by Ouida
She watched him, reading him as easily as she would have read gold letters on a white page.
By years their ages were the same, but she, in the world’s knowledge, already was so old, — so old; and he in his unworldliness and ignorance, was yet so young.
She knew the ways of men at their worst, their wisest, their best, their basest, and turned them over in her head as a child does the wooden letters of a mastered alphabet.
He of woman, knew hardly anything.
“You hear my story now,” she said, with a soft sigh, at last. “Signa, you loathe me?”
He shuddered a little.
“From my soul — I pity you.”
A sort of loathing was in him for her, but how could he say that? Whatever she had become, she had once been the little Gemma that he had kissed in her rough bed of hay.
Her eyelids were cast down; he did not see the cold blue flame of anger burn in her eyes a moment as she heard.
She to be pitied! she who, in her arrogance and her loveliness, thought she had the world to play with as a ball under her foot!
She turned her eyes upon him.
“So, you will leave me? You mean that?”
He coloured to his throat.
“You live still, by choice — in shame?”
She could have laughed aloud. She could have dashed her hand against his mouth. She could have killed him — almost; but she said, turning her thee from him, like one in pain of which she is ashamed:
“What other life was left me? Fling wool in mud; do you blame the fleece that it grows black? I told you I took my vengeance. There was no other thing to do. You do not understand the world. I was so young, and men so cruel. Wrong made me all that I have been, but I am tired; oh, so tired, Signa; if you only knew! A world of lovers and not one single friend. The loneliest woman is not so desolate as I. Dear, I am vile, perhaps, and cold, and love luxury too well; and if I were born with any heart in me, have killed it. That is what they say. I think it is quite true. There is no love anywhere for me. Love for me is the imperial beast that kissed and slew. Love: I laugh at the word, I dance on it, I spit at it. Judas loved; — and that great empress who wallowed in the mire with her guards and slaves!. What did they call her? I never loved a living thing. How should I? The only love that I have ever seen is a devouring beast with fire in his entrails and slime upon his mouth. That is the only love that over comes to me. Dear, I am tired. When I saw your face last night, I said in my own thoughts, I will tell him all the truth; he is not as the others are; he was a baby with me in the old green garden ways; he will understand; he will have sorrow for me; he will be true to me, when all are false; he will be my saint, when all others are my swine; he will despise me, lament for me, rebuke me; yes, no doubt; but he will not leave me utterly — for the sake of the old days when we were children. That is what I thought. Oh dear! I was unwise and you are wise. Fly from me, There is no common ground between us. You cannot see in me the thing you used to play with. I am only a base light wanton woman, without charm for you and without pardon either from you and from your God. Dear, you are right. To see more of me could only bring you pain or get you evil names. Pure dreams are your fair portion. Foul facts are mine. Leave me. I would not have you stay, though you are all of home or heaven that I shall ever see in life. Go and tell Palma not to plead to Christ for me. Her words are wasted. I am in hell, though living; let me be.”
She rose as she spoke and pushed him from her with a gesture of farewell.
The consummate art of her took every hue and grace of nature; her face was pale and cold; down her cheeks tears rolled and dropped upon the laces on her breast.
She knew the chords to touch in him; she played on him as he could play on any lute or violin.
She stung the generous sweetness of his nature; she stirred all his tenderness of pity.
Had he been cruel and self‐righteous in his instincts of disgust? Had he been unmanly and unfeeling; wounding a dishonoured woman, whose truthfulness had laid her open to his scorn?
A confused sense of being wrong to her oppressed him, and struggled with the natural impulse of his aversions, with his instinct never to look on her or be touched by her or hear the sound of her voice again.
A nature, generous and yielding, accused of meanness or selfishness, flew at a rebound to the unwisdom of self‐sacrifice.
“I had no thought of myself,” he murmured, pierced to the quick. “But between us there is such a gulf: what can I do? what can I say? I cannot see you lead this life, and come to you, and be in fellowship with the men who ruined you, or the men you fool? To me you are — Gemma; it is as if you were my sister. It is horrible. I do not know what to say to you. It seems to me we cannot be together now.”
“I said that you were right in saying so. Right — for yourself. Go; who keeps you, Signa? Not I. Go.”
She spoke coldly, sadly; he thought he heard in her the heart‐sick resignation of a woman from whom all good is banished, yet who cleaves to it.
The tender, unthinking, unwise ardour of his nature carried him away; he dropped before her on his knees as if she had been any saint or queen. His sweet and passionate voice thrilled with emotion.
“If I can serve, I will not leave, you,” he said. “Gemma, listen to me. You are heart sick of the wretched glories of your life. All the better nature in you is in rebellion at it. Leave it. Come home. You shall be to me as a sister. This horror shall be buried in our hearts. Throw your gold away; it brings the plague with it; strip your jewels off; keep nothing but the beauty that God gave you, and that you defile. Come back to the old hills, to the fresh air, to the green country ways, to the peaceful days and nights. Come back. Palma is there; she will love you still. Her arms are strong enough, her faith is firm enough, to lift you out of hell. Dear, fling this horror from you and trample on it, and leave men, and cling to God. I have some great‐ ness. I can make enough to keep you safe from want. You shall be to me ever as if you were a sister — lost and found. This beast you talk of, and that in your madness you call Love, shall never reach you, nor hurt you there. Come home. Palma is poor and ignorant, working for a crust, but she is strong in courage, and wiser than us all. She will suffer, but she will help you always. I look at you; you blind me: I do not know you. You seem to me one of those lovely lying things that Satan made and sent into the wilderness to tempt the saints. But if you are not that — if indeed you ever were the little Gemma that ran with me in the summer dust that day‐come home. Oh, Gemma, Gemma! if indeed you are the little child I played with, joy there never can be for you, dear, nor hope on earth, nor any love of any honest man, I know; but Palma will not turn from you, nor I. It is too late to save your beauty from the lepers — it is plague‐stricken. God himself cannot change that — but, Gemma, there is life beyond this life. I seem to speak so poorly, I cannot plead with you — not as I would. But, Gemma, the soul in you is not dead. Cast off these riches that are viler than all rags, and lead a straight and simple life, and trust the rest to God. Come home!”
He spoke in all his innocence, knowing no better.
A stray sunbeam shot across the shadow of the room, and fell on his fair upturned forehead and the misty radiance of his supplicating eyes. To him she was terrible; to him she was plague‐stricken; — almost he thought her, as he said, one of those beautiful accursed things the devil loosed on earth to tempt the minds of men in deserts, and sting their senses, and destroy their lives, and level them with the beasts that perish. Still, — if he could save her? He prayed with her for herself, as in his childhood he had prayed for Satan to the angels, watching the sun shine beyond the Certosa towers.
She listened, her beautiful golden head bent down, her colour changing; do what she would, she could not keep the blood quite steady in her cheek. She was so deeply angered. Yet some pain smote her through all the jewelled armour of her tranquil self‐content.
Had she lost something after all that poor dull women, plodding for their bre
ad, lived with and died with? — had she missed something in all her plenteous harvest, were it only a vain vague fancy, worth the having?
She had princes and heroes, all greatness, at her feet, and all the soft ease and peace and triumph that she craved; — yet for one instant the whole world seemed to grow as nothing to her if she had this boy’s scorn, this boy who had run ran with her over the brown fields of the hills through the autumn weather, when the crocus‐cup and the dragon‐weed had been the only gold they owned.
He was a fool; yet — some fools stand near to heaven.
The tears scorched her cheeks. Not such tears as she had summoned at her will a moment earlier, fair tricks of studied arts; but quick, salt, bitter drops, that burned her as they fell.
They angered her. The rage in her grew as much against herself as him.
“He shall know no heaven but me,” she said in her own heart. “He shall live on my kiss, and die because he loses it. He is a fool — a fool!”
And yet — were she but such a fool!
For the moment she would have given all her empire to have been no wiser and no guiltier than he.
He did not know. He only saw her cheek grow pale, her proud mouth tremble.
“You hear me?” he murmured; “you will come?”
She was silent mastering the rage within her and the new strange pain. The pain passed — the rage lived. She said to herself:
“There is no honesty upon my lips. Well, he shall find some sweeter thing there, and get drunk on it.”
She had meant to have sport with him. Well, sport with vengeance in it, was the finer pastime. It was his fault. Why should he speak of her as of a thing he scorned? To bring his babyish, monkish, womanish fancies here, of honour and shame, and heaven and sins: — sick phantasies from dying peasants’ psalters and priests’ penance‐tales in Lent!
She gazed down on him with serious eyes.
“No; I cannot come, Signa. You are good to me, but the things you dream of are not possible — for me, at least. You do not understand. I should make Palma mad; she me. I could no more go back to the old ways of life than you to a herdboy’s empty days. Things cannot be undone. When a tree is grown, you may cut it down and burn it, but you cannot make it back into the acorn or the chestnut that it sprang from first. Palma thinks me safe with the saints; — so let her. For you — you have your art, your fame, your certain growth of greatness. You can soon forget me. Dear, I fretted you and flouted you when we were children. That was all, I think, ever. It is but little to regret.”
“It is because I have no words to move you, to awake your soul—”
“If you were an angel from heaven you would say nothing that could change me. And do not think of any soul in me, Signa; I have none. Has the butterfly any? You are mad, Signa! I was an idle child — I am an idle woman. I love ease, luxury, riches, beauty. I toil! I hunger and thirst, and spin and sew! I plod after the oxen in the furrows! I! You are mad! You are mad, I say!”
His colour rose.
“There would be no need to toil. It would be a poor and simple life — yes; that is true. But I could make enough — I shall make more each year. All that I have should be for you. And it is honest money. Gemma — see, dear — I have always thought of you, and dreamed of you, and meant to seek you out and take you back, and set you in the midst of every greatness I could get. When the great ladies courted me, I did not care for them. I thought, somewhere there is a little girl with golden curls I used to kiss; — for I forgot that you grew old as I did. When men talked of love to me I would say nothing, but I used to think— “when I find Gemma.” Dear, that is over now. I cannot love you. You are a thing lost to me now for ever. Men do not love such women as you are. You are divided from me for ever. But you still are dear to me as if you were my sister. I would not touch your mouth with any kiss, for you have sold its kisses; I would not take your hand in mine, for you have perjured it; I would not, starving, break a crust of yours, for you are sold for it. But I will labour for you all my life; I will set away each coin I get for you; I will never have any joy, or mirth, or love in all my years, that I may work the better for you, and the oftener give you more. Dear, do not think it will be hard for me. You know I was reared hardly. I can live on nothing; and I can pass by woman’s love and all that delights and leads away men most, because, in truth, the only thing I love is my great art. In this I have been given so much, that I can easily renounce the rest. Dear, do not think that it will be anything to me. Men have lived so in monasteries — lived and died happily. Gemma, if you will come back — listen — I swear to you I will dedicate all my life to yours. There is the shame of you between us two for ever like a grave. But since you never can be anything to me more than the dead are, no other creature shall be anything — that I swear, too. Dear, listen! After God and my music, you are most dear to me — yes, even as you are. Let me work for you. Say you have no soul, as the rose has none; yet when a rose has blossomed with us who can throw it in the sewer? And you are wrong: a soul you have, for I have seen your tears. Oh, heaven! What word can I find to tell you how utterly I mean the thing I say? Gemma — if I had done right, and had refused to let you go with me that day to Prato, you would be living with your sister still, — an innocent, frank, happy, stainless thing; and I should love you, and you would be all my own. This misery is of my act. I let you go that day. Your shame has come of it; and I can never even kiss you, dear, because there is no honesty upon your lips. But take you out of your dishonour and save your soul, I can — I will. Gemma, come back; and let me give my life for yours. On earth you will not be happy, dear — nay, never. But hereafter — What can I say to make you trust me and believe?”
The words poured from his lips swill, eager, breathless, unconsidered, in all their unreason, their unwisdom, their nobility, their ignorance, their folly, their sublimity. All the narrow sim‐ plicity of the peasant, and all the boundless vision of the poet, met in him as he spoke. He meant, to their very uttermost, every syllable he uttered.
She was gone from him; she was to him a thing terrible and almost loathsome. He burned with shame for her shame. Yet she was dear to him. He was ready to give his life to ransom hers. To him sin was real, and hell and heaven. What he dreamed of was impossible; but in his sight it was possible. It seemed to him that the faith to do it was so strong in him, that it could not fail to work its own fulfilment.
She listened.
As far as she could be touched by anything, she was moved by his suffering. It was strange to her; it even amused her; but it touched her. Poor boy! He had always seen living things in lonely, wayside stones; and lamented for the birds and beasts, because the priests said there was no eternity for them; and heard so many voices, that none else could ever hear, in the silent marshalling of the clouds by night, and the low whimper of the autumn ruffled brooks. She remembered all those things. He had been always so foolish — always.
It amused her. Yet it hurt her a little — ever so little — very, very little — too.
“Who would have thought he would have taken it to heart — like that?” she thought. And she felt a sort of sullen jealousy in her. It was not for her that he suffered so much. Not for the real woman, as she knew herself. Not for the’ beautiful cold wanton whom Paris had called Innocence. It was for the playmate that had run with him that summer day over the plains to Prato: it was for the imaginary thing, which she had built up before him with her words, and dressed in her apparel of soft lies.
She was almost jealous: as astrologists were of shapes their magic conjured.
“Signa, do not be so full of pain,” she murmured. “It is no fault of yours.”
“Yes: it is mine. I let you go with me that day,” he muttered. “Oh, poor Palma! — thinking of you night and morning — thinking of you safe with Christ!”
His head was bent down upon her knees, otherwise he would have seen her petulant proud mouth curve in a little smile.
She stretched her hand out, and
musingly touched the soft curls of his hair.
He shrank, as if the touch had burnt him. She saw the gesture of aversion. It set her heart harder on the thing she meant to do.
“You shudder from me,” she said, sadly. “Well, that is natural, no doubt. But it is better to lose you from the truth, than keep you by a lie. I tell a million lies. All women do. But there is something in your eyes that will not let one lie. What is it?”
Lying all the while, she kept her hand upon his curls, stroking them gently, till, magnetised by the contact, he no longer moved away or strove to resist that touch, but looked down with his cheeks on fire and his pulse beating.
“I do not understand,” he muttered. “I see two simple ways — one right, one wrong. I would save you with my life; — I say, with my soul; — only you laugh at that.”
“Nay, I do not laugh; for you — you are of the things God makes to live for ever — if he makes anything. I laugh when you talk of soul or mind in me. A woman has a body and a face; no. more. She has ten years’ grace with them and glory; then she is withered up and shoved aside, and there is an end of all. I would make the most of my ten years. What harm?”
He looked at her in a blank despair. How could he give sight to what was blind? — how make her shamed for what she did not see?
“Leave me alone,” she said. “What matter? It is but such a little while a woman lives. With the first wrinkle on her skin, she dies. As well fret for each rose that falls each time it rains, I tell you. Signa, — why stay to pain yourself and me? You cannot change me. Go back to your own hills, and dream your music there, and pray to all the saints with Palma — if it please you.”