CHAPTER V. PABULUM ACHERONTIS
It was late that afternoon when Astorre Fifanti set out. He addresseda few brief words to me, informing me that he should return within fourdays, betide what might, setting me tasks upon which I was meanwhileto work, and bidding me keep the house and be circumspect during hisabsence.
From the window of my room I saw the doctor get astride his mule. Hewas girt with a big sword, but he still wore his long, absurd and shabbygown and his loose, ill-fitting shoes, so that it was very likely thatthe stirrup-leathers would engage his thoughts ere he had ridden far.
I saw him dig his heels into the beast's sides and go ambling down thelittle avenue and out at the gate. In the road he drew rein, and stoodin talk some moments with a lad who idled there, a lad whom he was wontto employ upon odd tasks about the garden and elsewhere.
This, Madonna also saw, for she was watching his departure from thewindow of a room below. That she attached more importance to that littlecircumstance than did I, I was to learn much later.
At last he pushed on, and I watched him as he dwindled down the longgrey road that wound along the river-side until in the end he was lostto view--for all time, I hoped; and well had it been for me had my idlehope been realized.
I supped alone that night with no other company than Busio's, whoministered to my needs.
Madonna sent word that she would keep her chamber. When I had suppedand after night had fallen I went upstairs to the library, and, shuttingmyself in, I attempted to read, lighted by the three beaks of the tallbrass lamp that stood upon the table. Being plagued by moths, I drew thecurtains close across the open window, and settled down to wrestle withthe opening lines of the [Title in Greek] of Aeschylus.
But my thoughts wandered from the doings of the son of Iapetus, until atlast I flung down the book and sat back in my chair all lost in thought,in doubt, and in conjecture. I became seriously introspective. I made anexamination not only of conscience, but of heart and mind, and I foundthat I had gone woefully astray from the path that had been prepared forme. Very late I sat there and sought to determine upon what I should do.
Suddenly, like a manna to my starving soul, came the memory of the lasttalk I had with Fra Gervasio and the solemn warning he had given me.That memory inspired me rightly. To-morrow--despite Messer Fifanti'sorders--I would take horse and ride to Mondolfo, there to confessmyself to Fra Gervasio and to be guided by his counsel. My mother's vowsconcerning me I saw in their true light. They were not binding upon me;indeed, I should be doing a hideous wrong were I to follow them againstmy inclinations. I must not damn my soul for anything that my mother hadvowed or ever I was born, however much she might account that it wouldbe no more than filial piety so to do.
I was easier in mind after my resolve was taken, and I allowed thatmind of mine to stray thereafter as it listed. It took to thoughts ofGiuliana--Giuliana for whom I ached in every nerve, although I stillsought to conceal from myself the true cause of my suffering. Bettera thousand times had I envisaged that sinful fact and wrestled with itboldly. Thus should I have had a chance of conquering myself and winningclear of all the horror that lay before me.
That I was weak and irresolute at such a time, when I most neededstrength, I still think to-day--when I can take a calm survey ofall--was the fault of the outrageous rearing that was mine. At Mondolfothey had so nurtured me and so sheltered me from the stinging blasts ofthe world that I was grown into a very ripe and succulent fruit for theDevil's mouth. The things to whose temptation usage would have renderedme in some degree immune were irresistible to one who had been tutoredas had I.
Let youth know wickedness, lest when wickedness seeks a man out in hisriper years he shall be fooled and conquered by the beauteous garb inwhich the Devil has the cunning to array it.
And yet to pretend that I was entirely innocent of where I stood and inwhat perils were to play the hypocrite. Largely I knew; just as I knewthat lacking strength to resist, I must seek safety in flight. Andto-morrow I would go. That point was settled, and the page, meanwhile,turned down. And for to-night I delivered myself up to the savouring ofthis hunger that was upon me.
And then, towards the third hour of night, as I still sat there, thedoor was very gently opened, and I beheld Giuliana standing before me.She detached from the black background of the passage, and the light ofmy three-beaked lamp set her ruddy hair aglow so that it seemed therewas a luminous nimbus all about her head. For a moment this gave colourto my fancy that I beheld a vision evoked by the too great intentnessof my thoughts. The pale face seemed so transparent, the white robe wasalmost diaphanous, and the great dark eyes looked so sad and wistful.Only in the vivid scarlet of her lips was there life and blood.
I stared at her. "Giuliana!" I murmured.
"Why do you sit so late?" she asked me, and closed the door as shespoke.
"I have been thinking, Giuliana," I answered wearily, and I passed ahand over my brow to find it moist and clammy. "To-morrow I go hence."
She started round and her eyes grew distended, her hand clutched herbreast. "You go hence?" she cried, a note as of fear in her deep voice."Hence? Whither?"
"Back to Mondolfo, to tell my mother that her dream is at an end."
She came slowly towards me. "And... and then?" she asked.
"And then? I do not know. What God wills. But the scapulary is not forme. I am unworthy. I have no call. This I now know. And sooner thanbe such a priest as Messer Gambara--of whom there are too many in theChurch to-day--I will find some other way of serving God."
"Since... since when have you thought thus?"
"Since this morning, when I kissed you," I answered fiercely.
She sank into a chair beyond the table and stretched a hand across it tome, inviting the clasp of mine. "But if this is so, why leave us?"
"Because I am afraid," I answered. "Because... O God! Giuliana, do younot see?" And I sank my head into my hands.
Steps shuffled along the corridor. I looked up sharply. She set a fingerto her lips. There fell a knock, and old Busio stood before us.
"Madonna," he announced, "my Lord the Cardinal-legate is below and asksfor you."
I started up as if I had been stung. So! At this hour! Then MesserFifanti's suspicions did not entirely lack for grounds.
Giuliana flashed me a glance ere she made answer.
"You will tell my Lord Gambara that I have retired for the night andthat... But stay!" She caught up a quill and dipped it in the ink-horn,drew paper to herself, and swiftly wrote three lines; then dusted itwith sand, and proffered that brief epistle to the servant.
"Give this to my lord."
Busio took the note, bowed, and departed.
After the door had closed a silence followed, in which I paced the roomin long strides, aflame now with the all-consuming fire of jealousy.I do believe that Satan had set all the legions of hell to achieve myoverthrow that night. Naught more had been needed to undo me than thisspur of jealousy. It brought me now to her side. I stood over her,looking down at her between tenderness and fierceness, she returning myglance with such a look as may haunt the eyes of sacrificial victims.
"Why dared he come?" I asked.
"Perhaps... perhaps some affair connected with Astorre..." she faltered.
I sneered. "That would be natural seeing that he has sent Astorre toParma."
"If there was aught else, I am no party to it," she assured me.
How could I do other than believe her? How could I gauge the turpitudeof that beauty's mind--I, all unversed in the wiles that Satan teacheswomen? How could I have guessed that when she saw Fifanti speak to thatlad at the gate that afternoon she had feared that he had set a spy uponthe house, and that fearing this she had bidden the Cardinal begone? Iknew it later. But not then.
"Will you swear that it is as you say?" I asked her, white with passion.
As I have said, I was standing over her and very close. Her answer nowwas suddenly to rise. Like a snake came she gliding upwards into my arm
suntil she lay against my breast, her face upturned, her eyes languidlyveiled, her lips a-pout.
"Can you do me so great a wrong, thinking you love me, knowing that Ilove you?" she asked me.
For an instant we swayed together in that sweetly hideous embrace. I wasas a man sapped of all strength by some portentous struggle. I trembledfrom head to foot. I cried out once--a despairing prayer for help,I think it was--and then I seemed to plunge headlong down through animmensity of space until my lips found hers. The ecstasy, the livingfire, the anguish, and the torture of it have left their indelible scarsupon my memory. Even as I write the cruelly sweet poignancy of thatmoment is with me again--though very hateful now.
Thus I, blindly and recklessly, under the sway and thrall of thatterrific and overpowering temptation. And then there leapt in my mind aglimmer of returning consciousness: a glimmer that grew rapidly to bea blazing light in which I saw revealed the hideousness of the thing Idid. I tore myself away from her in that second of revulsion and hurledher from me, fiercely and violently, so that, staggering to the seatfrom which she had risen, she fell into it rather than sat down.
And whilst, breathless with parted lips and galloping bosom, sheobserved me, something near akin to terror in her eyes, I stamped aboutthat room and raved and heaped abuse and recriminations upon myself,ending by going down upon my knees to her, imploring her forgiveness forthe thing I had done--believing like a fatuous fool that it was all mydoing--and imploring her still more passionately to leave me and to go.
She set a trembling hand upon my head; she took my chin in the other,and raised my face until she could look into it.
"If it be your will--if it will bring you peace and happiness, I willleave you now and never see you more. But are you not deluded, myAgostino?"
And then, as if her self-control gave way, she fell to weeping.
"And what of me if you go? What of me wedded to that monster, to thatcruel and inhuman pedant who tortures and insults me as you have seen?"
"Beloved, will another wrong cure the wrong of that?" I pleaded. "O, ifyou love me, go--go, leave me. It is too late--too late!"
I drew away from her touch, and crossed the room to fling myself uponthe window-seat. For a space we sat apart thus, panting like wrestlerswho have flung away from each other. At length--"Listen, Giuliana," Isaid more calmly. "Were I to heed you, were I to obey my own desires, Ishould bid you come away with me from this to-morrow."
"If you but would!" she sighed. "You would be taking me out of hell."
"Into another worse," I countered swiftly. "I should do you such a wrongas naught could ever right again."
She looked at me for a spell in silence. Her back was to the light andher face in shadow, so that I could not read what passed there. Then,very slowly, like one utterly weary, she got to her feet.
"I will do your will, beloved; but I do it not for the wrong that Ishould suffer--for that I should count no wrong--but for the wrong thatI should be doing you."
She paused as if for an answer. I had none for her. I raised my arms,then let them fall again, and bowed my head. I heard the gentle rustleof her robe, and I looked up to see her staggering towards the door, herarms in front of her like one who is blind. She reached it, pulled itopen, and from the threshold gave me one last ineffable look of hergreat eyes, heavy now with tears. Then the door closed again, and I wasalone.
From my heart there rose a great surge of thankfulness. I fell upon myknees and prayed. For an hour at least I must have knelt there, seekinggrace and strength; and comforted at last, my calm restored, I rose, andwent to the window. I drew back the curtains, and leaned out to breathethe physical calm of that tepid September night.
And presently out of the gloom a great grey shape came winging towardsthe window, the heavy pinions moving ponderously with their uncannysough. It was an owl attracted by the light. Before that bird of evilomen, that harbinger of death, I drew back and crossed myself. I had asight of its sphinx-like face and round, impassive eyes ere it circledto melt again into the darkness, startled by any sudden movement. Iclosed the window and left the room.
Very softly I crept down the passage towards my chamber, leaving thelight burning in the library, for it was not my habit to extinguish it,and I gave no thought to the lateness of the hour.
Midway down the passage I halted. I was level with Giuliana's door, andfrom under it there came a slender blade of light. But it was not thisthat checked me. She was singing, Such a pitiful little heartbroken songit was:
"Amor mi muojo; mi muojo amore mio!"
ran its last line.
I leaned against the wall, and a sob broke from me. Then, in an instant,the passage was flooded with light, and in the open doorway Giulianastood all white before me, her arms held out.