A Jay of Italy/Chapter 14

Messer Bembo,' said Montano, between meditative and caustic, 'you do not agree that our poor Lupo's definition of a perfect government, an autocracy with an angel at its head, is a practicable definition?'

He was sitting, as often during the last few days, at talk with the boy, on subjects civic, political, and theological. They had discussed at odd times the whole ethics of government, from the constitution of Lycurgus to the code of Thomas Aquinas: they had expounded, each in his way, a scheme or a dream of socialism: they had agreed, without prejudice, to liken the evolution of the simple Church of Peter into the complicated fabric of the fourth Sixtus to a woodland cottage, bought by some great princely family, and improved into a summer palace, which was grown out of harmony with its environments. Somewhat to his amazement, Montano discovered that the boy was the opposite to a dogmatic Christian; that his was a religion, which, while conforming or adapting itself to the orthodox, was in its essence a religion of mysticism. No doubt the traditions of his origin were, to some extent, to seek for this. A pledge, so to speak, of spontaneous generation, Bernardo accounted for himself on a theory of reincarnation from another sphere. He believed in the possibility of the resurrection of the body, which, though destroyed, and many times destroyed, could be, in its character of mere soul-envelope or soul expression, as regularly reconstructed at the will of its informing spirit. Death, he declared, was just the beginning of the return of that divested spirit to the spring of life—to the river welling in the central Eden from the loins of the Father, the spouse of Nature, the secret, the unspeakable God, of whom was Christ, his own dear brother and comrade.

He would tell Messer Montano, with his sweet, frank eyes arraigning that crabbed philosopher's soul, how this unstained first-born of Nature, this sinless heir of love, this wise and pitying Christ, moved by an infinite compassion to see the wounded souls of his brothers—those few who had not made their backward flight too difficult—come, soiled and earth-cloyed, to seek their reincarnation in the spring, had descended, himself, upon earth at last, sacrificing his birthright of divinity, that he might teach men how to live. And the men his brothers had slain him, in jealousy, even as Cain slew Abel; yet had his spirit, imperishably great, continued to dwell in their midst, knowing that, did it once leave the earth, it must be for ever, and to mankind's eternal unregeneracy. For, so Bernardo insisted, there was an immutable law in Nature that no soul reincarnated could re-enter the sphere from which it was last returned, but must seek new fields of action. Wherefore all earth-loving spirits, which we call apparitions, were such as after death clung about the ways of men, in a yearning hopefulness to redeem them by touching their hearts with sympathy and their eyes with a mist of sorrow. And, of such gentle ghosts, Christ was but the first in faith and tenderness.

A wild, dim theory, peopling woods, and fields, and cities with a mystic company—phantoms, yet capable of revealing themselves in fitful glimpses to the sinless and the sympathetic among men—ghosts, weaving impalpable webs of love across populous ways to catch men's souls in their meshes. Montano called it all transcendental fustian. It aroused his most virulent scorn. What had this cloud-moulding, moon-paring stuff to do with the practical issues of life, with freedom, and government by popular representation? He even professed to prefer to it Lascaris, with his metaphysical jargon and apostolic succession of atoms.

'He gives you at least something to take hold of,' he snarled. 'Listen to this'—and he condescended to read an excerpt from a recent treatise by his hated rival:—

'"Life,"' he read, '"is put out at compound interest. We represent, each in himself, a fraction of the principal, having a direct pedigree ab initio. As a spider will gather the hundred strands of his web into a little ball which he will swallow, so might we each absorb and claim the whole vast web of life. Rolled up to include each radiating thread, the web becomes I; the spider is I; I am the principal of life—not the principle: that is Prometheus' secret."'

'"I am a fraction of life's compound interest. The sum of the mental impressions of all my thread of tendency (which gathers back, taking up cross threads by the way, to the central origin) is invested in my paltry being, and lieth there, together with mine own interest on the vast accumulation, in tail for my next of kin. What can I do in my tiny span but touch the surface of this huge estate: pluck here and there a flower of its fields, whose roots are in immemorial time? Imagination founders in those fathomless depths. Tenuous, dim-forgotten ghosts rise from them. Who shall say that my dreams, however seeming mad and grotesque, are not faithful reflexes of states and conditions which were once realities; memories of forms long extinct; echoes of times when I flew, or spun, or was gaseous, or vast, or little; when I mingled intimate with shapes which are chimerical to my present understanding"'

The reader broke off, with an impatient grunt.

'There!' he said, 'dreams mad and grotesque enough, in good sooth; yet not so mad as thine.'

'Well,' said Bernardo, 'well,' with perfect sweetness and good temper.

'Christ in the world? Fah!' snarled the philosopher. 'I know him. He sits at Rome under a triple tiara. Quit all this sugared dreaming, boy, and face the future like a man.'

'Does the sun shine out of yesterday or to-morrow? It is enough for the moment to take thought for itself. The future is not.'

'Pooh! a mere Jesuitry, justifying the moment's abomination.'

'Nay: for we shall have to retraverse our deeds, and carry back their burden to our first account—with most, a toilful journey.'

'They would do better to stop with your Christ, then; and, judged by the preponderance of evil spirits here, I think most do. No future, say'st? But how about that heir of the compound interest? Is there not one waiting to succeed to him? Where? Why, in the future, as surely and inevitably as this date, which I am going to swallow in a moment, will be blood and tissue in me to-morrow.'

He held the fruit up—with a swift movement Bernardo whipped it out of his hand and ate it himself.

'How for your future now?' he chuckled, pinking all over.

Cicada laughed loudly, and Montano swore. His philosophy was not proof against such practical jokes. But, seeing his fury, the boy put out all his sweetness to propitiate him. He was his father's friend; he was a man of learning; he had suffered grievous wrong. The dog was coaxed presently into opening again upon the angelic principles. It was by such virulent irony that he thought—so warped was his mental vision—to corrode the candour of this saint, and bend him to his own views and uses—a diseased vanity, even had he not reckoned, as will now appear, without the consideration of another possible factor.

And 'So,' said he upon a later occasion, in the sentence which opens this chapter, 'you do not agree with our poor Lupo's practicable definition of a perfect government?'

The Saint's steadfast eyes canvassed the speaker's soul, as if in some shadowy suspicion of an integrity which they were being led, not for the first time, to probe.

'Why, Messer,' said he, 'practicable in so far as, by the dear Christ's influence, grace may come to make an angel even of our Duke.'

Montano tried to return his steady gaze, but failed meanly.

'With submission, Messer Bernardo,' he sniggered, 'I can only follow, in my mind's eye, one certain road to that great man's apotheosis.'

Bembo was silent.

''Tis the road,' continued the other, 'taken before by the Emperor Nero.'

'He stabbed himself, the most wretched pagan, in fear of a worser retribution than heaven's,' said Bembo. 'Alas! do you call that an apotheosis?'

'There are gods and gods,' said Montano,—'Hades and Olympus. Belike Nero was welcomed of his kind, as Galeazzo would be. I can scarce see in the Duke the raw material of your fashion of angel. There's more of the harpy about him than the harp.'

It was a heavenly day. Bernardo, still a little hectic and languid from his fever, sat in the embrasure of a window which gave upon the back court of the smithy. A muffled tinkling of armourers' hammers reached his ears pleasantly from the rear of neighbouring premises. There was a certain happy suggestiveness to him in the sound, evoked, as he hoped it might be, at his host Lupo's instigation. For his endearing optimism had so wrought upon that stricken artificer, during the week he had dwelt in hiding with him, as to persuade the poor man to quit his self-despairing, and hire out his skill—not practically; that was no longer possible; but theoretically—to a deserving fellow-craftsman. Already the sense of touch was curiously refining in the sightless creature, and the glimmer of a new dawn of interest penetrating him. And he was at work again elsewhere.

On the floor at Bembo's feet squatted Cicada, acrid, speaking little, and spending his long intervals of silence in staring at the girl Lucia, who, crouching at a distance away by the fireless forge, in the gloom of the shuttered smithy, seemed given over to an eternal reverie of hate. She, alone of the household, had remained impervious to all the sweet influences of sorrow and pity. Her wrong was such as no angel could remedy.

Cicada spoke now, with a scowl of significance for Montano:—

'Speak plain, master philosopher. Innuendo is the weapon of Fools, and wisdom shall prevail in candour. Thou canst not picture to thyself this evangelised Duke?'

Montano shot a lowering glance at him.

'No, I confess, master Patch,' said he—'unless,' he added grinning, 'by Nero's road.'

'Two whispers do not make one outspokenness,' answered the Fool. 'Hast hinted Nero once, and once again, and still we lack the application. Nero was driven to the road, quotha; well, by whom?—one Galba, an my learning's not a'rust. What then? Is Galba going to drive Galeazzo?'

'Nay, Love, dear Cicca,' put in Bernardo, but half hearing and half understanding.

'Love!' cried the Fool. 'Thou hast hit it. Hear wisdom from the mouths of babes. Love in the hands of rascals—a tool, a catspaw, to pull them their chestnuts from the fire, and then be cast burnt aside.'

He addressed himself, with infinite irony, to Montano.

'Good master philosopher,' said he, 'there is one fable for you: listen while I relate another. A certain rogue was stripped and beaten by a greater, who going on his way, there came a stranger, a mere child, and marked the fellow groaning. "Poor soul!" quoth he in pity; and knelt and bound his hurts and gave him wine, and by kind arts restored him. When shortly the aggressor returning and whistling by that place, his erst-victim, stung to revenge, yet having no weapon left him, did leap and incontinent seize up by his heels the ministering angel, and using his body for flail, knock down his enemy with him, killing both together. Which having done, and picked their pockets, on his way goes he rejoicing, "Now do I succeed to mine enemy's purse and roguery!"'

He ended. Montano, glancing stealthily at Bernardo, wriggled and tittered uneasily.

'Patch hath spoken,' he said; 'great is Patch!'

'I have spoken,' quoth the Fool. 'Dost gather the moral?'

'Not I, indeed.'

'Why, sir, 'tis of roguery making himself master of Love's estate; and yet that is not the full moral neither. For I mind me of a correction; how, before the blow was struck, Folly stepped between, and snatched Love from such a fate, and left the rogues to their conclusions.'

'Well, Folly and Love were well mated. Have you done? I am going to my books.'

He yawned, and stretched himself, and rose.

'I will show you to the door, says Folly,' chirped Cicada, and skipped about the other as he went, with a mincing affectation of ceremonial. But when they were got out of immediate sight and hearing of Bernardo into the front chamber, like a wolf the Fool snapped upon the philosopher, and pinned him into a corner.

'Understood'st my fable well enough,' he grated, in a rapid whisper. 'What! I have waited this opportunity a day or two. Now the stopper is out, let us flow.'

Montano, taken by surprise, was seized with a tremor of irresolution. He returned the Fool's gaze with a frown uncertain, sullen, eager all in one.

'Flow, then,' he muttered, after a little.

'I flow,' went on the other, 'oil and verjuice combined. Imprimis, think not that because I read I would betray thee. Ay, ay—no need to start, sir. Thou shalt not quit playing with thy doll for me; nay, nor dressing and goring it, if thou wilt, with triangles of steel. O, I saw!—the face and the slashes in it, too. I have not since been so ill, like him there, as to read a phantasy out of fact. What then? Would ye silence me?'

'Go on,' whispered Montano hoarsely.

'Well, I flow,' returned the Fool. 'Did I not tell thee candour was the best part of wisdom? Learn by it, then. I have marked thee of late; O, trust me, I have marked thee, thy hints and insinuations. And hereby by folly I swear, could once I think my master wax to such impressions, I would kill him where he stands, and damn my soul to send his uncorrupt to heaven. You sneer? Sneer on. Why, I could have laughed just now to see you, tortuous, sound his sweet candid shallows, where every pebble's plain. Do your own work, I'll not speak or care. You shall not have him to it, that's all. Sooner shall the heavens fall, than he be led by you to poison Galeazzo. Is that plain?'

It was so plain, that the philosopher gasped vainly for a retort.

'Who—who spoke of poison?' he stammered. 'Not I. Dear Messer Fool, you wrong me. This boy—the protégé of della Grande—mine old friend—I would not so misuse him. Why, he succoured me—an ill requital. If I sounded him, 'twas in self-justification only. We seek the same end by different roads—the ancient Gods restored—the return to Nature. Is it not so? Christ or Hyperion—I will not quarrel with the terms. "Knowledge," saith he, "is the fool that left his Eden." Well, he harks back, and so do I.'

'No further, thou, than to Rome and Regillus; but he to Paradise. Halt him not, I say. He shall not be thy catspaw. On these terms only is my silence bought.'

'Then is it bought. Why, Fool, I could think thee a fool indeed. He hath forsworn the court: how could we think to employ him there?'

'You know, as I know, sir, that this secession is a parenthesis, no more. He came to cure the State—not your way. A little repentance will win him back. The disease is in the head—he sees it; not in these warped limbs that the brain governs. He will go back anon.'

'And reign again by love?'

'I hope so, as first ministers reign.'

'No more? Well, we will back him there.'

'Again, be warned; not your way. Make him no text for the reform which builds on murder. I have spoken.'

'Well, we will not. Vale!'—and the philosopher, bowing his head, slunk out by the door which the other opened for him.

A little later, creeping into a narrow court which was the 'run' to his burrow, at the entrance he crossed the path of two cavaliers, whom, upon their exclaiming over the encounter, he drew under an archway.

They were come from playing pall-mall on the ramparts, and carried over their shoulders the tools of their sport—thin boxwood mallets, painted with emblematic devices in scarlet and blue, and having handle-butts of chased silver. Each gentleman wore red full-hose ending in short-peaked shoes, a plain red biretta, and a little green bodice coat, tight at the waist and open at the bosom to leave the arms and shoulders free play. Montano squinted approval of their flushed faces and strong-breathed lungs.

'Well exercised,' quoth he, in his high-pitched whisper; 'well exercised, and betimes belike.'

'News?' drawled Lampugnani. 'O, construe thyself!'

'The Fool,' answered Montano, 'sees through us, that is all.'

'What!' Visconti's brows came down.

'Hush! He hath warned me—not finally; only he pledges his silence on the discontinuance of my practices on his cub.'

'Well,' said Lampugnani serenely; 'discontinue.'

'Messer, he looks, with certainty, to the boy being won back to court anon. How, then! shall we let him go?'

'No!' rapped out Visconti.

'Yes,' said Lampugnani. 'I trow his good way is after all our best. Let him go back, and make the State so fast in love with Love as to prove Galeazzo impossible. He will sanctify our holocaust for us.'

'But the Fool, Messer—the Fool!'

'Will never conspire against his adored master's exaltation.'

'Exaltation? Would ye let this saint, then, to become the people's idol?'

'Ay, that we may discredit him presently for an adulterous idol. No saint so scorned as he whose sanctity trips on woman.'

'What! You think?'

'Exactly—yes—the Duchess. Vale, Messer Montano!'—and he lifted his cap mockingly, and moved off.

In the meanwhile Cicada, having watched, through a slit of the unclosed door, the retreat and disappearance of the philosopher, was about to shut himself in again, with a muttered objurgation or two, when a rapid step sounded without, and on the instant the door was flung back against him, and Messer Lanti strode in. There was no opportunity given him to temporise: the great creature was there in a moment, and had recognised him with a 'pouf!' of relief. He just accepted the situation, and closed the door upon them both.

'Well,' he said acridly, 'here you be, and whether for good or ill let the gods answer!'

Lanti stretched his great chest.

'It is well, Fool; and I am well if he is well. Where is he?'

Cicada pointed. The girl by the forge crouched and glared unwinkingly. The next moment Carlo was in his loved one's arms.

'Why hast hidden thyself, boy?—ah! it is a long while, boy—good to see thee again—stand off—I cannot see thee after all—a curse on these blinking eyes!'

'Dear Carlo, I have been a little ill; my joints ached.'

He wept himself, and fondled and clung to his friend.

'Thou great soft bully! For shame! Why, I love thee, dear. Wert thou so hurt? O Carlo! I have been most ill in spirit.'

'Come back, and we will nurse thee.'

'Alas! What nurses!'

'The tenderest and most penitent—Bona, first of all.'

The arms slid from his neck. Sweet angel eyes glowered at him.

'Bona to heal my spirit? To pour fire into its wounds rather! O, I had thought her pure till yesterday!'

And, indeed, Montano, in the furtherance of his corroding policy, had spared him no evidences of court scandal.

Carlo hung his bullet head.

'Lucia!' cried the boy suddenly and sternly.

The girl, at the word, came slinking to him like a dog, setting her teeth by the way at the stranger. Bernardo put his hand on her lowered head.

'Dost know who this is?' he asked of Carlo.

'Why, I can guess.'

'Canst thou, and still talk of Bona's penitence? Here's proof of it—in this foul deed unexpiated. Was it ever meant it should be?'

He raised his arm denunciatory.

'They have used me to justify their abominations; they have made mine innocence a pander to their lusts. Beware! God's patience nears exhaustion. We wait for Tassino. Will he come? Not while lewd arms imprison and protect him. Talk to me of Bona! Go, child.'

The girl crept back to her former seat. Carlo burst out, low and urgent:—

'Nay, boy, you do the Duchess wrong; now, by Saint Ambrose, I swear you do! She hath not set eyes on Jackanapes since that day—believe it—nor knows, more than another, what's become of him.'

'I could enlighten her. Can she be so fickle?'

'What! Don't you want her fickle? You make my brain turn.'

'O Carlo! What can such a woman see in such a man?'

'God! You have me there. She's just woman, conforming to the fashions.'

'Ah, me! the fashions!'

'Woman's religion.'

'She was taught a better. The fashions! Her wedding-gown should suffice her for all.'

'What! Night and day? But, there, I don't defend her!'

'No, indeed. Art thyself a fashion.'

'I don't defend her, I say. I'm worn and cast aside too.'

'Poor fashion! You'll grace your mistress' tire-woman next; and after her a kitchen-maid; and last some draggled scarecrow of the streets. O, for shame, for shame!'

'Go on. Compare me to Tassino next.'

'Indeed, I see no difference.'

'A low-born Ferrarese! A greasy upstart! Was carver to the Duke, no better; and oiled his fingers in the dish, and sleeked his hair!'

'Well, he was made first fashion. The Duchess sets them.'

'Now, by Saint Ambrose! First fashion! this veal-faced scullion, this fat turnspit promoted to a lap-dog! His fashion was to nurse lusty babies in his eyes!'

'What nursed thou in thine?'

'Go to! I'm a numskull, that I know; but to see no more in me!'

'I speak not for myself.'

'Why, these women, true, whom we hold so delicate—coarser feeders than ourselves—their tastes a fable. There, you're right; I've no right to talk.'

'Not yet.'

'Then, you're wrong. We've parted, I and Beatrice.'

'Carlo!'

'Didst think I 'd risk a quarrel with my saint on so small a matter?'

'Carlo!'

He flew upon the great creature and hugged him.

'My dear, my love! O, I went on so! Why did you let me? O, you give me hope again!'

'There,' growled the honest fellow, still a little sulkily. ''Twas to please myself, not you.'

'Not me!'

'Well, if I did, please me by returning.'

Bernardo shook his head.

'And seem to acquiesce in this?' He signified the girl.

'No seeming,' said Lanti. 'The Duchess promises to abet you in everything. I was to say so, an I could find thee.'

'How did you find me?'

'Let that pass. Will you come?'

'Will she hold Tassino to his bond?'

'She'll try to—I'll answer for it.'

'Will she excuse the Countess of Casa Caprona from her duties to her—for your sake, dear?'

'No need. The lady's a widow, and already self-dismissed.'

'Alas, a widow! O Carlo, that heavy witness gone before!'

'I must stand it. Will you come?'

'Why is this sudden change? I sore misdoubt it for a fashion.'

'Not sudden. I have her word the court goes all astray without thee. She pines to mother thee.'

'Mother!—an adulteress for mother! Alack, I am humbled!'

'Not so low as she. That touches the last matter. She wants the ring back she lent thee.'

'The ring?'

'Ay, the ring.'

'Carlo!'

He searched his clothes and hands in amaze.

'My God! It's gone!'

'Gone? Look again.'

'I had it on my finger. Till this moment I had forgot it clean—my brain so ached. Cicca!'

He turned in trouble on his servant.

'I know nought of it,' growled the Fool. 'If you had but chose to tell me. I am no gossip. Bona's ring was it, and leased to thee? Mayhap the rain that night washed it from thy finger.'

'If it were so—so great a trust abused! O Carlo! What shall I do?'

'Come back and make thy peace with her.'

Yet his brow gloomed, and he shook his head.

'O, O!' choked Bernardo, noting him with anguish.

'She sent a message—I can't help myself,' grunted Carlo. 'Did you seek to retaliate on her innocent confidence by ruining her? She meant the ring—your withholding it—'twas her troth-token from the Duke. Well, this is like getting a woman into trouble.'

Bernardo cast himself with a cry upon him.

'I will go back! I have no longer choice. I must hold myself a hostage to that loss!'

Carlo let out his satisfaction in a growl. But Cicada, squinting at the two, and rasping thoughtfully on his chin, pondered a speculation into a conviction.

'Narcisso!' he mused, 'was it he took it? As sure as he is a villain, it was Narcisso took it!'