Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

“You never told us.”

  Bruno’s voice was husky: his face was dark with troubled pain. When he had thought this young life so happy and so tranquil and so safe, it had been in conflict and torment, beating against the buffets of the world. He was bewildered; he had a dull sense of having failed in all that he had done; failed utterly.

  “Oh, no, what was the use?” said Signa, “It was no fault of anyone’s: things are so, if one have not money. You gave me all you could. I thought the ‘Actea’ would be taken at once. I thought that I should send you word of my triumphs while you were still all thinking me a little useless scholar. But it was not to be. If they could say that I wrote ill, I could bear it. Yes, I would tear it all up and think the failure was in me, and study more, and do better; but they cannot say that. The work that I have done is good. The coldest of them own it. Oh, heaven! it is that that breaks my heart: all my life is in it. I would die this hour, oh, so gladly, if I could be quite sure that my music would be loved, and be remembered. I do not know: there can be nothing like it, I think: — a thing you create, that is all your own, that is the very breath of your mouth and the and the very voice of your soul; which is all that is best in you, the very gift of God; and then to know that all this may be lost eternally, killed, stifled, buried, just for want of men’s faith and a little gold! I do not think there can be any loss like it, nor any suffering like it, anywhere else in the world. Oh, if only it would do any good, I would fling my body into the grave to‐morrow, happy, quite happy; if only afterwards, they would sing my songs, all over the earth, and just say ‘God spoke to him; and he has told men what He said.’”

  His hands clenched as he paused, his eyes burned, his face changed, and his mouth quivered; the madness of a great passion was in him — the pure impersonal hero‐passion of genius, which only reigns absolute in earliest youth, and whose death‐note is human love.

  Bruno looked at him darkly, drearily.

  This was the boy that he had thought had walked all the way only to look on his own face, and that he had thought had only cared for his old home, and come to live for ever on the calm hillside! What could he understand of this impassioned spiritual pain? — he was like a man watching a delirium that raves in an unknown tongue.

  Bewteen them there was that bottomless chasm of mental difference, across which mutual affection can throw a rope‐chain of habit and forbearance for the summer days, but which no power on earth can ever bridge with that iron of sympathy which stands throughout all storms.

  “I cannot follow — all that,” he muttered, wearily. “You go beyond me. No doubt you are born for greater things than I know. It is dark to me. But you came here for something — some wish, some aid, — tell me that. Perhaps I can help you. But I am ignorant. I cannot understand all that you say. Tell me the thing you want. I am better at acts than at thoughts.”

  Signa, recalled to himself, hesitated a moment: then he spoke, with the colour changing on his bent‐down face.

  “Well — all the hot months I have waited on these men. Waited and waited, all to no good. They are all afraid. Perhaps they think in their hearts that a boy like me — yesterday a peasant, and still with my shirts in holes, and only nineteen years old — perhaps they think I never can be really worth the great world’s hearing. Anyhow — they refuse. All refuse. ‘Have it played in your own country, and then we will see,’ say the foreign ones. ‘This country is too poor to risk uncertain ventures in it,’ say our own people. It is always some excuse. Some way they are afraid; of me or of the music. And then no one cares very much to risk new music. The theatres fill with the Ballo in Maschera and the Cenerentola, and all the rest. They only want them to fill. That is all. Nothing is to be done with them. ‘Comte Ory brings me as much as your Actea would were it successful,’ said one director to me. ‘And I have all the Comte Ory decorations, and all the singers know it by heart; why should I risk what might be half my ruin?’ For music they do not care, these men. No more than the men who sell wine in the wine‐shops care for the beauty of the vines. But now — only I do not know what you will say, you will think me mad; — now, last week in Milan, I have found a director who would take the Actea. Yes, take it, and bring it out in Carnival in Venice. In Venice — where they made Rossini’s fame, and sang the Ti riverdo even in the courts of law! I do not know whether he is a good man or a bad. But I would have kissed his feet. For he believes in the Actea—”

  “Well?” said Bruno, as he paused.

  Signa’s face flushed hotter, then grew very pale.

  “He will bring it out, this coming Carnival!” he murmured. “Only, as the risk is great, he says — he must have from me, before he does commence it, three thousand francs, one half the cost of it on his theatre.”

  “From you?” Bruno looked at him, doubting his own senses.

  “From me, yes,” said Signa, and faltered a moment, and then threw himself at the feet of Bruno, with that caressing, suppliant grace of action which makes an Italian bend his knee as naturally as a flower stoops before the wind.

  “Oh, listen! You have been so generous, so good, so long‐suffering — it is a shame to ask for more, to trespass further. Yes, I know. But, oh, listen to me, just this once again. What is the use of life in me if I cannot make men hear my music? I feel I am strong; I feel I am right; I feel what I do is great — only I have not the means of success in this world. Just see a skylark, the bird that mounts, mounts, mounts, ever singing; if it had a stone at its feet it could not mount, and so it could not sing, and yet its song would be in it just the same, and it would break its heart because it had to be mute. I am like the skylark: — only the stone with me is poverty. You see they have all had some little money. Mozart had his father’s help, and Haydn Prince Esterhazy’s, and everyone of them, some little thing just to loosen the stone off their foot as they rose first; — and once risen, then no lark wants anything more than only just the air and his own two wings. Now — oh, I know it is so much to ask, and in a way it is shameful; but you love me and I have no one but you. Now — that land you bought for me, you send me the worth from it always, and you mean to sign it away to me when I am of age, and you would like me to live on it for ever. Now — now — would it be impossible; would it be wicked in me to pray for it; — would you sell it at once, sell it straight away to whoever would buy it, the fields, and the olives and all; and give me the money for the Actea? Ah, my God! — do do it! My life is worth nothing to me, and what should ever I do with the land? It is yours I know, and I have no right yet; — but if you do still mean to give it to me, let me have the value of it now — now, for the Actea, and deliver me out of this torture and give me a chance to be great. Ah, my God, do hear me! — it will be as if you ransomed me out of hell!”

  His head dropped on his hands; he sobbed aloud; he knelt still at Bruno’s feet, but all drooped into himself like a crushed flower. He was ashamed of his own prayer; and yet the passion of his longing shook him from head to foot. What use were the land, and the olives, and the rush‐shadowed brook to him? What he wanted was fame eternal.

  Bruno was silent.

  This was why the boy had come back.

  After awhile Signa lifted his head timidly and glanced upward. Bruno’s face told him nothing: it was dark as a tempest, and, under all its bronze hue, pale; but it said nothing: it was like a moonless night.

  The boy was afraid. He thought there would break upon him an outburst of such rage as had shattered his lost Rusignuolo.

  But none came. Bruno was quite calm and was mute.

  “Will you do it?” said Signa, with a great fear at his heart, touching the man’s brown hands with a soft, shy supplication like a girl’s. “Will you do it? See, you are so strong, so good — you think so much of my body and my peace, and my happiness; which all are as nothing to me: wil you help me to save my soul? will you help me out from this death in life? Dear God! if you knew—”

  A terrible hopelessness seized him and stopped his prayer on his li
ps. Bruno’s face was so dark and so still: there was no response in it. A ghastly despair froze the boy’s beating heart.

  How could he ever make this man understand — this man who knew nothing — this man who followed his oxen, and reaped his corn, and was content?

  Bruno rose.

  “I will think of it,” he said, slowly; and his voice in the darkness and the stillness of the lamplit house, sounded deep and hollow, as a brave bell that is broken will sound. “I will do it — if I see if for your good. I must think.”

  Then he went out into the night air and drew the house door behind him, and the boy heard the echo of his footsteps passing away upward to the higher hills.

  He knew that his prayer would be fulfilled. He did not know that for one single instant, as he had knelt there, Bruno could have struck him down and stamped his life out with as passionate a hate as he had once stamped the music out of the broken violin: — one instant in which the heart of the man had risen and cried against him:

  “I have given you all my life — and you bring me back a stone.”

  The next day early Bruno went down into the Lastra. He went to the sacristy of the Misericordia.

  “Write to this man of Venice,” he said briefly. “Have it all in black and white: what he has said, what he will do.”

  Luigi Dini looked up astonished.

  “What! He has told you! You mean — ?”

  “We can speak of it when the answer comes. Write,” said Bruno, and went out into the tender sunshine and through the merry ways of the Lastra, that were overflowing with gathered grapes and laughing faces, down into the city, to the house of the notary who had served him in the transfer from Baccio Alessi, the carver.

  “I may wish to sell my land — that land — in a little while,” he said. “If you find an honest man at a fair price, tell me.”

  The notary looked up as the sacristan had done.

  “Sell the land! The land you were so proud of! What can that be for?”

  “That is no concern of any man’s. When you find the bidder tell me,” said Bruno, and went into the great square, where, the day being the market‐day, all the men from the villages and the villas were chaffering together with sonorous resonant voices, raised high in dispute or discussion.

  “Bruno is going to do some evil thing,” said the other men, seeing the look upon his face. They had been used to tell danger from the dark‐ ness of his face, as storm from the cloud‐crown of Monte Morello.

  But he did no evil. He trafficked with them, driving his bargains closely, and giving few words to all, with the glaive of Perseus and the bronze head of the Medusa above him in the shadow of the arch.

  When the day was ended, he entered the baptistery, and prayed there in the twilight.

  Then he crossed the river, and went out of the gates homeward.

  More than one man, going by with swift wheels and little jingling bells, and flying fox‐tails at the pony’s harness, stopped and offered him a lift; but he shook his head, and strode on along in the dust.

  It was the twenty‐fourth hour — the close of day — when he reached the foot of his own hill. The sun was just going down behind the great mountain and the sharp peaks that lie between the valley and the sea. It was nearly dark when he had mounted high enough to see his own roof above the olives.

  He passed Fiastra.

  The bell that said, “Lavora: et noli contristari” was ringing loud.

  On the path above there was a little tumult of young men and girls running merrily one on another to reach the open gates. They had torches with them, flaming bright in the dusk, and branches of fir and boughs of the vines that they tossed over their heads; they were shouting and leaping, and scampering, and singing in chorus. As they drew near the farmhouse, they called out to the people within:

  “We have brought him down! — we have got him! We will make him sing — our own little Signa, who is going to be so great!”

  Four of the youths had Signa aloft on their shoulders. They had sought him out where he was moping in solitude, as they termed it; and had besought him and besieged him with airy laughter and fervent entreaty, and a thousand appeals and reproaches of old friends to one who deserted them; and he had not been proof against all that kindly flattery, all that tender supplication, which had the honey in it of the first homage that he had ever known; and they had borne him away in triumph, and the girls had crowned him with vine leaves and the damask roses that blossom in hazel and grape time, and danced round him in their rough, simple glee, like the peasants of Tempe round the young Apollo.

  Bruno drew back into the shadow of the pines, and let them pass by him. They did not see him. They went dancing and singing down the steep grass paths, and under the archway, into the courtyard of Fiastra.

  It was a quaint, vivid, pretty procession, full of grace and of movement — classic and homely, pagan and mediæval, both at once — bright in hue, rustic in garb, poetic in feeling.

  Teniers might have painted the brown girls and boys leaping and singing on the turf, with their brandishing boughs, their flaring torches, their bare feet, their tossing arms; but Leonardo or Guercino would have been wanted for the face of the young singer whom they carried, with the crown of the leaves and of the roses on his drooped head, like the lotus flowers on the young Antinous.

  Piero di Cosimo, perhaps, in one of his greatest moments of brilliant caprice, might best have painted the whole, with the backgrounnd of the dusky hillside; and he would have set it round with strange arabesques in gold, and illumined amongst them in emblem the pipe of the shepherd, and the harp of the muse, and the river‐rush that the gods would cut down and fill with their breath and the music of heaven.

  Bruno stood by, and let the innocent pageant pass, with its gold of autumn foilage and its purples of crocus‐like colchicum.

  He heard their voices crying in the court: “We have got him — we have brought him. Our Signa, who is going to be great!”

  He stood still a little while: then he went up to his own home, and lit his lantern, and foddered his cattle, and worked in his sheds. He was too far off from Fiastra to hear any sound of the singing, but every now and then the wind, which blew that day from the south‐east, brought upward the bursts of applause, the enthusiastic shouts, that succeeded the intervals of silence; mere murmurs as the wind brought them; but to Bruno they sounded like the echo of the clarion of Fame, crying aloud to him from the great world, “He is mine.”

  It was late when Signa returned, brought back by the young men, who left him with caress and with gratitude as to a creature far above them, and went away singing low amongst themselves in chorus the greatest air that he had written, the chant of the dying Christians, which had in it all the majestic magnificence of the “Rex tremendæ majestatis,” and all the pathetic resignation of the “Huic ergo parce Deus,” of Mozart’s “Dies Iræ.”

  Signa stood on the threshold and listened to the broad, regular periods, the sonorous pathetic rhythm of his requiem, as the voices rose and sank, and grew fainter and fainter, as the steps fell away down the hillside.

  They were only peasants, only labourers of the flail and the furrow; but they could sing whatever took their ear with unerring truth and time. It was the first time that ever he had heard any music of his own upon the mouths of others: it was the first time that any of that sympathy, which is the sweetest part of public homage, had ever come to him: — he stood and listened with a tumultuous pleasure swelling at his heart, and a delicious sense of power on the lives of others stirring in him.

  “It will live,” he murmured to himself, as he listened there on the threshold until the voices died into silence, as the young men went on their several ways to their own homesteads, and parted.

  Bruno was working still in one of the sheds, his lantern burning beside him. He had been sifting grain, stacking wood, cleaning wine casks, with the white dog watching him and the night wearing away.

  Signa went within, and stood by him
a little timidly. He had not seen him that day, save for a few moments in the early morning.

  “You did not come to Fiastra to‐night,” he said gently, not knowing well what to say.

  “No,” said Bruno, without lifting his head, whilst he piled the brush‐wood.

  “Are you angry with me?” said Signa, with the child‐like way that was natural to him.

  “No,” said Bruno, but he worked on without raising his head.

  Signa’s mouth quivered a little. He knew that he had done no wrong, and yet he was not at peace with himself.

  “Perhaps I am very selfish to ask so much,” he said, hesitating a little as he spoke. “I know I have no right; I know I have no more of my own than the dog there. But, indeed — indeed — what use would the land be to me? what joy would it bring me? And you are so good.”

  Bruno paused in his labour a moment.

  “I said: I must think. Let it be. Wait a week — then I will tell you. I do not know that you are selfish. It is I, more likely. I will do what is for your good. Only leave me in peace. Do not talk.”

  And he lifted more wood.

  Signa stood by him sadly. He was not satisfied. He knew that he had gained what he wished, that his desire would be given him. But his victory brought a sense of pain and of wrong‐ doing, as victory over a noble foe does to a soldier.

  Bruno could never measure the height of the boy’s intelligence; the boy could never measure the depth of Bruno’s nature. In some ways they were for ever both strangers one to the other. Between human creatures it is often so.

  As he stood there, confused, troubled, mute, Bruno looked up with a gesture of impatience, and laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder, but gently, for since the day of the broken Rusignuolo he had sworn to heaven never to be ungentle with Pippa’s son.

  “I am not angered,” he said. “But leave me alone. Go with your friends; sing, dance, be caressed, take your pastime; enjoy yourself, dear, while you can. Do not think that you have hurt me; only leave me alone. It is not a thing to be done in a day. But you may trust me. What is best for you, that I will do: only I will not talk of it.”