A Jay of Italy

by Bernard Capes

'He said,' she had whispered, pondering some words of Ludovico's, 'More impossible things might happen.'

Then, taking the ring from her bosom, and apostrophising its green sparkle softly:—

'A little star—a little bribe, to win me both love and a throne!' she had said, and so had sunk back, closing her eyes, and murmuring:—

'Let it only prove its power here, and it and the heads of that conspiracy shall be all Ludovico's. He will not claim the latter, I think, until their purpose is accomplished. And then——'

And then Messer Ludovico himself had been announced. He visited her not infrequently in these days, though never, it seemed, with any purpose of foreclosing on that little mortgage of the ring. He came in the fashion of a confidential gossip, to enlighten her as to the doings of the world outside. They were very pleasant and intimate together, with a hint, no more, of closer relations to come. The lion rolled in a silken net, and affected his subjugation, as the lady affected not to notice the stealthy claws of her capture. It was a pretty little comedy, which engaged the sympathies of both, each according to its temperament. But it ended in tragedy.

Ludovico had, indeed, no interest in dissuading his beautiful gossip's mind from its tormenting suspicions as to the Messer Saint's gradual corruption by Bona; a scandal to which, no doubt—the wish in him being father to the thought—he himself gave ready credence. The report suited him in every way, both as to his policy and its instruments; and he only awaited its certain substantiation to let fly the bolt which was to involve three fortunes in one ruin—under warrant of the ring, if possible, but timely in any event.

And in the meanwhile it afforded him, whether from jealousy or pure love of mischief, some wicked gratification to nip and sting this already tormented lady in sensitive places, and to do it all under an affectation of the softest sympathy.

Yet, while for his own purpose he hugged and fostered the slander, whose growth and justification he most desired, the slander itself, for some inexplicable reason, did not grow, but even began to exhibit signs, for a time almost imperceptible, of attenuating. Ludovico could not acknowledge this fact to himself, or even consider it. It is difficult, no doubt, while we are calculating our probable gains, to admit the possibility of a blight in the harvest of our hopes. A fervid prospect blinds us to the road between; and this prince, for all his far-seeing, because of it rather, may have been less open to immediate impressions than some others about him.

Yet to souls less acute, there were the signs: the first little shadow of a smut on the ear—a hitch, just the faintest, in the ecstatic programme of Nature. Was it that Tassino, the mean worldling, was a true prophet of his parts, and that the reaction from a starved continence was already actually threatening? Whispers there certainly were of a growing impatience of restrictions in the castello; of schisms from the pure creed of its little priest; of hankerings, even on the part of the highest, after the old fleshpots. They rose, and died down, and rose again. There was no melting a certain snow-child, it was said, into anything but ice water. The Duchess, who had somehow expected to gather flowers from frost, went about white and smiling, and chafing her hands as if they were numb. She had once stopped before a new young courtier, who bore some resemblance to a past favourite, and, while speaking to him kindly, had been seen to flush as though her cheeks had caught the sudden warmth of a distant fire. Madam Caterina, it was certain, waxing bold in impishness, had commisserated her mother on the bad cold she had caught. 'Madre mia,' she had said, 'you have wandered too much in the chill woods, and would be the better for a hot brick to your bed.'

For such tittle-tattle was this after season of the sowing responsible, when, against all expectations, tares began to appear amidst the crops. Messer Ludovico, for his part, would recognise no sinister note in the laughter. It was just the rocking and babbling of empty vessels. Its justification in fact would not have suited his book at all; and so he continued in confidence to plant his little shafts in madam's raw places.