The Ninth Man/Chapter 6

by Mary Heaton Vorse

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CHAPTER VI

PONDERING upon the changed face of the town and upon its altered and so sinister temper, I walked slowly through the great hall. What I saw there was nothing, and yet it struck a chill as of death through me.

My lady sat by the window with the sun shining square upon her loveliness and upon the gold of her hair; but she was sunk in so deep thought that she was unconscious of all around, as unconscious as one who sleeps. As though she knew not what she did, she played with a black ebony ballot as though it had been a jewel. Her eyes did not leave it, but watched it, as it passed from one hand to the other, as it fell from her hand to the palm outstretched to receive it.

Across the room sat my master, Count Bartolommeo Conti, and fastened upon her a look of inconceivable malignity. He also watched the ballot, and he knew and I knew that my lady was not conscious of him nor of me nor of space, nor of aught in all the world but that she held death in her hand, and she was well pleased that she held death in her hand.

I had come into the hall with sedate and slow step, thinking to find no one there. And slowly I traversed its long length, but while I was in that room scarcely did my breath come to me.

It seemed to me that in crossing that silent room I lived more than the span of years that I had reached, and I pushed through the heavy door; and although I walked so slowly, as though absorbed in my own thoughts, panic was at my heels. I wanted to run from this sight: my master standing there in the insolent pride of his strength, watching my lady, who played so lovingly with the thought of death that she forgot life. As I got through the door it was as though I ran into the arms of my own chattering fright. In the corridor without was Father Giorgio.

"Have you seen, Matteo? Have you seen?" he cried at me. His fat cheeks were limp and gray, and it was the first time I had seen he was old.

"Oh, my poor Bartolommeo!" he cried. "My poor lady! Have you suffered as

 

OUR BEAUTIFUL AND ARROGANT LADY SAT BROODING

 

much as that? But this can't be! This can't be!" and he shoved out his two fat hands in front of him as if shoving something away from him, and then, half talking to himself and half to me: "Was it not enough that I should see the soul of her frozen in a night, and see the softness of her wither? And I must, too, see this? My poor Bartolommeo! A hard man he is and a strong man, but before God I swear he is not bad. It was to him only as if he had killed a whining dog. The black night's work it was. The black night's sowing! But not this harvest! You see, Matteo, she must not do this!"

In the hardness of my youth there was that in his complete discomposure that disgusted me. I plucked him by the sleeve and said to him in a tone of authority unbecoming in me to use to a priest of God: "Come, Father, who can tell who listens here?"

I led him down the long, deep flights of stairs and along the corridors to his own room, wondering into what hell I had now stepped, and frightened that life in my own house, where I served those whom I loved, should turn so ghastly a face upon me, I had often talked in the garden with Simonetta, my lady's tiring-girl, concerning my lord and my lady. We knew that my lady gave to my lord a cold, unvarying, grave courtesy. We called her among ourselves the most arrogant lady in the land, for we had both seen that she had the highest of arrogance, that which gives to all and asks from none. Pity she gave, and love and tenderness and kindness, to all who needed it. She asked nothing in return, and held herself as one who needs nothing; yet we, who lived so close to her, suspected her of a soft, tender heart, needing all those things and receiving none of them. We remembered, too, a time when she gave more to my lord than courtesy, and when he gave less than the jealous love which he now gave her, for he could not let her be, coming near her as though to bruise himself against her calm, as though he would hold her soul as close in his hand as he did her body, and with a fury that this forever escaped him. We knew that her gaiety dropped like a flag of mourning when he came near her; and it was this flame of life that burned so headily within her that made her beloved by all, this and her joy in play, for she played as eagerly as children play, sometimes with a child's serious eyes and sometimes with a child's laughter.

When her gaiety was at its height she seemed like some wild thing, and those who beheld it must needs run after it. It was like a flashing and scarlet thing. None of this, nor tenderness, was for my lord. This change, so Simonetta said, had come from one day to another.

All these things came tumbling through my mind as I traversed the corridors with Father Giorgio, he shaking as with the ague. As he got in his room he turned to me and said: "She has drunken too deeply of the loathing horror of life. This loathing has shaped her into a frightful, tortured thing, and there is no forgetting for her. I know the very night when the flesh of her became so degraded in her sight that she would have rejoiced in a purifying fire that mercifully could have burned it from her. But he did what he did in anger."

He stopped, and then as though he must tell, to relieve his mind of some intolerable burden, said, "There was a girl here once—some poor and distant relation of Count Bartolommeo's. You knew her."

I nodded. She had been a soft thing—too soft for my taste—with brown eyes like a dog's. And one day she went away and came back no more, and there had been some gossip, and that was all.

"Some months after the girl had gone I sat one night in my room," said he, "and with me Bartolommeo. I heard a whimpering as of a scared animal, and the curtain was held aside, and there stood my lady, and she pushed the girl in ahead of her; the girl was huddled under a cloak.

" 'And what do you here?' he cried. 'What do you want?'

" 'You, my lord,' said my lady, looking at him straight. And the girl bowed her head.

"The black fury of the Contis, which kills what comes in their way, came oyer him.

" 'I told you to begone,' said he, 'and to trouble me no more. Have you come whimpering back to show your shame?'

" 'Your shame and hers, my lord,' said

 

"THERE WAS A GIRL HERE ONCE—SOME POOR RELATION OF COUNT BARTOLOMMEO'S"

 

my lady. 'Where will you have her hide her shame?'

" 'Where it will trouble her no more,' cried my lord through his blackness, and he pointed to that doorway."

I looked where Father Giorgio pointed, and shivered, for our town is built on a hill, scrambling to its summit no one knows how. A mountain stream cleaves the town in two, cold as ice in midsummer. The garden of the Contis sits with its feet in the water, while that door leads to a narrow corridor and the corridor to a bridge, and thence is a narrow stretch to the town. Far below the bridge runs the silent stream, and many have gone through that door who have never returned.

" 'You come to me for counsel,' he cried, 'and to know where to hide your shame. Now hide it deep and hide it fast,' and he spoke in a tone that no man can resist. He opened the door and bowed low.

"My lady stepped up to him, and, 'My lord,' she cried, 'my lord!' He swept her away as though she were paper.

" 'Pass, Madonna,' said he.

"And the girl with the cloak around her bigness passed out before him and stood at the door, shivering. Then he said:

" 'There are less pleasant ways of dying. Pass!"

"She went out into the darkness, whispering, and he mocked her as she went, and whimpered after her and closed the door. And my lady said:

" 'You have rendered a great service, in that you have made my greatest grief my greatest joy, my lord,'

" 'And what is this joy?' he asked.

" 'That I had no son, my lord. In times of darkness I can remember that and my heart can become glad that I am childless.'

" 'You are young,' said he, 'and I am still your loving husband. The hour is very late. Let me conduct you to your room.' So he went with her."

Then Father Giorgio dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

"I loved him," he said. "I raised him from a little boy—and she has made my heart to break with pity—and she has death in her hands."