A Jay of Italy. Bernard Edward Joseph Capes
board, where he sat hunched over it. Looking from one to the other, he puffed out a little ironic laugh.
'Wonderest what is passing there, boy?' said he. 'Wilt never know. Not a hair would she turn though, like Althea, she were to find herself in child with a firebrand.'
Bernardo lowered his eyes with a blush.
'Nay,' said he, 'my thoughts of Madonna were more tempered. I coveted only her beauty for heaven.'
'Anon, Messer, anon!' cried the other banteringly: 'be not so free with my property. I hold her yet about the waist, seest, with a silver fetter? If there be a prior claim to mine——'
'Ay, Chastity's,' put in the boy.
Lanti hooted.
'Tempt her, if thou wilt, with such a suitor. She will follow him as she would the hangman. Wilt throw off thy belt, Beatrice? I gave a thousand scudi for it. See what Chastity here will offer thee in its room.'
'I will answer, if I may examine it,' said Bembo gravely. 'Will you tell her to unclasp it, Carlo, and let me look? I see it is all hinged of antique coins. There was a Father at San Zeno collected such things.'
'What, ladies' girdles!'
'Now, Carlo! you know I mean the coins. Methinks I recognise a text in one of them.'
Beatrice shrugged her shoulders, with a little yawn expressive of intolerable boredom.
'Well,' quoth Lanti impatiently, 'let him see it, you and he shall parable us for grace to meat, while these laggard dogs'—he looked over his shoulder, growling for his dinner.
Beatrice unclasped the cincture without a word, and flung it indifferently across the table. She had lain as impassive throughout her own discussing by the others as a slave being negotiated in a market. Not a tremor of her eyelids had acknowledged either her lord's rudeness or Bembo's provisional compliment.
The boy took up the belt and examined it. He was conscious of a sweet perfume that had come into his hands with the trinket. His lips were parted a little, his cheeks flushed. Presently he put it down softly, and looked across at Beatrice.
'It is what I thought,' said he—'the coin, I mean—a denarius of Tiberius, in the thirty-first year of Our Lord Shall I tell you what it says to me, Madonna?'
She did not take the trouble to answer.
'Yes,' roared Carlo.
Bembo slung his lute to the front, and began coaxing forth one of those odd, shy accompaniments of his, into which, a moment later, his voice melted:—
'When Tiberius was Emperor,
For thirty silver pieces bearing his image
Did Judas betray his Lord;
Then, himself betrayed to blood-guilt, cast them ringing
On the flags of the Temple, and maddened forth and died.
But the Jew elders eyed askance
The sleek, round coins, accurst and yet no whit
Depreciated as currency,
And ogling them and each other, were silent, till one spoke:
"Ill come; well sped. We need a place to bury the dead.
Let the Potter take these, and in return
Change us his field, o'er which we long have haggled.
So shall this outlay bring us two-fold profit,
Yet leave us conscience-clean before the Lord."
Thus, gentles dear, was bought "The Field of Blood";
And thus the wicked, damned price returned
Into the veins of traffic, there to circulate
And poison where it ran.
One piece found Hope, and changed was for Despair;
And Charity one led to hoard for self;
And one reached Faith, and Faith became a whore.
But, most of all, what had betrayed Love sore,
Sweet Love was used to betray for evermore.'
His voice broke on a long-drawn wailing chord. A little silence succeeded. Then, like one spent, he took up the belt and offered it to Beatrice.
'O Madonna!' he said, 'it is a denarius of the Cæsar that betrayed Love. Take back thy wages.'
She dragged down a spray of vine-leaves, and fanned herself furiously with it, making no other response.
'So! I am Judas!' cried Carlo; and began to bite his moustache, mouthing and glowering.
'Love!' he sputtered, 'love! Is there no love in nature? You talk of the human God, you——'
Beatrice broke in scornfully:—
'It is the world-wisdom of the monastery. He shall sing you love only by the Litany. His queen shall be a virgin immaculate, and her bosom a shrine for the white lambs of chastity to fold in. A fine proselyte for passion's understanding! I would not be so converted for all Palestine.'
Carlo laughed, with some fierce recovery to good-humour.
'Hearest her, Bernardo? Thou shalt not prevail there, unless by convincing that thou speak'st from experience.'
Bembo had sunk down upon the bench, where, resting languidly, he still fingered the strings of his lute. Now suddenly, steadfastly, he looked across at the girl, and began to sing again:—
'Love kept me an hour
From all hours that pass;
In her breast, like a flower,
She stored it, sweet, fragrant,
Of all time the vagrant,
Alas, and alas!
Of all time the flower,
Of all hours that pass,
For me was that hour,
When I cared claim it,
And kiss it and shame it,
Alas, and alas!
I dared not, sweet hour—
I let thee go pass;
And heaven is my dower.
My crown is stars seven:
I am a saint in heaven,
Alas, and alas!'
He never took his eyes, while he sang, off the wondering face opposite him. It was strangely transformed by the end—flesh startled out of ivory—the face of a wakened Galatea. Narcisso coming at the moment to place the first dishes of the meal before the company, she sat up, her hands to her bosom, with a quick, agitated movement.
'It is well,' she said. 'I am thy convert, saint in heaven!' She lifted the dish before her, and held it out with a nervous smile. 'Let us exchange pledges, by the token. Give me thy meat, and take mine.'
Carlo, watching and listening, knitted his brow in a sudden frown, and his hand stole down to his belt.
'Give me thy dish,' said Beatrice, almost with entreaty.
Bernardo laughed. With the finish of his madrigal he had pushed his lute, in a hurry of pink shame, to his shoulder.
'Nay, Madonna,' he protested. 'Like the simplest doctor, I but spoke my qualifications. Feeling is half-way to curing, and the best recommended physician is he who hath practised on himself. I ask no reward but thy forbearance.'
'Give it me,' she still said. She was on her feet. She kissed the rim of the dish. 'Wilt thou refuse now? Bid him to, Carlo.'
'Not I,' said Lanti. 'Hath not, no more than myself, been whipped into the classics for nothing? Quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre