by Ouida
It made me stagger and feel sick.
The owner of the magliè lived beyond the Frediano Gate. The streets seemed all in a tangle of strange unknown curves to me — I, who had known the city, as a child his father’s garden-ways, was adrift in it as in a foreign desert place. There was the red evening light everywhere, burning on the black shadows and the grey housewalls. Bells were beginning to toll for vespers. There was the scent of orchards from great mounds of ripe and rotting fruits. There was a loud gay chatter of voices and hurry of feet everywhere. A girl, about my years, leaned from a casement, and threw down a knot of carnations, and pouted, and shook her head ruefully at a young man standing below in a grey shirt and a scarlet cap.
“No chance of a stroll to-night, Agnolo; — mother will not let me stir from the treccià,”
She thought it such a hard fate, leaning there, tied to her task of straw-plaiting, with her lover in the street below, unable to get out in the cool summer night, to stray into the woods, and see the lucciolò lighten, and count the nobles’ carriages in the wide, moonlit piazzone. She thought it such a hard fate, only able to toss down the carnations — Oh God! she did not dream how hungrily I below there envied her the shelter and the tyranny against which she thus rebelled.
Out by the Frediano Gate there was more light The after-glow came in full from the west, across the valdigrève. The cypresses of Olivete were standing out against a wonderful sky; rose-purple, like the heart of a dahlia flower. The Strozzi lion couched white amongst the hanging woods. Along the road that wound at their base there were some contadini going homewards to the outlying villages.
One of these came towards me on a black mule. She was a little round red-and-brown figure; her panniers were full of market merchandise; before her strutted slowly a flock of young turkeys; she held a long switch, with which she struck at them; the old mule hobbled slowly in their wake; the grey plumes of the birds spread fanlike over the dust of the highway, as they rose and rustled in their wrath.
“Our Lady grant me patience, oh you diavolini!” cried the shrill, swift voice of the market-woman. “The sun is down, and, surely as one lives, you will all go to roost in the hedges — you always do; — just wherever you find yourselves, like the stupid boobies of birds that you are! And what can one do with you, you wretched simpletons? — sit and watch you in the hedge oneself all night, or else not a wing feather of you will there be to be seen in the morning! Such thieves as they all are in this city. That is what comes of buying you of that Pratoese by the barracks. If ever I buy poultry in the street again, may all my eggs be addled! And go to roost you will; — and we all these kilometres off home: you must have the tempers of a herd of gipsies in you, you nasty beasts, or you would never squat in any hedge like that, instead of waiting to get to proper perches like good God-fearing fowls—”
The shrill, scolding tones dropped suddenly; then a little frightened shriek broke the silence; her switch fell in the dust, her bridle on the mule’s neck. In the warm ruddy light, under the dusky wood, amidst the grey fluttering feathers of the birds, the little round, rosy face of Brunótta looked down into mine, blanching with sudden fear and wonder. Her hands sought the ring of amber beads about her throat, and her lips began to mutter prayers.
Perhaps I looked the ghost of my dead self to her, there, in the shadows and the warmth, perhaps; — I was so changed. And the long, dusky folds of the cloak covered my shape loosely from head to foot, and all she saw were my wide opened, feverish-startled eyes. I did not move. I sat on the stones, and looked up at her. I felt no wonder, no surprise, no passion of any kind; only a dreary desolate disgust and sickliness of great humiliation. He had loved her — this little shrill, scolding, petulant, coarse fool, striking at her turkeys with her switch — that was all I thought of: what better did I know?
The birds fluttered to right and left of her; the mule stood still; the other people had gone on round the bend of the wall; it was quite quiet; there was only the sound of a fisher’s feet wading in the river below the bridge.
“Is it you? — is it you, indeed, donzella?” she murmured, timorously, her hands clasping and counting the beads all the while. “I thought you were dead; I always thought so. You look dead now; only your eyes burn. Are you angry? Are you very angry still? Oh, holy Gesù! how you frighten me!”
I made her no answer.
I gazed at her in a sort of dreamy contemplation, in which my disgust of her was lost in deeper scorn for him and for myself. This was the thing that had shared his heart with me; this was the toy that he had dallied with ere he had turned to play in my turn with me! So I thought, poor little, weak, faithless, ignorant soul that I was, knowing nothing of the follies and fancies of men, knowing nothing of how their passion floats over an ocean of froth, that it skims curlew-like till it dives for its one pearl of price in the depths that the storm stirs and opens.
“I was sorry as soon as I had done it,” she began to whimper. “But who was to know he was in the Bargello? And who could tell that you would tear away and kill yourself like that? You were handsome, and you said you were illustrious. I thought all would go well with you. And the very next day I went and vowed a necklace to the Virgin, and I gave it, too; a beautiful thing, all real silver, with a moonstone, that that big black Dominic hung round me all for love — he swore it was his mother’s; but I believe he pilfered it Anyway, handsome it was, and the Madonna had it, and she ought to have had a care of you. But if you are not dead, you must be very, very poor — are you poor? Will you not say a word? Look you; now it is all over, I am not one that bears ill-will. I would give you a bed and a bit and drop — yes, I would; for Cocomero, he never saw any good looks in you; you were too thin for him; he likes a woman like a juicy apple, all round and rosy, just as I am. And if you like to come home with me, come. You shall be welcome. It is all over with Pascarèl and me, you know; and I have a tidy little place out here, Signa way, and I always was a handy one with poultry—”
“All over!”
I echoed the words, not knowing what I did. What! a creature lived there, rosy, and young, and full of health, and quite content with all her days, who yet could say thus coolly all was over with her love, and could think and know that she would see his face and hear his voice no more, and yet, a moment earlier, had had no care but to drive her grey birds homeward ere the evening fell!
The sound of my voice banished her strange fears of me as an unreal thing. She ceased to cling against her mule, and stepped a little forward in the dust The sun had set, it was growing quite dark under the shadow of Mount Olivèt.
“It is you, then — donzella?” she cried aloud; “and you are here still? and in great straits, I think; for where are your yellow skirts, and your sunny hair, and your proud pretty toss of your head like a princess born? One would think you were a beggar, sitting on those stones there. Yes, it is all over with him and me. After you were gone I did not seem to care — somehow — I had been jealous, — and when he was in prison — it is as if a man were dead, you know. One gets to forget — quite. And I had always liked Coco: he was such a goodnatured simpleton, and just like a baby to manage, and as merry as a dog in a fair. So, when Pascarèl found us out one day in Friuli and offered us this farm here, and said we might go before the priest and syndic and make all straight and right, as if one were a duchess, why, what could one do better? Coco was all for taking nothing — men are such fools; but I, I said, ‘never turn your back on a neat little podere, and a mule, and a poultry-house; when the Madonna sends such things, we should sin indeed not to take them.’ And, after all, dancing about in tinsel is merry and good enough in its way, but one cannot do it for ever, and it is well to have a roof over one’s head, and a fair name for fat fowls in the mercato; and, after all, say what you will, it is something to be a wedded wife, — wedded before syndic and all, — and if you only had seen the old mother’s face the first day I walked into the hovel in Casentino, and held my hand up to her with the yellow ring! I
t was worth anything just to spite her, for she had always sworn I should come to no good, but die in a ditch; and now she would give her ears for one of my turkeys to fat for Capo d’Anno.”
So her tongue ran, standing there in the white dust, and ending with a little gleesome laugh that showed her white teeth from end to end between the ruddy lips, like daisies set in poppies.
The dusky trees and purple skies, and all the deepening shadows in the bronze and gold of the night, swam round me in circles of darkness and light.
Brunótta slid herself from the back of the mule and stood leaning against the animal with one arm over his neck; a little ruddy figure, scarlet and brown, with black braids shining, and silver earrings glistening in the sunset, just as I had seen her first of all as the day had died and the crocus flowers had closed in the ilex woods to the sounds of the mandoline.
“Are you angry still?” she muttered, piteously. “As soon as I had told you, I was sorry — yes, I was. I am Dot a bad little thing — only I was sick to see him crazed for you, and I wanted you to know — out of spite — yes, out of spite. But as soon as I had done it, I wished it undone. I hammered at the door to tell you so, but you would not listen. You went away through the window, and such a fuss as the padrona made about her rose trees, that were all dragged down and trampled, never was! But how you look! You must be dead, I think. And if you are dead, I will have a mass said for you — two or three masses, if only you will be quiet, and not walk at night!”
She began to sob as her wont was in any fear, or any extremity; her finger in her mouth like a sulking child, and her shoulders shaking against the broad neck of the patient mule.
I did not speak to her; I did not even rise and move away. I sat and looked at her vacantly; while, through the stupor of my thoughts, a shiver of the old scornful, bitter hate began to steal upon and stir in me.
“A wife!” I echoed, dully. “A wife! whose wife?”
I had only one thought. I had gathered no definite sense from her words.
She looked like a humbled chidden child who finds a gilded toy he boasted of is only rag and patchwork after all. Some sense and tinge of shame came on her; she shifted her feet in the dust There was a sort of exultation and mortification struggling in her as she answered, —
“I am Coco’s wife; why not? He is just such a fool as he seems; and he dares not say his soul is his own if I look at him. That is the stuff one wants in a husband. And I always had been fond of him, — that I vow, — always. And when Pascarèl was in prison, — it was as if he were dead, you know. Of course I did not mean him to find out, but he overheard one day, and then he gave us the farm; and Coco, like a little blind barbaggiano as he is, went and told him I had driven you away. And then he was in such madness — such rage — the saints forgive him! I never saw the like. And we have never seen him since, except I passed him once on this very Signa road, and thought his eyes would have withered me up like a shrivelled leaf — he can look so, you know. But I bear no malice; no, not I; and if you want a roof over you, I will give it you, donzella — oh, yes, willingly; and we will let bygones be bygones, and be good friends, just as we used to be; and though you are useless enough, as I remember well, still there are things that you could do; and if you could not, I, for one, should never grudge you anything, and Coco, — whatsoever I tell him he thinks good, or says he does, which comes to the same thing; and you could see the house was safe while I come into the mercato, which one must do most days, or else lose credit with the buyers. You see I bear no malice — no, not I, — why should I? I have all I want. So, if you like to come — come; — and say no more about it.”
She put her hands out as she spoke — rough, brown, chubby, rosy palms — in token of fair faith and of all amity. She meant well — oh, heavens, yes! she meant well, poor little soulless, mindless, empty thing, that had no force to love or force to hate.
Why did I not strike her? Why did I not kill her?
I moved where I stood in the dust: a convulsive shudder of longing shook me to hurl her back into the dust and strike her insult dumb upon her mouth as men may do with one another.
But some strain of an old proud race still ran in me and helped me to keep silence, and gave me force enough to rise quite quietly from the heap of stones on which I crouched, beggar-like as she had said, and look down into her pretty, cunning, timorous eyes, in which the red light was shining.
“You mean no harm,” I said to her, “may things go well with you. But, if you are wise, do not let me ever see your face again.”
And so I left her, and went back under the olive shadows to the city, and she stayed there, a little frightened ruddy figure, in the glory of the after-glow, and ere I had gone far I heard her calling to her birds that had nestled down by the wayside and folded their russet pinions for their rest, like feathered gipsies and hedgerow philosophers, as their kind have ever been.
The turkeys would roost in the road — that was her trouble; she had forgot all other.
Who will may see her any day sitting underneath her green umbrella, with her fowls clucking loud around her, hard by the old Strozzi pile, and not a stone’s throw from what was once the bottega where Benvenuto shaped his Hercules on its field of lapis lazuli, and fashioned in gold, and bronze, and silver, his griffins and cherubs, his lilies and fauns, his wild acanthus Wreaths, and his love-legends for his daggers’ hilts.
Ah, dear foolish folk that weep for women! to one Gretchen on her prison-bed there are a million, Brunótte at their market stalls.
Some pluck, like her, their speckled hens for a few soldi; some pluck their golden geese in the great mercato of the world; but their end is all the same, and they are quite content.
I went on past the bridge, where men were wading with great cloud-like nets, and underneath the little church of Santa Maria, whose mellow bells were ringing across the silent water.
The sun had quite sunk; but there was a deep hot glare upon the sky that burnt the water red, the trees that stretch away towards the country were black, and from the full moon that hung in breathless purple skies, a lovely whiteness touched the river here and there, and gleamed upon the old pale walls of Signa, where she crouched to sleep under her feudal hills, scarce changed at all since the days of her many martyrdoms, when she was ever the first and surest mark for steel and torch from every foe who came across the mountains to violate the fruitful and serene loveliness of the olive-wreathed Verzaja.
I paused and looked back at all that evening calm — once — just once. I could still hear the voice of Brunótta screaming to the birds beneath the monastery. I thought of one day, one golden day of the late summer, that we had loitered away in Signa; how we had strayed amongst the tossing millet, and wandered amidst the old monastic walls, and cut reed pipes from the canes by the Greve stream, and quenched our thirst with the sweet green figs as we watched the cloud shadows come and go on the shallow gold of the Amo water, where Hercules had cast down the rock that in later days served to save the fair jewel-hung throat of Fiorenza from the brutal blade of her ravisher Castracelo.
Then I groped my way senselessly through the Frediano Gate, the gate of the green country, as the old City called it.
It was night, though the red tinge was so slow to leave the west The bells were tolling everywhere. People were passing through the doors of the churches to vespers.
Great, still, and white the vaulted basilica of the Dove looked like a palace of peace. There were a few dim lights at its east end. Scattered in its solitude half a dozen women, poor and old, kneeled in prayer, — dark bent forms against the marble pillars.
I lingered a moment on its steps, wishful to enter and pray likewise.
But shuddering, I looked and turned away — how can one pray when all one cares for on earth and in eternity is dead and gone!
I turned away and dragged my weary feet across the piazza where the moonlight was softly spreading, and under the shadow of the Guadagni Palace, where in the first night that
I had laughed in the Wandering Arte the alabaster workers of Florence had borne away Pascarèl upon their sturdy shoulders to the sound of their shouting and singing.
When I had groped my way by the Mouth of the Lion up to the garret of Giùdettà, her lamp was alight; there were swift eager voices in the chamber; the little old woman sitting on her settle gave a little thrilling cry of joy; a shadowy figure sprang to me and knelt at my feet, and kissed my poor dust-covered skirts.
“Ah, dear donzella!” cried the voice of Fiorio, “is that you? Is it indeed, you? How I sought you, all northward — all on a false trail, and you in wretchedness like this the while! And such news, signorina mia — such news! The lord, your father, is a great noble, and a rich one too — this very Capo d’Anno only; such strange accidents, so many deaths, and he, whom none would own or look at, called at last to his fathers’ place. Oh you never, never heard — it is a wonder-story for a child at Ceppò. And then to us — when we were all in the black north, taking crown and kingdom as it were — for it is all so great — then to us all of a sudden when I, amidst our grandeur, was still thinking and praying for you, though I had given up all hope — why, all of a sudden, comes to us, a week ago, a light witted, reckless, wandering scamp and playactor, who had made me split my sides many a night in his booth in years gone by in towns and villages. And he, all travel-stained and tired, with that wayward, capricious lordly fashion he has with him — for Pascarèl was always as proud in his ways as a prince, hedge-stroller though he has been from his boyhood up — he, I say, my darling signorina, forced his way to audience with your father, do all one would, and then and there told him where to find you; and what more passed between them the saints only know, but certainly high words of some sort; for the fellow when he came from your father swung through us all mute and fierce and with such a scorn on his face that I was like to strike him, only one knows he is so very apt to strike back. And a very little later milordo sent for me and bade me seek you out here, and I am come, and no empress, oh, my blessed little lady, shall ever have been greater than you shall be — if only it had pleased the Dominiddiò to let dear dead Mariuccia see the day — and have you never a word to cast to your old faithful Fiorio; but can you only stare at one with those sad blind strange eyes that it half breaks the very heart in one’s breast to see?”