University of Virginia Library

SCENE II

Scene.—An inner room of the palace; with a door communicating with a further room, which is closed. A lamp is burning on the table. The old nurse Caterina is seated near the window with bowed head and in deep grief. A knock is heard at the door. She hobbles toward it, and opening it admits Montano.
Montano.
Signora Caterina?

Caterina.
That is I.

Montano.
I see that you are broken down with grief.
Give me your hand.
[He leads her to a seat.
The reason of these tears
Is easily guessed. Luigi Gonzaga dies
With the first flush of day. This is the cause?

Caterina.
Ah, sir, if my own son had then to die,
I could not suffer more. I have no son;
But he took on him all the unborn child,
That never quickened in the might have been.
I have watched him as a gardener does a flower,
And seen him slowly grow into his strength.
Ah, who can say I had not pangs from him.
What he hath done I know not to deserve
So swift a death; only that he must die
I know.

[She breaks again into sobs.
Montano.
You know not yet. I bring a hope.

Caterina.
Oh, that he may be saved, may be released!
Sir, do not trifle with a soul so old,
Or play with cracking heart-strings!

Montano.
I will not.
I come from Pietro Tornielli straight.
Where is your mistress?

Caterina.
Dumb, and as the dead
Within she sits, fixed on the coming day.

Montano.
She, she alone can save him if she will.

Caterina.
[Stumbling to inner door.]
Ah, Gemma, Gemma!

Montano.
[Taking her arm.]
Peace, and sit you down.
To you I'll tell the terms of his release,
You then to her; and she shall then decide.

Caterina.
Terms! but there are no terms she will not give,
Life even!

Montano.
Perhaps a harder thing is asked.

Caterina.
Harder than life! What is so dear as breath?

Montano.
To a woman one thing only.

[A pause.
Caterina.
Still I grope
In darkness. What can Gemma give more dear
Than very life?

Montano.
More dear? her very soul.

Caterina.
I seem to guess more clearly now. You mean—

Montano.
I mean—for the night passes, and already
Is little time for words—Lord Tornielli
Will spare the life of Luigi but to hold
His sister in his arms this very night.
Am I now plain enough?

Caterina.
Aye—plain enough!
Had it been life—

Montano.
It is not life he asks

Caterina.
Oh, what a dreadful choice!

Montano.
Yet on these terms,
And these alone can Luigi's life be spared.

Caterina.
She will not do it, never, never, never!

Montano.
Still lay the chance before her: see you how
Already the stars pale; the time is short.
He from his dungeon watches how they pale.
You as a woman to another may,
With what authority and wisdom else
May prompt, disclose, and may at last persuade.
I'll leave you to her—then I will return
To know her verdict on her brother's life.
[Going, then returning.
Remember paling stars and coming sun!
[Exit Montano.

Caterina.
Ah, God! must I, this old and shrunken voice
Use to persuade her white soul to this act?
She hath been filled with pity for the fallen,
Yet with that pity hath so loathed the cause.
So innocent and yet so understanding,
She hath been so gentle to those sinners, yet
Sick with abhorrence but to think their sin.
But, Luigi, any sacrifice for thee!
Gemma, my child, Gemma.
[She goes to door.
I must have word
A moment with you.
[Enter Gemma white and with a fixed movement.
One has left me but
A moment, who brought word from Tornielli.

Gemma.
No word can ever reach my ear but one,
And that one, “death,” “death,” “death” for evermore.

Caterina.
Gemma, sit here, and I will kneel and lay
My old face in your lap.

Gemma.
As I how oft
Have laid my face, old nurse, down in your lap,
Dreaming, to hear thee tell of fairyland.
But, ah, no fairyland is with us now!
But life, how grey and cruel—ah, and death!

Caterina.
Do not start from me, nor fall swooning down,
At that I have to say—Luigi—

Gemma.
O listen!
Do you not hear the stones down on him falling?

Caterina.
It is not yet resolved that he shall die.

Gemma.
What, what! Have I gripped your arm too fast? Yet speak!
This is some foolish comfort, shallow thought,
To ease me for a moment. Why, I heard
Pietro Tornielli—and to me
He spoke—declare aloud the doom of death.

Caterina.
He did so; but he may repent him yet.

Gemma.
But what hath chanced in these brief hours to change
A state decree? How is he sudden white
Who then so black was,—hath he been re-tried
All in a moment? Ah, toy not with hope.

Caterina.
I tell you, Luigi's life may yet be spared.

Gemma.
By whom then, how? Who holds the scales so fine?

Caterina.
You!

Gemma.
[Starting up.]
I! how should I save him?

Caterina.
Can you not.
A little guess and save my speech o'er rough?
Did you not mark then Tornielli's glance?
How in his speech he stumbled, while on you
His eyes were anchored: how, alarmed, his host
Cried out against delay and for thy life.

Gemma.
[Passing her hand over her brow.]
Yes, I remember his eyes fixed on me.

Caterina.
Now can you not conceive, and realise?
And I my face will turn away from you.

Gemma.
Oh, now I see, and but this moment since
I have gulped down such a draught of this world's cup
As leaves me shivering, and to wind exposed.
This was the plan then; like a beast, not man,
He would ensnare me for a fleshy hour,
Baiting the trap even with a brother's life.
You know, my Caterina, well you know
How I have loved my brother, if 'twere death,
That I would gladly suffer; to expire,
And lose the sweet and music of this life.
All joy for ever to forego—for him,
Or if I must be stabbed, or poisoned—yes.
But this—not this! He is not such a coward
That he would put his life into the scales
Against his sister's shame. I will not do it.
Oh, all the stars that muster in the heaven
Would cry on me with voices like to beams,
More awful in their silence to the soul.
I tell you, No, No! And what more repels
My soul is this—a trap laid for my soul.
Again I say, baited with brother's blood!
I hate this man, I hate the mind that thought
This business out, this trader of the dark,
This burning merchant for a maiden's soul.
What should I be, old Caterina, what
For ever and for ever? They who went
To flame for faith, they went not for this cause,
And out of scorching flesh deserved the stars.
The girl who yields beneath a summer moon,
That I can understand; but never a true woman
Made bargain with her body such as this.
There is my answer, now and for all time.

Caterina.
Child, though I know that sickens in your soul,
Still, when all's said or thought, is't not enough
To bring back Luigi from the grave? At dawn
Surely he dies. I as a woman speak,
Let this man vent his riot; let the fool
Have his hot way, and suffer his embrace!
Yours is the laugh by daybreak, and for ever.
Think, then, of Luigi freed! The world is wrong,
None catch perfection; save your brother's life,
Spending an hour within those silly arms!
What are his kisses, if the grave is foiled?

Gemma.
You, you persuade me to it? You who nursed
Both of us; why is it, then, that a nurse holds
Dearer the boy than the girl? he must be spared,
She never!

Caterina.
What you do you do not do.

Gemma.
Ah, woman, but our bodies are our souls!

[Enter Montano.
Montano.
Ah, Signorina! Straightway from my lord,
Pietro Tornielli, I have come,
In the strong hope that you will speak to him.

Gemma.
What use so to pretend, and gloze the truth?
You know well why this gentleman desires
To see me; on this errand you are sent.
Take back my answer, then, I will not come.
I loved and love my brother, but he must die.

Montano.
Is he so well prepared? And can he launch
On such a voyage? What has been his life?
His public faults this day were charged on him.
None of them he denied: his private lusts
Are through Siena sounded publicly.
You, you alone cast his immortal soul
Before the conscious Judge, unripe and crude,
You, you alone can stay that dread assize.
[The hour strikes midnight.
The night wears out: and hearken how the gong
With solemn syllables divides the night!
He hears them from the dungeon, stroke on stroke.
What is thy hour to his eternity?

Gemma.
Dead mother, tell me!

Caterina.
She to whom you cry
Remember was his mother.

Gemma.
I will come.

[She takes down an old dagger from the wall and hides it in her bosom secretly.
Caterina.
See, let me set this red rose on your breast.

Gemma.
Yes, yes, it is the colour of his blood.

[Montano motions the way out and he and Gemma exeunt.
Caterina.
Oh, only for his life! for the boy's life!
Virgin in heaven, forgive me if I sinned!