by Ouida
How long I stood there, lost in a dream of this strange and wonderful life which had opened upon me, I cannot tell; Brunétta touched me in kindly impatience: —
“Do not dream in the moonlight like that, signorina. It makes people mad, they say. I have some hot soup here; come and drink it, and let us get to bed.”
“When will he be back!” I asked, as I followed her withindoors.
“Pascarèl? Oh! not till daybreak, I daresay. He is often out all night long. Come, do not let the soup get cold. And so you thought him wonderful, did you? Ah! did I not tell you only the truth?”
She sat opposite me, with the little brass soup-kettle between us, toasting her feet on an earthen scaldino; she had not changed her pretty short white and rose skirts; she had still her little starry crown on her forehead. She was a little gay, rosy, cheery soul, and yet I thought she seemed hardly worthy to be of the same race as this marvellous Pascarèl.
“I never could have dreamed of anything like him!” I said, under my breath, for I had been too deeply moved to be able to talk of it easily: “but the whole world ought to know it; he ought to play before kings!”
“He likes this best,” said Brunétta, keeping her airy skirts off the hot charcoal of her footstool. “He is so free, you see. He does just as he likes: in the world fame would be bondage. So he says, and no doubt he is right. Besides, I do not think he cares so much as this brown pot would care for either riches or fame. He loves his freedom, and he loves the people, Pascarèl.”
“But he wrote that piece himself!”
“Oh, yes. He writes everything that he plays.”
“But that is genius!”
“I do not know what you mean. He is very clever, no doubt, wonderfully clever; there is no one like him. But then he is a great scholar, you know; he took his degree at Pisa.”
“At Pisa? And you do not know how to read?” I cried, forgetful in my astonishment of all laws of courtesy.
“No. I cannot read,” said Brunétta, with a little confused laugh.
“But a degree at Pisa, and not to know the alfabeto — that is a great difference.”
Brunétta coloured; perhaps she was vexed.
“Yes. No doubt it is a good deal of difference. But then I was always a very lazy little thing, and never cared to do anything but to dance in the streets, whilst Pascarèl, — oh, you cannot imagine what wonderful things he has it in him to do. He might be very great — very great — there is no doubt, if he liked.”
“It is odd he should not like?”
“He has no ambition, I suppose — that is it: he likes to be free.”
“But who can be free if they be poor?”
“Anybody, signorina,” laughed Brunétta, with the philosophy which she had acquired from Pascarèl; “that is, if they do not try to be rich, you know. Of course, if you be always struggling to be something you are not, you never can be at ease — rich or poor.”
There was a profound wisdom in this, no doubt; but it was too profound for me.
“Pascarèl might have made an enormous deal of money, no doubt,” pursued the little dancing girl, “but he would never bind himself; that is where his fault is; and people will not pay you, ever, unless you will put yourself into harness for good and all. He is happier as he is; playing just as the fancy moves him.
“And you cannot think the good that he does, for all he looks so careless. That poor little Toccò there; he was the son of one of the brigands at Pæstum. The law took the father and the whole gang. They shot some, and sent some to the galleys, poor wretchesl and little Toccò they turned adrift on the streets, for he was only twelve, and nothing proved against him. Of course, in time, he would have been a thief like his father, but Pascarèl got hold of him and kept him; and now there is not an honester or better little soul in the whole length of Italy than Toccò; and I am sure he would be cut in a million pieces for Pascarèl.
“At the great flood, too, two winters ago, in Tuscany, when the whole land was under water and the bullocks and sheep drowned by thousands, and the people were only saved here and there by getting up on the tops of the towers, and the great stacks of hay and com, and the trees, and often the roofs and very bodies of the houses were tossing down the great yellow sea of the flood like so many little cockleshells in a gutter, you should have seen Pascarèl that day: we happened to be up high on the hills where the flood did not reach, but he heard of it at sunrise, and down he went and he got a boat, and he rowed about hither and thither on the white horrid face of the torrents, shaming the cowards that dared not stir, of whom there were hundreds and hundreds; and ever so many times he was within an ace of being swept to his grave, and not a whit did he care — not he.
“He worked on and on till the night fell and the force of the waters abated, and the men and women and children, and the flocks and the herds that he saved, you would never believe if I told you.
“There was much talk after that of some public reward for his goodness and courage, and some of the towns wanted to make great feasts in his honour and have jubilees in their churches, and give him money.
“But when Pascarèl heard that, he fled out of the country as though the black death itself were after him, and went along the Comiche into France, and would not return into Italy till time had gone by long enough for the people to forget what they owed to him. It does not take very long for people to forget a benefit, you know, signorina.
“But it is nearly midnight, donzella mia,” said Brunétta, rising after a pause in her chatter, and shaking the embers in her earthen pot, “and Pascarèl said you were to sleep early and wake late, because you were tired and not used to our life. Let me show you your room; it is a very poor and small place, but it is clean; and I hope you will not mind it.”
Then she led the way with a lantern, and we climbed a rickety ladder-like stair, and I found my little chamber — a mere nook in a wall as it were, and bare of comfort, but still clean, as she had said, and on the little hard bed was cast a cloak of skins.
“That is Pascarèl’s; he thought you might be cold; the nights are chilly, and so he told me to put it there,” said Brunétta, busying herself in a hundred kindly girlish fashions after my comfort as well as she could After she had bidden me thrice good-night, she stood, with her light in her hand, looking at me wonderingly as I unloosed my bodice and shook down all my hair, and took my shoes and stockings off ray tired feet.
“The donzellina is beautiful to look at,” she said, meditatively, with a sort of astonished inquiring pleasure in her voice: “and what white little feet, though she is so tall, and what a white skin! — it is wonderful! I wish Pascarèl could see you now. He says he never saw anything like you. He says you would do for the Angelica in that poem he is so fond of, you know? He is always running his head on that kind of rubbish, as if it would do one any good.”
“You are very flattering, Brunétta,” I said, laughing, as with some vanity, I fear me, I displayed to her all the thickness of my hair, which always delighted Italians, because of the yellow lights it had in it, which never darkened with the sun as their own did.
“I only say what is just true. Is that generous?” said the good little honest soul, as she turned at last fairly away with her lantern, and drew my door close behind her.
For myself, I was so confused, so excited, so full of a mingled pleasure and pain, that, though I threw myself at once on my bed, it was long before I could sleep.
When I did at length fall asleep, the grey streak fo the dawn had already begun to stray through the narrow casement across the bricks of my floor; and I dreamed feverishly of rushing floods, of drowning cattle, of dancing harlequins, of the onyx with the Fates, of old forsaken Verona, and of Pascarèl.
It was broad day when I awoke; the iron rod on a wall opposite, which served for a sun-dial, showed that it was ten o’clock. I heard a voice that I knew — a voice with a clear, careless laugh in it.
“Oh, good little soul,” it said, as in a mirthfu
l expostulation, “what possessed you to go aside in that wood yesterday? We were so well as we were; and women will never let well alone. They will always paint their lilies, and, of course, the poor lilies die of it. We were content as we were, and now — . What possessed you to bind up with our hedge-row flowers a stray hothouse rose like this?”
“You saw it before ever I saw it,” the voice of Brunétta replied to him. “And you must have liked the look of the rose, Pascarèl, or you never had given away for it your onyx.”
I heard him laugh, self-convicted.
“That was for the pure love of music, carina. Don’t you believe that? Oh, little sceptic! Nay I will make no bones of it; I will say the truth. The donzella is too noble for us; it is that which troubles me. When I saw her standing first in the square of Verona, I said to myself: What can she be, that young princess, with her golden skirts, singing in a crowd for a few baiocche? I could not understand it; and it troubles me now. She is too good for our life, and we have no other.”
“Let her go her own way, then, and go we ours,” said Brunétta, with tranquillity.
“No, by heaven, never!” retorted Pascarèl, with a fiery force in his voice. “What! Leave a beautiful, fearless, innocent thing like that adrift by itself in the world? Fie for shame, little Brunétta!”
Brunétta laughed; but there was a little sadness in the ripple of the mirth.
“Do you remember, Pascarèl, in the great flood that winter, when everyone was safe, as far as one could know, and it had grown quite dark; you could just see the outline of a young bull drowning far off; and nothing would do but you would launch the boat afresh, and ride the flood again, and go for it? And you got to it as it was sinking, and dragged it into the boat, and came to land with it with such a struggle that everyone thought all was over with you, and you were indeed half dead. Do you remember?”
“Yes. What of that?”
“Well, do you not remember, too, that as soon as the bull had strength enough to stagger up on to his legs alone he rushed at you, and struck you in the breast with his horns, and scampered off to the hills as fast as he could go? And you were very ill for many days; and they said if the blow had been an inch nearer to the heart, you might have died of it?”
“Well?” said Pascarèl.
“Well,” answered Brunótta, “I was only thinking — if the signorina should be like the bull!”
Then their voices ceased, and I heard a casement shut; they seemed to have been speaking in the chamber next to mine.
I sprang off my bed, a little indignant and a little touched, too.
Like the bull! I thought — no, never, never.
Brunótta seemed a traitress to me only to have breathed the possibility of such a parallel.
I dressed quickly, threw my hair back loose over my shoulders, and ran down the stairs into the common room. Pascarèl was there alone, standing by the window, looking thoughtfully out into the open air, with Toto at his feet It was the Berlingancio — the Mardi gras — the maddest madness of Carnival; all the fury and frolic already were ringing all over the city with deafening clash and clangour.
He turned swiftly, and saluted me with that cordial and easy grace which characterised all his movements.
“Ah, good day, my donzella. I have good news to shine on you with the sun. We have got your golden florins.”
“My florins!” I echoed, doubting my own joy. “My florins! How? — when? — where? Can it be possible?”
“Very possible,” he said, gaily, and he proceeded to count out on the stone seat of the window a dozen round, bright, golden Austrian florins. “How? Oh, never mind how. It is always an ugly story — a thief’s. You know I told you the rogue would repent as soon as he should be found out; they always do. You see the guardia of the town went to work in earnest for you. But you must be more careful of your wealth in future.”
I was too enraptured to heed much what he said. He might have told me the most improbable romances, and I should have credited them at that moment, so supreme was my ecstasy over my recovered treasure.
He watched me with a certain melancholy in his handsome eyes.
“So now — you are free again, you see,” he said, after a pause. “You can go away from us when you like, cara mia — if you like; what do you say? Twelve florins, even when they are of gold, are not a large patrimony with which to scour the earth. But still, you thought them enough for you rashly to run away from Verona on the strength of them alone.”
His words clouded the heaven of my restored happiness. I had been kissing my florins, laughing and almost crying over them. As he spoke I stopped, and looked him full in the face.
“Signor mio, — I ought to tell you, — I heard what you said this morning in the room next mine to Brunétta.”
His face flushed hotly.
“By heavens you did! How much did you hear? What about? Tell me quickly.”
“I heard you from the time that you called me a hothouse rose to the time when your sister said that I should be like the bull you saved out of the flood.”
Pascarèl laughed; his face was a little flushed still, but he looked relieved.
“Is that all, carina — honour bright?”
“Quite all. But — you seemed sorry she spoke to me in the wood yesterday; you seemed to think that I should be some trouble or burden to you. If that be so indeed, tell me the truth; I will go.”
Pascarèl stood before me, with the lights and the shadows swiftly succeeding each other on his changeful countenance.
“You do not wish to go, then, signorina?” he asked at length. “I thought you might, now you have back your florins.”
“No, I do not wish to go; I wish to be one of you, and to learn your art.”
I could not trust my voice to say more, for my heart was full at the idea that I should be again adrift by myself with those poor florins, which no longer seemed to me the brilliant safeguard and the omnipotent possession which they had done ere I had lost them.
Pascarèl rolled towards me a little table spread with a white cloth, on which coffee and wheaten rolls were set ready.
“Breakfast first, cara mia; then we will talk. Do you mind my smoke? No? that is right.”
Therewith he stretched himself out on the stone sill of the window embrasure, and rested at his ease, sending the smoke into the air in almost absolute silence, glancing now out into the street, already filling with processions of the Berlingancio fooleries, now glancing back at me where I broke my fast with pleasure, knowing that I could pay for what I took.
The radiance of the sunshine came through the open casement and bathed the large square red bricks of the floor; from without there came the smell of tossed flowers, and the noise of many bells, and the sound of countless feet pacing over the stones of the streets: above everything, there was the sweet, youthful scent of the Spring that dreamily breathed itself from the vineyards and fields, even through the dark and blood-stained old age of the Medicean streets.
When his spagnoletto was smoked out, and my coffee ended, he came across the room, and sat astride on an old walnut-wood chair, with his arms crossed on its back, and so gazed at me long and gravely.
“What do you wish for most in this world, cara mia!” he asked, at last “Money, of course,” I answered him, with widely opened eyes and a little impatient laugh of wonder. Was it not what I had missed and wanted all my life long — always!
“You have no genius in you, then!” he said, with a dash of scorn.
My answer had offended all the artist’s instincts in him. No doubt it seemed half puerile and half vile to him — so true an artist in every pulse and fibre of his being, that so long as his audience laughed or wept with him, he could not bring himself to consider whether gold pieces or copper bits filled the box at the door of his play-house.
“Perhaps not,” I said, in my own turn a little offended. “But—”
I glanced at the queer little bit of mirror which hung on the rough stone wall bet
ween a waxen Jesu and a portrait of the last brigand known in the Valdarno.
He followed the gesture and laughed.
“Oh, you have the best genius for a woman, no doubt. I would not deny that. But I thought you might, perhaps, have a touch of the other too.”
“It is a large word,” I said, more humbly. “And no one ever seems to know very well what they mean by it.”
“No. Some people say it is all your days to carry about with you a torch which illumines everyone’s path except your own.”
“Perhaps. My old music teacher used to say that to have genius was to be a fool.”
“That I deny. It is to be alone amidst fools — a thing much more bitter. And such fools! Dio mio! But, after all, what does it matter! If the world were only human, it would matter hideously; but, thank heaven, the world is so much else besides. When one is choked up to the throat with fools, one can always get away to the woods, to the mountains, to the birds, to the beasts, to the hills in the rain mist, to the sea when the sun breaks. If it were not for that, one would go mad straightway, no doubt And even with that one feels small sometimes — choked, fenced in, — Do you not know! One wants to push back the clouds, to thrust away the skies, to see beyond the horizon, to look close at the sun. If one only had wings! — but let us talk of yourself. You want money, you say; well, that certainly will not come to you on the stage for a long time. To many — to most it never comes at all; and myself, I always think that whether it does or not matters very little, after all.”
“But money is everything!” I cried to him — I, who knew so well by the want of it all that its possession must imply.
“Is it? Well, no doubt, to those who think so it is everything: I am not amongst them. But you are a woman-child; I am a man. We shall never think alike on that theme.