A Jay of Italy/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
It is remarkable how quickly the brute genii will adapt himself to his pint bottle when once the cork is in. Elastic, it must be remembered, has the two properties of expansion and retraction, the latter being in corresponding proportion with the former. Wherefore, the greater its stretching capacity the more compact its compass unstretched.
So it is with life, which is elastic, and mostly lived at a tension. Relax that tension, and behold the buoyant temperament rinding roomier quarters in a straitened confinement than would ever a flaccid one in the same; and this in defiance of Bonnivard, that fettered Nimrod of the mountains, whose heart broke early in captivity, and who, nevertheless, as a matter of fact, did not exist.
The truth is, a pint pot is over-enough to contain the mind of many an honest vigorous fellow; and it is the mind, rather than the body, which struggles for elbow-room. Carlo, in his prison, suffered little from that mere mental horror of circumscription which, to a more sensitive soul, had been the infinite worst of his doom. He champed, and stamped, and raged, sure enough; cursed his fate, his impotence, his restrictions; but all from a cleaner standpoint than the nerves—from one (no credit to him for that) less constitutionally personal. That he should be shut from the possibility of helping in a sore pass the little friend of his love, of his faith, of his adoration—the pretty child who had needed, never so much as at this moment, the help and protection of his strong arm—here was the true madness of his condition. And he bore it hardly, while the fit possessed him, and until physical exhaustion made room for the little reserves of reason which all the time had been waiting on its collapse.
Then, suddenly, he became very quiet; an amenable, wicked, dangerous thing; fed greedily; nursed his muscles; spake his gaolers softly when they visited him; refrained from asking useless questions to elicit evasive answers; brooded by the hour together when alone. They treated him with every consideration; answered practically his demands for books, paper, pens and ink, wine—for all bodily ameliorations of his lot which he chose to suggest, short of the means to escape it. There, only, was there no concession—no response to the request of an insulted cavalier to be returned the weapons of his honour of which he had been basely mulcted. His fingers must serve his mouth, he was told, and his teeth his meat—they were sharp enough. At which he would grin, and click those white knives together, and return to his brooding.
But not, at last, for long. Very soon he was engaged in exploring his dungeon, a gloomy cellar, two-thirds of it below the level of the moat, and lit by a single window, deep-shafted under the massive ceiling. His search, at first, yielded him no returns but of impenetrable induracy—no variations, knock where he might, in the echoless irresponsiveness of dumb-thick walls. Only, with that incessant tap-tapping of his, the trouble in his brain fell into rhythm, chiming out eternally, monotonously, the inevitable answer to a fruitless question with which, from the outset, he had been tormenting himself, and from which, for all his sickness of its vanity, he could not escape.
'What hath Cicada done? Concluded me safely sped? Done nothing, therefore. What hath Cicada done? Concluded me safely sped? Done nothing, therefore.'
So, the villainy was working, and he in his dungeon powerless to counteract it.
He lived vividly through all these phases—of despair, of self-concentration, of resourceful hope—during the opening twenty-four hours of his confinement. And then, once upon a time, very suddenly, very softly, very remotely, there was borne in upon him the strange impression that he was not alone in his underworld.
The first shadow of this conviction came to haunt him during the second night of his imprisonment, when, having fallen asleep, there presently stole into his brain, out of a deep sub-consciousness of consciousness, the knowledge that some voice, extraneous to himself, was moaning and throbbing into his ear.
At the outset this voice appealed to him for nothing more than the emotional soft babble of a dream. It seemed to reach to him from a vast distance, breathing very faint, and thin, and sweet through æons of pathetic memories. He could not identify or interpret it, save in so far as its burden always hinted of a wistful sadness. But, gradually, as the spell of it enwrapped and claimed him, out of its inarticulateness grew form, and out of that form recognition.
It was Bernardo singing to his lute. How could he not have known it, when here was the boy actually walking by his side? They trod a smiling meadow, sweet with narcissus and musical with runnels. The voice made ecstasy of the Spring; frisked in the blood of little goats; unlocked the sap of trees, so that they leapt into a spangled spray of blossoms.
A step—and the turf was dry beneath their feet. The sun smote down upon the plain; the grasshopper shrieked like a jet of fire; the full-uddered cattle lowed for evening and the shadowed stall.
Again, a step—and the leaves of the forest blew abroad like flakes of burning paper; the vines shed fruit like heavy drops of blood; the sky grew dark in front, rolling towards them a dun wall of fog—the music wailed and ceased.
He turned upon his comrade; and saw the lute swung aside, the pale lips yet trembling with their song. He knew the truth at once.
'We part here,' he murmured. 'Is it not? So swiftly run thy seasons. And you return to Spring; and I—O, I, go on! Whither, sweet angel? O, wilt thou not linger a little, that, reaching mine allotted end, I may hurry back to overtake thee?'
Then, clasping his hands in agony, the tears running down his cheeks, he saw how the boy bent to whisper in his ear—words of divine solace—nay, not words, but music—music, music all, of an unutterable pathos.
And he awoke, to hear the shrunk, inarticulate murmur of it still whispering to his heart.
He sat up, panting, in the deep blackness. His hands trembled; his face was actually wet. But the music had not ended with his dream. Grown very soft and far and remote, it yet went sounding on in fact—or was it only in fancy?
His still-drugged brain surged back into slumber on the thought. Instantly the voice began to take shape and reality: he caught himself from the mist—as instantly it fell again into a phantom of itself.
And thus it always happened. So surely as he listened wakeful, straining his hearing, the voice would reach him as a far plaintive murmur, a vague intolerable sweetness, without identity or suggestion save of some woful loss. So surely did his brain swerve and his aching eyes seal down, it would begin to gather form, and words out of form, and expression out of words—expression, of a sorrow so wildly sad and moving, that his dreaming heart near broke beneath the burden of its grief.
A strange experience; yet none so strange but that we must all have known it, what time our errant soul has leapt back into our waking consciousness, carrying with it, on the wind of its return, some echo of the spirit world with which it had been consorting. Who has not known what it is to wake, in a dumb sleeping house, to the certain knowledge of a cry just uttered, a sentence just spoken, of a laugh or whisper stricken silent on the instant, nor felt the darkness of his room vibrate and settle into blankness as he listened, and, listening, lost the substance of that phantom utterance?
But at length for Carlo dream and reality were blended in one forgetfulness.
Morning weakened, if it could not altogether dissipate, his superstitions. Though one be buried in a vault, there's that in the mere texture of daylight, even if the thinnest and frowziest, to muffle the fine sense of hearing. If, in truth, those mystic harmonics still throbbed and sighed, his mind had ceased to be attuned to them. He lent it to the more practical business of resuming his examination of his prison.
At midday, while he was sitting at his dinner, a visitor came and introduced himself to him, leaping, very bold and impudent, to the table itself, where he sat up, trimming his whiskers anticipatory. It was a monstrous brown rat; and self-possessed—Lord! Carlo dropped his fists on the cloth, and stared, and then fell to grinning.
'O, you've arrived, have you!' said he. 'Your servant, Messer Topo!'
It was obviously the gentleman's name. At the sound of it, he lowered his fore-paws, flopped a step or two nearer, and sat up again. Carlo considered him delightedly. He was one of those men between whom and animals is always a sympathetic confidence.
'Is it, Messer Topo,' said he, 'that you desire to honour me with the reversion of a former friendship? What! You flip your whiskers in protest? No friend, you imply, who could educate your palate to cooked meats, and then betray it, returning you to old husks? Has he deserted you, then? Alas, Messer! We who frequent these cellars are not masters of our exits and our entrances. How passed he from your ken, that same unknown? Feet-first? Face-first? Tell me, and I'll answer for his faith or faithlessness.'
The visitor showed some signs of impatience.
'What!' cried Carlo. 'My grace is overlong? Shall we fall to? Yet, soft. Fain would I know first the value of this proffered love, which, to my base mind, seems to smack a little of the cupboard.'
His hand went into the dish. Messer Topo ceased from preening his moustache, and stiffened expectant, his paws erect.
'Ha-ha!' cried Carlo. 'You are there, are you? O, Messer Topo, Messer Topo! Even prisoners, I find, possess their parasites.'
He held out a morsel of meat. The big rat took it confidently in his paws; tested, and approved it; sat up for more.
'What manners!' admired Carlo. 'Art the very pink of Topos. Come, then; we'll dine together.'
Messer Topo acquitted himself with perfect correctness. When satisfied, he sat down and cleaned himself. Carlo ventured to scratch his head. He paused, to submit politely to the attention—which, though undesired, he accepted on its merits—then, the hand being withdrawn, waited a moment for courtesy's sake, and returned to his scouring. In the midst, the key grated in the door, and like a flash he was gone.
'Ehi!' pondered Carlo; 'it is very evident he has been trained to shy at authority.'
It seemed so, indeed, and that authority knew nothing of him. Otherwise, probably, authority would have resented his interference with its theories of solitary confinement to the extent of trapping and killing him.
The prisoner saw no more of his little sedate visitor that evening; but, with night and sleep, the voice again took up the tale of his haunting; and this time, somehow, to his dreaming senses, Messer Topo seemed to be the medium of its piteous conveyance to him. Once more he woke, and slept, and woke again; and always to hear the faint music gaining or losing body in opposite ratio with his consciousness. He was troubled and perplexed; awake by dawn, and harking for confirmation of his dreams. But daylight plugged his hearing.
He had expected Messer Topo to breakfast. He did not come. He called—and there he was. They exchanged confidences and discussed biscuits. The key grated, and Messer Topo was gone.
This day Carlo set himself to solve the mystery of his visitor's lightning disappearances—Anglicè, to find a rat-hole. Fingering, in the gloom, along the joint of floor and wall, he presently discovered a jagged hole which he thought might explain. Without removing his hand, he called softly: 'Topo! Messer Topo!' Instantly a little sharp snout, tipped with a chilly nose, touched him and withdrew. He stood up, as the key turned in the lock once more.
This time it was Messer Jacopo himself who entered, while his bulldogs watched at the door. He came to bring the prisoner a volume of Martial, which Carlo had once had recommended to him, and of which he had since bethought himself as a possible solace in his gloom. The Provost Marshal advanced, with the book in his hand, and seeing his captive's occupation, as he thought, paused, with a dry smile on his lips. Then, with his free palm, he caressed the wall thereabouts.
'Strong masonry, Messer,' he said; 'good four feet thick. And what beyond? A dungeon, deadlier than thine own.'
Carlo laughed.
'A heavy task for nails, old hold-fast, sith you have left me nothing else. Lasciate ogni speranza, hey, and all the rest? I know, I know. Yet, look you, there should have been coming and going here once, to judge by the tokens.'
He signified, with a sweep of his hand, a square patch on the stones, roughly suggestive of a blocked doorway, wherein the mortar certainly appeared of a date more recent than the rest.
The other made a grim mouth.
'Coming, Messer,' he said; 'but little going. Half-way he sticks who entered, waiting for the last trump. He'll not move until.'
Carlo recoiled.
'There's one immured there?'
'Ay, these ten years'
And the wooden creature, laying the book on the table, stalked out like an automaton.
He left the prisoner gulping and staring. Here, in sooth, was food for his fancy, luckily no great possession. But the horror bit him, nevertheless. Presently he took up the book—tried to forget himself in it. He found it certainly very funny, and laughed: found it very gross, and laughed—and then thought of Bernardo, and frowned, and threw the thing into a corner. Then he started to his feet and went up and down, nervously, with stealthy glances to the wall. Haunted! No wonder he was haunted. Did it sob and moan in there o' nights, beating with its poor blind hands on the stone? Did it
A thought stung him, and he stopped. The rat! Its run broke into that newer mortar, penetrated, perhaps, as far as the buried horror itself. Was there the secret of the music? Was it wont, that hapless spectre, putting its pallid lips to the hole, to sigh nightly through it its melodious tale of griefs?
He stood gnawing his thumb-nail.
What might it be—man or woman? There was that legend of a nun with child by—Nay, horrible! What might it be? Nothing at this last, surely—sexless—just a spongy chalk of bones, a soft rubble for rats to nest in. O, Messer Topo, Messer Topo! on what dust of human tragedy did you make your bed! Perhaps
No! perish the thought! Messer Topo was a gentleman—descendant of a long line of gentlemen—no hereditary cannibal. He preferred meats cooked to raw. An hereditary guardian, rather, of that flagrant tomb. And yet—
He lay down to rest that night, lay rigid for a long while, battling with a monstrous soul-terror. A burst of perspiration relieved him at last, and he sank into oblivion.
Then, lo! swift and instant, it seemed, the unearthly music caught him in its spell. It was more poignant than he had known it yet—loud, piercing, leaping like the flame of a blown candle. He awoke, sweating and trembling. The vibration of that gale of sorrow seemed yet ringing in his ears—from the walls, from the ceiling, from the glass rim of his drinking-vessel on the table, which repeated it in a thousand tinkling chimes. But again the voice itself had attenuated to a ghost of sound—a mere Æolian thread of sweetness.
But it was a voice.
Carlo sat up on his litter. He was a man of obdurate will, of a conquering resolution; and the moment, unnerving as it seized him out of sleep, found him nevertheless decided. A shaft of green moonlight struck down from the high grate into his dungeon, spreading like oil where it fell; floating over floor and table; leaving little dark objects stranded in its midst. Its upper part, reflecting the moving waters of the moat outside, seemed to boil and curdle in a frantic dance of atoms, as though the spirit music were rising thither in soundless bubbles.
He listened a minute, scarce breathing; then dropped softly to the floor, and stole across his chamber, and stooped and listened at the wall.
The next moment he had risen and staggered back, panting, glaring with dilated eyes into the dark. There was no longer doubt. It was by way of Messer Topo's pierced channel that the music had come welling to him.
But whence?
Commanding himself by a tense effort, he bent once more, and listened. Long now—so long, that one might have heard the passion in his heart conceive, and writhe, and grow big, and at length deliver itself in a fierce and woful cry: 'Bernardo! my little, little brother!'
With the words, he leapt up and away—tore hither and thither like a madman—mouthed broken imprecations, fought for articulate speech and self-control. The truth—all the wicked, damnable truth—had burst upon him in a flash. No ghostly voice was this of a ten years immured; but one, now recognised, sweet and human beyond compare, the piteous solution of all his hauntings. The run pierced further than to that middle tragedy—pierced to a tragedy more intimate and dreadful—pierced through into the adjoining cell, where lay his child, his little love, perishing of cold and hunger. He read it all in an instant—the disastrous consequences of his own disaster. And he could not comfort or intervene while this, his pretty swan, was singing himself to death hard by.
Pity him in that minute. I think, poor wretch, his state was near the worse—so strong, and yet so helpless. He shrieked, he struck himself, he blasphemed. Monstrous? it was monstrous beyond all human limits of malignity. So the ring had sped and wrought! What had this angel done, but been an angel? What had Cicada, so hide-bound in his own conceit of folly? Curst watchdogs both, to let themselves be fooled and chained away while the wolf was ravening their lamb!
He sobbed, fighting for breath:—
'Messer Topo, Messer Topo! Thou art the only gentleman! I crave thy forgiveness, O, I crave thy forgiveness for that slander! A rat! I'll love them always—a better gentleman, a better friend, bringing us together!'
With the thought, he flung himself down on the floor, and put his ear to the hole. Still, very faint and remote, the music came leaking by it—a voice; the throb of a lute.
He changed his ear for his lips:—
'Bernardo!' he screamed; 'Bernardo! Bernardo!' and listened anew.
The music had ceased—that was certain. It was succeeded by a confused, indistinguishable murmur, which in its turn died away.
'Bernardo!' he screeched again, and lay hungering for an answer.
It came to him, suddenly, in one rapturous soft cry:—
'Carlo!'
No more. The sweet heart seemed to break, the broken spirit to wing on it. Thereafter was silence, awful and eternal.
He called again and again—no response. He rose, and resumed his maddened race, to and fro, praying, weeping, clutching at his throat. At length worn out, he threw himself once more by the wall, his ear to the hole, and lying there, sank into a sort of swoon.
Messer Topo, sniffing sympathetically at his face, awoke him. He sat up; remembered; stooped down; sought to cry the dear name again, and found his voice a mere whisper. That crowned his misery.
But he could still listen.
No sound, however, rewarded him. He spent the day in a dreadful tension between hope and despair—snarled over the periodic visits of his gaolers—snarled them from his presence—was for ever crouching and listening. They fancied his wits going, and nudged one another and grinned. He never thought to question them; was always one of those strong souls who find, not ask, the way to their own ends. He knew they would lie to him, and was only impatient of their company. Seeing his state, they were at the trouble to take some extra precautions, always posting a guard on the stairs before entering his cell. Messer Lanti, normal, was sufficiently formidable; possessed, there was no foretelling his possibilities.
But they might have reassured themselves. Escape, at the moment, was farthest from his thoughts or wishes. He would have stood for his dungeon against the world; he clung to his wall, like a frozen ragamuffin to the outside of a baker's oven.
Presently he bethought himself of an occupation, at once suggestive and time-killing. He had been wearing his spurs when captured—weapons, of a sort, overlooked in the removal of deadlier—and these, in view of vague contingencies, he had taken off and hidden in his bed. His precaution was justified; he saw a certain use for them now; and so, procuring them, set to work to enlarge with their rowels the opening of the rat hole. He wrought busily and energetically. Messer Topo sat by him a good deal, watching, with courteous and even curious forbearance, this really insolent desecration of his front door. They dined together as usual; and then Carlo returned to his work. His plan was to enlarge the opening into a funnel-like mouth, meeter for receiving and conveying sounds. It had occurred to him that the point of the tiny passage's issue into the next cell might be difficult of localisation by one imprisoned there, especially if the search—as he writhed to picture it—was to be made in a blinding gloom. If he could only have continued to help by his voice—to cry 'Here! Here!' in this tragic game of hide-and-seek! He wrought dumbly, savagely, nursing his lungs against that moment. But still by night it had not come to be his.
Then, all in an instant, an inspiration came to him. He sat down, and wrote upon a slip of paper: 'From Carlo Lanti, prisoner and neighbour. Mark who brings thee this—whence he issues, and whither returns. Speak, then, by that road—' and having summoned Messer Topo, fastened the billet by a thread about his neck, and, carrying him to his run, dismissed him into it. Wonder of wonders! the great little beast disappeared upon his errand. Henceforth kill them for vermin that called the rat by such a name!
Messer Topo did not return. What matter, if he had sped his mission? Only, had he? There was the torture. Hour after hour went by, and still no sign.
Carlo fell asleep, with his ear to the funnel. That night the music did not visit him. He awoke—to daylight, and the knowledge of a sudden cry in his brain. Tremulous, he turned, and found his voice had come back to him, and cleared it, and quavered hoarsely into the hole, 'Who speaks? Who's there?'
He dwelt in agony on the answer—thin, exhausted, a croaking gasp, it reached him at length:—
'Cicca—the Fool—near sped.'
'The Fool! Thou—thou and none other?' His cry was like a wolf's at night; 'none other? Bernardo!' he screeched.
A pause—then: 'Dead, dead, dead!' came wheezing and pouring from the hole.
'Ah!'
He fell back; swayed in a mortal vertigo; rallied. He was quite calm on the instant—calm?—a rigid, bloodless devil. He set his mouth and spoke, picking his words:—
'So? Is it so? All trapped together, then? When did he die?'
'Quick!' clucked the voice; 'quick, and let me pass. When, say'st? Time's dead and rotten here. I know not. A' heard thee call—and roused—and shrieked thy name. His heart broke on it. A' spoke never again. All's said and done. What more? I could not find the hole—till thy rat came. Speak quick.'
What more? What more to mend or mar? Nothing, now. Hope was as dead as Time—a poxed and filthy corpse. Love, Faith, and Charity—dead and putrid. Only two things remained—two things to hug and fondle: revenge and Messer Topo. He bent and spoke again:—
'Starved to death?'
'Starved'
The queer, far little mutter seemed to reel and swerve into a tinkle—an echo—was gone. Carlo called, and called again—no answer. Then he set himself to ruminate—a cud of gall and poison.
On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide open.
'Free, Messer,' he said; 'and summoned under urgency to the palace.'
Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and dreaded by a gentler soul.
The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and whispered for Messer Topo.
The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him (the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy), apostrophised him face to face:—
'My true, mine only friend at last,' he said (his voice was thick and choking). 'I must go, leaving him to thee. Be reverent with him for my sake—ah! if I return not anon, to carry out and plant that sweet corse in the daisied grass he loved—not dust to dust, but flower to the dear flowers. Look to it. Shall I never see him more—nor thee? I know not. I've that to do first may part us to eternity—yet must I do it. Come, kiss me God-be-with-ye. Nay, that's a false word. How can He, and this bloody ensign on my brow? My brain in me doth knell already like a leper's bell. Canst hear it, red-eyes? No God for me. Why should I need Him—tell me that? Christ could not save His friend. I must go alone—quite alone at last. Only remember I loved thee—always remember that. And so, thou fond and pretty thing, farewell.'
He put his lips to the little furry head; put the animal gently down; longed to it a moment; then, as it disappeared into its run, turned with a wet and burdened sigh.
But, even with the sound, a black and gripping frost seemed to fall upon him. He drew himself up, set his face to the door, and passed out and on to freedom and the woful deed he contemplated.