Chapters 6
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1 0 - Dramatis Personae 2:02
Pippa.
Sebald.
Adama, read by Tricia Gee. First student, read by Lars Rolander. Second, fourth, and sixth students, read by Barry Eads. Third student, read by Lars Rolander. Cotslieb, read by Doug. Schramm, read by Barry Eads. Fifth student, read by L'Osh Rolander. Jules. Hevid. Fini. Nidu Ayer. Blue Fox. Barry Eades. First Policeman. Doug. Second Policeman. Hevid. Third Policeman. Doug. Luigi.
Luigi's mother.
First girl.
Second girl.
Third girl. Third girl. Fourth girl. Monsignor.
End of Dramatis Personae
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2 1 - Prologue 13:22
New Year's Day at Asolo, in the Trevisan. A large, mean, airy chamber. A girl, Pippa, from the silk mills, springing out of bed.
Day. Faster and more fast, o'er night's brim, day boils at last, boils pure gold o'er the cloud-cup's brim, where spurting and suppress'd it lay, for not a froth-flake touch'd the rim of yonder gap in the solid gray of the eastern cloud an hour away. But forth one wavelet, then another, curl'd, till the whole sunrise, not to be suppress'd, rose, Reddened, and its seething breast flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
O day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, a mite of my twelve hours' treasure, the least of thy gazes or glances, be they grants thou art bound to, or gifts above measure, one of thy choices, or one of thy chances, Be they tasks God imposed thee, or freaks at thy pleasure, My day, if I squander such labor or leisure, Then shame fall on Aserlo, mischief on me. Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing, Whence earth we feel gets steady help and good, Thy fitful sunshine minutes coming, going, in which earth turns from work in gamesome mood, all shall be mine. But thou must treat me not as prosperous ones are treated, those who live at hand here and enjoy the higher lot, in readiness to take what thou wilt give, and free to let alone what thou refusest.
For day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest me, Who am only Pippa, Old year's sorrow, cast off last night, will come again tomorrow. Whereas if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow sufficient strength of thee for new year's sorrow.
All other men and women that this earth belongs to, who all days alike possess, make general plenty cure particular dearth, Get more joy one way, if another less. Thou art my single day, God lend to leaven what were all earth else with a feel of heaven. Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sons. Try now. Take Asolo's four happiest ones, and let thy morning rain on that superb, great, haughty Ottomar. Can rain disturb her sea-ball's homage? All the while thy rain beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane. He will but press the closer, breathe more warm against her cheek. How should she mind the storm? And morning past, if midday shed a gloom o'er Jules and Feeney, what care bride and groom save for their dear selves?
Tis their marriage-day. And while they leave church and go home their way, hand clasping hand, within each breast would be sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee. Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve with mist. Will Luigi and his mother grieve? The lady and her child unmatched forsooth, she in her age as Luigi in his youth for true content. The cheerful town, warm, close, and safe, the sooner that thou art morose receives them. And yet once again, out-breaking storm at night on Monseigneur, they make such stir about, whom they expect from Rome to visit Asolo, his brother's home, and say here masses proper to release a soul from pain. What storm dares hurt his peace? Calm, would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward thy thunder off, nor want the angels guard.
But Pippa, just one such mischance would spoil her day that lightens the next twelve months' toil at wearisome silk-winding coil on coil. And here I let time slip for naught. Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught with a single splash from my ewer, you that would mock the best pursuer, was my basin over-deep. One splash of water ruins you asleep, and up, up, fleet your brilliant bits, wheeling and counter-wheeling, reeling, broken beyond healing, now grow together on the ceiling. That will task your wits. Whoever quenched fire first hoped to see morsel after morsel flee as merrily, as giddily. Meantime what lights my sunbeam on? Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple? Oh, it is surely blown, my martagon!
New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple, plump as the flesh-bunch on some turk's bird's pole. Be sure if corals branching neath the ripple of ocean bud there, fairies watch unroll such turban flowers, I say such lamps disperse thick red flame through that dusk-green universe. I am queen of thee, floweret, and each fleshy blossom preserve I not, safer than leaves that embower it or shells that embosom. From weevil and chaffer. Laugh through my pain then, solicit the bee, gibe him be sure, and in midst of thy glee, love thy queen, worship me.
Worship whom else? For am I not this day, whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day? My morning, noon, eve, night, how spend my day? To-morrow I must be Pippa, who wind silk the whole year round to earn just bread and milk. But this one day I have leave to go and play out my fancy's fullest games. I may fancy all day, and it shall be so, that I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names of the happiest four in our asolo. See, Up the hillside yonder, through the morning, Some one shall love me, as the world calls love. I am no less than Ottima, take warning. The gardens and the great stone house above, and other house for shrubs, all glass in front, are mine. Where Siebold steals, as he has wont, to court me, while old Luca yet reposes.
And therefore, till the shrub-house door uncloses, I—what now?—give abundant cause for prate about me—Ottima, I mean, of late. Too bold, too confident, she'll still face down the spitefullest of talkers in our town—how we talk in the little town below. But love, love, love! There's better love, I know. This foolish love was only day's first offer. I choose my next love to defy the scoffer. For do not our bride and bridegroom sally out of Posagno Church at noon? Their house looks over Orcana Valley. Why should I not be the bride as soon as Ottima? For I saw, beside, arrive last night, that little bride, saw, if you call it seeing her, One flash of the pale, snow-pure cheek and black, bright tresses, blacker than all except the black eyelash.
I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses. So strict was she, the veil should cover close her pale, pure cheeks, a bride to look at and scarce touch. Scarce touch, remember Jules. For are not such used to be tended, flower-like, every feature, as if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?
A soft and easy life these ladies lead. Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed. Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness, keep that foot its lady primness, let those ankles never swerve from their exquisite reserve. Yet have to trip along the streets like me, all but naked to the knee. How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss so startling as her real first infant kiss? Oh, no, not envy, this. Not envy, sure. For if you gave me leave to take or to refuse in earnest, do you think I'd choose that sort of new love to enslave me? Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning, as little fear of losing it as winning. Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives, and only parents' love can last our lives.
At eve, the son and mother, gentle pair, commune inside our turret. What prevents my being Luigi? While that mossy lair of lizards through the winter-time is stirred, with each to each imparting sweet intents for this new year, as brooding bird to bird. For I observe of late the evening walk of Luigi and his mother always ends inside our ruined turret, where they talk, calmer than lovers, yet more kind than friends. Let me be cared about, kept out of harm, And schemed for, safe in love as with a charm. Let me be Luigi. If I only knew what was my mother's face, my father too.
Nay, if you come to that, best love of all is God's. Then why not have God's love befall myself, as in the palace by the dome, monseigneur? Who tonight will bless the home of his dead brother, and God will bless in turn that heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn with love for all men. I, tonight at least, would be that holy and beloved priest. Now wait! Even I already seem to share in God's love. What does New Year's hymn declare? What other meaning do these verses bear? All service ranks the same with God. If now as formerly He trod paradise, His presence fills our earth, Each only as God wills can work. God's puppets, best and worst, are we. There is no last nor first. Say not a small event.
Why small? Costs it more pain than this ye call a great event, should come to pass, than that? Untwine me from the mass of deeds which make up life, one deed power shall fall short in, or exceed.
And more of it, and more of it! Oh, yes, I will pass by and see their happiness, and envy none. Being just as great, no doubt, useful to men, and dear to God as they. A pretty thing to care about so mightily this single holiday. But let the sun shine, wherefore repine, with thee to lead me, O day of mine, down the grass-path grey with dew, under the pine-wood blind with boughs, where the swallow never flew as yet, nor sick ale dared carouse. Dad, carouse.
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3 2 - Act I 27:26
Morning. Up the hillside inside the shrub-house, Luca's wife, Otima, and her paramour, the German Siebold. Let the watching lids wink, days ablaze with eyes think, Deep into the night drink. Night? Such may be your Rindland nights, perhaps, But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink, We call such light the mornings. Let us see. Mind how you grope your way, though. How these tall, naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice, behind that frame! Nay, do I bid you, Siebald, it shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course, the slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content, or must I find you something else to spoil? Kiss and be friends, my Siebald. Is it full morning? Oh, don't speak, then. Ay, thus it used to be.
Ever your house was, I remember, shut till midday. I observed that, as I strolled on mornings through the Vale here, country girls were noisy, washing garments in the brook. Heinz drove the slow white oxen up the hills. But no, your house was mute, would open no eye, and wisely, you were plotting one thing there, nature another outside. I looked up. Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars, silent as death, blind in a flood of light. Oh, I remember. And the peasants laughed and said, The old man sleeps with the young wife. This house was his, this chair, this window, his. Ah, the clear morning! I can see St. Mark's. That black streak is the belfry. Stop, Vincenza should lie. There's Padua, plain enough, that blue.
Look o'er my shoulder, follow my finger. Morning? It seems to me a night with a sun added. Where's dew? Where's freshness? That bruised plant? I bruised in getting through the lattice yester-eve. Droops as it did. See, here's my elbow's mark in the dust on the sill. Oh, shut the lattice, pray. Let me lean out. I cannot scent blood here, foul as the morn may be. There, shut the world out. How do you feel now, Otama? There, curse the world, and all outside. Let us throw off this mask. How do you bear yourself? Let's out with all of it. Best never speak of it. Best speak again, and yet again of it, till words cease to be more than words. His blood, for instance. Let those two words mean his blood and nothing more.
Notice, I'll say them now, his blood. Assuredly, if I repented the deed. Repent? Who should repent, or why? What puts that in your head? Did I once say that I repented? No, I said the deed. The deed, and the event. Just now it was, our passion's fruit. The devil takes such cant. Say, once and always, Luca was a wateau. I am his cut-throat. You are— Here is the wine. I brought it when we left the house above. And glasses, too. Wine of both sorts. Black, white, then? But am not I, his cut-throat? What are you? There trudges on his business from the Duomo, benay the Capuchin, with his brown hood and bare feet, always in one place at church, close under the stone wall by the south entry. I used to take him for a brown-cold piece of the wall's self, as out of it he rose to let me pass.
At first, I say, I used. Now, so has that dumb figure fastened on me, I rather should account the plastered wall a piece of him, so chilly does it strike. This, Siebald? No. The white wine, the white wine. Well, Otima, I promise no new year should rise on us the ancient shameful way. Nor does it rise. Pour on. To your black eyes. Do you remember last damned New Year's Day? You brought those foreign prints. We looked at them over the wine and fruit. I had to scheme to get him from the fire. Nothing but saying his own set wants the proof-mark roused him up to hunt them out. Faith, he is not alive to fondle you before my face. Do you fondle me, then? Who means to take your life for that, my Siebald?
Hark you, O Tima! One thing's to guard against. We'll not make much one of the other. That is— Not make more parade of warmth, childish officious coil, than yesterday. As if, sweet, I supposed proof upon proof was needed now. Now first, to show I love you. Yes, still love you. Love you in spite of Luca and what's come to him. Sure sign we had him ever in our thoughts, white sneering old reproachful face and all. We'll even quarrel, love, at times. As if— We still could lose each other. We're not tied by this. Conceive you? Love. Not tied, so sure, because, though I was wrought upon, have struck his insolence back into him. Am I so surely yours? Therefore, for ever yours? Love, to be wise, one counsel pays another, should we have months ago, when first we loved.
For instance, that May morning we two stole under the green ascent of sycamores. If we had come upon a thing like that suddenly—a thing—there again—a thing. Then, Venus's body, had we come upon my husband Luca Gatti's murdered corpse within there, at his couch-foot, covered close, would you have poured upon it? Why persist in pouring now upon it? For tis here, as much as there in the deserted house—a You cannot rid your eyes of it. For me, now he is dead, I hate him worse. I hate. Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold his two dead hands and say, I hate you worse, Luka, than— Off, off! Take your hands off mine. Tis the hot evening. Off! Oh, morning, is it? There's one thing must be done.
You know what thing. Come in and help to carry. We may sleep anywhere in the whole wide house tonight. What would come, think you, if we let him lie just as he is? Let him lie there until the angels take him. He is turned by this off from his face, beside, as you will see. This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass. Three, four, four gray hairs. Is it so you said a plate of hair should wave across my neck? No, this way. Oteema, I would give your neck, each splendid shoulder, both those breasts of yours, that this were undone. Killing? Kill the world, so Luca lives again. Ay, lives to sputter his fulsome dotage on you. Yes, and feigned surprise that I returned at eve to sup, when all the morning I was loitering here.
Bid me dispatch my business and be gone. I would—she—no, I'll finish. Do you think I fear to speak the bare truth once for all? All we have talked of is, at bottom, fine to suffer. There's a recompense in guilt. One must be venturous and fortunate. What is one young for else? In age will sigh over the wild, reckless, wicked days flown over. Still we have lived. The vice was in its place. But to have eaten Luca's bread, have worn his clothes, Have felt his money swell my purse. Do lovers in romances sin that way? Why, I was starving, when I used to call and teach you music, starving while you plucked me those flowers to smell. My poor lost friend. He gave me life, nothing less. What if he did reproach my perfidy, and threaten, and do more?
Had he no right? What was to wonder at? He sate by us at table quietly. Why must you lean across till our cheeks touched? Could he do less than make pretence to strike me? "'Tis not for the crime's sake. I'd commit ten crimes greater to have this crime wiped out, undone. And you—oh, how feel you—feel you for me?" Well, then, I love you better now than ever. And best—look at me while I speak to you—best for the crime. Nor do I grieve in truth. This mask, this simulated ignorance, this affectation of simplicity, falls off our crime. This naked crime of ours may not now be looked over. Look it down, then. Great? Let it be great. But the joys it brought pay they or know its price. Come, they or it.
Speak not. The past—would you give up the past, such as it is, pleasure and crime together? Give up that noon I owned my love for you, the garden's silence. Even the single bee persisting in his toil suddenly stopped, and where he hid you only could surmise by some capanula's chalice set a swing as he clung there. Yes, I love you. And I drew back, put far back your face with both my hands, lest you should grow too full of me. Your face so seemed athirst for my whole soul and body. And when I ventured to receive you here, made you steal hither in the mornings. When I used to look up neath the shrub-house here, till the red fire on its glazed windows spread to a yellow haze. Ah, my sign was, the sun, inflamed on the sere side of yon chestnut-tree, nipped by the first frost.
You would always laugh at my wet boots. I had to stride through grass over my ankles. Then our crowning night. The July night? The day of it too, Siebold, when the heavens pillars seemed overbowed with heat, its black-blue canopy seemed let descend close on us both, to weigh down each to each, and smother up all life except our life. So lay we till the storm came. How it came? Buried in woods we lay, you recollect, swift ran the searching tempest overhead, And ever and anon some bright white shaft burnt through the pine-tree roof here burnt and there, as if God's messenger through the close wood-screen plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, feeling for guilty thee and me. Then broke the thunder like a whole sea overhead.
Yes. While I stretched myself upon you, hands to hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook all my locks loose, and covered you with them, You, Siebald, the same you. Slower, Otima. And as we lay— Less vehemently. Love me. Forgive me. Take not words, mere words, to heart. Your breath is worse than wine. Breathe slow. Speak slow. Do not lean on me. Siebald, as we lay, rising and falling only with our pants, who said, Let death come now. Tis right to die, right to be punished. Not complete such bliss but woe! Who said that? How did we ever rise? Was't that we slept? Why did it end? I felt you, fresh tapering to a point, the ruffled ends of my loose locks, twixt both your humid lips. My hair is fallen now, nodded again.
I kiss you now, dear Otima, now, and now. This way? Will you forgive me? Be once more my great queen. Find it thrice about my brow. Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, magnificent in sin. Say that. I crown you my great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, magnificent. From without is heard the voice of Pippa singing. The year's at the spring, and day's at the morn. Morning's at seven, the hillside's dew-pearled. The lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. Pippa passes. God's in his heaven. Do you hear that? Who spoke? You, you spoke. Pippa, oh, that little ragged girl. She must have rested on the step. We give them but this one holiday the whole year round.
Did you ever see our silk mills, there inside? There are ten silk mills now belonging to you. She stoops to pick my double-heartsies. Shh! She does not hear. You call out louder. Leave me. Go. Get your clothes on. Dress those shoulders. Siebold? Wipe off that paint. I hate you. Miserable! My God! And she is emptied of it now—outright now! How miraculously gone, all of the grace! Had she not strange grace once? Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes. No purpose holds the features up together. Only the cloven brow and puckered chin stay in their places, and the very hair that seemed to have a sort of life in it drops a dead web. Speak to me, speak not of me. That round, great, full-orbed face, where not an angle broke the delicious indolence, all broken.
To me, not of me, ungrateful, perjured cheat, a coward too, but ingrate's worse than all. Beggar, my slave, a fawning, cringing lie. Leave me, betray me, I can see your drift. A lie that walks, and eats, and drinks. My God, those morbid, olive, faultless shoulder-blades! I should have known there was no blood beneath. You hate me, then? You hate me, then? To think she would succeed in her absurd attempt, and fascinate by sinning, and show herself superior, guilt from its excess, superior to innocence. That little peasant's voice has righted all again. Though I be lost, I know which is the better. Never fear. Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, nature or trick, I see what I have done entirely now.
Oh, I am proud to feel such torments. Let the world take credit thence. I, having done my deed, pay too its price. I hate, hate, curse you! God's in his heaven. Me! Me! No, no, Siebold! Not yourself! Kill me! Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me. Then yourself. Then, presently, first hear me speak. I always meant to kill myself. Wait, you. Lean on my breast. Not as a breast. Don't love me the more because you lean on me. My own heart's Siebold. There, there, both deaths presently. My brain is drowned now, quite drowned. All I feel is—is at swift recurring intervals. A hurrying down within me, as of waters loosened to smother up some ghastly pit. There they go, whirls from a black fiery sea.
Not to me, God. To him be merciful.
Talk by the way while Pippa is passing from the hillside to Arcana. Foreign students of painting and sculpture from Venice assembled opposite the house of Jules, a young French statuary. Attention, my own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Shram and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five, who's a defaulter? We want everybody, for Schill must not be suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out. All here, only our poets away. Never having much meant to be present, Moonstrike him. The airs of that fellow, that Gio Vaccino. He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in his suit, so unmolested was it, when suddenly a woman falls in love with him too, and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all.
Whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Blue Fox assures me? Here a mammoth poem lies, Fowled to death by butterflies. His own fault, this simpleton. Instead of cramped couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Blue Fox, both classically and intelligibly. Asculopius, an epic catalogue of the drugs. Hebe's plaster. One strip cools your lip. Phoebus's emulsion. One bottle clears your throttle. Mercury's bolus. One box cures... "'Subside, my fine fellow. If the marriage was over by ten o'clock, Gilles will certainly be here in a minute with his bride.' Good. Only so should the poet's muse have been universally acceptable, says Blue Fox at Cannabis Nostris, and Delia, not better known to our literary dogs than the boy, Giovaccino.
To the point now. Where's Gottlieb, the newcomer? Oh, listen, Gottlieb, to what has called down this piece of friendly vengeance on Jules, of which we now assemble to witness the winding up. We are all agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out on us in a fury by-and-by. I am spokesman. The verses that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutvich. But each professes himself alike insulted by this rotting stone-squarer, who came singly from Paris to Munich, and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Poussagno here, but proceeds in a day or two alone again—oh, alone indubitably—to Rome and Florence. He forsooth take up his portion with these dissolute, brutalized, heartless bunglers.
So he was heard to call us all. Now, ischrambrutilist, I should like to know, am I heartless? Why, somewhat heartless, for suppose Jules a coxcomb as much as you choose. Still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed off—what do folks style it?—the bloom of his life. Is it too late to alter? These love-letters, now, you call his. I can't laugh at them. Because you never read the sham letters of our indicting which drew forth these. His discovery of the truth will be frightful. That's the joke. But you should have joined us at the beginning. There's no doubt he loves the girl, loves a model he might hire by the hour. See here. He has been accustomed, he writes, to have Canova's women about him in stone, And the world's women beside him in flesh, these being as much below as those above his soul's aspiration.
But now he is to have the real—there, you laugh again. I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth. Shram, take the pipe out of his mouth, somebody. Will she lose the bloom of his youth? Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world. Look at a blossom. It drops presently, having done its service and lasted its time. But fruits succeed, and where would be the blossom's place could it continue? As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, because its earliest favourite, whatever it may have first loved to look on, is dead and done with. As that any affection is lost to the soul when its first object, whatever happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due course. Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to look on.
Has a man done wondering at women? There follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men? There's God to wonder at, and the faculty of wonder may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one. Thus— Put Schramm's pipe into his mouth again. There you see. Well, this shill a wretched frivel. Oh, I watched his disportings at Po Sanyo the other day. Canoma's Gallery, you know. There he marches first resolvably past great works by the dozen without vouchsafing an eye. All at once he stops full at the Psychefanchulla. Cannot pass that old acquaintance without a nod of encouragement.
In your new place, beauty? Then behave yourself as well here as at Munich. I see you. Next, he posts himself deliberately before the unfinished pietà for half an hour without moving, till up he starts of a sudden and thrusts his very nose into—I say into the group—by which gesture you are informed that precisely the sole point he had not fully mastered in Kanova's practice was a certain method of using the drill in the articulation of the knee-joint. And that likewise has he mastered at length. Good-bye, therefore, to poor Canova, whose gallery no longer need detain his successor, Jules, the predestined novel-thinker in marble. Tell him about the women. Go on to the women. Why, on that matter, he could never be supercilious enough.
How should we be other, he said, than the poor devils, you see, with those debasing habits we cherish? He was not to wallow in that mire, at least. He would wait and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with the Psychefanchula. Now I happened to hear of a young Greek, real Greek girl, at Malamokko. A true islander, do you see, with Alchifron's hair like sea moss. Shramnors, white and quiet as an apparition, and fourteen years old at farthest. A daughter of Natalia, so she swears. That hag Natalia who helps us to models at three lire an hour. We selected this girl for the heroine of our jest. So first, Jules received a scented letter. Somebody had seen his tideus at the academy, and my picture was nothing to it.
A profound admirer bade him persevere. Would make herself known to him ere long. Paulina, my little friend of the Finite, transcribes divinely. And in due time the mysterious correspondent gave certain hints of her peculiar charms—the pale cheeks, the black hair, Whatever, in short, had struck us in our Mallamocca model, we retained our name to Feene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. Now think of Jules finding himself distinguished from the herd of us by such a creature. In his very first answer he proposed marrying his monitress, and fancy us over these letters two or three times a day to receive and dispatch. I concocted the main of it. Relations were in the way. Secrecy must be observed.
In fine would he wed her on trust, and only speak to her when they were indissolubly united. S-t-s-t, here they come. Both of them. Heaven's love. Speak softly. Speak within yourselves. Look at the bridegroom. Half his hair in storm and half in calm. Pattied down over the left temple like a frothy cup one blows on to cool it, and the same old blouse that he murders the marble in. Not a rich vest like yours, Hannibal Scratchy. Rich, that your face may the better set it off. And the bride, yes, sure enough, Arfini. Should you have known her in her clothes, how magnificently pale! She does not also take it for Ernest. I hope. Oh, Natalia's concern, that is. We settle with Natalia. She does not speak, has evidently let out no word.
The only thing is, will she equally remember the rest of her lesson, and repeat correctly all those verses which are to break the secret to Jules. How he gazes on her. Pity! Pity! May he go in? Now silence. New three. Not nearer the window mine than that pomegranate, just where the little girl, who a few minutes ago passed a singing, is seated. End of Act One.
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4 3 - Act II 25:34
She is silent, on which Jules begins. Do not die, Fini. I am yours now, you are mine now. Let fate reach me how she likes. If you'll not die, so never die. Sit here, my workroom's single seat. I overlean this length of hair and lustrous front. They turn, like an entire flower upward. Eyes, lips, last your chin, no, last your throat turns. "'Tis their scent pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever this one way till I change. Grow you. I could change into you, beloved. You by me, and I by you. This is your hand in mine, and side by side we sit. All's true. Thank God! I have spoken. Speak, you! O my life to come! My Tydeus must be carved. That's there in clay. Yet how be carved with you about the chamber?
Where must I place you? When I think that once this room, full of rough blockwork, seemed my heaven, without you, shall I ever work again, get fairly into my old ways again, bid each conception stand, while, trait by trait, my hand transfers its lineaments to stone. Will my mere fancies live near you, my truth, the live truth, passing and repassing me, sitting beside me? Now speak! Only first see all your letters. Was not well contrived? Their hiding-place is Psyche's robe. She keeps your letters next her skin, which drops out foremost. Ah! This that swam down like a first moonbeam into my world. Again those eyes complete, their melancholy survey, sweet and slow, of all my room holds, to return and rest on me, with pity, yet some wonder too, as if God bade some spirit plague a world, and this were the one moment of surprise and sorrow while she took her station, pausing o'er what she sees, Finds good, and must destroy.
What gaze you at? Those? Books I told you of? Let your first word to me rejoice them too. This minion, a colophus, writ in red, Bicester and Azzia by Bessarion's scribe. Read this line. No, shame. Homer's be the Greek. First breathe me from the lips of my Greek girl. My odyssey in coarse black vivid type, with faded yellow blossoms, twixt page and page, to mark great places with due gratitude. He said, and on Antinous directed a bitter shaft, a flower blots out the rest. Again upon your search? My statues, then. Ah, do not mind that. Better that will look when cast in bronze, an all-main kaiser. That, swart green and gold with truncheon based on hip, this rather turn to. What, unrecognised? I thought you would have seen that here you sit, as I imagined you, Hippolyta, naked upon her bright Numidian horse.
Recall you this, then? Carve in bold relief. So you commanded, Carve, against I come, a Greek in Athens, as our fashion was. Feasting. Bay filleted and thunder free, who rises neath the lifted myrtle branch. Praise those who slew Hipparchus, cry the guests, while o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves, as erst above our champions. Stand up, all! See, I have laboured to express your thought. Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms, thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides, Only consenting at the branch's end they strain toward, Serves for frame to a sole face. The praises in the centre, who, with eyes, sightless, So bend they back to light inside His brain where visionary forms throng up, Sings, minding not that palpitating arch of hands and arms, Nor the quick drip of wine from the drenched leaves o'erhead, Nor crowns cast off.
Violet and parsley crowns to trample on, sings, pausing, as the patron ghosts approve, devoutly their unconquerable hymn. But you must say a well to that. Say, well, because you gaze. Am I fantastic, sweet? Gaze like my very life's stuff, marble. Marbly even to the silence. Why, before I found the real flesh, Fini, I inured myself to see throughout all nature varied stuff, for better nature's birth, by means of art. With me each substance tended to one form of beauty, to the human archetype. On every side occurred suggestive germs of that. The tree, the flower, or take the fruit. Some rosy shape, continuing the peach, curved bee-wise o'er its bough, as rosy limbs, depending, nestled in the leaves, and just from the cleft rose-peach the whole dryad sprang.
But of the stuffs one can be master of, how I divine their capabilities, from the soft-rinded, smoothening, facile chalk that yields your outline to the air's embrace. Half softened by a halo's pearly gloom, down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure to cut its one confided thought clean out of all the world, but marble, neath my tools more pliable than jelly, as it were some clear primordial creature dug from depths in the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself, and whence all baser substance may be worked. Refine it off to air, you may, condense it down to the diamond. Is not metal there, when o'er the sudden specks my chisel trips? Not flesh? As flake off flake I scale. Approach! Lay bare those bluish veins of blood, asleep, Lurk's flame in no strange windings, where, surprised by the swift implements sent home at once, flushes and glowings radiate and hover, About its track.
Fini, what? Why's this? That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes? Ah, you will die. I knew that you would die. Fini begins. On his having long, remained silent. Now the end's coming. To be sure, it must have ended some time. Tush! Why need I speak their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind one half of it. Besides... I do not care for old Natalia now, nor any of them. Oh, you, what are you? If I do not try to say the words Natalia made me learn, to please your friends, it is to keep myself where your voice lifted me, by letting it proceed. But can it? Even you, perhaps, cannot take up, now you have once let fall, the music's life, and me along with that. No, or you would. We'll stay. Then, as we are, above the world.
You creature with the eyes, if I could look for ever up to them, as now you let me, I believe all sin, all memory of wrong done or suffering borne, would drop down, low and lower, to the earth, whence all that slow comes. And there touch and stay, never to overtake the rest of me, all that, unspotted, reaches up to you. Drawn by those eyes. What rises is myself, not so the shame and suffering. But they sink, are left. I rise above them. Keep me so, above the world. But you sink, for your eyes are altering, altered. Stay. I love you, love you. I could prevent it if I understood more of your words to me. Was it in the tone, or the words, your power? Or stay. I will repeat their speech, if that contents you.
Only change no more, and I shall find it presently, far back here, in the brain yourself filled up. Natalia threatened me that harm would follow unless I spoke their lesson to the end. But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you. Your words, Natalia said they were your friends, and meant you well, because I doubted it. Observing, what was very strange to see, on every face, so different in all else, the same smile girls like us are used to bear. But never men. Men cannot stoop so low. Yet your friends, speaking of you, use that smile, that hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit, which seems to take possession of this world, and make of God their tame confederate, purveyor to their appetites, you know.
But no, Natalia said they were your friends, and they assented while they smiled the more. And all came round me, that thin Englishman with light, lank hair, seemed leader of the rest. He held a paper. What we want, said he, ending some explanation to his friends, is something slow, involved, and mystical, to hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste and lure him on, so that, at innermost, where he seeks sweetness, soul, He may find this, as in the apple's core, the noisome fly, for insects on the rind are seen at once and brushed aside as soon, but this is found only when on the lips or loathing tongue. And so he read what I have got by heart. I'll speak it. Do not die, love. I am yours. Stop!
Is not that, or like that, part of words yourself began by speaking? Strange to lose what cost much pains to learn. Is this more right? I am a painter who cannot paint. In my life, a devil rather than saint. In my brain, as poor a creature too. No end to all I cannot do. Yet do one thing at least I can. Love a man, or hate a man, supremely. Thus my love began. Through the valley of love I went, in its lovingest spot to abide. And just on the verge where I pitched my tent I found hate dwelling beside. Let the bridegroom ask what the painter meant of his bride, of the peerless bride. And further I traversed hate's grove, in its hatefulest nook to dwell. But lo, where I flung myself prone, couched love, where the deepest shadow fell.
The meaning, those black brides' eyes above, not the painter's lip should tell.
And here, said he, Jules probably will ask. You have black eyes, love. You are, sure enough. My pearl is bright. So do you tell, indeed. What needs some explanation? What means this? And I am to go on, without a word. So I grew wiser in love and hate, from simple, that I was of late. For once, when I loved, I would enlace, breast, Islets, hands, feet, form, and face. Of her I loved in one embrace, as if by mere love I could love immensely. And when I hated I would plunge my sword and wipe with the first lunge my foe's whole life out like a sponch, as if by mere hate I could hate intensely. But now I am wiser, no better the fashion, how passion seeks aid from its opposite passion. And if I seek cause to love more, or hate more, that ever man loved, ever hated before, and seek in the valley of love the spot, or the spot in hate's grove, where my soul may the sureliest reach, the essence, not less, of each, the hate of all hates, or the love of all loves, in its valley or grove, I find them the very warders, each of the other's borders.
I love most, when love is disguised in hate, And when hate is surprised in love, then I hate most. Ask how love smiles through hate's iron cask, Hate grins through love's rose-braided mask, And how, having hated thee, I sought long and painfully To wound thee, and not prick the skin, but pierce to the quick. Ask this, my jewels, and be answered straight by thy bride, How the painter Lutwitch can hate. Jules interposes. Luttwich, who else? But all of them, no doubt, hated me. They at Venice, presently their turn, however. You I shall not meet. If I dreamt, saying this would wake me. Keep what's here this gold. We cannot meet again. Consider, and the money was but meant for two years' travel, which is over now.
All chance, or hope, or care, or need of it. This, and what comes from selling these my casts, and books, and medals, except—let them go, together, so the produce keeps you safe, out of Natalia's clutches. If by chance, for all's chance here, I should survive the gang at Venice, root out all fifteen of them, we might meet somewhere, since the world is wide. From without is heard the voice of Pippa singing. Give her but her least excuse to love me, When, where, how can this arm establish her above me? If fortune fixed her as my lady there, They're all ready to eternally reprove me.
Hissed, said Kate the Queen, But, oh, cried the maiden, binding her tresses, "'Tis only a page that carols unseen, Crumbling your hounds, their messes. Is she wronged to the rescue of her honor, my heart? Is she poor? What costs it to be styled a donor? Merely an oath to cleave a cease to part, but that fortune should have thrust all this upon her. Nay, list, bade Kate the Queen, and still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, "'Tis only a page that carols unseen, Fitting your hawks their jesses." Pippa passes. Jules resumes. "'What name was that?' the little girl sang forth. "'Kate?' the cornaro, doubtless, who renounced the crown of Cyprus to be lady here at a solo. Where still the peasants keep her memory, and songs tell how many a page pined for the grace of one so far above his power of doing good to, as a queen.
She never could be wronged. Be poor, he sighed, for him to help her. Yes, a bitter thing, to see our lady above all need of us. Yet so we look, ere we will love. Not I, but the world looks so. If whoever loves must be in some sort God or worshipper, the blessing or the blessed one, Queen or Page, why should we always choose the Page's part? Here is a woman with utter need of me. I find myself Queen here, it seems. How strange! Look at the woman here with the new soul, like my own Psyche's, fresh upon her lips. Allet, the visionary butterfly, waiting my word to enter and make bright, or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept, or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free from taint or foul with stain, as outward things fastened their image on its passiveness.
Now it will wake, feel, live, or die again. Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff be art, and further to evoke a soul from form be nothing? This new soul is mine.
Now, to kill Luttwitch, what would that do? Save a wretched Dauber. Men will hoot to death without me from their laughter. Oh, to hear God's voice plain as I heard it first, before they broke in with that laughter. I heard them. Henceforth, not God, to Ancona, Greece, some isle, I wanted silence only. There is clay everywhere. One may do whate'er one likes in art. The only thing is to make sure that one does like it, which takes pain to know. Scatter all this, my Feeney, this mad dream. Who, what is Luttwich? What Natalia's friends? What the whole world except our love? My own, own Feeney. But I told you, did I not, ere night we travel for your land, some isle with the sea's silence on it. Stand aside.
I do but break these paltry models up to begin art afresh. Shall I meet Luttwitch, and save him from my statues meeting him? Some unsuspected isle in the far seas. Like a god going through his world, there stands one mountain for a moment in the dusk. Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow, and you are ever by me, while I gaze, are in my arms as now, as now, as now! Some unsuspected isle in the far seas, some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.
Talk by the way. While Pippa is passing from Orkana to the turret. Two or three of the Austrian police loitering with Blue Fox, an English vagabond, just in view of the turret. So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop's intendant's money shall be honestly earned. No, don't make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop's name into the business. We know he can have nothing to do with such horrors. We know that he is a saint, and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man besides. Oh, were but every worm a maggot, every fly a grig, every bough a Christmas faggot, every tune a jig. In fact, I have abjured all religions, but the last I inclined to was the Armenian, for I have traveled, do you see, And at Konigsberg, Prussia improper, so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there, you might remark over a venerable house porch a certain Chaldee inscription.
And brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all, the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, With sensible alacrity. "'Twas the Grand Rabbi's abode," in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac. These are vowels, you dogs. Follow my stick's end in the mud. Celarent. Dare I. Ferio. And one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand. A. B. C. I picked it out letter by letter. And what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you'll say? How Moses hocus-pocus'd Egypt's land with fly and locust? Or, How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish?
Or, How the angel meeting Balaam straight his ast returned to Salem? In no wise, Chakra brah, Bo, somebody or other. Isaac, receiver, purchaser, and exchanger of, stolen goods. So talk to me of the religion of a bishop. I have renounced all bishops, save Bishop Beveridge. Mean to live so, and die, as some Greek dosage, dead and merry, hellward bound in charons wherry, with food for both worlds under an upper, lupine's seed and hecate's supper, and never an obelis, Though thanks to you, or this intendant through you, or this bishop through his intendant, I possess a burning pocketful of swansigers, to pay the Stygian fairy. There is the girl, then. Go, and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us, Signor Luigi and his mother.
I have been noticing a house yonder this long while, not a shutter unclosed since morning. Old looker gaddy's the owns the silt mills ere. He dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Siebel, the foreigner, set his wife to play in draughts. Never molest such an household. They mean well. Only, can not you tell me something of this little Pippa I must have to do with? One could make something of that name, Pippa, that is, short for Phelippa, rhyming to, Pernurge consults Hetrippa, Believest thou King Agrippa? Something might be done with that name. Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe musk-melon would not be dear at half a swansiger.
Leave this foolin, and look out. The afternoon's over, or nearly so. Where in this passport of senor Luigi does our principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? What's there beside a simple signature? That English fool's busy watching. Flourish all round. Put all possible obstacles in his way. Oblong dot at the end. Detain him till further advice has reached you. Scratch at bottom. Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above. Inkspert on right-hand side. Which is the case here? Arrest him at once. Why, and wherefore, I don't concern myself, but my instructions amount to this. If signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna, well and good. The passport deposed with us for our visa is really for his own use.
They have misinformed the office, and he means well. But let him stay over to-night. There has been the pretence, we suspect. The accounts of his corresponding and old intelligence with the carbonari are correct. We arrest him at once. To-morrow comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Blue Fox makes the signal, sure enough. There is he entering the turret with his mother.
No doubt.
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5 4 - Act III 21:11
Evening.
Inside the turret, Luigi and his mother entering.
If there blue wind, You'd hear a long sigh, easing the utmost heaviness of music's heart. Here? In the archway? Oh, no, no, in farther, where the echo is made, on the ridge. Here surely, then? How plain the tap of my heel as I leaped up. Hark, Lucius, Judas! The very ghost of a voice, whose body is caught and kept by—what are those? Mere withered wall-flowers waving overhead. They seem an elvish group with thin bleached hair who lean out of their topmost fortress, looking and listening, mountain men, to what we say, hands under chin of each grave earthy face. Up and show faces, all of you, all of you! That's the king's dwarf with the scarlet comb. Now, hark! Come down and meet your fate. Hark!
Meet your fate! Let him not meet it, my Luigi. Do not go to his city. Putting crime aside, half of these ills of Italy are feigned. Your pelicos and rites for effect, rite for effect. Hush! Say A rites and B. These A's and B's rite for effect, I say. Then evil is in its nature loud, while good is silent. You hear each petty injury, none of his daily virtues. He is old, quiet, unkind, and densely stupid. Why do A and B not kill him themselves? They teach others to kill him, me, and if I fail, others to succeed. Now, if A tried and failed, I could not teach that. Mine's the lesser task. Mother, they visit night by night. You, Luigi? Ah, will you let me tell you what you are? Why not? Oh, the one thing you fear to hint!
You may assure yourself I say and say ever to myself, at times, nay, even as now we sit, I think my mind is touched, suspect all is not sound. But is not knowing that what constitutes one sane or otherwise? I know I am thus, so all is right again. I laugh at myself as through the town I walk, and see men marry as if no Italy were suffering. Then I ponder. I am rich, young, healthy. Why should this fact trouble me more than it troubles these? But it does trouble me. No, trouble's a bad word, for as I walk there's springing and melody and giddiness and old quaint turns and passages of my youth, dreams long forgotten, little in themselves, return to me. Whatever may amuse me, and earth seems in a truce with me, and heaven accords with me, All things suspend their strife.
The very Sakala's laugh. There goes he, and there. Feast him. The time is short. He is on his way for the world's sake. Feast him this once, our friend. And in return for all this, I can trip cheerfully up the scaffold steps. I go this evening, mother. But mistrust yourself, mistrust the judgment you pronounce on him. Oh, there I feel. Am sure that I am right. Mistrust your judgment, then, of the mere means of this wild enterprise. Say you are right. How should one in your state e'er bring to pass what would require a cool head, a cold heart, and a calm hand? You never will escape. Escape? To even wish that would spoil all. The dying is best part of it. Too much have I enjoyed these fifteen years of mine to leave myself excuse for longer life.
Was not life pressed down, running o'er with joy, that I might finish with it ere my fellows who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay? I was put at the boardhead, helped to all at first. I rise up, Happy and content. God must be glad one loves his world so much. I can give news of Earth to all the dead who ask me. Last year's sunsets and great stars that had a right to come first and see ebb the crimson wave that drifts the sun away. Those crescent moons with notched and burning rims that strengthened into sharp fire and there stood, impatient of the azure, And that day in March a double rainbow stopped the storm. May's warm, slow, yellow, moonlit summer nights. Gone are they, but I have them in my soul.
He will not go. You smile at me. Tis true. Voluptuousness, grotesqueness, ghastliness, environ my devotedness as quaintly as round about some antique altar wreathe the rose festoons, goats' horns, and oxen's skulls.
See now, you reach the city. You must cross his threshold. How? Oh, that's if we conspired. Then would come pains in plenty, as you guess. But guess not how the qualities required for such an office, qualities I have, would little stead me otherwise employed yet prove of rarest merit here, here only. Every one knows for what his excellence will serve, but no one ever will consider for what his worst defect might serve. And yet, Have you not seen me range our coppice yonder in search of a distorted ash? It happens, the wry spoiled branches a natural perfect bow. Fancy the thrice sage, thrice precautioned man, arriving at the palace on my errand. No, no. I have a handsome dress packed up. White satin here to set off my black hair.
In I shall march. For you may watch your life out behind thick walls, make friends there to betray you. More than one man spoils everything. March straight, only no clumsy knife to fumble for. Take the great gate, and walk, not saunter, on through guards and guards. I have rehearsed it all inside the turret here a hundred times. Don't ask the way of whom you meet, observe, but where they cluster thickliest is the door of doors. They'll let you pass. They'll never blab each to the other. He knows not the favourite whence he is bound and what's his business now. Walk in. Straight up to him. You have no knife. Be prompt. How should he scream? Then out with you. Italy! Italy! My Italy! You're free!
You're free! Oh, mother, I could dream they got about me! Andrea from his exile, Pierre from his dungeon, Gautier from his grave! Well, you shall go. Yet seems this patriotism the easiest virtue for a selfish man to acquire. He loves himself, and next the world, if he must love beyond, but not between. As a short-sighted man sees nought midway his body and the sun above. But you are my adored Luigi, ever obedient to my least wish, and running o'er with love. I could not call you cruel or unkind. Once more, you're ground for killing him. Then go. Now do you ask me or make sport of me? How first the Austrians got these provinces? If that is all— I'll satisfy you soon. Never by conquest, but by cunning, for that treaty whereby—well?
Sure, he's arrived. The telltale cuckoo. Springs his confidant, and he lets out her April purposes. Or better go at once to modern times. He has—they have—in fact, I understand, but can't restate the matter. That's my boast. Others could reason it out to you and prove things they have made me feel. Why go to-night? Mourns for adventure. Jupiter is now a morning star. I cannot hear you. Luigi. I am the bright and morning star, God saith, and to such an one I give the morning star, the gift of the morning star. Have I God's gift of the morning star? Chiara will love to see that Jupiter an evening star next June. True, Mother. Well for those who live through June. Great noontides, thunderstorms, all glaring pomps which triumph at the heels of sovereign June, leading his glorious revel through our world.
Yes, Chiara will be here. In June, remember? Yourself appointed that month for her coming. Was that low noise, the echo? The night wind. She must be grown, with her blue eyes upturned as if life were one long and sweet surprise. In June she comes. We were to see together the Titian at Treviso. There, again! From without is heard the voice of Pippa singing. A king lived long ago. In the morning of the world, when earth was nigher heaven than now, and the king's locks curled, disparting her a forehead full as a milk-white space twixtorn and horn of some sacrificial bull, only calm as a babe new-born. For he was got to a sleepy mood, so safe from all decrepitude, from age with his bane so sure gone by.
The gods so loved him while he dreamed, that having lived thus long there seemed, no need the king should ever die. No need that sort of king should ever die. From without. Among the rocks his city was, before his palace in the sun. He sat to see his people pass, and judge them every one from its threshold of smooth stone. They hailed him many a valley thief, Caught in the sheep-pen's robber-chief, swarthy and shameless, beggar-cheat, spy, prowler, or rough pirate found on the sea-sand-lefter ground, and sometimes clung about his feet with bleeding lip and burning cheek, a woman Bitterest wrong to speak of one with sullen, thick-set brows, and sometimes from the prison-house the angry priests a pale wretch brought, who through some chink had pushed and pressed on knees and elbows, belly and breast, worm-like into the temple.
Caught at last there by the very God, Whoever in the darkness strode, Backward and forward, keeping watch, O'er his brazen bulls such rogues to catch, And these all and every one The king judged sitting in the sun.
That King. Should still judge sitting in the sun. His counselors on left and right looked anxious up, but no surprise disturbed the king's old smiling eyes, where the very blue had turned to white. Tis said a python scared one day, the breathless city till he came. With forky tongue and eyes on flame, where the old king sat to judge all way. But when he saw the sweepy hair, girt with a crown of berries rare, which the god will hardly give to wear, said the maiden who singeth, dancing bare The altar-smoke by the pine-torch lights at his wondrous forest rites. Beholding this, he did not dare approach that threshold in the sun, assault the old king smiling there. Such grace had kings when the world begun.
Pippa. And such grace have they now that the world ends. The python in the city on the throne, and brave men God would crown for slaying him, lurk in by-corners, lest they fall his prey. Are crowns yet to be won in this late trial which weakness makes me hesitate to reach? "'Tis God's voice calls. How could I stay? Farewell!"
Talk by the way while Pippa is passing from the turret to the Bishop's brother's house close to the Duomo Samaria. Poor girls sitting on the steps. There goes a swallow to Venice, the stout seafarer. Seeing those birds fly makes one wish for wings. Let us all wish. You, wish first. Ay, this sunset to finish. That old, somebody I know, gayer and older than my grandfather, to give me the same treat he gave me last week, feeding me on his knee with fig-peckers, lampreys, and red bregons of wine, and mumbling the while some folly about how well I fare, to be let eat my supper quietly. Since had he not himself been late this morning detained at—never mind where—had he not—ay baggage—had I not—how she can lie!
Look there—by the nails—what makes your fingers red? Dipping them into the wine to write bad words with, on the bright table. How he laughed! My turn. Spring's come, and summer's coming. I would wear a long, loose gown, down to the feet and hands, with plates here, close about the throat, all day, and all night lie, the cool long nights, in bed, and have no milk to drink, apples to eat, douzons and junetings, leather coats. Ah, I should say, this is away in the fields, miles. Say at once, ye'd be at home. She'd always be at home. Now comes the story of the farm among the cherry orchids, and how April snowed white blossoms on her as she ran. Why, fool, they've rubbed out the chalk mark of how tall you were, twisted your starling's neck, broke in his cage, made a dunghill of your garden.
They destroyed my garden since I left them? Well, perhaps. I would have done so. So I hope they have. A fig-tree curled out of our cottage wall. They called it mine. I have forgotten why. It must have been their long year I was born. Crick, crick. I think I hear the wasps overhead, cricking the papers trung to flutter there and keep of birds in fruit-time. Coarse long papers. And the wasps eat them, prick them through and through. How her mouth twitches! Where was I? Before she broke in with her wishes and long gowns and wasps, would I be such a fool. Oh, here, this is my way. I answer every one who asks me why I make so much of him. If you say you love him, straight he'll not be gulled. He that seduced me when I was a girl thus high had eyes like yours, or hair like yours, brown, red, white, as the case may be.
That pleases. See how that beetle burnishes in the path? There sparkles he along the dust, and there, your journey to that maze, toughs, boiled at least. When I was young, they said if you killed one of those sunshiny beetles, that his friend up there would shine no more that day nor next. When you were young, nor are you young, that's true. How your plump arms that were have dropped away. Why, I can span them. Saco beats you still? No matter, so you keep your curious hair. I wish they'd find a way to dye our hair your colour, any lighter tint indeed than black. The men say they are sick of black, black eyes, black hair. Sick of yours, like enough. Do you pretend you ever tasted lampreys and ortolans?
Giovita of a palace engaged. But there's no trusting him. To slice me polenta with a knife that has cut up an ortolin. Why, there, is that not Pippa we are to talk to under the window? Quick, where the lights are? No, or she would sing, for the intendant said, Oh, you sing first, then if she listens and comes close, I'll tell you. Sing that song the young English noble made. Who took you for the purest of the pure, and meant to leave the world for you. What fun! You'll love me at, and I can tarry, Your love's protracted growing. June reared that bunch of flowers you carry, From seeds of April's sowing. I plant a heart full now, Some seed at least is sure to strike and yield. What you'll not pluck indeed, Not love but may be like.
You'll look at least on love's remains, A grave's one violet, your look, That pays a thousand pains. What's death? You'll love me yet. To Pippa, who approaches. Pippa, oh, you may come closer. We shall not eat you. Why, you seem the very person that the great, rich, handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in love with. I'll tell you all about it.
End of Act Three.
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6 5 - Act IV 21:03
Night. The Palace by the Duomo. Monsignor dismissing his attendance. Monsignor thanks, friends, many thanks. I chiefly desire life now, that I may recompense every one of you. Most I know something of already. What? A repast prepared. Benedicte, benedicatur. Oh, oh! Where was I? Oh, as you were remarking, Ugo, the weather is mild, very unlike winter weather. But I am a Sicilian, you know, and shiver in your julys here. To be sure, when Twas full summer at Messina, as we priests used to cross in procession the great square on Assumption Day, you might see our thickest yellow tapers twist suddenly in two, each like a falling star, or sink down on themselves in a gore of wax. But go, my friends, but go!
Not you, Ugo. The others leave the apartment. I have long wanted to converse with you, Ugo. Ugochyo. Guccio Stefani, man, of Ascoli, Fermo, and Fossombruno. What I do need instructing about are these accounts of your administration of my poor brother's affairs. Oh! I shall never get through a third part of your accounts. Take some of these dainties before we attempt it, however. Are you bashful to that degree? For me, a crust and water suffice. Do you choose this especial night to question me? This night, Ugo, you have managed my late brother's affairs since the death of our elder brother, fourteen years and a month, all but three days. On the third of December I find him— If you have so intimate an acquaintance with your brother's affairs, You will be tender of turning so far back.
They will hardly bear looking into so far back. Aye, aye, oof, oof! Nothing but disappointments here below. I remark a considerable payment made to yourself on this third of December, talk of disappointments. There was a young fellow here, Jules, a foreign sculptor. I did my utmost to advance, that the church might be a gainer by us both, He was going on hopefully enough, and of a sudden he notifies me to some marvellous change that has happened in his notions of art. Here's his letter. He never had a clearly conceived ideal within his brain till to-day. Yet, since his hand could manage a chisel, he has practised expressing other men's ideals, and in the very perfection he has attained to, he foresees an ultimate failure.
His unconscious hand will pursue its prescribed course of old years, and will reproduce with a fatal expertness the ancient types. Let the novel one appear never so palpably to his spirit. There is but one method of escape. Confiding the virgin type to his chaste a hand, he will turn painter instead of sculptor, and paint, not carve, its characteristics. Strike out, I dare say, a school like Correggio. How think you, Ugo? Is Correggio a painter? Foolish Jules! And yet, after all, why foolish? He may, probably will, fail egregiously, but if there should arise a new painter, will it not be in some such way by a poet now, or a musician? Spirits who have conceived and perfected an ideal through some other channel, transferring it to this, and escaping our conventional roads by pure ignorance of them, eh, Ugo?
If you have no appetite, talk at least, Ugo. Sir, I can submit no longer to this course of yours. First, you select the group of which I formed one. Next, you thin it gradually, always retaining me with your smile. And so do you proceed till you have fairly got me alone with you between four stone walls. And now, then? Let this farce, this chatter, end now. What is it you want with me? Ugo! From the instant you arrived, I felt your smile on me as you questioned me about this and the other article in those papers. Why, your brother should have given me this villa, that podere, and your not at the end meant... What? Possibly that I wished for no loud talk here, if once you set me coughing, Ugo.
Ugo. I have your brother's hand and seal to all I possess. Now ask me what for. What service I did him? Ask me. I had better not. I should rip up old disgraces, let out my poor brother's weaknesses. By the way, Maffeo of Forli, which I forgot to observe, is your true name. Was the interdict ever taken off you for robbing that church at Cesena? No, nor needs be, for when I murdered your brother's friend Pasquale for him—'Ah, he employed you in that business, did he? Well, I must let you keep, as you say, this villa and that podere, for fear the world should find out my relations were of so indifferent a stamp.
My family is the oldest in Messina, and century after century have my progenitors gone on polluting themselves with every wickedness under heaven. My own father rests his soul. I have, I know, a chapel to support, that it may rest. My dear two dead brothers were, what you know tolerably well. I, the youngest, might have rivalled them in vice, if not in wealth, but from my boyhood I came out from among them, and so am not partaker of their plagues. My glory springs from another source, or, if from this, by contrast only, for I, the bishop, am the brother of your employers, I hope to repair some of their wrong, however. So far as my brother's ill-gotten treasure reverts to me, I can stay the consequences of his crime, and not one soldor shall escape me.
Maffeo, the sword we quiet men spurn away, you shrewd knaves pick up and commit murders with. What opportunities the virtuous forego, the villainous seize. Because, to pleasure myself, apart from other considerations, my food would be millet-cake, my dress sackcloth, and my couch straw. Am I therefore to let you, the off-scouring of the earth, seduce the poor and ignorant, by appropriating a pomp these will be sure to think lessens the abominations so unaccountably and exclusively associated with it? Must I let Villers and Poderes go to you, a murderer and thief, that you may beget by means of them other murderers and thieves? No, if my cough would but allow me to speak. What am I to expect? You are going to punish me?
Must punish you, maffeo. I cannot afford to cast away a chance. I have whole centuries of sin to redeem, and only a month or two of life to do it in. How should I dare to say, Forgive us our trespasses? My friend, it is because I avow myself a very worm, sinful beyond measure, that I reject a line of conduct you would applaud, perhaps. Shall I proceed, as it were, a pardoning? I, who have no symptom of reason, to assume that aught less than my My strenuousest efforts will keep myself out of mortal sin, much less keep others out. No, I do trespass, but will not double that by allowing you to trespass. And suppose the villas are not your brothers to give, nor yours to take. Oh, you are hasty enough just now.
One, two, number three. Aye. Can you read the substance of a letter? Number three, I have received from Rome. It is precisely on the ground there mentioned of the suspicion I have that a certain child of my elder brother, who would have succeeded to his estates, was murdered in infancy by you, Maffeo, at the instigation of my late brother. That the pontiff enjoins on me not merely the bringing that maffeo to condign punishment, but the taking all pains as guardian of that infant's heritage for the church, to recover it parcel by parcel, howsoever, whensoever, and wheresoever. While you are now gnawing those fingers, the police are engaged in sealing up your papers, Maffeo, and the mere raising my voice brings my people from the next room to dispose of yourself.
But I want you to confess quietly, and save me raising my voice. Why, man, do I not know the old story? The air between the succeeding air and that air's ruffianly instrument, and their complot's effect, and the light of fear and bribes, and ominous smiling silence. Did you throttle or stab my brother's infant? Come now. So old a story, and tell it no better. When did such an instrument ever produce such an effect? Either the child smiles in his face, Or, most likely, he is not fool enough to put himself in the employer's power so thoroughly. The child is always ready to produce, as you say, howsoever, wheresoever, and whensoever. Liar! Strike me? Ah, so might a father chastise. I shall sleep soundly to-night, at least, though the gallows await me to-morrow.
For what a life did I lead? Carlo of Cicina reminds me of his connivance every time I pay his annuity, which happens commonly thrice a year. If I remonstrate, he will confess all to the good bishop, you. I see through the trick, Cative, I would you spoke truth for once. All shall be sifted, however, seven times sifted. And how my absurd riches encumbered me. I dare not lay claim to above half my possessions. Let me but once unbosom myself, glorify heaven, and die. Sir, you are no brutal, dastardly idiot like your brother I frighten to death. Let us understand one another. Sir, I will make away with her for you, the girl. Here, close at hand. Not the stupid, obvious kind of killing. Do not speak.
Know nothing of her or me. I see her every day. Saw her this morning. Of course there is to be no killing. But at Rome, the courtesans perish off every three years, and I can entice her thither. Have, indeed, begun operations already. There's a certain lusty, blue-eyed, florid-complexioned English knave I and the police employ occasionally. You assent, I perceive. No, that's not it. Assent, I do not say. But you will let me convert my present havings and holdings into cash, and give me time to cross the Alps. "'Tis but a little black-eyed, pretty-singing Philippa, gay, silk-winding girl. I have kept her out of harm's way up to the present, for I always intended to make your life a plague to you with her.
"'Tis as well settled once and for ever. Some women I have procured will pass Blue Fox, my handsome scoundrel, off for somebody. And once Pippa entangled, you conceive, through her singing? Is it a bargain? From without is heard the voice of Pippa singing. Overhead the tree-tops meet, Flowers and grass spring neath one's feet. There was naught above me and naught below, My childhood had not learned to know. For what are the voices of birds, eye and of beasts, but words are words, only so much more sweet? The knowledge of that with my life begun, but I had so near made out the sun, and counted your stars, the seven and one, like the fingers of my hand. Nay, I I could all but understand wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges, and just when out of a soft fifty changes no unfamiliar face might overlook me, suddenly God took me.
Pippa passes. Springing up. My people, one and all, all within there. Gag this villain, tie him hand and foot. He dares, I know not half he dares, but remove him quick. Miserere mei domine. Quick, I say.
Pippa's chamber again. She enters it. The bee with his comb, the mouse at her dray, the grub in its tomb, while winter away. But the firefly, and hedge-shrew, and lob-worm, I pray. How fare they?
Ah, best thanks for your counsel, my Zamze! Feast upon lampreys, quaff the braganza! The summer of life's so easy to spend, and care for tomorrow so soon but away. But winter hastens at summer's end, and firefly, hedge-shrew, lob-worm, pray! How fare they? No bidding me then to—what did she say?—pare your nails, pearlwise, get your small feet, shoes, more like—what said she—and less like canoes. How pert that girl was! Would I be those pert, impudent, staring women? It had done me, however, surely no such mighty hurt to learn his name who passed that jest upon me. No foreigner that I can recollect came, as she says, a month since, to inspect our silk-mills. None with blue eyes and thick rings of English-coloured hair at all events.
Well, if old Luca keeps his good intents, we shall do better. See what next year brings. I may buy shoes, my sansa, not appear more destitute than you, perhaps, next year. Bluth something. I had caught the uncouth name, but for Monseigneur's people's sudden clatter above us, bound to spoil such idle chatter as ours, it were indeed a serious matter if silly talk like ours should put to shame the pious man, the man devoid of blame, the—ah, but—ah, but all the same, no mere mortal has a right to carry that exalted air. Best people are not angels quite, while not the worst of people's doings scare the devils. So there's that proud look to spare. Which is mere counsel to myself, mind, for I have just been the holy Monseigneur, and I was you too, Luigi's gentle mother, and you too, Luigi.
How that Luigi started out of the turret, doubtlessly departed on some good errand or another, for he passed just now in a traveller's trim, and the sullen company that prowled about his path I noticed scowled as if they had lost a prey in him. And I was Jules the Sculptor's bride, and I was Ottima beside. And now what am I, tired of fooling? Day for folly, night for schooling. New Year's Day is over and spent. Ill or well, I must be content. Even my lily's asleep, I vow. Wake up. Here's a friend I've plucked you. See, call this flower a heart's ease now. And something rare, let me instruct you, is this. With petals triply swollen, three times spotted, thrice the pollen. While the leaves and parts that witness the old proportions and their fitness here remain unchanged, unmoved now.
So call this pampered thing improved now. Suppose there's a king of the flowers, and a girl show held in his bowers. Look, ye buds, this growth of ours, says he, Zancy from the Brenta. I have made her gorge polenta till both cheeks are near as bouncing as her—name there's no pronouncing. See this heightened color, too, for she swilled brigandsa wine till her nose turned deep carmine. "'Twas but white when wild she grew. And only by this Zanza's eyes, of which we could not change the size, the magnitude of what's achieved otherwise may be perceived. Oh, what a drear dark closed my poor day! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud? Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away, dispensed with, never more to be allowed.
Day's turn is over. Now arrives the nights. O lark, be day's apostle to Mavis, Merle, and Throttle. Bid them their betters jostle from day and its delights. But at night, brother Howlett, far over the woods, Tole the world to thy chantry. Sing to the bat's sleek sisterhood's full complines with gallantry. Then owls and bats, cows and twats, monks and nuns in a cloister's moods, adjourn to the oak-stump pantry. After she has begun to undress herself. Now one thing I should like really to know—how near I ever might approach all these I only fancied being this long day. Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so as to—in some way—in Move them, if you please, do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind silk to-morrow, my silk may bind and border Ottima's cloak's hem. Ah, me and my important part with them, this morning's hymn half-promised when I rose. True, in some sense or other, I suppose. Though I passed by them all, and felt no sign. As she glides down. God bless me. I can pray no more tonight. No doubt some way or other hymns say right. All service is the same with God. With God, whose puppets best and worst are we, there is no last nor first. She sleeps. End of Act Four. End of Pippa Passes by Robert Browning.