Little Novels of Italy Part 21

"Pshutt!" said Grifone.

She turned like a caught beast, wild and blanched with horror. She rose suddenly, swaying on her feet, entangled one of them in her long robe and stumbled forward to stay herself by the table. She looked like some spurred Bacchante, lurching over the board with the great flagon a-nod in her hand. Cesare made to catch her in his arms, and reached for the cup; but then she screamed with all her might and threw the accursed thing crash upon the pavement.

"Treachery! Treachery!" Molly shrieked; and again, "Treachery! O G.o.d, he has made me a devil!" She threw her head up, herself tumbled back upon the cus.h.i.+ons; knew nothing of Grifone's "Go, go, go, my lord; the house is quick with murder!" and when she opened her eyes at last saw Amilcare standing grim and grey before her.

Who can say what shall best reveal a man, whether love or hate or fear?

Or how to know which of these three pa.s.sions stripped her this Amilcare naked? Naked he was now, and she found that she had never known him. The colour of his face was that of old white wax; his mouth seemed stretched to cracking point, neither turned up at the corners nor down, but a bleak slit jagged across his face. He fastened her with his hard eyes, which seemed smaller than usual, and had a scared look, as if he was positively disconcerted at what he read as they glimmered over his wife. In one of his hands (never still) he had a long knife, very lean in the blade.

"Ah, what do you want of me more, Amilcare?" It was Molly spoke first, in a whisper.

He croaked his reply. "I am going to kill you."

"Oh! oh! You are going to kill me, my lord?"

"You have sold me to my enemy. He is your lover."

"No, no! I have no lover, Amilcare; I have never had a lover."

"Liar!" he thundered. "If he had not been your lover you would not have spared his life. There can be no other reason. I am not a fool."

To Grifone that was just what he appeared. To her some ray of her own soul's honest logic showed at the last.

"Amilcare!" she cried out, on her knees, "Amilcare, listen, I pray you.

I have done you no wrong; I implore you not to hurt me; I have done you honour. It was because I loved _you_ that I saved his life. I speak the truth, my lord, I speak the truth."

"I have never thought you to speak otherwise; but I have been wrong, it appears. The excuse is monstrous. I am going to kill you."

The miserable girl turned him a pinched face. She searched for any shred of what she had known in him, but all the deadly mask of him she saw told her nothing. She began to be witless again, to wring her hands, to whimper and whine.

Amilcare looked fixedly at her, every muscle in his face rigid as stone.

So, as he ruminated, some whisp of his racing thought caught light from his inner rage, flared blood-bright before him, and convulsing him drove him to his work.

"Gross trull!" He sprang at her with his knife in the air. Molly shrieked for mercy; and before he could be on her Grifone whipped out his dagger and stabbed his master under the stabbing arm.

Amilcare jerked in mid-career, constricted and turned half. But the blow had gone too deep and too true. He fell horribly, and Molly knew no more.

XI

FROM AN AMATEUR'S CABINET

Grifone received his swooning lady into his arms and held her there to his great content, triumphing in her beauty and successful capture.

Truly the adventure had gone by clockwork: he might say (he thought) that there was not one step in it but had been schemed to an eighth of an inch; and when you have to bring temperamental differences into account, the chances of Italian politics, the influence of climate, the panic alarms of a ridden mob--and still succeed, why, then you may lawfully be happy. Happy he was, but Molly was tall and he a light-weight. Moreover, he wanted to wipe his blade and be off. He judged it prudent, therefore, to bring her to herself again, and so did by sousing her liberally with cold water.

Molly, as soon as she could see, was aware of him kneeling by her side and of his arms about her. Before she had done gasping he began to kiss her.

"My heart of hearts, my lovely soul, my lady Moll! Mine altogether by the act of my arm!" were some of his fiery words.

There were others yet more explicit, which left no doubt of his pa.s.sion, nor any ray of doubt of his intentions. Grifone took everything for granted, as he had from the beginning.

"My charmer," he said, "I have saved you from ignominious death; but I have saved myself also from a death by no means agreeable to me. It was impossible that our love could have held us much longer at a distance from each other, impossible that we could have still suffered a third person to usurp our privileges. If that stabbed stabber under the table had not misunderstood you so grotesquely--the gross-witted hog!--he would have lived, and I died of jealousy. A far from pleasant death, you will allow; worse in that it would have involved your own. For I should have had to kill you too, my dearest joy: so much would have been owing to my self-respect. Things, you see, could not have turned out more fortunately; the fellow trapped himself. We may be happy--we will be wildly happy--you shall see!"

It may be doubted whether Molly heard anything of this exposition; she may well have missed one or two steps in a carefully reasoned argument.

Hers was that state of absorbent la.s.situde when the words and acts put to you sink into the floating ma.s.s of your weakness. The late shocking grief hovers felt about you: a buzz of talk, a rain of caresses, hold the spectre off, and so are serviceable--but no more. The cold cheek, the clay-cold lips, the long, lax limbs of the poor doll were at his service. She saw nothing through her dim eyes, made no motion with her lips, sobbed rather than breathed, endured tearlessly rather than lived awake her misery. Misery is not the word: she had been sent down to h.e.l.l and had come back dumb to earth, neither knowing why such torment was hers, nor thinking how to fly a second questioning. Had she been capable of a wish, a prayer, or of begging a favour, who can doubt what it would have been? Death, oh, death!

Grifone's face was so near to hers, that not to kiss her would have been an affectation; but when he began to make plans, he released her, sat up, and spoke as though he were discussing theory.

"There is very much to do, my love," said he, "but I think I see my way clear. It is instant flight, to begin with, for one of the household may be here any moment, or Don Cesare return. Such an one would have but to open the window and cry, 'Treason, ho!' to secure our being torn to pieces--not for any love the Nonesi bear that carrion; but because not one of them could resist the chance of kicking his benefactors. It is reasonable, after all. Instant flight, my dear, if you please. But whither? you will ask. Luckily I can take you to a pretty safe place, of which I have the key and _custode's_ goodwill in my pocket. You know the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio outside the Latin Gate? We go there for our terrestrial paradise. Shawl your lovely head, therefore, stoop your glorious shoulders, and obey me exactly."

He got up as he made an end of speech, drew her gently to her feet, and showed her how to m.u.f.fle herself in the hood of a man's cloak. He bound the rest of the garment about her waist with his belt, pinned up her skirt and petticoat as high as her knees, and gave her his own stockings and shoes. Then he helped himself to his dead master's pair, to his sword and velvet gown; and--

"Now," he said, "we may start by the privy garden."

He led the way. It was a golden afternoon of late summer; the shadows were lengthening as the air grew tired and cool, all the place was full of that vast peace in which a day of strenuous heat sinks to rest. The faint breeze in the myrtles was like a sleeper's sigh:--

"Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae--" murmured Grifone to himself, as he slipped among the cypresses over the gra.s.s. Molly followed him with faltering knees, nearly spent. As always, she was at the mercy of a clear head, never masterless when a man was near her.

Morally, nervously, she seemed to be dead; so she followed her new lord as meekly as she had followed her old--that one to Nona across the seas, this one by gloomy, pent ways through the stale-smelling streets of the city to the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio.

Meekly enough she went, yet not so far nor so meekly but that she gave Grifone a genuine surprise. It seems that the air, the exercise, precautions, what-not, had cried back her escaped wits: certain it is that, once in the storm-bitten old fortress, she thanked her leader and rescuer with a tremulous sweetness all her own, and then--by Heaven and Earth!--urged him gently to go back, "lest her honour should be breathed upon."

Her honour! Grifone, the romancer, turned sick with amazement. He was dumbfounded, could not believe his ears, nor yet his eyes; that there before him should stand that drooping, flagged, pitiful beauty, always at his discretion, now wholly at his mercy within nine-foot walls, and talk to him with wet eyes and pleading lips of the Cardinal Virtues.

As soon as he could collect himself he put this before her in a whirl of words.

_Santo Dio!_ Timidity, prejudice, after what had pa.s.sed! In what possible way or by what possible quibble of a priest could anything stay them now from the harvest of a sown love--two years' sowing, by the Redeemer, two years' torture; and now--a solid square fortress on a naked rock, deemed impregnable by anything but black treachery! Let him make a.s.surance incredibly secure: say the word, and he would go and silence the old _custode_ for ever. It was done in a moment--what more could he do?

So he prayed; but Molly was a rock at last. She ignored everything but the fact that she could never survive the night if he stayed in the fortress-tower. Such, she a.s.sured him, was the fixed habit of her extraordinary race. She made no pretence of mourning her dead husband; indeed, her horror of him set her shuddering at his mere name; nor did she affect to deny that she loved Grifone. It made no difference. She was luminously mild, used her hands like a Madonna in a picture, was more lovely and winning in the motions of her little head, the wistful deeps and darks of her eyes, the pathetic curve of her mouth, than any Madonna short of Leonardo's. Grifone threw up his arms; such a pa.s.s confounded him; he had no tools to pick this sort of lock. Oh, but the thing was impossible! Two years' longing, the husband dead--why, they might marry, even, if she would. Perhaps that was what she needed? If so, he would risk his life in the city again to find a priest. But, think of it, formalities at this hour!

Molly smiled and blushed; she was sorry for her friend and would have consoled him if she could; but the thing was so obvious. Did not Grifone see?

Grifone did not see; he tore his hair, he threatened, prayed, raved, commanded, coaxed, swore by G.o.d and the Devil, clung to her knees--useless!

"Dear friend," she said, and stroked his hot hair, "you have served me well. Never serve me now so ill."

She beat him. From that moment, when love was dead, he began to hate her. She was safe from what she feared. Everything he might have waived but that, a clean blow at his own conceit. The end was near.

Their colloquy, so frenzied on his part, so staid and generous at once on hers, was barely over before the hum of many voices crept upon them, a slow, murmurous advance, out of which, as the hordes drew near, one or two sharp cries--"Seek, seek!" "Death to the traitor!"--threw up like the hastier wave-crests in a racing tide. Again they heard (and now more clearly), "Evviva Madonna! La Madonna di Nona!" and then (more ominous than all) a cry for Cesare Borgia: "Chiesa! Chiesa!"

At this last Grifone, who had been biting his fingers shrewdly, wrung a nail apart till the blood came. His was the desperate caught face of a stoat in a trap.

"What is this crying without?" said Molly in a hush.

"Pest! I must find out," said Grifone.

He climbed to a high window and looked down into the moonlight. "The Nonesi in force. Cesare Borgia and the troops. Hist! He is going to speak to them; they are holding him up." He strained to listen--and it seems that he heard.