Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  Signa sat apart under the walnut tree; he had forgotten where he was; he was thinking of what was dearer to him than any man or woman. He started as they spoke to him.

  “Signa! Signa!” the girls cried. “Have you left your heart in Bologna? Why are you dreaming there? Come, sing us something. Let us see if your grand learning has made your voice any sweeter? You have not played a note.”

  “Sing? here?” he asked, lifting his head in surprise.

  His thoughts had gone so far away.

  Bruno put his hand on his shoulder:

  “Sing or play. Who should care to hear you, if not your old friends here?”

  Signa had the habit of obedience in him; he never disputed any wish of Bruno’s. He took a mandoline from the old fellow who was thrumming it for the dancers; a grey‐headed farmer, seventy years old, who, nevertheless, could string a dance tune together as prettily as any one, and liked to see his grand‐daughters skip about like kids.

  No one can make much music with the mandoline, but there is no other music, perhaps, which sounds so fittingly to time and place, as do its simple sonorous tender chords when heard through the thickets of rose‐laurel or the festoons of the vines, vibrating on the stillness of the night under the Tuscan moon. It would suit the serenade of Romeo; Desdemona should sing the willow song to it, and not to the harp; Paolo pleaded by it, be sure, many a time to Francesca; and Stradella sang to it the passion whose end was death; it is of all music the most Italian, and it fills the pauses of the love songs softly, like a sigh or like a kiss.

  Its very charm is, that it says so little. Love wants so little said.

  And the mandoline, though so mournful and full of languor, as Love is, yet can be gay with that caressing joy born of beautiful nothings, which makes the laughter of lovers the lightest‐hearted laughter that ever gives silver wings to time.

  Signa took the mandoline and struck a few broad sweet chords, sitting under the heavy shade of the walnut leaves, with the pines and the starlit valley before him; just a few chords in the minor key; sad and soft, and almost solemn.

  Then he sang.

  He sang the old Misero pargoletto of Leo, which they had heard him sing a thousand times when he was a little fellow driving the sheep, and then he sang the Tu che accendi of Rossini’s Tancred, born from the lagunes of Venice, and known wherever a note of music has ever been heard; and then he paused a little, while the young men and the girls filled the air with their chiming voices that echoed the delicious familiar cantilena, in a chorus that vibrated through the pines and up to the skies, as if a thousand nightingales were singing; and then with a few sadder chords, sweet and almost solemn, he passed on to music that they did not know, airs that were quite strange to them, grave recitatives and sweet lovers’ serenades and grand airs of prayer and sorrow, and ritornelli, light as thistledown, and cathedral chants as solemn as death; they were all his own, with the freshness of a genius in them that had invigorated itself from study, but had borrowed nothing and retained its own originality, as the flower takes fresh colours from the bees, yet is a flower still, and never is a bee.

  “What is it?” they asked one another; for what with their own songs handed down from mouth to mouth and their little wandering theatres and their love of what is good in melody and the traditions of it, common in all households, these people know by ear so much that is ancient and beautiful; though they could not talk learnedly about it, and though the names of the masters are as Sanscrit to them.

  “What is it?” they asked one another; but they soon ceased to whisper even that, and could only listen in rapt silence.

  It was music that had a familiarity to them, inasmuch as it had something of the wild, fresh, hill‐born fragrance of their own popular songs, with which they followed the bullocks and lightened the toils of seed‐time and harvest. But, again, it was wholly unlike what they knew, having a purity and rarity in it. Something of the radiance of the old Greek music blended with the solemnity of the litanies and the misereri of the Renaissance of religious com‐ position; it was music in which the voice of the lover pleading to his beloved on the moonlit nights of vintage was blended with the cry of the desolate soul to stay the hand of the the God that scourged it; it was music true to that proufound canon of the Italian people: “La musicà è il lamento dell’amore, o’ la preghiera a gli Dei.”

  They listened — the girls leaning their arms on their knees, and their cheeks on their hands; the young peasants resting against the pine‐stems, or stretched on the benches of stone; the old people drawn together underneath the lamps and the story of the Ascension, with their pipe‐bowls cold with ashes, and their spinning‐wheels ceasing to turn.

  The very dogs were silent, and the little tumbling children, falling against one another, kept mute, with their curls intermingled, and their big bright eyes lifted upward.

  The face of Signa was quite in shadow where he sat under the walnut branches; the mandoline lay motionless across his knees; he sang on, and on, and on, as the young David might have sung to the madness of Saul.

  He had forgotten all that surrounded him, his soul was in his music.

  When his voice ceased quite suddenly, he looked at the people about him; the women were in tears, the men listened breathless; there was a moment’s silence, then they sprang to their feet, all of them with one accord, and flung themselves on him, and kissed his hands, and his hair, and his clothes, and his feet, and shouted, and laughed, and cried, and lifted him up on their shoulders, and called otu to the moon just sinking —

  “Look at him! look at him! Our own little Signa, and yet as great as this! Oh, the beautiful music! Did the angels teach it to you, dear — the angels you used to see?”

  Bruno alone stood apart, and Palma sat in the shade of the high house wall.

  When they let him go at last that night, he smiled on them, standing bareheaded in the shadows:

  “You are the first to praise me — I will always think of that.”

  Then he broke loose from them and went quickly away, forgetting everything. For his heart was beating loud, and, his eyes swam, and the faintness of a great emotion made the hill‐side reel before him for a moment. He wanted to be alone. They were only peasant people — farming‐men and girls from the fields — but if they were moved like that, would the world be wholly indifferent?

  He climbed up the steep path towards Bruno’s home, and sat down under one of the pines and thought. The old house of Fiastra was below him, he was out of the hum of the voices, but he could have heard dance music had there been any. He was glad it was all silent — he was glad they could not dance again — so soon.

  There was no sound anywhere around him.

  Far down below the lights of the Lastra glistened; above were the fields and the woods and the blue mountain crest. This was his home. He loved it. Nevertheless he said to himself: “Every day here is a day lost. How shall I tell it to Bruno?”

  Bruno — who to every man he met, and to every woman coming through the vines, had said always, with such pride in his voice, “He has come back — he has walked all the way only to see me — only just for that!”

  And Signa never heard him without a rush of blood to his cheeks and a rush of shame to his heart, — knowing that it was not so.

  He had not been there long before a step crushed the fallen leaves and fir‐needles, a step ascending with swift, elastic, even tread, the tread of feet that have never been trammellled in leather.

  “Dear, are you there?” said Bruno’s voice.

  Signa rose and met him. They went upward together.

  The old house of Fiastra was shutting itself up for sleep; the people were breaking up and going homeward; going without their usual twitter of flute and thrilling of mandoline, and without their usual jests and laughter, talking in low murmurs of the wonderful boy, who yet was their own little fellow — the little fellow that had been hungry, and footsore, and beaten, and made a mock of so many years, in the house by the Moth
er of Good Counsel.

  The heavens were brilliant. Coma Berenice was setting northward, and above the sea mountains Arcturus shone in full splendour, soon to pass away. Perseus gleamed bold on his white field of light: he had been shooting fire‐arrows half August through the sky, and now was still. Very low down, eastward and southward, as though watching over Rome, the strange lone star Fomalhaut hung in its mighty solitude. Orion still was hunting in the far fields unseen.

  “Was that all out of your own head?” said Bruno abruptly, as they mounted together under the pines.

  “My own music? Yes.”

  “It is very fine,” said Bruno, and was silent. His voice had lost its happy and hopeful intonation.

  “Ah, if only I were sure,” said Signa.

  “It is very fine,” repeated Bruno.

  He knew it. He could not have told why. He had heard, like all his countryfolk, the gay grace of Rossini and Cimarosa, and the grave grace of Donizetti and Bellini, in the little dusky crowded theatres of the populace down in the city, in all the seasons of autumn and carnival. It was only a pastime to him; a sport not fit to fill the life of a man. Music was like the grass — it grew everywhere. That was what he thought. But he knew that the songs of Signa were beautiful — knew it by the wet faces of the women, by the shining eyes of the men. And his heart was heavy with fear.

  “Do they not tell you it is fine where you study?” he asked. “They must know there.”

  “Some do,” said Signa, and then he hesitated, and his lips were mute.

  “It is what you care most for — still?”

  Signa drew a heavy breath.

  “Ah, it is all I live for! Did I not say you have given me more than life — life eternal.”

  “What will be will be,” said Bruno, with the old gloom deepening on his face. “It is not I, nor anyone. It is just that, — the thing that is to be.”

  “Fate,” said the boy.

  “Perhaps that is what you scholars call it,” said the man. “It may be the great God, it may be the Devil.”

  “May it not be ourselves,” said Signa, “or others?”

  Bruno did not answer. His face was dark. He had neither mind nor mood to unravel thought, or unweave the subtleties of fancy. What he felt was that there was a force stronger than he, and always against him. It did not matter what it was called.

  They walked on in silence slowly. The moon was gone, but all the stars were shining, and there was a little tremulous light on the moss under their feet. Signa stopped and lifted up a stone that had fallen across a few sprays of cyclamen, and raised up the drooping delicate pink heads of that most lovely and tender of all blossoms.

  “Look!” he said. “My music was the cyclamen — circumstance was the stone; what my hand does for the mitre‐flower, you did for my music and my life. I cannot call that Fate. It is something much warmer and much more beautiful to me.”

  “You talk like a poet,” said Bruno, roughly. “I am an unlearned man. I cannot follow figures.”

  Signa threw the stone away, and went on without saying more.

  When they had got to the house Bruno struck a match and lighted his brass lamp.

  “Good night,” he said, and would have gone to his bed, but Signa stopped him.

  “I have something to say,” he murmured. “Could we talk now? Something I came all the way on purpose to say — it could not be written.”

  “Ah!” said Bruno.

  He sat down on the settle by the cold empty hearth. He drew his hat over his eyes. A dull, weary shadow was on his face. It seemed to him as if a knife went to his heart.

  And he had said all through these three days to the people, “He has walked all the way to see me — only just to see me!”

  “Let us hear it,” he siad, and set down the lamp. He could not tell what it could be; but before he heard it all his hope died in him. The boy had not come for him, and the old life would not hold him.

  Signa remained standing, leaning against the marriage‐coffer.

  “My music that you heard to‐night,” he said, softly. “That is from an opera I have written. The first — the only one. I have called it ‘Actea.’ Oh, you do not know; the story does not matter. She was the love of Nero, an Emperor of Rome, and she a slave. I have studied hard. Yes, indeed. It is not to praise myself. It was a happiness — no pain. If only one could learn more; but the nights and the days seem so short; even with sleeping only four hours. I have made all the opera myself. The music, of course, but the story of it and the words too — all the libretto. I would not speak to anyone of my idea, and if one be at all a musician, one should be just a little also of a poet; enough for that. There is the jealousy of Actea and Poppea, and the triumphs in the Circus Agonistes, and the marytrdom of the Christians, and Nero harkening to the harping of Terpnos, and the death of Nero, and then Actea all alone by the grave; but you heard some of the music, all is said in that; I know that it is good. The great Father Polidria says so. He even says it is great. But it will not please the world; that is what he says. He thinks that ‘canterello’ began with Rossini, who was great, and who had much else besides; and has descended to all the little composers that are reigning now, and who have nothing else besides, and, in so descending, has increased and grown worse, and has corrupted the ear of the people, so that they only want noise and glitter, and care nothing for true harmony or pure cadence. Perhaps it is thus. He should know. He says that the people in all the nations have lost their critical faculty and their understanding, and that even in opera seria they now desire as much jingling and noise and spectacle as in the buffa. And so he thinks that my Actea’ would fail, because it has too much of Pergolese in it.”

  Bruno interrupted him:

  “Tell me what you want; what you come for? I cannot understand all these long words.”

  “I am so sorry,” said Signa, with the soft contrition of a chidden child. “I am always thinking of it; always talking of it; I forget — I must tire you; but I hardly know what you will say, what you will think — listen. All my soul, all my life, is in the opera. If only it could be heard I feel sure that it would make a great fame for me, and that is what you wish, is it not? You would not have me live and die an obscure musician, writing for little theatres or teaching song in the cities? Oh, no! Oh, my God, no! It would be better to work in the fields here for ever.”

  Bruno’s teeth shut close together.

  “I begin to understand — go on.”

  And sitting under the eaves of Fiastra that night, watching the young men and the maidens dance together, he had said in his heart, with security, “He is content. The old ways will hold him!”

  “You know,” said Signa, still leaning against the old gilded coffer, with his face in the glow from the lamp. “An opera to be known must be heard on some stage; and it must be a great stage: and the rendering of it good, or the music will have no chance to be great in the world. I have said nothing to you, because I hoped so much to send you word of some great victory for it, all in a moment, while you were thinking of me as only a little scholar. But the ‘Actea’ was finished in spring, and I managed to travel to Milan, — never mind how, walking most of the way, — and there I played from it, and showed it to many directors that come to the city, the score of it is in my knapsack there, and they have all wondered at me, and called me Mozart, and said that the music was good, some even said great; and the death chant of the Christians, and the grave song of Actea, they said were sublime. But they were all afraid of it. They all thought it too serious, too passionate, too thoughtful. I suppose it has not ‘cantarello’ enough. They said it would cost much, and would almost certainly fail to please. They are afraid of their money — afraid to spend it, and not to see it again. It is that everywhere, money. It has half broken my heart. To hear them say that it is beautiful, they all grant that, and yet to find not one there that will have the courage to give it to the world! I have seen them, of all nations, and it is always the same. ‘You are a young
genius, you are a Mozart,’ they all say. Oh heaven! how would ever anyone have known of Mozart if they had all dealt with him as these men deal with me!”

  Bruno looked up.

  “Poor lad!” he muttered; the thought of Signa, suppliant and repulsed, moved him; he hated the music that thus enchained the boy’s soul; but he hated as much those traffickers in the labour of the brain, who had made him suffer.

  Signa went on full of his own thought.

  “They told me I should take a homelier theme, with tragedy in it, like the Gazza Ladra; as if the meanness of the plot were not what destroys the beautiful music there! They were all afraid of my Actea. Oh, you do not know what I have endured. The hope of it, the despair of it, the waiting, the longing, the beseeching, the thinking every time ‘Here is one who will understand;’ and then always the smae disappointment at the end. I have been sick with the pain of it, mad with it; but you must not think that I lied to you when I said I was happy. I have been happy always because I believe in my genius; I do believe in it against everything. It is not vanity. I love the opera; but I love it as if God gave it me. It comes out of me just like the song out of the bird. No more. All the summer I have toiled after these men, one or other of them; the city of Milan is full of them; getting singers, and players, and melodies for their theatres, all over the world, for the next winter. I have lost weeks and months waiting, waiting, waiting; and often all day without a bit of anything to eat, because they do not think — those people — or because they do and know one is so poor. I suppose they never want for food themselves, and so forget.”