The Fool Errant Part 10

Virginia, walking staidly beside me, considered this outburst in silence before she delivered herself. '"You speak," she then said, "as I would have you speak, but not at all as you have decided to speak. You cannot at one and the same moment be Francesco of Upcote and Francesco Ignoto; you cannot exalt yourself and degrade yourself. If you choose to be a gentleman, why did you discard your coat?"

I laughed at her. "My child," said I, "on your showing a man cannot be a gentleman in his bed--or in his bath." But she held to her opinion.

"I think you understand me very well. You choose to go a pilgrimage, to encounter dangers and humiliations, and yet the moment a fine one is proposed to you, you jump back after your gentleman's estate. You tell me that you have peddled crucifixes: what more does Palamone expect of you? Be what you choose, Don Francis; kiss me or kiss your Aurelia; go afoot or in a coach; beg or give, sink or swim. You have two hands, you will say. It is true; but you have only one person. If, with a fistful of gold in your right hand, you go about begging with your left, you will be contemptible as well as ridiculous."

"I agree with that," I said, "but--"

"Here again," said she, breaking in upon me, "you have a choice; and it is obvious. I am not able to speak for Donna Aurelia, or so you will tell me; but I will give a great golden heart to the Girdle of Prato that while she may love a ridiculous Don Francis, she will turn her back on the other."

"Love!" I said, echoing her. "Love, my good girl! Of what are you speaking? Donna Aurelia love me? You must be mad."

"It is certain that I must be," she replied, "unless it is your honour who is mad. Pray let me understand what it is that you want of the lady when you find her."

"Her pardon," I said, and made her furious. She glared, bit her lip, stamped. With arms tight folded to restrain her heaving chest, she stopped short and nodded her words into me one by one, as if she were directing artillery at a siege. "Well, very well, Don Francis," she said; "then I tell you plainly that you will find misery and her together, if you propose to pray at her feet instead of taking her in your arms--she of Siena! She of Siena, my word!--you will be miserable, and make her miserable."

I told her to be quiet, but she would not; she grew wild, staring about and straining out her arms. "I will be no party to this folly--I will not--I will not," she said half to herself, but Palamone was listening with a comical, wry face, rubbing his beard.

She took no notice. "I know better than you what a girl needs, and what her rights are. One woman to humour your whims is enough, I should hope --Look at me, look at me, Don Francis!" I had never seen her in this state before--a beautiful starving creature, like some wild thing baulked of her desire. Her eyes were gaunt, she held out her hands to me; I was much concerned--it was really Palamone who got her to be quiet.

He came and touched her on the shoulder. "Have patience, my daughter,"

he said, and added some quick words under his breath, whose sense was lost to me. Meantime a little company of pa.s.sers-by had collected about us, and watched for the event. "We will not discuss our affairs before these citizens," said the frate, "more especially as the lady, whose name you toss to and fro, is not here to applaud or condemn. No doubt but you will find her in Prato, if, as you say, she is of the Sienese nation. Why, to the translation of the blessed remains are to come Donna Violante, wife of the Grand Prince, and Donna Camilla Pallavicini, his mistress. Next to a saint, a Grand Duke's mistress would draw every woman in Siena--and we are to have both. The thing is not worth discussion. She will be there. Hey, then, children, AVANTI!"

We went on without any more words; Virginia, all her spirit gone out of her, presented the most woebegone appearance. It would have been evident to me that she was deeply ashamed of herself had I not been too incensed to think anything about her. We entered the town of Prato about five o'clock in the evening, and found it crammed to the walls with sightseers and those who expected to offer them sights. The Piazza was like the camp about a fair, the inns were like anthills, the very churches were full. On the morrow was to be the great procession of religious to enact the translation of the remains. No lodgings were to be had better than a stall in the stable of the Sparrow-hawk. There it was that we established our camp; and that done, I left my companions and wandered alone about the town, hardly hoping, and not able, to find my beloved, remote and much injured Aurelia.

Late at night I returned and threw myself upon the straw which was to be my bed. I was tired, and fell asleep at once, but not comfortably.

Restlessness possessed me, I turned and tossed about, was distressed by dreams of incredible and fruitless labours and of mental anguish, whose cause I could not define. Presently after I was awakened by a sense of something touching my feet, and lay for a time awake, wondering what it might be. Some person or another was touching me there--softly, very softly, and in kindness. I heard gentle whispering--I felt the touch as of velvet on my feet; and then a drop fell, warm and wet. I said, "Who are you who kiss my feet?" and was answered, "It is I--Virginia--my lord."

"What do you there, Virginia?" I asked her. "What do you need of me?"

"Your pardon," she said; and I heard her crying softly to herself in the dark.

"My child," I said, and held out my hand to her, "you know that I am no man to have pardons worth a woman's accepting, but I can a.s.sure you of Aurelia's pity and pardon for what you have said against her. Draw near and you shall have it from my hands."

The straw rustled as she crept on hands and knees towards me. Her face encountered my hands and rested between them. It was burning hot, and so were her lips, which kissed my palms alternately and thirstily as if she were lapping water. "Forgive me, my lord, forgive me," she urged me.

"Oh, I am dreadfully ashamed! Forgive me this once, I am wretched."

"Child," I said, "think no more of it. I have no grudge against you--all my thoughts are kindly. Lie down, Virginia, and sleep. Our friendship is too strong for a tiff to break it." She kissed my palms again and again and crept off the straw. I heard her shut the door of the stable after her. Where she pa.s.sed the night I know not; but I remarked that in our subsequent wanderings she never let me know how or where she did sleep.

She met me next morning, her usual cool, nonchalant, reasonable self.

CHAPTER XVII

ERCOLE AT THE FAIR

If needs must have it that I was to accommodate crime by falling into it myself, it would appear that I was to do it with a certain air. When I awoke I found a very decent suit of black prepared for me against the proceedings of the day: a ribbon for my hair, shoes, s...o...b..ckles, silk stockings, ruffles, a neat cravat edged with lace. Thus attired, I was to be Fra Palamone's secretary and lieutenant, to hold his devotional objects, pa.s.s them about for inspection, praise them discreetly, and take the money. Virginia was to play the country girl, who, by simple ardour and appropriate questioning, was to excite general interest and stimulate the sale. She, too, had a new gown and stomacher, and looked so well that, the frate said, it was quite on the cards that half his stock would be bought for her by enamoured contadini, and thus brought into circulation over and over again. It was noticeable that far less time was spent upon her instructions than upon mine. Fra Palamone was not at all sure how far I should prove amenable.

Crime, however, by which I mean an unfailing fount of ready lying, was a more difficult accomplishment than I had reckoned it. I had no notion when I began what hard work it could be. It was not for want of an exemplar, for although Fra Palamone sweated as he lied, it would be impossible to relate the quant.i.ty, the quality or quiddity of his lies.

Their variety was indeed admirable, but apart from that they shocked me not a little, for I could not but see that as ready a way as any of discrediting true religion is to overcredit it; and that, where people believe in a miracle, to give them a glib hundred is to tempt them to infidelity. Because it might be true, as I undoubtedly believe it to be, that St. Francis of a.s.sisi floated between pavement and rafters, that were no reason for p.r.o.nouncing that Santa Caterina de' Ricci could stroke the chimney-pots; or if one thought it possible that St. Antony of Padua preached to the fishes of the sea, I contend that one would not be supported, but rather discouraged, in the opinion by hearing that Santa Caterina de' Ricci argued with eels in the stew-pan. But the melancholy fact remains to be told that, haranguing all day long, the wilder grew the anecdotes of Palamone, the brisker was his trade.

Virginia also, I freely own, acted her part superbly, with a lisp and a trick of sucking her fingers for one batch, an "O la!" for another, which brought in showers of purchasers. She presently took a fit of bargaining--by mere caprice, I believe--in which she was so keen that she beat down Fra Palamone to half his prices and set an example which made him desperately angry. As for me, I fell into entire disgrace almost at the outset, for when an old countryman asked me whether it was true that Roses of Sharon were good for the stone, unthinkingly I replied that prayer was better. "Cospetto!" cried my man, "and cheaper too! Many thanks to you for an honest young gentleman." Fra Palamone ordered me to resume my old part of deaf-mute.

The procession of the day, which, of course, put an end to all marketing for the time, began at half after ten, with High Ma.s.s set for eleven o'clock. It was a pompous business--the nuns of San Vincenzio, two and two, with lighted tapers; their friends of the world, ladies in hoops and feathers, attendant cavaliers; Donna Violante, widow of the Grand Prince Ferdinand, deceased--a stout black-eyed woman of middle age, under-dressed and over-painted. She had a court about her of half a dozen gentlemen, twice that number of ladies, and three black boys to hold her train. Donna Camilla Pallavicini may have been there, but I did not see her. The clergy followed, then the bishop with his chaplains, train-bearer and acolytes; torch-bearers next; and then the casket containing the body of the saint under a heavy crimson canopy. Friars of St. Dominic's religion closed a very fine procession.

Having myself a fair musical ear, I thought that the nuns sang badly, without harmony or spirit. They looked about them too with what I considered regretable freedom: they talked to their friends; one of them had a damerino on either side of her, and one also, I was constrained to notice, looked fixedly in my direction, with fine eyes, full of knowledge--but presently turned her head and pa.s.sed on. There was nothing flagrant, nothing to be compared with what was allowed to religious in Padua and Venice; but I was a little discontented at this nun's inspection. I had observed that she was handsome and of fine person, pale, serious, and with a high-bred air.

While all these devotees were winding their way round about the Piazza, Virginia and I had been sitting on a patch of gra.s.s by the roadway in the company of a country lad, who became extremely friendly. He was a goatherd from San Benedetto in Alpi, he told us, and had played truant for the day, walking over the stony hills for some sixteen or twenty miles and intending to return the same road at night. His name was Ercole; and that, as I told him, was as it should be. But I added, "Hercules served Eurystheus for twelve years for one clear purpose, which was that he might achieve immortality; and some of us labour for the same end, and others of us for ends which seem to us equally good.

Will you tell me, Ercole, why you have undertaken these prodigious exertions of yours?"

Ercole shrugged. "There is no life upon our mountains," he said.

"Moreover, Santa Caterina was a great saint, as I have heard your master say just now. Nor can you deny it."

I said, "I do not deny it. But the saints never fail us. Wheresoever one may dwell, there are they; and by the merits of holy baptism and the benefits of the Ma.s.s we may be in communion with them whether we live on mountain or plain."

"That is true," said Ercole. "Yet that was a good procession. I would not have missed it for two gold florins. I expect that in your country you have no finer processions of priests and n.o.ble ladies of religion. I am myself impa.s.sioned for religion."

"I too," was my answer. "But in my poor country the true faith is enmeshed in cold shrouds of unbelief. We dare not have processions, but cry unto G.o.d in secret; and no profession is more discredited with us than that of virgin."

"That is a terrible thing you tell me there," says he. "What else is a girl to do if she cannot marry the man of her heart?"

"We have our compensations," I replied; "we worship in the dark, hoping to be rewarded in the full light of heaven. Persecution has braced us; the Church had grown lax. With us, for instance, you would never see religious behave as here they do. Did you observe that nun that looked me full in the face as the procession went by?"

Ercole's eyes flashed; but he said nothing. I went on, "That would be impossible in my country, I can a.s.sure you."

"Pardon me," says Ercole; "you misunderstood the lady. It was not at you that she looked."

"Certainly it was not," said Virginia with decision.

"She looked at me," the boy said, "and I looked at her. She knew that I should be here."

"Ho!" said I, and Virginia said, "Gia!"

Ercole then explained. "That lady is Donna Domenica degli Onesti, who was daughter of my master, the Marchese Onesti, when I was dog-keeper to him at Bogazzano. She was always there, being in delicate health, and we loved each other from the first. There was no doubt at all about the matter."

"How could there be any doubt?" said Virginia; but Ercole took no notice of her.

"There was no doubt. She jumped whenever I came round the corner, and used to stand behind trees watching me. Also she used to come to see the dogs fed. Now, when I knew beyond all question the state of her feelings, I borrowed Guido's guitar, and struck one chord upon it at night under her window, and sang but one word--Vieni! In three minutes she came on to the balcony, and we looked at each other. There was a moon, and we could see quite well. We stood looking like that for five minutes without a syllable spoken, and then I went away. I went away before she did; so the thing was clear. After that I called my Vieni every night, and every night she came. Sir, you saw how fine she was, with a face of dawn, and great eyes, and the mournful air of a saint in the sky. There never was such a good love as ours in the world, since the days of Antonio and Cleopatra of blessed memory. It lasted all one summer, but she was turned of sixteen by then, and her father, the marchese, wished her to marry. Naturally I forbade that."

"You!" I cried, and again Virginia nodded and said, "Gia!"

"You may say so," said Ercole. "What else could I do? And naturally also she preferred the convent. I bade her farewell in the garden. She allowed me then to touch her hand. I said, 'Addio, Madonna,' and she, 'Addio, Ercole,' and then I left her standing there. That was five years ago. Since then I have seen her once a year. This is the fifth time."

"And when will the sixth time be?" I asked him.

"Immediately," he said. "When the procession returns."

"But, Ercole, is this tolerable?" I objected. "Is it humane to Donna Domenica?"