CHAPTER XIX
The hitch in the progress of the harvest came ever a little and a little more into evidence: the smut darkened on the ear; the whisper of a threatened blight grew from vague to articulate—grew clearer, grew bolder—until, lo!—all in a moment it was a definite voice.
This happened on the morning succeeding Bernardo's visit to the Casa Caprona—a visit of which, it would appear, the Duchess of Milan had been made somehow cognisant.
Bona, on this morning, came into the hall of council, her white hand laid, as she walked, upon the shoulder of Messer Cecco Simonetta, the State Secretary. That light, caressing touch was an arresting one to some eyes observing it—Ludovico's among the number. Its like, in that particular context of confidence and affection, had not been seen for many weeks—never, indeed, since the secretary had taken it upon himself to caution his mistress on the subject of a perilous fancy. He would have had no wish to balk any whim of hers that turned on self-indulgence. It was this whim of self-renunciation which had alarmed him. There was a mood which might conceivably vindicate itself in the sacrifice of a kingdom to a sentiment. Such things had happened; and saints were men. He would put it to her with all humility.
And she had listened and answered icily: 'I thank thee, Messer Secretary. But our faith is commensurate with our purpose, which is to sweep out our house, not pull it down. What then? Dread'st thou to be included in the scourings? Fear not. It is no part of our faith to forget our obligations.'
Which was a cruel response; but its hauteur silenced Mr. Secretary. And thenceforth he served in silence, watching, anxiously enough, the progress of his lady's infatuation, and feeling at last immensely relieved when on this day, her warm palm settled on his shoulder, melting the long frost between them.
She looked rather wistfully into his worn eyes, and smiled a little tale without words of confidence restored. And he, for his part, spoke of no matters less commonplace than the State's welfare.
'The Duke will make Christmas with us, Madonna,' he said; 'I have advices from him.'
'He will be most welcome,' she answered, and her face coloured with real pleasure. But the next moment it was like snow, and its vision hard crystals of frost. She had seen the Saint Magistrate advancing to accost her.
There was a strange look in the boy's eyes as they gazed, unflinchingly nevertheless, into hers—a look mingled of pain and doubt and fortitude. She had said no unkind word to him; yet a frost can nip without wind; and surely here was a plant very sensitive to the human atmosphere. He questioned her face a little; then spoke out bold, though low—while Messer Ludovico, turning papers at the table, was very busy—watching.
'Madonna, wilt thou walk apart? I am fain to crave thy private ear a moment.'
She stood like ice.
'Touching whose shortcomings now?' she asked aloud, and with a little cold laugh which disdained that implied confidence.
He gazed at her steadily, though in trouble.
'Nay, I spoke of none. It is of moment. Madonna, I entreat thee.'
For an instant the milk of her sweetened to him. He was such a baby after all. And then she remembered whence he had lately come, and gall flooded her veins—gall not so much of jealousy, perhaps, as of contempt. Doubtless, she thought, he could have ventured himself into that hothouse in the Via Sforza with impunity, since, though spirit he might be, he was of that uninflammability that his virtue amounted to little better than the virtue of sexlessness. She felt almost glad, at last, to have this excuse for dissociating herself from a cause which had always chilled, and had ceased now for some time even to amuse her.
Feel no surprise over the seeming suddenness of her revolt. Apart from her position, this Duchess of Milan was never anything but a typical woman, common-souled, lacking spiritual sensitiveness, leaning to her masculine peers. Breeding was her business, and motherhood her passion. She took no more jar of offence from the intimate custody of babies, than does a cat in licking open the eyes of its seven-days born. Her refinements were adventitious, an accident of her condition. She had felt it no outrage to her stately loveliness to yield it to Tassino's usings. She had that Madonna-like serenity of face which is the expression of an inviolable mindlessness; and no impressions other than physical could long pervade her. Stupidity is the rarest beauty-preserver; and it is to be feared that Bona was stupid.
Now, it is to be remembered that Bernardo had not mentioned shortcomings at all; but her object being to snub rather than answer him, she chose to take refuge in her sex's prerogative of intuition. Dwelling a moment in a rising temper, she suddenly flounced on him.
'If you will seek doubtful company, Messer, you must not cry out to have your fervour misread by it.'
He was about to answer; but she stopped him peremptorily.
'Women will be women, good or bad. We cannot promote a civil war in Milan to avenge some pin-prick to thy conscience. Indeed, sir, we weary a little of this precisianism. Is it come to be a sin to laugh, to warm our hands at a fire, to prefer a fried collop to a wafer? You must forgive us, like the angel that you are. We are human, after all, and pledged to human policies. Our State's before the magistracy. There are things weightier to discuss than a mischief's naughty word. We cannot hear you now.'
She turned away, relenting but a little, though flushed and trembling.
'Come, brother,' she said. 'Shall we not pass to the order of the day?'
Ludovico responded with smooth and smiling alacrity. One could never have guessed by his face the consternation which had seized his soul. Yet, so cleverly had he hoodwinked himself, this sudden leap of light was near staggering him. Merriment and warmth and fried collops? The charge in its utter, its laughable irrelevancy, was, he thought, a little hard on the saint, seeing how the gist of the new creed lay all in a natural enjoyment of life's bounties. What powder had winged such a startling shot?—weariness?—disenchantment?—remorseful hankerings, perhaps, after a discarded suet pudding, which, after all, had been infinitely more native to this woman's taste than the ethereal soufflé, whose frothy prettiness had for the moment appealed to her meat-fed satiety?
The last, most probably. And, in that case
His brain, through all the mazes of council, went tracing out a busy thread of self-policy. If this were really the end, he must hurry to foreclose on it ere the split widened into a gulf—before ever the first whisper of its opening reached Tassino's ears. The time for temporising was closed.
'It touches, your Grace,' he purred, 'upon the reception to be accorded the envoys of Ferrara and Mantua.'
The wind of a fall, like the wind of an avalanche, runs before the body of it. Messer Bembo, passing out, amazed, from his rebuff, found in himself an illustration of this inevitable human truism. All the envies, spites, and jealousies which his sweetness, under favour, had kept at bay, seemed now gathered in his path to hustle and insult him.
'Good Master Nature,' mocked one, 'hast ever a collop in thy pocket for a starved woodman?'
'See how he stumbles, missing his leading-strings!' cackled another.
A third knocked off his bonnet.
'Prophesy, who is he that smote thee!' he cried, and ducking, came up elsewhere.
'Ay, prophesy!' thundered a fourth voice; and a fist like a rammer crashed upon the assailant's face, spread-eagling it. The man went down in a welter. Bembo fled to Lanti's arms, feebly imprisoning them.
'Thou thing of bloody passions!' he shrieked. 'Wouldst thou so vindicate me?'
Carlo roared over his shoulder:—
'Help his prophecy, ye vermin, when he's ears to hear; and tell him I wait to carve them from his head.'
He bore Bembo with him from the hall, as he might carry a moth fluttering on his sleeve. Murmurs rose in his wake, seething and furious; but he heeded them not. In a deserted court beyond, he shook the pretty spoil from his arm, not roughly but with an air of madness, and stood breathing like a driven ox.
'What now?' he groaned at last—'what now?'
Then all in a moment the boy was sobbing before him.
'O Carlo! dear Carlo! I would the Duke were returned!'
His grief and helplessness moved the other to a frenzy. His chest heaved, he caught at his throat, struggling vainly for utterance of the fears which had of late been tormenting him without definite reason. Seeing his state, Bernardo sought to propitiate it with a smile that trembled out of tears.
'Nay, mind me not—a child to cry at a shadow.'
Lanti choked, and found voice at length.
'The Duke? Monstrous! Call'st thou for him? Forget'st Capello? Art changed indeed.'
'Alas!' cried the boy, 'no change in me. I think only of a more ruling tyranny than mine. Pitiless himself, he made pity sweet in others. I've converted 'em from deeds to words, that's all.'
'The Duke!'
'I begin to see. Thou warned'st me, I remember. The fashion of me passes, like thy shoe's long beaks. Yesterday they were a span; to-day they're shrunk by half; to-morrow, mayhap, ye'll trim them from your feet and run on goat's hooves.'
'Thou ravest. 'Tis for thee, being Duke-deputy, to trim us.'
'Into what? Cherubs or satyrs? Be quick, lest the fashion change while you talk.'
'Go to! Thou art the Duke, I say.'
'Well, a fine puppet, and great at righting wrongs. There's Lucia to witness.'
'She's provided for.'
'With bread. O, I am a very Mahomet. If I but nod my head, the city shall crack and crumble to it.'
'God! What ails thee, boy?'
'Something mortal, I think. A breath withered me just now!'
'A breath? Whose breath?'
'Whose? O Carlo, forgive me! What have I said or done? Look, I'm myself again. It just fell like a frost in June, killing my young olives. I had so hung upon it, too—its help and promise. The harvest seemed so certain.'
'Ah! She's thrown you over?'
'Dreams, dreams!' sighed poor little Nathan; 'to live on dreams—a deaf man's voices, a blind man's vision. I have seen such things, built such kingdoms out of dreams. Carlo! what have I done?'
Lanti ground his teeth.
'Done? Proved woman's constancy a dream—that's all.'
He clapped his chest, and looked earnestly at Bembo, and cried in a broken voice:—
'Boy—before God—tell me—thou hast not learned to desire her?'
The child looked up at him, with a pitiful mouth.
'Ah! I know not what you mean; unless it be that pain with which I see her melt from out my dream when most possessing it.'
'Most? She? She to possess thy dream, thy purpose?' cried Lanti, and drew back in great emotion.
'She is my purpose,' said the boy—'or was, alack!'
'Is and was,' growled the other. 'Well, 'tis true that for the purpose of thy purpose I remain; but then I don't count. What am I to thee?'
'My love, beyond all women.'
'I am? That's much. Now will we do without the Duchess.'
'Alas!'
'Shall we not?'
'She hath so nursed my flock to pasture—the kind ewe-mother. The bell was about her neck. Now, it seems, she will have neither bell nor shepherd, and the flock must stray.'
'Hath she in truth cast thee? On what pretext?'
'Nay, I know not. It seemed the twin-brother of him that once she used for loving me.'
'Ay, it is their way. But scorn, for your part, to show caloric as she cools.'
'Alas!'
'Trust me there. What had you said to chill her?'
'Nothing that I know, but to crave her ear a moment.'
'It is the sink of slander in a woman—a pink shell with a dead fish inside. Yet thy whisper might have sweetened it.'
'Stung it rather. Carlo, I know not what to do.'
'Tell me.'
'Shall I, indeed? I fear thee. Wilt thou be gentle?'
'As a lamb.'
'Well, then, I'll tell thee—I am so lost. Carlo, dear, I know where the ring is.'
'You do? Do you see how calm I am? Where is it?'
'Beatrice hath it—thy Beatrice.'
'You know that?'
'She sent to tell me—last night. God help me, Carlo, for a credulous fool!'
'You went to her? Well?'
'She would give it me, Carlo—O Carlo! on such a condition!'
'Which if you refused?'
'It shall be a fatal ring to me, she ended.'
'Shall it?—or to her? Well, that's said. And now, wilt thou go rest a little, sweetheart, while I think? I cannot think in company.'
'I will go, but not to rest.'
'Pooh! thy Fool shall drug thy folly with his greater.'
'Alas! he's gone.'
'Gone?'
'He too. Nay, blaspheme not. He had his reasons.'
'For what?'
'For leaving me awhile. "My folly starves on thine ambrosia," he said. "I would fain feed it a little on human flesh."'
'How long's he gone?'
'Some days.'
'Let him keep out of my way when he returns.'
'I'll not love you if you hurt him.'
'Then I'll not hurt him. Thy love is mine, and thy confidence, look you. This ring—speak not a word on it, to Bona or another, till I bid you.'
'Then I will not.'
'That's good. God rest you, sweetling.'
He watched him go, with frowning eyes; then, no message coming to him from the hall, strode off to his own quarters in the palace, and bided there all day.
'These women,' was the burden of his fury—'these women—soulless beasts! To aim at winning heaven by debauching its angel!—there's their morality in a nutshell! But I'll send him back there first. So Beatrice hath the ring! What will she do with it? What shall I with the knowledge? God! if my wits could run with my rage! To forestall her, else'
His fingers worked, as he tramped, on the jewelled hilt of his poniard.
It was Messer Lanti's misfortune that, in knocking down Bernardo's assailant, he had defaced, literally as well as symbolically, the escutcheon of a powerful family. The fact was brought to the Duchess's notice when, shortly after the event, she passed through the hall in company with her brother-in-law. Hoarse clamour of kinsmen and partisans greeted her, backed, by way of red evidence, by the condition of the victim himself.
Her wrath and emotion knew no bounds. She flushed, and stamped, and wept, and in the midst collapsed. It was outrageous that her authority should be so defied (though, indeed, it had not been) by the brute creature of a creature of her lord's. The Duke had never foreseen or intended such an arrogation of his prerogatives by his deputy. She would teach this swashbuckler a lesson.
Then she broke down and turned, tearful, almost wringing her hands, to her brother-in-law. Sure never woman was cursed in such a false position—impotent and responsible in one. What should she do?
He took her aside.
'These two,' he said, 'are as yet persona gratæ with Galeazzo. At the same time thou canst not with decency or safety ignore the outrage. Seize and confine Messer Lanti out of harm's way until the Duke's return—just a formal and considerate detention, pending his decision. There's thy wise compromise, sister.'
And so indeed it seemed. But undoubtedly the best wisdom lay in his own adroit seizure of a fortuitous situation. He had wanted this Lanti out of the way; had foreseen him, as it were, lurking in the thickets far ahead through which his policy sought a road. Here was the fine opportunity, and without risk to himself, to ambush the ambuscado, and have it laid by the heels.
Bona sobbed and fretted, nursing her grievance.
'Why did this angel come to vex us with his heaven? The world, I think, would be very well but for its schooling by saints and prophets. Children grow naughty under inquisition. There, have it as you will, brother; use or abuse me—it is all one. It is my fate to be persecuted through my best intentions.'
Ludovico put force on himself to linger a little and soothe her. His soul leapt with anxiety to be gone. To instruct Jacopo; to commission Tassino—to loose his long-straining bolt in fact—here was the moment sprung inevitable upon him. He had no choice but to seize it; and then—
'Your Grace must excuse me,' he said at length, smiling. 'I have to go prepare against a journey.'
'A journey!' she exclaimed, aghast.
'Surely,' he answered mildly. 'The matter is insignificant enough to have escaped your burdened memory; but smaller souls must hold to their engagements. My brother Bari and I are to Christmas with the King of France in Tours. We sail from Genoa, whither, in a day or two, I must ride to join him. It is unfortunate, at this pass; but'
'Go, sir,' she broke in—'go. I see I am to be the scapegoat of all your policies,' and she hurried from him, weeping.