The Land of Cockayne: A Novel

by Matilde Serao

From that time forward he spoke in a still more wild and eccentric way. Sometimes in the middle of the many mysterious ghostly incoherencies his mind wandered amongst he came back in speaking to his daughter to a ruling thought—to love looked on as a stain, a sin, an ingrained want of purity in soul and body. The girl often blushed in her simplicity on hearing the abuse heaped on love, and then he praised the chastity that keeps the heart in a state of grace—that allows human eyes to see supernatural visions, and go through life in a sweet, dreamy state. He would get excited, and curse love as the source of all defilement, all evils and sorrow. Bianca Maria hid her face in her hands, as if all her father's strictures fell on her head.

'My mother was a saintly woman, and she loved you,' she remarked one day, repenting at once of her audacity.

'She died from that love,' he answered darkly, as if he was speaking to himself.

'I would like to die like her,' the maiden whispered.

'You will die accursed—cursed by me, remember that!' he shouted, like a demon. 'Woe to the daughter of Casa Cavalcanti who stifles her heart in the shame of an earthly love! Woe to the maiden who prefers the vulgar horrors of earthly passion to the purest heights of spiritual life!'

She bent her head without answering, feeling that iron hand ever weighing more on her life to bend and break it. She dare not tell her lover of such scenes; only sometimes, breaking momentarily the bonds of respect her father held her in, she repeated to Amati her despairing cry:

'Take me away—take me away!'

He, too, now had lost all his calm. He himself was taken by this plan of carrying her off, of taking the maiden away as his comrade, his adored companion—of freeing her from the dark nightmare of a life that was a daily agony to her. Yes, he would carry off the poor victim from the unconscious executioner; he would tear her from that atmosphere of vice, mystery, and sadness; bring her into his house, his heart; defend her against all this folly, these tempests. The Marquis di Formosa would be left to struggle with his passion alone. He would no longer drag to the abyss of desolation he was plunging into this poor meek, innocent girl. Every day this longing to save her grew in his heart, until it became all-powerful. He longed to speak so that his grand dream should become a reality. Gravely and solemnly he had promised Bianca Maria that sad evening she had confided her sad family secret to him that he would save her, and an honest man must keep his promise, even if it induce in him the wildest ecstasies or bring on a sorrowful depression at certain times. He longed to do it. In the meanwhile the days ran on. Some uncertainty still withheld him, even when he was most strongly resolved to ask Formosa for his daughter's hand. He vaguely felt that the answer would be decisive—that after it was said his life would be settled for him. But an important incident all of a sudden made him come to a decision. The Marquis di Formosa, amidst the fluctuations of his mind, kept up his mystical piety, and every Friday he spent hours in prayer in the chapel before Our Lady of Sorrows and the life-sized pierced Ecce Homo crowned with thorns. With that faith of Southerners which has bursts of enthusiasm, but is also bound in by a close net of the commonplace keeping it down to the earth, he constantly mingled heavenly things with all the worldly complications of his ruling passion, and sometimes in his despair he made the responsibility of his ruin rest on his Creator.

'You allowed this to happen; it is all Your fault, Jesus Christ!' the Marquis called out in his prayer. But on terrible days his faith became still more accusing and sacrilegious, unjust. 'It is all Your fault; You allowed it to happen!' he cursed on, tears burning his eyes, his voice choked. Indeed, one evening when Bianca Maria thought her father had gone out, on passing the chapel door she heard angry, sorrowful words coming from it. She put in her head, and saw her father kneeling with his arms thrown round the Ecce Homo. First he deplored his misfortunes; then he set to calling out blasphemies, cursing all the names of the Godhead impiously; then he repented quickly, asking pardon for his untrue and sacrilegious words, until a new outburst of rage came on, and he unclasped the holy image with scorn and threatening words. In his raving he threatened Jesus Christ his Saviour, bound to the column, to punish Him—yes, punish Him—if by next week He did not allow him to win a large sum at the lottery. Bianca Maria, horrified, seeing no end now to his sacrilegious madness, fled, hiding her face in her hand; and, shut up in her own room, she prayed the Lord all night that her father's ignorant heresy should not be punished. Now she always shut herself up at night, to shield her slumbers from her father's influence, because he always wanted her to call up the spirit, and spoke to her of those ghosts as of living persons—in short, keeping her constantly under that frightful nightmare. But she slept very little, in spite of the solitude and silence of her room; for her strained nerves shook at the slightest noise, because she was always afraid that her father would knock at her door, and try to open it with another key, to get her to ask the ministering spirit for lottery numbers. While she was slumbering in a light sleep from which the slightest noise wakened her, she started as if excited voices were calling her, and gazed into the shadow with wide-open eyes, as if she saw a spectre rising up by her bed. How often she got up, half dressed, and ran bare-footed over the floor, because she thought a light hand scratched on the pillow, touched her forehead, or patted her hair! One night, a Saturday, she heard her father going up and down, as she lay awake, all through the house, passing before her door several times, in the wild cogitations of his storm-tossed soul. In a whisper she called down on him Heaven's peace—the peace that seemed to have deserted his mind altogether. But just as she was going to sleep again, a queer, dull noise wakened her, quivering; it was as if a very heavy body was being pulled along, making the doors and windows shake with that dull rumble. Sometimes the mysterious noise quieted down and was silent; after about a minute's pause it began again, stronger, and at the same time more deadened. She remained raised on her pillows, fastened there by an unknown iron hand: what was happening there? She would have liked to cry out, ring the bell, get hold of people, but that rumble deprived her of voice; she kept silence in a cold sweat, the whole nerves of her body strained to hear only. The noise, like an earthquake, was getting nearer and nearer to her door; she clasped her hands in the dark, and shut her eyes hard not to see, praying she might not see. Together with that dragging of a heavy, unsteady object, she heard laboured breathing, as if someone was attempting a task above his strength; then a hard knock, as if her door had been hit by a catapult. She thought her door had violently burst open, and fell back on her pillows, not hearing or seeing anything else, losing her feeble senses. Later on, a good time after, she recovered consciousness, frozen, motionless; she stretched her ears, but she heard nothing else for a long time. In the confusion there now was between her dreams and realities, she believed that all she had heard was only a doleful nightmare that had oppressed her with its terrors. Had she dreamt it, therefore—that queer earthquake, that laboured breathing, that strong blow on her door?

In the morning, having rested a little, she got up easier, and, after saying her prayers, went to her father's room, as she had to do every day, to wish him good-morning. But she did not find him; the bed was unused. Several times lately the Marquis di Formosa had not come home at night. The first time it had caused Bianca Maria and the servants great alarm, but when his lordship came in, he scolded them for having sent to look for him, saying he would not stand being spied upon, he would do what he liked. Still, every time Bianca Maria knew that he had spent the night out of the house she got uneasy; he was so old and eccentric; his madness led him into dangerous company, and made him weak and credulous. She always feared some danger would befall him one of these nights on the road, or in some secret Cabalist meeting. She trembled that morning, too, and went on into the other rooms, thinking over what had happened at night, again asking herself if all that did not point to a dreadful mystery. She found Giovanni sweeping carefully.