The Fool Errant Part 3

"Ha!" said he, "so now we have it."

"You shall have it now," I replied. "I was honestly ashamed of myself, and honestly glorious that I had been rebuked by so n.o.ble a lady. Sir, it is true that I love this lady." Aurelia gave a shocked little cry, but I went on. "It is true that I kiss her feet. Sir, I wors.h.i.+p the ground she presses with them--it is holy ground."

He scoffed at me. I said, "My feelings overcame me--I sinned--I am utterly unworthy. Punish me for my sin as you will, I shall not defend myself. But do not, and do not you, madam, I entreat, punish me for the one thing I have done this night of which I may be rightly proud."

"Bah," said he, "you are a fool, I see. And now, madam---"

"Yes, Porfirio," said she, poor soul.

"You, and that she-wolf over there--what have you to say?"

"I say," said Nonna, "that the young gentleman is out of his wits."

Aurelia said, "I am wretched. He was very foolish."

"You have deceived me," he thundered at her, "made a fool of me at your ease. You spoke your wheedling words, and he was in there to listen, and to laugh, by my soul! You coaxed, you stroked, you sidled, you whispered, and he was in there laughing, laughing, laughing! Oh, madam, you talk of his young foolishness, but you make your profit of my old foolishness."

"It is false," said Aurelia. "I never did it."

"By my soul," says he, "I'll not be contradicted. I say that you do. O Heaven, is this your duty, your grat.i.tude, your thanks due to me? Why-- why--why--what did I take you from? What did I make of you? Your wretched mother---"

She looked up with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. There was danger to be seen on its way. "She is not wretched."

"Then she should be, madam," he said. "She is parent of a wicked, false--"

Aurelia, crying, shook to get free. "No, no! Be silent. You shall not say such things." She stamped her foot. "It is absurd, I won't have it,"

she said. He gave a strangling cry of rage and despair, released her and rushed towards the cupboard. Dramatically, he flung his arms towards it as if he would shake off his two hands and leave them there. "Explain that, woman," he screamed. "Explain it if you dare---"

She was now equally angry, with patches of fire in her cheeks. "I shall explain nothing more. You will not believe me when I do. My mother will understand me."

"Then she shall--if she can," says the doctor, "and as soon as you please." Aurelia peered at him. "What do you mean, sir?"

"Why, madam, that you shall go where you are best understood."

"What!" she cried, "you mean--? You cannot mean--Oh, preposterous!"

The doctor was looking at the cupboard. "Ay, and it is preposterous, and I do mean it."

She stared at him for a moment, perplexed, then flew into a towering and ungovernable rage. "Ah," she cried, and she shook in every member. "Ah, now you may mean what you please, for I have done. Do you dare to suspect me? Do you dare to treat me as an infamous woman? Oh, oh, do you dare? You shall have no need to repeat it. I will go to my mother's house--I will go now--now--now. Nonna, my cloak and shoes--at once. I have been good--I have always tried to be good--and do you faithful duty. I have known what I ought to do--I have been proud to be Dr.

Lanfranchi's wife. I thought I would show to my people that a girl of Siena could be proud, even of a Venetian pig, if he were her husband.

Ah, but no more, no more. No, I will work elsewhere, for better wages-- you have seen the last of Aurelia." She was superbly beautiful as she turned, pointing to me. "This youth--this mad, incomprehensible youth-- what harm has he done YOU compared to what he has now done to me? He loves me, he says--I don't understand his love--but why should he not?

Am I to fall in love with everybody who says that? Do you think you are the only one? And--and--why!--you have never said that you loved me: no, you have not. You just took to me, and made me work--your servant or your doll--your plaything when you were done with the cafe--me, a Gualandi of Siena--and you, a pig of Padua. Good Heaven, for what do you take me, sir? Did you find me in the street? Is my family one of wretches? Oh, what a man you are; ungrateful, cruel, hard as the grave.

Yes, yes, Nonna, fold me close in my cloak; it will keep me from such cold as this." She stood, cloaked and ready: we all stood--the doctor like a rock, I like a man dead at his prayers.

She looked from one of us to the other, to me second. "You told me that you loved me, Don Francis," she said. "I am going to my mother. Will you take me?"

I never loved her so well as at this moment when I said, "Madam, I dare not do it."

She blushed, I know she was mute with astonishment. I thought old Nonna would have torn my eyes out. "Dog!" she called me, "son of a dog."

"I dare not go with you, madam," I repeated. "I love you too well. I have done you so much wrong, meaning to do right, that I dare not now risk an act which I know to be wrong. Oh," I cried, as my distress grew, "oh, unsay those words, Aurelia! You could not mean them, they were not yours."

She tossed her head, and shrugged. "I will be careful not to say them again, at least," she said. "They evidently distressed you. Come, Nonna-- we will leave these gentlemen." The doctor never moved--I followed her with my eyes. One more look from hers would have drawn us both to our destruction. I thank G.o.d at this hour that she never showed it me. She went out and shut the door behind her. Neither of us moved until we heard the street door bang. We had been waiting for that.

"Now, Dr. Lanfranchi," said I, with a glance at my sword, "I am ready for you how and when you please."

With a howl like that of a miserable maniac he leapt upon me, tripped and threw me flat upon the flags. I remember the stunning shock of my fall, but remember no more. I learned afterwards that he had pitched me out on to the stairs, and that I fell far.

CHAPTER VI

I COMMENCE PILGRIM

I arose from bed, some two or three days after the terrible occurrence related--and how I had got into it, except for the charity of the doorkeeper, there's no telling. I arose, I say, to a new heaven and a new earth: a heaven impossibly remote, an earth of sickly horror, an earth of serpents and worms, upon which I crawled and groped, the loathliest of their sp.a.w.n. I surveyed myself in the gla.s.s, faced myself as I was--I the wrecker of homes, the betrayer of ladies, love's atheist! Pale, hollow-cheeked, with eyes distraught, there was good ground for believing that when Dr. Lanfranchi threw me upon my worthless skull he had jogged out my wits.

The facts were otherwise, however. Resolution came back upon the crest, as it were, of the wave that brought me full knowledge; the more disastrously showed the ruin I had made, the more stoutly I determined to repair it.

The surgeon who attended me was perfectly discreet and told me nothing more than that Professor Lanfranchi had left Padua and was gone to Venice. Not so the custode of the house: it was from him I had the rest.

Dr. Lanfranchi had taken his keys with him and had left no directions.

Donna Aurelia had been twice to the house since her first departure from it, and had been unable to get access. The second time of failing, said the custode, she had "lashed into the street like a serpent from a cage.

And n.o.body," he added, "n.o.body in this town, and n.o.body under heaven's great eye, can say where she has gone. Perhaps she is dead, sir; but I believe that she is not. Pretty and snug lady that she was, it's my belief she will fret after her comforts, and that if she get them not from one, she will have them from another." Old Nonna had also disappeared, he said, which was better than things might have been; but the strongest ray of comfort shed upon me from this worthy fellow's store was this, that Donna Aurelia had returned to her house. Plainly, if she had been thither twice, she could be induced thither a third time. It must then be my business to induce her, and to see to it, if possible, that she was properly received upon that occasion.

Here was a duty plainly set before me--my first and greatest reparation, which no other tie must hinder, to accomplish which I must shrink from no hards.h.i.+p however severe, no humiliation however bitter. Another lay closer to my heart, I'll allow, the words of pardon which I hoped to sue forth from the dearest lips in all the world--for I could never hope to be happy until the being whom, most loving, I had most offended could consent to a.s.sure me of my peace. This, however, I resolutely put by as a selfish pleasure which I must not expect to enjoy until I had earned it. However natural might be the impulse which urged me to find Aurelia, fall at her feet, anoint them with my tears, I must withstand it until I could be sure of her honour saved. Now, was that surety to be gained first from her or first from her wrathful husband?

I turned to the custode, who stood smiling and rubbing his chin in my doorway. I said, "Beppo, I am in great perplexity. It is idle to deny that I am the immediate cause of all this misery, for you know it as well as I do."

He said that he had guessed something of what I was so good as to tell him. "There was, as I understand, a little misadventure with a cupboard door," he said; "but who can contend with Fate?"

"It has been my fate," I said, "to bring ruin upon the lady whom I adore. My sin is worse than that of Hophni and Phineas, and I would that the requital might be as theirs was, save that I can make it more bitter yet."

"Why," says he, "what was done to those gentlemen?" I told him that they were slain with the sword; to which he replied that, so far as he had ever heard, the doctor was nothing of a swordsman, and that he knew I had some proficiency in fence. "I hope then," he added, "that your honour will succeed where those other gentlemen failed; but if you ask my advice, I say, leave the doctor alone, and comfort the little lady."

His gross misapprehension of every merit of the case nettled me: I saw it was useless to talk with a person of his condition, and that instant action was my only safety. I must go, on my knees if must be, to the feet of Donna Aurelia, I must put myself entirely at her service. Should that lie in spurning me with her heel I must endure it; should she bid me go and receive public chastis.e.m.e.nt from her dangerous husband, I would a.s.suredly go. Tears, stripes, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, loneliness, nakedness, unjust accusation, ridicule, malicious persecution--all these I would cheerfully undergo; and if one or any of them could repair her misfortunes, then they would be repaired. The custode said that he believed they could not, but I bade him be silent and begone. "Wretched Venetian," I cried at him, "thou art incapable of comprehending anything but victuals. If I tell thee that I have lacerated an angel and deserve the sword, thou speakest of my skill in fence! I waste my breath upon thee. Comfort the lady, dost thou dare to say? What comfort can she have but in my repentance? What have I to offer but devotion?"

"It is just that which I advise your honour-" he began, but I was now embarked upon the waters of adventure, cheered with the prospect of action, impatient to begin my voyage. Astonishment cropped his period midway; he gaped as he saw what I did. I threw upon the floor my sword and finely laced coat; I threw my vest, ruffles, cravat, watch, rings, after them. I kicked into a corner with my foot my buckled shoes, my silk stockings, my fine gilt garters. Upon the top of the heap I cast my Paris hat, my gloves and brooch. "There lies," I said, "the sinful husk of Francis Strelley. Let the swine nozzle and rout in it for what they can find to their liking. And here," I cried, standing before him in s.h.i.+rt and breeches, barefooted, bareheaded, without a coat to my back, "here, good man, stands the naked soul of that same Francis, which shall go s.h.i.+vering forth to declare his shame, to meet his penance, to stand begging at the door of the Holy Place for the mercy which he has shown himself unworthy of."

About my disordered hair I tied Aurelia's ribbon, round my upper arm I placed her garter, to my neck, upon a silken cord, I hung her Venice slipper. In the bosom of my s.h.i.+rt I placed the little book of devotion which she had given me, and the "Aminta" of Ta.s.so in which we had last read together. "Farewell, Beppo," said I; "you may not see Francis again."

"Where are you going, sir?" he asked me, wondering.

"To Siena--to Aurelia--to Heaven!" and he held up his hands.

"You are never going to Siena as you are," he cried; and I asked him how else he would have me go.

"Your honour will take cold in the chest," says he, "that's very plain; but long before that can declare itself your honour will be lodged in the madhouse. And what is Madam Aurelia to say, by your leave, to an undressed young gentleman which she declined to say to a dressed one?

Let me tell you, young sir," he added with a sneer, "Siena's not the only city in Italy where there are madmen."