A Jay of Italy

by Bernard Capes

The deep, gloomy eyes of the Duke were lifted one instant to the strange seraph-gaze fixed silently upon him; then, making an acquiescent motion with his hand, he turned, and sat himself down again as if exhausted, and hid his brow under his palm.

Now the boy, never looking away, slung forward his lute, and like one that charms a serpent, began softly to finger the strings. And Galeazzo's head, in very truth like an adder's, swung to the rhythm; and as the chords rose piercing, he clutched his brow, and as they melted and sobbed away, so did he sink and moan. And then, suddenly, into that wild symphony drew the voice, as a spray of sweetbriar is drawn into a wheel; and all around caught their breath to listen:—

'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow.

They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips,

He to protect, she to trust—always together for ever and ever.

A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed,

Probing the earth with its keen tongue.

How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing!

Yet adored her little love to see him dare

That tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath.

And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed,

And drove the roaring terror from the woods.

She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength.

Then shone out the rainbow,

And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot.

"Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph,

"And I'll fetch it ye."

But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too!

We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!"

But he was already on his way.

And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before,

And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake:

"O leave me not behind!"

Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage,

the unattainable,

The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession.

And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain and

the whirl of dead leaves:

"Leave me not behind!"

But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain,

And often he staggered in the slough,

Or fell and cut himself on rocks.

And so, pushing on half-blindly,

Knew not at last from the dead rainbow the ignis fatuus,

The false witch-light that danced upon his path,

Leading him to destruction. Until, lo!

With a flash and laugh it was not,

And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness—

Night in the infernal swamps—

Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heart

The weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!"

Then at that, like one amazed, he turned,

And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence,

Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!"

And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset a

heart-broken sigh.'

He ended to a deep silence, and, while all stood stricken between tears and expectancy, moved to within a pace of the Duke.

'O prince!' he cried, 'haunted of that Innocence! Turn back, turn back, and find in thy lost playmate's face the ghost that now eludes thee!'

Carlo gave a little gasp, and his hand shivered down to his sword-hilt. He must die for his Saint, if provoked to that martyrdom; but he would take a desperate pledge or two of the sacrifice with him. One of the women, the younger, watching him, knew what was in his mind, and breathed a little scornfully. The other's eyes were set in a sort of rapture upon the singer's face. A minute may have passed, holding them all thus suspended, when suddenly Galeazzo rose, and, throwing himself at Bembo's feet, broke into a passion of sobs and moans.

'Margherita, my little playmate, that liest under the daisies. O, I will be good, sweet—I will be good again for thy sake.'

CHAPTER VI

Many a head in the palace, though accustomed witness of strange things, tossed on its pillow that night in sleepless review of a scene which had been as amazing in its singularity as it was potential in its promise. What were to be the first-fruits of that cataclysmic revulsion of feeling in a nature so habitually frozen from all tenderness? If no more than a shy snowdrop or two of reason, mercy, justice, pushing their way up through a savage soil, the result would be marvel enough. Yet there seemed somehow in the atmosphere an earnest of that and better. The hearts of all trod on tiptoe, fearful of waking their souls to disenchantment—agitated, exultant; wooing them to convalescence from an ancient sickness. The spring of a joyous hope was rising voiceless somewhere in the thick of those drear corridors. The f[oe]tid air, wafted through a healing spray, came charged with an unwonted sweetness. Whence had he risen, the lovely singing-boy, spirit of change, harbinger of a new humanity? Whither had he gone? To the Duke's quarters—that was all they knew. They had seen him carried off, persuaded, fondled, revered by that very despot whom he had dared divinely to rebuke, and the doors had clanged and the dream passed. To what phase of its development, confirming or disillusioning, would they reopen? The answer to them was at least a respite; and that was an answer sufficient and satisfying to lives that obtained on a succession of respites. Alas! as there is no logic in tyranny, so can there be none in those who endure it.

The earliest ratification of the promise was to witness in the figure of the Duke coming radiant from his rooms in company with the stranger himself, his left arm fondly passed about the boy's neck, his eyes full of admiration and flattery. He felt no more discomfort, it appeared, than had Madam Beatrice on a certain occasion, in the thought of his late self-exposure before his creatures. Such shamelessness is the final condition of autocracy. He had slept well, untormented of his vision. As is the case with neurotics, a confident diagnosis of his disease had proved the shortest means to its cure. Clever the doctor, too, who could make such a patient's treatment jump with his caprices; and with an inspired intuition Bernardo had so manoeuvred to reconcile the two. A whim much indulged may become a habit, and he was determined to encourage to the top of its bent this whim of reformation in the Duke. No ungrateful physicking of a soured bile for him; no uncomfortable philosophy of organic atoms recombined. He just restored to him that long-lost toy of innocence, trusting that the imagination of the man would find ever novel resources for play in that of which the invention of the child had soon tired. So for the present, and until virtue in his patient should have become a second nature, was he resolved wisely to eschew all reference to the intermediate state, and only by example and analogy to win him to consciousness and repentance of the enormities by which it had been stained. A very profound little missionary, to be sure.