CHAPTER VI
THE FRUITLESS WOOING
To have done what Bellarion had done was after all no great matter to the world of the court and would have attracted no attention there. But to have received the public thanks of Milan's civic head and a gift of five thousand florins in recognition of his services was instantly to become noteworthy. Then there was the circumstance that he was the son of the famous Facino—for 'adoptive' was universally accepted as the euphemism for 'natural,' and this despite the Countess Beatrice's vehement assertions of the contrary; and lastly, there was the fact that he was so endowed by nature as to commend himself to his fellow-men and no less to his fellow-women. He moved about the court of Milan during those three or four weeks of preparation for the campaign against Buonterzo with the ease of one who had been bred in courts. With something of the artist's love of beauty, he was guilty almost of extravagance in his raiment, so that in no single detail now did he suggest his lowly origin and convent rearing. Rendered conspicuous at the outset by events and circumstances, he became during those few weeks almost famous by his own natural gifts and attractions. Gabriello Maria conceived an attachment for him; the Duke himself chose to be pleasant and completely to forget the incident of the dogs. Even della Torre, Facino's mortal but secret enemy, sought to conciliate him.
Bellarion, whose bold, penetrating glance saw everything, whose rigid features betrayed nothing, steered a careful course by the aid of philosophy and a sense of humour which grew steadily and concurrently with the growth of his knowledge of men and women.
If he had a trouble in those days when he was lodged in Facino's apartments in the ducal palace, it lay in the too assiduous attentions of the Countess Beatrice. She was embittered with grievances against Facino, old natural grievances immeasurably increased by a more recent one; and to his discomfort it was to Bellarion that she went with her plaints.
'I am twenty years younger than is he,' she said, which was an exaggeration, the truth being that she was exactly fifteen years her husband's junior. 'I am as much of an age to be his daughter as are you, Bellarion, to be his son.'
Bellarion refused to perceive in this the assertion that she and Bellarion were well matched in years.
'Yet, madonna,' said he gently, 'you have been wed these ten years. It is a little late to repine. Why did you marry him?'
'Ten years ago he seemed none so old as now.'
'He wasn't. He was ten years younger. So were you.'
'But the difference seemed less. We appeared to be more of an age until the gout began to trouble him. Ours was a marriage of ambition. My father compelled me to it. Facino would go far, he said. And so he would, so he could, if he were not set on cheating me.'
'On cheating you, madonna?'
'He could be Duke of Milan if he would. Not to take what is offered him is to cheat me, considering why I married him.'
'If this were so, it is the price you pay for having cheated him by taking him to husband. Did you tell him this before you were wed?'
'As if such things are ever said! You are dull sometimes, Bellarion.'
'Perhaps. But if they are not said, how are they to be known?'
'Why else should I have married a man old enough to be my father? It was no natural union. Could a maid bring love to such a marriage?'
'Ask some one else, madonna.' His manner became frosty. 'I know nothing of maids and less of love. These sciences were not included in my studies.'
And then, finding that hints were wasted against Bellarion's armour of simplicity—an armour assumed like any other panoply—she grew outrageously direct.
'I could repair the omission for you, Bellarion,' she said, her voice little more than a tremulous whisper, her eyes upon the ground.
Bellarion started as if he had been stung. But he made a good recovery.
'You might; if there were no Facino.'
She flashed him an upward glance of anger, and the colour flooded her face. Bellarion, however, went calmly on.
'I owe him a debt of loyalty, I think; and so do you, madonna. I may know little of men, but from what I have seen I cannot think that there are many like Facino. It is his loyalty and honesty prevents him from gratifying your ambition.'
It is surprising that she should still have wished to argue with him. But so she did.
'His loyalty to whom?'
'To the Duke his master.'
'That animal! Does he inspire loyalty, Bellarion?'
'To his own ideals, then.'
'To anything in fact but me,' she complained. 'It is natural enough, perhaps. Just as he is too old for me, so am I too young for him. You should judge me mercifully when you remember that, Bellarion.'
'It is not mine to judge you at all, madonna, and Heaven preserve me from such presumption. It is only mine to remember that all I have and all I am, I owe to my Lord Count, and that he is my adoptive father.'
'You'll not, I hope, on that account desire me to be a mother to you,' she sneered.
'Why not? It is an amiable relationship.'
She flung away in anger at that. But only to return again on the morrow to invite his sympathy and his consolation, neither of which he was prepared to afford her. Her wooing of him grew so flagrant, so reckless in its assaults upon the defences behind which he entrenched himself, that one day he boldly sallied forth to rout her in open conflict.
'What do you seek of me that my Lord Count cannot give you?' he demanded. 'Your grievance against him is that he will not make you a duchess. Your desire in life is to become a duchess. Can I make you that if he cannot?'
But it was he, himself, who was routed by the counterattack.
'How you persist in misunderstanding me! If I desire of him that he make me a duchess, it is because it is the only thing that he can make me. Cheated of love, must I be cheated also of ambition?'
'Which do you rate more highly?'
She raised that perfect ivory-coloured face, from which the habitual insolent languor had now all been swept; her deep blue eyes held nothing but entreaty and submission.
'That must depend upon the man who brings it.'
'To the best of his ability my Lord Facino has brought you both.'
'Facino! Facino!' she cried out in sudden petulance. 'Must you always be thinking of Facino?'
He bowed a little. 'I hope so, madonna,' he answered with a grave finality.
And meanwhile the profligate court of Gian Maria observed this assiduity of Facino's lady, and the Duke himself set the fashion of making it a subject for jests. It is not recorded of him that he made many jests in his brief day and certainly none that were not lewd.
'Facino's adoptive son should soon be standing in nearer relationship to him,' he said. 'He will be discovering presently that his wife has become by Messer Bellarion's wizardry his adoptive daughter.'
So pleased was his highness with that poor conceit that he repeated it upon several occasions. It became a theme upon which his courtiers played innumerable variations. Yet, as commonly happens, none of these reached the ears of Facino. If any had reached them, it would have been bad only for him who uttered it. For Facino's attachment to his quite unworthy lady amounted to worship. His trust in her was unassailable. Judging the honesty of others after his own, he took it for granted that Beatrice's attitude towards his adoptive son was as motherly as became the wife of an adoptive father.
This, indeed, was his assumption even when the Countess supplied what any other man must have accounted grounds for suspicion.
The occasion came on an evening of early April. Bellarion had received a message by a groom to wait upon Facino. He repaired to the Count's apartments, to find him not yet returned, whereupon with a manuscript of Alighieri's Comedy to keep him company he went to wait in the loggia, overlooking the inner quadrangle of the Broletto, which was laid out as a garden, very green in those first days of April.
Thither, a little to his chagrin, for the austere music of Dante's Tuscan lines was engrossing him, came the Countess, sheathed in a gown of white samite, with great sapphires glowing against the glossy black of her hair to match the dark mysterious blue of her languid eyes.
She came alone, and brought with her a little lute, an instrument which she played with some expertness. And she was gifted, too, in the making of little songs, which of late had been excessively concerned with unrequited love, despair, and death.
The Count, she informed Bellarion, had gone to the Castle, by which she meant, of course, the great fortress of Porta Giovia built and commonly inhabited by the late Duke. But he would be returning soon. And meanwhile, to beguile the tedium of his waiting, she would sing to him.
Singing to him Facino found her, and he was not to guess with what reluctance Bellarion had suffered her voice to substitute the voice of Dante Alighieri. Nor, in any case, was he at all concerned with that.
He came abruptly into the room from which the loggia opened, his manner a little pressed and feverish. And the suddenness of his entrance, acting upon a conscience not altogether at rest, cropped her song in mid-flight. The eyes she raised to his flushed and frowning face were startled and uneasy. Bellarion, who sat dreaming, holding the vellum-bound manuscript which was closed upon his forefinger, sprang up, with something in his manner of that confusion usually discernible in one suddenly recalled from dreams to his surroundings.
Facino strode out to the loggia, and there loosed his news at once.
'Buonterzo is moving. He left Parma at dawn yesterday, and is advancing towards Piacenza with an army fully four thousand strong.'
'Four thousand!' cried Bellarion. 'Then he is in greater strength than you even now.'
'Thanks to the French contingent and the communal militia, the odds do not perturb me. Buonterzo is welcome to the advantage. He'll need a greater when we meet. That will be in two days' time, in three at latest. For we march at midnight. All is in readiness. The men are resting between this and then. You had best do the same, Bellarion.'
Thus, with a complete change from his usual good-tempered, easy-going manner, already the commander rapping out his orders without waste of words, Facino delivered himself.
But now his Countess, who had risen when he announced the imminence of action, expressed her concern.
'Bellarion?' she cried. Her face was white to the lips, her rounded bosom heaving under its close-fitting sheath; there was dread in her eyes. 'Bellarion goes with you?'
Facino looked at her, and the lines between his brows grew deeper. It wounded him sharply that in this hour concern for another should so completely override concern for himself. Beyond that, however, his resentment did not go. He could think no evil where his Bice was concerned, and, indeed, Bellarion's eager interposition would have supplied the antidote had it been necessary.
'Why, madonna, you would not have me left behind! You would not have me miss such an occasion!' His cheeks were aglow; his eyes sparkled.
Facino laughed. 'You hear the lad? Would you be so cruel as to deny him?'
She recaptured betimes the wits which surprise had scattered, and prudently dissembled her dismay. On a more temperate note, from which all passion was excluded, she replied:
'He's such a child to be going to the wars!'
'A child! Pooh! Who would become master should begin early. At his age I was leader of a troop.'
He laughed again. But he was not to laugh later, when he recalled this trivial incident.