by Ouida
“But you do very wrong things sometimes.”
Gemma shrugged her little white shoulders up to her ears.
“It is nice to do wrong,” she said placidly.
“They say things are wrong you know,” she added, after a pause. “But that is only to keep us quiet. It is all words.”
They called her stupid, but she noticed many facts and drew many conclusions. This was one of them; and it was alike agreeable to her and useful. She was a naughty child, but was naughty with logic and success.
“If only he would let me touch it once,” murmured Signa.
Gemma finding him such bad company went away hopping on one foot, and wondering why boys were such silly creatures.
“What is the matter?” said one of the ropemakers kindly to the boy. “Do you want to see the puppet show that came in the morning? Here is a copper bit if you do.”
Signa put his hands behind his back.
“Oh no, it is not that. You are very good, but it is not that.”
“Take what you can get another time,” said the ropemaker, offended and yet glad that his too generous offer had been repulsed by him.
“What an ass you are! The puppets are splendid,” hissed Toto, who was near, and who had spent an hour in the forenoon, squeezed between the tent‐pegs of the forbidden paradise, flat on his stomach, swallowing the dust. “They are half an arm’s length high, and there are three kings in it, and they murder one another just like life — so beautiful! You might have taken the money, surely, and given it to me. I shall tell mother; see then if you get any fritters for a week!”
“I did not want to see the puppets,” said Signa, wearily, and walked away.
It was late in the day; he had worked hard, running into the city and back on an errand; he was tired and listless and unhappy.
As he went thinking of the violin by the walls, not noticing where his steps took him, he passed a little group of strangers. They were travellers who had wandered out there for a day. One of them was reading in a book, and looked up as the child passed.
“What a pity the Lastra is forgotten by the world!” the reader said to his companions; he was thinking of the many memories which the old castello shuts within her walls as manuscripts are shut in coffers.
Signa heard; and flushed with pain up to the curls of his flying hair.
He said nothing, for he was shy, and, besides, was never very sure that people would not take him to Nita for a thrashing; they so often did. But he went on his way with a swelling heart. It hurt him like a blow. To others it was only a small, ancient, desolate place filled with poor people, but to him it was as Zion to the Hebrew children.
“If I could be very great, if I could write beautiful things as Pergolesi did, and all the world heard them and treasured them, then praising me, they would remember the Lastra,” he thought.
A dim, sweet, impossible ambition entered into him, for the first time; the ambition of a child, gorgeous and vague, and out of all realms of likelihood; visions all full of gold and colour, with no perspective or reality about them, like a picture of the twelfth century, in which he saw himself, a man grown, laurel‐crowned and white‐robed, brought into the Lastra, as the old Sacristan told him Petrarca was taken into Rome; with the rays of the sun of his fame gliding its ancient ways, whilst all Italy chanted his melodies and all the earth echoed his name.
“If I could but be what Pergolesi was!” he thought.
Pergolesi who consumed his soul in high endeavour, and died, at five‐and‐twenty, of a broken heart!
But then he knew nothing of that; he only knew that Pergolesi was a great dead creature, whose name was written on the scores of the Stabat and the Salve Regina which he loved as he loved the roll of thunder and the rose at sunrise: and he knew that it was he who had written that “Se circa se dice,” which he had learned in the dusky organ‐loft of the Misericordia; that song in which the great poet and the great musician together poured forth the passion of a divine despair, the passion which, in its deepest woe and highest pain, thinks but of saving the creature that it suffers for: “Ah, no! si gran duolo Non darle per me!”
He did not know anything about him, but looked up at the sun, which was sinking downward faintly in the dreamy warmth of the pale green west, and wondered where Pergolesi was, beyond those realms of light, those beams of glory?
Was he chanting the Salve Regina now?
Between him and the radiance of the setting sun stood the little figure of Gemma, her hair all aflame with the light; hair like Titian’s Magdalen and Slave and Venus, like the hair that Bronzino has given to the Angel who brings the tidings of the Annunciation, carrying the spray of lilies in his hand.
“Oh, you mammamia!” she cried, in derision, stopping short, with her brown little sister bowed down beside her under the weight of some earthen pots that they had been sent to buy in the Lastra.
“Oh, you mammamia!” cried Gemma, munching a S. Michael’s summer pear that some one had given her in the Lastra for the sake of her pretty little round face with its angelic eyes.
Signa took Palma’s flower‐pots on his own back, and smiled back at Gemma.
“I have nothing to do before bedtime,” he said: “I will carry these up for you.”
“And then we can play in the garden,” said Gemma, jumping off her rosy feet as she finished the pear. “But what were you thinking of? staring at the clouds?”
“Of a dead man that was a very great man, dear, I think, and made beautiful music.”
“Only that!” said Gemma, with a pout of her pretty lips; throwing away her pear stalks.
“Tell us about him,” said Palma.
“I do not know anything,” said Signa, sadly. “He has left half his soul in the music and the other half must be — there.”
He looked up again into the west.
The two little girls walked along in the dust, one on each side of him; Palma wished he would not think so of dead people; Gemma was pondering on the veiled glories of the puppets, of whose exploits Toto had told her marvels.
“Oh, Signa! if we could only see the burat‐ tini!” she murmured, as they trotted onward; she had been sighing her heart out before the tent.
“The burattini?” said Signa. “Yes. Gian Lambrochini would have given me the money to go; but I would as soon hear the geese hiss or the frogs croak.”
“You might have gone in — really in? — and seen them, murders and all?” said Gemma, with wide‐opened eyes of amazement.
“Yes.”
“Money to go in! — to go in! — And you did not take the money even!”
“No; I did not wish to go.”
“But you might have given it to me! I might have gone!”
The enormity of her loss and of his folly overcame her. She stood in the road and stared blankly at him.
“That would not have been fair to the Lambrochini,” said Palma, who was a sturdy little maiden as to right and wrong.
“No — and he so poor himself, and so old!” said Signa. “It would not have been fair, Gemma.”
“If you were fond of me, would you think of what was ‘fair’? You would think of amusing me. It is a shame of you, Signa — a burning shame! And longing to see those puppets as I have done — crying my eyes out before the tent! It is wicked.”
“Dear, I am sorry,” murmured Signa. “But, indeed — indeed, I never thought of you.”
“And never thought of all you might have got with the money!”
Gemma twisted herself on one side, putting up her plump little shoulders, sullenly, into her ears, with a scowl on her face.
It cost a whole coin — ten centimes — to go in to even the cheapest standing‐places in the theatre, and with a whole coin you could get a big round sweet cake for five centimes, and for another centime a handful of melon‐seeds, and for another a bit of chocolate, and for another two figs, and for the fourth and fifth and last a painted saint in sugar. And he might have brought all those treasures to
her!
Gemma, between her two companions, felt the immeasurable disdain of the practical intelli‐ gence for the idle dreamer and the hypercritical moralist. She trotted on in the dust sulkily; a little rosy and auburn figure in the shadows, as if she were a Botticelli cherub put into life and motion.
“You are cross, dear!” said Signa, with a sigh, putting his hand round her throat to caress her back into content. But Gemma shook him off, and trotted on alone in outraged dignity.
They climbed the steep ascent of grassy and broken ground past the parish church, with the sombre convent above amongst its cypresses, and the wilder hills with their low woodland growth green and dark and fresh against the south, and then entered the great gardens of Giovoli, where Sandro Zambetto worked all the years of his life amongst the lemons and magnolia trees.
The villa was uninhabited; but the gardens were cultivated by its owner, and the flowers and fruits were sent into the city market, and in the winter down to Rome.
“Are you cross still, Gemma?” said Signa, when he had put the big pots down in the tool‐ house. Gemma glanced at him with her forefinger in her mouth.
“Will you play? What shall we play at?” said Signa, coaxingly. “Come! It shall be anything you like to choose. Palma does not mind.”
Gemma took her finger out of her mouth and pointed to some Alexandrian apricots golden and round against the high wall opposite them.
“Get me four big ones and I will play.”
“Oh, Gemma!” cried Palma, piteously. “Those are the very best, the Alexandria S. Johns for the padrone!”
“I know,” said Gemma.
“But the fattore counted them this very morning, and knows every one there is, and will blame father if one be gone, and father will beat Signa or make Nita beat him!”
“Besides, it is stealing, Gemma,” said Signa.
“Chè!” said little Gemma, with unmeasured scorn. “You can climb there, Signa?”
“Yes, I can climb; but you do not wish me to do wrong to please you, dear?”
“Yes, I do,” said Gemma.
“Oh, Gemma, then I cannot!” murmured Signa, sadly. “If it were only myself — but it is wrong, dear, and your father would be blamed. Palma is right.”
“Chè!” said Gemma, again, with her little red mouth thrust out. “Will you go and get them, Signa?”
“No,” said Signa.
“Tista!” cried Gemma, with her sweetest little chirp, and flew through the twilight fragrance. “Tista! Tista! Tista!”
Tista was Giovanni Baptista, the twelve‐year‐old son of fellow‐labourer of Giovoli, who lived on the other side of the wall; a big brown boy, who was her slave.
Signa ran after her.
“No, No! Gemma, come back!”
Gemma glanced over her shoulder.
“Tista will get them, and he will swing me in the big tree afterwards.”
“No! Gemma, listen — come back! Gemma — listen, I will get them.”
Gemma stood still, and laughed.
“Get them first, then I will come back; but Tista will do as well as you. And he swings me better. He is bigger.”
Signa climbed up the wall, bruising his arms and wounding his feet, for the stones of it were sharp, and there was hardly any foothold; but, with some effort he got the apricots and dropped to the ground with them, and ran to Gemma.
“Here! Now you will not go to Tista? But, oh, Gemma, why make me do such a thing? It is a wrong thing — it is very wrong!”
“I did not make you do anything,” said Gemma, receiving the fruit into her skirt. “I did not make you. I said Tista would do as well.”
Signa was silent.
She did not even thank him. She did not even offer to share the spoils. He was no nearer her good graces than he had been before he had sinned to please her.
“Oh, Signa! I never, never would have believed!” murmured Palma, ready to cry, and powerless to act.
“She wished it so. She would have gone to Tista,” said Signa, and stood and watched the little child eating the fruit with all the pretty pecking ardour of a chaffinch. Gemma laughed as she sat down upon the grass to enjoy her stolen goods at fuller ease. When she had got her own way, all her good‐humour returned.
“What sillies you are!” she said, looking at the tearful eye of her sister, and at Signa standing silent in the shade.
“It is you who is cruel, Gemma,” said Palma, and went, with her little black head hung down, into the house, because, though she was only ten years old, she was the mistress of it, and had to cook and sweep and wash, and hoe the cabbages and bake the bread, or else the floors remained filthy and the hungry boys shirtless and unfed.
Gemma did not know that she was cruel. She was anything that served her purpose best and brought her the most pleasure — that was all.
She ate her apricots with the glee of a little mouse eating a bit of cheese. Signa watched her. It was all the recompense he had.
He knew that he had been weak, and had done wrong, because the fruit trees were under Sandro’s charge, who had no right to any of it, being a man paid by the week, and without any share in what he helped to cultivate; and this on the south wall being the very choicest of it all, Sandro had threatened his children with dire punishment if they should dare even to touch what should fall.
When she had eaten the last one, Gemma jumped up. Signa caught her.
“You will kiss me now, and come and play? There is just half an hour.”
But Gemma twisted herself away, laughing gleefully.
“No; I shall go and swing with Tista.”
“Oh, Gemma! when you promised—”
“I never promised,” said Gemma.
“You said you would come back.”
Gemma laughed her merriest at his face of astonished reproach.
“I did come back; but I am going again. Tista swings better than you.”
And with her little carols of laughter rippling away among the leaves, Gemma ran off and darted through a low door and banged it behind her, and called aloud:
“Tista! Tista! Come and swing me!”
In a few moments on the other side above the wall her little body curled upon the rope, and her sunny head, as yellow as a marigold, were seen flying in a semicircle up into the boughs of the high magnolia trees, while she laughed on and called louder:
“Higher, higher, Tista! — higher!”
Signa could see her, and could hear — that was all the reward he had.
He sat down disconsolate near the old broken statue by the water‐lilies.
He was too proud to follow her and to dispute with Tista.
“I will not waste another hour on her — ever!” he thought, with bitterness in his heart. There were the lute and the music in the quiet sacristy; and old fragrant silent hills so full of dreams for him; and Bruno, who loved him and never cheated him; and the nightingales that told him a thousand stories of their lives amongst the myrtles; and the stones of the Lastra that had the tales of the great dead written on them: — when he had all these, why should he waste his few spare precious minutes on this faithless, saucy, sulky, ungrateful little child?
His heart was very heavy as he heard her laughter. She had made him do wrong, and then had mocked at him and left him.
“I will never think about her, never any more!” he said to himself while the shadows darkened and the bats flew out and the glowworms twinkled, and in the dusk he could still just see the golden head of Gemma flying in the bronzed leaves of the magnolias.
After a while her laughter and her swinging ceased.
The charm of perfect silence fell on the grand old garden. He sat on, soothed and yet sorrowful. The place was beautiful to him, even without Gemma.
In the garden of these children all the flora of Italy was gathered and was growing.
The delights of an Italian garden are countless. It is not like any other garden in the world. It is at once more formal and more wild, at once greener wi
th more abundant youth and venerable with more antique age. It has all Boccaccio between its walls, all Petrarca in its leaves, all Raffaelle in its skies. And then the sunshine that beggars words and laughs at painters! — the boundless, intense, delicious, heavenly light! What do other gardens know of that, save in orange‐groves of Grenada and rose‐thickets of Damascus?
The old broken marble statues, whence the water dripped and fed the water‐lily; the great lemon‐trees in pots big enough to drown a boy, the golden globes among their emerald leaves; the magnolias, like trees cast in bronze, with all the spice of India in their cups; the spires of ivory bells that the yuccas put forth, like belfries for fairies; the oleanders taller than a man, red and white and blush colour; the broad velvet leaves of the flowering rush; the dark majestic ilex oaks, that made the noon like twilight; the countless graces of the vast family of acacias; the high box hedges, sweet and pungent in the sun; the stone ponds, where the gold‐fish slept through the sultry day; the wilderness of carna‐ tions; the huge roses, yellow, crimson, snow‐white, and the small noisette and the banksia with its million of pink stars; myrtles in dense thickets, and camellias like a wood of evergreens; cacti in all quaint shapes, like fossils astonished to find themselves again alive; high walls, vine‐hung and topped by pines and cypresses; low walls with crowds of geraniums on their parapets, and the mountains and the fields beyond them; marble basins hidden in creepers where the frogs dozed all day long; sounds of convent bells and of chapel chimes; green lizards basking on the flags; great sheds and granaries beautiful with the clematis and the wisteria and the rosy trumpets of the bignonia; great wooden places cool and shady, with vast arched entrances, and scent of hay, and empty casks, and red earthen amphoræ, and little mice scudding on the floors, and a sun‐dial painted on the wall, and a crucifix set above the weathercock, and through the huge unglazed windows sight of the green vines with the bullocks in the harvest‐carts beneath them, or of some hilly sunlit road with a mule‐team coming down it, or of a blue high hill with its pine‐trees black against the sky, and on its slopes the yellow corn and misty olive. This was their garden; it is ten thousand other gardens in the land.