by Ouida
For even a beaten dog is a creature less humble and timid than a woman that loves and whose love is rejected.
He took up a palette ready set, and went to a blank space of canvas and began to cover it with shapes and shadows on the unconscious creative instinct of the surcharged brain. Faces and foliage, beasts and scrolls, the heads of gods, the folds of snakes, forms of women rising from flames and clouds, the flowers of Paradise blossoming amidst the corruption and tortures of Antenora. All were cast in confusion, wave on wave, shape on shape, horror with loveliness, air with flame, heaven with hell, in all the mad tumult of an artist’s dreams.
With a curse he flung his brushes from him, and cast himself face downward on his bed of straw.
The riot of fever was in his blood. Famine, sleepless nights, unnatural defiance of all passions and all joys, the pestilence rife in the crowded quarter of the poor, — all these had done their work upon him. He had breathed in the foul air of plague-stricken places, unconscious of its peril; he had starved his body, reckless of the flight of time; he had consumed his manhood in one ceaseless, ruthless, and absorbing sacrifice; and Nature, whom he had thus outraged, and thought to outrage with impunity as mere bestial feebleness, took her vengeance on him and cast him here, and mocked him, crying, —
“A deathless name? — Oh, madman! A little breath on the mouths of men in all the ages to come? — Oh, fool! Hereafter you cry? — Oh, fool! — heaven and earth may pass away like a scroll that is burnt into ashes, and the future you live for may never come — neither for you nor the world. What you may gain — who shall say? But all you have missed, I know. And no man shall scorn me — and pass unscathed.”
There came an old lame woman by laboriously bearing a load of firewood. She paused beside the threshold.
“You look yonder,” she said, resting her eyes on the stranger crouching on the threshold. “Are you anything to that man?”
Silence only answered her.
“He has no friends,” muttered the cripple. “No human being has ever come to him; and he has been here many months. He will be mad — very soon. I have seen it before. Those men do not die. Their bodies are too strong. But their brains go, — look you. And their brains go, and yet they live — to fourscore and ten many a time — shut up and manacled like wild beasts.”
Folle-Farine shivered where she crouched in the shadow of the doorway; she still said nothing.
The crone mumbled on indifferent of answer, and yet pitiful, gazing into the chamber.
“I have watched him often; he is fair to look at — one is never too old to care for that. All winter, spring, and summer he has lived so hard; — so cold too and so silent — painting that strange thing yonder. He looks like a king — he lives like a beggar. The picture was his god: — see you. And no doubt he has set his soul on fame — men will. All the world is mad. One day in the springtime it was sent somewhere — that great thing yonder on the trestles, — to be seen by the world, no doubt. And whoever its fate lay with would not see any greatness in it, or else no eyes would look. It came back as it went. No doubt they knew best; — in the world. That was in the spring of the year. He has been like this ever since. Walking most nights; — starving most days; — I think. But he is always silent.”
The speaker raised her wood and went slowly, muttering as she limped down each steep stair, —
“There must hang a crown of stars I suppose — somewhere — since so many of them forever try to reach one. But all they ever get here below is a crown of straws in a madhouse.”
“The woman says aright,” the voice of Sartorian murmured low against her ear.
She had forgotten that he was near from the first moment that her eyes had once more fed themselves upon the face of Arslàn.
“The woman says aright,” he echoed, softly. “This man will perish; his body may not die, but his brain will — surely. And yet for his life you would give yours?”
She looked up with a gleam of incredulous hope; she was yet so ignorant; she thought there might yet be ways by which one life could buy another’s from the mercy of earth, from the pity of heaven.
“Ah!” she murmured with a swift soft trembling eagerness. “If the gods would but remember! — and take me — instead. But they forget — they forget always.”
He smiled.
“Ay, truly, the gods forget. But if you would give yourself to death for him, why not do a lesser thing? — give your beauty, Folle-Farine?”
A scarlet flush burned her from head to foot. For once she mistook his meaning. She thought, how could a beauty that he — who perished there — had scorned, have rarity or grace in those cold eyes, of force or light enough to lure him from his grave?
The low melody of the voice in her ear flowed on.
“See you — what he lacks is only the sinew that gold gives. What he has done is great. The world rightly seeing must fear it; and fear is the highest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he has many foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers, with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battle-fields of earth.”
“You were to give that gold,” she muttered, in her throat.
“Nay, not so. I was to set him free: to find his fame or his grave; as he might. He will soon find one, no doubt. Nay; you would make no bond with me, Folle-Farine. You scorned my golden pear. Otherwise — how great they are! That cruel scorn, that burning color, that icelike coldness! If the world could be brought to see them once aright, the world would know that no powers greater than these have been among it for many ages. But who shall force the world to look? — who? It is so deaf, so slow of foot, so blind, unless the film before its eyes be opened by gold.”
He paused and waited.
She watched silent on the threshold there.
The cruel skill of his words cast on her all the weight of this ruin which they watched.
Her love must needs be weak, her pledge to the gods must needs be but imperfectly redeemed, since she, who had bade them let her perish in his stead, recoiled from the lingering living death of any shame, if such could save him.
The sweet voice of Sartorian murmured on:
“Nay; it were easy. He has many foes. He daunts the world and scourges it. Men hate him, and thrust him into oblivion. Yet it were easy! — a few praises to the powerful, a few bribes to the base, and yonder thing once lifted up in the full light of the world, would make him great — beyond any man’s dispute — forever. I could do it, almost in a day; and he need never know. But, then, you are not tired, Folle-Farine!”
She writhed from him, as the doe struck to the ground writhes from the hounds at her throat.
“Kill me!” she muttered. “Will not that serve you? Kill me — and save him!”
Sartorian smiled.
“Ah! you are but weak, after all, Folle-Farine. You would die for that man’s single sake, — so you say; and yet it is not him whom you love. It is yourself. If this passion of yours were great and pure, as you say, would you pause? Could you ask yourself twice if what you think your shame would not grow noble and pure beyond all honor, being embraced for his sake? Nay; you are weak, like all your sex. You would die, so you say. To say it is easy; but to live, that were harder. You will not sacrifice yourself — so. And yet it were greater far, Folle-Farine, to endure for his sake in silence one look of his scorn, than to brave, in visionary phrase, the thrusts of a thousand daggers, the pangs of a thousand deaths. Kill you! vain words cost but little. But to save him by sacrifice that he shall never acknowledge; to reach a heroism which he shall ever regard as a cowardice; to live and see him pass you by in cold contempt, while in your heart you shut your secret, and know that you have given him his soul’s
desire, and saved the genius in him from a madman’s cell and from a pauper’s grave — ah! that is beyond you; beyond any woman, perhaps. And yet your love seemed great enough almost to reach such a height as this, I thought.”
He looked at her once, then turned away.
He left in her soul the barbed sting of remorse. He had made her think her faith, her love, her strength, her sinless force, were but the cowardly fruit of cruelest self-love, that dared all things in words — yet in act failed.
To save him by any martyrdom of her body or her soul, so she had sworn; yet now! — Suddenly she seemed base to herself, and timorous, and false.
When daybreak came fully over the roofs of the city, it found him senseless, sightless, dying in a garret: the only freedom that he had reached was the delirious liberty of the brain, which, in its madness, casts aside all bonds of time and place and memory and reason.
All the day she watched beside him there, amidst the brazen clangor of the bells and scream of the rough winds above the roofs.
In the gloom of the place, the burning color of the great canvas of Jerusalem glowed in its wondrous pomp and power against all the gray, cold poverty of the wretched place. And the wanton laughed with her lover on the housetop; and the thief clutched the rolling gold; and the children lapped the purple stream of the wasted wine; and the throngs flocked after the thief, whom they had elected for their god; and ever and again a stray, flickering ray of light flashed from the gloom of the desolate chamber, and struck upon it till it glowed like flame; — this mighty parable, whereby the choice of the people was symbolized for all time; the choice eternal, which never changes, but forever turns from all diviner life to grovel in the dust before the Beast.
The magnificence of thought, the glory of imagination, the radiance of color which the canvas held, served only to make more naked, more barren, more hideous the absolute desolation which reigned around. Not one grace, not one charm, not one consolation, had been left to the life of the man who had sacrificed all things to the inexorable tyranny of his genius. Destitution, in its ghastliest and most bitter meaning, was alone his recompense and portion. Save a few of the tools and pigments of his art, and a little opium in a broken glass, there was nothing there to stand between him and utter famine.
When her eyes had first dwelt upon him lying senseless under the gaze of the gods, he had not been more absolutely destitute than he was now. The hard sharp outlines of his fleshless limbs, the sunken temples, the hollow cheeks, the heavy respiration which spoke each breath a pang, — all these told their story with an eloquence more cruel than lies in any words.
He had dared to scourge the world without gold in his hand wherewith to bribe it to bear his stripes; and the world had been stronger than he, and had taken its vengeance, and had cast him here powerless.
All the day through she watched beside him — watched the dull mute suffering of stupor, which was only broken by fierce unconscious words muttered in the unknown tongue of his birth-country. She could give him no aid, no food, no succor; she was the slave of the poorest of the poor; she had not upon her even so much as a copper piece to buy a crust of bread, a stoup of wine, a little cluster of autumn fruit to cool her burning lips. She had nothing, — she, who in the world of men had dared to be strong, and to shut her lips, and to keep her hands clean, and her feet straight; she, whose soul had been closed against the Red Mouse.
If she had gone down among the dancing throngs, and rioted with them, and feasted with them, and lived vilely, they would have hung her breast with gems, and paved her path with gold. That she knew; and she could have saved him.
Where she kneeled beside his bed she drew his hands against her heart, — timidly, lest consciousness should come to him and he should curse her and drive her thence — and laid her lips on them, and bathed them in the scorching dew of her hot tears, and prayed him to pardon her if it had been weakness in her, — if it had been feebleness and self-pity thus to shrink from any abasement, any vileness, any martyrdom, if such could have done him service.
She did not know; she felt astray and blind and full of guilt. It might be — so she thought — that it was thus the gods had tested her; thus they had bade her suffer shame to give him glory; thus they had tried her strength, — and found her wanting.
Herself, she was so utterly nothing in her own sight, and he was so utterly all in all; her life was a thing so undesired and so valueless, and his a thing so great and so measureless in majesty, that it seemed to her she might have erred in thrusting away infamy, since infamy would have brought with it gold to serve him.
Dignity, innocence, strength, pride — what right had she to these, what title had she to claim them — she who had been less than the dust from her birth upward?
To perish for him anyhow — that was all that she had craved in prayer of the gods. And she watched him now all through the bitter day; watched him dying of hunger, of fever, of endless desire, of continual failure, — and was helpless. More helpless even than she had been when first she had claimed back his life from Thanatos.
Seven days she watched thus by him amidst the metal clangor of the bells, amidst the wailing of the autumn winds between the roofs.
She moistened his lips with a little water; it was all he took. A few times she left him and stole down amidst the people whom she had served, and was met by a curse from most of them; for they thought that she tended some unknown fever which she might bring amidst them, so they drove her back, and would hear naught of her. A few, more pitiful than the rest, flung her twice or thrice a little broken bread; she took it eagerly, and fed on it, knowing that she must keep life in her by some food, or leave him utterly alone. For him she had laid down all pride; for him she would have kissed the feet of the basest or sued to the lowest for alms.
And when the people — whose debts to her she had often forgiven, and whom she had once fancied had borne her a little love — drove her from them with harshest reviling, she answered nothing, but dropped her head and turned and crept again up the winding stairs to kneel beside his couch of straw, and wonder, in the bewildered anguish of her aching brain, if indeed evil were good, — since evil alone could save him.
Seven days went by; the chimes of the bells blown on the wild autumn winds in strange bursts of jangled sound; the ceaseless murmur of the city’s crowd surging ever on the silence from the far depths below; sunrise and moonrise following one another with no change in the perishing life that she alone guarded, whilst every day the light that freshly rose upon the world found the picture of the Barabbas, and shone on the god rejected and the thief adored.
Every night during those seven days the flutelike voice of her tempter made its hated music on her ear. It asked always, —
“Are you tired, Folle-Farine?”
Her ears were always deaf; her lips were always dumb.
On the eighth night he paused a little longer by her in the gloom.
“He dies there,” he said, slowly resting his tranquil, musing gaze upon the bed of straw. “It is a pity. So little would save him still. A little wine, a little fruit, a little skill, — his soul’s desire when his sense returns. So little — and he would live, and he would be great; and the secret sins of the Barabbas would scourge the nations, and the nations, out of very fear and very shame, would lift their voices loud and hail him prophet and seer.”
Her strength was broken as she heard. She turned and flung herself in supplication at his feet.
“So little — so little; and you hold your hand!”
Sartorian smiled.
“Nay; you hold your silence, Folle-Farine.”
She did not move; her upraised face spoke without words the passion of her prayer.
“Save him! — save him! So little, so you say; and the gods will not hear.”
“The gods are all dead, Folle-Farine.”
“Save him! You are as a god! Save him!”
“I am but a mortal, Folle-Farine. Can I open the gates of the tomb, or
close them?”
“You can save him, — for you have gold.”
He smiled still.
“Ah! you learn at last that there is but one god! You have been slow to believe, Folle-Farine!”
She clung to him; she writhed around him; she kissed with her soilless lips the base dust at his feet.
“You hold the keys of the world; you can save the life of his body; you can give him the life of his soul. You are a beast, a devil, a thing foul and unclean, and without mercy, and cruel as a lie; and therefore you are the thing that men follow, and worship, and obey. I know! — I know! You can save him if you will!”
She laughed where she was stretched upon the ground, a laugh that stayed the smile upon his mouth.
He stooped, and the sweetness of his voice was low and soft as the south wind.
“I will save him, if you say that you are tired, Folle-Farine.”
Where she was stretched face downward at his feet she shuddered, as though the folds of a snake curled round her, and stifled, and slew her with a touch.
“I cannot!” she muttered faintly in her throat.
“Then let him die!” he said; and turned away.
Once again he smiled.
The hours passed; she did not move; stretched there, she wrestled with her agony as the fate-pursued wrestled with their doom on the steps of the temple, while the dread Eumenides drew round them and waited — waiting in cold patience for the slow sure end.
She arose and went to his side as a dying beast in the public roadway under a blow staggers to its feet to breathe its last.
“Let him die!” she muttered, with lips dry as the lips of the dead. “Let him die!”
Once more the choice was left to her. So men said: and the gods were dead.
An old man, with a vulture’s eyes and bony fingers, and rags that were plague-stricken with the poisons of filth and of disease, had followed and looked at her in the doorway, and kicked her where she lay.
“He owes me twenty days for the room,” he muttered, while his breath scorched her throat with the fumes of drink. “A debt is a debt. To-morrow I will take the canvas; it will do to burn. You shiver? — fool! If you chose, you could fill this garret with gold this very night. But you love this man, and so you let him perish while you prate of ‘shame.’ Oh-ho! that is a woman!”