Little Novels of Italy Part 32

"Do it then," whipped in the Count.

"I can tell your Excellence why he succeeds no better with La Bellaroba."

"Ah!" The Count was suspicious, but interested.

"The little lady has a lover."

"Body of a dog!"

"Body of Angioletto, Excellence."

"Angioletto? That spaniel? How many more laps will he cradle in? Cut his tongue out, my good fellow, and then come to me again."

"Excellence, may I speak?"

"I suppose so. Speak."

The Captain waited no further invitation, but told the whole story from the beginning. Guarino thought upon it for a moment.

"He will come to-night?" he asked.

"Certain, Excellence."

"Then we have him. You have done well, Mosca--it was time, my friend, for you are an expensive hack to keep at gra.s.s. Now listen. Take Bellaroba away--command of the Contessa, of course. Take her to the little house in the Borgo. Make all fast, and return here in time for the steeple-jack. When you have him in the trap, run him through the body, raise the devil's uproar, and denounce him to the patrol. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly, Excellence."

"Take my purse from the table and off with you then."

Captain Mosca bowed to the ground and backed out.

VIII

FIRST MIDNIGHT CONVERSATION

The Borgo of Borso's day was, as you might say, a sucker of the city of the Po, a flowery crop of villas and gardens about the city's root.

There was the discreet house which Captain Mosca had once chosen for his Olimpia; there also was that which Guarino Guarini maintained for his (or any) Bellaroba. It is probable that there were many such houses in the Borgo; it was a very pleasant place, heavy scented with lilac and hawthorn in the spring, drowsy all the summer through with rustling leaves and the murmur of innumerable bees. The place was quiet; there was no traffic, no hint of the city bustle; on the other hand there was the notoriety which must always attach to any act done where no others are doing. Time, day-time especially, hangs heavy in the Borgo. One machinates in the face of many green shutters, which are not necessarily dead because they are shut.

This reasoning does not attack the sagacity of Count Guarini, for the only circ.u.mstance which could give it force was entirely unknown to him.

He did not know that the Borgo held Bellaroba's friend, Olimpia, or that it sheltered under the same roof Olimpia, the Captain's enemy. He knew nothing of Bellaroba's friends and cared nothing for the Captain's enemies. But, as a matter of history, the proceedings of Mosca upon that eventful day were of the greatest possible interest to Signorina Castaneve. Donna Matura, trust her, had not failed to report his first appearance, stork-like, in the Borgo. No subsequent voyage of his into those parts (and he made many) was lost upon Olimpia. Captain Mosca, honest man, made a preposterous accomplice. His rusty cloak, the white of his observant eye, the craning of his neck, the very angle of his sword--c.o.c.ked up for frolic like a wren's tail--spoke the profuse conspirator. He spent money liberally, seemed to have plenty more, had his finger to his nose with every other word. He brought a troop of underlings; a bevy of young women under his orders turned the little shuttered house out of doors--at every window carpets, curtains, hangings of all sorts, fluttered as if for a triumphal procession.

Flowers came in stacks: "H'm!" said Olimpia, "there's a woman in this."

A couple of a.s.ses brought skins of wine. "That will be wash for the lean hog himself," she added. From that time forth she never left her shutter. To make herself the more sure she gave orders to Donna Matura to close all the shutters alike. Captain Mosca, on one of his returns to the Borgo, looked up at the blind green eyes of his former haven and, chuckling, rubbed his hands. This artless outlet to his feelings was interpreted for what it was worth behind the shutter.

By six of the evening Mosca, seeing Olimpia's house still keep a dead face, threw off the last remnant of his cares and bade himself be merry. "My handsome friend is either asleep or on a journey, it appears," said he to himself. "That, on the whole, is well. I cannot think she would be pleased at the advent of little Bellaroba riding pillion to me. Still less would the honour about to be paid the young lady afford her any gratification. Least of all would her observations on the subject tend to clear the air. No, no. Everything is for the best, it seems, and the world still a tolerable place. Now for my little wood-bird." He paid and dismissed his work-people, then rode off himself to fetch Bellaroba. And Olimpia, from her shutter, watched him go.

There was no trouble on the child's score. The Countess was away; a feigned message from her was enough. Had she been at home and in a good humour, she would have accorded a real one, no doubt; so the deceit was quite harmless. Bellaroba demurred a little that she could not in person warn Angioletto, but the Captain begged her to have no fears. Time pressed; it was evident the Countess's service was urgent. Yet the Captain swore by all that he held sacred--to be sure no great things, but Bellaroba could not know that--to deliver her message to the lad with his own hand. "For," said he, and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse and rode with her into the green-sheltered Borgo, just as it was settling into twilight. And Olimpia, from her shutter, saw them come.

I spare you the picture of her fury: it was not seemly, for all it was very white and still. The sight of a handsome girl shuddering in a cold stare under the grip of an evil spirit can never be pleasant; and where the experienced Donna Matura shrank from what she saw and heard, it becomes not me to tread. Donna Matura was of her country, that cheerful, laughing Midland of the Po, and neither felt the Venetian throb of pleasure nor conceived the excesses of Venetian pain. Extremes touch on the Lagoon. Donna Matura saw her gold-haired mistress white and drawn, saw her witless shaking, saw her tear and rend herself, heard her jerked words of loathing, blasphemy, and obscene defiance--and fairly fled the house. "For," as she said, "if words of man or woman could bring the rafters about our ears, or open a pit to send us lightly whither we all must go who have heard them, those words which Madam Olimpia spat about her must surely do it." So much she confessed to afterwards, but no more; for she stayed nothing more.

Olimpia may have leaned twisting against her wall for about an hour, mouthing insane babble from her blued lips. It was at least quite dark when she came to herself, lit the lamp, wiped the cold beads from her forehead, smoothed and bound her hair. She was not herself, nor looked to be so; she had a face completely colourless, lips like grey mould, and burning black eyes. But her hand was steady; she hardly winked; her breath, which came through her nose, was even, though it whistled rather sharply. Whatever she was about--and she seemed to be acting a part--she did with extraordinary care, down to the changing of her crimson dress for a dark green one. The former had been loose and clinging, made of velvet; the dark green was of cloth, fitted her close, and, as she ascertained by a few gestures, gave free play to her arms. She knocked off her heeled Venetian shoes, whose clatter was familiar to the house, and bound on flat-soled sandals instead. Over her head she had a black lace scarf, on her hands leather gauntlets. Lastly, she took from a press a long, double-edged knife, felt its temper, and stuck it inside her stocking, under the garter. She made a final hasty sweep of the room with her unquiet eyes as she went out of it.

The door of the house she knocked upon was opened by a page, who asked her business.

"Mosca, Captain Mosca, is my business," said she in a whisper.

"The Signor Capitano is occupied, Madonna," replied the boy.

"I know it, I know it," she answered. "But my business is the lady's business also. I must see them both--and at once. Let me pa.s.s."

The page vowed and swore by all the company of Heaven that those were her actual words. He was put to the torture and cried in the most heartrending manner; but he held to it, so long as he could hold to anything, that the visitor had said "her business was the other lady's business." What a further application of the question might have brought we cannot tell, since he fainted before it could be tried. "The boy Gasparo appeared to take no further interest in the elucidation of the truth," reported the judges, "and we recommend that he be chastised for contumacy." He was, at any rate, no witness of the scene which followed Olimpia's entry. There was that about her, a subdued haste, a deliberation, a kind of intensity got by rote, which fascinated the youngster and left him staring in the hall.

Olimpia walked across it alone, went straight to a door at the bottom on the right-hand side, turned the handle, and entered. There was a table spread with supper; there was Captain Mosca seated at it eating a peach from his wine-gla.s.s; there was Bellaroba, flushed and marred with tears, leaning against the further wall. She gave a little gasp of fear when she saw what the doorway framed; after that she followed Olimpia about the room with the same incurable fascination which the page-boy had felt. Olimpia shut the door as softly as she had opened it, and as softly shot the bolt.

Then it seemed that Mosca felt her presence, for he turned, saw, and jumped up with a cry mingled of fear and rage. It was found out afterwards that he was unarmed. This will explain his alarm. Disastrous honesty! his sword was upstairs in the bed.

There followed a most curious scene. The Captain stood up by the table and dogged Olimpia with his narrow eyes. When she advanced, he backed; when she stopped, he stopped. In this manner, eyeing each other without a blink, they made the round of the table. Bellaroba cowered by the wall; pursued and pursuer brushed against her in turn. She shivered and moaned a little at every touch; but they were too intent upon their game to know that she was there. In the second round, Mosca, who was again close to her, reached out his hand for a knife from the table. Quick as thought Olimpia was at him, reached across and drove her knife through his hand into the wood. Mosca howled, but his fear by now was such that he must be free to run as before, though he maimed himself. He tore his hand away and left Olimpia holding a fixed blade. She wrenched it out and made a pounce. The miserable Mosca turned to Bellaroba. He laid what he had left of hands upon her shoulders; he pulled her from the wall; he set her before him and hugged her close to his breast. Thus he made her back a shield against the long knife, and with her he fenced and held off his enemy for minutes more. Olimpia, horribly busy, scorched the girl's neck with her breath--but she never made to hurt her.

Then came the end. Olimpia made a lunge at his right side. The Captain hugged Bellaroba there. At the next moment the long knife was below his left arm, buried to the hilt, and defender and defence rolled heavily to the floor. Olimpia walked to the table and helped herself to the Captain's Val Pulicella.

The watch (whom the page had roused after Mosca's first cry) broke in by the window, disentangled Bellaroba, bound the hands of both prisoners behind their backs, and marched them and the boy off to the Castle.

Count Guarini, coming in an hour later, found his murdered lieutenant for his only guest.

IX

SECOND MIDNIGHT CONVERSATION

In that same night of mine and countermine Duke Borso, who had broken up the circle early by reason of his toothache, went wandering the long corridors of the Schifanoia under the sting of his scourge. He found his s.p.a.cious pleasure-house valueless against that particular annoy, but (as always) he was the more whimsical for his affliction. Nothing works your genuine man of humour so nearly as himself. The sight of his own image, puffed and blinking in nightcap, bed-gown, and slippers, when he came upon it in a long mirror, set him chuckling. He paused before the absurd epitome to apostrophise, wagged a finger at it, and got wag for wag. "We might be two drolls in a pantomime!" said he to his double. "Your arm, gossip:" he crooked an elbow. "It seems," he continued, "that we are both sufferers, my poor fellow! Magnificence goes drooping; a swollen estate does not forbid a jowl of the same proportions; and give me leave to tell you, brother, that we have each of us been better dressed in our day. Fie, what a pair of quills below your gown; and what a sorry diadem to stand for two duchies and a marquisate of uncertain age! Duke and my brother, if we were to be spied upon by any of our Court just now, what sort of a reverence should we get, think you? Eh, you rogue, as much as we deserve! I will tell you, good Borso, my own poor opinion of these things. A Duke who cannot be dukely in his shirt, a Pope who is but an afflicted biped between the blankets, is no Duke at all, is a Pope by toleration. There should be some such test at every crowning of our sort. Souse a Bishop in his bath before you let him warm his chair; cry 'Fire!' on the stairs of the Vatican and watch your Pontiff-elect scudding over the Piazza in his sark, before the Conclave sing _Veni Creator_. Judge of your Emperor with a swollen nose, blacken your Dukes in the eye: if they remain Dukes and Emperors you may safely obey them.

They are men, Borso, they are men! Yes, you spindle-shanked rascal, you may well wince. Do you ponder how you would stand a.s.say? So do I ponder it, brother, and doubt horribly." He clapped his hand to his face.

"Steady now, steady, here comes another bout. Ah, Madonna of the Este--but this is a shrewd twinge! Fare you well, brother Fat-chops. I must walk this devil out of me." He waved a hand to his brother of the looking-gla.s.s and slippered away, groaning and sn.i.g.g.e.ring to himself. So he walked and was philosophical till two of the morning. At that hour he was ready to drop with fatigue; but his pains had left him. "I will sleep, by the grace of Heaven," he said. He plumped down in the embrasure of a door, prepared to follow his humour: the door yielded and he with it. "Who am I to outrage a lady's chamber?" he muttered, half asleep. "To be sure she seems to invite me. Let us look at this complaisant sleeper." He went into the room. A glimmering lamp burned before a shrine, enough to show him to a decent four-post bed, empty.

"By the great G.o.d Pan!" cried Borso, "my luck holds. Courage! I am not a Duke for nothing, then." He shut and bolted the door, slipped into the bed and was asleep in three minutes. It was twenty minutes after two.

At the stroke of three, with a scarcely perceptible rustling, Angioletto slid down the chimney and stepped into the room. He carefully brushed himself with a brush which hung by the hearth. The chimney was by now thoroughly clean, however. He next washed his face and hands, undressed, and crept softly to the bed. Very quietly he inserted himself between the sheets, very softly kissed the shoulder of the sleeper; very soon he was as sound as his bedfellow.

The Duke awoke, as his habit was, with the first light, and saw the curly head on the pillow beside him. He whistled softly to himself.

"Now, by the tears of the Virgin," said he, "how did this lady come in?

It would be as well to know it, since plainly I must go out." He sat up in bed, clasped his knees, and frowned a little. "It is clean against the traditions of my house," he ruminated, "but I think I will go. And the sooner the better."

Suiting action to word, he had one foot on the floor when Angioletto, with a long sigh, opened his eyes, turned over, and saw him.