A Jay of Italy. Bernard Edward Joseph Capes
and what hypocrites, denouncing the licence they example!'
'I know not what you mean.'
'Are they all saints, then, in San Zeno?'
'That is for Rome to say. It is a good law which lays down this wine of sanctity to mature. In a hundred years we shall know what stood the test.'
'Ah me! And I am but seventeen. Will you speak for your Abbot?'
'Ay, like a dear son.'
'Is he your father, Bernardo?'
'Is he not the father of us all?'
'Maybe. But 'tis of Benjamin I ask. Now, he is a strange father, methinks, to bid his Benjamin, thus apparelled, on a wild goose chase.'
'He could not discount the voices.'
'What voices?'
The boy lifted his face and eyes to the heavens, and lowered them again with no answer but a sigh of rapture.
'So? And did the voices bid thee wear a velvet mantlet and roses to thy shoes?' whispered the girl, with a tiny chuckle.
'They said, "Not in cockle shells, but a plume, goes the Pilgrim of Love,"' answered Bembo. 'As I am and have been, God finds me fitting in His sight.'
'And the Father Abbot, I wot?'
'Yes: "Since," says he, "Christ bequeathed His Kingdom to beauty."'
'And you have inherited it? I think I will be your subject, Bernardo.'
'I hope so, Madonna.'
He spoke perfectly gravely, and made her a little courtly gesture backwards.
'Well,' said she, 'had I been Father Abbot, I had put this pet of my fancy in a cage.'
'You know not of what you speak,' he answered seriously. 'God works great ends with little instruments. The puny bee is yet the very fairy midwife of the forests, I should have broke my heart had he denied me.'
'It would have saved others, alack!'
'What do you mean?'
'Nothing at all. Will you sing me another parable, Bernardo?'
'Ay, Madonna; and on what subject? The woman taken in adultery?'
'If you like; and whom Christ forgave.'
'And He said: "Go, and sin no more"'
She began to weep softly.
'It is shocking to be so abused for a little thing. I would you were back with your monks.'
He sighed.
'Ah!' she murmured, still weeping, 'that this bee had been content to remain a pander to his flowers! To dup hell's door with a reed! You know not to what you have engaged yourself, my poor boy.'
'To Christ, His service of Love,' he said simply.
'Go back, go back!' she cried in pain. 'There are ten thousand sophisters to interpret that word according to their lusts. Convert Galeazzo? Convert the brimstone lake from burning! Dost know the manner of man he is?'
'Else why am I here?'
'Ay, but his moods, his passions, his nameless, shameless deeds? He hath no pity but for his desires; no mercy but through his caprices. To cross him is to taste the rack, the fire, the living burial. He is possessed. Some believe him Caligula reincarnate—an atavism of that dreadful stock. And dost think to quench that furnace with a parable? Unless, indeed—Go back, little Bembo, and waste thy passion for reform on thy monks.'
'Madonna,' he said, 'I obey the voices. I shall not be let to perish, since Christ died to save His world to loveliness.'
It was the early rapture of the renaissance, penetrating like an April song into these newly reclaimed lands. The wind blew from Florence, and all the peaceful vales, so long trodden into a bloody mire, were awakening to the ecstasy of the Promise. That men interpreted according to their lights—lights burning fast and passionate in most places, but in a few quiet and holy. The breed of German bandits, of foreign mercenaries, was swept away. Gone was the whole warring race of the Visconti, and in its place the peasant Sforza had set a guard about the land of his fierce adoption, that he might till and graft and prosper in peace. Italy had asserted itself the inheritance of its children, the Court of God's Vicegerent, the chosen land of Love's gospel. That, too, men interpreted according to their lights. 'We are all the vineyard of Rome,' said the little Parablist. Alas! he thought Rome the Holy of Holies, and his father a saint. But his father, who adored him, had committed him, with his blessing, to this mad romance! Such were the paradoxes of the Gospel of Love.
Beatrice spoke no more, and they rode on in silence. About evening they came into a pleasant dell, where there was a level sward among rocks; and a little stream, running down a stairway of stones, dropped laughing, like a child going to bed, into the quiet of a rushy pool. Great chestnuts clothed the slopes, and made a mantle, powdered with stars, to the setting sun. It was a very nest for love.
Messer Lanti, halting, commanded the green tents to be pitched on the grass. Then, with a stormy scowl and a mockery of courtesy, he came to dismount his lady.
'Now,' says he, as he got her aside, 'if I do not show thy saint to be a petticoat, my hug of thee is like to prove a bear's.'
'What!' she said, amazed: 'Bernardo?'
He ground his teeth.
'I do not mark his pink cheeks for nothing.'
'Well, an he be,' she retorted coldly, 'I am liker, than if he be not, to lose my gallant.'
'That depends,' he growled, 'upon whom your fickleship honours with that title'; and he strode away, calling roughly to Bembo, 'Art for a bath, saint, before supper?'
'Why, gladly, Carlo,' said the boy, 'so we may be private.'
They went down to the pool together, and stripped and entered. Lanti saw a Ganymede, and was not pleased thereat. He came to supper in a very bad humour, which no innocent artifice of his guest could allay. The kill that day of their falcons—partridges, served in their own feathers, and stuffed with artichokes and truffles—was tough; the pears and peaches were sour; the confetti savourless and of stale design. He rated his cook, cursed his servitors, and drank more than he ate. When the disagreeable meal was ended, he strode ruffling away, saying he desired his own sole company, which it were well that all should respect. Bembo saw him go, with a sigh and a smile.
'Good, honest soul,' quoth he, 'that already wakes to the reckoning!'
Madam misunderstood him, and pressed a little closer, with a happy echo of his sigh. Her eyes were soft with wine and passion. She had no precedent for doubting her influence on the moment she chose to make her own.
'The reckoning!' she murmured. 'But I am wax in thy hands, pretty saint. Shalt confess me, and take what toll thou wilt of my sins?'
Her hand settled light as a bird on his.
'Sing to me, Bernardino,' she whispered wooingly, 'sith the cloud is gone from our moon, and I am in the will to love.'
He shot one little startled glance her way; then slowly slung round his lute, and, touching the strings pensively, melted into the following reproach:—
'Speak low! What do you ask, false love? Speak low!
Sin cannot speak too low.
The night-wind stealing to thy bosom,
The dead star, dropping like a blossom,
Less voiceless be than thou!
Low, lower yet, false love, if to confess
What guilt, what shameful need?
God, who can hear the budding grass,
And flake kiss flake in the snowy pass,
Your secret else will heed.
Ah! thou art silent, not from love,