by Ouida
“I have come back. Why, how you look! I was too wet to stay. I know you — yes. I saw you last night, and once before in Venice. Signa! Why, how you look!”
He fell at her feet, touching the hem of her white robe with tremulous timid hands, and gazing up at her with eyes of doubt and fear and adoration, because she was so wonderfully fair to look at, and yet he was afraid of her as of a creature not of earth and not of heaven, just such a lovely terrible thing as that which walked at midnight in the old green gardens of the Medici.
“What are you?” he murmured with the soft grace of a poet’s homage. “You know me — you? Oh, speak a little! Are you my Lamia, that I have dreamed of so often? Or are you Psyche that I saw at noon? You cannot be a living thing, you are too beautiful.”
She stooped, and with her soft, cool hands ruffled the thick hair falling on his brow, and laughed and threw a rose against his lips.
“Lamia! Psyche! They are dead: I live. Know you! Of course I know you. And when I saw you at Venice I was glad; only I said ‘he shall not see me yet — not yet.’ And was it all mere chance to‐night? I thought perhaps you knew, and came. No? Why, how you look! But, indeed, how should you know me? I was a little ragged thing. How well it was we ran away that fair‐day, and how sad you were, and how you cried; and yet I made you play. Poor Signa!”
She, stooping still above him, put her fresh lips to his hair and kissed him on the eyes; and then she laughed again, and then again she leaned to kiss him.
But Signa had sprung upward to his feet.
His face was very pale; his eyes had horror in them and amaze.
“Gemma!” he muttered. “Gemma! Gemma!”
A cloud of anger gathered on the fairness of her face.
“Yes, I am Gemma. Well?”
“Gemma!”
He said the little familiar name again and again, stupidly, as a man says a charm, gazing upon her in the moonlight. He had looked for her among the poor maidens of the working world, amongst the crowds at mass; he had thought often of finding her lonely, longing for home, repentant of her flight, living in some little nook among the roofs, making her daily bread by some sad means; and he had dreamed of how he would raise her up and take her back and crown her with his laurels and make her glad, And this was Gemma.
This beautiful thing unshamed, who came to him wet from the water and laughed, with the moonlight on her wet, half naked limbs. This was Gemma.
She was silent. A great anger obscured the beauty of her face, but there was a touch of shame with it. Her hands tore a rose asunder and threw the leaves on either side of her. She had looked for the passionate rapture with which all her years were full: this mute rebuke in its gentleness smote her dully like a blow.
He stood looking at her with a dazzled, bewildered pain; he was not certain that he was awake; he thought of Palma, praying for her sister and sure she was with Christ.
“Gemma! Is it you, Gemma?” he murmured. “You were a little ragged thing — you were so poor, and now you have those pearls about your throat. Palma was sure you were in heaven, but I said no. I always said that I would Hind you, only I thought so differently. I always hoped — so lonely, so penniless, so sorrowful for them all at home; and then I thought how I would take you back, and we would love you all the better for the sorrows you had had. And now you are like this. Ah, God!”
His voice shook, his lips trembled; the words were all incoherent, confused, almost foolish; but she knew all he meant.
“Poor! lonely! sorrowful!” she echoed; and her azure eyes laughed back at him, though they had more rage than mirth. “You thought I should be that? — I? Did I not get the things I wanted always? You forget.”
“That is what Bruno said,” he muttered; and was still.
“Bruno!”
She had forgotten nothing; nor had she forgiven anything, child though she had been.
When Bruno had dragged her off the sands by the sea away from the gifts and the praises of the great people, she had marked it in her thoughts, a thing to be avenged. Between the manhood of Bruno and her babyhood there had been always war.
“Your father died in Lent,” said Signa suddenly. He did not know what to say. He fancied still she was some shadowy thing that mocked him in the moonlight, not Gemma living.
She looked grave and troubled for a moment.
“Died! He was not old?”
“No, he was not old.”
He echoed the words unconsciously. He did not know what he felt. His heart seemed stifled. He caught her hands in his.
“Oh, Gemma! is it true? Oh, my dear, speak to me more! I never have forgotten you, Gemma. After my music I loved you best of anything; yes, better than Bruno, I think — heaven forgive me! You were a little troublesome, cruel child, but you were — Gemma. Oh dear, it cannot be — you did not seem to have any woman’s shame about you just now looking at me in the water; and then those pearls, and all this dainty, delicate stuff like silver. Gemma, oh Gemma! tell me for the good God’s sake, you are not a thing that your father can never meet in heaven? You are not — lost to us all for ever?”
Her eyelids were dropped as he spoke, and there was not light enough for him to see the changes that passed over her face; anger, contempt, derision, trouble, amusement, all following one another; each and all moved in her by his simple words, but none reaching any depth.
She hesitated a moment how to answer him, he seemed to her so foolish — oh, so foolish! and yet she did not wish for his disdain or his rebuke. She thought she would cheat him just a little while — to see.
She looked at him with the old pouting anger on her lovely mouth, the anger he had known so well when the little child in the gardens of the Giovoli was thwarted in her whim.
“You are very quick to judge me ill,” she murmured.
“Ah, dear, if I judge you wrong, may God heap coals of fire on my head. But what can I think, Gemma? Answer me; answer me truly. I could not hate you, Gemma, not if you were fallen to the vilest depths. Palma might. I do not know — I could not. Oh, my dear, do tell me truly, what fate have you found in the world? What thing have you become? When they said that you were dead, I loathed myself for letting you have your way that morning, and so letting you drift to your own misery; but oh, my dear, my dear, — if it should be with you so that death at its worst would have been better! I do not judge you, Gemma; only tell me — tell me truth!”
He knelt down before her in his eagerness and pain; he held her hands; his face, as it looked up to hers, was white with fear and with anxiety.
She was so. lovely, too, above him in the shadows, with the rose‐boughs caught against her and the wet gold of her hair touching the silvered orange‐leaves.
“Am I not beautiful, Signa?” she murmured. “The rest? What does the rest matter — for a woman?”
“Oh, God! Is that all you say?”
He rose again to his feet. Almost he hated her, this perfect shameless thing. And yet she was so beautiful. Looking at her, he shaded his eyes as from the sun or the heat of fire.
“Poor Palma!” he muttered. “Day and night she prays Christ for your soul.”
“My soul!”
Gemma smiled — a soft, slow smile.
Then she looked at him full in the eyes. She did what she would with any man, that way.
“You are too quick to judge. Come back to‐morrow; to the house yonder. Now it is nearly morning. I am cold still after the water. I bathe by moonlight because a negress told me I should keep my beauty so; there is a charm in it. Good‐night. Oh, you will come — yes, I know that. No! Do not stop me. I am cold, I say. Good‐night — come back to‐morrow.”
She drew her white clinging clothes out from his grasp, and laughed a little; for indeed she was amused, though troubled, and put the orange‐boughs aside and threw another rose at him and went: whither he could not see, the night had grown quite dark.
“Gemma! Gemma! stay!” he cried to her. “If you be Gemma, do not leave me so!”
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But he called to her in vain. He was alone.
The first thunder of the coming storm rolled over from the mountains, a shrill wind blew on the lake water, the rain drops fell.
She left him to meet the tempest as he might. Wet through, he reached with difficulty the little cottage higher by the shore.
It was dawn; but the dawn was darker than the night had been.
The hurricane was severe, and the sullen lake wrecked more than one boat that in the moonlight had danced lightly on its smiling surface.
Signa did not even try to sleep.
He watched the storm.
CHAPTER VII.
THERE were thunder and lightning and wild north winds all over land and sea, even to the great plains on either side, the Apennines.
The storm travelled as far as the Valdarno, reaching there by morning, and men watched the rivers, fearing flood again, and farmers thanked the saints that maize harvest and vintage had been safely passed.
Palma, working in the fields for a small wage above upon the slopes, and driven to seek refuge from the violence of the weather, sheltered herself in S. Sebastian’s little church, where the sheep also huddled together out of reach of the rain.
She was not afraid.
She told her beads and said her prayers as the blue lightnings flashed around her, and the winds howled.
“Dear God, keep him safe from harm,” she prayed. “And let Gemma who is with you, where no storms come, watch over him.”
CHAPTER VIII.
MEANWHILE, the woman of his vision let her people unclothe her, and she lay down in her white soft bed, and thought: the storm might beat without, she paid no heed to it; it might wreck boats, flood fields, kill birds and beasts and butterflies, send men and women homeless over ravaged farms — but her it could not hurt. Why should she think of it?
She was amused, and yet there was disquiet at her heart.
She hated all the old dead time; hated the bare memory of it: — of its hunger, of its cold, of its hardship, of her little naked feet, of her dirty, merry, kindly father, of her bed of hay, of her platter of wood. She hated it all; and it had sprung up before her suddenly till it all seemed alive.
She liked never to think of it — never. It was for this that in Venice, seeing her old playmate the hero of the hour, she had left the city whilst still unknown to him.
And yet she had wanted to show herself to him.
“Chance shall choose,” she said to herself, and when she had recognised him in the moonlight among the orange‐leaves she had walked straight to him.
She was glad upon the whole; though ruffled, and disturbed, and angered, too, because of his strange way of taking things.
It made her lie awake and think of the old years, and the skill with which she, a little hungry ragged child, one amongst many, had got to have her beauty known all over many cities, and to have those big pearls — big as linnets’ eggs — about her throat, when she was tired of her diamonds. But pearls best became her; that she knew. Older women have need of diameters to lend new lustre to dimmed charms; but she was fresh as any rose. And she was known as “Innocence.” So she wore oftenest her big pearls, that no empress could have beaten; as her sister peasants away in Tuscany wore their little seed‐pearls on feast‐days amongst the brown hillfields.
Lying awake now, with the blue of her eyes just gleaming under her curled lashes, she thought of that fair day in Prato, and of the sunny tamarisk trees by the shore, and of her struggle from the window, and her hurry across the wharves, and her escape in the brown‐sailed fishing‐smack that her captor had bribed to take them over the open sea.
She thought of how she had laughed and danced and clapped her hands as the rough old boat spread its wet sail, and rocked and tore before the wind that rose as the day declined, and blew hot and hard from the south‐east, while the man said to her, “No more black bread, my pretty pet: all cakes and fruit in the future.”
It had not been all cakes and fruit at first.
When he was sure of her he beat her. She bit his hand through. He tumbled her amongst a score of other children, older and younger, and took them to northern cities, and sent them about, some on stilts and in spangles, some with white mice and music, some with little statues — all thrashed, and starved, and made to do his bidding.
Her fate was what the Lastra fancied that it was, knowing how many children of this sort there are kidnapped, to shiver in the wet sad north.
But this endured only a very little while, with her.
She was so pretty. He knew her value. He would not leave her too hungry, or send her out in too cold weather. He knew that she was like a good wine, and would pay well for keeping.
One day, however, once more he beat her.
She darted into the street, and showed her little shoulders, and all the bruises, and sobbing drew a crowd grieved and indignant round her.
The crowd set on the man, and hounded him out of the town under a rain of stones; a good old woman took her home, weeping over her, and gave her a home.
That was three months after the fair at Prato, and took place in the town of Mechlin.
She lived there a few years like a little mouse in a sugar closet; the woman was aged, childless, and well off, keeping a lace shop in the midst of the beautiful, grave, quaint, grey little city.
She was petted, pampered, fed on dainties; she teased all the girls, and made all the boys slaves for her; she learned to read; she stole anything she wished for and could not get without stealing, and was either never found out, or else always forgiven; people said she had a face like the little Jesus.
Then she got tired. At Kermesse there came into the place a troop of players.
She went to see them.
The chief of them said to himself, “What a beautiful child!” and spoke to her a little later as she trotted to mass.
He tempted her to join them. She was too young to act, but she could sing a little. He said he would make pieces on purpose for her. She should just show herself; he said that would be enough. He painted the world and his wandering life in bright colours.
She pondered well, and weighed the matter, as her wont was, with solid sense, and no idle misleadings of fancy. She never dreamed. She only said to herself, “What is best for me?” and what she saw was best she chose.
If any one suffered by her doing, she said to them, as the ploughman to the flower, “Is it my fault that you grow in my way?”
Born in a little hut in the green leafy solitudes of a garden, she had been gifted at birth with the fine sense which leads straight to success: the sense of the paramount claims of self.
She pondered awhile till the players were on the wing; then she took a pretty quantity of the oldest and most delicate lace, some gold out of the till in the little shop, and all her clothes, and went with them, slipping out of the house at night whilst the old woman was sleeping.
“I can always go back if I want,” she thought. “She will always forgive me anything.”
And she ran out of the city to join her new friends outside the gates, with a heavy bundle but a light heart.
She was then thirteen.
The old woman who loved her, waking to her loss, would not believe that the child was to blame; and when people told her that the child had been seen going out of her own free will to the north, she would not credit them: robbers had taken the lace and the gold, and killed the child — that was her certainty. And being old, and all alone, and taking it too much to heart, she was never able to leave her bed again, and in a few weeks died of it.
Meanwhile the child throve.
The people she had joined were gay and good‐natured. and merry if not wise; and in their way well to do. They adored her. She did as she liked. For the lace she had taken no one molested her. She showed herself nightly in little bright laughter‐loving towns and cities. She had little to do, still less to say; they looked at her: that was quite enough.
She had not talent of any
kind; but she had a shrewd sense that to let her lovely baby face look like a little angel‐s was enough: and it was so.
When she was nearly sixteen, the people went to play in the city of Paris. She said to herself, “Now!”
She refused to play with a true foresight — she would not cheapen herself. She put her old white Flemish lace all about her like a cloud; she looked half like a cherub, half like a nun. She went and strayed by herself through gilded gates into the first public gardens that she saw.
It was summer, and the alleys were full of people; they all looked after her; she thought how good a thing it was to live.
The painter Istriel met her.
He was rich.
The players saw her no more.
After three months he painted her as “Innocence” looking with wondering eyes upon the world.
Nature gave her loveliness; Istriel gave her fashion.
Three years later he painted her as the sister of the Seven Dancers.
But by that time he had had many rivals.
He professed content. He cherished bitterest remembrance.
She had only used him. He had loved her.
To others he seemed to have passed from her lover to her friend indifferently; himself he knew that jealousy would never die in him whilst she had life.
She knew it too. It diverted her.
It never prevented her from smiling on whosoever most pleased her caprices and most lavished upon her the wealth she loved.
For the rest, she was at the height of her supremacy, and she never let it make her dizzy; she kept the calm, wise, steady judgment of her own advantage that she had possessed even when a little child; and she cherished her loveliness, studied her health, moderated her follies, and garnered her riches with a wisdom most rare in her world of pleasure.
Many lost fortune, many their senses, some few their lives for her.
Nothing of that kind stirred her for a moment.
The vainest could not flatter himself that he owed her smile to anything except his jewels and his gold; the vainest could not deceive himself that she had ever loved him.