In Maremma/Volume 2/Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXV.
LL this day and evening Este had passed in the alternate stupor and agitation of great fear. Against his judgment, against his manliness, he could not conquer the idea that she had gone to give him up to the law. He was very feeble; the simple fare that kept her in health had no power to restore the lost strength to his muscles or vivify his impoverished blood. He had nothing to do the whole day long; the gloom of the sepulchres, from which he dared not stir, oppressed him like a nightmare. His weak pulse beat fast with terror as he said in his soul, 'she is gone to tell them. She will never come back. She will only send the soldiers.'
When he heard her voice he could have screamed for gladness. When he saw her enter with the flasks of wine on her shoulders he laughed for very joy and kissed her feet for shame.
'I have brought the quinine and good Lacrima,' she said to him joyfully, yet with a tinge of reproachfulness in her voice. 'Why did you doubt me? I do not tell lies.'
'Forgive me! Hunted creatures doubt their own shadows. You sold the herbs well, then?'
'Ah, yes! so well, and to a kind old man who promised me that these would soon give you back your strength.'
'You never told him of me?'
'I did not tell him of you, of course; only that some one had had the marsh-fever and could not get health again. I had to go to Orbetello; that is what has made me so late.'
'What can I say to you? How can I repay you?'
'Ah! I want nothing but to see you well. You have suffered so long and so much.'
'Yes, I have suffered. But I do not see why you should care,' he said, using the same words that she had spoken to Maurice Sanctis.
She said nothing, but poured him out some of the rich red wine, which he drank eagerly.
'It is like drinking sunbeams,' he said, with the first smile that had dawned on his wasted features. 'Tell me, how could you get to Orbetello?'
'Febo, a fisherman of Telamone, took me there.'
'But he will suspect?———'
'Nothing—he is stupid, and, if he did, he knows that I know he smuggles goods from Sardinia; he will hold his tongue about me."
'There are many smugglers on the coast?'
'There are few people, but all the men that there are do smuggle—from the islands chiefly, to escape the customs dues. Why not? Do you know that when a Tuscan labourer comes back from working in Sardinia they make him pay duty on his Sardinian wooden shoes?'
He was silent; he was pondering whether one of those smugglers would take him across to France. But he had no money to offer as a bribe, and the crime of which he had been accused was one for which any country would surrender him up to undergo his sentence in his own land.
'You are very good to me,' he said with emotion as he saw her rake together the embers of the fire and begin to prepare his evening meal.
'I do not know that!' said Musa, and turned on him her luminous eyes that were like those of Carlo's divine messengers. 'I am sorry for you, and you have no one else.'
For the first time, the glance of her eyes startled him into perception of her as a young girl.
'Are you not afraid to come and go like this, alone?'
'I have my knife,' she said curtly; then, tired as she was, she turned away to light wood for a fire, and put the meat she had brought into water, making graceful this homely work by her own simplicity and grace as women did in days of old, when great Demeter herself thought household cares no shame.
He sat by the blazing wood and cones of pine and watched her; for the first time sensible of her beauty, for the first time also grateful for all she did for him.
It was she who gathered the wood and the fir apples; it was she who cut the dry heather to keep for fuel; it was she who fished, who span, who worked in all ways, who brought heavy loads upon her shoulders and shared her refuge with him, disdaining any personal fear or harm. It seemed to him that he ought to rise and go out into the daylight amongst men at all peril rather than bring risk and toil upon a woman—a girl—thus.
She appeared to divine his thoughts, for she spoke to him across the stone chamber of the Lucumo:
'I do not know that it is safe for you to be in this first room. I heard to-day in Orbetello that there is a reward up for you, and they say soldiers have come anew to the fort at Santa Tarsilla; there never have been any there in my remembrance.'
He shivered a little.
'A reward? You saw it?'
'Yes, for you; it describes you. And Febo said to me—"If you see yon poor soul on your moorlands there are gold and silver to be made."'
'And what did you answer him?'
'I told him he knew I was no trapper of birds or beasts. I thought it best to tell you this, because you must hide more carefully; the inner rooms are safest. They call you in that printing on the walls Count d'Este. You did not call yourself so?'
'Men call me so,' he said, wearily, 'or did so until I became a mere number amongst slaves.'
'That is a title, is it not?'
' A title, barren as the honourable names written under the paintings of these tombs! We were a branch of the Este of Ferrara, the great Este—the mightiest lords there were ever, save the Gonzaga and the Montefeltro. That is of no good now. All we have is a damp, ruined palace in Mantua, a few breadths of water-meadows; beyond Bergamo there is a little city on a rock—men come to it for its arts and architecture—that once was ours. Now we do not own a brick within its walls, and it is only remembered by travellers now and then because its houses are Bramante's and Sansovino's, and its altars are Giovanni Bellini's. We are almost as dead, almost as forgotten, as your Etruscans here.'
'You know who they were?' she said under her breath, as she spoke of her lost people. 'Tell me of them? When first I entered here, there was a king in golden armour, and with a golden helmet, lying there, just there; and as the light touched him the gold melted and he fled———'
'They were a great people, and they perished,' he answered her; 'their clay vases survive, but they are gone, obliterated, passed into nothingness. Now and then men find a wall of huge stones; a gateway hard and black as iron; a sepulchre full of gold and pottery. Then they say these were Etrusean. But when that is said, it is but a word; we know but little.'
'They were greater than the men that live now,' she said, with a solemn tenderness.
'Perhaps; why think you so?'
'Because they were not afraid of their dead; they built them beautiful houses and gave them beautiful things. Now, men are afraid or ashamed, or they have no remembrance. Their dead are huddled away in dust or mud as though they were hateful or sinful. That is what I think so cowardly, so thankless. If they will not bear the sight of death, it were better to let great ships go slowly out, far out to sea, and give the waves their lost ones.'
'Great ships whose freights should be death? Yes; the thought is fine. Would you mantle them with black like the homeward-coming vessels of Theseus? They should be the sailing ships of old, with "canvas stately in the wind," and their masts twined with myrtle, Greek-like———'
'Tell me more of them?' she said softly, motioning with her hand to the painted shapes upon the walls dimly glimmering into colour here and there as the lamp-light touched them.
'There is so little! My own Mantua was once theirs, named from their Mantus, that grim god of the land of shades—you see him yonder—we Latins called him Pluto. With other names, their deities and ours were all the same.'
'But was Christ amongst them?'
'No, dear; Christ was not born of a woman until this nation had been beaten, captured, absorbed, trodden under the iron heel of Rome. Christianity is a thing of yesterday; it looks beside Etruscan creeds as this year's bulrush beside the holm oak of the hills.'
'And where are those earlier gods?'
'Around us still; they are the unknown forces, the unalterable fates, that rule us then as now. What matter whether I called you Luna, or Cupra, or Hera, or Juno, or Musa; you would be yourself always, and always beautiful, as your marsh-lilies are that glow in gold upon the swamp.'
For the first time in all her seventeen years of life her face grew warm with a quick blush.
'I am not handsome,' she said, quickly. 'They call me Musoncella, the ugly face, always on the shore. If you want what is handsome you should see Giano's Mariannina; she has hair like the scales of the gold and red mullet.'
'I do not want Giano's Mariannina!' he said, with a soft intonation that escaped her.
'Well, she would be of no use here,' she answered him literally. 'She thinks of nothing all day but "gilding" her hair in the sun and getting bits of coral.'
Then she devoted her care to the meat broth she was setting on the wood fire in a bronze bowl; his heavy eyes watched her as she bent over the ruddy gleam from the crackling heather.
'You must be tired,' he said, with sudden perception of his own selfishness. 'Go and rest, my dear; pray go. I can wait very well for the broth until morning.'
'Oh no. You shall have it as soon as the fire will stew it. I am not greatly tired. You know I am made of strong stuff, and I rested in the boats.'
He did not urge her more.
As she sat by the fire she took some of her oaten bread, and some water, and made her supper of them, sitting beside the burning wood that sent out resinous odours as it burned.
'I ought to tell you why I am accused of this crime and condemned for it,' he said abruptly, after long silence. 'You ought to know—you who do so much for me on trust. You have a right to hear why they hunt me down as a murderer.'
'Do not tell it if it hurt you,' said Musa, as he paused. She saw that he shrank from telling the tale; and the temptation that was too strong for Psyche had never assailed her yet.
'Yes; you have a right to know. After all, it was ruin to me, but it is not much of a story; a tale-teller with his guitar on a vintage night would soon make a better one. I loved a woman. She lived in Mantua. So did I, too. For her sake I lost three whole years—three years of the best of my life. And yet, what is gain except love, and what better than joy can we have? A pomegranate is ripe but once. And I—my pomegranate is rotten for evermore! We lived in Mantua. It is a strange sad place. It was great and gay enough once. Grander pomp than Mantua's there was never known in Italy. Felix Mantua!—and now it is all decaying, mouldering, sinking, fading; it is silent as death; the mists, the waters, the empty palaces, the walls that the marshes are eating little by little every day, the grass and the moss and the wild birds' nests on the roofs, on the temples, on the bridges, all are desolate in Mantua now. Yet is it beautiful in its loneliness, when the sunrise comes over the seas of reeds, and the towers and the arches are reflected in the pools and streams; and yet again at night, when the moon is high and the lagoons are as sheets of silver, and the shadows come and go over the bulrushes and S. Andrea lifts itself against the stars. Yes; then it is still Mantova la Gloriosa.'
His voice dropped; the tears came into his closing eyes as though he looked on the dead face of a familiar friend.
He felt the home sickness of the exile, of the wanderer who knows not where to lay his head.
The glory was gone from the city.
Its greatness was but as a ghost that glided through its deserted streets calling in vain on dead men to arise.
The rough red sail of the fishing boat was alone on the waters once crowded with the silken sails of gilded galleys; the toad croaked and the stork made her nest where the lords of Gonzaga had gone forth to meet their brides of Este or of Medici; Virgil, Alboin, great Karl, Otho, Petrarca, Ariosto, had passed by here over this world of waters and become no more than dreams; and the vapours and the dust together had stolen the smile from Giulio's Psyche, and the light from Mantegna's arabesques. On the vast walls the grass grew, and in the palaces of princes the winds wandered and the beggars slept. All was still, disarmed, lonely, forgotten; left to a silence like the silence of the endless night of death. Yet it was dear to him; this sad and stately city, waiting for the slow death of an unpitied and lingering decay.
It was dear to him from habit, from birth, from memory, from affinity, as the reeds of its stagnant waters were dear to the sedge-warbler that hung its slender nest on the stem of arush. A price was set on his head; and never more, he thought, would he see the sunshine in ripples of gold come over the grey lagoons.
With an effort he took up his tale.
'We dwelt in Mantua. She was another man's wife. It is a common story. She was—nay, I cannot tell you what she was. Gather a lily in its whiteness and steep it in the sunset, and you will see something like her. She was of noble blood; the people always called her Donna Aloysia, as though she were a prince's daughter. She was poor—every one is poor there—but when she sat at her barred casement, with her mandoline leaning idle against her breast, she was a wife for Gonzaga's self; and her lord was an old, wizen, dull, and pitiful wretch—a judge of one of the petty courts there. So we loved one another. When the night fell, I rowed beneath her tower windows; if she were alone, there was a knot of flowers at the bars, and a lamp behind them; if all were dark, I stole away and hid amongst the reeds. So three years went by—you do not seem to understand! We were happy; we would have had nothing otherwise. All the stillness, and the gloom, and the hush of the close streets, and the noiseless pathways of the waters, all seemed made to make our lives the sweeter and the closer-knit. You do not seem to understand—you have never loved any one?'
'Only Joconda.'
'Joconda! I speak to you, then, in an unknown tongue. We were happy. Three summers went by. One night in August I rowed under her wall. The lamp was in the window behind the knot of jessamine and datura. The cord hung down from the bars; I tied my boat, and moored it as usual. As usual I swung myself up the rope, and entered her room by loosening one bar of the grating, which we had filed through long before. Whenever I shut my eyes, in thought or sleep, I see the pale, wide waters, the waving reeds, the white light of the full moon; I hear the hooting of the mosquito-clouds, the lap of the water on the wall, the great bells of the city which tolled midnight. I smell the scent of the creamy daturas and the jessamine flower as I brushed them down in my haste and my joy. They are always with me—always. When I lie in my grave I think they will be with me there. The room was light with the light of the moon. I saw her lying on the bed asleep—the great old bed that had once been Isabella d'Este's, with its velvet baldacchino and its gilded angels—but she had no kiss for me, no look, no murmur of delight. She was still, quite still, and on her breast, under a cluster of the datura lilies, there was a deep, dark gap, and a stream of blood was running slowly—oh, so slowly!—over the linen on to the marble floor. For, you see, she was dead. There was a three-edged dagger on the couch; a dagger of mine. I took it up. I understood. Jealousy had killed her and had used my weapon; jealousy has killed its thousands and its tens of thousands. At that moment men seized me. I know nothing more. When I came back to any sight or sense I was in prison, charged with the assassination of my mistress, Donna Aloysia Gorgias, wife of Piero di Albano.'
He ceased, and buried his face upon his hands. Musa listened, her eyes dilated with wonder, fear, and awe; her colour changing with unspoken sympathy, that was at once too timid and too strong for words.
'Who had killed her?' she asked at last.
'Her husband. Of that I am as sure as that the sun hangs in the heavens. He had a double vengeance so. I could but deny; I had no proof of innocence. Adultery with her was proven on me, and he, a man versed for many years in all the crafts of law, easily worsted me, delirious with the misery of her loss as I was then. Some furious words that I had been overheard to speak to her at a masked fête a few nights before, because she smiled more than I chose upon a youngster, were brought against me. My family were poor and proud, and ill-liked in Lombardy. They condemned me as guilty of her murder, and sentenced me to the galleys for thirty years. Thirty years! That is my tale. Well, no doubt in a way I murdered her, for she was slaughtered through our love.'
He was silent again; his head was sunk upon his arms; he had forgotten all except those nights in Mantua.
She was silent too. She was troubled by the ghastly story. Passion and death seemed to pass by her like the scorch of fire, like the chill of a grave.
'Does that old wicked man still live?' she asked.
'No doubt. He had his vengeance. After love it is the sweetest thing on earth. I know not how I came to touch the dagger, the foul thing, but being thus found with it in my hand was proof enough for the dolts who were my jury. Besides, old Piero di Albano was a man of weight in our poor ruined city, and I was an idler and a titled beggar. So he had his way. He laid her in her grave with a black cruel hole in her beautiful breast, and he sent me out amongst felons, to parch my life away like a dog chained in the sun, without a drop of water near, who looks up at the hot brazen skies till he is mad. Whilst I was in my cell a written paper, unsigned, was brought to me, which told me she had been as faithless to me as to her lord. It might be so; I know not. Or it might be but her husband's lie. This I know—love is a sorcerer's poison. It burns the brain to ashes, and shrivels the soul up in its heat, till it is no more than the cast coat of the tree-cricket.'