by Ouida
The evening was cold still, but bright and windless.
It was at the end of February; there were lovely roseate lights in the sky, and all fresh mountain scents on the air. Women went by with large baskets full of crocuses and daffodils.
In the beautiful pearly hues of the late day the old gaunt city was transfigured.
Its roofs and domes gained a spiritual light, and vast dream-like shadows swept its plains. It was for once possible to believe in Giuliettà and to muse on Catullus.
At least, so it seemed to me; but perhaps it was only lovelier that night because I knew that so soon I should look my last on it, — perchance for ever.
CHAPTER V.
The Feast of Faustino.
AN hour passed away with me sitting there, dreamily watching Verona.
I could see my old home; the dark gruesome stone pile of it rose sheer as a rock against the blueness of the sky, unchanged since the days when Henry the Seventh had slept beneath its roof, and the bright Conraddin ridden forth from its court yard.
I had never loved the place. Indeed, it had been as a prison to me all my years. And yet my heart ached now to leave it We are so bitterly ungrateful to the present, so blindly grateful to the past, — always.
The Ave-Maria slowly swung from all the bells of all the churches; the bronze gate of the loggia was shut with a clang, the scrivere hobbled across the square to his place of gossipry; lamps were set one by one in the doorways; the oil wicks were lighted in the iron sconces of the streets; the little charcoal stoves of the chesnut sellers began to glow ruddily in the coming gloom.
As I turned away from the sunset to go homeward, whilst those colours of glory faded over the silent city, a hand touched me, a voice startled me.
“Pregiatissima Signorina! have the Veronese no eyes that you are left to stray their streets alone?”
It was the voice of the Mousquetaire, from whom the Florentine Florindo had rescued me at the Veglione; a voice with a strong and harsh foreign accent. The shudder of disgust and dismay with which I recognised him made an impatient and displeased shadow sweep across his face.
“Wait Hear me a little,” he said eagerly as I turned my back on him and went with quicker steps out of the piazza. “I am a friend of your father’s. I have spent many an hour with him. You have nothing to fear. I have pitied you many a time, poverina, sitting up there, all alone, at that grated window; so fair a singing bird in so dark a cage.”
I twitched my purple mantle from his grasp.
“I do not want your pity. Let me be.”
But he kept step with me.
“Nay, why do you bear me such ill will?” he said, with a petulance in his laugh that served ill to reassure me.
“Listen, carina mia; you are a beautiful child. Did no one ever tell you so before? I have seen your golden head at that grating many a day, and been sorely tempted to enter your door; only that direful dragon whom you have happily buried for good and all, sat on guard so very grimly.”
I shook him off as best I could.
“Respect the dead at least, and leave me!” I cried to him; I hated the sound of his voice, the look of his eyes, and the street into which we had passed was so empty, and now that the after-glow had faded the city was so dark.
He laughed lightly and pursued his way.
“Oh no, cara mia! I let you go that night because I liked you too well to raise a scene around you. But I mean soon or late to have all that I there surrendered out of chivalry to you. See here, my pretty signorina, you were out on a freak, and no one knew, of course, and it was I who passed you in to the Veglione. Well, that is very harmless if you trust in me; I shall be silent, that you may be sure. But otherwise, if you provoke me — if you carry that handsome sunny head of yours aloft in that fashion, why then—”
I paused and faced him.
“Well? — What then?”
“What then? Why then — every one will know that the little Tempesta stole at midnight to the opera ball with me, and she will be very glad to give me whatever I please to take—”
He threw his arms about me, and bent his face to mine; but with all the strength I had I struck him on the mouth, poured on him all the epithets of injury and of disgust with which my knowledge of the Veronese streets supplied me, and shaking myself free of him, ran as swiftly as a hare through the twisting passages to my home.
The insult of this stranger had decided me. I did not dare to stay another day longer in Verona; I was pursued with the dread of him, and the disgust that he inspired was the last touch of impulsion needed to make me take wing into the unknown lands — into the unknown world.
I reached my own room unobserved; and put together the few clothes I possessed and counted my little store of money. I had changed all that I had gained on the day of Galà into gold with a childish idea that notes were of little comparative value; and so liberal had been the people to me, that when Mariuccia’s funeral and my own expenses for the last weeks had been paid, I had left me sixteen broad gold Austrian florins.
I put the money with my mother’s mosaics into a leathern bag, and strapped it about my waist. The onyx Fates were round my throat. I had a fancy that they would bring me fair fortune.
I took too a little dead rosebud from the great clusters that the Florentine masquer had sent me; and tied it with the onyx close about me. I had a fancy that it would propitiate the Fates.
My purple and amber costume was an absurd one for travel, but I had no other that had any warmth against the mountain winds, and I was forced to wear it I looked longingly around the long, familiar chambers, dusky and grim, with grated windows and deep vaulted roofs and floors of marble; desolate and prison-like though they had been, they were yet all I knew of Home.
With sobs that choked me I kneeled and prayed to the Mother of Many Sorrows, where her picture hung above Mariuccia’s bed, then with a last look of farewell I drew the velvet hood over my head and stole down the stairs.
I met little Zoto and Tito, and kissed them.
I could see the padrona in her kitchen wringing out washed linen by the light of a little oil lamp, under a picture of S. Sulpitia. A contadina from the plains sat chatting with her and plaiting straw as they talked.
My eyes filled with tears, and shut out the little picture. In another moment I had crossed the threshold, and was running hard and fast towards the south gate in the twilight On my way, I passed of necessity the coppersmith’s workshop under the Spiked Mace. I glanced wistfully through the open entrance.
The light of a large wood fire was leaping about all the brazen and copper vessels. The blind woman sat in its warmth. The coppersmith moved to and fro with bare sinewy arms. Little Rafiaellino sat reading a score, with his lithe limbs twisted under him, and his lute by his side on the bricks. I dared not let him know that I was going away, lest he should raise, far and near, opposing clamour.
I prayed mutely, in my heart, to the Madonna for them, then went on my way to the dull crooked passage in which Ambrogiô Rufi dwelt I dared not bid anyone farewell, lest they should find means to stop me in my course. I knew well that they would all say I was too young to stray alone over Italy.’ I dared not speak to anyone else, but I could not bring my heart to quit the city without some word, some look upon the face of my old master.
I stole upward to the desolate garret, and entered it unheard by him.
He was sitting leaning over the little brazier, which was all that he could afford to warm him in the bitterest weather.
It was the feast of the Martyr Faustino, and all the churches were calling to vespers.
The attic was quite dark.
The moon had not yet risen. It was so high in the air, that all the metallic clash and clangour of the bells seemed to beat through its silence like the clamour of a thousand hammers on a thousand anvils.
I went and kneeled down by him without his hearing me. I ventured to touch him gently.
“Dear master, does not the noise of all these bell
s tire you sometimes?”
He did not lift his head from his chest.
“I am always tired,” he muttered. “What of that?”
“But if you lived where it is quieter? — here it is so close to all the belfries.”
“It does not matter,” he answered me, absently. “They drown the music in my brain. I am glad of them — sometimes.”
“But if you wrote the music down?”
He shivered a little where he leaned over the brazier.
“To feed the stove? Not I — not I.”
I dared not urge him farther. The utter hopelessness, the terrible apathy of this lost genius, which all its life long had woven beautiful things to which the world was forever deaf. What could I say to these? — I, a child, to whom every sun that rose was as a promise and a smile from God?
I waited a little while, kneeling before the brazier at his side. My heart was very sore to leave him, though he so seldom seemed to note my presence.
“Maestro,” I murmured, at the last, “speak to me a little. I am going away.”
“Ay, ay!” he echoed, drearily. “To be sure — to be sure. You all go away. Why not?”
I was silent How many hundreds of us he must have seen pass away, bright-eyed, flute-voiced children, who stood around him for a little space, and then drifted out of sight, out of knowledge, into the darkness of the unknown world; while he, the old man, changed in nothing, but remained always by his cheerless hearth under his lonely roof.
I pressed a little closer to his side, timidly.
“Maestro,” I murmured again, “I have no one in the world, and I am going away. Will you bless me once — just once, for fear I never see your face again?”
He roused himself from his lethargy with a strong shudder. He looked at me a moment with a startled, awakened look in his dim eyes. He laid his hand upon my head, and, as it rested there, it trembled greatly.
“I dare not bless you — I have doubted God; but I wish you well, poor child. That is — I wish you without a heart, without a soul, without a conscience, so that you may deal unto men as surely they will deal unto you.”
His hand sunk from my head; his chin dropped again upon his chest He had fallen once more into his old dreaming stupor over the charcoal fumes under the roar of the bells.
I rose to my feet sorely afraid. It was a dread benediction with which to commence my pilgrimage.
In another moment I was again on my way to the south gate of the city. I looked back once. The old palace was black and full of gloom against the clearness of the skies. I shivered a little, and set my face again to the south-east.
Who could say how the sun might rise for me there!
CHAPTER VI.
Fuori.
HALF-AN-HOUR later I was rolling underneath the stone vault of the gate which faced towards Tuscany, in the old heavy, cumbrous, leathern-curtained diligenza, which thrice in every week droned on its way to Padova and Bologna.
Rich people travelled otherwise, I knew; but I had only sixteen florins in the world.
The soldiers at the gates looked hard at me, but said nothing. The man with the horn, on the step of the clumsy vehicle, took my money and asked no questions. I was safe on the road to Florence. It seemed a terribly long way off, across those unknown mountains; but the name of the City of Lilies allured me with a strong sweet spell Mariuccia had told me many glories of the place of her birth; and my young mother I knew had there won her bright brief fame. And with what love my Florentine masker had spoken of it, — he whose tenderest little rose I had saved when dead with the rest, and had brought away with me where the stone Fates were hidden.
It was a queer, capacious, ill-scented old waggon — this conveyance, which was dignified by the name of diligenza.
There were three peasant women, smelling strongly of garlic, and hugging great baskets of woollen stuffs, of pizzicheria goods, and of live hens that they had purchased in the town. There were two old priests, a burly fattore, and a young Tirolese in the picturesque garb of the Unterinnthal.
The vehicle was as full as it could hold, and no one looked with much favour on me as I entered, except the young mountaineer.
No doubt I had appeared to them, starting up in the heavy gloom of the night, strange enough as they had thundered slowly over the stones in the gateway; all alone at my age, and dressed as I was in my mufflings of velvet, and my most absurd yellow skirts of rich brocaded satin fit for the wearing of any queen.
They made place for me, however, with pleasant good-humour.
The old waggon settled heavily on its way over the plains.
It was a dark, moonless night. An oil-lamp hung in the roof, which gave us very little light. We rolled on with a creaking droning noise, only varied by the crack of the whip.
The contadina and the priests went to sleep; the fattore took out his accounts and reperused them; the good-looking Unterinnthaler and I were alone wide awake, being young, and on a journey that was strange to us.
They had told me that it would be day and night again before we reached Bologna; and to Bologna, as the farthest stage of all, I had said that I would go. The others were to be set down midway at Padova and other places on the route.
I had never been out of Verona since our residence had begun there in my fourth year.
My head was in a tumult, my brain was in a whirl, with the strange movement, the throbbing noise, and that odd sense of jumbling on into the darkness of the night which was but too true an emblem of the obscurity of my fate.
I could with difficulty keep my sobs quite silent as I thought of the old deserted, familiar chambers, of the old bronze lamp swinging by the broken Donatello, of the little quiet, nameless grave in the cemetery of the poor; of the homelike nook amongst the coppersmith’s huge, shining vessels, where Raffaellino would still be sitting with his blind mother, scanning some ancient score by the dim light of his bronze lucernata.
It was all gone — all gone forever, never to come back.
Yet I felt with it all a curious sense of liberation and of exultation. If I had been alone I would have laughed and cried aloud.
The pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat of the horses’ feet on the hard road seemed to me to beat out an everlasting trisyllable, “Fuori, fuori, fuori!” Yes, I was “fuori” now, — fairly out of the gates and away. So I told myself again and again, and took an odd, unsatisfactory, remorseful and yet intoxicating pleasure in the freedom of it all.
I must have looked very strange, doubtless, as I sat there with my cheeks changing to red and white in my excitement, and my lips twitching in my longing to cry, and my hair all ruffled by the haste with which I had run, and the ridiculous yellow skirts crushed up between the tattered black robe of a priest and the grey woollen petticoat of a contadina.
We thundered on in perfect silence for a time, with a little light flashing in upon us now and then from some village post-house or some lamplit wayside Calvary.
The nights were still cold, being so early in the spring. Sitting there, I grew very stiff and chilly. The priest was stout and so was the contadina. Both were soundly sleeping, and sometimes swayed heavily against me.
My heart began to sink. The sense of the “fuori” to be more pain than glory. I thought wistfully of the little bed where I had slept for so many years under the sheltering shadows of Mariuccia’s Mater Dolorosa.
I was roused by a sheepskin being placed about my knees, and by the gentle rustic voice of the young Tirolese, who prayed me to accept its covering. He was sure, he said, the signorina was very cold.
I looked up and thanked him. In the dull light of the lamp I saw his gentle honest eyes fixed on me, whilst he blushed hotly at his own temerity.
I took his sheepskin. It was roughly dressed, but warm; and emboldened, he asked me if I was all alone.
“Yes,” I told him, glad to hear his voice in that horrible gloom and that unceasing gallop. “And you too?”
“I too, signorina? Yes — but then for a man it is not
hing,” he answered. “Besides, I go to people I know in Este — an uncle of mine married and settled there. But the signorina, does she go to friends too?”
“Oh, yes,” I assured him, being too proud to say otherwise. But my heart rose in my throat at the little lie. I knew how far, far away was the only hope to which I clung.
The young Unterinnthaler looked at me wistfully. I think he knew that what I said was not very true.
“It is cold to-night, signorina,” he said, gently.
“Yes — very.”
“And you go far?”
“To Bologna.”
“Your friends meet you there?”
“No.”
“Then you go farther still?”
“I am not sure.”
Do what I would the great tears brimmed over in my eyes; his questions made me realise my desolation.
With kindly courtesy he busied himself with rubbing off the mist of our breaths from the glass window nearest him, so that we might see the dark maple-trees fly by us in the shadows of the night.
“Do you know my country, signorina?” he asked me, to divert my thoughts, no doubt. “My country, across the mountains. I am a farmer in the Unterinnthal. No? Ah, that is such a pity!”‘
“Is it so beautiful, then?”
“Beautiful? Ay, God knows it is beautiful. Not flat like this, with nothing but these weary olives; but all so great, so superb, so wonderful; all pine forest and endless alps, and then the waters that flash like so much light, and the snows that lie so high; and then the clouds that are always about the mountains, and the rich green woods and the yellow maize-flelds all below — beautiful? Ah, indeed!”
“You would not leave it, then?”
“To live in Este? The holy saints forbid. I should be a dead man in a year, signorina. Away from the mountains? I will tell you who did that. It was Andrea Zafür; he was older than I, but I knew him. He was kapellmeister in our burgh. When he led the choir it was enough to make one weep; it was like the singing of the angels in heaven. Well, some day some people came who persuaded him that his voice might be a mine of gold to him if he would only leave the mountains and go into the world along with them. In an evil hour Andrea listened. He was poor, you see, and they told him fine things; so he went Whether the world cared much for him or not I never heard; but I know that they shut him up in cities over there, German cities and French. And one day, two years later, they came for his old mother, and told her that Andrea was dying and prayed to see her. She went at once; but even then she was too late. She found him in Paris, but he was out of his mind; he did not know her at all; and all he kept saying forever was ‘Take me back to the mountains! take me back! take me back!’ He had made a great deal of gold; the old mother was rich when she returned; but he died, crying aloud to see the mountains once more. Nothing had been any joy to him; he had always been cramped and stifled, and sick to death away from the mountains. It must always be so. Love them once, you can never leave them — and live.”