Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 222
The rabbits were scudding with bustle and glee amongst the cabbages. Far away at the other end of the garden two little children were gathering great yellow pears off the side of a shed, eating and laughing as they filled the rush baskets with the fruit.
A white pigeon spread silver wings against the deep cloudless blue of the sky. The houseleek on the red sloping roof turned to vivid gold. The woman of the house hummed to herself fragments of song as she went to and fro past her open window; and I could hear the merry music of the flute where the villagers were still dancing.
Why do I think of all these things? I do not know: only the leaves and the flowers, and the beasts and the unconscious people that have all been about one in any great misery seem to become a portion of it, and burn themselves into one’s brain — forever.
The sadness of the daybreak had passed away from me with the vanished mists. My future seemed to glow before me — golden, beautiful, indistinct, sacred, as the cross of the cathedral glowed down in the valley.
I sat and dreamed over the tender music of his voice, which could lend to the simplest phrase or commonest greeting all the eloquence of a caress.
For the last time in my life I was happy with that perfect happiness only possible in extreme youth, which is only half conscious of itself, and does not awaken to question either its wisdom or its hereafter.
After a while there was a rustle and a step, and Brunétta, hot and tired, pushed her way through the leaves.
She stopped short as she saw me.
“I thought you were on the hills, signorina,” she said, sullenly, and stood posed on one foot, like a little sulky bird, as her habit was when not quite at her ease.
I looked up and smiled on her. I loved every living thing that day, and though she had been capricious and out of temper with me recently, I had never forgotten all the goodness she had shown me in the early days of my wanderings with the Arte.
“Have you had a good dance, Brunétta!” I asked her. “I saw you in the village with that big black Domenico.”
“There is no harm in stretching one’s limbs awhile,” said Brunétta, sulkily, as though I had accused her of some fault “I went to mass in the morning, of course. Of course one always prays for the dead. They never haunt you if you do. Though, for the matter of that, I knew a good soul in Casentino who paid a dozen masses every Quaresima to keep her husband quiet in his grave, and it was all not one bit of use; he was a pedlar, and was thought murdered for good and all by brigands, but just when she was married to a rich poulterer, and comfortable, he came to life again, and all the church money was wasted that she had paid for six years and more; — if that was not enough to try a woman! — still, I always say prayers for them, for they can do one a great deal of hurt if they like. And I am always afraid my old father may come any night, for there was a matter of fifteen soldi for goafs milk that we quarrelled about the very day he fell down in a fit; and his very last words were, ‘If I get out of my grave, I will have those soldi, you wicked wench! He said that even with L’Olio Santo upon him.”
And Brunétta paused, overcome with her recollections, looking vaguely and still sulkily at me, as she rested one foot on the other.
I listened with a little wonder; it was the first time she had ever spoken of her father, though she had often told me of the cruelties of her foster-mother in Casentino; and this dying thought of the soldi seemed to me wholly unlike the gay, ironical, humorous and whimsically proud man whom Pascarèl had so often described to me as the graver of the prince’s coronet upon the old tin tinker’s pot.
Moreover, if Pascarèl had been fifteen when his father had died, how could Brunétta, who was so many many years younger than he, remember the dead man at all?
“You mean your foster-mother’s husband?” I said, looking away down the white road and thinking little of her, only eagerly watching for the shadow so familiar and so dear to me to fall across the sunny bridge.
“I mean my father,” said Brunótta, stubbornly, and was silent, with the guilty, conscious, cunning loot upon her face that she had worn on the day of the San Giovanni.
I did not think much of her.
My eyes went across the bridge to that little white glimpse of road on which with every second I hoped to see the elastic slender figure, the white dress, the dark oval face, like an old picture, that I had so often watched for in such happy hours, but never watched for with such a beating, eager, tremulous heart as now.
When at last I looked at her she was still in the same position, looking like an angered chidden child, but with a certain apprehensive cunning on her ruddy face.
“Why, Brunótta, how you stare at me!” I cried, growing a little tired of her gaze. “Is there anything strange in me to-day?”
In answer, her lip fell, her plump shoulders heaved, and she began to sob aloud.
My heart stood still with terror. My fancy flew to every kind of evil that might have befallen him.
“What is it?” I cried, breathless with fear. “Any accident — any sorrow — to him?”
Brunótta dropped at my feet in the dust, a little ruffled heap, like a gay-plumaged bird that is beaten down by the rain.
“He is well enough! Or I daresay he is,” she muttered, sitting there upon the sand.
She caught hold of my skirts with both hands, and hid her face, and began to sob aloud.
“No, no, he is well enough. It is you, signorina.
Will you go away, and let us be happy once more? We were so happy before you came. I have been telling him so, ever so many days past, but it is all no use. You have bewitched him, and he cares nothing for me. Will you be generous and go away? You are so handsome, and men care so much for you. It will be sure to be well with you anywhere.”
“Go away!” I echoed, stupidly. I thought I could not fairly be awake.
“I was so sorry for you in the wood that day,” she went on, pushing my skirts aside, and speaking in petulant passion, while her round black eyes swam in tears. “Ah, Holy Gèsu! It is always one’s good deeds that turn round and sting us like wasps. It is very hard to do right in this world. It costs one so much. And I was fond of you, donzella; oh yes! I am fond of you still, if only you will go right away. I will pray for you night and morning to our own black Madonna of Impruneta, and she will look after you, and see you want for nothing. I am sure she will if I ask her; for I never miss mass on her feasts — not once; and whenever I have owed her a candle for any good that she did me I always have paid it, in the very finest wax, too. She will care for you, that I am sure; and, besides, what will you want for, anywhere? You can do as you will with men. There is no strength like that strength. It comes to one here and there, in tens of millions, they say; and you have it I do not grudge you it Oh no. I would not have you think that—”
“Think what?” I cried to her, still amazed and bewildered, and not dreaming the truth.
“That I am jealous of you. Oh no, I am not jealous.
But if you would just go away. We were so well till you came. That first night he was wise and I the fool. He said to me, ‘Why bind up with our hedgerow flowers this beautiful stray hot-house rose?’ And I, like a fool, only laughed at him, and saw no harm. Though, of course, I might have known full well what the end would be. He will kill me, I daresay, for speaking to you. So he must I would rather die.”
I rose and drew away the hem of my dress with which her hands were nervously playing. I looked down on her in incredulous amaze.
“Are you mad, Brunétta? What is it you mean? How can I hurt you? Cannot you speak simply and straightly, and say what it is that you want?”
She cast a scared glance down the long green aisle of the pergola to make herself sure she was not overheard: there was only at the farther end the white wall of the house and the open casement, with the woman still moving to and fro and still singing.
“I mean you to go away,” she muttered, under her breath, with a certain sound almost of fierceness in her voice. “To leave him. Cannot you understand?”
“No, I do not understand. Why should you want me away? You were the first who asked me to stay.
You mean something more, Brunétta. Speak out—”
“I know I was the first to ask you to wait with us,” she cried, with a great sob, half of pain, half of passion. “Have I not said it is always what we do best that most hurts us. It is always so. I speak as plainly as I can. I tell you to go.
“He will kill me, no doubt; so he must From the very first you bewitched him.
“I might have known a man as poor as Pascarèl does not give away twelve gold florins, making believe they were got back from a thief, without love having something to say in it He worked very hard to make up those florins; he did all kinds of coopers’ and coppersmiths’ work ever so long, and you never knew.
“You were so glad to get back your florins you believed any follies he told you.
“He has loved you from the first, that I am sure. That day when he half killed the Sicilian it was out of rage for you, not for me. And only look at him now!
“Before he saw you, there was not such a gay-hearted, mischief-loving, careless creature in all the country. He loved his wine, and his wit, and his comrades, and his nonsense, and he had kisses and jests for every woman he met I was never jealous of them.
“And now not once in ten times will he sup with the men when they ask him: as for the women, he never looks at one; and when he is alone — I mean when you are not there — he just sits dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, and never a word to throw at a dog!”
She paused, breathless from the rapidity and vehemence of her words, and I stood as breathless before her. My face burned; my heart beat; my brain whirled. All wonder, all offence, all amazement, were drowned in me under the flood of my own delicious happiness — he loved me.
I did not think to answer her. I was thinking only of that perfect sympathy, this unutterable gladness, which bound my life to his with silver cords.
A strolling player! I could have laughed aloud in delicious mockery of my old dead pride. A tinkers son! What matter? I cried in my heart; I knew him a king amongst men.
The little shrill, petulant voice of Brunòtta came strangely on my ears, as though from far, very far away.
“He will kill me if ever he know!” she was crying. “For he said to me that first night when we had found you in the wood, ‘Not a word, Brunòtta, never a word — as you value my love and your life.’ And I promised him; nay, I swore by all the saints that I would never tell.
“No doubt they will burn me below, sometime, for that; though if they put women in hell for just breaking their word, I cannot think how they find room in the place.
“It is bad to break a promise, I know. But I have begged Pascarèl to send you away from us, and he will not And so at last I must speak, and I will. It is three years ago last San Giovanni’s day since he said to me, ‘Piccinina, will you wander with me?’
“We were at the fireworks on the Carraia bridge, you know, and I was frightened and screamed because a rocket fell near me; and he lifted me down into a boat he had got on the river; and there were young men with him, and coloured lanthorns, and wines and sweetmeats, and they sang; and it was all so merry and good, that when he asked me I thought the life would be one big feast day always.
“And I was so sick of the casentino, and the goats and the straw-plaiting; and one had to tell a thousand lies to get a scudo for oneself, the old people were so sharp and so mean; and then all one’s savings went in absolution, of course; and such a fuss to get leave to go off to a fair as never was, and such a rage if a youngster kissed one! I remember being beaten black and blue by the old woman after this very fair up here at Fiesole because I went to have my fortune told at the Buda, and there was a brave-looking boy from Prato who was full of money, and—”
She stopped and coloured all over to the brown rings of her pretty hair, and glanced at me with cunning eyes, whilst I listened, comprehending nothing that she said, and waiting in astonished silence to hear the purport of her words.
“So you see, signorina,” she went on, breathlessly, “I thought to myself, when Pascarèl in his boat, said to me, half joking, ‘Pretty bird, will you fly away with us?’ I thought to myself I would jump at it, and get away once and for all from the goats and the plaiting; and then, you know, Pascarèl looks like a marquis; and I knew I should dance as much as ever I liked; and who could tell that he had it in him to be such a tyrant, and would make such a fuss about taking a trinket?
“Ever since that Giovanni’s night I have been true to him, quite true to him, that I vow; and if I have had a neckkerchief here and an earring there from a man or two, what does it signify?
“I have never given anything back for it, that I swear by all the saints — scarce a fair word even, for Pascarèl is so fierce. And how can one live in a playhouse as if one were in a convent? It is ridiculous to say such things; and if one may not laugh and gossip, whatever is life worth having?
“And I have put up with all that, though at my age one does not like to be cooped up like an abbess; and I have borne with his temper — and it can be a horrid one, as you might see that day with poor Rosello Brun — and I have always had a care that he should have a good supper, though for himself he never knows whether he is eating a capon or a crow.
“And then all in a minute it is the donzella this, the donzella that, and one is set aside in everything — a stranger, who has not even so much as a silver bodkin for her hair that she can call her own.
“But if you will go away it will be well again.
“It is your face bewitches him; and that pretty, proud, saucy way you have with you. But if you will go away he will think nothing about you in a month. He forgets very soon, does Pascarèl.”
I heard her in perfect bewilderment, my thoughts too astray in their own sweet confusion for me to be able fairly to seize the sense of her words.
“But, Brunétta, I cannot understand,” I murmured. “Why should you not have come with your brother when you found him on Giovanni’s night? and why should I be asked to go away now that he—”
I stopped abruptly. My face burned, and I turned a little away from her. I remembered that the affection between us was his secret, and must not be given to the winds by me.
Brunótta’s hands clutched nervously at the scarlet fringes of her dancing skirt; her face paled a little under its ruddy brown; her eyes glanced slyly through the leaves; she strained her throat to see that there was no hearer in the little garden or at the wicket in the acacia hedge; then she dropped her head sullenly, and, with a little cunning laugh, like a child when it has broken some precious toy, muttered beneath her breath —
“Signorina, he is not my brother!”
“Not your brother?” I echoed, vaguely.
Her meaning did not dawn on me. I had never been deceived by any creature; so far as I knew, no one had ever told me an untruth; to give and receive good faith had always seemed to me a law of life as natural as to draw the breath.
And of any evil I had but the most shadowy conception. There were women in the world who were wicked; so much I knew; but of what shape or meaning their wickedness took I had but the vaguest imagining.
“No! Nobody but a baby like you would ever have believed that folly,” said Brunétta, still crouched at my feet in the dust, her fingers plucking at her scarlet fringe. “How you should ever have believed it I cannot think. There have been thousands and thousands of things that ought to have told you if you had not been as blind as an owl in the daylight. But if you will just go away, it will be as if it never had been. You must never say that I told you; he would murder me. Go away quietly. You will come to no harm. You have a face that is your friend anywhere. And I will pray to our Lady for you, I will, honestly, and she will have a care of you. Whenever I have promised her anything I have always paid it faithfully. We fell in with a horrible storm off Catania once, and I vowed her three pounds of candles if we got out of it safe, and I bought them in the very finest wax and offered them up at San Frediano the moment I set foot in Florence—”
“Not your brother?” I echoed, dreamily watching the grey cat straying amongst the pumpkins. “You mean you were only his foster-sister. I am not astonished at that.”
“He is no brother of mine at all,” she retorted, sullenly. “I tell you he is no kith nor kin of mine. I only saw him for the first time that San Giovanni’s day three years and more ago. I had never set eyes upon him before. You might have guessed at once — only you are such a baby. And I never would have told you, only I know you love him yourself, and he loves you.”
I listened with a strange sound like rushing waters beating at my brain. I did not understand, and yet the green fields, the red vine-leaves, the evening sky, that had grown grey as the sun had sunk behind the hills — all eddied round me in a dizzy maze.
A man — any man, however base, I think — would have had pity on my innocence and bewilderment But a woman who is jealous has no pity, and Brunétta had none.
She laughed, a forced little laugh, hard, cunning, and cruel — a laugh of envy and vengeance together.
“How strange you look, signorina! I am sure I never dreamt you half believed that story. Who that had eyes in their heads could think he was my brother?”
“Not your brother?” I echoed the words mechanically.
That falsehoods were daily human food, that a lie was the small brass coinage in which the interchange of the world was carried on to the equal convenience of all, was a truth of which I had no suspicion.
“Not your brother!” I repeated again. “What do you mean? What is he, then?”
A deadly coldness clutched at my heart as I spoke. I did not know what I feared or what I thought, but a great woe seemed suddenly to gather close about me.
Brunétta threw herself on her knees at my feet in the chequered shadows from the foliage overhead. She sobbed convulsively in a passion of repentance and of tears.
“I had sworn to him never to tell you. And now I have told; and he will kill me if ever he know.
