by Ouida
“I did what I could; but then he did not want anything done,” she thought.
“She is dull and morose; she works too hard, poor girl,” thought he; and he moved away. “Good day, dear, for a little; I will see you before I go.”
“Go! — you go again then?”
“Ah, yes! In a very little. It will be the autumn season soon. I go whenever the ‘Actea’ is played.”
Palma looked up at him; straight in his face.
“And you are quite happy?”
“Quite.”
“And you are really great?”
“Men say so. I do not know. I will be greater if I live.”
“And Bruno lonelier.”
She wished the words, when they were said, unsaid. Signa’s face clouded a moment.
“That is not my fault,” he said, slowly. “And no — perhaps he will not be; — when I am all that I dream of, and when I have gold in both hands, I will come back and live here on the hills, that I promise; and I will build a palace of marble that shall look east and west; and all the hungry shall be fed there, and all the footsore rest. And then, when there are any boys quite desolate, as I was, and dreaming beautiful things, as I did, and wanting help, and not knowing where to turn, then they will all come to me; and I will teach them, and we will sing together, and they shall be happy, and we will give our lives for the world; and men will love us, and through us love God: it will be like the ‘Angeli’ of S. Marco dwelling together with music, with the roses round them, and the sky above!”
He stopped; the cloud had cleared from his face; it was shining with a light that was sweeter than the sun’s.
He was only a boy still; and the world had not dimmed his dreams with its breath.
Of all the innocent things that die, the impossible dreams of the poet are the things that die with the most pain, and, perhaps, with most loss to humanity. Those who are happy die before their dreams. This is what the old Greek saying meant.
The world had not yet driven the sweet, fair follies from Signa’s head, nor had it yet made him selfish. If he had lived in the age when Timander could arrest by his melodies the tide of revolution, or when the harp of the Persian could save Bagdad from the sword and flame of Murad, all might have been well with him. But the time is gone by when music or any other art was a king. All genius now is, at its best, but a servitor — well or ill fed.
Palma listened, looking up at that bright, strange light upon his face; not understanding at all with her mind, but wholly with her heart. The frozen pain in her melted.
She put her full basket back into the house.
“Will you come with me a moment?”
“Where?”
“To the old church, up yonder.”
“Yes, dear.”
She called to her little brother to mind the house, and took Signa up the narrow, winding paths, just trodden down in the grass by a few rare footsteps, going up amongst the vines and then amongst the olives, and then where the land grew wilder amongst the gorse. The vines were hung with grapes that touched them as they went; the wild peaches fell yellow at their feet; the blue radish‐flower was in the grass like gleams of the sky reflected on the dew; big oxen, muzzled and belled, looked at them through the leaves.
“It is so beautiful!” said Signa, mounting higher and higher into the tangle of green and the network of sunbeams.
“Yes,” said Palma. But she did not know it. She had not time. Amongst all its sad losses, poverty has none that beggars it more than its loss of perception.
They reached the old church, brown and solitary, with a few cypresses near it, and round it the sheep grazing; it had once been the chapel of a great villa, of which there was nothing now left but roofless arches and a wall where the rains of five hundred winters had not quite washed away the frescoes.
She took him in, and led him up to the pillar by the altar where the little picture hung.
“I bought it; I put it there,” she said, timidly. “Perhaps it has done nothing, you know; perhaps you do not want it; — but at least it could do no harm, and I have come and prayed here every little bit of time I had to spare. I am sure the saints love you — without that or anything — but it was all I could do. And when you were so far away—”
Signa looked up at the column and understood it all. He stooped and kissed her, touched to the quick.
“Ah dear! — how good to think of me. You bought it — you, who toil so hard? Oh, Palma! I will try and find Gemma for you; — I shall find her; — something tells me so.”
Palma sat down on the lowest altar step; she did not answer. If he had looked at her face he would have seen that it was very pale under the brown that the sun had scorched on it. But he did not look; he was looking up at the painted Sebastian on the roof, and thinking how bitterly Gemma had cried one day because he could not reach down the saint’s golden arrows for her.
The sheep bells tinkled; the smell of the rosemary was sweet on the air; a bird sang, sitting on the old tattered mass‐book.
“Gemma is in heaven,” said Palma, and sat still and pale in the morning light.
Gemma! — who had always been so much happier than she.
“Perhaps I shall find her somewhere in the great world,” said Signa, softly. “And she will have suffered, perhaps, and sorrow have softened her and ennobled her — it does, they say — and made her soul as beautiful as her little body was. Think of that Palma! and then I would bring her home to the palace that I mean to build, and make her happy, so happy; and she would be in all my music, just as the sun is in all the flowers. Think of that Palma! Pray that it may come true. It would be like a story out of the ‘Legend of Gold.’”
Palma was still very pale.
“You will see her in heaven,” she said. “She was drowned in that sea, that I am sure.”
But Signa shook his head.
“She is alive; that I am sure.”
CHAPTER IV.
SIGNA went down into the Lastra and sat awhile with Teresina in the room over the sea‐gate, and spoke with old friends — of whom he found many, since they are flowers that grow fast in the soil of success — and spent some hours in the sacristy, turning over, with curious emotion, the yellow scores and crabbed manuscripts which had once been written to him in an unknown tongue.
Then he passed down into the city.
He knew so little of it, scarcely more than if he had been a stranger. Bruno had held him back from it always.
He strayed into the galleries, quiet and deserted in the strong August heats, and saw the face of the Samian Sybil and the beauty of the Venus of Titian.
As he wandered down the corridor which holds the portraits of the artists painted by themselves, he paused before one which seemed to him, in a way, familiar. It was the head of a man still young; a head that had grace and power in it, but also levity and caprice. It was roughly painted in black and white.
“Whose head is that?” he asked the custodian dozing in the sun.
“A living painter’s — one Istriel.”
“Of what country?”
“France. He is a great man there. He did that for us by order of the King.”
“I have seen him somewhere; where does he live?” said Signa, and mused a little while; and then remembered the morning of the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, and the gift of the Fair Christ.
“He lives in France, I suppose,” answered the other. “But I think he is a great deal in Rome. I think he works there a great deal.”
“What kind of things does he paint?”
“Women, for the most part, I believe. There is a picture they talk very often of just now; you can see a copy of it in the town: it is very fine — a woman.”
“A portrait?”
“Oh, no; just a woman dancing.”
“I will see it,” said Signa, and he went where the man directed him for sake of those two gold coins that had bought his Rusignuolo.
“Who knows?” he thought, “without those forty f
rancs I might never have known more of music than to thrum on a lute to the sheep.”
Who could tell? All Bruno’s labour of eighteen years might have been of less use than two gold pieces tossed by a stranger.
He found the place where the copy of the great picture could be seen; a copy made by the painter’s pupils, and shown for a little while by his permission, the original being in Paris. It was a picture of which all the world had talked two years before, whilst Signa was buried under the dust of study, and the darkness of poverty, and the disbelief of men.
The copy was alone in a small cabinet, hung with red, and lighted from the top; it was a full‐ length form of a woman dancing — only that; on a sombre background of brown shadow.
Was it so beautiful?
He did not know. But he shaded his eyes as from too much sun. It dazzled him. The figure stood out form the darkness like a living thing; all the light was concentrated on the exquisite fairness and warmth of the supple body, on the head turned over the shoulder, on the upraised arms tossing castenets above; on the know of pomegranate buds above the ear; on the rounded limbs, lithe as reeds and white as snow; on the transparent scarf of scarlet, touched with gold, which was the only drapery. The figure bent a little backward, showing every curve and grace of it: the face was beautiful.
It was called, with the arrogance of a genius that knew its hold upon the world, “A Sister for the Seven Dancers of Herculaneum.”
Signa stood before it blinded, stunned, confused.
No living woman had ever moved him as this dancer did. He gazed and gazed till, as the passion of the Spanish love‐song says, “his heart’s blood was drawn from him through his eyes.”
And yet the picture hurt him.
Hurt him by the taint that there was upon its loveliness; as there is in that of the Venus Calipyge of Naples.
An old man, looking at the picture at the same time, spoke of it.
“Yes; it is a beautiful study,” the stranger said. “I have seen the original. This is a fine copy. The artist has touched it here and there himself.”
“It is not a portrait?” said Signa, timidly. He could not bear to speak of the picture, and yet he wanted to know more of it.
“Oh, yes, it is a portrait. Only you see that he has painted it in the old Greek manner — the feet off the ground, no sign of earth, indeed; the figure floating, as if she flew. Yes, it is drawn from life. A girl — a woman — whom they call Innocence, in Paris.”
“Innocence! And painted there!”
The old man smiled.
“Nay, Vitellius called his bear so. The wild beast shamed it less than does the woman, perhaps.”
The next morning he said to Bruno,
“I have found the name of the man who gave me that money in the Lastra. It is Istriel. You remember my losing the paper in the rushes as I ran.”
“What do you want with any man now?” said Bruno, jealously; “or with any man’s help?”
“Nothing, indeed; but I should like to see him.”
“I cannot see why you should think about him.”
“Perhaps I never should have got beyond my little lute but for him.”
Bruno gave an impatient gesture.
“We are what we are,” he said, with rough fatalism. “It is no chance wind that blows the notes into the nightingale’s throat, and the screech into the owl’s; all that is settled beforehand.”
Signa was silent. He did not say his thought aloud which was:
“I wish to meet this painter, because I want to know where he found her, or if he only fancied her — that ‘Sister of the Seven Dancers.’”
He said instead, “Come down into the city and see a picture of his.”
“I cannot to‐day,” said Bruno, “because there is so much to do. Watering alone takes six hours in this dry weather; but to‐morrow, perhaps, I can.”
To‐morrow he went. He did not know anything about any of the arts, but he was at home amongst them; they were familiar things to him: it is so with all his country‐folk.
He stood and looked at it for some time; then he laughed a little.
“Yes; it is a beautiful — wanton.”
He had hit the blot on it.
Signa sighed unconsciously and restlessly. The picture beguiled him, bewitched him, and yet hurt him.
Bruno said, “Do not look at it too long; it will get into you — like marsh fever;” and took him away.
When they were in the sun again in the streets, he added:
“If your baby Gemma were alive, that is just what she would be like.”
“No! never!” said Signa, indignantly; he did believe she was living, but he looked for her always amongst the innocent maiden faces at mass in the churches.
Bruno laughed a grim laugh.
“Let us hope she is dead,” he said. “Only the devil never cuts his very best flowers down early.”
Signa did not answer.
“Your painter must be bred to spread the plague,” said Bruno.
Signa did not ask him what he meant.
He went and found Palma.
“You do pray for Gemma’s soul?” he said to her.
“Always,” said Palma.
“Well, pray more, dear. Perhaps she needs it, who knows?”
“Oh, no; she is in heaven,” said Palma. “Such a child — and Christ so good.”
“Well, never mind. Pray always.”
“That is all he thinks I am of use for, to pray for Gemma’s soul,” thought Palma. But she reproached herself for the thought, as mean and base.
She had never ceased to love Gemma and mourn her; — only she wished he would not talk of her, not so very much.
Signa wandered about the woods alone, and saw always before him, in the golden fires of the summer day, “The Sister of the Seven Dancers.”
She banished the sweet veiled face of Lamia.
“Your painter should cut off his right hand: it is like the sun; it breeds corruption,” said Bruno, who knew the force of the flesh and the devil, and had in him a fierce, scornful wrath against that picture which had burnt his boy’s soul with its impure sorceries.
One day Lippo met him in the pine woods, no one being near.
“Dear nephew,” said Lippo, softly. “We cannot meet. Bruno is implacable. He will never forgive what he thinks an injury. See here: — I knew his little piece of land had to be sold to give your work a trial and a chance of favour. I said to myself: ‘I have a kind father‐in‐law and good friends, shall I offer to lend the money?’ But then I bethought me, ‘Bruno would only answer with a blow.’ So when it was quite sure the land must go, I said to an honest soul in the city whom I could trust, ‘Go, buy it in your own name, and make it over to me; so the thing shall not wound my brother, and yet the piece of ground not go away from the family.’ So said, so done. Dear — I only hold the land in trust. I tried to explain to Bruno, but his head was full of traitors and of wrath; I could make no way with him. He would have brained me with his spade. But this I wish to say to you — my children are dear to me, but justice is dearer still. If ever you wish the land back again, I will sign it over to you — almost as a gift: I would say quite so; but, when one has so many mouths to feed, one is not altogether the master of one’s purse. Dear — be quite sure of this: I bought it, hoping to please Bruno; never to spite and vex him, as he thinks. Christ knows there is no venom in my heart. The other night, when you had such a welcome I was proud and glad; I should have come foremost amongst them, only Bruno is so violent, and I feared it might look time‐serving. But, believe me, no one is prouder than I am, and Nita; she says fifty times if once, ‘To think he is so great — the little drowned baby that sucked with Toto!’ Dear — you have been made to think ill of us. It is a pity. And in your grand, famous ways in the future years you will not want us; that is true. Still, be sure our prayers go with you; and, though we are only poor folks toiling hardly in a little village, we shall not shame you, for we are Christians and we pay
our way; and if you ever should desire back that little bit of land — well, I look on it still as yours, and I never let the interests of my children bar the road of justice. No, that were to serve them with very narrow sight and worldly selfishness. Bruno has misjudged me always. Well — the saints bore all evil and were patient. So must we. Dear — farewell. If ever you dare brave my brother’s wrath, and will like to look in on us, you will find frank welcome. But perhaps I am not right to ask it. Your duty is to Bruno before all things. Yes; to you he has been good. Farewell.”
And Lippo went away quite softly through the pines.
Signa was moved. True, they had been unkind to him; but such wrongs fade fast in generous natures, and, where an impersonal passion reigns, personal injuries seem slight and are soon forgotten.
Perhaps Bruno had been harsh and too swift in his ire, he thought regretfully. Bruno’s error was too great haste of temper and strength of hatred; that all the country knew.
“I wish they could be reconciled,” thought the boy, and lingered on his way home wondering if there were any means to do it.
He hinted at forgiveness that night to Bruno.
Bruno set his heel down with a force that jarred the house.
“I do forgive as much as can be asked of any man; — I let him be.”
Meanwhile Lippo went homeward to his house by Our Lady of Good Counsel, pondering whether he could not prevail on Baldo to help him to acquire another acre or two of ground, quite near on the same hill, which rumour said would soon be in the market. Baldo had grown to have strong faith in the prudence and wisdom of his son‐in‐law.
“You will let the boy have back the land at what you gave for it!” screamed Nita, when her husband told of her of the things he had said; for she was a rough, impetuous woman, of fierce temper, and could never see an inch where he saw a full mile.
Lippo smiled, his gentle pensive smile.
“Nay, dear; that is a question for the future. The children’s interests must not be forgotten; that were not just to them; and land rises in value every day, and money gets more scarce.”