by Ouida
He did as she told him, and ran away. She watched him from the little square window over the carnation pots. She was a good soul, but she could not help a thrill of longing to see how Bruno would down into the Lastra like a brown bull gored and furious.
“Only the one that is in the right always gets the worst of it,” thought Teresina (who had seen her seventy years of life), as the last star died out of the skies, and she turned from the lattice to scrub out her pipkins and pans, and fill her copper pitcher with water, and sweep the ants away with her reed besom, and then sat down to spin on at Lisa’s bridal sheeting, glancing now and then at the mountain, and wondering what would happen.
What would happen?
That was what tortured the little beating heart of Signa, as he ran out into the lovely cold darkness of the dawn, as the chimes of the clocks told four in the morning. He held his slice of melon and bread in one hand, and clasped the violin and its bow close to him with the other. A terrible sense of guilt, of uselessness, of injury to others, weighed on him.
Even Teresina, who was fond of him, had confessed that he was a burden to Bruno, and a cause for strife at all times, and no better. Even Teresina, who was so good to him, had said that he could do nothing unless he could get himself out of the world.
The words pursued him with a sense that the old woman would have bitten her tongue through rather than have conveyed into the child’s mind — a sense of being wanted by no one, useful to no one, undesirable and wearisome, and altogether out of place in creation.
He was old enough to feel it sharply, and not old enough to measure it rightly. Besides Nita and Toto and Georgio and all of them, had told him the same thing ten thousand times: what was said so often by so many must be true.
To kill himself never entered his thoughts. The absolute despair which makes life loathsome cannot touch a child. But he did think of running away, hiding, effacing himself, as a little hare tries to do when the hounds are after it.
He would go away, he thought; it was his duty; it was the only thing he could do to serve Bruno, and he was ashamed of himself, and so sorrowful; and perhaps people might be kind to him on the other side of the mountains where the sun came from; perhaps they might when they heard the Rusignuolo. Other boys decide to run away for love of adventure or weariness of discipline, but he resolved to run away because he was a burden and brought wild words between two brothers, and was good for nothing else.
The curse of granted prayers lay heavy on his young frightened soul. The thing he had desired was with him; the thing that he had thought was sweeter than food or friends or home, or anything; and yet his feet were weary and his heart was sick from the woe which it had brought upon him.
“Still it is mine — really mine!” he thought, with a thrill of happiness which nothing could wholly stifle in him, as his hand wandered over the strings as he went, and drew out from them soft sighing murmurs like the pipe of waking birds.
Meanwhile he was quite resolute to run away; down into Florence, he thought, and then over to where the sunrise was. Of the west he was afraid; the sea was there, of which he had heard terrible things in the winter evenings, and the west always devoured the sun, and he supposed it was always night there.
“I will just bid Gemma good‐bye — just once,” he thought, running one, stumbling, and not seeing his way, because his eyes were so brimming with tears; but sight did not matter much. He could find his way about quite safely in the darkest night.
The gates of the great gardens were open, for the labourers were already at work there, and he ran into the shadowy, fresh, dew‐wet place, looking for her.
If he could find her without going to the cottage, he thought, it would be best, because her father might have heard and might detain him, thinking to please Bruno.
He was not long before he saw her. Out of bed at daybreak, as birds are out of their nests, lying on her back in the wet grass by the marble pond, where the red Egyptian rushes were in flower, and muching the last atom of a hard black crust which had been given her for her breakfast, while the big water lilies still were shut up, and the toads were hobbling home to their dwellings in the bottom of the tanks.
Gemma was one of those beautiful children, who, in the land of Raffaelle, are not a fable. As they grow older, they will lose their beauty almost always; but the few people who ever had time to look at Gemma, thought that she would never lose hers.
No doubt there was some strains of the old Goth or of the German blood in her from the far times when Totila had tramped with his warriors over the ravaged valleys, or Otho had come down like a hawk into the plains. She was brilliantly fair; as she lay now on the grass on her back, with her knees drawn up and her rosy toes curled, and her arms above her head, she shone in the sun like a pearl, and her face might have come out of Botticelli’s choir, with its little scarlet mouth and its wonderful bloom and its mass of lightest golden hair cut short to the throat, but falling over the eyes.
“Gemma, I have brought you some more breakfast,” he said to the pretty little child.
She threw her arms round his neck, and set her pearly teeth into the melon. The bread followed. When she had done both she touched his cheek with her finger.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I am no use to anyone. Because I bring trouble on everybody.”
Gemma surveyed him with calm, serious eyes.
“You bring me good things to eat.”
That was his use; in her eyes there could be no better.
The tears fell down Signa’s face; he sobbed under his breath, and kissed Gemma’s light curling locks with a sorrow and force in his lips that she did not understand.
“I think I will go away, Gemma,” he said, with a sort of desperate resolve.
Gemma, who was not easily excited, surveyed him with her blue eyes seriously as before.
“Where?”
“I do not know.”
“That is silly.”
Gemma was a year younger than he. But she was not vague as he was, nor did she ever dream.
“I will go away, I and the Rusignuolo,” said Signa, with a sob in his throat. “It is the only way to be no burden — to make peace.”
Gemma pushed a lizard with her little rosy toes.
“Mimi does not bring me so much fruit as you do,” she said thoughtfully. Mimi was a neighbour’s son, who was nine years old, and worshipped her, and brought her such green plums and unripe apples as his father’s few rickety trees would yield, by windfalls. She was wondering how it would be with her if she were left to Mimi only.
“Perhaps I will get you beautiful golden fruit where I go,” said Signa, who always unconsciously fell into figures and tropes. “The signore in the monastery said my mouth would drop pearls. I have seen pearls — beautiful white beads that the ladies wear. They are on the goldsmith’s bridge in the city. When my lips make them you shall have them round your curls, Gemma, and on your throat, and on your arms; how pretty you will be!”
He was smiling though his tears, and kissing her. Gemma listened.
“With a gold cross like Bice’s?” she said, breathlessly. Bice was a rich contadina who had such a necklace, a string of pearls with a gold cross, which she wore on very high feasts and sacred anniversaries.
“Just like Bice’s,” said Signa, thinking of his own woe and answering to please her.
Gemma reflected: pushing her little foot against the wet gravel in lines and circles.
“Run away, at once!” said she suddenly, with a little shout that sent the lizards scampering.
“Oh, Gemma!” Signa felt a sting, as if a wasp had pierced him. Gemma loved him no more than this.
“Run away, directly!” said the little child, with a stamp of her foot, like a baby empress.
“To get you the pearls?”
Gemma nodded.
Signa sat still, thinking; his tears fell; his eyes watched a blue and grey butterfly in the white bells of the aloe flower. He could not
be utterly unhappy, because he had the violin. If it had not been for that —
“Why do you not go?” said the little child fretfully, with the early sunbeams all about her little yellow head in a nimbus of light.
Signa got up; he was very pale; his great brown eyes swam in a mist of tears.
“Well — I will go — I have got the Rusignuolo. Perhaps it is not true what the signore said — but I will go and see. If I can get pearls — or anything that is good — then I will come back, and the Lastra will be glad of me, and I will give everything to the Lastra, and to Bruno and you. Only, to go away — it will kill me, I think. But if I do die, I shall be no burden anymore then on anyone. And if the signore spoke truth, and I am worth anything, then I will be great. When I am a man I will come back and live here always, because no place can be ever so beautiful; and I will make new gates, all of beaten gold; and I will build the walls up where they are broken; and I will give corn and wine in plenty everywhere, and there shall be beautiful singing all the night and day, and music in all the people’s homes, and we will go out through the fields every morning praising God; and then Signa will not be old or forgotten any more, but all the world will hear of her—”
And he went, not looking back once at the rushes and the water‐lily and the little child; seeing only his own visions, and believing them; — as children and poets will.
But Gemma, pausing a moment, ran after him.
“Take me, too!”
“Take you — away?”
“Yes. I want to go too.”
Signa kissed her with delight.
“You are so fond of me — as that?”
“Oh, yes; and I am so tired of black bread, and Mimi’s plums are always green.”
Signa put her away a little sadly.
“You must not come. There is your father.”
“Yes. I will come. I want to see what you will see.”
“But, if you should be unhappy?”
“I will come back again.”
Signa wavered. He longed for his playmate. But he knew that she wished a wrong thing.
“I cannot take you,” he said, with a sigh. “It would be wicked. Palma would cry all the day long. Besides, I am nothing — nobody wants me. I go to spare Bruno pain and trouble; that is different. But you, Gemma, all of them love you.”
“Let us go,” said Gemma, putting her hand in his.
“But I dare not take you!”
“You do not take me,” said Gemma, with a roguish smile, and the sophism of a woman grown. “You do not take me. I go.”
“But why? Because you love me?”
Gemma ruffled her golden locks.
“Because they give me nothing to eat.”
“They give you as much as they have themselves.”
“Ah! but you will give me more than you have,” said Gemma, with the external foolishness and internal logic of female speech.
Signa put her away with a sigh.
“Perhaps I shall have nothing, Gemma. Do not come.”
Gemma stopped to think.
“You will always get something for me,” she said, at last. “Take me — or I will go and tell Bruno.”
Signa hesitated, and succumbed to the stronger will and the resolute selfishness of the little child: they are more often feminine advantages than the world allows.
“You will be angry with me, Gemma, in a day, if I let you have your way,” he said, hanging his head in sad perplexity.
Gemma laughed: she was so pretty when she laughed; Fra Angelico would have delighted to paint her so.
“When I am angry, I am not dull,” she said, with much foresight for her own diversion. “The boys slap me back again. But you never do. Let us go — or I will run up and tell Bruno.”
“Come, then,” said Signa, with a sigh; he knew that she would do what she said. Gemma, nine years old, was already a woman in many ways, and had already found out that a determination to please herself and to heed no one else’s pleasure was the only royal road to comfort in earthly life.
And she was resolved to go; already she had settled with herself what she would make Signa do, shaping out her projects clearly in the sturdy little brain that lived under her amber curls.
She was thought a beautiful child, but stupid; people were wrong.
Gemma lying doing nothing under a laurel bush, with her angelic little face, and her stubborn refusal to learn to read, or learn to plait, or learn to spin, or learn to do anything, was as shrewd as a little fox club for her own enjoyments and appetites. She lay in the sun, and Palma did the work.
“We will go to Prato,” said Gemma, all smiles now that her point was gained.
“I thought — Florence,” said Signa, who, in his own thoughts, had resolved to go there.
“Chè!” said Gemma, with calm scorn. “Boys never think. You would meet Bruno on the road. It is Friday.”
Friday is the market day, when all fattori and contadini having any green stuff to sell, or grain to chaffer for, or accounts to settle with, meet in the scorch of the sun, or in the teeth of the north wind, in face of Orcagna’s Loggia; a weather‐worn, stalwart, breezy, loquacious crowd, with eyes that smile like sunny waters, and rough cloaks tossed over one shoulder, and keen lips at close bargains either with foe or friend.
“And there is a fair at Prato,” said Gemma, “I heard them saying so at the millhouse — when I took Babbo’s grain.”
“But what have we to do with a fair?” said Signa, whose heart was half broken.
Gemma smiled till her little red pomegranate bud of a mouth showed all her teeth, but she did not answer him. She knew what they would have to do with it. But he — he was dreaming of gates of inlaid gold for the Lastra.
What was the use of talking any sense to him? He was so foolish: so Gemma thought.
“Prato goes out — to the world,” she said, not knowing very well what she meant, but feeling that an indefiniteness of speech was best suited to this dreamer with whom she had to do. “And if you want to get away you must go there at once — or you will have Bruno or Lippo coming on you, and then there will be murder; so you say. Come. Let us run across the bridge while we can. There is nobody here. Come — run.”
“Come, then,” said Signa, under his breath, for it frightened him. But Gemma was not frightened at all.
It was now five.
The great western mountain had caught the radiance of the morning shining on it from the opposite mountains, and was many‐coloured as an opal; the moon was blazing like a globe of phosphorous, while the east was warm still with rosy light; all above them, hills and fields and woods and river and town, were bathed in that full clear light, that coldness of deep dew, that freshness of stirring wind, that make the earth as young at every summer sunrise in the sough, as though Eos and Dionysius were not dead with all the fancies and the faiths of men, and in their stead Strauss and Hegel reigning, twin godhead of the dreary day.
She took his hand and ran with him.
Signa’s tears fell fast and his face was very pale; he kept looking back over his shoulder at each yard; but the little child laughed as she ran at topmost speed on her little bare toes, dragging him after her down the piece of road to the bridge, and across the bridge, and so on to the hillside.
“I know Prato is the other way of the mountains,” said Gemma, who had more practical shrewdness in her little rosy finger than Signa in all his mind and body. “I have seen the people go to the markets and fairs, and they always go up her — up, up — and then over.”
Signa hardly heard. He ran with her because she had tight hold of his hand; but he was looking back at the gates of the Lastra.
No one said anything to them. On the north side of the bridge no one had heard the terrible story; and if they had heard, would not have had leisure to say anything, because it was threshing time, and everybody was busy in one way or another with the corn — piling it one the waggons, driving the oxen out to the fields for it, tossing it into the bar
ns or the courtyards, banging the flails over it, or stacking the straw in ricks, with a long pole riven through each to stay the force of the hurricanes.
When the country side is all yellow with reaped grain, or all purple with gathered grapes, Signa people would not have time to notice an emperor; their hearts and souls are in their threshing barns and wine‐presses. When they are quiet again, and have nothing to do but to plait or to loiter, then they will make a mammoth out of a midge in the way of talk, as well as any gossippers going.
CHAPTER XIV.
THERE were many mules, and horses, and carts, and men, and women, and asses rattling out over the cross roads from the many various villages and farms towards Prato.
In the ways of the Lastra itself dust was rising as the noisy ramshackle baroccini were pulled out of their stables and got ready with any poor beast that was at home. The cattle had all been driven over in strings the night before from every part of the country, lowing, whinnying, and bleating as they went.
The road over the hill was thick with dust, and trampled with traffic as the children climbed it, and many a rope‐harnessed horse and crazy vehicle flew by them in a cloud of white powder, the driver shrieking, “Via, via, via!”
“We shall be seen and stopped,” said Signa, shrinking back; but Gemma pulled him onward.
“Nonsense,” she said, steadily. “They do not think about us; they think about themselves and the fair; and where they will drink and eat, and how they will cheat.”
Gemma dwelt under the lemon leaves of lonely Giavola; but her experiences of life had been sufficient to tell her, that when your neighbour is eating well and cheating comfortably he will usually let you alone.
She would not let him go back; she kept close hold of his hand, and trotted on her rosy, strong little feet that tired no more than do a mountain pony’s.
She was right in her conclusions. The carts rattled by and no one took any notice of them. Two children running by the wayside were nothing uncommon, that anyone should remark on it and reflect about it; and one or two people who did look at them and recognise them sup‐ posed that they were going somewhere on some errand for Sandro or for Bruno.