Ouida_Signa.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
CHAPTER I.
Hs iraa only a little lad coming singing through the summer
weather ; singing as the birds do in the thickets, as the grilli
do in the com at night, as the acacia bees do all the day long
in the high tree-tops in the sunshine.
Only a little lad, with brown eyes and bare feet and a wistful
heart, driving his sheep and his goats, and carrying his sheaves
of cane or millet, and working among the ripe grapes when
the time came, like all the rest, here in the bright Signa
country.
Few people care much for our Signa and all it has seen and
known. Few people even know anything of it at all, except
just vaguely as a mere name. Assisi has her saint, and Peru-
gia her painters, and Aresso her poet, and Sienna her virgin,
and Settignano her sculptor, and Prato her great Carmelite,
and Yespignano her inspired shepherd, and Fiesole her angel-
monk, and the village Vinci her mighty master; and poets
write of them all for the sake of the dead fame which they
embalm. But Signa has found no poet, though her name lies
in the pages of the old chroniclers like a jewel in an old
king*8 tomb.
It is so old, our Signa, no man could chronicle all it has
seen in the centuries ; but not one in ten thousand travelers
thinks about it. Its people plait straw for the world, and the
train from the coast runs through it : that is all that it has to
do with other folks. Passengers come and go from the sea to
the city, from the city to the sea, along the great iron highway,
and perhaps they glance at the stern, ruined walls, at the white
houses on the cli, at the broad river with its shining sands,
at the blue hills with the poplars at their base and the pines
1* 6
/^
6 SIQNA,
at their summits, and they say to one another that this is
Sijrna.
Bub it is all that they ever do ; it is only a glance, then oa
they go through the green and golden haze of V aldamo. Signa
is nothing to them, only a place that they stop at a second.
And yet Signa is worthy of knowledge. She is so ancient
and so wise, and in her way so beautiful too ; and she holds
so many great memories in her ; she has so many faded laurel-
boughs, as women in their years of age keep the dead rose-
leaves of their days of love ; and once on a time in the Re-
public's time, as her sons will still turn from the plow or rest
on the oar to tell to a stranger with pride she was a very
Amazon or Artemis of the mountains, setting her breast
boldly against all faces, and they were many, who came down
over the wild western road from the sea or from the Apen-
nines with reddened steel and blazing torch to harry and fire
the fields and spread famine and war to the gates of Florence.
These days are gone. The years of its glory are done. It is
a gray, quiet place, which now strays down by the wat-er and
now climbs high on the hill, and faces the full dawn of the day
and sees the sunset reflected in the mirror of the river, and is
starry with fire-flies in midsummer, and at noon looks drowsy
in the heat and seems to dream, being so very old. The but-
tressed walls are ruins. The mass-bell swings over the tower
roofs. The fortresses are changed to farms. The vines climb
where the culvcrins blazed. White bullocks and belled mules
tread to and fro the tracks which the free-lances made ; and
the peasants sing at their plows where the hosts of the invaders
once thundered.
Ita ways are narrow, its stones are crooked, its summer dust
is dense, its winter mire is heavy, its hovels are many, its
people are poor, oh, yes, no doubt, but it is beautiful in
various ways, and worthy of a scholar's thought and of aa
artist's tenderness. Only the poet does not come to make it
quoted and beloved by the world, as one single line on the
drifting autumn leaves has rendered Vallombrosa.
Here where the ancient walls of its citadel rise hoary and
broken against the blueness of the sky ; there where the arches
of the bridges span the river, and the sand and the shallows
and the straw that is drying in summer shine together yellow
in the sun ; here where under the sombre pointed archways
SIQNA. 7
the little children play, their faces like the cherubs and the
cupids of the Renaissance ; there where the cobblers and
coopers and the plaiting maidens and the makers of the yellow
birch brooms ail work away under lintels and corbels and carved
beam timbers six hundred years old if one; here where
through the gateways with their portcullises woven over by
the spiders there only pass the patient mules with sacks of flour,
or the hay-carts dropping grasses, or the wagons of new wine ;
there where the villas that were all fortresses in the fierce
fighting times of old gleam white in the light upon their crests
of hills, with their cypresses like sentinels around them, and
breadths of corn and vineyards traversed by green grassy paths,
that lead upward to where the stone pine and the myrtle make
sweet the air together, in all these Signa is beautiful ; most
of all, of course, in the long light radiant summer, when the
nightingales are singing everywhere, noon as well as night,
the summer which seems to last almost all the year, for you
can only tell how it comes and goes by the coming and the
going of the flowers ; the long-lived summer that is ushered
in by the daffodils, those golden chamberlains of the court of
flowers, and dies, as a king should, on a purple bed of anem-
ones, when the bells of the feastr of the saints sound its re-
quiem from hill to hill. And Signa revels in all that bright-
ness of the Tuscan weather, and all about her seems singing,
from the cicala piping away all day long, through the hottest
heat, to the mandolins that thrill through the leaves at night
as the peasants go by strumming the chords of their love-
songs. Summer and song and sunshine, Signa lies amidst
them like some war-bruised shield of a knight that has fallen
among the roses and holds the nest of a lark.
One day in summer Signa kept the feast of the Corpus
Domini with more pomp and praise than usual. The bella
were ringing all over the plain and upon the hill-sides, and the
country-people were coming in from all the villages that lie
scattered like so many robins* nests among the olives and the
maize and the arbutus thickets everywhere around. They
were like figures out of a Fra Bartolommeo or a Ghirlandajo
as they came down, through the ripening com and the
red poppies, from the old gray buildings up above, in their
trailing white dresses and their hoods of blue, with the unlit
tapers in their hands, and the little white-robed children run-
8 SJQNA.
ning before them with their chaplets of flowers still wet from
the dew.-
It was the procession of Demeter transmitted throngh all
the ages, though it was called the feast of Christ ; it might
have been the songs of Ceres that they sang, and Viigil might
have looked upon them with a smile of praise as they passed
through the waving wheat and under die boughs red with
cherries.
The old faith lives under the new, and the old worship ia
not dead, here in the country of Horace and in the fields where
Proserpine wandered. The people are Pagan stUl ; only now
they call it being Christian.
It was fiiirest summer weather. There was sure harvest and
promise of abundant vintage. The sweet strong west wind
was blowing from the sea, but not too roughly, only just
enough to shake the scent out of the acacia-blossoms and fan
open the oleanders.
The peasantry were in good heart, and trooped down to the
Feast of the Body of Ghd from the loneliest farmstead on the
highest hill-crest ; and from every villa chapel set along the
mountains or among the green sea of the valley vines there
was a bell ringing above an open door.
The chief celebration was at Signa, which had broken from
its usual ways, and had music on this great service because a
cardinal bishop had come on a visit in its neighborhood, and
all its roads and streets and lanes were swept and garnished
and watered, and at many open casements there were pots of
lilies, white and orange, and in many dark archways groups of
little children on whose tiny shoulders it would have seemed
quite natural to see such wings of rose or azure as II Beato
gave his cherubim.
The procession came out from the white walls above on the
cliff, and down the steep way of the hill and across the bridge,
and through the Lastra to the little church of the Misericordia.
There were great silk banners waving heavily ; gold fringe that
shone and swayed ; priests' vestments that gleamed with silver
and color ; masses of flowers and leaves borne alofl ; curling
croziers and crimson baldacchini ; and then came all the white-
clothed contadini, by tens, by twenties, by hundreds, and the
cherubic children singing in the sun ; it was Sigua in the
Middle Ages once again, and Fra Giovanni might have stood
SI0NA. 9
by and painted it aU in a choral book, or Maroillat have put it
in a stained window, and have illumined it with the aznre skj
for its background, and the rays of the morning sun, like beams
that staieamed straight to earth from the throne of God.
The procession came down the hill and across the bridge,
with its irregular arches and its now shallow green water shin-
ing underneath, and on its sands the straw lying drying, and
beyond it the near hills with their dusky pines, and the white
streaks where the quarries were cut, and the blue haze of the
farther mountains.
All the people were chanting the Laus Deo, chanting with
chests made strong by the mountain air, and lips made tuneful
by the inheritance of melody ; men and women and children
were all singing, from the old white-haired bishop who bore
the host, to the four-year-old baby that trod on the hem of its
mother's dress.
But above all the voices there rose one sweetest and clearest
of all, and going up into heaven, as it seemed, as a lark's does
on a summer morning. He was only a little fellow that sang,
^a little boy of the Lastra a Signa, poorer than all the rest ;
with his white frock clean, but very coarse, and a wreath of
scarlet poppies on his auburn curls ; a very little fellow, ten
years old at most, with thin brown limbs and a lean wistful
face, and the straight brows of his country, with dark eyes
full of dreams beneath them, and naked feet that could be fleet
as a hare's over the dry yellow grass or the crooked sharp
stones.
He was always hungry, and never very strong, and certainly
simple and poor as a creature could be, and he knew what a
beating meant as well as any dog about the farm. He lived
with people who thrashed him oftener than they fed him. He
was almost always scolded, and bore the burden of others'
faults. He had never had a whole shirt or a pair of shoes in
all his life.. He kept goats on one of the dusky sweet-scented
hillsides above Signa, and bore, like them, the wind and the
weather, the scorch and the storm. And yet, by God's grace
and the glory of childhood, he was happy enough as he went
over the bridge and through the white dust, chanting his psalm
in the rear of the priests, in the ceremonies of the Corpus
Domini.
For the music was in his head and in his heart ; and the
10 SIGNA.
millions of leaves and the glancing water seemed to be singing
with him, and he did not feel the flints under his feet, or the
heat of them, as he went singing out all his little soul to the
river and the sky and the glad June sunshine, and he was
quite happy, though he was of no more moment in the great
human world than any one of the brown grilli in the wheat
or tufts of rosemary in the quarry-side ; and he did not feel
the sharpness of the stones underneath his feet or the scorch
of them as he went barefoot along the streets, because he was
always looking up at the brightness of the sky, and expecting
to see it open and to see the faces of the curly-headod winged
children peep out from behind the sun-rays as they did in the
old pictures in the villa chapels.
The priests told him he would see them for a certainty if he
were good ; and he had been good, or at least had tried to be,
but the heavens never had opened yet.
It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very
hungry, and have many sticks to beat you and no mother's
lips to kiss you.
But he tried in his own small way. When he carried the
bright-blue plums to the market, not to ta^te even one when
his mouth was parched with the dust and the sun ; when he
let his reed-flute lie mute while he searched for a straying kid ;
to tell the truth, though it cost him a thrashing ; to leave his
black bread untouched on a feast morning, though he was so
hungry, because he was going to confession ; to forbear from
pulling the ripe grapes as he went along the little grass paths
through the vines ; these were the things that were so hard,
and that he tried his best to do, because in his little dim mindi
he saw what was just, and in his way endeavored with all his
might to follow it, that he might see the faces of the angels
some day ; and he wondered now why he could not see the
cherubs through the blue smiling sky, as the old fresco-painters
had done who did not want it half so much as he did, because
no doubt the painters were wise men, and knew a great deal,
and were very happy, and were not like him, who was always
wanting to know everything, and could never get any one
to tell.
The old painters would have painted him, and would have
made a cherub of him. with his wreath of poppies and his
wondering eyes and his little singing mouth, and would have
SIONA. 11
taken all the leanness out of his face and the paleness oat of
his cheeks and the dams ont of his little coarse frock, and
would have made his field-flowers roses of paradise, and would
have glorified him and made him a joy to the wondering
world forever.
But he did not know that; he did not know that the
painters never saw any other little angels than just such foot-
tired and sun-tanned little angels as he, which their genius
lifted up and transfigured into the likeness of the children
of God.
He did not know that Fra Angelioo would have kissed him
and Raffaello would have put him forever in the internal sun-
shine of the Loggie, with gold rays about his head and the
lilies of Mary in his hands.
He only looked up in vain ^for the cherubs in the shin-
ing morning skies, and was sorry that he was not good enough
to have the right to see them, and yet was glad at heart as he
went carrying his taper in the rear of the silken banners and
the silvered robes and the chanting contadini over the green
sun-lightened Arno water, with the midsummer corn blowing
on all the hills around, and the west wind bringing the salt or
the sea with it to strengthen the young bud-clusters of the
vine.
Olad, because he was so young, and because he was sure
of one creature that loved him, and because the music thrilled
him to his heart's delight, and because it was a happiness to
htm only to sing, as it is to the thrush in the depths of the
woods when the day dawns, or to the nightingale when she
drinks the dew in heats of noon off the snow of a magnolia-
fiower.
He had a little lute of his own, given to him by the only
hand that ever gave him anything. Where he lived he might
not play it, on pain of its being broken ; but upon the hills he
did, and along the country roads ; and when people were asleep
ill their beds in Signa, they would be awakened by notes that
were not the birds rippling up the street in the sweet, silent
dark, and going higher and higher and higher : it was only the
little fellow playing and singing as he went along in the dusk
of the dawn to his work.
In the Lastra no one thought anything of it. In any other
ooontry, lattices would have been opened and heads hung out
12 8IGNA.
and breaths of deep pleasure held to listen better, bocanse the
child's music was wonderful in its way, or at least would have
been so elsewhere. But here there is so much music eveiy-
where : nobody noticed much. It was no more than a hundred
other lutes strumming at cottage doors, than a thousaifd other
stornelli or rispetti sung as the oxen were yoked.
There is always song somewhere.
As the straw-wagon creaks down the hill, the wagoner will
chant to the com that grows upon either side of him. As the
miller's mules cross the bridge, the lad as he cracks his whip
will hum to the blowing alders. In the red dover, the laborers
will whet their scythes and sickles to a trick of melody. In
the quiet evenings a Kyrie eleison will rise from the thick
leaves that Jiide a village chapel. On the hUls the goatherd,
high in air, among the arbutus branches will scatter on the
lonely mountain-side stanzas of purest rhythm. By the sea-
shore, where Shelley died, the fisherman, rough and salt and
weatherworn, will sing notes of sweetest measure under the
tamarisk-tree on his mandolin. But the poetry and the music
float on the air like the leaves of roses that blossom in a soli-
tude and drifl away to die upon the breeze ; there is no one to
notice the fragrance, there is no one to gather the leaves.
The songs of the people now are like their fire-flies in sum-
mer. They make night beautiful all over the dusky hills, and
the seas of vine, and the blowing fields of maize, in a million
lonely places of the mountains and the plains. But the fire-
flies are bom in the corn and die in it; few eyes see their
love-firos, except those of the nightingale and the shrew mouse.
Theocritus cried aloud on his Sicilian muses, and the world
heard him and has treasured the voice of his sweet com-
plaining. But the muse of these people now lives with the
corncrake under the wheat and the swallow under the house-
eaves, and is such a simple natural home-bom thine that they
think of her no more than the fire-fly does of her luminance.
And so they have no Theocritus, but only ever-renewing burste
of song everywhere as the millet grows ripe, and the lemon-
tree flowers, and the red poppies leap with the com.
Oflen they do not know what they sing: ^Does the firorfly
know that she burns?
This little fellow did not know what he sang.
He did not know what he was.
SJONA, 13
At home he was always bdng told that he had no right to
exist at all: perhaps he had not; he did Dot know.
Himself, he thought rod had made him to sing, made him
just for that ; as he made the finches and nightingales. But
he did not tell any one so. At home they would have asked
him what should the great God want with his puny oat pipe*
Toto could make as good a noise cuttuig a reed in the fields
any day.
Perhaps Toto oould. He thought his own voice hotter, hut
he was not sure. He was only glad to sing, hecause all the
world seemed singing with him, and all the sky seemed one
vast space of sweetest sound, ^as, perhaps, it seems to a hird :
who knows?
When he went to hed in the hay he could hear the nightin-
gales and the owls and the grilli singing all together in the trees
behind the village and in the fields that stretched by the
river ; and in the dusk of the dawn when he ran out' with his
little bare feet, dripping with dew, there were a million little
voices hymning in the day. That was what he heard. Other
people, no doubt, heard cart-wheels, and grinding mills, and the
scolding of women, and the barking of dogs, and the creaking of
doors, and a thousand other discordant things ; but to him the
world was full of the singing birds and the humming insects,
and the blue heavens teemed with a choir of angels : he could
not see them, but he heard them, and he knew they were near,
and that was enough : he could wait.
" Bo you hear anything up there ?'* the other children would
ask him, when he stood listening with his eyes lifted, and they
oould not see so much as a bird, and he would look back to
them quite sorrowfully.
" Do you not hear, too ? You are deaf, then I"
But the children of Signa would not allow that they were
deaf, and pelted and fought him for saying so. Deaf, indeed !
when it was he who was the simpleton hearing a bird sing
vhcre none was.
Were they deaf? or, was he dreaming ?
The children of Signa and he never agreed which was
which.
It is the old eternal quarrel between the poet and the world ;
and the children were like the world, they were strong in num-
bers ; since they could see no bird, they would have it there
2
14 SI0NA.
oould be no music, and they boxed his ears to cnre him of
hearing better than his neighbors. Only it did not care him.
His angels sang above him this day of the Corpus Domini,
and he did not feel the sun hot on his bare head, nor the stones
sharp under his bare feet, and he did not remember that hs
was hungry, and that he had been beaten that morning until
the music ceased suddenly, and he dropped to earth out of the
arms of the angels.
Then he felt his bruises, and the want of food gnawed in
him, and he gathered up his little white acolyte's dress and
ran as quickly as he could, the withering poppies shaking off
his hair.
He was only Pippa's child.
CHAPTER 11.
There is wild weather in winter at Signa. The mountain
streams brim over, and the great historic river sweeps out in
full flood, and the bitter Alpine wind tears like a living thing
over the hills and across the plain. Not seldom the low-lying
fields become sheets of dull tawny water, and the little ham-
lets among them are all flooded, and from the clock-towers the
tolling bells cry aloud for succor, while the low, white houses
seem to float like boats. In these winters, if the harvests before
have been bad, the people suffer much. They have litde or
no bread, and they eat the raw grain sometimes.
The country looks like a lake in such weather when the
floods are on ; only for ships there are churches, and the light-
houses are the trees ; and like rocky islands in all directions
the village roofs and the villa walls gleam red and shine gray
in the rain. It is only a short winter, and the people know
that when the floods rise and spread, then they will find com-
pensation, later on, for them in the double richness of gni^s
and meai^ure of corn.
Still, it is sad to see the finest steer of the herd dashed a
lifeless dun-colored mass against the foaming piles of the
bridge ; it is sad to see the young trees and the stacks of hay
SIGN A, 15
whirled together against each other; it is sad to watch the
broken crucifix and the cottage bed hurled like dead leaves on
the waste of waters ; it is saddest of all to see the little curly
head of a drowned child drift with the boughs and the sheep
and the empty hencoop and the torn house-door down the
furious course of the river.
Signa has seen this through a thousand winters and more, in
more or less violence, and looked on untouched herself; high
set on her hills like the fortress which she used to be in the
old Republic days.
In one of these wild brief winters, in a drenching night of
rain, a woman came down on foot along the high-road that
runs from the mountains, the old post^road by which one can
travel to the sea, only no one now ever takes that way. In
sunshine and mild weather it is a glorious road, shelving sheer
to the river-valley on one side and on the other hung over with
bold rocks and bluffs dusky with ilex and pine ; and it winds
and curves and descends and changes as only a mountain road
can do, with the smell of its rosemary and its wild myrtle
sweet at every turn. But on a winter's night of rain it is very
dreary, desolate and dark.
The woman stumbled down it as best she might.
She had come on foot by short stages all the way from the
sea some forty miles over hill and plain. She carried a bundle
with her, and never let go her hold on it, however wildly the
wind seized and shook her, nor however roughly the rain
blew her blind. For the bundle was a child.
Now and then she stopped and leaned against the rocks or
the stem of a tree and opened her cloak and looked at it ; her
eyes had grown so used to the thick darkness that she could
see the round of its little red cheek and the curve of its folded
fist and the line of its closed eyelashes. She would stop a
minute sometimes and bend her head and listen, if the wind
lolled, to the breathing of its parted lips set close against her
breast ; then she would take breath herself and go onward.
The child was a year old, and a boy, and a heavy weight,
and she was not a strong woman now, though she had once
been so ; and she had walked all the way from the sea. She
began to grow dizzy, and to feel herself stumble like a footsore
mule that has been driven until he is stupid and has lost his
sureness of step, and his capacity for safety of choice. She
16 SIGN A.
was drenched throngh, and her clothes hnng in a soaked dead
weight upui. her. Yen with all her care she could not keep
the child quite dry.
Somewhere through the darkness she could hear bells tolling
the hour. It was eight o'clock, and she had been in hopes to
reach Signa before the night fell.
The child began to stir and cry.
She stopped and loosened her poor garments and gave him
her breast. When he grew pacified, she stumbled on again ;
the child was quiet ; the rain beat on her naked bosom, but
the child was content and quiet ; so she went on so.
Sometimes she shivered. She could not help that She
wondered where the town was. She could not see the lights.
In earlier years she had known the country step by step as
only those can who are born in the air of it and tread it daily
in their ways of work. But now she had forgotten how the
old road ran. Her girlhood seemed so far away ; so very, veiy
far. And yet she was only twenty-two years of age.
But then life does not count by years. Some suffer a life-
time in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the
setting of a sun.
She had gone over the road so many times in the warm
golden dawns and the white balmy nights plaiting her wisps
of straw, bare-headed in the welcome air, and with a poppy or
a brier-rose set behind her ear for vanity's sake rather than for
the flower's. But she had been long away, ^though she was
so young, at least it seemed very long to her, and with
absence she had lost all the peasant's instinct of safe movement
in the dark, which is as sure as an owl's or an ass's, and comes
by force of long habits and long treading of the same familiar
way. She was not sure of her road ; not even sure of her
footing. The wind terrified her, and she heard the loud surge
of the Arno waters below, beating and foaming in flood. She
was weak too from long fatigue, and the weight of the water
in her clothes and of the child in her arms pulled her
earthward.
No one passed by her.
Every one was housed, except sentries on the church-towerB
watching the rising of the waters, and shepherds getting their
cattle upward from the low-lying pastures on to the hills.
She was all alone on the old sea-road, and if she were near
SIGN A, 17
tlie lightB of Signa she could not see tliem for the steam and
mist of the furious rain.
Bat she walked on resolutely, stumbling oflen over the great
loose stones. She did not care for herself. Life was over for her.
She would have been glad to lie down and die where she was.
But if the boy were not under some roof before morning, she
knew he would perish of cold in her arms. For she could
give him so little warmth herself. She shivered in all her
veins and all her limbs ; and she was soaked through like a
drowned thing, and he was wet also. So she went on, growing
frightened, though her temper was bold, and only keeping her
courage to move by feeling now and then as she went for the
fair face of him at her breast. But the touch of her hand
made him cry, ^it was so cold, and so even that comfort
ceased for her, and she could only pray in a dumb unconscious
way to Ood to keep the numbness out of her arms lest they
should drop the boy as she went.
At a turn in the road there is a crucifix, a wooden one
set in the stone.
She sat down a moment under it, and rested as well as she
could, and tried to think of God. But the wind would not
let her. It tore the covering off her head, and tossed her long
hair about ; it scourged her with a storm of snapped boughs ;
it stnng her with a shower of shriveled leaves; it pierced
through and through her poor thin clothes. She recited her
paternoster a little as well as she could in the torment of it,
but it went round and round her in so mad a whirl that she
could not remember how the words should go. Only she
remembered to keep the child warm, as a mother-sheep sets
her body between the lamb and the drif^ of the snow. Afler
a while he began to cry.
Do what she would, she could not keep a sense of chilliness
and discomfort from reaching him ; he wanted the ease and
rest of some little cozy bed ; her cramped arms held him ill,
and the old shawl that wrapped him up was wet and cold.
She murmured little words to him, and tried even to sing
some scrap of old song ; but her voice failed her, and the child
was not to be comforted. He cried more, and stirred restlessly.
With great effort she bent her stiffened knees, and rose, and.
got on her way again. The rocking movement, as she carried
him and walked on, stilled him a little.
2*
18 SIGN A,
She wished that she had dared to turn up a path higher on
the mountain that she knew of, which she had passed as the
Ave Maria bell had rung. But she had not dared.
She was not sure who was there ; what welcome or what
curse she might get. He who was sure to be master there
now had always been fierce with her and stem ; and he might
be married, and new faces be there too, she could not tell ;
five years was time enough for so much change.
She had not dared go up the path ; now that it was miles
behind her she wished that she had taken it. But it was too
late now. The town, she knew, must be much the nearer of
the two, now that she had come down so far; so she went
onward in the face of the blinding rainstorm. She would go
up in the morning, she thought, and tell him the truth : if he
were brutal to herself, he would not let the child starve ; she
would go up in the morning, so she said, and walked onward.
Her foot had slipped a dozen times, and she had recovered
her footing and gone on safe. Once again in the dork she
slipped, her foot slid farther on loose wet earth, a stone gave
way, she clutched the child with one arm, and flung out the
other, she could not see what she caught at in the dark. It
was a bush of furze. The furze tore her skin, and gave way.
She slipped farther and farther, faster and faster ; the soil was
so drenched, and the stones were unloosed. She remembered
the road enough to know that she was going down, down,
down, over the edge. She clasped the child with both arms
once more, and was borne down through the darkness to her
death.
She knew nothing more ; the dark night closed in on her ;
she lost the sound of the ringing bells, and she ceased to feel
the burden of the child.
SIGNA. 19
CHAPTER ILL
An hour later, two men came with lanterns into the fields
that lie between the rough vineyards underneath the road from
the sea. They had sheep there, which they were going to
drive into the town in the morning, and they were afraid that
the flock, terrified in the winds and rains, might have broken
loose and strayed across the iron rails of the other road that
rons by the river, and might get crushed under the wheels of
the night trains running from the west.
As they went they stumbled against something on the
ground, and lowered their lights to look.
There was a broken bramble-bush, and some crushed ferns,
and a thing that had fallen from the height above on the soak-
ing soil. By their dim lanterns they saw that the thing was
a woman, and, bending the light fuller on her as well as they
could for the rain, they saw that she had been stunned or killed
by the fall.
There was a great stone on which the back of her head had
struck. She lay face upward, with her limbs stretched out ;
her right arm was close round the body of a living child ; her
breast was bare.
The child was breathing and asleep ; he had fallen upon his
mother, and so had escaped unhurt.
The men had been bom peasants, and they were used to
wring the throats of trapped birds and to take lambs from
their mothers with small pity. They lifted the boy with some
roughness and some trouble from the stifiening arm that in-
closed him ; he began to wail and moan : he was very wet and
miserable, and he said a little word which was a call for his
mother, like the pipe of a little bird that has fluttered out of
the nest and lies cold on the grass and frightened.
One of them took him up, and wrapped his cloak across the
little sobbing mouth.
The other knelt down, and tried to make his light burn
better, and laid his hand on the woman's breast to feel for a
pulse of life. But she was quite dead. He did what he could
20 SJQNA,
to call back life, but it was all in vain ; at length he coTered
her breast, and stared up at his fellow.
" This looks like Pippa," he said, slowly, with a sound as
of awe in his voice.
The other lowered his light too and looked.
"Yes, it is like Pippa,*' he said, slowly, also.
Then they were both silent for some moments, the lantern
light blinking in the rain.
" Yes, it is Pippa ; yes, certainly it is Pippa," said the first
one, stupidly ; and he ran his hand with a sort of shudder
over the outline of her features and her form.
The one who held the child turned his light on the little
wet face ; the baby ceased to cry, and opened his big, dark,
wondering eyes at the flame.
" And whose byblow is this?" said he.
" The devil knows/* said he who knelt by the mother.
" But it is Pippa. Look here on her left breast do you see?
there is the little three-cornered soar of the wound I gave her
with my knife at the wine fair that day."
The other looked ploser while the rain beat on the white
cold chest of the woman.
" Yes, it must be Pippa."
Then they were both silent again a little, for they were
Pippa's brothers.
** Let us go and tell them in the Lastra, and get the bier/*
said the one who knelt by her, getting up on to his feet, with
a sullen dazed gloom on his dark face.
" And leave her here ?" said the one who had the child.
" Why not? nobody will run away with the dead !"
" But this little beast what can one do with him ?"
" Carry him to your wife."
" There are too many at home."
" She has one of his age ; she can take him."
" She will never touch Pippa*s boy."
" Give him to me, then, and stay you here."
" No, that I dare not : the foul fiend might come after
her."
" The foul fiend take your terrors. Let us get into the Las-
tra ; we can see then. We must tell the Misericordia, and
get the bier "
" There is no such haste ; she is stone dead. What a pipe
SIGN A. 21
this brat lias I One would think it was a lamb with the knife
in its throat."
** It 18 very cold. Who would have thought it could haye
liyed such a fall as that, and such a night I
" It lives because nobody wants it. She had no gold about
her, had she ?"
" I do not know."
The one who held the child stooped over the dead woman
awhile, then rose with a sigh of regret :
" Not a stiver ; I have felt her all over."
'* Then she must have done ill these five years."
" Yes, and yet so handsome, too. But Fippa never plaited
even."
" Nay, never, ^poor Pippa!"
So they muttered, plodding over the broken heavy ground,
with the sound of the swollen river in their ears and their lan-
tern lights gleaming through the steam of the rain. In the
noise of the waters the child sobbed and screamed unheard.
The man had tossed him over his shoulder as he carried the
new-horn lambs, only with a little less care.
They clambered up into the road and tramped through the
slough of mud into the town. The woman had drawn nigh
to the upper town by a dozen yards, when her foot had slipped
and she had reeled over to her death. But the feet of the
shepherds were bare, and kept sure hold, like the feet of goats.
They tramped on, quick, through the crooked streets and over
the bridge ; the river had run nigh, and along the banks and
on the flat roofs of the towers there were the lights burning
of the men who watched for the flood. They heard how loud
and BwiiUy the river was running as they went over the bridge
and down into the irregular twisting street and under the old
noble walls of the lower village of the Lastra.
The one who carried the child opened a rickety door in the
side of a tumbl^own house, and climbed a steep stairway,
and pushed his way into a room where children of all ages,
and trusses of straw, and a pig, and a hen with her chickens,
and a black crucifix, and a load of cabbage-leaves and maize-
stalks, and a single lemon-tree in a pot, were all together
nearly indistinguishable in darkness.
He tossed the child to a sturdy brown woman with fierce
brows.
22 SIQNA,
^^ Here, Nita, here is a young one I found in the fields.
Feed it to-night, and to-morrow I will tell the priest and the
others, and we shall get credit. It is near dead of cold already.
No I cannot stay do you hear how the waters are out ?
Bruno is down below, wanting me to help house the sheep."
He clattered away down the stairs, and joined his brother
in the street.
" I told her nothing of Pippa," he said, in a whisper. " If
she knew it were Pippa's, not a drop of milk would he get to-
night. As it is, it is a pretty little beggar ; she will let bim
share with Toto. She knows charity pleases Heaven and the
Padre. And and see here, Bruno, why need we speak of
Pippa at all ?"
His brother stared at him in the murky gloom.
" Why ? why, we must fetch her in and bury her."
'^ The waters will do that before morning if we let them
alone ; that will spare us a deal of trouble, Bruno."
" Trouble why ?"
" Oh, it is always trouble the church, and the law, and all
the rest. Then, you know, the Padre is such a man to ask
questions. And nobody saw her but ourselves. And they
may say we tumbled her over. She has come back poor, and
all Signa knows that you struck at her with your knUe on the
day of the fair, and that she has been a disgrace and a weari-
ness always. We might have trouble, Bruno."
" But the child ?"
^' Oh, the child ! I have told Nita we picked it up lost in
the fields. Why should we tell anybody to-night about Pippa ?
The poor soul is dead. No worse can come. Men do not hurt
dead women. And there is so much to do to-night, Bruno.
We should see for the sheep on the other side now, and then
stay down here. The devil knows what pranks Amo may not
play to-night. In five hours, I warrant you, he will be out all
over the country."
" But to leave her there all alone ^it is horrible I"
^' How shall we show we did not push her there to her
death ?"
" But we did not"
'* That is why they would all say we did. Everybody knows
there was bad blood with us and Pippa ; and most of all with
you. Let the night go over, Bruno. We want the night to
SJGNA, 23
work in, and if she be there at day-dawn, tben we can tell. It
will be time enough."
" Well ^lie as you like," said the other, sullenly. " Let us
get the sheep in, anyhow."
So they went out to the open country again, through the
Btorm of the west wind that was blowing the river back from
the sea, so that it could not get out, and was driven up again
between the hills, and so overflowed the lands through which
it traveled. The men worked hard and in earnest housing
their own sheep and driving their neighbors' cattle on rising
knolls, or within church-doors, or anywhere where they were
safe from the water ; and then came down again into the street
towards midnight, where all the people were awake and astir,
watching Amo, and holding themselves ready to flee.
" You have got the ague, Bruno," said the man at the wine-
shop, for his arm shook as he drank a draught.
" So would you if you had been up to your middle in water
aU the night like me," said the elder brother, roughly. But
it was not the water : they were too used to that. It was the
thought of the woman dead all alone under the old sea road.
The night was a bitter black night.
Up the valley the river was out, flooding the pastures far
and near. Boats went and came, taking help, and bringing
homeless families. Watchfires were burning everywhere.
Bodies of drowned cattle drifted in by scores. There were'
stories that the great city herself was in flood. In such a time
every breath is a tale of terror, and every rumor grows in-
stantly to giant proportions.
The upper town of Signa itself was safe. But there was
great peril for the low-lying Lastra. No one went to their
beds. The priest prayed. The bells tolled. The men went
to and fro in fear. The horrid loudness of the roaring waters
drowned all other sounds.
When the morning broke, sullen and gray, and still beaten
with storm, the cold dull waste of water stretched drearily on
either side of the great bridge. The two brethren went with
the crowd that looked from it eastward and westward.
The river had spread over the iron rails, and the grassy,
broken ground, and the bushes of furze, and reached half-way
ap to the rocks and the hill-road above. The wind had changed,
aod was blowing in from the eastward mountains. The water
24 SJGNA.
rolled nnder its force with fiirious haste to the sea, like a thing
long imprisoned, and frantic with the joy of escape.
*' It has taken Pippa," said the hrothers, low to one another.
And they felt like men who have murdered a woman.
Not that it mattered, of coarse. She was dead. And if
not to the sea, then to the earth, all the dead most go, ^into
darkness, and forgotten of all.
CHAPTER IV.
The hrothers looked pale under their brown skins in the
ashen light of the dawn.
But they had lost sheep, like other folks, and so, like other
folks, were pitied as they went back into the Lastra to get a
mouthful of bread after the sickly Yigil of the night
Bruno was an unwedded man, and could bear misfortune ;
but Lippo was a man early married, and having mx young
children to clamor round his soup-pot and fight for the crusts
of bread. He was pointed out among the crowd of sufferers,
and was one of those who were pitied the most, and who was
sure to get a good portion of the alms-giving and public relief
^^ Give Bruno a cup of wine and a crust, Nita," said he,
going up the stairs into the house of his wife. He lived there
with her because her father, who was a cobbler, owned the
place, and he himself best liked the life of the Lastra. The
wife too, having been a cobbler's daughter and grand-daughter,
had been always used to see life from the half-door of the work-
shop ; she would not become a mere oontadina, hoeing and
weeding and plaiting and carrying dung in a broad-leavcd hat
and a russet gown, ^not she, were it ever so ; and Anita was
one of those strong and fortunate ' women who always get
their own way by dint of their power to make every one
wretched who crosses them.
" Leave me to speak,'' said Lippo, with a glance of mean-
ing to his brother.
It was five in the morning, very cold, and still dusky. Anx-
iety was allayed, since the wind blew from the east, and the
waters were sinking, though slowly.
SIGNA, 25
Nita, who bad been np all nigbt on the watch, like the rest
of the women, was boiling coffee in a tin pot, and fanning the
charcoal. The children lay about as they chose on the floor.
None of them had been put to bed, since at any moment they
might have had to run for their lives.
Bruno looked round for Pippa's child. He did not see it.
" An awfiil night," said Lippo, kicking the pig out of a
d(Me. " They do say the Vecchio bridge is down in Florence,
and that the jewelers could not get out in time. I wish the
gold and silver stones would drifb down here. All the
Gr^ve country is swamped. St. Giosto sticks up on his tower
like a masthead. The cattle are drowned by herds. Whole
stacks of wheat are against the piles, making hungry souls*
mouths water ; rotted and ruined ; fine last year's grain ; the
good God is bitter hard sometimes. Where is the baby I
brought you last night, my woman ?*'
Nita pointed with her charcoal fan ; her coffee was on the
point of boiling.
The brothers looked where she pointed, to a nest of hay
close to the hen and her chickens. The child lay there sound
asleep, with his little naked limbs curled up ; and close against
him was Toto, a yearling child also.
The elder brother turned away suddenly, and his body shook
a tittle.
" You have never dried your clothes, Bruno," said his sister-
in-law. " What a gaby a man is without a wife I Drink that :
it is hot as h6t. And what did you bring me that baby for
you and Lippo ? You know whose brat it is, I suppose, and
look out for the reward ? I thought so, or I would not have
given it house-room. Toto is more work than enough, so
masterful as he is and so ravenous."
** Nay," said Lippo, as with a sheepish apology for his weak-
ness, " I know nothing of whose brat it is. I was just sorry
for it, left in the soaking fields there ; and I picked it up as I
should pick up a lame lamb. What do you think of it, my
dearest? does it look like a poor child or a rich one, eh?
Women are quick to judge."
The black brows of Nita lowered in wrath.
" Mercy of heaven ! Who would have to do with such dolts
u men ? Just because the child was there you pick it up,
never thinking of all the hungry mouths half fed at home I
B 8
26 8IGNA.
Shame on yon I You are an nnnatnral brate. Yoa would
starve your own to nourish a stranger I"
" Nay, sweetest Nita/' murmured Lippo, coaxingly, " on
such a night and a child taken down by flood, too not a
living soul but would have done as I did. And who knows
but he may be some rich father s child, and make our fortunes?
Anyway, the township will give us credit, and he can go to
the Innocenti to-morrow, if we find no gain in him. Look
what his things betoken."
" " Oh, his things are rough-spun enough, and vile as can be,"
said his wife, in a fuming fury. " And would a rich man's
child be out on flood ? It is only the poor brats weather finds
loose for it to play antics with. The child is a beggar's son,
and this thing linked round his neck by a little string is a
thing you get at the fairs for a copper bit."
The two men looked together at the locket that she held to
them ; it was of base metal, ^a little poor round tmmperj
plaything. On it there was the one word, in raised letters,
of " Signa," and inside a curl of soft light hair. That was all.
They could none of them read, so the letters on the metal told
them nothing. They stooped together over the sleeping child.
He was pretty and well made ; he lay quite naked in the
hay, and beside brown Toto looked like one of the little white
marble children of old Mino. His lashes and his brows were
black, but over his forehead hung little rings of soft, fair,
crumpled hair.
Bruno turned away.
" She used to look just like that when she was a little child,^*
he muttered to himself
Lippo glanced round to see if his wife heard. But she was
busy with the hen, who had got into a barrel of rice, and was
eating treble her own price in the market at one meal.
'^ The brat must go," said she, turning and flogging the ben
away. *' As for a chance that it is a rich man*8 child, that is
all rubbish. You make your bread with next year's com.
Chances like that are old wives' talcs. What we have to do
is to feed six hungry stomachs. You were a fool to bring it
here at all. But to dream one should keep it 1 Holy Mary !"
^* Holy Mary would say, keep it," said Bruno, munching
his crust.
'^ Maybe it is your own, Bruno. Those that hide can find/*
SIGNA. 27
nid his Bister-in-Iaw, sharply. " The child shall pack to-day.
I shall go and tell them at the goard-house. Toto is more
than enough ; and as for that locket, you can get such trash
as that at any fair for a couple of figs. That goes for noth-
ing.
*' Well, well, keep the poor baby till noon, and I will see
what the curate says. It is always well to see what he says,"
her husband answered her, hurriedly, and afndd of the gather-
ing storm on Bruno's face.
Bruno was passionate, tempestuous, and weak, and the
quieter and subtler brother ruled him with ease whilst seeming
to obey. But for turning the baby of dead Pippa*s to public
maintenance, Lippo had a foreboding in him that in this mat-
ter his brother would be too strong for him.
He hurried away out of pretext of the labor awaiting them
in the inundated country, not without misgiving that the dark-
est suspicions as to the fatherhood of the foundling were
awakening in the jealous soul of his wife.
They went straight to the edge of the river, and got out
their old black boat, with its carved prow and tricolored tiller,
and pulled down the current of the now quiet water, to see
with the rest what they could help to save from the flotsam
and jetsam of the flood. Whole districts lay under water, and
the river was full of dead cats and dogs, drowned sheep, float-
ing pipkins and wine-casks, bales of hay, carcasses of cows,
and broken bits of furniture from many a ruined farmstead
and peasant's hut laid low.
" Listen," said the elder brother, suddenly, when the boat
was fairly out from the bank, and with his hooked pole he
drew in a spinning-wheel with its hank of flax drenched like
a drowned girl's hair. " Listen to me, Lippo. Pippa's son
must not go to charity. Do you hear ?"
"I hear. But we are poor men, and Pippa was "
" That is neither here nor there," said Bruno, with his dark
brows meeting. " She never asked alms of us, nor house-
mom, nor did anything except go to her death just as sheep
tamble over a rock. The baby must not go to the parish.
We did faulty enough, ^letting her go down flood with never
an office of church said over her. And who knows ? who
knows ? she might not be quite dead, afler all."
" Nita will not keep him, that is sure," said the younger,
28 SIQNA.
quickly. ^'Lookl that is Barcelirs old red cow. You maj
know her by the spot on the side."
" Would she keep him if she were paid ?"
Lippo's eyes lighted wich joy, but he bent a grave face over
his pole as he raked in a floating oil -flask by its wicker coat
'* I doubt she would not. She has a deal of trouble with
Toto. And who is there to pay, pray ? We know no more
than the cow there who the man was : you know that."
" I will pay."
" You I"
" Yes ; I will pay the child's keep."
"Holy angels! And you who were forever at words and
blows with Pippa, and stabbed at her even for being too gay !''
" I will pay," said Bruno.
Lippo rowed on in silence some momenta.
" How much ?" he asked, at last.
" I will give you half of all I get."
Lippo's white teeth showed themselves in a sudden smile.
His brother gained a good deal in corn and oil and beans and
hay and wine, being on good land, and being a man who
worked and got the uttermost out of the soil that he shared
with his master, and liippo was often pinched by his father-
in-law Baldo the cobbler, and half famished by his wife, and
was a true, thrifty son of the soil, and knew the worth of a
hundredth part of a copper coin as well as any man between
sea and mountain.
" Half of all you get, and we to keep the child," he said,
absently, and as with reluctance. " But what can we say to
Nita?"
" You are never at a loss for good lying, Lippo."
Lippo smiled ; his vanity was flattered.
" I never lie to Nita. She always finds one out. Only in
the matter of Pippa's son I hid the truth to please you. She
never would nurse the child if she guessed. But as for making
her keep him, say what one will, it will be impossible, ^im-
possible, my dear."
" It must be," said Bruno, withdrawing his band from the
tiller and bringing it down with violence on the boat's side,
while his eyes flashed with blue fire as the lightning flashes
most summer nights over the blue hills of his own Signa. " It
must be. I will pay. I will give you half I get. Oood bar-
SIQNA. 29
Tests, ^yon know what that is. But Pippa's child shall not
go to the parish while I have an arm to drive a plow through
the ground or to guide over the field. Settle it with your wife
jour own way. But Pippa*8 child shall grow up among us."
'' Dear Bruno, to please you I will try/* said gentle Lippo,
with a sigh. " But we have brats too many in the house, and
you know what Nita's ^ Nay' can be."
'' Nay or yea, the child stays," said Bruno.
" The half of everything," murmured Lippo, as he bent to
his oars and passed by a dog howling on the top of his floating
kennel to reach his pole to a butcher's basket of meat that
was tossing among the rubbish.
But Bruno, having the tiller, pushed first to reach the dog.
" It is only a cur," said Lippo.
Bruno pulled the dog into the boat.
In the Lastra, and in the town, and in all the country round
or near Signa, the brothers were known as well as the mass-bells
of the churches.
The Signa people thought that Bruno the contadino was a
bad man enough, ready with his knife and often in a brawl,
and too often seen at fairs and with other men's wives on feast-
days. Lippo they liked and respected, and everybody spoke
him fair ; and he would keep the peace most beautifully when
men got angry in the street before his house-door.
They were both handsome men, and could neither of them
read, and believed in their priest and their paternoster, and
had never been beyond the mountains around Signa, except
now and then Bruno with his bullocks, and Lippo in a
barroocino to buy leather^ down the Yaldamo into the Lily
City.
Bmno lived on the wild hill-side, among the thyme and the
myrtJe and the gorse and the grass cropping sheep and the
ever-singing nightingales. Lippo dwelt down in the street,
doing as little as he could, and by preference nothing, in the
smell of his wife's frying and in the sound of her father's little
hammer ; rowing out his boat when there was any chance for
it to pay, and seeing after the few sheep that the shoemaker
kt'pt above the bridge. They had been bom within a year of
each other, sons of peasants and workers in the fields.
Bruno had stayed on the old land where his fathers had had
righta of the soil uncounted generations. Lippo had loitered
8*
30 SIQNA.
down love-making into the Lastra, and had married veiy earlj
the daughter of well-to-do old Baldo.
There had been several sons after them. Two had been
killed as soldiers, and others had died in infancy by various
strokes of evil chance ; and the youngest of them all had been
Pippa, Pippa, whose body was gone out on the flood to the
sea with never a prayer said over her. Beautiful, fierce, way-
ward, willful, fire-mouthed Pippa, who had run over the hiUs
like a lizard, and who had had saucy words on her tongue as
a rose has its thorns, and who had had all Signa gazing after
her for her beauty when she walked singing like a cherub in
the wake of the banners of the church.
Not that she had ever cared much for the church, poor
Pippa I
* She had always been quarrelsome and self-willed and head-
strong, and had flouted her lovers, and been petulant to her
own hindrance, and as wild as a hawk, and provoking yes,
provoking past the endurance of any man who was a brodier
and nothing more. She would never sit quiet and spin ; she
would never keep her eyes on her tress of straw as other girls
did ; if she milked the cow she would upset the pail just out
of wantonness, and would laugh and dance to see their rage
when she let the pigs run in among her brothers* plot of green
peas. Yes, certainly, she was provoking ; a bad girl, even
though loving at heart ; no one was to blame that she had
gone away without a word, and come back so, with a child at
her breast, to find her death the night of the flood.
A self-willed foolish girl, and with wrong-doing ingrained in
her. As for patience, who could be i^ery patient with a woman
that let the pigs in among your peas just when green peas
fetched their weight in silver ? And then she had such a
tongue, too, the little shrew : true, she did not bear malice,
and would hot growl, growl, growl, for hours together, as Nita
would, and Nita's mother, thinking it the only way to manage
men ; true, she was a generous soul, and would let a beggar
have her dinner, though meals were meagre on the hills; and
when one had beaten her till she was blue she would not tell, but
say she had fallen from the ladder trimming the vines, or that
the bees had stung her. Still, a willful, quarrelsome, pettish
thing : no man could be blamed for her ill hap nor for her end.
So Lippo said to himself, when his brother had gone up to
SIONA. 31
the hills, and be himself left bis boat, to go down tbe narrow
street homeward, pondering on Pippa's cbild and on what be
should say to Anita.
As be went up the stairs he settled the lie to his mind's con-
tent, and entered tb^ room looking with bis fairest faith out
of his clear brown eyes.
" I am going to be frank with yon, Nita,^ he said, and then
he sat down and lied so prettily, that if there be a Father of
Lis he must quite have rejoiced to hear him.
Nita listened as well as a woman can listen, that is, inter-
mpting twenty times and getting up to do some irrelevant
thing twice twenty.
" Bruno's son !" she ci*ied, at last.
'' Hush ! The children will hear," said Lippo. " It is as I
tell you. Only Bruno must not know that you know, because
he is so afraid that red-haired Roma whom he is courting
should hear of it. But you see why I closed with him, Nita.
It will be a good thing for us. We can eat like fatting pigs
off Bruno's land. Nothing to prevent us. Though it is only
hill land, I know, still his share comes to a good bit, taking
fair weather and foul. And then, besides that, we shall have
credit in tbe Lastra, for Bruno never will say a word, and the
curato and all the place may as well think the child a found-
ling as not. A good deed smells sweet in the neighbors' nos-
trils, and a good name is like a blest palm. We must tell your
father, or he will grumble at there being a seventh mouth. But
nobody else need know. The brat will grow up with the others,
and we shall seem kind : that is all."
" To think of its being Bruno's !" cried Nita, with a clap
of her big brown bands. " Did I not say so, now ? Did I not
jeer him as be looked at it asleep ? Ob-bo ! Who can deceive
me ? Never you try, Lippo, more !"
" You can see through a millstone," replied Lippo, with an
embrace of her. " Only an ass can ever seek to blind you ; and
that is why I told you the truth, though Bruno would have
screened it. He is so afraid of tbe creature he goes to now
ever knowing, ^you understand."
" The child wUl be a bother," said Anita, remembering the
kicks and cuifs with whose best administration she could scarce
manage to keep the peace among her brood or their hands ever
oat of tbe soup-pot
32 8IGNA,
"Ob, no," said Lippo, shragging his shouldera: "where
there are six there may as well be seven. He will tumble up
with the others. We are to have half of all Bruno gets; and
I can guess to a stalk, you know, what an acre of wheat is
worth or what an olive or a fig tree bears. No bailiff would
outwit me. I was not bred out on the fields for nothing. Half
of everything, you know, Nita. That will mean a good deal in
good seasons. I am very hungry, carina. Could you not fry
somethiog in oil, nice and tempting, for one ? An artichoke,
now, or a blackbird ?'*
Nita grumbled at the extravagance, but, being in a good
humor, went down-stairs and across the way and brought over
some artichokes and fried them and ate them with her husband,
the children being sent to make dust pies and castles in the
sun on the stones below, old Baldo keeping an eye on them
over his half-door.
Lippo and his wife ate their artichokes, and drank a 'little
wine with them.
Pippa's son cried unnoticed in his nest of hay, and sobbed
out his one little word for mother, which was like the moan of
a little unfledged bird left in the snow.
" We will bring him up to help himself," said Lippo, with
his mouth filled with the fried eggs and oil.
The child sobbed on, and felt for his mother*s breast, and
only had his small soil rosy hands torn with the thorns and
pricked with the burs and briers of the sun-dried hay.
CHAPTER V.
Meanwhile, Bruno went on up the hills ; up the same old
road which had felt Pippa's footsteps on it the night before ;
with the river underneath it, and on the other side the moun-
tains rising, with the olives and vines about their sides, and
on their summits old watch-towers and fortresses, and dusky
woods of ilex, and cloudy masses of stone-pine, that sent their
sweet strong odor down the valley a score of miles.
Bruno went on his way, looking neither right nor left. He
8I0NA. 33
went over the groand so often, and be liad seen it all from the
year he was born ; always this, and never anything else, and
long familiurity dulls the sense of beauty, even where such
sense has been awakened \ and Bruno's never had been, ex-
cept for a woman's looks.
He strode on, not looking up nor looking back ; a straight-
limbed, swarthy, fine-built peasant, of thirty years or more,
with the oval face of his country, and broad, black, luminous
eyes, soft and contemplative, like the eyes of the ox, when the
rage was not alight in them.
He did not look round, because peasants do not look up
from the soil ; and he did not look back, because he had no
care to see the spot where he had kneeled down in the wet
grass by the broken bushes, with the noise of the river in his
ears.
He went up the sea-road some way, and then quitted it and
struck to the left. The soil to which he belonged was on the
side of a great bold hill, that turned to Signa and faced straight
down the valley, and whose wine is named in the Bacoo in
Toscana of RedL There are beautiful hills in this country,
steep and bold, and chiefly of limestone and granite, covered
all over with gumcistus and thyme and wild roses and myrtle,
with low-growing kureb and tall cypresses, and boulders of
stone, and old thorn-trees, and flocks of nightingales always,
and the sad- voiced little gray owl that was beloved of Shelley.
Bruno's farmstead was on one of these hills ; half the hill
was cultured, and the other half was wild ; and on its height
was an old gray, mighty place, once the palace of a cardinal,
and where there now dwelt the steward of the estate on which
Bmno had been bom.
His cottage was a large, low, white building, with a red roof,
and a great arched door, and a sun-dial on the wall, and a
group of cypresses beside, and a big walnut-tree before it.
There was an old well with some broken sculpture ; some fowls
scratching under the fig-boughs ; a pig hunting for roots in
the black bare earth ; behind it stretched the wild hill-side,
and in front a great slope of fields and vineyards ; and far
below them in the dbtance the valley and the river and the
. bridge, with the high crest of the upper Signa, and the low-
lying wall towers of the Lastra on either side of the angry
Waters.
34 SIGNA.
BniDO did not look back at it all. He saw the san xiae
over it, and the beautiful pale light steal up, and up, and up,
and up, whenever he arose to his work in the day-dawn. Bat
it was nothing at all to him. When now and then a trareler
or a painter strayed thither, and said it was beautiful, Bruno
smiled, glad because it was his own country : that was all.
He went into his cold, quiet, desolate house, and sat down for
a minute*s rest : he was tired.
There was no one to greet him. He did everything for him-
self. Ho had nd neighbors. The nearest oontadino lived &
mile down beyond the fields which in summer were a sea of
maize and a starry world of fire-flies ; and the old palace was
some distance higher on the crest, where the gorse grew thick-
est, and the mountain-moss clustered about the roots of the
stone pines.
Here in the long, low, rambling dwelling, with the sun-
dial on its wall, and the great archways underneath it, and the
stacks of straw before it there had been nine of them onceu
Now Bruno lived there alone.
He sat down a minute on the settle, and thought. Think-
ing was new work to him. He never thought at all, except
of the worm in the ripening wheat, or the ticks in the flock s
fleeces. The priest did his thinking for him. What use was
it to pay a priest for having opinions, if one had to think for
one's self as well ?
But he sat and thought now.
Poor Pippa! what a little, ruddy, pretty thing she was
lying in her white swaddling bands, when he was a big, rough
boy twelve years old, with bare feet and chest, who used to
come in from the fields hungry and footsore, and feel angry to
see the last-come child at his mother's breast, getting all her
care and caresses.
He bore Pippa a grudge for her birth. They were all
boys, rough-and-tumble together, share and share alike ; and
then one summer morning the girl came, and thdr mother
never seemed the same to them again, ^never any more. The
little girl, with a face like a bud of the red-rose laurel, seemed
to be all she thought about, or so they fiincied ; and anything
good that could be got, honey, or a drop of new milk, or a lit-
Qe white loaf from the town, or an apricot from the fattoria,
was always set aside for Pippa, ^pretty, saucy, noisy, idle
SIGNA. 35
Pippa, wlio was more often in mischief than they were, but
never got as they did a thrashing and a wish that the devil
might oome and fetch away all naughty children.
There had been times when he had hated Pippa, hated her
from the first day he saw her lying on her mother's bosom,
with her little red mouth clinging as a bee does at a flower, to
the night when he had scolded her for dancing with any fool
that afiked her, and then she had mocked him about a dead
love, and he had struck at her with his knife, and the people
had dragged him off her ; he all blind with rage and shame
at his own misdoing ; and the blood had spouted out up from
her neck, and stained the lace she wore as red as a goldfinch's
feathers.
He had hated her always.
It seemed to him now that he had been like a brute to her,
^poor, pretty, brown-eyed, happy, self-willed thing, who had
been spoiled from her babyhood upward.
Lippo remembered how provoking she had been, and justi-
fied himself, as he went home through the Lastra.
But Bruno forgot it, and only reproached himself. He had
always been rough and fierce and moody with her, oh,
yes, no doubt. If he had been patient with her, he
twdve years older, too, she might never have run away from
her home on the hill, and borne that nameless child, and gone
to her death on the old sea-road.
No doubt he had done wrong by her, ^had been too severe
and tyrannical, and had helped to make the cottage distasteful
to her after their mother had died and he had become master.
and had tried to shut her in as a thrush is shut in a wicker
cage.
He forgot all her faults, poor dead Pippa, and he re-
membered all his own. Liberal natures will err thus to them-
selves ; and Bruno, with all his evil ways, was as liberal aa
the sun and winds.
Poor Pippa !
He saw her as he had seen her standing out in the light on
the hill, with her little brown hands plaiting the straw all un-
evenly, and her bow-like mouth gay with laughter at some
piece of mischief sweet to her as a fig in summer. She had
used to look so pretty, with her arch eyes shining under her
great straw pent-house of a hat, and her supple, sUm shape, in
36 SIQNA,
brown and red, like a fire-fly standing np as a poppy does
against the com on the amber light of the evening sky, here
where the hill was just the same, and only she was a thing
that was gone for ever and ever and ever.
Bruno shut his eyes not to see the hill. But he could not
shut out his thoughts. He had been a brute to her. It
stirred and grew in him, this mute remorse, which Lippo
would have laughed at, and which had been awakened ever
since he had gone about his business as the river rose, and left
the dead woman alone to driH down with the flood.
She was dead, of course, and it could hurt her no more to be
swept out to the salt sea-pools westward than to be lowered
into the earth in a coffin. Still, Bruno, if he had gone straight
to the priest and told him, and had let the church sorrow over
and bury her, would not have been tormented by the thought
of her as he was now. Now, in a curious kind of half-stupid
way, he felt as if he had found her and had killed her.
There had been war between him and Pippa always ; and
though it had shocked him a little to find her lying there life-
less in the dark, yet he had not cared much at first. But
since he had forsaken her to the will of the waters in the
vague fear of that nameless trouble which his brother had
threatened him with as possible, Bruno a brave man all his
days felt a coward ; and with the tingling shame of that new
craven sense came a self-reproach in which every rough word
and fierce act of his life against the lost creature rose in
judgment against him.
Poor Pippa I
After all, what had her faults been ? Only nurth and over*
eagerness for pleasure, and a quick tongue, and a love of the
sunshine idly spent among fruits and flowers whilst others
were working. These were all.
She had been truthful and generous of temper, and never
unwilling to forgive. Nay, though he had struck at her with
his open blade that fair night, she had called out to the peo-
ple not to hurt him for it ; and when she had left, the hill-side
that very summer, no one knew for whither nor with whom,
did she not say to an old woman, who alone saw her going through
the millet at break of day with a bundle, " Tell my brothers
I am not angry any more: they have been unkind to me, but I
have been troublesome, and said hot words very often ; and I
SIQJUA. 37
wiD pray for tbem, if that will do any good : only tell them
not to try to bring me back, because we never are at peace
together " ?
Poor Pippa I
He shut his eyes agiunst the sunlight ; but, shut ^em as
he would with both hands, he saw her as he had seen her last
coming through the bean-flowers, with the long evening
shadows and the little golden fire-flies seeming to run before
her; when he had turned across the fields and avoided her
because of the thrust with the knife, which he had never
spoken of, and of which he was half ashamed and half defiant,
and which therefore he would never admit that he regretted,
but lived on in silence with her under the same roof, trusting
to chance.
And chance came, the chance that one summer morning
the bed of Pippa was empty, and old Viola, coming in with a
sheaf of green cane for her donkey, told them how she had
met the girl, and of her farewell words.
Shut his eyes as he would, he saw her so ; among the purple
bean-flowers that night when his heart had swelled a little at
sight of her, and he had been half inclined to tell her he was
sorry for that blow, and then had felt the pride rise in him,
and had said to himself that the girl had deserved it, dis-
obeying him, and then jesting at him, and so had struck
across the rustling com, and let her go without a word.
And now she was dead, gone out on the flood to the sea ;
and he had never told her that he had been sorry for the stab,
and never could tell her now.
Would God tell her ? or any one of the saints ?
Bruno wondered. He felt as if that dead woman whom
the river had got stood forever between him and all the hosts
of heaven.
He was a strong man, and his emotions and his intelligence
were both unawakened, and his life was much like that of his
own plow bullocks ; but he shuddered through all his limbs
as he rose up from the wooden settle and faced the day. Work
with the laborer is an instinct, as watehing is the house-dog's ;
and pain may stifle it for a moment, but no more.
He went out and unloosed the bar of the stable-doors, and
brought out his oxen, and muzzled them, and yoked them
together, and drove them out over the steep, slanting fields that
4
38 SIGNA.
ran upward and downward, and were intersected by lines of
maples and mulberries with the leafless vines clinging to tbem,
and by watercourses cut deep that the rain might be borne
down the mountain-side, and by wild hedges of briony and
rose and arbutus unido, with here and there winter-red leaves
of creepers that the winds had forgotten to blow away.
It was a gray morning, with heavy white mists lying over
all the valley down below ; and on die high hills it was very
cold. Bruno drove his meek large-eyed beasts through the
black earth with a heavy heart.
He seemed always to see Pippa as she had used to come,
when their father lived, and she was a child, with a black loaf
and a flask of wine, out to them on the hill in the plowing*
time, and stroked the bullocks, and put round their leathern
frontlets gay wreaths of anemones, purple and red and blue,
and the berries of the beautiful carbezzulo.
And now she was dead, stone dead, ^like the mouse the
share killed in the furrow.
The bullocks, well used to goad and curse, turned ih&i
broad foreheads and looked at him with luminous fond eyes :
he was so gentle with them ; they were grateful, but they won-
dered why.
Bruno plowed all day, and the wind blew up from the sea,
and he felt as if it were blowing her long wet hair against
him.
" I will do good by the child, so help me , and perhaps
they will tell her in heaven," he said to himself, as he went to
and fro up and down the shelving fields underneath the lines
of the leadless trees.
'^ Perhaps they will tell her in heaven ?*' he thought, as he
went over the heavy wet clods in the mist.
SJ0NA. 39
CHAPTER VI.
Brunoke Marcillo, always known as Brnno, was what
alibis people had always been ibr seven hundred centuries and
more.
They liad been vassals and spearmen in the old warlike
times, and well-to-do contadini ever afterwards ; giving their
Bons, when need arose, to die in the common cause of the
Dative soil, bat otherwise never stirring off their own hillside ;
fsood husbandmen, bold men, fierce haters, honest neighbors,
keeping their womenkind strictly, and letting their males have
as mudb license as was compatible with unremitting and patient
labor in all seasons. '
They were a race remarkable for physical beauty, a beauty
that is strictly national; the dark straight-browed classic
beauty which Cimabue has put in his Garden of Olives, and
Signorelli given to his noble Prophets.
They had always intermarried with mountain races like
thmr own, or taken wives from the Lastra households, where
the ancient blood ran pure. The father of Brunone and Lippo
had done otherwise ; he had taken a work-girl of the city, a
pretty feckless thing, whom he had seen one market night that
he had strayed into the Loggia theatre, when a good harvest
had put too much loose cash in his pockets, and the humors
of Cimarosa*8 Nemeci Generosi had been making him laugh
till he cried.
The girl had become to him a good wife enough, nobody had
denied that ; but she was not of the stem stuff that the Mar-
alio housewives always had been, with their busts of Geres
and their brows of Juno, their arms that could guide the oxen
and their heads that could balance a wine-barrel.
She was timid, and some said false, though that was never
proved, and she had not the hill-bom strength of mind and
body that these people who had lived nigh a thousand years
in the same air possessed. Her second son, Filippo, or Lippo,
inherited her constitution, and with it her supplicating caress
of manner and her timidity, perhaps her falseneiw too ; but
40 SIQNA.
the Lastra did not think so; the Lastra was fond of Lippo,
though he had deserted the ways of his fathers, and dwck in
an idleness not altogether creditable and altogether alien to the
habits of his race, who had always been used to labor together,
father and sods, and often grandsons, all under the same roof
and on the same fields, generation after generation.
When the large family dwindled down to the one man, it was
out of custom to leave so much land to a solitary laborer.
But Brunone Marcillo was a favorite with his master, and one
of the best husbandmen in the province ; besides, he was sure
to marry and fill the house, they thought : so he was Icfl un-
disturbed, and the land suffered nothing ; for, though he loved
his pleasure in a wild, lawless way, and took fierce fits of it at
times, he was devoted to his homestead and his work, and loved
his birthplace with that fast-rooted love of the Tuscan which
makes the little red roof under the red evening skies, on the
solitary upland, or in the silent marsh, or amidst the blue-
flowered fields of flax, or above the thyme-covered, wind-blown
hills by the sea, more precious and more lovely than any
greater fate or fairer gifts elsewhere.
All alone on his little farm Bruno became a man well-to^o,
and who could have put money by had he not loved women
so well, so they said.
It was a broad, rich piece of land that went with the dwell-
ing-house he occupied. lie grew wheat and maize, and beans,
and artichokes, and had several sturdy fig-trees tliat yielded
richly, and noble olives that numbered their hundred years,
and the vines that marched with his corn were among the best
in the Signa country.
The half of all its produce was his, according to the way of
the land and the provisions of custom ; and the house was a
better one than most of its degree ; and the fields that were
his lay well on the open hill-side, sun-swept, as was wanted
by vines and grain both, but sheltered from cold winds by the
jutting out of the quarried rocks and the woods of ilex and
pine that were above.
Bruno was a laborious workman, and was skilled in field-
labor ; he knew how to make an ear of barley bear double,
and how to keep blight away, and the fly from the vine.
He could not read ; he could not write ; his notions ^ God
were shut up in a little square colored picturBi framed and
SIGNA. 41
bniig up over the gateway into his fields to bring a blessing
there ; bis idea of political duty was compressed into hating
any one who taxed him, and being ready to shoot any one
who raised the impost on grain ; but he was a husbandman
after Virgil's own heart; he wanted no world beyond the
waving of his com, and if a steer were sick, or when the
grapes were ripe, he took no sleep, but watched all night,
loving his cattle and his fruits as poets their verse or kings
their armies.
On the whole, Bruno led a contented and prosperous life,
and, if he had not been so ready with his wrath, might have
been welcome in all households ; and if he had not been over-
fond of those fairs in all the little towns where wandering
players set up their little music-booths, and of the women that
he found there, and of the license that is always to be had by
any man whose money-bag has its mouth open and its stomach
filled, Bruno might have become also a very wealthy man in
his own way. But he was fierce, and every one feared him,
and he was improvident, and every one fleeced him. And he
was lax and lawless in his loves, and had a dangerous name
in the country-side among the mothers of maidens.
So that he of all men had had no title to bo hard upon
Pippa : and yet hard he had been always.
The most amorous men and the wildest are usually the most
exacting of virtue and modesty in their own women.
He had always hated her, yes, honestly hated her, he told
himself; and as she grew up into girlhood, and they were shut
alone in the same house, always opposed one to another, Pippa's
idleness, and sauciness, and rebellion against home-keeping, and
passion for dancing, and straying and idling, infuriated him
against her more and more with every day that dawned.
Bruno, with all his excesses, never n^lected or slurred over
his labor. The land and its needs were always first with him.
He would have had his sister one of those maidens, numerous
around him, who asked nothing better than the daily round
of household and field duties ; who could reap as well as a
man ; who could harness an ox and guide him ; and who were
busy from dusk of dawn to nightfall hoeing, drawing water,
spinning,* plaiting, shelling beans, rearing chickens, drying
tomatoes, setting cauliflowers, thinning fruit-trees, winding
iiUk off the oocooDS, and went to bed with tired limbs and a
4*
42 SIGNA.
light conscionoe, never dreaming of more pleasure than a stroQ
on a feast-daj with a neighbor, or a new white linen skitt for
some grand church function.
Why was not Pippa like that, he had asked himself, angrily,
ten thousand times, instead of a girl that would hardly do aa
much as tie up a few bunches of carnations or St Catherine
lilies for the market ?
The Marcillo women had always been reared in strong nso-
fulness and in stem chastity. This handsome, buoyant, gay,
insolent, idle thing ofifended him in every way and at every
turn.
He would have married her away willingly, and dowered
her well, to the first honest fellow ; but Pippa had laughed in
the faces of all the neighbors* sons who had wanted her to
wed with them. She was in no hurry, she said.
She made all the countryside in love with her, and then
turned her back on it with a saucy laugh, and the sunshine in
her face was never merrier than whenever she heard that two
young fellows had qiiarreled about her and drawn knives on
each other, and set all the Lastra talking.
So that when Pippa disappeared many were glad, and none
very sorry. Bruno smarted with shame, that was all.
Indeed, when she was gone away, the townsfolk talked of a
foreigner, a student and painter, who had been seen with the
girl at evening on the road, or by the river, or in the shadow
of the old Lastra bastions ; a young man with a delicate fkce,
and a playful way, and a gay tongue, who had wandered on
foot, with his knapsack and colors, down from the Savoy
country and into Tuscany, and had danced often with Pippa,
and had been met with her after sunset on the hill-side.
But none had told Bruno till too late, being afraid of bis
too ready knife if a hint were taken wrong, and he had known
nothing of these tales until Pippa had vanished, and even then
the neighbors were slow to rouse his wrath by telling the
scanty rumors they had heard.
Even the young man*s name the people had not known,
a youngster lightly come and lightly gone, whom no one took
account of till of a sudden they noticed that ho had been
unseen since Pippa had been missing. He had lodged a little
while above a wine-shop, and gone up and down the river,
and to and from the old white town, painting ; and had danced
8IQNA. 43
at die fiuTS, and learned to strum on a guitar, and had eaten
piles of figs, and had been restless and graceful as a fire-fly :
that waa all ; and only a few women had observed as much as
that
It told nothing to Bruno ; and, besides, if they had told
him a hundred times as much, he could have done nothing :
a oontadino is rooted to the soil, and it no more would have
seemed possible to him to travel into far countries than to
have used his plowshare for a boat, or driven his steers to turn
the sea like sod.
People had hardly ever thought what Pippa*s fate had been.
If anything great had come to her, the countryside would have
heard of it.
In these little ancient burghs and hill-side villages, scattered
up and down between mountain and sea, there is often some
boy or girl, with a more wonderful voice, or a more beautiful
face, a sweeter knack of song, or a more vivid trick of impro-
visation than the others ; and this boy or girl strays away some
day with a little bundle of clothes and a coin or two, or is fetched
away by some far-sighted pedlar in such human wares, who buys
them as bird-fanciers buy the finches from the nets ; and then,
yearLand years afterwards, the town or hamlet hears indis-
tinct of some great prima donna, or of some lark-throated
tenor, that the big world is making happy as kings and rich
as kings' treasurers, and the people carding the flax or shell-
ing the chestnuts say to one another, " That was little black
Lia, or that was our old Momo ;" but Momo or Li^ the village
or the vine-fields never see again.
If anything great had come in that sort of way to Pippa,
Signa would have heard of it. There is always some one to
teD of a success, always some one to bring word, so that the
friends may gird up their loins and go and smell out the spoil,
claim the share of it, and remind Momo, as he comes out of a
palace, of his barefoot babyhood, and call to Li^'s mind the
time when she, who now quarrels with princes, was once glad
of the dog*s bran bread, ^ut none had ever said anything of
Pippa. She had dropped out of sight and remembrance, and
no one had asked what had become of her, though the girl had
been beautiful in her way, darkly, brightly, roughly, tenderly,
capriciously beautiful, like the barley blowing from shade to sun,
~only, no man ever would stand her temper, said the women.
44 SIGNA.
That had been conceded everywhere; and her brothers had
been pitied.
Between the day that she had gone over the fields with the
farewell word to old Viola and the night that she had stumbled
to her death, over the sea, in the dark road, no one had ever
heard or known anything of Pippa.
But it was not because her story was a strange one ; it was
only because it was so common. Mystery is to the tongue of
the story-teller as butter to the hungry mongrel ; but what is
simple is passed over by human mouths as daisies by the graz-
ing horse.
Her tale was very simple.
That fair-day in Signa she had been so resolute to go to the
merry-making because of the stranger who would whirl to the
thrum of the mandolin as a bat does when a lamp bums, and
who would come through the bean-flowers to see her plait straw
when her brothers were out in the field, and who was gay like
herself, and passionate, and young, and found but one song
worth the singing when the sun went down and the fire-flies
burned.
Then there had come Bruno's blow, and the stab in her
breast ; and all a man's natural passion of sympathy had been
aroused, and all a girl's terror of her fierce brother's worse ven-
geance, if only the truth were known.
And so her lover took her with him when he went back to
France, while the bean-flowers were still in blossom ; and Pippa
loved him like a dog : ^poor Pippa I who, always having been
so saucy of tongue, and stubborn of neck, and proud, and full
of petulance, clung like a vine, and crouched like a spaniel,
and trembled like a leaf, when once she loved, as all such
women do.
Thus the broad shining Tuscan fields were changed for the
streets of Paris, and the hills of olive for the roofs of lead, and
the song of the grilla for the beat of the drum, and the fires of
the lucciole for the shine of the gas ; and Pippa, a thing of sun
and wind and sea-blown air, fresh as a fruit and free as a bird,
was cooped up in a student*s attic, with the roar of the traflic
forever on her ear, and the glistening zinc of her ueighbors'
house-roofs forever before her casement.
He did what he could for her.
He was a landscape painter and a student of Paris. He
8JGNA. 45
liad a beautiful face, great dreams, ardent passions, and no
money, except such little pittance as an old doting mother, a
widow in a little Breton hamlet, conld send him by pinching
herself of oil and bread. For three months he worshiped
Pippa ; and this scarlet poppy from the Tuscan wheat glowed
on a hundred canvases in a hundred forms ; and then, of course,
he tired. Then, of course, the poppy ceased to be a magical
flower of passion and of sleep ; it seemed only a red bubble,
blowing useless in the useful com.
He thought he hid this from her ; but she felt it before he
knew it. Women will always do so who love their lives out in
a year, as Pippa did.
The Mcmds, and B^b^, and L4b^ around her were happy
enough, with a pot of mignonette for their garden, and a
theatre for their heaven, and a Sunday in the woods now and
then for their liberty. Besides, they could all chatter with
one another, and change their lovers, if need were, and sing
little triplets, like little canaries, as they sat sewing at rose-
colored dance-skirts or twirling up their cambric mock-rose-
buds.
But Pippa was in exile. Pippa had the woman*s worst
crime of loving over-much. Pippa had brought nothing with
her but her own full, fierce, fond little heart of storm. Pippa
felt her heart break in this cage.
Pippa could not read. Pippa knew nothing that he talked
of, except when he told her that he loved her ; and men get
weary of saying this too long to the same woman. Pippa could
only plait straw, and that not very well ; and no one wanted
it in Paris.
Pippa, when in the dance-gardens, one night, struck with a
knife at a man who would have kissed her, and wounded him
florely, and, when hidden away from the perils that arose, could
not be made to see she had done wrong, because Bruno had
stabbed her and she had borne him no m^ice, and here she was
on her just defense and had done right, she thought. Then
her lover was wroth with her, and Pippa, whose spirit was
broken, like that of all fiery creatures when they love, could
only sob and kiss his feet ; and then he went elsewhere.
Then came hard winters, and a crying child, and the garret
Was cold and empty, and debt stole in like a ghost, and hunger
with him, and Pippa sold her pearls, ^real pearls, fished up
46 8IONA,
from the deep sea by ooral-divers, and worn at fain and feuta
by her with the honest pride of the true Tnscan peasant. Only
she never let him know the pearls were sold. She made him
think that it was one of his own pictures which had brought
them that little heap of gold.
But that money lasted very little time, and the child sickened
and died, and the summer came ; but that would not banish
hunger ; and Pippa lost her beauty, and her rich, round, ra-
diant look, and her great brown eyes got a frightened look,
because he so seldom kissed her now, and sometimes would
g^ve her a little gesture like that which a man gives when he
sweeps away quickly with his elbow some dead flower or
dropped ashes. Tet still he was good to her, oh, yes, he was
good. Pippa told herself so a thousand times a day. He
never beat her. Pippa, once so saucy and so proud, was grate-
ful. Love is thus.
Then another winter came, ^the third one : that was hardest
They had nothing to eat for many days. They sold their
clothes and their bed-linen, and even the copper pot in which
their food was stewed ; and she had no more pearls.
Pippa had nothing, either, of her beauty lefl but her straight
brows and her big lustrous eyes. She was no longer even i
bright bubble, as the field-poppy was. She was a little dusky
peasant, pale and starved, and blown among the snow like i
frozen redbreast.
" It b the pictures he cares for," she had learned to say to
herself. She had found this out. She got to hate them, the
senseless things of wood and color, that cost so much money,
and now had all his looks, all his longings, all his memories,
all his regrets.
She hated even those canvas likenesses of herself, that had
blossomed into being with the purple bean-floweis under the
summer suns of Signa, when their passion was new-bom.
Pippa loved her lover with the same love, fierce and faith-
ful and dog-like and measureless, as when he had first taken
her small head within his handis and kissed her on the ejes
and mouth.
But it was a love that could understand nothing, least of all,
change.
One day, in the bitterness of the mid-winter, after weeks of
hunger, and the shameful straits of the small debts that make
SIONA. 4n
the oommonest acts and needs of daily life a byword and re-
proach, she woke to find herself alone.
There were twenty gold pieces on the bed, long stripped of
all its covering, and a written line or two. She took the paper
to the woman of the house below, who read it to her. It told
her that he was gone to Dresden to copy a famous picture for
a wealthy man : he sent her all the sum they had advanced
him, and said a little phrase or two of sorrow and of parting,
and of hope of better days, and of the unbearable pain of
such beggaiy as they had known. He spoke vaguely of some
union in the future.
Pippa cast the twenty gold pieces into the mud of the street,
where the poor scrambled and clutched and fought for them.
She understood that she was forsaken.
All he had said was true ; but the great truth was what he
had not said. Pippa was ignorant of almost everything \ but
this she knew enough to know.
That night they took her to a mad-house, and cut close the
long brown braids of her hair, and fastened together the feet
that had used to fly as the wind flies, through the paths of the
vines in summer.
Poor Pippa ! She had always plaited ill ; the women had
always said so.
In half a year*s time she gave birth to a child and her rea-
son came back to her, and afler a time they let her go. She
promised to go to her own country.
But she cheated them, and went to Dresden. She had kept
that name in her mind. She got there as best she could, b^-
ging on the way or working ; but of work she knew so little,
and of workers there aro so many. She carried the child all
the way. Sometimes people were good to her ; sometimes they
were bad ; oftenest they wero neither one nor the other. In-
difference is the invincible giant of the world.
When she reached Dresden, it was Buknmer. The city was
empty.
With much trouble she heard of him. The copy was done,
and he was gone back to France.
'' Perhaps he does not want you. If he wanted you he would
not leave you," said a comely woman, who was sorry for her,
but who spoke as she thought, giving her a roll of bread under
a tree in the street
48 SIGNA.
" Perhaps lie does not want me," thought Pippa. The
words awoke her memory. She had been lefl by him. He
would not have left her unless he had been tired, tired of all
the poverty and all the pain, and of the passion that liad lost
its glow, as the poppy loses ita color once being leaped with
the wheat
There was a dull fierce pain in her. There were times when
she wished to kill him. Then at other times she would see a
look of his face in the child's, and would break into an an*
guish of weeping.
Anyway, she set backward to find bim.
Carrying the child, that grew heavier with each day, and
traveling sometimes with gypsies and vagrants and mounte-
banks, but more often alone and begging her bread on the way,
she got back into France afler many months. She had got
stupid and stunned with fatigue and with pain. She had lost
all look of youth, only she kept the child as fresh as a rose ;
and now and then she would smile, because his mouth lauded
like her lover's.
Back into Paris she went. The strange fortunes that shelter
the wretched kept her in health and in strength, though she
rarely had a roof over her at night, and all she ate were the
broken pieces that people gave her in pity.
In his old haunts it was easy to hear of him ; he had gone
to study in Rome.
" He will do well for himself, never fear," they said, in the
old house on the Seine water, where her dream of joy had
dreamt itself away. Some great person, touched by his pov
erty and genius, and perhaps by his beauty, had given him
means to pursue the high purposes of his art at leisure. ScHOie
said the great person was a woman, and a princess : no one
knew for sure. Anyhow, he was gone to Rome.
Pippa knew the name of Rome.
People had gone through Signa sometimes, to wind away by
the sea-road, among the marshes and along the flat sickly
shores, to Rome. And now and then through Signa, at fair
time, or on feast days, there had strayed little children, in
goat-skins, and with strange pipes, who played sad airs, and
said they were from Rome.
But the mountains had always risen between her and Rome.
It had always been to her far off as some foreign land. Never-
SIQNA. 49
theles, she set out for Rome by the sole way she knew, the
way that she had traveled with him, straight across France
and downward to the sea, and along the beautiful bold road,
under the palm-trees and the sea- Alps, and so along the Cor-
Dicbe back to Signa.
She knew that way ; and, toilsome though it was, it was
made sweet to her by remembered joys.
He had gone with her; and at every halting-place there
was some memory so precious, yet so terrible, that it would
liaTe been death to her, only the child was there, and wanted
her, and had his smile, and so held her on to life. He had been
with her in the summer and autumn weather ; and all the way
had been made mirthful with love's happy, foolish ways ; and
the dust of the road had been as gold to her, because of the
8weet words he murmured in her ear ; and when they were
tired they had leaned in each other's arms, and been at rest ;
and e^ery moonlit night and rosy morning had been made
beautiful, because of what they read in each other's eyes and
heard in the beating of each other's hearts.
Pippa had forgotten nothing ; she had only forgotten that
she had been forsaken.
Women are so slow to understand this always ; and she,
since that day when she had flung the money in the street,
and fallen like a furious thing, biting the dust, and laughing
horribly, had never been too clear of what had happened to
her.
There was the child, ^nd he her love was lost. This was
all she knew.
Only she remembered every trifle, every moment, of their
first love-time ; and as she went, walking across great countries
as other women cross a hay-field or a village street, she would
look at the rose-bush at a cabin-door and think how he had
plncked a rosebud there ; or touch a gate-rail with her lips
becaufle his hand had rested on it ; or lift the child to kiss a
wayside crucifix because he had hung a rope of woodbine there
and painted it one noonday ; and at each step would murmur
to the child, " See, he was here, and here, and here, and
here,'* and would fancy that it understood, and slept the sweeter
because told these things.
Poor Pippa ! she had always plaited ill.
Women do, whose only strand is one short human love,
c 5
50 SIGNA,
The tresB will ran uneven ; and no man wants it long.
Still, it is best to love thus. For nothing else is Love.
So she had pressed on, till the golden aatumn weather lost
its serenity, and stirred with strife of winter wind and rain ;
so she had walked, and walked, and walked, a b^gar-girl for
all who met her, with no beauty in her, except her great, sad,
lustrous eyes, until she had come out once more on that old
familiar road that she had trodden daily in her childhood and
her girlhood, with her hank of straw over her arm, and a
pitcher of milk, or a sheaf of gleaned corn, or a broad basket
of mulberries balanced on her head.
She thought she would see Brano, -just once. He had
been rough and fierce with her ; but once she could have loved
Bruno, if he would ever have let her do so. She thought she
would show him the child, and ask him ^if she never got to
Borne
Then her foot slipped, and she fell down into darkness, and
of Pippa there was no more on earth,*-only a dead woman,
that the flood took out with the drowned cattle and the drift-
wood to the sea.
CHAPTER Vn.
' Local tradition has it that all the plain of Signa was onoe
a lake, with only the marsh birds calling and the reeds waving
in the great silence of its waters ^long ago. Their " long ago**
b very dim in date and distant, but very close to fancy and to
faith. Here ^neas is a hero bora only yesterday ; and Cati-
linus brought his secret sins into the refuge of these hilU
an hour since it seems ; and Hercules one can almost see hiiD
still, bending his bold brows over the stubbora rock in that
stream where the quail dips her wing and the distaff cane bends
to the breeze.
Nay, it is not so very far away afler all since the dove plocked
the olive off the mountains yonder, and no one sees anjthiDg
stranee or incongruous in the stories that make the sons of
nom and the children of Latona tread these fields side by
SIGNA. 51
side, and the silyer arrows of Apollo cleave the sunshine that
the black crucifixes pierce. Nay, older than tale of the Dove
or legend of Apollo is this soil. Turn it with jour spade, and
jott shall find the stone coffins and the gold chains of the
mighty Etruscan race whose buried cities lie beneath your
feet, Uieir language and their history lost in the everlasting
gloom.
This was once Etruria, in all the grace and greatness of her
royaltieB ; then through long ages the land was silent, and only
heard the kite shriek or the mountain-hare scream ; then fort-
ified places rose again, one by one, on the green slopes, and
Florence set to work and built between her and the sea ^be-
tween her and the coast, and all her many enemies and debtors
^the walled village of the Lastra-a-Signa ; making it noble
'^of its kind, as she made everything that she touched in the
old time ; giving it a girdle of the massive gray mountain-
stone, and gateways with carven shields and frescoes; and
houses within braced with iron, and ennobled by bold archways
and poetized by many a shrine and symbol.
And the Lastra stood in the green country that is called the
Verdure even in the dry city rolls, and saw the spears glisten
among the vines, and the steel head-pieces shine through the
olives, and the banners flutter down from the heights, and the
coodottieri wind away on the white road, and the long lines
of the pilgrims trail through the sunshine, and the scarlet
pomp of the cardinals bum on the highway, and the great
lords with their retinues ride to the sea or the mountains, and
the heralds and trumpeters come and go on their message of
peace or strife ; and itself held the road, when need arose,
stanchlj, through many a dark day, and many a bitter night,
for many a tale of years, and kept its warders on its watch-
towers, looking westward through the centuries of war. And
then tiie hour of fate struck, when the black eagle, who had
" two beaks to more down," flew with his heavy wing over the
Amo ; and the Republic had no help or hope but in her Gid-
eon, as she called him, frank Ferruccio.
Femiccio knew that the Lastra, set midmost in the highway,
was the iron key to the gates of Florence. But he had no
^ifls of the gods to make him omniscient, and he was rash, as
brave men are most apt to be. With his five hundred troopers
he wrought miracles of valor and relief; but iu a fatal hour
52 SIGNA.
he, scouting the country in search of the convoys of food that
he conveyed to Florence, lefl the Lastra for Pisa; and the
traitor Bandini whispered in the ear of Orange, " Strike now
while he is absent."
Orange sent his Spanish lances, and the Lastra beat them
back. But he sent them again, as many in numbers against
the place as was all Ferruccio's army, and with artillery to
aid ; and they made two breaches in the walls, and entered,
and sacked and pillaged, and ravished and slew, the bold gates
standing erect as they stand to-day.
Is not the record painted in the Hall of Leo the Tenth ?
The brave gates stood erect ; but the Lastra was an armed
town no more.
Its days of battle were done.
The grass and the green creepers grew on the battlements ;
and out of the iron doors there only passed the meek oxen
and the mules and the sheep.
The walls of the Lastra are still midmost in the highway,
with the soft mountain lines and sunset lights behind them ;
broken down' indeed in many places, and with many places
where there are hillocks of grass and green bushes instead of
the old mighty stones, or, worse still, where there are mean
houses and tiled roofs. But they are still erect in a great part
and very full of gloom and loneliness, with the rope-makers
at work on the sward underneath them, and the white bullocks
coming out of their open doors. The porteullis still hangs in
the gateways that face the east and the west, and the deep
machicolations of the battlements are sharp and firm as a lion's
teeth. There is exquisite color in them, and noble lines
severe and stern as any that Amolfo, or Taddeo, drew or
raised.
" She is so old our Lastra T' say the people, with soft pride,
while the women sit and spin on the stairs of the old watch-
towers, and the mules drink, and the wagons pass, and the
sheep are driven under their pointed archways.
Of the Lastra it may be written, as of the old tower of
Calais church, " It is not as ruins are, useless and piteous,
feebly or fondly garrulous of better days ; but useful still,
going through its daily work, as some old fisherman beaten
gray by storm yet drawing his daily nets."
Its years of war indeed are done ; it can repel no foe, it can
SIQNA. 53
tun aade no invader ; the wall-sorrel grows on its parapets,
the owl builds in its loopholes, the dost of decay lies thick
npon its broken stairs ; in its fortified places old women spin
their flax and the spiders their webs; but its decay is not
desolation, its silence is not solitude ; its sadness is not despair ;
the Ave Maria echoes through it morning and night ; its great
noes, the Latteringhi, the Acciajoli, the Capponi, the Pucci,
the Herli, still are household words beside its hearths ; when
the warm sunrise smites the battlements, its people go forth to
the Ubor of the soil; when the rays of the sunset fill the
west, there rise from its mountains a million spears of gold,
as though the hosts of a conquering army raised them aloft
with a shout of triumph ; it gamers its living people still as
sheep within a fold "its bells for prayer still rolling through
its rents." Harvest and vintage and seedtime are precious to
it ; fruits of the earth are brought within it ; the vine is green
against its doors, and the com is threshed in its ancient armo-
ries ; beauUful even where unsightly, hoary with age, yet
linked with living youth; noble as a bare sea-cliff is noble,
that has kept the waves at bay throughout uncounted storms,
the Lastra-a-Signa stands amidst the green billows of the
foliage of the fields as a lighthouse among breakers: its
towera speaking of strength, its fissures of sorrow, its granaries
of labor, its belfries of hope.
When the great service was over, and the bishop and the
nobles had passed away in their glory, and the bells had ceased
for a season to ring, and the white-robed contadini had gone
up among their hills, and the families of the Lastra had gone
withio-doors and closed their window-shutters to the sun, the
little singer, who loved every stone of the old place, laying; off
his little surplice, and by a rare treat being free of task and
punishment, and sent only to gather salads from the hill-garden
of his one friend, made his way quickly through the village
and out by the western gate.
That was all he was, a child of Pippa's, who had died
without a coin upon her, or a roof she could call her own, or
anything at all in this wide world except this little sunny-
headed, sof^Iimbed, useless thing, fresh as dew and flushed like
apple-blossoms, that she left behind her, as the magnolia-leaf,
dropping brown to the browQ earth, leaves a blossom.
Just a child of Pippa's, with no name or use or place or
6*
54 SIOITA.
title that any one could see, or right to live at all, if yon pnsbed
matters closely.
Himself, he did not know even so much as this, which
indeed was as bad as nothing to know. To himself he was
only a foundling, as he was to every one else ; picked np as
any blind puppy might have been, motherless on the face of
the flood.
The old white town had stood him in the stead of father
and mother and nation and firiends ; and though the Church,
purifying him with baptismal water, had given him a long
saint's name, Signa was his true eponymus.
The children had called him Signa, because of the name on
the little gilt ball that they were scratched on, ^the little gilt
ball which Nita had hung round his neck by its string again.
' It looks well to give it to him," she had said to her hus-
band. " And it would fetch so little, it is not worth keeping
for oneself."
So his little locket had been left him, the locket that had
been bought that day of the fair, and filled with a curl of
sunny-brown hair, which Pippa had cut off herself in the
dusk where the vines met overhead ; and he was called after
the word that was on it first by the children, and then by their
elders, who had said, ^' As well that as any name, why not?
the dogs of Jews are often called after the towns that bear
them ; why not this little cur, so near drowned here, after the
place that sheltered him ?"
Hence he was Signa, like the town ; and, in a vague fancy
that he never followed out, he had some dim idea that this
village of the Lastra, which he loved so dearly, had created
him out of her dust, or, from her wandering winds, or by her
bidding to the owls that roosted in her battlements : how he
did not know, but in some way. ' And he was thoroughly con-
tent ; loving the place with a great love, quite reasonless, and
quite childlike, and yet immeasurable.
He was proud because he had the name. When they beat
him, he would not cry out, because the Lastra had been brave,
so the old people who told stories of it to him said ; and he
would be brave likewise.
It was like his impudence to dare be brave when honest-
born children squealed like caught mice ! so Nita would say
to him a score of times, ^when slapping his cheek because
SIGNA. 55
Toto had trodden on her gowb, or beating him with the rods
of aider when Toto had stolen the fritters from the frying-
pan.
" She is a good woman, Nita," said the neighbors, shaking
out the gleaned hay before their hons^-doors, or sitting to
plait together in the archways ; ^^ Lippo is an angel. To think
of them seven children, and an eighth nigh, and keeping,
all for charity, that little stray thing found at the flood. Any
one else had sent it packing, a poor child as one could see by
its clothes that were all rags, and no chance for any rich folk
ever coming after it. And yet treating it always like their
own, share and share alike, and no preference shown ah, they
were good people. Old Baldo, too, not saying even a word,
thoo^ he was a sharp man abont shoe-leather, and no blame
to him, because, after all, who will save the skin of your onion
for you unless you do yourself?"
As from a baby it grew into a little child, Bruno ever and
again saw to its wants.
" The child must be dean," he said ; and he would not have
it go in rags.
^' The child must be well kept," he said ; and he would not
have its curls sheared close, as Toto's were.
Then, as it grew older, "Let the child learn," he said;
and Nita humored him, because she believed it to be his own,
and Lippo, because of that good half of eveiything, which
kept his father-in-law in such good humor, and left him him-
sdf free to idle in the sun and lie face downward on the stone
benches and do nothing all day long except kill flies.
80 Lippo and his wife were very careful to have the child's
curls shine, instead of shearing them dose as they did their
own babies, and when he ran into the street would give him
a big lump of crust to eat as people passed, and on saint's day's
take him with them to the church in a little frock snow-white
like one of the straight-robed long-haired child- figures in any
pand or pvedella of Francesca or the Memmi. He was so
pretty that people gave him cakes and fruits and money, just
for the beauty of his wistfiil eyes, and to see his little mouth,
like a carnation bud, open to sing his Aves.
And of course there was reason that the child, once home,
shouki give up the cakes and fruits to the other children, who
were like foster-brothers and sisters to him ; and as for the
66 SJQNA.
money, of ooarae be ooold not keep it, being sacb a litde
tbing ; tbey took it from bim to take oare of it tbej were
good bonest people. '
As for tbe little tbing, true, be was bungry often, and beaten
often, wben no one was looking, and worked like a little foot-
sore mule at all times. Bat nobody noticed tbat, because be
was always taken to mass, and bad tbe little wbite sbirt on
just like Toto, and no diflference made, and all bis curls bmsbed
out. Tbe curate's sister said tbere never was so sweet a soul
as Lippo's, for of course it all was Lippo's doing ; Nita was an
bonest woman, and true-bearted, but Lippo it was tbat was
tbe saint in tbe bouse. Anotber man would bave turned the
brat out by tbe ears at first sigbt : not be ; be cut tbe stray
diild's bread as big as any of bis boys', and paid for bim, too,
to learn bis letters.
So the curate's sister said, and tbe neigbbors aftr ber ; and
Lippo, being a meek man, smiled gently, and cast bis eyes
down undemeatb tbe praise, and said in answer, tbat no one
could bave turned a pretty baby like tbat out after once bous-
ing it, and added, witb a kindly grace tbat moved tbe women
to tesirs, tbat be boped tbe cbild migbt be like tbose gold-
winged porcellin tbat, flying in your window witb the sun-
beams, bring good will and peace, the people say.
This day, after church, the little boy ran over tbe bridge
and up tho hill-road, where bis mother, of whom be knew
nothing, had met her death. He was stiff witb a severe beat-
ing that had been given bim.
The night before, there bad been a basket of red cherries
missing, and Toto bad been found crunching them in tbe loft,
and Toto had said that he bad been given them by Signa, who
first had eaten half; and old Baldo, who bad got them as a
. present for the priest, bad been beside himself witb rage, and
Nita bad beaten Signa, as her habit and daily oomfoit was,
because be never would cry out, which made bim the more
provoking, and also was always innocent, than which tbere is
nothing more irritating anywhere.
He was very stiff, and felt it now that the music was all
done ; but almost forgot it again in tbe pleasure of tbe hill-
side and tbe holiday.
The country was full of joys to the cbild that be never
reasoned about, but which filled bim with delight. Tbe great
SIQNA. 57
bold carves of the oak-bough overhead ; the amethyst and
amber of the trefoil blossoms ; the voices of the wood doves ;
the jovial croakings of the frogs ; the flash of butterflies ; the
glories of the oleaDders, here white as snow and there rosily
radiant as flame ; the poppies that had cast their petals, and
had round gray heads like powdered wigs ; the spiders, red
and black, like bits of old Egyptian pottery ; the demure and
dosky cavaletta, that looked like ghosts of nuns, out by an
error in the daylight ; the pretty lizards that were so happy,
asking nothing of the world except a sunbeam and a stone to
sleep under ; the nightingales that were so tame, and sang at
broad noontide to laugh at poets ; the orchids, gold and ruby,
that mimicked bees and flies to make fun of them, because
there is so much humor in nature with all her sweet gravity
of beauty ; the flies that shone like jewels ; the hedges of
china roses that ran between the corn ; the gaunt stern spikes
of the artichokes; the green Madonna's herb ; the mountains
that were sometimes quite lost in the white mists, and then of
a sudden liHed themselves in all their glory, with black shadows
where the woods were, and dreamy, hazy breadths of color where
the bare sandstone and serpentine shone beneath the sun ; all
these things, so various, great and small, wonderful and obscure,
under his feet, or on the far horizon, were sources of delight to
the child, who as he went lost sight of nothing, from the little
gemmed insect in the dust he trod to the last glow left on the
faintest, farthest peak of the Monte Albano range that rose
between him and the sea.
Nobody had ever told him anything.
None had led him by the hand and bidden him look.
Some instinct moved him to see and hear where others were
blind and deaf. That was all.
To the plowman of Ayr the daisy was a tender grace of God)
and the mouse a fellow-traveler in the ways of life.
To Signa, who was only a baby still, and was beaten most
days of the week, and ran barefoot in the dust, the summer
and the world were beautiful without his knowing why, and
comforted him. For in this sea of sunshine ^as in the music
^he forgot his pain.
He ran like a little goat up the road, with the green river
binding below, and the hills changing at each step with those
inconstancies of light and shade and aspect and color in which
58 SIQNA.
all hills delight. It was an hour hefore, always dimbing
sturdily, he reached an old stone gateway set in breadths of
grain just golden for the sickle, with a black crucifix against
it, and above it a little framed picture of the Annunciatioo.
He stooped his knee, and crossed himself; then ran between
the old stone posts, which had no gate in them, and sent bis
voice up th% hill-side before his feet "Bruno! Bruno!
Bruno 1"
" Here 1" sang the man's voice in answer fiiom above, among
the com.
Signa climbed the steep green paths that ran between the
wheat and under the vines up the face of the hill, and threw
his arms round Bruno's knees.
"A whole day to spend I" he cried, breathless with running.
"And are you working ? Why, it is Corpus Domini. They
do not work anywhere !"
Bruno put down the handiul of com that he had just cut
and wound together.
" No ; one should not work," he said, with some shame for
his own industry. " But those clouds look angry ; they may
mean rain at sunset; and to spoil such grain as this nd the
Padre will not come this way ; he never gets so far down on
feasts. And you are well, Signa?"
" Oh, quite well."
" But you must be hungry ? ^running so ?"
" No ; I can wait."
" You have had your bread, then ?"
" Yes."
It was not true. But then Signa had found out two things :
one, that when he told Bruno that he was ill treated or ill fed
at home, there were quarrels and troubles between Bruno and
his bh)ther ; and the other, that if he let Bruno see that he
was at all unhappy, Bruno seemed to be consumed with sdf-
reproach.
So that the child, whose single love, except that for the old
town itself, was Bruno, had early learned to hold his tongue
and bear his sorrows silently as best he might, and tell an
innocent little lie even now and then to spare pain to his friend.
Bruno always took his part. It was Bruno who got him
any little joy he ever knew, and Bruno who would not let
them shave his pretty clustering curls to make a bare round
SIONA. 59
pumpkin of bis head like Toto's ; and one day when he had
been only seven years old, and Bmno by chaDoe had found
Kim crying, and learned that it was with the smart of Nita's
thrashing, Bmno and Lippo had had fierce words and blows ;
and late that night the eldest boy of Lippo*s had oome and
shaken him in his bed of hay, and hissed savagely in his ear,
" Yon little fool, if yon go telling my nncle Bmno we ill
treat you, he will strike at my father and kill him perhaps,
who knows ? he is so violent, and then a nioe day's work you
will have made for every one ; ^you little beast. My father
dead, and Bmno at the galleys, all through you, who are not
worth the rind of a rotten melon, little cur 1"
And Signa, trembling in his bed, had vaguely understood
the mischief he might do, though why they quarreled for him,
and why Lippo gave him a home and yet ill treated him, or
why Bruno should have any care to take his part, he could
not tell ; but he comprehended that all he had to do was to
accept ill usage dumbly like the dogs, and bring no one into
any trouble by complaining. And so he grew up with silence
for a habit ; for he loved Bmno.
Bmno, who was fierce and wayward and hated and feared
by every one on the country-side, but who to him was gentle
as a woman, and was always kind. Bruno, who had a most
terrible knack of flashing out his knife in anger, and who had
quarreled with all the women he had wooed, and who had a
rough heartless way of speech that made people wonder he
could be of the same blood and bone as mild and pleasant
Lippo, but who to him was never without a grave soft smile
tbat took all the darkness from this face it shone on, and who
for him had many tender thoughts and acts that were like the
blue radish-flower on its rough, gray, leafless stalk.
The child never wondered why Bmno cared for him. Child-
ren take love as they take sunshine and their daily bread.
If it rain and they starve, then they wonder ; because children
come into the world with an innocent undoubting conviction
that they will be happy in it, which is one of the oddest and
the saddest things one sees ; for, being begotten by men and
borne by women, how can such strange error ever be alive in
them?
Bmno put by his reaping-hook, and let the big-bearded
Turkish wheat stand over for another day. He had risked
1
60 SIGNA.
bis own soul to make sore of the wheat, for to Bmno it
a soul's peril to use a sickle on a holy day, ^bnt he let go the
com rather than spoil the little fellow's pleasure.
'' You can eat something again come," he said, stretching
his hand out to the boy's.
Pippa's child was like her, only with something spiritajd
and far-reaching in his great dark eyes that hers bad never
had, and a gleam of gold in the soft thickness of his hair that
did not come from her. He was more delicate, more slender,
more like a little supple reed, than Fippa ever had been, and
he had a more uncommon look about him ; but be was like
her, like enough to make Bruno still shudder now and then,
thinking of the dead woman left all alone to the rain and to
the river.
^* Come and cat," be said, and took the child in-doors.
His house had a great arched door, where Pippa bad stood
plaiting many a night. It had a brick floor, and a ceiling of
old timbers, and some old dusky chests and presses that would
have fetched a fortune in city curiosity-shops, and a strong
musty smell of drying herbs and of piles of peas and beans
for winter uses, and trmes of straw cleaned and cut for the
plaiters ; and hens were sitting on their eggs inside an old
gilded marriage-coffer six hundred years old if one, whose lid,
that had dropped off the hinges, was illuminated with the nup-
tials of Gklileo in the style of the early school of Cortona.
Through a square unglazed window there was seen the head
of a brindled cow munching grass in her shed on the other
side, and through a wide opening opposite that had no door,
the noon sun shining showed the great open building that
was granary and cart-shed, and stable and hot-house all in
one, and where the oil-presses stood, and the vats for the
wine, and the empty casks.
Against one of the walls was a crucifix, with a little basin
for holy water, for Bruno was a man who believed in the saints
without question ; and above the arched entrance there greir
a great mulberry-tree that was never stripped, because he had
no silkworms ; and magnolias and cistus-bushes, and huge pop-
pies that loved to glow in the stones, and big dragon-beads
burning like rubies, and Arabian jessamine of divincst odor,
and big myrtles, all flourishing luxuriant alike together, be-
cause in this country flowers have nine lives like cats, and will
SIQNA, 61
live anywIieTe, jnst because no one wants them or ever tbinks
of gathering them unless there be a corpse to be dressed.
" Eat/' said Bruno ; and he got the little lad out some
brown bread, and a jug of milk, and a cabbage-leaf of cur-
rants, which he had gathered early that morning before the
mass-bells rang, being sure that Signa would come before the
day should be over.
Signa ate and drank with the eager good will of a child
who neyer got enough, except by some rare chance on a feast-
day like this ; but the larger part of the currants he left on
the leaf, taking only one or two bunches.
Bruno watched him.
" Are you going to give them away ?*'
" I wiU give them to Gemma I may ?''
" Bo as you like with your own. But if you must give
them to any one, give them to Palma."
Signa colored on both his little pale cheeks.
" I will give them to the two," he said, conscious of an un-
just intention nipped in the bud.
" Palma is a better child than Gemma," said Bruno, sharp-
ening a vine-stake with his, clasp-knife.
Signa hung his head.
" But I like GemnSa best."
" When that is said, there is no more to be said," answered
Bruno, who had learned enough of human nature on the hills
and in the Lastra to know that liking does not go by reason
nor foUow after merit.
" Gemma is so pretty,'' said the little fellow, who loved any-
thing that had beauty in it ; and he ran and got his mandolin
out of the comer where Bruno let him keep it, and began to
turn its keys and run his fingers over its strings and call the
cadence out of it with as light a heart as if his back had never
been black and blue with Nita's thrashing.
*" If Gemma broke your chitarra, would you like her the
better then ?" asked Bruno.
' I should hate her," said Signa, under his breath ; for he
had two idols, his lute and the Lastra.
'* I wish she would break it, then," said Bruno, who was
jealous of this little child for whom Signa was saving his cur-
rants.
But Signa did not hear. He was sitting out on the
6
62 8I0NA,
tliresholdy on an empty red lemon-pot toraed npeide down, with
the slope of the autumn corn and the green hill-side beneath
him in the sun, and beyond them, far down below in the great
valley, and golden in the light, were first the walls of the Los-
tra set in the sea of vines, and then the towers and domes of
Florence far away ; and farther yet, where the east was warm
with morning light, the mountains of Umbria, wiUi the little
towns on their crest, from which you see two seas.
With all that vast radiant world beneath him at his feet,
Signa tuned his mandolin and sang to himself undied on the
still hill-side. The oow leaned her mouth over the window-
sill, and listened, cows seem so stupid chewing grass and
whisking flies away, but in their eyes there is the soul of lo ;
the nightingales held their breaths to listen, and then joined
in till all the branches that they lived in seemed alive with
sound ; the great white watch-dog from the marshes came and
lay down quite quiet, blinking solemnly with attentive eyes ;
but the cicali never stopped sawing like carpenters in the tree-
tops, nor the gossiping hens from clacking in the cabbage-beds,
because cicali and chickens think the world was made for
them, and believe that the sun woyld fall if they caused firam
fussing and fuming : they are so very humam.
Bruno laid himself down face forward on a stone bench, as
oontadini love to do when they have any leisure, and listened
too, his head upon his arms.
The water dropped from the well-spout ; a lemon fell with
a little splash on the grass ; the big black restless bees bnzied
here and there ; blue butterflies danced above the grain as if
the cornflowers had risen winged ; the swallows wheeled round
the low red-tiled roof; the old wooden plow lay in the shade
under the fig-trees ; the oxen ate clover and the leaves of cane,
in fragrant darkness in their shed ; the west wind came from
the pines above with the smell of the sea and the thyme and
the rosemary.
Signa played and sang, making up his song as he went
along, in rhymes strung like chains of daisies, all out of his
own liead, and born in a moment out of nothing, banning
with the name of a flower, and winding in with them the sun
and the shadow, the beasts and the birds, the restless bees and
the plowshare at rest, and the full wheat-ears and the emptj
well-bucket, and anything and everything, little and laige, and
SIONA. 63
foc^kh and wise, that was there about him in the midsummer
light
Anywhere else it might have been strange for a little peasant
to make melody so ; but here the children lisp in numbers, and
np and down on the hills, and in the road when the mule-bells
ring, and on the high mountains with the browsing goats, the
verse and song of the people fill the air all day long, ^this
people who for the world have no poet.
Bruno, lying face downward and listening half asleep to the
rippling music, thought it pretty, but nothing rare or of won-
der ; the little lad played better than most of his age, and had
a gift for stringing his rhymes, that was all.
For himself, he was almost jealous of the lute, as he was of
the child Gemma. For Bruno loved the boy with a covetous
love and a strong love, and felt as if in some way or other
Signa escaped him.
The boy was loving, obedient, grateful, full of caressing and
tractable ways ; there was no fault to find with him ; but
Bmno at times felt that he held him no more surely than one
holds a bird because it alights at one's feet.
It was a vague feeling with him. Bruno, being an un-
learned man, did not reason about his impressions nor seek to
know whether they were even wise ones. But it was a strong
feeling, and something in the far-away look of the little lad's
eyes, as he sang, strengthened it.
Pippa had never had that look ; no one had it except the
little Christs or St. Johns sometimes in the old frescoes in the
churches that Bruno would enter once a year or so, when he
went to Prato or Caxmignano or Pistoia to buy grain or to
sell it.
" That is Gt)d looking out of their eyes," an old sacristan
said once to him, before one of those altar-pictures, where the
wonderful faces were still radiant amidst the fading oolorsiof
the age-dimmed frescoes.
But why should Gtod look out of ihe eyes of Pippa's child ?
Why was Grod in him more than in any others ?
Those children in the frescoes were most fitting in their
place, no doubt, among the incense, and the lilies, and the
crosses, and above the sacred Host. But to sit at your bench,
and eat beans, and be sent to fetch in sheep from the hills,
Bmno felt that a more work-day soul was better for this : he
64 SJONA.
would have been more at ease if Signa had been just a noisj,
idle, troublesome, merry morsel, playing more like other bop,
and happy over a baked goose on a feast day. He would haTe
known better how to d^ with him.
And yet not for worlds would he have changed him.
CHAPTER Vni.
Iv Pippa had not been quite dead that night when they
had found her in the field ? If there had been any spaii of
life flickering in her that with warmth and care and a surgeon's
skill might have been fanned back again into a steady flame?
It was not likely, but it was possible. And if it had been eo,
then what were he and Lippo ?
The sickly thought of it came on him many a time and
made him shiver and turn cold. When he had left the woman
lying in the field he had been quite sure that all life was gone
out of her. But now he was not so sure. Cold and the fall
might have made her only senseless : who could tdl ? If they
had done their duty by her, Pippa might have been living dov.
It was not probable. He knew the touch of a dead thing;
and she had felt dead to him as any slaughtered sheep could
be. But sometimes in the long lonely nights of autumn,
when he sat watching the grapes with his gun against his
knee, lest thieves should strip the vines, Bruno would think
of it, and say to himself, " If she were not really dead, what
was I ?" He told all to the good priest in the little brown
church beneath the pines on his hill, told all under seal of
confession ; and the priest absolved him by reason of his true
penitence and anxious sorrow. But Bruno could not absolve
himself He had lefl her there for the flood to take her :
and after all she might have been brought back to life had he
lifted her up on his shoulders and borne her down into shelter
and warmth, instead of deserting her there like a coward.
The water had done it ; had washed her away out of sight,
and had killed her, if she were not already dead when it ro^
and swept her away to the secrecy of the deep sea. But be
SIGN A. 65
told himself at times that it was he who was the murderer,-^
not the water.
When he looked at the river, shining away between the
green hills and the gray olives, he felt as if it knew hLs guilt ;
as if it were a fellow-sinner with him, only the more innocent
of the two. Of course the pain and the torment of such
self-accusation were not always on him. He led an active life ;
he was always working at something or another from day-
break till bedtime ; the free, fresh air blew always about him
and drove morbid fancies away. But at times, when all was
quiet in the hush of midnight, or when he rested from his
labors at sunset and all the world was gold and rose, then he
thought of Pippa, and he felt the cold, pulseless breast under-
neath his hand ; then he said to himself, " If she were not
quite dead ?" The torment of the thought worked in him,
and weighed on him, and made his heart yearn to the little
lad, who, but for his cowardice, might not have been mother-
less and alone.
Bruno sat on at his house door that night, watching the little
lad run along the hill. He could see all the way down the
slope, and though the trees and the vines at times hid Signa
from sight, and at times he was lost in the wheat, which was
taller than he, yet at intervals the small flying figure, with the
sunset about his luur, could be seen going down, down, down
along the great slope, and Bruno watched it with a troubled
fondness in his eyes.
He was doing the best for the child that he knew. He had
him taught to read and write ; he had him sing for the priests ;
he was learning the ways of the fields, and the needs of beasts,
tending his sheep and Lippo's by turns, as a little contadino
had to do in the simple life of the open air. He could not
tell what more to do for him ; he a peasant himself and the
son of many generations of peasants, who had worked here one
after another on the great green hill* above the Lastra valley.
He did not know what eL^ to do.
That was the way he hadtbeen brought up, except that he
had never been taught a letter ; running with bare legs over
the thyme on the hills, and watching the sheep on the high
places among the gorse, and pattering through the dirt after
the donkey when there were green things to go in to market,
or loads of fir cones to be carried, or sacks of com to be borne
6*
66 8IQNA,
to ihe grinding-preBS. If tihere was a better way to bring op
a child he did not know it. And yet he was not altogether
sure that Pippa, if she saw, from heaven, were satisfied.
The child was thinner than he liked, and his shirt was all
holes, and never a little b^gar was poorer clad than was Signa
winter and summer ; and Bruno knew that he gave into Ltppo's
pocket more than enough to keep a child well, for his land was
rich, and he labored hard, and he bore with Lippo*s ooming
and going, and prying and calculating always to make sore
how much the grain yielded, and to count die figs and pota-
toes, and to watch the winepress, and to see how the peas
yielded, and to satisfy himself that he always got the full
amount that they had agreed for ; he bore with all that from
Lippo, though it was enough to exasperate a quieter man, and
many a time he could have kicked his brother out of his fields
for all that meddling and measuring, and, bdng of an impar
tient temper and resentful, chafed like a tethered mastiff, to
have Nita and her brood clamoring for roots and salads and
eggs and buckwheat, as if he were a slave for them.
" The half of all I get,*' he had said, in the rash haste of
his repentance and remorse ; and Lippo pinned him to his
word.
He would have given the world that instead of that mad
bargain made without thought, he had taken the child to him-
self wholly and told the truth in the Lastra, and given the
poor dead body burial, and been free to do with Pippa's boy
whatever he chose. But Bruno, 'like many others, had fallen
by fear and haste into a fisilse way ; and stumbled on in it
galled and entangled.
Bruno was now over forty years old, and his countiy-folk
spoke more ill of him rather Uian less. When he went down
into the Lastra to sit and take a sup of wine and play a game
at dominoes as other men did, none were glad to see him. The
women owed him a grudge because he married none of them,
and the men thought him fierce and quarrelsome, when he was
not tecitum, and found that he spoiled mirth rather than in-
creased it by his presence.
He was a handsome man still, and lithe, and burnt brown
as a nut by the sun. He wore a loose shirt., open at the
throat, and in winter had a long brown cloak tossed acroad
from one shoulder to the other. He had bare feet, and the
SIGNA, 67
alk of a mountaineer or an athlete. Marching besides his
bnllocks, with a cart-load of hay, or going down to the river
for fish, with his great net outspread on its circular frame, he
was a noble, serious, majestic figure, and had a certain half
wild, half lordly air about him that is not uncommon to the
Tuscan peasant when he lives far enough from the cities not
to be oontaminated by them.
The nine years that had run by since the night of the flood
had darkened 3mno*s name in the Lastra country.
Before that night he had been, whatever other faults or
vices he had had, open-handed to a degree most rare among
his people. A man that he had struck to the ground one day,
he would open his leathern bag of coppers to the next. What-
ever other his crimes, he had always been generous, to utter
improvidence, which is so strange a thing in his nation that
he was often nicknamed a madman for it. But no one quar-
rels with a madness that they profit by, and Bruno's gener-
osity bad got him forgiven many a misdeed, many a license, by
men and women.
Since the flood, little by little, parsimony growing on him
with each year, he had become careful of spending, quick
to take his rights, and slow to fling down money for men's
sport or women's kisses. The country said that Bruno was
altogether given over to the devil, he was no longer good to
get gain out of even, he had turned niggard.
And there was no excuse for him, they averred ; a better
padrone no man worked under than he, and his fattore was
old and easy ; and the land that in the old time had served
to maintain his father and mother with a tribe of children to
eat them out of house and home, now had only himself upon
it, good land and rich, and sheltered though on the mountains,
whilst, as every one knows, the higher the land lies the better
is the vintage.
Men gossiping in the evenings under the old gateways of
the Lastra, watching Bruno with his empty bullock-cart go
back between the hedges to the bridge, would shake their
heads:
'*A bad fellow 1" said Momo, the barber, for Bruno never
came to have his head shaved as clean Christians should in
summer, but wore his thick dusky mane tossed back much
like a lion's.
68 SIONA.
" Brutal bad I'* echoed Papucci, who was a bhicksmith, with
slow work. " No doubt that little byblow is his own, aud see
how he fathers it on Lippo. Lippo has good as told me it
was that poor Dinars child by Bruno ; jou remember her, a
pretty young girl, died of a ball in the Uiroat, or they said
BO : very likely it was Bruno, that wrung her neck in a rage,
I should not wonder. He would have lefl the boy to starve,
only Lippo took it home, and shamed him."
^^ He is good to the child now,'' said Noa, the tinman, who
had a weakness for seeing both sides of a question, which made
him very disagreeable company.
" Oh hi I" demurred the barber, with his under-lip out in
dubious reply. " The other day the little lad was baUungwith
my youngster, and I saw his back all blue and brown with
bruises. * Is he such a bad child you beat him so ?* I said to
Lippo, for indeed he was horrid to look at, and Lippo, good
man, looked troubled. Bruno will be violent,' he told me,
quite reluctantly : ' he forgets the child is small.' Oh, I dare
say he does forget, and when he has him aJone there flays him
of half his skin 1"
" Why say the child was Bruno's or Dina's, either ? He was
found in the fields at the great flood, and Dina was dead a
year before," said Noa, who had that awkward and unsocial
quality, a memory. " Not but what I dare say it is Bruno's,"
he added, with an aflcr-thought willing to be popular ; " and
perhaps he pays for it 1"
" No, not a stiver," said the cooper. " Lippo and Nita hare
said to me a score of times, ' We took the boy from pity, and
we keep it from pity. Not a pin's worth shall we ever see
back again this side heaven. But what matter that ? When
we feed eight mouths it is not much to feed a ninth.' They
are good people, Lippo and his wife."
"Good as gold," said Brizzo, the butcher, "and saving
money, or I suppose it is old Baldo's ; they have bought that
little poderc up at Santa Lucia ; a snug little place, and twenty
little Maremma sheep upon it as fat as I have ever put knife
into. Lippo has God's Grace."
"A fair-poken man always, and good company," said Memo,
who had shaved him bare and smooth as a melon that very
morning.
This was the general opinion in the Lastra. lappo, who
SIONA. 69
had always a soft smart word for everybody ; who smiled so on
people who knew he hated them, that they believed they were
loved whilst he was smiling ; who was always ready for a nice
game at dominoes or cards, and, if he did cheat a little, did it
so well that no one could fail to respect him the more for it ;
Lippo was well spoken of by his townsfolk, and one of the
Council of the Misericordia had been often heard to say that
there was not a better man in all the province.
Bat Bruno, now that he chose to save money, was a very
80D of the fiend, without a spot of light anywhere. Now
that he would never drink, and now that he would never
marry, the Lastra gave him over to Satan, body and soul, and
for all time.
Bruno cared nothing at all. They might split their throats,
for any notice that he took.
*' 111 words rot no wheat," he would say to his one friend,
Cecco, the cooper, who lived across by the bridge, and had a
workshop with a great open arch of thirteenth-century sculp-
ture, and a square window with crossed bars of iron, and a
^reen of vine-foliage behind it that might have been the back-
p\und of a pieta, so beautiful was it when the sun shone
through the leaves.
He went on his own ways, plowing with his oxen, pruning
hb olives, sowing and reaping, and making the best of his
land, and going down on market-days into the city, looking as
if he had stepped out of Ghirlandajo's canvas, but himself
knowmg nothing of that, nor thinking of anything except tho
s^amples of grain in his palm or the cabbages in his cart;
Bruno cared nothing for other folk's opinions.
What he cared for was to keep faith with Pippa in that
mute compact bom of his remorse, which he firmly believed
the saints had witnessed on her behalf
He had cared nothing for the child at first, but as it had
grown older, and each year caught hold of his hand more
fondly, as if it felt a friend, and lifled up to him its great soil
serious eyes, a personal afiiection for this young life which he
alone protected grew slowly upon him ; and as the boy became
older, and the intelligence and fancies of his eager mind awed
Bruno whilst they bewildered him, Bruno loved him with the
deep love of a dark and lonely soul, for the sole thing in which
it makes its jpossibility of redemption here and hereaflcr.
70 SIQNA.
He sat on at the house^oor now, and watched the running
figure of the boy so long as it was in sight. YHien the bottom
of the hill was reached and the path turned under the lower
yines, he lost him quite, and only knew that he must still be
running on, on, on, under all those roo& and tan^e of green
leaves.
He was not quite at ease about him. The boy noTer com-
plained; nay, if questioned, insisted he was happy. But
Bruno mistrusted his brother, and he doubted the peace of
that household. The children, always groveling and scream-
ing, greedy and jealous, he hated. It was not the nest for
this young nightingale, ^that he 'felt. But he did not see
what better to do.
Lippo held him fast by his word ; and he had no proof that
the boy was really ill used. Sometimes he saw braises on him,
but there was always some story of an accident or of a childish
quarrel to account for these, or of some just punishment, and
he, roughly reared himself, knew that boys needed such ; and
Signals lips were mute, or, if they ever did open, said only,
^^ They are good to me," ^a lie for which he confessed and
besought pardon on his knees in the little dark, corner in the
Misericordia church.
Still Bruno was not satisfied. But what to alter he knew
not, and he was not a man who could spare time or acquire
the habit of holding communion with lus own thoughts.
When the child had quite gone out of sight, he rose and
took his sickle again and went back to his wheat.
He seldom had any one in to help him j men were cardesB
sometimes, and split the straw in reaping, and spoiled it for
the plaitcrs. He generally got all the wheat in between St
John's day and St. Peter's ; and the barley he took later.
The evening fell suddenly ; where this land lies they lose
the sunset because of the great rise of the hills \ they see a
great globe of fire dropping downward, it touches the purple
of the mountain, and then all is night at once.
The bats came out, and the night kestrils, and the wood
owls, and went hunting to and fro. Nameless melodious
sounds echoed from tree to tree. The cicali went to bed, and
the grill hummed about in their stead ; they are cousins, only
one likes the day and the other the night. The fire-flies
flitted faint and &lling over the fallen corn. When the wheat
SJQNA. 71
WB8 reaped tbeir day was done. Later on, a faint light came
above the fiir Umbrian hills,^ a faint light in the sky like the
dawn ; then a little longer, and out of the light rose the moon,
a ronnd world of gold ablaze above the dark, making the tree-
boughs that croesed her disk look black.
But Bnino looked at none of it.
He had not eyes like Pippa's child.
He stopped and cat his wheat, laying it in ridges tenderly.
The fire-flies put out their lights, because the wheat was dead.
But the ^ow-worms under the leaves in the grass shone on ;
they were pde and blue, and they could not dance ; they never
knew what it was to wheel in the air, or to fly so high that
men took them for stars ; they never saw the tree-tops, or the
nests of hawks, or the loiiy magnolia-flowers; the fire-flies
only could do all that ; but then the glow-worms lived on from
year to year, and the death of the wheat was nothing to them ;
they were worms of good sense, and had holes in the ground.
They twinkled on the sod as long as they liked, and pitied
the firB-flies, burning themselves out by soaring so high, and
dying because their loves were dead.
CHAPTER DC.
The child Signa ran on through the soft gray night.
Toto was afraid of the night, but he never.
The fire-flies ran with him along the waves of the standing
com. Wheat was cut first on the sunniest land, and there
was much still left unreaped on the lower grounds.
One wonders there are no fairies where there are fire-flies ;
for fire-flies seem fairies. But no fairies are found where the
Greek gods have lived. Frail Titania has no place beside
Demeter ; even Puck will not venture to ruffle Pan*s sleep ;
and where the harp of Apollo Cynthaerides was once heard
Ariel does not dare sing his song to the bees.
Signa caught a fire-fly in his hand and watched it burn a
minute, and then let it loose again, and ran on his way.
He wished he could be one of them, up in the air so high,
72 SIGN A,
with tliat light always showing them all they wished to know;
seeing how the owls lived on die roofs of the towera, and how
the hecs ruled their commonwealth on the top of the acadas,
and how the snow-blossom came oat of the brown magnolia
spikes, and how the cypress-tree made her golden balls, and
how the stone-pine added cubits to his height so noiseleaBlj
and fast, and how the clouds looked to the swallows that lived
so near them on the chapel belfries, and how the wheat felt
when it saw the sickle, and whether it was pained to die and
leave the sun, or whether it was glad to go and stall the pain
of hungry children. Oh, what he would ask and know, he
thought, if only he were a fire-fly 1
But he was only a little boy, with nothing to teach him any-
thing, and a heart too big for his body, and no wings to rise
upon, but only feet to carry him, that were often tired, and
bruised, and weary of the dust.
So he ran down towards the Lastra, stumbling and going
slowly, because he was in the dark, and also because he was so
constantly looking upward at the fire-flies tliat he lost his foot-
ing many times.
Across the bridge, he turned aside and went up into the
fields to the right of him before he walked on to the Lastra.
Between the bridge and the Lastra it is a picturesque and
broken country. On one side is the river, and on the other
hilly ground, green with plumes of corn, and hedges of bri^-
rosc, and tall rustling poplars, and up above, cypresses ; and
old villas noble in decay, and monasteries with frescoes cmmb-
ling to dust, and fortresses that are bams and stables for cattle,
and convent chapels whose solitary bell answers the bells of the
goats as they graze.
Signa ran up the steep grassy ways a little, and through a
field or two under the canes, twice his own height, and came
to a little cottage, much lower, smaller, and more miserable than
Bruno's house, a cottage that had only a few roods of soil
apportioned to it, and those not very arable.
Before its door there were several sheaves of com lying on
the ground ; all its produce except the few vegetables it yielded.
The grain had been cut the day before, and was not carried in
on account of the day being a holy one, for its owner did not
venture to risk his hereafter as Bruno had dared to do.
The man was sitting on the stone bench outside his door,
SJONA. 73
a good-hnmored fellow, lazy, stupid, yery poor, but qaite oon*
tented. He was one of the laborens in the gardens of a great
villa doee by, called Oiovoli. He had many children, and was
aa poor as it is possible to be without b(^:ging on the roads.
" Where is Gemma ?" called Signa. The man pointed in-
doors with the stem of his pipe.
" Gone to bed, and Palma too, and I go too, in a minute or
less. You are out late, little fellow."
'' I have been with Bruno," said Signa, unfolding his cab-
bage-leaf and his currants in the starlight, that was beginning
to gleam through the deep shadow of the early evening.
'' Look, I have brought these for Gemma 1 May I run in and
give them to her ? They are so sweet !"
The gardener, who was called Sandro by everybody, his name
being Alessandro Zanobetti, nodded in assent. He was a good-
natured, idle, mirthful soul, and could never see why Lippo's
wife should treat the child so cruelly ; he had plagues enough
himself, but never beat them.
" If Gemma be asleep, she will wake if there be anything
to get," he said, with a little chuckle: himself he thought
Palma worth a thousand of her.
Signa ran in-doors.
It was a square-built place, all littered and untidy ; there
were hens at roost, and garden refuse, and straw, with a kid
and its mother on it ; and a table, and a bench or two, and a
crucifix with a bough of willow, and in the corner a bed of
hay upon the floor, sweetHsmelling, and full of dry flowers.
Two children were in it, all hidden in the hay, except their
heads and the points of their feet.
One was dark, a little brown strong sofl-eyed child, and thu
other was of that curious fairness, with the hair of reddened
gold, and the eyes like summer skies, which the old Goths
baTc left here and there in the Latin races. Both were
asleep.
They were like two little amorini in any old painting, with
their curving limbs, and their curly heads, and their rosy
mouths, curled up in the withered grasses ; the boy did not
know anything about that, but he vaguely felt that it was
pretty to see them lying so, just as it was to see a cluster of
pomegranate-flowers blowing in the sun.
Signa stole up on tiptoe, and, touching the cheek of the fair
2 7
74 SIONA.
one with a banoh of carrants, laughed to see her bine bii^t
eyes open wide on him with a stare.
'^ I have brought you some fruit, G^mma," he said, and
tried to kiss her.
'^ Give me 1 give me quick V* cried the little child, tumbling
up half erect in the hay, the dried daisies in her crumpled
curls, and her little bare chest and shoulders fit for a statue
of Cupid. She pushed away his lips ; she wanted the fruit.
*' If I do not eat it quick, Palma will wake," she whispered,
and began to crunch them in her tiny teeth as the kid did its
grasses. The dark child did wake, and lifted herself on hei
dbow.
" It b Signa 1" she cried, with a little ooo of delight like i
wood-pigeon*s.
" I kept you no currants, Palma !" said Signa, with a sad-
den pang of self-reproach. He knew that he had done un-
kindly.
Palma looked a little sorrowful. They were yeiy poor, and
tiever hardly tasted anything except the blade bread like the
dogs.
" Never mind ; come and kiss me," she said, with a little
sigh.
Signa went round and kissed her. But he went back to
Gkmma again.
" Gk)od-night," he said to the pretty white child sitUng up
in the hay ; and he kissed her once more. So Gemma was
kissed twice, and had the currants as well.
Palma was used to that
Signa ran out with a hardened conscience. He knew that
he had been unjust ; but then if he had given any of the
curranta to Palma, Gemma never would have kissed him at
all.
He liked them both ; little things of eight and nine, living
with their father and their brothers, close to the gates of the
great garden, low down on the same hill where, higher, Lippo s
sheep were kept.
He liked them both, having seen them from babyhood, and
paddled in the brook under the poplars with them, and strung
them chains of berries, and- played them tunes on the pipes
he cut from the reeds. They were both his playfellows, pretty
little things, half naked, bare-footed, fed by the air and the
8I0NA. 76
mm, uid tumbling into life, as little rabbits do among tbe
But Palma he did not care about, and about Gemma be did.
For Gremma was a thousand times the prettier, and Palma
loved him always, that he knew ; but of Gemma he never was
80 sure.
Nevertheless, he knew he had not done them justice about
those currants, and he was sorry for it, as he ran along the
straight road into the Lastra, and with one look upward to the
gateway that he loved, though he could not see the blue on
the parapet because it was dark, he darted onward quickly,
lest the gates should close for the night and he be punished
and turned backward, and hurried up the passage into Lippo's
house.
Lippo lived in a steep paved road above the ancient Place
of Arms, dose to the open-arched loggia of what used to be
the wood market against the southern gate. There is no great
beauty about the place, and yet it has light and shade, and
color, and antiquity, to charm a Prout or furnish a Canaletto*
The loggia has the bold round arches that most Orcagna loved ;
^e walls have the dim, soil browns and grays of age, with
flecks of color where the frescoes were ; through thb gateway
there oome the ox-carts, and the mules, and the herds of goats
down the steep paved way ; there is a quiver of green leaves,
a breadth of blue sky, and at the bottom of the passage-way
there is a shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel, so old that the
people can tell you nothing of it ; you can see the angels still
with illumined wings, and the Virgin with rays of gold, who
cats behind a wicket of gray wood, with a carven M interlaced
before her, and quaint little doors that open and shut ; but of
who first made it or set it up there for worship, they can tell
jou nothing at all.
It is only a bit of the Lastra that nobody sees except the
&ttori rattting over the stones in their light carts, or the con-
tadini going in for their masters' letters, or now and then a
Doble driving to his villa, and the country folks coming for
justice or for sentence to the Prefettura. But there is beauty
in it, and poetry ; and the Madonna who sits behind her little
gray gate has seen so much since first the lilies of liberty were
carved on the bold east gate.
The boy's heart beat quick as he went up the sUurs. He
76 SJGNA.
braye in a shy, aHent way, and lie believed tbat tbe angds
were veTy near, and would help bim some day : etUl Nita'a
weigbty arm, and the force of her alder twigs or her aah stem,
were not tbingB to be got rid of by dreaming, and the angels
were-very slow to come ; no doubt because be was not good
enough, as Signa thought sorrowfully. And be bad sent Uiem
farther away from him than ever by that unjust act about the
currants ; so that his heart throbbed fast as be climbed the
rickety stairs where the spiders had it all their own way, and
the old scorpions never were frightened by a broom, which
made them veiy happy, because scorpions hate a broom, and
tumble down dead at the sight of one (cleanliness haviDg im-
measurable power over them) in as moral an allegory as JEaof
and Fontaine could ever have wished to draw.
Nita and all her noisy brood were standing together ot^
the table, with a big loaf on it, and an empty bowl, and flasks
of oil and vin^ar, getting ready for supper.
Lippo was down in the street, playing dominoes, and old
Baldo was sitting below, puoling out, by a bronie lamp, from
a book of dreams, some signs he bad had vifflons of in a doze,
to see their numbera for the tomboUu
" How late you are, you little plague 1 I gave you till sun-
set," screamed Nita, as she saw bun. '^And where is the
salad ? Give me quick I"
" I am very sorry," stammered Signa, timidly. " The salad ?
I forgot it I am veiy sorry T'
'* Sony ; and I waiting all this time for supper I" shrieked
Nita. " Nothing to do but just to cut a lettuce and some
endive off the ground, and you foiiget it. Where have yon
been all day?"
" With Bruno."
" With Bruno of course with Bruno and could not bring
a salad off his land. The only thing you had to think of, and
we waiting for supper, and the sun over the mountains more
than an hour ago, and you stuffed up tbere, I warrant, like a
&tting goose !"
I had some bread and milk," said Signa.
He was trembling in all his little limbs ; he could not help
this, they beat him so oflen, and he knew well what was
coming.
*'And nothing else ?" screamed Nita, &r evezy good thing
81QNA. Tt
that went to him she considered robbery and yiolence done on
her own children.
" I had fruit ; but I took it to Sandro*s girls/' said Signa,
Tery low, because he was such a foolish little fellow that
neither example, nor execration, nor constant influence of
lying could ever make him untruthful, and a child is always
either utterly untruthful or most exaggerately exact in truth
^there is no medium for him.
^ To Sandro^s girls ! ^and not to us 1" screeched Nita's eldest
daughter, and boxed him on the ear.
'* You little beast i" said Giorgio, the biggest boy, and
kicked him.
Toto, waiting for the signal of assault, sprang on him like
a cat^ and pulled his hair till he tore some curls out by the
roots.
Signa was very pale, but he neyer made sound or effort.
He stood stock-still and mute, and bore it. He had seen pic-
tures of St Stephen and St. Lawrence and of Christ, ^and
Uiey were still and quiet always, letting their enemies have
their way. Perhaps, if he was still too, he thought, it might
be forgiven to him, that sin about the currants.
Nita, with an iron hand, sent her offspring off reeling to
their places, and seized him herself and stripped him.
He was all bruised from the night's beating still ; but she
did not pause for that. She plucked down her rod of alder
twigs, and thrashed him till he bled again, then threw him into
the straw in the inner room beyond, where the boys slept.
All the time he was quite mute. Shut up in the dark his
courage gave way under the pain, and he burst out crying.
" Dear angels, do not be angry with me any more,*' he
prayed, '* and I only did it to make Gemma happy ; and they
beat me so here ; and I never tell Bruno.''
But the angels, wherever they are, never now come this
side of the sun, and Signa lay all alone in the dark, and got
no rest nor answer.
" The chitarra will be sorry," he thought, getting tired of
waiting for the angels.
He told all his sorrows and joys to the chitarra, and he was
sure it understood, for did it not sing with him, or sigh with
him, just as his heart taught it ?
^ I will tell the chitarra," said Signa, sobbing in his straw,
7*
78 SIGNA.
with a vague babyisli dim sense of the great truth that his
art is the only likeness of an angel that the singer ever sees
on earth.
CHAPTER X,
The little fellow had a laborious life at the best of times,
but he had so groni up in it that it never occurred to him to
repine.
True, Toto, the same age as himself, and a mother's darling,
led one just as lazy and agreeable as his was hard and over-
worked. Toto sported in the sun at pleasure, played mora for
halfpence, robbed cherry-trees, slept through noon, devoured
fried beans and green almonds and artichokes in oil, and re-
fused to be of any earthly use to any human creature through
all his dirty idle days as best beseemed to him. But Signa
from the cradle up had been taught to give way to Toto, and
been taught to know that the measure of life for Toto was
golden and for him was lead. It had always been so from the
first, when Nita had laid him hungry in the hay to turn to
Toto full but screaming.
Signa, sent out in the dark before the sun rose, to see to the
sheep on the hill, kept on the hill winter and summer, if he
were not sent higher to fetch things from Bruno's garden and
fields ; running on a dozen errands a day for Baldo or Lippo
or Nita ; trotting by the donkey's side with v^etables along
the seven dusty miles into the city, and trotting back again
afoot, because the donkey was laden with charcoal, or linen to
be washed, or some other town burden that Lippo earned a
penny by, fetching in for hb neighbors ; early and late, in
heat and in oold, when the south wind scorched, as when the
north wind howled, Signa was always on his feet, doing this
and that and the other. But he had got quite used to it, and
thought it a wonderful treat that they allowed him to sing now
and then for the priests, and that he let his voice loose as loud
as he liked on the hill-sides and in the fields.
When he went up into these fields, and knew the beautiful
Tuscan world in summer, the liberty and loveliness of it made
SIGNA. 79
bim liappy withont his knowing why, hecause the poetic temper
was alive in him.
The little breadths of grass-land white as snow with a million
caps of the earth-creeping bind-weed. The yellow wheat clam-
bering the hill-sides and darkened to roddy bronze when the
TiDe^shadows fell over it. The midsummer glory of the trees with
their blnsh flowers tossing among the great walnuts and the cone-
dropping furs. The fig-trees and the apple-trees flinging their
boaghs together in June like children clasping arms in play.
The glow-worm lying under the moss, while the fire-flies shone
aloft'in the leaves. The blue butterflies astir like living corn-
flowers among the bearded barley and the dainty grace of the
oats. The little shallow brooks sleeping in sun and shade un-
der the green canes, with the droll frogs talking of the weather.
The cistus, that looks so like the dog-rose, that you pluck one
for the other every day, covering the rough loose stones and
crombling walls with beauty so delicate you fear to breathe on
it The long turf paths between the vines, left for the bul-
locks to pass by in vintage-time, and filled with amethystine
colors from clover and ivis and bugloss and fritillaria. The way-
side crucifixes so hidden in coils of vine and growing stalks of
msh-like millet and the swaying fronds of acacia oflshoots
that you scarce can see the cross for the foliage. The high
hills that seem to sleep against the sun, so still they look, and
dim and dreamful, with clouds of olives, soil as mist, and flecks
of white where the mountain villages are, distant as far-off'
sails of ships, and full, like them, of vague fancy and hope and
perils of the past. All these things were beautiful to him, and
he was very happy when he went up to Bruno.
Besides, this tall dark fellow, who scowled on every one and
should have been a brigand, people said, was always good to
him.
He had to work, indeed, for Bruno, to carry the cabbages
into the town, to pump the water from the tanks, to pick the
insects off" the vines, to cut the distaff'-canes, to carry the cow
her fresh fodder, to do all the many things that are always
wanting to be done from dawn to eve on a little farm. But
then Bruno always spared him half an hour for his lute, al-
ways gave him a good meal, always let him enjoy himself
when he could, and constantly interceded to get him spared
labor on a feast-day, and leave to attend the communal school.
80 SJGNA.
He did not wonder either at Brano's kindness or at tbe
other's unkindaess ; because children take good and evil as the
birds take rain and sunshine. But it lightened the troables
of his young life and made them bearable.
He had never wandered farther than the hills above the
town, and sometimes he was sent with the donkey into Flor-
ence ; that was all. But the war-worn stanch old Lastra is
enough world for a child ; it would be too wide a one for an
historian) could all its stones have tongues.
It is a trite saying that it is not what we see but bow we see
that matters ; and Signa saw in hb battle-dinted world-forsaken
village more things and more meanings than a million grown-
up wanderers woiidd have seen in the width of many countries.
He got the old men to tell him stories of it in the great re-
publican centuries ; the stories were apocryphal , no doubt, but
had that fitness which almost does as well as truth in popular
traditions, and, indeed , is truth in a measure. He knew how
to read, and in old muniment rooms going to decay in irm-
houses and granaries fouod tattered chronicles which be could
spell out with more or less success. He knew all the old tow-
ers and ruined fortresses as the owls knew them. When be
got a little time to himself, which was not very oflen, he would
wander away up into the high hills and play his lute to the
sunny silence, and fancy himself a minstrel like those he saw
in the illuminations of the vellum rolls that the rats ate in
many a villa once a palace and now a wine-warehouse, whose
lords had died out root and branch. Wading knee-deep in the
green river-water among the canes and the croaking frogs that
the other boys were fishing for, his shining eyes saw the broad
channel of the river filled with struggling horses and fighting
men, as they told him it had been in the old days when Cas-
truccio had forded it and Ferruccio had ridden over it with bis
lances.
It was all odds and ends and waifs and strays of most im-
perfect knowledge that he got, for every one was ignorant
around him, and though the people were proud of their his-
tory, they so mixed it up with grotesque invention and dis-
torted hyperbole that it was almost worthless. Still, the little
that he knew made the old town beautiful to him and vener-
able and mosC wonderful, as Troy, if he could see it entire,
would seem to a Hellenic scholar. His little head was full of
SIONA. 81
delicate and glorious fancies, as he pattered on his hare hrown
feet beside the donkey under the gateways of the Lastra ;
the west one with its circlet of azure where the monochrome
used to be, and its chasm of green where the ivy and bushes
grow ; and the east one with its great stone shields, and its
yawning depth of arch, and its warders* turrets on the roof.
He was so absorbed in thinking that he would sometimes nerer
see the turnips jump out of the panniers, or the chestnuts shake
out of the sacks on the donkey's back, and Nita would beat
him till he was blue for leaving them rolling in the Lastra
streets, to be puzzling about old color on the tops of gates,
when the blessed vegetables were flying loose like mad things
on the stones ! it was enough to call down the instant judg-
ment of Heaven, she averred.
Those gleams of blue on the battlements, what use were
they ? and as for the clouds ^they were always holding off
when they were wanted, and coming down when rain was ruin.
But as for turnips and beans about their preciousness there
could be no manner of doubt. And she taught the priority
of the claims of the soup-pot with a thick cudgel, as the world
teaches it to the poet. The poet often learns the lesson, and
puts his conscience in to stew, as if it were an onion ; finding
philosophy will bake no bread.
But no beating could cure Signa of looking at the frescoes,
and hearing the angels singing in the clouds above.
Signa was not as other children were. To Nita he seemed
more foolish and more worthless than any of them, and she
despised him.
^^Yon cannot beat the gates down nor the clouds," said
Signa, when she thrashed him ; and that comforted him. But
such an answer seemed to Nita the very pertinacy of the
vl1 One himself.
'* He was an obstinate little beast,*' said Nita, " and if it
were not for that half of Bruno's land "
But he was not obstinate. He only stretched towards the
light he saw, as the plant in the cellar will stretch through the
bars.
Tens of millions of little peasants come to the birth, and
grow up and become men, and do the daily bidding of the
world, and work and die, and have no more of soul or God-
head in them than the grains of sand. But here and there,
n*
82 SIGNA.
with no lot different from his fellows, one is bom to dresm and
muse and struggle to the sun of higher desires, and the world
calls such a one Burns, or Hajdn, or Giotto, or Shakspeare,
or whatever name the fierce light of fame may bum upon and
make iridescent.
Some other relaxations and enjoyments too the child found ;
and here and there people were good to him ; women for the
sake of his pretty innocent face, with the cloud of dusky gold
of hair half over it always, and priests for the sake of hia
voice, which gave such beauty to their services when anything
great happened to demand a full ceremonial in their datk,
quiet, frescoed sanctuaries scattered under the hills and on
them. Indeed, Lippo would have taken him into the city,
and made money of his singing in the great churches at Easter
time, or on Ascension Day, or in Holy Week at the grand
ceremonies of Home. But of that Bruno would never hear.
He set his heel down on the ground with an oath.
" Sell your soul, if you please, and the devil is fool enough
to pay for it," he said, " but you shall never sell the throat of
Pippa*s child like any trapped nightingale s.*'
Poor Lippo sighed and yielded ; it was one of those things
in which his own good sense and calm wisdom had to let them-
selves be overborne by his brother's impetuous unreason. The
churches even the great ones ^pay but a few pence ; it was
not worth while risking for a few coppers, or an uncertain
future, that lucrative '^ half of my half" off the rich fields and
vine-paths of the Artimino mountain.
So Signs sang here and there, a few times in the year, in
the little choirs about the Lastra, for nothing at all but the love
of it, and in the Holy Week sang in the church of the Mis-
ericordia, where one of his chief haunts and sweetest pleasures
was found at all times.
It is the only church within the Lastra walls, the parish
church being outside upon the hills, and very little used. It
is a small place, gray and grim of exterior, with its red curtain
hanging down much worn, and having, within, its altar-piece
by Cimabue, only shovm on high and holy feasts ; no religious
building in this country, however lowly, is quite without some
treasure of the kind.
The little edifice fills to overflowing at high mass, and the
people stand on the steps and in the street, and the sound of
SIGNA. 83
the chanting and the smoke of the incense and the tinkle of
the little bells come out on to the air over the bowed heads,
and with them there mingle all sweet common country sounds,
from bleating sheep, and rushing winds, and watch-dogs bay-
ing afar off, and heaving ropes grating boats against the bridge ;
and the people murmur their prayers in the sun and bow and
kneel and go home comforted, if they know not very well why
they are so.
Above the body of the church, led up to by a wooden stair-
case, there are the rooms of the Fraternity to which all good
men and true belong for the love of the poor and the service
of heaven, rooms divided into little cells, each with the black
robes and mask of a brother of the order in it ; and black-
lettered lines of Scripture above, and the cross-bones of death ;
and ciosets where the embroidered banners are, and the
sacred things for holy offices, and the black velvet pall with its
memento mori and its golden skulls, that covers each brother
on his last travel to his latest rest.
Here, in the stillness and the silence, with these symbols of
death everywhere around, there dwelt at this time in the dull
Bongless church a man who, in his day, had been a careless
wandering singer, loving his art honestly, though himself one
of the lowliest of her servitors.
Bom in the Lastra, with a sweet voice and an untrained love
of harmony, his tastes had led him to wander away from it
and join one of the troops of musicians who make the chance
companies in the many small theatres that are to be found in
the Italian towns which lie out of the great highwiiys, and are
hardly known by name, except in their own commune. He had
never risen high in his profession, though a favorite in the
little cities, but had always wandered about from season to
season, from playhouse to playhouse ; and in the middle way
of his career a drenching in a rain-storm, alter a burning day,
had made his throat mute and closed his singing life forever.
He had returned to his birthplace, and there joining the
Misericordia, had become organist and sacristan to their church
in the Lastra, and had stayed in those offices some thirty years,
and now was over seventy ; a silent, timid old creature usually,
but of a gentle temper, and liking nothing better than to recall
the days of his wanderings as a singer, or to linger over the keys
of hiB old organ with some world-forgotten score before him.
84 SIQNA.
There was little scope for his fondness for melody in the
Lastra. It was only in Holy Week that he could arrange any
choral service ; or once in two or three years, perhaps, there
would come such a chance for him as he had had on that day
of Corpus Domini when the bishop's visit had brought about
an unusual greatness of ceremonial.
At all other times all he could ever do was to play a few
symphonies or fugues at high mass, and if any village child
had a great turn for melody, teach it the little science that he
knew, as he taught Signa, who was so docile a pupil that he
would have knelt in happy obedience to the whip which St.
Gregory bought for his scholars, only he never would have
merited it for the transgression of singing out of time.
The stillness, the sadness, the seclusion, where no sound
came unless it were some tolling bell upon the hills, the UEiel-
ancholy associations of the place, which all spoke of pain, of
effort, of sorrow, of the needs of the poor, and of the warn-
ings of the grave, all these fostered the dreamful temper of the
boy, and the thoughtfulness which was beyond his years, and
he passed many a happy tranquil hour singing over to him-
self, or trying to reproduce upon his lute, as best he mighty
themes of the musicians of earlier generatioAS from the
fugues of Merula from the airs of Zingarclli ^from the
Stabat Mater of Jedi from the Benedictus of Jomelli ^from
the Credo of Perea from the CantSata of Porpora ^knowing
nothing of their names or value, but finding out their melo-
dies and meaningi^ by sheer instinct.
Luigi Bini, whom every one called Gigi, had many a crabbed
old score and fine sonata and cantata copied out by his own
hands, and the child, having been taught his notes, had grown
able to find his way in this labyrinth, and pick out beautiful
things from the dust of ages by ear and instinct, and make them
all his own, as love appropriates whatever it worships ; and he
never knew, as he went over the stones of the Lastra with the
donkey, and woke the people in their beds with his clear voice,
whilst all was dark and only he and the birds were astir, that
when he was singing the great Se circa^ ce duce^ or the mighty
Misero pargolettOy or the delicious Queili-ld, or the tender
Deh signora! he was giving out to the silent street, and the
driviug echoes, and the wakening flush of day, airs that had
been the rapture of the listening world a century before.
SIGNA. 85
Graye Gregorian melodies ; Landi of the Florentine landisti
of the Middle Ages ; hymns from the monasteries, modeled on
the old Greek traditions, with " the note the slave of the word */'
all things simple, pure, and old filled the manuscripts of the
sacristy like antique jewels. Signa, very little, very ignorant,
very helpless, strayed among them confused and unconscious
of the value of the things he played with ; and yet got the good
out of them and felt their richness and was nourished on the
strength of them, and ran away to them at every stolen mo-
ment that he could, while Luigi Dini stood hy and listened,
and was moved at the wonderiiil instinct of the child, as the
Romans were moved at the young Mozart's singing of the
AUegri requiem.
Music was in the heart and the hrain of the child ; his feet
moved to it over the dusty roads, his heavy hurdens were light-
ened by it, and when they scolded him, often he did not hear
there were so many voices singing to him.
Where did the voices come from ? He did not know ; only
he heard them when he lay awake in the straw beside the other
boys, with the stars shining through the unglazed windows of
the roof; as he heard them when the hot noon was bright and
sdll OD the hill-top where he strayed all alone with his sheep.
One day he found the magical voices shut up in a little
brown prison of wood, as a great soul ere now has been pent
in a mean little body, one day, a wonderful day, after which
all the world changed for him.
In a little shop in the Lastra by the Porta Fiorentino there
was a violin for sale, a violin in pear- wood, with a shell inlaid
upon its case, and reputed to be very, very old.
Tonino, the locksmith and tinman, had it. So many years
before that he could not count them, a lodger had left it with
him in default of rent, and never had gone back for it. The
violin lay neglected in the dust of an old cupboard. One day
a peddler had spied it and offered ten francs for it. Tonino
said to himself, if a peddler would give that, it must be worth
four times the sum at least, and put it in his window with his
old keys and his new saucepans, and his ancient locks and his
spick-and-span bright coffee-pots, a little old dusky window
just within the tall east gateway of the Lastra, where the
great poplars throw their welcome shadow across the sunny
road.
8
86 SIONA.
Signs going on an errand there one day and left alone in
the shop took it up and b^an to make the strings sound, not
knowing how, but finding the music out for himself, as Pascal
found the science of mathematics, and Wierta the art of
engraving.
When Tonino entered his workshop, with a pair of hot
pincers in his hand, he was frightened to death to hear the
sweetest sounds dancing about the air like butterflies, and
when he discovered that the child was playing* on his precious
violin that the peddler would have given ten francs for, he
hardly knew whether to kiss the child for being so clever or
whether to pinch him with the red-hot nippers for his
impudence. Anyhow, he snatched the violin from him and
put it in the window again.
A thing that could make so sweet a noise must be worth
double what he thought.
So he put a price of forty francs upon it, and stuck it among
his tins, hoping to sell it : dealers or gentlefolks came some-
times up and down the Lastra, seeing if there were any pretty
or ancient thing to buy, for the people have beautiful old
work very often in lace, in majolica, in carvings, in missals, in
repottss^j in copper, and can be cheated out of these with an
ease that quite endears them to tEose who do it
A few people looked at Tonino's violin, but no one bought
it ; because the right people did not see it, or because it was
an old violin without any special grace of Cremona or value
of Bologna on its case.* As it lay there in the window among
the rusty iron and the shining tin things, with the dust drift-
ing over it, and the flies buzzing about its strings, Signa saw
it twenty times a week, and sighed his little soul out for it I
Oh, the unutterable wonder locked up in that pear-wood
case I oh, the deep undreamed-of joys that lay in those mate
strings !
The child thought of nothing else. After those munnars
of marvelous meanings that had come to him when touching
that strange thing, he dreamed of it by day and night. The
lute was dear to him ; but what was the power of the lute
beside those heights and depths of sound that this unknown
creature could give ? ^for a living creature it was to him, as
much as was the redbreast or thrush.
Only to touch it again I just once to touch it again I
SIQNA, 87
He b^^gcd and prayed Tonino ; bnt tlie tinman was inex-
orable. He could not risk his bit of property in suck babyish
bands. True, the child had made the music jump out of it ;
bat that might have been an accident, and who could tell that
another time he would not break it, a little beggar's brat like
that, without people to pay for it if any damage were done ?
" Give me my forty francs, and you shall have it, picci-
nino,'' Tonino would say, with a grin, knowing that he might
as well tell the child to bring him down the star-dust from
the skies.
Signa would go away with his little head hung down, the
longing for the violin possessing him with a one idea a passion.
In the young child with whom genius is born its vague tumul-
tuous desires work without his knowing what it is that ails
him.
The children laughed at him, the old people scolded him,
Nita beat him, Bruno even grew impatient with him because
he was always sighing for an old fiddle, that it was as absurd
for him to dream of as if it were a king's sword or a queen's
pearls.
" As if he were not lazy and tiresome enough as it is !"
said Nita, boxing his ears soundly, when she went by one
evening and caught him leaning against Tonino's casement,
and looking with longing, pitiful, ardent eyes at the treasure
in its pear-wood shell.
After a time the child, shy and proud in temper, grew
ashamed of his own enthusiasm, and hid it from the others,
and never any more tried to soften Tonino's heart and get
leave to touch that magical bow again.
Bruno thought he had forgotten it, and was glad. The
violin lay with the metal pots and the rusty locks, and no one
bought it. Signa when he had to go past on an errand
through the gate to Castagnolo, or Santa Maria del Oreve,
or any other eastward village, tried not to look at the brown
shining wood that the wasps and the mosquitoes were hum-
ming over at their will. But he longed for it the more be-
cause he kept the longing silent and had no chance of ever
feeling those keys of enchantment under his little fingers. A
thing repressed grows.
He would lie awake at night thinking of the violin ; if it
had not been so wicked he would have stolen something to
88 SJQNA.
buy it with ; some days it was all he oonld do to keep himsdf
from stealing it itself.
One bright afternoon in especial, when every one was at a
marionnette show in the square, and he had come back vezy
foot-sore from the city, and passing saw Tonino*8 place was
empty and the old lattice window was open and the san's rays
fell across the violin, it would have been the work of a second
to pat his hand in, and draw it out, and run off anywhere
anywhere ^what would it have mattered where, if only he
had carried all that music with him ?
For genius is fanaticism; and the little barefoot hungiy
fellow, running errands in the dust, had genius in him, and
was tossed about by it like a small moth by a storm.
To run away and wander with the violin to talk to him
wherever he might go : ^the longing to do this tortured him
so that he clasped his hands over his eyes and fled without
it ^as fast as his feet could take him.
To see it lying dumb, when at a touch it would say such
beautiful things to him ! he ran on through the gateway and
down the road with the burning temptation pursuing him as
prairie flames a frightened fawn.
If any one had had it who could have made it speak, be
would not have minded ; but that it should lie mute there
useless lost hurt him with a sharper pain than Nita s hasd
rods could deal.
" Oh, Gemma almost I stole it !" he gasped, panting and
breathless with the horror of himself, as he stumbled np
against the pretty child on the green strip that runs under
the old south wall, where the breaches made by the Spanish
assaults are filled in with ivy, and the ropemakers walk to and
fro, weaving their strands under the ruined bastions.
Gemma put her finger in her mouth and looked at him.
^^Why not quite?" she said. Gemma had stolen many
things in her day, and had always been forgiven because she
was so pretty.
" Oh, Gemma, I did so nearly !" he murmured, unheed-
ing her answer in the confusion of his own new stricken sense
of ^peril and escape.
*' Was it to cat?" said Gemma.
* To eat ?"
He echoed her words without knowing what he said. Two
SIGN A. 89
great tears were rolling down his cheeks. He was so grateful
that strength for resistance had heen given him ; and jet he
was thinking of a song* of the country to a lute, which
sings of how its )wner would gild its strings and wander with
it even as far as Rome, mountains and rocks inclining before
its silver sounds.
If only he could have that beautiful strange thing, he
thought, how he would roam the world over, fearing nothing,
or how happy he would lie down among the sheep and the
pines, forever making music to the winds.
'^ Why did you not take it, if nobody was by to see ?'' said
Gemma.
" Oh, dear, it is wicked to thieve,'* said Signa, drearily,
" wicked, you know, and mean."
Gemma put out her lower lip.
" If no one knows, it is all right/' she said, with accurate
perception of the world's standard of virtue.
Signa sighed heavily, his head hung down ; he hardly heard
her ; he was thinking of the violin.
*' You are a mammamia,'* said Gemma/ with calm scorn,
meaning he was a baby and very silly. " When I wish to do
a thing, I do it."
" But you do very wrong things sometimes."
Gemma shrugged her little white shoulders up to her ears.
" It is 'nice to do wrong,'' she said, placidly.
" They say things arc wrong, you know," she added, after
a pause. " But that is only to keep us quiet. It is all
words."
They called her stupid, but she noticed many facts and
drew many conclusions. This was one of them ; and it was
alike agreeable to her and useful. She was a naughty child,
but was naughty with logic and success.
''If only he would let me touch it once," murmured
Signa.
* " Oh qaanto suoni bene ohitarezxa !
Le tui corde si possone indorare !
Lo manoio direnti una fanciulla !
E dove io vada ti posso men are
Ch' io ti posso menar da qui a Roma
B monti e sassi t 'abbeanio a inchinare !"
TuBCAx Serbhabx.
8*
90 SIONA.
Gemma, finding him such bad oompaDj, went awaj hop-
ping on one foot and wondering why boys were such silly
creatures.
" What is the matter ?" said one of the A)pemakers kindly
to the boy. " Do you want to see the puppet-show that came
in this morning ? Here is a copper bit if you do.'
Signa put his hands behind his back.
*^ Oh, no, it is not that. You are very good, but it is not
that.'*
'^ Take what you can get another time," said the ropemaker,
offended, and yet glad that his too generous offer had heen
repulsed by him.
'^ What an ass you are ! The puppets are splendid," hi^K^
Toto, who was near, and who had spent an hour in the fore-
noon, squeezed between the tent-pegs of the forbidden para-
dise, flat on his stomach, swallowing the dust. "They are
half an arm's length high, and there are three kings in it, and
they murder one another just^Iike life so beautiful! Yon
might have taken the money, surely, and given it to me. I
shall tell mother; see then if you get any fritters for a
week I"
" I did not want to see the puppets," said Signa, wearily,
and walked away.
It was late in the day ; he had worked hard mnning into
the city and back on an errand ; he was tired and listless and
unhappy.
As he went, thinking of the violin, by the walls, not noticing
where his steps took him, he passed a little group of strangers.
They were travelers who had wandered out there for the day.
One of them was reading in a book, and looked up as the
child passed.
" What a pity the Lastra is forgotten by the world !*' the
reader said to his companions : he was thinking of the many
memories which the old castello shuts within her walls as
manuscripts are shut in coffers.
Signa heard, and flushed with psun up to the curls of his
flying hair.
He said nothing, for he was shy, and, besides, was never
very sure that people would not take him to Nita for a thnish-
ing; they so often did. But he went on his way with a
swelling heart. It hurt him like a blow. To others it was
SIONA, 91
only a small, ancient, desolate place filled with poor people,
but to him it was as Zion to the Hebrew children.
" If I could be very great, if I could write beautiful things
as Pergolesi did, and all the world heard them and treasured
them, then praising me, they would remember the Lastra," he
thought.
A dim, sweet, impossible ambition entered into him, for the
first time ; the ambition of a child, gorgeous and vague, and
out of all realms of likelihood ; visions all full of gold and
color, with no perspective or reality about them, like a picture
of the twelfth century, in which he saw himself, a man grown,
laurel-crowned and white-robed, brought into the Lastra, as
the old sacristan told him Petrarca was taken into Rome ; with
the rays of the sun of his fame gilding its ancient ways, whilst
all Italy chanted his melodies and all the earth echoed his
name.
" If I could but be what Pergolesi was I" he thought.
Pergolesi who consumed his soul in prisons, and died of a
broken heart
But then he knew nothing of that ; he only knew that Per-
golesi was a great dead creature, whose name was written on
the scores of the Stabat and the Salve Regina which he loved as
he loved the roll of thunder and the rose of sunrise ; and he
knew that it was he who had written that " Se circa sc disce,''
which he had learned in the dusky organ-lofl of the Miseri-
cordia ; that song in which the great poet and the great musi-
cian together poured forth the passion of a divine despair, the
passion which, in its deepest woe and highest pain, thinks but
of saving the creature that it suffers for :
"Ah no! si gran duole
Non darlo per me !"
He did not know anything about him, but looked up at the
sun, which was sinking downward faintly in the dreamy
warmth of the pale-green west, and wondered where Pergolesi
was, heyond those r^ms of light, those beams of glory ?
Was he chanting the Salve R^ina there ?
Between him and the radiance of the setting sun stood the
little figure of Gemma, her hair all aflame with the light,
hair like Titian's Magdalen and Slave and Venus, like the
hair that Bronzino has given to the Angel who brings the
92 SIQNA.
tidings of tlie Annunciation, carrying the spray of lilies in
his hand.
" Oh, you mammamia !" she cried, in derision, stopping
short, with her brown little sister bowed down beside her
under the weight of some earthen pots that they had been
sent to buy in the Lastra.
*^ Oh, you mammamia I*' cried Gemma, munching a big pear
that some one had given her in the Lastra for the sake of her
pretty little round face with its angelic eyes.
Signa took Palma's flowerpots on his own back, and smiled
back at Gemma.
'* I have nothing to do before bedtime/' he said ; " I will
carry these up for you."
*' And then we can play in the garden," said Gemma, jump-
ing off her rosy feet as she finished the pear. * But what were
you thinking of, staring at the clouds?"
'' Of a dead man that was a very great man, dear, I think,
and made beautiful music.*'
^'Only that !'* said Gemma, with a pout of her pretty lips,
throwing away her pear-stalk.
" Tell me about him/' said Palma.
" I do not know anything," said Signa sadly. " He has
left half his soul in the music, and the other hidf must be
there."
He looked up again into the west.
The two little girls walked along in the dust, one on escb
side of him : Palma wished he would not think so of dead
people ; Gemma was pondering on the veiled glories of the
puppets, of whose exploits Toto had told her marvels.
"Oh, Signal if we could only see the hurattinir she
murmured, as they trotted onward \ she had been sighing her
heart out before the tent.
"The 6Mra/im.?" said Signa. "Yes. Gian Lambrochini
would have given me the money to go ; but I would as soon
hear the geese hiss or the frogs croak."
"You might have gone in really tVi.^ ^and seen them,
murders and all?" said Gi^mma, with wide-opened eyes of
amazement
" Yes."
" ^loney to go-in 1 to go in I ^And you did not take the
money even 1"
8IQNA. 93
" No ; I did not wish to go."
" Bat jou might have given it to m / I might have
gone I"
The enormity of her loss and of his folly overcame her.
She stood in the road and stared hlankly at him.
'^ That' would not have heen fair to the Lambrochini/' said
Palma, who was a sturdy little maiden as to right and wrong.
*' No, and he so poor himself, and so old 1" said Signa.
** It would not have been fair, Gkmma."
*' If you were fond of me, would you think of what was
' fair* ? You would think of amusing me. It is a shame of
you, Signa, a burning shame 1 And longing to see those
poppets as I have done, crying my eyes out before the tent !
It is wicked."
'' Dear, I am sorry," murmured Signa. " But, indeed, in-
deed, I never thought of you."
*' And never thought of all you might have got with the
money !"
Gkmma twisted herself on one side, putting up her plump
little shoulders, sullenly, into her ears, with a scowl on her
ioe.
It cost a whole coin ^ten centimes ^to go in to even the
cheapest standing-places in the theatre, and for a whole coin
you could get a big round sweet cake for five centimes, and
for another centime a handful of melon-seeds, and for another
a bit of chocolate, and for another two figs, and for the fourth
and fifth a painted saint in sugar. And he might have brought
all those treasures to her I
Gremma, between her two companions, felt the immeasurable
disdain of the practical intelligence for the idle dreamer and
the hypercritical moralist. She trotted on in the dust sulkily,
a little rosy and auburn figure in the shadows, as if she
were a Botticelli cherub put into life and motion.
" You are cross, dear I" said Signa, with a sigh, putting his
hand round her throat to caress her back into content. But
Gemma shook him off, and trotted on alone in outraged dignity.
They climbed the steep ascent of grassy and broken ground,
past the parish church, with the deserted convent above
among its cypresses, and the wilder hills with their low wood-
land growth green and dark and fresh against the south, and
then entered the great gardens of Oiovoli, where Sandro Za-
94 SJGXA,
nobetd worked aU the jean of his life among the lemons and
magnolia-tree&
The villa was nninhahited ; but the gardens were cnltlyated
by its owner, and the flowers and fruits were sent into the city
market, and in the winter down to Rome.
" Are you cross still, Gkmma ?" said Signa, when he had
put the big pots down in the tool-house. Gemma glanced at
him with her fore-finger in her mouth.
" WiU you play? What shall we play at?" said Signa,
ooaxingly. " Come ! It shall be anything you like to chooee.
Palma does not mind."
Gkmma took her finger out of her mouth and pointed to
some apricots golden and round against the high wall opposite
them.
" Get me four big ones and I will play.*"
'* Oh, Genmia !" cried Palma, piteously. '' Those arte ihe
yeiy best, the very ones for the padrone I"
" I know," said Gemma.
But the fattore counted them this veiy mornings and
knows eveiy one there is, and will blame fiither if one be gone,
and father will beat Signa or make Nita beat him 1"
" Besides, it is stealing. Gemma," said Signa.
" Ch^ !" said little Gkmma, with unmeasured soom. '' Yoa
can dimb there, Signa ?"
** Yes, I can climb ; but you do not wish me to do wrong to
please you, dear?"
" Yes, I do," said Gemma.
"Oh, Gkmma, then I cannot 1" murmured Signa, sadly.
"If it were only myself I ^but it is wrong, dear, and your
fiither would be blamed. Palma is right."
" Ch^ 1" Biud Gemma, again, with her little red mouth thrust
out " Will you go and get them, Signa ?"
" No," said Signa.
" Tista i" cried Gremma, with her sweetest little chirp, and
flew through the twilight fragrance. " Tista 1 Tista ! Tista I*'
Tista was Giovanni Battista, the twelve-year-old son of a
fellow-laborer of Zanobetti, who lived on the other side of the
wall, a big brown boy, who was her slave.
Signa ran after her.
" No, no I Gkmma, come back I"
Gkmma glanced over her shoulder.
SIGNA. 95
'' TiBta win get them, and be will swiDg me in the big trees
afterwards."
" No 1 Gemma, listen come back ! Gremma, listen ; I
will get them."
Gemma stood still, and laughed.
" Get them first, then I will come back ; but Tista will do
as well as you. And he swings me better. He is bigger."
Signa climbed up the wall, bruising his arms and wounding
his feet, for the stones of it were sharp, and there was hardly
any foothold ; but with some effort he got the apricots and
dropped to the ground with them, and ran to Gemma.
** Here 1 Now you will not go to Tista ? But, oh, Gemma,
why make me do such a thing ? It is a wrong thing ! it is
veiy wrong I"
'^ I did not make you do anything," said Gemma, receiving
the fruit into her skirt. " I did not make you. I said Tista
would do as well."
Signa was silent.
She did not eyen thank him. She did not even offer to
share the spoils. He was no nearer her good graces than he
had been before he had sinned to please her.
" Oh, Signa I I never, never would have believed 1" mur-
mured Palma, ready to cry, and powerless to act.
** She wished it so. She would have gone to Tista," said
Signa, and stood and watched the little child eating the fruit
with all the pretty pecking ardor of a chaffinch. Gemma
laughed as she sat down upon the grass to enjoy her stolen
goods at fuller ease. When she had got her own way, all her
good humor returned.
" What sillies you are I" she said, looking at the tearful eye
of her sister^ and at Signa standing silent in the shade.
" It is you who are cruel. Gemma," said Palma, and went,
with her little black head hung down, into the house, because,
though she was only ten years old, she was the mistress of it,
and had to cook and sweep and wash, and hoe the cabbages
and bake the bread, or else the floors remained filthy and the
hungry boys shirtless and unfed.
Ckmma did not know that she was cruel. She was any-
thing that served her purpose best and brought her the most
pleasore, ^that was all.
She ate her apricots with the glee of a little mouse eating
96 SIGN A,
a bit of cheese. Sigoa watched her. It was all the reoom-
pense he had.
He kocw that he had been weak, and had done wroog,
because the fruit-trees were under Sandro*8 charge, who had
no right to any of it, being a man paid by the week, and with-
out any share in what he helped to cultivate ; and this on the
south wall being the very choicest of it all, Sandro had
threatened his children with dire punishment if they shoold
dare even to touch what should fall.
When she had eaten the last one, Gemma jumped ap.
Signa caught her.
" You will kiss me now, and come and play ? There is
just half an hour.**
But Gemma twisted herself away, laughing gleefully.
" No ; I shall go and swing with Tista."
" Oh, Gemma I when you promised "
'^ I never promised,** said Gemma.
" You said you would come back.**
Gemma laughed her merriest at his face of afltonished re-
proach.
" I did come back ; but I am going again. Tista swings
better than you.'*
And, with her little carols of laughter rippling away among
the leaves, G^mma ran off and darted through a low door and
banged it behind her, and called aloud,
" Tista ! Tista ! Come and swing me !**
In a few moments, on the other aide above the wall, her little
body curled upon the rope, and her sunny head as yellow as a
marigold, were seen flying in a semieircle up into Uie boughs
of the high magnolia-trees, while she laughed on, and called
louder,
" Higher, higher, Tista I higher !**
Signa could see her, and could hear : that was aD the re-
ward he had.
He sat down disconsolate by the old broken statue by the
water-lilies.
He was too proud to follow her to dispute with Tista.
" I will not waste another hour on her, ever I'* he thought,
with bitterness in his heart. There were the lute and the
music in the quiet sacristy ; and old fragrant silent hills so
fiill of dreams for him ; and Bruno, who loved him and never
SIQNA. 97
cheated him ; and the nightiogales that told him a thoTuand
fitories of their loves among the myrtles ; and the stones of the
Lastra that had the tales of the great dead written on them ;
when he had all these, why should he waste his few spare
predous minutes on this faithless, saucy, sulky, ungrateful
Utde child?
His heart was very heavy as he heard her laughter. She
bad made him do wrong, and then had mocked at him and
left him.
" I will never think about her, never any more !** he said
to himself, while the shadows darkened, and the hats flew out,
and the glow-worms twinkled, and in the dusk he could still
just see the golden head of (jemma flying in the bronzed
leaves of the magnolias.
After a while her laughter and her swinging ceased.
The charm of perfect silence fell on the grand old garden.
He sat on, soothed and yet sorrowful. The place was beauti-
ful to hhn, even without Oemma.
In this garden of these children all the flora of Italy was
gathered and was growing.
The delights of an Italian garden are countless. It is not
like any other garden in the world. It is at once more formal
and more wild, at once greener with more abundant youth and
veaerable with more antique age. It has all Boccaccio between
its walls, all Pctrarca in its leaves, all RaflFaelle in its skies.
And then the sunshine that b^:gar8 words and laughs at paint-
en! the boundless, intense, delicious, heavenly light 1 What
do other gardens know of that, save orange-groves of Granada
and rose-Uiickets of Damascus ?
The old broken marble statues, whence the water dripped
and fed the water-lily; the great lemon-trees in pots big
enough to drown a man, the golden globes among their emer-
ald l^ves ; the magnolias, like trees cast in bronze, with all
the Bpice of India in their caps ; the spires of ivory bells that
U)e yuccas put forth, like belfries for fairies ; the oleanders
tiller than a man, red and white and plush color ; the broad
velvet leaves of the flowering rush ; the dark majestic elice
oaks, that make the noon like twilight ; the countless graces
of the vast family of acacias ; the high box hedges, sweet and
pungent in the sun ; the stone ponds, where the gold-fish sleep
through the sultiy day ; the wilderness of carnations ; the huge
E 9
98 SIONA,
roses, yellow, crimson, snow-white, and the small noisette and
the banksia with its million of pink stars ; myrtles in dense
thickets, and camellias like a wood of eyergreens ; cacti in all
quaint shapes, like fossils astonished to find themselTes again
alive ; high walls vine-hung and topped by pines and cypre^es;
low walls with crowds of geraniums on their parapets, and the
mountains and the fields beyond them ; marble basins hidden
in creepers, where the frogs dozed all day long ; sounds of con-
vent bells and of chapel chimes ; green lizards basking on the
flags ; great sheds and granaries beautiful with the clematk
and the wisteria and the rosy trumpets of the bignonia ; great
wooden places, cool and shady, with vast arched entrances, and
scent of hay, and empty casks, and red earthen amphone, and
little mice scudding on the floors, and a sun-dial painted on
the wall, and a crucifix set above the weathercock, and through
the huge unglazed windows sight of the green vines with the
bullocks in the harvest-carts beneath them, or of some hilly
sunlit road with a mule-team coming down it, or of a blue
high hill with its pine-trees black against the diy, and on its
slopes the yellow com and misty oUve. This was their gar-
den ; it is ten thousand other gardens in the land.
The old painters had these gardens, and walked in them,
and thought nothing better could be needed for any scene of
Annunciation or Adoration, and so put them in beyond the
windows of Bethlehem or behind the Throne of the Lamb ;
and who can wonder?
The mighty lives have passed away into silence, leaving no
likeness to them on earth ; but if you would still hold com-
munion with them, even better than to go to written score or
printed book or painted panel or chiseled marble or cloistered
gloom, is it to stray into one of these old quiet gardens, where
for hundreds of years the stone naiad has leaned over the foun-
tain, and the golden lizard hidden under the fiiUen caryatid,
and sit quite still, and let the stones tell you what they re-
member and the leaves say what the sun once saw ; and then
the shades of the great dead will come to yon. Only you
must love them truly, else you will see them never.
Signa, in his little ignorant way, did love them with just
such 'blind untaught love as a little bird bom in a dark cage
has for the air and the light.
When he stole into the deserted villas, where, after oentu-
SIGNA, 99
ries of neglect, some fresco would glow still upon the damp
walls where the cobwebs and the wUd vine had their way,
when he saw the sculptured cornices and the gilded fretwork
and the broken mosaic in the halls where cattle were stabled
and grain piled, when he knelt down before the dusky name-
less Madonnas in the little churches on the hills, or found some
marble head lying among the wild thyme, the boy's heart
moved with a longing and a tenderness to which he could have
giTen no title.
As passion yet unknown thrills in the adolescent, as mater-
nity yet undreamed of stirs in the maiden, so the love of art
comes to the artist before he can give a voice to his thought
or any name to his desire.
Signa heard " beautiful things'* as he sat in the rising moon-
light, with the bells of the little bindweed white about his
feet.
That was all he could have said.
Whether the angels sent them on the breesse, or the birds
brought them, or the dead men came and sang them to him,
he could not tell. Indeed, who can tell ?.
Where did Guido see the golden hair of St. Michael gleam
upon the wind ? Where did Mozart hear the awful cries of
the risen dead come to judgment? What voice was in the
fountain of Yaucluse ? Under what nodding oxlip did Shak-
speare find Tltania asleep ? When did the Mother of Love
come down, chaster in her unclothed loveliness than vestal in
ber veil, and with such vision of her make obscure Cleomenes
immortal ?
Who can tell ?
Signa sat dreaming, with his chin upon his hands, and his
ejes wandering over all the silent place, from the closed flowers
at his feet to the moon in her circles of mist.
Who walks in these paths now may go back four hundred
years. They are changed in nothing. Through their high
hedges of rhododendron and of jessamine that grow like wood-
land trees it would still seem but natural to see Raphael with
his court-train of students, or Signorelli splendid in those ap*
parelings which were the comment of his age ; and on these
broad stone terraces with the lizards basking on their steps and
the trees opening to show a vine-covered hill with the white
oxen creeping down it and the blue mountains farther still be-
100 SIONA.
bind, it would be but fitting to see a dark figure otting and
painting lilies upon a golden ground, or cberubs* heads upon
a panel of cypress wood, and to hear that this painter was the
monk Angelico.
The deepest charm of these old gardens, as of their ooontnr,
is, after all, that in them it is possible to forget the present
age.
In the full, drowsy, voluptuous noon, when they are a gor-
geous blaze of color and a very intoxication of fragrance, as in
the ethereal white moonlight of midnight, when, with the
silver beams and the white blossoms and the pale marbles, they
are like a world of snow, their charm is one of rest, silence,
leisure, dreams, and passion all in one ; they belong to the
days when art ,was a living power, when love was a thing of
heaven or of hell, and when men had the faith of children
and the force of gods.
Those days are dead, but in these old gardens you can be-
lieve still that you live in them.
The boy, who did not know hardly why he was moved by
it so greatly, musing in this garden of Giovoli, and sitting
watching the glow-worms in the ground-woodbine, was more
than half consoled for the cruelty of his playmate. When
the nine o'clock chimes rang down below in the Lastra, he did
not move ; he had forgotten that if he were away when Nita
should shut her house up he would have another beating and
no supper.
How often was Giotto scolded for letting the sheep stray ?
Very often, no doubt.
When the moon had quite risen, with a ring of mist round
her, because there was rain hanging in the air, little feet ran
over the bindweed, and a little rosy face, all the prettier for
the shadows that played in its eyes and the watery radiance
that shone in its curls, looked up into his with saucy merri-
ment.
A little piping voice ran like a cricket's chirp into the
stillness.
" You may swing me to-morrow : do you hear?"
Signa started, roused from his musing.
The beautiful things were mute ; the clouds and the leaves
told him nothing more. He was only a little barefooted boy,
vexed at being left alone, and jealous of big brown Tista.
8IQNA. 101
Oemma was a pretty, snlk j baby, with a pert tongae and a
sturdy will of her own ; a little thing that could not read a
letter, and cared for nothing but for eating and for play ; but
there were shadowed out in her the twin foes of all genius,
the Woman and the World.
^' Are you sulking here ?'* said Gemma. " Tista swung me
so high ! so high ! Much better than you. You must get
out of the garden now ; father is come to lock the gates.''
Signa got up slowly.
" Good-night, Gemma."
" Good-night, Gemma T' echoed the child, mimicking the
sadness of his answer. " Oh, how stupid you are ! Just like
Palma 1 Tista has more life in him, only he never has any-
thing for one except those little green apples. You may come
and swing me to-morrow, if you like.'*
" No ; you love Tista."
" But I love you best"
She whispered it with all the wooing archness and soilness
of twenty years instead of ten, with the moonbeams shining
in her eyes till they looked like wet cornflowers.
Signa was silent. He knew she did not love him, but only
his pears that he got for her from Bruno, or his baked cakes
that he coaxed for her from old Teresina.
''You will come to-morrow?" said Gemma, slipping her
hand into his.
'' You will flout me if I do come."
" No," said Gemma.
" Yes, you will. It is always like that."
" Try," said Gemma ; and she kissed him.
" I will come," said Signa ; and he went away through the
dewy darkness, forgetting the stolen apricots and the choice of
Tista. It was so very seldom that she would kiss him, and
she looked so pretty in the moonlight.
Gemma glanced after him through the bars of the high
iron gate with the japonica and jessamine twisting round its
coronet.
Tista was going away on the morrow into the city to be
bound 'prentice to a shoemaker, who was his mother's cousin,
and had offered to take him cheaply.
But it had not been worth while to tell Signa that.
'' There would have been nobody to swing me if I had not
9*
102 SIGNA.
coaxed him/' thought Oemma ; " edcI perhaps he will bring
me one of those big sweet pears of Bruno's."
And the little child, well contented, ran off under her father*s
shrill scolding for being out so late, and went in-doora and
drank a draught of milk that Palma had b^ged for her from
a neighbor who had a cow, and slipped herself out of her little
blue shiH and homespun skirt, and curled herself up on her
bed of hay and fell fast asleep, looking like a sculptor's sleeping
Love.
CHAPTER XI.
A FEW days later fell the feast of St. Peter and St. Panl,
and Signa for more than half a year had been promified a
great treat.
Bruno had said that on that day he would take Kim to sec
the marble men and the painted angels of the Certosa Mon-
astery, some ten miles away along the bend of the green Orcve
water.
What Bruno promised he did always ; the child had the
surest faith in his word ; and by five o'dock in the fair sunrise
of the June morning, Signa slipped down the dark staircase,
and undid the door, and ran out bareheaded into the sweet
cold air, and stood waiting on the stones.
The Madonna of Good Counsel smiled on him through her
wooden wicket ; bells were ringing over the country around ;
some tender hand had already placed before the shrine a fresh
bunch of field-flowci-s ; the sky was red with the rose of the
daybreak.
He had not waited long before a tall figure turned the
corner, and Bruno's shadow fell upon the slope.
"You are ready? That is right," he said,~and without
more words the child ran on by his side out of the lofly Fior-
entina gate.
The morning was fresh and radiant, very cold, as it always
is in midsummer, before the sun has warmed the earth and
drunk up the deep night dews that drench the soil
The shutters of the houses were unclosing, and through the
SIGNA. 103
open doors and in the darkness of the cellars there was the
yellow gleam of wheat, cut and waiting for the threshers ; the
gardens and yards were yellow, too, with piles of straw hata
wetted and drying ; the shadows were broad and black ; men
were banning their work in the great arched smithies and
workshops ; there was everywhere the smell of the wet earth
refreshed and cooled by night.
They went along the road that leads to the Greve river ;
past the big stone bams where the flails would be at rest all day
for sake of good St. Peter and St. Paul ; past the piles of
timber and felled fir-ti'ees that strewed the edge of the road ;
past the old gray villa of the Delia Stufa who nigh a thousand
years before had come over the mountains, Christian knights
and gallant gentlemen, with their red cross and their tawny
lions on their shields ; the chapel bell was calling the scattered
cotters of Castagnolo to first mass; past the pretty bridge of
the Sta'gno (the pool), with its views of the far mountains, and
the poplar-trees that the Latins named so because of the rest-
lessness of their leaves, like the unresting mob ; past the great
fortress of the Castel Pucci, once built to hurl defiance at the
city itself, now white and silent, sheltering in its walk the
woeful pain, and yet more woeful joys, of minds diseased ;
past the worthy barber^s shop, where it is written up that he
has only painted his sign with the tricolor to quiet tasteless
whirligigs, he being a man of humor, with a pity kindred to
contempt for all the weathercock vagaries of politics ; past the
old, dirty, tumbledown, wayside houses, where the floors were
strewn with the new straw picked for the plaiting, and the
babies were lying in flat fruit-baskets, swaddled and laughing,
and the girls were getting ready for mass with bright petticoats
and braided hair and big ear-rings, and, if they were betrothed
maidens, strings of pearls about their throats ; past all these,
till they came to the Oreve bridge, where they met a priest
with the Host in the brightness of the festal day-dawn.
They uncovered their heads and knelt down in the dust and
prayed for the passing soul till the little bell, borne before the
holy man, had tinkled away in the distance. Then they walked
on by the Greve water under the shivering poplars and among
the grazing sheep.
There is no r^ular path along the river ; but they made
one fir themselves, brushing through the canes, getting round
104 8IGNA.
the rashes, or, when it was needed, wading knee-deep, or
oHener, for the water was low, walking in the stony sand of
the drj river-bed.
Once it was a warlike water enough, in the old days wheo
the Satteringhi and Alberti, and Am^oli and Pandolfini, and
all the other great races, Guelph and GhibdliDO, had their
fortified places bristling along its hanks ; when its stone land-
ing-qnays were crowded with oondottieri watering their horses
ere they went to lend their lanoes to the strongest ; when
mighty nobles in penitence raised shrines and bnilt hospitals
beside it to seek God's grace npon their arms ; when the long
lines of pilgrims wonnd along it, or the creeping files of sampler-
males, or the bright array of Hawkwood's White Company ;
the Greve was then a busy stream, and was as often as not
made red with the blood let out in many a skirmish or the
reflected flames firom a castle fired in fend.
But all that is of the past. Now it is only a miU-race, a
washing-pool, a ford, a fishing-bam, anything the people like
to make of it ; it sees nothing bat the miller's males, or the
grape-wagons, or the women with their piles of white linoi ;
and the only battles it beholds are the fighting of the frogs in
the cane-brake or of the tree-sparrows in the air. Now the
Greye is a simple pastoral river. No one has ever sung of it
that one knows. It lies so near to the Amo, held dear by
every poet and made sacred by every art, that the little Greve
is as a daisy set beside a crown diamond ; and no one thinks
of it.
Tet perhaps only one dare not say so for one's life per-
haps it has as much real loveliness as Amo has. It baa the
same valley, it has the same mountains, it is encompassed by
the same scenes and memories ; and it has a sylvan beantj, aU
of its own, like Wye's or Dart's or Derwent's.
Grassy banks where the sheep browse ; tall poplars, great
oaks, rich walnuts, firs, and maples, and silver lar(^, and the
beautiful cercis that blossoms all over in a night; calm stretches
of green water, with green hills that lock it in ; old water-mills,
half hidden in maize and dog-grass and plumy reeds ; broken
ground above, with winding roads from which the mule-bells
echo now and then ; steep heights, golden with grain, or 6a
grant with hay, and dusky with the dark emerald leaf of the
innumerable vines ; deep sense of coolness, greenness, restlxd-
8IQNA. 105
nesB ererywbere ; and then, where the river's windings meet
its sister stream the Ema, set in a narrow gorge between two
hills, yet risible all along the reaches of the water while far
off, the monastery of the Cistercians the Certosa ending all
the sweet song of peace with a great hymn to k)d.
This is the Greve, with flowering rashes in it, and the sun
in its water till it glows like emeralds, and goats going down
to drink, and here and there a woman cutting the green canes,
and dragon-flies and swallows on the wing, and oxen crossing
the flat timber bridge, and from the woods and rocks above the
aonnd of chapel bells and reapers' voices falling through the
ir, softly as dropping leaves.
Bruno and the child kept always along the course of the
water, walking in its bed or climbing its banks as necessity
made them.
Bruno was never a man of many words ; the national
loquacity was not his ; he was fierce, sullen, taciturn ; but he
snukd on the little lad's ecstasies, and though he could tell him
none of the ten thousand things that Signa wished to know,
y^ he said nothing that did not suit the joyous and poetic
mood of the child ; for though Bruno was an ignorant man
except in husbandry, Love is sympathy, and Sympathy is
intelligence in a strong degree.
Signa was wildly happy ; leaping from stone to stone ;
qlashing in the shallow water with a jump ; calling to the
gossiping frogs ; flinging the fir-apples in the air ; clapping his
hancb as the field-mice peeped out from the lines of cut grain ;
wondering where the poppies were all gone that a week before
had " run like torchmen with the wheat."
Once, his hands filled with blossoms and creepers from the
hedges, he stopped to gather a little blue cornflower that had
outlived the corn as mortals do their joys.
^ Why is it called St. Stephen's crown ?" he asked.
" How should I tell ?" said Bruno ; for indeed it seemed to
him the silliest name that could be.
"Do yon think it saw when they stoned him, and was
sorry?" said Signa.
" How should a flower see ? You talk foolishness."
*^ Flowers see the sun."
That is foolish talk."
'* And the moon, too, else how could they keep time and
106 SIQNA.
shut and go to bed ? And somebody mast bare named tluan
all. Whowasitr
Bruno was silent. Cattle liked dried flowers in ibeir
bay, and bouses would not eat tbem, tbat was all be knew
about them, and wben tbe cbild persisted, be answered him,
" The saints, most likely."
Bat be said within himself,
" If only tbe boy would pull off lizard's tails, or snare birds,
like other boys, instead of asking such odd questions thai
make one think him hardly sensible sometimes I
Signa, a little pacified, gathered bis bands ful), and ran on,
puzzling his little brain in silence. He bad a fancy tbat St.
John had named tbem all one day out of gladness of heart
when Christ had kissed him. Tbat was what be thought^ run-
ning by tbe Greve water.
Who did indeed first name the flowers ? Who first gave
tbem, not their Latin titles, but the old, familiar, fimcifnl,
poetic, rustic ones tbat run so curiously alilce in all tbe differ-
ent vulgar tongues ?
Who first called the lilies of tbe valley tbe Madonna's tears;
tbe wild blue hyacinth St. Dorothy's flower ? Who first called
tho red clusters of the oleander St. Joseph's nos^ays, and tbie
clematis by her many lovely titles, consolation, traveler's joy,
virgin's bower? Who gave tbe spiderwort to St. Bruno; the
black briony for Our Lady's Seal ; tbe corn-feverfew to St.
Anne ; the common bean to St. Ignatius ; tbe bane-berry to
St. Christopher; the blue valerian to Jacob for bis angels'
ladder ; tbe toywort to tbe shepherds for their purse ? Who
first called the nyctanthcs tbe tree of sadness, and tbe starry
passiflora the Passion of Christ ? Who first made dedication
of the narcissus to remembrance ; the amaranthus to wounded,
bleeding love ; tbe scabious to tbe desolation of widowhood ?
Who named them all first in the old days tbat are forgotten?
It is strange that most of these tender old appellatives are
tbe same in meaning in all European tongues. Tbe little
German madchen in her pine woods, and tbe Tuscan contadina
in her vineyards, and tbe Spanish child on tbe sierras, and
the farm-girl on the purple English moorlands, and tbe soft-
eyed peasant tbat drives her milch-cows through tbe sunny
evening fields of France, all gathering their blossoms from
wayside green or garden wall, give them almost all tbe same
SJQNA. 107
old names with the same sweet pathetic significance. Who
gave them first ?
Milton and Spenser and Shelley, Tasso and Schiller and
Camoens, all the poets that ever the world has known might
have been summoned together for the baptism of the flowers,
and have failed to name them half so well as popular tradition
has done, long ago in the dim lost ages, with names that still
make all the world akin.
Meanwhile the man and boy came to a wooden bridge that
bullocks were crossing, with flowers in their frontlets, and red
tassels. There was a broken arch beyond of a bridge that the
Greve had thrown down in flood. The reaped wheat was
lying on the hills. The long cool grass tossed about to the
water's edge. Children were fishing in the shallows.
Up above there was an open space, with a house that had a
green bough over its door, and men drinking, and mules resting
with their noses in fresh-cut cane-leaves. Here they lefl the
bed of the stream, and went up on the high path that goes
along the wooded heights with the bold green blufis on either
side, and the yines below, and the river under the aspens
between them.
They went along the path, which is hardly more than a
mule- and ox-track, rising higher and higher, with the blue
mountains behind them, through the blackberry brambles and
the starry clematis and the wild myrtle and the innumerable
hill-flowers of all hues, and past a rambling farm-house called
Assinaria, with old arched doorways, and a boy drawing water
by a rope, standing in a high unglazed window, with blue shirt
and brown limbs, against the dark behind him, like a figure
painted upon an oaken panel ; and then ankle-deep through
the sea of yellow com strewn all about around the place
awaiting threshing, and out on to a knoll of rock set thick with
rosemary, and so on in view of the Certosa.
The Certosa, afar off, above the stream, with the woods in
front beneath it, so that it seemed lifted on a forest throne of
verdure against the morning splendor of the east ; as he saw
it, Signa was still a minute, and drew a deep, long breath.
Approached from the Roman road, the monastery is nothing,
a pile of buildings, irregular, and only grand by its extent,
on a bare crest of rock ; but approached from the Greve river,
when the morning sun, shining behind it, shrouds its vast pile
108 SJONA.
in golden mist and darkens the wooded valley at its feet, the
monastery is beautiful, and all the faith and the force of the
age that b^ot it are in it : it is a Te Deum in stone.
" It looks as if the angels fought there/' said Signa, with
hushed awe, as he stood on the sward and made the sign of
the cross ; and indeed it has a look as of a fortress, Aociaj^,
when he raised and consecrated it, haying prayed the Repnklio
to let him make it war-proof and braced for battle.
" Men fight the devil there," said Bruno, beUeving what he
said.
The chimes of the monastery were ringing out for the first
mass, deep bells, and of sweet tone, that came down the liver
like a benediction on the day.
Signa kneeled down in the grass.
' Did you pray for the holy men ?" Bruno asked him when
they rose, and they went on under the tall, green, ({uiyering
trees.
"No,** said Signa, under his breath. '^ I prayed for the
devil."
" For him I" echoed Bruno, aghast. '* What are you about,
child? are you possessed? do you know what the good
priests would say ?"
" I prayed for him,** said Signa, with that persistency whidi
ran with his docile temper. '* It is he who wants it. To be
wicked there, where God is, and the sun, and the bells !*'
" But he is the foe of God. It is horrible to pray for him.* '
" No,*' said Signa, sturdily. *' God says we are to forgive
OUT enemies and help them. I only asked him to b^n with
His.*'
Bruno was silent. He did not know what to say to die
boy. The devil to him was a terrible reality ; had he not seen
him, with his black, foul deformity and* flame-vomiting jawa,
on the frescoed walls, whenever he had entered any chureh in
the heat of noon, to sit a little and turn his ftce to the
pillars and hear the murmurs of l5w mass in some side-chapel ?
The devil lived in the flesh for Bn\no : the devil had made
him stab Pippa; the devil was always in the fire of his
tongue and in the haste of his hand ; and these holy painters
of the Church had surely seen the devil in the flesh, or bow
could they ever have portrayed him ?
Pray for those the devil enters, carino," he sud, sofUy.
SJONA. 109
^ When yon baye done with them, it will be time to pray for
bim ; and tbey count by tens of thousands."
*' It is best to pray for him, himself," said Signa, with his
docOe determination to keep his own ideas which Nita so con-
stantly endeayored to thrash out of him. " Perhaps men made
bim bad because they would not leaye him any hope of being
better."
"Do not talk of those things: the priests would not like
it, Signa," said Bruno, to whom such a manner of speaking
of Satan seemed impious, only the child was so young,
beayen, he trusted, would not be angry.
Signa was silent ; he obeyed an order always ; only he kept
his own ideas : it was as a dog obeys a ciJl, but keeps its
instincts.
But his joyous chatter was subdued. He kept looking up
at the great monastery aboye the woods, that was all in a glow
of sunlight, and where men fought the deyil, and, perjraps, saw
God.
" I would not fight him," he thought to himself. " I would
just bring him out, and tell him to look down the riyer, and
I think he would take no more pleasure in hell then."
And he fancied he saw golden-haired Michael and the angel
that was called Gabriel leading the dark incarnate Sin out
there into the light till the sun changed his sable wings to
silyer.
Satan was as real to him as to Bruno : only he felt sorry
for him, always sorry, when he heard the priests talk of him,
and saw the old terrible pictures on the walls of all the woe
he wrought, and the deyouring flames.
Signa had thought a great deal about all these things, sitting
in the dusky aisle with his hand telling his beads and his little
hot feet on the col4 payement, while they droned out the
There were other country-people waiting to go in. The
peasants loye these places : you will see them yery oflen in
little groups, hushed and yet happy, wandering yery quietly
through the aisles of the churches or monasteries, or sitting
against the columns or in the shade on the altar steps. Though
they are a mirthful people at times, and like their lotteries and
dominoes and whirling dances and gossiping jokes, there is
something in the solemn rest, in the serious dusky stillness,
10
1
110 SIGN A.
that Baits them strangely ; the houses of God are reallj to
them abodes of rest ; they take their tired limbs there aod got
repose actual as well as figurative ; perhaps they do not think
about anything, but sit in a sort of daysleep when their
prayers are done ; but the influence of the place is with them,
and their love for it is true.
A whitc-frocked brother met them in the long Tanltei
passage-way, looking as though he had stepped out from some
canvas of Del Sarto's, and they went in with the five other
oontadini waiting there, Bruno with his brown cloak on one
shoulder and a clean shirt, and the child in rough white linen
with a carnation at his throat ; a flower in the ear or at the
throat is seen here so often with bare legs and feet.
Signa, awe-stricken and full of the beauty of the place, was
mute as they strayed through its cloisters and crypt, and fol-
lowed the white-frocked brother, and passed other monks
kneeling rapt in prayer or meditation. Only when he came
to where the old bishop lies asleep in the wonderful marble of
Francesco di San GhJlo he was moved by a sudden impulse,
and plucked the end of Bruno's doak.
" I should like to sing him something," he whispered.
"Sing? to whom?"
" To that old man," said Signa, and then colored, ashamed
of himself.
" His soul is in heaven ; he would be angered," said Bruno,
in dismay. " He hears much better singing than yours.
Look ! the padre is shocked at you, and in this holy place I"
Signa hung his head.
" Are you fond of singing, little fellow ?" asked a stranger
who had been looking at the Perugino on the wall.
Signa nodded shyly.
" And why do you want to sing to th^ dead bishop?"
" Because he is only asleep," said Signa, timidly, ^ and it
might give him pretty dreams. Old Teresina says she always
has good dreams towards morning, because I go under the
house singing."
" Sing, then," said the stranger, and turned to the monk
with some words of entreaty.
" If it be a holy song," said the monk, with reluctant oon-
seating.
" He sings well," said Bruno, with an outbreak of the tender
SIGN A. Ill
pride in Signa which hd endeavored to conceal bat could not
always.
Signa was shy and silent for a minute : he wished he had
not spoken of doing it, with this grand strange signore there ;
but the old dead man's face smiled at him, and the Holy Child
in Peragino*8 picture seemed to look down in expectation ; he
foTgot the living people ; the bishop and the Gesu were all he
saw ; he joined his hands as if he were at prayer, and sang a
sacrament hymn of Pergolesi that they sang in his own church.
Whether the good bishop dead five hundred years, or hard-
headed honest Perugioo sleeping under the wayside oak in
Frontignano, heard or not, who shall say till the secrets of tho
grave be loosed ? But the contadini standing reverently by,
and the white-robed monk, and the listening stranger, heard,
and held their breath. The monk turned his head a moment
to Pemgnio's picture, to see if it were not some miracle being
wrought there, and the Angds of the Nativity singing instead
of this peasant child.
Signa sang on as larks do, forgetting everything when once
his voice was loosened on the air, and, without knowing what
he did, left the hymn of Pergolesi, and sang on and on and
on, cadences that were to be traced to no written score, and
that came to him, he never could tell how, just as they came
upon the mountain-side, with not a creature near. The words
were the words of the Latin services, but the cadences were
his own as much as the thrush's are its own in the hawthorn-
time.
He might have sung on till sunset, if two other monks,
drawn by the unwonted sounds, had not come near and looked
on through the half-open door. The sound stopped him ; he
paused, startled and half ashamed ; and not another note could
be got from him.
^ He is not angry," he whispered to Bruno, looking at the
statue. " He is smiling still."
'* You would make marble smile, if it had frowned through
ages till you sang," said the stranger, while the monks mur-
mured something of a gift of God. " My pretty little boy,
you may make the world hear of you ; your mouth will drop
gold."
Signa glanced at him bewildered ; he understood nothing of
this kind of language.
112 STQKA.
'' Come with me where I am punting,** said the Btraoger.
'* I should like to hear who taught jou your perfect phrasing,
who taught you to sing, I mean. Come with mo a few
minutes. Is that your &ther with you ?"
" That is Bruno/* said Signa. For the first tame it oocorred
to him ^why had he no &^er? Was he horn oat of the old
town from the stones and ivy, as the owls were ?
" Not your father ? What is he to you, then ?"
" He is always good. I keep his sheep sometimes.**
The artist did not ask any more ; the hoy was some peas-
ant*s son, it did not matter whose. *' But who taught you to
sing?** he pursued.
" I sing in the churches at home."
" But have yon had no teacher ?**
"No/* said Signa; then added, after a pause, "The birds
do not have any.**
" But much that you sang, ^it is no known music, ^it is
composed by some village genius of whom no one has heard?**
Signa was very puzzled.
" I sing the music that I have in my head,*' he said, after a
little while.
" Then it is you who have the genius, a second Mozart?**
Signa could not 'understand those words at all Perhaps he
was something wicked. Nita was always saying so.
" A genius ? that is a sin ?** he asked, shyly.
The artist laughed. " Yes ; unless you can sell it weD. A
sin sold well is half for^ven.**
The child did not understand, hut was a little frightened.
To speak of sin at all was eerie in this groat place, where men
all day long and all night long fought the fiend.
" I should like to paint your face,** said the stranger ; " as
Perugino did the Holy Child's that you look at so. Oh, a few
lines will do, but I fancy your face will be well known to a
great world one day, and you have a look in your eyes that is
beautiful. Can yon wait?"
The child asked Bruno. Bruno was displeased, but an
Italian has a respect for art and artists : he muttered unwill-
ingly that it was a feast-day, the boy might do as he liked for
him ; it was a folly, but it would not hurt ; it was not as if it
were a girl.
The child went willingly into the room that is sacred to the
SIONA. 113
Popes, and where dread Leo frowned on him. In the wide
window looking to the north on to the purple mountains,
there stood an easel and other things of a paioter's work ; the
artist, being a great man, and bringing authority of govern-
ments with him, was painting that glorious view, and living in
retreat there for a few days.
Bruno followed them ; he would have preferred that strangers
should leave the boy alone ; he was jealous over him, and he
thought that praise would make him vain.
So Signa stood in his little white shirt, with his dark curls
that had the gold light in them touching his throat, and the
painter painted his head and shoulders, with his chest half
bare, and the carnation bright against the skin.
He swept the likeness in with the fast, broad, true touches
of a great artist, who with a dozen strokes can suggest a whole
picture, as Bembrandt drew Jan Six's Bridge.
In half an hour he had what he wanted, ^a little face full
of sadness and joy together, and most purely child-like, with
a look in the eyes that would make women weep.
He had been waiting for such a &ce in his great picture of
the ehUd Demophoon in the sacred fire ; for whose scene he
had come to these purple hills and dreamful plains as all the
old painters and Baffaelle, in his days of wisdom ^had come
to these or such as these.
To move the child to wondering interest and wake the eager,
npt look in his eyes, the painter talked to him, with easy
graphic language, simple, yet eloquent, such as the child had
never heard.
He told him about the flowers he loved ; about the moun-
tains ; about the dead Acciajoli, whose marble effigies were in
the crypt below ; about Donatello, who had carved the stone
warriors in their mighty rest ; about Guilimo, who had sculp-
tured the fruits and flowers there to take away all terrors from
the tomb ; about St. Bruno the founder, and of the far lone
Alps, where he had dwelt, forbidding the sight of woman for
many a mile around ; about the builder of this charter-house,
Qenele Orcagna, that good old man, who loved to paint Cupids
frolicking with youog maidens under orange-boughs, and brave
youths hawking under sunny skies, and yet could draw Black
l^th as if he feared her not, but sent her upward through
the air as though by all^ory not to leave men without hope ;
114 SJQNA,
one of those mighty men who oonld write 8cn1ptor on their
canvas and painter on their marble ; one of those great, rich,
wise lives that make the best of our 01^ look so barren, spent
in raising great piles and coloring beautifol things, and dwell-
ing in peace and honor, and closing tranquilly when their
course was run. Orcagna was writing sonnets when he died
to a young Lid he loved. Sixty years old, and yet with strei^th
and youth and fiiith enough, and enough freshness of heart
and soul, to write a sonnet that should please a boy ! These
men had never been bitten in the bud by the snake of Satiety,
the wound which kills the Achilles of Modem Art.
Bruno, stretched on a bench, lay still as a felled tree and
listened.
*' If I could talk like that to the boy he would love me
better," he thought ; but how was he to talk like that, ^a man
who knew how to make barley grow, and how to drive bullocks
over the land, and how to cleanse the vines with sulphur, but
no more ?
He wished the psdnter would not tell the child the world
would know of him : what use was there in that ? Valdamo
and the hills were world enough ; and were he to sing and the
great unknown cities hear him, he would have to go away for
that, and Bruno hoped to keep him always, always, always,
and see him safe for all the future after him on that good
piece of land on the hill-side, where Pippa had come through
the bean-flowers at sunset
. What better life was there than that, with the meek beasts
on the corn-lands, high in the air among the vines ?
Kings no doubt were higher, and groat lords ; but Bruno
pitied them.
Two o'clock came, and the monks had their simple dinner
in their refectory, and the same fare was brought to the artist
as to any laity who may dwell there in retreat, and he made
them bring portions for the contadino and the child, and added
wine of his own getting, rich and rare.
Bruno and Signa took it without ado, and with the ample
animal-like grace which is bred in Italian blood as in the limbs
of the chamois or the wings of the swallow.
He was a great man, perhaps, and rich, no doubt, and far
above them : but why should they be ashamed to break his
bread with him ?
8IQNA. 115
Thej would have broken theirs with bim.
As for bim, now be bad tbe face be wanted, ^tbe face tbat
be had sought for high and low among the beantiful children
of the Riviera, and always vainly, ^he did not care bow soon
they went, nor where ; and yet the boy had a wonderful voice,
only children were so often wondeiriful in Italy that no one
ever heard of when they were grown to men, a precocious,
fiwifUy passing, universal genius, that burst to beauty like a
rose-laurel blossom, and dropped down without fruit. Still,
this little barefoot boy, tbat sang to the dead bishop, had some-
thing in his face that surely would not die.
** If I took you with mc to tbe big world they would make
an idol of you, little lark,'' be s^d, as tbe boy put down bis
white bowl of soup. " Would you come if I would take you ?*'
Signa looked up to Bruno's face and across at the hills that
hid bis old town from bis sight.
" No,'* he said, simply, but his face flushed all over suddenly ;
a vague fancy, a dim possibility broke before bim, like tbe
faint rose that is promise of tbe sunrise. Only be was too
young and knew too little to be able to be sure of what be
thought.
" No ? Well, you are right,'* said the great painter, smiling.
*' To a mDlion blanks one prize, only the prize is a proud one,
once got ; though tbe men whose hands are emptv deny it to
console themselves. But be content in your life, little fellow ;
it is a good one ; you are not like a town child, ' un brin
d'herbe sans soleil entre deux pav^.' You have the sun and
tbe air and the country : the old painters knew tbe value of
these; we do not. Look here, my pretty boy, take these
pieces and buy what you fancy, and if you ever do wander
far afield and want help, here is my name ; come to me and
remind me of the Gertosa, and such influence as I have with
other men I will use for you. But if you are wise you will
not wander. The oz-furrows are safer traveling than the city
stones. Farewell." '
He gave tbe boy two gold pieces of France, and smiled at
him, and went within to tbe dormitory. He would not have
minded tbe child remaining all tbe day, but be was tired of
seeing that black-browed contadino stretched, listening and
silent, on the bench. Besides, be wanted to go on with his
landscape.
116 SIGNA.
'' Am I to keep them ?'* said Signa, looking down at the
money in bis palm.
^' Money is money," said Brano, briefly. '^ It is forty francs.
Francs do not bang in the bedges."*
Signa was silent in absolute amaze. He bad nerer bad a
centime for bis own in bis wbole life. He felt dixsy.
Then all at once be gave a ringing about of rapturoiis joy.
' I could buy the violin I" be cried, till the Tault of the
chamber echoed.
It was to bim as if be could buy the earth and the son and
the planets.
" Yes ; you can buy the violin," said Bruno.
Signa laughed all over his little face as a brook does when
the sun and wind together please it ; he was beside himself
with bewildered happiness ; he shouted, be leaped, he sang, he
raced, regardless of the silence and sanctity of the pkoe, till
Bruno hurried bim away, fearful that the good brethren mighc
enter and be displeased.
" What did the paper say ? you have forgotten the paper,"
said Bruno, as they passed the pharmacy, where the monks
were distilling their sweet odors and strong waters, with a del-
icate fragrance of coriander and coromandel seeds, and of dried
herbs and lemons and the like, upon the air.
Signa, giddy and breathless, unfolded the crumpled scrap on
which the painter had written bis name with a pendl, his
surname Istriel curtly, as men write who know that the one
word tells all about them to the world.
He spelt the name out slowly, but the line beneath it punled
bim : it was only an address in Paris, but then the little boy
did not know what Paris meant
He crushed the slip of paper together with the gold, and
ran out of the cool vaulted corridors that were so still and
hushed and gray, like twilight, into the patli that runs down
the vines.
"I can buy the violin!'* he cried to the bright sky; he
thought that the sky smiled back again.
* Afior all, the angels had had thought of him.
'* Oh, this wonderful day 1" he shouted. " Oh, Bruno, are
you not happy that we came?"
" I am glad if you are glad," said Bruno. And that was
the truth at all times.
SIQNA. 117
Half-way down the hiD Signa stopped and looked back to
the monastery.
" I forgot to thank the Holy Child," he said, with sharp
ooDtrition.
Which one ? and for what ?"
*' The little Christ in the picture that they called Pemgino :
he fient me this to buy the violin. I am sure of that. He
smiled at me all the while I sang, and I never said a prayer to
thank him. Let me go back."
" They would not let you in ; say your prayers to him at
home ; he will be quite as pleased. But it was the painter
who gave you the money."
*^ It was the Holy Child sent it," said Signa, who had seen
80 many frescoes of the heavenly host descending to mingle in
the lives of men, and had heard so many miracles and legends,
that the visible interposition of Pemgino*s G^u was only such
a thing as he had looked for naturally.
Well, the Gesu might, ^why not? thought Bruno: the
child was worthy even of such memory.
He did not know it seemed presumptuous to think they
could think in heaven of a child's wish for a wooden toy ; but
still, who could tell ? it is such simple, humble, foolish hopes
as these that keep the peasants' hearts and backs from breiik-
ing nnder the burden of unending toil. Untiring intelligence
may live best without a faith, but tired poverty and labor must
have one of some sort. Called by what name it may be, it is
the self-same thing, the vague, sad, wistM hope of some far-
off, bat certain, compensation.
To Bruno, indeed, it seemed that the Gesu had sanctioned
the spending of a vast fortune on a mere plaything ; it was
the cost of a sheep or of a barrel of wine ; but he could no
more have denied the child than he could have cut his hand
off besides, if the saints willed it.
As for Signa, he had no doubt that heaven had sent it to
him. He cried and laughed in his delight. He showed his
gold to the birds, to the frogs, and to the butterflies. He
leaped from stone to stone in the water, laughing at his
own image. He stopped to tell every contadino he met, and
ercry fisherman throwing a net from the canes. He ran
through the hedges of acacia and clematis, and told the spiders
weaving silver in the leaves. He stopped to tell the millers at #
118 SIGN A.
the mOl-botiBe over tlie river, where the good men leaned ont
of a little square window with the yellow fight of a candle
behind them, and above the moss-grown roof the apple bouglis
interlaced against a dreamy blue evening sky, like a Rembmndt
set in a Baffaelle. He caught a big brown velvet stingiess bee,
and whispered it the story, and let it go free to cany the news
before him to the swallows in the Lastra ; and when he came
to the red cross that stands on a pile of stones, where the
Greve is broad and green under the high woodlands, Whens
the mighty Acciajoli once reigned, he knelt down and said tlic
prayers he had forgotten, while the wind chased the shadows
in the water, and the weir and the water-wheel sang to each
other.
" Will it be too late to buy it to-night?" he said, as he saw
Venus rise above the mountains from the sea.
" Not if Tonino be not in bed," said Brand, who never
could bear not to humor the child. So they walked on as >
as they could.
" You are tired ?" said Bruno. " If you are tired, get on
my back."
*' I am not tired I" laughed the child, who felt as though he
had wings, and could dart all the way home as swifUy and
straight as a dragon-fly. It was quite dark when they reached
the Lastra.
It was a hot night. The mosquitoes and the little white
moths were whirling round the few dusky lamps. There were
lights behind the grated windows, and darksome doorways lit
as Rembrandt loved.
The men stood about in their shirt-sleeves, and the women
lingered, saying good-night as they plaited the last tress. There
were groups in the archways, and on the high steps, and in the
bakers' and wine-sellers' shops, where the green boughs were
drooping after the heat of the day. In uncurtained cacjenients
only lighted by the moon, young mothers undressed their sack-
lings. There was a smell of ripe fruit, of drying hay, of fir-
apples, of fresh straw, of that sea-scent which comes here upon
the west wind, and of magnolia-flowers from the villas on the
hills.
Signa's heart beat so fast he felt blind as he flew under the
gateway and looked to see if Tonino had shut liis house for
the night.
SIONA, 119
ffis heart leaped in him as he saw a light in the place, and
the big keys magnified in the shadow till they were fit for the
YBTj keys of St Peter, and in the door the locksmith himself,
with bu^ arms and easy mind, chatting with his neighbor,
Dionisio the cobbler.
Signa darted to him.
" Give it me ! quick- quick quick ! oh, please, good
Tonino!" he panted. "See, here are the forty francs, all
beaatifu] real gold, and the fair child in the monastery sent
it to me to-day. Quick quick, oh, dear Tonino 1 You never
have sold it while we were away ?"
" The child pleased an artist to-day, and sat for a picture,
and 80 got the money. Let him have the toy," said Bruno,
following, to the astonished Tonino, who had stretched out a
hand by sheer instinct to s^ize the boy, making sure that he
had stolen something.
" I have not sold it," he said, with wide-open eyes. " But
buy it I ^forty francs I ^the like of you, you little bit of a
fellow ! It cannot be I It cannot be 1"
" Oh, dear Tonino !" cried the child, piteonsly, and he began
to tremble all over with dread, his color went and came hotly
and whitely in the yellow gleams of the locksmith's brass
lamp, and he could hardly speak plain for excitement, with
both his hands cUnging to the man's bare arms. " Oh, dear,
good Tonino, you never have sold it? oh, say you have not
sold it I Here is the gold, ^beautiful real money, and you
never do have gold in Signa, and pray, pray do let me have it
quids ; I have longed for it so, oh, you never will know how !
Only I said nothing, because you all scolded and laughed ; and
now perhaps you have sold it. Do say you have not sold it 1"
And Signa broke down, crying with a very rain of tears in
the reaction from this immeasurable joy to fear.
Bruno's hand fell heavily on the lockismith's shoulder.
'*It is good money. You cannot refuse your own price.
Let the boy have the fiddle."
'' But a baby like that 1" stammered Tonino. " And if there
are painters about that pay so, there is my little Ginna, rich
and rosy as a tomato, and how can you, even in conscience, let
that brat squander such a heap of wealth, ^the price of a calf
almost, and a barrel of wine quite, and the best wine in the
commune too ; and sure he ought to be made to take it to that
120 SIQNA.
good aoiil Lippo, who baa kept him, body and soul together^
all these years, when any other man would have let such a
little mouse drown in the flood where he came from ; and I do
not think I could in conscience let the lad throw all that away,
and he a beggar, one may say, unless I speak to Lippo and
Nita first, and they be willing, because "
Bruno's eyes took fire with that sudden light which all the
Lastra had dreaded since he had been a stripling, and his hand
went inside his shirt, where, about the belt of his breeches, he
was always believed to carry a trusty knife, notwithstanding all
law and peril.
*' Keep your conscience for your neighbors* kettles and pans
that you send home with new holes when you solder the old
ones !" shouted Bruno. '^ Out with the fiddle, or, as the saints
live above us, choked you shall be, and dead as a door-naiL
Take the gold and fetch me the toy, and leam to preach to me
if you dare I"
" But in conscience " stammered the locksmith.
" Give the child the plaything," he cried, in a voice of
thunder, shaking him as a dog does a chicken, " or it shall be
the worse for you. You know me /"
*' I would take the gold when I could get it, if I were you,
Tonino," whispered the cobbler, who was a man of p^aoe.
" Gold is a rare sight for sore eyes in Signa, and what is
Lippo to you ?"
'^ That is true," murmured the locksmith, frightened out
of his wits, and thankful for any excuse to yield. " But it is
only to-day that I heard that the fiddle is worth quite double.
There is a great singer come to stay at one of the villas who
saw it ; and to let a child have it who will break it--never
theless, to please a neighbor "
And, having soothed himself a little with this elaborate and
useless fiction, as his country-folk will, always deriving a very
soothing and softening effect from the pleasure of lying, To-
nino went grumbling within, and poked about with his dim
lamp, and came out slowly with the violin, and clutched the
two gold pieces before he would let it go. Signa, who stood
trembling with wild excitement, took the precious instrument
in both his hands with trembling reverence, the tears falling
fast down bis cheeks.
Beast 1 you have made him cry I" muttered Bruno, and
SIGNA. 121
kicked the locksmith into his own doorway with a will, and
laid his hand on the child's shoulder, and strode up the street
of the Lastra, glancing from right to left with mute challenge
if any man should have the courage to stop his progress.
No one attempted to call him to account. Tonino was not
a popular man, and the weight of Bruno*8 wrath and the
keenness of his knife had heen felt hj more than one of the
eager, chattering audience who leaned out of the windows and
crowded each other in the doorways, in hreathless hope to see
a pretty piece of stabbing.
Bruno went through them in silence. Signa trotted by his
side, his hands clasping the violin to his chest, and his great
eyes dewy with tears, yet radiant as jewels, in his joy.
Tonino grumbled that if a man made such a sweet morsel
of his own bastard he should not be above the owning of it,
and went to his bed with sore bones and a grieved heart that
he had not asked double for the fiddle; though for more
years than he could remember he had always thought it worth-
leas lumber.
Bruno and Signa went up the street in the moonlight, with
yellow flashes now and then falling across them from the
lamps swinging in the doorway.
" Where will you play on it, dear little lad," said Bruno,
gently, " if you take it home ?"
The child looked at him with the smile of a child dreaming
beautiful things in its slumber.
" I will keep it at old Teresina's. She will let me, and I
will bring it to you when I come. Oh, is it reafly, really true
that I have got it r
*^ Quite true ; and it is dearer to you already than the old
lute, Signa ?"
Signa was silent Bruno had given him the lute.
They passed out of the Lastra and along the road into the
street that curves towards the bridge. It was quite dark ; but at
the little caS6 there which looks towards the river, several men
were drinking and playing dominoes on the stones by the feeble
light of the brass oil-lamps. Bruno saw Lippo among them.
He put his own tall form with the dark cloud of his brown
cloak between Lippo and the child, and strode on carelessly
without stopping.
-** Good-night," he called out. " I am taking the boy up with
F 11
122 ^ SIGN A.
me. I want bim to help stack wbeat, and he will have to be
up at four, 80 he had b^t sleep on the hill."
Lippo nodded, and hardly looked up from his dominoes.
They went on over the bridge unquestioned.
The bridge had many groups upon it, as on all hot nights,
leaning against the parapets, and chatting in the cheerful, gmr
rulous Tuscan fashion. The moon was bright on the wide
reaches of the river. The sky was studded with stars.
On a summer night Signa loses her scars of war and age,
and is young as when Hercules shook her sunny waters from
his sunny locks, resting from labor.
The child looked up at the stars. He wondered if ever in
all the world there had been so happy a thing as he. And
yet he could only see the stars through his tears ; he did not
know why the tears came.
An aziola owl went by with its soft cry,-^
" Saoh M nor voioe nor late nor wind nor bird
The Boul e^er itirred,
Unlike and far sweeter than thej all."
' Oh, dear Chiou 1" said Signa to the owl, calling it by the
familiar name that the people give it, " will you tell the littJe
Christ how happy I am, and the old dead bishop too ? Thcj
may think I am thankless because I cry. Do tell them, Chiou,
you go so near the sky 1"
" What fancies you have 1" said Bruno ; but the little
brown hand was hot as it touched his own. " You are tired
and excited,'* he said, more gravely. *' You dream too much
about odd things. That owl is hunting gnats and mice, and
not thinking about the angels."
*^ I am not tired," said Signa ; but he was walking lame,
and his voice was weak and trembled.
Bruno, without asking him, lifted him up in his arms ; he
himself was a strong man, and the light burden of the thin
little lad was a small one to him.
" Oo to sleep : I will carry you up the hill," he said, put-
ting the child's head down against his shoulder. Signa did
not resist. He still clasped the violin to him.
Bruno went up the steep road where his mother had oarried
him through the darkness and cold before she stumbled and
fell.
SIQNA. 123
With rest and fatigae Signa dropped asleep, and did not
awaken all the way up the long lonely paths through the vines
and the reaped fields.
'* How he loves that thing already ! as never he will love
me," thought Bruno, looking down at him in the starlight
with that dull sense of hopeless rivalry and alien inferiority
which the self-ahsorption of genius inflicts innocently and un-
consciously on the human affections that cling to it, and which
later on Love avenges upon it in the same manner.
Bruno, nevertheless, was glad that he had it. Fierce and
selfish in all his earlier life, he had taught himself to he gentle
and unselfish to Pippa*s son. He carried him into the house,
still sleeping, and laid him down under the crucifix on a pile
of hay, and would have undressed him, but the child, mur-
muring, resisted, clasping the violin to him, as though in his
sleep afVaid that any one should take it from him.
80 Bruno left him as he was upon the hay, with his tum-
bled curls, and his violin folded in his crossed arms, in the
deep dreamless slumber of a great fatigue, and lit a lantern and
went round to fodder the cow and see to the ass and make sure
that all had been safe during his absence, and then, with his
loaded gun beside him, lay down to rest himself.
He had not been asleep an hour himself before he was awak-
ened by silvery sweet music that seemed to him to be like
the voices of all the nightingales in May singing together ;
but the nightingales were most of them dumb now, now that
the lilies were dead and the hay garnered.
Bruno started up, and listened, and looked : he too believed
in a dim sort of way in the angels ; only he never saw them
oome down on the slant of the sun-rays, as the good men had
done that had decorated the churches.
The moon was shining into the house ; by the white cool
light he saw that it was the child sitting up in the hay and
playing. Signals ^eyes were open and lustrous, but they had a
look in them as if he were dreaming.
Hb chin was resting on the violin ; his little hands fingered
the strings and drew the bow ; his face was very pale ; he
looked straight before him ; he played in his sleep.
Bruno listened aghast ; he had a melodious ear himself, the
music was never wrong in a chord ; it was sweet as all the
nightingales in the country singing all together.
124 8IGNA.
He dared not wake the boj, wlio played on and on in the
moonlight.
'* It is the gifl of God," thought Brano, awed and sorrow-
ful ; because a gift of Ood put the child fiirther and farther
from him.
He listened, resting on one arm, while the owls cried '' Woe !"
from the great walnut-trees oyer the house-roof. The sweet
melody seemed to fill the place with wonder, and to live in the
quivering rays of the moon, and to pass out with them through
the lattice among the leaves, and so go straight to the stars.
A little while, and it faltered a moment, and then ceased.
Signa's head dropped back, his eyes dosed, his hands let the
violin sink gently down ; he slept again as other children
sleep.
'* It is the gifl of God ; one cannot go against God,'* said
Bruno, making the sign of the cross on his own broad breast.
And he was very sorrowful, and yet proud ; and could not bear
that it should be so, and yet would not have had it otherwise ;
as men were in the old days of fidth whose sons and daughters
went out to martyrdom.
When he got up to his labor before the sun was up, and
while the faintest rose-red alone glowed beyond the mountains
in the east, he stepped noiselessly, not to awaken the boy, and
left him sleeping while he went out to his work at the stadcing
of corn, with the earth dim with shadow and silvered with
dew.
He thought of the child and the gifts of God. He did not
know that he had seen Pippa*s lover.
CHAPTER XIL
" Where is the little bit of paper with the name on?" said
Bruno, eating his bit of black bread when the morning was up
wide and golden over all the harvest-land.
Signa lifted up his head from his violin. '^ I lost it When
I caught the bee, coming home, the paper flew away \ the
winds took it. Does it matter ?"
SIGN A. 125
" No. Only it might have been a friend for you. Do you
recollect the name ?*'
Signa shook his curly head.
R^llect anything ! ^with the violin in his hand, and the
music dancing out on the sunbeams, and saying everything for
him that he never could say for himself 1
What was the name to him? the giver of the gold had* only
been the ministrant of the little Christ.
Bruno let him alone.
The boy was so happy, sitting in the shade there, trying all
cadences that came to him on this new, precious, wondrous
thing, he had not the heart to call him to come out in the sun
and carry tho wheat He had been too rough with Pippa.
He atoned by being too genUe with this child.
So he went out into the fields again by himself, and built
up his stacks, made low because of the hurricanes that come
over when there are white squalls upon the sea, and covered,
till there should be time to thatch them, with snowy linen
cloths, so that they look like huge mushrooms growing for the
table of Oaigantua.
When he had been at work some two or three hours, hear-
ing at intervals, when the wind blew it towards him, the song
of the violin that the boy was enjoying within, with the cow
in her shed, and the sitting hens, and the tethered goat and
her kid for listeners, he heard the little feet that ho knew
patter over the stubble, and from his half-completed stack
looked down on Signa's upraised face.
The child had the violin with him.
^* Bruno,*' he asked, shyly, " I have been thinking : there
is old Nunziata often without bread, and Giudctta, whose
children all died of those poison-berries, and Stagno the blind
man, that has no 1^ either, and and so many of them that
want so much, and are only hungry and sad : was it selfish
of me not to give them the money between them, was it
wicked to have the violin ? I am sure the angels meant the
violin, you know ; but still did the angels wish me to think
of others or all of myself? What do you think ? Do you
think I was wrong?*'
" Anyway, it is too late now, bambino," said Bruno, with
the curtness of his natural speech. " You have wanted the
violin a year : why spoil the pleasure of it?"
11*
126 SIONA.
" But was it selfish ?'* persisted Signa.
" Why worry yourself? it is done."
" But it was, then ?" cried the little fellow, with a sort of
fevensh pain.
Bruno came down the ladder and took up more con).
'^ Oh, no : you things that love sounds or sights or hits of
wood or oils and earths hotter than human creatures, always
are selfish, so. But I don*t know why ever you should be
blamed. There is no more selfish beast than a cow with her
calf, or a woman with her wean. Why should you not have
your fiddle like that ? only you will be like Frisco. I koew
Frisco : he thought of nothing but saving every scrap of money
to buy things to paint with, and he was always after the
churches and gateways and places where the colors are ; and
he said it was a fine gift, and a glorious one. I am not say-
ing it was not : only he went away and lefl his old mother to
be kept by the commune, and people say he is a great man
away in Rome ; but the old soul is dead, and never saw him
again. Not that it is for me to say evil of any maa."
" But I have no mother," said Signa.
Bruno shrank as though a grass-adder had stong him, and
stooped and gathered more corn again.
'^ No, dear," he said, after a moment, very gently: "make
a mother of your music if you can. The good Qod gave it
you in her stead. And it is not selfish, dear: you pndse
heaven in it, and make the children dance with joy, and the
old folks forget they are old when they hear you. Do they
not say so in the Lastra a thousand times ? Do not fret your-
self, Signa. The angels sent you the fiddle. Be glad in it.
To quarrel with happiness is to quarrel with Qod, It is but
seldom he sends any: perhaps he would send more, only
whenever they get it people spoil it by fuming and fretting,
as a bad spinner knots the smooth flax. Play to the ^ck
folk and the old and the sorrowful. That will be the way to
please the little Christ."
Signa was comforted, and sat down among the loose wheat
and played all his little fancies away on those strings that were
to him as of silver and gold, whilst, the cicale buzzed in chorus
in the tree-tops, and all the field-finches strained their pretty
throats in rivalry.
But he did not play gayly, as he had done in the house.
SIGNA. 127
He was afraid the Gesu was not content ; and why bad he no
mother, as other boys bad ?
Bruno, working on the top of bis golden rick, conld have
bitten bis own tongue out for having reminded the child of
that
Signa never asked any questions. They bad told him he
had come on the wave of the flood, and for himself be thought
that the owls had dropped him there. But then it was never
of any use to ask an owl. They never said anything to any
one, except " Chiou, chiou I" " Woe, woe I"
Bruno sent him away at sunset, with a big basket of beans
and cabbages for Nita, to propitiate her into good humor.
It was cheating his lord, because it is understood that what
a cantadino takes for eating shall be what is needed in his own
house ; but Bruno did not see barm in it : the men who would
not take a crumb out of their master's dwelling for all the
temptings of the worst hunger will never see any sin in taking
them off the soil they labor on, and Bruno was no better than
his neighbors. Besides, he would have done a wrong thing
knowingly, to serve or help the child.
^' I should love him little if I would not take a sin on my
own soul for his welfare," he said to himself oflen : that was
his idea of how he ought to keep his word to Pippa. He did
not argue it out so clearly as that, because peasants do not an-
alyse ; but the sense of it moved him always.
So Signa kissed bis old lute in &rewell, and laid it away on
the old marriage-box under the crucifix, and sprinkled rose-
leaves on it, and meadow-mint, because he fancied it would
like sweet smells, and then shouldered his big skip full of
vegetables, and made his way down the hill, hugging the violin
close to him.
The waning moon hung silvery and round over the town as
he entered. In many of the interiors and in the stone bams
the men were threshing, the flails heaving and falling in
pleasant regular cadence, the workers knee-deep in the yellow
grain. A few machines hum in Tuscany, but they are very
few: they fear to spoil the straw for the plaiters, and they
ding still to the old ways, these sons of Ceres Mammosa.
The rush skip on his back was heavy, but his* heart was
light as he went. The wonderful wooden thing that be could
make sing like a nightingale was all his own forever.
128 SIQNA.
Only to think wliat he oonld do ; kll that he heard and
he heard so much, from the birds and the beee and the winds
at dawn, and the owla at night, and the whispering canes and
the poplars down by the water, and the bells that swing for
prayer ^he could tdl again on those wonderftd strings, of
whose power and pathos the child, all untaught, had a true
intuition.
With the yiolin against his shoulder he felt strong enough
to fiioe the worid and wander over it, ten years old only
though he was, and of no more account than a little moth,
that a man can kill with a wave of the hand.
The &ncy came once to him to go away, with the wooden
Rungnuolo, as he called it, and see what people would do to
him, and what beautiful things he could hear going along the
roadb, and into the strange streets, playing. If only he had
not loved the town so well ; but every stone of the Lastra was
dear to him. They held his feet to the soil.
And, besides, he was only a little child, and the mountains
looked too high for him to dimb, though those old p^nteis,
he knew, must have gone higher stiU, or how could they have
seen the clouds and the little angeb and amorini Uiat dwdl in
the worlds where the rose never fades and the light never
ceases?
But neither mountains nor clouds were within his reach : so
he only trotted down into the Lastra with his skip of cabbages
and beans upon his little tired back, very happy because he
had his heart's desire ; and if he had been sdfish he had asked
to be forgiven : none of us can do more.
All people were sdll astir in the place ; by eight of the
clock it is nearly dark under these hills when onoe the day of
St. Peter and St. Paul is past ; they were sitting about in the
street ; the doorways showed the golden straw that the girls
were still sorting ; there was the smell of the fidds everywhere ;
oxen in red wagons crept through the twilight, taking grain
to the threshing-bams ; men came in from the river^de with
their nets wet, and their bare 1^ shining with sand, and their
pumpkin gourds full of little fish ; here and there was a brown
monk with his huge straw hat on his shoulders and hb rosary
dangling in front of his knees.
He nodded up at old Teresina ; eighty years old, and spin*
Ding at a high window under the gateway ; she would let him
8IQNA, 129
go and play his yiolin there in her little dusky den, among
the ropes of onions and the strings of drying tomatoes, and
with the one little -square lattice looking out to the hold moun-
tain of the high Alhano range, that rises ahoTe Artimino and
Carmignano, and takes all the rose of the dawn and all the
purples of the storm and wears them as its own, and has the
SOD go down behind it and the star of love rise from it.
Then he ran up the little dark stairs into the room where
she liyed ; a bright old soul, with many daughters and sons
and grandchildren scattered over the place ; a good spinner
and good plaiter still, though nigh eighty years old ; she had
spent all her years here under the western gate ; seeing the
harrest-wagons and the grape-barrels come and go for nearly
three-fourths of a century ; she could remember the French
fellows with Murat riding through ; she had sat at her window
and watched them ; she had just married then ; she had seen
the snn sink down over the mountains, calm and golden or red
and threatening, every night of her life ; and had never slept
elsewhere than here where the warders had lighted their
beacons and pointed their matchlocks in the old days long
before her, when news came that the Pisans were marching
from the sea ; the Lastra was her world, but it had been wide
enough to make her shrewd and keen of sight, and happy
enough to keep her kindly of temper and of quick sympathy
with youth and childhood.
Of the child Signa she was very fond ; she liked to be
awakened in the dark mornings by his fresh voice caroling
some field-song of the people as he went out under the gate-
way to his work. And she was one of the few folks who
liked Bruno better than his gentler brother.
*'I have seen them both with their bullocks when they
were lads,*' she would say to her neighbors. '* Bruno made
his do a hard day^s work, but he fed them well, and never
galled them, and the beasts loved him. Lippo would hang his
with tassels and flowers, and pat them if people were looking ;
but he would prick them twenty times an hour and steal their
fodder and sell it for a penny and play morra. Do not talk
to me I the fierce one for my money !"
So when Signa ran in to her and told her the story of the
violin, not very coherently, mingling the locksmith and the
little Christ and the gold pieces and the marble bishop all
136 SIGNA.
together in an inextricable entanglement, Teredna was Sjnnpa*
thetic, and held up her hands, and believed in the angels, and
wondered at the beautiful gifl with all the ardor that he could
have desired, and said, of course, to be sure he might keep it
there, why not? and play it there too, she hoped, and
opened for its safer concealment the heavy lid of a great chest
she had in her chamber ; one of those sarcophagus-like coffins
which the Middle Ages made in such numbers and ornamented
with such lavish care ; this one was of oak wood, very old ;
and a hungry connoisseur had told her that it was of the
workmanship of Dello, and had offered her any money for
it ; but she had told him that Dello, whoever he was, was
nothing to her, and that the chest had held her bridal UncD,
and now held her cere-clothes all ready, and all of her own
spinning, and would hold her grand-daughters* and great grand-
daughters' afler her, she hoped.
So the chest, whether of Dello or not, remained in its oomer,
and she opened it and let Signa lay his Rusignuolo in it on
her bridal sheets and her shroud that she had finished last
winter and was very proud of, and helped him cover it with
the dead rose-leaves and the sprigs of lavender which she had
put there to keep moths away, and the bough of cypress which
she had laid there to bring good luck.
So Signa, quite sure that all was safe, went away quite happy,
and shouldered his creel again, and went towutis Lippo^
house.
Signa turned up by the old shrine that has the gray wood
door and the soft pink color and the frescoed seraphs by the
high south gate, and mounted the paved steep lane to Lippo's
house.
There was a little gossiping crowd before it; old Baldo
with his horn spectacles shoved up on his forehead, and Momo
the barber, who had a tongue for twenty, and Caccarello the
coppersmith, and several women, foremost of whom was Nita
screaming at the top of her voice, with both hands in air in
gesticulation, and Toto beating the drum tattoo with a metal
spoon on a big frying-pan as a sort of chorus to his mother's
cries.
Whilst still he toiled up the lane, cqpcealed from their view
by his burden of cabbages, he caught her flying sentences,
scattered like dry peas rolling out of a basket.
SIONA. 131
*' Two hundred francs in gold ! given him, all for his peak
ing litUe face, and thrown away, ^thrown away, ^thrown away
on a wretched creaking thing that Tonino kept among his
nails and his keys ! and never a centime brought to us I to
})eople that took him out of the water like a half-drowued
pup and have spent our substance on him ever since as if he
were our own. Oh, the little viper 1 ^fed at my breast as he
was and laid in the cradle with my own precious boy ! Two
hundred francs all in gold, all in gold 1 and the horrid little
wretch squanders it on a toy with a hole in it for the wind to
come out of, squeaking like a mouse in a trap. But there
must be law on it 1 there must be law I that brute Tonino
could not claim a right to take such swarms of money from a
pauper brat I"
^' Nay,'* said the barber, '^ Tonino tells us he swore his con-
science was hidr-on-end at such a thing. But when a man
has a knife at his throat "
'' I saw the steel touch him, as he shivered," swore Gaoca-
rello the coppersmith.
" And the fiddle was worth a thousand francs. It was a
rare Cremona,'* whined the barber. " It is poor Tonino that
18 cheated, ^near as bad as you, dear neighbor T*
" But the money was not the little brat*s ; it belonged to
those who nourished and housed him,** said a fat housewife,
who often gossiped with Baldo over a nice little mess of oil
and onions.
'* That, of course,** said Caccarello. " But Lippo is so meek
and mild. He has lackered up that byblow as if it were a
prince's lawfully-begotten son and heir.**
" Lippo is a heaven-accursed fool,** said old Baldo, with a
blow of his staff, ^he was never weary of telling his opinion
of his son-in-law, "but he is not to blame here. He never
could have fancied that a liUle beast would come home with
the price of a prime bullock and go and waste it on a fiddle
without a thought of by your leave or for your leave, or any
remembrance of all he owed in common gratitude for bed and
bread. The child could be put in prison, and so he ought to
be ; what is a foundling's gain belongs to those that feed him.
That is &ir law everywhere. If Lippo were not daft, he
would hand the boy over to the law and let it deal with hm."
" Bravo 1** said the little crowd, in chorus ; for Baldo was a
132 SIQNA.
well-to-do old man and much respected, wearing a aOk bat and
yelvet waistcoat upon feast-days.
" Ay, truly,*' said Nita, stretching her brawny brown anns
in all the relish of anticipated vengeance, while Toto beat
louder on his frying-pan, and called in glee,
" And you will shave his head now, mother? and give me
that gilt ball of his to sell ? and when his back is raw as raw,
you will let me rub the salt in it ?"
Nita kissed his shaven crown, forgetful of the character for
goodness that she had been at such pains to build up before
her townsfolk ; but Lippo, mindful of his fair repute, reproved
him.
*' Only a little wholesome chastisement: that is all we ever
allow ; you know that, my son."
And Toto grinned. He knew his &ther*s tricks of
speech.
The neighbors thought nothing of it : take a brat off the
face of the flood and bring it up out of charity, and then see
it squander the first money that it touched upon a fiddle,
without so much as bringing home a soldo I they were nnaoi-
mously of opinion that it would have provoked a saint into
exchanging her palm-sheaf into a rod of iron.
A fiddle, too, that Totino swore was worth a thousand francs,
if one, and a purest old Cremona ; as if an oat pipe cat in
the fields were not good enough for this little cur picked out
of the muddy water I And then they all of them had chil-
dren too, pretty children, or, at least, children they all thought
pretty, and where was ever a painter found to give them
money for their faces ?
Money was scarce in the Lastra, and popular feeling ran
strong and high against Signa for having ventured to have a
piece of good fortune fall upon him. If he had brought it
home, now, and put it in Lippo*s strong box, and Lippo had
given them all a supper with it, and played a quarter of it
away in morra or draughts, as no doubt he would have done,
then indeed they might have pardoned it. But a fiddle ! and
not a single centime for themselves !
" Punish him I will," murmured Lippo, goaded to despera-
tion, but thinking woefully of what his brother would say, or,
worse still, do, on his own skin and bones. *' Still, he is such
a little thing, and saved by me, as one may say, ^not that I
SJONA. 133
take mentw It is a borrible tbing, all that good gold squan-
dered on a fiddle, and we robbing our precious children nine
long years to feed a bastard deserted by those that had the
right; and yet, dear friends, a child no older than my
Toto '\
" Maudlin ass,** quoth Baldo, in high wrath, while the barber
said that Lippo was too great a saint to live, and the others
answered that such goodness was beautiful, but Lippo must
look at home ; and all the while Nita screamed on to the night-
air, bewailing.
Signa heud. What had he done ? That they had power
to put him in prison he never doubted. That they had power
to beat him ^why not to do anything else ?
Signa heard, as he labored up the hill beneath his load of
cabbages, the angry voices rolling down the slope and drifting
to the Madonna sitting with the glory round her head behind
her little wooden wicket.
The poor Madonna often heard such words. When they
had spoken them worst they gave her flowers.
His limbs shook, and his heart sank within him. Yet one
great thought of comfort was with him, the fiddle was safe
under its rose-leaves and its lilac mint-flowers. Teresina would
not let it go.
He understood that the story of his buying the violin had
run through the Lastra, gathering exaggerate wonders as it
went Indeed, if only he had thought a little, he would have
known that the scene at the locksmith's shop by the archway
never could pass without being talked about by the dossen idle
folks who had nothing to do but to watch it.
But even Bruno had not thought of that. Italians love
secrets ; but they bury them as the ostrich buries her head.
Toiling up under his overshadowing cabbages, and in the
dofik of the evening, they did not see him. The loud shrill
voices thrilled to his very bones.
" Let me get at him 1" thundered old Baldo, who echoed his
daughter always. " Two hundred francs ! The little brute 1
And he owes me that for lodgment 1 Qh, Nita mine, now see
what comes of taking nameless mongrels **
^' Two hundred francs !" moaned Lippo, his voice shaking
with a sort of religious horror, *^ when he might have brought
half to my wife, who has been an angel of mercy to him, and
12
134 SIGNA.
Bpent the other half in masses for his poor dead mother's soul,
which all the devils are burning now 1"
" That is the thought of a good man, but of an ass !*' said
Baldo, bluntly. " They should have come to your strong box
and mine, son ; and as many francs as there were shall he have
Lishes !"
" Let me get at him I ^let me get at him 1 Oh, the little
snake, that I suckled at my breast, robbing my own predoos
child for him ! Two hundred francs ! two hundred francs !
A year's rent ! a flock of sheep I wine to flood the town !
wagons of flour I ten years* indulgence I ^half this worid and
all the next, why, one might buy for such a sum as that !
And flung away upon a fiddle-case ! But to prison the child
shall go, and Tonino must disgorge. Let me only catch him !
Let him only come home I*'
Signa, in the dark upon the stones, looking up, saw this
excited crowd, with waving hands, and fists tlurust into each
other's eyes, and faces glowing in the light of the gateway
lamp, and voices breaking out against him and blaming Brana
They were ready to fling him back into the Amo.
He was shy, but he was brave. His heart sickened and his
temples throbbed with horror of the unknown things that they
would wreak upon him. But he lowered the load off his
shoulders, and darted up the paved way into their midst.
*** It is all untrue," he panted to them. " It was only forty
francs, and Bruno had nothing to do with it, and the little
Gesu of Perugino sent me the money for my own, and selfish
it might be, I know, but that I have asked Grod, and beat me you
may till I am dead, or put me in prison, as you say, but it was
all my own, and my wooden Rusignuolo is safe, and yon can-
not touch it, and "
A stroke of Nita's fist sent him down on the g^round.
He was light and agile. He was on his feet in a second.
All the wrongs and sufferings of his childhood biased up like
fire in him. He was a gentle little soul, and forgiving; but
for once the blood burned within him into a furious pain.
Stung and bruised and heated and blinded by the blows
that the woman rained on him, he sprang on her, struck her
in the eyes with all his force, and, tearing himself out of tho
score of hands that clutched at him, slipped through his tor-
mentons and fled down the slope.
SJONA, 135
" I will tell BraDO ! I will tell Bruno I*' he sobbed as he
went ; and while the women surrounded the screaming Nita,
who shrieked that the little brute had blinded her for life, a
solemn silence fell upon the men, who looked at Lippo.
If Bruno were told, life would not pass smoothly at the
Lastra.
That minute of their hesitation gave the child time for his
liberty. When Lippo and the barber pursued him, he was
out of sight, running fast under the shadow of the outer walls,
where all was silent in the dusk.
" This comes of doing good I" groaned Lippo to the barber.
CHAPTER XIIL
SiGNA ran on under the walls where the men make ropes
on the grass, but where it was all deserted now.
He had never known what passion was before. He had
borne all ill usage as his due. He had let himself be kicked
and cuffed as a gentle little spaniel does, only looking up with
wistful eyes of sorrowful wonder.
But now the fury of a sudden sense of unbearable wrong
had boiled up in his veins and mastered him, and was hissing
still in his ears and beating still in his brain.
A sense of having done some great crime was heavy on him.
He knew he had been very wicked. He could feel himself strik-
ing, striking, striking, and the woman's eyeballs under his
hands. He might have killed her, for anything he knew. To
his vivid little fancy and his great ignorance it seemed quite
possible. And yet he had borne everything so long, and
never said a word, and lain awake so many nights from pain
of bruises.
Could anybody be very angry with him for having lost his
temper just this once ?
Bruno would not, that he knew.
He heard the steps of Lippo and the barber and the mut-
teringiB of their voices pursuing him. He ran as if he had
136 SIONA.
wiugs. A great vagne terror of bideous pnnishmeDt koi bim
tbe speed of a gaiehound. He doubled tbe walls at bead-
loDg speed, bis bare feet scarcely toncbing tbe ground, and
darted in at tbe door of old Tereaoa's dwelling in tbe western
gateway. By beaven's mercy sbe bad not drawn tbe bolt
Tbe old woman was in ber abort kirtle, witb tbe bandker-
cbief off ber gray knot of bair, getting ready for goii^ to bed,
witb one little lamp burning under a paper picture of tbe Na-
tivity.
Signa ran to ber, tumbling over tbe spinning-wbeel and ihe
dozing cat and tbe buge brown moon-like loaf of bread*
" Ob, dear Teresina, let me bide bere I" be cried, in bis ter-
ror, clmging to ber skirts. " Lippo is after me. Tbey are so
angry about tbe violin, and I bave burt Nita very mucb because
sbe knocked me down. Hide me bide me quick, or tbey will
kill me, or give me to tbe guards !"
Old Teresina needed no twice telling. Sbe opened tbe big
black coffer witb tbe illuminated figures, wbere sbe bad bidden
tbe violin, and motioned tbe cbild to follow it* Tbe coffer
would bave sbeltered a man.
Sbe left tbe lid a little ajar, and Signa laid bimself down at
tbe bottom witb tbe Old World smell of inoense and spioed
woods. His wooden Rusignuolo was safe; be kissed it^and
clasped it to bim. After all, wbat did anytbing matter, if only
tbey would leave tbat to bim in peace ?
" Lie still till tbey bave been bere to ask for you," said Tere-
sina ; and sbe tied ber bandkercbief over ber bead again and
began to spin.
In a few minutes tbere was rapping on ber door.
Teresina put ber bead out of the window, and called to know
wbo was there.
" It is I Lippo," a voice called up to ber in answer. " Is
tbe little devil witb you ? We bave loved bim as our own, and
now he has half murdered Nita, Nita that fed bim from her
bosom and treated bim inch for inch like Toto all these years !
Here is Momo : he will tell you. Is the boy witb you ?"
" I bave not seen bim all day," said Teresina. *' I tbongbt
ho was on the bills. Come up, good Lippo, and look, and tell
me more. The child has a sweet pipe, but heaven only knows
where the devil may not lurk. ' Come up, Lippo, and tell mealL
You make me tremble."
SrONA. 137
"Yon work late, mother," said Lippo, saspicioasly, tam-
blbg up the stairs into the chamber.
^*Aj. Lisa's bridal is on St. Anne's day, and there is next
to no sheeting. A grandame must do what she can for the
dower. But tell me all, ^all, quick, dear ! How white jou
look, the saints keep us 1"
" White f With a little viper nurtured nine years stinging
you, and a dear good wife blind, I daresay, for life, who would
not be white ?'* wept Lippo, glancing sharply through the
shadows of the room. "And of course you must have heard,
two hundred francs and a beastly fiddle 1 and it is enough to
bring the judgment of Holy Church "
" I have heard nothing," said Teresina, with her hands up-
lifted in amaae. " Sit down and tell me, Lippo, and Memo
too; you look ready to drop, both of you. Two hundred
francs I Gesn ! why, it would buy up the whole of the town I
And a fiddle ! ah, now I think of it, the dear naughty little
lad wss idways sighing for an old thing in Tonino's window
that he had played on once."
" If I could find him or it, I would break it in shivers over
his head," said Lippo, forgetting his saintly savor. "I am a
meek man, as yon know, and a merciiiil, and never say a harsh
word to a dog ; but my dear wife blind, and all that money
squandered, and Bruno, if that little beast is gone to him, ready
to smash every bone in my body I It is horrible 1"
" Horrible, truly," gasped Teresina. " It is like a green
apple to set one's teeth on edge. But tell me the tale dear ;
how is one to understand ?"
They told her the tale, both in the same breath, with every
ornament that imagination and indignation could lavish on it :
death may be imminent, time may be money, a moment lost
may mean ruin or murder or a house devoured by flames ; but,
all the same, Lippo and all his countrypeople will stop to tell
their tale. Let Death's scythe fall or Time's sands run out,
they must stand still and tell their tale.
The story-teUers of the Decamerone are true to nationality
and nature.
And while they told it, Teresina trimmed fresh her lamp,
and made the wick bum so brightly that there was not a nook
or cranny of the little place in which a mouse could have been
hidden unseen.
12*
138 SIONA.
''Bat you never will go after him to Brano*s," ^^ said,
when the narrative was done, and all her horror poured out at
it in strongest sympathy. '' The child is half-way there hy this
time, and Bruno takes part with him right or wrong, ^you hest
know why, and he is so violent ; and at night, too, on that
lonely hill ; there might be mischief."
"Ay, there might," said Momo, with a quaking in his voice.
She knew her men.
'* No fear of that," said Lippo, with a boast ; " Bruno is
fierce, we all know his fault, dear fellow, the saints change
his heart I But with me, oh, never with me."
For all that, he shook you once, many years ago, when
you beat the child all in justice and good meaning. -hook
you as a big dog does a little one," said Teresina, with a nod
of her head and a twinkle in her eyes. *' I would not go nigh
him, not to-night ; you must think of your good Nita and all
those children. With the morning you will be cool, both of
you. But Bruno on that hill, in the dark, ^I should not care
to face him, not on ill terms. You have your family, Sippo."
" But if we leave it till the morning "
'' Well, what harm can come ? The child's sin is the same,
and Nita can have law on him ; and about the money, Bruno,
of course, must hear reason, and give up the fiddle, and let you
get the whole sum back. Tonino would see the justice of that :
you have reared and roofed the child ; all his is yours, that
is fair right But if you cross Bruno, of a sudden, in the
night "
" There is reason in what you say, mother," assented Uppo,
whose heart was hammering against his ribs in mortal terror
of confronting Bruno.
And afler a little while he went, glad of an excuse to veil
his fears from the loquacious barber.
'' Tell Nita I shall see her in the morning, and how sony I
am, because I loved the lad's little pipe, and never thought he
had such evil in him," said Teresina, opening her door to call
the valediction afler them down the stairway. Then she came
and opened the lid of the coffer.
" He is gone now. Jump out, little one."
" Oh, why did you keep him?" cried Signa, looking up as if
he were in his coffin. '^ I thought he never would go, and I was
so afraid. And have I hurt her so much as that, do you think ?"
8IQNA. 139
"Ab if your little fists oonld bmise a big oow like Nita I
what folly I I kept him to send him away more surely. When
joa want to get rid of a man, press him to stay ; and if you
baye anything you need to hide, light two candles instead of
one. No, yon have never hurt Nita. Take my word, she is
eating an onion supper this minute. But there will be trouble
when Bruno knows ; that I do fear.*'
Signa sat up in the coffer, holding the violin to his chest
with two hands.
'* Am I a trouble to Bruno?'* he said, thoughtfully.
" Well, I should think so ; I am not sure. The brothers
are always quarreling about you. There is something under-
neath. You have never complained to Bruno ?"
'* No. Giorgio told me Bruno might kill Lippo if I did, and
then they would hurt Bruno, send him to the galleys all his
life ; so Giorgio said."
" Like enough,*' muttered Teresina. " But you cannot hide
this, little one. All the Lastra will talk about it.**
"And there will be harm for Bruno?*'
" He will be violent, I dare say : he always is. Bruno does
not understand soft answers, and Lippo is all in the wrong ;
and then, of course, Bruno must learn at last how they have
treated you. It will be a patticcio"
Teresina sat down on her wooden chair, and twitched the
kerchi^off her head, again perplexed and sorrowful. To make
a pasticcio a bad pasty is the acme of woe and trouble to
her nation.
" Can I do anything ?*' said Signa, wistfully, sitting still in
the open coffer.
" No, not that I see, ^unless you could put yourself out of
the world,*' said the old woman, not meaning anything in par-
ticolar, but only the utter hopelessness of the matter in her
eyes.
Signa looked up in silence ; he did not miss a word.
" No, there is nothing to be done,** said Teresina, in anxious
meditation. " Bruno will get into trouble about you. I have
always thought he would. But that is not your fault, poor
little soul 1 There is something Lippo is a fox. He
phiys his cards well, but what his game has been nobody
knows. Perhaps he has made a mistake now. Bruno must
know they have ill used you. That comes of this money.
140 SIQNA.
Money is god and devil Why could that painter go and give
you gold ? a bit of a thing like yon. Any other man than
Bruno would have put it by to buy you your ooat for your first
communion. But that was always Bruno, one hand on his
knife and the other scattering gifts. For my part, I think
Bruno the better man of the two, but no one dse does. Tes ;
there must be trouble. Bruno will break his brother*8 head,
and Lippo will have law on him. You might go to Tonino
and get him to take the fiddle back ; but then it was only forty
francs, and lappo vrill always scream for the two hundred that
the foob have chattered about : that would be no good. Oh,
Dio mio 1 if only that angel at the Certosa had not sent you
anything. An^ls stand aloof so many years, and then they
put their finger in the dough and spoil the baking. May they
forgive me up above ! I am an ignorant old woman, but if they
would only answer prayer a little quicker or else not at all. I
speak with all respect. My child, sleep here to-night, and be
off at dawn to Bruno. Sleep on it Oet up while it is gny,
to have the start of Lippo and his people. But sleep here.
There is a bit of grass matting that wUl serve you, there,
whore the cat b gone. And 1 will get you a drop to driok
and a bit of bread, for tired you must be and shaken ; and
what the Lastra see in Lippo to make a saint of baffles me,
a white-livered coward and a self-seeker. He will die ridi ;
see if he do not die rich I he will have a podere, and keep his
baraccino, I will warrant, before all is done I"
She brought the child the little glass of red wine, and a big
crust ; he drank the wine, ^he could not eat, and lay down
as she told him by the cat upon the matting. He was so un-
happy for Bruno ; the Rusignuolo scarcely comforted him, only
every now and then he would stretch out his hand and touch
it. and make sure that it was there ; and so fell asleep, as chil-
dren will, be they ever so sorrowful.
He woke while it was still dark, from long habit, but the old
woman was already astir. She made him take a roll and a
slice of melon, as she opened her wooden shutter and looked
out on to the little acacia-trees below, and the big mountain,
that was as yet gray and dark.
^* Get you up the hill, dear, to Bruno, and out of the house
before the men are about underneath with the straw," she said
to him, " and I do not know what you can say ; and I mis-
8IGNA. 141
doabt there will be ill words and bad blows ; and it has been
said for many a year that Bruno would end his days at the
galleys. I remember his striking his sister once at the wine-
fair in Prato, such a scene as there was, and the blood
spoiled her bran-new yellow bodice, that was fit for the Blessed
Mary, speaking with all respect There b Gian undoing his
big doors below : every place is full of grain now. Run, run,
dear little fellow, and the saints be with you, and do not forget
that they love a peacemaker ; though, for the matter of that,
we folks are not like them, ^we love a feud and a fight, and
we will prick our best friend with a pin rather than have dull
times and no quarrel. Run off, quick, and take the melon
with you."
He did as she told him, and ran away. She Ifatched him
from the little square window over the carnation-pots. She
was a good old soul, but she could not help a thrill of longing
to see how Bruno would come down into the Lastra like a
brown bull gored and furious.
" Only the one that is in the right always gets. the worst of
it," thought Teresina (who had seen her eighty years of life),
as the last star died out of the skies, and she turned from the
lattice to scrub out her pipkins and pans, and fill her copper
pitcher with water, and sweep the ants away with her reed be-
som, and then sat down to spin on at Lisa's bridal sheeting,
glandDg now and then at the mountain and wondering what
would happen.
What would happen ?
That was what tortured the little beating heart of Signa, as
he ran out into the lonely cold darkness of the dawn, as the
chimes of the clocks told four in the morning. He held his
slice of melon and bread in one hand, and clasped the violin
and its bow close to him with the other. A terrible sense of
guilt, of uselessness, of injury to others, weighed on him.
ven Teresina, who was fond of him, had confessed that he
was a burden to Bruno, and a cause for strife at all times, and
no better. Even Teresina, who was so good to him, had said
that he could do nothing unless he could get himself out of the
world.
The words pursued him with a sense that the old woman
would have bitten her tongue through rather than have con-
veyed into the child's mind, a sense of being wanted by no
142 SIONA.
one, useful to no one, nndesirable and weanBome, and alto-
gether out of place in creation.
He was old enough to feel it sharply, and not old enoi^ to
measure it rightly. Besides, Nita and Toto and all of them
had told him the same thing ten thousand times : what was
said so often by so many must be true.
To kill himself never entered his thoughts. The absolute
despair which makes life loathsome cannot touch a child.
But he did think of running away, hiding, effacing himself;
as a little hare tries to do when the hounds are after it.
He would go away, he thought ; it was his duty ; it was the
only thing he could do to serve Bruno ; and he was so ashamed
of himself, and so sorrowful, and perhaps people might be kind
to him on the other side of the mountains, where the sun came
from ; perhaps they might, ^when they heard the Rnsignudo.
Other boys decide to run away from love of adventure, or
weariness of discipline ; but he resolved to go away because he
was a burden, and brought wild words between two brothers,
and was good for nothing else.
The ^' curse of granted prayer" lay heavy on his young
frightened soul. The thing he had desired was with him ; the
thing which he had thought would be sweeter than food or
friends or home or anything ; and yet his feet were weaiy and
his heart was sick from the war which it had brought apon
him.
" Still it is mine, ^really mine," he thought, with a thrill
of joy which nothing could wholly stifle in him, as his band
wandered over its string? and drew out of them little softjsigh*
ing murmurs like the pipe of waking birds.
He was quite resolved to run away ; down into Florence, he
thought, and then over to where the sunrise was ; of the west
he was afraid, ^the sea was there, that he heard terrible things
of on winter evenings, and the west always devoured the sun,
and he supposed it was always night there.
" I will just bid Gemma good-by, just once," he thought,
running on stumbling and not seeing his way, because his eyes
were so brimming with tears. But sight did not matter much.
He could find his way about quite safely in the darkest night
The gates of the great gardens were open, for the laborers
were already at work there, and ho ran into the shadowy dew-
wet place looking for her. If he could find her without going
SIQNA. 143
to the cottage, be thought, it would be best, because ber
father might have heard, and might detain him, thinking to
please Bruno.
He was not long before he saw her, out of bed at daybreak,
as hirds are out of their nests ; lying on her back in the wet
grass by the marble pond, where Uie red Egyptian rushes
were in flower, and munching the last atom of a hard black
crust which had been given her for her breakfast, while the big
water-lilies still were shut up, and the toads were hobbling
home to their dwellings in the bottom of the tank. Gemma
was one of those beautiful children who, in the land of Rafiaelle,
are not a fable. As they grow older they lose their beauty
almost always. But the few people who saw her thought that
she would never lose hers.
No doubt there was some strain in her from the old Goth
or German races from the times when Totila had tramped with
his warriors over the ravaged valleys, or Otho swooped down
like a hawk into the plains.
She was brilliantly fair ; as she lay now on the grass, on her
back, with her knees drawn up and her rosy toes curled up
and her arms above her head, she shone in the sun like a pearl,
and her face might have come out of Botticelli's chair, with
its little scarlet mouth and its wonderful rosy bloom, and its
mass of lighted golden hair cut short to the throat, but falling
over the forehead.
^ Gemma, I have brought you some breakfast," he said to
the pretty little child. She threw her arms round his neck,
and set her pearly teeth into the melon. The bread followed.
When she had done both, she touched his cheek with her
linger.
" Why are you crying ?"
" Because I am no use to any one. Because I bring trouble
on everybody."
Gkmma surveyed him with calm, serious eyes.
** Tou bring me good things to eat.''
That was his use ; in her eyes there could be no better.
The tears fell down Signals face; he sobbed under his
breath, and kissed Gemma's light curling locks with a sorrow
and force in his lips that she did not understand.
'^ I think I will go away, Gmma," he said, with a sort of
desperate resolve.
144 SIQNA.
Gkmma, who was not easily excited, Bunrejedhim with het
blue eyes seriously as before.
"Where?"
"I do not know."
" That is siUy."
Oemma was a year younger than he. But she was not
vague as he was, nor did she ever dream.
" I will go away, I and the Rnsignuolo,*^ said Signa, with
a sob in his throat " It is the only way to be no burden,
to make peace."
Gremma pushed a lizard with her little rosy toes.
" Mimi does not bring me so much fruit as you do," she
said, thoughtfully. Mimi was a neighbor's sou, who was nine
years old,, and worshiped her, and brought her such green
plums and unripe apples as his father's few rickety trees would
yield by windfalls. She was wondering how it would be with
her if she were left to Mimi only.
" Perhaps I will get you beautiful golden fruit where I go,'*
said Signa, who always unconsciously fell into figures uid
tropes. " The signore in the monastery said my mouth wouhi
drop pearls. I have seen pearls, ^beautiful white beads that
the ladies wear. They are on the goldsmiths' bridge in the
city. When my lips make them you shall have them roand
your curls, Q^mma, and on your throat, and on your arms :
how pretty you will be !"
He was smiling through his tears, and kissing her. Gkmma
listened.
" With a gold cross like Bcei's ?" she said, breathlessly.
Bcei was a rich contadina who had such a necklace, a string
of pearls with a gold cross, which she wore on very high feasts
and sacred anniversaries.
" Just like Bcei's," said Signa, thinking of his own woe and
answering to please her.
Gemma reflected, pushing her little foot against the wet
gravel in lines and circles.
" Run away, at once I" said she, suddenly, with alittle shout
that sent the lizards scampering.
" Oh, Gkmma I" Signa felt a sting, as if a wasp had pieroed
him. Gemma loved him no more than this.
'* Run away, directly 1" said the little child, with a stamp
of her foot, like a baby empress.
SIQNA. 145
" To get you the pearls ?"
Gemma nodded.
Signa sat still, thinkiDg ; his tears fell ; his eyes watched a
blue-and-gray butterfly in the white bells of the aloe-flower.
He oould not be utterly unhappy, because he had the violin.
If it had not been for that
" Why do you not go ?" said the little child, fretfully, with
the early sunbeams all about her little yellow head in a nimbus
of light.
Signa got up ; he was veiy pale ; his great brown eyes swam
in a mist of teeuv.
" Well, I will go. I have got the Kusignuolo. Perhaps it
is not true what the signore said ; but I will go and see. If
I can get pearls, or anything that is good, ^then I will come
back, and the Lastra will be glad of me, and I will give every-
thing to the Lastra, and to Bruno and you. Only, to go
away, it will kill me, I think. But if I do die, I shall be
no burden any more then on any one. And if the signore
spoke truth, and I am worth anything, then I will be great.
When I am a man I will come back and live here always,
because no place can be ever so beautiful ; and I will make new
gates, all of beaten gold ; and I will build the walls up where
they are broken ; and I will give corn and wine in plenty
everywhere, and there shall be beautiful singing all the night
and day, and music in all the pcople*s homes, and we will go
out through the fields every morning praising God ; and then
Signa will not be old or forgotten any more, but all the world
will hear of her."
And he went, not looking back once at the rushes and the
water-lily and the little child ; seeing only his own visions, and
believing them, as children and poets will.
But Gemma, pausing a moment, ran after him.
" Take me, too 1"
" Take you away ?"
" Yes. I want to go too."
Signa kissed her with delight.
" You are so fond of me as that ?"
" Oh, yes ; and I am so tired of black bread, and Mimi's
plums are always green."
Signa put her away a little sadly.
"' You must not oome. There is your father."
o 18
19
146 SIGNA,
" Yes, I will come. I want to see what you will see."
" But if you should he unhappy ?*'
" I will come hack again."
Signa wavered. He longed for his playmate. But he knew
that she wished a wrong thing.
" I cannot take you," he said, with a sigh. " It would he
wicked. Pal ma would cry all the day long. Besides, I am
nothing ; nohody wants me. I go to spare Bruno pain and
trouhle ; that is different But you, Gemma, all of them love
you."
" Let us go," said Gemma, putting her hand into his.
" But I dare not take you !"
" You do not take me," said Gemma, with a roguish smile,
and the sophism of a woman grown. *' You do not take me.
I go."
" But why ? Because you love me ?"
Gemma ruffled her golden locks.
" Because they give me nothing to eat."
" They give you as much as they have themselves.'
" Ah, hut you will give me more than you have," said
(remma, with the external foolishness and internal logic of
female speech.
Signa put her away with a sigh.
" Perhaps I shall have nothing, Gemma. Do not come.''
Gemma stopped to think.
" You always get something for me," she said, at last.
" Take me, or I will go and tcTl Bruno."
Signa hesitated, and succumhed to the stronger will and the
resolute selfishness of the little child : they are more oflea
feminine advantages than the world allows.
" You will be angry with me. Gemma, in a day, if I let yoti
have your way,'* he said, hanging his head in sad perplexity.
Gemma laughed : she was so pretty when she laughed ; Fra
Angelico would have delighted to paint her so.
" When I am angry, I am not dull," she said, with much
foresight for her own diversion. "The hoys slap me back
again. But you never do. Let us go, or I will run up and
tell Bruno."
" Come, then," said Signa, with a sigh : he knew that she
would do what she said. Gemma, nine years old, was already
a woman in many ways, and had already found out that a de-
SIGN A, 147
terminatioii to please herself and to heed no one else's pleasure
was the only royal road to comfort in earthly life.
And she was resolved to go ; already she had settled with
herself what she would make Signa do, shaping out her pro-
jects clearly in the sturdy little brain that lived under her
amber curls.
She was thought a beautiful child, but stupid : people were
wrong.
Gemma lying doing nothing under a laurel-bush, with her
angelic little face, and her stubborn reftisal to learn to read, or
learn to plait, or learn to spin, or learn to do anything, was as
shrewd as a little fox cub for her own enjoyments and appe-
tites. She lay in the sun, and Palma did the work.
'' We will go to Prato," said Oemma, all smiles no^ that
her point was gained.
"I thought Florence,*' said Signa, who, in his own
thoughts, had resolved to go there.
" Ch6 ! said Gkmma, with calm scorn. '^ Boys never think.
Yon would meet Bruno on the road. It is Friday."
Friday is the market-day, when all fatten and contadini
having any green stuff to sell, or grain to chaffer for, or ao-
counts to settle with, meet in the scorch of the sun, or in the
teeth of the north wind, in face of Orcagna's Loggia; a
weather-worn, stalwart, breesy, loquacious crowd, with eyes
that smile like sunny waters, and rough cloaks tossed over one
shoulder, and keen lips at close bargains either with foe or
iriend.
''And there is a fair at Prato," said Gemma. "I heard
them saying so at the mill-house, when I took Babbo's grain."
' But what have we to do with a fair ? " said Signa, whose
heart was half broken.
Gemma smiled till her little red pomegranate bud of a
mouth showed all her teeth, but she did not answer him.
She^ knew what they would have to do with it. But he he
was dreaming of gates of inlaid gold for the Lastra.
What was the use of talking any sense to him ? He was
so foolish : so Gemma thought.
^'Prato goes out, ^to the world," she said, not knowing
very well what she meant, but feeling that an indefiniteness
of speech was best suited to this dreamer with whom she had
to do. " And if you want to get away you must go there at
148 SIGNA,
onoe, or yon will have Brano or Lippo coming on yon, and
then there will be marder ; so joa saj. Come. Let na run
across the bridge while we can. There is nobody here. Gome
^run.
" Come, then," said Signa, under his breath, for it frigbtened
him. But Gemma was not frightened at all.
It was now five.
The great western mountain had caught the radiance of the
morning shining on it from the opposite mountains, and was
many-colored as an opal ; the moon was blazing like a globe of
phosphorus : the east was warm still with rosy light, while all
above them, hills and fields and woods and river and town,
was bathed in that full clear light, that coldness of deep dew,
that freshness of stirring wind, that make the earth as young
at every summer sunrise in the south, as though Eos and
DLonysius were not dead with all the fkncies and the faiths
of men, and in their stead Strauss and H^el reigning twin
godhead of the dreary day.
She took his hand and ran with him.
Signals tears fell fast, and his fiice was veiy pale ; he kept
looking back over his shoulder at each yard ; but the little
child laughed as she ran at topmost spe^ on her little bare
toes, dragging him afler her down the piece of road to the
bridge, and across the bridge, and so on to the hillside.
'* t know Prato is the other way of the mountains,^* said
Gemma, who had more practical shrewdness in her little rosy
finger than Signa in all his mind and body. ^' I have seen
the people go to the markets and fiiirs, and they always go up
here, ^up, up, and then over.**
Signa hardly heard. He ran with her because she had'
tight hold of his hand ; but he was looking back at the gates
of the Lastra.
No one said anything to them. On the north side of the
bridge no one had heard the tedious stoiy, and if they had,
would not have had leisure to say anything, because it was
threshing-time, and everybody was busy in one way or another
with the com, piling it on the wagons, driving Uie oxen out
to the fields for it, tossing it into the bams or the courtyards,
banging the flails over it, or stacking the straw in ricks, with
a long pole riven through each to stay the force of the hur-
rioanes.
SIONA. 149
When the coHDtry-sido is all yellow with reaped grain, or
all purple with gathered grapes, Signa people would not have
time to notice an emperor ; their hearts and seals are in their
threshiDg-hams and wine-presses. When they are quiet again,
and have nothing to do but to plait or to loiter, thei they will
make a mammoth out of a midge in the way of talk, as well
as any gossipers going.
CHAPTER XIV.
Thkrb were many mules, and horses, and carts, and men,
and women, and asses rattling out over the cross-roads from
the many various villages and farms towards Prato.
In the ways of the Lastra itself dust was rising as the
noisy ramshackle baroccini were pulled out of their stables
and got ready with any poor beast that was at home. The
cattle had all been driven over in strings the night before
from every part of the country, lowing, whinnying, and bleat-
ing as they went.
The road over the hill was thick with dust and trampled
with traffic as the children climbed it, and many a rope-har-
nessed horse and crazy vehicle flew by them in a cloud of
white powder, the driver shrieking, " Via, via, via T'
''We shall be seen and stopped," said Signa, shrinking
back ; but Gremma pulled him onward.
" Nonsense !'* she said, steadily. '* They do not think about
us ; they think about themselves and the fair ; and what they
will drink and eat, and how they will cheat.**
Gemma dwelt under the lemon leaves of lonely Giovola ;
but her experiences of life had been sufficient to tell her that
when your neighbor is eating well and cheating comfortably he
will usually let you alone.
She would not let him go back ; she kept close hold of his
hand, aqd trotted on her rosy, strong little feet that tired no
more than do a mountain pony^s.
She was right in her conclusions. The carts rattled by and
no one took any notice of them. Two children running by
the wayside were nothing uncommon, that any one should
18
150 SIQNA,
remark on it and reflect aboat it ; aad one or two people wlio
did look at them and recognize them supposed that they were
going somewhere on some errand for Sandro or for Bmao.
They went along unmolested till the sun rose hi^or and
the glittering heavy dews b^an to paas off &om the earth
as the day widened.
They descended the hill and proceeded along the stnight
road of the plain ; the great line of the northern mountains
unrolled before them in the morning light, with airy gray
summits high in the clouds, and the lower spurs purple with
shadow, and here and there the white gloom of a village
dropped in a ravine, or of a little town shining at the foot of
a bold scarp. Monte Morello rose the highest of all the
heights, looking a blue, solemn, naked peak t^inst the ndiant
sky, keeping the secrets of his green oak forests aad his
emerald snakes for such as have the will and strength to see
him near. Beyond, in the distance, far behind the near^
range, were the fantastic slopes of the mountains by Uie set,
that saw the flames of Shelley^s pyre rise on the solitary
shore. They were of faint rose hue, and had a mlvery light
about them ; they seemed to him Uke domes and towers.
" Are those temples, do you think ?" he said, in an awed
voice, to Gemma.
Gemma looked, and put her finger in her mouth.
" Perhaps they are the tops of the big booths at the fur."
'^ Oh, Gemma 1" he said, with pained disgust, and would
have loosened his hand, but she held it too close and t4ght
" If they are booths, we shall get to them in time," she said.
'^ I would rather they were temples, though we might never
get to them," said he, with heat and pain.
* That is silly,'* said Gemma.
What use were temples that one never gets to ? or any
temples, indeed ? Nobody ever fried in them, or made sweet-
meats.
That is what she thought to herself, but she did not say so
aloud. He was so siUy ; ho never saw these things ; and she
wished to keep him in good humor.
In time they reached Poggio Caiano : they were used to ran
along dirty roads in the sun, and did not tire quickly. They
oould both of them run a dozen miles or more with very little
fatigue, but it was now seven in the morning.
SIGNA. 161
'^ I am thirsty," said Gemma. '^ I should like some milk.
Aflk for it"
There was a cottage by the side of the road, with wooden
sheds and cackling hens, and bits of grass-land ander shady
malberrics. She saw two cows there. Signa hung back.
" We have nothing to buy it with, nothing I"
"How helpless you are I" said Gemma, and she put her
pretty golden head in at the cottage door. There was a brown,
kmdlj-looking woman there, plucking dead pigeons.
" Dear moSier," said Gemma, ooaxingly, "you look so good,
oould you give us just a little drop of water ? We have been
walking hsdf the night. Father is gone to Prato with a string
of donkeys to sell, and we are to meet him there, and we are
BO oh, so thirsty !"
" Poor little souls I" said the woman, melted in a moment,
for all Italians are kind in little things. " My child, what a
&oe you have ^like the baby Jesus I Step in here, and I will
get you a draught of milk. Is that your brother ?"
" Yes,*' sidd Gemma.
"Oh, Gemma 1 to lie is so wicked 1" murmured Signa,
plucking at her ragged skirt
"Is it?" said Gemma, showing her pearly teeth; "then
everybody is wicked, dear ; and the good God must have his
hands full 1"
The woman brought them out two little wooden bowls of milk.
Gemma drank from hers as thirstily and prettily as a little
snake oould do. Signa refused his. He said he did not wish
for it
" Perhaps you are hungry," said the woman, and offered
them two hunches of wholesome bread.
Signa shook his head and put his hands behind his back.
Gemma took both.
" You are so kind," she said, winningly, " and we are hun-
gry. My brother is shy ; that is all."
"Poor little dear!" said the good housewife, won and
touched, so that she brought out some figs as well. " And you
have been walking far! and have so far still to gol Your
father is cruel."
" He is very poor," said Gemma, sadly, " and glad to get a
copper driving the asses. We come from Scandicci, a long
way."
162 SIGNA.
And then she threw her aims around the woman prettilyy
and kissed her, and trotted on, hugging the bread and figs.
The woman watched them out of sight. " A sweet child "
she thought. ** If the good Madonna had only given me tho
like ! ah me 1 I would have thanked her day and nighu
The boy is handsome too, but sulky. Poor babies! it u
very far to go.'* And she called Cremma back and kissed her
again, and eave her a little bit of money; being a soft4iearted
soul and well-to-do herself.
*^ Is it wicked to lie ?" said Gemma to Signa, showing her
white little teeth again. " But look 1 it does answer, yon see !"
'^ I cannot talk to you, G^enmia,*' said the boy, weanly, ^*yoa
are so wrong, you grieve me so.''
Gemma laughed.
'' And yet it is me you always want to kiss, ^not Pahna.
Palma, who never tells a lie at all 1"
Signa colored. He knew that that was true. He went on
silently, holding the Rusignuolo close to him, and not giviBg
his hand to Gemma any more. She did not try to take it : it
was too far for him to turn back.
They came to the royal gardens of the palace where once
Bianca Capella reigned and was happy and studied her love-
philtres and potions for death's sleep. Some great gates stood
ajar ; there was the green shade of trees and shadows of thick
grass.
*^ Let us go in," sud Gemma ; and they went in, and she
sat down on the turf and began to taste the sweetness of her
fiigs.
Signa stood by her, silent and sad. She was so wrong, and
et she was so pretty, and she could make him do the things
e hated, and he was full of pain, because he had left the
Lastra and the hills and went he knew not whither.
^' What are you doing there, you little tramps ? Be oJT with
you !" cried one of the gardeners of the place, espying them.
Gemma lifted to him her blue caressing eyes.
" Are we doing wrong ? Oh, dear signore, let us stop a
little, just a very little; we will not stir from here; only wo
are so tired, so very tired, and"T& the road it is hot and dusty
and the carts are so many !"
The gardener looked at her and grumbled, and relented.
" If you do not stir you may stop a little while, a veiy
I
SIQNA. 153
litUe," ^he said, at last. " Where have you come from, you
baby angel ?'* ^
" From Scandicci ; and we go to Prato."
The man lliled his hands in horror, ^because Scandicci was
a long, long way, away npon the Oreve water.
" From Scai^icci I Poor children I Well, rest a little if
you like."
And he left the gate open for them.
"Have you beautiful flowers here?" said Oemma, softly
glancing through the trees. " I do love flowers !"
She did not care for a flower more than for a turnip, living
among gardens always, as she had done. But she knew flowers
went to market, like the butter and the eggs.
" Do you ? You are a flower yourself," said the gardener,
who had had three pretty children and lost them. " What are
you going to do, you and your brother ?"
" We are going to play in Prato. We have no father or
mother. He makes the music, and I dance," said Gemma,
who, though without imagination of the finer sort, could ring
the changes prettily in lying.
" Poor little things I And what are your names?"
" I am Rita ; and he is Paolo," said Gemma. " Do you
think you could give me a flower just one to smell at as I
go along?"
" I will see," said the man, smiling.
Signa stood by, mute, with a swelling heart. He knew that
he ought to stop her in her falsehoods, but he was afraid to vex
her and afraid to lose her. He listened, wounded and ashamed,
and feeling himself a coward.
" Why do you do such things. Gemma?" he cried, piteously,
as the gardener turned away.
" It is no use telling you, you are so silly,*' said Gemma, and
she ate fig after fig, lying on her back in the shade of the trees
where once Bianca and Francesco had wandered when their
love and the summer were at height, and where' their spirits
wander still at midnight, so the peasants say.
In a little time the gardener returned, bringing with him a
basket of cut flowers.
^' You may like to sell these in Prato," he said to the child.
" And you will find a peach or two at the bottom."
" Oh, how good you are 1" cried Gemma, springing up ; and
154 SIONA.
sbe kissed tJie flowers, and then the brown hand of the
man.
" Yon have but a sulky companion, I fear,*' said the gir-
doner, glancing at the boy, who stood aloof.
** Oh, no I he 18 only shy and tired. What is this great
honse ?;'
" It is a palace.'*
" Are there people in it ?"
" No. Only ghosts !"
"Ghosts of what?"
" Of a great wicked woman who lived here, and her lovers.
She was a baker's daughter, but she murdered many peojJe,
and got to be a duchess of Tuscany."
" Did she murder them to be a duchess ?"
" They say so ; and to keep her secrets I" *
Gemma opened wondering eyes.
"And she walks here at night ?"
" By night ; not that I can say I have ever seen her mysdf.'
" I should like to meet her."
Why ?"
" Perhaps she would tell me how she did it."
The gardener stared, then he laughed.
" You pretty cherub ! if yon have patience, and grow a
woman, you will find out all that yourself."
" Come away," said Signa, and he dragged her out Uiroogb
the open gates.
She turned to kiss her hand to the gardener. Signa dragged
her on in hot haste.
"A rude boy, that," said the man, as he shut the gates oq
them.
" They are flowers worth five francs I" said Gemma, hugging
her basket of roses ; " and you think it is no use to tell lies?"
" I think it is very vile and base."
" Pooh 1" said Gemma, and she danced along in the dust
She. had got a basket wordi five francs, bread and fruit enough
for the day, and some copper pieces as well, all by lookiug
pretty and just telling a nice little lie or two.
He seemed very helpless to her. He had got nothing.
" It is very hot walking," she said, presently.
" Yes," said Signa. " But we are used to it, you and I.'*
" I hate it, though."
SIQNA, 155
" Bat we must do it if we want to get to Prato."
"liinstwer
She thought a few minntes, then looked hehind her ; in the
distance there was coming along a haroccino and an old white
horse.
Gemma gave a sudden cry of pain.
" What IS it, Gemma dear?" cried Signa, melted in a mo-
ment and catching her.
" I have twisted mj foot on a stone. Oh, Signa, how it
hurts I"
She sat down on a log of wood that chanced to lie there,
and ruhbed her little dusty foot dolefully. Signa knelt down
in the dust, and took the little wounded foot upon his knee
and caressed it with fond words. He could see no hurt ; but
then no one sees sprains or strains till they begin to swell.
'^ Oh, Signa, we never shall get on I It hurts me so 1*' she
cried, and sobbed and moaned aloud.
The cart stopped ; there were old people in it coming from
the dty itself, people who did not know them.
" Is there anything the matter?" cried the old folks, seeing
the little girl crying so bitterly.
" She has hurt herself," said Signa. " She has twisted her
ankle, or something, and we go to Prato. Oh, Gemma, dear
Gemma, is it so very bad?"
Gemma answered by her sobbing.
The old man and woman chattered together a little, then,
seeing the children were so pretty and seemed so sad, told
them there was room in the cart ; they themselves were going
to Prato, ^there were eight miles more to do ; the boy might
lift the girl in if he liked.
(}emma soon was borne up and seated between the two old
people ; Signa was told that he might curl himself, if he would,
on the rope foot-place of the bai'occino, and did so. The white
horse rattled onward.
" You are a pretty boy, too," said the woman to Signa.
" Why do you not talk to one ?"
" I have nothing to say,'* he murmured.
He would not lie ; and he could not tell the truth without
exposing Gi3mma*s pretty fables.
'^ You are more sulky than your sister : one would think it
was your foot that had been hurt," said the old woman.
156 SIONA.
It was the third time in half an hour that, through Gemma,
he had been called sulky. He hung his head, and was mute,
taking care that Gemma's ankle should not be shaken as thej
went.
The way seemed to him very long.
He could see little, on account of the dust, which rose in
large quantities along the road, foA the weather was diy and
the traffic to the &ir was great. Now and then he saw the
purple front of Monte Morello, and the towers of Prato lying
underneath it, to the westward, and farther the dark quarried
sides of the serpentine hills with the crimson gleam of jasper
in the sun, and, much farther still, Pistoja ; that was all.
Signa took her foot between his hands, and held it tenderly,
80 that the jolting should not jar it more than he could kelp.
Her sobs ceased little by little, and she chattered sofUy with
the old driver, telling him that she was going to Prato to sdl
flowers, and her brother to make a few coins by playing if he
could: they had no father and mother. She cried out a little
now and then, when the cart went rougher than usual over
a loose stone.
" Are you in such pain, dear? Oh, if only I could bear it
for you !*' said Signa ; and the tears came in his eyes to think
that she should suffer so much.
" It is better ; do not fret," said Grcmma, gravely; and the
old woman in the cart thought, " What a sweet-tempered child
it is, so anxious to be patient and not vex her brother T' For
Gemma had the talent to get credit for all the virtues that she
had not, & talent which is of much more use than any real
possession of the virtues ever can be.
The eight miles were very tedious and mournful even to
Signa ; he was full of sorrows for her little bruised foot^ and
full of care for her Aiture and his own, and full of reproach to
himself for having let her come with him.
" Whatever will come of it, all is my fault," he thought,
tormenting himself whilst the white horse trotted wearily over
the bad road, and the clouds of dust blew round them and
obscured the green sunny valley and the shining Bisenzio
river.
Gemma, moaning a little now and then, leaned her curly
liead against the old woman's knee, and before veiy long fell
&st asleep, her long black lashes sweeping her rosy cheeks.
SIONA. 157
" The innoGCDt lamb I" said the woman,' tenderly, and cov-
ered her face from the sun and from the flies.
When the cart stopped at the south gate of Prato, the old
woman woke Gkmma softly.
" My pretty dear, we cannot get the things ont without
moving you, but if you will sit a bit in the shade by the wall
there, we will take you up again in a minute, and put you
where you like ; or maybe you will stay with us and have a
taste of breakfast"
Her husband lifted Gemma with much care down upon
the stones, and set her on a bench, Signa standing still beside
her.
" What is to be done, Gemma ?" he said^ with a piteous
fligb. *' Tell these good people the truth, dear, and they will
tdke care of you, and drive you back again to Giovoli, I am
sore. As for me, it does not matter.*'
'' You are a gruHoP^ said Gemma, with calm contempt,
which meant in her tongue that he was as foolish a thing aa
lived. " Wait till they are not looking, then do what I do."
Soon the man and woman had their backs turned, and were
intent on their cackling poultry and strings of sausages.
" Now I" said Gemma, and she darted round a comer of the
gate, and ran swiftly as a young hare down the narrow street,
dasping her flower-basket close to her all the while.
'* But you are not lame at all 1" cried Signa, stupefied, when
at length, panting and laughing, she paused in her flight.
Her azure eyes glanced over him with a smile of intense
amusement.
" Lame 1 of course not I But we wanted a lift. I got it.
That was all."
" Oh, Gemma I"
He felt stunned and sick. He could only look at her. He
could not speak. He thought the very stones of the street
would open and swallow her for such wickedness as this.
Gemma laughed the more to see his face. She could not
perceive anything amiss in what she had done. 1^ had been
fun to see the people's anxiety for her ; and then they had
been carried the eight miles they wanted : ^how could any-
thing be wrong that had so well succeeded ? '
Gemma, with her little plump bare shoulders and her ragged
petdcoat, reasoned as the big world does : Success never sins.
14
158 SIGNA,
Signa could not laugh. He would not answer ber. He felt
wretched.
" You are a kill-joy 1" said G^mma, pettishly, and sat down
on a door-step to tie up her flowers and consider what it would
be best worth her while to do.
She decided that it was of no use at all to consult him. He
was faH of silly scruples that grew naturally in him, as choke-
grass in the earth.
CHAPTER XV.
As it chanced, that day Bruno heard nothing. He did not
leave his fields, the week being the threshing-time, and he
having a man to help him whom he had to pay, and being
anxious to do all his grain and stack the straw entirely before
the Sunday. And down in the Lastra, Lippo, whose counige
though not his wrath had cooled, found excuse to go up to &
sheep who were ailing, and got out of reach of his wife'a
tongue, and spent the day in pondering how best he could com-
pass the getting back the money without rousing the ire of his
brother too hoUy on his own person. He held Bruno by a chain
indeed, but he had a foreboding that under too severe a strain
the chain would snap, and he repented him of the impolitic
passion into which his wife had hurried him : nine years of
prudence and hypocrisy had been undone in five minutes' rage I
It was eight in the evening. There was red still in the sky,
but the sun had gone down. Bruno had set a torch in the
ring in the wall of his stone stable, and was still threshing by
its light with the peasant whom he had hired to help him.
Unless they worked late and early there could be no chance of
finishing the gndn by the Sunday morning ; and he wanted it
threshed and done with, that he mi;ht have all his time for
his maize and vines, and begin the plowing forthwith.
The ruddy light gleamed on and off; the flails rose and fell;
the floor was golden ; the walls were black ; the air blew in,
iragrant with the smell of the meadow-mint in the fields, and
the jessamine that clung to the arched doors, and the stone-
pines that dropped their cones on the grass above where the
hill was rock.
SJONA. 169
Bruno was very tired and hot ; he had worked all day on a
drink of Bharp wine from four of the morning, and had only
Stretched himself on the bench for an hour's sleep at noon.
Nevertheless he went on belaboring the corn with all his will,
and in the noise of the flail and the buzz of the chaff about his
ears he never heard a voice calling from outside, coming up
the fields ; and a child was standing at his side before he knew
that any one was there.
Then he left off, and saw Palma, Gemma's sister.
" Bo not come lounging here. You will get a blow of the
flail," he said, roughly.
** Signa I" panted Palma, who was crying. She had been
ciying all the way up the hill.
" LTyou want the boy, he is in the Lastra. Get out of the way."
" Is he not here ? We were sure they were here," said
Pahna, with a sob, knee-deep in the tossing straw.
" No," said Bruno, whirling his flail about his head. ^ Be
off with you ! I can have no brats idling here."
" But Signa is lost, and Gemma was with him 1" said Palma,
with wide-open black eyes of abject terror.
'* Lost ! What do you mean ? The boy is somewhere in
the Lastra, doing Lippo's work."
" No," said Palma, with a sob. ^^ They were in the garden
at Giovoli ^very early Mimo saw them and they went away
together ^very fast over the bridge. And Babbo sent me
to ask you he was sure that they were here. But old Tere-
sina says that Signa must have run away, because Lippo and
Nita beat him horribly about a fiddle I do not know and
all the town is talking because Signa hit Nita in the eyes ; and
I know she was cruel to him always, only he never, never
would tell us."
Bruno flung down his flail with an oath that made the little
girl tremble where she stood in the gold of the corn.
'^Stay till I come, Neo,'* he said quickly to the contadino
working with him, and caught his cloak from a nail, and, with-
out another word or a glance at the sobbing child, strode away
through his vines in the twilight.
Palma ran with him on her sturdy little legs, telling him
all she knew, which was the same thing over and over again.
Bruno heard in unbroken silence.
His long stride and the child's rapid little trot kept them
160 SIGNA,
even, and took tbcm fast into the road and on to the bridge.
At the entrance of this bridge Sandro met them : tbongh the
children were always together, Sandro knew little of Bmno,
and was afraid of the little he did know. Bat the common
bond of their trouble made them friends. He seized hold of
Bruno as he went on to the bridge :
'^ Do not waste time in the Lastra. He is not in the Las-
tra. There was some horrid quarrel, so thej say. Nita
knocked the boy down, all about that fiddle and the quantity
of money. The boy has run away, and my Oemma with him
^my pretty little Gemma I and a minute ago there came in
Nisio with his baroccino ; he has been to Prato, and he says
he saw them there, and thought that we had sent them : there
is a fair. You can see Nisio ; he is stopping at the wineshop
just across. That was at four in the day he saw them. The
boy was playing. Will you go ? I do not see how I can go;
they will turn me away at Giovoli if I go; all my camatioos
potting, and all my roses budding, and then the goat is neu
her labor, and nothing but this child to see to her or to keep
the boys in order ; and what the lad could take Gemma for,
if he would run away, though she was only a trouble in the
house, and a greedy poppet always, still "
Bruno, before half his words were done, was away over the
bridge, and had reached the winc-fihop, and had confronted
Nisio, Dionisio Riggo, a chandler and cheesemonger of the
Lastra, who had a little bit of land out Prato way.
" You saw ^the boy in Prato ?"
Nisio grinned.
" I saw Lippo's foundling in Prato. Is that much to yon?
Nay, nay ! I meant no offense indeed. Only you are so soft
upon the boy, ^people will talk I Yes, he was there, phiying
a fiddle in a crowd ; and the little girl of Sandro*8 the
?retty white one with him. Only a child's freak, no douht.
thought they were out there for a holiday; else I would
have spoken, and have brought them home. But they can
take no harm."
Bruno left him also without a word, and went on his way
as swiftly as the wind up to the house of Lippo.
Old Baldo was working at a boot at his board before his
door. Lippo, who had just come down from the hills, was
standing idling and talking with his gossip the barber. His
SIONA. 161
wife was ironing linen in an attio under the roof, lier eyes
none the worse, thongh she had bound one up with a red
handkerchief that she might make her moan with 'effect to
the neighbors.
Bruno's hand fell like a sledge-hammer on his brother's
shoulder before Lippo knew that he was nigh.
" What did you do to the boy?''
Lippo trembled, and his jaw fell. People came out of the
other door-way. Old Baldo paused with his awl uplifted.
Children came running to listen. Bruno shook his brother
to and fro as the breeze shakes a cane by the river.
" What did you do to the boy?"
" I did nothing," stammered Lippo. " We were vexed,
all that money, and nothing but a fiddle to show. That was
natural, you know,- only natural, was it not? And then the
child grew in a dreadful passion, and he flew on my poor good
Nita like a little wild-cat, and blinded her, she is blind now.
That is all the truth, and the saints are my testimony 1"
" That b a lie, and the devils are your sponsors !" shouted
Bruno, till the shout rang from the gateway to the shrine.
" If harm have come to the child, I will break every bone in
your body. I go to find him first ; then I will come back and
deal with you."
He shook Lippo once more to and fro, and sent him reeling
against the cobbler's board, and scattered Baldo's boots and
sboes and tools and bits of leather right and Icfl ; then, with-
out looking backward or heeding the clamor he had raised, he
dashed through the Lastra to get home, and fetch money, and
find a horse.
Old Baldo did not love his son-in-law. His daughter had
been taken by Lippo's handsome, soft, pensive face, and timid
gentleness and suavity of ways, as rough, strong, fierce-tem-
pered women oflen are ; and Baldo had lot her have her way,
though Lippo had brought nothing to the common purse. It
was a bad marriage for Nita, the sole ofispring of the old cob-
bler, who owned the house he lived in, and let some floors of it,
and was a warm man, all the Lastra said, with cozy little bits
of money here and there, and morsels of land even, bought at
bargains, and a shrewd head, and a still tongue ; so that he
might be worth much more than even people fancied, where
he sat stitching at his door, with a red cap and a pair of horn
14*
162 SIGNA.
Bpectacles, and a wicked old tongue that could tihrow dirt vith
any man's, or woman's either.
Lippo stood quivering, and almost weeping.
" So good as we have been T* he moaned.
" You white-livered cur I" swore old Baldo, who had bera
toppled -off his stool, and was wiping the dirt off his gray head,
and groping in the dark for his horn spectacles, with many
oaths. " You whining ass I Your brother only serves yon
right. It is not for me to say so. It is ill work washing one's
foul linen in the town fountain. But if Bruno break your neck
he will serve you right, ^taking his money all these years, and
starving his brat, and beating itpah I"
"And what would you have said if I had pampered it up
with dainties ?" said Lippo, panting and shivering, and hoping
to heaven Nita*s hands were in the starch, and her ears any-
where than hearkening out of the window.
" That IS neither here nor there," said old Baldo, who, like
all the world, detested the tu qvoqne form of argument " That
is neither here nor there. The pasticcio was none of my mak-
ing. I said there were too many brats in the house. But you
have got good pickings out of it, that is certain ; and it is only
a raging Hon like Bruno, a frank fool, and a wrathful, and for-
ever eating fire and being fleeced like a sheep, that would not
have seen through you all these years.*'
Lippo upset the stall again by an excess of zeal in searching
for the spectacles, and prayed the saints, who favored him, to
serve him so that, in the noise of all the falling tools, his terrible
father-in-law's revelations might not reach the listening barber.
Bage in, wit out : Lippo sighed to think that his lot fell for-
ever among people who saw not the truth and wisdom df this
saying.
He found the spectacles, and then gathered himself together
with a sigh.
" My brother shall not go alone to seek the boy,*' he said,
with gentle courage and a sigh. " I thought the child was
safe upon the hill, or else Harm me? oh, no I Poor
Bruno is a rough man ; but he owes me too much ; besides,
he is not bad at heart, oh, no I Perhaps I was hasty about
that iponey. After all, it was the child's. But when people
are poor, as we all are, and never taste meat hardly twice a
year, and so much sickness and trouble everywhere, it over-
SIGN A, 163
comes one. So much money for a toy 1 for, after all, an old
hte does as well. Tell Nita I am gone to look for Signa, and
maybe out all night'*
*^ He is a good man, and it is a shame to treat him so/' said
the women at the doors.
Old Baldo picked up his waxed thread, and made a grimace
to himself, as he went to his work again, with a lantern hung
up above him on a nml. But it was not for him to show his
daughter, or her husband, in the wrong. Besides, popular
feeling, so far as it was represented in the lane between the
gateway and the shrine, was altogether with Lippo.
He had struck a chord that was sure to answer. People who
lived on black bread and cabbages, and had a good deal of
sickness, and labored from red dawn to white moonlight to fill
empty mouths, were all ready to resent with him the waste of
gold pieces on a child and a fiddle.
He knew the right key to turn to move his little world.
Good man as he was, he went down the lane with an angry
heart, saying, as old Yasan has it, things that are not in the
mass ; but he said them to himself only ; for he had a char-
acter to lose.
Under the light of the lamp that jutted out from the east
gateway, where the old portcullis hangs, he saw Bruno. He
was putting a little, rough, short pony into a baroccino, having
hired both from a vintner, whose tavern and stable were open
on to the street. The baroccino was the common union of rope
and bars and rotten wood and huge wheels, which looks as if
it would be shivered at a step, but will in truth wheel unbroken
over mountain heights and fly unsinking over a morass. The
pony was one of those sturdy little beasts which, with a collar
of bells and a head-dress of fox-tails, fed on straw and on blows,
and on little else besides, will yet race over the country at that
headlong yet sure-footed speed which Tuscans teach their cattle,
heaven knows how. Bruno had hired both of the vintner, to
save the time that his return home would have taken him.
The street was quite dark. The lamp in the gateway shed a
flickering gleam over Bruno's dark face and the brass of the
pony's head-stall.
Lippo's heart stood still within him with fear. Nevcrtho-
lesB, he went up to the place. He had a thing to say, and he
knew he must say it then or never.
164 SIGNA.
' Brano, give me one word/* he said, in a whisper, tonching
his brother on the arm.
Bruno flashed one glance on him, and went on hackling the
straps of the harness.
"Are you going to quarrel with me about the boy?"
"As God lives, I will kill you if harm come to lum."
Lippo shivered.
" But if you find him safe and sound, boys are always sife
and sound,--do you mean to quarrel with me? do you mean
to take him away ?" .
" K you have dealt ill with him, it will be the worse for yoa.^*
Lippo knew the menace that was in his brother*8 vmoe,
though Bruno did not look up once, nor leave off buckling and
strapping. And he knew that he had dealt ill, ^vezy ill.
" Listen, Bruno !*' he said, coaxingly. " He will tell you
things, no doubt ; children always whine. We have punished
him sometimes ; one must punish children, or what would
they be ? If you listen, he will teU you things, of coarse.
Children want to live in clover, and never do a stroke of wotk."
Bruno freed his arm from his brother's hand, with a gesUird
that sent the strap he was fastening backward up into Lippo's
face.
" You have hurt him, and you have lied, and jou have be-
trayed me and cheated me," he said, between his teeth. " I
know that 1 I know that ! Well, your reckoning will wait^
till I have found the child.*'
Lippo's blood ran very cold. Concealment, he saw, was
impossible any longer. If the boy were found, he knew that
he would have scant mercy to look for ftom Bruno*s hands.
" But hear a word, Bruno," he said ; and his voice shook,
and his fingers tremble as they clutched at Bruno's doak,
as the latter took the ropes that served for reins and pat his
foot on the step of the little cart " Just a word, just a word
only. Will you take him away? Will you cease to pay?
Will you break our compact ? Is that what you mean ?"
Bruno sprang on the baroccino, and answered with a slash
of his whip across Lippo's mouth.
Lippo, stung with the pain of the blow, and goaded by a
laugh that he caught from the vintner, who stood watching in
his tavern door-way, sprang up also on the iron bar that servos
as footboard to the little vehicle.
SIONA, 165
" Take care what you do I'* he hissed in his elder's ear.
" Take care 1 If you cease to pay, if you take the child,
I will say what I said. I will make him hate you ; I will tell
him who he is ; I will tell him how you stabbed his mother at
the fair ; I will tell him how you ^you ^you lefl her alone
dead for the flood to take her, and may-be had murdered her,
for aught I know. And see how he will love you then, and
eat your bread. Now strike me again if you like. That is
what I shall say. And what can you do ? Tell me that ;
tell me that I Now go and ride out all the night, and think,
and choose. How weak you are ! ah, ah 1 How weak you
are against me now I how weak, with all your rage T*
Bruno struck him backward off the step. The pony dashed
away into th^ darkness. Lippo fell in the dust.
When the tearing noise of the wheels and the hoofs flying
away into the night over the stones had died away, Lippo
lifted his head to the vintner, who had raised him from the
ground and had poured some wine into his mouth.
" Grood friend," said gentle Lippo, with faltering breath,
wiping the dust and a little blood from his forehead, " good
friend, say nothing of this : it would only bring trouble on
Bruno. I would have gone with him to find the boy, but you
saw what his passion was. He thinks me to blame ; perhaps
I was. So much money thrown away on a toy of music for a
child, when a pipe cut in the fields does as well, and it might
have been laid aside for his manhood 1 And so much want as
there is in the world 1 But never mind that ; say I was wrong,
only do not tell people of Bruno. You know he is brawling
always, and that gets him a bad name ; and not for paradise
would I add to it. He is too quick with his hands, and will
take life, I always fear, one day ; but this was an accident,
a pure accident only 1 Oh, I am well, quite well ; not hurt
at all. And your wine is so pure and good.'*
And he drank a little more of it, and then went away home;
and the vintner watched him, going feebly, as one bruised and
shaken would do ; and shook his head, and said to three or
four others who came in for a flask and a turn at dominoes,
that that beast Bruno had wellnigh killed his brother and
driven over him ; and that it would be well to give a hint of
the story to the Carabineers when they should next come by
looking after bad men and perilous tempers.
166 SIONA.
CHAPTER XVL
When lie reached Prato it was quite nigbt Most of the
bouses were shut up ; but, as it had beea.a great fair-day, there
were lights in many places, and little knots before wine-house
doors, and groups coming and going to the sound of mandolins,
laughing and romping about the old crooked streets.
There was a bright moon above the old town where Fre
Lippo once lived. The shadows of walls, and gables, aod
towers, and roofe, were black as jet The women and youths
danced on the pavement, while somebody strummed a guitar
for them. There was a smell of spilt wine and dead flowers.
Some mountebanks, in scarlet and blue and silvery spangles,
were coming down a lane, having finished their night's work,
drum and fife sounding before them.
Bruno saw nothing of all this.
He only looked for a little, thin, pale face with big brown
eyes as bright as stars.
He stopped the pony before a little osteria that was open,
because some men were still playing draughts and drinking in
its doorway, and bid them put the beast in the stable, and
asked them if they had seen a little boy and a girl somewhat
younger, the boy having a fiddle with him, and long hair.
The people did not know ; they had not noticed ; scores of
children and countiy-folks had been about Prato all the day.
Bruno left the pony and baroccino with them, and wandered
out where chance took him. He had no acquaintance in Prato.
He had only come there a few times to buy or sell, if there
were a good chance to do either with profit.
But he inquired of every creature he saw for the children.
He asked the girls dancing. He asked the old man raking
up the melon-rinds and fignskins out of the dust. He askod
the women barring up their casements for the night He
asked the lovers sauntering in the white, moon-lit midnight^
with their arms round one another. He asked the dnsky
monk, flitting like a brown shadow from one arched doorway
to another. But none could tell him anything ; nobody had
SIQNA, 167
ooticed ; some thonglit tliej bad seen a little fellow with a violin,
but were not snre ; one girl bad, she knew, and had thought
that be bad played prettily, and remembered there bad been a
crowd about him ; but where the child had gone, bad no idea.
" He must be in the town," thought Bruno, and looked for
him in every nook of shadow, ^under arches or on the steps
of shrines, thinking to find them curled up asleep, like kittens
after play.
He tramped through and through the town, not staying for
any rest or drink, footsore and beartsore, and putting away
from him as best be could the dark perplexity of bow be
should tell the child the truth, without risking the loss of bis
affection ; or, keeping his secret, save the boy from Lippo.
As he went pondering, with midnight tolling from the
ancient bells above him, one of the mountebanks came to him
down a dim passage-way, a rose-colored and gold-bedizened
figure, skipping in the shadows with a mask on, and a bladder
that it rattled.
" Are you looking for two children ?" it said to him through
its grotesque visage. " I can tell you of them, a little lad
with a fiddle, and a pretty baby, white as a lily. They were
here all day in Prato. And this evening Giovacchino, whom
wc call the Ape, took them both off with him to the sea.
They went willingly ! oh, they went willingly ! The Ape's
children always do ; only they never know what they go to I
Do you understand ? The Ape has such a pretty cajolery
with him. He would make the little Gtu off the very altars
dance and play for him. But if you are their father, as I take
it, follow them to Livorno : the Ape will take ship there at
once. Follow them. For the Ape is ^not so pleasant when
children once are out of sight of shore. Yon understand 1"
And, singing, the mountebank, with his masked &ce grin-
ning from ear to ear, rattling bis peas in his gilded bladder,
skipped away as be bad come, too suddenly and swiftly for
Bruno to stretch a hand to stay him.
" Is that true T* cried Bruno, with a great gasp. He felt as
if a strong band had gripped his heart and stopped its beating.
An old man, raking the fruit-skins that the revelers had left
on the stones, looked up from his basket of filth.
" I dare say it is true," said he. " Why not? That man
they call the Ape seeks pretty children,' and catches some, and
168 SIGNA,
takes them off to stninge ooontries, to go about and pl&y and
dance, or sell the plaster casts, or grind the barrel-organs. I
have heard of him. It is a trade, Hke any other. He always
takes care that thej go willingly. Still, if you be their fath^,
and have no mind to lose them, best be off. He would be sure
to go to sea at once.*'
" The sea I Where is the sea ?" said Bruno.
He did not know, except that it was somewhere where the
sun went every night.
" Go to Livomo. They have gone to livomo safe enoogfa.
The Ape will be sure to ship with them, and has got a scare
more, I warrant 1 Gt) to Livomo."
"LiTomol" The name told hardly anything to Bnmo;
it was where the fish came from, that was all he knew, and
the river ran there ; and now and then from it to Signa there
would come some seafaring fellow home for a week to his
parents or brothers, bringing with him tales of strange coan-
trios, and weeds that smelt of salt, and wonderful large shdls;
and such a one would put up in one of the chapels a votive-
offering picturing a shipwreck, or a vessel burning on tbe
ocean, or a boat straining through a wild white squall, or some
such peril of deep waters from which he had been delivered:
that was all Bruno knew. Except into the great towns to sell
or buy seeds or oxen, Bruno had never stirred from the hill he
was born on, and to quit it had never entered his imagination.
To him Livorno was as Nova Zembla or the heart of Africa is
to older denizens of wider worlds.
The contadino not seldom goes through all his life without
seeing one league beyond the fields of his labor, and the village
that he is registered at, married at, and buried at, and which
is the very apex of the earth to him. Women will spin and
plait and hoe and glean within half a dozen miles of some great
city whose name is an art glory in the mouths of scholars, and
never will have seen it, never once, perhaps, from their birth
down to their grave. A few miles of vine-bordered roads, a
breadth of corn-land, a rounded hill, a little red roof under a
mulberry tree, a church tower with a ssdnt upon the roof, and
a bell that sounds over the walnut trees, ^these are their
world : they know and want to know no ot^er.
A narrow life, no doubt, yet not without much to be said
for it. Without unrest, without curiosity, without envy;
SIQNA, 169
dingpng like a plant to the aoil : and no more willing to wander
than the Tinestakes which they thrust into the earth.
To those who have put a gutUe round the earth with their
footsteps, the whole world seems much smaller than does the
hamkt or farm of his affections to the peasant: and how
much poorer I The vague, dreamful wonder of an untraveled
distance of an untnicked horizon ^has afler all more romance
in it than lies in the whole globe run over in a year.
Who can ever look at the old maps in Herodotus or Xeno-
phon without a wish that the charm of those unknown limits
and those nntraversed seas was ours ? without an irresistible
sense that to have sailed away, in vaguest hazard, into the
endless mystery of the utterly unknown, must have had a
sweetness and a greatness in it that is never to be extracted
from " the tour of the world in ninety days*' ?
But Bruno was almost as simple and vague in belief as the
old Father of History, and the idea of the earth he dwelt on
was hardly clearer to him than to any Lake-dweller in Lacus-
trine ages. Dangerous people called Francesi were in great
numbers beyond that sea whose west wind sent the rain up,
and the floods, and the fish ; and in Home God lived, or St.
Peter did, which was the same thing : so much he knew, but
no more ; he did not want to know more ; it would not have
done him any good, the priest said so.
Therefore, when he heard now that the children were gone
to the sea-shore, it was for him as if they had gone with any
falling star into the dusky and immeasurable depths of night.
But, being a man who thought little but acted fast, and
would have followed Signa into the fires of the bottomless
pit, he did not tarry a moment, but flung his doak over his
shoulder, and prepared to gOvStraight seaward.
'^I will go get the pony," he said, stupidly, like a man
stunned, and was moving off, but the old man raking in the
dust stopped him.
*' Nay : what good is a pony, forty miles if one ? If the
beast were fresh you would not be in time. The Ape is there
by this time. Go by the iron way. 60 you will get to the
sea a little after sunrise."
" The iron way ?" said Bruno, dully : the thought was new
and strange and weird to him ; he saw the hateful thing, it is
true, winding every day through the green vinenshadows under-
H 16
170 SIONA,
neath his hill, but to use it ^to trust to it ^it wbs like ri^g
the horned Fiend.
" To be 8ure," ssdd the old man with the nike and basket
" Come I will show you the way it is a good step you will
give me something for charity.'*
"I might get a horse," muttered Bruno, and pulled his
canvas bag out and counted his coppers and his little dirty
crumpled notes. '
He had not very many francs ; twenty or so, that was dl;
just what he had taken in the market on the Friday beiore.
He had never been away from home. He had no idea what
travel might cost
" No horse that you could hire would get by daybreak to the
sea," said the old man, who knew he would get nothing by ha
hiring a horse, but thought he might turn a penny by leading
him to the rail. " Think : you want those children ; and if
you saw the ship just out of port and could not reach her,
would you forgive yourself? You would never see them
again, never b\\ the rest of your days. . The Ape would take
care of that But go by the quick way. They will oome
through from Florence in a few minutes, I hear the dock
striking."
Bruno shivered a little under his brown skin. Never to see
the boy again 1 and what would he say to Pippa on the great
day when all the dead should meet ?
" For the boy's sake," he muttered : there was no peril or ct3
he would not have run the gauntlet of to serve or save the boy.
" Show me the way, if it be the best way," he said to the old
man, with that curious and pathetic helplessness which at times
comes over men who, physically courageous, are morally weak.
" Yes, I will show it you. But you will give me some-
thing?" stipulated the rag-picker, shouldering his basket
Bruno nodded.
The old man hobbled on before him through a few crooked
lanes and little streets, throwing quaint black shadovrs on the
moon-whitened pavement with his rake and his rush skip.
Bruno followed, his brain in a dark confusion, and his heart
sick for the danger to the boy.
When they reached the place, the iron horse already was
rushing in through the cool white night, flinging foam and
fire as it came.
SIONA. 171
It seemed to Bruno as if ten thousand hammers were
striking all at once. The showers of sparks seemed to him
as if from hell itself.
He could watch for thieves alone on the dark hill-side in
antumn nights. He could hreak in wild colts to the shafts,
and fierce steers to the joke. He would stride through a
hostile throng at a brawl, at a wine-fair, careless though every
man there were his foe. He had the blood in him that has
flowed freely from Monteaperto to Mentana. But he was
afraid of this unnatural and infernal thing. His fancy was
bewildered, and his nerve was shaken by it. He was like a
soldier who will face a mine but shudders from a spectre.
" It is horrible, ^unnatural, ^unchristian," he muttered, as
the great black engine, with its trail of flame and smoke, stood
panting like a living animal.
" But we must use the devil's work when it serves us. All
the saints say that,*' said the old man, dragging him to the
hole in the wall and twisting his money out of the bag and
getting him his pass in due exchange.
Bruno was like a sheep; he followed mechanically, dull
with the ghastly fear of what had happened to the boy, and
the vague personal terror of this unknown force to which he
had to trust.
There were great noise; great shouting, hurrying to and fro,
roaring of the escaped steam, lights green and rod flashing in
the dark.
Confused and uncertain, Bruno caught his bag out of the
old man's hand, sprang in a hole that some one shoved him
to, and felt himself moving without action of his own, with
the sparks of fire dancing past his eyes.
** For the boy,'' he said to himself; and he made the sign
of the cross under his cloak, and then sat down as he saw
others do.
If he went to his death, it was in seeking the boy : he
would meet Pippa with a clean soUl.
The old man hobbled away chuckling. Bruno, true to his
word, had given him a penny ; but in his palm he held four
of the dirty notes, each of one franc.
'^ I might have taken more," he said to himself, with self-
reproach. " He never would have known. The saints send
one folks in trouble!"
172 8IQNA,
Brnno was borne on swifUj through the night
With him there were a monk, a conscript, and two oonta-
dini with a basket of poultry between them, and two melons
in a handkerchief. An oil lamp burned dully orerhead,
throwing yellow gleams on the young soldier's boyish lace,
and the b^ging friar's brown cowl, and the black brows of
the sleeping peasant-women, and the green wrinkled globes of
the fruit.
They rocked and thundered, and rattled and flew ; the white
steam and the rain of sparks drilling past the wooden window.
Bruno was like a man in a nightmare. He only dimly
understood the danger assailing the boy. He had heard that
men took children to foreign countries, tempting them with
fair promises, and then grinding their little souls and bodies
in the devil's mill. But it was all Tague to him, like every-
thing else outside the lines of his vines or beyond the walk of
the Lustra.
Only a word of the rag-picker's haunted him like a ghost.
The man would take ship ; and he himself might reach too
late, and see the ship sailing sailing sailing, ^and never be
able to overtake it or see the &ce of the chUd again.
That horror clung to him.
He sat gazing into the night, making the sign of the cross
under his cloak, and muttering ever and again an ave.
'* You are in trouble, my good son ?" said the monk.
" Yes, father," answered Bruno ; but he said no more. It
was not his way to take refuge in words.
A great dull tumult of horror was on hinL The strange
noise and swaying motion added to it. All the ill that ever
he had done in all his life and it was much surged up over
him. It was divine vengeance on his sins, he thought ; he had
not clean hands enough even to save Pippa's child. He had
been a wild, fierce man, and had never ruled his passioiis, and
had struck rough blows when he should have asked fbr^ve-
ness, and had been lawless in his loves, and had made more
than one woman rue the day his wish had lit on her.
It seemed to him that it must be his sins which were pur-
suing him. For the little lad was so innocent: why should
this misery befall them else ?
His thoughts were all in disorder, shaken together and
whirling round and confusing him, so that all he could think
SIGNA. 173
of was that ship sailing away, and he on shore, helpless : only
DOW and then, in the midst of his pain, he thought too of his
oxen, Tinello and Pastore : were they hungry ? would the
man to whom he had lefl them have wit to give them their
suppers? would they hellow with wonder at not seeing him
in their stable ? ^if he were a minute late they always lowed
for him, thrusting their great white heads over the wooden
half-door.
So his thoughts went round and round, and the night train
flew on with him, past the shining river in its thickets of
cane and acacia, and the gray hills silvery in the moonshine,
and the knolls of woodland with their ruined fortresses,
and the vineyards that grew green where ruined Semifonte
was leveled with the soil, and the silent sleeping towns, and
Pisa with hor cold dead beauty like a lifeless Dido on her
bier, and so past the great dense woods, and breezy heathery
moorlands of the king's hunting-grounds, till in the light of
the moon a white str^ shone, and the monk, pointing to it,
said to them,
" There is the sea.'*
It was four in the morning.
On the long low sandy lines of the coast, and on the blue
waters, the moonlight was still shining. In the east the great
arc of the sky, and the distant mountains, and the plains with
their scattered cities, were all rose-colored with the flush of the
rising day. Night and morning met, and kissed and parted.
Bruno went down to the edge of the sea, as they told him,
and looked, and was stupefied. In some vague way the strange
beauty of it moved him. The vast breadth of water that was
80 new to him, sparkling under the moon, with white sails mo-
tionless here and there, and islands, like clouds, and, in face
of it, the sunrise, awed him with its wonder as the familiar
loveliness of his own hills and valleys had no power to do.
He foi^got the child a moment.
He crossed himself and said a prayer. He was vaguely
afraid. He thought Ood must be there.
He stood motionless. The rose of the dawn spread higher
and higher, and the stars grew dim, and the moon was bathed
in the daylight. A boat put out from the shore, and stole
sofUy away across the gleaming blue, making a path of silver
on the sea.
16
174 SIGNA.
Bmno, like a man waking, remembered the warning of tlie
ship ; for aught he knew, the boat was a ship, and the diild
was borne away in it
His heart grew sick with fear. He stopped the only crea-
ture that was near him on the way, a fisherman gomg to set
his pots and creels in the rock-pools to catch crabs.
** Is that a ship going away ?" he asked.
The fisherman laughed.
" That is a little boat, going fishing. Where do you come
from, that you do not know a ship ?**
" Has one sailed yet, since night? Away ? quite away?
not to come back ?'*
'^ What do you mean ?" said the fisherman. " If you mean
the mail-ships or the steamers to Elba or Genoa, no ! Nothing
will leave port till night. Some will come in. Why do you
ask ? Do you want to get away ?**
The fisher glanced at him with some suspicion.
Bruno's eyes had a strange look, as if some peril were aboat
him.
" You are sure no ship will go away 7" he asked, per-
sistently.
" Not till nightfall," said the fisherman. " There are none
due. Besides, there is a dead calm : see how those rowers
pull." _
And he trudged on with his lobstr-pots and creels. This
man was in trouble, he thought : it was best not to meddle
with him, for fear of getting into any of the trouble.
Bruno went on along the wharf.
The natural shrewdness of a peasant's habits of acUon
began to stir underneath the confusion of his brain and the
perplexity of his ignorance and his sorrow. In many things
he was stupid, but in others he was keen. He began to con-
sider what he could best do. That great wide water awed
him, ^appalled him, fascinated him; but he tried not to
think of it, not to gaze at it ; he looked, instead, up at the
moon, and was comforted to see it was the same that hung
over the hills of Signa, to light the little gray aziola homeward
through the pines. It seemed to him that he was half a world
away from the quiet fields where Tinello and Pastore drew the
plow beneath the vines.
But he had to find the boy : that he must do before ever
8IQNA. 175
he saw the Signa hills again. He pondered a little, passing
along the wharves, then turned into a wine-house that was
opening early for seafaring men, and ate some polenta, and
drank, and asked them tidings if they could give any of a
little lad with a violin, who had been stolen.
The tavern-folks were curious and compassionate, and would
have helped him if they could have done so, but knew nothing.
Only they told him that if the child had a pretty trick of
melody he would be nearly sure to be taken to earn money
where the gay great people were, southward, along where he
could see the tamarisk-trees. If he did not find the children in
the old town, it would be best to go southward towards noon.
He thanked them, and wandered out, and about all the old,
ugly, salt-scented lanes and streets and busy quays piled with
merchandise and fish, and lines of fortifications, and dull squares
and filthy haunts, where there was a smell of salt fish all day
long, and the noise of brawling sailors of divers countries,
and screaming foreign birds, and the strong odor of fishing-
nets and sails and cordage*
He heard nothing of the boy, but learned that a ship would
go away to the coast of France at sunset.
So at noon, as they had told him it would be best to do, he
went along the sea-shore, southward, past the lighthouse and
through the green lines of feathery tamarisks, that Titania
of trees, with its sweet breath, that is flower and forest, and
spice and sea, and feather and fern, all in one, as it were.
To ask any public authority to aid him never occurred to
him. He had been too often at feud with it in his wild youth
to dream of seeking it as any help. Bruno and the guardians
of order loved not one another. When he saw them at street-
comers, with their shining swords and their soldiering swag-
ger, he gave them a wide berth, or, if forced to go by them,
passed with a fiercer glance than common, and a haughtier
step, as of one who defies.
His heart was sick as he went by the shining water. The
horror came on him that he had beeu misled. Neither
mountebank nor rag-picker had been sure that the children
had come to the shore. At best.it had been only a thought.
Bruno felt for his knife in his waist-band under his shirt.
If only he could deal with the man who had taken the boy ;
and with Lippo.
I
176 SIGN A.
Hb son] wasUadL as nig^t as he went along in the fUl
sunshine, with the asore water Rowing till his bold ejes acked
to look at iL
He had never known tall now how well he loved the child.
And if he hsd drified away to some vile, wretched, siDfal,
hopeless life, the life of a beaten dog, of a stage monkej,kf
a caged song-bird, if he lived so and died so, what oonld he
saj in heaven or in hell to Pippa ?
The sweet tamarisk scent made him sick as he went.
The plaj of the sun on the sea seemed to him the orueleBt
thing that ever laoghed at men*s pain.
When he came among the gay people and the mnsic, and
the color and the laughter of the summer batheis, and the
beautiful women floating in the water with their long hair
and their white limbs, he hated them all : for sheer pain he
could have taken his knife and struck at them, and made the
sparkling blue dusky with their death. It was not only the
child that he lost ; it was his power to save his own soul
So he thought.
He went through the long lines of the tamarisks, a brown
straight figure, with naked feet, and bold eyes full of pain,
like a caught hawk's, in the midst of the fluttering gaiments
and the loosened hair and the mirthful laughter and tihe grace-
ful idleness of these bathers, whom Watteau would have
painted for a new voyage to Gytherea.
Bruno did not notice what he was among. The Tuscan
blood is too republican to be daunted by strange rank or novel
spectacle. Whatever be its other faults, servility is utterlv
alien to it, and a serene dignity lives in it side by side wiu
indolent carelessness.
Bruno went through these delicate patricians, these pictur-
esque idlers, these elegant women, as he went through the
poppies in the com. They were no more to him.
He had come into the environs of the Ardensas, with the
pretty toy villas glittering on each side of him, and in front
the Maremma road, with bold brown rocks and sheep-cropped
hills, going away southward to the marshes and to Rome ; and
on the sea, boats with wing-like sails, some white, some brovn,
and the coral-fishers* smacks at anchor, and in the sunlight
the violet shores of Corsica.
All at onoe his heart leaped.
SIGN A. 177
He heard the notes of a violin, quite faint and distant, bat
sweet as the piping of a blackbird among the white anemones
of earliest spring.
There were ten thousand violins and more in the world.
He did not think of that To him there was but one.
He made his way straight toward the sound.
It came from a group of tamarisks and evergreens set round
a lawn some short way from the shore, where the luxurious
bathers, after their sea-plunge, were gathered in a little throng,
with all the eccentric graces of apparel that fashion is amus^
to dictate to its followers.
His heart leaped with surer joy as he drew nearer and nearer ;
he recognised the song that was being sung, a rispetto of the
people, strung to an old grand air of Benedetto Marcillo, the
Venetian : having heard the air of it on the sacristan's organ,
and which he had played night afler night on his little lute,
sitting outside the door of Tinello and Pastore's stable, while
the sun went down behind the hill.
" Morird, morird, aarai contcnta.
Pill non la aentirai mia aiOitta voce !
Qaatiro oampaoe sentirai aonare
'Na piccola campana a basaa yoce.
Quando lo sentirai '1 morto paasare
F&tti di faora, che qaella son io
Ti prei^, bella, viemmi a aooompagnare
Fino alia chiesa per I'amor di Dio
Quando m'incontri, falld il pianti amare
Kiedrdati di me quando i'amavo
Quando m'ineontri, vol^ i paffsi indietro
Ricdrdati di me qnand' ero teoo."*
Bruno knew nothing of the name of the air, but he knew
the words, and, with a great cry, he pushed his way into the
brilliant circle.
*I shall die, shall die; and thou wilt be content.
Thou wilt no longer hear my lamentation.
Four bells will ring upon thine ear for me,
And one small bell much lower than the rest !
When thou shalt learn the dead is passing by.
Come forth to see me, for that dead am I.
I pray thee, love, come forth to come with me.
Come to the church for the dear love of God ;
And when thou seest me, gather bitter plants.
And think of me in our dead days of love ;
And when thou seest me, turn thy steps within,
Think of me in the time when I was thine.
TuteaH Sitpetto.
178 SIQNA.
The music ceased ; the child looked up ; he wasstandbg in
the midst of the graoefiil women and idle men, playing and
singing, with big tears rolling down his cheeks.
Gemma, with a scarlet ribbon in her short gold locks, and
her hands full of sweetmeats, was running from one to another
of the listeners, taking all they gave.
'* Signal*' cried Bruno.
The boy stopped a moment, liHing his great eyes in piteoos
uncertainty of what was right to do ; then the impulses of
affection, and of habit, and of home were too strong for his
resolution of self-sacrifice ; he sprang into Bruno's outstretched
arms.
'^ Oh, take me back, take me back, and Gkmma too 1" he
sobbed ; " and you will not hurt Lippo ? promise me, promise
me because they will hurt you ; and that is why I ran awaj,
for fear that I should bring you harm. But I am so unhappy.
Gemma laughs and loves it all ; but I Oh, take me badi to
the Lastra ; and will they tell me there if I have hurt Nita and
ought to die ? But promise me about Lippo first ; promise
meP
G^mma stood looking, the sea-wind blowing the scarlet
ribbon in her curls ; she pouted sulkily, and ate a sweetmeat.
*^ I promise you," said Bruno. His eyes were blind, his lips
trembled ; he held the boy in his arms and kissed him on the
forehead. Then he set him down, and his hand went to his
knife, and a sudden savage remembrance swept across his &oe
and darkened out of it all tenderness of emotion.
" Let me get at the brute : point him out," he said, in his
teeth, while his eyes glanced over the gathered people.
But there were only the languid idlers staring at him, and
asking each other if it were a concerted scene to enhance the
charm of the little fellow's playing. The man Giovaochino had
disappeared at the first glance of the stalwart peasant coming on
his errand of vengeance.
Had Bruno known what his face was like, he would have
had but little chance of reaching him in the mazes of the tama-
risk groves ; as it was, pursuit was impossible. He took the
two children bv the hand. " Point me out, boy, show me
him," he said, breathlessly.
But Signa, bewildered, stared around, and could see nothing
like his tempter.
8IGNA, 179
" He is gone, I think," be whispered, clinging to Bruno's
doak. " He was not a bad man ; he was very kind."
" He was very good, and I want him,'* said Gemma, with a
flood of tears. " He has promised me pink shoes, and a coral
necklace, and a little gilt carriage to ride in, and a harlequin
toy that one can put on the floor to dance."
" What is it?" said the loungers. " Is it a comedy scene to
make one admire the children in new parts?"
Bruno seised Gkmma roughly, and took Signa by the hand.
" Let us go home," he said, and the rage died off his face,
and a great serene thankfulness came on it.
He had back the boy.
Pippa would know he tried to keep his word. The man
might go unpunished.
Signa clung to him, mute, and half out of his wits with the
sudden wonder of this deliverance from the fate he loathed.
Bruno to him had been Providence always : as other children
see the strength of godhead in their parents' care, so he in
Bruno 8. To feel that Bruno was there was to Signa to be
ransomed out of death. He was speechless and dizzy with
his joy.
The idlers under the tamarisks watched him, supposing it
some portion of the programme of these pretty children, who
had come upon the sands that morning, the boy with a voice
so sweet that the child Haydn himself never sang more divinely
those famous trelli for the famous cherries that in old age he
loved to recall with such delight, and the girl with such a little
face of grace that she might have stepped straight down
from any triptych of Botticelli, or flown from any ceiling of
CoiT^wio.
'* Where are you going to take him ? Is the boy your
son ?" said one of the gentle-people, who had been giving their
money and their pretty trifles to hear Signa sing and play.
" Do you know he is a little Mozart ? What do you mean to
do with such a genius as his? Not bury it? Tell me all
about him. Where do you live ?"
But Bruno flashed a dark glance of suspicion over the ele-
gant throng, and answered nothing, only moved his hat in
half-defiant courtesy of farewell, and moved away, afraid that
if be stayed some other means would be found by some one
to take the child away.
180 SIQITA,
His hand gripped Signa's firmly.
" Let me get hcnne," he said.
Signa smiled all over his little pale startled face.
" To the J^tra !" he said, with a litde sigh of sweetest
self-content
" What genius I" said the throng left under the tamarisk-
trees.
" What is genius ?" thought Signa. " But anyhow, if I
have it, it will go home with me. I did not get it here."
" Why do you cry, Gemma ?" he said, aloud.
Gemma hung back, and stamped her foot, and sobbed with
fury, letting all her gilded sweets and pretty tieasures of
painted paper fall on the sand as she went.
" I will not go back ! I will not go back !" she said. " I
want the pink shoes, and the gilt carriage. We have nothiag
to eat at home, and you heard them all say I am so pretty. I
want to hear them say it again. I will not go back ! I will
not I"
" But I am going too," said Signa.
Gemma pushed him away and struck at him with her roej
little fists. But no one heeded her rage.
Bruno dragged her along without attention to her lament,
and Signa for once was indifferent to her ; he clasped his violin
close, and he was going back to the Lastra ; he was so happj
that it almost frightened him. He seemed to have lived
years since he had run along, with the angel's gift, by iht
Greve water three nights before.
He went back straight to the wine-house in the town.
He asked them if they were hungry. They were not The
man who had decoyed them had fed them well ; till they were
out of sight of shore, stolen children had nothing but good-
ness at his hands : the gold-bedisened mountebank had only
said the truth.
There was a rough, kindly woman at the wine-house. Bruno
gave her Gemma to take care of for the few hours that had
to pass before they could get away to the Lastra.
Gkmma was ciying sullenly ; she hated to go back ; she
wanted this pretty gay world that she had had a glimpse of,
that was all ribbons and sweetmeats and pnuses of her pretti-
ness ; she hated to be taken to the bed of hay, to the crust of
black bread, to the lonely garden, to the trouble of hunting
8IQNA, 181
hens' eggs, and killing grabs in the flowers, and beating sheets
with stones in the brook with Palma.
Then he took Signa out into the open air. It seemed to him
that what he had to say had better be said there. Between
four walls, Bruno, hill-born and air-fed, felt stifled always.
The boy and he went silently down to the edge of the sea
ODce more.
Signa was startled and subdued.
He felt as if he were a child no longer, but quite old.
He had known what it was to be adrift on the world ; to
gain money ; to be heart-sick for home ; to hear that he had
9ome great gift that other people wondered at ; the contrast
and conflict of all these varying emotions had exhausted him.
And he was sorry, too, about Gemma, Oemma, who cried for
a stnoge life, for a strange country, for a strange man,
Gemma, who cared more about a scarlet band in her curls, and
a gilded box of sugar, than ever she had done for all his music
or caresses.
Signa had had his first illusion broken.
He was no longer only a child.
Fair faiths are the blossoms of life. When the faith drops,
spring is over.
Amidst his great mute happiness at his own home there
was a dull pain at his heart, fie had found that beyond the
mountains he was no nearer God.
Bruno watched in silence along the sea. They came at last
along the level shore to a little creek, where the brown rocks
cast deep shadows, where the water was in golden shallow
pools, fill] of sea-weeds and sea-flowers, where the town was
sunken out of sight behind them, and they were quite alone
with the wide blue radiance before them in the splendor of the
noon.
" Sit here," said Bruno, and threw himself down upon the
rock. Signa obeyed him, letting his little brown legs hang
over into the pool and feel the cool sparkling ripples break
against them. Brano watched him.
Even now the boy was not thinking of him.
Signa with dreaming eyes was looking out to the sea and the
sky, and his hand was, by unconscious instinct, touching sofl
minor chords on the strings of his Rusignuolo.
" What are you thinking of?" said Brano, abraptly. He
16
182 SIGNA.
was jealous of these far-away thoaghta Uiat he could neYer
follow.
Signa hung his head.
" I do not know, hardly. Ooly I wondered, why does
Gkd make the earth so beautiful and men so greedy ?"
His own thoughts were sadder and wider than this, but
they were dim to him ; he could not put them into bett'
words.
" I suppose it is the devil/* said Bruno ; he had no betta
reason or consolation to give.
Religion giyes no better.
Signa shook his head. It did not satisfy him : but he
could find no better himself.
" It is the devil/' repeated Bruno, who believed firmlj in
what he said. And he watched the child anxiously ; he was
oppressed with his own secret; he hated himself .because he
had not courage that night of the flood to bear poor dead
Pippa to her grave and tell the simple truth. The trath
looked so simple now, so easy and so plain ; he marveled why
he had been fool enough to hide it : truth always has thu
vengeance soon or late.
None desert her without seeing that she would have beeo
their noblest friend. Only often it is too late when they do
see it. Once driven away with the scourge of lies, she is veiy
hard to call back.
Lippo ill treats you ?" he said, abruptly, having resolved
to rend the spider's web that he had let his brother weave
about him.
Signa withdrew his gase from the sea with a sigh. On that
world of waters he saw such beautifol things : why must he
be brought back to the misery of blows and hunger and ill
words?
^ You have promised me not to hurt him," he said, aoxiouslj.
" They said you would hurt him if you knew."
" And that is why you never tc^d me ?"
" Yes ; and why I ran away."
" Tell me everything now."
The boy obeyed. Bruno listened. Hi& face was veiy darV.
He did not look up ; he lay on the rock at full length, restb;
his chin on his hands.
'* I am sorry that I promised you."
SIQNA, ^ 183
That was all fae said when Signals little tale of childish woes
and wrongs was ended. But there was a sound in his voice
that told the child why they had said in the Lastra that Bruno,
if he knew, would do that upon his brother which would take
him himself to end his days in the galleys.
'^ But yon have promised/' said Signa, softly.
Bruno was silent.
He was a fierce man, and in his passion faithless, and in his
ways wild and weak at once, oftentimes. But he never broke
a promise, not even one made to the beasts in the yoke of
his plow.
There was a long silence, in which the gentle ripple of the
water sounded clear : the intense silence of noon, when all
things are at rest. After a while Bruno rose, and lifted the
child up and set him between his knees, sitting on a great
brown heap of rocks.
** You have been very unhappy ?'*
" Sometimes," said Signa.
" And were silent for fear of evil I should do ?"
" Yes : for fear that they would harm you."
" You do love me, then ?"
" You are good to me."
" Would you love me if I did the evil ?"
" Just the same."
" You would not be afraid of me ?"
" No."
" How is that ?"
" You would never harm me."
But if I did a great crime?"
" I would hate that ; but I would love you."
" Who teaches you all this ?"
" I seem to hear God say it, when I make the music. I
do not know."
Bruno was silent.
He put the boy from him, and leaned his head on his hands.
Then suddenly he spoke, not looking up, very quickly, and
anyhow.
^^ Listen. I want to tell you the truth. I have -hid it be-
cause I was a coward, at first from fear of trouble and of the
people's talk, and of late because I wanted you to love me a
little, and thought you would not if you knew. Listen, dear.
184 SiONA.
It WB8 BQch a simple tbing. I was a fool. But lippo pert it
60. I must have been a coward, I suppose. Listeii. I bad
one sister, Pippa, a young tbing, pretty to look at, and idle as
a lisard in the sun. I was rough always, and too fierce tsd
quick. They tell you right to be afraid of me. I have done
much evil in my years. I was always a brute to Pippa I
had a sort of hate of her. When the girl came, my mother
looked at none of us. I see her now, a little brown baby
laughing or crying all day long, and my mother thinking of
nothing but of her. I see her now in the sun under the
Pieta, in the house-door, her little red mouth sucking at the
breast, and mother so proud and singing and talking of the
time when she would want her marriage-pearls. I bated her.
No matter, I knew it was a sin. I was rough and emd vith
Pippa, grudging her all pleasure and all playtime, and when
my mother died she had a bard time of it with me : jeB^ I
know. And at a wine-fair she would dance when I foibade
her, and mocked me about a woman, never mind, and I
struck my knife into her. I should have killed her, only tb
people held me back, and the knife turned on the busk of her
bodice, and only stabbed the flesh. You see, I was a hrato
to her. That is what I want you to understand. Wdl,
then, one day she went away. I cannot tell where she went
to, no matter. And the years went by. And one night,
the night of the great flood that yon have beard us tell of,
Lippo and I, seeking the sheep, came on a woman in tbe field.
She had fallen doWn over the height, from that road we go on
from the town up to the bill. She was quite dead. She had
a child. We saw that it was Pippa. Then Lippo urged to
me, the sheep would drown ; the girl was dead, the tovn
might say that we had murdered her ; he thought it best to
say nothing till the morning. We took you ; we took the
child. We left her there till morning. The river rose. It
took her body with it. We never found it. Then Lippo
urged again, Why say that it was Pippa? It would do na
good. People would think we were ashamed of her, and i^o
bad killed her. We could not prove we had not^ What xise
was it to say anything ? The river had her. So I let it hi
I was a coward. Then there was the child. lippo would
send it to charity. He bad too many mouths to feed. But
that I would not have, for Pippa's son. I got lippo to keep
SIG^A, 185
it witb bis own, giving him half of all I got. He has had
half and more. His children have fattened like locusts off
my land. You know that I thought he used you weU. You
never told me. I did for the best. Lippo has cheated me.
Dear, jou are Pippa's son. I got to love you. I was afraid
that you would hate me if you knew. I have been a coward.
That is alL Will you forgive me? Your mother does, I
think."
Signa had listened with breathless lips and wide-opened,
startled, wondering eyes.
When the voice of Bruno ceased, he stretched his arms out
with a little bewildered gesture, glanced round at sea and sky
one moment, then tottered a little, and fell in a dead faint :
the long fatigue, the tumult of emotion, the peril and the pain
that he had undergone, the wild delight of rescue and the hope
of home, and now the story of his mother and her death, all
overcame his slender strength. He fell, quite blind and sense-
less, down at Bruno's feet.
When consciousness came back to him, his hair and clothes
were drenched in the sea-water ; Bruno hung over him ten-
derly as a woman. Signa lifted himself and gazed, and stretched
his hand out for the violin, and saw Bruno, and remembered
all.
" That was my mother I" he said, bewildered, and could not
Qoderstand.
Bruno* B eyes were wet with tears, salt as the sea.
*' You do not hate me, dear ?" he said, with a piteous en-
treaty in his voice. " I have tried to do right by you since.
I think she is not angry, longer, if she knows."
" No," said Signa dreamily, confused as though he had been
stunned by a heavy fall.
" lliat was my mother ?" he repeated, dully. He did not
understand : the owls had never found him on the flood, then ;
he had always bought they had.
" Yes, you are Pippa's son. I have tried to do the best.
You do not hate me now?*'
Signa put his arms round Bruno's neck.
" No. I love you. Take me home."
16*
186 SIGNA.
CHAPTER XVn.
It was late io the aflernoon when they got back to the
tavern by the wharves.
The child walked beside Brono, veiy pale, and still, and
Borrcwful.
'^ You will not hart Lippo ?'' he said, once.
'* I have told you no," said Brono.
Then once he asked,
" Had I a father too ?"
" No doubt, dear."
" And why have I not his name ? The other children have
their father*s name."
" How can we tell what it may be ?"
He could not say to tlie child, " You have no daim on it"
" And where is he?" persisted Signa.
'^ I cannot tell. I know nothing," answered Bruno, impa-
tient of the theme. " Pippa ^your mother ^went awaj to
some strange country. We never knew anything more. Girlfl
do these things, sometimes, when they are not happy."
" Then my father may be a king?"
** A b^gar, more likely. Anyway, a rogue. Why think
of him ?"
" Why a rogue ?"
Bruno was silent.
" Your mother came back very poor, by the look of her,"
he said, afler a while. " And sad she must have been, or she
would never have thought of her old home."
Signa was silent too. Then he said, musingly, '' Perhaps
he would care to hear me play. Do you think so ? When
Carlo Grerimino makes at home figures in wood, di^gs, aod
mice, and birds, just what he sees, ^his &thcr is so proud,
and promises to have him taught great things when he is old
enough."
*^ Do not think of him, I tell you, dear," said Bruno, with
impatience. " You have me. I will do all I can. Think of
the Holy Child and your wooden singing-bird ; that is better
far. He may be dead, and so that and want together drov
SIGNA. 187
Iier home. Anjrwaj, it is of no use to yex your heart for him.
We can never know "
'^I thought the owls found me/* said Signa, sadly, and
dragged his little tired feet along, bewildered ; while the old
Tioiin clangored against him, and his head bent, and his hair
hung over his eyes.
He would have sooner chosen that the owls had found him.
This sudden story, told in fragments, and never clearly, as was
Bruno's way, oppressed him with a sense of mystery and
sorrow.
Pippa's son ? What did that mean I
He did not understand.
But he understood that he would live with Bruno always,
and with Tinello and Pastore, and with the sweet wild hill-
side, all rosemary-scented, and dark with the asters and the
myrtle and the pine ; and that made him glad, that com-
forted him.
" What beautiful things I shall hear all the day long !*' he
thought ; for when he was alone where the leaves were, and
the sky was above him, he heard such beautiful things that it
was the crudest pity that they should ever be driven away by
the rough noise of Tutors fretting, and Nita*s rage, and the
girls quarreling, and the baby's screams, and the jar of the
Louse-work, and the creak of the pump-wheel, and the curses
of old Baldo on the gnats and flies.
When they reached the sailors' wine-house by the wharf,
the boy was so tired that he had almost lost all consciousness
of anything that went on round him. But at a great rush of
voices, and in the foul-smelling doorway, his dreamy eyes
opened, and his dulled ears were started to attention, for he
heard the woman of the place calling aloud,
"And who could have thought? a casement no wider than
oue's thumb, as one may say ? and how she could get through
it passes me ; the man must have helped her from outside.
As the saints live, I took every care. I kept her in the little
rDom at the back, that has the tamarisk in at the window, and
shells and sea- weeds to amuse her, and a beautiful picture of my
husband's sister's son, of the Martyrdom of the blessed Lo-
reuzo. And she had a good bowl of soup, and a roast crab,
and a handful of figs, eating for a princess, and ate it all,
every bit, she did ; and then she seemed tired and sleepy, and
188 SIGN A.
no wonder, tboaght I, and I laid her down on the bench with
a pillow, and just locked the door on her, and went aboat my
work, and thought no more, because mj husband is always a
poor thing, and there are bo many men coming and going, th(^
is more than one woman can get through, ^up at four, and to
bed at past midnight, as I am. And then, looking out in the
street, and seeing you coming with the little boy and the fiddle,
I went to wake her up, and the room was empty, and some of
the tamarisk twigs broken and tumbled down on the floor, so
that, of course, through the lattice she must have gone, and
the man must have been there to help her out. The window
looks on a lane ; there is nobody ever there : oh, he might
have done it quite well, only so small as the hole is, that
beats me. And it is no fault of mine, that Our Lady knows ;
and why must you be leaving her with me ? and you will pay
me for the soup, and the crab, and the figs^ because she has
got them away in her stomach/'
'^ Is G^mma lost?" cried Signs, with a piteous wail in his
voice that stopped the woman's torrent of phrases.
" Yes, dear; it seems so," said Bruno, in perplexity. ^ Bat
we will find her for you. Do not cry, Signa, do not ciy: yoa
hurt me when you cry."
But to find her was beyond Bruno's powers. He traced
her to the quay; led by a man, they said. That was all he
could hear. They had gone in a smack that sailed away,
bound for Oorgona, at three in the afternoon. Some sailon
on the wharf remembered noticing the golden-headed, diat-
tcring little child ; she seemed so happy to be off ; the smack
was some strange one from some of the islands, ^no Idvorneae
crafl ; it had come in the day before with pilchards ; they sup-
posed that the man had got the owner of it to give him a lift
over water; no one had known that there was any need to
interfere ; they said that the father of the girl had b^ter come
and see : no one else could have any right to meddle.
That was all Bruno could learn.
They were quite certain the child with the red ribbon and
bare feet had gone to sea ; they showed him the distant sail,
speeding fast over the waves, which were now freshened hy a
breeze that had sprung up : by the direction she was taking,
they did not think that she was going to Gk)rgona ; anyhow,
no one would overtake her till long after night&lL
8IQNA. 189
Signa stood and sobbed his heart out by the sea.
Bruno pondered a little. He could do no good, and he
had barely enough coins upon him to get home, and had no
credit in this strange town, nor any friend ; besides, who could
tell if Tinello and Pastore were well fed ? They might be
stolen, ^heaven alone could tell ; if the men threshing with
him were not faithful, no one could say what evil might not
happen, nor what ruin or what blame the fattore might not
lay upon him for his absence without a word. To stay an-
other night away was impossible; he could do no good to'
Gemma, and would be penniless himself upon the morrow, and
powerless to return.
He pondered a little while, then paid the woman at the ,
wine-house for the crab and figs that she lamented over, and
made his way back in the full red sunset heat by the iron way
he hated, half leading, half carrying the boy into the wagon,
where Signa wept for his playmate, till he wept himself to
slumber, as the train, groaning, started on its way, leaving the
brilliance of the golden west and the blue sea, to plunge across
the marshy wastes by Pisa, and traverse the green vine-coun-
try, where the Ave Maria bells were ringing, and pause in the
still twilit ancient towns, and so reach the hills above the
Lastra.
It was quite dark when they reached the hill of Signa.
Bmno, quite silent, looked up with a longing glance to the
purple lines of pine, where his vines were, and where Tinello
and Pastore dwelt in their shed under the great magnolia-tree.
But before he turned his steps thither, he had to tell of Gem-
ma's loss ; he pressed money on her father, and sent liim sea-
ward, on the vague chance that what they had heard might
be untrue ; then, holding Signa by the hand, he went straight
down into the Lastra.
It was eight of the night.
Bells for the benediction offices were ringing from many
ehapel towers on the hills ; single sonorous bells answering one
another under the evening shadows, and calling across the hills.
The people were all about, idling at their doors, or in knots
of three or four talking of the many little matters that make
up the history of a country summer day. There was hardly
a lamp alight The moon hud not risen.
But the men and women all knew Bruno as he came down
190 SIQNA.
into the midst of tbem with the stately tread of bis bare Ewifi
feet
A stillness fell upon tbem. Tbey tbonght be came to take
bis brotber's life, most likely. They drew a little into tbeir
own doors, and otbers came up from passages and bousewajs.
" Where is Lippo ?*' be asked of tbem.
No one answered. But, by an involantary unconscions
glance that all tbeir eyes took, it was easy for him to see slink-
ing away on the edge of the throng the slender, supple figure
of bis brother.
"Wait there!** cried Bruno. ''I shall not bann jou,
coward.**
Lippo paused, ^by some such fascinated fear as makes the
bird stay to be done to death at the 8nake*s will.
" People of Lastra, I have something to say,'* said Brano,
standing still; a tall, brown, half-bare figure in the gloom,
with the boy beside him.
All the people ran out to listen, men and women and chil-
dren, breathless and afraid: what could he be doing irith
words, be whose weapon was always straigbter and swifter
than any speech can be ?
The voice of Bruno rang out loud and clear, reaching the
open windows and the inner courts,, and the loiterers at the
gateways.
" I have something to say. I am a rough man. It is ea^er
to me to use my hand, but I want to tell you, it b just to
the child. You remember that I was bad to Pippa. I iras
cruel. I stabbed her, even ; you will remember. She was a
gay girl, but no barm. She forgave it all : she said so. We
never heard of her : you remember that. She went ; that waa
all. That night of the food we found her dead, Lippo and I,
quite dead, under the bank by the sea-road, just above there
There was a child with her : this child. I left her alone in the
night out of fear, and because of the shame of it, and for the
sake of the sheep, and because they might have thought that
we had killed her : Lippo said so. At dawn I meant to go and
tell the Misericordia, and go and bring her in and get her de-
cent burial by holy church. I meant so : that I swear. But
at daybreak the flood bad got her. Now you know. It was
of no use to say anything then : so Lippo said. It was as if
one had murdered her. But the good God knows how it came.
SIGNA. 191
I got Lippo to take the boj. I said that I would pay for him,
giTe balf I got for him, always. I have done it. I thought
the boy was happy and well fed. Sometimes I had words with
him for the child's sake. But on the whole I thought that all
was well. For nine years Lippo has had my money and my
money's worth. For nine years he has lied to me, and beaten
and starved and hurt the child. For nine years he has lied to
me, and cheated me. You know me. I would kill a man as
soon as a black snake in the corn ; but I have promised the
boy. I lost the boy, and found him by the sea. The saints
are good. The child ran away because he feared that I should
do ill on his behalf, and fall into the power of the law. For
bim I will let Lippo be. If it were not for the child, I would
kill him as one kills a scorpion so ! You know me. Oo, tell
him what I say. Though we live both for fifty years, let his
shadow never fall between me and the sun ; if he be wise.
This is the truth. He has lied to me and cheated me. I do
not forgive. Women and dogs may forgive ; not men. This
very day the child might have perished, body and soul. And
what should I have said to Pippa before Ood*s face when the
dead rose? That is all."
He paused a moment, to see if any one would answer there
in Lippo's voice or Lippo's name. But the darkening groups,
half lost in the night shadows, were all still, silenced by amaze
ment and by fear.
Then Bruno turned, and, with the boy's hand still in his,
went through the western gateway, and up the road, beneath
the trees, towards the river and the bridge, homeward.
When be was quite lost to sight, the outburst of tongues
buzzed aloud, like swarming bees under the stars.
Was this the truth, ind^ ? and hidden so long I
Bruno went on his way over the cloudy waters to his hills.
192 SIQNA.
CHAPTER XVm.
So the trutli was told at last
And the Lastra, of coarse, after taking the night to oooader,
rejected it as a fiction.
When truth in any guise comes up from her well, she his
the fate of Ginevia when Ginevra rose from the tomh : erezy
door is closed and bolted, and friends look her in the Me and
deny her.
In the Lastra, after the first surprise of Bruno's speech had
passed away, there remained very few believera in his story.
Old Teresina, who had always eald that he was the better
man of the twain, and Luigi Dini, who had seen him at a
death-bed or two, and thought he had a soft heart under a
hard hide, and his friend Cecco, the cooper, who made casb
and tubs under the line near the bridge, with the old workshop
with the barred window, and the vine behind it these three,
and a few women, who had loved Bruno in other years, and
had sore hearts still, when they stopped working to think,
these did believe ; but hardly anybody else.
At the time of his speaking, no one had heard him without
belief.
There was that strong emotion, that accent of truth, whidi
always cleave their way to the hearts of hearers, however hard
those hearts be set in antipathy or opposition.
But after a while, feeling his way by little and little, and
stealing softly into the minds of his townsfolk, Lippo wandering
about with his sweetest voice, and tears in his eyes, sighed and
murmured : that he would not speak ; nay, let poor Bruno dear
himself, if he would ; he did not wish to say anything. He
could clear himself. Oh, yes : as easily as you could split a
melon in halves. People knew him. He was a poor man and
of no account, but he had tried always to do good. He had
been wrong ; yes, that he felt ; twice wrong, in giving the
shelter of his roof to his brother's base-bom one, and then,
again, in letting the infirmity of anger master him about all
that good gold squandered on a squeaking toy. But in nothing
SJONA. 193
the, 80 &r as he could judge himself, searchiog his heart
As for poor Pippa, Heaven knew he had sought high and low,
Tainlj, for years and years, and never could get tidings of any
fate of Pippa's. There had been a dead woman and a child
found, but not by him ; a woman Bruno had driven to her
ruin ; but no, he would say nothing. The Lastra knew him
and his brother both. Let it judge which spoke the truth.
Only this, he swore by all the hosts of saints, no scrap of
Bruno's money or morsel of food off Bruno's hnd had he or
his ever touched in these nine years. The child he had taken
in out of sheer pity, Bruno turning against his duty to it. But
there, he would say nothing. He was glad and thankful when
some natural feeling had awakened in Bruno for the boy : who
knew what good it might not bring to that poor diu-kened
soul ? If he wanted witness, there was Adamo, the wine-
^Der, who had seen him thrown brutally off the shafts of
Bruno's barroccino and had heard his life threatened by him ;
but there ^no, he would say nothing. The neighbors knew
him. As for gratitude, that no man might look for ; but it
was hard to be maligned after nine years' forbearance. But
the saints had borne much more and never took their ven-
geance. In his own humble, poor little way, he would en-
deavor to do like them.
So Lippo, to the Lastra, softly and by delicate degrees ;
and such is the force of lying, a force far beyond that of truth
at any time, that two-thirds of the town and more believed in
him and pitied him. For start a lie and a truth together, like
litare and hound ; the lie will run fast and smooth, and no man
will ever turn it aside ; but at the truth most hands will fling a
stone, and so hinder it, if they can.
lippo, jeopardized in credit a few days, recovered ground,
and, indeed, gained in the public estimation, with time; so
very prettily did he lie.
The parish priest took his part, and that went far ; and the
Counsel of the Misericordia did the same, and that went
farther still.
Lippo, a good soul, who rarely missed early Mass, and often
^^e to Benediction, who never did anything on holy-days,
except lie on his face in the full sun, and made his children do
the (Same, ^who, if he was offended, kept a tongue of oil and
^ps of sugar, and who was almost certsun to have all Baldo's
I 17
194 SIGN A,
BftTings, when that worthy should he gathered to his fktherSf
Lippo, plausihle and popular, and always willing to loiter and
chatter at street-comers and play at dominoes and take a
drink, Lippo had a hold on public feeling that Brano never
would have gained, though he had shed his life-blood fir the
Lastra.
Most people knew, indeed, that lippo was a liar ; but then
he was so excellent a man that they respected him the more
for that
So lippo recovered his standing, and even heightened it ;
and kept well out of the way of his brother ; and was brow-
beaten by his wife within-doors for the loss of all the gain the
boy had been to them, but went to mass with her all smiles,
and on feast-days with his children was a picture of felicity ;
and so no one was the wiser for what quarrels raged under the
tiles of Baldo's dwelling by the Lo^a. And only old Teresina
and Luigi Dini and Cecco and such like obstinate simpletons
believed, or admitted they believed, that Pippa had been found
dead on the night of the great flood.
Why should they have believed it? It is dull work to
believe the truth.
Bruno in return bent his straight brows darkly on them,
and kept his knife in his belt, and let them shout evil of him
tUl they were hoarse in market-plaoe and wine-shop.
He was hated by them just as Lippo was believed in ; he
was unpopular just as Lippo was popular.
" Well, let it be so,*' he said to himself. He was indifferent
" Other folks' breath never made my soup-pot boil yet," he
would say to the old priest of his own hill-side, who would
sometimes remonstrate with him on the misconstruction that
he let lie on him. '* They believe in Lippo. Let them believe
in Lippo. Much good may it do to him and them.^'
But the old Parroco shook his head, having a liking for this
wild son of the church, of whose dark, fierce, tender, self-tor-
menting soul he had had true glimpses in the oon&ssional,
when Easter times came round and men disburdened themselves
of their sins.
"But it will do you harm," said he. "The walnut-tree
laughs at ants ; but when the swarm is all over its trunk and
in its sap, where is the tree then ?"
But Bruno bent his delicate dark brows, that made him like
SIGNA. 195
a head of Cimabue's drawing, and smiled grimly. If every
man's hand were against him, he cared nothing : he had his
good land to till, and the boy with him in safety.
If he conld have wrung his brother's throat he would have
been happier indeed. As it was, having promised the boy, he
passed Lippo in the Lastra with such a glance as Paul might
hare given to Judas ; and otherwise seemed no more to remem-
ber that he lived, than if he had been a dead snake that he had
flung out in the road for the sun to wither.
*^ The same mother bore you,*' the priest would urge some-
times, " and you honor the same Ood."
" What has that to do with it?" said Bruno. " Though he
were my father, I would do just the same. He cheated me."
" But forgiveness b due to all."
" Not to traitors," said Bruno.
And no one could move him from that faith. And Lippo
would go a long way round outside the gates rather than meet
that glance of his brother's in the narrow thoroughfares of the
Lastra.
Though on the whole, good man, the neighbors pitying him,
he was the better for the wrath of Brun'o, especially since he
was quicker than ever to answer the Misericordia bell, and
droned louder than ever his responses of the mass, being wise
in his generation.
CHAPTER XIX.
So the child went up to the hills with Bruno, and stayed
there for good and all, with Tinello and Pastore, and the big
magnolia-tree, and the old gilded marriage-coffer, and the hens
and the chickens, and the terra-cotta Annunciation, and the
drying herbs and beans, and the big white dog from the Ma-
remma, and the palm blessed on Easter day.
He was not quite the same.
He would never be quite the same again, Bruno thought,
and thoujrht aright.
The child's vision had widened, and his thoughts had sad-
196 SIONA.
dened; and he knew now that there was a Imng world outeide
his dreams; and he doubted now that the skies would eyer
open to let him see the singing children of God.
And he had lost his own mystery and wonder for himself.
He was nothing strange that the owls had found in the soft
night shadows and dropped down at the gates of Signa, as he
had always thought.
He was only Pippa's son.
Poor Pippa I She was not dear to him. He could not care
for her. When he went along the sea-road he had no instinct
of remembrance of the night that he had lain against her
breast and had had his cries hushed upon its aching warmth.
Just Pippa's son, as Toto was Nita's, ^that was all.
That the angels had breathed upon him and said to each
other, " Let this little soul see light/' and then dropped him
BofUy on the waters, and so the white wise birds had found
him and borne him to the Lastra, there to grow up and hear
about him the music of the heaven he had been sent &om,
that had been intelligible to him, and had seemed quite natural
and beautiful and true.
But Pippa's son, as Toto was Nita's !
That was pain to him, and perplexity. It made all dark.
A child's feet are bruised, and stumble on the sharp stones
of a hard, physical, unintelligible fact.
He was much happier, in truth, than he had ever been :
unbeaten, unstarved, unpunished, with only the free, frcifh,
open-air toil to do, and the man's strong affection about him
for defense and repose, and often allowed to wander as he
would, and play as he chose, and dream unhindered as he
liked, his life on Bruno's hill-side was, beside his life in the
Lastra with Lippo, as liberty by slavery, as sunshine by rain.
And yet a certain glow and glory were gone out of his day
for him ; because of this truth about himself which to himself
was so much less easy of understanding than the vaguest fable
or wildest miracle would have been.
Pippa's son ! no brighter born or nearer heaven than that
It was his faith and fancy that were bruised and drooped
like the two wings of Bome little flying bird that a stone strikes.
The boy had Koniething girlish in him, as men of genius
have ever something of tlie wuman ; and all that was gentlest
and simplest in him suffered under the substitution of this
SIGNA, 19^
barah sad history of hifl birth for all his pretty foolish faiths
and fancies.
Bat in all the manner of his life he was much happier.
In the ootintry of Virgil, life remains pastoral st&l. The
field-laborer of Northern countries may be but a hapless hind,
hedging and ditching dolefully, or at best serving a steam-beast
with oil and fire ; but in the land of the Greorgics there is the
poetry of agriculture still.
Materially it may be an eyil and a loss, apolitical economists
will say so ; but spiritually it is a gain. A certain peace and
light lie on the people at their toil. The reaper with his hook,
the plower with his oxen, the girl who gleans among the trail-
ing vines, the child that sees the flowers tossing with the com,
the men that sitig to get a blessing on the grapes, ^they have
all a certain grace and dignity of the old classic ways left with
them. They till the earth still with the simplicity of old, look-
ing straight to the gods for recompense. Great Apollo might
still come down amidst them and play to them in their thresh-
ing-bams, and guide his milk-white beasts over their furrows,
and there would be nothing in the toil to shame or burden him.
It will not last The famine of a world too full will lay it
waste ; but it is here a little while longer still.
To follow Tinello and Pastore as they plowed up and down
the slanting fields under the vines, dropping the grain into
each farrow as it was made ; to cut the cane and lucerne for
the beasts, and carry the fresh green sheaves that dropped dew
and fifagrance over him as he went ; to drive the sheep up on
to the high slopes, where the grass grew short and sweet, and
the mosses were like velvet under the stone pines, and lie there
for hours watching the shadows come and go on the mountains,
and the bees in the rosemary, and the river shining far down
below ; to load the ass and take him into the town with loads
of tomatoes or artichokes or pumpkins or salads, as the season
chanced to be, and ride him back among the hills, dreaming
that the donkey was a war-horse, and the pines the serried
lines of spears, and he a paladin, like Rinaldo, of whom he
had read in an old copy of the *' Morgan te Maggiore*' that lay
in the sacristan's chest in the Lastra, the sacristan holding it
profane but toothsome versifying; to keep watch over the
grapes near vintage-time in the clear moonlit nights, when the
falling stars flashed by scores across the luminous skies, and
17*
198 SIONA.
066 th6 daj-dawD rise and the san mount over the far Umbnan
hills and wake all the birds of all the fields and all the foreetB
into song ; to pluck the grapes when they were ripe, with the
bronzed leaves red and golden in the light, and load the wagon
and dance on the wine-press till his feet were purple, while all
over the hill-sides and along the fields by the water hi and
near the same harvest went on, with the echoes of the strife
and the play and the laughter and the butsts of song making
all the air musical from the city to the sea ; this was the labor
that he had to do, with kindly words and with easy pauses of
leisure, the passing of the months only told by the change of
the seeds and the fruits and the blossoms, and by the violets
and the crocuses in the fields giving place to the anemones and
the daffodils, and they to the snow-flakes and the arums, and
they to the scarlet tulip and the blue iris, and they to the wild
rose and the white broom, and they to the traveler's joy and
the yellow orchids, and so on through all the year, with as
many flowers as there were hours.
The life on the hill-side was full of peaoe for him, and
wholesome labor, and innocent freedom, and all those charms
of this country of sight and scent and sound which dther are
utterly unknown, unfelt, incomprehensible, or are joys strong
as life and fair as children's dreams ; for men and women are
always either blind to the things of earth and air, or have a
passion for them : there is no middle way possible.
You shall know " the hope of the hills** in its utmost beauty,
or know it never.
Signa did know it, small creature though he was, and whoUj
untaught ; and the joy of the hills was with him day and
night whilst he dwelt here so high in air, with the deep
mountain stillness round him and ^e sky seeming nearer than
the earth.
Weeks and months would go by, and he would not leave
the hill-side for an hour, having no other companions than the
little wild hares, and the gentle plow-oxen, and the blue jajs
that tripped among the white wakerobins, and the sheep that
he would drive up under the beautiful red-fruited arbutus
thickets, while far down below the world looked only like a
broad calm lake of sunshine, ^like a sea of molten gold.
The child was tranquilised, though he was saddened, by that
perfect solitude.
SIGNA. 199
It was the most peacefiil time also that Bruno's life, tem-
pestuous though monotonous, had ever known.
Since he had lost the boy, he had come to know as he had
never done before the full force of his great love for him.
Signa was not to him only a creature that he cared for with
all the strength of his nature, but he was like a soul committed
to him straight and fresh from the hands of God, by care of
which, and by all means of self-devotion and self-sacrifice, he
was to redeem his own soul and to secure an everlasting life.
He did not reason this out with himself, because reasoning
was not the habit of his mind, but it was what he felt every
time that he bowed his head before an altar or knelt before a
crucifix. He prayed, with all his heart in the prayers, that
he might do the best for the lad in all ways.
Most days he went on bread himself, that he might be able
to give meat twice a week to the growing boy. He went to
the fairs in the early day, and lefl them as soon as his traflic
was done, so that he might not Ispend money in roystering
and get fighting as of old. He looked away from women,
and strove not to be assailed by them, so as not to waste his
substance on their tempting. He labored on his fields even
earlier and later than he had ever done, to mako them produce
more, and so have means to get little trifies of pleasure or
better nourishments for the boy. He grew more merciless at
bargains, harder in buying and selling ; he gave no man drink,
and flung no feast-day trinkets into women's breasts : all the
Tuscan keenness became intensified in him : he labored for the
boy.
Folks said that, losing his opcn-handedness, he lost the one
saving grace and virtue he had had in him : he let them say
it : if he were pitiless on others, he was no less so on himself.
He combated the devil in him what he called the devil
because he could not let the devil loose to riot in his blood,
as he had used to do, without lessening the little he had, and
that little would be the all of Pippa's son.
Now that Signa was under his roof and always present
with him, his love for the boy grew with each day. The sort
of isolation in which his ill repute and evil tempers had
placed him with his countryside made the companionship and
the afiection of this little human thing more precious than it
would have otherwise been.
200 SIQNA.
And as Lippo's story obtained footing more and mote in
the Lustra, and the taverner's tale of how he had attnck
Lippo off the cart under the pony's hoofe spread and took
darker colors, men and women looked colder than ever upon
him, and avoided him more and more. Why should Uiey
not, since now he never bought their absolution with a
drink and the cards for the one sex, and bold wooing and free
money for the other?
So the years rolled quietly on, without incident, and with
no more noteworthy memory in them than the exoelleDoe or
the paucity of the vintage, the large or small yield of the
Turkish wheat, the birth and the sale of a oalf, the dry
weather and the wet
Only to Bruno a great aim had been set, a great h(^ had
aiisen.
Before, he had worked because he was bora to work ; now,
he worked because he had a great object to attain by every
stroke that he drove into the soil, by every heat-drop Uiat f4l
from his brow like rain.
There was a little piece of ground on the hill-side which
was much neglected, a couple of fields, a strip of olives, and
a breadth of wild land on which the broom and myrtle only
grew. It ran with the land which Bruno fiirmed, and he had
often looked at it longingly.
It was allowed to go to waste in a great d^ree; but Bruno
knew the natural richness of the sou, and all that might be
done with it; and it had the almost priceless advantage of a
water-course, a mountain-fed, rush-feathered brook, runnmg
through it. To own a litUe bit of the land entirdy is the pea-
sant's ideal of the highest good and glory everywhere in every
nation. Nine times out of ten the possession is ruin to them-
selves and the land too. But this they never will believe till
they have tried it.
lib was Bruno's ideal.
All the other land of the hill-side was the duke's, his pa-
drone's ; that he never thought of possessing any farther than
the sort of communism of the Tuscan husbandry already ac-
corded it to him. But this little odd nook always haunted
and tempted him to passionate lon^ng for it.
It belonged to a carver and gilder down in the dty. It
was said that the man was poor and incapable, and often in
SIGNA. 201
difficdlty. Bruno, who was not a very good Christian in these
matters, used to wish ardently that the difficulty might drift
as &r as bankruptcy, and so the morsel of soil come into the
markets
For he had an idea.
An idea that occupied him as he drove Tinello and Pastoro
under the vines, and looked across at those ill-tilled fields,
where the rosemary had it nearly all her own way, except
where the hearts berry and the wild cistus and the big sullen
thistles and the pretty little creeping fairy-cups disputed pos-
session. An idea that grew more alluring to him every night
as he smoked his pipe before sleeping, and watched the first
ripple of moonlight on. the little brook under the brush-reed,
the gardener's rush, and the water-star. It so grew with him
that one day he acted on it, and put on a clean blue shirt, and
threw his best cloak over one shoulder with the scarlet lining
of it tamed back ; and, being thus in the most ceremonious
and festal guise that he knew of, he went first to his own fat-
tore, who was a good old man and his true friend, and then
' took his way straight down into the city.
A few weeks later Tinello and Pastore were driven through
the rosemary and turned it upside down, and a pruning-hook
shone among the barren olives, and a sickle made havoc among
the broom-reeds in the little brown stream, and the gardener's
rush was cut too to tie the broom-reeds up in bundles.
There was no one there to see, except a neighboring peasant
or two, who knew Bruno of old too well to ask him questions;
and the fisittore, when he rattled up-hill in his little baroc-
cino, knew what was doing, and stopped to look with approval.
But when rumors of it in time filtered down the hill-side to
the city market-place, as rumors will, trickling through all
obstacles like water, and busybodies asked the carver and
gilder in his dusky shop in the shadow of the Saints of Orsan-
michele whether it were true that he had sold the land or not,
the man said, '^ No,*' and said it angrily.
" How could any man," he asked, " sell any place or por-
tion of his own in this now law-beridden country without his
hand and seal and all his goods and chattels and his price and
poverty being written up and printed about for any gaping fool
to read?"
Which was true : so the busybodies had to be content with
I*
202 SIONA.
ooDJectare ; and Bruno, with whom hnsjhodies never meddled
any more than dogs do with a wasp8*-ne8t, worked on the iittk
nook of land at his odd hoars, tUI the rosemary dared show
her head nowhere, and the brook thought it only lived to bear
brooms for the market.
This addition made Bruno's work more laborious than ever;
but then it was of his own choice if he did so, and no afiair of
any one's. Besides, no one except its own peasants ever coo-
cerned thenisdvcs with what went on upon this big, bold, lonely
hill, with its lovely colors and iragrant smells, that bad the
sunset blaze over it every night in burning beauty in weather
serene, or dark with storm. It was his fattore's business only,
and his fattore was content.
And the carver and gilder was so, down in the dty by
Orsanmichele ; for every month on a markeday he had a Iittk
roll of much-soiled bank-notes, and these were so rare to him
that they were thrice welcome. Whatever else Bruno's secret
might be, he kept it, with a mountaineer's silence, and a
Tuscan's reticence.
Tinello and Pastore turned the first sod of this bit of land
in the August when Signa was found and Gemma lost *, and
Bruno always took an especial pleasure in sending the boy to
work on that little brook-fed piece of the hill rather than on
any other.
He himself never neglected his own acres ; but he toc^ a
yet greater pride in this small slope, which he had made
golden with com, and those old rambling trees, which be
had made bear as fine olives as any on the whole mountain-
side.
On great feasts or fast-days when even Bruno (who was
not altogether as orthodox as his Parroco said he should be,
in being useless on the hundred odd days out of the year
that the Church enjoins) let his plow and spade and aas and
ox be idle ^he would, as often as not, saunter down into this
nook, taking the boy with him, and for hours would loiter
through the twisted olive-boughs, and sit by the side of the
pretty, shallow, swifl water running on under the sun and
shade, with the tall distaff canes blowing above it, with a
dreamy pleasure in it all, that he never took in the land, weD
as he loved it and cared for it, where his father*s fathera had
lived and died, ever since Otho's armies had swarmed down
SIGNA. 203
throagh the Tyrol passes and spread over the Lombard and
the Tuscan Unds.
" You are so fond of these three fields. Why is it ?*' said
Sigiia, one day, to him, when they walked through the green
plumes of the maize that grew under the olives.
^^ They were barren ; and see what they are now. I have
done it," answered Bruno.
And the boy was satisfied, and cut the brook-reeds into
even lengths, sitting singing, with his feet in the brook and
hiA face in the sun.
He thought so little about these things: he was always
puzzling his brain over the old manuscript music down in the
sacristy in the Lastra. Whenever Bruno let him go off the
hill-side he ran thither, and sat with his curly head bent over
the crabby signs and spaces, sitting solitary in the window
that looked on the gravestones, with the mined walls and the
gateway beyond, all quiet in the sunshine.
The music which the old Gigi had most cared for and
copied, and gathered together in dusky, yellow piles of pages.
Was that which lies between the periods of Marcello of Venice,
aod Paesiello, and which is neglected by a careless and ingrate
world, and seldom heard anywhere except in obscure, deserted
towns of Italy, or in St. Peter's itself.
There was no one to tell Signa anything about this old
music, on which he was nourished.
The names of the old masters were without story for him.
There was no one to give them story or substance ; to tell him
of Haydn serving Porpora as a slave ; of Vinci, chief of coun-
terpoint, dying of love's vengeance; of Paesiello gathering
the beautiful, savage, Greek airs of the two Sicilies to put into
his operas, as wild flowers into a wreath of laurel ; of Cima-
rosa in his dungeon, like a blinded nightingale, bringing into
his mosic all the gay, rich, elastic mirth of the birth-country
of Pasquin and Polichinello ; of Pergolese marrying the sweet
words of Metastasio to sweetest melody ; of the dying Mozart
writing his own requiem ; of the little scullion, LuHy, playing
ia the kitchen of the Guise the violin that the cobbler had
taught him to use ; of Stradella, by the pure magic of his
voice, arresting the steel of his murderer on the evening still-
a8s of San Giovanni Laterano; of Pergolese breaking his
heart under the n^lect of Rome, while Rome ^he once being
204 SIQNA,
dead ^loved and worshiped, and monrned with hitter teais,
and knew no genius like his ; of Jaoopo Benedetti, the stern
advocate, leaving the world because the thing he loved was
slain, and burying his life in the eternal night of a monk's odl^
and as he penned his mighty chants, and being qnestioned
wherefore, answering weeping, '* I weep, because Love goes
about unloved." There was no one to tell him all these things
and make the names of his dead masters living personalities to
him. Indeed, he knew no more than he knew the magnitude
of the planets and distance of the stars, that these names
which he found printed on the torn, yellow manusciipts, a
century old or more, were of any note in the world beyond
his own blue hills.
But he spelt the melodies out, and was nourished on them,
^-on this pure Italian music of the Past, which has embalmed
it in the souls of men who followed RaJSBaelle, and Mino, and
Angelico, and Donatello ; and breathed in all the mountain-
b^otten and sea-bom greatness of ^' il bel paese oh* Appennine
parte e '1 mar circonda, e '1 Alpe" ^men who were as morning
stars of glory, that rose in the sunset of the earlier Arts.
CHAPTER XX.
" You never come to the garden now," said Palma. " Yon
are always in the sacristy."
*^ The music is there, and Oigi will not let me bring it away,"
said Signa.
'* But what do you want with that music?" said Palma.
'* You make it so beautifully out of your own head."
Signa sighed.
'^ I learn more ^playing theirs. Yon like my music ; but
how can I tell ? it may be worth nothing, it may be like the
sound of the mule's bells, perhaps."
'^ It is beautiful," said Palma.
She did not know what else to say. She meant very much
more than that.
SIGN A, 205
Signa was fifteen now, and she was the same.
Palma was a tall, brown girl, yerj strong, and somewhat
haodaome. She had her dark hair in great coils, like rope,
round her head ; and she had an olive skin, and big brown
eyes like a dog's. She had a very rough, poor gown, far too
short for her, and torn in many places ; she wore no shoes,
and she worked very hard.
She was only a very poor, common girl ; living on roots
and herbs ; doing field-work in all weathers ; just knowing her
letters, but that was all ; rising in the dark, and toiling all day
long until nightfall, at one thing or another. And yet, with
all that, she had a certain poetry of look in her, a kind of dis-
tant kinship to those old saints of Memmi's on their golden
grounds, those figures of Giotto's with the fleur-de-lys or the
palms. Most Tuscans have this still, or more or less.
With the rest and food that Bruno allowed to him, and the
strong, hill air, which is like wine, Signa, from a little, thin,
pale child, had grown into a beautiful youth : he was very
slender, and not so strong as the young contadini round him ;
but the clear, colorless brown of his skin was healthful ; and
bis limbs were i^le and supple ; and his face had a great
loveliness in it, like that of Guercino's Sleeping Endymion.
And his empress of the night had come down and kissed him,
and he dreamed only of her ; she was invisible, yet filled all
the air of heaven ; and men called her Music, not knowing
very well of what god she comes, or whither she leads them,
or of what unknown worlds she speaks.
It was a noon, and Palma had snatched a moment of leisure,
to gnaw a black crust, and to sit under the south wall, and to
talk to Signa, who had come for melon-seeds for Bruno.
She loved him dearly ; but he did not care very much for
her. All the love he had in him outside his music he gave
to Bruno.
Bruno he had grown to love strongly since the story by the
sea : he did not wholly understand the intense devotion of
the man to himself, but he understood it enough to feel its
immeasurable value.
With Palma and him it was still the same as it had been on
the night of the white currants and green allbonds. He kissed
her carelessly, and she was passionately grateful. They had
been playmates, and they were often companions now.
18
206 SIGNA,
Only he thought so little about her, and bo rnudi of the
Ruslgnuolo and the old music in the Miserioordia Choidi.
And Palma knew nothing ; which is always tiresome to one
who knows something, and wants to know a great deal more,
as Signa did. The lot of an eager, inquiring, visionary mind,
cast back on its own ignorance, always makes it impatient of
itself and of its associates.
The boy felt like one who can see among blind people : no
one could understand what he wanted to talk about ; no one
had beheld the light of the sky.
Palma indeed loved to hear his muac. But that did not
make her any nearer to him. He did not care for human ears.
He played for himself, for the air, for the clouds, for the
trees, for the sheep, for the kids, for the waters, for the stones;
played as Pan did, and Orpheus, and ApoUo.
His music came from heaven and went back to it. What
did it matter who heard it on earth ?
A lily would listen to him as never a man oould do ; and
a daffodil would dance with delight as never woman could ;
or he thought so at least, which was. the same thing. And be
could keep the sheep all around him charmed and still, high
above on the hill-side, with the sad pines sighing.
What did he want with people to hear ? He would play for
them ; but he did not care. If they felt it wrongly, or felt it
not at all, he would stop, and run away.
" K they are deaf I will be dumb," he said. " The dogs
and the sheep and the birds are never deaf, ^nor the hiUs,
nor the flowers. It is only people that are deaf. I suppose
they are always hearing their own steps and voices and wheels
and windlasses and the cries of the children and the hiss of
the frying-pans. I suppose that is why. Well, let them be
deaf. Rusignuolo and I do not want them."
So he said to Palma under the south wall, watching a but-
terfly, that folded was like an illuminated shield of bkck and
gold, and with its wings spread was like a scarlet pomegranate
blossom flying. Palma had asked him why he had run away
from the bridal supper of Gruni the coppersmith's son, just
in the midst of his music, ^run away home, he and his violin.
" They were not deaf," resumed PalnuL " But your mo^c
was so sad ; and they were merry."
" I played what came to me," said Signa.
SIQNA. 207
'^ But you are meny sometimeB."
"Not in a little room with oil-wicks burning, and a
stench of wine, and people round me. People always make
me sad."
"Why that?"
" Because I do not know : ^when a number of faces are
round me I seem stupid ; it is as if I were in a cage ; I feel
as if Ood went away, farther, farther, farther I"
" But God made men and women."
" Yes. But I wonder if the trapped birds, and the beaten
dogs, and the smarting mules, and the bleeding sheep think so."
" Oh, Signa 1"
" I think they must doubt it," said Signa.
" But the beasts are not Christians, the priests say so," said
Palma, who was a very true believer.
" I know. But I think they are. For they forgive. We
never do."
" Some of us do."
" Not as the beasts do. Agnoto's house-lamb, the other day,
licked his hand as he cut its throat. He told me so."
" That was because it loved him," said Palma.
" And how can it love if it have not a soul ?" said Signa.
Palma munched her crust. This sort of meditation, which
S^na was very prone to wander in, utterly confused her.
She could talk at need, as others could, of the young cauli-
flowers, and the spring lettuces, and the chances of the ripen-
ing com, and the look of the budding grapes, and the promise
of the weather, and the likelihood of drought, and the Par-
roco's last sermon, and the gossdps' last history of the neigh-
bors, and the varying prices of fine and of coarse plaiting ;
but anything else Palma was more at ease with the heavy
pole pulling against her, and the heavy bucket coming up
sullenly from the water-hole.
She felt, when he spoke in this way, much as Bruno did,
only fiur more intensely, as if Signa went away from her
right away into the sky somewhere as the swallows went
when they spread their wings to the east, or the blue wood-
smoke when it vanished.
" You love your music better than you do Bruno, or me, or
anything, Signa," she said, with a little sorrow that was very
humble, and not in the least reproachful.
208 SIGN A.
" Yes," said Signa, with the unconscious craelty of one in
whom Art is born predominant. " Do joa know, Palma," he
said, suddenly, after a pause, " do jou know I think I cooU
make something beautiful, something men would be gUd of,
if only I could be where they would care for it ?"
" We do care," said the girl, gently.
''Oh, in a way. That is not what I mean," said the hoy,
with a little impatience which daily grew on him more, for the
associates of his life. " You all care ; you all sing ; it is as
the finches do in the fields, without knowing at all what it is
that you do. You are all like birds. You pipe ^pipe ^pipe,
as you eat, as you work, as you play. But what music do we
ever have in the churches ? Who among you really hkes all
that music when I play it off the old scores that Gigi says were
written by such great men, any better than you like the tinklbg
of the mandolins when you dance in the threshing-barns?
I am sure you all like the mandolins best. I know nodiiDg
here. I do not eyen know whether what I do is worth much
or nothing. I think if I could hear great music once if I
could go to Florence "
" To Florence ?" echoed Palma.
It was to her as if it were a thousand leagues off. Sbe
oould see the gold cross, and the red roo&, and the white
towers gleam far away in the plain against the mountains
whence the dawn came, and she had a confused idea that
the sun rose somehow out of the shining dome ; but it was
to her like some foreign land : girls live and old women die
within five miles of the cities, and never travel to see them
once ; to the peasant his purse, his hamlet, is the worid. A
world wide enough, that serves to hold him from his swaddling-
bands to his grave-clothes.
" To Florence," said Signa. " There must be great mnac
there. But Bruno will never let me go. If there be vege-
tables to take to the city, he takes them himself. He saji
that cities are to boys as nets to birds."
" But why ?" began Palma, having eaten her crust, and witi
her hands braiding the straws one in another. ^
But Signa pursued his own thoughts aloud :
" There is a score of a man called Bach in the church. It
is a part of what they call an oratorio ; a kind of sacred play,
I suppose, that must be. It is marked to be sung by a bun-
SIONA, 209
dred voioes. Now, to hear that a hundred voices ! I would
give my life."
" Would it he hetter than to hear some one singing over the
fields?" said Palma.
Signa sighed.
" You do not understand. The singing over the fields, yes,
that is beautiful too. But it is another thing. Some one has
scribbled in old yellow ink on some of the scores. In one place
they wrote, ^ This miserere, sung in the Sistine this Day of
Ashes, 1722,; fifty-five voices, very fine.' Dear 1 To hear
that ! it must be to the singing in the fields like the lightning
on the hills to a glow-worm."
"The lightning kills," said Palma, meaning simply what
8he id, and not knowing that she pobted a moral in meta-
phor.
'' I must go back with the seeds, Palma," said the boy,
rising from under the old south wall.
He was not vexed with her, only no one understood, ^no
one, as he said to the Rusignuolo, when he went home with
the basket slung at his back, playing the violin as he went
over the hills, as his habit was, while the little children ran
down through the vines to listen, and the sheep stood on the
ledges of the rocks to hear, and the hollowed crevices gave the
sound back in faint, sweet, faithful echo.
Palma, plaiting as she walked, went to her father's cottage,
and laid her straw aside, and twisted her short skirt as high as
her knees, and went down into the cabbage-bed and worked ;
hard labor that made her back bend like an osier, and her
brown skin wet with heat, and her feet cold and black with
the clinging soil.
He lived in the air, like a white-winged fiingiullo; and she
in the dods, like a poor blind mole.
" We are nothing to him, any one of us," she thought, and
a dew that was not a rain-drop fell for a moment on the crisp
green cabbage-leaves.
Bat sbe hoed and weeded and picked off the slugs, and
scolded herself for crying, and labored ceaselessly all the after-
noon over the heavy earth ; and then put a pile of the cab-
bages into a great creel, and carried it on her back into the
Lastra, and sold it for a few coppers ; and then went homo
again to make her brothers' shirts, and draw the water that
18*
210 SIGNA.
filled the troughs of bark that ran across the plot of gnmnd,
and clean her poor little hovel as well as she oonld, with five
bojs, and a pig, and hens and chickens, always spnwling on
the floor ; and when the san set, washed the mad off her
limbs, and climbed the rickety ladder into the hole in the roof,
where her straw mattress was, with two bits of wood nailed in
the shape of a cross above it
Palma worked very hard. In winter, when the bitter moun'
tun-wind was driving everything before it in a hurricane whose
breath was ice, she had to be up and out in the frosty dark
before day, no less than in the soft dusk of the summer dawns.
She had all the boys to attend to and stitch for ; her father s
clothes to make ; the cottage to keep clean as best she might:
she had to dig and hoe, and plant the slip of ground on which
their food grew : she had to help her father often in the greit
gardens : she had to stand on the square stone weU and draw
the water up by the cord and beam, which is a hard task even
for a man to do long together: and, finaUy, in all weathers, ^
had to trudge wherever she was wanted, for the gpod-natared
Sandro was as lazy as he was cheery, and put labor on what
shoulders he could, so only they were not his own.
If ever she had a minute's leisure, she spent it in plaitin;.
and so got a few yards done a week, and a few coppers to add
to the household store ; for they were very poor, with that
absolute poverty which is often glad to make soup of nettks
and weeds ; frequent enough here, and borne with a smiling
patience which it might do grumbling Northern folk, whose
religion is discontent, some good to witness if they could.
That was Palma's life always; day after day; with no
variety, except that sometimes it was cabbages, and sometimts
lettuces, and sometimes potatoes, and sometimes tomatoes ; and
that when the sun did not grill her like a fire, the north wind
nipped her like a vice ; and when the earth was not baked lii^e
a heated brick, it was a sodden mass that she sunk into like a
bog. That was always her life.
Now and then she went to a festival of the saints, and put
a flower in her rough black braids as her sole means of huly-
day garb ; and twice a year, at Ceppo and at Pasqua, tasted i
bit of meat. But that was all : otherwise her round of hours
never changed, no more than the ass's in the brick-kiln mill.
Neverthdess she put up her cross above her bed, and never
SIONA. 211
laid herself down without thanking the Heavenly Mother for
al] the blessings she enjoyed.
The State should never quarrel with the Churches. They
aloDe can bind a band on the eyes of the poor, and, like the
lyiog watchman, cry above the strife and storm of the sad earth.
" All's well ! All's well 1"
Palma never thought for a minute that her lot was a hard
one. Her one great grief had been losing Gemma. Under all
else she was happy enough : a brave and cheerful and kindly
girl, and with no evil habit or coarse thought in her; and pure
as Una, though she had to stand on the well-edge with bare
anns and legs gleaming like bronze in the sun, and the wind
blowing her poor thin skirt like a leaf.
Meanwhile the boy went up the hill-side, tbinking not at all
about her.
He was thinking of an epitaph he had seen in an old book
the day before, an epitaph from a tomb under an altar of St.
Simon and St Jude in Bome :
"Johannes PEnirs Alotsius
Palestrina,
MusicjB Pbincbps."
He was thinking how beautiful a thing it would be to die,
if one were only sure of having " Musicae Prinoeps" written
above one's rest under the golden gloiy of St. Peter's dome.
He was no longer content, like the boy Haydn, over a worm-
eaten clavecin, content with the pleasure of sound and of
fancy, and pitying kings because diey were not as he. He
was no longer content thus.
The desire of eternal fame ^the desire of the moth for the
star ^had entered into him.
Meanwhile, though he cried his heart out for her, Gemma
never returned.
Sandro came back without her, and cried a little for a week,
but was not disconsolate, and on the whole found his nutshell
of a house more tranquil without the little, sulky, self-willed
beauty. But Palma mourned her long ; and her playfellows
likewise.
^' I was so wicked to let her go with me 1" said Signa, often,
in bitter self-reproach. But the good-natured Sandro did not
reproach him.
212 SIQNA.
" My dear," be said, " when a female tiling, boweversmsll,
chooses to go astray, there is not the male thing, however b%,
that should ever hinder her/'
Sandro never looked beyond his pots of pinks and beds of
roses ; but he knew so much human truth as that.
What Oemma had gone to, who could tell 7 ^wandering
with little Savoyards and Roman image-sellers, or dandog with
dogs and monkeys, in rainy streets of Northern towns, or under
the striped canvas of merry-andrews* booths ; that was what
most of the children did who were tempted and taken over
sea.
" Anyhow, wherever she is gone she is happy if she has
got a bit of ribbon in her hair, and a sugar-plum upon her
tongue, and she will get them for herself, I will warrant, any-
where," said Bruno, who could not have honestly said that he
was sorry she was lost.
But Signa, when he said those things, cried so that he ceased
to say them ; and gradually the name of the sunny-headed
little thing dropped out of memory except with Signa and
Palma, who would talk of her often in their leisure minutes,
sitting under the wall by the fountain, watching the old speckled
toads come and go, and the chaffinches proen &eir white wings,
and the cbtus buds unfold from the little green knots, and the
snakes* bread turn ruby red till it look^ like a monarch's
sceptre dipped in the bloodshed of war.
Whenever at night the storm howled, or the snow driiled
over the lace of the hills in winter, Signa would tremble in his
bed, thinking of his poor lost playmate, as she might be at
that very hour homeless and friendless on the cruel stones of
some foreign town. His imagination tormented him with
vision and terror of all the possible sufferings which might be
falling to her lot.
" It was my fault, ^it was my fault," he said incessantly to
himself and every one, and for a long time utterly refused to
be comforted. When 'the great day of his first communioD
arrived, and he went, one of a long string of white-dad chil-
dren, with his breviary in his clasped hands, and little brown
shabby Palma behind him with the other girls, Signa felt the
hot tears roll down his cheeks, thinking of the absent, golden-
headed, innocent-eyed thing, who would have looked so prettj
with the wreath of white wild hyacinths upon her head.
SIQNA. 213
" The boy is a very lamb of God : how he weeps with joy
at entering the fold!'* thought the good old Parroco from tha
hill^, looking at him.
But Signa was thinking of Gemma.
" Dear love, do not fret for her," said Teresina, that very
day, after the service of the church, in her own little room
over the Livomese gate ; " never fret for her. She is one that
will light on her feet and turn stones to almonds, always : trust
her for that."
But Signa did fret ; though he knew that they were right,
lie had no thought to be unkind to those he lived with ; but
he became so innocently and unwittingly.
All his mind and heart were with those crabbed manu-
scripts in the sacristy, and with the innumerable harmonies
and combinations thronging through his brain. He wanted to
learn ; he wanted to understand ; he wanted to know how
othere had ITeen able to leave to the world, after their death,
those imperishable l^acies of thought and sound. He could
only dream uselessly, puzzle himself uncertainly, wonder hope-
lcily : he thought he had power in him to do something great,
but how could he be sure ?
Meanwhile he was only a little peasant, riding out with the
barrels of wine, pruning the olives, shelling the maize, driving
the cow up to her pasture under the pines. And Bruno said
always, " when you come after me," " when you are a man
^^rown and sell com in the town market yourself," " when
you are old enough to go in on a Friday and barter," and ten
thousand other phrases like these, all pointing to one future
for him, as the needle points to the pole.
The boy was heavy-hearted as he went up the hill-path.
Sometimes he was ungrateful enough to wish that Bruno
had never followed and found him on the sea-shore ; that he
had wandered away with Gemma into the dim tangle of an
unknown fate. All his affections clave to the beautiful mSim-
tain-world on which he lived ; but all his unsatisfied instincts
fluttered like young birds with longing for far flight.
Sometimes he wondered if there were any great man whom
he could ask, and was vexed that he had lost the little bit
of paper by the water -side the night he had run from the
Lajitra. It might have been of use who could tell ?
" Are you tired ?" said Bruno, that evening. " You should
214 SIQNA.
not tire. At your age I could walk from bere to Prato and
back, and never a bead on my forehead nor a muscle weaij."
" I am not tired," said Signa. " I was thiuking/'
"You are always thinking. What good does it do?"
" I was thinking : ever so many hundred years ago, down
in the city, I have read that three men, a Corsi, a Bardi, and
a Strozzi, found poet and composer, musician and singers, all
of themselves, and gave the city an opera in Palace Com ;
the second it ever heard. Are there any nobles like that
now?"
" I do not know. And how can you tell what an open
is?"
" I can fancy it. Gigi has told me."
" An opera is a pretty thing. I do not deny it," said Bruno,
too true a son of the soil to be deaf to the charms of the stage.
" When I was a youngster, indeed, always befoje before I
had more to do with my money, ^I was forever going down to
get a standing-place in the summer theatre : the women round
you, and the fine music, and the big moon xverhead oh, jes,
I used to care for it very much ; but, afler all, they are
follies."
" Would you let me go and hear one ?"
Signals eyes lit ; all the paleness and fatigue went out of his
face ; he looked up at Bruno as a spaniel at his master.
" What for ?" said Bruno, sharply. " If you want menr-
making, they dance every night down at Fiastra, the ^Is and
the boys."
Signals face fell ; he went without a word into bb own little
bedchamber.
To jump" about in the droll Tuscan rigadoon, and to whirl
round plump Netta or black Tina, that was not what he
wanted. But how should Bruno understand ?
He could hear the sound of the bell from the roof of the
Fiaitra farm, calling the dancers along the hill-side, but be shut
his door and sat down on his bed and took out bis violin.
After aU, it was the only thing that could undexstand
him.
His small square casement was open ; clematis flowers hung
about it ; the vast plain was a vague silvery sea, foJl of all the
beautiful mysteries of night.
He played awhile, then let the Rusignuolo fall upon hia
SIONA. 215
knee and the bow drop. Wliat use was it? Wlio would ever
hear it?
The fatal desire of fame, which is to art the corroditig ele-
ment, as the desire of the senses is to love, bearing witli it
the seeds of satiety and mortality, ^had entered into him,
without his knowing what it was that ailed him.
When he had been a little child, he had been quite happy
if only the sheep had heard his music and only the wandering
water-course answered it But now it was otherwise. He
wanted human ears to hear ; he wanted all the millions of the
earth to sing in chorus with him.
And no one of them ever would.
The power in him frightened him with its intensity and its
longing : his genius called on him as the Jehovah of Israel
called on the lad David ; and, at the summons of the solemn
unseen majesty, all the childhood and the weakness in him
trembled.
He sat quite quiet, with the violin upon his knee, and his
eyes staring out at the stany skies.
The heavens were brilliant with constellations : red Antares
flamed in the south ; the Centaur lifted his head ; and radiant
Spica smiled upon the harvest The moon was at the full, and
all the sky was light, but it did not obscure " the length of
Ophiuchus large," nor the many stars held in the Herdsman's
hand, nor the brilliancy of Altair and Vega.
Bruno, working out-of-doors under the house- wall, heaving
up the buckets from the tank, and watering his salad-plants in
the evening coolness, noticed the silence. He was used to
hear the sweet sad chords of the Rusignuolo all the evenings
through, outstripping the living nightingales' song.
" Perhaps he is beginning not to care for it," he thought,
and was glad, because he was always jealous of that thing, for
whose sake the boy was so oflen deaf and blind to everything
around him.
'' When he knows what I have done,'' thought he, letting
the bucket down into the splashing water, that glittered like a
jewel in the starlight,-" when he knows all I have done, and
sees his future so safe, and feels the manhood in him, and
knows he will be his own master, then all these fancies will go
by fast enough. Strong he never will be perhaps, and he will
always have thoughts that no one can get at. But he will be
216 SIGNA,
80 happy and so proud, and his nrnsio will just be a toy Sv
him, ^nothing more : just a toy, as Geoco*8 chitarra b when !
he takes it up out of work-hours. He will put away diildisb
things, ^when he knows the saints have been merciful to me."
And he stopped to cross himself, before he took up the rope
and drew up the pail and flung Uie water oyer the rows of
thirsty green plants.
The saints had been merciful to him.
All things had thriven with him sinoe the day he had told
the truth in the Lastra. The seasons had been fair and pros-
perous, the harvests lai^e, the vintages propitious. There bad
not been one bad year, from the time he had taken the boy
home in the face of his neighbors. Eveiything had gone well
with him. It seemed to him that every grain he had pat into
the earth had multiplied a million-fold ; that every green thin^
he had thrust into the mould had brought forth and multiplied
beyond all common increase.
He had labored hard, doing the work of three men ; sparbg
himself no moment for leisure or recreation ; crushing out of
himself all national inborn habits of rest or of passion ; deny-
ing himself all indulgences of the body ; toiling without ces-
sation when the hot earth was burning under the months of
the lion and scorpion as when the snovrs drifted thick in tbe
ravines of the Apennines. And now his reward was ahnoei
at hand.
He almost touched the crown of all his labor.
He thanked the saints and crossed himself, then flung tbe
last shower of water over his plants, and went in-doors to bis
bed with a heart at ease.
" He is tired of his toy ; he is not playing,*' he thought, as
he closed the household bars and beams against the sultij
lustre of the night, and set his old gun loaded against his side,
and threw his strong limbs on his mattress with a sigh of
weariness and a smile of content.
Afler all, he had done well by Pippa's child : in a very little
while he would have bought the boy's safe future, and housed
it &om all risks, so far as it is ever possible for any man to
purchase the good will of fate.
** The saints were very merciful," thought Bruno, and, ft*
thinking, fell into sleep with the stillness and the iragrance of
tbe summer night all about him in the quiet house.
SIONA, 217
CHAPTER XXL
Four months later, on a Sunday morning, Bruno and he
talked to their own parish church over the plowed land for
early mass.
The bells were ringing all over the plains below. Their
distant melodies crossing one another came upward on the
cool, keen air.
The church was exceeding old, with an upright tower, very
lofty and ruddy -colored, and with an open belfry that showed
the iron clapper swaying to and fro, and the ropes jerking up
and down, as the sound of the tolling echoed along the side
of the hill.
The brown fields and the golden foliage sloped above and
below and around it. A beautiful ilex oak rose in a pyramid
of bronzed foliage against its roof. The few scattered peas-
ants who were its parishioners went one by one into the quiet-
ness and darkness and stillness. The old priest and a little
boy performed the offices. The door stood open. They could
see the blue mountain-side and the vines and the tufts of
grass.
Bruno this morning was more cheerful and of more gayety
of words than the boy had ever seen him. His character was
deeply tinged with that melancholy which is natural to men
of his country, where their passions are strong, and which
lends its dignity to all the countenances of Sarto's saints, of
Giotto*s angels, of Fra Bartolommeo's prophets, of Ghirlandaio's
priests ; countenances that any one may see to-day in the fields
of harvest, or in the threshing-barns, anywhere where the
same sun shines that once lit the early painters to their work.
Bruno kneeled down on the bricks of the old hill church
with the truest thanksgiving in him that ever moved a human
heart ; one of the desires of his soul had been given him ;
going through the fields he had thought, " Shall I tell him
yet? or wait a little." And he told himself to wait till he
should get the boy down to the borders of the brook quite in
solitude.
K 19
218 SIGNA.
With labor he had compassed the thing he wished. He lad
made the future safe by the toil of his hands. He was happy,
and he blessed God.
Kneeling on the red bricks, with the mountain-wind blow-
ing over him, he said to himself,
*' I think Pippa must know. The saints are good. Thej
would tell her."
lie breathed freely, with a peace and joy in his life that be
hud not known since the dark night when he had let the dead
body drift out to the sea.
A sunbeam came in through a chink in the stone wall, aod
made a little glow of silvery light upon the pavement where
he knelt He thought it was Pippa's answer.
He rose with a glad light shining in his eyes.
" We will not work to-day," he said when the office was
over.
Usually he did work after mass.
They went home, aad they had coffee and bread. Coffee
was a thing for feast-days. He went outside and cat a b^
cluster of yellow Muscat grapes, growing on his south wall,
which he had left purposely when he had taken all the others
off the vine for market.
He laid them on Signa's wooden platter.
" They are for you," he said. " It is fruit for a prince."
Signa wanted to share them with him, but he would not
He lighted his pipe and smoked, sitting on the stone beach
by his door under the mulberry. Under his brows he watched
the boy, who leaned against the table, plucking his grapes with
one hand, and with the other making figures with a pencil oa
paper.
Signals lithe, slender limbs had a girrs grace in them ; htJ
shut mouth had a sweet sereneness ; his drooped eyelids had a
dreamy sadness ; his lashes shadowed his cheeks ; his hair fell
over his forehead ; he was more than ever like the Sleeping
Endymion of Gucrcino.
But he was not asleep. He was awake ; but only awake ia
a world very far away from the narrow space of four walls ia
which his body was.
'' You look like a picture there is in the city," said Bruno,
suddenly, who had stalked through the Tribune as contadini
do. *^ The lad in it has the moon behind him, and he dreams
SJGNA, 219
of the moon, and the moon comes and kisses him, so Cecco,
the cooper, said, and never of another thing did the boy
think, sleeping or waking, but of the moon, which made her-
self a woman. Is the moon behind you ? You look like it."
Signa raised his 'head and his long dusky lashes *, he had
not heard distinctly ; he was intent upon the figures he was
making.
**I have never seen the city,*' he said, absently; "never
since I used to run in, when I was little, afler Baldo's donkey."
" What are you doing there?" said Bruno, looking envi-
ously at the pencil ; he was envious of all these unknown
things, which he always felt were so much better loved by the
boy than ever he was or would be himself.
Signa colored to his curls.
" I was writing ^music."
"Write music! How can you write a thing that is all
sound ? You talk nonsense."
" I think it is right," said Signa, wistfully. " Only I can-
not be sure. There is nobody to tell me. Gigi thinks it is
correct, ^but impossible. He thinks no one could ever play
it I can play it. But then I hear it. That is different."
" Hear the paper? You get crazed !" said Bruno. "Dear,
you get too old to dream of all this nonsense. Your Rusig-
nuolo is a pretty toy enough, and you play so that it is a joy
to listen to you. That I grant. But it is a childish thing at best,
and gets no man his bread. Look at the old beggar Maso who
wanders with his flute. Music has brought him to that pass."
" The beggar Maso says that men, by music, have been
greater than kings," murmured Signa, with his eyes dropped
again on his score.
" Then he lies, and shall get a crust at this door no more,"
said Bruno, in hot haste.
For the world was a sealed book to him, and music a thing
universal but of no account, like the meadow-mint that sweet-
ened the fields ; a thing of a shepherd's pipe, and a young
girl's carol, and the throats of villagers at Passion-week
masses, and the mandolins of lovers and merry-makers, goin^
home on St. Anna's Eve through the vines after dunce and
drink.
Signa sighed, and bent his head closer over his paper. He
never disputed. He was not sure enough of the little he knew.
220 SIGNA.
" You like it better than the grapes," said Bruno, with J
vexed irritation. He had saved the grapes two months and
more with the thoughts of Signals pleasure in them alwajs it
his heart. It was a little thing, a nothing. But still
Signa folded up his paper and ate his grapes, with a flash
almost of guilt on his face. All his soul was in the concerto
that he was writing.
He had found his own way through the secrets of compo-
sition by instinct ; for genius is instinct, only a higher and
stronger form of it than any other. The sacristan knew a
little, a very little ; but that little had been enough to gire
the boy a key to the mysteries of the science of sound.
Who can think that Kaffaelle would have been less Rafibelle,
even though Sanzio had been a breaker of stones, and Pen-
gino a painter of signs?
Genius is like a ray of the sun : from what it passes through
it will take its passing color ; but no pollution of air, of water,
no wall of granite, no cloud of dust, no pool of mire, will tarn
it back, or make it less the sun-ray.
Bruno blamed himself that he should have said a haety
word. The fire ran off his tongue unawares. When all htt
heart and mind were full of the boy, he felt impatient to see
that blank paper those dots without meaning raised in
rivalry with him and outstripping him.
"Dear," he said, very gently, and putting his hand on
Signals shoulder, " come down to the brook with me, will you?
I have something to say ; and I talk best in the air, though
talk is no great trick of mine at the best."
Signa rose obediently: he always obeyed. But, by sheer halnt,
he reached down the Kusignuolo from the top of the chest
Bruno saw, and his brows drew together.
"Always that thing!" he thought; but he said nothing.
They went out into the air.
The little brook was brimming from the autumn rains : it
is these little brooks that bring about the great floods. The
reeds and rushes were blowing merrily : no one cut them this
time in the year. Red-breasted chaffinches were bathing and
chirping. Fir-apples were tossing down in the ripples. The
glass was bright with the cups of the autumn anemones, in all
colors. Kobins were singing in the olives; and, higher, a
cushat cooed.
SIGNA, 221
Brnno stopped and looked at it all, with a smile in his eyes,
smile proud and full of peace.
" Sit here, dear,'* he said, pushing the boy gently down on
a large boulder of brown stone.
He remained standing still, with always the same look in his
eyes.
He laid his hand on Signa's shoulder. His voice, as he
spoke, was low, and very soft.
" It is sixteen years to-day since I found you by your
mother. She had her arm round you. You had your mouth
at her breast. She was dead. It was the night of the great
flood. Sixteen years ago, dear. You must be seventeen now ;
for they said the women who knew that you looked a year
old, or more, that night."
"Yesr
Signa lifted his head and listened. All this he knew, and
it had always a certain sharp pain for him.
'* Yes,*' said Bruno, and paused a moment. " Sixteen years.
The flrst nine went all wrong. But I thought I did well. I
think Pippa sees you now, ^and is content, and quite for-
gives. You are a pure, good, frank boy, and fair to look at,
and have no fault, if one may say so of any mortal thing. God
knows I do not speak in idle praise ; no, nor in vanity. You
are as nature made you. But your mother would be glad.
Now, dear, listen. When one is seventeen, one is not a child
any more : one begins to labor for oneself, to think of the
future! At twelve I was more a man than you are now,
indeed ; but that so best so best so best 1 Keep young.
Keep innocent. Innocence does not come back : and repent-
ance is a poor thing beside it."
Signa listened, with earnest, uprabed eyes, his feet hanging
in the ^t, brown water, the violin lying by him among the
anemone-flowers and the brown plantain-stems.
" I have been tormented for your future," said Bruno.
" Yes ; very oft^n. For if I die to-morrow, I have thought,
what would become of you ? ^and I had nothing to leave !
And you, oh, you labor well and cheerfully for me, dear. I
do not mean that ; but for others, there are stronger lads, and
hardier, and who like field-toil more, and do not dream at all.
And you do dream, ^too much. I have been tormented often,
when I have been roofing the stacks, and have thought,
19*
222 SIONA.
' Just a fall and a blow on the head for me, and where would
the lad find a home T "
Signa laid his cheek against the hand that rested on his
shoulder, a long, brown, sinewy hand, good to grasp a weapon
or wield a flail.
" For you sec," went on Bruno, his eyes shining as they
glanced down on the boy's face, and then at the old olive-trees
and the brown fields corn-sown, " while that treacherous beast
was draining me, I could hardly keep myself together; much
less could I well lay by for you. A few francs in an old bag,
at the end of a year, that was all, do what I would. Bat I
had often looked at these three fields and the olives. If I
could get them for my own, I thought ; but it was hopeless.
What could I do, with that snake coiling and sucking always
and all his brood ? But when I got you safe that day, away
from the Lastra and Lippo, and I was all my own master, then
I said to myself, * It is possible, just possible !* So I went first
to the fattore, and got his consent, and showed him my plans,
and he had nothing against them ; and then I went dowo into
the city and saw Baccio Alessi. Oh, you do not know ! That
is the ass who let the thistles he ought to sup off choke up all
this good soil. I went to straight in to Baccio, the fool was
gilding a frame,-^==-and I put it straight before him : all I would
give and do. I found he was half willing to sell ; wapted three
thousand francs, for me, he might as well have said three
millions 1 I could not get it anywhere ) even Savio would not
lend it, though I would have worked it out somehow. But
I laid my plan before Baccio, we both cunning as rats, and
slow and sure ; and at last we came to terms, hammering away
at them for days and days. I was to have the land to farm,
in the way that seemed best to me ; and I was to give him
half I got off it for ten years, and two hundred and fifty francs
a year as well, paid monthly ; and at the end of the ten years
the ground was to be mine, ^mine, ^mine !"
Bruno stopped ; his breath came quickly ; his hand tight-
ened on the boy's shoulder.
Signa looked up, listening, but calmer than Bruno had
fancied he would be. To him it was such a gigantic thing,
and so marvelous ; he wondered the boy could hear it and keep
so quiet and sit so still.
" You know all I have done to the land," he pursued. " You
SIGNA. 223
can see. You are fanner enough to judge that, my dear.
But I hare never neglected anything on the old soil, no,
Savio says that. He is quite content that it is as it is. He
praises me to the padrone ; only the padrone is so gay and
young ; it is no matter to him. Now, when that fool Baccio
yonder saw what his half became, and all I got out of his
ground, he was for being off his bargain. Of course. But I
have him tight, hand and seal, and good testimony to it. A
Tuscan is no bird*to catch with chaff. He was grieved in his
soul, I can believe, when he saw all the land would give. But
that of course was no business of mine. Now, this last sum-
mer ^the saints are good to one Baccio, who is a shiftless
dolt, and leaks on all sides like a rust-eaten pipkin, got deeper
and deeper into his troubles, and was as wellnigh being sold
up by his creditors as a man can be to keep head above water
at all. Now, dear, you have never been stinted for anything ?
No ? You have had all the food you wished for, and all the
leisure time you wanted, and I do not think you have ever had
a narrow measure of anything ? Nevertheless, I saved money.
When Savio had taken his dues, an^ Baccio had had his
month's portion, I was always able to put away something in
that old copper pot, that I slip in the chimney, where nobody
ever would look for it ; not even a magpie. So, when I heard
the fool was so nigh his rope's end, I counted my money. I
had six hundred francs, and there were two years to run under
Baccio. I went down and saw him. I told him I would give
him the money down if the land were made mine at once. The
poor devil sprang at the chance. He thought the money
would help him over the bog of his debts ; and he knew in a
month or two, if I did not have his bit of land, the creditors
would take it and divide it between them. So he asked nothing
better than to do what I wished. He had lost the courage to
higgle. I paid him the money down on the nail, and the
notary made the ground over to me, for ever and ever. Do
you understand, dear? It is mine !"
Signa smiled up in his eyes.
" How glad I am ^if you are glad !'*
" If I am glad !'*
Bruno looked at him bewilderedly. Was the lad stupid or
blind, that he did not know, that he did not guess? and
with those three fair fine fields of wheat, and those good olives
224 SIONA.
round him io the san as fair and as plain to he aeen aa the gold
disk round the head of the Gesu child on the altars?
" Glad !" he echoed ; " be glad for yourself too, dear. Do
you not understand ? What is mine is yours. I baTe irorkt*d
the land for you. It shall be your iniieritance, Signa. No,
rather, when you are of age, my dear, I shall make it orer to
you, in your own name, and then you will be your own mas-
ter, Signa. Your own master do you understand?"
Signa sprang up and threw his arms round the man's brown
neck.
" You are so good, so good I To care for me like that ;
to think so much : to work so hard. Oh, what can I say in
answer?"
Bruno was silent. He was always ashamed of emotion, and
he was vaguely disappointed. What the boy felt was grati-
tude, not joy ; not, in any way, the great enraptured pride of
possession which Bruno had expected would have filled his
young heart to overflowing.
For seven years he had toiled night and day, and denied
himself all rest of the body or pleasure of the senses, that be
might make this one portion of mother earth his own. Aod
now, the boy loved him for his love indeed ; but for the gift
did he care for it ? Not so much as he did for the gift of a
blank sheet of paper to scrawl signs on. Not one tithe as
much as he had cared for the gift of the old brown wooden
liusignuolo.
He put Signa gently away from him, and sat down also by
the side of the sin^int; brook.
'' You do not quite understand,'* he said, and his voice had
a changed sound in it, and his throat felt dry. '^ Dear, you
are seventeen, as I said, and it is time to think of the futarc
Now, that is why having this land makes me so much at
peace. Do you not see ? It will be all your own ; and on it
alone a man could live. Oh, yes, live well, if we build up a
little house on it, and the stones lie so near hereabouts, and
Savio would got me leave to take them, and there is a bnimblj
corner there by the last olive. But that is not what I am
thinking of; I dare say I shall live to be old ; I am tough as
an ox ; and threatened men never die, they say, and so many
would like to stick a knife in me. Still, anything may happen.
And now, what I mean is this : this land shall be yours, your
810 N A. 225
own entirely, as fast and as sure as the notaries can bind it ;
and then, when I do die, you learning to be a good husband-
man, and having all the produce of your own fields to do as
you like with, and so getting to care for the work as you do
not yet, because you are so young, Savio will let you stay on
in my place in the old cottage, where your mother was born ;
and you will marry, and have children, and grow a rich cou-
tadino; and there is no better life under the sun, no, not any-
where ; and so your future is safe, my dear, do you see ? and
that is why I thank God. Because I have lain awake many
an hour, saying to myself, ' If I should die to-morrow, or be
killed in a brawl, what would the boy do?' But now you are
safe, quite safe for all your life long, because you have your
own bit of land to live on and get your bread out of, and that
is the sweetest thing that the world holds for any man ; and
so I bless the saints that they have let me get it for you, and
and I think Pippa knows."
His voice fell low, and he uncovered his dark curly head,
and made the sign of the cross on his breast.
The boy kissed his hand, ^but was quite silent.
CHAPTER XXU.
" Is it not good, Signa ?" said he, after he had borne the
silence a little time with no answer but the cooing of the dove
in the cranberry-bushes.
Signa laid his head against Bruno's arm, as a girl would
have done.
" You are good !"
" No, I was never that," said Bruno, with some of his old
roughness. " But the life for you will be good, the best the
world holds, owing nothing to any man, and all to the work
of one*8 own hands and the good black mould that feeds one's
hanger all one*s years and covers one's nakedness when one is
dead. Ah, dear, I think you are so young you do not see
how great a thing it is to set your foot on a bit of the earth and
226 SIGNA.
say, ' Thu is mine !* A king cannot saj any more. Only,
the king puts dead men into it, and we put the seed that is
life."
Signa was silent. He was thinking that he knew a greater
thing : to be king in a realm that conquerors cannot assail, in
a world that the lives around cannot enter.
He was oppressed and frightened by this, which Bruno bad
meant should be the crown and joy of his sum of seventeea
years. It was as if the weight of the earth bestowed on him
wasvheavy on his heart
To get rich, to marry, to have children. The common
ideal of human kind appalled the pure and lofty fancies of the
boy.
To live and die a tiller of the soil, the common lot of the
common mortal, terrified the young soul which had believed
itself the care of angels.
He felt as if a great chain had been flung round him, fast-
ening him down on to the hill-ide. And yet what could he
say to this unchangeable unselfish devotion which had thoagfat
to benefit him ?
He sat and looked at the brown running water, as it rip-
pled over his feet and the wind blew among the rushes. He
loved every rood of tlie land, and every cloud-mist that floated
over it, and every little humble flower that helped to make
the soil beautiful ] he loved the great dusky pine woods above
his head, and the old roofk and towers by the river in the
plain far below ; he loved the roads he had run on with a
baby's feet, and the blue mountains that he had worshiped
with a poet's heart; he loved them all with passion and
fidelity.
And yet this future of which Bruno spoke as a supreme
mercy of heaven oppressed him with a deadly sense as of im-
prisonment.
Bruno watdied him, and saw nothing of what he felt; he
only saw the troubled shadows that had come instead of the
cloudless sunshine which he had thought to see dawn on the
boy's face. He was struck dumb with amaze ; he was morti-
fied to the quick ; he was nearer to rage against Signa than
ever he had been in all his life.
What could it mean ?
He had given the boy a priceless gifl, a treasure that moth
SIOXA. 227
could not eat nor mst corrupt ; he bad made safe his fatare at
the cost of seven years of incessant toil and unending self-
denial. And this was all, silence ! only silence ! as though
he had said to the child, as Abraham to Ishmael, ^^ Arise, and
depart from me."
He had come down to the side of the brook at peace with
heayen and all men ; he had rejoiced with the pure joys of an
unselfish sacrifice and of a duty fulfilled ; he had counted for
years on the pleasure of this one moment ; he had said to him-
self ten thousand times, plowing in the rain and wind or rising
in the stormy dusk of winter dawns, " How happy the boy will
be I ^how happy I"
And now the gift was given, and Signa.sat silent, watching
the brook run by.
He thought it must be because Signa did not understand.
He spoke again, twbting the rushes to and fro in his right
hand.
*' Look here,'* he said ; " perhaps you do not see. I think
you are not glad. It is strange. What other lad Do
you know all it means to have a bit of land of your own ?
You cannot, I think. It means freedom. You would be a
poor man with only this, that I know ; but you would never
need to starve, and you would be always free. No beggar,
and no bondsman, always free. Do you understand what
that means ? You are seventeen. Some day you will see a
girl you want. Listen. When Pippa was but a child, not
twelve, I think,*^! loved a woman not the first I loved, nor
yet the last, may Heaven be merciful to my sins! but the
best, ^yes, the one I loved the best. The girl was poor, a
daughter of many; her father a shepherd up above there.
She was called Dina. I think she was not handsome ; but
she was like a wild rose, yes, just like that; a thing you
could not be rough with ; a thing that made all the air round
her sweet. I loved her best of all. Well, well ; you do not
know. You will know. If I had married her, all would have
gone right. She could keep me from fair and fray, from riot
and quarrel, as none of the others ever could. I would have
married her. But I was one among many, working on the
same soil. My father said, * How bring another mouth, when
there was not enough for the mouths there were ? There was
not room for a mouse the more in the old house. Dina had
228 SIGNA.
nothing but the poor rough shift and gown she wore.* He
would not hear of it ; so I never married Dina. We met by
stealth up in yon pines. We loved each other. Trouble
came. You are too young. Never mind. Dina died of it in
the end, a year later, that was all. And there was no sofl
little white soul between mine and the devil any more. I let
myself go to all the evil that chose to come in my path. I
stabbed and cursed and gambled and rioted, and made men
afraid of me and women rue me. If I had married Dina,
I never saw any other woman that I cared to marry ; nay, I
would have given none the place that ought to have beea
Dinars. Sometimes I go up and look at where she li^ still, ia
that little square place with the white walls round it, right up
there under the pines, where you see the doud now, that
cloud that has come down and past the mountain. Yes, up
there. Sometimes I can feel her arms about my throat, and
feel her kiss me still. I never think of any of the othei?.
But you do not understand. What I meant to say was, if I
had had a little piece of ground like this, and had not been
but one among so many, I should have married Dina, aod
she might not have died. God knows, at least, I should not
feel it in the way I feel it now, that it was J who brought her
death on her ; and I should have lived with cleaner soul and
straighter steps, I think. Now, you, dear, you are a grade
boy, and tender of nature, and will love some girl more inno-
cently than ever I did. And when we have built your little
house, just see how it will stand, with the sanrise always in
face of it, which will please you so; and that curve of the hill
to keep it from the northerly storms, why, then, I say, you
can bring home any honest, pretty maiden that you take a
fancy to, and need not ask my will nor any one s. but can live
God-fearing and wholesomely all your days, instead of being
cast adrifl on lame chances and blind passions. For you arc
not very strong, my boy, and a tranquil life will be the best
for you ; and then, when death does come to you, and you sec
your mother face to face at last, why, then you will say to her
that I kept you out of hell, though I could not keep myself.
And I shall not mind hell, dear. No! let it burn mc as it
may, if only they leave me just a little light, so that I can
look up and see you happy by God's throne, ^you and my poor
Dina. A man can be a man in hell, I think.'*
SIGNA, 229
His voice ceased.
What he spoke of was no metaphor to him, but dark, dread
truth, as sure to come to pass as night to follow day.
Signa looked, half tearfully, up into his face. What could
the boy say ?
He only vaguely understood all that the strength and the
weakness, the sternness and the tenderness, the force and the
frailty of this man's soul wrestled with and overthrew. He
only felt the dead weight of a future that appalled him being
forced on him by the hands that were stretched out to give him
blessing.
A bitter sense of his own cruel thanklessness, and of his
impotence to make himself more thankful, choked up in his
heart all other emotions.
He was mute a little while, his chest heaving and his eyes
burning with an insufferable shame at his own ingratitude.
Then all at once he threw up his head, and spoke with the
desperate pain of one who feels himself most utterly unworthy,
yet is carried out of himself by the force of a passion stronger
than his wiU.
" What can I say ?" he cried. " Oh, how good you ai'e to
think 80 of me and never once of yourself ! And any other
boy oh, yes, I know any other than I would be so happy
and so proud. You must hate me, because I am so thankless.
No, not thankless in my heart. Most thankful ; only it is not
what I want. It sounds so vile to say so, and you toiling and
saving, and thinking only of me and of my future all those
yean. But one is as one is made. You know the rose could
not live the water-life of the rush, the dove could not burrow
in the moss and sand like the mole. We are as we are made.
We cannot help being rose or rush, dove or mole. Something
does it for us, God, they say. Only one wonders. You must
hate me, so cold as I seem, and so base, and so callous, and
you thinking only of me all these years, and giving up your
life for mine. But it is better to tell you the truth, and you
will try and forgive it, because I cannot help it. It is stronger
than I am. I do not want any land nor any girl. I do not
Want to be a contadino always, living and dying. I should do
no good. I love this hill-side ah, dearly I I would spend all
niy life upon it. But then not in the way you wish. Only when
I should have learned all I want, and should come home here
20
230 SIONA.
for ever and ever^ and watch the sunrise, and make music sH
day long that should go away to all the ends of the earth and
take the name of Signa with it, and make it great everywhere
in men's mouths. But to stay here now and always, nerer
knowing anything, never hearing a mass sung, nor a cantata
played, nor an opera given, never doing anything except put
the grain in and reap it, and dig round the olives and trim
them, oh, I would rather you would throw me in the brook
and fling stones on me till I should be dead. When I take
the cattle out, I do not think of them ; I think of the mo^ic
that is always about me,, all around me, everywhere. I love
the land, but it is because of its beauty I love it ; of plowing
and weeding, and watering and stacking, I help you because
I ought to do it ; but my heart is not in my body while I do
do it. My heart is with the birds, with the clouds, with the
stars, anywhere, ^but never in the labor at all. . If I were
alone here in other years, as you say, I should let the briefs
and the rosemary eat it ail up, as Baocio did. Oh, listen, do
listen, and do not be angry. What I want to do is to lean ;
to hear beautiful things, and see if I cannot make more beau-
tiful things myself I have heard that there are schools of
music, where one can know what one is Worth. I play the
old great things the great masters wrote, and when I play them,
then my heart is in my body, and my soul seems to live in my
hands. I cannot help it. The only thing I care for in all the
world is music, and I do think that God has meant me to give my
life to it for the world. You remember what that stranger said
when I sang to him when I was only a child. I do not want
my mouth to drop pearls. I do not want gold, or pleasure, or
comfort. But if I could go away where I could learn. I
have written, ^but I do not know what it is worth. If I could
go away where I could hear great things, and study them, then
I think I could make you proud of me, then I think I could
honor the Lastra. Oh, listen, listen, listen ! I am not thank-
less, indeed. Bub what I want is to have the beautiful things
that I hear live after me. I would die a thousand deaths, if
it were possible, so that only I could give life to them, and
know that the world would say, * He was only a little lad,
he was only Signa, ^but his music was great.' "
Then his voice ceased quite suddenly, and he dropped his
face on his hands and trembled. For he was afraid of the
SIGN A. * 231
fruit of his words ; and his unthankfulness made his sool
black and loathsome in his own sight.
At the first phrase Bruno had sprung to his feet, and had
all the while stood looking down on him, not breaking in upon
him by a breath or by a sign. Only over his face there had
come the old darkness that had been banished so long; his
eyes under the straight black line of his brows had the old
murderous fire in them.
He listened to the end.
Then he set his heel on the violin, which lay on the sedges
at hts feet, and stamped it down again and again as if it had
been a snake.
" Accursed be the toy that has bewitched you ! ^accursed
the gold that bought it, and the man that gave !"
The bruised wood cracked and broke under his heel ; a
single string snapped, with a shrill, sad, shivering sound, like
the cry of some young thing dying. The boy sprang erect,
hb fair face in a blaze of wrath and horror, his slender hands
clinched. For a moment they looked at one another, a sullen
gloom set in the man's flaming eyes ; a wild reproach and a
hopeless defiance in the boy's.
Then Signa's arms dropped, and he flung himself on his
mined treasure, covering it with kisses, weeping as girls weep.
Bruno looked down on him, and the fierce scorn on his face
deepened, and he laughed aloud.
Mourn in despair for a broken plaything, and slay without
thought a love that would bum in hell through all eternity to
serve him 1
Without a word he turned and went up the mountain-side.
The boy lay face downwards in the grass, sobbing, with the
shattered wood under his quivering lips.
Bruno never looked back.
232 SIGNA,
CHAPTER XXIIL
It was niglit when Sigoa crept back from the eide of the
brook to the house. *
The 8UD had left a stonnj rod over the mountains. In the
valley it was raining heavily. The wind blew from the west
The bells were ringing for the benediction through the dense
violet^hued vapors.
The poor peasant who most oflen aided Bruno on his fields
was putting up the bin before the oxen's stable.
He turned his lantern to the boy, and nodded.
" You will be up by dawn, Sigiia will you ? It is too much
for me to do alone."
The boy stopped, shadmg his face from the lantern, lest the
man should see his swollen eyelids and his pallid cheeks.
" Is Bruno gone ?" he asked.
" Yes. Did you not know ? But there ! he never oja
anything. It is his way. How your voice shakes I You
have got a chill. Yes. He came down from the mouDt^as
an hour ago and told me he should be away a day, two daySi
^perhaps more. Would I sleep in the house and see to
things? No offense. But you are no more than a baby.
Mind the guns are loaded ; and leave the wine where I can
get it easy if you go to bed."
Signa locked himself in hb little room, heeding neither the
guns nor the wine.
All night the rain beat against his lattice and the winds
raged over the roof. All night he tried by the light of a feeble
little lamp to mend his shattered Rusignuolo.
It was quite useless. The wooden shell he could piece to-
gether well enough ; but the keys were smashed beyond all
chance of restoration, and for the broken silver string there
was no hope.
The Rusignuolo was mute for evermore, as mute as a dead
bird.
Signa never slept, nor even undressed. He sat looking at
the violin with a sick, dead apathy of pain.
SIONA, 233
He watehed by it as a bird living will watcb by the dead
one which has been its comrade in song and flight, and never
more will spread wing with him or praise the day beneath the
summer leaves.
When the morning came and the peasant flung a shower of
pebbles at his shutter to rouse him, he was still sitting there,
tearless and heart-broken, with the fragments of the Kusignu-
olo before him.
The habits of his life were strong enough to make him rise
and dip his head in water and shake his hair dry, and go down
and help the man in his stable- and field-work. But first he
laid the violin reverently, as though he buried it, in a drawer,
where his rosary and his communion-ribbon and his book of
hours and his little locket were all laid with sprigs of fir and
cypress and many rose-leaves to keep them sweet. His face
was very white : he had a scared, appalled look in his eyes,
and he hardly spoke.
The peasant asked him if he had seen a ghost in the night.
Signa shook his head ; but he thought that he had heard
many, ghosts of his silent melodies, ghosts of his dead dreams,
ghosts of all the gracious, precious, nameless, heaven-born
things that he and the Rusignuolo together had called to them
from the spirit-world, from tho shadows and the storms, from
the stars and the sun.
The long, dreary, dull day dragged out its weary length. It
had ceased to rain, but the valley was hidden in vapor. He
could not see the river, or the villages, or the distant gleam of
the golden cross. Dusky mists, white and gray, floated along
the face of the mountains, and rose like a dense smoke from
the plains.
He helped the peasant all the day, his own peasant training
teaching him by instinct to labor whilst he suffered. He fed
the beasts, and plucked up the beet-root, and drew water, and
stacked wood, and did whatever the man told him to do.
No one came near. The hill-side was still as a grave. Tlie
fog drifted beneath it, and hid the rest of the world. He and
the man worked on alone. The oxen lowed in the byre, miss-
ing their master. The screech-owl, finding it so dai-k, began
to hoot. A great awe, like that of the sight of death, weighed
upon Signa.
He feared everything, and yet he feared nothing.
20
234 SIGN A.
*
The Riisignnolo was ruined and voiceless.
It seemed to him as if the end of the worid had oome.
He went up the stairs and looked at it often. No tens
would come to his eyes ; but his heart felt as if it would boist
Never again would it speak to him.
Never I
A dull aching hatred of the man who had done this evil rose
up in him. Hatred seemed to him like a crime, afier all that
he owed to him ; but it was there.
He was unutterably wretched.
K there had been any one he could have spoken to, it might
have been better ; but the only thing that had ever understood
him was dead, lying mute and broken among the rose-leaves.
He could only work on silently, with his heart swelling in
him, and let the horrible gray hours come and go.
The peasant wondered fifty times, if once, where Brtino
could be gone, Bruno, who, for forty-nine years, never had
set foot off his own hill and valley, save that once to the set.
But Signa answered him nothing. He did not care. He
did not ask himself. If Bruno were dead the Rusignaolo
was dead. It would be only justice.
The boy*s heart was cold and numb.
The Rusignuolo was dead, and all his hopes and all hb
dreams and all his faiths dead with it
" Why did he take me out of the flood?" he thought, as he
looked down into the dull vapors of the great rain-clouds that
hovered between him and the plain.
There is a silence of the mountains that is beautiful bepnd
all other beauty. There is another silence of the mountains
that is lonely beyond all other loneliness.
The latter silence was about him now, with the worid of
water and mist at his feet, ^that dim white gray world m
which he might have drifted away with his mother ^but for
Bruno.
" Why did he save me, then," he thought, " if he must kill
all that is worth anything in me now ?"
And his heart grew harder against Bruno with each hoar
that went by, and brought the wet, oppressive, sullen evening
round again, with the wind lohd among the pines.
The boy looked out through the iron bars of his open lat-
tice into the cold still night, full of the smell of fallen leaves
SIONA. 236
and fir-cones. The tears fell down his cheeks ; his heart was
oppressed with a vague yearning, snch as made Mozart weep
when he heard his own Lacrimova chanted.
It is not fear of death, it is not desire of life.
It is that unutterable want, that nameless longing, which
stirs in the soul that is a littJe purer than its fellow, and which,
burdened with that prophetic pain which men call genius,
blindlj feels its way afler some great light, which it knows
must be shining somewhere upon other worlds, though all the
earth is dark.
When Mozart wept, it was for the world he could never
reach, not for the world he left.
With the morning Palma came up ; the same weather lasted,
but weather did not matter to her. She came for sticks and
fir-cones for her firing, which she could glean above on the
wild ground. Usually Signa helped her. Now he murmured
that he had too much to do, and let her go up under the trees
alone in the falling rain.
What was Palma to him, or any living thing ? the Rusig-
Duolo was ruined.
He sat on the low stone wall with the pain on him, and
left all his work undone.
The absence of Bruno weighed on him with a vague sense
of misfortune and fear, and yet he did not wish him to return ;
he wished him to keep away, always, always, always, he
thought ; how should he bear to see the man who had slain
his Kusignuolo, and how could he ever avenge it on the man
who had given him bread and shelter and love, and almost
life?
The boy*s heart was sick with sorrow, and with the first
bitterness of wrath that had ever found resting-place in him.
He wished that he were dead ; he wished that he had never
lived.
Palma came down from the higher ground under the pines,
with a sack of fir-apples on her shoulders, and a great bundle
of dry boughs and brambles balanced above it on her head.
Her feet were black with the moss and the mud ; her wisp of
a bkirt was clinging to her, wet through ; her brown face was
Warm with work. She stopped by the wall.
" Is anything the matter ?"
Signa shook his head ; he could not speak of it.
236 SIGNA.
" Cippone told me Bmno was gone away,** she said,
moaning the man in the field. " Is that true?"
* Yes, it is true."
" Then there most he something."
Signa was silent, sitting on the wall with his wet hair blow-
ing about him.
Pal ma rested her sack and her fagot on the stone parapet,
and looked anxiously in his averted faoe.
" Dear Signa, do tell me."
" It is nothing/* said Signa, slowly ; " only he is a brute,
he kills what is greater than himself; and I hate him."
" Oh, Signa !"
The girFs sunburned cheeks grew ashen: the sloirncs
and coldness of his answer frightened her more than any out-
burst of wild grief or rage would have done. It was so un-
like him.
" I hate him !" said Signa. " Palma, see here. He pro-
tends to love me, and he breaks my Rusignuolo, and he breaks
my heart with it ; and he thinks he loves me, both body iikI
soul, because he buys a bit of land and bids me live on it all
the days of my IJfe, and dig, and sow, and plow, and hew, aixl
draw water, and lead a life like the oxen's, ^no better: he
calls that love. To do with me exactly what he wishes him-
self! To make a mule of me, a mule, ^a stupid plodding
thing, mute as the stones : he calls that love."
" Oh, Signa I"
She could sav nothing else. She was so amazed and so
aghast, that all her love of the soil as a Tuscan, and all her
instincts of class and of custom as a peasant, were roused in
horror at him. Only she was so fond of him. She could not
think him wrong. She had a true woman in her, this poor
brown girl, who went half naked in the wind, and bore her
burdens on her back like any beaten ass.
" Oh, Signa I" echoed the boy, impatient of her tone, toss-
ing his wet hair out of his eyes. " Oh, no doubt you think
my gratitude is as poor as his love. No, it is not. K it had
been any one else, I am only seventeen, and not strong,
they say, but I would hav^ found some way to kill what killed
my Rusignuolo. Oh, I know he took me out of the flood,
off my dead mother's breast, and has been good veiy
good ; and I have loved him. But now, because I canQt
SIONA, 237
promise bim to live as he lives, because I cannot choke the
music out of me, because I want to go away, and see whether
what I do 19 worth anything or worth nothing, because I feel
I could be great as Gigi says that Paesiello and Palestrina
and Pei^lesi were, now he turns against me, now he is a
brute, now he breaks the violin under his heel as if it were
an empty husk of maize ! And then he calls that love ; and
you look at me in horror, as if I were some heartless thing,
because I would sooner any day have my lute than such a
love as that, to set Its foot upon my throat and keep it mute,
as the kite sets its claw into the thrush's t*'
He spoke with Yivid, tremulous, petulant passion, ^the first
passion that had ever convulsed the tender, dreamful youth
of him ; all the color flushed back into his face, his mouth
quivered, his eyes flashed fire through the rain.
Palma listened with great terror in her. But she was a
brave girl, and swifl to reason and to see the right.
" Is your gratitude so much more real than his love ?" she
said, quickly, and then was sorry that she had said it, fearing
it too harsh.
Signa winced a little, struck home by a sudden consciousness.
" You cannot buy gratitude," he said, angrily. " I was
grateful, heart and soul, and I would have died for him two
days ago. But now he has forfeited all that. I hate him I
I hate him !"
"' Does a moment's rage outweigh sixteen years' love so
soon?"
'^ He broke the Busignuolo," said Signa ; and his fair month
set with stem severity, that gave him for the moment almost
the look of manhood.
Palma looked at him, and thought how beautiful his face
was ; her eyes filled with tears.
" What do you want ? To go away ?"
" To go away now, that I may come back great."
" Are people happier that are ^what you adl great ?"
" Happy ! that I do not know ; perhaps not. I dare say
not. What does that matter? It is not to have lived in
Tain. Not to be put under the sod like a dead horse. Not
to be forgotten while there are men on the earth. It is to
do the thing one has it in one to do ; to see the sun always
while other people stare at the dust. It is ^it is oh, what
238 SIONA.
18 the use of talking? Yoa never would know ; pa iie?er
understand."
'^ No, dear," said Palma, with a sigh ; " and what does
Bmno want of you ?"
'^ To live as he does. To he a contadino always. He bu
hought that hit of land for me hy the hrook, you know it ;
he would give it me for my own ; and when I am a man I un
to live there, and take some girl as my wife, and so be safe, is
he calls it, and happy, as he thinks 1 That is what be bis
laid out for me. That is what he wants."
Palma colored to the roots of her dusky rippling hair, uid
then grew veiy pale, as pale as her olive skin could be.
" And all that docs not please you ?"
*^ Please me 1 Oh, Palma, when one has the song of tbe
angels always in one's ear I"
His mouth trembled, his voice faltered : how oould be sar
what was in him ? the force greater than himself that drove
him on ? the ^tile despair at his own powerlessness to aher
his fate, which made him heartrsick at this future, which tbej
all thought so fair ?
Palma did not understand. A sickly pain settled over her,
a sense of isolation and of immeasurable distance from tbc
other life which had grown up with her own among the flovers
of GiovolL
Besides, to have a bit of land, and dwell on it, and die od
it, that seemed to her, as it had seemed to Bruno, the rert
sum and crown of human desire.
The " sublime discontent'' which stirred in the young son!
of Signa was as* far from any range of her vision as were the
angels' songs he said he heard.
She believed in the angels, indeed ; hut for her they weif
mute. For her they ever abode beyond the great white clondi,
invisible and silent.
She did not speak for a little time. Then she rose, and Itfl
her sack and her fagot on the wall.
" It is true, dear. I do not understand. I am stupid. I
dare say. I will just go in and see if there is anything to d*
in the house. I can stay a very little while. I have every-
thing to do at home, father is so busy taking the lemons in*
doors."
Signa let her go. He was looking through the still fiilling
SIQNA, 239
rain at ihe mountains, where he oould no longer see the sun-
rue, and at the plain where the golden cross was still behind
the mist
When he had had the Rusignuolo with him, he had never
cared whether there was rain or sun.
Palma went into the house, and, like the laborious and
cleanly creature that she was, found much to do with broom
and pail and duster ; made a fire underneath the cold soup-
pot, cut fresh vegetables into it, and scoured out the pots and
platters of daily use which were lying foul about the place.
She was accustomed to such work, and could get through it
(|uickly.
She worked hard and fast, the tears swimming in her eyes
all the while. She did not know very well what ailed her.
She only knew that Signa wanted to go away, that the life
which seemed so natural and so good to them all was a thing
impossible to him.
She loved him better than all her brothers ; and it had hurt
her curiously to hear him talk with such scorn of the little
house that Bruno would have built for him on the hill by the
brook, and of the girl that in time might have dwelt with him
there in face of the great glad sunrise.
It was not that she thought she could have been chosen to
be that girl, oh, no ! Nevertheless it hurt her with a dull
and confused pain. Besides, she felt that he was wrong ; and
she did battle with herself whether she ought or ought not to
tell him so.
She decided to tell him. Signa seemed, to her sturdier,
stronger, lower nature, like some beautiful, delicate sky song-
bird, that a rough word would scare and drive away like a
shower of stones. He was so unlike them all. To Palma,
who only saw- her cabbages, and her broom, and her water-
bucket, those eyes of his, which were always looking upward
and seeing such beautiful things in the clouds and the sun-
beams, seemed like those of a young saint.
If the Church had made*him " beato," she would not have
been astonished ; she would have worshiped him honestly, and
besought his intercession with that God whom he was always
80 near.
And yet now she knew he was in the wrong, and she
wrestled with herself, scouring out the metal pans, whether it
240 S10J!^A,
were ber boanden right to tell bim so, or whether she m^t
without cowardice hold her peace. And perhaps he would
only laugh her to scorn ; she knew she was stupid, except just
for this rude hand-labor, and that she knew nothing at all, not
even her letters all through, and that she had never seen anj-
thing except this green hill and the walls of the Lastra ; while
Signa knew so much, so much ! ^and had been as a child tn
the city and to the sea, and now could tell one so many Uiin:s
about the old walls that for him had tongues, and the ways of
the birds and the beasts on the mountains, and had read ail
the lives of the saints, and could see right away into heaven
when he had the dream-look in his eyes, so she thougfaL
Nevertheless, being a brave girl, and with a resolute heart,
her conscience would not let her keep mute. When she had
done the house up tidily, and even put a new sprig of bay
under the Madonna, she went out into the air. The rain had
ceased, but the white mist was hanging everywhere. Signa
still sat looking down into the vapors of the plain. She
touched him timidly.
" Dear, do not be angry with me ; but I want to say one
word. I am not clever, I know. But the priest says, when
one is very clever one does not see simple things so straight
I do not know. I want you to think. Of course you can
judge better than I. But do you do rightly by Bruno?
He has been so good, and given up so much, and hoped so
much : is it not just a little hard that you should be so long-
ing to leave him.? Perhaps he does love you selfishly. But
is not your want to get away selfish too ? He has been cruel.
Oh, yes ! that is certain. But then no doubt he was in pain :
he hardly knew what he did. If I were you, I would try and
do what he wishes. Yes, I would. You would have had no
life at all if it had not been for him. Is that nothing? I
would try, if I were you."
Then, afraid of what she had said, and afraid of being late
at her home, she took up her sack and her fagots, and went
away into the rain-fog, down the rough side of the plowed land,
over the yellow and brown leaves fallen from the vines.
*' She does not know. She knows no more than the mnlos
or the stones know,'' thought Signa, while she ran on with
firm, fast feet, and the boughs like a dark cloud over her
head.
8IGNA. 241
Genius lives in isolation, and suffers from it. But perhaps
it creates it.
The hreath of its lips is like ether ; purer than the air
aroand it : it changes the air for others to ice.
The day went on, and Bruno did not return. The peasant
pondered and wondered, hut had the soup and the wine, and
stayed and saw to the fields and the cattle.
Signa wandered up into the woods, and stayed there till
nightfall. The rain had passed away, hut there was no sun.
The hrow of the hill is very wild, a great hreadth of gorse
and myrtle, with huge stones scattered over it, and thousands
of sea-pines standing hold against the sky. Here in spring
and summer the nightingales sing in countless numbers.
He had so oflen taken his violin up there and played in
oonoert with them, echoing and catching all their notes.
It seemed to him terribly silent now.
Palma's words pursued him into that cool gray silence.
She did not know : she was so stupid : and still she had
awakened his conscience.
Conscience and genius, ^the instinct of the heart and the
desire of the mind, the voice that warns and the voice that
ordains : when these are in conflict it is bitter for the life in
which they are at war ; most bitter of all when that life is in
its opening youth, and sure of everything and yet sure of
nothing.
The boy threw himself downward on the wet earth, and
leaned his cheek on his hands, and gazed into the dim watery
world underneath him, where all the distant towns and the
pole villages b^;an to gleam whitely and faintly, like little
clouds, on the dark grayness of the plains, and the dull blue
and black of the mountains, which rose like ramparts of iron
in the east and north.
The girl was 8tupid,fio stupid that every one knew she
had never learned her alphabet even, and yet he felt that
here she had seen and had spoken aright. That he felt.
Signa had had few moral teachings in his seventeen years
of life.
There is virtue on these lonely hill-sides, but it is virtue
self-sown, wind -drifted, like the wild pomegranate-bushes, and
the wild peach-trees.
No one had taught him what was right or wrong, so long
L 21
242 SIGNA.
u be obaerved all Uie rules of the Gfaarch and did not bhinder
against any civil law. So far as he had been told, he had
goodness enough to make his peace with Jleavea. Bat the
boy's own mind had clearness and simplicity in it, and went
by instinct to a higher sense of right and wrong than aoy he
had been ever taught, as Falma's did likewise, Palma, who
trotted in the mud or dust all her days, and whose brain was
all dulled with small cares as with cobwebs.
He knew that she was right.
That he was thankless and selfish ; that the hate which
Uirobbed sullenly in him was almost a crime ; that a wolf cub,
fed and housed and cared for as he had been, would have had
more gratitude than he.
He knew that she was right.
That his life ought to be offered to the man who had done
all for it ; that his long debt ought to cancel an hoards wrong ;
that since he had no other way or means of payment save
obedience, he should obey, even to the sacrifice of all his
dreams, even to the crushing out of all hb soul.
He lay chest downward underneath the pines, and gased
into the misty depths below, and felt the hard sharp pain of
his consciousness of right gnaw at him with her remembered
words. He could see the line of his olive-trees and the fields
where he was to labor all his life long, facing the sunrise.
He was wise enough to know that he could not have hah
lives ; that as he grew to manhood he must cease to be ^ther
peasant or musician ; that he must renounce one thing or the
other. He had lived too much on the soil not to know the
ruthless toll of hours and the ceaseless patience and porpose
which the soil, ere it will consent to repay him anything, ex*
acts from the husbandman.
He knew that he must choose, now and forever.
It was the old common choice between bodily need and
spiritual desire; only for him the lower need was the one
linked with duty, the higher need was the one linked with,
sin. He lay and gaxed at the dark fields that were to be
his own, and the brook that glimmered like a glow-worm
under its dusky rushes. And it had been there that the
violin had been broken and all its melody silenced for ever
It froze his heart against the little spot. He h&ted th&t
and aye !
SIQNA. 243
shallow water which could eing on and on and on, where the
greater music had been hushed into dumbness.
It seemed like a parable to him.
Just as the violin had been stricken mute there, so would
be the powers in him. Just as the silver string had snapped,
BO would his heart break by that cruel streamlet. He saw
himself growing older and older, living on and on, with the
music dying in him every day and every year, a little more and
a little more.
He saw himself as he would be on that land that looked to
the morning light, spending his breath in shouting call-words
to the panting oxen, spending his strength in sowing and in
reaping the sum of his daily bread, touching his lute perhaps
at evening with dull tired hands, that others might dance under
the olive-houghs.
What use would the morning light be to him then ? What
wonid it say to him ? He would only be able to^k on the
black earth he turned, as it dawned ; he would only grow to
loathe the little song-birds, awakened by its beams, because
they would be free and he never. He lay looking down and
thinking and seeing himself thus as he would be- in all the
years to come.
His eyes were dry, his face was calm ; the coldness that had
froaen about him in the night, when he had watched by his
ruined Rusignuolo, never changed. It was as if all his boy-
hood had perished in him with that lost music.
The struggle was hard in him. All the longing of his soul
wrestled with the consciousness of duty which the speech of
the ^rl had stung into life. He knew that he ought to forgive.
He knew that he ought to obey. All the earth and all the air
around him spoke to him of this man*s exceeding love. He
looked down on the river from whose flood it had rescued him.
He looked down on the roof under whose shelter it had har-
bored him. He looked down on the old gray gateway beside
whose shadow it had faced calumny and forgiven treachery for
bis sake. He looked down on the old dark trees beneath
whose foliage it had toiled for him in endless labor from day-
break to nightfall, in light and in darkness, through sixteen
years.
And he let the blow of a moment's passion sweep it all
away as though it had never been. Mighty and enduring as
244 SIONA,
granite, it was to him dissolved in a second of Ume like an
image of snow.
He wrestled with himself for this. He strove against the
hardening of his heart. He strolled to change himself; to
forgive ; to ohey.
It was of no nse.
With the mnsic from the broken strings, gratitude and af-
fection had passed out of his heart, and left a dead aileooe
there, a silence in which his conscience indeed q)oke, but
spoke in vain.
When the Ave Maria tolled dully under the mists of the
plain, he got up slowly, and went slowly homeward.
His mind was made up : he would not live on in his body
slaying his soul.
"He killed the Rusignuolo," he said to himself. "He
would kill me."
And he resolved to live his own life ; how or where he
knew nothing ; only by his own means and in his own way,
no longer eating the bread of the man who loved him indecdi,
but who hated his genius and who wished it to perish.
'* What one can do is sweeter and dearer than what any
thing is,*' he thought to himself, with the terrible self-abeDq^-
tion of the artist in his art, terrible, because ever fore-
doomed to die in agony soon or late, under some human paaskm
that avenges the rejection of humanity.
And he went slowly down the hill-side home, losing sagfai
of the brook and the olives, for it had grown quite dark.
The house was silent. The shutters were closed. The dog
was mute. He lifted the latch of the door and entered.
There was the glow &om a lighted lamp upon the stone of
the floor.
In the light stood Bruno.
He came forward and bowed his head before the boy. He
said,
" Forgive me.**
8IQNA. 245
CHAPTER XXIV.
That night, when Signa had gone to his hed of haj, and
had fallen asleep there, with the tears left wet upon his lashes,
Bruno sat still and lost in thought, with his head sunk upon
his breast.
The boy must go.
That was sure. That was plain to htm.
Signa had hegged to stay and do his will in all things,
meaning what he said. Touched into passionate repentance
of his own hardness of heart by this noble remorse which had
bent the strength of the man before him, he had vowed in
uttermost sincerity of purpose to live and die on the hill-side.
Bruno, a suppliant before him, had awed and ruled him, as
Bruno, a master tyrant over him, never could have done.
When he had been embittering his soul against the love
that saved and sheltered him, that love had been returning
to him, bringing the fierce, proud, stem soul of the man into
supplication before him, ^him, a child, a debtor, a beggar, an
ingrate!
The sharpness of the contrast had stung him to the quick.
At the first words of Bruno he had fallen on his neck in
passionate contrition.
His thankless, oblivious, selfish passion seemed vile to him
as a crime.
" Forgiv^ me,*' said Bruno.
But the boy knew that the forgiveness needed was for him-
self ; that passion may be an infirmity of man, but that in-
gratitude is a curse of hell.
*^ I will do what you wish," he had vowed, in all the breath-
less eagerness of his repentance. "I shidl be happy, so
happy ! I will never go away, never, never I Let my foolish
dreams die. They are not worth a moment of sorrow or re-
gret to you. I shall be happy here, so happy !"
Bruno had smiled ; but it was a smile whose tenderness
had half appalled the boy.
'' My dear/' he had answered, " later we will talk of that
21
246 8IQNA.
I sinned enoagh against yoa ; I wiQ tiy to do right li
forth."
And when it was midnight, and the hoy slept in the little
corner chamber with the blessed palm-heaf above his bead,
Bruno sat still and pondered how to do this right.
Passion had mastered him. The old brutal, swift, saTmge,
unthinking rage, which had done so much evil in his dsy, had
burst out like a smothered flame, and for the first ttine liad
smitten the living thing in which all his affections and all his
atonement centred. When he had struck his heel down oo
the Rusignuolo, it had seemed to him as if he were cnushing
out the devil that was tempUng the boy from his side into aU
the evil of the worid. All his own great love and unooasted
sacrifices had been as nothing beside a plaything of wood, a
toy of sound and wind ! it had seemed to him as if he gave
a kingdom and got back a stone.
In the futy of his pain, all that was worst in him surged up
from its long sleep and broke its bonds. He let all the evO
in him loose. He went down into the city and plunged into
all the license that he had sternly shunned so long. He eam
out from the riot of it cooled and in his right mind, like a
man who awakes from the heavy sleep of drugs. Three
nights had gone by ; he hated himself; he thought of the boy
without bitterness and with longing ; he felt as if he were not
worthy to meet the clear eyes of a child.
He went, in the dull gray rain of the afternoon, into a little
dark chapel in the oldest quarter of the city, and kneded
down in the black shadow of it and confessed his nnsw It
was his duty, he thought ; he had been reared so. He be-
lieved that he purified his soul.
He was vile in his own sight.
In his remorse, the broken Rusignuolo seemed to him-^
no less than it had seemed to Signa, mourning it on the hill-
side a human thing, with a voice from heaven in it, that he
had hurled into death and silenced by a deed as cruel as
Gain's.
Ho went homeward along the familiar road, with the Ave-
Maria bells ringing through the fog. As he went, he struggled
hard wfth himself. Ho hated this madness, as it seemed to
him, which had taken possession of the boy. He hated ii at
once with the jealousy of an affeotion which beheld in it an
8IQNA. 247
irresiflttble riTa], and with the soperatttioiis fear which an-iiii-
edneated inteUigence has of an incomprehenaible mental
power.
Bnino was of the same staff aa those men who in earlier
aiges burned the magic out of creatures whom they believed be-
witched, and thought the ruthless torture that they dealt a
righteous serrice both to God and man. In his sight, it was
a sorcery which entiiralled Signa and made him blind to all
the peace and safety and plenty and sweetness of the life upon
the hills.
But, with the bating of his fuiy, the calmness of reason
had returned to him. It was a sorceiy, that he thought ;
but it was one which there was no combating, that he saw
also. He saw that it would only be possible to stifle it, by
destroying the very core of the boy's life.
He might keep his hand on the throat of his nightingale,
true ; but^ under the pressure, the life would go out with
the song.
Though to him this strange absorbing instinct which killed
all other was beyond any possible comprehension, Bruno, by
the force of his love for the lad, knew that he must let him
go, or see him fade away into a hopeless and joyless creature,
forever beating and thirsting to be free.
As he went along the road in the rain which he never felt,
under the sound of the bells which he never heard, he thought,
and thought, and thought, ^tearing the selfishness out of his
heart with the same haste and rage as in other years he had
hurled oaths or stricken steel at those who had offended hioL
To do right by the boy.
That had been his first intent, his sole desire, since, driving
his cattle out on the day after the flood, he had made his mute
promise to dead Pippa.
But what was right ?
He did not know. His reason as a man told him that, the
strong instincts of the brain being stifled, the boy would fall
into a feeble, worthless, and unhappy thing. His ignorance
as a peasant made him fear, with all a peasant's dread of the
unknown and the unseen, the world into which Signa pined
to soar away, and the art which usurped all his desires.
Music 1 well, what was it? Just a thing that came to
every flute-voiced giri canying her linen to the river's brink,
248 SIGNA.
vrerj lithe^ingered Bhepherd or ox-driver who, idien bis
work was donoi thnumied on a mandolin before the ootu^
door.
This power which took empire over the boy, and drove him
from all paths of custom and of duty, and made him happj
with a few signs upon a piece of pc4)er, ^that was hejood all
sense and meaning to him, a horrible exaggeration and dis-
tortion of an innocent thing, snch as men sent who had the
evil eye.
How to do right ?
To bom and stamp this madness out of the yonng Bonl?
or to let it have its way and tmst to heaven ?
If he only knew.
In the I^tra the lamps were burning. There was a fiioenl
going through the gates ] the bier borne by the brotheis of the
Misericordia.
Unconsciously, from habit, he stood stiU and eroesed him-
self, and uncovered his head. When it had passed, a tboaght
had come to him.
He entered the church, where Liugi Dini was putting out the
lights afler benediction. Bruno went up to him without
greeting.
'^ Old Maso told the lad men by muao have been gretter
than kings. Is that a lie ?''
The sacristan was used to him, and took no offense.
'' It is a truth,'* he answered.
Can the lad be great?"
" I think so."
But is that happiness ?"
" No."
''What is the use of it, then?"
* It is what is not happy that speaks to men of Goi
Happy men think of their coffers, -of their children,'Hf
their bodies, of their appetites : Uiey are content with all
that."
" You have known a great man ?"
" Never out of books."
" And happy men ?"
" Yes ; they were three parts fool, and the rest rogue."
Bruno was silent : he wanted to be as Ood to the lad. He
wanted to give him endless daylight and ceaseless peace. He
SIQNA, 249
wanted to be hiB fate, and stand always between bim and pain
and sorrow and accident and the calamities of earth.
The old man looked up at him, and understood his thought
" You cannot do it/' he said, answering what was not
spoken. " It is not given to any life to be the providence of
another."
The veins swelled on Bruno's forehead : a heavy sigh broke
from him : he was never a man to let another know the thing
he felt, but now pain mastered him, ^the miserable pain of
irresolution and uncertainty, and of that sense,* beyond all
others oppressive, of combating in the dark an unseen and un-
measured force.
He stretched his hands out with an unconscious gesture, as
of a blind man seeking guidance.
" Look : you know the boy as well as I ; better, may-be.
For his soul is dark to me; He is higher than I. It is as
when a bird goes up up against the sun. You cannot fol-
low it There is too much light where it is gone. I only
want to do the best For me it does not matter. You see,
I haye got the bit of land for him, the land on the moun-
tain ; I have made it good land and rich, and it is a safe pro-
Tision for him all his days. But, then, when he breaks his
heart at thoughts of it, and is crazed to learn, and talks of
being great, ^if only I could tell what to do 1 Perhaps it is
a boy*s whim, and to do right one should be hard with him
and rough, and stamp it out, and seem cruel now, and he
would be thankful in a few years' time ? And then, again,
if one made a mistake, if one did the wrong thing, ^if he
sighed and fretted, and wanted what he had not, and were
never content, and fell away to feebleness and uselessness,
how would one forgive oneself ever ? How can I tell ? I do
not understand. If^ at seventeen, they had said to me, ^ There
is a bit of good land all for you, all your own, and you be-
holden to no man, and working all for yourself, and sharing with
no master,' I should have been mad with joy and pride. I
should have seen nothing but my corn and my grapes. I
should have thought I was better off than any one else in the
wide world. Why should it not be so with him ? I do not
understand. He is Fippa's boy. He has our blood in him.
He should love the soU. He did not get his dream from
Pippa. If one only knew. For me it does not matter. I
L
250 SIQNA.
will cut off my right hand if that will serve him, if UntviH
keep his soul safe here and hereafter. But what he waots
seems madness. Is it a devil that Inres him ? Or is it sn
angel calls? How can one know? I want to do the thing
that best will serve him. But how to find it? Tell me, if
you know. Do not think of me. For me it does not matter."
He ceased, and leaned his hand on the rail before the dtik
altar, on which the last light had just sunk out The rail
shook with the trembling of his strong nerves j his head
dropped upon his chest.
The old man looked at him a moment.
" You will be lonely if he go : it is not fair to you : you
have done all for him all his life."
Bruno gave an impatient gesture.
" I say, for me it does not matter. I can live alone. An-
swer for the boy, as if I were dead, and there were only him
to think of, ^for his good.'*
" Then I say. Let him go."
Bruno was silent. He breathed hard.
" Let him go," repeated the sacristan. '* I never knew a
great man. No. My path did not lie that way. But I did
know one, a man that might have been great, ^truly great^
I think. It was when I was a lad. He was a little older
than I was. He traveled with the first little troop that I
belonged to then, singers, and actors, and musicians, all of
us going from town to town as the fairs, and the feasts, and
the carnival, and the vintage, fell. Tou have heard me talk
of it. He was the son of a poor organist, and was himself a
violin-player, hardly more than a boy, just keeping body and
soul together; he played divinely, and he wrote beantifol
things, just as your boy does now. People would weep to
hear him. It was like nothing mortal. He had an old
mother, widowed, and a little sister in Perugia. They lived
wretchedly. He sent them every coin that he could get He
stinted himself One night while he was playing he fainted.
It was only hunger. Hunger is so common. The world is so
full. He used to dream of greatness, just as your \sA docs.
And indeed the things he made were perf^t. Only he had so
little time, and never had any chance to get them heard. One
day he had a letter from his mother. His grandfather, a hard
man, who had denounced her for her. marriage, had relented)
SIQNA. 261
and had offered to take home Claudio into his hoiue and way
of business^ on condition that he should toach no note of music
eyer again. The old man was a money-changer and banker in
the north, sharp and keen, and hard as any stone. The mother
and the little sister implored him ; they starved for all that he
could do ; and here were peace and plenty, only waiting for
his will. They wrote and wrote and wrote ; then at last they
came. They wept, and raved, and entreated, and reproached.
They wore him out ; he yielded. ' It will kill me,' said Claudio.
' But if it most be ^for them ^ That night he burned all
he had ever written. It was to him worse than any murder.
He believed he killed his soul. He suffered hideously. Death
seemed to pass over him as the flame took his music. ' No
one will ever have it now/ he said. And he smiled. I sup-
pose they smile like that in hell, thinking of what they have
to see, and of the heaven they will never see. He went. The
mother and the little sister were happy. They had enough,
and more than enough. ' Claudio will be a rich man,' they
said to me. They rejoiced in thdr success. They thought
they had done rightly for him as well as happily for them-
selves. When a year and a little more had gone by, I got a
message begging me to go to Claudio in Trieste. I was with a
theatre in Verona at the time. I did not know how to do it;
but I felt that I should never see his face again unless I
hastened. I crossed the sea. I found him dying. * I did my
best,' he said to me. ' Indeed I did my best. But I died
wh^ they killed the music in me. My body has dragged on
a little longer, but I died then.* Then he asked them to let
me sing to him ; he had kept his vow ; he had not played or
heard one note. The mother and the sister were there, weep-
ing. The old man said, ' Yes : he may have what he will
now.' I sang to him, as men have sung masses burning at
the stake. For I loved Claudio. The dying life flamed up in
him as he heard. It came back for one moment into his veins,
into his eyes, into his soul. He raised himself with such a
look upon his fiice, ah, such a look ! if there be angels indeed
they must look so 1 and he lifted his voice, and sang, with all
the strength and beauty of his youth returned to him, the
Etemo Qenitor, the chant that Metastasio died singing. One
moment ^but a moment, so it seemed the glory of the song
brought his life back. Then his voice dropp^,--all suddenly.
252 8IQNA.
His mother raised Kim. He was dead. The old nan ened
to Heaven to take his gold and give him hack the boy. Bat
Heaven does not hear these prayers, or will not answer them.
They told me later he had labored at the desk with patience^
and with constant effort ; but it had killed him. When the
old man had relented, and would have made him free in bis
own way, it was too late. If you blind a bird you cannot give
sight and liberty again ; nay, if you beseech (}od ever so, even
He cannot do it. There are things that, done, cannot be nn-
done, by Qod or by man. His mother lived out her days a
rich woman. His sister had a large inheritance, and wedded
wealthily. But it had been bought with Glaudio*s life, ud
who shall say what the world did not lose ? That is true.
He was my friend. It was fifty years ago, all that Clandio
would be old. But the look that was in Claudio's eyes is in
your boy*s. And I think I think ^if you keep hun here,
and deaden his soul in him, that his fate will be die same."
Bruno made no answer.
He stood still, with his head bent by the side-altar, in the
gloom of the church that was only lighted by the hnxeo
sconce that the old man carried in his hand. He had not loet
one word ; his breath came slowly and loud ; he did not under-
stand ; he did not know what it was that this dead lad and this
living one loved beyond ease, and safety, and friends, and
peace, and daily bread. He did not understand one whit the
more. But he saw what he must do.
He turned with a heavy sigh, like a man who stoops to take
up a great burden on his shoulders and walk on with it
" Good-night T' he said, simply, and he went through the
little dark church, lost in thought^ and out into the starless,
misty night
Luigi Dini went up the wooden stairs into the room where
the brethren keep their robes and masks.
" He will let the boy go," he said to himself.
The bell had rung for succor for a peasant who had been
flung from a mule-cart on the road going to Santa Maria ; some
brethren were busily fastening their cloaks, while others got
out the black stretcher to go and fetch the wounded man.
Among them was Lippo, ever foremost in good works.
As Lippo drew the hood over his head, he was telling bis
neighbor how his brother Bruno had lentmoney out for several
SIGNA, 253
jeus on bypoihec to the poor wretch Baocio Alessi, the gilder,
in the city, on the fine little piece of land under Artemino,
that ran with what he farmed ; and of how poor Baocio, heing
close driven by nnlooked-for calamity and the cnielty of credit-
ors who had no mercy on a hard-working creature, had been
in direst need, and Bruno, seeing good his time, and taking
advantage of necessity, had foreclosed and drawn his claim so
tightly and so suddenly that Baccio Alessi had .no chance or
claim, and so the land had passed to Bruno, who, as he once had
wasted all his substance on evil-living and light women, now
would make soup out of pebbles and milk a milk-stone for the
sake of his ill-batten darling whom he had foisted on the
memory of poor Pippa.
" He will let the boy go," thought the old man, while Lippo,
mourning over his brother*s hardness of greed and the poverty
of poor Baccio in the city, drew his cowl close and hurried
away to help raise the half-dead peasant, and Bruno, solitary
and musing, went up into the darkness and silence of the
hills.
" The boy must go," thought Bruno, as he flung his cloak
across his mouth against the watery cold, and ascended the
sea-road in the teeth of the wind from the northward.
The outer world was a black and empty space to him. The
cities were whirlpools of vice, into which the young were
caught as in nets. The only life that he could comprehend,
or could believe to be of any worth, was the life of the hus-
bandman living and dying under one roof. In the dreams that
made the future beautiful to the lad he himself had no belief.
In the greatness that the lad aspired to he saw no reility and
no excellence ; but only a vague dark chimera of folly that
would lead down^ down, down, into a bottomless abyss.
He had no consolation of hope.
He had no fond simple belief in some impending though
unknown good, such as mothers who love their sons without
comprehending them are solaced by when their children leave
them.
To him all beyond was rayless, meaningless, comfortless.
He had said truly : he did not understand.
He only knew that the boy would perish here like the dead
Claudio, and so he must go.
The rest was with the future, the silent, dark, inexorable
22
264 8JQNA.
fhtaro, which he bunied to tear asander as M3o ton the ode,
and Bee the heart of it and the aocret, no matter wbat tkej
were.
All he did know was that he himaelf was notlung in the life
that owed him all.
He sat motionless while the night waned; not deepbg;
wide awake, but half paralysed, as a man under gansbot piia.
The boy most go, go to forget the sweet hill-ttde, the hud
that gave him daily bread, the old straight wholesome waji,
the old clean simple paths, the old innocent natnnl affecdoas;
go to foiget them all ; go to get drank on this strange mad-
ness of unrest ; go to be possessed of this fever of dcsied
greatness.
Bruno cheated himself with no false faiths.
If the boy went now, he went forever.
His steps indeed might return, but the heart and the youth
and the love of him never. If he went to the world and to
fame and to art, these would hold him forever. Bruno kaev
none of the three, but this he felt. No baaeleaB hopes, bo
lingering blindness, duped him.
Nevertheless he knew that he must go.
Go, whilst he himself stayed to labor for him, and get oat
of the soil the means for him to pursue the things he wished,
and change his visions into reali^ if such things ever were
done in the world, and keep here roof and house and refuge
for him, if so be that he should never find his dreams coom
true, but should return sickened and bruised with effort aod
with failure.
The boy must go : this was his own portion, to labor here,
and get the gold together that would give this young thing
wings.
He did not think of that with any regret.
It was to him natural. He had of late years so bent all his
energies and all his endurance into working for the good of the
boy, that to continue doing this was nothing that seemed to
him either generous or strange. It was what he had always
said to himself that he would do for Pippa*s son.
Bruno went home to his hills.
The morrow would be All Soub* Day.
It was late in the afternoon. He went out of his way to
the little church of his daily worship.
8IONA. 256
Vespers were just OTr. The old priest was in his sacristy
Two or three peasants were comiDg out. The little, dark
chareh was being huDg with yells of black, here and there, bj
the sacristan ; and a woman, who wept as she work^, was
putting up some branches of everlasting-flowers, ^her lover
had died in the harvest-time.
Bruno went into the sacristy, and laid some money down on
the table.
" For Pippa*s soul ^to-morrow T'
The old priest gave him his blessing; he dwelt on the same
hill-side, and believed in the story of Pippa.
Bruno went out into the twilight.
" She will know I keep faith with her," he said to himself,
and then entered his dwelling-house, and stood before Pippa's
son, and said, " Forgive me I*'
When maqy hours had gone by, and the boy was at rest,
Bruno sat on, with his solitaiy lamp burning.
" The boy must go," he thought still, sitting alone when
midnight was past, and Signa slept.
He was at peace with himself; at least, he had that deep,
Bad peace sad as death which follows the surrender, for
another's sake, of all the hope of life.
The calm of a great repentance, and of an unflinching self-
Bacrifice, was with him, the cold funeral meats wherewith Duty
feeds her faithful.
But a great loneliness weighed on him, and closed round
him. He felt that he had given a kingdom and got back a
stone.
Like all generous natures, he had poured out his gifl un-
thinking, ungrudging, and without measure.
His hands were empty, and hb heart was desolate.
That was his reward.
It is a common one.
The night wore on ; the intense chilliness of coming dawn
came into the house like ice ; the cock crowed from the stable.
He rose and went into the inner chamber, where the boy was;
it was only parted by an archway from the common room.
Signa lay asleep, his head upon his arm, his face turned
upward. Bruno lowered the lamp, shading it with one hand,
BO as not to awaken him. Its light fell on his soft young
limbB, on his thick lashes, on his beautiful mouth. Bruno
256 SIGNA.
looked at him long. Then two great tears gathered in bis own
eyeSi and fell down his cheeks slowly, like the great laia-drops
that follow storm.
He stood silent for a while ; the lad slept on, aaooDScions ;
then he set down the lamp, and blew the ^ame of it out, and,
without noise, unbarred his house-door and went into the op&i
air and b^an his labor for the day.
There was a strong wind blowing from the north. Run
was falling. It was dawn, ^but dawn without the sun.
He yoked his oxen ; and alone and in the darkness he b^n
the day.
CHAPTER XXV.
When winter came, Bruno dwelt alone in the old house on
the hills, and Signa studied music in the schools of Bdogna.
In the fair bright weather of the spring, when the Tirgin
gold of the daffodils was scattered broadcast everywhere, an oU
man with white hair and horn spectacles hobbled over tbe
stones by the south gate to the post for a letter, and got it,
and went and read it in the shade by the shrine of our Ladj
of Good Counsel, and then took his way through the Lastra
to go across the bridge towards the great hills.
As he went under the west gateway, an old woman put her
head out over a window-board that had roses on and some
hyacinths not yet in bloom.
*' Is he well ?'' she cried down into the street
Quite well," said the old man, looking up, and went on
between the budding trees.
Before he reached the bridge, a girl raced down the sloping
fields, all green with com. She had great knots of scarlet
wild-flowers and white snow-flakes, that she was tying up for
market, in her hands. Her feet were wet, because she bad
been standing in the brook to get the flowers ; she had a
pitcher slung at her back ; her heart beat 'so high and her
breath came so fast that the lacing of her ragged bodice broke.
" Is he coming back ?" she asked, and her great black eyes
shone like stars.
SIONA. 25T
" Coming back 1 ^no 1" said the old man, with a smile. " He
must neyer come back now, Palma. That would never do."
The girl tumedi and went away up the fields slowly, lettuig
the snowflakes drop.
The old man went on up the sea-road.
There was the lovely afternoon light everywhere ; all the
soil was radiant with leaf and blade ; the river was a sheet of
gold and green, shiuing like the lizards ; the air was so clear
that on the highest and farthest heights the smallest dwelling
gleamed white as any pearl, and each tree told ; near at hand,
along the footpaths, every tuft of grass had the rich ruby and
purple of the anemone in it, and the fresh odors of the violet;
while the daffodils^were tossing everywhere above the short
green wheat. But the sacristan looked at none of these
thing?.
He was old.
An hour and more*s sturdy labored walking brought him
midway on the great hill, with the stone pioes on its summit,
and the blue mountain in its rear. A west wind was blowing
sweetness from the fir woods and salt from the sea. A man
was at work in the bean-fields that ran under the olives.
He straightened his back and looked up, shading his eyes
from the sun. Then he saw the open letter, and made an
eager stride forward.
" Is he happy ?*' he asked.
*' This is the love that loves best/' thought Luigi Bini. And
he sat down in the shade.
"Is he happy?*' he asked, resting his hand on his hip,
under the olive-boughs, in the March afternoon.
And the old man answered him truthfully from the letter
that was a sealed book to Bruno, " Yes ^he is happy ;" and
read him what the boy said.
Bruno looked at the piece of paper with longing eyes. He
wished that in his own boyhood he had learned to read, in-
stead of wading among the canes, and climbing for nests of
birds, and scaling convent-walls to get the grapes, and romp-
ing and dancing with every girl he could whenever a mandolin
was playing.
Signa wrote the truth ; he was happy.
He had a little room under the roof. He heard the clang-
ing of the coppersmith's hammers all day long. He missed
22*
268 8IQNA.
tlie freedom of the hilh, aa all bi]]4xni cre aUu e i ahvimeities
do. The fare he had was meagre and untempting. To the
people whom he was with he was a little peasant, a Utde sui-
dent, ^nothing more ; they were too busy to heed him fnidier.
The town was veij dark, veij chill, very oppreanye ; with
the fuiions Alpine winds driving through it, and the high
arcades shutting in the blacknesa of the ^adows, and the lut-
temess of the cold, it was like a vast tomb, after the ladiaaoe
of the sunset and the sunrise from the mountains beyond the
Lastra.
Physically he suffered much in his new life. Like Boanni,
he had to study his score in his bed, to keep his hands from
being numbed to ice. When he went out in the gloom of the
streets, it seemed to him as if noon were night. He fiunted
twice from hunger and the stifling sense of want of air in the
class-room of the academy. He did not know how to breathe,
being shut foreyer within four walls, ^he who had been used
to dwell on the high hills with the sheep and wander thnmgh
the thyme and the gorse like the kids.
Other lads mocked him for a thousand things,-*^or his
girlish beauty ; for his gentle ways ; for his coarse-spun shiite ;
for his horror of hurting any creature ; for his innocence of
mind ; for his long thick curls ; for his hatred of shoes, whieh
he would fling off the moment that he wanted to run fSut;
for a thousand things that made him at once so wise and 90
foolish, so childlike and so thoughtful ; while they were town-
bred world-worn young scholars, who knew eveiything ind
meditated upon nothing.
He suffered much in many ways.
Yet he wrote no lie when he told them that he was happy.
He was happy, though always lonely, and sometimes fi^gfat-
ened, and very often persecuted. He was happy, looking up-
ward at the face of the St. Cecilia. Happy, learning all that the
great professors of his chosen art would teach him. Happy,
in his own little attic, that he would fly to for rrfuge, as a
bird to its nest, studying with all the powers of his mind the
themes that had been given him to comprehend or to com-
pose ; happiest of all, when they ordered him a sonnet of
Metastasio, or an ode of Giusti, to be set to mmdo in a doten
different ways, and he could let all his subtlest combinations
and wildest fimoies have full play, and, sitting in the little
SIOKA. 259
dark garret, heard again tbe " beaatifbl things" that he had
used to hear on his own mountains, till it seemed to him that
the Rusignnolo was with him once more.
'^ I am as happy as ever I can be,'' he wrote, not thinking
how cruel the words might sound ; and wrote the truth.
For cold and hardship did not hurt him much or seem great
things to bear after his training in the house of Lippo. And
mockeij wounded him little, because he heard so little what
they aaid, being always dreaming ; and those in authority oyer
him praised him for his docile ways, and found his talent
great ; and many women were kind to him for the sake of his
fair face with its beautiful amorous-lidded eyes that never yet
had found a woman beautiful ; and he believed in his own
future.
Who can do this is happy.
When life is still a coin unspent, it looks of purest gold,
and bears on it, under a bough of laurel, the figures of Victory
and of Love. But when it is paid away and gone forever,
its poor change left &om it is of base metal. Even if other
men still see stamped on its alloy the Victory or the Love
within the garland, we who hold the poor coin in our own
hands know that the figures struck on it are those of Failure
and of Falsehood, and that the laurel-wreath was copied from
a &ded knot of fennel.
Signa, whose coin was still unspent, wrote truly, " I am
happy."
Meanwhile another suflfered greatly to give him happiness.
Bnmo, a poor man as the world measures such things, had
always been a rich one in his own esteem. The Lady Poverty
of St Francis had bqen a mbtress with whom he had never
quarreled*
True, he had to labor in all hours and all weathers ; he had
to be content with rough bread and onion-soup most of his
days ; he had to be abroad in the driving hail-storm as in the
scorching sirocco.
But all things are measured by habit and weighed by com-
parison. Beside such a man as Sandro Zanobetti or the poorer
peasants on his own hill-side, Bruno was almost wealthy, having
no need to stint himself for wood or oil or wine, having those
fine cattle of his own, and having, whenever he had cause to
go down into the city, loose money in his pocket, more or less,
260 SJGNA.
for dnDkiog with a friend or idling iritli a woman. He liad
never thought of himself as a poor man since beoomiog. ai
his parents* and his brothers' death, the only owner of the old
hou^ he and his forefathers had been bom in; to havearcwt'
over you and food enough, and to be debtor to no man for toy-
thing, that seemed to him wealth.
Perhaps the world was happier when the bulk of its people
thought so also.
But now, for the first time in all his life, the died: and gall
of poverty pressed on him ; the chain which rivets to the soil
those who gain their bread firom it was for the first time heavy
about his feet.
He had to send the boy from him ; he had to let him pi
and live alone ; he had to trust blindly that all was well He
could not stir. He could not go' and see fi)r himself. He
could not move and dwell wherever the thing he loved migfcc
drifl. He had to stay there, and turn Uie same sods and praae.
the same trees day after day, month after month, year afi^r
year.
For the first time he realized the one supreme gopd of
money, ^that it gives wings to men.
When the heart of a man or woman is where the feet are,
wings are not needed ; but when the heart goes longingly ^
away, and the feet must still abide on the same spot^ then the
simplest and hardiest yearns for flight.
Gold is as the pinion of Hermes.
Bruno, who knew nothing of Hermes, but saw die winged
figure painted in a thousand places and modeled in a thoosand
ways in the friezes of old villas and the streets of old towns,
longed for such plumes to his ankles, that he might bridge
space and see the boy. But freedom and' travel were as im-
possible to him as those feathered sandals. He had to stay
treading his fields from dawn to night&ll. For the first time,
as he followed his oxen he felt as if the clinging sods were
weights of leaden fetters.
Still he worked more than ever.
As it was, he could scarcely make ends meet It was a very
different thing to keep the boy where food and drink, lig^^
and fuel, all came off the soil, costing nothing ; and to keep
hini far off in a city, where every crumb called for a coin.
Luigi Dini, indeied, whom he had sent with him, had pat
SIGN A, 261
the lad with people that he knew, good, honest, simple-Hying
fioulsy who gave hiin a room under their roof for little in the
^nind square where the Guard amorta of Dante is, and where
the coppersmiths and market-folks wrangle and tussle all day
But to maintain him thus, and meet the cost of his studies
too, drained dry the leathern sack in which Bruno, when his
accounts were squared with his master, put his surplus. All
that came from the bit of land which had been Alessi^s he
counted as the boy's and put aside for him entire, and sent to
him as it was wanted. But that was not sufficient ; and to
obtain all that was needed Bruno had to stint himself down
to the leanest portion that a man can live on even in this land
of his, where hard hand-labor is often cheerfully wrought from
daybreak to evensong on a piece of blackened week-old bread.
His beasts he would not stint, not even for Signa. His
oxen were to him fond fellow-laborers and friends. But him-
self he denied all except the sheer necessities of life ; and the
gray came into his dark hair, and his strong, slender, erect
frame grew leaner still, and he never went down into the city
save early in the forenoon of a market-morning, lest tempta-
tion should assail him and he should spend a coin on his own
appetites or wishes. His life was going away from him with
no sweetness in it and no love and no pleasure. But he did
not think of that. It did not matter.
Two years went by, swiftly to the boy, leaping from height
to height of his great art, and feeling nothing of poverty or
privation, because always living in impersonal desires, and
always dreaming of the future time, and always hearing the
music of the spheres above all the bray of voices and the
clang of metal and the tumult of footsteps in the streets around
him.
But very slowly to Bruno.
To rise in the dark, to toil all day, to lie down for the heavy
dreamless sleep of bodily fatigue, to wrestle with storm and
drought and blight and hurricane, to chaffer for small gains,
to foUow the oxen up and down and to and fro, to go tired
into an empty house and eat an unshared loaf and go to a joyless
bed, ^this was his portion.
There was nothing in it to give wings to time.
One day succeeded another without change, and the tale of
262 SIQNA. I
one moDth was as the tale of anotlier. It was tlie life of a
beast of burden, nothing more. He had always thought ao
life could be better ; but it was oppressive to him now.
Other men labored for their children, or had that daskj
settle bj the wood-embers made bright by some fresh-&ced
new-wedded maiden. But he was aU alone, alone with the
thought of dead Dina on the mountain-height and Pippa's
body drifted to the sea.
Men would hare little to say to him : they were Lippo s
friends.
He lived in almost absolute solitude. Sometimes it grew
dreary, and the weeks seemed long.
Two years went by, slowly.
Signa did not come home. The travel to and fro took too
much money, and he was engrossed in his studies, and it wtt
best so : so Luigi Dini said, and Bruno let it be. The boj did
not ask to return. His letters were very brief, and not Toy
coherent, and he forget to send messages to old Teredna or to
Pal ma. But there was no fear for him.
The sacristan*s friends under whose roof he was wrote oaoe
in a quarter, and spoke well of him always, and said that tbe
professors did the same, and that a gentler lad or one more
wedded to his work they never knew. And so Bruno kept bis
soul in patience, and said, *' Do not trouble htm ; when be
wishes he will come, or if he want anything. Let him be.'
To those who have traversed far seas and many lands, and
who can bridge un traveled countries by the aid of experitf^ceand
of understanding, such partings have pain, but a pain leeseoed
by the certain knowledge of Sieir span and purpose. By tbe
light of remembranoe or of imagination they can follow tbat
which leaves them.
But Bruno had no such solace.
To him all that was indefinite was evil, all that was ud&-
miliar was horrible. It is the error of ignorance at all times.
To him the world was like the dark fathomless waste of
waters shelving away to nameless shapeless perils such as old
Greek mariners drew upon their charts as compassing the
shores they knew.
He had no light of knowledge by which to pursue in hope
or fancy the younger life that would be launched into the
untried realms. To him such separation was as death.
SIONA. 263
He could not write ; he oonld not even read what was
written. He oould only trnst to othera that all was well with
the boy.
He oonld have none of that mental solace which supports
the scholar ; none of that sense of natural loveliness which
consoles the poet ; his mind could not travel heyond the nar-
row circlet of its own pain ; his eyes could not see beauty
everywhere, from the green fly at his foot to the sapphire
mountains above his head ; he only noticed the sunset to tell
the weather ; he only looked across the plain to see if the rain-
fall would cross the river. When the autumn crocus sank
under his share, to him it was only a weed best withered ; in
hell he believed, and for heaven he hoped, but only dully, as
things certain that the priests knew ; but all consolations of
the mind or the fancy were denied to him. Superstitions,
indeed, he had, but these were all, sad-colored fdngi in the
stead of flowers.
The Italian has not strong imagination.
His grace is an instinct ; his love is a frenzy ; his gayety is
rather joy than jest ; his melancholy is from temperament, not
meditation ; nature is little to him ; and his religion and his
passions alike must have physical indulgence and perpetual
neameaa, or they are nothing.
Bruno, who had strong passions and bland fliiths, but who
had no knowledge and no insight, was solitary as only a man
utterly ignorant can be solitary. But he never complained
even in his own thoughts ; and he never attempted to seek
any solace. He had set himself on absolute self-sacrifice, and
he went through with it, as thousands and tens of thousands
of his own countrymen have done before him in the old days,
from Chrysostom to Fraocis, in the monasteries that rise ma-
jestic amidst the brown wastes of the sun-burned plains and
crown the emerald radiance of the hill-throned vines.
He was io, his fields all day, having a crust of bread in his
pocket, and a flask of his own wine under the hedge. He went
in-doors only when it was quite dark, and was at work again
before any gleam of sun showed over the Umbrian moun-
tains. Nothing broke the monotonous measure of his time.
Nothing relieved the constant strain of toil. He thought that
he grew old. But it was only that his weeks and months had
the dullness and the barrenness of age.
264 SIGNA.
Climbing the stoep yine-Iands, Teaping in the san, dmii^
his oxen, working among the bare boughs in the teeth of the
north wind, he thought always of Signa, far away there in the
unknown city among the unfamiliar people.
Did Signa think of him ?
He wished he could know.
The boy's letters were few ; but then that was beoraae their
postage cost money, and every centime was of yalne. Laigi
Dini read them. They had always messages, tender, thankful,
affectionate.
But that was not much.
Bruno knew that the boy's soul and heart and fancy had
long led him, and soared into a world that he himself ooald w
more reach than he could reach the star Sirius shining over
the reaped fields in the hot night. He doubted if remem-
brance had much hold on this child, who when with him and
beside him had always been dreaming of the future. He did
not reason about it. Only he said to himself,
" It is as if he were dead."
But as, had the boy been dead, he would have spent all th&t
he possessed on masses and prayers to ransom his soul and pni-
chase heaven for him, as he would have fancied that he could
do, so he toiled now, and with as little thought of lecompeo^
or remembrance.
" It is as if he were dead," he said.
" Nay, nay," the old man would urge to him. " He only
lives a stronger life, that is all, on his own wings, as full-fledged
birds do. The world will hear of him. He will be fortunate.
I think. He will do something great. He has true gcniiiA.
Then he will come to you and say, ' I should have been a littlo
hungry homeless goat-herd all my years had it not been for ytiL
All that I am, and all that I do, and all that men praise in me,
I owe to you.' That is how he will come back one day."
But Bruno shook his head, and worked on among bis vines
and wheat, not lifting his eyes up from the soil.
" What will be will be," he said, curtly.
But he did not deceive "himself nor did he even desire to be
much remembered.
Bcmembrance of him would mean for the lad failure.
SIONA. 265
CHAPTER XXVL
Meanwhile Lippo, munching tomatoes stewed with garlic,
n the warm weather with his casement open to the evening
dr, satd to his wife,
'' Nita, I met a man in the city to-day, who has come over
Tom Bologna upon business. He told me that old Dini's
toast is not untrue, that the boy of 6nino*s is doing well at
the Music School, and that people say he is clever, and he gains
quattrini singing in the churches, only Bruno does not know
that. The man knew, because his own son is at the great School,
having a bass voice that they think to make something of
in a year or two. It is a good thing that we never stinted the
lad, and that all the Lastra said how good we were to him, and
always let him go to mass, and never a clean shirt for Toto but
there was one for him too. If ever the lad should do anything
that the world talks about (not that I think it likely, an idle,
dreaming brat), still, if ever it do come to pass, people will
know we have fair claim on him, and nobody could say if he
neglect us that it would be other than rank thanklessness.
Nut that what we did we did for gain. No, never! But
they do say those singing men and women make rare fortunes.
Or if he writes for the theatres and the churches, there is
the man of Pesaro that wrote the ' Gazza Ladra' and the
'Otello,* ^I have heard them scores of times down in the city ;
he lives still, or did quite lately ; and such a fuss with him as
kings and queens and other countries make, if it should be
ever ao with this dainty boy of Bruno's well, we did our duty
{by him, wife. That we can say honestly.'^
'^ Ay, that we did !'* said Nita, with a grin on her wide,
'Q^ mouth, scarlet as the tomato that she ate.
Nita was a rough woman, and a masterful, and could lie,
khea need arose, with all the stubbomess and inventiveness
^at coald be desired from any daughter of Eve. But she
nould not take the daily pleasure that her lord did in keeping
vp the lie all the day long in her own household, when all
'^ was over, and not a creature there to be the dupe of it.
V 28
266 SIQNA.
" We did our duty by him, and very few there iroiild hsn
been who would have taken pity on Bruno*8 base-born, and
brought him to a sense of what he owed to it," sud lippo,
pushing his emptied plate away with a sigh.
He had talk^ himself very nearly into the bdief that the
boy was Brano^s, and his own charity just what he had told
the neighbors. He had said it so often that he had neaiij
grown into the belief that it was true.
' I was thinking," he said, timidly, ^for he was alwap
timid before Nita, since who could say how she might per-
suade Baldo to leave his money? " I was thinking lifter all,
he is our blood, though not oome rightly by it imJ^ do yoa
say if we were to send him a little basket of figs and the like
when this man goes back to Bologna? It woald be jnst a
little remembrance, and show one bore no rancor against his
for that fit of paadon when he blinded you."
" Wait till he has written his opera," said Nita, with her
mouth still in angry laughter. " You are a shrewd ftDov,
Lippo. But sometimes you are over-fond of counting year
chidcens before your hen has even laid an egg. Figs are figs,
and fetch five centimes each till August comes. And de?er
boys are like lettuces : in much sun thev run all to seed. Tour
precious brute Bruno gives this lad aU sun. If I had had
him "
* Ah 1" said Lippo, with a smile and sigh together, and
girded up his loins and went into the street to see who was
inclined to play a turn at dominoes ; and told the baiher and
the butcher that the poor boy Signa was trying to do ri^t in
Bolo^a, and was studying hard.
" Oh, I bear no ill will. We are all poor creatures ; where
should we be at our best unless the saints were there to inter-
cede for us ?" said he, with gentle self-deprecation^ when thej
praised his kind way of speaking. '' Oh, I bear no ill will ;
Bruno is hard, and always unjust, and the greed of getting
gold grows on him ; but some day he will see the wrong that
he has done. I can wait It is sad to live ever in estrange-
ment, but when one knows one^s innocence and good intent,
and the poor lad either never was to blame. He was encour-
aged in rebellion and ingratitude. I have sent him a trifle of
money by a man that is going to Bologna ; he is in little dif-
ficulties, so they tell me, and one does not like a boy to soffer
SWNA, 2ffl
for bis elder's &nli. Beades, now be has left, he sees who
were hie true friends. Bruno dotes on him, oh, yes, in a mad
fashion, but boards for him, and presses poor men he lends to
as be did to Baocio ^poor Baocio Alessi, he is in the bargello
for anothw debt ! and all his children starve I It is not the
way to bring a blessing on the lad. So I have a mind to tell
Bruno, only be is so violent, and never speaks to me, being
ashamed, no doubt But all that is not the lad's fiiult Nor
would one visit it."
And Lippo sat down to bis dominoes, and was so pleased
with himself that be cheated a litUe more than usual by way
of self-reward. He never cheated greatly, because he knew
that to cheat a little eveiy evening, with success and unde-
tected, is much more productive and more pnident than to
eheat with a big audacity, that reaps one golden harvest and
then is found out, and so forever ended.
" You will call him ' nephew' if he should write for a
theatre and get paid ?" said old Baldo, looking up at him
through bis spectacles as he returned, with some loose notes
in bis pocket of which he would not speak to Nita.
" Blood is blood, without the Church or notary, that I do
think," said lippo, gently ; be liked those vague well-sounding
phrases that pledged nothing.
Old Baldo chuckled, and smoked a second pipe. Baldo
B^ed within himself that he would let all his savings and
bis snug little purchase of land above Giovoli go unrestricted
to his daughter ; her husband, he saw, was not a man to waste
money or opportunities, poor-spirited fool though the cobbler
thought him, as he heard Nita's voice saluting his return to
bed with a shower of invectives that rolled through the open
casement on the night's stillneft up to the Pisan Gate.
'' My dear," he heard Lippo's soft voice answer, '' my dear,
I have only been to drink a cup of coffee with the good Canon.
When be was so gracious as to do me so much honor, bow
oould I say no ?"
Baldo (muckled.
He did not like Lippo ; be was impatient of him, and con-
temptuous of him, but be felt a sort of respect for him never-
theless, as he listened where he sat in the porch.
Any way, Idppo was a safe man to leave one's money to,
and ail one*s little outstanding crop of bad debts.
268 fif70in.
Be might be poor-splritod, ^no doubt he wbs. A bold
opponent might wring his neck Hke a chicken's. But swk
pretty, neat, ready lying as his would stand him in better
stead than all the high spirit in the worid ; which, after all,
only serves to get a man into hot water in this life and denial
fire in the next
Baldo put his pipe out, and nodded to the barber, who was
taking his neighbors' characters away by lam|Jigfat under the
Madonna of Oood Counsel, and double-locked his house-door,
and carried his stout old body to his bed.
" I used to wish she had married the other one," he though^
as he laid himself down. " But he would have throttled her
in a fit of passion ; he would never have kept her quiet with
the Canon's cup of coffee. And he would never have got in
for me all my bad debts. He would have burnt my ledgen
as soon as I was dead. He is a fool. I am glad she mamed
the clever one,"
CHAPTER XXVn.
Nearly two years had gone away.
It was a still night at the end of September. It was on
the eve of the vintage.
The vines lie open everywhere : to the roads, to the sCreams,
to the mule-tracks, to the bridle-paths, over the hills, down by
the water under the cypresses, against the old towers, any-
where and everywhere, climbing like gipsy children, and as
little guarded.
Only when they are quite ripe, then the peasants keep watch
with their guns at night ; the gipsy children have grown as
precious then as little queens. Over the dark and quiet coun-
try stray shots echo every now and then ; perhaps it is a bird
shot, or a dog, or a fox, or nothing at all, or perhaps a man,
it matters little ; if he were stealing the grapes he deserves bis
fate, and, living or dead, will never complain.
Bruno, like others, loaded his gun and watched abroad in
these latter weeks when the vintage was so near.
In September, summer has the day, but autumn takes the
SIGNA. 269
niglit. It was the twentieth, and after sunset was cold. He
wrapped his brown cloak round him, and with hL9 white dog
walked to and fro the grass paths of his vines, or sat on the
stone bench outside his house while the hours wore away.
On the morrow they would all begin to gather, nearly
everybody in the Signa country, at the same time and moment.
Then the wine-presses would run over in the shade of the
great sheds, and the oxen would munch at their will the hang-
in; leaves unmuzzled.
It would be an abundant vintage, and wine in the winter
plenteous and cheap ; there was joy in all the little households
scattered over the mountains and the plains, behind the gold
of their stacks, and under the blue of their skies.
The hours wore away. The clock of the village churoh
midway on the hill tolled them with its sad dull sound ; all
clocks and bells sound mournful in the night. There was no
wind; but the smell of the ripened fruit, and of the stone-
pines, and of the balm firs, was strong upon the air. The
moon was a slender crescent, just resting on the black edge of
the mountains before it sank from sight. The turf was pale
in the shadows, with the funt colors of the leafless crocuses
and the blush hues of the exquisite mitre-flowers. The screech-
owl hooted with joy high in the tops of the trees. The bats
wheeled, like brown leaves blown about on a wild breeze.
Bruno sat in the fragrant cold darkness, with his old gun rest-
ing against a hive, and strotched before him the dog.
He sat thinking of the yield of the morrow, but alert for
every sound. It was so lonely here that thieves wero likelier
to be daring than in any place with aid nearer, within call ;
but, on the other hand, thero were no tramps from the towns,
nor idlers from the b^gar-haunts ; it was too high to be trav-
ersed by, or even known to, such aS these. He had had frays
with poachers thrice in all the years he had lived alone thero ;
that was all ; and each time they had been worsted, and had
fled with his good swan-shot in their flesh.
As he sat now, when it was past midnight, and the moon
had vanished behind her mountain, withdrawing her little
delicate curled golden horn, as if to blow with it the trumpet
call of morning, he heard steps coming up the steep ascent of
his own fields, and the fallen leaves rustling and crackling.
The dog sprang up, barking. Bruno pointed his gun.
28*
270 SIQNA,
He did not speak ; it was not bis waj ; if thej eame tlwR
after an evU errand let them get thdr measure and be paid
for it He waited.
It was too dark to see anything. It was of no nse to in
aimlessly into the cloudy blackness of the elnstered Tine&
The steps came nearer, the leaves nistled louder. He lifted
his gun to his shoulder, and in another seoond would have fired
at the wavering shadow that seemed to move the boi^^
when suddenly the dog*s wrath ceased ; it sprang forward with
a yelp of welcome, leaping and fawning. He paused, afraid
that he might fire on the dog, angered with die beast, asd
astonished. The dog bounded into the darkness, and oat of
the darkness there came a slender swift figure, graeeful frosD
the vines, as the young Borghese Bacchus.
Signs stretched his arms out
Do not fire 1 do not fire I It is I!''
Bruno throw his gun upward, and shot the charge off in
the air, then, with all his soul in his eyes, caught the boy in
his strong hands.
'* Oh, my dear 1 oh, my love 1 I might have killed you T
All the great silent longing heart of him went out in the
tenderness of the words.
Till this moment he had hardly known how he had longed
to see the face of the boy.
After a little he drew Signs within the porch, and went and
lighted a lamp, and brought it out, and let its rays shine on
the lad from head to foot, and looked at him again and again
and again, with his own dark ox-like eyes, dim and yet lumi*
nous, with all his heart shining out of them, while he never
spoke a word.
Signa had changed but little, except that he had grown tall,
like a young acacia- tree ; he was very pale, and vety thio ; he
looked fatigued and weak ; he had all the soft grace of his
nation ; his limbs were beautiful in shape, though very slender;
his throat was like a statue*s, and his delicate head drooped
always a little downward, like a flower on a bending stalk.
He was more than ever before like the Endymion of the
Tribune.
The moon had kissed him. WiUi earth he had nothing
more to do. His eyes seemed to say,-
" Why keep me here ?"
SIQNA. 271
Brano felt it dimly.
" Your body is come back/* be said, sadly. ' Bu t "
He did not end bis pbrase. He knew wbat be felt. But
be knew bardly bow to say it.
The soul would never oome back, never.
" Yes, I am oome back," said Signa, witb a smile, answering
the words and not tbe tbougbt. '^ I would not write. I walked
all the way to save tbe money. I tbougbt I sbould bave been
bere before dark. Have I seemed thankless ? Wbat can I say?
You have given me more than life. Yon have given me life
eternal."
'^ Hush I Come in and eat. Fou look weak. Gome in."
Bruno, someway, ^wby be did not know, could not bear
tbe boy to thank him. He save all his own life for tbe boy's,
just that, no more, no less. But he oould not bear to
speak of it.
Leaving the vines to any chance of tbefl, he took Signa
within, and heaped for him such rude fare as bis bouse held,
bread and wine, and some fine fruit that had been meant for
market. He watched him at tbe meal with fond eyes, as a
mother might have done, but he spoke little. His heart was
full. He was so happy.
" If you had sent me word you should bave had tbe money
to travel ; I would bave got it somehow," be said, resting bis
elbows on the table, and still gazing at Signa, while tbe brass
lamp burned between them, its wick wavering in tbe draught.
" I did not ask you, dear ; no Luigi Bini said that you were
best left undisturbed, and I said, Let him be till bis heart
speaks, till he remembers and wants to come. Ah, dear, it
is more than your body that comes back ; it is your heart too."
" Surely," murmured Signa, but tbe color rose a little again
in bis pale cheeks, and he drank off hb wine quickly.
'^ You bave^walked fi^r to-day ?"
" Only frosi Prato ; and through Carmignano. I tbougbt
of Qemma. Nothing is ever bea^ of her ?"
'* Nothing. Palma is well, a good girl, as good as gold."
'* Poor little Gemma 1" said Signa, witb a sigh ; be could
not quite forget tbe pretty golden-headed sullen little temptress
that bad made him pUiy and dance that fair-day on the stones
of Prato.
'* If she be alive she is bad. You cannot change a gnat to
I
272 SIGNA,
a bee,** said Brano, briefly. "And, dear, do t^ me of Joa^
self, there is so mach to hear. You have been happy f*
Sigma's eyes shone like Endymion's lifted to Uie mooa.
" Happy ! that is so little. It is much more than thaL*^
" But the people are good to you. You want for nothing?
You have all you wish ?**
'' Oh, DO, I want for nothing. Perhaps I am hungry some-
times, and cold ; the other lads laugh, the mastera praise ;
the bread runs short, the shirts are worn out, the women ay
so what does it matter ? It makes so little dlfferenoe. While
one has strength enough, and can have faith in onesdf, one has
the future. What do the little things signify ? One does not
notice even *'
Bruno was silent. He did not understand.
" The angels speak to him, I suppose/' he thoi^l
" Is the Lastra changed ?" said Signa. ** I cannot g^e it
gates of gold, not yet 1"
" How should the Lastra change?*' said Bruno, to whom
it was immutable and eternal as the mountains.
" I do not know," said Signa. *' Only I am so dianged
that it seems to me everything else must be so too. It is m
if I had been away a thousand years."
" You were so sad of heart for us,"
Bruno's face lightened with a deep unspoken gladnes.
All this while that he had been resigned to be foigotten,
the boy had longed for his old home, and now had tiampod
on foot two hundred miles and more to dasp him by the
hand!
Signa abswered with swift questions of a score of things,
Tinello and Pastore, and Teresina at the gate, and the hureet
and the flowers of Oiovoll, and the old priest on the hill, and
all the things and people of the old life he had left.
Himself he knew that he seemed to have been parted froD
them a thousand years, not for his regret or for hb sormw
but for the immeasurable distance of thought and knowledge
that divided him from them all, ^from that hopeless sense
'^they cannot understand," which yawned in an unbridged
gulf of difference between himself and them.
" And to-morrow we begin to gather," said Bruno, repljing
to him. * It will take two days or more. The grapes are
very fine ; the last rains swelled them so. You will see all
SIONA, 273
the people. There is not one dead. They will be so glad.
No donbt yon thought of vintage when you chose the time ?
It was well chosen."
" I did not remember," murmured Signa, glancing at the
brown knapsack that he had put away in one comer. *^ But
as I came along I noticed the vines were ready ; and at Car-
mignano a woman gave me a ripe bunch. You will be busy
then all the week ?*'
** Bat you will stay the week, and more ?"
" If yon wish." He leaned his head on his hand ; he spoke
wearily ; his face flushed a little wkh the same uneven change-
ful color.
" You are tired, dear," said Bruno, tenderly. " From
Prato, ^it is a long way for you. Very long. And the nights
cold. You look to have so little strength. You must have
overworked yourself. 60 to your bed, dear. That will be
best now. We shall have time to talk ; and it is selfishness
to keep you up ; and with your eyes so sleepy. Lock, you
see the bed is ready. I have always kept it so. Quite ready.
For I said, Who knows ? he may get tired of the city or of
his learning, and come back without one*s# knowing. Only I
did think you might forget; ^and you have not forgotten.
The people will be so glad ; and you will play to them."
The boy had walked all the way to see him ; only to see him 1
He had not forgotten. He had needed nothing. He had
only come back from remembrance and affection. The moment
paid Bruno for all the twenty long months of solitude and
toil.
'* You wanted to see me, and you walked all the way I" he
said, over and over again, those words, and nothing more. It
was so incredible to him, and yet so natural. He was grateful,
as liberal natures are to those who owe them all things and pay
them with an hour's tenderness.
Signa colored a little and looked away.
" Yes, I walked ; what of that ? It was so long a time, ^to
see you and the Lastr a "
Then he touched Bruno's hand with his lips, in soft, caress-
ing grace.
" It was good of you," said Bruno, simply, and the tears
stood in his eyes. The boy had loved him always, never for-
gotten, ^had walked all the way only to see his face again 1
274 SIONA,
The eighteen Jrears of lahor and of sacrifice and of fore-
thought and of shelter all rolled away from his lecoUeetioD ; be
had done nothing, so it seemed to. him ; and it was he who was
Signa*8 debtor. Generous natures wrong themsdTes as nioch
as others wrong them.
"And if ever you should tire and should he of a differeat
mind/' said Bruno, setting down the lamp by the little bed.
** They say boys do change, dream of great things, and of
learning, and then see the cities a little, and the hoUowiieBS and
labor of it all, and grow content to return into the M quiet
ways, and leave the world to its own burdens, they say so,
men who know. Well, if ever it should be so with you, or if
it be so now, why, there is your bit of land by the brook al-
ways ready for you as this bed is, and getting better and betier
every year, and yielding more. A safe place for you, and dailj
bread, and the house we would build in no time, ^tliatis,jot
know, if ever you should change and wish for it. There it
always is. A solid bit of land : ^if you should ail anytbii^,
or be disappointed, or see with different eyes ; that b all, detr.
Good-night, and the saints keep you. And it was good of yoa
to think of me, and to walk all the way."
Signa was too tired to hear the words very dearly, and wtf
ready to stretch himself wearily on the little familiar mattrefi
over which Bruno had been careful to set the blessed palm of
the previous Easter. Bruno left him and took his gun MpM
and went out into the moonless night to continue his watch of
the vineyard.
But all the sky seemed light to him.
The boy had wanted to see him, and had walked all the
way I He was quite happy as he sat in the silence and the
darkness. A great hope was warm around his heart The boj
had come back.
That proof of love was so precious to him that all his yein
of toil were effaced by it, and all his solitude glorified.
Who could say that the old ways and the old habits, and
the native air and the native soil, and the freedom of the higb
hills, mi^ht not have some sweetness in them after all, and
rest at home those young, tired, wandering feet? It wis
possible at least
Bruno crossed himself where he sat, with the musk^ resting
at his knee, and thanked the Mother of God. He thanked
8JQNA. 276
her. He wonld not pray for anyihing. He would not ask
for anything. He was content, quite content.
The boy had come back. That was enough.
" Only to Bee me ; only just to see me ! and walking all
the way I" he repeated to hunself while the hours wore away.
Dawn came very soon.
It seemed to Bruno that it had come when the last gleam
of the moon behind the mountains had shone on the &ce of
with the red vine-leaves against his forehead.
CHAPTER XXVin.
With the sunrise the vintage h^an. *
Signa opposed nothing ; entered into all the work and all
the pleasure as if he were the little fellow who had run home
with his Rusignuolo seven years before. There was an effort
in it all ; his heart was not in it ; in his eyes there was the old
ur-away wistful look ; and at times he fell into abstraction
and silence. But Bruno was too incessantly occupied to notice
those shadows on his sunshine. The boy was home again ;
that was enough. When he saw Signa's slender brown hands
pulling down the grape-clusters, and heard his voice calling
across the hill-side to the men with the teams, he was content,
so utterly content himself that it did not occur to him to
dream that the youth could be otherwise. And he was very
proud of him.
Proud of his soft grace, of his straight limbs, of his delicate,
serious beauty; proud of that very something about him which
was so difficult to define, but which seem^ to separate him
from all those around him as widely as the solitary gold-winged
oriole from the brown multitude of the tree-sparrows.
Signa had learned other things besides his own art away
there under the Alpine winds; he had studied all that he
could, night and day, old lore and new ; ^it was not very much,
but to his old associates it seemed miraculous ; they did not
understand what it was, but they felt that this young scholar
a gloiy to them. One told another, and from all the
276 SIGN A.
oountry about, as &r as the bridge of OreTe, people came to
Bee him and speak with him ; and when Uie good priest ebil-
lenged him in Latin, and he could answer with ease and grace,
and when the head-gardener of Giovoli, who was a Frencfanua,
spoke to him in his own tongue and was fairly answered in it,
Signa seemed to his old friends and companions sometbii^
very wonderful, a little fellow running barefoot and oatdi^
food for the oxen only a day ago, as it seemed.
They said with one anoUier tbat be could not have been
Pippa*s son ; ^no, certainly, that was surer than ever, oerer
poor Pippa's son ; ^if Bruno's I Who knew ? Bruno bad
been famous for his physical comeliness in his younger jear&
Who knew ? patrician ladies had strange &ncies sometimes ;
their oontadini could tell rare tales of some of their kve-
fancies.
So they gossiped going down the hill after sedng the boy
in the cool eyening shadows or talking with him in the I^stn.
At last it became settled with them ; the tongue takes such
grasshopper-leaps from conjecture to affirmation ; ^jea, tlt
was the secret of it all, they said. Bruno had pleased sonid
grand dame too well for her peace or honor, and this was how
it came that the boy had such tastes and such an air about
him, and Bruno money enough to make a schdar of him.
Yes, that was how it was.
" We always knew it,'* said the women, with a sagaciocs
twirl of their distaff, and added that they could name the
erring principessa if they chose, but it was perilous work to
light truth under great names ; like thrusUng burning stzaws
under a hornets' nest.
As for Lippo, he waited, hearing all they said, and then,
by accident, was in the street close by the LiTomese Gate as
the boy came down old Teresina's stairs and stopped with his
gentlest smile before him.
" Dear, we rejoice to bear you do so well," he said, with
outstretched hands, knowing his wife was safe over her linen
washing in the brook underneath the trees by Santa Maria.
" It is 80 sad. Bruno is hard to turn : we are estranged. But
it was all an error. I was too rough with you about that Tiolin
when you were little. Tes, that I feel ; I have done penance
for it often. But we were as good to you as we knew how to
be, so poor as we were, and with so many children. Indeed,
SIONA. 277
we loved yon always, and Nita nursed yon. Yon and my
Toto are as foster-brothers. I never can forget all that."
Si^a put out his hands.
** I forgive everything," he said, gently. " When one is
free and away, that is easy. But friends we cannot be ; it
would be unjust to Bruno. And I do not know that I do
well. I cannot tell, not yet. One may fail.''
And he went on his way to the church of the Misericordia.
Liippo went the other way, chagrined.
**' I wish he would not say that he forgives," he thought :
*^ it sounds as if one had dealt ill by him. I am glad I did
not ask. him to the house. Perhaps it is all moonshine what
they say of him. * One may fail,' he says. Fail in what
thing, I wonder? Nita was right. It is as well to wait, and
be quite sure. Only, whatever happens, Nita nursed him.
That he never can forget if he should succeed in anything and
get a name." "
For lippo, like many others before him, held that a life
that rises from obscurity to triumph should look back in grate-
ful obligation to those who, when it was in obscurity, did their
best to keep it there.
The stone in the mud cries to the butterfly against the
clouds, " Come down and kiss me, for when you were a grub
I did my best to crush you : is not that a link between us ?"
Signa went on into the little dark church, where his first
communion with the old masters of his art had opened to him
the glories that lie in the science of sound.
" Wc will go down to Fiastra," said Bruno, on the third
eTcning, when all the grapes were gathered in. It was so the
old farm-house was called where all the hill-side danced at
Tintage-time. The bell was ringing from its roof, an old
bell, that had on its copper " Lahore : et noli contristare," and
had been cast in the tenth century or earlier.
They were rich peasants at Fiastra. They had cattle and
horses of their own. They had a wide rambling dwelling-
house, with immense halls and large loHy chambers. There
was a great court-yard in the centre ; the house ran round
three sides of it ; the fourth side was open to the hill-side, with
all the landscape shining through a screen of pines. They had
a numerous family of grown-up sons and young daughters.
All through the vintage month, while the maize was being
24
278 SIONJL
picked, they used to danoe tbere, and rii^ the bdl abore tlw
roof, and bring all the oontadini above and b^w within
bearing up and down to the merriment The jonths and the
maidens sbelled the Indian com, and romped and jested and
made love ; when night fell, some one plajed on a mandolia;
perhaps there was a pipe or a Ante, too, and aometimeB some
wandering mosician had a tambourine. They whirled and
jumped about to the rattling music, while the old people
smoked or spun, and the babies tumbled with the dogs,
with the yellow maixe lying in a pile, and the oalm night
skies above, and the hillside shining white in the atariigbt
through the colonnade of the graced, serious pines. Tfaej
had done this in the old house for centuries, always as maiie-
harvest and vintage came round; prosperous folks, booest^
simple, and gay ; generation succeeding generation, witboot
break, and chan^ng in nothing.
There are still many such in this country. Soon there will
be none. For discontent already creeps into each of these
happy households, and under her hood says, '^ Let me in : I
am Progress."
They had always gone down to Fiastra. It was the custom
on all the hill-side. But since Signa had been away, he had
had no heart to go there; the lads and the girls were so meny
and so content in their manner of life, it had made his heart
ache the more ; why could not Pippa*s son have been so ?
But now all was well again. It was different. The boy had
come back. '^ Walked all the way ! just to see me I** Bruno
had said to each neighbor that day, going out of his habit of
silence in the gladness of his soul.
It was early ; they were stiU shelling the last maise ; the
bell was just beginning to sound ; girk were trooping in, in
their work-day dross, but each had her little string of peark
round her throat Palma, who came among them, had no
pearls. She was not so much even as a contadina. She felt
very brown and roush and unlovely beside the grace of Signa.
She could not keep herself from thinking how Gemma would
have looked if she had stayed and had lived; how pretty,
though having no ornament put her bright glancing hair and
wild-rose cheeks.
Palma took a portion of com and shelled it, sitting apart on
a bench. She was not content like Bruno.
SieNA. 279
'' His body has come back, but not his heart," she thought;
^ and his feet will soon wander again."
*' Will jou not dance with me, PaJma ?*' he asked her, when
they tonched the mandolin.
Palma looked up and smiled ; bnt she shook her head. She
danced like all the rest at otiier times, but this night she could
not ; she seemed to herself to have suddenly erown coarse and
heavy, and to have her feet shod with lead. To be fit for him,
she thonght, one wanted butterfly's wings and a face like a
flower's, a &ce like what Gumma's would have been, if
kmma had been dancing there.
Bmno stood with the elder men and talked of the vintage
and the new wine, smoking their pipes under the eaves of the
house, where a great walnut-tree touched the red tiles.
But all the time his eyes followed Signs.
He thought, " He enjovs the old life ; he is happy in it ;
he will not go away again.
Palma sat and shelled her maise and watched him too, as
he threw his light limbs about in the careless gestures and
joyous bounds, which here, without order or figure, do duty
for the Western saltarello and the tarantella of the South.
Bnt Palma thought,
" He does it to please them ; he does not care ; he is thinking
of other things ; he wants to be away."
For Palma noticed that his laugh ceased quite suddenly very
oflen, as the laughter of one who at heart is not gay ; she noticed
that he hardly looked at the brown buxom maidens whom he
whirled round in the measures, but often looked away through
the stems of the pines to the starlit country, as if the tall
straight trunks were the bars of a cage; she noticed that
when he paused to take breath and came and sat down beside
her and some other girl, thofigh his mouth smiled, his face was
grave, and though his words jested, his attention wandered.
*' He sees the old ways are good, and that there is no place
like home," thought Bruno.
But Palma thought,
" He loves us all still, but he is tired of us. We are dear
to him still, but we are wearisome to him, and he would like
to be away."
For Bruno deceived himself, because he had hope; but
Palma, having no hope, had no deception.
280 SIGNA,
After a time, they were fatigued with their romps a^d tli^ir
dances, and all rested awhile, cracking walnuts, eating ahnoDds,
whispering, joking, bandying loTe-nonsense, with the stars over
their heads, and the old dark house behind them, with rich
bits of color here and there in the men's blue shirts, in the
girls' red petticoats, in the children's brown limbs, in the brnd
gold of the sunflowers, in the glazed terra-cotta of the Annun-
ciation above the house-door, in the scariet kerchiefs hanging
from a casement, as the light of the stars or of the lamp in the
doorway fell fitfiilly on them.
Signa sat a little apart under the walnut-tree ; he had for-
gotten where he was ; he was thinking of what was dearer to
him than any man or any woman. He started as they ^poke
to him.
"Signal Signal" the girls cried. "Have you left yoar
heart in Bologna? Why are you dreaming Uiere? Come,
sing us something. Let us see if your grand learning has
made your voice any sweeter. You have not played s
note,"
" Sing? here ?" he asked, lifting his head in surprise.
His thoughts had gone so far away.
Bruno put his hand on his shoulder :
" Sing, or play. Who should care to hear you, if not your
old friends here?"
Signa had the habit of obedience in him ; he never dis-
puted any wish of Bruno's. He took a mandolin from the
old fellow who was thrumming it for the dancers, a gray-
headed fanner, seventy years old, who, nevertheless, could
string a dance-tune together as prettily as any one, and liked
to see his grand-daughters skip about like kids.
No one can make much music with the mandolin, but there
is no other music, perhaps, which sounds so fittingly to time
and place as do its simple sonorous tender chords when heard
through the thickets of rose-laurel or the festoons of the vinS,
vibrating on the stillness of the night under the Tuscan moon.
It would suit the serenade of Romeo ; Desdcmona should sing
the willow song to it, and not to the harp ; Paolo pleaded bv
it to Francesca, be sure, many a time, and Stradella sang to it
the passion whose end was death ; it is of all music the most
Italian, and it fills the pauses of the love-songs softly, like a
sigh or like a kiss.
SIQNA. 281
Its very cbann is that it says so little. Love wants so little
said.
And the mandolin, thongh so monrnfal and full of languor
as Love is, yet can be gay with that caressing joy born of
beaatifal nothings, which makes the laughter of lovers the
lightest-hearted laughter that ever gives silver wings to time.
Signa took the mandolin and struck a few broad sweet
chords, sitting under the heavy shade of the walnut leaves,
with the pines and the star-lit valley before him ; just a few
chords in the minor key ; sad, and soft, and almost solemn.
Then he sang.
He sang the old Misero pargoletto of Leo, which they had
heard him sing a thousand times when he was a little fellow
driving the sheep, and then he sang the Tu che aocendi of
Rossini's Tancred, bom from the lagoons of Venice, and
knows wherever a note of music has ever been heard ; and
then he paused a little while the young men and the giris filled
the air with their chiming voices that echoed the delicious
familiar cantilena, in a chorus that vibrated through the pines
and up to the skies, as if a thousand nightingales were singing ;
and then with a few sadder chords, sweet and almost solemn,
he passed on to music that they did not know, airs that were
quite strange to them, grave recitatives and sweet cantilena,
and grand airs of prayer and sorrow, and ritomelli, light as
thistle-down, and cathedral chants as solemn as death ; they
were all his own, with the freshness of a genius in them that
had invigorated itself from study, but had borrowed nothin*
and retained its own originality, as the flower takes fresh
colors from the bees, yet is a flower still, and never is a bee.
*^ What is it?" they asked one another ; for what with their
own songs handed down from mouth to mouth, and their little
wandering theatres, and their love of what is good in melody
and the tradidons of it common in all households, they knew
by ear so much that is ancient and beautiful ; though they
could not talk learnedly about it, and though the names of the
masters were as Sanscrit to them.
''What is it?" they asked one another; but they soon
ceased to whisper even that, and could only listen in rapt
silence.
It was music that had a familiarity to them, inasmuch as it
had something of the wild, fresh, hill-born fragrance of their
24
282 SIGNA.
own popular songs, with wliich they followed the boBocfa vA
lightened the toils of seed-time and harvest. Bat, again, it
was wholly unlike what they knew, having a great poiitj and
rarity in it, 'Something of the radiance of the old Greek
music blended with the solemnity of the litanies and the
misereri of the Renaissance of rdigions composition. It vaa
music in which the voice of the lover pleading to his h^ved
on the moonlit nights of vintage was blended with the cry cf
the desolate soul to stay tha hand of the Qod that seoiaged
it ; it was music ^music true to that proibund canon of the
Italian people, " La musidi d il kmento dell' amorei o la pr^
ghiera a gli Dei."
They listened, the girls leaning their arms on th^ kneess
and their cheeks on their hands ; the young peasants re^dxtg
against the pine-stems, or stretched on the boiches of staie;
the old people drawn together underneath the lamps and the
story of the Annunciation, with their pipe4)owl8 oold with
ashes, and their spinning-wheels ceasing to turn.
The very dogs were sOent, and the little tumbling chiUrea,
falling against one another, kept mute, with their ooris mttf-
mingled, and their big bright eyes lifted upward.
The face of Signa was quite in shadow where he sat under
the walnut-branches ; the mandolin lay motionleas aerass hk
knees ; he sang on, and on, and on, as the young David mi^
have sung to (e madness of Saul.
He had forgotten all that surrounded him ; his soul was ii
his music.
When his voice ceased quite suddenly, he looked at the
people about him. The women were in tears, the men listened
breathlessly ; there was a moment's silence, then they spring
to their feet, all of them with one accord, and flung themeelveB
on him, and kissed his hands, and his hair, and his dothes, and
his feet, and shouted, and laughed, and cried, and lifted him up
on their shoulders, and called out to the moon, just sinking,
'* Look at him I look at him 1 Our own little Signa^ and
yet as great os this 1 Oh, the beautiful music ! Did the angeli
teach it to you, dear, ^the angels you used to see ?**
Bruno alone stood apart, and Palma sat in the shade of the
high house-wall.
When they let him go at last that night, he smiled on them,
standing bareheaded in the shadows :
8IQNA, 288
* 'S'oii are tbe first to pnuae me, ^I will always think of
that."
Then be broke loose from tbem, and went qnicklj away,
ioT^etdng ererytbing. For bis beart was beating lond, and
hifl eyes swam, and Uie faintness of a great emotion made tbe
hill-eide reel before bim for a moment He wanted to be
alone. They were only peasant-people, ^farming-men and
girla from tbe fields, bnt if tbey were moved like tbat^ would
the world be wboUy indifferent ?
He climbed np tbe steep path towards Bnmo's home, and sat
dovtrn under one of tbe pines, and tbougbt. Tbe old bouse
of Fiastra was below bim : be was out of tbe bum of tbe
voices, but be could have beard danoe-music had there been any.
He was glad it was all silent; be was glad they could not
danoe again so soon.
There was no sound anywhere around bim.
Far down below tbe lights of the Lastra glistened ; abore were
the fields and tbe woods and the blue mountain-erest. This
was bis home. He loved it. Nevertheless he said to himself,
'' Tery day here is a day lost. How shall I tell it to Bruno?"
Bruno, ^who to every man he met, and to every woman
coming through the vines, bad said always, with such pride in
bis voice, " He has come back ; be has walked all tbe way
only to see me, onlv just for that I"
And Signa never boiird bim without a rush of blood to his
cbeeka and a rush of shame to bis beart, ^knowing that it
was not so.
He had not been there long before a step crushed tbe fallen
leaves and fir-needles, a step ascending with swift, elastic, even
tread, tbe tread of feet that have never been trammeled in
leather.
'* Dear, are you there ?*' said Bruno's voice.
Signa rose and met bim. Tbey went upward together.
Tbe old bouse of Fiastra was shutting itself up for sleep ;
tbe people were breaking up and going homeward, agoing
without their usual twitter of flute and thrilling of mandolin,
and without their usual jests and laughter, talking in low
murmurs of the wonderful boy, who yet was their own little
fellow, tbe little fellow that bad been hungry, and footsore,
and beaten, and made a mock of so many years, in tbe bouse
by tbe Mother of GU)od Counsel.
284 SIGNA.
The beaTens were brilliant Coma Berenioe was setdBs
northward, and above the sea-mountains Arctoms shone ii
fall splendor, soon to pass away. Persens ^euned bold o& |
bis white field of light : be had been shooting fire-arrovs half j
August through the sky, and now was still. Yeiy low dova
eastward and southward, as though watching over Borne, the
strange lone star Fomalhaut hung in its mighty solitade. |
Orion still was hunting in the fiur fields unseen.
" Was that all out of your own head?" said Bruno, abniptij,
as they mounted tQgetber under the pines.
" My own musio ? Yes."
" It is veiy fine," said Bruno, and was silent His Toioe
bad lost itB happy, hopeful intonation.
" Ah, if I were only sure 1" said Signa.
" It is very fine," repeated Bruno.
He knew it He could not have toLd why. He had bev^
like all bis country-folk, the gay grace of Rossini and Oimaroea ,
and the grave grace of DoniKtti and Bellini, in the little doskj
crowded theatres of the populace down in the city, in all die
seasons of autumn and carnival-
It was only a pastime to him, a sport not fit to fill the life
of a man. Music was like the grass : it grew everywheie.
That was what he thought But he knew that the son^ of
Signa were beautiful, ^knew it by the wet faces of the womeBf
by the shining eyes of the men. And his heart was heavy
with fear.
" Do they not tell you it is fine where you study?'' he
asked. " They must know there.*'
" Some do," said Signa, and then be hesitated, and his tip0
were mute.
" It is what you care most for sUll ?"
Signa drew a heavy breath.
*^ Ah, it is all I live for ! Did I not say you have given me
more than life, ^life eternal ?"
'^ What will be will be," said Bruno, with the M gloom
deepening on his face. " It is not I, nor any one. It is just
that, the thing that is to be."
" Fate,'' said the boy.
" Perhaps that is what you scholars call it," said the man*
^ It may bo the great Gkd, it may be the Devil."
" May it not be ourselves," said Signa, " or othen ?"
8IONA. 285
Brano did not answer. His face was dark. He bad neither
mind nor mood to nnravel thought or unweave the subtleties
of fancy. What be felt was that there was a force stronger
than he, and always against him. It did not matter what it
was called.
They walked on in silence slowly. The moon was gone, but
all the stars were shining, and there was a little tremulous light
on the moss under their feet Signa stopped and lifted up a
stone that had fiiHen across a few sprays of cyclamen, and
raised up the drooping delicate pink beads of that most lovely
and tender of all blossoms.
*' Look I" he said. ^* My music was the cyclamen, circum-
stance was the stone; what my hand does for the mitre-flower,
you did for my music and my life. I cannot call that Fate.
It is something much warmer and much more beautiful to
me.
'* You talk like a poet/' said Bruno, roughly. ' I am an
unlearned man. I cannot follow figures."
Signa threw the stone away, and went on without saying
more.
When they had got to the house, Bruno struck a match
and lighted his brass lamp.
" Good-night,'' he said, and would have gone to bis bed,
but Signa stopped him.
" I have something to say," he murmured. '' Could we
talk now? Something I came all the way on purpose to say:
it could not be written."
' Ah I" said Bruno.
He sat down on the settle by the cold empty hearth. He
drew his hat over his eyes. A dull, weary shadow was on his
face. It seemed to him as if a knife went to his heart.
And he had said all through these three days to the people,
" He has walked all the way to see me, only just to see me 1"
" Let us hear it," he said, and set down the lamp. He
could not tell what it could be ; but before he heard it all his
hope died in him. The boy had not come for him, and the
old life would not hold him.
Signa remained standing, leaning against the marriage-
coffer.
"My music that you heard to-night," he said, soflly.
** That is from an opera I have written. The first, the only
286 SIQNA.
one. I have called it Aetea.' Oh, yoa do not knov; ^
story does not matter. She was the love of Nero, an cn-
peror of Borne, and she a slave. I have stadied haid. Tei,
indeed. It is not to praise myself. It was a happinen,
no pain. If only one oonld learn more 1 hat the ni^its lad
the days seem so short, even wiUi sleeping only four hooca.
I hare made all the opera myself. The mnaic of eoane,
hut the story of it and the words too, all the libretto. I
would not speak to any one of my idea, and if one be at all a
musician, one should be just a little also of a poet ; eooag^
for that There is the jealousy of Actea and Poppea, and the
triumphs in the Circus Agonistes, and the martyitkB of the
Christians, and Nero hearkening to the harjHog of TypnoB;
and the death of Nero, and then Actea all alone by the gnve;
but you heard some of the music, all is said in that ; I
know that it is good. The great Father Polidria says so. Ha
even says it is great But it will not please the world ; that
is what he says. He thinks that cantellero'* bcfssn with
BosBini, who was great, and who had much else besides, aad
has descended to all the little composers that are reigning nov,
and who have nothing else besides, and, in deso(din|^ htf
increased and grown worse, and has corrupted the ear of
the people, so that they only want noise and ditter, and care
nothing for true harmony or pure cadence. Pwhapa it is so.
He should know. He says that the people have in all the na-
tions lost their critical faculty and their understanding, and that
even in opera seria they now desire as much jin^ng and ikhss
and spectacle as in the buffo. And so he thinks that my
Actea* would fail, beeaase it has too much of Pagoieai is
it; "
Bruno interrupted him :
' Tell me what you want,*~what you come for. I esanot
understand all these long words."
'' I am so sorry," said Signa, with the soft oontrition of a
chidden child. '^ I am always thinking of it, always talking
of it ; I forgot I must tire you ; but I hardly luiow what
you will say, what you will think. Listen. All mj soul, all
my life, is in the opera. If only it could be heard, I fed sore
that it would make a great fame for me, and that is what yoa
SIGNA. 287
'wiBh, is it not? You would not haye me live and die an ob*
scare musician, writing for little theatres or teaching song in
the cities? Oh, no I Oh, mj Ood, no I it would be better
to work in the fields here forever."
Hnino's teeth shut close together.
'* I begin to understand. Uo on."
And sitting under the eaves of Fiastra that night, watching
tbe joung men and the maidens dance together, he had said
in his heart, with security, *' He is content. The old ways
wiU hold him !"
^ Ton know,** said Signa, still leaning against the old gilded
oofTer, with his face in the glow from the lamp, " an opera to
be known must be heard on the stage ; and it must be ar great
sta;^ and the rendering of it good, or the music will have no
duuice to be great in the world. I have said nothing to you,
becaose I hoped so much to send you word of some great
Tictory for it, all in a moment^ while you were thinking of me
as only a little scholar. But the Actea was finished in spring,
and I managed to travel to Milano, ^never mind how, walking
most of the way, and there I played from it, and showed it
to many directors that come to the city, the score of it is in
my knapsack, and they have all wondered at me, and called
me Mosart, and said that the music was good, some even said
great ; and the death-chant of the Christians, and the grave-
song of Actea, they said were sublime. But they were all
afraid of it. They all thought it too serious, too passionate,
too thoughtful. I suppose it has not 'cantellero' enough.
They said it would cost much, and would almost certainly fiiil
to please. They are afraid of their money, afraid to spend
it and not to see it i^in. It is that everywhere, money. It
has half broken my heart. To hear them say that it is
beautiful, they all grant that, and yet to find not one there
that will have the courage' to give it to the world! I
have seen them of all nations, and it is always the same.
'You are a young genius, you are a Mozart,' they all say.
Oh, heaven I how would ever any one have known of Mo-
zart if they had all dealt with hun as these men deal with
me !"
Bruno looked up.
*' Poor lad !" he muttered ; the thought of Signa suppliant
iod repulsed moved him ; he hated the music that thus eo*
288 SIONA.
diained the boy's soul, but he bated as mndi those tnJkkcB
in the hibor of the brain, who had made him suffer.
Signa went on, full of his own thought.
" Thej told me if I would take a homelier theme, with
tragedy in it, like the Oazza Ladra, it would be betto', as if
the meanness of the plot were not what destroys the beautiful
musie there I They were all afraid of my Actea. Oh, yoa
do not know what I have endured, the hope of it, the de-
spair of it, the waiting, the longing, the beseeching, the thiok-
ing every time, ^ Here is one who will understand ;* and thai
always the same disappointment at the end. I hare been ack
with the pain of it, mad with it ; but you must not think that
I lied to you when I sai^ I was happy. I have been happy
always, because I believe in my opera: I do betiere in it
against everything. It is not vanity. I love the opera; hat
I love it as if Qod gave it me. It comes out of me just like
the song out of the bird. No more. All the summer I have
toiled after these men, one or other of them ; the eitj of
Milano is full of them, getting singers, and players, and melo-
dies for their theatres, all over the world, for the next winter.
I have lost weeks and months waiting, waiting, waiting; iod
often all day without a bit of anything to eat, because thej
do not think these people or because they do not know oae
is so poor. I suppose they never want for food themself es,
and so forget"
" You never told us."
Bruno's voice was husky : his fiice was dark with troubled
pain. When he had thought this young life so happy and so
tranquil and so safe, it had been in conflict and torment, beat-
ing against the buffets of the world. He was bewildered ; be
had a dull sense of having fiiiled in all that he had done,
failed utterly.
" Oh, no : what was the use ?" said Signa. ** It was no fkvii
of any one's: things are so, if one have not money. You gave
me all you could. I thought the ^ Actea* would be takeo at
once. I thought that I should send you word of my triumphs
while you were still all thinking me a little useless scholar.
But it was not to be. If they could say that I wrote ill f
could bear it. Yes, I would tear it all up, and think the failure
was in me, and study more, and do better. But they aaiBot
say that. The work that I have done is good. The ooldest
SIONA. 289
of tbem own it. Oh, heaven I it is that that breaks my heart :
all my life is in it. I would die this hour oh, so gladly !
if I ooold be quite sure that my music would be loved and be
remembered. I do not know : there can be nothing like it, I
think : a thing you create, that is all your own, that is the
very breath of your mouth, and the very voice of your soul ;
which is all that is best in you, the very gift of God ; and then
to know that all this may be lost eternally, killed, stifled,
buried, just for want of men's faith and a little gold I I do
not think there can be any loss like it, nor any suffering like
it, anywhere else in the world. Oh, if only it would do any
good, I would fling my body into the grave to-morrow, happy,
quite happy, if only afterwards they would sing my songs i\\
over the earth, and just say, ' God spoke to him ; and he has
told men what He said.' "
His hand clinched as he paused, his eyes burned, his face
changed, and his mouth quivered: the madness of a great
passion was in him, the pure impersonal hero-passion of
genius, which only reigns absolute in earliest youth, and whose
death -note is human love.
Bruno looked at him darkly, drearily.
This was the boy that he had thought had walked all the
way only to look on his own face, and that he had thought
had only cared for his old home, and come to live forever on
the calm hill-side 1 What could he understand of this im-
passioned spiritual pain ? he was like a man watching a de-
lirium that raves' in an unknown tongue.
Between them there was that bottomless chasm of mental
difference, across which mutual affection can throw a rope-
chain of habit and forbearance for the summer days, but which
no power on earth can ever bridge with that iron of sympathy
which stands throughout all storms.
" I cannot follow all that," he muttered, wearily. " You
go beyond me. Nb doubt you are bom for greater things
than I know. It is dark to me. But you came here for
something, some wish, some aid. Tell me that. Perhaps
I can help you. But I am ignorant. I cannot understand all
that you say. Tell me the thing you want. I am better at
acts than at thoughts."
Signa, recalled to himself, hesitated a moment: then he
spoke, with the color ^hanging on his bent-down face.
V 25
290 SIGNA.
^ WeQ, aD Uie liot raoDths I bare mited on these men,
muted aod waited, all to no good. Thej are all afraid. Pe^
hap6 thej think in their hearts that a boy like me ^jesterdaj
a peasant, and now with mj shirts in holes, and onlj nineteoi
years old perhaps they think I never can be really vcath the
great world's hearing. Anyhow, they refiise. AU vefnse.
^ Have it played in your own conntiy, and then we will see,*
say the foreign ones. ' This ooontiy is too poor to nsk on-
oertun ventures in it,' ^ly our own people. It is always sooie
excuse. Some way they are afraid, of me or of the music.
And then no one cares very much to risk new music. The
theatres fill with the Ballo in Maschera and the Cenerentob.
and all the rest They only want them to fill. That is all.
Nothing is to be done with them. * Comte O17 brings me as
much as your Actea would were it suooessful,' nid one di-
rector to me. ' And I have all the Comte Ory deocffatioD^
and all the singers know it by heart : why should I risk what
might be half my ruin ?* For music they do not care, these
men. No more than the men who sell wine in the wine^shops
care for the beauty of the vines. But now, only 1 do not
know what you will say ; you will think me mad ; now, bst
week, in MUano, I have found a director who would take the
Actea, ^yes, take it, and bring it out in Carnival in Venioe.
In Venice, where they made Rossini s fame, and sang the
Ti rivedro even in the courts of law I I do not know whether
he is a good man or a bad. But I would have kissed his feet.
For he believes in the Actea **
" Well ?'' said Bruno, as he paused.
Signals face flushed hotter, then grew very pale.
" He will bring it out this coming CamivaJ, my Actea P
he murmured. " Only, as the risk is great, he says, he miut
have from me, before he does commence it, three thoosand
francs, one-half the cost of it on his theatre."
'^ From you ?'* Bruno looked at him, doubting his own
senses.
" From me, ^yes," said Signa, and fidtered a moment, and
then threw himself at the feet of Bruno, with that caressin;;:.
suppliant grace of action which makes an Italian bend Li^
knee as naturally as a flower stoops before the wind.
''Oh, listen I You have been so generous, so good, so long-
suffering, it is a shame to ask for more, to tiespaas further.
SIQNA. 291
Yes, I know. Bat, oh, listen to me, just this onoe again.
Wbat is the use of life in me if I cannot make men hear my
music ? I feel I am strong ; I feel I am right ; I feel what I
do is great: only I have not the means of success in the world.
Just see a skylark, the bird that mounts, mounts, mounts, ever
singing ; if it had a stone at its foot it could not mount, and
eo it could not sing ; and yet its song would be in it just the
same, and it would break its heart because it had to be mute.
I am like the skylark, only the stone with me is poverty.
Tou see, they have all had some little money. Mozart had his
father's help, and Haydn Prince Esterhazy's, and every one of
them some little thing just to loosen the stone off their foot
as they rose first ; and onoe risen, then no lark wants anything
more than only just the air and his own two wings. Now, oh,
I know it is so much to ask, and in a way it is shameful ; but
you love me, and I have no one but you, ^now, that land you
bought for me, you send me the worth from it always, and
yon mean to sign it away to me when I am of age, and you
would like me to live on it forever. Now now would it
be impossible, would it be wicked in me, to pray for it ?
would you sell it at onoe, sell it straight away to whoever
would buy it, the fields and the olives and all, and give me the
money for the Actea? Ah, my Godl^-do do it! My life
is worth nothing to me, and what should ever I do with the
land ? It is yours, I know, and I have no right yet ; but if you
do still mean to g^ve it to me, let me have the value of it now,
now, for the Actea, and deliver me out of this torture,
and give me a chance to be great. Ah, my Grod, do hear me t
^it will be as if you ransomed me out of hell !'
His head dropped on his hands; he sobbed aloud ; he knelt
still at Bruno's feet, but all drooped into himself like a
crushed flower. He was ashamed of his own prayer ; and
yet the passion of his longing shook him from head to foot.
What use were the land, and the olives, and the rush-shadowed
brook, to him ? What he wanted was fame eternal.
Bruno was silent.
This was why the boy had come back.
After awhile Signa lifted his head timidly and glanced up-
ward. Bruno's face told him nothing : it was dark as a tem-
pest, 'and, under all its bronze hue, pale ; but it said nothing:
it was like a moonless night.
292 SIONA.
The boy was aftaid. He thought there would break upon him
an outburst of such rage as had shattered his loet Rusigonolo.
But none came. Bruno was quite calm and was mote.
" Will you do it ?** said Signa, with a great fear at his hearty
touching the man*s brown hands with a soil, shy snpplicatioo
like a girl's. " Will you do it? See, you are so strong, so
good ; you think so much of my body, and my peace, and m j
happiness, ^which all are as nothing to me : will you help me
to save my soul? will you help me out from this death in life?
Dear God ! if you knew "
A terrible hopelessness seized him and stopped his pnT^r
on his lips. Bruno*s face was so dark and so still: there was
no response in it. A ghastly despair froze the boy*s beating
heart.
How could he ever make this man understand, this maa
who knew nothing, ^this man who followed his oxen, aod
reaped his corn, and was content?
Bruno rose.
" I will think of it,*' he said, slowly ; and his voice, ia ibe
darkness and stillness of the lamp-lit house, sounded deep m^
hollow, as a brave bell that is broken will sound. " I willio
it, if I see it for your good. I must think."
Then he went into the night-air, and drew the house-door
behind him, and the boy heard the echo of his footsteps pass-
ing away upward to the higher hills.
He knew that his prayer would be fulfilled. He did oot
know that for one single instant, as he had knelt there, Bruno
could have struck him down and stamped his life out with as
passionate a hate as he once had stamped the music outof tbe
broken violin, one instant in which the heart of the man bad
risen and cried against him,
" I have given you all my life, and you bring me back a
stone."
The next day early Bruno went down into the Lastra. Ht!
went to the sacristy of the Misericordia.
** Write to this man of Venice," he said, briefly. " Have it
all in black and white, what he has said, what he will do/'
Lnigi Dini looked up astonished.
" What ! He has told you I You mean ?"
" We can speak of it when the answer comes. Write," *'^
Bruno, and went out into the tender sunshine and thiottgbthe
SIQNA, 293
merry ways of the Lastra, that were overflowing with gathered
grapes and laughing faces, down into the city, to the house of
the notary who had served him in the transfer from Baccio
Alcssi. the carver.
*^ I may wish to sell my land that land in a little while,"
be said. " If you find an honest man at a fair price, tell
mc."
The notary looked up as the sacristan had done.
^'Sell the land! The land you were so proud of! What
can that be for ?"
" That is no concern of any man's. When you find the
bidder, tell me,'* said Bruno, and went into the great square,
where, the day being the market-day, all the men from the vil-
lages and the villas were chaffering together with sonorous,
resonant voices, raised high in dispute or discussion.
" Bruno is going to do some evil thing," said the other men,
seeing the look upon his face. They had been used to tell dan-
ger from the darkness of his face, as storm from the closed crown
of Monte Marcello.
But he did no evil. He trafficked with them, driving, his
bargains closely, and giving few words to all, with the glaive
of Perseus and the bronze head of the Medusa above him in
the shadow of the arch.
When the day was ended, he entered the baptistery, and
prayed there in the twilight.
Then he crossed the river, and went out of the gates home-
ward.
More than one man, going by with swifl wheels and little
jingling bells, and flying fox-tails at the pony's harness, stopped
and offered him a lift ; but he shook his head, and strode on
alone in the dust.
It was the " twenty-fourth hour" ^the close of day when
he reached the foot of his own hill. The sun was just going
down behind the great mountain and the sharp peaks that lie
between the valley and the sea. It was nearly dark when he
had mounted high enough to see his own roof above the olives.
He passed Fiastra.
The bell that said, " Lahore : et noli contristare" was ringing
loud.
On the path above there was a little tumult of young men
and girls running merrily one on another to reach the open
26
294 STONA,
gates. They bad torches witb them, flaming bright in the
duiik, and branches of fir and boughs of the vines that thj
tossed over their heads ; they were shouting, and leajHng, ami
scampering, and singing in chorus. As they drew near tb
farm-house, they called out to the people within,
" We have brought him down I we have got him ! We
will make him sing, our own little Signa, who is going to be
BO great I"
Four of the youths had Signa aloft on their shoulders. Tbej
had sought him out where he was moping in solitnde, as they
termed it, and had besought him and besii^ed him with aiiy
laughter and fervent entreaty, and a thousand appeals and
reproaches of old friends to one who deserted them ; and be
had not been proof against all that kindly flattery, all that
tender supplication, which had the honey in it of the fint
homage that he had ever known ; and they had boroe bim
away in triumph, and the girls had crowned him with vine-
leaves and the damask roses that blossom in haxel and grape
time, and danced around him in their rough, dmple glee, like
the peasants of Tempe round the young Apollo.
Bruno drew back into the shadow of the pines, and let than
pass by him. They did not see him. They went dancing
and singing down the steep grass patlis, and under the arch-
way, into the court-yard of Fiastra.
It was a quaint, vivid, pretty procession, fiill of grace and
of movement, classic and homely, pagan and mediieval, both
at once, bright in hue, rustic in garb, poetic in feeling.
Teniers might have punted the brown girls and boys leaping
and singing on the turf, with their brandishing boughs, their
flaring' torches, their bare feet, their tosfdng arms ; bat Lie-
nardo or Guercino would have been wanted for the face of the
young singer whom they carried, with the crown of the leaves
and of the roses on his drooped head, like the lotus-flowers on
the young Antinoiis.
Fietro da Cortona, perhap, in one of his greatest moments
of' brilliant caprice, might best have painted the whole, with
the background of the dusky hill-side ; and he would have set
it round with strange arabesques in gold, and illumined among
them in emblem the pipe of the shepherd, and the harp of the
muse, and the river-rush that the gods would cut down and fill
with their breath and the music of heaven.
SIGNA. 295
Bruno stood by, and let the innocent pageant pass, with its
gold of autumn foliage and its purples of wind-flower buds.
lie heard their voices crying in the court, '* We have got
hini ! we have brought him 1 Our Signa, who is going to be
great!"
He stood still a little while ; then he went up to his own
liome, and lit his lantern, and foddered his cattle, and worked
in his sheds. He was too far off from Fiastra to hear any
sound of the singing, but every now and then the wind, which
blew that day from the southeast, brought upward the bursts
of applause, the enthusiastic shouts, that succeeded the inter-
vab of silence, mere murmurs as the wind brought them ;
but to Bruno they sounded like the echo of the clarion of
Fame, crying aloud to him from the great world, " He is mine."
It was late when Signa returned, brought back by the young
men, who left him with caresses and with gratitude as to a crea-
ture far above them, and went away singing low among them-
selves in chorus the greatest air that he had written, the chant
of the dying Christians, which had in it all the majestic mag-
nificence of the ^' Rex tremendao majestatis," and all the pathetio
resignation of the *' Huic ergo parce Deus," of Mozart*s ** Dies
Inc."
Signa stood on the threshold and listened to the broad
regular periods, the sonorous, pathetic rhythm of hb requiem,
as the voices rose and sank, and grew faunter and fainter, as
the steps fell away down the hill-side.
They were only peasants, only kborers of the flail and the
furrow; but they could sing whatever took their ear, with
unerring truth and time. It was the first time that ever he
had heard any music of his own upon the mouths of pthers :
it was the first time that any of that sympathy which is the
sweetest part of public homage had ever come to him : he
stood and listened with a tumultuous pleasure swelling at his
heart, and a delicious sense of power on the lives of others
stirring in him.
" It will live," he murmured to himself, as he listened there
on the threshold until the voices died into silence as the young
men went on their several ways to their own homesteads, and
parted.
Bruno was working still in one of the sheds, hb lantern
burning beside him. He had been sifting grain, stacking
296 SIONA.
wood, cleaning wine-casks, with the white dog watcluDg bxm
and the night wearing away.
Signa went within, and stood by him a little timidly. Ho
had not seen him that day, save for a few moments in the
early morning.
" You did not come to Fiastra to-night," he swd, gently, not
knowing well what to say.
No," said Bruno, without lifting his head, whilst he piled
the brush-wood.
" Are you angry with me ?" said Signa, with the child-like
way that was natural to him.
* No," said Bruno, but he worked on without lai^og his
head.
Signa's mouth quivered a little. He knew that be had
dt ne no wrong, and yet he was not at peace with himself.
" Perhaps I am very selfish to ask so much," he said, hesi-
tating a little as he spoke. " I know I have no right ; I know I
have no more of my own than the dog there. But indeed
indeed what use would the land be to me ? what joy would it
bring me ? And you are so good."
Bruno paused in his labor for a moment.
" I said, I must think. Let it be. Wait a week ; then I
will tell you. I do not know that you are selfish. It is I,
more likely. I will do what is for your good. Only leave me
in pence. Do not talk."
And he lifted more wood.
Signa stood by him sadly. He was not satisfied. He knew
that he had gained what he wished, that his desire would be
given him. But his victory brought a sense of pain and of
wrong-doing, as victory over a noble foe does to a soldier.
Bruno could never measure the height of the boy's intelli-
gence; the boy could never measure the depth of Bruno's
nature. In some ways they were forever both strangers one
to the other. Between human creatures it is often so.
As he stood there, confused, troubled, mute, Bruno looked
up with a gesture of impatience, and laid his hand on the lad's
shoulder, but gently, for since the day of the broken Rusi-
gnuolo he had sworn to heaven never to be ungentle vith
Pippa's son.
^' I am not angered," he said. " But leave me aJone. Go
with your friends; sing, dance, be caressed, take your pastime;
SIQNA, 297
enjoj jonrself, dear, while you can. Do not think that you
have hart me : only leave me alone. It is not a thing to be
done in a day. Bat yoa may trast me. What is best for you,
that I will do : only I will not talk of it."
He thrast him, still gently, out of the shed into the night-
air a^inst the open house-door.
" It is late. Go to your bed."
Signa went, and climbed up to his own room, and opened
the old drawer and looked at his broken violin lying where he
had lefl it, with its rosemary and its sprigs of cypress, as if it
were a dead thing in a coffin.
" Perhaps the world will prize you some day," he thought,
" as it docs the old wooden shoe of Paganini."
He was happy because he had faith in himself, and hope ;
almost as happy as when the fair angel had given him the
Rusignuolo ; but he had a heavy sense amidst his joy of hav-
ing sinned against Bruno.
He only partly understood the pain that he had dealt. He
only dimly saw how the man who had believed that his return
had been one of love was wounded to the quick by the revela-
tion that ambition and personal desire and immediate need had
been the sole impulses moving him. He only very vaguely
comprehended how to ask Bruno to give up the land which he
had slaved for seven years to gain was to shatter at a blow all
the pride of his days, all the hope of his life.
The great genius overmastering him was like a cloud before
hia eyes. If he were cruel to Bruno, he was cruel uneon-
Bcionsly ; as he was cruel to his own body in inflicting on it
hanger and cold and all corporal ills whilst he followed the
spirits that beckoned to him.
If he asked Bruno to give up much, he himself was ready
to give up everything. If it could have been said to him,
" Die now, and your music shall live," he would have accepted
the alternative without pause^ and gone to his death rejoicing.
It was the sublime fanaticism of genius, which, like all other
fanaticism, is cruel. The desire for glory had entered into
him, as yet impersonal, but none the less all-absorbing and
dominant.
Once he had been content to have leisure and rest, to hear
the " beautiful things" of his fancy. Now he had no ponce
unless he could repeat them to the world of men ; as at firat
298 SrONA.
the lover is content with the perfect posseesion of his nustRSis
bat, when this has been enjoyed a while in secret, grows
restless for the world to know the joy that crowns his
passion.
The days passed away with him in a fever of nnrost, eatbg
little, sleeping little, vaguely consoled and elated by the hom-
age his old comrades gave him, but missing much of the
beauty of autumn, because the unrest of ambition was in him.
The little pale crocus would not tell him half the things it had
whispered him in his childhood, and the great winds wander-
ing among the pines had lost much of their melody for him.
He was aJways thinking, " Will they kill my soul in me?
Shall I die unheard and unknown ?"
Palma came up no more to Fiastra : she stayed down in
her father's house, washing, mending, ironing, scrubbing, hoe-
ing, toiling.
" I am nothing to him," she said to herself. " If I had
been Gremma, he would have made his songs about me.'*
Signa strayed sometimes into Giovoli, indeed, as he went to
old Teresina^s and other places that he had known ; bat he
was always thinking, thinking, alwaj^s absorbed ; sometimes
seeming to listen, and then writing music on any scrip of
paper from his pocket, and at other times singing over softlj
to himself the recitatives and the airs of his Actea.
The two weeks of uncertainty were torture to him. His
hope and fear were in equal portions, and each possessed him
by turns to all exclusion of the other.
" I thank heaven, lad, you did fail at the school of deagn
in the city, and came home to make honest tubs and ehunis
and buckets,'' said Cecco the cooper to his own youngest sod
in the workshop with the vine behind the barred window.
They all had a dim sense that Signs was going to be great;
but they most of them thought it a bad thing, and pitied him,
and pitied Bruno for not having a good, strong, contented
youth, who would have helped him with the land and held it
aflcr him.
As for Bruno himself, he never spoke to any man of the
boy or of the land.
Letters came and went. Luigi Dini and the notary, who
was a good man and kindly, puzzled the matter out together,
and dealt with it cautiously and carefully. Weeks went by
SJGNA. 299
"With, all things unsettled. At length the sacristan called
3runo down into the Lastra, and said to him,
'^ The man of Venice is an honest man. There is no fear.
If the half of the cost be paid, he will produce the work in
Camival and do it all justice. There is no fear. He will not
say it will succeed, but he will give the test. He is a true
man, as such men go, living by their own wits and the brains
of others."
Bruno shaded his eyes with his hand a few minutes ; then
he nodded his head to the sacristan and drove to the city and
said to the notary, '* Sell the land."
The notary had some time before found with ease a man
who was willing and able to buy, money down, with no palter-
ing or pilfering.
** The deeds shall be ready by the week's end," he said
now ; and he sent and called in the buyer, a stranger to Bruno
and a dweller in the city ; and they shook hands on the bar-
gain, and it was concluded beyond possibility of change.
Bruno did not speak once.
" Does he sell under pressure of debt, that he looks so
dark ? It is whispered about," said the buyer.
'* Then a lie is whispered about," said the notary. " He sells
because he chooses to sell. And it is his way to look like
that."
But the notaiy thought to himself, " The man is a fool. The
boy has a pipe like a chaffinch, and so the good land is to go
in a puff of sound. The boy must be his own, or he would
never do so."
For the notary, though he dealt with the letters to and from
the city of Venice because he was paid to do so and it was no
business of his, was sincerely sorry that the solid soil was be-
ing bartered away for a lad's silly dream, and was sorry, more-
over, for Bruno.
*^ It will all end in vapor, and the boy will die in a garret
It is always so," said the notary, though hb own dwelling-
house was close against a wall on which was written " Qui
naoqoi Cherubini."
Then he entered his own house.
Signa was sitting by the oil-lamp, writing music. He sel-
dom did any other thing. His hand on the dark oak table woa
300 SIGNA.
white and small as a girrs ; his cheeks were flashed with a
feverish color ] he looked weak, and he was veiy thin.
Bruno went up behind him and laid both his hands on his
shoulders. He did not care for the boy to look np at his
face.
" Dear, it is done," he said, gently. " You have got yonr
desire. Your music will be heard in the winter. Ask Loigi
Dini the rest."
Then he left the room and locked himself in the loft abore
the stable of Tinello and Pastore. He could not trust him-
self to speak more. All the night he had no sleep.
He went out again while the stars were still shining.
Bruno went down to the little brook rushing awaj andei
its reeds, to the great fields corn-sown, to the narrow gras
paths under the gnarled olives.
Kings leaving their kingdoms have suffered less than he
losing this shred of land.
Nine years he had labored on it, giving it the sweat of his
brow and the ache of. his limbs, and all the stolen hours that
other workers gave to rest or pleasure ; and now it was going
from him as sand runs out of a glass.
All the toil was over and useless. All the nine years were
passed like a breath of smoke, and left no more tale or worth.
He sat down by the edge of the bright water. It was day-
break. No sound stirred upward or downward on the great
hill.
He was quite quiet. He had the dull dark look on his iace
that had come there when the boy had first asked this gift at
his hands. He said to himself that what befell him was just
On that spot by the rippling bum he had shattered the boj s
treasure : it was only meet now that he should lose his own.
He did not waver. He did not repine. He made no re-
proach, even in his own thoughts. He had only lost all the
nope out of his life and all the pride of it
But men lose these and live on ; women too.
He had bujlt up his little kingdom out of atoms, little by
little, atoms of time, of patience, of self-denial, of hoarded
coins, of snatched moments, built it up little by little, at
cost of bodily labor and of bodily pain, as the pyramids were
built brick by brick by the toil and the torment of unnoticed
lives.
SIONA. 301
It was only a poor little nook of land, but it had been like
an empire won to him.
With his foot on its soil he had felt rich.
He had wondered that men lived who spent their souls in
envj.
It had been his ambition, his longing, his dream, his victory :
labor for it had been as sweet to him as the kisses of love :
and when he had made it all his own, he would not have
changed places with princes or with cardinals.
And now it was gone, gone like a handful of thistle-down
lost on the winds, like a spider's web broken in a shower of
rain. Gone, never to be his own again. Never.
He sat and watched the brook run on, the pied-birds come
to drink, the throstle stir on the olive, the cloud-shadows steal
over the brown, bare fields.
The red flush of sunrise faded. Smoke rose from the dis-
tant roofs. Men came out on the lands to work. Bells rang.
The day began.
He got up slowly and went away ; looking backwards, look-
ing backwards, always.
Great leaders who behold their armed hosts melt like snow,
and great monarchs who are driven out discrowned from the
palaces of their fathers, are statelier figures and have more
tragic grace than he had, only a peasant leaving a shred of
land no bigger than a rich man's dwelling-house will cover ;
but vanquished leader or exiled monarch never was more deso-
late than Bruno, when the full sun rose and he looked his last
look upon the three poor fields, where forever the hands of
other men would labor, and forever the feet of other men
would wander.
On the morrow, the notary in the street of tb^ B^^d Gate
saw duly signed and sealed and attested the deed which gave
the land by the brook on the hill that is called Artemino. over,
from Brunone Marcillo, to one Aurelio Avellino, cheese-w^er,
in the city of Florence.
26
302 SIGNA.
CHAPTER XXIX
It was a winter^s night in the Lastra.
The cold had heen severe. It was the first month of the
young year. Snow was resting on the harbican and watch-
towers of the Porta Fiprentina and on the ledges and battJe-
ments of all the old walls. It melted every morning wheD the
noon sun touched it, but it lay there every night. The villas
were ail deserted. The nobles were down in their palaces in
the city. ^ The little churches rang their bells regularly over
the barren solitary country, like soldiers firing over a forsaken
field. The rivers were swollen, but had not overflowed ; every
little thread of water was swelled into a brook, and every hill-
fed brook into a torrent. The people were hard presed at
times for food and oil. There was a good deal of sufiering in
the little homesteads, most of all in those set high on the
hill-sides and the mountain -crests, that were swept by the bitter
fierce winds from the north, where the dwellers could see no
faces save those of their own households, until spring should
have come and made the mule-tracks passable again. Even
down in the Lastra things were not very bright ; for the people
are poor, and the taxes are many. It was high carnival in the
great towns, but they had not much to do with that Now
and then some groups of men and girls went down to join the
mummery in the city, with masks on and ribbons fluttering,
and came back white, not with snow, but with the flour-pdtr
ing ; and for the midnight fair, under the gallery of the M^ici,
the contadini dressed up their wine-barrels in quaint guise,
and the straw-pl alters took their prettiest baskets and tassels
and hats and toys, and the best-looking maidens went down
with the best winter fruits, to stand and laugh behind the
flaring torches under the evergreens and the flags, and, per-
haps, have a waltz and a scamper down the broad pavement,
with the stars shining above, and the tambourines and cymbals
clashing, and the Yeochio frowning on the pastime and the
blaze.
SIQNA, 303
Otherwise the Lastra had nothiap^ to do with Carnival,
except that dow and then it put a fat goose in its pot or
manched a bit of toothsome strong bread from Siena, or had
a set of strolling players in the old Loggia that used to be a
hoccpital in the days when Antonino preached charity as the
saving of men, and uprooted his damask rose-trees in the eternal
antagonism of Theology and Nature.
It was a winter's night in the Lastra. It was the first night
of the midnight wine-fair in the city, and the noisiest folks
were away. In the wine-shop, however, of one, Sanfranco, a
good merry-man and a son-in-law of old Teresina, a score or
more of people, men and women, were gathered. The great
wooden nail-studded doors of the arched entrance were shut
to against the driving wind. The oil-wicks burned brightly,
though they could only dimly light up the dark-vaulted cavern-
like entrance-room ; but long branches of trees flamed on the
dogs, and Sanfranco sold good wine, and his wife was a popular
soul and made the best macaroni in the communie, and a bough
outside his door always showed that hunger as well as thirst
might be allayed within.
At the moment no one was eating or drinking. The straw-
covered flasks stood about unnoticed. The pipes had grown
cold. Old Tcresina, who was at supper with them, had her
distaff idle and both hands on her knees, as she strained her
ears to hearken. Men and women sat and leaned around in
various postures, but all with the same stillness and intentness,
listening. Sanfranco himself forgot to chalk the scores of the
night ; and his wife, for once, let her fryiug-pan frizzle itself
into blackness. They were all gathered together in absorbed
attention. The sacristan of the Misericordia sat in their midst :
his spectacles were on his nose, his especial lamp burned close
at his elbow : he had a newspaper in his hands, and other papers
crumbled at his feet. He had been reading aloud some time ;
his glasses were dim with mist, his voice faltered, and his sight
almost failed him, as he continued :
" What shall we say of this child ? for he is no more than
a child. Rossini was twenty-one when Venice first welcomed,
with one voice, his mighty * Tancred.' This lad is even younger.
We predict for him a fame even greater than Rossini's. Since
oar gnmdfathers worshiped Cimarosa, there has been no parallel
to the rapture of this city at the ' Actea.' The grave-song of
304 SIGNA,
Actea is on every woman's lips to-daj ; the death-chant of tbe
Christians is echoed by every gondolier. All the air and all
the waters seem full of this new masic, which to the most perfe^
ireshness of fancy unites the severe grace and sonorous humoaj
of Durante and Pergolesi. If it has a fault at all, it is too pure.
It has the passions of faith, of heroism, of aspiration ; it has
not the passion of love ; it belongs to the soul ; it has passed bj
the senses. This is the result of his youth. It b more divine
than it is anything else. But its exquisite beauty, its truth to
all the requirements of the noblest musical art, above all, its
real sublimity of conception, have carried all before it There
has been no such scene as that of last night in Venice nce
Rossini 8 Aria di Guzzi rose on every tongue. All the city vas
in tumult. Men and women wept like children. From the first
act, which opens with the chorus of the gladiators, to the last,
which closes on the grave of Nero, there was not for ooe
moment doubt or coldness in the audience. Its reception was
an ever-increasing tempest of delight. Men who had gooe
listless and even hostile were overborne and carried away
by the universal enthusiasm. The young artist could not he
found at the moment the opera commenced. When the seoond
act had passed, and such a furore as might have wakened the
very dead shook the house from floor to roof, he was found
hidden in one of the dark unused passages below the stage.
He had fainted "
The old man paused; his voice was choked with emotion;
he let the paper fall at his feet.
The men gave a deep glad shout ; the women sobbed aloud.
" My pupil ! yes, I may call him that," murmured Luigi
Dini. ^* I taught him all he knew at first."
Then he took up the printed sheets, and went on with his
slow measured reading:
^' When at length he came before the people, he looked more
like some beautiful pale young ghost of Dcsdemona or of Fran-
ceses, than like a youth who had fought his battle with the
world and conquered. When all was over, the people got
hold of him, clambering on the boards to reach him, and zbt-
ricd him alofl on their shoulders, and bore him out into the
air, smothered with the flowers and the handkerchiefs of
women. A whole fleet of gondolas accompanied him home-
wards. The great chant had caught the ear of the whole city.
SIQNA, 305
The nobles of Venice seized him, and bore him away to
a brilliant feast. They sang it as they took him to his home.
They sang it under the windows. They brought him out again,
and again, and again. The night rang with their cheers, and with
the echoes of his music. It was not until morning that any-
thing like order or stillness prevailed. Like the southern poet
who loved Venice so well, he awakes, and finds himself famous.
It is said that he is a little contadino, the son of a contadino
also, in a village in Tuscany, and that all the study he has ever
hod has been a year and a half in Bologna. It is said, too,
that his friends are so poor, and he so penniless, that yesterday
he had not a coin to buy himself a crust of bread. He calls
himself only Signa."
Luigi Dini caught his breath a moment, and his withered
lips quivered.
" Then they pass on to speak of the music, critically, and in
detail," he said, striving to seem calm. " You will not care to
hear that It is too long. But, you see, we were no idle
dreamers, no mere weavers of cobwebs. You sec, my boy is
great."
" My little Signa, that I hid in the coffer 1" cried old Tere-
sina, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, yet laughing
in her joy.
'' Little Signa, that Nita beat like a dog I'* said her daugh-
ter, laughing and crying too.
** Little Signa, that thought it such a fine thing to have a
bowl of soap with the children on Sundays 1" said Sanfranco
himself.
"Little Signa, that we thought no better than a baby!"
said his son, a strong, lusty young blacksmith.
^^ Little Signa, that is only Pippa's son 1" said Cecco, the
cooper. ** Only Pippa*s son I and that base-born."
" Little Signa no more," said Luigi Dini ; " and base-born ?
what does that matter ? God has called him into the light
of the world."
" Will he ever look back to us ?" murmured the old woman,
with the slow tears falling down on her hank of flax.
" Never mind. We will look up at him," said the old man
pently. " But I do not think he will forget. We do not
think the stars see us in the daytime, but if we go down into
a well, we see that they do Just the same : so wiill it be with
26*
1
306 SIONA.
him. The great light may hide him from onr nght, hat be
wfl] see us all the same."
They were all silent.
" Did he write anything himself?'' said Oeoco the cooper,
after a pause.
" He wrote, ' Tell Bruno/ and sent me all these pi^iers.
That was all.**
'^ Bruno !" echoed the cooper, who was his fnend.
* They had none of them thought of Bruno.
" Poor Bruno," said the old man, sadly; he was thinking
of the price that Bruno had paid for the night of Tictoiy in
Venice.
" You cannot go up to him to-night," said Sanfranoo : ^ the
hill-paths are perilous."
" No. The post came so late, too, from the state of the
roads. I will go up the first thing in the morning."
" Perhaps be will be in here to-night. I think he went
through to the wine-fair. I think he had to go ; yes, he saki
SO.
" Yes, he said so," echoed Cecco. " But only to take wine
to SaWio's stall. He will not stay."
^ Does he expect to hear this news to-night?"
" Not to-night," said the sacristan. " The man of Venice
has dealt so ill with the lad, putting off, putting off, till here is
nigh the close of the Carnival. We began to think that be
would cheat us utterly. He had a ballet that ran well. He
did not care. No. Bruno has ceased to hope. * What is done
is done ;' that is all he has ever said about it."
" It is a wonderful glory !" said the woman. " Read na
again. Read us again, good Luigi."
And he read again, the story which already he knew so
well by heart that it mattered little that his eyes swam so
often, and that the printed letters were wrapped in mist.
As he read this second time, the heavy iron-beaded door
swung open, letting in a blast of bitter frosted air, that almost
blew the lights out : a man came into the room, shaking snow
at each step on the red bricks, and muffled in his thick brown
cloak, wearing it across his chest and his mouth, in the same
fashion that Dante and Guido Cavalcanti once did theirs.
It was Bruno.
His baroccino stood without, with the mule tiled and oold,
SIQNA. 307
and the candle dark in the lantern that swung from the shafts.
He had deposited the wine at Salvio's stall, and hud come
away, leaving to others the riot, and dance, and glee, and jest,
and mumming, and masking of the great Carnival fair, under
the arches of the galleries on the edge of the Amo.
In many a hy-gone year he had been the wildest there, with
rough jests over the sale of the wine, and rough wooing of
the women's torch-lit graces, and mad dancing with black
dominoes and rainbow-hued maskers, while the drums and
flutes had resounded through the great arcade fill the daylight
broke.
^'Saniranoo, will you give me a light?'* said he, coming
into the midst of them with the rush of cold air ; " mine is
gone out, and the frost makes the hills bad driving."
Then his sight fell on the sacristan with the printed paper,
and he glanced over all the faces of the others, and read them.
He strode up to the old man.
" There is news of him ?" he said, under his breath, with
passionate thirsty eyes.
'' Yes, great and good news," said Luigi Dini ; but his feeble
voice was drowned in the deep shouts of the men, and the
women's shrill cries, each eager to tell the tale the quickest,
and to be the first.
" Great and good news !" they clamored. " All Venice is
mad for him, Bruno. He has taken the city by storm. The
people have feasted him, and chanted him all the night long.
Only think 1 only think ! Just our own little Signa. Just
Pippa's son, as you say. He is great. He is famous. He
has all the world after him. Only think 1 only think !"
Bruno stood in the centre of them, the snow falling in
flakes ofi* his garments, his eyes turning bewildered from one
to another. Then he put his hand up before his sight, like a
man blinded with a sudden blaze of light. It was so hard to
understand. It was so hard to conceive as possible.
" Do they laugh at the boy ? or at me ?" he muttered, with
the linger of a sudden suspicion awakening in the flash of his
glance.
"No, no! No, no!" said Luigi Dini; "who would have
the heart to make a mock of it? And what is there so
strange ? It is what we hoped and prayed for, only it passes
beyond all our prayers. The lad is great, ^yes, do not look
308 SIQNA.
80. The dear child is great, and his fotnre is safe. God is
good ; and yoa sold the land not in vain/*
Bruno dropped down on a bench that stood near.
" God is good," he muttered.
They were all silent. Thej could not shout and chatto' and
praise and wonder any more. There was that in his intense
stillness which overmastered and awed them.
Whether it were pain or thankfulness they could not teL
Whichever it was, it was beyond them.
Sanfranoo was the first to speak. He touched Bruno on the
arm.
" Stay here in the warm, and let him read you the news,
such news ! We have heard it twice over, but we can well
bear it thrice. I will see to your beast. Io not go back to
the hills this rare night. We ought to have a bonfire on the
roof of the big gate. Stay with us."
Bruno rose to his feet, still with that unsteady dazzled ]ofk
on him like a man wakened by a blaze of fire.
" No," he said, absently. " No. See to the mule, he is
cold and lame. Come away with me, Luigi. Let me hear,
all alone."
The old sacristan made a gesture to the others to be quiet
and cease from their pressing, and gathered up all the papeis.
"Yes. We will go to my quiet little room. It will be
best," he said, and put his hand on Bruno's arm and guided
him out of the doorway into the dark freezing night It was
but a stone's throw to the sacristy. Bruno went out like a
blind man. Sanfranoo followed them, and put up the vaxik
in his stable.
" One would think he was not glad, afler all," said he to his
wife, returning.
" Nay, he is glad and thankful," said his old mother-in-lav,
who was clipping an oil-wick. " If it had not been for \os
labor, who would ever have heard of the dear little lad ? But
^look you ^the stars may see us in the day, as Luigi says,
mayhap they do ; but if a star were all one had to loye, it
would be hard work to feel the loneliness and the oold dose
in, and sit in the dark water of the well and only catcii a
glimpse of the star now and then shining ever so &r away
up in the light of the sun, and we out of the li^t hr-
ever."
SIGNA. 309
'' That IB tme, mother," said Sanfranoo. " But yon talk
like a book."
^' Nay, Day, never so ; I talk sense," said the old Teresina.
'^ Bat that is how it will always be with Bruno and Pippa's
lKy ; just the well and the star, just the well and the star :
do you see ?"
*^ I see," said Cecco, the cooper who loved Bruno ; and he
emptied half a flask of wine.
The gray dawn came into the little room by the Misericor-
dia Church, with the black cross-bones and the memento mori
everywhere about it, and beyond its lattice the old broken
battlements and the duU winter skies.
He had it all read to him, over and over again. He sat
leaning against the table with his head on his hands.
He understood it all ; he understood it ; the fame of the
arts is that which is most intelligible to the peasants of this
country, those descendants of the men who ran weeping and
laughing before Cimabue, and filled the churches to hearken
to the oratorios of St. Philip Neri.
They understood it by instinct.
So did he. But it was still like a sudden blaze of flame, so
close to his face that whilst he was dazzled by it his eyes were
darkened and sightless.
Was he thankful ? yes, he thanked God. God was good.
So be stud from the depths of his heart.
Living for the world, the boy was dead for him.
And yet he thanked God.
Time went away, and he took no count of it His feet and
limbs were cold, but he had no sense of it. The little lamp
paled and the chilly dawn came, but he had no perception that
it was morning. He sat thinking, thinking of this wonder-
ful thing which that night had brought : of this distant city,
where the little fellow who had run barefoot by his side was
raised up as a prince among men.
Afiection quails before the supremacy of art ; as art in its
turn cowers under the supremacy of passion.
The boy was dead to him ; that he knew. The old man
who had sat quiet and patient, sleeping a little and waking up
to warm his hands over his little pot of ashes, touched him at
last, almost frightened at the silence and the stillness with
which he leaned there, with his head on his hands.
310 SIONA.
'' The dear, good lad I'* he said, softly. " He will irrite
himself * princeps musicorum* after all ; aj, we alwajs nid
it, he and I, dreaming here leather, the old fool and the joiuag
one, as they used to say. But do not lament for it, Bmno ;
I mean, do pot sorrow for ourselves. He will not forget. He
Is too true of heart."
Bmno shivered a little, waking to his first sense of the oold
that had frozen around him. He rose : he smiled a little.
" I will pray that he may forget,*' he said, slowly. " When
he remembers, then he will have dropped down from this
height He was my lark. I broke his cage. Let him go
up up ^up. Why should he fall for me?"
He spoke dreamily, and he had his hand before his eye^
with the same dull sense of confusion and of wonder which
had come upon him when he had first listened to the nevs.
He put out his hand and grasped Luigi Dini's in farewell.
'' TeU him I have heard," he said. ' Tell him I am glad.
What money I can I will send. There is nothing more to
say."
Then he threw his cloak over his mouth and went down
the staircase through the little church that was quite dark.
Luigi Dini, fumbling with the keys, unlocked the door and lei
him out ; he passed up the street towards the seaward gate,
without remembering that his mule stood in Sanfi:anco*s stai4e.
CHAPTER XXX.
Was he thankless ?
No. He thanked God.
God was good : so he said from the depth of his soul.
Had not the boy his desire ? But Bruno said, " God is good'*
as the Argive mother said it when in answer to her prayer for
their blessing her sons were smitten down dead.
She did not doubt the goodness of her gods : nor did he
that of his.
Bat as the woman's heart was rent in two by the fulfilling
of her prayer, so was his now.
SIGNA. 311
Some faint hope had been alive in him which he had hated
because it was hope, which he had plucked at to pluck out
from his soul as the basest and meanest of crimes : some faint
hope, cruel, irrepressible.
As he went, some men and women coming from the fair,
merry and loud-tongued from wine, tossing their masks by the
strings and flinging white comfits and pellets of chalk one
from another up against the closed casements and the iron
bars, reeled against him as he passed, and recognized him.
*' Ah, Bruno, black Bruno !'* they called to him, half dnink-
enly. " There is rare news of your little lad in the city, of
Pippa*8 son as you call him. A lion in Venice, a lion with
wing? I Such a fuss never was. The boy is a great man,
just at one leap. Bravo 1 Why not ? We will have his
music down in Florence at Easter. If he be your own boy,
say so now. Claim him while you can get him. Another
year he will be too fine to notice you, oh, they are all the
same, those swectrthroated birds, when they get a nest of gold
and a bough of laurel to sing in che, che ! he will be like
the rest."
Bruno passed them without a blow or a word. And yet men
had often hurt him less, and all his blood had been in flame,
and his steel had been in their flesh.
The maskers, laughing, daished their chalk up at the grated
casements, and reeled noisily through the still sleeping Lastra ;
he walked away over the bridge, with the mountain-wind fierce
in his teeth.
The solitary bell of his own little brown church was ringing
for the fast mass when he reached the hills above the farm of
Fiastra, tolling sadly through the gray winter fog.
He entered it, and prostrated himself on the stones.
There was no one there save the old priest officiating ; the
candles burned dully, the white mist had got into the church,
and the vapors of it hung about the altar; the voice of the priest
seemed to come from a cloud. Some sheep lefl out all night,
forgotten by the shepherd, had crept in, and lay huddled to-
gether under one of the pillars ; the north wind blew loud
without.
Bruuo kneeled there in the dampness and the darkness and
the bitter cold.
* God, save the boy always," he prayed with all the might
312 SIGNA,
of his heart " Do not think of me : if I stanre heire, if I ban
hereafter, it does not matter: I am nothing. Only, save the
boj."
So he prayed again and again and again, with his forehead
on the stones, and his heart going out to the great onkoown
powers he believed in with a mortal agony of suppiication. The
world was as a fiend to him that wrestled with him for the
soul of Pippa^s son. Of himself he could no nothing.
Would heaven be on his side ?
Would the great, quiet angels stir and come down and have
pity?
When the mass was over, and the old priest, thinking the
church empty, had gone away to break his fast, the shepherd,
seeking his strayed sheep, followed his dog within the church-
doors, and found them sleeping together at the foot of the
pillar, and found beside them a man stretched face downward,
senseless in a swoon.
'' It is that tall, strong, fierce brute ! W^e thought him made
of ironl" said the shepherd, wondering, to his sheep-dog.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Meanwhile Lippo, in the Lastra, read the news-sheets,
and walked with meek pride among the idlers at the house-
doors at the close of the working-day.
" Yes, ^my nephew," he would say, with some new joamal
in his hand, out of which he could spell some fresh descriptioD
of the successes of the Actea. " Dear boy 1 to see how great he
is. And to think that if I, or rather my good father-in-law,
had not advanced the money for that litde bit of land, all this
great talent might have been buried forever, ay, it makes one
proud to have been the humble means. But, iadeed, in his
babyhood I foresaw the bent that he would have ; you will re-
member, I always spared him to chant in any church they
sought him for. I knew it was fine practice, and what yono^
life can begin holier than by using God's gifts to praise His
saints ? It always brings a blessing. * Put the child to work,*
\
SIQNA. 313
people said always ; but I, and Nita too, said, ' No ; as fiir as
we have aught to do with him, we dedicate him, as the parents
did the little Samuel, to the sacred offices of the Temple.'
Only then Bruno interfered, and would not have it, because
the church only gives but a few pence ; as if it were pence
brought the blessing ! But that is all bygone. I wish to bury
all remembranoe of diflPerence. Only poor Bruno is so hard
and harsh.
" Oh, yes, it is all true, all printed here ; the Syndic of
Genoa sent him special entreaty to be present at the first rep-
resentation in the Carlo Felice, and all the town was dressed
with flags, and strangers flocking from all parts ; it might have
been a victory with half a million of men killed and wounded,
for all the mighty rejoicing that there was. It does seem
wonderful, and he such a little lad ! But he does not forget
tis. No ; he wrote to Nita yesterday, and sent a necklace of
pearls for our Richetta, remembering she is sixteen years old
to-day. Was it not pretty, and so grateful ? But he knows
who were always his true friends, dear boy 1 Nita will show
you the pearls if you go all of you up-stairs. He is so fond
of us, and we of him ; only he cannot let it be seen when he
stays here, because his first duty is, I always say, to Bruno ;
and we know what Bruno is."
And Lippo would go up the street, and murmur much the
same at other houses in the short twilight of* the shortening
days ; and his townsfolk listened, and ended in believing him.
True, some skeptic said that the pearls were old ones of his
mother's that he had had reset himself on the jewelers' bridge
down in the city ; and some of those malignant souls that keep
long memories for the torment of their fellow-creatures, since
most folks like to write their lives in sand, remembered one
with another a little fellow, beaten black and blue, who had
run hungry about all day on Lippo's errands.
But these were in a very small minority. Baldo was a warm
man, the Lastra knew, the Lastra itself being usually cold, so
far as empty pockets go ; and Lippo had got the bit of land
upon the hill, and had added another little bit to it, and had
moreover such a pretty way of lending money at convenient
moments to his neighbors, and, when oblig^ to ask for it
back again at inconvenient ones, sorrowed so and wept, and
took high interest with such reluctance or such protestation of
o 27
314 SJONA.
it, that the Lastra oonld not qnarrd widi him, nor object to
seeing with his eyes.
Lippo grew daily into a power in the little place; and
Bruno, all the Lastra knew, and Signa-on-the-Hili knew too,
had always heen a dangerous, dark man, who kept his own
counsel in churlish silence, whilst candid cheerful lippo laid
his heart hare as a good comrade should, and kept dose
thoughts in nothing.
The Lastra, like the world, did not mind a little lying ; it
was the life of gossip ; but silence it would not forgive ; silence
was the highest sin and the biggest.
And Baldo felt so much respect for him in consequenoe,
and had so high an opinion of his judgment, that be gave his
money for any scheme of investment or modes of purchase
that his son-in-law proposed.
'^ Lippo had not a centime of his own,*' said the shoe-
maker to his special gossips, *^ but then he knows how to plant
a centime in the ground, so as to make it take root and
blossom into hundreds. That is better perhaps than to be
bom with money, to know the art of getting and tamios^
about other people's. The miller gains more by the wheat
than the farmer does.'*
It could hardly be said that Baldo ever liked his son-in-lav.
But he grew to be glad of him and to believe in his good sense.
" Nature makes some folks false as it makes lisards wriggle,**
said he. " Lippo is a lizard. No day ever caught him nap-
ping, though he looks so lazy in the sun."
Bruno had neVer known how, or, knowing, never would
have troubled himself, to please the people round him.
Lippo did know.
*^ It IS no good to make your life into a bit of solid silver fit
for goldsmiths, and shut it up in a cupboard : you will get no
credit," he said to himself. " Make it into a dish of tomatoes,
and put plenty of garlic in ; and let every one put a finger
into it, and lick his finger afterwards : then they wiU alwaya
speak well of you, and think they helped to cook the dish as
well as eat it, and so will take a pride even when your plates
are all cracked in you."
And Lippo always ate his tomatoes in public, and so was
much beloved, and turned his vin^ar to oil.
" I thought he was a ne'er-do-well," said Baldo. " But I
SJGNA, 315
was wroDg. For pretty Ijing, nicely buttered, and going down
like a fig in a dog's throat, ^ere ia not his equal anywhere,
not anywhere "
CHAPTER XXXII.
The next morning old Teresina, being a h^e old body, and
active, climbed up the slope to Oiovoli, and told Palma the
tidings.
The girl was hoeing among the frost-bitten ground, and
digging out cauliflowers.
She straightened her back and listened, with her great eyes
open in humid wonder, to the tale the old woman brought,
a tale enlarged and glorified as such narratives ever will be
passing from mouth to mouth.
Palma could understand nothing of it; less than any of
them. She had never been out of the Lastra. She had never
been in any city, nor heard any music except that at church
and at the country merry-makings such as those at Fiastra.
It was all obscure to her, terrible, incomprehensible. It was
as if they had told her Signa had been made a king.
" Sure it was his heart's wish, so we ought to be glad," said
old Teresina, when all her story was done.
" Tes, indeed," said Palma ; but her head was in a whirl,
and her throat was full. She knew, as Bruno knew, that,
living for the world, he was dead to them, quite dead. All
the country was talking of him : how should he remember ?
" She is a stupid little mule," thought the old woman, an-
grily. " She feels nothing, she sees no greatness in it all ; she
is only good to grub among her cabbages."
And she went away huffed, and thinking she herself had
been a fool to walk all the way to GiovoH to tell her news.
Palma worked on among the hard sods, filling her hand-
truck with cauliflowers, which her brother would wheel down
to the market at the back of the Palace Strozzi.
She was always hard at work, in the open air in all weathers,
and knowing no rest; for they were poorer than ever now her
brother grew so big; and, what. with the mill-Uix and the
316 SIONA.
goods-tax and the tax at the gates for everj scrap of eatable
stuffs or inch of homespun cloth, the lives of the poor are terri-
ble in this land where all the earth runs over with plenteoiisi]e8&
Hour after hour she hoed, and dug, and uproofed, and
packed the green heads of the y^etables one on another : all
the while her heart was like lead, and her tears were dropping.
" One ought to be glad ; he would have broken his heart
here ; one ought to be so glad," she said to herself.
But gladness does not come for the commanding of it, nor
at the voice of duty. She could not feel glad ; she could onij
feel, " We shall ^ever be anything more to him. never any
more."
Signa had been the one grace, the one poem, the one sweet
gleam of leisure, rest, and fancy, in all the dead level of b^
laborious life.
All the rest was so dull, so hard, so unloyely ; all the rest
was just one constant up-hill struggle for sheer life, one
ceaseless rolling of the stone of poverty upward every day, to
have it fall heavy as ever back again with every night. Her
father was idle, her brothers were quarrelsome ; their needs
were many, and their ways of meeting them were few ; every
one leaned on her, everybody looked to her, everything was
left for her to do and save : she had a nature that would have
been happy on a very little, but she had no time to be happy ;
no one ever thought she could want such a thing. All the
loveliness about her always, from the blaze of sunrise over the
hills to the mitre-flower in the path between the cabbages, bhe
had no time to note : if she had a moment to rest she was so
tired she could only sit down with closed eyes, heavily, stu-
pidly, like an overdriven horse.
Signa alone had sometimes made her look up and ^ee the
daybreak, look down and see the cydamen ; Signa alone, with
his smile and his song and his dreams and his fancies, bad
brought her a little glimpse of that life of the peroeption and
of the imagination without which the human life diflPere in
nothing from that of the blinded ass at the grinding mill.
She clung to him quite unconsciously ; he was the sole ray
of light in her long dark day of toil, ^toil that no one thanked
her for, because it was so simply her duty and her obligation.
She loved him with the simplest, teuderest, most innocent
affection ; and with infinite humility, because she so seldom
SIGNA. 317
could reach the height of his thought or the stature of his
mind. He was the one heauty in her life ; he was so unlike
all else that surrounded her ; even when she knew him wrong
his error was more divine to her than others* right ; the hope
of him when he was coming, the memory of him when he had
gone, had illumined for her so many days of joyless labor ;
when his life had gone quite out of hers she had been deso-
late, with a desolation the more absolute because no one
gaessed, or, guessing, would have pitied it.
And now at his victory she was not surprised. She could
not understand it, but she had believed in him as he had be-
lieved in himself; and, so believing, she had been sure that he
would do the thing he wished.
Therefore the news had found her, and had left her, so quiet,
o quiet : only with a weight at her heart like a stone.
She knew, as she had known at Fiastra, his feet might re-
torn, but his soul never 1 She tried to make herself glad ; she
hated herself because she failed to rejoice.
'* He would have broken his heart if he had not succeeded,"
she said to herself; and all the while she worked among the
black earth whose chinks were filled with ice, and her feet
were numb with cold, and her poor wisp of a woolen skirt was
blown through and through by the north wind, and she tried
to cheat herself and believe that she was glad.
When the cabbages were all packed, and the rest of the
garden-labor done, she went within a minute, and got out a
little morsel of paper-money sewn within her mattress, and
stood and thought. Years before, it had been given her by
her godmother, ^the only little bit of money she had ever had
for herself; and she had been told by her father to spend it on
herself; and she had saved it always from year to year, think-
ing when she could get a little bit to add to it to buy some
stockings and shoes for mass-days ; for she was a little ashamed
of her bare feet in the churches. But the other little bit she
had never got yet, all that was made by her labor being always
wanted for the black bread for the boys* mouths, of which,
though she toiled ever so, there was never enough. She had
dung to the hope of getting it always, but day by day, year
by year, the hope drifled farther and farther away, and the
little scroll of a bank-note was all alone in the mattress a
yellow tumbled scrap of a few francs in worth.
27*
318 SIGNA.
Now she took it out and meditated a moment, and llieii na
dowo into the town. It was with her as if she were weighted
with some heavy burden dragging at her heart-strings
every step ; yet with every step she said to herself^ ^ I
glad ; oh, dear Madonna, make me ^ad !**
She ran down to a nook in the town where there dwdt a
man by name or nickname Chilindro, a little old man, of
great repute in the place as a draughtsman, and whose busi-
ness it was, for due payment, to make those colored drawings
which by the score adorn the voto chapels ; thank-ofieringi
Tor great mercies, and propitiatory presents to the saints, where
color is lavish, and perspective unknown, and miracles are
commemorated in a primitive art that scorns all rule save that
of the buyer's fancy.
Ghilindro drove a good trade in his art : the peasants love
these votive pictures, and believe in them beyond all other
ways of pleasing heaven. Does a man escape death by fire or
water, does he fall unharmed from roof or rick, does a duld
pass through peril unscathed, or a mother hear her son is
saved from shipwreck, or a loose horse in mad career pass
without trampling on a prostrate creature, the miracle, if it
have been wrought for pious souls, is drawn and painted, or a
fitting print is colored ; and the Madonna, or the Saint in-
voked, beams out from flames or waves or clouds ; and the
record of the heavenly grace is carried up to some favored
chapel, and hung with thousands of others, to show that there
sdll is gratitude on earth, and to plead for further favors still
from heaven.
Chilindro did not know how to draw, but that was no mat-
ter : in these pictures art is nothing, fidth is all things ; lai^
splashes of red and blue, and the people taller than the houses,
and the Madonna or the Saint always very prominent, that
is sufficient. Chilindro was a good old man, and a great gos-
sip, and had a high repute for holiness, and had painted the
miracles of the Signa country for thirty years and more, till
heavenly interpositions seemed no more to him than the drop-
ping of an apple seems to any other man.
Palma climbed up to the attic against the south wall where,
when times were good and accidents were many, he spent his
days.
He put on his spectacles, and drew his wonderful wooden men
SIGNA, 319
and women, and his shipwrecks with gaping fish far bigger than
the vessels, and his blazing hay-ricks with the Virgin sitting
in the flames and patting them out with the mere borders of
her robe ; ibr Chilindro, though he could not draw a straight
line, had a very great reputation, and people came from far
and near to him, even from the shores of the sea. and the
coasts of the marshes, where the little chapels, that crown the
heatbered rocks and paths among the rosemary over the blue
waters, have so many of these offerings from seamen and sea-
men*9 wives, and the coral -fishers and the trawlers who draw
their daily bread from the deep.
Palma went up to the old man, in the dusk of the late winter
afternoon, and drew out her piece of yellow paper.
" Is that enough for a good one ?" she asked, with all her
heart in her eyes.
The old man scanned it prudently.
" It depends on what you want Has your syreetheart been
in trouble? Is that it ?^'
" No,'' said Palma, too utterly absorbed in lon^ng to do
right^ to heed the jest or blush for it " Look ; I am not sure
what it- should be, but something that would please St. Cecilia.
It is she who listens to all music, and sends beauty into it, is
it not r
" Ay, ay," said Chilindro, roughly, being not over-sure him-
self, and preferring fires and shipwrecks, which were all the
Madonna's. " Ay, ay ; go on : what do you want with St
Cecilia? I deal with no chUdishness, you know; that were
pro&ne."
Palma leaned both her hands on his table, and her heart
was beating so, that he might have seen her rough bodice heave
with it, only he was an old man and did not care for girls.
" Profiue I oh,' no, no, no 1 It is the very life of his life.
It is the only thing he loves. If you would do something very
beantiful for her that would please her very much, and show
her I am glad, something that would please him too, if ever
he should see it ! I would take it up myself and pray with it,
and so she would watch over him always. That was what I
thought This is all the money I have. I have saved it for
years ; meaning to buy shoes always. If it be enough, if you
would make it do ? then she would know how glad I try to
be. Only I cannot I cannot not just at once."
320 SIGNA.
Her Yoioe eboked in her throal ; her eyes gased impkrin^
at the old man, as though he held the keys of heaTen ; sl^
had absolute faith in the power of what she stfore to do ; if
she could haye given her life-blood to get Iha pietme, she
would have given it willingly.
The old man scanned her curiously. She was too thin and
ill-:lad and blown and beaten by the weatiier to Bave mndi
beauty ; yet she looked almost handsome, in her brown, rough,
simple way, as she leaned there in the dusk over his boaid,
witn her great braids wound about her shapely head, and her
breast heaving, and all her soul shining in her eyes.
" It is that boy who has made his fame in Venice/' thought
the old Chilindro; but he had seen too much of men and
women to seem to know the thing they did not wish tbem
selves to tell ; he had painted votive offerings for road4rigasds
in his earlier days, and taken their money and asked notJiing
but what they chose to say, a still tongue, he held, being as
gold to whosoever has the wit to keep it safdy tacked behind
his teeth. His business was to make the pictures, not to tuni
people's memories and desires inside out ; beades, he saw tiie
story of the girl in her Reaming innocent eyes.
There were so many stories like it ; without them half the
walls of half the votive chapels would be bare.
He looked at her and at the paper note, then seemed to
meditate.
'^ It is a low price ; and St. Cecilia, ^that is more difficult
than the Madonna ; she is more hard to please. Our Lady is
everywhere. She is used to it. Still, I will do my best, jou
being a young thing, and wishing it so much : only your price
is low. Because you will want laurel, and harps, and the
trumpet of fame, and all the rest ; it is to get triumph for the
youth and for his music that you wish ?"
" Yes r' said Palma, with a sigh that shuddered her with an
infinite pain. " Yes ; triumph al^rays, what he longa ibr,
triumph eternal, that shall live longer than he lives. That is
what he used to say. Ah, you are good to do it for so little ;
then thev will know in heaven I am glad.''
The old Chilindro was silent He was used to see all woes
and joys of human emotion. He was used to mothers, sisters,
wives, daughters, mistresses of men, who came and wept and
laughed and prayed, and were mad with rapture at the sweet
SJONA. 321
sadden delivenmoc from death of some life that made the sum
of thein. But this girl moved him ; she was so quiet, and
jet there was such longing in her eyes.
Nevertheless, he took her money.
" I will do the picture, and you may come for it this time
to-morrow," he said, as he raked up the little note into his
leathern bag. '^ But that you are wise I will not say. My
dear, in failure they come back ; in success, never."
" I know," said Palma.
'' And you still wish the picture ?"
'' I will be here for it this time to-morrow ; and you are good
Co do it."
Then she went.
Chilindro did no work that night, but went and gossiped :
on the morning he did better for her than he did for most ;
lie took a little wood-engraved head of Eaffaelle's Cecilia, and
left it undaubed by color, and drew round it in his own clumsy
fashion the laurel and the bay and all immortal symbols, Pagan
and Christian, twisted all together, and lettered under with the
little line '' Haurietis aquas in gaudio."
He did not know very well why he wrote that in his flourish-
ing gilded letters, but he thought it would serve its turn.
Then he put it in a plain black frame, which was a free gifl,
and could not have been claimed as portion of the picture.
It was much simpler than his flames and waves, his azures
and his crimsons ; and yet, somehow, he thought he liked it
better than them all.
With the dusk of the dav Palma came for it To her, too,
it seemed beautiful. She looked at it in silence, her hands
erosaed on her bosom, that he should not see how high it
heaved.
'^ It 18 good of you to have done so much for me," she said,
gently, and then she took the picture and folded it under her
ragged woolen shawl, and again went away, without another
word. %
Chilindro was disappointed.
" I wish I had made her pay for the frame," he thought, as
his dxr shut upon her.
Palma, with the speed of a goat, ran up into the hills ; she
bad so little time to spare ; her brothers would be home by
nightfall, clamorous for their dish of soup. There was a little
o
322 SJGNA.
church high above Oiovoli that she loTed wdl, a littk old
brown tumbling church, where Signa and Gemma had often
played with her among the old tombs in their babyhood, and
sat with the sheep-dog up by the altar, wondering at the little
stone children and the broken pieces of jasper and porphyry,
and the blazoned St. Sebastian, with the arrows in him, up m
the narrow window, cobwebhung.
And sometimes Signa, with Gemma and her at his feet on
the steps of the altar, had sung the chants he sang at matin
and complin with the other choir-children ; and the sweet little
flute-like voice of him had gone sighing out through the arched
door to the sunshine, and away over the gorse and the rosemary,
till it found the thrushes singing too, and was lost in the myrtle-
leaves with them.
She ran up the hill to this little church ; there wcare do
thrushes now, and the rosemary and myrtle were bare, and the
savage north wind pierced her through and through, and the
ice in the clefls cut her feet.
It was just open for evening service.
There were a few scattered huts and farms, whose peasants
would steal into it sometimes and sit down in the daricness and
rest if they did not pray.
She went in and threw herself down on her knees in the
corner nearest the altar. It was there that she meant to ask
to have the picture hung, just there, where the old brok^
rail was still bright with the jasper, and where Signa had used
to sit and sing.
" dear God ! I am glad, indeed I am glad I*' she said, as
she kneeled with her hand on the stone and the little picture
close clasped against her breast. " Gemma is dead ; and he is
the same as dead to me. But G^mma is safe with you and
the angels, and he has the thing that he wished. I am glad,
indeed I am glad. I would not have them back oh, no !
only perhaps he will see the picture once, and then he will
know I did what I could ; then he will know. I am gkd 1"
SIONA. 323
CHAPTER XXXm.
The spring came in Venice.
There were flowers all the day long everywhere, and mnsic
all the night ; the swallows and the doves were happy in the
cloudless air ; the sweet sea- wind only hlew sofUy enough to
lift the hair of the women standing on the wet marble stairs
to meet the boats of fish and of frait.
It was the city of Desdemona, of Stradella, of Oiorgione,
of Consuelo. Signa lived in it as in a dream ; this silence
enfolded him like sleep, sleep filled with the stir of birds'
wings, the sound of waves, the sigh of the wind in the case-
ments full of lilies, the murmurs of amorous whispers.
'^ Am I awake ?" he would say to himself in this won-
derful trance of slumberous delight, when all the air was full
of his own melodies and all the people's eyes turned afler
him.
Signa drifted on the tide of the city's praise and passion,
like a rose dropped on a smooth-flowing river. He hardly
wondered. The women's touch and words would make him
color like a girl, and he submitted to them with a soil timidity,
graceful as the bending of a reed in the wind. Other\rise he
was quite tranquil. No glory and no beauty could be quite
so glorious or so beautiful as those of his dreams.
To him who had dreamed of a triumph like Petrarca's and
a grave like Palestrina's, who had dreamed of gates of gold
for his Lastra, and all the nations of the earth for his singers,
to him nothing could appear very startling or very great.
True, he was only a little contadino, who still loved best his
feet shoeless and his breast bare ; a little rustic from the vines
and the olives, happiest to sit in the sun and eat a slice of
bread and a handful of fruit ; but the native grace of move-
ment and absence of self-consciousness made him as serene in
a ducal palace as on the hill-side at home, and less moved at
a prince's compliment than at the shout of a boatman or a
fruit-seller. '
He came into the fiune that welcomed him as a young heir
324 SJGNA.
into his hentage. It was nothing strange to him. He had
looked for it so long.
" For years to long and dream and give np all hope, and
then to wake of a sudden and find the dream all Une, that
is to he happy indeed !" he would say to himself; and happy
he was with the sweet, glad, thoughtless innocenoe of a cluid.
So happy that he never thought to turn his steps backward
to those who watched at home on the high lonely hill in the
light of the setting sun.
Every day, indeed, he thought, " To-morrow I will go.*^
But when the morrow became the present day, he still aaid,
" To-morrow !*'
He was caressed, adored, feasted, sought, done homage to
all through the city in the months of spring. In any other
country thero might have been a coarseness in the adulation,
a vulgarity of fashion in the universality of praise, which might
have sated or have nauseated him ; but here, in the city that
once heard the serenades of Strade^ and held the wometi of
Tiziano, it was all one simple impulse of ardor, one unstudied
outburst of rapture, one sweet natural inspiration answering
his own as the whole forest full of song-bink answers the first
morning singer at sunrise ; and the days were one long fesfta,
and the gondolas wafted him from piJace to palace, and all
women caressed him, from the bare-limbed fish-girl standing
in the surf of the Lido to the jeweled lady leaning on ha
fringed cushions of silk.
Others beside the Moon leaned down to kiss this young
Endymion.
He was so great a rarity to them, so innocent, so shy, and
yet so full of grace, with all his peasant's simplicity and igno-
rance, yet so far away from them by that look in his eyes and
that serious beauty of his &ncies, so utterly unlearned in all
the usage of the world, and yet so dreamfully calm amidst
it all, as if he were some young marble god that liad beeo
touched to life out from his sleep of twice a thousand years in
Latin soil.
For he was dreaming of another opera.
He had the story of the Lamia in his head, ^the Venuib
Lamia of Athens ; the young Greek flute-player, whose &oc
is still seen on the carved amethyst in the library of the
Louvre; she who, in Alexandria, made captive, beaeune the
8IQNA. 325
BOToreign mistress of her conqueror, and by the magic of her
music and her beauty yanquishcd the victor of Ptolemy and
changed death into love.
He knew very little of any other learning than his own
sweet science, but here and there the old classic stories had
beguiled him, and the Lamia had of all others pleased him ;
perhaps because the girl who became a goddess by force of a
man's passion for her had been a high-pnestess of his own art.
and by that art had changed death mto love.
In the glad spring days, the music for his Lamia came to
him as the butterflies came in on the sea-breeze over the white
lilies in his window. The Actea had been solemn with the
gloom of wasted love and martyred courage ; the Lamia as she
came to birth was radiant with all the glory of young life.
He had read the story one day sitting on a boat's keel on
the Lido sands, with bis feet in the water and the white sea-
birds above his head in the sunshine. He saw his Lamia in
the waves of light that ebbed and flowed from the shining sea
to the shining skies ; saw her though he had never seen the
amethyst ; saw her with her pure Greek face and her passion-
ate eyes and her floating veil and her fillet that marked her
the priestess of melody, the Lamia Aphrodite of Athens.
And the story haunted him, and the music came with it, and
had all the passion in it that was in all the air around him, and
jet not in his own heart ; that women here breathed on his
own young lips, and yet which lefl him so unmoved to it, as
the sirocco goes over a lyre and leaves it mute.
The red sullen glow of old Nile, the white serene radiance
of Athens, the brooding darkness of Egypt, the living rings
of the dance-chain of the Hormus, the palm -crowned virgins in
the feasts of Hyacinthus, all the faces and things gone from
the earth three thousand years and more became living and
visible to him.
Actea had been but a shadow to him in his music ; Lamia
lived for him and smiled. Women wanted him to love them.
He did not But he almost loved Lamia.
^' Shall I see her likeness living oneday ?*' bethought; and
his face grew warm.
It was the first time that any thought, save that of his
music, had quickened the pulse of his heart.
*^ You do not care for us," said a young fisher-girl, with her
28
326 SIGNA.
beantiPol bronie limlMi thrown down by him on the sand, ind
with her hands stroking his hair.
Signa smiled.
** Oh, no ! Why should I ? I see women so mnch lovelier
than any of yon on earth.^'
" Where ?" said the girl of the Lido.
" In the sun, ^in the sea, ^where the swallows go, where
the shadows are, anywhere, everywhere. But most beautifnl
of all when I close my eyes and play in the dark, so sofUj ;
and then they come."
'' Who come ?" said the girl.
" Ah, who !*' said Signa, and he smiled, lying haxk on the
sand, with his eyes on the blueness of the vanlt above him.
" Does no one love you at home ?** said the girl.
" Only a man,'* said Signa.
" And the great ladies here ? The princesses ? that one
with the blue and gold in her gondola, who seeks yon so often 7"
" She is a princess. And I, I am only a peasant, joa
know. At least I was yesterday.'*
^' Then you do not love her ; though she loves you ?**
" No."
'' And you do not love me ?"
" No, dear."
" Then what is it you love ?"
" The things that I hear," said Signa. And I will love the
Lamia when I find her."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
With the spring a little house was reared on the bit of
ground by the brook, a little, square, low house, of the gray
stone that is quarried above, roofed with red tiles, and entered
by a small arched door.
A peasant came to live in it, ^a very poor laboring-man,
who could hardly keep body and soul together ; but he was
enough for the work of the place. The com was green and
promised fiurly; the olives and the vines were yrm set for
SIQl^A. 327
blossom ; the reeds and the rushes grew all the thicker for
deep winter rains and some weeks of hard frost.
When the little grass paths between the fields were all white
^vrith the clusters of the sweet-smelling snow-flakes, that are
called in t^^is country the church-bells of the spring, there came
up on Sundays and days of feast a handsome, pensive-looking
man, a black-browed, stout-built woman, with a red shawl and
gold pins in her uncovered hair, and a tribe of riotous children.
Bruno, working in his cattle-shed, saw them
They were Lippo and the family of Lippo.
They came up often, and brought a flask of wine with them,
and rolls of bred and sweetmeats, and would sit down under
the olives and eat and drink, and see the children race about
and laugh very noisily, and seem the very soul and symbol of
content ; never quarreling by any chance whatever.
Bruno saw them through the trees. Their words could not
reach him, but the echo of their laughter did.
They were friends of the cheese-seller, no doubt. The
cheese-seller never cared to come up thither himself; perhaps
being so fiuaway down in the city.
Bruno never spoke of it ; and no one ever spoke of it to him.
Who would, must come. He was a stranger there.
Later on fell St. Mark's day.
Bruno was at work.
Since he had lost the land and the boy, he could not keep
the saints' days holy ; he could not lie idle in the sun ; he
oonld not endure the quiet of leisure. Unless he had always
some toil to do, some effort to make, he felt as if he would
turn sick or mad, or do some evil thing. In the dawn he
would go to the first mass ; that done, he labored all the rest
of the day till nightfall.
He was digging up his early potatoes and shaking the earth
off the roots; it was a calm, bright day; there had been
showers ; the yellow water iris was pricking up in every run-
let, and the little black velvet lily that the city took for her
arms and her emblem was in the grass wherever he turned.
He did not strike them down with his spade now. Signa
had cared so much for flowers.
He was working on the side of his farm that looked upward
to the land he had lost.
There was a belt of fir-trees between him and it, and then
328 SIONA.
a field of green barley, and then again another row of in.
Looking down on the black earth and the green plants of the
potatoes, he did not see three men oome through the treee and
stand and look at him.
He only raised his head as a voice said his name softly.
Then he saw his brother Lippo with his yonngeei dukL
clingiog to his knees, and beside him his two fiiendsi Moido
the barber, and Tonino the locksmith.
" Bruno !" said Lippo, very sofUy.
Bruno struck his spade deep down into the earth, and slrack
his heel on it, and seemed as though he had not heard.
Lippo left the nearer belt of firs between his brotber and
himself. He stood at a little distance among the half-giown
barley. His youngest child, a girl of three years old, with a
face like a little St. John, and a temper like her molJier^s,
clung to him, dressed in fresh white clothes, and with a knoc
of red field-tulips in her hand.
" Bruno dear Bruno," said he, softly. " You must see os
often here. I thought I would come and tdl you ; you Mii^t
hear it by accident and wonder. I thought yoa would be
sorry for your land to go out of the family ; once haTing been
in it S^ ^the name used was Avellino's, I have known hira
long and well, a most good creature ; but the money was mine,
and the land is transferred to me, you understand? I am a
poor man, but I have a kind father-in-law, and when ooe has
so many youog ones, one tries to save and better oneself, you
understand. I thought you would be glad. And you will see
us often here ; and if you will be neighborly and brothieriy,
dear Bruno, both Nita and I shall be most willing. The diU-
dren might oome in and cheer you, you so lonely here **
The self-satisfied, soft smile died off his face ; the little girl
hid hers and screamed. Yet Bruno had done nothing ; he
had only dashed his spade into the soil to stand erect there by
itself, and stood with his eyes biasing upon Lippo's.
Then by the mightiest effort of his Hfe he controlled him-
self, and bent over the earth and dug again, stamping his foot
down on the iron as though he stamped a traitor^s life out
with it.
Lippo waited, with a vague and gentle appeal upon his
face, and a look every now and then of gentlest wond^ at hia
friends.
SIGNA, 329
Bmno dag on, scattering the black ground right and left.
*' Will you not speak, dear Bruno ?" said Lippo, moum-
ftilly. " I thought to give you pleasure 1"
Bruno stood erect.
" Christ spoke to Iscariot, and forgave him. He was the
Son of Ood. I am a man. If you say one word, or tarry
one moment, I will brain you where you stand."
Momo the barber and Tonino the locksmith plucked back
at Lippo's sleeve.
" Come away ; come away. He is possessed "
" Envy I" murmured Lippo, with a sigh, and let himself
be led away back through the green and bending barley.
Bruno, leaning on his heavy spade, breathed loudly, like a
man exhausted ; the veins of his throat swelled ; his bronzed
face grew black with the rush of blood.
'' Christ, keep my hands from blood-guiltiness," he muttered.
I cannot ! ^I cannot !"
CHAPTER XXXV.
Down in the Lastra at evening, Momo the barber and To-
nino the locksmith told the townsfolk how Bruno had threat-
ened his brother's life for the second time : ^beware the third I
'* We heard him ourselves. It is worse than Cain 1" they
said, in the merry little wine-shop in the Place of Arms.
'^ He squandered away his bit of land just to keep his boy in
lewd living away in the cities ; and good Lippo, to do the
matter delicately, bought it back, only getting another's name,
not to seem too forward or hurt him too much, and thinking
only of saving his brother's credit, so that it should not pass
to a stranger ; and when he breaks this to him, so prettily,
oh, so prettily ! and offers him love, and good will, and the
children to keep him company, the brute threatens only to
brain him, to brain him with the spade he worked with,
and said that the Son of Gkd should have done the same by
Iscariot 1 It is too horrible I Lippo is a saint, else would he
bid the guards of the law keep their watch over Bruno. This
28*
330 8I0NA,
we heard with our own eiin. This wc saw with our owi
eyoB.
And the wine-shop echoed, '^ Worse than Gain T'
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Thb spring went by, and the summer, and the tidingi that
came to the Lastra were always good.
The boy wrote now from here, now from there, ^now fiom
a mountain town, where his music was playing in a summer
theatre ; now from a lake palace, where some great prince had
summoned him; now from the cities, where foreign directon
were seeing him ; now from the sea-shore, where 'great ladiei
were wooing him. He said so little ; he was hidden from them
in a golden cloud ; they could scarcely follow him even in fimcy.
But he was well, he was happy, he was triumphant, he wanted
for nothing. They had to be content with that, and to imagine
the rest, as best they could.
All the northern countiy was echoing with his music, up to
the edges of the Alps, and from the one sea to the other, and
the boy was wandering, welcomed and praised and rejoiced orer
everywhere, and with hia own melodies always ringing in his
ears, as the gorgeous genius of the *' Anacreon of Gknoa" had
been three hundred years before. This was all they knew, and
they had to be content with it
He was gone over the land like one of the improvisatori of
the old times, with the sound of his " sweet singing" in herald
of him everywhere ; their lark had gone up against the sun ;
they could see him no longer ; they had their work to do, the
work that kept their eyes on the earth.
Bruno labored on his lands, and went to and irom the mar-
kets, and toiled early and late in all weathers, and seldom spoke
to any living thing except his dog or his oxen ; Luigi Pini
opened and folded the black robes of the brethren, and sav
the sick and the dead carried by, and unclosed and closed the
church-doors, and thought that the days grew very long ; poor
8JONA. 331
merry Sandro died, quite suddenly, of a ball in his throat, and
Pal ma bad to sell her hair to a barber in the town to pay for
the grave, and to keep the boys and the roof over their heads
as best she could, two of them earning something small, and
three of them nothing at all ; old Teresinafell down her wooden
stairs and broke her leg, and could trot about no more as her
chief pleasure had always been to do, but had to lie and look
over the tops of her roses in the little square window, and only
knew when the sun went down by the glow in the bit of sky
that was all she could ever now see. The weeks and the months
were very slow to all these, and the luxuriant summer only
brought them heat and pain. They could not follow their
lark, even in fancy ; he was gone so high and so far ; and
though the summer had come for them, it was all dark and
dust. But they were glad to think he was away against the
sun, glad, all of them.
One morning Bruno went down early to the market in the
city. It was August, and he had samples of his wheat with
him. He worked hard ; never looking over through the belt
of pines to the brook under the rushes ; worked as hard as he
had done when he had worked with a great hope and goal
before him ; partly because it was the one habit of his life,
partly because he so had least time for thought ; also ^although,
indeed, the boy needed nothing now, and made his money for
himself, and would have none sent to him because, still, the
time might come that he would want it.
'^ Di doman non si e certozza."
One never knew, so Bruno said to himself, and laid by what
he could in the old leathern pouch thrust behind a loose brick
in the chimney-comer, that had once held the purchase-money
of the land that he had lost.
It was five in the morning ; a morning cold with that fresh
alpine clear coldness which precedes at daybreak the hottest
weather for the noon, and refreshes the thirsty earth with its
dense dews, that are as thick as rain. On the bridge he met
a girl slowly toiling under a great burden of linen ; she stopped
aa he passed her, and lifted her large eyes to him. She was
very thin and very brown.
*' Is it you, Paima?" he said to her ; he could not refuse to
stop : poor Sandro had been a good friend and kindly to the
boy. " Is there anything I can do for you ? You look ill."
332 STONA.
"No," she said, timidly. "I wanted to know IV
you have any news of him ever ?"
" All is weU with him, yes," said Bruno. Thit Dim
sees, sees in the printed papers. He has not written now,
not for some time. Tou see, it is not as if we oould read
what he writes, or write ourselves. I dare say it seema to him
as if we forgot, since we can never answer.'*
" He will not think toe forget,*' said Palma, and stood suQ
with her great eyes clouded.
" No. But no douht it seems as if we were all dead. It is
to be half-dead in a way, not to read and write, ^I see that
now. I used to think it only fit for poor pale fools in dtiea.
Not a thing for a man, ^unless one were a priest."
'* But he knows we cannot write," said Palma, ^ and Lni^
Dini does for us, ^for you, at least Perhaps it is he hinaalf
who does forget?"
" Why not ?" said Bruno. The thought was like an arror
in his heart, but he would never open his lips to blame the boj.
" Why not ?" murmured the girL
Why not, indeed ? They had nothing to do bat to xeBien-
ber ; he had all the world with him.
" Gk)od-day," she added, and moved to take up the bundle
of linen, that she had rested for a moment on the paiapet of
the bridge.
But Bruno looked at her curiously. He had seen ha t
score of times since the Lenten time when Sandro had died,
but he had not noticed before that her hair was clipped short
to her head like a young conscript's.
" What have you done with all your braids ?" he asked.
" I sold them."
" What for ? "
" To pay my father's burial : ^it just paid it."
' I wish you had let me know. I would have paid. Poor
child I I never noticed it before."
^^ That is because I tied a handkerchief on. The baibtf
shaved my head quite close. Now the hair is grown just a
little."
" You are a good girl. Can you manage to live anyhow ?*'
" Yes. We can just live. Frunco and Beppo earn a little.''
" But you must work very hard ?"
" I have always done thaL Why not?'*
SIQNA. 333
** But you are a pretty girl when you have your hair. You
xntust marry.'
Palma gave a quick shudder.
" Oh, no.'*
" And why not ?"
She colored to the hronze rings of her shorn curls.
" My brothers will want me many years yet ; and then I
shall be old."
She nodded to him, and went her way over the bridge,
carrying the linen she had washed for the canon's house-
keeper on the hill. Bruno walked onward : he thought little
of the girl, though he had always liked her for her courage
and her industry, he thought much of one of her answers :
* Perhaps it is he himself who does forget." Yes ; of course
it was he himself; it is always the one who goes that forgets,
always the one who is left that remembers.
No doubt the boy forgot them : why not ? He said so to
bis own heart every day all through the long months when the
letters came so seldom and the printed papers were so full of
Strna*s name and of Sigua's music.
He walked on trying to fancy what his boy looked like in
all those strange cities among all those strange faces ; trying
to fancv how it was when the streets were throntred and the
flowers were tossed and the theatres were besieged and the
viva8 were shouted: he had seen such nights of applause, such
hours of homage, himself, in Carnival times in his youth, when
Florence had found some singer or some musician in whom its
heart delighted, and for whom its winter roses were gathered
and its voices uplifled in one accord.
But he could not imagine the boy among such nights as
these, Pippa's son, ^the little delicate lad running barefoot
by him in the dust, and looking up through his curls to see
if the heavens had opened to show him the singing children
of God.
It perplexed him. He could not grapple with it.
All through the warm months, in the long oppressive
evenings, with the thunder-clouds brooding overhead, or the
sirocco driving the straw and dust through the gates, the old
man had sat in the doorways and read out to all the many
listening groups this tale and that, this history and the other,
of the victories of Signa's music wherever it was heard, wel-
I
334 SIGN A.
oomed in every UttJe city of the plains and every giy town on
the shores of lake or sea as the carnations were welcomed and
the swallows and the nightingales ; all through those moDtbaj
Bruno, hearing, had come no nearer to comprehension of it,
no nearer than, the vague dull sense that the world had the
hoy and he had lost him.
He had grown used to it, as we grow in a manner used to
any pain, wearing it daily as the anchorite his girdle of shaip
iron ; he was proud of it in his own silent way, as the seamen
on the shores of Genoa were proud when they heard how the
old world had heen forced to take an empire from theiis,
"nado nocchiitf; promettitar di regni;*
proud when he went through the Lastra or down the streets
of the city, and men who had long shunned him paused n his
path to say, " And that young genius they talk so much of
northward, is that indeed your hoy?" and he answered, "Yes:
it is Pippa's son,** and went his way. Proud so. Prood of
the hoy and for him, ^the little corncrake that left the fields
to cleave his flight where eagles go.
But he could not comprehend it-, could not realize that
the little fellow so late singing his seouenoe at mass, with
the other children, in Holy Week, with his ragged homespoa
shirt, and hungry stomach and sad eyes, could now have name
and fame with other men, and be spoken of as they spoke in
Florence of great Cimarosa.
It was true, no doubt, and he was sure of it ; and working
in his field he thought of nothing else, and said forever to
himself, ^' If he has got his desire, what does it matter for me? *
but still it was dark to him ; there were times when the great
oppressive weight of it lay on him as if he had been boned
alive, and in his grave could hear the footsteps of the boy
going away, away, away, farther and farther, always over his
head, but beyond his reach and beyond his call forever.
It was a stupid feeling, no doubt, born out of ignorance sod
emotion and solitude ; but that was what he felt often, often
in the quiet lonely nights when there was no moon in the skies^
and no sound on the mountains.
This day he walked straight to the city, and did his traffick-
ing in the square before the heat had come, and while the
shadows were still long on the steps between the white lions.
SIGN A, 335
By noon these matters were done with by most of the men,
for the weather was at its sultriest, and the shade ff the cool
arched granaries and wine-bams in the country more to bo
desired than the soorching pavement. He went into the place
of Santa Maria Nodella, having a last errand there to a har-
ness-maker. In the blinding sunshine of the unshadowed
square there was a white slender figure, a boy's face, a gesture
that he knew : before he could speak, Signa had thrown him-
self upon his neck.
'' It is 1 1 yes, it is 1 1" he cried. " I have just come by
the iron way that you hate so. I thought I would walk, I
thought I might meet you, being Friday. Ah, dearest, truest,
best friend ! all that I am you have made me \ all that I may
become will be yours !"
Bruno looked at him speechless. Once before he had re-
joiced so greatly, only to find his error. He dared not now
be glad.
He gaied at the boy, so changed and yet in so much the
same : the solitary sunlit square went round and round him
like a whirlpool of white fire. The great stones seemed to
heave and dance.
" I made sure now you had forgotten," he muttered, and
stood stupidly like one of his own oxen when it has been very
long in the dark and is led out on a sudden into the full blaze
of the noon.
^ Forgotten ! Did you think me lower than the beasts ?*'
said Signa, and he kissed the man's brown hands.
^ Yes, it is true," he added. " Yes, I was base not to come
back long ago. But every day I said, To-morrow, and every
morrow brought some change, some wonder, some great thing
to do or hear ; and so the summer has slipped away as the
spring did. But forget I oh, never, never 1 What would I
be now but for you ? a starved and beaten thing in Lippo's
house.**
^ Let us go in here,** said Bruno, and he mounted the steps
of the church, with the white marble of it shining in the
noonday sun, and went into the body of it, where the light
was like a great rainbow stretching from one stained window
to another. There were a few people about it, some gaaing at
the pictures, some kneeling in dark comers.
Bruno drew him down the marble steps into the silence of
336 SIQNA.
the green cloister ; there was not a soul there ; the gate vas
left open, the guardian of the charch dosed in the heat, stttiog
in the shade under the pillars.
Id the solitude where only Giotto's &ded saints and ancl
looked upon them, he drew the hoy dose to him and looked
in his face.
" My dear, my dear ! God is good !" he muttered. '^ I
donbted it, ay, I doubted; God foigive my doubt! When
that traitor took the land, I oould have killed him. God is
good. My hands are clean. And the world has not taken
you from me ; men have not made you forget. Ah, our God
is good. Let us praise him !'*
He leaned against one of the columns, with his fiu^e beat
down on his arm ; his bare chest heaved, his strong nerrtms
limbs trembled ; the hot sun poured in on his uncovered head,
then silently he put his hand out and grasped Signa's, and ld
him into the Spanish Chapel, and sank on his knees.
The glory of the morning streamed in from the dcMSter;
all the dead gold and the faded hues were transfigured by it;
the sunbeams shone on the face of Laura, the deep sweet
colors of Bronsino*s C]ena glowed upward in the vault amidst
the shadows; the company of the blessed, whom the old
painters had gathered there, cast off the faded robes that the
Ages had wrapped them in, and stood forth like the tender
spirits that they were, and seemed to say, " Nay, we, and they
who made us, we are not dead, but only waiting.*'
It is all so simple and so foolish there ; the war-horaes of
Uccello that bear their lords to eternity as to a joust of arms;
the heretic dopB of Gaddo, with their tight wooden collars ;
the beauteous Fiammctta and her lover, thronging among tbe
saints ; the little house, where the Holy Ghost is utting, with
the purified saints listening at the door, with strings tied to
their heads to lifl them into paradise; it is all so quaint,
so childlike, so pathetic, so grotesque, like a set of wotdfo
figures from its Noah's Ark that a dying child has set out
on its little bed, and that are so stiff and ludicrous, and
yet which no one well can look at and be unmoved, bj reason
of the little e^ld hand that has ibund beauty in them.
As the dying child to the wooden figures, so the dead faith
gives to the old frescoes here something that lies too deep for
teais; we smile, and yet all tlie while we say. If only we
SJQNA. 337
could believe like this ; if only for us the dead could be but
sleeping 1
Bruno sank on his knees on the bench by the west door,
under the beautify Bronzino that the shadows were so covet-
ous of, where the word Silentio is written on the wall.
In him the old simple blind Mth lived, as it had lived in
the hearts of the old painters, that had covered the stones
here with their works.
He cried straight to heaven, and he believed that heaven
heard him.
Holding the boy's hand in his, and with his head thrown
back, and his eyes meeting the ^I sun-rays that glanced from
Bronsino's Christ to him, he blessed God, who had brought
back the body safe and the soul pure.
Then his head sank, his forehead fell upon the back of the
bench ; he knelt silent many moments. He spoke to his God
alone, or to his dead ; not even Signa heard.
When he rose he looked calm, and his eyes shone with the
peace of a tranquil happiness.
Let us talk here a little,'' he said, and they went out into
the arcades of Giotto's cloister, where the mountain-winds,
and the autumn rains, and the fierce beating of the mid-
summer suns, have stripped the saints and prophets bare.
'^ And you are a great man !" he said, with a slow soft
tfmile. "A great manl you Pippa's son ^my little cow-
herd and sheep boy ! Forgive me, dear ; it seems strange."
'' Nay, the music in me is great ; not I," said Signa. " I
am like the reed that the gods took to breathe through : that
is all.^'
^ And that is pretty of you to say. But a man is known
by his works, as a tree by her fruit; and yours are good.
You were no dreamer, niy boy, as we thought."
' But if you had not sold the land 1" said Signa.
Bruno winced.
Why talk of that ? What is done is done. The land
was for yon ; you were right to have it sold. I see that now,
dear ; it was only hard at first."
" But who has it? You said a traitor."
'^Lippo has it. He bought it secredy. Honestly as
money goes, but not fairly ; there is a difference. But why
speak of these things ? Never put back on your teeth a wal-
p 29
338 SIGNA.
nut that has the worm. Dear, yon thiDk I hare snfoed.
Do not poison your pleasure with that fancy. When the
news came that winter night, I had more content ^fbr yon
than ever the land would have brought with it. I said, * God
is good.' Gtd u good. He has giren you your heart's de-
sire ; and you have come back safe, and have not ibigotten.'*
He was leaning against one of the columns ; the hoy wu
sitting on the marble ledge where the grares are. Brono
looked down on him as the sun shone above his young up-
turned face. Signa was not much changed ; his drees was ail
of white linen, but it was very simple; the sea, and the travd,
and the hope and new gjoiy of his life had warmed his cheek
and invigorated his limbs ; that was all ; but there was aboot
him, and upon him, that immeasurable, indescribable altersdoa
which nuses up the childhood that dreams into the manhocd
that has accomplished ; he was a boy still, but he was a boj
who had fought his fight and had conquered.
He was no longer Endynuon sighing fitfully in a tormented
sleep with vain desire ; he was the Endymion who had held
his divine mistress in his arms, and vanquished and possessed
her.
" Do not think of the land any more, ever again," said
Bruno. " It was of use. That was all it could ever have
been. It is for me now as if I had never had it. That is alL
Dear, tell me of yourself rather : you have so much to teL"
It was a noble lie.
The land was the cruelest loss of his life. Eveiy lime that
ihe voice of his brother echoed up through the pines, eveiy
time that he saw the strange hands among the oliveboughs
and the river rushes, the longing of vengeance possessed him
as ardently as in the moment of Lippo's first taunts, the sharp-
ness of its loss was as poignant to him as in the hour when he
had first said to the notary, " Sell." But Bruno gave his gifts
with both hands ; he did not weight them with a miUstone of
appraisement
Signa had so much to tell ; days, weeks, months, conld not
have exhausted for him the story of his wanderings and his
victories. He had lost nothing of his simple eager ^th,
nothing of his spiritual endless aspirations; only now, instead
of dreaming of victory he had achieved it ; now, instead of the
passionate praises of genius he had its passionate joys.
SIONA. 339
He told his story sittiDg under the arches of the noble
doisters, with the strong August sun making the marble warm
like human flesh. It was the same story that Bruno had
heard from the letters and from the printed sheets, month afler
month ; but it only now took life and color for him, it only
now became an actual truth for him, heard from the boy^s
happy breathless lips, with the blue shining above the op^n
courtw
Signa was a great singer in the land, as Cimarosa had been
in his, with his gay melodies caught from the threshing-bams
and the orange-gatherers and the coral-fishers and the vintage-
dancers ; as the poet Chiabrera had been, with his mighty
odes that echoed Uke the roll of battle ; as the improvisatore
Bernardo had been, with his silver lute that held the Romans
still as listening goats that circle round a shepherd*s pipe : that
he could understand now, wonderful though it was, now that
the boy's eyes shone back to his, and the boy's own lips told
him of cities and villas and searshores and mountain-palaces,
and the tumult of towns in summer nights, and the chorus of
strange voices under his casement singing his own songs till
the dawn broke.
He could understand it now ; and though it took Pippa's
Bon away from him, ^quite away into a world where he him-
self could never tread, ^yet he was proud of it, and glad,
bewildered, but very glad.
That you should be so great, you little thing I" he mur-
mured, and smiled, thinking of the night coming in from the
Certosa, when he had carri^ the child, worn out and tired, as
the owls cried and Signa dreamed of the Fair Angel.
To Bruno the boy was only such a little thing, ^no more
than a girl was, or a bulrush or a willow rod in the stream.
And half the nation was chanting his music, and the other
half babbling of his name 1
'* The land did not go in vain I" he thought, with a thought
that he would not utter aloud, lest it should seem a regret or a
reproach ; and then he rose and shook himself, with a glow of
joy on his olive skin and a soflened light beaming under his
straight drooped eyelids.
*^ Let jQS go, dear. Hark ! The clock is striking. We have
talked here three hours. I will get your baggage ; you left it
yonder ^yes ? It is not fair to keep you from the Lastra. And
340 SIGNA.
yon are tired, too, no donbt, and huDgrj. Will joa deep to-
night on your own little hard bed, after lying nndcr then
great nobles* roofe? Do palaoeB smdl sweeter than our luUs?
I think they cannot"
Talking bo, with a qnicknen and abundance quite nre to
him, that came with the proud overflowing of his eileot heart,
he went and sought the boy's small packages, and swxmg tbem
over his shoulders, and came out again into the hot sunshine
smiling.
He was only a peasant, with bare feet and shirt open at his
breast, and his face dark with many years of tofl ; but there
was nobility about him, and dignity, and freedom.
Signa, who, though he had half forgotten, lored him, looked
at the dark erect figure of him against the white marble azid
the blue sky, and thought the old painters might have painted
him there in the chapter-house as the Shepherd King, tbe
Re Pastore of Metastasio and of Peigolen.
" Can you walk, dear ? Oh, it is too far ! I did not bring
the cart to-day,'* said Bruno.
Signs laughed.
" Too far ! The dear, old, dirty, ugly road that I had to
trot down in an hour after Baldo's beast ! No ; I should like
to see eveiy stone of it 1 And perhaps the people wiD knov
me. I think so."
So they went
" You should haye*a chariot, like a young prince ; and jim
walk as we do in the dust," said Bruno, with a smile. He was
so proud and glad. AU jests seemed sweet
" I love the dust Does it not go to the Lastra?**
And he stooped and raised a little of the dust' in hts haod,
and kissed it, and blew it away, and laughed. He too was so
happy. All trifles had their charm.
" Poor Palma asked for you this morning," said Bruno.
" Palma did ? I have brought a trinket for her."
" A trinket 1 She sold her hair in Lent to pay for her
father's burying."
They went on along the road. It was dusty, noisj, un-
lovely, as it always is ; with the people sitting out at their
doors, and the smiths and the joiners and the coopers and the
straw-plaiters all at work in the darksome open interiois.
Presently one woman clapped her hands.
8IQNA. 341
' If that is not little Signa that used to live on the hiU T*
And then a hlacksmith stood and stared.
" What, Brunone Marcillo! is that your hoy?"
And the oontadini going hy in their carts turned, and
looked, and shouted.
" That is Signa ; only he looks like a lordling, all in his
white, and with shoes on I"
And they drove away, and said in the gates of the Lastra,
'' Signa is come home. He will be here in a very little ;
we ]aaBed him on the road."
But the road was long to Signa ; for now one would speak,
and then another would shake hands, and one man would fetch
out a stoup of drink, and some girl would give him a fresh
carnation; and what with one thing and another, and the
gathering groups and the recognitions and the wonder and the
eager greetings and the reluctent &rewell8, his path was made
as slow as any young conqueror's going along laurel-hung streets
in war-time ; and by the time they came in sight of the shields
on the Porta Fiorentina it was nearly night, and the Ave Maria
was sounding everywhere, and the lamps were b^inning to be
Ughted.
In this country people gather together, like mosquitoes ailer
a wisp of lighted straw, on the slenderest pretext, to follow,
and to watch, and to chatter.
There was a throng on his steps, laughing, shouting, chat-
tering, not knowing very well why they w^nt, but vaguely
&neying that he, since the world had made a king of him,
must have grown rich, and would by-and-by throw some gold
to the foremost.
There was a little crowd at his back, and out of the great
east gate there came another crbwd ; there was a white-haired
old man at their head ; they had torches flaring red on the
dusk; women ran with them, and children; the deep voices
and the shrill ones rose together ; they were singing his own
Death-Chant of the Christians. Luigi Dini, who led them,
had taught it to them to sing as requiem in the Holy Week
of the past Lenten season. When the peasants had driven in
saying, " Signa comes," the old man had called his choristers
together, and many young brethren of the confraternity, and
had said to them, " Let us meet him with his own music :
there can be no welcome like that."
29*
I
842 SIONA.
Signa stopped suddeiilj ; bis heart sweDed, liis ejes
he had had many a grander triumph, many a more radiant
spectacle, many a louder-toned praise fVom bigger multitude ;
but none had moved him like that little crowd in the fitful
glow of the torches, tbose fresh, rough, untndned voiees angii^
his own music in the dusk and the heat of the summer night,
at home.
They came out to meet him as a conqueror ; and, only sudi
a little while before, he had been a little child they moc^edl at
for hearing the angels singing in the douds, when for their
ears only the crickets chattered in the com.
He stood still while the torches tossed about him, and the
strong familiar voices throbbed and thrilled upon the air: then
he threw his left arm round Bruno's shoulders, and stretdied his
right hand out to the old man ; and he looked at the brown weB-
known faces turned upward in the shadow of the old gray gate :
" Bear ftiends, what I am, these two have made me. The
heavens would never have opened for me if on earth xhese two
had not succored me. When I am gone, will you remember
that?"
In an after-time the people said to one another, " What did
he mean ^ when he was gone' ?"
Then, standing outside the gateway there, and stretdii]^ in
a long line through the Lastra, while every casement and every
doorway had its cluster of eager faces, they only flung ih^
torches in the air, and shouted vivas loud enough to stir the
soldier soul of dead Ferruocio, sleeping far away. Then, as
the peasants had done above Fiastra before the world had hcaud
of him, they lifted him on their shoulders, and, laughing and
shouting and crying and leaping like young children in their
pride and pleasure, they bore him away under the aidi of the
old gate, chanting the Chorus of the Christians, while finom
every dark doorway and eveiy grated window heads were
thrust and hands were offered, and in the dark dull town just
going to its sleep there was one universal outcry,
*' It is little Signa come home 1"
Up by the shrine of the Good Counsel, Lippo's window
alone was dark.
And Palma, mending the great holes in her brother's shirts
by the light of a solitary oil- wick while the boys were sleepiD&
knew nothing of the festival within the gates.
SIONA. a43
It ira8 late ere they would let him go. They were poor
people, all of them, working for their daily bread ; but if he
oonld have eatea gold that night they would have found means
to change their loaves to it, they were so proud of him, their
little, neglected, laughed-at waif and stray, \o whom the grilli
in the moonlit wheat had taught such sweet^toned singing.
They forgot that they had been rough with him, that they
had kicked him about like a little l^e dog, that they had said
all manner of cruel things to him and of the man who defended
him : those who do the wrong can so easily forget. But neither
did he care to remember.
They were the people of the Lastra to him, the people of
his home.
That was enough.
They would cany him into Sanfranco's house ; they would
poor forth the richest wine that the country could yield ; they
would all touch him, all look at him, all have a word with him ;
they would come in one on another in an endless stream, with
a ceaseless delight ; they would pour question on question,
wonder on wonder, and stand and look at him as if he were a
young god come down on earth.
" And to think if I had not let him have that fiddle so
cheap, the world might never have heard of him, ^never 1"
said Tonino the locksmith, looking in on the edge of the crowd,
though he did not adventure farther.
For not only the fly on the spoke takes praise to itself for
the speed of the wheel, but the stone that would &in have
hindered it says, when the wheel unhindered has passed it,
" Lo ! see how much I helped 1"
Signa, perceiving him in the dark without, looked over at
him and smiled.
He did not care to remember his hurts. He was happy,
and men all seemed to him brothers in the sunshine of 6od*8
peace, like the saints in the Spanish Chapel where he had
prayed that day.
^' When I was a little thing,** he said to them, " I dreamed
of gates of gold for the Lastra here. Gktes of gold I never
can give. But, if all go well with me, I will live and die
among you here ; and you will make my grave on the high
hills, and you will sing what I have written when you bury
mc."
344 SIQNA.
''Why does he talk of dying?*' they nid to one another.
"' Hk life 18 only jnst b^on.'*
But Signa did not hear them. He was looking down on
them with a smile, while his eyes were wet with tears.
He had looked like that when he had been a little child,
and they had said, " Is it the ang^ he hears? nay, it is only
the crickets in the com that are hnmming.'*
It was late when they wonld let him go. Bruno had waited
patiently, saying nothing to any sonl, drawn huk. a little near
the door, wiUi the look of a great peace npon hb faoe ; hnt alait,
because too proud and with too much scorn in him to say,
'' Tou see that I spoke truth. And this is no young god,
this is only Pippa*s son, whom you derided."
The crowd went with him out by the sea-gale, and took
lesTe of him till the morrow, kissing hb hands and hb dothes,
and shouting and leaping around him, and bidding him \
down at sunrise, all the tables of the town should be qvead
for him.
He had refused to be taken homeward. He wished to trad
with hb own feet Uie londy fiimiliar road. As the last of the
throng left him, and Bruno and he were alone, in the moonkas,
sultry night of the hottest month of the year, the edio of the
people's Toioes followed them, still singing the diant of tlie
Christbns.
'' Fame has only the span of a day, they say," murmured the
boy, half aloud. " But to live in the hearts of the people,
that b worth something."
" They love you now. Ten years ago they beat yon ; ten
years hence they will beat you again if the humor take them,"
thought Bruno ; but he said nothing. After all, he might be
wrong.
CHAPTER XXXVn.
Thsrs was a little light in a littie hut by the waynde.
Bruno looked at it
" That b where Palma lives now," he said. ^ The other
house went with the garden. She works late to-night, there
are so many boys."
SIGNA, 345
'' I will give her what I have brought,*' said Signa, and he
paused and knocked at the door. " It is I Signa 1" he cried
aloud.
The girl unbarred the door and flung it open. She did not
speak, but her great eyes were alight with a fire like the leaping
of the dawn, and she trembled from head to foot.
" It is I," said Signa, slipping into her hand a little packet.
*' Look, you must wear this to please me, ^to show you I did
not forget. I will come and see you in the morning, dear.
Good-night !"
He kissed her cheek, and went away.
Palma took the parcel to the light, and opened it ; it was a
string of carved coral beads and a cross.
"And I am BO ugly now I oh, so ugly ! Oh, how cruel Ood
is !" she cried, in a passion of anguish, and dropped her poor
brown head on her hands ; her head that was like a boy's.
She had never before thought it any pain to have given her
brave black tresses to pay for her father's grave,--only a duty,
so simple and natural that it was not to be thought twice about
in any way, and never to be lamented with self-pity ; but now
she could have wept her very soul out to have lost her sole
treasure, to be so unlovely, so absurd, so shameful, to have given
up her one crown and veil of womanhood.
" I am so ugly I" she moaned, sitting on the bare mud floor,
with the pretty coral necklace in her lap.
It was all the reward that her sacrifice brought her, ^to
know herself disfigured and discrowned when Signals eyes
should fall on her with the morrow's sun.
She had never thought about herself, never taken any count
whether she were lovely or unlovely, ill or well ; in her bar-
barous life, filled to the brim with work that was never done,
there was no time for any such speculation ; she toiled all the
day long and half the night without joy or pause, or recom-
pense of any sort ; honest and pure and loyal to her task by
sheer instinct, as birds are clean, and leaves are ; never with
any thought of herself, all her life being merged in the lives
she served ; but now, for the first time, her heart cried out in
sick rebellion.
God had made her ugly, -just as Signa came.
346 SIQNA.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
He, unwitting, went on with Bruno up the sea-road where
his mother had stumhied to her death. There was hardly a
breath of air, even on the hills. After a while, having reached
a height, they paused and looked behind them. It was all a
great sea of darkness, fragrant, but solemnly dark, like a
mighty grave.
'^ And you love nothing but your music still ?'* said Bnmo,
suddenly. " Nothing ? no woman ? You would tell me ?"
''No woman, no!" said Signa; and he spoke the simple
truth. Yet in the gloom of the night his &oe grew wann.
He had loved no woman yet ; but in his visions of late the
angels that came to him had all women^s forms and women's
faces, as in the visions of the Paradise on Orcagna's field of
gold.
As they stood and looked back into that soft impenetnUe
darkness, there came a fluttering line of light, which, undu-
lating like a fiery snake, stole thjnough the shadow up and up
and up towards die clouds.
'' What is that ?" cried the boy, startled and unnerved after
the homage and the wake^ fancies of the* night.
'' They are the torches," said Bruno. '' A hill-burial, that
is all. There are so many lights: it is some young thing
dead."
" The torches came to meet me in triumph an hour ago,"
thought Signa, and a shiver went over him, and he oeased to
look back.
The lights stole up the hill-side towards some lonely tomb
among the silence of the woods, then vanished, and aD was
dark.
8IQNA, 347
CHAPTER XXXIX.
With Uie moniing, Signa went down to see more quietly all
his old friends of the Lastra. Passing, he paused by Palma's
hat. She was at work in her garden, gathering tomatoes off
the bashes before her poor little dwelling. She had tied the
red woolen handkerchief over her head again. She hardly
looked up as she thanked him for his gift.
"It is too magnificent for me," she murmured. "Ton
know I am so poor always, and so ugly now ; I have lost my
hair."
" Who would not love you more, dear, knowing why you
lost it ?" said Signa, kindly ; for he knew the goodness of the
girl, and was fond of her in his gentle way, only she never
could understand anything, not knowing her letters even, and
being always at work like a little windlass that everybody's
hand turns.
But Palma shook her head.
She did not know anything indeed, but the instinct of her
sex moved in her and made her feel that no glory of a golden
deed is so great a nimbus to a woman as the rays of a physical
beauty.
" Indeed, you are never ugly, Palma," aid Signa, to console
her. " Dear, you have straight features, and such noble eyes;
you cannot be ugly, ever. And for the hair, that will very soon
grow, and you must wear the necklace on feast^ays when I am
gone, to show that you remember me."
Remember I PaJma thought of the St. Cecilia hung up in
the church above on the hill. She had meant to tell him of
it ; she had dreamt always of leading him up there hand in
hand, as they had used to go when they were children, and
making him sit on the altar-steps where the jasper was, while
she told him what she had done ; but she was silent about it
now that he was here. Someway she felt almost aehamed
of it.
He had made his own fame ; he had won his own victory ;
he did not want her help or St Cecilia's. Perhaps he woiUd
348 81QNA.
only smile, she thon^t. She was not sure of the great use of
the picture ; all in a moment ahe had lost her faith in it.
He looked so full of grace, smiling there in the sunshine.
She glanced up at him, feding as ^ there were whole voilds
of distance between him and her. She could not have done
him any good with her prayers up there in the dark ; die could
not have been wanted. She would have liked to tdl hisi, hut
she felt ashamed.
" Tou work so hard, Palma," he said, leaning OTer the Vm
stone Wall.
" Tee ; but I hare always done that. It is not new.**
'* But the boys must help you, now ?"
" A little ; but they eat more than they earn.*'
'^ Did your iather suffer much, dying ?"
" A great deal ; it only lasted a day. He could not speak,
but I think he thought of Gremma : he kept looking at that
little Jesus in wax that used to be so like her. He has seen
her now ^in heaven."
" You are always sure she is dead?"
*' Oh, yes I She would not have forgotten us so long as
this, if she were living."
Signa was silent He knew that to those who go, forget-
fulness is easy ; to those who stay, impossible.
" I never think she is dead," he said, at last
"Why?"
" Because she was so full of life ; so sturdy, so mirthfii] ;
always in mischief too, and doing so well for herself: things
like that do not die."
" Everything dies if Ood wills it," said Pahna. " For me,
I am sure she would not have forgotten if she were hving.
Sometimes I pray to her to make me a little sign from heaven,
but she never does."
" She was like a cherub in heaven to look at," said Signs,
who never had quite ceased to mourn his lost playmate or to
reproach himself with her fate. After his music, he had most
loved Gemma.
" Yes," said Palma, and stooped down her head over her
hoeing at the weeds ; she felt so ugly, with her short, ruffled,
foolish, clipped curls, that made her feel like a shaven dog.
She never had thought of her face before, of what it pos-
sessed or of what it lacked ; but that morning, rising, she had
SIQNA. 349
looked at herself in the little sqnaTe bit of mirror over the
floar-bin, and had thought she was lean and brown and
frightfiil.
'* I do not believe she is dead," said Signa, again. " Some-
times, in the strange cities, I look about in the women's faces
to see if there may be one that might be hers. She wonld
not alter. I should know her."
'' Tou never will see her. She is dead/' said Palma, with
the obstinacy that is always in the peasant as in the mule.
She worked on among her tomatoes, gathering the bright
scarlet balls into a skip.
She could not tell him about her St. Cecilia. He would
only talk of Gemma all the while, if they were to go up there
among the thrushes and the rosemary ; besides, the change
that was in him she felt more acutely than even Bruno had
done. This beautiful young Endymion, whom the moon had
kissed, could have wanted no help of hers. Her poor little
picture seemed to her so foolish, so humble, so small ; the
grace and greatness of his fame could not have grown out of
her prayers in that little dark nook. All the year she had
thought that it had, and had poured out all her heart in them.
But now that she saw him, her hope seemed to her as stupid
a thing as if a brown ant creeping by with a grain of com
had thought it filled the granaries of the world.
She was ashamed of her little picture that she had spent
all she possessed to hang up there by the altar-rail, with the
ruby light of the stained glass upon it whenever the sun went
west She did not dare to ask him to go up to the hill with
her and see it.
' I did what I could ; but then he did not want anything
done," she thought.
" She is dull and morose ; she works too hard, poor girl,"
thought he; and he moved away. "Good-day, dear, for a
little ; I will see you before I go."
" Go I ^you go again, then ?"
' Ah, yes 1 In a veir little. It will be the autumn season
soon. I go whenever the * Actea' is played."
Palma looked up at him, straight in his fiice.
" And you are quite happy ?"
Quite."
" And you are really great?"
80
350 SIGNA.
''Men say 80. I do not know. I wOl be greater if I Hve."
" And Bruno lonelier.'*
She wished the words, when they were said, anaaid. Sgoa'a
fiice clouded a moment
" That is not my fiiult," he said, slowly. " And no, per*
haps he will not be : when I am all that I dream of, and when
I have gold in both hands, I will come back and live here on
the hills, that I promise ; and I will build a palace of maibie
that shall look east and west ; and idl the hungiy shall be fed
there, and all the footsore rest. And then, when there are any
boys quite desolate, as I was, and dreaming beantifal things,
as I did, and wanting help, and not knowing where to torn,
then Uiey will all oome to me ; and I will teach them, and we
will sing together, and they shall be happy, and we will give
our lives for the world ; and men will love us, and, through
us, love Ood : it will be like the * Angeli' of San Maroo dwdl-
ing together with music, with the roses round them, and the
sky above !"
He stopped \ the doud had cleared from his fiioe ; it was
shining with a light that was sweeter than the sun*s.
He was only a boy still ; and the world had not dimmed his
dreams with its breath.
Of all the innocent things that die, the impossible dreans
of the poet are the things that die with most pain, and, per-
haps, with most loss to humanity. Those who are happy die
before their dreams. This is what the old Greek saying meant.
The world had not yet driven the sweet fur follies from
Signa's head, nor had it yet made him selfish. If he had
lived in the age when Timander could arrest by his mdodies
the tide of revolution, or when the harp of the Persian ooold
save Bagdad from the sword and flame of Mnrad, all might
have been well with him. But the time is gone by whi
music or any other art was a king. All genius now is, at its
best, but a servitor, well or ill fed.
Palma listened, looking up at that bright strange light upon
his face ; not understanding at all with her mind, but wholly
with her heart. The frozen pain in her melted.
She put her full basket back into the house.
^ Will you come with me a moment?"
Where ?"
" To the old church up yonder."
SIONA. 351
Yes, dear."
Sbe called to her little brother to mind the house, and took
Signa up the narrow winding paths, just trodden down in the
^^rass by a few rare footsteps going np among the vines, and
then among the olives, and then where the land grew wilder
among the gorse. The vines were hung with grapes that
touched them as they went ; the wild peaches fell yellow at
their feet ; the blue radish-flower was in the grass like gleams
of the sky reflected on the dew ; big oxen, muzzled and belled,
looked at them through the leaves.
'' It is so beautiful !** said Signa, mounting higher and higher
into the tangle of green and the net-work of sunbeams.
" Tea," said Palma. But she did not know it. She had
not time. Among all its sad losses, poverty has none that beg-
gars it more than its loss of perception.
They reached the old church, brown and solitary, with a few
cypresses near it, and round it the sheep grazing ; it had once
been the chapel of a great villa, of which there was nothing
now left but roofless arches and a wall where the rains of five
hundred winters had not quite washed away the frescoes.
She took him in, and led him up to the pillar by the altar
where the little picture hung.
'^ I bought it ; I put it there," she said, timidly. " Perhaps
it has done nothing, you know ; perhaps you do not want it ;
bat at least it could do no harm, and I have come and prayed
here every little bit of time I had to spare. I am sure the
saints love you, without that or anything, ^but it was all I
ooald do. And when you were so far away "
Signa looked up at die column and understood it all. He
stooped and kissed her, touched to the quick.
'^ Ah, dear 1 how good to think of me I Tou bought it,
you, who toil so hard ? Oh, Palma 1 I will try and find
Gemma for you ; ^I shall find her ; something tells me so."
Palma sat down on the lowest altar-step ; die did not an-
swer. If he had looked at her fiu he would have seen that
it was very pale under the brown that the sun had scorched
on it But ne did not look ; he was looking up at the painted
Sebastian against the roof, and thinking how oitterly Gemma
had cried one day because he could not reach down Uie saint's
golden arrows for her.
The sheep-bells tinkled; the smell of the rosemary was
352 SJQNA.
sweet OD the lur ; a bird sang, sitting on the old tattered
book.
" Gkmma is in heaven/* said Palma, and sat stiU and pale
in the morning light.
Gremma ! who had always been so much happier than she.
'^ Perhi^ I shall find her somewhere in the great worid.'*
said Signa, softly. " And she will have suffered, perhaps, and
sorrow have softened her and ennobled her, ^it does, th^ say,
and made her sool as beautiful as her litUe bodj wa&
Think of that, Palma ! and then I would brii^ her home to
the palace that I mean to build, and make htf happy, so
happy ; and she would be in all my music, just as tiie sun b in
all the flowers. Think of that, Pidma I Pray that it maj oome
true. It would be like a story out of the * L^end of Gold.' "^
Palma was still very pale.
'^ You will see her in heaven," she said. ' She was drowned
in that sea, that I am sure."
But Signa shook his head.
'' She is alive \ that /am sure."
CHAPTER XL.
Signa went down into the Lastra and sat a while with
Teresina in the room over the sea-gate,' and spoke with old
friends, of whom he found many, since they are flowers that
grow ikst in the soil of success, ^and spent some hours in the
sacristy, turning over, with curious emotion, die yellow scores
and crabbed manuscripts which had once been written to him
in an unknown tongue.
Then he passed down into the dty.
He knew so little of it, scarcely more than if he had been
a stranger. Bruno had held him back from it always.
He strayed into the galleries, quiet and deserted in the
strong August heats, and saw the face of the Samian Sibyl
and the b&uty of the Venus of Titian.
As he wandered down the corridor which holds the portraits
of the artists painted by themselves, he paused before one which
SIGNA, 363
seemed to him, in a way, ^miliar. It was the bead of a man
still young, a head that had grace and power in it, but also
a promise of leyity and caprioe. It was roughly painted in
llack and white.
" Whose head is that?" he asked the custodian dozing in
t^e sun.
'^ A living painter's, one Istriel."
" Of what country ?"
" France. He is a great man there. He did that for us
bj order of the king."
'^ I have seen him somewhere. Where does he liye ?" said
Signa, and mused a little while, and then remembered the
morning of the Feast of the Transfiguration, and the gift of
tbe &ir Qesu.
^'He lives in France, I suppose/' answered the other.
'* But I think he is a great deal in Rome. I think he works
there a great deal."
" What kind of things does he paint?"
'' Women, for the most part, I believe. There is a picture
they talk very often of just now ; you can see a copy of it in
the town : it is very fine, a woman."
" A portrait?"
" Oh, no ; just a woman dancing."
" I will see it," said Signa, and he went where the man
directed him, for the sake of those two gold coins that had
bought his Rusignuolo.
" Who knows ?" he thought ; " without those forty francs
I might never have known more of music than to thrum on a
lute to the sheep."
Who could tell ? All Bruno's labor of eighteen years might
have been of less use than two gold pieces tossed by a stranger.
He found the place where the copy of the great picture
could be seen, a copy made by the painter's pupils, and
shown for a little while by his permission, the original being
in Paris. It was a picture of which all the world had talked
two years before, while Signa was buried under the dust of
study and the darkness of poverty and the disbelief of men.
The copy was alone in a small cabinet, hung with red and
lighted from the top ; it was a full-length form of a woman
dancing, only that, on a sombre background of brown
shadow.
80
364 SIQNA.
Was it so beautiful ?
He did not know. But he shaded his eyes as if Itoib too
much sun. It dazzled him. The figure stood out firom the
darkness like a living thing ; all the light was oonoentnted
on the exquisite fairness and warmth of the supple body, on
the head turned over the shoulder, on the upraised arms toa^
ing castanets above, on the knot of pomegranate buds Above
the ear, on the rounded limbs, lithe as reeds and white as
snow, on the transparent scarf of scarlet, touched with gold,
which was the only drapeiy. The figure bait a little back-
ward, showing every curve and grace of it: the &ee was
beauUful.
It was called, with the arrogance of a genius that knew ui
hold upon the world, " A Sister for the Seven Dauceis of
Herculaneum."
Signs stood before it blinded, stunned, confused.
No living woman had ever moved hun as this dancer did.
He gazed and gazed till, as the passion of the Spaniali knre-
song says, '' his heart's blood was drawn fixm him throa;^
his eyes."
And yet the picture hurt him.
Hurt him by the taint that there was upon its lovdinesi ;
as there is in that of the Venus Calypica of Ni^es.
An old man, looking at the picture at the same tame, Botke
of it.
'^ Tes ; it is a beautiM study," the stranger said. " I have
seen the original. This is a fine copy. Tbe artist has touched
it here and there himself."
" It is not a portrait?" sud Signs, timidly. He could not
bear to i^peak of the picture, and yet he wanted to know more
of it.
* Oh, yes, it is a portrait Only you see he has painted it
in the old Oreek manner, the feet off the ground, no sign
of earth, indeed, ^the figure floating, as if she flew. Yes, it
is drawn from life. A girl a woman whom they call In-
nocence, in Paris."
" Innocence ! And painted there /"
The old man smiled.
'^ Nay, Yitellius called his bear so. The wild beast shamed
it less than does the woman, perhaps.**
The next morning he said to ^runo, ^I have found the
SIGNA 365
name of the man who gave me that money in the Lastra. It
is Xstriel. Yon remember mj losing the paper in the rashes
as I ran.**
'* What do you want with any man now?*' said Bruno,
jealously ; " or with any man*s help ?**
* Nothing, indeed ; but I should like to see him.*'
" I cannot see why you should think about him."
'' Perhaps I never idiould have got beyond my little lute
bat for him.**
Bruno gave an impatient gesture.
*' We are what we are,** he said, with rough fatalism. " It
is no chance wind that blows the notes into the nightingale's
throat, and the screech into the owFs : all that is settled be-
forehand.*'
Signa was silent He did not say his thought aloud, which
was,
" I wish to meet this painter, because I want to know
where he found her, or if he only fancied her, ^that ^ Sister
of the Seven Dancers.' "
He said, instead, ^' Gome down into the city and see a pic*
tare of his."
" I cannot to-day," said Bruno, '' because there is so much
to do. Watering alone takes six hours in this dry weather ;
but to-morrow, perhaps, I can.**
On the morrow he went. He did not know anything about
any of the arts, but he was at home among them ; they were
familiar things to him : it is so with all his countiy-folk.
He stood and looked at it for some time ; then he laughed
a little.
'^ Yes ; it is a beautiful wanton.*'
He had hit the blot on it.
Signa sighed unconsciously and restlessly. The picture be-
guiled him, bewitched him, and yet hurt him.
Brano said, " Do not look at it too long ; it will get into
you like marsh fever,*' and took him away.
When they were in the sun again in the streets, he added,
" If your baby Gemma were alive, that is just what she
would be like."
" No ! never !** said Signa, indignantly ; he did believe she
was living, but he looked for her always among the innocent
nudden &ce8 at mass in the churches.
356 SIGNA.
Bruno laughed a grim laogk.
' Let us hope she is dead,** he sud. '' Only the deril never
cuts his Teiy best flowers down early."
Signa did not answer.
" Tour painter must be bred to spread the pl^oe,** sud
Bruno.
Signa did not ask him what he meant
He went and found Palma.
" Tou do pray for Gkmma*B soul ?'* he said to her.
" Always,** said Palma.
"Well, pray more, dear. Perhaps she needs it^ who
knows?**
" Oh, no; she is in heaven,'* sud Palma. ^ Suoh a child,
and Christ so good.**
" Well, never mind. Pray always."
" That is all he thinks I am of use for, to pray for Gemms s
soul,** thought Palma. But she reproached herself for the
thought, as mean and base.
She had never ceased to love Qemma and mourn her,'-onl7
she wished he would not talk of her, not so very mudi.
Signa wandered about the woods alone, and saw alwijv
before him, in the golden fires of the summer day, The SiAf
of the Seven Dancers.
She banished the sweet veiled &ce of Lamia.
One day Lippo met him in the pine-woods, no one beii^netf*
" Dear nephew,** said Lippo, softly, " we cannot meet onno
is impkcable. He will never forgive what he thinks an ioJQiy.
See here : I knew his little piece of land had to be sold to gi^e
vour work a trial and a chance of &vor. I aatd to mysdf, I
have a kind father-in-law and good friends, shall I offer tD lead
the money ? But then I bethought me, Bruno would oo/j
answer with a blow. So when it was quite sure the land moat
go, I said to an honest soul in the city whom I could tnut,
' Gh, buy it in your own name, and niake it over to me ; so
the thing shall not wound my brother, and yet the peoe of
ground not go away from the family.* So said, so dooe.
Dear, I only hold the land in trust I tried to ezplaia to
Bruno, but his head was full of traitors and of wrath; I
could make no way with him. He would have brained me
with his spade. But this I wish to say to you : my children
are dear to me, but justice is dearer s^. If ever you wish
8IONA, 357
tbe land back again, I wiD sign it over to you, almost as a
g;ifb : I would say quite so, but, when one has so many mouths
to feed, one is not altogether the master of one's purse. Dear,
be quite sure of this : I bought it, hoping to please Bruno,
never to spl^o and Tex him, as he thinks. Christ knows
there is no venom in my heart. The other night, when you
had such a welcome, I was proud and glad ; I should have
come foremost out among them, only Bruno is so violent, and
I feared it might look like time-serving. But, believe me, no
ODO is prouder than I am, and Nita : she says fifty times if
once, ' To think he is so great, ^the little drowned baby that
sacked with Toto I' Dear, you have been made to think ill
of us. It IS a pity. And in your grand famous ways in the
future years you vnll not want us ; that is true. Still, be sure
our prayers go with you ; and though we are only poor folks,
toiling hardly in a little village, we shall not shame you, for
we are Christians and we pay our way ; and if you ever should
desire back that little bit of land, ^well, I look on it still as
yours, and I never let the interests of my children bar the road
of justice. No, that were to serv^ them with very narrow sight
and worldly selfishness. Bruno has misjudged me always. Well,
the saints bore all evil and were patient So must we. Dear,
farewell. If ever you dare brave my brother's wrath, and will
l(Xk in on us, you will find frank welcome. But perhaps I am
not rigbt to ask it. Tour duty to Bruno before all things.
Yes ; to you he has been good. Farewell."
And I^ppo went away quite sofUy through the pines.
Signa was moved. True, they had been unkind to him ;
but such wrongs fiide ftst in generous natures, and where^ an
impersonal passion reigns, personal injuries seem slight and are
soon forgotten.
Perhaps Bruno had been harsh and too swifl in his ire, he
thought respectfully. Bruno's error was too great haste of
temper and strength of hatred ; that all the country knew.
" I wish they could be reconciled," thought the boy, and
lingered on his way home wondering if there were any means
to do it^
He hinted at forgiveness that night to Bruno.
Bruno set his heel down with a force that jarred the house.
" I do forgive as much as can be asked of any man : I let
him be."
358 SIQNA.
Meanwhile lippo went homeward to lus atdcs bj Oar Ia%
of Oood Counsel, pondering whether he could not prerail ra
Baldo to help him to acauire another acre or two of groond,
quite near on the same hill, which rumor said would soon be
in the market. Baldo had grown to have strong faith in ^
prudence and wisdom of his son-in-law.
" You will let the boy have back the land at what jou giTe
for it I** screamed Nita, when her husband told h& of the
things that he had said ; for she was a rough, impetooias
woman, of fierce temper, and could never see an indi where lie
saw full a mile.
Lippo smiled, his gentle, pensive smile.
^^ Nay, dear ; that is a question for the fotnie. The ehii-
dren's interests must not be forgotten ; that were not just to
them ; and land rises in value every day, and money gets mciv
scarce." And he sauntered out mto the waim, 8tar4ig]tfed
streets.
" I have seen the dear lad," he said to Momo and TodIdo
and his other gossips. '^ I met him qmte by chance. So tall
as he is, and so graceful, and so like a young prince, one woW
not know him. His heart is full of love for us. He canmi
show it. No. He would come to us ; but I said to him, I
say always, ^ Tour duty, before aU else, to Bruno.* I must
say it, knowing what I know. His duty is to him, ^as Toto't
duty is to me. Oh, yes, he is a noble lad, spoiled in mocb,
^yes, but of a good heart. Bruno has not done ill in lettiofr
him have the land's money for his opera ; I know it has paid
Bruno back thrice over. Bruno has a dear head and a keen
eye. They know that in the Square of the Signoria. Ponr
boy ! Well, ^I say poor, ^perhaps stupidly, but it does 8eiD
so. Parted from us all, and ruled by Bruno; and, like afl
people that have genius, a baby, a simpleton, a mere piece of
wax in worldly matters. All Uie country is ringing of him
It is a great thing to think : unless we had let him go to the
church functions and learn the plain-song and be so much with
the sacristan in the organ-loft, he might never have known all
that there is in him ; he might have been a little shepherd^
barefoot on the hills, ^yes, still. Throw your bread upon the
waters, ay : ^perhaps come back to your own month it will
not; but you will be blessed by it, someway. The dear boj!
no doubt in his great world he will forget us all : why not?
SIGNA. 359
We are peasants, when all is said ; and he will go to palaces*
Snt then the good that we have done to him keeps with us like
a cjpress bongh that never withers and that drives the evil
spirits far away. Bear boy ! ^to think fie is so great ! and
will be rich too ; if, at least, his gold be left him and his
career well managed. That is the only thing I fear. Bruno
loves him oh, surely 4n his way. ^ut then Bruno loves
money too."
And Lippo nghed, and piled the dominoes in a little heap
absently, and with a sad, nervous gesture, thinking. The
gossips shook their heads.
Lippo was so just a man : that all the town knew. Of such
men is the kingdom of heaven. To be sure, his window had
been dark that night when all the Lastra was rejoicing ; but
that had only been good feeling in him. He had not liked to
seem to claun the boy's grateful remembrance when there
was such great triumph too.
^' We may remind those who &il, of us,'* said Lippo, with a
gentle smile. " But we must be forgotten by those who suc-
ceed, ^if they choose it shall be so.*'
" You are so good,'* said his neighbors, and began to mutter
to one another that Bruno, when he had sent the boy to the
great schools and sold the land for him, had only been sharper
of sight and more prudent of forecast than ever, ^yes.
And the Lastra was well content to think that, when it had
welcomed so loudly the young hero of the Actea, it had left
Bruno standing aloof, and had not noticed him, not even
when Signa bade them.
The lad stayed on till vintage came again and passed ; cor-
recting and perfecting his new music of the Lamia in the fresh
hill air, in the sweet smell of. the fruit; and now and then
went down into the city, and stood and gazed at the dancer
of Istriel, and drank in the impure sorcery of her, without
knowing it.
'^ Your painter b like the sun ; he breeds rottenness from
beauty,** said Bruno, who knew the force of the flesh and the
devU, as he called it, and felt a sort of sullen scorn of this
strange painter who spent his strength giving enduring shape
to the fleeting graces of wantons. To Bruno it seemed a poor
thing to fill a man's life. Women were women, ^to be toyed
with if you woulJ ; but to pass your life painting in their owi'
360 SIQNA.
likeness their wiles of a moment and their postares of pleasure,
^that seemed to him poor pursuit enough. This painter vaa
only a name to him, a vague shadow ; hut he felt a fierce wrath
against him. But for the coins that had bought the Bosig-
nuolo, who oould tell ? Signa might have dwdt omtented
in the peaceful husbandry of the hills.
For the iron was always in his souL He was proad of his
boy, and loved him, and knew that now Signa could never be
other than he was, and so ceased to chafe at Uie unchangeable,
and tried to make the best of an undesired destiny. But, like
Palma, it was all in vain that he brought his thank-offering,
that he prayed to his gods, that* he said a thousand UnMS, " I
am glad.'*
In his heart there was no gladness.
In his heart he lamented still and rebelled.
With the last day of vintage Signa spent his last honra oo
the hills.
The Actea was being given at the theatre of Como, and he
had to go thither, and thence to Milan, where its music was
yet unknown.
He had a sort of longing to buy that dancer of Istriel, and
take her with him, and look at her always; but it was impoa-
sible : despite his own new-born fame and Lippo's fables, be
was poor; he made some money, but no more than was needed
for his costs of travel and his simple ways of living and the
gifts that he loved to throw broadcast. He was famous, indeed ;
but he was only a boy, and had to deal with a shrewd world,
and it cheated him. The world, like Lacedsemon, is fond of
hounding into silence and exile its Timotheuses who dare to
add new chords to its lyre of song ; but it is unwise to do it,
for its Timotheuses are so intent on stringing the lyre anew,
and hearing the full, sweet sound of their fresh creation, thai
the world may empty their pockets unfelt, as it will, and un-
chidden. Its Timotheuses are its golden geese : it should be
content to pluck them ; but it is not often so : seldom is it sat-
isfied with doing less than what kills Uiem.
It was very early in the morning.
There had been heavy rains at night, and there was, when
the sun rose, everywhere, that white fog of the Yaldamo
country which is like a silvery cloud hanging over all the earth.
It spreads everywhere and blends together laud and sky ; but
SIONA, 361
it baa breaks of exquisite transparencies, through which the
gold of the sunbeams shines, and the rose of the dawn blushes,
and the summits of the hills gleam here and there, with a
white monastery or a mountain belfry or a cluster of cypresses
seen through it, hung in the air, as it were, and framed like
pictures in the silvery mist.
It is no noxious steam rising irom the rivers and the rains ;
no gray and oppressive obliteration of the face of the world,
like the fogs of the North ; no weight on the lungs and blind-
ness to the eyes ; no burden of leaden damp lying heavy on the
soil and on spirit ; no wall built up between the sun and men ;
but a fog that is as beautiful as the full moonlight is, nay,
more beautiful, for it has beams of warmth, glories of color,
glimpses of landscape such as the moon would coldly kill ;
and the bells ring, and the sheep bleat, and the birds sing un-
derneath its shadow ; and the sun-rays come through it. darted
like angels' spears : and it has in it all the promise of the
morning, and all the sounds of the waking day.
Bruno's dwelling was lifted out of it, but it spread every-
where beneath ; and the tops of the highest hills seemed to
ride on it like ships upon a sea. Signa paused and looked
over the vast scene as he and Bruno came out into the air.
He had to leave at eight of the morning for the northern lakes,
trusting himself to that iron way and horse of fire which
Bruno had never ceased to hate and to mistrust, though night
and day for so many years he had heard the steam beast
thunder dully through his valley, winding as the river wound.
They came out of the house after their meal of bread,
which was all they broke their fast with, and stopped by
mutual impulse .under the old mulberry-tree by the porch.
Bruno had said nothing to dissuade him from departure.
He had grown to see the necessity of their lives being per-
petually asunder.
Signa could only come to him now and then, that he saw ;
and the times of his coming must grow rarer and rarer, and
the links of union between them fewer and fewer, ^that he
saw too. He never complained. He hardly r^retted. He
had known that it would be so, when he had broken the Bu-
sin3Uolo. It was a dull, ceaseless, unchanging pain to him,
but he said nothing. What was done was done.
This young singer this young hero this young crowned
Q 81
362 SIONA.
dreamer of dreams, could by no miracle be brought back and
be made into a peasant lad, and contented with a laborer*8 lot
If he ever retarned to live here, it would only be be!^Q5te
the world drove him back with a broken heart; therefore
Bruno said, in his dark corner in the church, to the unknovn
powers that he worshiped, " Let him never be brought back,
never."
The world had his boy. Since the world would only put
with him if it flung him bruised and ruined away, let the
world keep him.
*^ After all. it does not matter for me," said Bruno, and
taught himself to think so.
Only a vague fear, a shapeless anxiety, haunted him always.
He knew too little of any life beyond that of his own country*
side to be able to go with Signa, even in fancy, into these
strange new lines of his fate. He was too ignorant, and mis-
trusted himself too much, to be able to tell the lad what it
was that he dreaded. But in his heart he was full of trouble.
" All is well enough with him now," he thought " But
when the woman comes?"
For Bruno thought that the great world, since it was made
up of men and women, must have the same fatality in it as
the life he knew.
The woman makes or mars the man ; the man the woman.
Mythology had no need of the fates.
There is only one, the winged blind god that came by
night to Psyche.
So much Bruno knew.
A weight of longing and of warning was upon his bcartw
But he stood silent in the arched way of his house.
The boy seemed now so much wiser than he ; had seen 9o
many cities and men ; had sown the seeds of his young brain
and made already harvest ; was great, though so young. What
could he say himself? a man who knew nothing except to
drop the wheat-grain into the earth, and wait for sun and storm
to make it multiply ?
What came in his mind to say were a million confused
things ; he did not know how to sort them and shape them
into speech.
At last he did say, with the heavy gloom of parting on
him,
SJONA. 363
*^ Woman is god or devil to man, as he to her. Dear, when
jou love a woman, tell me. Will you tell me that?''
Si^a smiled musingly.
*' Oh, yes ! I love my Actea and my Lalhia. They are the
real and living women to me. The rest are shadows."
** That will not last," said Bruno, curtly. " Your Actea
and jour Lamia will he the shadows soon."
Signa shook his head.
*' Not to me. Mozart loved his wife ; hut it was not of his
wife he thought when he was dying. It was of his requiem.*'
" You speak like a child," said Bruno ; and they were
silent.
It was of no use speaking : they did not understand each
other. The hoy knew the powers of art, of which the man
was insensible. The man knew the powers of passion, of
-which the boy as yet was ignorant.
Bruno saw in the future a fate that wrestled with him for
the soul of Pippa's son. It wore to him the likeness of that
Sister of the Seven Dancers of the city of ashes.
To him she was a symbol : she haunted him ; he hated her.
She or her likeness would dispute the boy*s life with him.
As he had hated the sorcery of the Rusignuolo, so he hated
the vision of the unknown woman. What use were the boy's
promise, the boy's faith, the boy's foolish proud confidence in
the empire on him of his dreams? Bruno knew well, a
woman would look some day, just look, and all these
things would be as vapors drifting before the break of day.
'* Love kills everything, and then dies itself," he said, bit-
terly. "Or perhaps it does not die: then it is a flame,
always burning, burning, burning, till the body and the heart
are cracked, empty, shrunken potsherds. That is love."
Signa shuddered a little.
" You frighten me," he said.
*^ I wish I could," said Bruno.
And he knew that he could not ; that, say what he would,
some single look from a woman's eyes would undo it some day.
He had never thought about it till he had seen that dancer
with the pomegranate-blossom in the town ; but now he knew
there would be a foe to him some day that he would not be
able to break under his foot, as he had broken the Busig-
nuolo.
364 SIGNA,
His heart was heavy, standiDg there id the white eold mkts
of the daybreak.
To the boy, the future was a golden hase, a mirage full of
fair colors, a certainty of national love and public praise and
sweet intoxication and all the liberty of an untrameled genioB^
To the man. the future was dark : he saw no way into it; he
had no faith in it ; he doubted the good faith of the world.
No doubt it was because he was ignorant He had told
himself so ; but he had no belief in Uiis fair fortune blown
from the breath of other men.
" It is to plow and to sow in the sand-bed of the river/* he
said to himself. And it seemed to him that Signa mistook
the shadow of a reed for the sword of fire of an archangel
" If your great world should turn against you, should tire
of you, they say it is capricious, ^your heart will be broken,"
he said, abruptly, with his hand on the lad*s shoulder.
Signa looked up and smiled.
"No; the world cannot hurt me. My music has gone
down into the hearts of the people. It will live thoe.
Nothing else matters."
" But the world is changeable, I have heard.'*
" Fashion is ; the people are not In Milan the other day
they sang the same chants in the cathedral that St Gregoij
composed five hundred years after Christ Nothing can huit
me now. If the great world did not want me, I know my
force now. I should go through the countries, teaching my
songs to the people everywhere. Death itself would not hurt
me very much, because, though dead, ^they might forget me
quickly enough, no doubt, but the music would live, and my
soul would live in it What else do I want ?*'
^'' I cannot understand," said Bruno. " You talk as if you
had no body to be pained or pleased. One would think you
were a spirit, to hear you. It is nonsense if one kill a night-
ingale with a stone, then the song is killed too."
" Perhaps not," said Signa, soflly. " Perhaps a poet has
passed and heard it, and sbgs the song over again to the
world."
But Bruno did not see what he meant
*^ One stones it, and it is dead ; there is an end," he re-
peated, with a sick, heavy sense of peril upon him, of what
he did not know clearly ; but it seemed to him that the boy
SIQNA. 365
walked irith his head in the douds and his feet in the quick-
Bands.
He conld Dot help it.
He coald not guard Signals steps, nor bend his eyes to
earth. He was beyond hioL He could only hope ; and with
Bruno, do what he would, his hope had always the drooped,
clipped wings of doubt
They stood silent together ; while the sun, behind the sea
of snowy mist, shone golden in their faces.
^' Dear,** he said, at last, ^^ you go away into a vast unknown
world. I cannot help you, nor follow you nor even warn
you, ^not to do any ^)od. I know the Uiings of the soil, as
well as any man ; but nothing else. No doubt you go to
greatness, having won it for yourself already. And you so
young ! And I suppose nothing else would ever have con-
tented you ; so, it is best so. But there are things, I think,
that will go hard with you, one cannot tell ; you have not
suffered yet, and you seem all mind, just as a flower is all
bloom. That will not last : you will find the beast in you
some day, even you. Dear, it is not for me to preach, or
teach, or counsel anything. I have led a bad life oflen, and I
know nothing. If I were to begin to talk, I might hurt you.
One fears to handle your soul : it is like a white moth, to me.
But what I want to say is just this. You know I promised
your dead mother. What one says to the dead, one must keep
faith to, more than to the living. The living can avenge
themselves, but those poor dead Dear, will you remember ?
I want to meet your mother, face to face, on the Last Day,
and to just say to her, ' This is your boy ; I have done my
best by him ; he comes back to you with a pure soul ; I have
given my life for his.' Will you remember? You are far
away from me always now ; much farther than by miles. I
can do nothing, only hope and fear. If evil do assail you,
think of that. Help me to keep my faith with Pippa."
Signa heard him, moved, subdued, perplexed.
The great shadow of Bruno's doubt fell also upon him.
Was there BO much more peril in the world than he knew?
He bowed his head.
^' I will try," he said, simply.
Bruno thought, '^ Ho does not say, I will.*'
They left the house and went down through the wet
81
366 SIGNA.
woods and througli the doads that floated on the sides of the
hUls.
"Before another hour he was gone.
Bruno stood a little while alone on the edge of the ircm
rails, listening to the distant thunder of the steam, as the last
curl of the smoke disappeared in the windings of the Tallej.
The fog had lifted and passed away. Mountain and river and
yincjard and homestead stood out clear in the morning light ;
his own hill rose above them all, ^the quarries shining in the
sun, the bold pines piled against the brightness of the skj.
" It is a good augury,*' he said to himself.
He tried to think so.
ITe retraced his steps up the cliff road, and went home alone,
and yoked his oxen to the plow, and drove them up and down
bcDoath the vines, as on the day when Pippa's body had drifted
away on the face of the flood to the depths of the sea.
** It is a good augury," he said to himself, as the gloiy of
the morning spread over all the earth beneath him.
But, though the sun shone, it seemed to him as if, on all
the land and water, a great, empty, desolate silence had Bdleo.
All was so still.
H(\ was alone.
" The birds do not sing after vintage," ho told himself; and
tried CO think that it was only that.
CHAPTER XLL
Palm A looked out of her cottage door, and saw the trail of the
smoke too, going farther and farther away under the green leavea
along by the river, round between the mountains. She watched
it, shading her eyes, and turned slowly within into the house.
He had not thought to say a word of parting that morning ;
a kind, careless farewell, the night before, at the garden gate,
when Bruno was by, that had been all.
" Why do you cry, Palma?" said the youngest of her brothers,
who was only twelve, and a cripple, with his small limbs mis-
shapen and withered.
SIGNA. 367
" Do you ask ? -mih father not six months in his grave ?'*
murmured Palma.
Her heart smote her as she said it. She was lying to the
child.
She went ahout her daily work. It was for her as if she
did it in the dark. But she did it, missing nothing, not
even slurring anything: There was so much to be done, with
all those five boys, and two only of them earning anything.
Once in that long, laborious day she stole up-stairs, and
looked at the necklace.
^* He was thinking that he was buying for Gemma," she
said, as she looked.
Later in the day, the eldest son of Cecco, the cooper, came
and leaned over the wall as she worked. He was a cooper too,
and a fine-built youth, and well spoken of in the Lastra.
' You will not think of it, Palma?" he said to her, with
his brown eyes wistful and sad.
*' You are good ; but no, never 1" said Palma, and went on
weeding.
What he wanted her to think of was himself He did not
mind her cropped hair: that would grow. He loved her
industrious ways, her independence, her patience, her care of
her brothers. His father was well-to-do ; he would look over
the absence of a dower.
'^ I shall not many," said Palma, always.
And when the young cooper said, for the hundredth time,
'' You will not think of it?" in this warm, radiant, summer
forenoon, Palma only said, *^ Never 1" and went on, stripping
her tomato-bushes of their fruit, and hoeing between the lines
of her newly-set cauliflowers.
She belonged, she said, to her brothers. So her living self
did, her body and her brain, such as it was, and her strong,
laborious, untiring feet and hands. But her heart belonged
to two other lives,-^-one dead and the other lost : the two lives
that had been by hers in their childhood, in the moonlit lemon-
alley.s of Giovoli, and the calm shadows of the old church of
St. Sebastian.
Sij^na and Gemma were always together in her thoughts,
one dead, the other lost.
Cecchino, the son of Cecco, could give her a good house in
the Lastra, and a full soup-pot always, and a good store of house-
368 SJQNA.
linen, and shoes and stockings, and a settled place in the world..
Oh, jcs ; she knew. And his mother, who was a tender sonl,
had said, '* He loves you : we will not mind ahont the dower,
and you shall have my own self-span sheets and my string of
pearls/' And they were all good, good as gold. And Beppo
and Franco, who foresaw help for themselves in this anion,
apbraided her always, and railed at her when the bread was too
stale or the sour wine ran short
But Palma though she knew, none better, the worth of
bread and wine in this life, and the use of a strong arm to bar
the door against the Old Man Poverty whom the devil has
given leave to hobble perpetually upon the earth and cref^p in
at all cold hearths Palma shook her head, and would not even
think of it, however Cecchino besought her.
*^ I will not marry you ; I do not love you," she told him.
And Cecchino urged that marriage should come firsts love last,
with women.
^^ Not so," said Palma. ^' That is to have the leaves hiUer
and the flowers leafless, like the endive. But it is not only
that I will not marry. I will work for my brothers while
they want it ; and when they do not want me, I will go into a
convent, and rest so. That is what I mean to do. Our Ladj
willing."
And Cecchino could not change her.
That was what she meant to do.
Rest so, a brown -faced, middle-aged woman, in a white
coif, saying prayers in a little cell, on knees stiff from many
years of toil, and going among the orphans and the poor, and
tending dying souls, ^that was how she saw herself in the
future.
It did not appall her.
Any thought of marriage did.
In the convent she would be able to pray for Signa and for
Gemma; and then in heaven* she might see their fiioes.
Perhaps, if she worked very hard and prayed very much,
the Madonna might call her up quickly, and give her some
grace of beauty, there, in heaven to be like them. Sometimes
she hoped that, quite humbly, and never sure that she auld
merit it.
In the twilight of this day having labored hard, and
her brothers come and go, and smiled on them, and forced
SIGNA. 369
cheerful laugh for them, hecause a dull house was had for hoys
and apt to drive them to the wine-shops and the lotteries
Palma stole up, footrwearj though she was, to the little church
above the gardens of Giovoli.
She carried her little crippled brother on her back, because
he fretted if he were left long alone, and set him down when
the last gleam of sun fell, and gave him a few pebbles to play
with, which contented him, because he was not very bright of
brain.
Then she went herself and prayed in the nook by the column
where the St. Cecilia hung. She had lost faith in it, because
he had seemed to have none. He had thanked her for her
thought of bim, but he had never seemed to think it possible
that it could have helped him in any way to fame.
'' Keep him safe in the world, and let him meet Gemma in
heaTen,*' she prayed ; and said it over and over again, in pas-
sioDate reiterated supplication, clinging to the pillar with her
arms wound about it and her forehead pressed against its cold
gray stone.
She prayed there till the moon shone through the stained
window on to the broken jasper ; and the little cripple cried
because the air grew cold, and he could not rise to catch the
glow-worm alight upon the altar-step.
She did not ask anything for herself.
Hard work for ten or twenty years longer, and then rest,
CD the hard boards of a convent bed, and by the death-agonies
oF beggars.
That was her future.
It did not affi-ight her.
'' Only keep him safe on earth, ^and her in heaven.*'
That was ail she prayed.
She was sure the saints would hear her.
She came out into the moonlight, carrying the lame boy on
her back, and with the glow-worm like a little lamp within her
hand. She was almost happy.
Prayers, innocent and in firm faith, brought the benediction
of their own fulfillment. She was sure of that.
370 SIQNA,
CHAPTER XLU.
It was a sultry night northward.
There was a storm in the air, but it bad not broken. Tbe
great lake was curled by the faintest of breezes. There was
the smell of oranges leaf and flower and fruit upon the air.
Little boats went sailing through the shadows. The constel-
lation of the Winged Horse shone clear high up in tbe
heavens, though all round the horizon the skies were orer-
cast, the Horse that has a star for his nostril, and that is
plumed with strong desire, and that says to the poet, '* Mount,
and ye shall enter the realms of the sun with me, and ride also
through the endless night where Persephone lies sighing."
Signa who did not know the stars by any name, but lorod
them as all dreamers do, and held them in that wistful awe
which was with him one-half the terror of a child, one-half
the wonder of a thinker was drifting in a little boat over the
quietness of the water, and looking up at Pegasus.
They were giving his music at Como ; and they were about
to bring the Lamia out in Milan. He went where his music
went, as the way is in this country. But the small strife of
the theatres, and the contentions and envious revilin9) and
the men and women with whom he had to do, were all pain-
ful to him, too rough, too real, too coarse for him. He
broke from them whenever he could, and they had ceased to
try and alter him ; he was no more fit for their world, thej
saw, than a young nightingale for a gay brawling street. They
laughed at him, ^which he seldom knew, or, knowing, did not
heed, and let him live in his own fashion as he liked, and
made their money out of him, and said all genius was no
better after all than an inspired idiocy, and he was such a boy:
only a little peasant still, though he had so sweet a face and
so sofb a grace.
Signa was careless of them, utterly careless.
He was so purely, naturally, innocently happy that nothing
could much stir or trouble him. All the noise around hioi
was like the sound of a whirlpool to a child seated high on
SJONA. 371
the rocks, who hears it, hat only sees the silver sea-gulls and
the sunshine. All the fret of their life could not hurt him ;
he saw only the dreams and the destinies of his own.
What was beautiful to him in those long months of wan-
dering were not the pleasures which his associates found ; he
hardly cared even for the praise that made his pilgrimages
triumphs. What was beautiful to him were the changing
moan tains, the fresh wide waters, the unknown old cities, the
treasuries of lost arts, the noble churches, the silent monas-
teries, the lonely little towns that had all some wonder of
stone or of color, the delicious free sense, as of a bird's flight,
with which he was borne from place to place, filling his brain
with memories, as a child its hands with flowers, thinking
each new one found still lovelier than the last.
lie drifted now in his little boat : a fisherman rowed him
from point to point along the shores. He had talked to the
mao till they were both tired ; going with the current, little
movement of the oars was needful ; the man sat mute, think-
ing of his haul offish of that morning; Signa laid back, looking
up at the radiance of Pegasus.
He did not know it as the constellation that belongs to all
who dream of any art, but its stars shone down on him with
a bright serene light, and he thought how they were shining
too upon the water and the hills about his home.
His heart always went back to the Lastra.
His fondest fancy was of what should be his return to it,
to raise works of marble like the palaces he saw, and live a
great life in peace and pleasure, with a choir of young singers
like himself around him, and the love of all the country with
him.
He was so young still ; such dreams were possible to him.
His hands were filled with the fast-fading laurels of earth, but
be believed them the changeless asphodels of heaven.
The life of Rossini, had he seen it close, would have hurt
him like a blasphemy.
To Signa reared in simple religious faiths, half pagan,
half monastic, which were quite real to him ^victory was ob-
ligation.
God had given him his desire ; so he thought. He said
always to himself, " What can I render back ?"
In so many things he was only a little peasant still.
372 SIONA.
The boat floated along, rocked genfJj on the liquid dai^*
He watched the stars, and dreamed, and dreamed, and
dreamed, and seemed to see again, white upon the shadow, a
Btatne he had seen that daj at noon : the Lore and P^jdie
of CanoTa.
Ganova ^whose sonl was dead when he moulded the lascivi-
ous charms of the BorgheseVenus and the poor vulgar graces
of the Dancing Girls ^has put all his soul into this marble.
For one moment, in his vision of the face of Love, he has
reached the height where the Greek sculptors reign alone.
In the face of Love there is the very heaven of passion.
all its longing, all its languor, all its inefi^le abandonment
and yearning, all its absolute oblivion, which makes it only
live in one other life, and would let the earth dissolve and tb
heavens shiver as a burnt scroll, and take no heed, so that
" only from me this be divided never."
The boy had wathed the statue long, with a strange sense
of something missed in his own young years, something un-
known ; and like a hot wind over him had come the memusy
of the dancing girl of Istriel.
He had hated the memory, yet there it came.
Her face effaced the softer face of Psyche : Psyche, who is
noteworthy Love in the marble, as in the fiible of the lamp.
Floating along the shores of the lake he dreamed of the
statue; only, do what he would, instead of Psyche he saw
always the form of the dancer of Istriel. And the boy in his
ignorance smiled, remembering the warnings of Bruno.
^*What does he know,'* he thought, "living on hia hiil
there? All men love, the lowest and the highest. One
would be greater surely in all ways, not lesser, if one loved."
For he did not know that Love will only reach his height
by treading all other things beneath his feet. He did not
know that Love lends a fire divine to human souls only by
burning all their world to waste.
The boat paused at a bend in the shore, grated a little,
and then was fastened to the land.
Signa leaped out, with the fresh cool leaves smiting him
sweet blows upon his eyes and mouth. They had reached
the little village where he liked to sleep and see the dawn
break over the lake better than to remain in Como, where the
SIQNA. 373
singers dnink, and laughed, and quarreled until daybreak, and
thought it ill of him uuless he joined them.
The boat went on to where the rower lived. Signa strolled
a little on the shore. It was not late, and he could see the
wbite-walled cottage where he had house-room among its
orange-trees and myrtles, and he wished to watch the storm
which, country-bom and hill-bred as he had been, he knew
was rising, though the lake was still.
The Tillage stood on a small creek ; its woods and thickets
wetit to the water's edge ; it was a wilderness of roses. It had
a little white church, with one bell ; several huts and houses
of peasants and fisher-people ; and a few villas that were sought
by summer idlers and by rich strangers towards the early
autumn time.
Signa walked on the edge of the water, his feet in rose-
leaves and fallen jessamine-flowers : its shore was all a garden,
wild or cultured according as the proprietor of the soil were
poor or rich.
He wandered along till he lost sight of the roof of his own
little dwelling, listening to the soft lapping of the little waves
upon the stones and the splash of distant oars.
All at once he paused. He saw a statue in the water
through the leaves ; at least, he thought it so. It was the
white figure of a woman, half clothed in close-clinging dra-
peries, which with her right hand she held upward to her
knees ; with the other hand she was gathering her hair into a
great knot ; her naked feet were in the shining water ; her
arms were bare too. She was quite still at the moment he
saw her first, as though awaiting something ; the moon had
come out of a heavy cloud, and fell on her, so that she looked
a piece of sculpture, white as Psyche was.
Then, tired of holding up her hair, she let it fall in a sud-
den shower, thrust the boughs of the wild roses apart, and
stepped from the pebbles and the water on Che shore. The
movement brought her face to face with Signa.
He saw she was no statue, but a woman ; young and living,
and impatient of sotbe delay ; dripping with water, which ran
from her hair and limbs in silvery rain, and made her white
thin garments cling to her. She had been bathing in the
solitude of her ^rdens, into which he unwittingly had
strayed.
82
374 SIQNA.
Signa stood still and gazed at her, too much amazed, too
startled, too confused, to move or speak. His face flushed
with shame, shame for himself and shame for hor.
^^ Forgive me," he murmured ; but his feet were rooted to
the ground, his heart beat so loudly it seemed to him to fill
the air. The woman, all white there, with her shining limh$
and shining hair tangled in the thickets of the ro6e&, with her
wet small feet like ivoiy upon the moss, he thought it all a
dream.
She had started, too ; then she looked at him with a smile
slowly uncurving the rose-leaves of her close pouted lifis.
She was in no wise embarrassed. She stood looking at him
with the moon-rays full upon her, making the water-drops like
pearls.
Then she laughed, a pretty laughter pealing through the
garden silence.
She shook her hair over her like a veil, her white arms and
bosom shining through it as through a golden netrwork. like
cobwebs in the sun.
Another woman ran quickly up to her with breathless ex-
cuse for absence, holding a scarlet shawl in her outstretched
arms. She let it be wrapped round her, and turned away,
looking at Signa through her hair.
" Stay there," she said to him ; " stay there, and string a
romance upon me. I am wet, I was bathing. I will oome
back. Stay there 1"
He stood there, stupefied and entranced, as she had bidden
him ; not sure, still, whether it were a woman indeed, or only
a statue that his fancy warmed.
He was not sure that all was not a trick of his own imagi-
nation, and of the sudden shining of the moon out from the
dark night
He stood, bewildered and breathless, listening with throbbing
pulses to every noise in the leaves and on the water. If she
were a living creature, she had bidden him wait.
For his life he could not have moved away.
He felt hot with shame for her if she were indeed a linog
thing.
Strange stories he had heard in the old folk-lore of the
Lastra where people believe in many an eerie phase of the
night-side of nature came over him with a shiver. What
SJQNA. 375
human thing could bare looked half so white? or could have
borne his gaze straigbtly without a blush? or could have
laughed in his face as sbe bad done?
His brain was giddy, bis beart beat high: be glanced up
to find bis stars, but tbey were gone, the clouds had covered
tliem. The rose-boughs rustled, the grasses seemed to thrill,
iKe shallow water shimmered at his feet. Would sbe come
back, or had she only mocked him? Was sbe like the beau-
tiful white woman wbo cannot forget her crimes, but wakes
from her grave and strays all night through the great forsaken
^rdens of tbe Medici? He shuddered as he thought, he
who had been reared where tbe people believe in tbe ghostly
wanderings of Bianca Capello.
He longed for her back again, and yet he feared her. He
strained his eyes to watch for her in tbe gloom, and yet he
was afraid, sJraid as he bad never been in his childhood going
in the darkness over tbe lonely hill-lands peopled with the
spirits of the dead, as peasants told him.
It might have been hours that he waited there, it might
have been but moments; he could not tell which, be bad no
sense of time ; but tbe moon was still shining when be saw
her.
She came under tbe leaves of the orange-trees through the
crossing rose-boughs to him ; she was still wrapped in white,
some glistening thing with silver -in it, like a spider's web
that has caught the dew ; her wet hair fell over her shoulders ;
her feet were shod in soft white furs ; sbe bad put a string of
pearls about her throat, which gleamed a little as snow does
as bhe moved ; sbe came through the shining moonlit leaves,
bending down towards him and smiling.
" I have come back. Why, bow you look ! I was too wet
to stay. I know you, ^yes. I saw you last night, and once
before in Venice. Signal Why, how you look!"
He fell at her feet, touching tbe 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 wonder-
fully fair to look at, and yet he was afraid of her as of a crea-
ture not of earth and not of heaven, just such a lovely terrible
thing as that which walked at midnight in tbe old green gardens
of the Medici.
'^ What are you?" he murmured, with the soft grace of a
376 SIGNA.
poet*8 homage. "You know me ^you? Oh, speak a Kttk!
Are you my Lamia, that I have dreamed of so oftoi? Or
are you Psyche that I saw at noon? Yon cannot be a liriiig
thing : you are too beautiful."
She stooped, and with her soft, cool hands raffled the thidc
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 YeBice I
was glad ; only I said, ^ He shall not see me yet, not yet'
And was it all mere chance to-night? I thou^t 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 jon were,
and how you.cried! ^and yet I made you play. Poor SignaP
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 ! Gremma!"
A cloud of anger gathered on the fairness of her fiioe.
" Yes, I am Genmia. Well?"
" Gemma !"
He said the little fiuniliar name again and again, 6ta|ud]y as
a man says a charm, gazing upon her in the moonlights He
had looked for her among the poor maidens of Uie working
world, among the crowds at mass ; he had thought oftn i
finding her lonely, longing for home, repentant of her flight,
living in some little nook among the rooia, 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. 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 yean-
SIONA, 377
^rere fall : iJiis mate rebuke in its gentleness smote her dully
like a blow.
He stood looking at her with a dazzled, bewildered pain ; he
i^as not oertain that he was awake; he thought of Palma pray-
ing for her sbter and sure she was with Christ.
" Gemma I Is it you, Gemma ?" he murmured. " Tou were
a little ragged thing, you were so poor, and now you have
those pearls about your throat. PsJma was sure you were in
heaven, but I said no. I always said that I woidd find you,
only I thought so differently. I always hoped, so lonely, so
penniless, so sorrowful for them all at home; and then I
thoaght 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 r
His voice shook, his lips trembled ; the words were all inco-
herent, confused, almost foolish ; but she knew all he meant.
" Poor! lonely! sorrowftd 1'* she echoed; and her azure eyes
laughed back at him, though they had more rage than mirth.
" You thought I should be th^t? 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 bauds
in his.
" Oh, Gremma ! is it true? Oh, my dear, speak to me more !
I never have forgotten you, Gemma. After my music I loved
82*
378 SIGNA,
YOU best of anything; yes, better than Bruno, I think,
heaven forgive me ! You were a little, troublesome, cmel chFui,
but you were Gemma. Oh dear, it cannot be ! ^you did nt
seem to have any woman^s shame about you just now looking
at me in the water ; and then those pearls, and all this daintr.
delicate stuff like silver. Gemma, oh, Genuna 1 tell me, for the
good Grod's sake, you are not a thing that your father can never
meet in heaven ? You are not lost to us all forever ?"
Her eyelids were dropped as he spoke, and there was net
light enough for him to see the changes that passed ov^ her
face, ranger, contempt, derision, trouble, amusement, all fal-
lowing one another, each and all moved in her by his simpk
words, but none reaching any depth.
She hesitated a moment how to answer him, be seemed to
her BO foolish, oh, so foolish ! and yet she did not wish fjr
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 h- loveh
mouth, the anger he had known so well when the little ehiU
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 (xod heap coab of
fire on my head. But what can I think. Gemma? An^^cr
me, dear ; 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 tmly^
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
letting you drifl 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 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 whito
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 ?"
SIQNA. 379
" Oh, God ! Is that all you say?"
He rose again to his feet. Almost he hated her, this per-
fect, 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 1" he muttered. ^' Day and night she prays
Christ for your soul."
" My soul 1"
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 negrcss told
me I should keep my beauty so ; there is a charm in it. Good-
nijrht. 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 I Gremma ! stay !" he cried to her. " If you be
Gemma, do not leave me so 1"
But he called to her in yain.
lie 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
fcoiiling surface.
Signa did not even try to sleep.
lie watched the storm.
380 SIQNA.
CHAPTER XLIIL
There were thunder and lightning and wild nortli winds
all over land and sea, even to the graeit plains on either ade
the Apennines.
The storm traveled as far as the Yaldamo, reaching there
by morning, and men watched the rivers, fearing flood again,
and farmers thanked the saints that maise-harvest and vint^
had been safely passed.
Palma working in the fields for a small wage above npon
the slopes, and driven to seek refuge from the violence of the
weather, sheltered herself in St. Sebastian's little choivh,
where tJie 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 l^t-
nings 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, wateh
over him."
CHAPTER XMV.
Meanwhile, the woman of his vision let her people un-
clothe 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 m^nory of
it, of its hunger, of its cold, of its hardship, of her littJe
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.
SIGNA. 381
She liked neyer to think of it, neyer. It was for that that
in Venice, seeing her old playmate the hero of the hour, she
had left the town 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 recognized him in the moonlight among the orange-leaves
she had walked straight to him.
She was glad, upon the whole; though ruffled, and dis-
turbed, 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 among
many, had got to have her beauty known all over many cities,
and to have those big pearls big as linnets' ^:gs about her
throat, when she was tired of her diamonds. But pearls best
became her; that she knew. Older women have need of
diamonds 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 among 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 bands 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 southeast, 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 among 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
382 SIGN A,
bow many children of tbis sort there are, kidnapp^ to diiTer
in the wet sad north.
But this endured only a rery little whilei with heir.
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 weD
for keeping.
One day once more he beat her.
She darted into the street, and showed her little shonlders.
and all the bruises, and sobbing drew a crowd giieved and
indipiant round her.
That 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 afler the fair at Piato, 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, quain^ gnj
little city.
She was petted, pampered, fed on dainties ; she teased siU
the girls, and made all the boys slaves for her ; she learned
to read ; she stole anything she wished for and could not gvt
without stealing, and was either never found outs or else always
forgiven ; people said she had a face like the little Jesus.
Then she got tired. At Kermesse there came into th
place a troop of players.
She went to see them.
The chief of them said to himself, " What a beauiifiil
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 cd
purpose for her. She should just show herself; he said thti
would be enough. He painted the world and his wandering
life in bright colors.
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 mef
and what she saw was best she chose.
If any suffered by her doing, she said to them, as the plow-
man to the flower, " Is it my fault that you grow in my way f
SIGNA. 383
Bom in a little hut in the green leafj solitudes of a garden,
he had heen gifted at hirth with the^fine sense which leads
tmi^ht to success, the sense of the paramount claims of self.
She pondered a while till the players were on the wing ;
hea she took a pretty quantity of the oldest and most delicate
:ice, some gold out of the till in the little shop, and all her
clothes, and went with them, slipping out of the house at
ii*xht whilst the old woman was sleeping.
'^ I can always go hack if I want," she thought. " She
^ill ^ways forgive me anything."
And she ran out of the city to join her new friends outside
irhe 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 helieve 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
tiiken 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
wa.s 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 I"
She refused to play, with a true foresight : she would not
(*heap3n herself. She put her old white Flemish lace all about
her like a cloud ; she looked half like a cherub, half like a
mm. 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 ailer her ; she thought how good a thing it was to live.
The painter Istriel met her.
384 SIONA.
He was rich.
The players saw her no more.
Aiier three months he painted her as " Innooenoe*' looking
with wondering eyes upon the world.
Nature gave her loveliness ; Istriel gave her fashioa.
Three years later he painted her as the Sister of the Seven
Danoers.
But hy that time he had had many rivals.
He professed content. He cherished hitterest rememhraiioe.
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 m^
pleased her caprices and most lavished upon her the weakfa
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, sleadj
judgment of her own advantage that she had posseased even
when a little child ; and she cherished her loveliness, stodied
her health, moderated her follies, and garnered her riches widi
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 h^r
smile to anything except his jewels and his gold ; the Tunest
could not deceive himself that she had ever loved him.
She loved herself; just as mach now that she had the woi^d
at her feet, as when she had been a little child, eating the whit
currants and green almonds in her nest of hay.
Love, though the highest selfish ecstasy, must yet hare self-
forgetfulness.
She had none.
She could enjoy. But she could not suffer.
** How much shall I tell him ?*' she thought, lying with
half-closed eyes watching the lights flicker over the ivoiy and
silver of her mirror.
"Why should she tell him anything? Why should she
see him ? She did not want him. To her he would never be
8IGNA, 385
Lnything bnt Signa, the little, silly, dreaming fellow that had
un about for her, and given up his fruit for her, and &llen into
anlt unoomplaimnglj for her sake. She had made him her
tepping-fltone to fortune ; then had done with him : why not ?"
JLad yet now she had seen him, she did not choose to let
lim go.
He condemned her; he sorrowed over her; he rebuked
ler ; ^he ! ^who had been her little slave, running where she
jTOuld, and doing her will in the summer dust of the Lustra.
With noon she was ready for him.
Sbe was alone in the little lake palace.
It belonged to the painter Istriel.
When she wanted rest and seclusion she went to it, know-
ing bow to keep her beauty fresh and render her favor more
precious.
He was content that men should think his old ties with her
not wholly broken.
He was now in the steppes of the North. He had visited
her passing by. She always smiled on him. She was a little
afraid of him.
Besides, she never turned any man against her ; she only
-would have her own way always, that was all. She wore
her lovers as she did her jewels : some had their turn often,
some seldom, some forever waited for a day that never came,
but aU were hers ; she could shut them in the hollow of
her rosy hand, as in the gardens of Oiovoli she had held the
butterflies.
She was never swept away on any strong tide, not even of
caprice.
She kept her brain clear always.
She was not clever ; but she had iar sight.
She got all the best the world could give her, and was as
calm amidst it all as a dormouse in its nest of wool. No one
could quote a folly against her.
She walked wisely.
With noon they told her Signa had come there. She let
him wait. She always let them wait. Waiting heightened
the imagination and spurred expectancy. Besides, she was
never in any haste herself.
Ue had been shown into a little cabinet, which had statues
in it, and one great window looking on the lake.
B 88
386 SIONA.
He WI8 standing when she entered.
He was very piJe : he had heen all daybfeak on the shore,
rendering what help he could against the storm, whkh nov
had pasBed away entirely and had gone soathwanL
They looked at each other a moment in stlenoe, these two
who had run together over the stony road and Yentnied their
little fortunes into the noisy press of Prato Fair.
Their &te8 had divided tliere, and yet the link of union
never could be quite broken.
They looked at each other, remembering that hot^ tnilsoine
day when they had eaten their figs under the trees of the dead
Medici ; and when, in the tumult and the merriment of Fn
Lippo*s town, she had laughed at his tears, and pulled him by
his curls, and whispered, '* I am hungry play get me some
cakes so. Do you hear me ? Play !" And he had pbyed.
She looked at him, and thought, " He is not dianged ooe
whit ; he is the same ; only a boy still."
He looked at her, and thought, ' Can she be Oemma? It
is some goddess, dreamt of in the night"
They had run hand in hand across the plain to Prato. Bat
there were worlds, centuries, aU the heights of heaven, all the
depths of hell, between them now.
She put her hands out to him.
" Signa, dear Signa, sit by me."
He took her hands and let them go.
No. TeU me firet"
She sighed a little.
" You used to love me, Signa."
" I loved a little child called Qemma ^yes."
'* And I am Qemma."
He was silent.
He would not sit by her. He was confused and blinded.
Her loveliness lost nothing by the morning light.
But he felt to recognize her less than he had done in the
dim sbifUng shadows of the night She had no more in com-
xnon with Uie little, stnrdy, ra^ed, mischievous baby he had
kissed in her bed of hay, than the butterfly seems to have to
do with the chrysalis. He felt still that he must be in a dream ;
when he had fidlen asleep over his score, in his half-starviiig
student days, such dreams had come to him.
" If you are Gemma indeed," he said, with effort, haw
I
SIQNA. 387
jon nothing to say of your own home ? of yonr father, who
^ed thinking of you ? of yonr brothers ? of Pahna? Is that
aU forgotten ? Do you never think ?'*
She would not let him see the anger in her.
'^ I was so young/* she murmured. " ChDdren do not think."
*' No ? Pahna thinks. She said, * Gemma is dead. Else
she never would be silent all these years.' She prays for you."
* Is she in want of anything?"
" She wants everything. She works like a mule. But she
would never take anything. Palma would be ashamed."
G^emma put out her under lip with the sullen contemptuous
gesture of her infancy. But she answered him gently.
" Palma was always good. Yes, ^I remember that. Poor
Palma !"
" Gemma, ^if you be Gemma, need Palma, with all your
glory, be ashamed of you ? Tell me : you said diat you would
tell me now."
" Sit by me, and I will."
'* No 1 not till I know whose zoof I find you under, and why
you are ^like this."
"What is it to you?"
" Nothing. Oidy, if you are a base woman I want to see
your face no more. I loved you when we were two litde chil-
dren. It would hurt me like a sister's shame.*'
He spoke simply and directly the thing he felt ; he was
calmer than he had been in the sultary, moonlit night ; he was
cooled as the air was ; he felt oppressed and pained, but it was
with sorrow for the little child that had run with him in the
dost and heat, not for the woman that &oed him with her
shining eyes.
Over Gemma's fiioe rose a quick flush of anger and amaze ;
all her world envied her.
She had no sense of shame. Shame, like remorse, only visits
women that are left alone.
Gemma played vrith all the glories of life, as a child with a
ball of flowers.
She repressed the rage and wonder that she felt She could
assume what shape she would.
*^ If I were base," she muttered, " might I not need more
tenderness? You are too narrow, Signa; and too harsh."
"II Harsh?"
388 8IQNA,
^' I think so. You only love your rnuac. Yon see mdiii^
outside that."
He was silent.
Was he harsh ? He did not mean to be so. He bad aid
what he had felt. K she were no longer innooent, he wiekd
to go away and see her face no more. He had meant do
bittemeBB.
^ You do not understand," he said, at last. " I hhme no
living thing; I am not wise enough. Only there are stra^ht,
simple things one feels about women like an instinct, just as
when one keeps one's honor dean, do you not know? Yoa
see, I have always thought about you ; nd reproached mjself ;
and dreamed so much of finding you and taking you back to
your own people ; and when Bruno said, seeing the pictsue of
a wanton danc^, ' That is what your Gemma is now, if die be
living,' I almost hated him ; it seemed to hurt me so ; becanse,
though you were willful and liked your own way too well, j^
I was sure you were too true and brave for that^ and would
have thought of Palma. Dear, if your life is honest, take mj
hand. If you be any man's wife, and come by all thk bixiuj
and riches justly, dear, I will beg for your foigivaiess od mj
knees. But else what can I think ?"
She was silent. A certain darkness fell upon her life. Sbe
was like the Syrian king : all the fairness and richness of ber
Palestine grew naught to her, because she was shut out from
one little, narrow, lonely vineyard.
What shall I say to him ?" she thought. " What sball I
say, to keep him ?"
She wanted to keep him, and yet her heart was hard and
sullen with rage against him. He had lifted the golden api^
in her basket of ulver, and had scorned them ; she was aetoD-
ished and dully angered.
But she was never swept away on any impulse, not even oo
that of anger, which was the strongest with her.
She looked up at last, and saw his eyes watch her witb i
piteous tender eagerness, and he held out his hands to her.
I cannot take your hands," she said ; '* no, not in ^niess.
And yet I am not to blame ; not in the way you think. Sigitf^
I owe you nothing. I need tell you nothing. Yet, betau:^
we were children together, as you say, I will tell you all the
truth."
SIONA. 389
And tlien she bailt him up a tale of lies, snch as would
touch him most Poor Signa ! whose face had paled if she
had trapped a bird, whose heart had sorrowed for each kid that
went to slaughter, in the old times, when the Lastra and its
green vine-ways had been the only world to both of them.
To Bruno and his people he was changed utterly. They
looked up at him from the twilight of their ignorance and
obscurity. To her he was changed in nothing. She looked
down on him from the broad noonday on the heights of her
prosperity.
For five full years she had studied the full world of men ;
to her he was only a boy, a peasant, a dreamer, a fool, ^in-
spired perhaps, but only the greater fool for that.
Outside there was the shining beauty of lake, and wood,
and mountain; within, the softly-shaded room, filled with
pidntings, statues, flowers. Oemma in her white robes of
morning, dead white, such as made the fairness of her look
like a rose set among lilies, turned a little from him, half lying
among her cushions, and told him the story of her life from
that day of the fair in Prato.
" Dear Signa, I was a little willful selfish thing. I wanted to
see a bi^er brighter life than any we had upon our hills. The
man persuaded me. He promised me all sorts of golden toys,
and never-ending feast-days. Yes. He took me with him in
that fishing-smack. We were hidden in Gknoa a little while,
then we went northward. We were treated like beaten dogs,
once in his power. There were many other children. He sent
na out in rain, and wind, and snow. To him it did not matter
what we suffered. We sold images, or tumbled in the streets,
or hawked fiowers, or went with an organ. We wandered
from town to town, all over the world sometimes, I think ;
we crossed seas often, and mountains ; where I do not know ;
I was a little stupid thing. I was made black and blue
with thrashing. Dear, I was punished for jtny selfish fault ;
punished beyond all telling. Night a^r night I cried myself
asleep, longing for you, and Psdma, and green Giovoli. In
a few years the man sold me to a set of player-people, low
comedians, who went about with a traveling theatre, and
dressed me up in spangles, and whipped me to make me dance.
Nay, dear, how pale you look 1 Oh, it is all over, that, I
had no talent. You know I never had talent as you had.
88
390 SIGNA.
Nature has made me so good to look at; it does not mite
for the rest I did not act well ; I was just looked at, and of
ooorse I pould jump and danee, you will remember tkt
You recollect old Maro from the Marches *pohm^ ns the sil-
terello, and you and I dancing it every minute that we oooid?
And at the &ir, how pleased they were, and yon, with the great
tears running down your cheeks all the whUe yon danoed it!
Ah, yes, yes, yesl Signs, it seems like yesterday.*'
She paused a little while, and turned her head away still
further; his heart ached for her; he longed to take her ^sds.
and kiss her lips, and say, ' We will forget that any time bs
passed ;** but a dark wall seemed to him between Uiem. He
could not think of her, of this lovely woman in her weaitk
as Oemma, little ragged rosy demma, pouting and lau^ucf
in hia face in the Giovoli garden, because Tista had swtzk
her so high, so high.
"Oh, my dear! oh, my poor lost love!" he murmured, md
bowed his young head upon her knees ; his frame shook vitb
pain and the shock of the first burning rage that had efer
touched him.
He was bewildered. Horror possessed him. The ample,
innocent affection he had kept for her shuddered and griered
fir her, as a brother's would have done. He had kept Gemm
in his fancy and his hope so pure, and safe, and strong. The
darkness of thb irreversible fate spread over her, and msik
her terrible to him. Signs had ail the childlike belief ic
heaven that a child has in its father; this struck his b^ef tf
the roots. Ood was good, and yet let such thin^ be! M
was great, and vet would be forever powerless to make tLb
horror as though it had never been. There were things tbea
that even Gkd could not do 1 Signa stared helpless at this
wreck of all his faiths.
And even if she were indeed Gfemma, as she said, and as
her remembrance proved, what oould he say to her until 1^
knew?
The sense around him of her golden shame stifled him, anJ
kept him mute. He felt as Palma would have felt. It var
not this woman that he cared for ; it was his little playmats
lost on the sands of the Tyrolese sea.
"I was sold to these plavers," she said; "sold just as i
monkey might be, or a goat ^at knew some tricks. They s^
8IQNA. 391
me in thdr torn to others. I waub made into little Loyes, and had
^ngp, and looked pretty ; or else danced in pretty ooetnmes ;
we went here, and there, and everywhere ; they treated me
well and 1 liked it. I knew no better. I had sweetmeats,
and fruit, and fine words. It was all good enough, and merry
enough, I thought You know of old, if all went well, I did
not want to look farther ; and indeed, what did I know ? or
what conM I have done? A child all alone, and a thousand
miles, they said, away from home 1 Among them I learned
to read, and learned some few other things. I do not know
muchy except the world. That is so big a book, you know ;
one does not want another. Signa, try and understand. Do
not he harsh ; I was not great of heart, and near to heaven,
as you were when yon were a child ; nor plodding, and honest,
and loving the saints, like Palma. I loved ^myself, and
wanted to enjoy. GKxl made me such a weak and selfish
thing. Tou know he makes bees and butterflies. Dear, I
was in so bad an air ; it reeked with shamelessness ; if you had
anything to sell, your body or your soul, you sold it, and spent
the money ; why not ? they said. When I was sixteen ihey
betrayed me. We were in Vienna, then ; there was a woman
that I trusted. When I knew the thing that they had made
me, I grew blind and reckless ; I was turned to stone, only
stone that shut a devil in it, as the marble shuts a toad some-
times, they say. He who had bought me bought me stupe-
fied, like any moth you kill with sulphur smoke was rich and
a great man in his way. He covered his new toy vrith dia-
monds and gold. I grew the fashion. You have fkme. That
is another thing. Fame is a comet burning itself with its
own fire as it travels. Fashion is the wax-light in a ball-room.
. I like the ball-room best You see space, and all the worlds
set round about what men will call the throne of GKxl, no
doubt But I "
She landed a little ; she had forgotten for the moment that
she did not mean to let him see the truth of her, ^not then,
whatever afterwards might come.
He listened ; his breath came brokenly ; his lips were dry.
He raised his head, and gazed at her, almost blankly.
" You can jest I"
The words recalled to her the thing she wished to seem to
him.
392 SIQNA.
'' Yes. I jeet : if you call that jesting. I saw a man onoe
watoh his honae burn : the fire took hia children, and made
him a beggar : he laushed. So I laugh. Oh, m j dear ! (hej
have not left me any heart to laugh or cry. I would say, I
pray they have not ; if I were you or Paima. But thai I
never had much. I loved myself, you will remember that
Such love is punished. So your priests say. Well, yon see
now how it was with me : sixteen years old ; a ch^tel pur-
chased ; a decked slave ; a ruined thing made glorious with
gilding. I am not meek, I am not good, Signa ; you knew
me when we were both babies. You know I had no mercy
or gentleness to others, even then. I saw myself base, by no
fault of my own. I saw myself marked out with a brand,
proscribed, outcast, whilst I was myself as innocent as aoj
yearling lamb we ever played with on the hill at home. Well,
I did not drown myself I was too full of life. I looked at
my own face in the mirror, and I loved it. I could not gire
it to the water-rats to gnaw. You love your music. I lore
my loveliness. Why is one love, one vanity, worse than the
other ? Can you tdl me ? Nature put the rhythm in your
brain. It put the beauty in my body. Well, why should the
love of one be holiness in you, the other sin in me ? Bat,
sin or not, I have it. If disease made me hideous, or acci-
dent, then I would kill myself with smoke or opiates, or some
easy gentle means of death. Not otherwise. No ; I did not
kill myself when I knew the thing I was. Your women of
romance do ; but for me, I shrink from being hurt ; I bate
the thought of lying under ground and leaving all the rest to
laughter in the sunshine. To cease to &e, ^it is horrible 1
Oh, not for you who think that death will set your spirit free
and carry it straight to some great world where all your
dreams made true are waiting you ; ay, but for us ? We We
only our bodies, and we dread the worms. No ; I did not
kill myself. I took my vengeance. I made myself the lore-
liest thing the world has seen for ages. They all say bo.
Then I melted their hearts and broke them. I slew them
with a hair of the dog that had torn me. Dear, do not judge
me harshly. I took solace in the strength I had, soch
strength as women like me have ; we share it with the snake
and with the panther. Your Qod made snakes and panthers."
She paused. The boy was quiet ; his chest rose and fafl
8IGNA. 393
painfril breatluDg ; liis lip6 were oold and white ; he waa
saying always to himself,
" Who was the man at first ?"
For he felt as if for Palma, and for poor dead merry Sandro,
and for his own honor's sake, the avenging of her onght to be
his own work and no other's. Had he not let her go with him
that day, a little thoughtless child, over the hiU and plain to
Prato?
He pitied her &om the bottom of his heart.
He believed the tale she told.
And he was sick with the giddiness of one who falls through
drinking and from some great height. He lost his footing.
He lost his hold upon the dreams and hopes of life. He was
cast down from the pure simple certainty which never asked,
" And \m there faith in heaven and is there love ?"
hecanse he was so very sure of both.
And now he was sure of nothing.
" Grod makes snakes and panthers."
Yes ; and Qod had let Gfemma be made vile,' with no &ult
in her, no sin or seeking of her own ; so he thought.
He grew dizzy. He, who had said to Palma, for her sister's
sake,
" Dear, pray always. Prayers are heard."
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 un-
worldliness 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.
" Yon hear my story now," die said, with a soft sigh, at
last " Signa, you loadie 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.
*
394 SIQNA.
Her eyelids were cast down ; lie did not see the oold Use
flame of anger bum in her eyes a moment as she heard.
She is to be pitied! she who, in her arrogance and ha
loveliness, thought she had the world to play with as a hall
under her foot.
She tamed her eyes upon him without anger, sadly.
" So, you will leave me ? You mean tibat ?"
He colored to his throat.
" You live still, by choice ^in shame ?"
She could have laughed aloud. She oould have dashed her
hand against his mouth. She oould have killed him, ahnosc ;
but she said, turning her face irom him, like one in pain of
which she is ashamed,
' What other life was left me ? Fling wool in mud, do yoa
blame the fleece that it grows black ? I told you I Uxk mj
vengeance. There was no other thing to do. You do not
understand the world. I was so young, and men so cnxeL
Wrong made me all that I have be^, but I am tired, oh,
tired, Signa ; if you only knew 1 A world of lovers, and net
one single friendl The loveKest woman is not so desolate is
I. Dear, I am vile, perhaps, and cold, and love luxniy 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 wal-
lowed in the mire with her guards and daves ? 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 ever comes to me. Dear, I am tired. When I saw
your face last night, I said in my own thoughts, I will tdl him
all the troth ; 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 trae to me, when all are &]se;
he will be my saint, when all others are my swine ; he vill
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, dearl I was
unwise and yon are wise. Fly from me. There is no common
ground between us. You cannot see in me the thing you used
SIGNA. 395
to play witiL I am only a base light wanton woman, without
charm for you and rithout pardon either from you or from
your Qod. Dear, you are right To see more of me could
only bring you pain or get you evil names. Pure dreams are
your fidr portion. Foul facta are mine. Leave me. I would
not hATe 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 dis-
gust ? Had he been unmanly and unfeeling, wounding a dis-
honored woman, whose truthfulness had laid her open to his
scorn?
A confused sense of being wrong to her oppressed him, and
strug^ed 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 vielding, 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
qoicL ''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
mj sister. It is horrible. I do not know what to say to you.
It seems to me we cannot be togeUier 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 ardor of his nature carried
396 SIGNA.
him away ; he dropped before her on his knees as if At had
been any saint or queen. His sweet and paaaonate Toice
thrilled with emotion.
" K I can senre, I will not leave .yon/' he said. '^Gemm.
listen to me. You are heartsick of the wretched gkmeB of
your life. All the better nature in you is in rebellion at it
Leave it Come home. Tou 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 &e beauty that Qod gave you, and that you defile.
Gome back to the old hills, to the fiesh air, to the green
country ways, to the peaceful days and nights. Gome back
Palma is there ; she will love you still. Her arms are s^oog
enough, her faith is firm enough, to lift you out of helL IXetr,
fling this horror from you, and trample on it, and leave meo,
and cling to G^ed. I have some greatness. 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. Gome home. Palma is poor and ig*
norant, working for a crust, but she is strong in courage, and
wiser than us im. 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 yon ever were the little Gemma that ran witli
me in the summer dust that day, come home. Oh, Gemma,
Gmma I if indeed you are the little child I played with, joj
there never can be for you, dear, nor hope on earth, nor any
love of any honest man, I know ; but Palma will not torn
from you, nor L It is too late to save your beauty from the
lepers : it is plague-stricken ; Qtcd himself cannot change that
But, Gkmma, there is life beyond this life. I seem to speak
so poorly, I cannot plead with you, not as I would. Bat^
Gemma, the soul in you is not dead. Cast off these riches
that are viler than all rags, and lead a straight and fiimple life,
and trust the rest to God. Gome home 1"
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
SIQNA. 397
^vrtm plagne-stiicken ; almost he thought her as he said, one of
t-liose beantifiil aocoraed 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 heasts that perish.
Still, ^if he could save her ? He prayed with her for her-
self, as in his childhood he had prayed for Satan to the angels,
vratcbing the sun shine heyond the Certosa towers.
She listened, her beautiful golden head bent down, her color
clian^g : do what she would, she could not keep the blood
quite stoidy in her cheek. She was so deeply angered. Yet
some pain smote her through all the jeweled armor of her
tranquil self-content
Had she lost something, a^r all, that poor dull women,
plodding for their bread, lived with and died with ? had she
missed something in all her plenteous harvest, were it only a
Tain vague fiincy, worth the having ?
She had princes and heroes, all greatness, at her feet, and
all the soft care 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 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 ho loses
it He is a fool, a fool 1*'
And yet were she but such a fool 1
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,
84
398 SIQNA.
'^ There is no honesty upon my lipe? irdi^ he shall fad
some sweeter Uiing there, and get drank on it"
She had meant to have sport with him. Wdl, sport with
vengeanoe in it was the finer pastime. It was his &ali. Whj
woold he speak of her as of a thing he scorned ? To hdnf^
his babjish, monkish, womanish fkndes here, of honor and
shame, and hearen and una, dck phantasies fioia djing
peasants' psalters and priests' penance-tales in Lent !
She gased down on him with serions eyes.
" No ; I cannot come, Signa. You are good to me, hot the
things yon dream of are not possible, ^for me, at leasL Yoi
do not understand. I should make Palma mad ; die me. I
could no more go back to the old ways of life than you to t
herd-boy's empty days. Things cannot be undone. When a
tree is grown, you may cut it down and bum it, but you eaxh
not make it back into the acorn or the chestnut that it sprug
from first Palma thinks me safe with the saints ; so li her.
For you, you have your art, your fame, your certain growth
of greatness. You can soon forget me. Dear, I fretted joa
and flouted you when we were children. That was all, I thuik,
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 could say nathiog
that would change me. And do not think of any soul in me,
Signa ; I have none. Has the butterfly any ? You are mai
Signa 1 I was an idle child, I am an idle woman. I love ease,
luxury, riches, beauty. / toil I / hunger and thirst, and ^in
and sew 1 /plod after the oxen in the furrows 1 // You are
mad ! You are mad, I say 1"
His color rose.
( There would be no need to toil. It would be a poor and
simple life ; yes, that is true. But I could make enoush ^I
shall make more each year. All that I have should be for
you. And it is honest money. Gkmma, see, dear, I hav
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 eveiy
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 Idas ; ibr I forgot that you
grew old as I did. When men talked of love to me, I wcHiId
SIGNA. 399
say nothiDg, but I used to thinlc, When I find Gtemma-
Dcar, that is over nov. I cannot love yon. Yoa are a thing
lost to me now forever. Men do not love such women as
vou are. You are divided from me ever. Bat you still are
duar to me as if vou 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 peijured it ; I would
not, starving, break a c^;ust of yours, for vou are sold for it.
But I will labor 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 ofb-
ener give you more. Dear, do not think it will be hard for
me. X ou 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 forever 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 I
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 I 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, vou would be living with your
sister still, an innocent, frank, happy, stainless thing ; and I
should love you, and you would be aU 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 dishonor
and save vour 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, swift, eager, breathless,
400 SIQNA,
unoonadered, in aD their anreason, their nnwisdom, theb lo-
hilitj, their ignorance, their fbllj, their sablimitj. All tbe
narrow simplicity of the peasant, and all the boundleas t^c^ii
of the poet, met in him as he spoke. He meant^ to thai
very uttermost, every syllable he uttered.
She was gone from him ; she was to him a thing tenibk.
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 heaveo.
What he dreamed^f was impossible ; but in his sight it wis
possible. It seemed to him that the faith to do it was so
strong in him that it could not &il to work its own fulfillmeot
She listened.
As fiur 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 1 He had always seen liviog
things in lonely wayside stones ; and lamented for the birds
and beaste, because the priests sud there was no etemi^ for
them ; and heard so many voices, that none else could ever
hear, in the silent mardhaling 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 litde
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 jeal-
ousy in her. It was not for her that he suffered so much.
Not for the real woman, as she knew herself. Not for the beau-
tiful 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 bad
built up before him with her words and dressed in her appard
of sofl lies.
She was almost jealous : as astrologists were of shapes thdr
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 I ^thinking of you night and
morning, thinking of you safe with Christ 1"
His head was bent down upon her knees, otherwise he
SIQNA. 401
would have seen her petulant, proud month oarre in a little
smile.
She stretched her hand out, and musingly touched the soft
carls of his hair.
H^ shrank, as if the touch had burnt him. She saw the
gestare of aversion. It set her heart harder on the thing she
meant to do.
'^ Yon 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 teU a million lies. All women do.
But there is something in your eyes that will not let one lie.
What 18 itr
Lying all the while, she kept her hand upon his curls,
stroking them gently, till, magnetized 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 vou with my life ;
^I say, vrith my soul ; only you laugh at mat.''
" Nay, I do not laugh ; for you, ^you are of the things
Gt)d makes to live forever, ^if he makes anything. I laugh
when you talk of soul or mind in me, A woman has a body
and a fiioe ; no more. She has ten years' grace with them,
and glory ; then she is withered up and eiioved 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 oould 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 teU you. Signs, 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."
"Pahnal What is she to me ?"
He rose and stood irresolute, impatient, bewildered. Gro,
and leave her 1 He felt as he had felt in the garden of Giovoli,
hearing her laughter on the other side of the wall as she was
swung by other hands than his up in the golden fruit-boughs.
84
\
402 8IGNA.
His &oe was bomiiig ; his lieait was beatang; liia bnm mm
giddy; lie had spoken in all the eamestzieas of pain an^ dirilL
It seemed to him that she must loathe her life. It seemed
to him that she must hate herself. He had spoken in fill
fidth. He would have sorrendered up his firinne yean to has,
and senred her faithfully forever parted fiom her.
But then she did not seem to see
The passion of his sorrow fell back fixim her, as hot tean
may &11 back fixm the red smoothness of a ro0e-lea
She leaned backwards on the cushions of her oouidi ; her
hands were tightly clasped behind her head ; her wide aleevei
fell back from her arms to the shoulder ; her &oe was tamed
upward, with her blue eyes watching him through half-oiosed
lids ; her small scarlet mouth was but half shut^ h& bfealh
came through it evenly as a child's ; she smiled a littleL
It maddened him to look on her.
He could not stir one pulse of shame in her.
He could only ^leave her.
So she said.
Had he heea older, harder, wiser, he would have lefi her
then, without an effort to change the unchangeable, to piem
ihe impenetrable; or he would have tossed her away fiom him
with such scorn, such firce, such loathing, that, finding her
master in him, the cowardice which sleeps in ewery woman
would have awakened in her and brought ha trembling to his
feet But he was not old, nor hard, nor wise ; hk heart wia
weak with all the innocent affection of his diildhood, and fiir
the first time the loveliness of a woman made him Uind and
aid. She was so much to him : she was Gemma, whom he
kissed a thousand times in babyhood, tnmblmg in the
flower-filled grasses of the green hill-ddes ; and she was abo
the first woman whose look sent fire through his veins. She
was near to him by a host of sinless memories ; and she m
sundered from him so utterly by sins so vile.
The world held nothing for him but herself.
To cleanse her fh)m her golden corruption, to shake her
conscience from its drugged apathy, to tear her away from the
companions of her life, to do aU this and save her for the
eternity that he believed in, the boy would have given up his
own life and his own soul.
All in a moment his art perished.
1
8I0NA. 403
"Wlien a human love wakes, it crasIieB fame like a dead
iSkFj and all the spirita and ministers of the mind shrink away
efore it, and can no more aUure, no more console, but, sighing,
aas into silence and are dumb.
She, lying back with her golden head on her clasped hands,
patched him.
She knew all he felt.
** IjCAve me," she said, with a slow soft smile. '* Ton have
fonT mnsic and the saints that yon believe in, and Pahna, who
will pray with yon. Why do you stay here ? Qo."
** 1 cannot go, ^not so.
She stung him with Palma's name ; poor, stupid, unlearned,
barefoot Pahna, treading the earth as the ox did and the mule.
^' GKemina, have you no conscience in you? no pain, no
sorrow, no revolt against your fate ?" he said, suddenly. " Oh,
my dear I have I spoken to the winds? Is it because my
words are weak that what I plead for seems so too ? Gemma,
I cannot leave you to your fate. It is to leave you to drink
poison as the very water of life, and to die a dog's death at
the end of all, a street-dog*s, kicked and cursed. Tou speak
of Pahna. How can I look in Palma's face, leaving her sister
loet as you are lost ? The very hills there would rebuke me,
the Yeiy stones at home cry out. Oh, God I What shall I
say ? If He put no soul in you, how shall I ?"
She listened to the generous, foolish, noble, senseless words.
Some of them stung her like thorns ; some of them moved
her with wonder. He seemed to her such a fool, ah, heaven I
Bach a fool. He spoke as children dream. Tet, innocently,
he lashed her with a scourge of nettles ; for he rejected her with
all his infinite tenderness ; for he spoke of her as of a lost,
degraded, alien thing ; for he would not set his kiss upon her
lipe.
She rose on an impulse of rage to send him from her for-
ever ; ^he would not touch her I She, who saw princes sue
and lords in feud for her, could have thrust her foot at him
and spumed him from her presence in her fuiy at his inno-
cently uttered scorn.
When the heart is fullest of pain and the mouth purest
with truth, there is a cruel destiny in things which often makes
the words worst chosen and surest to defeat the end they seek.
Each added word of his hardened more and more her will
404 8IGNA.
upon the oonree that she bad set herself; stang aU her
pride, and made more sure his doom with her.
No angel from heaven, no miracle of light sinning as in the
steps of Paul, could ever have changed her much ; hut he, io
all his innocence, struck the iron of her willfol Tanitj and
beat it into sharpest steel.
She rose erect on to her feet, and throst back the vhite
wooden shuttera before the casement nearest her, and let the
dazsling effulgence of the intense noonlight pour on her, and
bathe her in it, and turn the fairness of her hair to molten gc^
the whiteness of her flesh to ivory, the flush of her dieeks to
opal fires ; her beautiful limbs shone in it like marble, her hair
streamed against it till it was like an aureole of heaven. The
ruthless light glanced on her and searched her everywheie. and
found no flaw. Flowers droop in it ; childr^i pale in it ; birds
flee from it ; but she bore it in all its intenmtj, and was hat
the more glorious in it.
He gazed at her. She stood erect, golden and white against
the burning sun.
" Look at me I" she cried to him. " Look 1 t^e light tha
kills all other things and pales all other beauticR does but make
mine the greater. Look at me I The sun may shine on me,
search me, pierce me, it can find no &ult anywhere. Look
look ^look I There is no blemish anywhere, I say no flaw
the sun can find. And you talk to me of penitence and pain !
You talk to me of poverty and shame I Tou talk to me of
going back to penance in a peasant^s hut and letting rains and
winds and snows beat on my body ! Look at me ! While I
am this^ you think I care for heaven ? Tou are mad I Un-
lovely loveless women may cling to priestly tales of it, as
hungry curs hope, shivering, for a bone. I ^rtre it with an
hour of myself. Grods themselves can do no more than I !"
The mighty blasphemy of her superb vanity seenwd to him
to bum through the golden light she stood in, as lii^iJitnii^
through the sunbeams.
With her anps uplifted in the exultation of her mAasure-
less arrogance, and her eyes with contemptuous challenge
glancing through their amorous drooped lids, a sudden memurj
struck him.
He cried aloud, as if some mortal hurt were done hiia b
the flesh,
SIGNA, 405
** ITou were the dancer of Lstriel I Ton are the creature
they call Innocence !"
She looked him in the eyes straightly and serenely, her
golden head erect under the nimbus of the noonday light.
" Yes. Well, then ? what of that ?"
He gazed at her breathless; a great tearless sob choked
him ; then he fell down senseless at her feet.
When he came to himself he was alone upon a bed in a
darkened chamber. The wind was blowing over him; he
heard birds singing.
LiODg fasting, sleeplessness, and violent emotion, all had
made him lose his consciousness for a while ; his brain was
giddy still, the light swam before his eyes ; he rose and stag-
gered to the glass doors which stood open, and put the outer
shutters aside, and went out into the air.
An old pegress stopped him. Was he not too ill ? Would
he Dot wait ? Her mistress At the last word he put her
hurriedly aside and hastened farther out ; it was the house of
this woman whom her world called as the emperor his desert
beast Innocence. He could not stay in it ; the air of it
seemed to stifle him.
Without well knowing what he did, he traversed the gar-
dens with unsteady steps, the sunshine reeling and dancing
before his half-blind eyes ; then, his limbs growing stronger
and his sight clearer as the wind blew on him from the
water, he pushed his way through the maze of flowering
shrubs and thick-set orange-trees out of the gardens down on
to the shore. He sat down stupidly in the shadow of a boat
and leaned his forehead on his hands, and, do what he would,
saw only her ^standing against the light.
She was the dancer of lstriel.
' Well, what of that?'' she had asked him.
What of it, indeed ? It made her neither better nor worse.
It changed nothing. To have been the nude model of a painter
was not more than to have been the willing wanton of the world.
Yet it seemed more hideous to him.
It brought her vileness home to him.
It seemed to write her shame on earth and sky, as ou a
scroll for every eye to read.
This was a fancy ; but the fancies of poets are their hell
when they cease to be their heaven. And they cease so soon.
406 SIQNA. ^
The dancer of Istriel had heen seen hj all the oatams d
the globe ; that loveiy, yolaptnoos, smiling thing, with hanid
blossom and her floating feet, had looked all mankind in the
face and made them wish for her ; to the boy she seemed soid
to the whole earth, made harlot for all the peoples of tbe
world.
IstrieFs gold had bought his Rnagnaolo. Istrid's goidlud
purchased Gemma.
He owed his fiime she her ruin to the same hand. So
he thought He exaggerated his own debt, and he diut Ik
eyes against her lie, as such natures as his will ever do, to hurt
themselves and keep their fidth in their fiilse gods.
Where was Istriel ?
In an aimlefls, hopeless passion, he longed to find this man,
this man who had taken her in her youngest youth and
drawn every curve and colored eveiy hue of her fiur frame so
cruelly, and sent it out to let the eyes of all men ^oat on U in
public as they would. The crime of the painter against her
seemed to him viler than all seduction. It seemed to him the
very brutality of license, the veiy crown of outrage. The
seducer fed but his om eyes wiUi the beauty he unveiled;
this man had fed ten million ravishers' eyes wiUi has.
It was the first passionate agony of his life. He had sof-
fered before ; but then with hope underneath him, bearing him
up like the wing^ of some strong bird. He suffered now aa
those do who suJSer without hope.
All these years gone, and Palma praying there in an un-
doubting faith, and all the while nothing on earth or heaTca
heeding ; but til this vileness done beyond recall, beyond repur.
Do what he would, he could not change this thing the yeazB
had made her.
Cry as he would to fate, no means could undo what had
been done.
Nothing could give him back Gemma, ^little fiur Gemma,
with unstained sovd, sleeping as the lambs sleep in the bed of
hay. And yet the loveliness of her burned him like so much
flame.
He hid his face in his hands, and saw her always as he had
seen her come out from the water in the dark night among the
red roses.
" Qo write a romance on me," she had said to him. Bat
SIGNA, 407
lie oomld no more have done it than lie oould have flown to the
sun 'with the eagles.
H!is art seemed dead in him.
He heard no longer sweet concord in the waters and lisped
ntiinberB in the murmnrs of the winds ; he looked back at his
self of yesterday and wondered where the power in him had
gone ; iJl in a moment his art and his fame and all his high
desires seemed to grow as nothing to him.
He shnt his eyes, and saw the fair limbs of a woman slowly
moving through the shadows ; a mouth that smiled a little, a
bough of dark leaves and ruby buds against a snow-white
breast : that was all he saw.
His art : ^where was it?
It seemed to him like a dead thing. A sudden sense of
Tast immeasurable loss fell on him.
He was terrified ; he did not know what ailed him.
In men and women Loye waking wakes with himself the soul.
Id poets Love waking kUls it.
Nature had been always to the boy so full of sympathy and
solace. Beaten and hungry and overtasked in lus childhood,
he bad been happy the moment that he had escaped alone into
the open air on the breesse-blown hill-paths, with the sighing
of the pines above his head ; nay, happy even if he could but
be by auy little narrow casement and see the line of the old
town wall with the lichens and vetches clear against the sky
and in their crevices the shining lizards sitting. But now
mountain and lake and the autumnal glories of the woods
oould bring no consolation ; they only seemed to him cruel ;
they had no heart in them, they did not care.
The hideous universal sentence of corruption for the first
time seemed to him written over all the thing? of earth and air.
For she was vile.
How the day passed he never knew.
It rolled away somehow; the sky seemed like a sheet of
fire ; the sun for the fint time burned him and hurt him ; he
saw nothing but the form of a woman.
The man who had his opera at the town sought him, and
said,
" Only think ! they will play your Lamia at the Apollo in
Borne in Carnival. Only think! and at San Carlo too.
Here are your letters.**
\
408 SIGNA, I
He stared at the speaker, and thrnst tlie papen avij, nd \
did not answer.
He hardly understood.
HiB music?
It had been his religion. He was dead to it now. Ail in
a day his innocent spiritual joys were withered up in bia.
What use was it? It could not alter her.
In proportion to the absorption of any life in any ait, so ts
the violence of its dethronement and oblirion of ait when lore
has entered.
It seemed to him that eveiy note in all the woild mi^t be
forever mute, and he not care.
It seemed to him that if they said he was a ibol and kt him
die nameless and despised, it would be no matter to him.
For he loved this fair foul thing ; only he did not know it
After a while mechanically he found his way into his an
chamber.
It was late in the day. The little room was filled with
flowers that the village women, proud of having the yonog
genius in their midst, had placed everywhere about. He did
not notice them. But at the intense odor he shuddered a little;
they made him think of the garden ways of GiovolL
Without knowing what he did, he sat down to the piaso
which stood there.
He began to play.
A torrent of passion, a passion of tears, was in the mada
that he made with no sense of what he did ; the abraptest
changes from psun to rapture, the strongest and greatest har-
monies, the most capricious transitions, the most bittv woe,
were in the sounds he drew ; never in all his creations had be
reached so great a height as now, when he created what he did
not care to preserve, what he had no brain left to measure.
By sheer instinct his nature cried aloud against its pain is
the art that was inborn in him as its song in a bird.
Then all at once he ceased and loathed it : what use was it?
it was only a mockery ; it could not alter her.
Some of those who followed him and worshiped him, ^for
he was never now without some of these parasites of success,
standing outside his door, listened breathless in ecstasy ; one
or two, when the melody ceased, ventured in and kissed his
hands, and cried to him,
8IGNA. 409
" You never were so great I"
He looked at them dally.
'^ What good is it ?" he said to them ; and he went into his
oner room and barred the door against them.
What good was it?
He was scarcely more than twenty years old ; he had a gp^at
ature ; he had put his name in all the mouths of men ; he
I ad all that, dreaming under the pines above Bruno's house
he night when the violin was broken, he had thought would
)e worth purchase by a whole long life of toil and poverty and
'enunciation and neglect.
And all was unr^ and useless to him now. It seemed as
f his hands grasped ashes and his ears were full of the sound
)f empty winds mourning through desolate places.
He went out in the air again.
He could not rest in-doors.
He shook himself free, with impatience, of his disciples,
who would fain have accompanied him and spoken to him ot
the coming reception of his operas down in Rome. He got
away hy himself to the shore of the lake; to the still and
sombre shadows of a long-deserted garden that had been his
haunt in happier hours.
There are times when the weakness of humanity falls back
broken and heart-sick before the iron wall of unchangeable
circumstance, as a beaten seabird falls back from the stone
face of the clifis.
It was so with him now
"If only I could save her!" he cried in his heart, and in
his heart knew that he could not, not though he were to
give his soul up for her own. Legends tell of such barters.
Life does not know them.
Gemma had been her own destiny. But such destiny was
as immutable as though the gods of old had shaped it.
She had stained her white marble red. Signa knew that
though the stone should be washed seventy times seven and
bruised into a million fragments, the dust would be never
white again, but blood-red always, always.
He had uttered his real thoughts to Gemma: to him she
was like one leprousstricken. Her story had filled him with
pity, but with horror.
Bruno had taught him to hold wanton women accursed.
8 86
410 SIQNA.
Braoo, who again and again bad fiillen in their snares, ^
always bidden bim bold them like the deadly nrasbrooms dns
men gather for bread and find are death. Bmno, fearii^ the
soilness of the boy's nature, had said always to him, ^^ Povertj
is bad, and hunger and sickness and sorrow and labor tliat bs
no end, ^these are all bad ; but worse than any of tliese is it
to be the slave of a woman who is unchaste/*
He wandered all the day. It seemed to him as if it woold
never end. He saw nothing but the face of Oemma. The
world which had seemed to him so beautiful was changed;
heaven was cruel. It created loveliness only to poUute it and
deform it afterwards.
Out of his dreams he was brought &oe to fikoe with hdtA
that sickened him. All the old land-marks of his fidth were
gone. All the happy hopefulness of his nature was crushed.
He was bewildered and sick at heart. And through it all he
could not thrust away the personal beauty of the woman.
Her gaze, her form, her breath, her smile, her sigh, ^he could
think of no other thing. It seemed to him as if she were m
the air, in the clouds, in the water; her voice rang in his ears;
she was so lovely, and yet she was so vile ; she was so much
more than a woman, and so much less. " If only I could save
her I" he said to himself, and then could have flung hb fere-
head on the rock, remembering that there was no way to make
her other than she was; remembering that to be torn fiom
shame is not to become innocent.
Oh, dear God, all Palma's prayers !'' he thought. They
had been all in vain, like so much fotile breath ngi&ki on the
empty air to corresponding space.
The mockery of it stung him, as if God himself were jeering
as a man might do.
He looked up stupidly at the broad noonday skies. There
was the same sun, the same earth, the same water ; b^ond the
plains on the hills that he knew best, men and women were
leading the same Ufe, sharing the wine from the presses, draw-
ing the oxen over the green sods, gathering up the ripe olives,
with the bells ringing over their quiet world. It seemed to
him so strange. Everything was unchanged except himself
and he se^ed to have become old, and died, and full of pain.
Only one night before there had been no happier living
thing in all the human world than he ; and now ^he wcmdered
SIONA. 411
tliat the snn did not stay in its course, that the waters did not
rise and eover the land, that all the flowers were not withered
off the gronnd, since sin so covered the earth.
The hoars rolled by ; he did not count them. The long
bot day burned itself out, as passing passions do. The boats
came and went ; the sun sank, and the moon rose. His own
stars the stars of the Winged Horse shone down in the first
faint darkness of the early night.
He sat lonely on the solitary shore, watching the breeze-
blown water, without sense of what he saw.
He could not understand the anguish that blotted out for
bim all favois of earth and heaven.
All life had been to him as the divining-rod of Aaron,
blooming ever afresh with magic flowers. Now that the flame
of pain and passion burned it up, and lefl a bare sear brittle
bough, he could not understand.
Love is cruel as the grave.
The poet has embraced the universe in his visions, and heard
harmony in every sound, from deep calling through the darkest
storm to deep, as from the lightest leaf dancing in the summer
wind ; he has found joy in the simplest things, in the nest of
a bird, in the wayside grass, in the yellow sand, in the rods of
the willow ; the lowliest creeping life has held its homily and
solace, and in the hush of night he has lifled his face to the
stars, and thought that he communed with their Creator and
his own. Then all in a moment^Love claims him, and there
is no melody anywhere save in one single human voice, there
is no heaven for him save on one human breast ; when one face
is turned from him there is darkness on all the earth ; when
one life is lost, let the stars reel firom their courses and the
world whirl and bum and perish like the moon; nothing
matters : when Love is dead there is no Qod.
Signa sat by the wind-tossed lake-waters.
He did not know what had killed his soul in him. He only
knew that his music was no more to him than the sound of
stones shaken in a shriveled bladder by an idiot's hand.
Bruno was avenged.
Give me to the worms : let only my music live 1" he ha4
said again and again in his one prayer to Fate. Now ^wha
use was his fame or his art to him ? They could not und
what was done.
412 8IONA.
Achievement holds its mockeiy, no less than fkOiire.
The evening deepened; the stars of Pegasns grew clearer;
a lovely silvered radiance spread over the face of the waters
and the sides of the mountains. He had no sight for it, and
no care. He sat where he had wandered, the hill-thjnfte under
his feet, goldfruited boughs above his head, the lake before him.
Through the soft gloom a white form stole towards him, a
rose against her lips, as Silence has, to hide her smileB.
She came and watched him a moment, and then laid her
hands on his bent head.
" Ton went uway without a word to me," she said. " I have
looked for you since sunset, Signa."
He trembled from head to foot, and sprang erect, and stood
and gassed at her.
She waited a little while, then sank on the rough stone seat
hewn out of a fallen rock where he had sat.
" Well ?" she said, softly. " Have you nothing to say to
me? nothing?
" What can I say ?" he muttered. " I wound you, I hurt
you, or I seem a fool."
'^ A noble fool," she said. '^ Such fools as heaven is peopled
with, if the saints' tales be true."
His face flushed with the joy of her pndse. Yet what waa
any praise of hers worth ? ^what value any word ?
Her words were as the tinkling cymbals of brass whidi lead
men to destruction. Her beauty was bare to ail the worid as
Phryne's on the canvas of Gkrome.
He had been reared in the stem judgments of the old Dante
temper which'still lived in the recesses of the hill, the temper
which flung the nude marble and the voluptuous image in the
flames at Savonarola's bidding.
" Why did you go away so ?" she said to him. " I Idl
you for a moment with my woman, and when I went back yoa
had fled, no one knew where."
" Knowing what I know, your house stifles me."
" That is how you repay me for the truth. I should have
lied to you."
. You have let him paint the truth in scarlet letters for all
the world to read."
'^ Istriel ! Oh, that is so long ago I"
" He was your betrayer ?"
SIONA. 413
What does it matter?"
" He was ?"
" What does it matter ? I say ; I have forgotten him. He
is far away painting in the Ukraine, waiting for the great
snows, they say, to draw the forests and the wolves. Perhaps
the wolves will eat him. Let him he. He painted me in a
liundred ways. The first thing he did was of me standing like
a little saint holding a dove and with those white roses that
^we call of the Madonna : he named the picture Innocence ;
that is how I had the name."
" He is in the snow-fields, you say, now ?"
' I heard so ; yes. What does it matter ? What would
you do if he were here ?"
He only looked at her. His &ce was very pale ; his great
eyes had an answer in them that she understood.
She laughed a little to herself.
" You would kill him ? Poor Istriel I Why? Since I did
not?"
" You would have done if "
" If I had heen Palma ?"
She laughed again ; aloud this time.
'' If you had been a woman as Qod made them."
" How is that ? God made Eve ^if He made anything. Do
not use phrases, Signa. You learned that of your priests.
Yoa will die in a monk's robes after all I"
He turned from her with an inexpressible pain.
" Ob, my God I You can jest I**
" Why not, dear ? All my life is a jest. It goes merrily
like bells. You will not understand."
" I will not believe 1 You cannot be so base."
"In a man it were philosophy; why in a woman is it
baseness ?"
" You play with words ! if you be happy, why say a few
hours since you were in hell ?"
A faint smile broke across her face. She banished it before
he saw it there.
" You know women so little, if you ask that. We are in
hell one hour and in heaven the next. * Flower of an Hour.'
That is a woman. I am happy, very happy, when you
will not make me think."
He looked up at her again.
86*
414 SIONA,
" All ! if you would but think, but let your
wake."
We said enough of that," she interrupted hiin, with
coldness. "To-day I answered you, onoe and 6t bSL If
you want conscienoe, and terror of the saints, and all joo call
true womanhood, you have it in Palma, ^whom yon leare!
As for me, I told the truth to you, judging you other than
you are. I thought that you were fair enough, tender enoo^
sinless enough yourself to stay with me a little for our diild-
hood*s sake, without reproach. I have loTers where I wilL
I have no friend. Because I am no hypocrite, and will not
take up at a moment's bidding sackdoth and ashes, and say
the seven psalms of penitence, you shudder and leave me to my
fate. You have no patience, no reason, no compassion. You
cast me off because I am not ready to go back to the old, hate-
ful, bitter, famished life, and say my ^ culpa mea* at the feet of
Palma. You are mad. And do not speak to me of sorrow.
If you had sorrow for me, you would say, * This woman is alone
in all her wealth, desolate in aU her power, without a heart to
trust amidst a troop of lovers.' You would say, ' There b a gulf
between us, yes, but I will serve her still. I will not foniake
her because she does not pile the cinders of a false repentance
on her head; I will have more faith in the later strength of
patient purpose to win her back from error.' That is what
you would say, were you indeed the gentle boy I thought yoiL
But you are like all the rest who imitate the saints. Tender-
ness with you means flattered vanity ; you speak of your gods
and act but for yourselves ; you think you arm yourself with
virtue, but your strength is only your own self-love sharp-
wounded and irate. You preach to me; you bid me leave my '
world ; you say you best had never seen my fiice again ; and
why? Because you hate my sins? Ah, no! Because you
hate my lovers I"
His face flushed scarlet ; he sprang to his feet
The brutal truth, which yet was only half a truth, and bore
rankest injustice with it, pierced him to the quick.
There were honor, fair faith, and purity of intent in him,
which flung off the words, in honest rage, as calumny. Yet,
like aJl words that lay bare any truth, they had the electrio
shock of lightning in them. Passionate repudiation spraag
to bis lips, then paused there ; he was silent.
SIONA. 416
it less her sins he loathed than those who shared them ?
searched his heart in vain ; all seemed dark there. He
(tood indignant, jet abashed. He knew her words a lie ; yet
irere bis own all truth ? He did not know. He was a mys-
to himself.
To himself; but not to her. She watched him, knowing
pang that moved him, knowing each doubt that stunned
and confused him. The lovers of her world, though often
passion was high and their emotions violent, could give
lier no such sport as this young soul which had dwelt in solitude
-^th art and God, and was bewildered in the maze of passions
4h&t she dragged it to, as any antelope caught in the hunter's
toils, when the forest is ablaze with torches and alive with
*^ You do me cruel wrong, God knows," he said, simply,
and 80 turned and would have left her then forever.
He knew she wronged him ; but how much how little
that he could not tell ; he was sure no longer of himself, nor
of anything, human or divine.
**^ What ! she said, slowly. '' You cannot even foigive me,
thenr
He sighed from the depths of his heart.
'* I do forgive you everything. But who is to know the
thing you really are ? You seem so vile and soulless, all one
moment, and the next Ah, let me go I It kills me to be
here. Perhaps I hate your lovers, as you say. Perhaps.
Your brothers would."
A dark sooro gathered in her eyes. He ^who had felt
her hand among his hair, and on his drooping brow could
speak sol
" My brothers ! they would be glad enough if I gave them
gold to spend at loto, and new wine to drink, as far as I re-
member them, which is but little. They bit and pinched
me ; and I stole figs and nuts to bribe them with, if ever I
wanted them. If you have no better thing to say than quote
my brothers I "
"Say what I will, you quarrel with it, Gemma, ^if you be
Gemma ; sometimes still I think you cannot be, let me go 1"
" I am not Gemma. Gemma was a little stupid child, fed
on black bread and tumbling with the pig. I am Innocencei
the Innocence of Paris."
416 810NA.
And she laughed.
The kughter was like ioe, and made him shiver^ fledi a&d
bone.
What had she not known, what had she not done, what
brutalities of license had not she bent to in willing bondage,
what cruelties and luxuries of vice had she not tasted, io-
ented, been prodigal of, what memories bad she not, what
horrors must she not have steeped her fsdr white beaatj in^
he thought of all that, hotly, dully, as a drunken man will
think of things that forever pursue him and yet are alwap
vague to him.
The moonlight was about her; the crimson amarmnthos
flung its tall feathers round her ; some marble scolptnreB sbooe
behind her in the dark leaves of olive and of orange. She
was so perfect to look on; no sculptor ever made a &irer
Glytie for the Gk)d of Song: and what had h^ life been?
what were her memories? what was her foul knowledge?
She was like the casket of silver that held the ashes of dealiL
It broke his heart to look onlier.
To others she might be only one fur false woman the moi,
gone the way that all loose women take. But to him she was
the very ruin of earth, the very mockery of heaven.
He clasped her hands with a great oiy : ^' Oh, Ciemma !
have you no pity?"
Had she any ?
She looked at him, thinking for the moment that she would
be pitiful, and let him go, go, whilst there was yet time ;
while she could still become to him a thing seen in a trance, a
phantom soon forgotten, a mere name ; go, whilst the honor
in him was stronger than the love.
He was only a score of years old ; he heard beautiful things
in his dreams ; he was loved by the people and cherished ;
his future would be greater than his present ; he had the semi-
divinity of genius; he had the virgin gold of an unworn
heart ; he had the fond mad faith of a poet : if she let him
go there was still time, time for him to leave in peace, forget-
ting her, in his art, as a feverish dream of the night is ibr-
gotten in the breaking of morning.
Would she have pity ? it was but one plaything forborne,
one leaf of the laurel ungathered. But she had said to h^-
self, " Palma shall die of want of him, and I will be his god.'*
SIGNA. 417
She said it again in her heart.
As much of warmth as she could know, stirred in her to-
wards him.
His beauty, his youth, his very innocence had a charm for
her, such as sated Faustina or wearied Messalina might have
foand in some fair boy captive from Judea, with the simple
asceticism of the Ghililean fishers in his soul. And then he
rebuked her, shrank from her, condemned her : it was enough.
In the days of their infancy she had done with him as she
chose ; should he be stronger than she was now ?
He cleaved to his art and his faith ; well, he should forswear
both.
He was a little shell off the sea-shore that Hermes had
taken out of millions like it that the waves washed up, and
had breathed into, and had strung with fine chords, and had
made into a syrinx sweet for every human ear.
Why not break the simple shell for sport ? She did not
care for music. Did the gods care, they could make another.
"Have I no pity?'' she murmured. "Nay, you only
dream : dreams are pale, cold things at best : learn with me
to live I'' And she drew her hands from him and passed
them round his throat, and inclined his head towards her
breast, and brought his lips to hers.
" Have I no pity ?" she said.
His life passed into her life. His soul went from him and
became her own.
CHAPTER XLV.
It was a soft, clear winter ifi the country round the Lastra.
On Christmas-day the wind-flowers were still rosy and
purple and snow-white in the grass of the fields ; and, with
the new year, the red roses blossomed behind the iron bars of
the casements, and in the corn-fields the crocuses were think-
ing that it was already time to come through the earth. Girls
plaited at the doors on the mild mornings, as if it were sum-
mer ; and there was seldom a curl of wood-smoke on the air,
except when the soup-pots were simmering.
s*
418 SIGNA,
Mod oomiDg and going from the city, and post-lngs diop]Kd
as the letter-cart ran down over the bridge from the vffer
town, brought tidings in the soft, silveiy weather of the AcSfit
and the Lamia.
In all the cities one or the other was being given ; norl^
and south, under the Alps, and by the sea-shore of VesuTiua,
they were playing and singing the music of the joang master,
who called himself by the old historic word of " Sigoau*^
" Wliat name will you take for the great world ?" they had
siud to him, when he was still but a little scholar.
" Only Signa," he had said ; and he signed all that he
wrote so.
'* My mother was the flood, and my &ther the owls," be
said to himself; he liked best to have it so ; dead Pippa we
a pain to him ; and her lover, whoever he had been, whetln?
prince or peasant, had no hold on his thoughts. *'I am
Signa," he said ; that was all his own, owing no man anything
for it, nor the Church either. Signa, just as the walls were,
and the gates, and the bells, and the woods, and the old painted
frescoes.
Everywhere they were playing and anging his music, and
it had even echoed over the Alps, and spread itself northward
and southward, in that victory of the lyre with whidi his ooon-
try has so often avenged herself for the invasions of the sword.
His music was in the throats of the people.
In gnm Perugia, in dark Bologna, in smiling Como, In
grand Ravenna, in the City of the Sirens, in the busy marts
of Milan, in sombre, obscure truscan towns, in mighty opera-
houses, in little solitary theatres, anywhere and everywhere the
melodies of the Actea and the Lamia were ringing ; they had
the pure science which allures the cultured ear, and the potent
sympathies which sway the multitudes; learned doctors fol-
lowed their accurate combinatians with delight in the solitnde
of the study, and boys and girls caught their sweet smplidty
with rapture, and sang them to the woods and fields, as birds
their love-calls.
The Actea and the Lamia were sisters and rivals both at
once : the Asiatic slave, with her crucified god and her mur-
dered master, and the Venus of the Jelute, with her crowned
passion and her divine honors, divided between them the adnla-
tion of the people.
SJONA, 419
Some fonod noblest the saciifioed love, some the yictorious;
the dishonored grave that held the world for Actea, some
^he imperial art that rendered Lamia stronger than her tyrant;
liit whether one or the other, or whether both together, the
^^wo stories, old as the cities of the world are old, fresh as love
is fresh, took hold upon the sonls of the people, and by the
interpretation of his harmonies thrilled the world anew, as
Rome had trembled when Actea had wept, and Athens when
T^mia had stayed the lifbed sword.
There is a chord in every human heart that has a sigh in it
i touched aright.
When the artist finds the key-note which that chord will
answer to in the dullest as in the highest, then he is great.
Signa had found it.
Found it by the instinct which men call genius, not knowing
'what else to say.
To the quiet Lastra, with the com springing about it, and
tbe smell of the pines coming down on the wind, and the fish-
ermen throwing their nets in the full waters, tidings of these
^reat triumphs of the little fellow who had run barefoot among
them came eveiy now and then, written in letters, spelled out
of newB-sheets, and oftener still brought by the mouths of men
coming from the little fairs of the towns, or the grain-markets
of the city.
They played the Actea in the city itself before Christmas.
The men and women of the Lastra went many of them down
into the city to hear this wonderful music which Pippa*s son
had made, ^poor Pippa, who had always plaited ill. And
many more, who could not go, heard of it on the market-days,
and brought back all the strange marvels of it that were told
and said, how at midnight on Christmas Eve, when the people
sang all together in the cathedral, praising God for the past
year, for the good and ill together, some solitary voice had
lifted itself and sung the death-song of the Christians, inso-
much that the whole multitude was carried away as with one
impulse, and chanted it together as by one voice, standing and
beating their breasts with streaming eyes under the great dome,
when the music had got upon them, so that no force could
restrain them, but, singing still, they had poured out under the
midnight stars into the fresh air, and gone their various ways
in the teeth of the northern wind, singing the hymn still in all
420 SIGNA.
the streets, and fiUiDg Florence with it, as it bad been fiOed la
the olden time with the litanies of SaTonarola.
All that Bmno heard, when he drove his mole thiongh the
little towns, or went down into the city to buy or sdl ; all that,
and much more of the same spirit, in the winter-tiine, when
he worked by lantern-light early and late, and the snow ky oa
the mountains between him and the sea.
Lnigi Dini went and heard, and said his Nnnc Dinoitlis ia
the great peace of his heart. He had lored Music, and had
served her as the veiy humblest and lowest of her drudge j
and it had been given to him to feed on his crumbs of knowl-
edge, and refresh with his cup of the water of faith, this yonag
High-Priest of hers, this heaven-bom ApoUino.
Sitting in an obscure comer of the vast area of the Pi^
ano, the old man heard the thunders of applause, and saw the
house filled from floor to roof, and listened to the grave-soag
of Actea,' and thanked fate which had let him live so long : few
men can do as much.
" Will you not go and hear it?" he said to Bruno.
Bmno answered,
" No."
" No ! Not when the city rings with it ?*'
" Why should I ? I have heard it, ^long ago, ^when he
was a little child, sitting in the thrashed straw, playing on the
old cracked lute I gave him. I had it all, ^so long ago."
'* A child's twitterings on a lute I You talk idly : you know
nothing of this."
*^ I know enough," said Bruno. For in his heart he still
hated it, the art which had taken away Pippa*s son. It was
always his antagonist, always his conqueror.
But for that, Signa would have been so happy in the little
house that would have been built by the brook where the
rushes blew. So happy, and safe always.
He and Palma worked in the short winter days, and got up
in the dark and beat the black earth for their daily bread ; and
neither of them ever forgave this mystical passion which had
usurped the life of Signa and taken him from them to give
him to the world.
Bruno worked early and late, because it had been his habit
from his birth upward, and had so grown into him as to be a
very part of himself. But he had lost sBcst in it. He had no
SIGNA. 421
longer any um. The man, by temper open-handed, did not
care to save for saving's sake and the mere pleasure of seeing
the money accumulate, as most men did ; and Signa did not
want his help. Signa earned his own money.
Life, without a central purpose around which it can revolve,
is like a star that has fidlen out of its orbit. With a great
affection or a great aim gone, the practical life may go on
loosely^ indifferently, mechanically, but it takes no grip on
outer things, it has no vital interest, it gravitates to nothing.
Bmno was too hardy and too used to the ways of labor to
leave any labor undone or ill done ; but the days were all stu-
pid alike to him ; he would have been content to have had no
more of them. His crops, his cattle, his fruits, his oil, ceased
to fill turn with pride or to rack him with anxiety ; a bad year
or a good year was the same to him ; he had no end to save
for : there was Lippo in the three fields by the brook ; and
Signa wanted no help. The old gloom fell upon him ; the
old dark thoughts took possession of him.
The people on the hill saw that he worked harder than
ever he had done before, now that he was once more alone.
But they did not know that the joy had gone out of the work
for him.
Before, Bruno had had that pride and pleasure in his daily
labors vrithout which labor is but as the task of the treadmill.
In his comely stacks, in his even furrows, in his plenteous
crops, in his cleanly vines, in his well-nourished beasts, he had
taken delight. His fields had been to him as a fair picture ;
his harvests as a stout victory ; he would have plowed against
any man to and fro the steepest slope with the same triumph
in his skill as that which fills the breast of the artist in con-
templating his finished masterpiece.
But now all that was changed with him. His work had lost
that gladness in it which alone sweetens life's perpetual strug-
gle. A sense of captivity had come over him. That large
liberty which the breath of the mountains gives had gone away
from him.
One marketrday he had to stay later in the city over a bar-
gain which Saverio had bidden him miss on no account: it was
night before he could harness his little beast and think of
moving homeward. It was Twelilh-Night, and all the place
was in a pleasant tumult. Carnival had come in that day, and
86
422 SIONA.
everywhere thore were laughter and lights and sport and jest,
and at the oomers of the streets maskCTs were dancing.
Time had been when he had had fnll lest in that merrj
fooling ; when he had oome down in the dark eyeninga from
his homestead, walking all the way, and spent the midnight in
the masked riot, leaping round the bonfires and fljiiig in the
circles of the mad dancers, and then had gone up again hdbre
dawn broke to his oxen and his wheat-fields and his oliTe-
pressing.
But those days were done for him : he passed throng^ the
mnmmers dark and silent^ with never a look at th^n, with his
cloak wrapped across his mouth. His errand took him past
the great theatre ; the lighted lamps gleamed on the prmted
word of Actea ; a multitude was thronging in, while die city
clocks chimed eight
Bruno halted a moment. He had said he would never hesr
it A sort of hatred thrilled in him at sight of the gatherii^
people : it was to fill their ears and to have his name in their
mouths that Signa had forsworn the old safe ways of his
mother*s people.
So Bruno thought, at least, who did not know that geidis
is, at its best, but a idave, driven on by the whip of an irape
rious and incomprehensible obligation.
He had said he never would hear it But at oght of that
dense crowd pressing inwards, a curious impulse to go with
them seized on him.
Without thinking much what he did, he entered too ; drew
from his pouch the price they asked him ; and found himsdf
carried onwards by he pressure into the body of the house.
He had been there once or twice in his life, no more. It
is the theatre of the people indeed, but peasants go to humUer
ones, and Bruno, except on Carnival nights, had never, even
in his maddest years of youth, .spent much time in the city.
The Lastra had been his world.
He stood and leaned against a pillar, as he might have done
in a church, and the sweet, solemn harmonies of the overture
thrilled through the immense space round him.
Look where he would, there was a sea of human faces ; the
theatre was crowded, and there was not empty room left for a
little child. A carious emotion filled him with pain and pride
together. All this throng of living people was summoned by
SIONA. 423
tbe iiiag;ic of the boy whom he had lifted from the breast of his
d3ad. mother like a lamb from a drowned ewe. He had never
realized before what thing it wajs^ this power of the artist on
the multitade ; this power which is most the result of genins in
proportion as it is least its object. As he watched the silent,
bria.tliles8 mnltitude, such a power seemed to him like a sorcery.
He recognized the beauty of the music, but it was not that
'wbicbi moved him. It was to see all that rapt intent throng
of men and women ruled by the spell cast on them by the boy
'who, to him, was still only as a child, ^the boy who only a
day before, as it seemed to him, had been a little thing carrying
a load of vine-leaves for the cattle, and happy if a crust of
bread were given him to eat on the hill-side at noonday.
He stood and watched and listened : the rapturous applause,
the tearful silence, the ecstasies of admiration, made his brain
dizzy, and his heart throbbed. This was fame, ^to hold a
mass of idle, curious, indifferent people in these trances of de-
light, in these rhapsodies of emotion : he understood it at last.
ach wave of these great sounds seemed to lifl the boy he
loTed farther and farther from him. The shouts of the mul-
titude were like the noise of a sea-tempest in his ears, bearing
away from him and drowning the one innocent affection of his
life. He realised his own impotence to follow or reach or do
anything more to aid the life which had been swept out of his
orbit. All in a moment Signa grew an inaccessible, unfamiliar
far-distant thing to him, ^like any one of those stars which
lie looked up to at night, and which the priests said were
worlds lying in the hollow of the hand of Deity.
*' It is to be like a god," he said to himself, as the music
pealed through the space around him and held the people quiet
in the breathlessness of their delight. He did not wonder any
more that Signa had refused to be content with beating the
earth for his daily bread.
He heard two men close by him say,
*' It is strange the boy himself should be away, ^the first
time any of his music is ^ven here, his own city, too, as one
may call it.*'
" Ay : he is in Rome. They play the Lamia there in Car-
nival."
" And there is a woman, so they say."
" There always is a woman."
1
424 SIGNA.
The two men passed onward, laughing.
Bruno touched them.
" Sirs, ^forgive me, ^is that true?"
" Is what true ?"
They looked at him in surprise ; a oontadino with his daik
cloak about him, Ad his careless defiance of attitude, and hia
look of the mountain and the weather.
" That which jou said, ^that there is a woman ? that this
is why he does not come?''
" Ah I we know nothing," they answered him, lightJj. ''So
they say. So young as he is, and a lion everywhere, it is quite
natural. But what can it be to you ?"
" I am from his country," said Bruno, simply. He thought,
perhaps, it would not do the lad good to say much more. ^^ I
come from the Lastra, if you could (ell me anything of him ? '
" Indeed we know nothing," said the men. "We nerer s^w
the youth ; but every one is talking of him ; so they will go- .
sip, it may not be true. That is aJl : somebody said a womaa
kept him down in Rome, ^some light woman out of Fraaoe.
But they would be sure to say so, true or untrue. Fame is a
sugared paper ; but it brings all wasps down on it. Nay, ifl-
ded, we know no more."
And with many asseverations and many excuses, as thoas:h
he were a prince and not a peasant, courtesy being the oommoo
way of the country, the men went out through the crowd into
the night-air, and Bruno followed with the passing throng.
" Some light woman out of France."
The words rung in his ear like a hornet's booming.
He harnessed his mule, and went back through the gay
merry glittering streets, and over the river across dark Oltramo
and so out into the solitary country.
He met scarcely any one upon the way.
The high-road was quiet as a bridle-path across the fields,
and the Lastra was hushed, with fastened casements, and asleep.
The mule flew speedily over the level ground, and strained
slowly up the steep hill-road ; the river shone ; the leafless
plain was dark; the night was very cold; the skies were
clouded ; a dark winter storm hung over where the sea lay,
and hid the Lyre, and the Cross of Cygnus, and the five stars
dedicated to the plumed steed which bears poets to their dreams
and liiis them to the highest height, to let them fall.
SIQNA. . 425
** A ligbt woman out of FraDce."
The words went with him as a corse rings on the ear long
after it is spoken.
^What would she do with him ? with that tender reed of
liis 9onl, which the gods had singled out from all its fellows,
a.Dl taken away from the mountain-brook of its birth to make
into a flute for their pleasure ?
Snino drove on through the gloom up into the loneliness
or Ills own hills.
Tie felt like one chained.
The life which had seemed to him the best of all lives grew
into a prison-cell. He was wedded to the soil ; fastened down
to one daily track ; held &st as by a cord about his feet
It had always seemed to him so well that a man should
never stir from one nook, should get his bread where his
ikthers sot theirs, should find his joys and his pains in one
spot, should live and die on the soil that saw his birth. Men
yfrho sought fortune &r afield had seemed to him no better
than the gypsies. Men who bore their restless discontent for-
ever to firesh pastures had seemed to him base sons of a fair
country. A narrow field was a world too wide for a man to
do the duties of it, so his people had always said, dwelling
here, and letting the centuries go by without bringing to them
any change. Generation after generation, they had filled the
graves that the sheep cropped around the old brown church.
He had always said, '^ Mine will be there too," and been con-
teDt.
Now all in a moment ^the hill-side that he loved narrowed
to a prison-house. Other men were, free to come and go, to
follow the evil that they dreaded, and seek it out and combat
it ; but the peasant cannot stir.
The earth has fed him ; the earth claims him. He is her
son, but he is her bondman too ; as Ishmael was Abraham's.
All peril and all shame might encompass the young wander-
ing life of Signa, and the man who had set himself to give his
own life for it could not move to see the truth or wrestle against
fate.
^' A light woman out of France."
The words ran with him through the dark like furies chasing
him.
It might not be true : it might bo true.
86*
126 SfGNA.
It might be Tue : what likelier?
Signa, inspired of heaven, and among sharp hmmui epB &
fool, as genius always is, ^a giant in his art, an inuit in lui
ignorance, ^what plaything costlier or more alfauing to a
woman ?
He had the power of the Apollo Gynthseriredes indeed oref
men ; but in aJl other things, save his music, he was hot a
child, a child still half asleep, who looked at 1^ with sbuHds;
eyes and stretched his hands to it as to a sonbeam. What
likelier than that a woman held him ? and a woman worthies
it was sore to be. The heart of silver falls ever into the hands
of brass. The sensitive herb is eaten as grass by the swioe.
Fate will have it so. Fate is so old, and weaiy of her
task ; she must have some diversion. It is Fate who blinded
Love ^for sport and on the shoulders of PoaseBsion hong
the wallet full of stones and sand Satiety.
Bruno reasoned nothing so.
Only he knew the boy ; and he knew Love ; and he aud to
himself,
" Fate will come that way.!*
He had no hope ; he felt that what the men had said was
true. There was a woman yonder there in Rome.
Of course it might be so, and no harm come. Huiiicttiei
pass ; some trees stand and are the stronger for the atonn *,
some break and faU forever.
Or there might be no hurricane ; only a sweet mild south
wind that blew a little hotly for a space and whirled him on it
like a straw : ^no more.
But not to be there ! not to know ! Going through the
winter night to his lonely house, Bruno felt as though the
soil that he had loved as loyal sons their mothers, was a jaiL
His feet were fettered to it.
An alien force held the life that he had sworn to save, and
might destroy it and he never nearer, but working like his
beasts among the sprouting com, fix)m dawn to night, no JBreer
than the beasts were.
Beaching the summit of the hill, he looked back southward
to the low mountains that lie between the plun and Home.
The black clouds that folded the Winged Horse in their
mists had not stretched thicker ; over those mountains there
was darkness, but the stars were seen. Far away, above where
8IQNA. 427
tliey told him was the place of Rome, the star Algol was
Bliining clearer than all the rest.
A^strology and astronomy alike were naught to him; he
could find his way hy Polaris if wandering at night, ^thatwas
all : for the rest they were to him only veiled, nameless won-
ders that he never thought of: only this star he knew, Argol,
dresuled of Arah and Chaldean.
For on the night when Dina had died above there where the
pines were, that star had shone alone, as it did now, when all
tlie sky was dark.
And an old man, now dead, a shepherd, who had been a
soldier of Napoleon in his youth, and had brought strange
perilous faiths and fancies with him from the land of Eg3rpt,
Yksad said to him that night when Dina had died,
'^ That is the Demon Star. We knew it in the desert. It
means death,^-or worse."
Bruno had known it always ever after ; he knew it now.
A.rgol was shining above Rome.
Men who dweU in solitude are superstitious. There is no
*i chance" for them.
The common things of earth and air to them grow portents ;
and it is easier for them to believe that the universe revolves
to serve the earth, than to believe that men are to the universe
as the gnats in the sunbeam to the sun ; they can sooner credit
that the constellations are charged with their destiny, than
that they can suffer and die without arousing a sigh for them
anywhere in all creation. It is not vanity, as the mocker too
hastily thinks. It is the helpless pathetic cry of the mortal
to the immortal nature from which he springs :
" Leave me not alone : confound me not with the matter
that perishes : I am full of pain : have pity 1"
To be the mere sport of nazard, as a dead moth is on the
wind, the heart of man refuses to believe it can be so with
him. To be created only to be abandoned, he will not think
that the forqps of existence are so cruel and so unrelenting
and so fruitless. In the world he may learn to say that he
thinks so and is resigned to it ; but in loneliness the en umbra
of his own existence lies on all creation, and the winds and
the stars and the daylight and night and the vast unknown
mute forces of life aU seem to him that they must of neces-
sity be either his ministers or his destroyers.
428 8JQNA.
Bmno went on with a shadder in his
Ai^ol.
He had released his weary mole from his burden, and vaDced
up the steep path between his winter fields, holding the droof^
ing mouth of the beast. It was very cold in the honra before
morning on the heights where he dwelt. There was iee on
the roots of the pines where the rain-waters had settled, and
the north winds chased the great clouds around the head of
the hill. His home was dark and silent
When he had put the mule in the stall and thrown dova
hay for it, he entered his house, with the cheerlessneBB of the
place closing in upon him like a numbing frost. He passed
on his threobold and looked back at the southward akiesL
Argol was shining over Rome.
He set his lantern down before his crucifix that hung s^ainat
the wall.
*' Are you not stronger than that star ?" he mattered to it
" I have tried hard to serve you : are you not stronger ? caa
you not save him ? ^let the star take my soul if it most have
one. My soul I not his. Do you not hear ? Do we all eij,
and you are deaf? Let the star do its worst on me : that does
not matter. Do you hear?"
The crucifix hung motionless upon the wall. He had ex-
pected some sign, he knew not what.
Men had often been answered by such signs ; so the priest
told him, out of the lives of saints in the l^end of gold.
But for him all was dark, all was silent. No voice answered
him in his perplexity. Nothing cared.
Only through his open door he saw the blackness of the
night and Argol shining.
CHAPTER XLVL
" Dear Nita," said Lippo, one night, toasting himself over
a little pot of charcoal, " do you know I met my old friend
Fede in the city this morning ? He has come from Rome."
Nita grunted an indifferent assent; she was sorting and
numbering a pile of sheets and other house-linen ; her eldest
SIGIfTA. 429
daughter Rita waa about to marry a corn-chandler of Pistoia,
a very good marriage, for the youth was rich and had a farm
to boot, and Rita was of that turbulent temper, and had that
strong love of theatres, jewelry, and gadding about which
makes a burden of responsibility that a mother prefers to
shelve from her own shoulders to a son-in-law's as soon as may
be.
'^ Fede is doing well in Rome,'* said Lippo, loquacious and
confidential as it was his wont to be, especially when he had
anything in his mind that he intended to keep secret. " Only
think 1 twenty years ago Fede was a poor lean lad here, glad
to get a copper by the holding of a horse or running with a
message ; and now he is as plump and well-to-do a soul as one
could want to see, with a shop of his own, and good money in
the banks, and a vineyard by Frascati, all by knowing how
to get old women to give their dingy lace up for a song, and
coaxing plowmen to barter old coins they turn up from the
mud for brand-new francs, and having the knack to make
cracked pots and pans and pipkins into something wonderful
and ancient ! What a thing it is to be clever I But Provi-
dence helps always those who help themselves."
'' What have we to do with Fede?*' said Niti, who knew
that when her lord praised Providence for helping others he
generally had put his own spoon into their soup-plate.
'^ Oh, nothing, nothing I" said Lippo, caressing his charcoal-
pan. " Only, if ever we see any little old thing, ^no value,
you know, a saucer, or a pitcher, or a cup, or a plate that the
old folks use about here, there are scores, you know, why,
we can ^ve them nice new platters or jugs fresh made from
Doccia, and take the old ones and send to Fede : do you see ?
We shall do a good turn so to all our friends, to those poor
souls who will have new whole things to use instead of old
ones, and to Fede, who deals in such droll antique things to
the rich foreigners."
Nita's eyes sparkled.
** He wUl give us well for them ?" she sud, suspiciously,
never having learned in all her years of marriage the fine aits
and the delicacy of her lord.
Lippo waved his hand.
" Oh, my dear I ^between friends ! Fede is the soul of
honor. It will be a pleasure to look out for him ; and, besides,
430 SIONA.
each a benefit to one's poor ndghbon, wbo wiH btTe vbde,
smooth, pretty china, instead of the cradned damsj pots tks
the silly English-speaking nations like to worship. I did aj
to Fede, ^for one mnst always think of what is jnsi in o&-
scienoe before all else, Is it right to sdl pipkins and psas for
idols to the En^^ish ? And Fede said that for his psrt, too,
he had had that scruple, bat that the English are pegaiift, all
of them, always, and, if they cannot get a pipkin to pot oo an
altar under glass, fall on tbeir knees before a lug red book,
like a mass-book, that they call a Pl-rage. No one knovs
what is in it, only by what they find there, or do not lad.
they smile or frown ; some book of a black art, no doubt So
that the pipkin is the more innocent thing, because, whea tbej
get a pipkm, then they smile all round. So Fede says "
'* But he will pay us weU for anything we find ?" said Nki.
always impatient of her husband's moral digressiona. ^ Muj
old wives I know of have platteis and jugs hundreds of jesis
old and more, ^if that is what they want, such rabbit 1 '
Lippo waved his hands with a soil gesture to the onptj tir.
" Dearest, we are alone. It does not matter. I know jos;
noble nature. But if any one were here a stranger, or the
children ^they might think, hearing you, that our souls vse
basely set on gaining for ourselves. Praise be to the 8aii}t&
we are above all need of that now."
'^ With Toto spending all he does 1" grumbled his wife, wlti\
for her part, thought it very siUy to waste such pretty period?
when nobody was listening : why wash your fiwe unless j^-a
walk abroad?
" The pleJEisure," continued Lippo, as though she had nci
interrupted him, ^^ th^ pleasure will be in doing two good
turns : for one, to Fede, whom we have known all our lives.
good, thrifty, honest soul, and to our neighbors ; jnst thoee
dear old wives you spoke of, who will be made hiqppj by nici;
new china in the stead of ugly cracked old pots, heavy as iitiL
And then there may be now and then a little matter of hte,
too, or a crucifix, or a bit of old embroidery, anything
that is very i^ly and dropping quite to pieces pleases tbc
foreigners. There is so much hereabouts, in the old hrm
and the dames' kitohen-nooks. But of that we will talk
more. It is a new idea. Fede just spoke of it this momiitg.
He said to me, ' There is much money to be made this waj ;
8IQNA. 431
not bat what I know you do not care for that, only to senre
tne and your towns-folks.' And so he took me in my weakest
point !"
Nita grinned, marking her sheets.
She was a rough downright yigorous woman, with some
sense of humor, and the delicate reasonings of her husband,
when they did not rouse her wrath, tickled her into laughter.
She did not understand that he deceived himself with them
almost as much as he did others, blowing round himself always
this incense of fair motives till he believed the scented smoke
was his own breath.
'' It is quite a new idea,*' pursued Lippo, " and may turn
out some benefit to ourselves and others. The other lads are
all well placed, but Toto is a torment, ^nay, dear boy, I know
you love him best of all, and so do I, perhaps, afler my Eita,
but his bold bright youth boils over at times. Oh, it is only
the seething of the new-pressed grapes ; the wine will be the
richer and the better by-and-by,^-oh, yes. Still, love, there
is no being blind to it. Toto is a cause for trouble. Now, I
see an opening for Toto down in Kome, with Fede. The dear
boy does not love labor. It will just suit him well ; saunter-
ing about to find the pots and pans and lace and carvings, and
idling in the shop to show them afterwards to the great
strangers and fine ladies. And Fede will look after him and
have a care of him, a fatherly care ; and Toto, in time, may
come to have a vineyard of his own out by Frascati. And
he will please the ladies, ^he is a pretty lad. Yes, Fede spoke
much of it to me to-day. He wants just such a boy, and
hinted at a partnership in trade hereafter. Of course the
future always rests with God. We see imperfectly."
" It seems a nice easy trade," said Nita, tempted ; '^ and
lying must be handy in it : that would suit him. No one lies
so nattily as Toto."
" Oh, my love," sighed Lippo, " make no jests of the dear
lad's infirmity : his sportiveness leads him into danger, and he
is too quick of wit ; it is a peril for young tongues, sore
peril, but you mistake, ind^. This trade, as you call it,
is a most honest one. It buys from some people what they
do not want, to sell to some others what they long for; it
helps the poor, and shows the rich innocent ways of easing
their overflow of gold. Oh, a most honest trade \ a trade in-
432 SIONA.
deed that one may even call benevolent You canDot
that I woold place jour precious boj in anj employ whse
the BouVs safety would be imperiled for him. But to see well
into this thing and judge of it, and study Fede*s books, whidi
he offers in the most candid way to show to me, it will be
needful that I should run down with him to Rome."
" What !" screamed his wife, and let her sheets fkll tum-
bling to the ground.
In all their many years of wedded life Lippo bad nener
stirred from her roof for any journey ; she had been a jealoos
woman, and he had given her cause for jealousy, though never
means of proof that she had cause. Besides, no one er^
stirred from the Lastra from their life's banning to ha eod,
unless for some day out at Impruneta ass-f^r, or the feast of
St. Francis in Fiesole, or the grain- and cattle-markets over the
plain at Prato or such another town. Folks of the Lastra
never travel. It is not a Tuscan way.
'^ Fede goes down to-morrow, and I think it wiU be veD
that I should go with him,'' said Lippo, who was quite re-
solved to go, but never made a scene for anything, holding
that rage and haste knotted your flax and never carded it.
*' It is a great opening for Toto, your &ther will see thiit,
and, I think, the very thing that will be suited to the lad ;
jfor even you, my love, cannot deny that he is idler than one
well could wish. It will cost very little, only the journey.
I shall lodge and eat with Fede ; that is understood. And
then there is your aunt, my dear, the good old Fanfanni ; I
might look in on her at Assisi, passing; you have had ill
news for her health, and she has no chick nor child, and what
she has will be going to the Church, unless, indeed *'
" Then it is I should go, not you," said Nita, hotly. The
Church I* If she has any bowels for her own kin, never I
My father's only sister, and we with six sons and daughtos I
To the Church ! oh, infamous ! I will go with you, Lippo.**
^* Oh, my dearest, if you only could 1 But only ten dsjs
to Rita's marriage, and the young man coming here daily, and
all the bridal clothes unmade, ^you never can be spared ; it
would not be decorous, my dear. And I shall be back in such
a little time, three nights at most ; and as for your aunt's
money and the Church, my love, we must use no influence to
hinder any sickening soul from making peace with heaven.
SJONA. 433
For me, I shall not say a word. If she wish to leave it to the
Oliurch, she shall, for me. But, old and ailing and alone, it
i:s only fit that one should 'show her that, though she quarreled
^^Trith your father in her haste, we have no malice, and no culd-
ioss; that is only right; and perhaps if you put up some
little thing, some raspberry syrup or some preserved peaches,
just some little thing that I could take with me, it might
le well, to show we bear no malice. Dear, pack me a shirt
or two, and a suit of clothes in case of getting wet : I need no
more. And now I will go down and tell your father : he is
so shrewd and full of sense. I never do anything without his
counsel."
Lippo went down-stairs, knowing that old Baldo would
count out a score of dirty yellow notes to be rid of the lad
Toto, or have the mere hope of being rid of him ; and his
-wife grumbling and screaming and crying she was the worst-
used woman in the land, yet did his will and packed him up
biB things.
Nita believed she ruled her husband with a rod of iron ; biit,
unknown to herself, she was bent by him into as many shapes
and to as many uses as he liked.
A firm will, sheathed in sofl phrases, is a power never re-
sisted in a little household or in the world of men.
" After all, Toto will be miles away in Rome," she mused,
thinking uneasily of many freaks and foibles which mude the
Lastra hot as an oven for her Benjamin, and many a bundle
of good money wheedled out of her by false stories to be
thrown away into the bottomless abysses of the tombola or
the State lottery.
So she packed her husband's shirts, grumbling but acqui-
escent, and added little dainties for the old aunt at Assisi, and
put with them a pictured card of the Agnus Dei, and then
went out and told her neighbors that her lord was called away
in Rome.
To Rome ! It was as if she said to the very end of the known
world. It gave her a kind of dignity and majesty to have a
husband traveling so far ; it made her almost like a senator's
wife ; she almost began to think the Pope had sent for him.
So Lippo got his will and departed in peace, where any other
roan, less mild and clever, would have raised a storm above his
head and gone away under a rain of curses.
I 87
434 SJGNA.
Nita was a shrew, certainly, and Baldo a crabbed oM gb-
mudgeon, and both, when Lippo had manied, bad held tkar
money-bags tight; but Lippo by good jadgment and wk
patience had got both Nita and Baido under his thumb viili-
out their knowing it, and had the money-ba^ too ; and yet ke
never said a hars^ word, never.
" The fool is violent/' said Lippo. '* If we can only fij
and fume like angry dogs, why is our reason given nsf*
Man was marked out from the brutes by the distinctive
human faculty of being able to cheat his fellows ; that was what
he thought, only he never used any such a word as cheat He
never used any unpleasant words. If driven by the weakness
of mortality ever into any breath of anger, he confessed it to
his priest with instant and unfeigned repentance. He wis
ashamed of it as an error of intelligence.
** K we sin with our body, perhaps we cannot help it ; that
is animal in us," he would say : " but to go astray wiUi oar
mind is shameful. That is the human and divine part of as."
And he used his humanity and divinity with mudi skill for
an unlearned man who only knew the little world of his own
birthplaca
And he journeyed now to Rome peaceably, keeping the reil
chief object of his journey to himself, and pausing at Asstsi to
see the old sick aunt, whom he so charmed with his syrups aai
confections and his disinterested religious -fervor that she toade
up her mind that Mother Church was, afler all, as well off as
a fat sitting hen, and determined to leave her savings, which
made k nioe little nest-egg, as her life had been long and pru-
dent and laborious, to this good man and to his children.
" Though Baldo is a bad one/' said she, shaking her white
head.
Lippo smiled and sighed.
^' Oh, a kind soul, only too bent on things of the mearc
passing world, and thinking too much that heaven is like the
binding to a shoe, ^the last thing to be thought of, and stitched
on in a minute when you want."
" A bad one," said the old woman, thinking all Uie men
evil of him from his son-in-law's gentle words; for Idppo,
though he had never heard of a little crooked poet in the
northern isles, knew to perfection the artbtio way to ^* hbt a
fault and hesitate dislike."
8IGNA. 435
And when he was gone, she hobbled straight to a Dotary^s
oCBce in the town, and made her testament, bequeathing a
small sum for masses for her soul, but leaving all the rest to
her g:Tandnephew8 and grandnieoes in the Lastra, under their
father*s rule.
'' Mother Church is plump enough without my crumb," she
said to herself, " and never a priest among them all has ever
thought to bring me a sup of syrup. They can give one
eternal life, I know ; but still, when one^s cough is trouble-
some '*
So Lippo, dropping his bread on many waters by the way,
journeyed discreetly down to Rome.
CHAPTER XLVn.
Bruno lay down that night, but for an hour only. He
could not sleep.
He rose before the sun was up, in the gray wintry break of
day, while the fog from the river rose like a white wall built
up across the plain.
It is the season when the peasant has the least to do. Plow-
ing, and sowing, and oil-pressing, all are past ; there is little
labor for man or beast; there is only garden-work for the
vegetable-market, and the care of the sheep and cattle, where
there are any. In large households, where many brothers and
sisters get round the oil-lamp and munch roast chestnuts and
thrum a guitar, or tell ghost-stories, these short empty days
are very well : sometimes there is a stranger lost coming over
the pine woods, sometimes there is a snow-storm and the sheep
want seeing to ; sometimes there is the old roistering way of
keeping Twelfth-Night, even on these lonely wind-torn heights ;
where the house is full and merry, the short winter passes not
so very dully ; but in the solitary places, where men brood
alone, as Bruno did, they are heavy enough ; all the rest of
the world might be dead and buried, the stillness is so un-
broken, the loneliness so great.
He got up and saw after his few sheep above among the
pines ; one or two of them were near lambing ; then he labored
436 SIONA.
on his garden mould among the potato-plants and canlifloiree^
the raw mist in his lungs and the sea-wind blowing. It lud
become mild weather : the red rose on his honse-wall wss i&
bud, and the violets were bq^nning to push from underaeath
the moss ; but the mornings were always yctj cold and damp.
An old man came across from Carmignano to beg a pumpkin
gourd or two ; he got a scanty living by rubbing them up and
selling to the fishermen down on the Amo. Bruno gave them.
He had known the old creature all his life.
"You are dull here," said the old man, timidly; because
every one was more or less afraid of Bruno.
Bruno shrugged his shoulders and took up his spade agiiiL
'^ Yout boy does grand things, they say," said the old maa:
'' but it would be cheerfuller for you if he had taken to the
soil."
Bruno went on digging.
" It is like a man I know," said the pumpkin-seller, think-
ing the sound of his own voice must be a charity. " A man
that helped to cast church-bells. He cast bells all his liie *, he
never did anything else at all. ' It is brave work,* said he to
me once, ' sweating in the furnace there, and making the metal
into tuneful things to chime the praise of all the saints and
angels ; but when you sweat and sweat and sweat, and every
bell you make just goes away and is swung up where jon
never see or hear it' ever again, that seems sad ; my bdls are
all ringing in the clouds, saving the people's souls, greeting
Our Lady ; but they are all gone ever so far away from me.
I only hear them ringing in my dreams.' Now, I think, the
boy is like the bells to you."
Bruno dug in the earth.
" The man was a fool;" said he. " Who cared for his sweat
or sorrow ? It was his work to melt the metal. That was
all."
*^ Ay," said the pumpkin-seller, and shouldered the big yel-
low wrinkled things that he had b^^ed ; '* but never to hear
the bells, that is sad work."
Bruno smiled grimly.
" Sad 1 He could hear some of them as other people did,
no doubt, rinnng far away against the skies while he was in
the mud. That was all he wanted ; if he were wise, be did
not even want so much as that. Good-day."
SIQNA. 437
It wafi against his wont to speak so many words on any other
thing than the cattle- or the olive-harvest or the prices of
seeds and grain in the market in the town. He set his heel
upon his spade and pitched the earth-begrimed potatoes in the
skip he filled.
The old man nodded and went, to wend his way to Car-
misriiano.
Suddenly he turned back ; ho Was a tender-hearted fanciful
soul, and had had a long lonely life himself
'' I tell you what,** he said, a little timidly ; " perhaps the
bells praising God always, ringing the sun in and out, and
honoring Our Lady, ^perhaps they went for something in the
lives of the men that made them ? I think they must. It
would be hard if the bells got everything, the makers nothing.'*
Over Bruno's face a slight change went. His imperious
eyes softened. He knew the old man spoke in kindness.
" Take these home with you. Nay, no thanks," he said,
and lifled on the other's back the creelful of potatoes dug for
the market.
The old man blessed him, oveijoycd ; he was sickly and
very poor, and hobbled on his way along the side of the
mountains.
Bruno went to other work.
If the bells ring true and clear, and always to the honor of
the saints, a man may be content to have sweated for it in the
furnace and to be forgotten ; but if it be cracked in a fire and
the pure ore of it melt away shapeless I The thought went
confusedly through his brain as he cleaned out the stalls of
his cattle.
Down in the plain all the bells were ringing, the sweet peal
of San Giusto replying to the long full chime of Peretolata
from across the water, and all the other villages calling to one
another over the wintry fields ; some with one little humble
voice, some with many melodious notes, while down in the
hollow, where the city lay, the deep cathedral bells were boom-
ing, and all the countless churches answering ; but Bruno on
his hill heard none of these.
He only heard the winds moaning among the unbending
pines.
He only heard the toads cry to one another, feeling rain
coming, " Crake ! crake I crake 1 We love a wet world as men
87*
438 SIONA,
an evil way. The skies are going to weep ; let ns be merrj.
Crock ! crock ! crock 1"
And they waddled oat, slow, quaint, black thii^ vkh
arms akimbo, and stared at him with their direwd hard ^g.
They would lie snug a thousand yean within a stone and be
quite happy.
Why were not men like that ?
Toads arc kindly in their way, and will get friendly. Only
men seem to them such fools.
The toad is a fakir, and thinks the beatitnde of life lies in
contemplation. Men iVet and fuss and fume, and are forever
in haste ; the toad eyes them with contempt.
The toads looked at Bruno now, and he at them.
A soft thick rain had begun to fall. It scudded otct the
plain and crossed the river, and came up the hill-side, dim and
yet dense, stealing noiselessly, and spreading Tastly, as if it
were the ghostly hosts of a dead army.
Sometimes, on the hill-tops, clouds would break that nerer
touched the plain ; sometimes in the plain it was pourinsTt
while the hills were all in sunshine. Now mountain and ral-
ley had the rain alike.
Bruno worked on in it, not heedinc;, till the water ran oflT hb
hair, and his shirt was soaking. He did not think about it
He was thinking of what the men had said : " A light woman
out of France."
All the evil in the world might be happening that t^
hour, and he would know nothing.
There was no way to move, no way to hear. He was like
a chained dog.
*' I am like the toads," he thought : " the whole city might
burn to the ground, and they would croak in their pool, aiid
know nothing."
But he was not like the toads, for he dreaded this fire
which he could not see.
It rained thus several days.
Bruno saw no one. He had his hands full with the birth
of weakly Iambs, in the wet agueish weather, that made the
mossy ground under the pines a swamp. He worked earlj
and late, seeing no creature, except the dumb lad he had as
shepherd, and the dogs. It was dark before four in the after-
noons. He took his big lantern into the shed, and hewed
SIGNA. 439
wood, or ground maize, all the evening, with the heads of the
oxen near him, over their half-iioor. He felt as if he could
not face the cold lonely kitchen and living-room, with their
empty hearths. One or two nights he watched all night hy a
sheep in her trouble, with the great pines over his head, and
the broken rocks strewn around.
Io whatever he might, he looked across to where Rome
was, and thought of the light woman out of France.
The drenching rains hid Argol, with all the other stars. But
he had seen it that once. It was enough. It haunted him.
Silently and uselessly he raged against his own impotence.
Why had he not been any creature free to roam ? a gypsy, a
tramp, a vagabond,: anything, so that he could now have set
his face to the south, and bent his steps over the hills ?
The habits of his life were on him like so many chains.
The soil held him as the flat stone holds the sucker of leather.
Change never occurred to him as possible. The peasant thinks
no more of quitting his land than the sentinel his post Come
what may, there he stays.
Several of these days and nights went by ; it rained always.
There was no communication from village to village. A gray
cloud overspread the whole great landscape.
Bruno worked as if it were bright harvests weather ; and
it went ill with some of his ewes, and tried him ; but going
and coming, rising and lying down, sitting in his sheep-hut on
the mountain-side, and working the millstones by torchlight in
the shed, one thought alone went with him, and racked him
sore : was it true what they said of the boy in Rome ?
At last the rain cleared ; the roads grew more passable ; the
last lamb was bom that would be born for some weeks ; he put
the mule in the shafls, and drove down into market with his
sacks of potatoes. When he had done his business, a thought
struck him. He went to the place where he had seen the
dancing girl of Istriel.
The painting was gone. He asked them if they had any
pictures of it, the things that the sun took ? They had, and
sold him one. It seemed to him very dear. It cost more than
a flask of wine.
But he took it with him.
" What is that man, Istriel ?*' asked Bruno of the seller
of the copies, who was an old Florentine, and knew something
440 SIGNA.
of painters and their ways, and had heen abont the THk
Medicis in earlier years in Rome.
The man' shrugged his shoulders.
" He is Istriel. That is enough to say. It is as wboi oce
says any other great name. It speaks for itself.*'
*^ Great I From painting wantons 1"
'- Tiziano painted them."
* He is not oi our country ?"
" No. Of France. Bat he often works in Rome. He hai
a palace there."
'' I thought painters were poor. How should he lire ia t
palace ?**
" They are poor for the most part, and I think it is best for
their pictures when they keep so. But he is notw He pabts
naked women so beautifully that all the world runs to see.
Not to be bigger than your time is, ^that is a wonderful aecoi
to make you rich."
'* I do not understand," said Bruno.
The man, who had seen hundreds of students come and go
out of the class-rooms and the painting-rooms, laughed.
*^ Oh, I understand, because I see so much of them. Thcj
are all alike. They come with great bright eyes, and kao
cheeks, and empty purses. They study our giants, they do
beautiful things. No one wants them. They starve a fev
years, then they see what the world likes. They change, and
paint wantons in silk clothes, or without, as large as life ; or
else, little rapiered manikins, frilled and furbelowed, q)
bigrcr than a shoe-buckle. Tlien they make money. This
Istriel has made more money than them alK because he draws
with the force of our Michel Angelo and colore with the
softness of their Greuze. He is a wise man, too. He know
his age, I remember him well a student down in Rome. A
handsome, gay, charming lad, with great genius. .He might
have done better things than his naked women. But I do not
know : very likely he is right. They call him the new Tiziano,
and he is at the head of his school, and can get its weight in
gold for any picture. No man needs more."
*^ I do not understand," said Bruno, whom all these words
only confused.
The old man chuckled, and nodded, and turned to other
people to sell other photographs of the Sister of the Seven
1
t
\
SIGNA, 441
XanceT8. For many a long year he had swept out the floors,
and set the easels, and trimmed the palettes in the Villa Me-
dlcis, and had seen the young artists grow old, and knew how
they pprew to the greed of the world, as vines to the twists of
the maple.
Bruno was perplexed. Painters had ever been to him mys-
terious religious men, who lived to the glory of God, and
made church-walls and monastic altars eloquent with sacred
meaning to the common people. That was what he thought,
he, who, from the time when he had run with his father s mule
to market, had trodden the streets of Del Sarto, and Giotto, and
the Memmi brethren, and said his Ave in haste in the cool
summer dawns, in Or San Michele before the white tabernacle
of Orcagna.
Istriel was nothing to him. Yet his soul rose in a sullen
scorn against the man who had so fair a gift from heaven, and
only used it to show a dancer bounding away over " the prim-
rose path of hell," and taking the foolish souls of the young
and the guileless with her.
Bruno would uncover his head before a Madonna or a Mag-
dalen, and feel, without knowing why, that those who could
make such things live on the pale plaster or the brown cypress
wood were men worthy of honor. But against the painter of
Innocence, all the manliness and all the strength of his char-
acter arrayed thenLselves in fierce contempt.
Going out of the street, he met Salverio. The old man
stopped him.
" So they expect your boy in the town to-night, for a great
gala I What ! Did yon not know ? Perhaps he meant to
surprise you. He has done that before. No doubt he will
come round by the sea-way from Rome to Signa."
" It is possible," muttered Bruno. ^^ He may be there now,
then 1"
** Like enough. I heard them saying in the streets some-
thing, I am not sure what, of a great festa for him to-night,
and of the king, and of your boy being sent for. He would
be sure to come by sea, I think. Most likely he is already
there. You had better go home. Besides, the lambs must
not long be left."
" No," said Bruno, almost stupidly. Was it possible Signa
was so near as this, and all the gossip of the woman that held
T*
442 SIGN A.
him was antme? No doubt the boy meant to sarpnse hha.
Each time he had done so. Each time, when his Ictten hii
been few and brief, he had returned safely, glad and well aod
proud. No doubt what the men had said bad been & follj.
bom of jealousy and disparagement, the twin parasitee tlu:
feed on ill success, and kill it if they can.
Bruno's heart grew light.
He did not stop to doubt or question. It seemed so natural
Nothing was likelier than that the lad, summoned for any fresb
or special honor, would have had no space to write of it, but
would have come round by the sea-way to teU the tale of it,
and give a brief glad greeting, and then pass down into the
city. Nothing likelier.
Bruno left Snlverio, in haste, thinking of the boy readiiie:
the hill thenoe by the early morning time, as he no doubt Ltd
done, and finding him absent. All these precious hours, too!
It was now one o^clock. " Tocc6* ' was sounding from all the dtj
clocks. He met another man he knew, a farmer from Montehipa
" Brave doings 1** said the Montelupo man. " A gala sight
to-night for the foreign prince, and your boy summoned, so
they say. No doubt you are come in to see it all ?"
Bruno shook himself free quickly, and went on ; for a mo-
ment it occurred to him that it might be best to wait and see
Signa in the town ; but then he could not do that well
Nothing was done at home, and the lambs could not be left
alone to the shepherd lad's inexperience, only a day dd, ooe
or two of them, and the ground so wet, and the ewes weakly.
To leave his farm would have seemed to Bruno as to leave his
sinking ship does to a sailor. Besides, ho had nothing to do
with all the grandeur ; the king did not want him.
His heart grew light again, and he felt proud as he beard
the people talking in the streets of how the princes had ordered
this great night of Lamin, and how the theatre would be lit
" like day,** and how standing room there was not to be had,
no, though you could give all the jewels and gold and silv^ for
it off the Jewelers' Bridge. He felt proud. All this stir and
tumult and wonder and homage in the city was for Signs;
princes seemed almost like his servants, the king like his
heiichnjan I Bruno was proud, under his stem, calm, lofty
bearing, which would not change, and would not let him smile,
or seem so womanish-weak as to be glad for all the gosnpiag.
SIONA. 443
The boy wanted no king or prince.
He said so to them, with erect disdain.
Yet he was proud.
*' Afler all, one does hear the bells ringing," he thought, his
xnind drifting away to the old Garmignano beggar's words.
He was proud, and glad.
He stopped hi^ mule by Strozzi Palace, and pushed his way
into the idmost empty market, to the place called the Spit or
Fila, where all day long and every day before the roaring fires
the public cooks roast flesh and fowl to fill the public paunch
of Florence.
Here there was a large crowd, pushing to buy the frothing
savory hot meats. He thrust the others aside, and bought
half a kid smoking, and a fine capon, and thrust them in his
cart. Then he went to a shop near, anci bought some delicate
white bread, and some foreign chocolate, and some snowy sugar.
"No doubt,'* he thought, *Hhe boy had learned to like
daintier fiire than theirs in his new life ;" theirs, which was
black crusts and oil and garlic all the year round, with meat
and beans, perhaps, on feast-nights, now and then, by way of
a change. Then, as he was going to get into his seat, he saw
among the other plants and flowers standing for sale upon the
ledge outside the palace a damask rose-tree, a little thing, but
covered with buds and blossoms blushing crimson against the
stately old iron torch-rings of the smith Gaprera. Bruno
looked at it, ^he who never thought of flowers from one year's
end to another, and cut them down with his scythe for his
oxen to munch as he cut grass. Then he bought it.
The boy liked all beautiful innocent things, and had been
always so foolish about the lowliest herb. It would make the
dark old house upon the hill look bright to him. Asham3d
of the weaknesses that he yielded to, Bruno sent the mule on
at its fastest pace, the little red rose-tree nodding in the cart.
He had spent more in a day than he was accustomed to
spend in three months' time.
But then the house looked so cheerless.
As swiflly as he could make the mule fly, he drove home
across the plain.
The boy was there, no doubt, and would be cold, and hun-
gry, and alone.
Bruno did not pause a moment on his way, though more
444 riGNA.
than one called to him as he droTe, to know if it were true
indeed that this night there was to be a gala for the Lamia and
the princes.
He nodded, and flew through the chill gray aftenooD,
splashing the deep mud on either side of him.
The figure of San Giusto on his high tower, the leafless
vines and poplars, the fiuriers' and coopers' worktops on tb
road, grim Castel Pucci, that onoe flung its glove at Florenee,
the green low dark hills of Castagnolo, villa and monastery,
watch-tower and bastion, homestead and convent, aU flew bj
him, fleeting and unseen ; all he thought of was that the bor
would be waiting, and want food.
He was reckless and furious in his driving always, but his
mule had never been beaten and breathless as it was that daj
when he tore up the ascent to his own farm as the clocks ia
the plain tolled four.
He was surprised to see his d^ lie quiet on the steps.
" Is he there?*' he cried instinctively to the creature, which
rose and came to greet him.
There was no sound anywhere.
Bruno pushed his door open.
The house was empty.,
He went out again and shouted to the air.
The echo from the mountain above was all his answ^.
When that died away, the old silence of the hills was unbroken.
He returned and took the food and the little rose-tree out
of his cart.
He had bought them with eagerness, and with that tender-
ness which was in him, and for which dead Dina had loved
him to her hurt. He had now no pleasure in them. A bitter
disappointment flung its chill upon him.
Disappointment is man's most frequent visitor, the un-
invited guest most sure to come ; he ought to be well used to
it ; yet he can never get familiar.
Bruno ought to have learned never to hope.
But his temper was courageous and sanguine : such mad-
men hope on to the very end.
He put the things down on the settle, and went to put up
the mule. The little rose-tree had been too roughly blown in
the windy aflemoon ; its flowers were falling, and some soon
strewed the floor.
SIQNA. 445
dnno looked at it when he entered.
It hurt him ; as the star Argol had done.
He covered the food with a cloth, and set the flower out of
the draught. Then he went to see his sheep.
There was no train by the sea-way from Rome until night
Signa would not come that way now, since he had to be in
the town for the evening.
*' He will come after the theatre," Bruno said to himself,
and tried to get the hours away by work. He did not think
of going into the city again himself He was too proud to
go and see a thing he had never been summoned to ; too proud
to stand outside the doors and stare with the crowd while
Pippa's son was honored within.
Besides, he could not have lefl the Iambs all a long winter^s
night, and the house all unguarded, and nobody there to give
counsel to the poor mute simpleton whom he had now to tend
his beasts.
'^ He will come after the theatre," he said.
The evening seemed very long.
The late night came. Bruno set his door open, cold though
it was, so that he should catch the earliest sound of footsteps.
The boy, no doubt, he thought, would drive to the foot of the
hill, and walk the rest.
It was a clear night after the rain of many days.
He could see the lights of the city in the plain fourteen
miles or bo away.
What was doing down there ?
It seemed strange, Signa being welcomed there, and he
himself knowing nothing, only hearing a stray word or two by
chance.
Once or twice in his younger days he had seen the city in
gala over some great artist it delighted to honor ; he could
imagine the scene and fashion of it all well enough ; he did
not want to be noticed in it, only he would have liked to
have been told, and to have gone down and seen it, quietly
wrapped in his cloak, among the throng.
That was how he would have gone, had he been told.
He set the supper out as well as he could, and put wine
ready, and the rose-tree in the midst. In the lamp-light the
little feast did not look so badly.
He wove wicker-work round some uncovered flasks, by way
88
446 SJGNA.
of doing something. The hitter wind blew in ; he did not
mind that : his ear was strained to listen. Midnight ysBSsL
The wind had blown his lamp out. He lighted two gnt kn-
tems, and hung them up against the door-posts, it was so dark
upon the hills.
One hoar went; another; then another. There was ao
sound. When yet another passed, and it was four of th
o'clock, he said,
" He will not come tonight No doubt thej kept hia
late, and he was too tired. He will be here bj sanrise."
He threw himself on his bed for a little Ume, and dosed
the door. Bat he left the lanterns hanging outside, oa the
chance.
He slept little ; he was up while it was still dark, and the
robins were beginning their first twittering notes.
" He will be here to breakfast," he said to himself, and he
lefl the table untouched, only opening the shutters so thai
when day came it should touch the rose at once and wake it
up ; it looked so drooping, as though it felt the oold.
Then he went and saw to his beasts and to his work.
The sun leaped up in the cold, broad, white skies. S^na
did not come with it.
The light brightened. The day grew. Noon brought its
hour of rest
The table still stood unused. The rose-Ieayes had faDen in
a little crimson pool upon it. Bruno sat down on the bench
by the door, not having broken his fast.
" They are keeping him in the town," he thought " He
will come later."
He sat still a few moments, but he did not eat
In a little while he heard a step on the dead wint^ leares
and tufts of rosemary. He sprang erect ; his eyes bnghteoed ;
his face changed. He went forward eagerly :
" Signa ! ^my dear ! at last !"
He only saw under the leafless maples and brown Tine-
tendrils a young man that he had never seen, who stopped
before him breathing quickly from the steepness of the ascent
*' I was to bring this to you," he said, holding out a long
gun in its case. " And to tell you that he, the youth they
all talk of, Signa, went back to Rome this morning ; had
no time to oomo, but sends you this, with his dear love and
SIQNA, 447
fleeting, and will write from Rome to-night. Ah, Lordl
"Taere was such fuss with him in the city. He was taken to
tlie foreign princes, and then the people ! if you had heard
them ! all the street rang with the cheering. This morning
he could hardly get away for all the crowd there was. I am
only a messenger. I should he glad of wine. Your hill is
steep."
Bruno took the gun from him, and put out a flask of his
own wine on the threshold, then shut close the door.
He stripped the covering off the gun.
It was such a weapon as he had coveted all his life long,
8eein; such in gunsmiths' windows and the halls of nohlemen :
breech -loading, of foreign make, beautifully mounted and in-
laid with silver : among the chasing of it he could see en-
graved lines : he could distinguish his own name and Signals,
the one he knew the look of, having seen it so often on
summons-papers for mad deeds done against the petty laws of
bis commune ; the other he knew because it was painted over
the railway-place upon the hill. He could decipher Bruno
Signa ; and he guessed the rest : a date, no doubt, and some
few words of memory or love.
He sat still a little while, the gun lying on his knees ; there
was a great darkness on his face. Then he gripped it in both
hands, the butt in one, the barrel in the other, and dashed the
centre of it down across the round of his great grindstone.
The blow was so violent, the wood of the weapon snapped
with it across the middle, the shining metal loosened from its
hold. He struck it again, and again, and again ; until all the
polbhed walnut was flying in splinters, and the plates of sil-
ver, bent and twisted, falling at his feet ; the finely-tempered
steel of the long barrel alone was whole.
He went into his wood-shed, and brought out branches of
acacia brambles, and dry boughs of pine, and logs of oak,
dragging them forth with fury. He piled them in the empty
yawning space of the black hearth, and built them one on
another in a pile, and struck a match and fired them, tossing
pine-cones in to catch the flames.
In a few minutes a great fire roared alight, the turpentine
in the pine-apples and fir boughs blazing like pitch. Then he
fetched the barrel of the gun, and the oaken stock, and the
silver plates and mountings, and threw them into the heat.
448 SIGyA.
Tbe flaming wood swallowed them up; he stood and
watched it
Af)er a while a knock came at his house-door.
" Who is there ?" he called.
" It is I," said a peasant's voice. " There is so much smoke.
I thought you were on fire. I was on the lower hill, so I na
rp. Is all rifijht with you?"
" All is right with me."
' But what is the smoke?"
" I bake my bread."
" It will be burnt to cinders."
" I make it, and I eat it. Whose matter is it ?"
The peasant went awuy muttering, with slow unwilling feet
Bruno watched the fire.
Afler a brief time its frenzy spent itself; the flames died
down ; the reddened wood grew pale, and began to change to
ash ; the oaken stock was all consumed ; the silver was mdted
and fused into shapeless lumps ; the steel tube alone kept shape
unchanged, but it was blackened and choked up with ashes,
and without beauty or use.
Bruno watched the fire die down into a great mound of duD
gray and brown charred wood.
Then he went out, and drew the door behind him, and
locked it.
The last red rose dropped, withered by the heat.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
February days are in the Signa country often soft as the
May weather of the north.
The trees are setting for leaf, the fields are green, the moiin
tains seem full of light ; the birds sing, and the peasants too ;
the brooks course joyously down the hills, the grass is full of
snow-drops and the pearly bells of the leuconium and millioos
of violets pale and purple ; there are grand sunsets with almost
the desert red in them, and cold transparent nights, in which
the greatness of Orion reigns in its fullest glory, and watching
for the dawn there hangs that sad star which we call tho Ser-
SIQNA. 449
pent*8 Heart, and the Arabian astrologers called The Solitary
One.
The stars were still out when Bruno rose from his short,
troubled, lonely sleep, and went out to hb work as was his
wont.
He worked early and late. There was nothing else for him
to do.
He was consumed with impatience and anxiety, but he
labored on in his fields. To leave them never occurred to him.
The sailor in mid-ocean is not more chained to one narrow
home than Bruno was by habit and custom and narrowness
of knowledge to his high hill-tops.
A fever of desire to hear, to see, to learn, to make sure,
consumed him. He ate his very heart away with the gnawing
wish to know the worst. But Rome was as vague to him and
as far off as the white moon that faded away over his pine-
woods as the daylight waned to noon.
On his own land, in his own labor, he was a strong skillful
man, able to cope with any labor and turn aside any disaster.
But away from his own soil he knew nothing. Custom and
ignorance hang like a cloud between the peasant and the outer
world. He is like the ancient geographers of old, who feared
to step off the shore they knew, lest they should fall into an
immeasurable, incomprehensible abyss.
Bruno would have walked through fire or plunged headlong
in the sea to serve or save the boy ; but the lack of knowledge
paralyzed him. Rome to him was far off as the stars : he
could only work and wait, and rise in the dark coldness before
morning, haunted with nameless fear, and counting the dull
dead days as they dragged on, and meeting the sacristan who
said always, ^' He does not write : oh, that is because all is
well : when young things are happy they forget."
Once or twice he took out a handful of money from off the
copper pitcher set behind the chimney -bricks, and went to his
priest: " When we pay for masses for the dead, it does them
good ?" he said. " Hell if they be in it gives them up, ^lets
them loose: is it not so?"
" Most certainly, my son," said the old pastor.
* Then can we not buy them for the living ? There is hell
on earth," said Bruno, and emptied out his handful of curled
yellow notes, and looked at his priest with wbtful pitiful eyes.
88*
450 sias^A.
" Tell me what tbe trouble is," said the Ptoroeo, wbo
the best and kindliest of souls, and had always had a
for this sinner whom he had confessed and shriTsi efij
Easter for so many years.
" I am not sure what it is," said Bruno, and told him vhal
he knew.
" Masses will do nothing, smoe there is a woman/* sud tbe
old priest, sadly.
" Are women stronger than hell, then ?"
" I have lived seventy years ; and I think so. Bat it is wA
a case for masses. Prayer for your lad I will say with mj
full hearths willingness. But put up your notes. I will not
take them."
But Bruno would leave them on the little wooden seat of
the sacristy. *' Give them away in charity," he said : ^'per-
haps Heaven will remember it to the boy." And he would
leave them there.
*^ We may get a soul out of purgatory ; but a lad out of a
woman's toils, ^that is harder," thought the priest ; but he
only said, rolling up the notes, " I will make sick folks hamaer
with them, Bruno, since you wish it. That can neiUio' bam
you nor him."
*^ Pray for him ; never mind me," said Bruno, simply, and
he left the little old red church, with its high crumbliDg
tower, where the daws built, and the owls, and the beautifol
blue-jays.
It was a little solace to him that prayer should rise up there
in the stillness of the hills, and pass out of the narrow windows
with the wind, and go up through the sunshine and the douds
to where they said God and the saints were. Who knew what
it might do ?
But it gave little rest to the anxious, troubled, heavy sool
of the man. Nature had made Bruno for action : to pray and
hope and trust and wait resigned was a woman's way ; it was
not his.
The bitter ferocity, too, vrith which he had broken and
burned the gun had not passed away. With Bruno nothiog
passed. His passions were flames which burned their passage
indelibly. He kept the secret of his pain in his own miod
unspoken ; but the rage with which he had destroyed what
had seemed to him as insult as payment in base metal wbco
SIQNA. 451
lie gold of remembrance and of affection was withheld, that
-age chafed in him always.
He never opened his lips to blame Signa. He never let any
)ne in his hearing say they marveled at Signals forgetfulness
f him. When any man said within earshot of him that it
Bras strange that the boy should have passed a night in the
irity and never sent any tidings home, Bmno had answered
bim sharply, *' The lad has great things to think of; he be-
longs to all the world now, not to one hill- top ; when I com-
plain of him others may do so too ; till then let them have a
;;are." And people, knowing his humors, were afraid, and never
said a slighting word, but supposed that Bruno was content.
But the fury with which he had thrust the rifle into the
Bre consumed him always. The gift hurting him like a
blow, cast to him as it seemed like so much wage had dug a
chasm between him and the boy he loved.
Any other time he might have taken it as a symbol of
p:ratful tenderness. But now when Signa forsook him it
added a sting to the sharpness of his pain under neglect. It
seemed to him the very insolence of success of triumph of
riches, which said, '* So my debts are paid.'*
In cold reason the next day, when he raked out the fire and
found one silver plate unbumed amidst the embers, he stamped
it under his heel, and hurled it into the deep well at his door.
Signa had had the unhesitating unhalting sacrifice of twenty
years of his life^ and thought to pay him by a gunsmith's
glittering toy !
That was how it seemed to him.
So he worked on amidst the fields, and let the days go :
between him and the boy there was a gulf of silence. Bruno's
heart revolted against him. He asked himself why he had
let the years go by, and lived without woman's love, and the
laughter of children, and that good will of men which comes
from easy spending, that Pippa's son might have his way and
pay him with forgetfulness. Why had he consumed a score
of years in rigid self-denial, ceaseless labor, and barren soli-
tude for this boy's sake, only in the end to be abandoned for
the first wanton face that smiled, and recompensed with such
reward as careless princes give the forest-guards that drive
their game ?
Yet the great loyal love in him cleaved even to what he
452 SIGNA.
ihon^hi ihanklesB and thoughtless and fbrgetfiiL He at
would have bought Signa*s peace at any price of his owa biT
or soul ; he still said to the priest, '' Pray for him ; for me it
does not matter."
But in the short soft days and in the long cold nights th^t
was a heavy darkness always on him. Once he said to ibe
priest,
*^ If she take him from me, there is no God."
As he toiled in his fields with the fragrance of the eomii^
spring in all the soil, he turned and looked across at the kiw
lines of the hills, and felt his heart like a stone, hb feet hke
lead.
One fresh chill daybreak, as he worked with the silvo* d^w
on every blade of grass and spread like a white veil over all
the hills, his brother s voice called him.
Looking up, he saw Lippo. He stood on the ot-her ade of
one of the low stone walls that are built across the slopirr
fields to stay the force of water coming from the heights ia
winter nuns.
Bruno did as he had done ten years and more, he worked
on, and seemed never to see the figure of his brotho- betweeo
him and the light.
They met a hundred times a year and more ; Bruno did
always so. For him Lippo had ceased to live.
The priest had urged him vainly to forgiveness.
'* Who cannot hate, cannot love," Bruno had answer d
always. " Forgetfulness is for women. Forgiveness is for
dogs. I have said it."
" Bruno, may I speak a word to you ?'* said Lippo, gwitlv.
He had his softest and most pensive face ; his eyes were t^idor
and regretful ; his voice was calm and kindly ; in his boot be
had slipped a knife, for fear no one could tell Bruno was
violent, and he had left his cowherd in the lower fields within
a call ; but in his look and attitude Lippo had the simplest
trustfulness and candor. He seemed oppressed and sorrowful :
that was all.
Bruno went on and worked as he had done on the day that
he had heard his brother was the owner of the neighboring
land. He was cutting his olive-trees. He slashed the braochoB
and flung them from him with force, so that if they would
they might strike Lippo in the face.
SIQNA, 453
Lippo watched the gleaming steel play in the gray leaves,
ind was glad he had bethought him to slip that knife within
[lis boot.
" Bruno," he said, very gently, " do not be in haste or rage.
r come in all true brotherliness ; the saints are my witnesses.
You have been in anger against me many years. Some of
your anger was just ; much unjust. I could not defend myself
from your accusations of having dealt ill with Pippa's child
unless I had blamed Nita ; and what husband can shield himself
at his wife's cost? Poor soul I She has many virtues, but
her hand is rough, and her tongue harsh, and mothers think
it a merit to beat other children to benefit their own. A
woman's virtue is locked up in the cupboard by her own
hearth-stone. Nita has been an honest wife to me ; but she
has a temper."
Bruno slashed a great bough ^m his tree, and flung it
downward ; it struck Lippo. He moved aside, blinded for the
moment, then went gently on.
" A temper : oh, I know it, none so well. No doubt the
poor child suffered from it, and were it not that in marriage
one must serve a wife at every hazard, and take her wrong-
doing as one's own, I could have proved to you with ease that
what you thought my treachery was none of mine, but bitter
pain and grief to me; ay, indeed. Again and again I have
gr)ne supperless to give the little lad my portion. Yon know
I never was master in my house. The money has always been
hers and her father's. Never once have they let me forget
that, though Baldo is a good soul in much."
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 of the wall,
lie 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 I" 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 I" cried Lippo. " By the Lord above us, 1
come with good intent."
454 SIQNA.
Brano did not pause, nor look back.
He went by up the dope of the grasB-IaDds, ]^Biid|j, s
though there were no one near.
" But if I come to make amends ?" said Lippo.
Bruno laughed, a short deep laugh, fierce 9& a fierce ik^'s
bite, and went on his way against the giitterii^ dews of ik
rising ground.
Lippo cried to him from the wall,
" But I have journeyed up from Rome.*'
Rome 1 InvoluntarDy, unconsciously, Bruno stopped, sad
turned his head over his shoulder. The name of the dt?
struck him like a shot It was the last word be woiikl hare
dreamed of hearing. It was the place forerer in his mind.
It was the dim, majestic, terrible world that Algol shone oa
in the frosty nights.
Lippo, who had never traveled beyond the hills round the
Lastra and the town-walls of Florence, had journeyed hack
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 riv^ed attention. He
leaped the wall lightly, and joined his broths.
"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
stem self-control, his impenetrable reticence. Do what be
would, he felt his face pale, his eyes fall under Lippo*s. Pas-
sionate questions sprang to his lips ; but how could he trust a
traitor and a liar ?
In the instant of hb hesitation, Lippo spoke.
" I have been down to Rome. On business. To place mj
son in trade there. Nay, listen. All the city will tell you I
speak truth. Of course I heard of Signa. It was impossi-
ble not to hear. At the Apollo they play his Actea ; ail the
town is full of him. Of his great genius no one can ray
enough. But if some means be not found to save him, be
will be destroyed, body and soul. A woman has hold of him.
SIONA. 455
[e only lives for her. I caugbt sight of him onoe two nights
^o ; he was with her in the moonlight. He looks so changed ;
ne woald not know him for that happy, simple lad of our last
iitumii time. Listen. All hoys have follies. This might
ass as such a folly does. But it will not do so, no. Be-
Biuse thb woman is not as others are. She is the vilest of
[le vile, but beautiiul : the saints forgive me, but, when I
iw her, I felt one might do any crime fcr such a face as that.
*hey call her Innocence I In mockery, no doubt. For they
\y there is no living thing more cruel than she is, nor more
cpraved, nor more voracious of all kinds of wealth. That
$ the worst. This* woman is rich. The boy is poor. You
;now what they will say : he lives upon her, or they say he
Ices. I know it is not true. Your Signa is too proud and
mre for that. But, still, they say ; and great men, while they
raise his genius, look askance on him, so I hear. Nay, it
s a sorceiy. A strong will would break from it. But the lad
s not strong. When God gives genius, I think he makes the
rain of some strange glorious stuff, that takes all strength
ut of the character and all sight out of the eyes. Those
irtists, 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 forever wounding
their breasts against the wires. No doubt it is a great thing
to have genius : but it is a sort of sickness, afler 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 fiincies, like any other,'* he mut-
tered. " Why not? Why not? You hate him, because you
wronged him. Therefore you make much from little. You
lie now ; you always lied. Gret 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 com-
paijsion : and he was poor Pippa^s son I I do not blame the
lad, a boy like that. And if you saw the beauty of the
456 SI&NA.
woman ! Only, I said to myself, Bmoo dioald know of th^;
and, rather than ask a stranger to meddle io it, I came mpelt
Because he is the woman's toy, her tooK her fooL her sbvt^
He does nothin; with his time. He never touches p^ wx
late, nor anything of art I hear she says to him, ^ Gire ae
a rival in your art, I leave you/ And he, to do her will, fliuss
all his life away. Some say she loves him really. Some saj
that it id only wantonness, because the world talks of him ; oU
so she likes to rule him, and, in a month or two, will bre^ bis
heart, and send him out a beggar and an idiot. Nay, I aj
nothing more than all Rolne says ; in truth, not a tithe so
much. It is the common gossip of the streets. The woman
b rich. She has had great lovers, princes and the iik& Tiie
boy is known to live under her roof, to be lapped in Inxuiy ;
^you know what men will say."
Bruno sprang forward and seized his brother by the shoul-
ders, in an iron grasp.
" It is a lie of Rome ! ^a lie, a lie 1 They grudge my boy
his glory, and so they stone him thus, and fling their mod
upon him I"
. ^^ It is not a lie. Think : is he not silent to you ? Is be
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 bru-
tally 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*8 eyes met him in
steadiness and sorrow. Bruno let him go, and stood st-upefied,
mastering, as best he could, his own suffering, lest Lippo
should read it and be glad. In his heart he knew tJiat the
story brought from Kome 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, among crafty well-tcnio
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
SIONA, 457
cannot gainsay that. But, as the angels watch as this hour in
beaven, I have no single thought but the boy's good in what
I tell you now. He is so young. He is sod-hearted as a girl.
He is alone in a great, turbulent world, that first turned 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
li a spoiled 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 gray 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. Afler 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 dotes 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 alto-
gether : 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 man-
ner of strange sights and soundfs, that none but himself could
V 89
458 SIONA.
erer see or hear. Now that he loves this woman as ite loFed
his music, it will go hard with him. Because a wantoa ct&-
not 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 oooJd do ht^
affect to douht his brother's words, or deny the things tlb^j
spoke of; the misery and danger for the boy spread b*
fore him as if they were written on the limestone hill and oo
the cloudless winter sky ; he forgot all else.
His brother's treacherous deeds against himself paled iato
nothing; his true and loyal faith to Pippa*s son made hb
own wrongs grow as naught to him; he would have let i
snake bite him to serve Signa. So he let the biumph of Iip|:
sting him, thinking only of the peril of the boy.
" Why have you come to say all this to me ? You hare
hated the boy, and been false to him and to me. Of all this
if it be true ^you are glad."
" Nay I 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 : heaves and
earth I why should I ? I doubted that he was Pippa's aoo.
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 chidiy
I erred through weakness, letting a too violent woman have
her way in my little household. I have admitted my &oh
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 arc sons of
one sainted mother, my heart is free of every taint of bitter-
ness against you or the boy. I have been proud of his great-
ness. Any ray of it is so much light and honor on us all.
I grieve, as any creature with human blood in him would do,
to know that idl 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 thooght
that if you saw him went to him some change might come,
or you might save him from some rash, mad deed, when be
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 ?"
k.
SIGNA. 459
" Nothing more."
'' Where does she come from?"
From France, I think/'
" She is called that name ^Innocence ?"
" Yes."
*' It is the same woman vhose 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
bad taught himself late in life. " Tou 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
Bee 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 yon," said Lippo, with sudden
candid self rebuke and r^;ret in hb 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 to 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
labor of the day unflinchingly winces at the fly that stings
him in the wrung nostril, where the iron is. " Tou did right
to tell mc," he said, simply. *' It was good in you and honest."
" I asked the grace of heaven on it," answered Lippo.
460 SIQNA.
BruDo looked at him.
Lippo's eyes met his with dear and hooest candor.
A short troubled sigh heaved Bmno^s chest qoiddj &r a
moment.
" I must think/* he muttered, and he turned and took ^
ladder on his shoulder, and began to mount the hiU.
" 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 lie wait dovlj
up the grass between the olives. His own ^es were vezy
sad, and had a heavy dark reproach in them.
" I am not a man to forget," he said. ** A foe b a foe
always to me ; a traitor always a traitor. But if you neiB
well by the lad, and would save him, I will foigive you if I
*t
can.
Then he went onward.
Lippo stood silent; a little faint smile came on his mouth.
"He will to Borne," he thought
Suddenly Bruno turned once more and came downward to
him with a swiil stride. The generous, fierce, tender natare
of him welled up in a sudden warmth and emotion.
" Lippo, you have done good now : it shall caned the ctiL
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 6od*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 olive4ree8
untouched.
Lippo went downward into the Lastra.
'^ He will go to Bome," he thought, " and he will quarrd
with the boy, or kill the wanton.*'
And he smiled, going through the buoyant springtide 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
8I0NA. 461
eturl J morning ; he smiled on children as he passed them, and
gave a heggar money. As he went back he saw Palma carry-
ing up linen to wash in the washing-place behind her on the
Iiill-fiide.
'^ 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
everybody 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.
CHAPTER XLIX.
A LITTLE later the girl had her linen plunged in the cold
deep water, and stood washing with half a dosen other women.
To keep her brothers from want and a roof over all th^ir
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
Home. Only these tanks upon the hills are in wide 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
DO one ever wanted her, unless, indeed, as they wanted the
mule or the cart-horse : she lefl the linen soaking, and went
outside the wooden door.
Bruno stood there.
He put a little picture in her hand.
8
462 8IONA.
" Have eyer yon seen any one like that ?" he asked Iier,
coTering all bnt the face of it Palma^s brown i^eek grev
ashen : then the blood rushed over her forehead.
What is it? Where did you get it?"
"Whom is it like?"
" It is like G^mma ; only it is a woman.*'
" Yes, it is a woman."
He laughed a little, and took his hand away and \2dl the
figure of Uie daneer of Istriel yi^ble.
Palma colored oyer her throat and up to her dusky gw y ing
hair.
" It is a shameful woman. Oh, why did you show me that T*
" 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.
" Why did you show it me? Do ypu know anything ? Io
you mean anything ?"
" Nothing. It IS only a picture."
And he walked away.
She leaned oyer the tank and reached and plucked it out
fipm the water ; it was a photograph, and the moisture na
off, and did not harm it. She stood and looked at it She
was alone against ^e white brick wall ; her rough blue ^iit
dung wet and close to her ; she had a red handkerchief over
her short cropped hair ; the wind blew over her naked feet
and her bared arms ; the wide green hills were behind her, the
brown wooden door of the shed before her ; there was a cold
azure sky aboye the golden leafless trees.
She stood and looked at the picture. Her ice burned,
though she was all alone. She shuddered and hated it
*^ He is a hard, cruel man,'* she said. " How could he
bring me such a thing? My Gkmma is safe with Christ"
Then she threw the picture in the water again, and as it
floated put a great stone on it and sunk it, and as it rose, flung
another greater stone, and then another, and then another,
until the picture dropped under it like a drowned dead thing,
and lay at the bottom with the mud and weeds. She felt as
if she slew a deyil.
My Gemma is with Christ," she said, and she went back
to the washiog-women and the hard work and the coaise linen,
while the winter sun shone, and the winter wind blew.
SIONA. 463
CHAPTER L.
Britno went straightway to his steward, and told him that
lie was about to go to Rome.
It was as base to him to leaye his land as it is to the
soldier to desert his poet.
The land was more than your mother, so he thought ; it
fed you all your life long, and gaye you shelter when you
were dead and men would have you cumber their households
no more. He loyed every clod of the good sound earth, and
every breath of its honest fresh fragrance. He looked to lie
in it when he should be buried and gone forever by the side
of Dina, under the pines, with his feet resting forever on the
mountain-side, that they had trodden so long. He had always
a fancy that in his grave there he should know when the corn
was springing and feel the soft rainfall.
The love of the country was in his blood, in his brain, in
all the soul he had. He could not comprehend how life
would go on with him elsewhere. He was rooted to his birth-
place as an oak is to its forest "^
Nevertheless he tore himself away.
He did not know what penalty might avenge, what fate
might follow, his desertion of the soil. His lord might be
furious. His possessions might be pillaged. When he re-
turned he might find himself ruined, ejected, displaced, ^if he
returned at all, it^ ^who could tell ?
The thing he did was, to him, as if he stepped off a great
precipice into the emptiness and nothingneas of silent and
unfathomable air.
His bones might be broken in the fall, and his very exist-
ence cease to be.
Nevertheless he went: as he would have leaped off an
actual height down into unknown space, if by so doing he
could have saved the boy.
In the white marble of the great Borghese sculpture, Cur-
tius leaps down, and the world hails a hero: ^no one saw
464 SIGNA.
Bruno, or would have praised bim had thej seen, yet tbc
ooarage was scarcel j less, and the sacrifice nearly as abaolnte.
Indeed the hero saw glory in the bottomless abya and
darted to it : the peasant saw nothing except impenetnUe
gloom and hopelessness. Yet he went ; because die son of
Fippa was in peril.
He went back to his homestead, and pat all his things in
order.
It was high noon.
He took out from its hiding-place his copper pitdier with
his savings in it. They were not much in value. He had
bad only one harrest-time and one vintage to save from, since
his all had been taken for the Actea. Such as tbey w^ be
stitched them in the waist-band of his trousers, and put a
shirt or two up in a bundle, and so was ready for his joumej.
He would not go unUl evening. He worked all day, leavii^
everything as it should be, and, so far as it was possil^ nothii^
for new-luuids to do ; except so far as seeing to the beasts
went, that was of necessity a new care every day.
He had been brought up on this great wooded spur lookii^
down on the Signa country ; all his loves and hatreds, joys
and pidns, had been known here ; from the time he had plumed
the maple-leaves in autumn for the cattle with litde browa
five-year-old hands, he had labored here, never seeing the son
set elsewhere, except on that one night at the sea. He wu
close rooted to the earth as the stone-pines were and the oaks.
It had always seemed to him that a man should die where he
took life first, among his kindred and under the sods that his
feet had run over in babyhood. He had never thought much
about it, but unconsciously the fibres of his heart had twisted
themselves round all the smallest and the biggest things of his
home, as the tendrils of a strong ivy bush fasten round a gieat
tower and the little stones alike.
The wooden settle where his mother had sat, the shrine in
the houso-wall, the copper vesseb that had glowed in the wood-
fuel light when a large family had gathered there about the
hearth, the stone well under the walnut-tree where dead Dioa
had often stayed to smile with him, the cypress-wood presses
Vhere Pippa had kept her feast-day finery and her pearls, the
old vast sweetHsmelliog sheds and stables where he had thrashed
and hewn and yoked his oxen thirty years if one, aU these
SIGNA. 465
tbings, and a hundred like them, were dear to him with all
the memoriee of his entire life ; and away from them he ooold
know no peace.
He was going away into a great darkness. He had nothing
to guide him. The iron of a wasted love, of a useless sacrifice,
was in his heart. His instinct drove him where there was
peril for Pippa's son : ^that was all.
If this woman took the lad away from him, where was there
any mercy or justice, earthly or divine? That was all he
asked himself, blindly and stupidly ; as the oxen seem to ask
it with their mUd sad eyes as they strain under the yoke and
goad, suffering and not knowing why they suffer.
Nothing was clear to Bruno.
Only life had taught him that Love is the brother of Death.
One thing and another had come between him and the lad
he cherished. The dreams of the child, the desires of the
youth, the powers of art, the passion of genius, one by one
had come in between him, and loosened his hold, and made
him stand aloof as a stranger. But Love he had dreaded most
of all ; Love, which slays with one glance dreams and art and
genius, and lays them dead as rootless weeds that rot in burning
Buns.
Now Love had come.
He worked all day, holding the sickness of fear off him as
best he could, for he was a brave man ; only he had wrestled
with fate so long, and it seemed always to beat him, and almost
be grew tired.
He cut a week's fodder for the beasts, and left all things in
their places, and then^ as the day darkened, prepared to go.
Tinello and Pastore lowed at him, thrusting their broad
white foreheads and soft noses over their stable-door.
He turned and stroked them in farewell.
"Poor beasts 1" he muttered, '* shall I never muzzle and
yoke you again ?"
His throat grew dry, his eyes grew dim. He was like a man
who sails for a voyage on unknown seas, and neither he nor
any other can tell whether he will ever return.
He might come back in a day ; he might come back never.
Multitudes, well used to wander, would have laughed at him.
But to him it was as though he set forth on the journey which
men call death.
466 SIQNA,
In the gray lowering eyening he kissed the beasts on their
white brows ; there was no one there to see his weakness, and
year on year he had decked them with their garknds of hedge-
flowers and led them up on God's day to have their stren;th
blessed by the priest, their strength that labored with his
own from dawn to dark over the bare brown fields.
Then he turned his back on his old home, and went down
the green sides of the hill, and lost sight of his birthplaoe as
the night fell.
All through the night he was borne away by the edge of
the sea, along the wild windy shores, through the stagnant
marshes and the black pools where the buffalo and the wild
boar herded, past the deserted cities of the coast, and beyond
the forsaken harbors of ^neas and of Nero.
The west wind blew strong ; the clouds were heavy ; now
and then the moon shone on a sullen sea ; now and then the
darkness broke over rank Maremma yapore ; at times he heard
the distant bellowing of the herds, at times he heard the moan-
ing of the water ; mighty cities, lost armies, slaughtered hosts,
foundered fleets, were underneath that soil and sea, whole
nations had their sepulchres on that low wind4lown shore.
But of these he knew nothing.
It only seemed to him that day would never oome.
Once or twice he fell asleep for a few moments, and, waking
in that confused noise of the stormy night and the wild water
and the iiightened herds, thought diat he was dead, and thai
this sound was the passing of the feet of all the living multi-
tude going forever to and fro unthinking over the depths ^
the dark earth where he lay.
CHAPTER IL.
LlPPO in this last lengthening day of February found houn
of sunshine and of leisure to loiter in and out the Lastra doon,
set open to the noonday brightness and the smell of the air
from the hills, which brought the fragrance of a world of
violets with it.
Lippo, with sad eyes and softened voice, said to his goasipa,
SIGNA. 467
" Mj brother is gone down to Rome. Yes, \eft the old
bouse where we were born, and all his labors, and gone down
to Rome. I dread the worst. Poor Bnino 1 He has been an
unbrotherlj soul to me, and harsh and hasty, and has been
misguided always and mistaken. But, before he went, he
a^ked my pardon frankly, and you know when a man does
that, bygones are bygones. I do not understand those hard
hearts which never wUl forgive. Yes, I dread the worst. You
see, the poor lad Signa has fallen in evil courses, and been
taken in the ooils of a base woman, and Bruno hears of it, and
will go see for himself, and Says that he will drag the boy from
ruin though it oost bloodshed. I do dread the worst. Be-
cause, you see, youths are not lightly turned from their mad
passions, and Bruno is too quick of hand and heavy of wrath.
It makes me very anxious. Oh, yes, indeed, I know he has
had little love for me, and been unjust to me, and done me
harm ; but when a man says that he repents, ^it may be weak,
but I for one could not refuse my hand. And between brothers,
too. Indeed, I loved him always, and the poor boy knew
that.''
And Lippo sighed.
" What a heart of gold 1" said the barber, looking after him
as he went up the street
" Ay, truly, tender as a woman, when you take him the
right way," quoth the butcher.
** And a man of thrift : money soon jumps itself treble in
his pocket," said Toto the tinman.
" And a good son of the church," said the parish priest,
who was passing by; and the barber nodded solemnly, and
added,
" And never a shrewder brain under my razor, with all the
polls I have shaved as clean as pumpkins forty years and one
last St. Michael in the Lastra."
Lippo went on to the sacristy of the Misericordia, where he
had risen to be of good report, and one of the foremost men
of the order, by dint of assiduous service in the black robes,
and bearing to and from hospital or graveyard his sick or life-
less fellow-creatures, and being constantly present at mass and
reouiem.
There was a dead body lying up on the hills as far away as
Mosciano, the body of a poor sister of the order, a peasant-
468 SIONA.
woman, and the bier and cata&lqne were goii^ out to leidi
her. One of the daily servitors, whose tarn it was, had net
with an accident to hia foot in answering the sommons. lippo,
with kindliest, qoiokest willingness, took his place, and bade
the man go home and rest, and he would himself paj hb fi&e
of ahsenoe.
Amidst blessings Lippo moved away nnder the Uai^ and
dismal pall.
" A pure good Christian soul," said the by-standeam " It
will be hard for snch a man if his wild brother make a diame
and scandal for him down in Rome.'*
From the Lastra to Mosciano is a long and toilaome vay^
winding up into the green hills and under the sleep hdghtg
that are left as nature made them, and have the arbutus and
the oak and the stone-pines growing at free will in beautiful
dells and on bold rocky knolls that lie high under the skies,
nameless, and rarely seen of men. There is infinite lovdineas
in these lonely, wUd, richly-foHaged hill-tops, with the great
golden valley fkr below, and beyond on the other side the
shining plains by the sea. The day was fair; die opposite
mountains were silvered with snow *, the fox and the wild hare
ran across the solitary paths ; but it was cold ; the north wind
blew, the ascent was steep, and the way seemed endless, lying
along over the green chain of the high woods. The nK.
laboring under the weight of the bier, grew footsore and tired :
when they brought the poor dead sister down, and laid her in
the chapel to await her burial on the morrow, the long boon
of the day were already gone, it was night.
Lippo wiped the sweat from his forehead as he laid away
his cowl ; he was aching in every limb, and his feet were cat
and bruised, but he was well content. Those were the things
which smelt sweet in the nostrils of his neighbors. To walk
in a steam of good savor is, he knew, to walk soon or late to
the goal of success.
" You are not strong enough to take such exertion ; it
was noble of you, but you overtask yourself,*' said pretty
Candida, the vintner's wife, as he lefl the church ; and she
would have him in, and made him warm himself beside her
stove, and brewed him some coffee, and praised him, and
hoped with a sigh that Nita knew her own good fortune anJ
}uB worth.
SJGNA, 469
" IX not make me vain," miurmared Lippo, with a pathetic
appeal in his soft lustrous eyes. " Do not make me vain,
nor miserable."
And he said it so sweetly, and his hand stole so gently into
Hers, and his eyes were so eloquent and so plaintive, that
pretty Candida was ready to promise him coffee -or aught
else whenever he passed that way.
So Lippo went home, having done a good day's work, and,
meeting the vintner within a few yards from the door, pressed
bim by the hand warmly, and said ^Was Candida well? he
luad not seen her for a week or more ; and being praised a
little farther onward by the parish priest, said, He had done
nothing ; oh, no ! Mosciano was a stretch, but what mattered a
little fatigue when there was God's labor to be done, and the
saints* pleasure ? and then, with modest denial of any virtue in
liimself, took a few farther steps, and mounted to the upper
chamber, where his wife was sitting and waiting for him with
a scowl and loud upbraiding.
Nay, dear,'' said he, *' do not be angered. Poor Tista hurt
Ilia ankle at the church, and so I took his turn in fetching a
corpse down from the hills ; that is all. From Mosciano, an
endless way ; a day's work, and a hard one, for a mule. I
thought I should have died. And not a bit or drop passing
my mouth since noonday, and it is nine of the dock. Dear,
give me some wine, quick : I feel faint."
And Nita, who loved him in a jealous, eager, tyrannous way,
got him of the best, and waited on him, and roasted him some
little birds upon a toast, and sorrowed over him.
For she was a fierce-tongued, fierce-eyed, jealous creature,
^but his dupe. The sharpest woman will be the merest fool
of the man she loves, if he choose to fool her.
" There is a letter come for you," said Nita, when the birds
were eaten.
A letter was a rarity in any household of the Lastra.
Lippo broke it open, and slowly spelled it out, syllable by
syllable.
" Heaven is good to us," he said, sofUy, and laid it down by
the brass lamp.
** What is in it ?" asked his wife, watching his face breath-
lessly.
" Dear, your aunt, of most blessed memory, is dead ; Ood
40
470 SIONA.
rest her aonl ! She died of a strtctuie of the stomidi, all m t
momoit. Would I had been there 1 She leaves ns all Ae
had ; it seems she saved much ; her cottage at Ass^, and
twen^ thousand francs in scrip ; all to us to me ^without
reserve."
Nita screamed aloud, with her black eyes all kindling with
ferocious joj, and flung her brown arms about his neck aad
kissed him.
" Oh, Lippo 1 oh, Lippino ! How dcver jou are I To have
thought of taking Uie silly old soul those oonserves and cough-
potions just in the nick of time 1 How clever ! ^I never will
say you nay !*'
Lippo returned her caress, thinking the lips of Candida
were softer. His fiice grew very grave, with a penave reproach
upon it
'^ Oh, my love, your words are unbecoming. You know full
well I had no thought of after-gain in paying that poor sool
the deference due to age. You know it pains me not to be in
friendship with all our relatives, and we so M too, it was
only duty, Nita ; believe me, dear, when we do right, heaven
goes with us. I am thankful, of course, that so much more
is added to us to keep you and the children in good comfort;
but I would sooner far that the kind old creature were liTiag
and enjoying life, than gain this greater prosperity by her
death ; and so, I know, would you, though your (jui^ tongue
outruns your heart and does belie it"
Nita suddenly drew back, and made unseen a grimace be-
hind her husband's handsome head. She began to feel he was
her master. She began to realise her own clumsy inferiori^
to this delicate fine workmanship of his.
'* Anyhow, the cough-syrup has brought good measure
back !" she muttered, her eyes still a^ow.
^^ My journey to Rome, in my boy's interests, has proq)ered,
thanks to heaven," said lippo, widi calm serious grace, and
went and read the notary's letter to old Baldo.
" You will be a warm man, Lippo," chuckled the cobbler,
who had grown very infirm and kept his bed ; *' a warm man.
You will have all I have too, ere long."
" May it be very longl" said Lippo, and said it with such
earnest, graceful tenderness that the old man, though he had
known him tell lies morning, noon, and night for five-and-
SIQNA. 471
twenty yean, was touched, and almost thought that lippo said
the truth and meant it.
" Once/* said Baldo, '* I did wish that my girl had taken
your mad brother. But now I know she chose aright. Yes,
you are a man to prosper, Lippo."
'^All things are with Grod,'' said Lippo, and, tired though
he was, sat down by the bed and spelt out aloud to the old man,
who was drawing near his end and liked to be well with heaven,
one of the seven psalms of penitence.
The window-shutter was not closed ; a pretty woman, lean-
ing in the opposite casement, could see, and a canon who dwelt
on the other side of the thin wall could hear him.
CHAPTER LH.
It was three in the afternoon, from accident and delay, when
Bruno, dazzled, stupefied, cold, and fasting, stumbled on his
first steps on the stones of Borne.
There was a sort of awe for him in Rome.
He had been taught that it was there the great St. Peter
always lived, and held the keys of heaven and hell. That
was all. Other thoughts of Rome he had none ; and even
that died out of him in the engrossing dread that possessed
him of all he should learn here of the boy.
He got down, and on his feet, and stared blankly across the
square, and felt blind and bewildered with that sense of
strangeness which overpowers beyond all other sense the igno-
rant and the untraveled who alight in an unknown place.
What had he come for ? He did not know.
He came on the impulse which his brother had set alight
in him, ^the impulse to save Signa.
The men and women who had come with him in that
dreary journey went all their several ways with noise and
tumult, quarreling and difficulty. Bruno stood stock still, like
a lost dog in the midst of the uproar ; and it soon had c^ised.
*' Where are you going ?*' said a man to him, who had a
472 SIGNA.
bone and ydude, and thought that he might need both, is
other travelers did.
Bruno stared at him, and, without answering, felt to make
flore that both his belt and knife were safe.
" You wiU be sick and sorry not to have taken me,'^ aid
the driver, irritated with the churlishness of silence. *^ There
is not another beast to be hired under its worth in scndi afl
over the ci^ to-daj : not one.'*
'* What is there amiss in the citj ?" he asked. He was
hungiy, and felt a dinj stupor in his head.
The driver laughed outright.
" Oh, Tuscan gahj^ where are jour wits ? Is it not Shrove
Tuesday ?"
'* I forgot," said Bruno, and stood stall, wondering where he
had best go.
" Are you come to get a job on the Campagna?" said the
man, knowing him to be a peasant, and gneseing his proriaa
by his accent ^* You are too early. Thej come in by troopa
in another month, laborers like you."
Bruno moved away mechaniadly, as the lost dog will whca
some one teases it.
It had been a mild and golden day, and the siu was nov
setting.
The mists had been left with the marshes, and the eKoQ&
had blown away over the sea; the dark, lowering, wiadj
weather had been left in the north; and oyer Rome Uieie wii
a flood of amber, radiant light
The sunshine of Rome has a great influence in it
It makes happiness an ecstasy.
It makes pain a despair.
Bruno moved away in it, ^a lofty, eiect^ dark fiignre, with
his brown doak on one shoulder.
He wished the light were not so bright The gray, suileD
mists of the pools and the shores had hurt him less.
Very soon his wish was fulfilled. The sun sank, and night
fell.
He had not tasted food or drink for fifteen houra.
He saw a wine-house in a crooked street ; he went in and
took a draught and ate a bit of bread and a few mushrooiDs;
then he went out again, the stupor of his brain clearing a hUie
as his body was refreshed.
SIONA. 473
It was already quite dark.
XTndying Petrus dwelt here, and kept the keys of eternal
life. So he had always been told. He did not doubt it.
It made the city mysterious and half divine to him. That
was all. Otherwise he was scarcely sensible of the difference
of place.
His mind was absorbed in his errand.
Brano would have moved unabashed and unconscious
through all the palaces of the world; and now, when he
thought that he was where the R^ent of Christ dwelt, he said
to himself,
'^ If I could see him, I would tell him to shut me out for-
ever, forever : it will not matter for me ; so that only the boy
may go to Ood."
To Bruno heaven and hell were as two visible worlds : had
not he seen them, one golden as morning, the other lurid as a
tempestuous night, painted by great Orcagna, who had been
suffered to behold them, as in a vision, and prefigure them for
the warning of men ?
He went through the lonely streets, pondering within him-
self. Their solemnity was welcome to him, and soothed the
jagged, weary, impatient bitterness of his mind.
A giri laughed above, in an open lattice behind a grating.
He wondered to hear her. It seemed to him as if the city
were a mighty grave in which sinners waited for judgment.
He remembered hearing from the priests and preachers
church-tales of the martyrs who had perished here for their
faith. He envied them such death.
If only they would take him so, and bind him and bum
him, ^if by such means he could save the boy.
lliose men were happy. They made their bond with God,
and paid down their brief, fiery pang, and got eternal life by
it, or so they thought.
Bruno envied them. He could only see the soul he loved
drift into hell ; and could do nothing.
He walked on, seeing the greatness round him as in a dream.
The mind of the man was larger than the shell in which it
had been imprisoned all its years.
He was ignorant ; his brain had never gone out from its
narrow confines of pastoral knowledge and of daily cares : but
in it there was a certain unawakened power which, under other
40*
474 SIGNA.
habits and under other modes of life, might hmve
strength and dignity of thought.
As it was, his brain, dumb, fettered, oonfosed, confined,
only pain to him, and of no more use than the lion's force b
to the lion bom in an iron cage and doomed to lire and die ia
one.
It was quite night when he left the wine-house and walked
onward.
It was all dark. For Rome is ill lit at all times, and the
streets are narrow and the walls are high, and the mooDbesas
only shine in here and there save when the moon is at ho^foQ
and the white glory of her is spread everywhere like a ^htm-
phorescent sea.
It was all dark as Bruno passed along its unknown wsjb,
his hand upon his knife. He made his way slowly, with a
curious sense of something greater than himsdf, and grecter
than the world that he had known, around him.
A vast stUlness and obscurity reigned everywhere, hut eT^*
and again there loomed out from the gloom a thing of Rohm,
such as only Rome can ^ve : a ooloasal statue, aombre and
crowned, with the orb of the world at its feet ; a saint with
gigantic crosier raised on high to awe into subjection the rulers
of the universe*, a mighty form tiaraed and robed in travertine
that gleamed to a red |le gold in the light of some sditaiy
lamp ; a huge column fitted for the grip of Samson ; a dusky
arch with wild grasses growing in its keystone, or a white
fountain with its fantastic play of foam cast up in ealver on
the black background of towering walls or endless staiiwajs.
These and such as these gleamed ever and again out from the
universal shadow. There was a vague nameless sense of im-
mensity around. These statues were Titans frtm&a into stone ;
the Sant* Agnese was the full-breasted, fleet-footed daughter
of a god ; tbis naked Oregorius had the brow and the loins
of banished Zeus.
These are all Rome gives at night: some prophet with oat^
stretched arms raised in imprecation ; some stem stone face of
an Assyrian lion ; some Sphinx with cold and dreaming eyes
that hold the mysteries of the lost races in them ; some
Christian martyr with white marble limbs wound about a cross
of bronze ; some Latin god with thyrsus broken in his hand
and wine-cup ^led with dust and ashes; these and their like
siayA, 475
gleam here and tbere, parted by great breadths of shadow and
gloom of impenetrable darkness, where any crime may have
been wrought and any woe been suffered.
A strange perpetual sense of power and of measureless
empire is still upon the air ; here all the passions and all the
forces of humanity were once at their idlest and their fiercest ;
here giants moyed and breathed and worked and fought and
had their being, and in their turn died,^-died mortal -men also
at the last, but to the last also in their sinew and substance,
by their legacy and tradition, giants even in the silence and
the impotence of death.
Bruno, going through the night, and seeing these, was
moved to a vague fear, such as even a bold man may feel
entering a haunted house at midnight and alone.
Rome had been once the throne of the world, and was now
the refoge of God.
That was all he knew. But it was enough.
He wandered without knowing where he went, or whither
he ought to go.
Used to a &iry city, he was lost and bewildered in this city
of giants.
Until he had set foot in Bome, it had never come to his
mind that the boy might be hard to find.
" They must know of him at the Theatre of Apollo," he
said to himself; and tried to reach the theatre ; and missed
his way ; and came on What seemed to him most beautiful and
most appalling, a great arena strewn with fallen pillars and
mutilated friezes, and with a carved column that idone stood
erect, and seemed to tower to the clouds, and deep stone ways
in which stagnant black water glittered ; and all around there
was an intense stillness ; and above all there rose a mountain
as it seemed of marble and brick and sculpture ; and over all
was the silvery mist of the new-risen moon and wide sombre
veils of shadow.
It was the Forum of Trajan.
And the mountain of stone was the back of the Capitol.
Bruno, knowing nothing, thought it a vast sepulchre, whose
tombs and temples had been overthrown in war.
No living mortal met his eye. It seemed to him that spirits
alone could have their dwelling there.
All the thousands and tens of thousands were away in the
476 SIGNA.
feasting of the grandest day of Carnira], gattiaed togge&r
by the Pincian Hill. They had told him so ; hot he fiij^
it as he went
The stillness, the vastness, the sadness of the mighty wilder^
ness of stone in which he wandered oppressed him. He had
been reared on the nionntain-de, amidst the waTii^ ssm of
com, the fresh fragrance of woods, the width of tibe gieei
valleys, and the smile of the wet wind-tossed pines.
This maxe of brick, this labyrinth of brokoi maiUei was
wonderfnl to him, and terrible to him. When he saw a graei
curled palm rising over the granite of a palaee bastion, be
could have stretched his arms to it as to a friend.
Nature, living and lauding, Nature, eternal and ever tri-
umphant everywhere else over all the works of men, ^Nafcoze
is cowed and hushed in Rome.
Men have cast such weight of stone upon her breasts tkat
their milk is dry.
She has crept slowly, as a bereaved childleai createre m^bt,
over this vast battle-ground, and has covered with a green
mantle the nakedness of the innumerable slain; but she is
stilled and sterile in her office. She lies barren in the phdoa,
and forsakes the city where the people so long ago denied \s
and turned to worship their gods of bronie and day.
He mounted the steep stairway and entered by it the grand
granite desolation that saw Biensi ialL
It was all deserted.
Through an arch where the moon-rays shone he saw a co-
lossal river-god lying dark and prostrate. The cdd, damp,
lofby courts were all silent The bronae Augurtos sat alone,
gazing over Rome. Castor and Pollux caught their great
horses back on a field of stone. The stairways seemed Deas-
ureless and endless, shelving into the dim unknown dqiths of
the silent city.
Bruno shuddered.
He was a brave man amidst mad cattle, furies of the flood,
bare knives unsheathed in feud, or any bodily peril. But here
ho was stupefied and afraid.
Here, alone with this great past, of which he knew nothing.
He dolTed his hat to the bronse emperor erect there in lua
lonely grandeur.
Was it a statue or a spectre ? He did not know. The air
SIGNA. 4.TI
liad grown very cold. On the vast steps whicli had felt the
feet of millions the moonbeams were shining.
When he saw at last a human form he was thankful.
He spoke aloud.
" Where am I ? tell me ?"
The ascending shadow answered him.
" This is the Capitol."
" Who is that? who reigns in the midst?''
'* Men called him Augustus, ^lord of the world.*'
" And those two that struggle with the horses ?"
"They are the Gemini. They ride in the heavens too.
You may see them any night among the stars from tulip-time
to vintage."
Bruno did not understand.
Yet he felt that the words suited the place better than any
bare bold answer, and he had sense enough to know that no
common man spoke so.
" Do they ride with the stars ?'' he said, doubtfully, half
believing.
'' Yes. All the summer long."
" Are they stronger than Algol ?"
" What b Argol ?"
" A star of evil : so they say."
" Then be sure they are not. Evil is always stronger than
good."
Bruno made the sign of the cross, and stood silent, looking
at the brothers straining at their steeds.
The ascending figure, pausing too, looked at him. With
his stature, his unconscious dignity of posture, his oval, olive
face, his broad brows, his dark, fathomless gaze, he had a
grandeur in him, though he had followed his oxen and trodden
the plowed earth all his days.
The other looked at him from bead to foot.
" Do you fear that star, ^your Argol ?"
" It is to be feared," said Bruno.
" Is it in your horoscope ?"
What is that ?"
" It is a fate, read by the stars."
" Is there such a thing ?"
" No doubt. How else should any one have known that
some stars are good, some evil ?"
478 SIGNA.
'* Where are the living people ?'*
" You must go onward for them. Take that waj. Yos
will find them bj tens of thousands."
What do they do there?"
They are at the Moooletti."
"What is that?"
" Fire-worship. In Egypt it was of old the Feast of Lanps.**
" But they worship Christ in Borne."
" A few did, eighteen hundred years ago," said tlie other,
with a smil^ and ascended the rest of the staiis.
" Is he the Evil One?" thought Bruno, with a chiD, as he
saw the smile in the moonlight.
The stranger passed away into the empty spaoe of tlie Gi|-
itol, and Bruno took his way through the darkness, leaving
the heaven-bom Gemini to wrestle with their coursers.
He moved always in the direction which the other had
pointed to him. For a time all was still, sombre, and solitary,
frowning masses of masonry ascending to ihe skies on either
side, with here and there Uie slender featheA of a palm cast
up against the silver of the night.
Then he came to a great baUlemented brown pile, and to a
continuous living stream of tumultuous people, and stood still
with utter amaze ; for what he saw was a winding way of fire,
which seemed to be without end, as though all the fix^ies of
the old Eastern world and the new Southwest had met there
and there held revel. Clouds of starry little flames were
moving everywhere ; the earth was all alive wiih them, and
the air; a river of light stretched away, away, away, with
cupolas and stairs and domes all ablase in golden coruscitioDS
in the far distance ; whilst all along the channel of fire clusters
and plumes of sparks flew and fought and whirled and sprang
aloft, as though ail the million stars of heaven had dropped to
the lower air and were in battle.
Bruno stood and gased entranced, and doubting his own
sight ^
It was only the great game of the Moooletti. But in his
own province Carnival knows not this crown and glory of the
high fea^t-dsy ; and he had never heard, of it, and oould not
comprehend the torrent of light that rushed down the long
and crowded Corso towards him, and the mad uproar of shoutft
and cries that deafened him like the roar of cannon.
8IQNA, 479
For a few momenta he stood and gazed aghast at the sight,
whilst at the end of the river of flame the great round domes
of the church, raised to lay Nero's wandering soul at rest,
gleamed like glohes of light in the fiery rain of a thousand
rockets. Then, as the fantastic cars and chariots passed him,
their gay combatants armed with blazing wands, and as the
grotesque masks and harlequins and dominoes flew by him,
striking with their long tapers right and left, he saw that it
was some feast of Carnival unknown to him, and tried to turn
away from it and gain the solitude of some side street. For
his heart was heavy and his brain was dull ; and the tumult
and the mirth and the madness were hateful to him.
But to escape from such a crowd was no longer possible.
The Moccoli once lit at Ave Maria, the Romans are mad till
the last light dies. He was wedged in a multitude, whose
numbers were swelled with every moment; the frightened
horses, the great allegorical cars, the throngs of masqueraders,
the striking, dancing, nodding, flaming tapers, all hemmed him
in, and pushed him upward almost off his feet, and bore him
on by the force of the screaming and rapturous mob. The
utmost he could do was to defend his face from blows, and his
clothes from the flying fires. Against his will, he was carried
along, higher and higher, under the crowded casements and
balconies, nearer to the domes and the obelisks and the foun-
tains glowing to gold and crimson in the feast of fire.
When he at last got breathing-space and rest a moment, and
leaned against an open doorway, to watch this strange fantastic
war of flames, that seemed to make the very stones and walls
and winds and clouds alive with it, he rested opposite a wide-
open window, with a gallery running underneath it, and draped
with gold cloths and furs and silken stuffs, more richly than
any of those near it. A woman leaned her arms on the bal-
ustrade, and gazed down on the sea of lights below, and with
a long white wand, alight at the end, fought the lights under-
neath her, and laughed as she moved it for the thousandth
time, burning still, despite all efforts from the street to blow it
out or strike it from her hand.
She laughed as a little child might have done at the sport
they made her ; and many, looking upward, forgot their war-
fare and let her vanquish them, because, in the flickering, fit-
ful light of the countless flames, she looked so lovely, leaning
480 SIGNA.
there, as if the fire were buroing in her and shinii^ thnn^
her, as its flame in an alabaster lamp.
Bruno looked up, as all the others did, se^ng how th
chariots paused and the faces were uptomed and the waneb
were lowered under this one casement.
He knew her in an instant: the wanton whose Hkeceas
Palma had flung under the water and stoned ; the child who
had sunned her snowy little limbs in the long grass amoi^
the daisies and the wind-flowers of GioToli.
At her feet lay a youth, whose hands held a change ^
tapers ready to tip her wand afresh should she be vanquished \
every now and then he gave her a knot of roaes 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 tbe pearb that damped
it.
He was screened from the sight of the multitude by the
draperies of the balustrade ; but as he raised himself on his
arms to give her fiowers, Bruno's gaze found him.
Bruno's hand went to the knife in his waist-belt, and, with
a curse, thrust it back again.
That could not reach the smiling thing throned up there on
high.
He wished that he had never burned that deadly fair weapoa
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, newbom thing, lying at her mother's toii-wom
breast, and poor improvident 8andro, 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 Grod I**
So Sandro had said, a faulty inan, but loving his children
and hating shame.
And the white child was here.
Some roses feil through from the rails of her balcony,
SIGN A. 481
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 reward 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."
Bi-uno 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, seem-
ing 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 biimed 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 multi-
tude ; the close-packed throngs swept with one movement out-
ward to where the colored 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 con-
sciousness for a moment in the great roar and pressure of the
T 41
482 SIGNA.
overwhelming mass. When he came to himself, he hid been
pushed upward into the square under the dcHnes of the dinrch
raised to lay the ghost of Nero ; all was dark ; the sport w^
over ; the throngs were still dense, the horses of the atj guanl
were slowly scattering them ; there were no lights, exeqit 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 yoa
upright ; you are a strong man. I ran with jon because joa
)iate that woman, and you gave me money. Will yon give me
more ? Shall I show you whero she lives ?"
" Ay 1 show me T* said Bruno, stupidly ; and by instioci,
like a dog, stooped and drank from the hoUow of his hand
the water of the lion's mouth.
" 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 stariight.
" He is good," said the lad, when his somersault was ended,
and he dipped his mask in the fountain, and drank froand
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 mc, it looks a
poor pastime. Those men of old that colored 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 forever 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 gifl
of yours, to make the likeness of his living things and give
them more beauty than any real life has. And what do you
do with it? Make shameless women glow like the fire, and
the rose, and the jewels of the kin^, 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
488 SIGNA,
been a fool and a Binner with many a living woman in wj
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 Tile creatare ap
on high, and color every hue of her, and draw every line, tnd
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 beau-
tiful body, with a foul cancer hid in it' since to do tbat is
what they call genius, I praise Fate that made me unfettered
and unlearned and sent me to dwell with my beasts at the
plow."
The painter Istriel looked at him with greater intentsess.
The rough doquence 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 de-
scended to delight and stimulate with the matchless graee of
his color and the vital power of his hand the sated materialism
of his age.
He recognized 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 sirens into the
flames at Savonarola's word.
He was less offended than aroused.
^^ What has any one of my pictures done to you f* he asked.
"Men like you feel no impersonal pain. What is your per-
sonal wrong at my hand ?*'
Bruno's eyes glanced at him with a deep mute acorn.
" I do not know what you mean. Your wantons never hurt
me. Only I would hew the wood you paint them on into a
million pieces, and thrust them in the nearest kiln to bum 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 ang&, my boy 1
But ailer 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 beistB.
Yes, that is what your genius does for men. It is great; ah I
SJONA. 489
80 is the marsh-fever, for it can kill a king if he pass by.
Tour 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 yon 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 7 Because the woman had no shame with
you, must yon 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. Lookl the wanton you
made takes my boy from me, from the world, from his art,
from his God!"
He paused abruptly; he had spoken with broken impetuous
passion ; the long-locked gates of his silence once burst asunder,
all his heart rushed forth in his words; he smote wildly, like
a blind man in the midst of foes.
Istriel listened ; the wrath that rose in him was daunted by
a vague trouble, a restless uncertain shame.
" Whom do you speak of?" he said, with a wonder that
held his wrath in check. *^ Your boy 1 is it possible that you
mean the musician that they call Signa?"
Bruno made a gesture of assent.
Istriel was silent.
In his soul he hated the young lover of his Innocence, the
beautiful boy who had youth, who had fame, who had her.
" What have I to do with that?" he said, bitterly. " She
takes a whim for him, a fancy of a month ; he thinks it heaven
and eternity. She has ruined him. His genius is burned
up ; his youth is dead ; he will do nothing more of any worth.
Women like her are like the Indian drugs, that sleep and kill.
How is that any fault of mine ? He could see the thing she
wus. If he will fling his soul away upon a creature lighter
than thistle-down, viler than a rattlesnake's poison, poorer and
quicker to pass than the breath of a gnat, whose blame is that
except his own ? There was a sculptor once, you know, that
490 SIGNA.
fell to lascivioos worship of the marble image he had made;
well^ poetfl are not even so far wise as that. Thej make an
image out of the gossamer rainbow stuff of their own dreams,
and then curse heaven and earth because it dissolves to empty
air in their fond arms. Whose blame is that ? The foob aze
made so "
He spoke with fierce curt scorn ; he too had loved this
worthless loveliness that he had christened Innocence.
" It is as bad as that with him ?" muttered Bruno. " It is
true then all they say?*'
Istriel laughed.
" Most true. All Rome can read it Her hncj is done ;
and now his hell has come. It is always so. But what can
it be to you ? What is he to you ?" he said, abruptly.
Bruno smiled, a smile of the pale passion which is bitter
as death, and deep as the bottomless sea.
" I have given him all my life,*' he said, simply. " AH my
life. And you and your wanton have destroyed him."
" He b your son?" said Istriel.
" No. They all thought so, but they were wrong. He was
Pippa's son," said Bruno, whose mind was clouded with the
force and fury of his pain, and who at all times had the peas-
ant's opticism, and believed that every one must know, with-
out need of explanation, who he was, and what he meant, and
why he spoke.
" Pippa I" echoed Istriel. His memories were wakened by
the name, and went back to the days of his youth, when he
had gone through the fields at evening, when the purple bean-
flower was in bloom.
" What is your name, then ?" he asked, with a changed
sound in his voice, and with his fair cheek paler.
" I am Bruno Marcillo ; I come from the hills above the
Lastra a Signa."
Istriel rose and looked at him ; he had not remembered dead
Pippa for many a year. All in a moment he did remember:
the long light days ; the little gray-walled town ; the meetings
ill the vine-hung paths, when sunset burned the skies ; the
girl with the pearls on her round brown throat ; the moonlit
nights, with the strings of the guitar throbbing, and the hearts
of the lovers leaping,* the sweet, eager, thoughtless passion
that swayed them one to another, as two flowers are blown to-
SIGNA. 491
gether in the mild sofl winds of summer : he remembered it
ail now.
And he had forgotten so long ; forgotten so utterly ; save
now and then, when in some great man's house he had chanced
to see soma painting done in his youth, and sold then for a
few gold coins, of a tender tempestuous face, half smiling and
half sobbing, full of storm and sunshine, both in one ; and
then at such times had thought, " Poor little fool 1 she loved
me too well ; it is the worst fault a woman has."
Some regret he had felt, and some remorse, when he had
found the garret empty, and had lost Pippa from sight in the
great sea of chance ; but she had wearied him, importuned
him, clung to him ; she had had the worst fault, she had loved
him too much. He had been young, and poor, and very am-
bitious -, he had been soon reconciled ; he had soon learned to
think that it was a burden best fallen from his shoulders. No
doubt she had suffered ; but there was no help for that, some
one always suffered when these tics were broken, so he had
said to himself. And then there had come success and fame,
and the pleasures of the world and the triumphs of art, and
Pippa had dropped from his thoughts as dead blossoms from
a bough; and he had loved so many other women that he
could not have counted them ; and the memory of that boy-
and-girl romance in the green hill-country of the old Etruscan
land had died away from him like a song long mute.
Now, all at once, Pippa s hand seemed to touch him, Pippa*8
voice seemed to rouse him, Pippa's eyes seemed to look at him.
This was Bruno, then? the great, dark, elder brother,
whom she had feared, and had often pointed out to him in the
fading evening light from afar on the hill-sides, and had b^ged
him never to meet, lest there should be feud about her, and
bloodshed.
This was Bruno.
All in a moment the past leaped up to him, and grew fresh
as yesterday.
This was Bruno ; and what, then, was the boy?
He mastered the horror and the emotion which possessed
him ; but his mouth was dry and his voice was unsteady, as
he asked,
" She was your sister Pippa ?"
Yes."
492 SIGNA.
"Is she dead, then?'*
" Yes."
"When did she die?"
" On the night of the flood, in the dark, we found her dead,
Lippo and I. The child was at her hreast. She had dlea
from the edge of the road. She could tell as nothing. What
is it to you ? Why do you want to know ?"
Istriel was silent a moment ; a shiver as of some great coU
went over him. Then he spoke suddenly :
" Because I was her lover. I took her from your ooontrr.
That lad, if he be hers, is mine. She loved me too wdl to
be faithless. There are women so."
Bruno stared at him stupidly. The sense of what he heatd
was long before it reached him or brought perception of its
truth. Then all at once he understood.
" It will kill him !" he muttered, at last ; " it will kill him !
Do you not see ?"
With a shudder, Istriel looked him slowly in the face.
Bemembering the boy, their mutual thoughts dulled pasaira,
numbed rage, and struck them mute.
Bruno's hand, raised to strike Xhe lover of dead Pippa, fell
to his side nerveless and strengthless as a reed that is plucked
upward by the roots.
CHAPTER LIV.
" Let me think ! let me breathe !" said Bruno, and he
staggered farther out into the darkness, gasping for air.
The horror of an inevitable, irrevocable destiny dosed in
on him like a cage of iron.
There are hours in the lives of men when the old Greek
sense of being but the sport of an inexorable Fate, from which
there is no possible escape, sweeps away all hope and power
of self-help, and strikes all courage blinded to the dust
What could he do ?
The powers of heaven and hell were alike against him,
so he thought.
SIGN A. 493
He waa no god to struggle with this ghastly cnrse of risen
jears, these prisoD-mists of perished passions.
It was no fault of his.
His hands were innocent, his soul was free of guilt; yet he
suffered as the guilty do not. It is often so.
There was a sound as of many waters in his ears ; the white
moon and the curled palm-leaves went round and round ; the
great stones seemed to heave heneath his feet.
He saw the &ce of the man before him as in a mist, blood-
red.
" Get you gone," he muttered, " get you gone. You have
no share with him. For you, he would have drowned, like
any lamb that the flood took. He is mine, mine, mine.
My hands worked for him ; my bread fed him ; my roof shel-
tered him. He was naught to you. You have lived your life
and never thought. He is naught to you ; he is mine. Get
you gone !"
And he struck at the air ^blindly.
The other shrank away before that great just passion,
shrank, palsied and awed, in all his proud vain manhood, as
though old age had seized him. He had dropped the serpent's
tooth of a careless love by the wayside, and thought no more ;
and now an armed host sprang on him.
" But to save him ?" he murmured, and was still.
Bruno stood erect, and in the changing shadows his form
seemed to tower and dilate and grow to giant's stature.
'* Leave him to me," he cried ; and his voice rolled like
thunder down the deserted ruined ways of Rome. " He is
mine I he is mine 1 My soul for his, that I have said,
always, always, while you feasted, and were famous, and
kissed your wantons, and took no thought. Get you gone ; get
you gone. You gave him your life ; but I gave him my soul."
The other shrank back into the shadows.
Bruno stood silent, with his face to the stars.
" Is there a God there ?" he cried to them. " Is there a
God, that he lets the innocent suffer for the guilty?"
The serene star-covered heavens seemed chiU as any vault
of ice. What cared they for his pain ?
It was no blasphemy in him that cried thus, and thus
doubted ; it was faith in its death-agony ; the &ith of David's,
" Lord, I believe : help thou mine unbelief."
42
494 SIQNA,
^e was alone in the pale night
The lover of dead Pippa, who had Dcyer feared anjthiog
in life, feared him.
" Is it all of no nse?" muttered Bruno to the eilenoe ; and
silence answered him. Was it all of no use ? the long jean
of toil ; the patient sacrifice ; the unceasing resistance of sel-
fish desire; the bitter winters; the burning summers; the
effort ; the anxiety ; the prayers ; the love ?
Was it all of no use? Did neither men nor God care
anything ?
That unutterable and terrible loneliness whi^ comes to all
in their death-hour and comes to some in their full height of
life encompassed Bruno now.
It seemed to him as if he stood solitary ailiidst the wreck
of the whole world.
He had tried to build up in safety the temple of this jonng
life, so that every fair and pure thing might be gamered
therein, and no foul spirits ever enter ; he had been willing to
cement its comer-stone with his heart's blood, and by the
sweat of his labor, and by the pain of his penshing hopes,
purchase a blessing upon it And now it burned and crumbled
t)efore his sight, blasted with the Hghtning of a hideous pft-
sion. And he stood by, with bound hands.
'^ My soul for his/' he muttered. That he had said alwap;
that he would give still ; only it seemed to him that there wis
no way to force on &te such barter.
It is not given to any life to be the providence of another :
so the old man had told him in the sacristy of the Laatn,
and he found the truth now.
A great sickness came on him, a loathing of life and of the
hopes with which he had cheated himself through these twentj
long years of vain sacrifices.
He seemed to feel the long wet hair of dead Pippa, and the
cold of her lifeless breasts. Was it an hour ago that they
had found her by the old sea-road, or was it twenty years?
He stood stunned and stupid in the silent ways of Borne.
A great darkness was over all his mind, like the plague ^
that unending night which brooded over Egypt
All the ferocity of his nature was scourged into its greatest
strength ; he was sensible of nothing except the sense that he
was beaten in the one aim and purpose of his li&.
SIONA. 495
Only if by any chance he conld still save the boy.
That one thought companion with him, sleeping and wak-
ing through so many joyless nights stayed with him still.
It seemed to him that he would have strength to scale the
very heights of heaven, and shake the very throne of God
until He heard, to save the boy.
The night was far gone ; the red of the day-dawn began to
glow, and the stars paJed.
He did not know how time went ; but he knew the look of
the daybreak. When the skies looked so through his grated
windows at home, he rose, and said a prayer, and went down
and unbarred his doors, and led out his white beasts to the
plow or between the golden lines of the reaped com. All that
was over now. The birds were waking on the old green hills
and the crocus flowers unclosing ; but he
" I shall never see it again, " he thought, and his heart
yearned to it, and the great hot slow tears of a man's woe
stole into his aching eyes and burned them. But he had no
pity on himself.
He had freedom and health and strength and manhood, and
he was still not old, and still might win the favor of women,
and see his children laugh, if he went back to the old home-
stead and the old safe ways of his fathers. And the very
smell of the earth there was sweet to him as a virgin's breath,
and the mere toil of the ground had been dear to him by
reason of the faithful love that he bore to his birthplace. But
he had no pity on himself.
'* My soul for his," he had said ; and he cleaved to his word
and kept it.
In his day he had been savage to others. He was no less
BO to himself.
He had done all that he knew how to do. He had crushed
out the natural evil of him, and denied the desires of the flesh,
and changed his very nature, to do good by Pippa's son : and
it had all been of no use ; it had all been spent in vain, as
drowning seamen's cries for help are spent on angry winds and
yawning waters. He had tried to follow God's will and to
drive the tempter from him, for the boy's sake ; and it had all
been of no avail. Through the long score of years his vain
sacrifices echoed dully by him, as a dropped stone through the
dark shaft of a well.
496 SIGNA,
Perhaps it was Dot enougb.
Perhaps it was needful that he should redeem the hoj s
soul by the utter surreoder and eternal ruin of his own,
perhaps. Afler all, it was a poor love which balanced cost,
a meek, mean love which would not dare take guilt upon it for
the thing it cherished.
To him crime was crime in naked utter bladEnees, without
aught of those palliatives with which the cultured and philo-
sophic temper can stroke it smooth and paint its soft esrase
and trace it back to influence or insanity. To him sin wad
a mighty, hideous, hell-bom thing, which being embraced
dragged him who kissed it on the mouth, downward and down-
ward into bottomless pits of endless night and oeaseless torment
To him the depths of hell and heights of heaven were real as
he had seen them in the visions of Orcagna.
Yet he was willing to say, " Evil, be thou my good," if by
such evil he could break the bonds of passion from the hie dt
Pippa's son.
He had in him the mighty &naticism which has made at
once the tyrants and the martyrs of the world.
" Leave him to me,"' he had said, and then the strength, and
weakness, and ruthless heat, and utter self-deliverance of his
nature leaped to their height, and nerved him with deadly
passion.
" There is but one way,'* he said to himself; ^there was
but one way to cut the cords of this hideous, tanked knot of
destiny, and let free the boy to the old ways of innocence.
^' He will curse me,*' he thought; " I shall die, never looking
on his face, never hearing his voice. But he will be freed
so. He will suffer, for a day, a year. But he will be
spared the truth. And he is so young, he will be glad again
before the summer comes.**
For a moment his courage failed him.
He could face the thought of an eternity of pain, and not
turn pale, nor pause. But to die with the boy's curse on him,
that was harder.
*^ It is selfishness to paune," he told himself. " He will
loathe me always ; but what matter ? he will be saved ; he
will be innocent once more; he will hear his * beautiful things*
again ; he will never know the truth ; he will be at peace with
himself, and forget before the summer comes. He never has
SIQNA. 497
loved me, not mnch. What does it matter bo that he is
Bayed ? When he sees his mother in heaven some day, then
she urill say to him, * It was done for your sake.' And I shall
know that he sees then, as Gk)d sees. That will he enough."
And he refused to have pity on himself, and hardened
his heart, and faced the red of the breaking day with his re-
solve stronger and firmer in his soul, till he seemed to himself
to be no more a man with nerves to wound and heart to suffer,
but a thing of iron set to vengeance as a clock is wound to
strike.
There was no other way, that was what he thought ; no
other way to turn the boy to innocence, and spare him ever
any knowledge of the truth.
The same terrible sense of crime as duty which of old
nerved the hands of Judith and of Jael came on him now.
In the great blindness that was upon him it seemed to him
that to shrink from this act set to him would be the feeblest
cowardice. It seemed to him that all the forces of Satan were
at war with him, and that not to strike them down and crush
them out would be to pander to and aid them, and shrink, a
craven, from their path.
The passion which makes tyrannicides was in him now.
" I have lived righteously, and no good has come of it," he
said to himself ^^If crime can save him, crime shall be
sweeter to me than all virtue."
That was all he felt, dully, savagely, hopelessly, with that
despair upon him which is irresponsible as madness.
He had given all his manhood to the boy, and surrendered
all the hopes and ties and pleasures and tender follies which
make the toil of manhood bearable, and soften creeping age
of half its terrors, and one afler another alien forces had arisen
and taken the thing he had labored for away from him.
His heart was hard. His blood was fire. Fate had been
merciless and God been deaf. He grew merciless too, and
stopped his ears to pity.
Pity !
Where was there any in all this wide world ? The fiend
sent a creature on to earth with a wooing mouth and a white
body, and she ate up youth and innocence and all pure desires
and all high endeavors, and devoured souls as swine the gar-
bage ; and from heaven there was never any sign.
42*
498 SIONA.
The young day grew wider and brighu^ and redder m tie
sky. Nightingales sang in the gardens on the other side of
the high walls. The wind rose fragrant with the smeO of vei
grass-ways and of the laden orange-boughs. He nodoed no-
thing. The time had gone by with him when any sight or
sound had power on him. He only waited, ^waited sikntJj,
^rawn back within the shadow of the walls.
With the full morning the bolts of the gates were dnwn
back ; then came forth a young man with a &oe strange to
him, and rich garments, and a smile of triumph on his mootli ;
a little later came a woman with great buckets on her shoulders,
going to fetch water from the fountain in the public square i
street or two beyond.
He, waiting for such a moment's favoring chance, weoi
within. The fresh dark gardens were deserted. There ms a
stone terrace with two flights of steps ; winged lions ; and
grim marble masks. He ascended the stairs, and pushed baek
some great doors which were unlatched within. They yielded
to his hand. He entered the silent house.
Two or three senrauts, drowsy or drunken, lay about on the
couches in the great vaulted entrance, whose white and red
marbles gleamed in the golden glory of the slanting sun-rays.
One of them raised himself sleepily, and stopped him with
a stupid smile.
" Where do you go ? ^what would you do?"
Bruno pushed him aside.
** I go to my work," he answered, and passed onward. The
other, muttering, dropped back again into his vinous rest
Bruno went on. Long corridors, empty banqueting-rooms,
chambers rich with sculptures and with frescoes, deserted splen-
dors where the flowers were fading and the morning shming
through the crevices of closed shutters, all followed one on an-
other like the tombs of dead Etruscan kings. All the house-
hold slept, after the long, gay, amorous vigil of the night. He
traversed the silent places as a living man traverses the soli-
tude of sepulchres. He had no knowledge where to find the
thing he sought; but he went on without a pause: he had
grasped Evil by the hand ; it guides unerringly.
His bare feet smote the bare marble and trod on, inezorab^
as the tread of time^ Afler many chambers, the vast, beauti-
ful painted chambers of Borne, lolly as temples, and cool as the
SIONA. 499
deep sea, he saw a door closed, with garlands of roses bloom-
ing on itfi panels under the morning sunbeams.
He thrust his strength against it ; it resisted a moment, then
gave way and opened noiselessly; a fierce exultant joy leaped
up in his heart like a sudden flame ; he had found his goal.
Here no daylight came ; a little lamp was burning, a Cupid
swung it from a chain ; there was deep color in the shadows
everywhere ; the gloom of the place was filled with aromatic
odors.
He paused neither for the loveliness nor the stillness of it ;
he went through its fragrant darkness with the same slow calm
steps. As destiny comes to men to strike, unhastlng but un-
resting, so he went to her.
He paused a moment and looked on her. Her bed was
white as sea-foam is ; it rose and sank like billows under her ;
her loosened hair half covered her ; her arms were cast above
her head ; her limbs were lightly crossed ; she was one of those
women who are most beautiful in sleep ; and her sleep waa
sod and smiling and profound in its repose, as when she had
slumbered on the nest of hay by Palma's side in the old hut
at Giovoli. . In her disarray, in her abandonment, in her deep
drcatailess rest, she was like a white rose just ruffled with the
dew and wind and shutting all the summer in its breast.
He stood and looked on her.
In her nude beauty she was to him sexless ; in her perfect
loveliness she was to him loathsome.
She was no woman ; but all the evil, all the wrong, all the
injustice, and all the mockery of human life made manifest in
the flesh in her.
He stood and looked on her ; at her red closed mouth, at
her fair curled limbs, at her soil breast that rose and fell with
the even measures of her peaceful breath.
Then he leaned forward and drew his knife from his belt,
and, stooping, stabbed her through the heart, again and
again and again, driving each stroke farther home.
She quivered a moment, then was still; she passed from
sleep to death.
He went out, no man staying him, or asking him anything,
into the broad bright daylight of the outer air.
"It was for him,'' he said in his thoughts, and a great
serenity was with him as of some duty done.
500 SIONA.
Man would slay him, and Gkd would bid him bmn in hefl
forever : ^what matter? ^the boy was saved.
He went on, erect, in the full sunshine. Justice was doi^
A deep, fierce, exultant calm was on him. He would parish,
^body and soul, but the boy was saved.
In the streets there were many people, and the multitudes
were silent and afraid, and there was a sound as of weeping
among women, and the stir and the press grew greater at each
step ; and through the crowds there was brought out in the
living light of the joyous day an open bier; men foDoved
mourning as once they follow^ RafTaelle.
" What is it?" he asked, and paused, for a great fear M
upon him.
A woman answered him.
" His wanton was faithless, look you, and last night alone
he knew it. So he slew himself. Why not? She had killed
all his soul in him. When Love is dead, one*s body best dies
too."
They brought the bier through the weeping crowds.
The face was uncovered to the light. It was the face of
Signs.
They had folded his hands on his breast, and his eyes Vere
closed as in slumber.
Love had killed him.
Why not ? It is the only mercy that Love ever has.
CHAPTER LV.
In a warm cloudless morning, with the scent of wild flowers
upon the wind, when the summer had drawn near, and the
world was filled with life and light, they brought Bruno out
into the public place of Rome to meet his death.
He was quite silent. He had been always silent.
When the sun smote his eyes, and the wind blew on his
face, he shivered a little, that was all.
It was all of no use," he muttered. " It was all of a
use."
He mounted the scaffold with a firm step. He i^as un-
n
SJQNA. 601
oonscions what he did, bat courage remained an instinct with
tkim.
Priests conld do naught for him. He repelled them. He
liad no remorse.
" I did what I could," he said in his heart. *^ But it was
aU of no use, of no use."
He looked a moment at the blue sky, at the fair sailing
clouds, at the hills which rose between hum and his old home ;
then he surrendered himself.
They bared his throat.
*' Pray for your soul," said some voice in his ear.
He looked straight upward at the sun.
" Let my soul burn forever 1" he said. '' Save the boy's.*
That was his prayer.
Then he bowed his head, and knelt.
The axe fell.
They flung his body in a ditch, and threw the quicklime
on it, and the heavy earth.
That was the end.
The hills lie quiet and know no change ; the winds wander
among the white arbutus-bells and shake the odors' from the
clustering herbs ; the stone-pines scent the storm ; the plain
outspreads its golden glory to the morning light ; the sweet
chimes ring ; the days glide on ; the splendors of the sunsets
bum across the sky, and make the mountains as the jeweled
thrones of gods.
Signa, hoary and old, stands there unchanged ; beholding the
sun shine alike on the just and on the unjust
Why not?
Signa can count her age by many centuries. Before the
Latins were, she knew truria ; but, many as be her memories,
she remembers no other thing than thb, there is no justice that
she knows of anywhere. Signa is wise. She lets this world
go by ; and sleeps.