by Ouida
“Look,” she said, and led me in, and let me stand before the statue she had made, and which she had herself cut out from the block, and shaped in every line, till it stood there, a white and wondrous thing, erect in the sunlight shining from the skies, and seemed to live, nay, to leap forth to life as the Apollo does in Belvedere.
It was the same statue that she had made in the clay at Venice; that is, it was Hilarion: the man made god by the deifying power of the passion which thus beheld him. Every curve of the slender and symmetrical limbs was his, every line of the harmonious and Greek-like features his also; but it was no longer a mortal, it was a divinity; and about his feet played an ape and an asp, and in his hand he held a dead bird.
That was all.
There was no other allegory. She knew that marble must speak in the simplest words, as poets spake of old, or not at all.
Marble must be forever the Homer of the arts: ceasing to be that, as it does cease if it be wreathed with ornament or tortured into metaphor, it ceases also to be art. Marble must speak to the people as it did of old over the blue Ægean sea and under the woods of Pelion, or be dumb, a mere tricked-out doll of fancy and of fashion.
She knew this, she who had been trained by Maryx; and even had she forgotten his teachings, her own genius, cast on broad and noble lines, would have obeyed the axiom by instinct.
I stood silent and amazed before the statue: amazed because the spiritualized and perfect beauty given in it to Hilarion seemed to me the most amazing pardon that a woman’s forgiveness ever on this earth bestowed; silent, because I, who had dwelt among sculptors all my years, could never have conceived it possible for her to give to any shape of stone such vitality, such proportion, such anatomical perfection, such personal sublimity, as were all here.
It was a great work; it would have been great in Athens, and was how much greater in this modern age! And she was only a woman, and so young.
“Oh, my dear! oh, my dear!” I moaned to her, standing before it. “Athene is with you still. You have the clue and the sword. Oh, my dear, with such gifts praise heaven! What does the pain or the loss of life matter? You are great!”
She looked at me from under her lovely low brows and her half-falling hair, as the Ariadne of the Capitol looks at you; only with a look more intense, — a look of deep pity, deeper scorn.
“Is that all that you know? Great! What use is that? I could not kill the ape and the asp. Perhaps he would not have left me if I had been foolish and like other women.”
I, like an idiot, cried out, —
“You blaspheme, and against yourself! The gods’ gifts are greater than his. You have the clue and the sword. How can you care? Let him perish, the ingrate and fool!”
The look in her eyes grew darker and deeper with sadness and scorn. She turned from me with almost aversion.
“I have only created it that he may see it, and that others may still see his face when I shall have been dead a thousand years; for it will be of him they will think, not of me.”
Then she was silent, and I could have spoken mad words against him, but I dared not; and I thought of the Daphne of Borghese with the laurel growing out of her breast, the laurel that always is bitter, and that hurts when it springs from the heart of a woman.
“Oh, my dear,” I said humbly to her, “ be grateful; you have the gifts that a million of mortals live and die without ever even comprehending. Be not thankless; genius is consolation.”
“For all but one thing,” she said, very low; and her eyelids were wet.
And indeed after all there is nothing more cruel than the impotence of genius to hold and keep those commonest joys and mere natural affections which dullards and worse than dullards rejoice in at their pleasure, — the common human things, whose loss makes the great possessions of its imperial powers all valueless and vain as harps unstrung or as lutes that are broken.
“It is very beautiful, and it is very great,” I said to her, and said but barren truth.
“It is himself,” she answered.
“What will you call it?”
“Only — a poet.”
“You will let it go out to the world, surely?”
“Yes, that he may see it.”
“You think he will come to you?”
She shrank a little, as if one had stung her.
“No: he will not come back; no. But perhaps he will remember a little, and drive the asps and the apes away. If I could pray as the women pray in the churches, that is all I would ask; nothing else, — nothing else.”
“My God! How can you forgive like that?”
“To love at all, is that not always to forgive?”
Then a heavy sigh parted her beautiful lips that were now so pale yet still so proud, and she went away from my presence and left me alone with the marble. Had it not been her creation I think I should have struck the statue, and cursed it and cast it down headlong, as of old they cast the false gods.
That day I went and sought Maryx. The fever had passed from him with the heats of summer and the perilous rains of the autumn, and its agues and its fires had ceased to chill and burn him turn by turn. But he was weakened and aged, and never, so Giulio told me, touched the plane or the chisel: his workmen he paid as of yore, but the workrooms were locked.
I asked to see him, and I told him.
“You bade me say how you could serve her,” I said to him. “You can serve her now. I am an old man, and poor, and obscure; I can do nothing. Will you let the great world see her work? Of no other man could I ask such a thing after-after —— But you are not like others.”
His heart heaved, and the nerves of his cheek quivered, but he pressed my hand.
“I thank you that you know me well enough. What I can do I will. She was my pupil. I owe her such simple service as that.”
“The work is great,” I said to him. “I thought it might bring her fame, and fame consoles.”
Maryx smiled, a weary smile.
“Does it? Those who have it not, think so; yes, I dare say.”
“But if it do not console it may do something at the least, — light some other passion, ambition, pride, desire of achievement, all an artist feels. If she can gather the laurel, let her. At the least, it will be better than love.”
“She shall gather it,” said he, who had been her master; and he came out with me into the night. It was a cold clear night, and the stars shone on the river.
“I have gathered it,” he added. “Well, I would change places with any beggar that crawls home to-night.”
I could not answer him.
We walked through the city in silence. He had lost his strength and his elasticity of movement, but he bore himself erect, and something of the vigor of energy had returned to him, — since he could serve her.
Her tower was far from the Golden Hill; he had never entered it; but I had the keys of her working-room, and I knew that at this hour she slept, or at least lay on her bed, shut in her chamber if sleepless. On the threshold of the studio I paused, frightened, for it seemed to me cruel to bring him there, and yet he was obliged to see the statue if he meant to help her to fame.
“Perhaps you had better not see it,” I muttered. “After all, it is nothing, though beautiful; nothing except — Hilarion.”
His face did not change, as I watched it with fear in the dull yellow lamp-light.
“It could be nothing else, being her work. Open.”
My hands shook at the lock; I felt afraid. If I had longed to take a mallet and beat its beauty down into atoms and dust, what might not he do, he who had struck the Nausicaa as men strike a faithless wife?
He took the key from me, and thrust it into the lock.
“What do you fear?” he said. “Shall I harm the stone when I have let the man live?”
Then he opened the door and entered. I had left a lamp burning there, — a lamp that swung on a chain hung from above, and was immediately above the head of the statue. The stream of soft golden light from
the burning olive oil fell full on the serene beauty of the figure, holding the dead nightingale in its hand, with doubt upon its features that was not regret.
A strong shudder shook Maryx.
I drew the door to, and waited without. It seemed to me that I waited hours, but no doubt they were only minutes. When the door unclosed, and he came forth from the chamber, he was calm, and his face was only stern.
It is a great work: it would be great for a great man. It will give her fame. It shall give it to her. You look strangely. What do you fear? Am I so base as not to serve the genius I fostered? My genius is dead: hers lives. That I can serve at least.”
“You can reach such nobility as that!”
“I see nothing noble. I am not quite base, that is all. Tell her — nay, I forgot; she must not know that it is I who do anything, — else you should tell her that her master thanks her.”
And with that brave and tender word he left me and went out into the darkness.
It seemed to me that his forgiveness was greater even than hers; since even greater than hers was his loss.
Now, when the spring-time of that year came, the world of the arts spoke only of one great piece of sculpture, shown in the public halls where Paris holds its rivalry of muses.
Before this statue of the poet all the great world paused in awe and ecstasy.
“Is it the work of Maryx?” asked one half the world, and the other half answered, —
“No! It is greater than any work of Maryx.”
And before the new youthful strength thus arisen they slighted and spoke ill of the great strength that had been as a giant’s in the past.
So had he his reward.
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
WHEN he had gone away that evening and I had returned to the studio to put out the lights and see that all was safe, it being past midnight, I found her there, beside the work of her hands. A long, loose, white robe clung lose to her, and fell about her feet; she looked taller, whiter, lovelier, perhaps, than ever, but it seemed to me that there was in her beauty something unearthly: one could have imagined her to be that Sospitra of her lover’s poem, who was lifted above all earthly woes save the two supreme sorrows, — Love and Death.
She sat down on the wooden bench that stood near the statue, and motioned me to stay.
“You brought Maryx here?” she asked me.
“Yes: I thought you were asleep.”
“I seldom sleep. In my chamber I could hear your voices, but not what you said. Does it seem good to him — what I have done?”
“It seems great.”
Then I told her all that he said to me; and the noble soul of him seemed to me to shine through the words like the light through a lamp of alabaster; and I saw that they touched her deeply. Her sad eyes gathered moisture in them, and her grand mouth, always so resolutely closed as though afraid that any reproach of her lost lover should escape them, trembled and grew soft.
“He is too good to me,” she said, at length. “Oh, why was I born only to bring so much misery to others!”
“Nay, there is some misery dearer to us than joy,” said I. “Maryx loves you.”
A shudder ran through her, and she stopped me.
“Never speak of love to me. A woman faithful will not even think that any can feel love for her, — save one: it is almost infidelity.”
“Nay, I spoke not of love so: would I insult you? I mean simply and truly that his love for you is great enough to vanquish any remembrance of himself, — great enough, too, to make him hold his hand because you bid him: greater there cannot be.”
She put out her hand to silence me.
“He received me into his house when I had no friend and no hope in the world, and he was so good to me. If he would but forget me! I have been thankless. He taught me the strength and the secrets of the arts, and I have given him in return only pain and ingratitude.”
“Dear, it is on pain that love lives longest.”
Alas! that she knew. She was silent some moments, whilst above her rose the beauty of her own creation.
Since she had returned to the pursuit and the occupation of art, the youth in her had revived; the numbness and deadness which had seemed like a half-paralyzed intelligence had passed off her; she had gathered up the clue and lifted up the sword, and, though it was love that nerved her and not art, the effort had brought back inspiration, and inspiration to the artist is the very breath of life: without it his body may live, but his soul does not.
She looked at her statue with wistful eyes.
“You will send it to Paris.”
“In Paris. Before showing it here?”
Yes: he does not come here; he would not see it.”
A deep flush came on the paleness of her face, as it always did at the very mention of Hilarion.
“He will know that I have made it, — he will believe in it,” she said, a little later,— “because he saw me make the Love in Venice.”
“Where did that Love go?”
“It was sent from Venice in a ship; and the ship foundered, and went down in a storm.”
And the statue was lost?”
“Yes.”
She leaned her head upon her hands, so that I could not see her face. She had never before spoken to me of that time. I stood silent, thinking how terrible an augury had been that foundered Love, sunk to the bottom of the deep sea, companioned only with the dead.
Almost I longed to tell her of all that he had said by the temple of Agrippa, but I dared not. She believed that he had loved her once: I had not courage to say to her, Even his first caresses were a lie!
To her Hilarion remained a creature who could do no wrong: I had not heart to say to her, There was no sort of truth in him ever, not even when he swore to you eternal faith.
“And if he do read the message of your marble,” I asked her, abruptly, “if he do read it, if he be touched by it, — if he come back to you, what then? Will you let him come — now?”
Her face was leaning on her hands, but I could see the blush that covered her throat and rose to her temples.
“It would be different now,” she muttered. “Then I did not know; no, I did not know. I obeyed him. I had no idea that I became worthless in his sight. When you spoke to me so bitterly in Venice, you pained me, but I did not understand: I never did until those friends of his in Paris (he called them friends) wrote to me and sent me their jewels when he was away. It is not that I care what the whole world thinks me, but to be lowered in his sight, to seem to him only a frail foolish thing — like the rest — —”
A great heavy sob heaved her heart; she lifted her face to mine: it was burning now, with an indignant pain in her uplifted eyes.
“Look! what does it mean? — who is to tell the ways of the world? That vile woman whom he lived with here in Rome, she is faithless and cruel and false, and betrayed him as well as her husband, and yet he goes back to her and the world sees no shame in her, though she wears his jewels about her neck and dishonors her children. And I, who, sleeping and waking, never think but of him, who have never a thought he might not know, who am his alone, his always, in life and in eternity, if eternity there be, I am shameful, you say, and he has ceased to love me because I loved him too well. Who can understand? I cannot.”
I knew not what to say to her: the laws and the ways of the world are sadly full of injustice, and cast in stiff lines that fit in but ill with the changeful and wayward needs of human life. I knew not what to say.
She lapsed into silence. It was natural to her to endure: it was very seldom that any reproach escaped her either of fate or of him. Her brain perplexed itself wearily over the problem of where her fault had lain by which she had lost him: she was too loyal to see that the fault was in himself.
“Shall it go, then, to Paris?” I said, to lead her thoughts back to her labors.
She gave a sign of assent.
“May it be sold?”
“Ah, no! —
never!”
“It is to come back to you, then?”
“Unless he wish for it.”
“Would you give it to him?”
“I have given him my life!”
“Shall I put your name on it, or will you carve it there?”
“No. Let it go as the work of a pupil of Maryx. That is true.”
“Maryx thinks it will give you a fame not second to his own.”
“Fame? I do not care for fame.”
She looked up at the marble once more.
“Once I used to think I should like all the ages that are to come to echo my name; but that is nothing to me now. If only it may speak to him, — that is all I want. Perhaps you do not believe, because he has left me; but indeed when I was with him he heard only the nightingales, and the apes and the asps never came near. Do you remember when we walked by Nero’s fields that night of Carnival, you said he was like Phineus? But the evil spirits never had any power on him when I was there: he told me so, so often. If only by that marble I can speak to him! — if one could only put one’s soul and one’s life into the thing one creates, and die in one’s body, so as to be alive in art alone, and close to what one loves! — there are legends — —”
She wound her arms close about the white limbs of her statue, and laid her lips to them as she had done to the Hermes, and leaned on the cold sculpture her beating breaking heart.
“Take my life away with you,” she cried to it; “take it to him! — take it to him!”
Then she broke down and wept, and sobbed bitterly, as women do.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE statue went to Paris, and the word and the weight of Maryx went with it, as I had said, and did for it what influence can do in a day, and genius unaided may beg for in vain through a score of years.
It was accepted by the judges of the Salon, and placed between a group of Clesinger’s and a figure by Paul Dubois. Maryx had had carved upon it the letters of her name, Giojà: no more. It was made known to those whom it concerned that she was a woman, and very young, and his pupil in Rome.