by Ouida
CHAPTER II.
The Night of All Saints.
THAT evening he did not play at his Arte, and we strolled down the hillside into Florence as the sun set Brunòtta elected to stay behind; she had some shirts to iron, as she said, and wished to sup afterwards with a blacksmith’s wife in Marco Vecchio. Coco was missing when we left the hills, and little Toccò alone ran beside us, throwing his ruzzoli as gleefully as though he had been six years instead of sixteen.
It was a beautiful warm red and gold evening, promising to be stormy on the morrow, but splendid then, as the sun set, and full of odour from the full wine-presses where they stood beneath the trees, and the glow of roses that burned over every villa wall.
We went into the city on the carretta of a contadino piled with fresh hay; for we cut hay all the year round in Italy.
The old mule stumbled down the stony ways; I sat amidst the flower-sown grasses, and drew the dead daisies in it through my fingers; Pascarèl walked beside me; the boy ran on before; the contadino told us stories of his crops and vines, and of the prices he had made by his wife’s home-woven linen; sometimes we had to draw up against the wall and wait to let a waggon-load of grapes go by; all along the road the people were sitting out at their doors.
It had been a good vintage time, and all the world was content; at the gates even the soldiers who took the custom dues were in good humour, laughing over flasks of new red wine.
The city was all life and light It was a beloved feast of the people, and the streets were full.
All the bells were pealing; there was music everywhere. Women leaned from the casements with roses in their hands. Over all the place there was a curious dreamy golden hue, deepened here and there into deep bronze shadows, at times broken by a flush of scarlet, as a wood fire glowed through an open doorway, at times paled into a pearly coolness when the last daylight gleamed upon the marble of a statue or a tomb.
The Florentines were all out, flocking to the churches, to the theatres, to the bands of music, to the coffee houses, playing dominoes in the street, chaunting praises at the vespers, wandering by the river side, or gambling at morra at the corners of the streets.
We ate black figs and drank black coffee hard by the old palace of the Strozzi, with the cornice of Cronaca still catching the sunrays, whilst the walls below were black as night, and the passers-by were illumined by lantern and lamplight shed from doorway and casement, and little bright specks of flame like glowworms sparkled as the stands of the chestnut-sellers wandered from place to place, and the vendors of amaretti and brigidini shouted from corner to corner.
Then having long before lost little Toccò, where some street-tombola for toys and fruits had attracted him, we too wandered away, and strayed with others up the stairs of the little Loggè theatre, above the old mediaeval granary, and laughed our hearts out over the merry melodies of Don Bucefalo, and then came out again into the streets into the starlight.
“To-morrow will be the Feast of the Dead,” said Pascarèl, his voice dropping softly, as we went through the Street of the Dead. “There will be only the sound of the Miserere all over Florence to-morrow.
“Well, no city has so true a cause to pray for her dead, for none other has dead so great.
“Will any pray for Ginevra, I wonder? I think you will, gioja mia. Do you not see her, on just such a night as this, flying down this very place?
“There is no story so perfect as the Ginevra tale.
“The dreadful loneliness of the great dome as she awoke beneath it; the vast haunted stillness, with here and there the whiteness of a moonbeam; these quiet gloomy streets at midnight; the black shadows; these yawning archways, like the gates of tombs; the trembling, hunted, heart-sick thing, with her bare feet wounded on the stones, and the grave-clothes falling from her shivering limbs; everywhere denial, incredulity, horror, superstition; everywhere the closed wicket and the cry of terror as at some unearthly apparition.
“Then at last the lover’s threshold, the timid summons of despair, the open door, the instant welcome; not a doubt, not a question, not a fear — What matter whether living or dead, of heaven or of hell?
“What matter whence she came?
“What matter what she brought?
“Welcome, thrice welcome, as flowers in the Maytime.
“Welcome and precious — since the face was hers!”
His voice had a thrill of passion in it that seemed upon my ear, in the silence of the deserted street, sweet as the song of the nightingales in the ilex forests in the nights of Midsummer. I felt — without well knowing what I felt — that it was not of Ginevra only he was thinking.
“And it was all true too, here in this Via della Morte,” he said, very softly and sadly, after awhile, drawing me closer against him as we went under the solemn shadow of the leaning walls; and he uncovered his head reverently in the moonlight, as though there had passed by him all those dead, for whom his Florence on the morrow would beseech her God.
We went on in silence until we had passed through the Gate of San Gallo to go homewards towards the hills.
“That cost us in all just four soldi,” laughed Pascarèl, as the city barriers closed behind us. “Figs and coffee and music, and all for the price a rich man gives for one cigar, or one peach, away in Paris. What do we want with a Lemon Stone? Our coffee would be in eggshell china, to be sure, and we should have red velvet arm chairs at the Pergola; but should we be any the happier really? tell me, donzella, should we?”
“How could we be any happier?” I answered him dreamily.
It had only cost four soldi, that sweet starlight evening, amongst the laughter of the people and the ringing cadence of the Bucefalo; but what of that?
The gladness was with us that never comes twice in a lifetime, and our hearts had an echo for the music that made it sweet as the voices of angels.
He did not answer.
As I glanced at his face, there was a certain vague disquietude upon it that stole there all suddenly, while his eyes beamed on mine in the shadows, with the look that had made silence fall between us that day beside the Rio Gonfio.
“Ah, carina, you do not know, you do not know,” he murmured softly.
What was it that I did not know? That look in his eyes made my heart beat in a strange tumult, and I did not ask him.
We went in silence up the hilly road, with the stars shining overhead. He passed his arm around me to aid me in the toilsome way, and drew my hand in his.
No palace floor strewn with roses was ever softer to the sandalled feet of an eastern queen than seemed that stony dreary way to me.
The road was quite deserted at that hour. The moonrays made it white and calm.
The dust of it was changed to silver, and its jagged walls seemed like ivory where the light touched them, and like malachite and porphyry where the green ivy and the golden vine leaves crossed each other.
From the wine-presses full of juice of the grapes there came strong fruitlike odours.
In the stillness we could hear the goats browsing off the grass under the stripped vines. There were sweet scents of roses, of pasture, of grazing cattle, as we passed the villa gates. Away in the city below there was a sound of men singing to the chords of a lute. Above, against the lustre of the skies, rose the white outlines of sad Fiesole.
We paused a moment to rest within the garden walls of a villino. Cypresses were swaying plume-like in the wind; wild roses were blowing, half-closed, with the dews shut in their hearts; a stream of water dropped slowly into a marble shell; clusters of yellow grapes hung about a broken statue of dead Hyacinthus.
We stood there close together, with the stars above us, and on the cool night air the scent of the crushed grapes and fallen leaves.
In the soft gloom, his eyes burned into mine; his arms drew me closer; his lips touched my hands, my cheeks, my throat.
Are there any who have not known these hours? — they have heard but half the language, have seen but half the sun.
<
br /> We spoke but little. What need were there for words.
We went slowly, after awhile, homeward up the road, which at another time would have seemed steep and dreary enough, but to me was beautiful as the earth can only be once in the length of any life.
There were no lights in Marco Vecchio, nor in the little humble place where we had made our dwelling. There was only the moonlight glistening on the convent walls above upon the heights, and a falling star that ran swift and bright until it dropped in the sea of the olive woods.
I went up to my little bare chamber, where the brick floor was white from the rays of the moon.
He stayed without, walking to and fro beneath the bronzed leaves of the walnuts.
I was sleepless and full of those dreams born of memory, which are sweeter than all the dreams of fancy.
The small square casement of my chamber was hung round with thick acanthus coils; beyond them the stars of Orion gleamed in the deep blue of the skies.
All the hillside sloped away dimly towards Florence, pale under the moon, and only black where the cypress grew. The worn marbles and dulled frescoes of the old historic villas gleamed like silver, and below in the valley the lights of the city glowed as a cluster of lùcciole glows in the harvest amidst the blowing maize.
The roof of the house was low; the upper chambers were underneath the eaves, some broken blocks of macigno, grown over by a fig-tree, were beneath my window. He, looking upward, saw me leaning there.
He paused a moment; then, lithe as a deer, swung himself by the boughs of the fig until he could touch me where he stood.
The great dark leaves were all round him; the moonlight was upon his face. He drew my hands about his neck, and murmured the sweetest words of passion that lie in the tongue of Tasso, of Romeo, of Francesca.
The perfect night was all around us. We were alone beneath the throbbing stars, amidst the burning roses.
There, in the old Badià, men, dreaming of heaven, had missed the heaven that we entered by a touch, a look, a breath.
CHAPTER III.
Sunrise.
I LAY awake for very happiness that night, and rose so soon as the sun came over the hills and through the broad screen of the fig foliage.
It was a beautiful wet, cool dewy world into which I ran joyous and bare-headed from out the little lowly capanna on to the misty side of the hills.
I was a child in my joy; I was full of the present; I had no thought beyond; I reasoned on nothing; I reflected on nothing; I only wanted to hear him say once more he loved me.
Life was not more real to me than if we had been geniï, like the Gwyn Araun he envied; it was a wonderful perfect flowerlike thing that I held in eagerness and ecstasy, doubting not that it came from God.
I ran into the sweet, cold, rosy, misty morning, with the bronze of the reddened vine leaves about my feet, and looked up at the blue sky and laughed a little gladly and low, and then felt my eyes fill with delicious tears, and stood still, wondering if ever any creature had been so blessed as I.
About me was all the gold and crimson of the autumn foliage; the whole hill-side seemed to burn with it up to the brown walls of the old Badià; but away in the valley there was a dense white fog in which Florence was hidden from sight; even the golden cross of her cathedral was no longer visible.
I dropped on to a stone bench in the olive orchard of the cottage, and sat and dreamed, and listened for the footfall of Pascarèl. But all was quite silent round me.
My heart fell a little. I had thought that he would have been watching as eagerly for the dawn as I was.
After a while bells began to ring in the city under the pale shadows of the fog. I could hear them where I sat on the hill-side; but they sounded muffled and sad.
A woman came through the olives to cross the bridge of San Marco. She passed me closely; she was weeping quietly.
I looked at her in a sort of wonder; in this world — my beautiful, wonderful fairy world — how was any sorrow possible?
“I go to pray for my lost children,” she said, gently, in answer to the look upon my face. “It is the Feast of the Dead. May you never know grief, my pretty signorina.”
She went on under the olives. I shivered a little where I sat, with the red vine coils bright about my feet: the mists dense as clouds in the valley.
Florence was veiled in her white shroud; she was mourning her dead.
I had forgotten what the day was.
I gave a swift thought to the lonely nameless graves in cold Verona.
What had happened? Nothing.
And yet in the stead of my perfect joy there stole on me a vague fear.
CHAPTER IV.
Sunset.
ALL was quite still on the hill-side.
A few peasants went through the trees to matins in the old monastery church.
The bells rang on wearily and mournfully, echoing through the fog.
Little Toccò ran down to me with a ruzzolà in his hand.
“He went into the town before the sun was up; he left me this for you.”
On it Pascarèl had written, “I must go into Florence, but will be back ere sunset.”
A great darkness fell on me. The bells seemed to be wailing for the dead.
It was only a day, indeed; but then I had dreamed such perfect dreams of this single little day amongst the red autumn leaves, hearing of his love forever and forever and forever, and yet never enough. Alone with him on these haunted sacred hills.
A lattice was thrown sharply open; a shrill voice called —
“He is gone into the town, and never let me know; and I want coffee, and pins, and a shoestring, and the saints know what not! and nothing is to be had in this beastly place, be it ever so. Toccò, run in the village and see if you can buy aught worth the eating. HE would never care if he lived on acornsI”
It was Brunétta making her daily lamentation.
I rose, and wandered away out of hearing; that little sharp voluble voice jarred upon me.
Little Toccò passed me, running with a few scudi to do her errand.
I stayed him a moment on the hill.
“Do you know why he is gone?” I asked him, wistfully.
Toccò shook his curly head.
“Not I. But I think — at least the cowherd said so — that he seemed troubled as he left the house at day-dawn. Perhaps he is gone to pray for someone dead. It is the day of the dead, you know. But I must make haste, signorina, or Brunétta will box my ears, surely.”
The lad flew down the slope and across the bridge to the village. I strayed away amongst the olives, choosing hunger in that peace and stillness rather than encounter the perpetually ringing chimes of Brunótta’s chatter.
Under the wall of the Villa of Mario a dairy-woman gave me a draught of milk and a crust, and I wandered by myself all the morning, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming always of him. Of him alone.
Had he gone to pray for any dead that he loved?
My heart for a moment was heavy at the thought. I was jealous even of a memory that might be dear to him; but not for very long. He loved me now.
What matter the rest?
So many hands had touched the mandoline — yes, no doubt. But I had a sweet, vague sure instinct that one chord had been reached by me alone.
When the day had passed the meridian, all my spirits rose again. He had said that he would be back before sunset. I might hope for him every moment.
I returned through the fields and orchards lingeringly and happily; the mists had all lifted by noon.
It was another clear summer-like day. The golden cross of the duomo glittered in the hollow where the city lay.
In the village, the people, having prayed for their dead, were out in their holiday gear; they were talking cheerfully of the abundant vintage, and some of them were dancing under the red vine foliage to the sound of a flute and a fiddle.
I saw, afar off, Brunétta, brave in a scarlet kirtle and white bodice, with the amber beads of St John’
s Day round her throat, merrily footing the salterrello with a brawny blacksmith of San Marco. Her white teeth shone, her little rosy face laughed, her small plump feet twinkled ceaselessly, the sunshine fell about her, the gold and bronze of the dying vine leaves hung above her head; she was as happy as a grillo in the grasses.
I went into the garden of the capanna we had lodged at and sat down in a green nook of it, whence I could see the bridge and the white road beyond as it shelved down towards Florence.
I lost sight of the dancers under the vines, but I could watch him come up from the city, or fly to meet him if no one looked.
The little garden was gay with all kinds of autumn flowers; for the daughter of the house was one of the flowersellers of Florence. There were great bands of scarlet salvia blossoming, and many yellow heads of gourds and pumpkins.
A pergola stretched from the threshold to the garden wicket; grapes still hung on it, and the leafage was a brilliant tangle of red and green and gold. I sat on a bench in one corner of this, whence I could see the shallow sunlit river; children were wading in it with many joyous cries, and a grey mule was drinking at the ford.
I was shut in by the green leaves.
Now and then a great lustrous bee or moth went humming through the bean blossoms. I could see through the vine foliage the white wall of the house and the open window of the kitchen; the padrona went to and fro past the window in a white coif and a red petticoat, with copper vessels in her hands.
Lazily, every now and then, I lifted my arm over my head, and drew down one of the grapes off the clusters that hung above there. A grey cat was walking slowly through the maze of the pumpkins on the ground. Beyond the garden walls there were the fields and the vineyards, and beyond all these again, Fiesole and the mountains.
Ave Maria bells were ringing dreamily down in the Valdarno.
It was five of the clock in the afternoon; there was no light on the sun-dial on the wall, but a tawny glow like molten gold was shed over every thing from the western skies above the hills.