A Jay of Italy

by Bernard Edward Joseph Capes

  *CHAPTER XVII*

  There was a quarter of Milan into which the new light penetrated withsome odd uncalculated effects. It was called, picturesquely enough,'The Vineyard,' and as such certainly produced a great quantity offull-blooded fruit. Vines that batten on carrion grow fat; and here wasthe mature product of a soil so enriched. There was no disputing itsappetising quality. That derived from the procreant old days ofpaganism, before the germ of the first headache had flown out ofPandora's box into a bung-hole. 'The Vineyard's' body yet owed totradition, if centuries of adulteration had demoralised its spirit.Still, altogether, it was faithfuller of the soil, self-consciouslynearer to the old Nature, than was ever the extrinsic Guelph orGhibelline that had usurped its kingdom. Wherefore, it seemed, it hadelected to construe this new reactionism, this _redintegratio amoris_,this sudden much-acclaiming of Nature, into a special vindication ofitself, its tastes, methods and appetites, as representing thefundamental truth of things; and, _ex consequenti_, to appropriateMesser Bembo for its own particular champion and apologist.

  Alas, poor Parablist! There is always that awakening for an enlightenedagitator in any democratic mission. Does he look for some comprehensionby the Demos of the necessity of _radical_ reform, his eyes will bepainfully opened. The pruning, by its leave, shall never be among thesuckers down by the root, but always among the lordly blossoms. ShallSpartacus once venture openly to stoop with his knife, he shall lose ata blow the popular suffrage. At a later date, Robespierre, who was notenlightened, had to subscribe to the misapplication of his own reforms,or be crushed by the demon he had raised. Here in Milan, 'The Vineyard'was the first to renounce its champion, when once it found itself to beintimately included in that champion's neo-Christianising scheme.

  Alas, poor Parablist! Not Reason but Fanaticism is the convincingreformer! the bigot, not the saint, the effective drover of men.

  In the meanwhile 'The Vineyard' swaggered and held itself a thought morebrazenly than heretofore, on the strength of its visionary election.Always a clamorous rookery, one might have fancied at this time acertain increase in the boisterous obscenity of its note, as that mightpresage the fulfilment of some plan for its breaking out, and plantingitself in new black colonies all over the city. But as certainly, ifthis were so, its illusionment was a very may-fly's dance.

  Now as, on a noon of this late Autumn, we are brought to penetrate itsintricacies, a certain symbolic fitness in its title may or may notoccur to us. Supposing that it does, we will accept this ViaMaladizione where we stand, this gorge of narrow high-flung tenements,looped between with festoons of glowing rags, for the supports and deadtrailers of a gathered vintage. Below, the vats are full to brimming,and the merchants of life and death forgathered in the markets.Half-way down the street a little degraded church suddenly spouts afriar, who, punch-like, hammers out on the steps his rendering of thenew nature, which is to remember its cash obligations to Christ, and sovanishes again in a clap of the door. A barber, shaving a customer inthe open street, gapes and misses his stroke, thereby adding a trickleto the sum of the red harvest. Mendicants pause and grin; oaths riseand buzz on all sides, like dung-flies momentarily disturbed. Andpredominant throughout, the vintagers, the true natives of the soil,swarm and lounge and discuss, under a rent canopy, the chances of theseason and its likely profits.

  Ivory and nut-brown are they all, these vintagers, with cheeks likeburning leaves, and hair blue-black as grape-clusters, and eloquentanimal eyes, and, in the women, copious bosoms half-veiled in tatters,like gourds swelling under dead foliage. But the milk that plumps thesegourds is still of the primeval quality. Tessa's passions are of theancient dimensions, if her religion is of to-day. Her assault andsurrender borrow nothing from convention. No billing and rhyming forher, with canzonarists and madrigalists under the lemon trees, in thedays when the awnings are hung over to keep the young fruit fromscorching; but rough pursuit, rather, and capture and fulfilment--alluncompromising. She is here to eat and drink and love, to enjoy andstill propagate the fruits of her natural appetites. She does not, likeRosamonda, brush her teeth with crushed pearls; she whets and whitensthem on a bone. She does not powder her hair with gold dust; the sunbronzes it for her to the scalp. No spikenard and ambergris make herrags, or perfumed water her body, fragrant for her master's mouthing.Yet is she desirable, and to know her is to taste something of thesweetness of the apple that wrought the first discord. She is still achild of Nature, though Messer Bembo's creed surpasses her bestunderstanding. She loves burnt almonds and barley-sugar, and crunchesthem joyously whenever some public festival gives her the chance; butthe instincts of order and self-control are long vanished from thecategory of her qualities, and she survives as she is more by virtue ofher enforced than her voluntary abstinences. For the rest,civilisation--the civilisation that always encompasses without touching,without even understanding her--has made her morals a terror, and themorals of most of her comrades, male or female, of 'The Vineyard.'

  It is, in fact, the sink of Milan, is this vineyard--a very low quarterindeed; and, it is to be feared, other red juice than grapes' swells theprofits from its vats. Here are to be found, and engaged, a richselection of the tagliacantoni, the hired bravos who kill on a slidingscale of absolution, with fancy terms for the murder which allows notime for an act of contrition. Here the soldier of fortune, who hasgambled away, with his sword and body-armour, the chances of anengagement to cut throats honestly, festers for a midnight job, andcountersigns with every vein he opens his own compact with the devil.Here the oligarchy of beggars has its headquarters, and composes itsbudgets of social taxation; and here, finally, in the particular den ofone Narcisso, desperado and ladrone, hides and shivers Messer Tassino,once a Duchess's favourite.

  He does not know why he is hidden here, or for what purpose MesserLudovico beguiled and threatened him from the more sympathetic custodyof his friend Jacopo, to deposit him in this foul burrow. But he feelshimself in the grip of unknown forces, and he fears and shivers greatly.He is always shivering and snuffling is Messer Tassino; whining out,too, in rebellious moods, his pitiful resentments and hatreds. Hislittle garish orbit is in its winter, and he cries vainly for the sunthat had seemed once to claim him to her own warmth and greatness. Hehas heard of himself as renounced by her, condemned, and committed, onhis detested rival's warrant, to judgment by default. Yet, though it beto save his mean skin, he cannot muster the moral courage to come forthand right the wrong he has done. That, he knows, would spell his lastdivorce from privilege; and he has not yet learned to despair. He hadbeen so petted and caressed, and--and there are no lusty babies to begathered from Messer Bembo's eyes. At least, he believes and hopes not;and, in the meanwhile, he will lie close, and await developments alittle longer.

  Perhaps, after all, there is knowledge if little choice in his decision.He may be justified, of his experience, in being sceptical of thedisinterestedness of spiritual emotionalism, or at least of the femininecapacity for accepting its appeal disinterestedly. But of this he isquite sure--that sanctity itself shall not propitiate, by mere virtue ofits incorruptibility, the woman it has scorned; and, in that certainty,and by reason of that experience, he nurses the hope of still profitingby the revulsion of feeling which he foresees will occur in a certainhigh lady as a consequence of her rebuff.

  Still, however that may chance, he finds his present state intolerable.It is not so much its dull and filthy circumstance that appals him,though that is noxious enough to a boudoir exquisite; it is the shadowof Messer Ludovico's purpose, shapeless, indistinct, eternally conninghim from the dark corners of his imagination, which takes the knees outof his soul. Is he really his friend and patron, as he professes to be?He recalls, with a sick shudder, how once, when in the full-flood of hisarrogance, he had dared to keep that smooth and accommodating princewaiting in an ante-room while he had his hair dressed. He, Tassino, thefungus of a night, had ventured to do this! What a fool he had be
en;yet how worse than his own folly is the dissimulation which can ignorefor present profit so unforgettable an insult! It is not forgotten; itcannot be; yet, to all appearances, Ludovico now visits him, on the rareoccasions when he does so, with the sole object of informing him,sympathetically, of the progress of Bona's new infatuation. Why? Hehas not the wit to fathom. Only he has not so much faith in thisdisinterestedness as in the probability of its being a blind to somedeadly policy.

  How he hates them all--the Duchess, the Prince, the whole world ofcourtly rascals who have flattered him out of his obscurity only to playwith and destroy him! If he can once escape from this trap, he will showthem he can bite their heels yet. But what hope is there of escapingwhile Ludovico holds the secret of the spring? Day after day finds himgnawing the bars, and whimpering out his spite and impotence.

  He has not failed, of course, to question his landlord Narcisso, or toweep over the futile result. Even if the little wretch's tact and witwere less negligible quantities, there is that of crafty doggedness inhis gaoler to baffle the shrewdest questioner. Deciding that the man isin the paid confidence of the 'forces,' Tassino soon desists fromattempting to draw him, and vents on him instead his whole soul ofvengeful and disappointed spite.

  Narcisso, for his part, offers himself quite submissively to the comedy;waits on him with a sniggering deference; stands while he eats; bringswater, none the most fragrant, for him to dip his fingers in afterwards;dresses his hair with a broken comb, and takes his own dressing forpulling it with a grinning impassivity; lends, in short, his hugecarcass in every way to be the other's butt and footstool. Thisexercise in overbearance is a certain relief to the prisoner; but, forall the rest, his time hangs deadlily on his hands. There are norestrictions placed upon him. He is free to come and go--as he dares.His terror is held his sufficient gaoler, and it suffices. He never, infact, puts his nose outside the door, but contents himself, like thewaspish little eremite he has become, with criticising and cursing fromhis solitary grille the limbs and lungs and life of the f[oe]tid worldin which his later fortunes seem cast. So much for Messer Tassino!

  One particular night saw him cowering before the caldano, or littledomestic brazier, which must serve his present need in lieu of hottermemories; for the season was chilling rapidly, and what freshness hadever been in him was long since starved out. He was grown a littlegrimy and unkempt in these days, and his clothes were stale. The roomin which he sat was, in its meanness and squalor, quite typicallyVineyardish. Its furniture was of the least and rudest; it had not somuch as a solitary cupboard to hold a skeleton; it was as naked toinspection as honesty. That was its owner's way. Narcisso was a veryDacoit in carrying all his simple harness on and about him. He cut histhroats and his meat impartially with the same knife; or toasted, as hewas doing now, slices of Bologna sausage on its point. His abortivescrap of a face puckered humorously, as the other, drawing his cloaktighter about him, damned the pitiful dimensions of their hearth.

  'I would not curse the fire for its smallness, Messer,' he said. 'Wiltneed all thy breath some day for blowing out a furnace.'

  Tassino wriggled and snarled:--

  'May'st think so, beast; but I know myself damned as an unbaptized one,to no lower than the first circle of our Father Dante.'

  'Wert thou not baptized?'

  'Do I not say so? And, therefore, lacking that grace, exonerated.'

  'What's that?'

  'Not responsible for my acts, pig.'

  'Who says so?'

  'Dante.'

  'Who's he? Has a' been there? I would not believe him. What doth a'say o' me?'

  '_You_? That you shall choke for all eternity in a river of blood.'

  'Anan!' said Narcisso, and blew, scowling, on his sausage, which hadbecome ignited. 'That's neither sense nor justice, master. I kill bythe decalogue, I do. Did I ever put out a man's eyes for sport?'

  'It's no matter,' answered Tassino. 'Thou wert baptized.'

  'What will they do to thee?'

  'I shall be forbidden the Almighty's countenance, no more--punishmentenough, of course, for a person of taste; but I must e'en make shift todo without.'

  'It's not fair,' growled Narcisso. 'I had no hand in my ownchristening. Do without? Narry penalty in doing without what you'venever asked nor wanted.'

  A figure that had stolen noiselessly into the room as they spoke, andwas standing watching, with its cloak caught to its face, sniggered,literally, in its sleeve.

  Tassino snapped rebelliously at the knife point, and began to eatwithout ceremony.

  'Punishment enough,' he whined, 'if it means such a life in death asthis.'

  He sobbed and munched, quarrelling with his meat.

  'How canst thou understand! The foul fiend betray him who condemned meto it! That saint; O, that saint! If I could only once trip _his_ soulby the heels!'

  'No need, my poor Tassino,' murmured a sympathetic voice; 'indeed, Ithink, there is no need.'

  The prisoner staggered from his stool, and stood shaking and gulping.

  'Messer Ludovico!' he gasped. 'How----'

  'By the door, my child--plainly, by the door,' interrupted the Princesmoothly. And then he smiled: 'Alas! thou hast no ante-room here forthe scotching of undesirable suitors.'

  The terrified creature had not a word to say. One could almost hear hisfat heart thumping.

  Ludovico, lowering his cloak a little, made an acrid face. The roomoffended his particular nostrils: its atmosphere was nothing less thansticky. But, reflecting on the choice moral of it, he looked at thelittle tarnished clinquant before him, and was content to endure. Heeven affected a pleasant envy.

  'This is worth all the glamour of courts,' he said, waving his handcomprehensively. 'To eat, or lie down; to go in or out as thou will'st.Never to know that suspicion of thine own shadow on the wall. To wasteno words in empty phrases, nor need the wealth to waste on empty show.What a rich atmosphere hath this untroubled, irresponsible freedom; itis a very meal of itself! I would I could say, For ever rest and growfat thereon; but, alas! I bring discomforting news. My poor Tassino. Ifear the fortress at last shows signs of yielding.'

  The little wretch opposite him whimpered as if at a whip-cut.

  'Is it so indeed? Then, Messer Ludovico, it is a foul shame of her.She hath betrayed me--may God requite her!' He snivelled like a grievedchild; then, on a sudden thought, looked up, with a child's cunning.'At least in that case I shall be forgotten. There can be no object inmy hiding here longer.'

  The Prince lifted his eyebrows, with an inward-drawn whistle.

  'Object? Object?' he protested, acting amazement. 'But more than ever,my poor simpleton. Thy case is double-damned thereby. Think you theother would rest on the thought of a rival, and such a rival, at large?Thy very existence would be a menace to his guilty peace. I come,indeed, as a friend to warn thee. Lie close; stir not out; the very airhath knives. Be cautious, even of thy shadow on the wall, of thy handin the dish.'

  He said it calmly and distinctly, looking towards Narcisso, who all thistime had stood hunched in the background, his dull brain strugglingbewildered in a maze. But the urgency of this innuendo penetrated evenhim; the more so when he saw Tassino leap and fling himself on his kneesat the Prince's feet.

  'What do you mean?' shrieked the young man. 'Is _he_ in their pay? OMesser, save me! don't let me be poisoned.'

  He pawed and grovelled, looking madly over his shoulder. Ludovicolaughed gently, disregarding him.

  'Nay, I know not,' he cooed. 'It is a dog that serves more masters thanone.'

  Narcisso slouched forward, and ducked a sort of obeisance between sullenand deferential.

  'What's to-do?' he growled. 'I serve my patron, Messer Duke's son, likean honest man. What call, I say, to warn 'en of me? Do I not earn mywages fairly?'

  'Scarcely, fellow,' murmured Ludovico--'unless to betray thine employerbe fair.'

  Narcisso scowled and lowered.

 
'Betray!' he protested, but uneasily. 'That is a charge to be proved,Messer.'

  Ludovico suddenly leapt to a blaze.

  'Dog! Wouldst bandy with me, dog? Beware, I say! Who blabbed mysecrets to the lady of Casa Caprona?'

  He was himself again with the cry. His faculty of instant self-controlwas a thing quite fearful. Narcisso cowered before him; shrunk underthe playful wagging of his finger.

  'Messer--in the Lord's name!' he could only stammer--'Messer!'

  'O thou fond knave!' complained the Prince, showing his teeth in asmile; 'to think to play that double game, one patron against another,and stake thine empty wits against the reckoning! Well, thou artconfessed and damned.' He drew back a pace. 'But one word more,' hesaid, raising his voice. 'What hast thou to plead that I call not upthose that will silence for ever thy false, treacherous tongue?'

  He stood by the door. It was a very reasonable inference that he hadnot ventured into such a quarter unattended. Narcisso stood gasping andintertwining his thick fingers, but he could find no words.

  'What!' smiled Ludovico; 'no excuse, no explanation? No answer of anykind? Shall I call, then?' He seemed to hesitate. 'Yet perhaps oneloop-hole, though undeserved, I'll lease thee on condition.' He movedagain forward a little, and spoke in a lower tone: 'There's news wantedof a certain stolen ring. Dog! do I not know who thieved it, and forwhom? Now shalt thou undertake to go yet once again, and, robbing thereceiver, bring the spoil to me--or be damned here and now for thyvillainy.'

  He thought he had netted at last the quarry of his long, patientstalking; but for once his confidence was at fault. Watching intentlyfor the effect of his words, he grew conscious of some changetransfiguring, out of terror and astonishment, the face of his victim.Foul, ignoble, animal beyond redemption as that was in all its features,its swinish eyes could yet extract and emit, it seemed, from the thin,dead ashes of some ancient fire, a stubborn spark of self-renunciation.He could read it in them unmistakably. The man stood straight beforehim, for the first and only time in his life, a hero.

  Ludovico gazed in silence. He found, to do him the right justice, thispsychic revelation of acuter interest to him than his own defeatforeseen in the light of it. But Tassino's subdued whimpering jarredhim out of his abstraction.

  'Well, is it agreed?' he asked with a sigh. For the moment he almostshrunk in the apprehension of an affirmative reply.

  The rogue drew himself suddenly together.

  'Call, Messer,' he said. 'That is my answer.'

  His chin dropped on his breast. Tassino uttered a cry, and hid his facein his hands. Not a word or apparent movement followed; but when,goaded by the fearful stillness, the two dared to look up once more,they found themselves alone.

  Then, at that, Tassino shrieked and sprang to the grille.

  'My God!' he sobbed; 'he has gone, and left me to my fate!'

  He moved to escape by the door, but Narcisso caught and wrenched himback.

  'What ails the fool!' he protested in his teeth. 'My orders be to keep,not kill thee, man!'

  Messer Ludovico, walking enveloped within a little cloud of hisadherents, smiled to himself on his way back to the palace.

  'The fascination of the serpent,' mused he, shaking his head--'thefascination of the serpent! How could that crude organism be expectedto resist the arts of our Lamia, when I myself could fall near swooningto them? Hath he betrayed me to others? I think not; yet it were wellto have him silenced betimes. The weakness was to threaten where Idared not yet perform. Yet it may chance, after all, he shall come tobe prevailed on for the ring.'

  'The ring!' he muttered, as he climbed presently to his chamber--'thering! I think it comes to zone the world in my imagination!'

  As he was passing through the ante-room to his private closet, a drapedand voiceless figure moved suddenly out of the shadows to accost him.He gave the faintest start, then offered his hand, and, without a word,ushered this strange ghost into his sanctum. The portiere swung back,the door clanged upon them, and there on the threshold he dwelt, lookingwith a silent, smiling inquisition into the eyes of his visitor.

  Hast thou ever seen the dead, leafy surface of a woodland pool stir,scarce perceptibly, to the movement of some secret thing below? So, asBeatrice stood like a statue before the Prince, did the soul of herreveal itself to him, writhing somewhere under the surface of that stillmask.

  Then suddenly, swiftly, passionately, she thrust out a hand.

  'There is the ring,' she said. 'Do what you will with it.'