Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  Bruno looked up, as all the others did, seeing how the chariots paused and the faces were upturned, and the wands were lowered under this one casement.

  He knew her in an instant: the wanton whose likeness Palma had flung under the water and stoned; the child who had sunned her snowy little limbs in the long grass amongst the daisies and the wind‐flowers of Giovoli.

  At her feet lay a youth, whose hands held a change of tapers ready to tip her wand afresh should she be vanquished; every now and then he gave her a knot of roses or lilies of the valley that she asked for; always he was looking upward to her face.

  The river of fire ran unheeded by him; the feast of folly had its wild way unshared by him; he saw only her; — as the hot, changeful light shone over her laughing eyes and mouth, and her shining throat, whiter than the pearls that clasped it.

  He was screened from the sight of the multitude by the draperies of the balustrade; but as he raised himself on his arm to give her flowers, Bruno’s gaze found him.

  Bruno’s hand went to the knife in his waistbelt; and, with a curse, thrust it back again.

  It could not reach the smiling thing throned up there on high.

  He wished that he had never burned that deadly fair weapon which had been broken up and destroyed in his haste.

  His eyes devoured her with that hate which is deep as lava and as ruthless; — he thought of one day when he had seen her a little, white, new‐born thing, lying at her mother’s toil‐worn breast; and poor, improvident Sandro, gleeful and rueful at another branch to his roof‐tree, and another mouth to feed, had said, —

  “Such a white child! — so white! Heaven send her a white soul, too. We will bring her up to the cloister life. When one has so many, one can spare one to God!”

  So Sandro had said: — a faulty man, but loving his children and hating shame.

  And the white child was here.

  Some roses fell through from the rails of her balcony — winter roses — fair and rare. A boy, whose rags were covered with a goatskin, and who wore a mask of Bacchus, grinning from ear to ear, as though life were one long wine‐song, caught them eagerly, as boys do all such things in carnival; then, seeing where they came from, threw them under his feet and stamped on them and spit on their scattered leaves.

  Bruno saw, and felt for a coin to toward the lad that hated her.

  “Why do you hate her?” he asked.

  “She let her horse lame my brother a month ago; he, a little child; and she laughed and drove on, saying never a word, and Lili with both feet jammed and bleeding in the dust. If she were a princess one would not mind; but they say she was a beggar, like ourselves.”

  Bruno gave him money.

  “Does she live up yonder? — tell me.”

  “No. She is there to see. I will show you her house when the sport is all over. You hate her too?”

  Bruno was silent.

  He was watching the flame of her wand as it played, seeming to lick her cheek and her throat, while the shadows above enfolded her softly like a cloud. There were many faces round her; one was the face which had been like the face of the sleeping Endymion, but there were no dreams there now; it was haggard with the exhaustion of passion, hectic, wasted, with all the beautiful youthfulness of it burned away, as the bloom of a flower is consumed in the heat of a lamp; in the eyes were the hunger of jealousy, the hunger which drives out all other sense as the famine of the body kills the mind.

  With a loud cry Bruno flung his arms upward towards the boy he loved. The great city, the strange crowds, the blazing fires faded from his sight; he had no eyes except for Pippa’s son. But his shout was drowned in the uproar of the screaming multitude; the close‐packed throngs swept with one movement outward to where the coloured fires were blazing and roaring from the Place of the People, around the great obelisk of Egypt; he was borne off his feet, wedged in, hemmed round, carried and forced by the rushing tide of human life away from the spot where the White Child played with fire; he lost his consciousness for a moment in the great roar and pressure of the overwhelming mass; when he came to himself he had been pushed upward into the square under the domes of the church raised to lay the ghost of Nero; all was dark; the sport was over; the throngs were still dense, the horses of the city guard were slowly scattering them; there were no lights; except the quiet stars above in the cloudless skies.

  The boy in the goatskin was by him, and looked at him curiously.

  “They hit you on the head; not meaning. You would have fallen, I think, only the crowd was so close, it kept you upright; you are a strong man. I ran with you because you hate that woman, and you gave me money. Will you give me more? Shall I show you where she lives?”

  “Aye! — show me!” said Bruno, stupidly; and by instinct, like a dog, stooped and drank from the hollow of his hand the water of the lion’s mouth mouths .

  “You are her father or her brother?” said the boy; “you must be something to her since you look like that. She is an evil one — yes — that is sure. Did you see that lad with her; the one with the great dark eyes and the girl’s face? That is the one who makes all that great music. He will make no more. Not he.”

  And the boy turned a somersault on the stones under the stars, and flung his Bacchus mask up in the starlight.

  “He is good,” said the lad, when his somersault was ended, and he dipped his mask in the fountain and drank from it and spit it out again, because water was not wine. “He is good. When Lili was lamed that day he came and found us out and gave us money and spoke soft words; and there was an old lute of Lili’s lying there, and he took it up and made it sound so — one would have said the angels were all singing — and then, all in a minute, he put it down and tears were in his eyes, and he went, — so, — saying nothing more. But he sent to us often; only Lili always says — since that — the lute seems dumb.”

  Bruno gave him more money.

  “Show me where,” he said.

  The boy pressed through the loosening crowd, and bade him follow.

  They went through many a narrow street, solitary and dark, until all the noise of the multitude was left behind them, and they even ceased to see the stray noisy groups of the straggling maskers.

  “Why should he play no more?” said Bruno, suddenly, in the stillness; the words were haunting him.

  “That is what the city says,” answered the boy, who went leaping and turning in endless gyrations; a ghastly figure in the moon rays and the shadows in his satyr’s garb, and with his wine‐god’s head.

  “The city says it? Why?”

  Bruno felt stupid still; a falling torch had struck him on the head, and he had fasted long, and all his heart and soul were sick with hopelessness.

  “Because it is dead; gone out of him; that is what they say. She killed it — just for sport. Why not? That is what she would ask: Why not?” And the boy whirled like a wheel in the gloom under the beetling houses.

  “Why not?” said Bruno, as a rock might give back an echo sullenly.

  There arose near them iron gates and high black walls, and the heads of palm trees. The boy pointed to them.

  “There it is. Pay me.”

  At that moment wheels passed them; horses foaming and plunging passed them; the gates opened; the mud from the winter rains struck Bruno in the face.

  “That is she,” said the boy in the mask of Bacchus.

  The gates closed, shutting her in. Bruno wiped the mud from his mouth.

  He put money in the child’s hand again, and bade him go.

  “He was with her,” said the boy, with his white teeth shining through the wide jaws of his mask. “She has not done with him yet. She maddens him with jealousy and pain. She cheats him always — and them all. It must be brave sport to be a woman?”

  Bruno bade him begone.

  The little lad ran off; but, once more lingering, returned.

  “Do not hurt him,” he said, again, and then reluctantly went away; a quaint, small, faun‐like figure in t
he moon rays.

  Bruno remained by the closed gates. He sat down on the stone coping of the wall and wrapped his cloak around him. It was now the tenth hour.

  There was no sound, except from a fountain that was within the gates and of the night wind amongst the palm‐trees. He had no hope; all was dark. He could not see why God dealt thus with him. His heart hardened against earth and heaven.

  To behold the dominion of evil; the victory of the liar; the empire of that which is base; to be powerless to resist, impotent to strip it bare; to watch it suck under a beloved life as the whirlpool the gold‐freighted vessel; to know that the soul for which we would give our own to everlasting ruin is daily, hourly, momentarily subjugated, emasculated, possessed, devoured by those alien powers of violence and fraud which have fastened upon it as their prey; to stand by fettered and mute, and cry out to heaven that in this conflict the angels themselves should descend to wrestle for us, and yet know that all the while the very stars in their courses shall sooner stand still than this reign of sin be ended: — this is the greatest woe that the world holds.

  Beaten, we shake in vain the adamant gates of a brazen iniquity; we may bruise our breasts there till we die; there is no entrance possible. For that which is vile is stronger than all love, all faith, all pure desire, all passionate pain; that which is vile has all the forces that men have called the powers of hell.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  A GREAT bell clanging within the iron gates jarred on the silence.

  He looked up; there was a man there by his side without who rang thus.

  A voice answered the stranger’s demand through a grated wicket. Was she within? No; she was not within.

  Bruno opened his lips to say that they lied; but kept back the words unuttered: the other was naught to him.

  “I raised her from the very dust and have to ring at her gates like a beggar,” the stranger muttered, with tones too low for Bruno’s ear to hear them; then he turned and went away unwillingly. The moon fell full upon him. He saw the motionless dark figure of the peasant leaning by the wall. He looked and spoke:

  “Is it you who dread Argol? What do you do here?”

  “What do you?” said Bruno; his mouth scarcely unclosed, his whole heart and soul were full of frozen pain; his hand was against every man’s; he would have struck a child dead, or have spat upon the cross. What use were man or God? Where was their justice?

  He looked at the stranger sullenly; who rang at her gates must be her friend — his foe.

  The moon had risen fully, and shone with that pure and dreamful light which takes two thousand years of age away from Rome; the moonlight in which they say the dead gods rise and walk — weeping.

  The face of the man was turned to him in it; a fair proud face, with something arrogant and something gentle, and the eyes of a poet and the lips of a cynic.

  Bruno stared on him, wondering, doubting, remembering; then ground his teeth as a mastiff would at sight of what he loathed, and sprang erect.

  “Wait! I know you,” he said, slowly; “You are the painter — Istriel.”

  “Yes,” said the other, with a careless smile, as of one whose name meant homage. He was known so well by princes and by people. It seemed nothing strange.

  “I meant to look for you. Wait there,” said Bruno. “Oh! I went and read your face, line by line, in the city where you have painted it; I meant to deal with you one day — and, yet, yonder, it was so dark there; you escaped me. Oh, I know you now.”

  He spoke savagely, with his teeth set, still staring upon Istriel; startled, the other looked and kept his ground; he was a bold man, and knew that in his life he had sown enemies broadcast. This might be one of them.

  “So you come to ring at her gates?” said Bruno. “When you shared her with all the world, were you not sick of her? You great men are less squeamish than we peasants are. When we throw the rotten fruit away, we have done with it. Do you know what Sandro said when she came to the birth? ‘Such a white child — so white‐God send send send her a white soul too.’ That is what he said, and he died looking at the little white plaster Christ on the wall, and saying, ‘I had a white child too; has the Holy Mother got her safe? Shall I see her the other side of the sun?’ That is what he died saying—”

  “I do not understand,” said Istriel.

  Bruno laughed aloud.

  “No, no doubt: why should you? You take the loveliest, vilest thing you own, and strip it bare and smile, and paint it so, and send it out to all the multitudes — that is genius. You go down to hell and bring up a curse from it, and throw it out broadcast amongst the living people — that is genius. You have cursed my boy. Ten thousand others, too, for aught I know. But his was the gentlest, purest, sweetest soul that lived, and came so fresh from heaven, that he brought all heaven’s music with him in his ear and in his mouth, and was for ever hearing it and making others hear it. I have seen fierce men fighting cease and grow quiet, only because the child passed — singing. Look you, the lizards would come from their holes and the sheep and the goats stand listening round him, and the snakes lie still and quiet, in the sun there on the hills, because he piped upon his little lute — the broken lute I gave him. He never hurt a living thing. When he was a young child, he would take scorpions in his hand and say that he was sorry for them, because they hated men and had no one to love them — that was my boy. It is of no use telling you; how should you know, how should any one know, as I do? God sent him on to earth, I think, just to show what a human thing can be — how beautiful — when it has no greed and no vile thought. I laboured for the land and got it, and then I lost that, and all was to begin over again; and I could bear it — somehow — because he was safe, and things went well with him, and he had his heart’s desire; and when he came home to me, though the world had got him, it had not hurt him — not one whit, nor did he forget nor cease to care. But after he saw the accursed picture, then it was all over. There are women that have little white souls like doves, and when they enter the heart of a man, it is with him as if the Holy Spirit were there, and they nestle in him, and keep him from evil; but there are others; — your picture was accursed, I say. It bewitched him. It poured fire into him; the fire that consumes the bones and the nerves and the brain. When a boy or a man loves a woman that is vile, he kisses corruption on the mouth.”

  “That is true,” said. the other; “but what have I done to you that you should upbraid me thus?”

  He did not understand in any way the fierce onslaught and the confused meanings of the unknown man who fronted and arraigned him in the moonlight; but the rough eloquence of it fascinated him, and the courage and very rudeness of it and passionate pathos moved him to know more.

  “You are a great man, that I hear,’” answered Bruno, “and you spend your strength painting lewd women. I do not know. I suppose it seems good to you. For me, it looks a poor pastime. Those men of old that coloured our walls — they saw God and the saints, and the great deeds that were done when men were giants; so they painted them. You paint what you see — I suppose. Is that what it is to have talents? to make dancing wantons live unperishing and drive innocent souls mad with sick passions? I praise heaven that I am a peasant and a fool. When you come to die, will it be well with you? to see these women for ever about your bed, and think of the young lives you have burned up with the teachings of wicked desire? If my right hand could create such things as that Innocence of yours, I would cut my hand off rather than leave it its cunning.”

  “You are an ascetic?” said Istriel, with a smile. He was surprised at the fierce earnestness of this peasant, and was of that temper which will quarrel with nothing which is new to it and diverts it.

  “I do not know what you mean,” said Bruno. “I am a man, and have been a bad man. At least, they have always said so. But I would slay myself before I would pander to the vileness of the world as you do. God gives you that gift of yours, to make the likeness of his living things, and give them more beauty than any re
al life has. And what do you do with it? Make shameless women glow like the fire, and the rose, and the jewels of the kings; and drive pure souls to hell with longing for them. What are you better than a pander and a tempter? You might make men see heaven, and you will not. You are like a jewel in a toad’s head. Has all your learning taught you no greater thing? is there nothing on all the broad earth but a naked wanton? For me, I have been a fool and a sinner with many a living woman in my time: that is the folly of all men; there is nature in that, and good may come out of its evil; but to set a vile creature up on high, and colour every hue of her, and draw every line, and set her up in the midst of the people, and seem to say to them, ‘There is nothing in all the world to worship but only a beautiful body, with a foul cancer hid in it;’ since to do that is what they call genius, I praise Fate that made me unlettered and unlearned, and sent me to dwell with my beasts at the plough.”

  The painter Istriel looked at him with greater intentness: the rough eloquence stirred a certain shame in him; he knew that in it there was a grain of truth; in his own youth he had had pure aspirations and spiritual aims, and he had descended to delight and stimulate with the matchless grace of his colour, and the vital power of his hand, the sated materialism of his age.

  He recognised in the passionate imperfect words of the man before him the temper which had made the men of the Middle Ages hurl their marble bacchanals and painted syrens into the flames at Savonarola’s word.

  He was less offended than aroused.

  “What has any one of my pictures done to you?” he asked. “Men like you feel no impersonal pain; what is your personal wrong at my hand?”

  Bruno’s eyes glanced at him with a deep mute scorn.

  “I do not know what you mean. Your wantons never hurt me. Only I would hew the wood you paint them into a million pieces, and thrust them in the nearest kiln to burn to ashes — if I could. From the time he saw that accursed thing all was altered with him. It got into him like wine — like poison. It made him drunk. Before — he lived in all the sweet sounds he heard; just as a bird does in the leaves and the light. He was always hearing beautiful things, and seeing them — we could not. He was so near the angels — my boy! But after he saw your accursed picture, it was the woman he saw — always the woman; she got between him and God. Do you not know? And so when she chose, she took him. It is like the plague. He looked with innocent eyes on your picture; when he looked away, he knew that we are all beasts. Yes, that is what your genius does for men. It is great; ah! so is the marsh fever, for it can kill a king if he pass by; your picture has killed my boy. When he found it living, he fell down before it. You see. He has no brain, or soul, or memory, or beauty left; all his dreams are dead; he only sees your wanton. Because you played with a wretched thing like that, must you make her a public glory to lure men’s souls? Why did you do it? Was there not the sea, and the sun, and the children, and the face of the mountains, and all the wide world for you to make a likeness of, and call all the nations to look? Was the great blue sky too narrow for you that you must needs go and make a devil‐star out of the mud of the sewer? Because the woman had no shame with you, must you crown her for that, and make others that look on her shameless? Your hand is accursed; your hand is accursed, I say. Were I lord and king, I would have it struck off in the sight of all the people. Look — the wanton you made takes my boy from me; from the world, from his art, from his God!”