by Ouida
“And then again,” she would go on, diving down for a stocking thrice the size, “a big one this, no beauty in it; broad as a pumpkin leaf and thick as any melon — worn in the toes — you know what that means. Pirouettes by the dozen on the Pagliano boards; standing strained on tip-toe as a Lotus Lily or a Queen of Night No story in it that is pretty like the lover’s to the little fairy feet. And yet, perhaps, you know, some poem after all; some homely thing sung to a baby’s cradle and a shuttle’s swing, in some weaver’s bare garret where the meal-pot would be empty and the stove be empty too, if the young, fresh, brown mother did not run out into the cold and strip her kirtle and dress herself in clouds and flowers to dance for a silver coin before the gay theatre lights! Ay — who knows! A big, square, ugly pair of hose, no doubt, but worth the better darning maybe than those dainty ones of the pretty marchesina’s, after all.”
So she would chirp to herself, driving her long needle deftly all the day; a poet who could not read, but only feel, like many millions of her country people.
Pascarèl would have talked with her for the hour and found her histories for all the stockings tumbled in the rush basket on her feet But I — her chirping made my heart more sick, my brain more dull, my life more desolate. I was thankless, so utterly and cruelly and unremorsefully thankless, as only very early youth can be.
For in later years we throb all over with so many wounds, that we have learned to value the hand that plucks a dockleaf for our nettle sting, though we know well no balm can heal the jagged rent in the breast that no man sees.
Old Giùdettà darned her hose under the sculptured shield, and trotted to and fro between the lattice and my bed of sacking in the corner where she had laid me, and prayed for me every chilly morning in the great white silence of the Sta. Spirito, and begged her own brass-framed red and blue picture of the Madonna to have a care for me, though I seemed but a sad little pagan to her, where I lay and sobbed and moaned wearily through all the sickly hours.
How good she must have been, a woman so old as that, and so poor that she sewed stockings from the first peep of the sun to the last flare of the oil-wick. Yes; she must have been good indeed. She died after one day of sickness only, a year later, so I heard; her needle in her old worn, tired hand, smiling, they say, and wondering if the Madonna would ever let her darn a little there in heaven for mere old remembrance sake.
I told them, when I heard that, to set her up the whitest, fairest cross that ever shimmered in the light above there under the cypresses on the dusky Miniato slopes. Cold gratitude, you say! — but am I worse than nations when I measure my debt by a stone’s height and breadth!
There is nothing so ingrate as a great grief; and mine was bitterly thankless, utterly apathetic. I took what she did for me indifferently as a right; I had no thought of her; all the thought I had was with that sweet dead hour when the vintage moon had shone above Fiesole.
She would sit and chirp all day in her sonorous Tuscan; she had darned stockings all her life, she said, drawing her threads so fine no one could tell where the silk once had gaped.
She was most good to me, and I most thankless.
She was very poor; but she pinched herself in her measure of oil and her handful of meal to tempt my sickening indifference with the rosy heart of some prickly southern fig, or fresh pomegranate. She was childless and cheery, and loved by her neighbours, and had no need of me: yet hardly could a mother have been more patient with my ingratitude and fierce despair than she was. I was so young, and friendless, and unhappy, it was plain to see. That touched her, and she kept me. Ah, you who say there is no honest fruit of love and grace beneath that sweet wide-opened sun-swept flower, of an Italian smile — how little way you see, and how you lie!
Did ever you hear of Signa Rosa? Nay — not you.
She lived forty years in widowhood on the seashore by Nizza; a small, slender, beautiful old woman, very beautiful, they say, — I never saw her, for she died in my babyhood, but I have heard this from many tongues, — well, she bound the peasant’s coif about her head, and did her homely service daily for herself, and never stirred across her threshold except when early mass was ringing over the orange thickets; but her country folk sought her from far and near for consolation and for counsel; in her the dove’s gentleness and serpent’s wisdom were blended; peace-making was her office; and none sought her who did not leave her simpler, purer, better for her words of solace; so she dwelt for near half a century, the sanctity of the cloister about her, yet in her the warmth of human sympathy, the sweetness of widowed fidelity, and the passion of maternal love; so she dwelt where the palms of the riviera rise against the blue sea skies, and when she died ten thousand Italians followed her to the grave, and to this day the country numbers her with its holiest names.
For Signa Rosa was the mother of Garibaldi.
Without such women, think you that Italy would ever have such sons?
Indifferent to, insensible of, anything that moved around me, I listened and answered with no sense of what I heard or said. I used to lie and watch the figure of Giudettà, brown against the golden sunset lightened panes; and wonder feebly why I could not die — that was all.
It was the winter season of pleasure and pomp.
One morning lying there face downward on my mattress of grass, I heard gay, tumultuous shouts and bursts of music, and the shrill pipe of eager voices, and the sun was shining yellow and broad across the floor.
Another little old woman, a gossip of Giudettà’s, came and stood by me awhile; she had a new dark kirtle, and a scarlet ribbon in her white hair, and some brave silver rings in her ears.
“I wish you could get up and come, poverina,” she said kindly. “You are so young to lie and die like a motherless kid there; and they are bringing in the Carnival, and it is good to see. I have never missed once for seventy-two years!”
I shivered and turned farther from her sight, and buried my face in darkness.
The familiar merry welcome name of the old Catholic king struck like a knife into my aching heart All the day long I lay there shrinking from the sun rays, and striving to hide from the sounds and the shouts of the streets. The chiming bells, the laughing voices, the furious fun, the blaring trumpets, all came in a dull echo across the river into the chamber where I lay; and I shuddered and cowered down as those do who, in the dead of night, believe that they behold the risen ghosts of their lost and buried loves.
Mercifully for me, Carnival reigned and rioted on the other side of Arno, and in the old still dusky quarter of the Silver Dove silence and solitude only had dominion as the people flocked across the bridges and left it to the coming of the chilly twilight Giùdettà stayed with me, and sat at her work in the casement “We are always dull in old Oltrarno,” she said.
I was thankful. I shivered where I lay, when on the nights of Dominica across the river from the arches by the Vecchio Bridge there floated to us the distant tumult of the Midnight Fairs.
The Carnival went by, and all the coolness of Quaresima, and the bright brevity of Pasquà, followed it, and in their turn passed by and dropped into the things that were.
I heard the shrill gala shouts and the clamour of the Berlingaccio; I heard the Lenten bells swing in monotonous measure from dawn to eve; I heard the joyous cries of the lovers and the children tossing their Easter eggs into each other’s breasts, or bearing home their sheaves of palm. I heard it all telling the passage of the feasts and seasons as chiming clocks ring away the dying hours. I heard it all sitting against the empty stone hearth, heart-sick, and weaving the threads to and fro, to and fro, to and fro.
For me, every one of those fasts and feasts had voice, and the dead days lived in them, as a dead child lives for its mother in the tones and the glance of every laughing yearling that creeps out to catch her black skirts in rosy fingers. She shudders from the tender touch; — so I shuddered from the sunny hours.
CHAPTER III.
By the Mouth of the Lion.
; THE cold had gone; it was the balmy, cool, spring weather united with the golden Tuscan noons and the roseate Tuscan twilights that had welcomed me when I had first passed the gates of Florence. I had been three months with Giùdettà, and had not left my bed. I was a wan, shrunken, tired thing, with immense startled eyes and short clipped curls; few would have recognised in me the child that had wandered in the wake of the Arte through all the blossoms of the year from the bright crocus to the tremulous cyclamen.
One day I was lying listless and feeble in my dark room, where no ray of light could come from the narrow grated casement, when suddenly there arose upon the noonday quiet a rush of many feet, and a wide echo of deep voices that seemed to rend asunder the old walls, She sitting by the window, thrust her stocking off her arm, and leaned as far out as the grating would allow her; a little, bent, eager, curious figure with the glow of the noon light catching the silver rings in her ears.
“Che, che!” she cried. “What a clamour and clatter, — all the town is out, — they have those free three-coloured flags,’ too, that the lads got shot so often for, years ago, and that the priests say will always bring on us poison in the wells and pestilence. There is little Tista, the baker’s son, amongst them; he is always a bit of tinder. Ah, Tista, Tista, tell me what it is all about. Are the people mad? — or is Giotto’s gold cap put atop the campanile? — or is the Pope come? Che, chef Stop a bit, Tista, and say a word, boy.”
There was a shrill boy’s voice, clear as a silver trumpet upon Easter day, that pierced above the din and joyous uproar and came through the darkness of the chamber to me.
“It is Pascarèl set free of the Bargello, and we make high holiday. Dress your casement, good mother, and at sunset bring a light there, or we will break it sure to-night.”
I sprang from my bed — I whose wasted, fever-stricken limbs for three long months had never known me upright, — I bruised my bare arms and my hollow cheek against the iron grating; I beat my aching breast against the bars like any fresh caged bird. But all I saw was the gay glad tumult of the crowd heaving and gathering under the broad sunshine, with the three colours of free Italy tossing high against the scarlet cross of Florence. Then, too weak to stand, my feet gave way beneath me, my hands loosed their hold upon the stancheons, the bright multitude in the narrow, dusky street was blotted into utter darkness; I fell moaning and bruised upon the garret floor.
At night she hung her light within her window, as Tista, the baker’s son, had bidden her; and went quietly herself to vespers, as was her wont. Ever since I had heard the one name ring down the street, I had leaned there, pressed against the grating, to watch the return of the people through Oltrarno.
I loved him so — dear Heaven! and yet almost I hated him. He had deceived me! He had deceived me!
This was the iron in my soul. It is an error so common! Men lie to women out of mistaken tenderness or ill-judged compassion, or that curious fear of recrimination from which the highest courage is not exempt A man deceives a woman with untruth, not because he is base, but because he fears to hurt her with the truth; fears her reproaches, fears a painful scene; and even when she is quite worthless, is reluctant to wound her weakness. It is an error so common! But it is an error fatal always.
Night fell quiet; the oil-lamp glimmered in the casement I forgot the light it shed upon my face, but crouched there, watching with wide beaming eyes the coming of the crowd.
The eighth hour echoed from the Vecchio as there rolled in on the silence — the deep sea-like sound of a rejoicing people. The tramp of many feet came distinctly over the bridges. The swell of song vibrated against the massive walls.
Strained against the grating, I watched and listened.
Then, after a little spate, they poured through the narrow passage by the Lion’s Mouth, they came, the people of Oltrarno — artizans, painters, mosaic-sellers, wood-cutters, cobblers, traders, all in a confused moonlight struggle, with banners above them and shouts rising from them; and in their midst my darling, with the white moonlight on his dark straight poetic brows and on his dreamful eyes.
Breathless I pressed against the iron bars — breathless I gazed, as only any creature can who, for months of silence and of absence has never once looked upon the face it loves.
I forgot the light shed on me — he looking up at the eager people that filled every illumined casement, saw me where I leaned, and with one great cry, like the cry of a drowning man, he sprang down from the height on which they bore him aloft upon their shoulders, and forced his way up the ink-black slope of the steep stairs, and thrust his foot against the fastened door, and broke into the room.
Then with a great cry he caught me in his arms, and held me close there in the great darkness, as a man will hold some dear thing dead. How many moments went I know not; as there are years in which one does not live a moment, so there are moments, I think, in which one lives a lifetime.
The moonlight went whirling by; the darkling shadows swam round me like eddying waters; the floors trembled; then my eyes closed beneath his kisses, my sense grew faint, the world was dark — all dark. But it was the sweet, hot darkness of a summer night; and even then I know I prayed, so far as I could pray, that I might die in it The trance of passion passed.
After a while, whether the time was short or long I cannot tell, the cloud upon my senses seemed suddenly to lift; the deathlike trance of passion passed.
I lifted my head, and strained myself backward from his hold, and shivered where I stood.
For I remembered.
He, with a quick vague fear awakening in his eyes, held me against him.
“Why look at me like that?” he cried, and then was still.
What I answered I cannot tell. All madness of reproach that ever any tongue could frame, I know left my own lips in that blind, cruel hour. All excuse for him and all goodness in him I forgot: ah, God forgive me, I forgot! He had deceived me; that was all I knew or cared to know.
I had longed for his touch, his look, his word, as prisoners for liberty, as dying youths for life; and yet, now that he was there, all the pride in me flamed afresh, and burned up love. All that I poured on him were hot upbraiding, and broken bitter scorn.
“You shall not touch me, you shall not touch me!” I cried to him, wrenching myself from his hold as we stood there, in the paleness of the moonlight, with the shouting of the baffled and impatient crew filling the air with its strange tumult; in the noise, in the flashing light, in the sudden passion of joy and terror, of love and hate, my brain was gone. I had only this one memory left, and with it the instinct to wither him with his shame.
I do not know either what he said in answer. I knew he kneeled there in the moonshine, kissing my hands, my dress, my feet, pouring out to me in all the eager fervid eloquence of his nature the rapture, the woe, the wonder, the sorrow, the shame, and the remorse that turn by turn had their sway over him.
“Loved her!” he cried, as I flung the word back on him again and again and again in the fury of my solitary instinct “Loved her! Oh, God! do not profane the word — oh, child! how should you know? Love? What has love to do with the mindless follies and the soulless vagaries of men? One catches the rotten pear that falls with golden skin across one’s summer path; but what fruit of thought, what flower of fancy, what fragrance of heart or soul can there be there? Another passer-by had had it, coming first. Oh, gioja mia! oh, anima mia! listen, listen, listen, and believe! If you love me, be jealous as you will of the wind that touches me, of the sun that shines on me, of the air I breathe, or of the earth I tread, but never be jealous of a soulless love. There is no dead thing in its cold corruption that a man can ever loathe as he loathes that!”
I shut my ears to the sweet pleading of his heart. I wrenched my hands from him. I struggled from his arms.
“Ah! so you say, ah! so you say,” I said to him. “But why should I believe you? You deceived me once!”
His head bowed itself down upon my feet; he was silent a moment, the
n he raised his face quite bloodless as the dead are in the chill moonrays.
“Oh, my darling! I know, I know!” he murmured softly. “But be gentle, have patience; what else then could I do? I was frank with you — as frank as I could be; not to lay evil bare beneath your guileless eyes. I told you from the first we were unfit for you; only you pleaded so to stay, and my heart pleaded for you. You were so young, so helpless, so utterly lonely in your defenceless ignorance; and I tried to get better shelter for you, and I failed. And you were happy, and you heard no harm. It was a shame to love you, and let one’s-self be loved. Ah, yes! I know, but it was all so natural, so innocent, so unforeseen; ah, light of my eyes! I sinned to you, indeed. But all the while I strove so hard to do my duty to you, — such poor and feeble duty as I could. Can you not forgive me that I erred in weakness?”
Almost I yielded as I heard; the crowd, astonished and impatient, surged with loud outcry through the narrow street below, but all that I had ears for was that sweet, sonorous, passionate voice that had made its music for me in the old dead days in the moon-lightened fields, whilst the maize was all ablaze with the love fires of the lucciolei. Almost I yielded: all the life in me was yearning for his life; for the softness of silent kisses; for the warmth of folded hands, for the gladness of summer hours spent side by side in the ilex shadow, for the passion and the peace of mutual love that smiles at the sun, and knows that heaven holds no fairer joys than those which are its own, at the mere magic of a single touch!
Almost I yielded, held there by his close-clasped arms, his face looking upward as he kneeled there where the moonrays fell.
A moment — a word — and it was mine again; mine for evermore; mine a thousandfold more strong in sweetness, and more sweet in strength than I had known it whilst the wild libeccio blew the fragrance from the trampled grasses and the trodden grapes and the tossing roses on the hillside on the night of the saints beneath Fiesole. A moment, and it was mine. And I, oh fool! oh poor, vain, proud, half-hearted little fool! I shut my heart to him, and shuddered in scorn from the deep dreamful delight that stole upon me like a trance.