Italy Read online

  *CHAPTER II*

  They travelled on till sundown through the green plains; and, for onegood hour dating from their start, not a word would Madam Beatriceutter. Then she gave out--Messer Carlo being a distance in advance--butwith no grace at all.

  'You are an ill horseman, Saint. I am near jogged from my seat.'

  'Put thine arms about me.'

  'Nay, I am not holy enough.'

  She was silent again, for five minutes.

  'Your lute bangs my nose.'

  He shifted it. She held her peace during two minutes.

  'Who taught you to play it, Saint?'

  'It was one of the fathers. What would it profit you to know which?'

  'Nothing at all. I trow he was a good master to that and your gospel.'

  'My gospel?'

  'Ay, of love. He has made you worldly-wise for a saint. Hast everbefore been beyond thy walls?'

  'Of course.'

  'And studied this and that? Experience, methinks is the right nurse forsuch a creed. What made you accuse me of dishonour?'

  'I did not.'

  'Nay, is that to be a saint?'

  'Whom the shoe fits, let her wear it.'

  'Bernardo! _Where got you the shoe_?'

  'Does it fit, I say?'

  'I fear me 'twas in some bagnio.'

  'Where you had dropped it? For shame!'

  A rather long pause.

  'I will not be angry--just yet. Where got you the shoe, I say? Aneavesdropper is well equipped for a prophet.'

  'I am no eavesdropper.'

  'Who enlightened you?'

  'Your cicisbeo.'

  'Under that title?'

  'Nay; it is not the devil's policy to call himself devil.'

  A shorter pause.

  'But you had heard of me?'

  'Nothing escapes the Church's hearing. Besides, Messer Lanti's summerlodge is within call, one may say of San Zeno.'

  'You are daring. Dost know in what high favour he stands with theDuke?'

  'Else how could he have compassed Uriah's dismissal to the wars?'

  Silence, and then a sigh.

  'Whom do you mean by Uriah?'

  'Thy lord, the Count of Casa Caprona.'

  'He is a soldier, and an old man.'

  'Didst covenant with his age in thy marriage vows?'

  'Bernardino, I am very sleepy.'

  'Sleep, then, and forget thyself, and awake, another.'

  She sighed, and put her arms softly about him and her cheek against hisshoulder. Messer Lanti, falling back, saw her thus, with closed eyes;and laughed, and then frowned, and cried boisterously--

  'Hast converted her, Parablist? Art a saint indeed?'

  He spurred forward again, with a discontented look, and madam opened hereyes.

  'What gossips are thine old monks, Bernardino; and what hypocrites,denouncing the licence they example!'

  'I know not what you mean.'

  'Are they all saints, then, in San Zeno?'

  'That is for Rome to say. It is a good law which lays down this wine ofsanctity to mature. In a hundred years we shall know what stood thetest.'

  'Ah me! And I am but seventeen. Will you speak for your Abbot?'

  'Ay, like a dear son.'

  'Is he your father, Bernardo?'

  'Is he not the father of us all?'

  'Maybe. But 'tis of Benjamin I ask. Now, he is a strange father,methinks, to bid his Benjamin, thus apparelled, on a wild goose chase.'

  'He could not discount the voices.'

  'What voices?'

  The boy lifted his face and eyes to the heavens, and lowered them againwith no answer but a sigh of rapture.

  'So? And did the voices bid thee wear a velvet mantlet and roses to thyshoes?' whispered the girl, with a tiny chuckle.

  'They said, "Not in cockle shells, but a plume, goes the Pilgrim ofLove,"' answered Bembo. 'As I am and have been, God finds me fitting inHis sight.'

  'And the Father Abbot, I wot?'

  'Yes: "Since," says he, "Christ bequeathed His Kingdom to beauty."'

  'And you have inherited it? I think I will be your subject, Bernardo.'

  'I hope so, Madonna.'

  He spoke perfectly gravely, and made her a little courtly gesturebackwards.

  'Well,' said she, 'had _I_ been Father Abbot, I had put this pet of myfancy in a cage.'

  'You know not of what you speak,' he answered seriously. 'God worksgreat ends with little instruments. The puny bee is yet the very fairymidwife of the forests, I should have broke my heart had he denied me.'

  'It would have saved others, alack!'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Nothing at all. Will you sing me another parable, Bernardo?'

  'Ay, Madonna; and on what subject? The woman taken in adultery?'

  'If you like; and whom Christ forgave.'

  '_And He said: "Go, and sin no more"_'

  She began to weep softly.

  'It is shocking to be so abused for a little thing. I would you wereback with your monks.'

  He sighed.

  'Ah!' she murmured, still weeping, 'that this bee had been content toremain a pander to his flowers! To dup hell's door with a reed! Youknow not to what you have engaged yourself, my poor boy.'

  'To Christ, His service of Love,' he said simply.

  'Go back, go back!' she cried in pain. 'There are ten thousandsophisters to interpret that word according to their lusts. ConvertGaleazzo? Convert the brimstone lake from burning! Dost know themanner of man he is?'

  'Else why am I here?'

  'Ay, but his moods, his passions, his nameless, shameless deeds? Hehath no pity but for his desires; no mercy but through his caprices. Tocross him is to taste the rack, the fire, the living burial. He ispossessed. Some believe him Caligula reincarnate--an atavism of thatdreadful stock. And dost think to quench that furnace with a parable?Unless, indeed--Go back, little Bembo, and waste thy passion for reformon thy monks.'

  'Madonna,' he said, 'I obey the voices. I shall not be let to perish,since Christ died to save His world to loveliness.'

  It was the early rapture of the renaissance, penetrating like an Aprilsong into these newly reclaimed lands. The wind blew from Florence, andall the peaceful vales, so long trodden into a bloody mire, wereawakening to the ecstasy of the _Promise_. That men interpretedaccording to their lights--lights burning fast and passionate in mostplaces, but in a few quiet and holy. The breed of German bandits, offoreign mercenaries, was swept away. Gone was the whole warring race ofthe Visconti, and in its place the peasant Sforza had set a guard aboutthe land of his fierce adoption, that he might till and graft andprosper in peace. Italy had asserted itself the inheritance of itschildren, the Court of God's Vicegerent, the chosen land of Love'sgospel. That, too, men interpreted according to their lights. 'We areall the vineyard of Rome,' said the little Parablist. Alas! he thoughtRome the Holy of Holies, and his father a saint. But his father, whoadored him, had committed him, with his blessing, to this mad romance!Such were the paradoxes of the Gospel of Love.

  Beatrice spoke no more, and they rode on in silence. About evening theycame into a pleasant dell, where there was a level sward among rocks;and a little stream, running down a stairway of stones, droppedlaughing, like a child going to bed, into the quiet of a rushy pool.Great chestnuts clothed the slopes, and made a mantle, powdered withstars, to the setting sun. It was a very nest for love.

  Messer Lanti, halting, commanded the green tents to be pitched on thegrass. Then, with a stormy scowl and a mockery of courtesy, he came todismount his lady.

  'Now,' says he, as he got her aside, 'if I do not show thy saint to be apetticoat, my hug of thee is like to prove a bear's.'

  'What!' she said, amazed: 'Bernardo?'

  He ground his teeth.

  'I do not mark his pink cheeks for nothing.'

  'Well, an he be,' she retorted coldly, 'I am liker, than if he be not,to lose my g
allant.'

  'That depends,' he growled, 'upon whom your fickleship honours with thattitle'; and he strode away, calling roughly to Bembo, 'Art for a bath,saint, before supper?'

  'Why, gladly, Carlo,' said the boy, 'so we may be private.'

  They went down to the pool together, and stripped and entered. Lantisaw a Ganymede, and was not pleased thereat. He came to supper in avery bad humour, which no innocent artifice of his guest could allay.The kill that day of their falcons--partridges, served in their ownfeathers, and stuffed with artichokes and truffles--was tough; the pearsand peaches were sour; the confetti savourless and of stale design. Herated his cook, cursed his servitors, and drank more than he ate. Whenthe disagreeable meal was ended, he strode ruffling away, saying hedesired his own sole company, which it were well that all shouldrespect. Bembo saw him go, with a sigh and a smile.

  'Good, honest soul,' quoth he, 'that already wakes to the reckoning!'

  Madam misunderstood him, and pressed a little closer, with a happy echoof his sigh. Her eyes were soft with wine and passion. She had noprecedent for doubting her influence on the moment she chose to make herown.

  'The reckoning!' she murmured. 'But I am wax in thy hands, prettysaint. Shalt confess me, and take what toll thou wilt of my sins?'

  Her hand settled light as a bird on his.

  'Sing to me, Bernardino,' she whispered wooingly, 'sith the cloud isgone from our moon, and I am in the will to love.'

  He shot one little startled glance her way; then slowly slung round hislute, and, touching the strings pensively, melted into the followingreproach:--

  'Speak low! What do you ask, false love? Speak low! Sin cannot speak too low. The night-wind stealing to thy bosom, The dead star, dropping like a blossom, Less voiceless be than thou!

  Low, lower yet, false love, if to confess What guilt, what shameful need? God, who can hear the budding grass, And flake kiss flake in the snowy pass, Your secret else will heed.

  Ah! thou art silent, not from love, but fear, And true love knows no fear. Creeping, soft-footed, in the dust, It is not love, but conscious lust, Which dreads that God shall hear.'

  He rose swiftly beside her, while she sat, dumbly biting a lock of herown hair. The frown of outraged passion was in her eyes. What had thefool dared in rejecting her!

  To touch the perfumed essence of sin with a rebuke which was like acaress--that, _pace_ his monks, was Bernardo's rendering of the Gospel;and who shall say that, in its girlish tenderness, its earnestemotionalism, it was not the most dangerous method of all? Not everyadulterous woman is fit to meet the gentle fate of Christ's. It is notalways well to doctor too much kindness with more. Surfeit, surely, isnot safely cured, unless by a God, with sugar-plums.

  'For shame!' he said quietly; 'for shame! Christ weeps for thee!'

  She looked up with a frozen, insolent smile.

  'Yet there is no tear in all the night, prophet.'

  He raised his hand. A star trailed down the sky, and disappeared behindthe trees. It startled her for a moment, and in that moment he wasgone, striding into the moonlight. She saw a sword gleam in the shadowof the tent.

  'Carlo!' she hissed; 'Carlo! follow and kill him!'

  Messer Lanti came out of his ambush, sheathing his blade. His teethgrinned in the white glow. He sauntered up to her, and stood lookingdown, hand on hip.

  'Not for all the bona-robas in the world,' he said, and struck his hiltlightly. 'This I dedicate to his service from this day. Let whocrosses my little saint beware it.'

  He burst out laughing, not fierce, but low.

  'Thou art well served in thy confessor, woman. Wert never dealt afitter penance.'

  It was significant enough that he had no word but mockery for herdiscomfiture. He might have spitted the seduced on a point ofgallantry; for the siren, she was sacred through her calling.

  In the meanwhile Bernardo had left the green, had passed the low,roistering camp pitched at a respectful distance beyond, and had thrownhimself upon his knees in the wide fields.

  'Sweet Jesus,' he prayed, 'O justify Thy Kingdom before Thy servant!Already my young footsteps are warned of the bitter pass to come. BeThou with me in the rocky ways, lest I faint and slip before my time.'

  He remained long minutes beseeching, while the moon, anchored in alittle stream of clouds, seemed to his excited imagination the very boatwhich awaited the coming of One who should walk the waters. Hestretched out his arms to it.

  'Lord save me,' he cried, 'or I sink!'

  He heard a snuffle at his back, and looked round and up to find the foolCicada regarding him glassily.

  'Sink!' stuttered the creature, swaying where he stood. 'Lord save metoo! I am under already--drowned in Malmsey!'

  Bembo rose to his feet with a happy sigh. '_Exultate Deo adjutorinostro!_' he murmured, 'I am answered.'

  His clear, serene young brow confronted the fuddled wrinkles of theother's like an angel's.

  'Cicada mio,' he said endearingly; 'judge if God is dull of hearing,when, on the echo of my cry, here is one holding out his hand to me!'

  The Fool, staring stupidly, lifted his own lean right paw, and squintedto focus his gaze on it.

  'Meaning me?--meaning this?' he said.

  Bembo nodded.

  'A return, with interest, on the little service I was able to renderthee this morning. O, I am grateful, Cicada!'

  The Fool, utterly bemused, squatted him down on the grass in a suddeninspiration, and so brought his wits to anchor. Bernardo fell on hisknees beside him.

  'What moved you to come and save me?' he said softly. 'What moved you?'

  Cicada, disciplined to seize the worst occasion with an epigram, made adesperate effort to concentrate his parts on the present one.

  'The wine in my head,' he mumbled, waggling that sage member. ''Tis thewet-nurse to all valour. I walked but out of the furnace a furlong tocool myself, and lo! I am a hero without knowing it.'

  He looked up dimly, his face working and twitching in the moonlight.

  'Recount, expound, and enucleate,' said he. 'From what has the Foolsaved the Parablist?'

  'From the deep waters,' said Bembo, 'into which he had entered,magnifying his height.'

  The Fool fell a-chuckling.

  'There was a hunter once,' said he, 'that thought he would sound hishorn to a hymn, and behold! he was chasing the deer before he hadfingered the first stops. Expound me the parable, Parablist. Thoupreachest universal goodwill, they say?'

  'Ay, do I.'

  'Thou shalt be confuted with thine own text.'

  'How, dear Fool?'

  'Why, shall not every wife be kind to her friend's husband?'

  'Ay, if she would be unkind to her own.'

  The Fool scratched his head, his hood thrown back.

  'And so, in thy wisdom, thou step'st into a puddle, and lo! it is overthy ears. Will you come out, good Signor Goodwill, and ride home in ababy's pannier?'

  Bembo caught one of the wrinkled hands in his soft palms.

  'Dear Cicada,' he said, 'are there not tears in your heart the whilesyou mock? Do you not love me, Cicada, as one you have saved fromdeath?'

  Some sort of emotion startled the harsh features of the Fool.

  'What better love could I show,' he muttered, 'than to warn thee backfrom the toils that stretch for thy wings?'

  'Ah, to warn me, to warn me, Cicada!' cried the boy, 'but not home tothe nest. How shall he ever fly that fears to quit it? Be rather likemy mother, Cicada, and advise these my simple wings.'

  The Fool caught his breath in a sudden gasp--

  'Thy mother! I!'

  A spasm of pain seemed to cross his face. He laughed wildly.

  'An Angel out of a Fool! That were a worthy parent to hold divinity inleading-strings.'

  'Zitto, Cicca mio!' said Bembo sweetly, pressing a finger to his lips.'Do I not know what wit goes to the acting of folly--what e
xperience,what observation? If thou wouldst lend these all to my help and aid!'

  'In what?'

  'In this propaganda to govern men by love.'

  'Thou playest, a child, with the cross-bow.'

  'I know it. I have been warned; direct thou my hand.'

  'I!' exclaimed the Fool once more in a startled cry. And suddenly,wonder of wonders! he was grovelling at the other's knees, pawing them,weeping and moaning, hiding his face in the grass.

  'What saint is this?' he cried, 'what saint that claims the Fool to hisguide?'

  'Alas!' said the boy, 'no saint, but a child of the human God.'

  'And He mated with Folly,' cried Cicada, 'and Folly is to direct thebolt!'

  He sat up, beating his brow in an ecstasy, then all in a moment forbore,and was as calm as death.

  'So be it,' he said. 'Be thou the divine fool, and I thy mother.'

  With a quick movement Bembo caught the Fool's cheeks between his palms.

  'Ay, mother,' said he, with a little choking laugh, 'but see that thyhand on mine be steady, lest the quarrel fly wide or rebound uponourselves.'

  It was the true mark indeed to which the cunning rascal had all thistime been sighting his bow. He watched anxiously now for the tokens ofa hit.

  The Fool sat very still awhile.

  'Speak clearer,' he muttered; then of a sudden: 'What wouldst ask ofme?'

  'Ah! dear,' sighed Bembo; 'only that thou wouldst justify thyself ofthis new compact of ours.'

  'I am clean--as thou readest love. Who but God would consort withFolly? The Fool is cursed to virginity.'

  'Cicada, dear, but there is no Chastity without Temperance.'

  The Fool tore himself away, and slunk crouching back upon the grass.

  'I renounce thy God!' he chattered hoarsely, 'that would have me falseto my love, my mistress, my one friend! Who has borne me through thesepasses, stood by me in pain and madness, dulled the bitter tooth ofshame while it tore my entrails? Cure wantonness in women, gluttony inwolves, before you ask me to be dastard to my dear.'

  'Alas!' cried Bembo, 'then am I lost indeed!'

  A long pause followed, till in a moment the Fool had flung himself oncemore upon his face.

  'Lay not this thing on me,' he cried, clutching at the grass; 'lay itnot! It is to tear my last hope by the roots, to banish me from thekingdom of dreams, to bury me in the everlasting ice! I will followthee in all else, humbly and adoringly; I will try to vindicate thislove which has stooped from heaven to a clown; I will perish in thyservice--only waste not my paradise in the moment of its realisation.'

  Bembo stooped, kneeling, and laid one hand softly on his shoulder.

  'Poor Cicada,' he said, 'poor Cicada! Alas! I am a child where I hadhoped a man, and my head sinks beneath the waters. Tired am I, and fainto go rest my head in a lap that erst invited me. Return thou to thybottle, as I to my love.'

  The Fool, trailing himself up on his knees, caught his hands in a wild,convulsive clutch.

  'Fiend or angel!' he cried, 'thou shall not!--The woman!--The skirts ofthe scarlet woman! Go rest thyself--not there--but in peace. From thismoment I abjure it--dost hear, I abjure it? I kill my love for love'ssake. O! O!'

  And he fell writhing, like a wounded snake, on the grass.

  '_Salve, sancta parens!_' said Bembo, lifting up his hands fervently tothe queen of night. The pious rogue was quite happy in his stratagem,since it had won him his first convert to cleanness.