Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  “Let us go and see the sacra cintola,” whispered the boy, for he was a devout little fellow, and had heard all his days from all the country‐side of the wonders of the holy girdle that Prato enshrines.

  “What will the sacra cintola do for us?” said Gemma.

  “Nothing,” said Signa, sadly, “nothing — now we have told so many lies.”

  “The girdle would not have had that cart,” said Gemma, with a smile that would have been a grin only she was so pretty; and she let Signa draw her onward to the square where the Duomo stands, because, as she thought to herself, there would surely be the most people there, it being the hour of high mass — people always made themselves safe with heaven before they began to jump about and eat and drink.

  “Look!” said Signa, forgetful one moment of his woes in his delight at looking up at the great duomo of which so many legends were rife in the country‐side. “Look! Gemma, look! There is Donatello’s pulpit, where they used to show the girdle to the people on the feast days; Donatello you know, who once was only just a poor boy like me, and lived to make the marble speak; the signore at the Certosa told me so; do you think they ever will talk of me hundreds of years after I am dead and gone, as they do about him? Oh, I think they will, because the music does last like the stone, though no one can touch it and feel it like the stone — and I am sure one day I will make some music that they will care about. Oh, Gemma, you are not looking — just see those beautiful children up there, all in the marble, with the white flowers! And where is the mark of the man’s hand that was cut off for sacrilege, you remember? Teresina has told us about it so often! — it was thrown up in the air, you know, and the blood of it made a spot like an open palm on the grey wall up above, that is always, always there; only surely the angles might wash it out now; he must have suffered so much, and been so sorry by this!”

  And Signa, trembling at his own vivid imaginations, stood still, gazing up and trying to see the blood‐stain amongst the black and green serpentine of the inlaying above Lucca della Robbia’s Virgin, with her S. Stephen and S. Lawrence. The story was so real to him, he could see the wicked monk going round and round in the aisles, in the dark, with his stolen treasure, unable to find his way out, and believing himself on the road to his own monastery, and so striking the panels of the great door, and crying, “Open, open!” and thus calling down detection and chastisement with his own voice. He could see it all, and he stood gazing up and looking for the blood‐stain above Donatello’s happy snow white children, till he trembled all over with the awe and fever of his own visions. Gemma, not heeding at all and quite indifferent to the sacred girdle, since it was nothing pretty to put on herself, sniffed with her dainty little nose the various fumes of frying and stewing that came from the open doors and windows of the houses in the square, and decided with herself that it was high time to get something more to eat.

  It was noon, and breakfast was being prepared everywhere, and a slice of smoking kid or a taste of boar stuffed with prunes were more to her taste than all the stone children of Donatello. She had known what such dainties meant at fairs at Signa and Impruneta, whither she had occasionally been taken by kindly baby‐loving women who pitied her because she had no mother.

  She pondered a little; smelling the fragrance of the soup pots, whilst the crowds of people let loose from high mass, like boys from school, filled the piazza, laughing, buzzing, chattering, pushing, loitering, with the broad bright sky cloudless above their heads.

  Gemma went and looked wistfully in at an open arched entrance of a fruit shop; beyond, she saw a kitchen with a plump motherly woman in an orange kerchief, who was just taking off the fire a frying‐pan full of bacon and lard, browned and ready for eating.

  “Might I just lay my flowers here in the shade one moment or two?” said little Gemma, timidly slipping her basket on to the stone slab under the cool wet leaves that kept the strawberries fresh. “Might I just leave them here one moment with you, they will all fade away in the sun?”

  “Certainly, my pretty one,” said the woman. “But where do you want to go?”

  Gemma looked very shy and sad.

  “Only — to see — to buy — a little bit of bread. I have a centime, and I am so hungry—”

  “When did you eat last?”

  “Yesterday at noon. Mother is just dead, and there was no more bread in the house, and no money.”

  “Poor little soul!” cried the good woman, with her charity alive in a second; human charity is a match that will strike light very quickly, only it will go out again very nearly as rapidly. “Poor little sweet soul!”

  “It shall never be said that I turned a hungry child empty away. Come in and eat your fill. There is only my husband; and we are half famished too, for there has been no getting a mouthful were it ever so, so busy as this morning has been; there is scarce a stalk of fruit left, as you see, already. Come in, you pretty morsel, and eat for two.”

  Gemma did eat for two, taking no remembrance of Signa outside by the cathedral in the sun. He was well enough with his Donatello and his nonsense. Meanwhile she stuffed her little round mouth full of crisp, brown, savoury bacon, and swallowed her little glass of blue wine, and picked as many bigarreau cherries as she chose, and touched to the quick the hearts of her host and hostess, who were childless.

  They only let her go again with many promises that she would return, which indeed she gave willingly, with every intention of keeping them if she found nothing better to do. When she had got her flowers and ran out again to look for Signa, she could not find him. That dismayed her, because he was her mine of money. She pondered a little, selling some flowers in the square meanwhile, because, as she reflected, however sorry one may be, pence are not the less sweet‐smelling for that; then reasoned with herself that such a silly as he would be sure to be inside the cathedral dreaming about the sacrilegious monk; and there, in truth, did she find him, sitting on the lower step of the high altar, with the bronze crucifix above him.

  Signa was very pale from weariness and long fasting; but his eyes were full of brightness, and he was almost happy; someone had been playing on the organ somewhere unseen, the church being empty and the custodians dozing in noon‐tide rest, and the noble silence around him and the deep coolness and the beautiful colours and fuzes so lulled him, and yet excited him, that he knew nothing of the flight of time.

  “Are you not hungry?” said Gemma, pattering up and dipping her golden head in half impudent obeisance before the altar.

  “Hungry? Oh, no!”

  The word seemed to him almost like a sacrilege; yet he was hungry, only he had no leisure or sense for it.

  “I am,” said Gemma, knowing that her wants were the strongest levers to stir him into movement.

  “Are you? I am sorry,” said Signa vaguely, half remorsefully, yet almost incapable, in that beauty and holiness which were around him, of bringing his mind wholly to any ordinary daily thing. “Are you, dear? I am sorry. What can we do? But, oh, Gemma dear, can you feel very hungry in this place? Do look at the paintings. Fra Lippi did them, someone said. He was a monk, I think. And then look at those terrible grey faces and the tails like snakes — they are meant for Sins, are they not? It frightens one, and yet it is so beautiful, all of it.”

  Gemma looked with a sort of scorn at the marble sphinxes with their serpent bodies on Mino da Fiesole’s pulpit. They did not move her.

  “Sins are pleasant. Those are ugly things,” she said with a premature wisdom. “And I am hungry. Come out.”

  Signa went lingeringly, reluctantly looking back into the calm eyes of the sphinxes, and sorrowful to be forced out of that solemnity and stillness into the noise and the confusion of the fair.

  “How happy the man must have been who made all those things,” he said to himself, with a dim perception of the beauty of ages in which labour was done for sake of faith and country and God’s will, and not for sake of gold alone.

  Gemma jogged his shoulder.

&nb
sp; “Do not go to sleep! Come close to me, and do what I ask you — that is all.”

  Keeping tight hold of his violin and its bow, Signa obeyed her; the bright, prompt, unswerving will of Gemma always bore him away with it, without any volition of his own. The ascendancy of the unscrupulous will tells, in small lives as in great.

  She led him through the flocking people, with the loud clanging bells and the hot sunshine above them.

  The noble brown walls of Prato shut in that day a gay and noisy multitude. There were unusual attractions in the way of shows and travelling actors. The country folk had come in from the plain and from both sides of the mountains. The copper‐smelters from the valley of the Bisenzio, the quarry‐workers from Figlone, the pottery‐painters from Doccia, the straw‐plaiters and red‐cap makers of the town itself, the villagers from all the little places round about for twenty miles and more, all had contributed to swell the sum of the merrymaking throngs that put on their best, and ate and drank, made love and bought trinkets and shouted and sang under the frown of the old Ghibelline Castello and the prison that was once a Guelph Palace. There were booths in the streets, flags on the roofs, merry faces at the old grated casements; there was all the uproar of lotteries, charlatans, cheapjohns, and the players of puppets; asses brayed, children screamed, maidens laughed, mandolines twanged, kids and pigs were roasting whole in the streets, mounds of plums and cherries reddened the stones with their juice, barrels of wine ran in a hundred dark old kitchens and at many a quaint corner under a terra‐cotta shrine in the wall; and above all the happy breathless turmoil rose bell‐tower and cupola and fortress and monastery, and above them again the fair blue sky.

  Gemma slipped in amongst the multitude, keeping one of Signa’s hands in hers.

  She watched her opportunity. There was a pause. One puppet‐show had just ended; the tombola had not begun. She let go his hand.

  “Play,” she said, simply.

  “Play!” echoed Signa, with his beaming eyes full of pain. “Oh, Gemma! how can I play! so wretched as I am, and away from the Lastra; and Bruno hating me, perhaps; and Nita blind; and all through my own wickedness!”

  “Chè!” said Gemma, with serene contempt; “standing crying never mended a broken pot yet; Babbo says so a dozen times a week. I want some sweet cakes, and you have got to get them. How shall we keep ourselves if you do not play? It is all you are good for.”

  “How cruel you are!” sobbed the boy, his heart in revolt at his little tyrant, yet his courage weak against her.

  “Oh, you silly!” laughed Gemma, and pulled his curls. “Let us dance, then — do as I do — dance the saltarello that old Maro from the Marches taught us last year — that will make you merrier.”

  And Gemma began to dance herself, in the agile lithe postures that an old wandering fiddler had taught to the children of the Lastra; for Tuscany has no dance of its own except the droll trescone, which resembles the hopping of frogs.

  “Dance, and play the tune!” said Gemma, imperiously, looking like a little white flower blowing up and down in the wind, as her white arms went up above her head, and her small naked feet twinkled on the stones.

  Signa, by sheer instinct, obeyed her as a poodle would have done, making the tune come off the strings of his Rusignuolo, and moving wearily to her lithesome invitation, his head hanging down, and his feet feeling like lead, and the big tears coursing down his cheeks.

  “Oh, the little love, let one look at her!” said a woman or two, and cleared a space; and others gathered about, and a ring was made, and one score of people, and then another, and then another, gradually grew together, and watched Gemma in the saltarello, which no busked maiden from the wet green woods of the Marches, and no Roman child under the vinehung loggia of a Trastevere winehouse, ever danced with more spirit or more grace.

  Gemma was at home in the air, like a butterfly; and untiring she whirled around, and spurned the pavement, as if her little dusty toes had the wings of Mercury.

  “Oh, the beautiful little angel!” cried the women, when at least she ceased, hot, and breathless, and panting, with all her yellow hair blown back; and they kissed her, and worshipped her, and loaded her with sweetmeats, and cheap trinkets, and playthings.

  Signa stood apart, with swollen eyes and a swelling heart.

  “What fun it is!” said Gemma to him, with her little skirt full of spoils.

  Signa was silent.

  “A sulky boy,” said the women. “Is he your brother, my dear?”

  “Yes, and he plays so beautifully,” said Gemma. “He was too tired to dance well. Play, dear, play for these good kind people, who have given us such lovely things.”

  The words were simple, and she caressed him as she spoke, but in his ear she whispered: “Play, and get some money; or I will tell the guards, and send you back to Lippo.”

  Signa was helpless in her hands.

  If he were sent back, there would be woe — and the galleys for Bruno.

  He obeyed her, and drew the bow across the strings, and played his old favourite Misero Pargoletto, of Leo, which he had played so many times, that it came to him by sheer instinct and habit. He could not play amiss, even when he was not thinking what he did, his hands found the true place, and struck out the true music.

  Insensibly, the sweet accustomed sounds soothed him, drove away his pain, and calmed his sense of desolation and danger.

  Insensibly, he went on from one thing to another, and the melody gained on the people. They are sure judges of what is pure and excellent. Their ear is accurate; their feelings unerring. The little figure in their midst, with the sweet and serious face, and the small brown hands, that moved so perfectly, touched and won them. Muledrivers, copper miners, pottery‐painters, peasants, townsfolk, merry‐makers, gathered together, and listened to the child, till silence fell on the crowded square, and Gemma, seizing the moment, slipped in from one to another, holding out her little empty palm, and whispering, while her pockets were full of half‐pence, and her ears were full of praises: “We are so hungry, my brother and I!”

  CHAPTER XV.

  AS it chanced that day Bruno heard nothing. He did not leave his fields, the week being the threshing time, and he having a man to help him whom he had to pay, and being anxious to do all his grain and stack the straw entirely before the Sunday. And down in the Lastra, Lippo, whose courage though not his wrath had cooled, found excuse to go up to his sheep who were ailing, and got out of reach of his wife’s tongue, and spent the day in pondering how best he could compass the getting back the money without rousing the ire of his brother too hotly on his own person. He held Bruno by a chain indeed, but he had a foreboding that under too severe a strain the chain would snap, and he repented him of the impolitic passion into which his wife had hurried him — nine years of prudence and hypocrisy had been undone in five minutes’ rage!

  It was eight in the evening. There was red still in the sky, but the sun had gone down. Bruno had set a torch in the ring in the wall of his stone stable, and was still threshing by its light with the peasant whom he had hired to help him. Unless they worked late and early there could be no chance of finishing the grain by the Sunday morning; and he wanted it threshed and done with, that he might have all his time for his maize and vines, and begin the ploughing forthwith.

  The ruddy light gleamed on and off; the flails rose and fell; the floor was golden; the walls were black; the air blew in, fragrant with the smell of the meadow‐mint in the fields and the jessamine that clung to the arched doors, and the stone‐pines that dropped their cones on the grass above where the hill was rock.

  Bruno was very tired and hot; he had worked all day on a drink of sharp wine from four of the morning, and had only stretched himself on the bench for an hour’s sleep at noon. Nevertheless he went on belabouring the corn with all his will, and in the noise of the flail and the buzz of the chaff about his ears, he never heard a voice calling from outside, coming up the fields; and a child was standing at his side
before he knew that anyone was there.

  Then he left off, and saw Palma, Gemma’ s sister.

  “Do not come lounging here. You will get a blow of the flail,” he said roughly.

  “Signa!” panted Palma, who was crying. She had been crying all the way up the hill.

  “If you want the boy he is in the Lastra. Get out of the way.”

  “Is he not here? We were sure they were here,” said Palma, with a sob, knee‐deep in the tossing straw.

  “No,” said Bruno, whirling his flail about his head. “Be off with you. I can have no brats idling here.”

  “But Signa is lost, and Gemma was with him!” said Palma, with wide‐open black eyes of abject terror.

  “Lost! what do you mean? The boy is somewhere in the Lastra, doing Lippo’s work.”

  “No,” said Palma, with a sob. “They were in the garden at Giovoli — very early — Mimi saw them — and they went away together — very fast — over the bridge. And Babbo sent me to ask you — he was sure that they were here. But old Teresina says that Signa must have run away, because Lippo and Nita beat him horribly — about a fiddle — I do not know — and all the town is talking because Signa hit Nita in the eyes; and I know she was cruel to him always, only he never, never would tell you.”

  Bruno flung down his flail with an oath that made the little girl tremble where she stood in the gold of the corn.

  “Stay till I come, Neo,” he said quickly to the contadino working with him, and caught his cloak from a nail, and without another word or a glance at the sobbing child, strode away through his vines in the twilight.

  Palma ran with him on her sturdy little legs, telling him all she knew, which was the same thing over and over again. Bruno heard in unbroken silence.