by Ouida
Bruno descended from his ladder, lifted it from the tree upon his shoulder, and turned to leave his olives, as though there were no man speaking or waiting on the other side the wall. He would not waste words on Lippo, and, if he looked at him he knew that he would do some evil on him; — this brother who had cheated him and got his land.
He shouldered his ladder, and turned to mount the sloping field.
“Wait!” cried the other. “Bruno — as surely as we are sons of one mother, I come to you in all amity.”
Bruno went on up the hill.
“Bruno, wait!” cried Lippo. “By the Lord above us, I come with good intent.”
Bruno did not pause, nor look back.
He went up the slope of the grass‐lands, leisurely, as though there were no one near.
“But if I come to make amends?” said Lippo.
Bruno laughed, a short deep laugh, fierce as a fierce dog’s bite; and went on his way against the glittering dews of the rising ground.
Lippo cried to him from the wall, —
“But I have journeyed up from Rome.”
Rome! Involuntarily, unconsciously, Bruno stopped, and turned his head over his shoulder. The name of the city struck him like a shot. It was the last word he would have dreamed of hearing. It was the place for ever in his mind. It was the dim, majestic, terrible world that Argol shone on in the frosty nights.
Lippo, who had never travelled beyond the hills round the Lastra and the town walls of Florence, had journeyed back from Rome!
In the natural movement of surprise and wonder he halted a moment under the olive trees and looked back.
Lippo took that one moment of riveted attention. He leaped the wall lightly, and joined his brother.
“Bruno — as I live, I come to make amends. I want to speak to you about the boy. If you will not listen, it is he who will suffer. He destroys himself — there.”
Bruno halted. Mechanically he shifted the ladder from his shoulder, and set it up against the nearest tree. He was taken by surprise. He was forced to show his sense of his brother’s presence and his brother’s words. He was shaken out of his stern self‐control, his impenetrable reticence. Do what he would, he felt his face pale, his eyes fall, under Lippo’s. Passionate questions sprang to his lips; but how could he trust a traitor and a liar?
In the instant of his hesitation, Lippo spoke.
“I have been down to Rome. On business. To place my son in trade there. Nay, listen. All the city will tell you I speak truth. Of course I heard of Signa. It was impossible not to hear. At the Apollo they play his Actea; all the town is full of him. Of his great genius no one can say enough. But if some means be not found to save him, he will be destroyed, body and soul. A woman has hold of him. He only lives for her. I caught sight of him once two nights ago; he was with her in the moonlight. He looks so changed; one would not know him for that happy, simple lad of our last autumn time. Listen. All boys have follies. This might pass as such a folly does. But it will not do so — no. Because this woman is not as others are. She is the vilest of the vile, but beautiful: — the saints forgive me, but when I saw her, I felt one might do any crime for such a face as that. They call her Innocence! In mockery, no doubt. For they say there is no living thing more cruel than she is, nor more depraved, nor more voracious of all kinds of wealth. That is the worst. This woman is rich. The boy is poor. You know what they will say — he lives upon her, or they say he does. I know it is not true. Your Signa is too proud and pure for that. But, still, they say so; and great men, while they praise his genius, look askance on him — so I hear. Nay: — it is a sorcery. A strong will would break from it. But the lad is not strong. When God gives genius, I think he makes the brain of some strange glorious stuff, that takes all strength out of the character, and all sight out of the eyes. Those artists — they are like the birds we blind: they sing, and make people weep for very joy to hear them; but they cannot see their way to peck the worms, and are for ever wounding their breasts against the wires. No doubt it is a great thing to have genius: but it is a sort of sickness, after all; and when love comes—”
Bruno, standing with his back against the olive, heard his brother’s voice run on, and did not stop him. His eyes were fastened with anxious, hungry pain on Lippo’s face. He knew that Lippo spoke the truth.
“The boy has amorous fancies, like any other,” he muttered. “Why not? Why not? You hate him, because you wronged him. Therefore you make much from little. You lie now; you always lied. Get you gone — while I let you go in peace.”
Lippo sighed.
“Nay, Bruno — it is you who do wrong to me. Why should I come and tell you this? It cannot pleasure me, nor hurt me. Only one has some natural affections, some bowels of compassion — and he was poor Pippa’s son! I do not blame the lad; a boy like that. And if you saw the beauty of the woman ! Only, I said to myself, Bruno should know of this; and, rather than ask a stranger to meddle in it, I came myself. Because he is the woman’s toy, her tool, her feel, her slave. He does nothing with his time. He never touches pen nor lute, nor anything of art. I hear she says to him, ‘Give me a rival in your art, I leave you.’ And he, to do her will, flings all his life away. Some say she loves him really. Some say that it is only wantonness, because the world talks of him; and so she likes to rule him, and, in a month or two, will break his heart, and send him out a beggar and an idiot. Nay — I say nothing more than all Rome says; in truth, not a tittle so much. It is the common gossip of the streets. The woman is rich. She has had great lovers, princes and the like. The boy is known to live under her roof, to be lapped in luxury; — you know what men will say.”
Bruno sprang forward and seized his brother by the shoulders, in an iron grasp.
“It is a lie of Rome — a lie, a lie. They grudge my boy his glory, and so they stone him thus, and fling their mud upon him!”
“It is not a lie. Think — is he not silent to you? Is he frank with you, and glad, and truthful, as of old? It is true, terribly true: a woman has bewitched him.”
“As God lives — do you say this in honesty and pity or brutally, to triumph in his weakness?”
Lippo looked him full in the eyes, candidly.
“In honesty and pity.”
Bruno gazed in his brother’s face. Lippo’s eyes met him in steadiness and sorrow. Bruno let him go, and stood stupefied, mastering, as best he could, his own suffering, lest Lippo should read it and be glad. In his heart, he knew that the story brought from Rome was true.
Lippo took up his narrative; he had a sweet, pathetic voice, and skill in speech, like almost all his countrymen.
“Bruno, I know I have offended you; nay, more — wronged you, in the days gone by. I am poor, amongst crafty well‐to‐do folks, who goad me on; I have many children; I have a troubled home, and noisy hearth. I know I have thought too much of getting on in life, and laying by; and so was untrue to your trust sometimes, and so lost your confidence — justly. That I see now. And you have been harsh and violent. You cannot gainsay that. But as the angels watch us this hour in heaven, I have no single thought but the boy’s good in what I tell you now. He is so young. He is soft‐hearted as a girl. He is alone in a great turbulent world, that first turns his head with flattery and homage, and then reviles him the first moment that, he falls. They tell me it is always so. The world is a spoilt princeling, and the genius in it is the dog it first flings cakes to, and then bids go drown. They say so. But, I think Signa may be saved. He is so young. It cannot be that this sudden passion has killed all natural, innocent love and gratitude in him. That is impossible, his heart is good: even to me — whom you had made him hold as his foe — he was most gentle always. It cannot be he has forgotten all he owes to you, or would be altogether deaf to what you urge on him. It cannot be that all old memories and old affections are dead in him.”
Bruno stood with the grey wood and leaves of the old olive‐tree behind him; his head was bent; his face was very white, under the brown hues
from the sun; his lips quivered under the dark, drooping hair; he strove to seem calm, but Lippo read the pain that tortured him.
“It is too true, indeed,” said Lippo. “Where a woman is, and the love of her, there reason has no hold, and gratitude no abiding place. And she is beautiful. She makes you dizzy, even seeing her go by in the moonlight, you standing in the gutter. After our brown, dusky, sturdy maidens, that white wonder seems more than a woman — somehow. They rave of her in Rome. It seems she has abandoned all her mighty lords, and doats on Signa; and they do say, too, that in a month or two she will veer round and laugh at him, and take up her lords again; and then — there will be worse evil still. Because the boy is mad for her, and believes her all she is not. When he learns the truth, there will be trouble; and any day may show it. When her fancy ends, then what will become of the lad? I spoke to an old man, whom my friend knew, one of the flute‐players of the opera‐house, and he told me that they think the boy’s genius will die out altogether, he cares for nothing — only for the woman and her whims and will. It is a sorcery. Signa is not like other youths. He was always thinking of the angels, and of all manner of strange sights and sounds, that none but himself could ever see or hear. Now that he loves this woman as he loved his music — it will go hard with him. Because a wanton cannot ever love. That grown men know.”
Bruno was silent. His face moved with a great emotion that he had no longer power to conceal; he could no longer affect to doubt his brother’s words, or deny the things they spoke of; the misery and danger for the boy spread before him as if they were written on the limestone hill and on the cloudless winter sky; he forgot all else.
His brother’s treacherous deeds against himself paled into nothing; his true and loyal faith to Pippa’s son made his own wrongs grow as nought to him; he would have let snake bite him to serve Signa. So he let the triumph of Lippo sting him, thinking only of the peril of the boy.
“Why have you come to say all this to me? You have hated the boy, and been false to him and to me. Of all this — if it be true — you are glad.”
“Nay! God knows you wrong me!” cried Lippo, as with a burst of generous indignation, of pained sincerity. “You wrong me cruelly. The poor boy I never hated — heaven and earth! — why should I? I doubted that he was Pippa’s son. I did believe him yours. But either way he was my kith and kin. I erred. I say so. No man can do more. But chiefly I erred through weakness, letting a too violent woman have her way in my little household. I have admitted my fault there. I did not continue loyal to your trust as I should have done. I sacrificed duty to the sake of keeping peace at home. In a word — I was a coward. You who are brave as lions are, have furious scorn for that. But Bruno, as we are sons of one sainted mother, my heart is free of every taint of bitterness against you or the boy. I have been proud of his greatness. Any ray of it is so much light and honour on us all. I grieve, as any creature with human blood in him would do, to know that all his future has been put in pawn to a vile woman. I come to tell you because I said — how should he hear anything on that lonely hill? And because I thought that if you saw him — went to him — some change might come, or you might save him from some rash, mad deed, when he finds out what thing it is he worships. That is why I come. Upbraid me if you will; but do not doubt me.”
“Do you know more of her?”
“Nothing more.”
“Where does she come from?”
“From France, I think.”
“She is called that name — Innocence?”
“Yes.”
“It is the same woman whose likeness was shown in the town yonder?”
“That I do not know.”
“A man called Istriel painted her.”
“That I do not know either; I only know what I have told you.”
“She passes for rich?”
“She is rich.”
“How long has — he — been with her?”
“Two months — or something more; so they say.”
“Where does she live?”
“At a palace called the Sciallara; going up by what they call the Campidoglio.”
“That is hard to remember. Write it.”
Lippo took out a torn letter and a pencil, and, making the wall his desk, wrote it in the clumsy handwriting which he had taught himself ]ate in life. “You will do nothing rash,” he said, pleadingly, as he gave the paper.
Bruno took it.
“I cannot tell what to do.”
His face was dark and weary; his breath came quickly; his eyes had a sort of piteous wish for counsel in them; he was so utterly ignorant of what course to take. He could not see his way. He would have grasped any hand as a friend’s that could have led him through the darkness.
“I wish I had not told you,” said Lippo, with sudden candid self‐rebuke and regret in his vexed tones. “Perhaps I should have held my tongue. But it seemed horrible. To know the lad in such a woman’s power, and not speak of it to you, to whom he is the very apple of the eye, though he forgets so—”
Bruno winced, as a brave steer that has borne the heat and labour of the day unflinchingly winces at the fly that stings him in the wrung nostril, where the iron is.
“You did right to tell me,” he said simply. “It was good in you and honest.”
“I asked the grace of heaven on it,” answered Lippo.
Bruno looked at him.
Lippo’s eyes met his with clear and honest candour.
A short troubled sigh heaved Bruno’s chest quickly for a moment.
“I must think,” he muttered, and he turned and took the ladder on his shoulder, and began to mount the hill.
“Stay, Bruno,” said his brother, “Stay one moment. We have been sundered so long. Tell me we are friends?”
Bruno looked at him, turning his head, as he went slowly up the grass between the olives. His own eyes were very sad, and had a heavy dark reproach in them.
“I am not a man to forget,” he said, “A foe is a foe — always — to me. A traitor always a traitor. But if you mean well by the lad, and would save him, I will forgive you if I can.”
Then he went onward.
Lippo stood silent; a little faint smile came on his mouth.
“He will go to Rome,” he thought.
Suddenly Bruno turned once more and came downward to him with a swift stride. The generous, fierce, tender nature of him welled up in a sudden warmth and emotion.
“Lippo, you have done good now, it shall cancel the evil. I cannot forget; it is not in me to forget; but if I save the boy we will live in fellowship. You stole the land — yes. But I will ask God’s grace to wash that out of mind with me. If you mean well by the lad — that is enough.”
He stretched his hand out: Lippo took it.
Then they parted.
Bruno went upward to his house, leaving the olive trees untouched.
Lippo went downward into the Lastra.
“He will go to Rome,” he thought, “and he will quarrel with the boy, or kill the wanton.”
And he smiled, going through the buoyant springlike air, as the western wind blew keen from the mountains.
Lippo knew that wise men do not do harm to whatever they may hate.
They drive it on to slay itself.
So without blood‐guiltiness they get their end, yet stainless go to God.
Lippo, content, walked on in the brilliant sunshine of the morning; he smiled on children as he passed them and gave a beggar money.
As he went back he saw Palma carrying up linen to wash in the washing‐place behind her on the hill‐side.
“Shall I tell her,” thought he, and he paused a moment. But Lippo was a kindly man when he had no end to serve by being cruel; and he disliked giving pain, unless he gained something by it. He had soft words and gentle deeds for every body when they cost him nothing. So he went on and left Palma in ignorance; Palma, who every year, on the feast of the dead, prayed for her sister as for one safe in heaven.
C
HAPTER XIII.
A LITTLE later the girl had her linen plunged in the cold deep water, and stood washing with half a dozen other women. To keep her brothers from want and a roof over all their heads, she had to take any and all work as it came; the rough with the smooth. She got a little something — washing the shirts and shifts of peasants too busy with field work to have time to do it for themselves, and Palma’s linen was always white, and always was well wrung out and dried.
Here and there on the hills there are these big water places, like the stone tanks that the women wash at in the streets of Rome. Only these tanks upon the hills are in wide wooden sheds, and have the green country shining through the doors of lattice‐work.
Palma was washing among the other women, the water was splashing and bubbling, the sun was shining, the wind was whistling, the tongues were chattering, she alone of all was silent, her bare arms in the cold brown pool.
“You are wanted,” the women said to her, surprised, for no one ever wanted her, unless, indeed, as they wanted the mule or the cart‐horse: she left the linen soaking, and went outside the wooden door.
Bruno stood there.
He put a little picture in her hand.
“Have ever you seen any one like that?” he asked her, covering all but the face of it. Palma’s brown cheek grew ashen: then the blood rushed over her forehead.
“What is it? Where did you get it?”
“Whom is it like?”
“It is like — Gemma; only it is a woman.”
“Yes, it is a woman.”
He laughed a little, and took his hand away and left the figure of the dancer of Istriel visible.
Palma coloured over her throat and up to her dusky growing hair.
“It is a shameful woman. Oh, why did you show me that?”
“It is only a picture,” said Bruno, moodily, and he pitched it into the water that flowed and foamed outside the washing‐house. She caught his arm.