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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-02-19 07:21:05 -0800 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-02-19 07:21:05 -0800 |
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diff --git a/9956-h/9956-h.htm b/9956-h/9956-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aafd166 --- /dev/null +++ b/9956-h/9956-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5532 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Hauntings | Project Gutenberg</title> +<style> +body { + width: 85%; + /* == margin-left:7% */ + } +@media screen { + body { + margin-left: 8%; + /* == margin-left:7% */ + } + } +.pagedjs_page_content > div { + margin-left: 8%; + /* == margin-left:7% */ + } + h1, h2, h3, .center {text-align: center;} +/* ************************************************************************ + * set the indention, spacing, and leading for body paragraphs. + * ********************************************************************** */ +p { + margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; + text-indent: 1em; + text-align: justify; + } +/* suppress indentation on paragraphs following heads */ +h2 + p, h3 + p, h4 + p { + text-indent: 0 + } +/* tighter spacing for list item paragraphs */ +dd, li { + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0; + line-height: 1.2em; + /* a bit closer than p's */ + } +/* ************************************************************************ + * Head 2 is for chapter heads. + * ********************************************************************** */ +h2 { + /* text-align:center; left-aligned by default. */ + margin-top: 3em; + /* extra space above.. */ + margin-bottom: 2em; + /* ..and below */ + clear: both; + /* don't let sidebars overlap */ + } +/* ************************************************************************ + * Head 3 is for main-topic heads. + * ********************************************************************** */ +h3 { + /* text-align:center; left-aligned by default. */ + margin-top: 2em; + /* extra space above but not below */ + font-weight: normal; + /* override default of bold */ + clear: both; + /* don't let sidebars overlap */ + } +/* ************************************************************************ + * Styling the default HR and some special-purpose ones. + * Default rule centered and clear of floats; sized for thought-breaks + * ********************************************************************** */ +hr { + width: 45%; + /* adjust to ape original work */ + margin-top: 1em; + /* space above & below */ + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-left: auto; + /* these two ensure a.. */ + margin-right: auto; + /* ..centered rule */ + clear: both; + /* don't let sidebars & floats overlap rule */ + } +/* ************************************************************************ + * Images and captions + * ********************************************************************** */ +img { + /* the default inline image has */ + border: 1px solid black; + /* a thin black line border.. */ + padding: 6px; + /* ..spaced a bit out from the graphic */ + } +.right {text-align: right; margin-right: 2%;} +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 9956 ***</div> +<h1>HAUNTINGS</h1> + +<div class="center">FANTASTIC STORIES<br><br> +VERNON LEE<br><br> +1890</div> + +<p class="center" style="margin-top: 4em">To <i>FLORA PRIESTLEY</i> and <i>ARTHUR LEMON</i><br> + <i>Are Dedicated</i> DIONEA, AMOUR DURE,<br><i>and</i><br>THESE PAGES OF INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY.</p> + +<h2><i>Preface</i></h2> + +<p>We were talking last evening—as the blue moon-mist poured in through +the old-fashioned grated window, and mingled with our yellow lamplight +at table—we were talking of a certain castle whose heir is initiated +(as folk tell) on his twenty-first birthday to the knowledge of a +secret so terrible as to overshadow his subsequent life. It struck us, +discussing idly the various mysteries and terrors that may lie behind +this fact or this fable, that no doom or horror conceivable and to +be defined in words could ever adequately solve this riddle; that no +reality of dreadfulness could seem caught but paltry, bearable, and +easy to face in comparison with this vague we know not what.</p> + +<p>And this leads me to say, that it seems to me that the supernatural, +in order to call forth those sensations, terrible to our ancestors +and terrible but delicious to ourselves, skeptical posterity, must +necessarily, and with but a few exceptions, remain enwrapped in +mystery. Indeed, ’tis the mystery that touches us, the vague shroud +of moonbeams that hangs about the haunting lady, the glint on the +warrior’s breastplate, the click of his unseen spurs, while the figure +itself wanders forth, scarcely outlined, scarcely separated from the +surrounding trees; or walks, and sucked back, ever and anon, into the +flickering shadows.</p> + +<p>A number of ingenious persons of our day, desirous of a +pocket-superstition, as men of yore were greedy of a pocket-saint +to carry about in gold and enamel, a number of highly reasoning men +of semi-science have returned to the notion of our fathers, that +ghosts have an existence outside our own fancy and emotion; and +have culled from the experience of some Jemima Jackson, who fifty +years ago, being nine years of age, saw her maiden aunt appear six +months after decease, abundant proof of this fact. One feels glad to +think the maiden aunt should have walked about after death, if it +afforded her any satisfaction, poor soul! but one is struck by the +extreme uninterestingness of this lady’s appearance in the spirit, +corresponding perhaps to her want of charm while in the flesh. +Altogether one quite agrees, having duly perused the collection of +evidence on the subject, with the wisdom of these modern ghost-experts, +when they affirm that you can always tell a genuine ghost-story by +the circumstance of its being about a nobody, its having no point +or picturesqueness, and being, generally speaking, flat, stale, and +unprofitable.</p> + +<p>A genuine ghost-story! But then they are not genuine ghost-stories, +those tales that tingle through our additional sense, the sense of the +supernatural, and fill places, nay whole epochs, with their strange +perfume of witchgarden flowers.</p> + +<p>No, alas! neither the story of the murdered King of Denmark (murdered +people, I am told, usually stay quiet, as a scientific fact), nor of +that weird woman who saw King James the Poet three times with his +shroud wrapped ever higher; nor the tale of the finger of the bronze +Venus closing over the wedding-ring, whether told by Morris in verse +patterned like some tapestry, or by Mérimée in terror of cynical +reality, or droned by the original mediaeval professional story-teller, +none of these are genuine ghost-stories. They exist, these ghosts, +only in our minds, in the minds of those dead folk; they have never +stumbled and fumbled about, with Jemima Jackson’s maiden aunt, among +the armchairs and rep sofas of reality.</p> + +<p>They are things of the imagination, born there, bred there, sprung +from the strange confused heaps, half-rubbish, half-treasure, which +lie in our fancy, heaps of half-faded recollections, of fragmentary +vivid impressions, litter of multi-colored tatters, and faded herbs and +flowers, whence arises that odor (we all know it), musty and damp, but +penetratingly sweet and intoxicatingly heady, which hangs in the air +when the ghost has swept through the unopened door, and the flickering +flames of candle and fire start up once more after waning.</p> + +<p>The genuine ghost? And is not this he, or she, this one born of +ourselves, of the weird places we have seen, the strange stories we +have heard—this one, and not the aunt of Miss Jemima Jackson? For what +use, I entreat you to tell me, is that respectable spinster’s vision? +Was she worth seeing, that aunt of hers, or would she, if followed, +have led the way to any interesting brimstone or any endurable +beatitude?</p> + +<p>The supernatural can open the caves of Jamschid and scale the ladder +of Jacob: what use has it got if it land us in Islington or Shepherd’s +Bush? It is well known that Dr. Faustus, having been offered any ghost +he chose, boldly selected, for Mephistopheles to convey, no less a +person than Helena of Troy. Imagine if the familiar fiend had summoned +up some Miss Jemima Jackson’s Aunt of Antiquity!</p> + +<p>That is the thing—the Past, the more or less remote Past, of which +the prose is clean obliterated by distance—that is the place to get +our ghosts from. Indeed we live ourselves, we educated folk of modern +times, on the borderland of the Past, in houses looking down on its +troubadours’ orchards and Greek folks’ pillared courtyards; and a +legion of ghosts, very vague and changeful, are perpetually to and fro, +fetching and carrying for us between it and the Present.</p> + +<p>Hence, my four little tales are of no genuine ghosts in the scientific +sense; they tell of no hauntings such as could be contributed by the +Society for Psychical Research, of no specters that can be caught +in definite places and made to dictate judicial evidence. My ghosts +are what you call spurious ghosts (according to me the only genuine +ones), of whom I can affirm only one thing, that they haunted certain +brains, and have haunted, among others, my own and my friends’—yours, +dear Arthur Lemon, along the dim twilit tracks, among the high growing +bracken and the spectral pines, of the south country; and yours, amidst +the mist of moonbeams and olive-branches, dear Flora Priestley, while +the moonlit sea moaned and rattled against the moldering walls of the +house whence Shelley set sail for eternity.</p> + +<div class="right">VERNON LEE</div> + +<div><i>MAIANO, near FLORENCE,<br>June 1889.</i></div> + +<h2><i>Amour Dure:</i></h2> + +<div class="center">PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF<br>SPIRIDION TREPKA.</div> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em"><i>Part I</i></h3> + +<p><i>Urbania, August 20th, 1885.—</i></p> + +<p>I had longed, these years and years, to be in Italy, to come face to +face with the Past; and was this Italy, was this the Past? I could have +cried, yes cried, for disappointment when I first wandered about Rome, +with an invitation to dine at the German Embassy in my pocket, and +three or four Berlin and Munich Vandals at my heels, telling me where +the best beer and sauerkraut could be had, and what the last article by +Grimm or Mommsen was about.</p> + +<p>Is this folly? Is it falsehood? Am I not myself a product of modern, +northern civilization; is not my coming to Italy due to this very +modern scientific vandalism, which has given me a traveling scholarship +because I have written a book like all those other atrocious books +of erudition and art-criticism? Nay, am I not here at Urbania on the +express understanding that, in a certain number of months, I shall +produce just another such book? Dost thou imagine, thou miserable +Spiridion, thou Pole grown into the semblance of a German pedant, +doctor of philosophy, professor even, author of a prize essay on the +despots of the fifteenth century, dost thou imagine that thou, with +thy ministerial letters and proof-sheets in thy black professorial +coat-pocket, canst ever come in spirit into the presence of the Past?</p> + +<p>Too true, alas! But let me forget it, at least, every now and then; as +I forgot it this afternoon, while the white bullocks dragged my gig +slowly winding along interminable valleys, crawling along interminable +hill-sides, with the invisible droning torrent far below, and only the +bare grey and reddish peaks all around, up to this town of Urbania, +forgotten of mankind, towered and battlemented on the high Apennine +ridge. Sigillo, Penna, Fossombrone, Mercatello, Montemurlo—each single +village name, as the driver pointed it out, brought to my mind the +recollection of some battle or some great act of treachery of former +days. And as the huge mountains shut out the setting sun, and the +valleys filled with bluish shadow and mist, only a band of threatening +smoke-red remaining behind the towers and cupolas of the city on +its mountain-top, and the sound of church bells floated across the +precipice from Urbania, I almost expected, at every turning of the +road, that a troop of horsemen, with beaked helmets and clawed shoes, +would emerge, with armor glittering and pennons waving in the sunset. +And then, not two hours ago, entering the town at dusk, passing along +the deserted streets, with only a smoky light here and there under a +shrine or in front of a fruit-stall, or a fire reddening the blackness +of a smithy; passing beneath the battlements and turrets of the +palace…. Ah, that was Italy, it was the Past!</p> + +<p><i>August 21st.—</i></p> + +<p>And this is the Present! Four letters of introduction to deliver, and +an hour’s polite conversation to endure with the Vice-Prefect, the +Syndic, the Director of the Archives, and the good man to whom my +friend Max had sent me for lodgings….</p> + +<p><i>August 22nd-27th.—</i></p> + +<p>Spent the greater part of the day in the Archives, and the greater part +of my time there in being bored to extinction by the Director thereof, +who today spouted Aeneas Sylvius’ Commentaries for three-quarters of +an hour without taking breath. From this sort of martyrdom (what are +the sensations of a former racehorse being driven in a cab? If you can +conceive them, they are those of a Pole turned Prussian professor) I +take refuge in long rambles through the town. This town is a handful of +tall black houses huddled on to the top of an Alp, long narrow lanes +trickling down its sides, like the slides we made on hillocks in our +boyhood, and in the middle the superb red brick structure, turreted and +battlemented, of Duke Ottobuono’s palace, from whose windows you look +down upon a sea, a kind of whirlpool, of melancholy grey mountains. +Then there are the people, dark, bushy-bearded men, riding about like +brigands, wrapped in green-lined cloaks upon their shaggy pack-mules; +or loitering about, great, brawny, low-headed youngsters, like the +parti-colored bravos in Signorelli’s frescoes; the beautiful boys, +like so many young Raphaels, with eyes like the eyes of bullocks, and +the huge women, Madonnas or St. Elizabeths, as the case may be, with +their clogs firmly poised on their toes and their brass pitchers on +their heads, as they go up and down the steep black alleys. I do not +talk much to these people; I fear my illusions being dispelled. At the +corner of a street, opposite Francesco di Giorgio’s beautiful little +portico, is a great blue and red advertisement, representing an angel +descending to crown Elias Howe, on account of his sewing-machines; and +the clerks of the Vice-Prefecture, who dine at the place where I get +my dinner, yell politics, Minghetti, Cairoli, Tunis, ironclads, &c., +at each other, and sing snatches of <i>La Fille de Mme. Angot,</i> which I +imagine they have been performing here recently.</p> + +<p>No; talking to the natives is evidently a dangerous experiment. Except +indeed, perhaps, to my good landlord, Signor Notaro Porri, who is just +as learned, and takes considerably less snuff (or rather brushes it off +his coat more often) than the Director of the Archives. I forgot to +jot down (and I feel I must jot down, in the vain belief that some day +these scraps will help, like a withered twig of olive or a three-wicked +Tuscan lamp on my table, to bring to my mind, in that hateful Babylon +of Berlin, these happy Italian days)—I forgot to record that I am +lodging in the house of a dealer in antiquities. My window looks up the +principal street to where the little column with Mercury on the top +rises in the midst of the awnings and porticoes of the market-place. +Bending over the chipped ewers and tubs full of sweet basil, clove +pinks, and marigolds, I can just see a corner of the palace turret, +and the vague ultramarine of the hills beyond. The house, whose back +goes sharp down into the ravine, is a queer up-and-down black place, +whitewashed rooms, hung with the Raphaels and Francias and Peruginos, +whom mine host regularly carries to the chief inn whenever a stranger +is expected; and surrounded by old carved chairs, sofas of the Empire, +embossed and gilded wedding-chests, and the cupboards which contain +bits of old damask and embroidered altar-cloths scenting the place with +the smell of old incense and mustiness; all of which are presided over +by Signor Porri’s three maiden sisters—Sora Serafina, Sora Lodovica, +and Sora Adalgisa—the three Fates in person, even to the distaffs and +their black cats.</p> + +<p>Sor Asdrubale, as they call my landlord, is also a notary. He regrets +the Pontifical Government, having had a cousin who was a Cardinal’s +train-bearer, and believes that if only you lay a table for two, light +four candles made of dead men’s fat, and perform certain rites about +which he is not very precise, you can, on Christmas Eve and similar +nights, summon up San Pasquale Baylon, who will write you the winning +numbers of the lottery upon the smoked back of a plate, if you have +previously slapped him on both cheeks and repeated three Ave Marias. +The difficulty consists in obtaining the dead men’s fat for the +candles, and also in slapping the saint before he has time to vanish.</p> + +<p>“If it were not for that,” says Sor Asdrubale, “the Government would +have had to suppress the lottery ages ago—eh!”</p> + +<p><i>Sept. 9th.</i>—This history of Urbania is not without its romance, +although that romance (as usual) has been overlooked by our Dryasdusts. +Even before coming here I felt attracted by the strange figure of +a woman, which appeared from out of the dry pages of Gualterio’s +and Padre de Sanctis’ histories of this place. This woman is Medea, +daughter of Galeazzo IV. Malatesta, Lord of Carpi, wife first of +Pierluigi Orsini, Duke of Stimigliano, and subsequently of Guidalfonso +II., Duke of Urbania, predecessor of the great Duke Robert II.</p> + +<p>This woman’s history and character remind one of that of Bianca +Cappello, and at the same time of Lucrezia Borgia. Born in 1556, she +was affianced at the age of twelve to a cousin, a Malatesta of the +Rimini family. This family having greatly gone down in the world, her +engagement was broken, and she was betrothed a year later to a member +of the Pico family, and married to him by proxy at the age of fourteen. +But this match not satisfying her own or her father’s ambition, the +marriage by proxy was, upon some pretext, declared null, and the suit +encouraged of the Duke of Stimigliano, a great Umbrian feudatory of +the Orsini family. But the bridegroom, Giovanfrancesco Pico, refused +to submit, pleaded his case before the Pope, and tried to carry off by +force his bride, with whom he was madly in love, as the lady was most +lovely and of most cheerful and amiable manner, says an old anonymous +chronicle. Pico waylaid her litter as she was going to a villa of +her father’s, and carried her to his castle near Mirandola, where +he respectfully pressed his suit; insisting that he had a right to +consider her as his wife. But the lady escaped by letting herself into +the moat by a rope of sheets, and Giovanfrancesco Pico was discovered +stabbed in the chest, by the hand of Madonna Medea da Carpi. He was a +handsome youth only eighteen years old.</p> + +<p>The Pico having been settled, and the marriage with him declared +null by the Pope, Medea da Carpi was solemnly married to the Duke of +Stimigliano, and went to live upon his domains near Rome.</p> + +<p>Two years later, Pierluigi Orsini was stabbed by one of his grooms at +his castle of Stimigliano, near Orvieto; and suspicion fell upon his +widow, more especially as, immediately after the event, she caused the +murderer to be cut down by two servants in her own chamber; but not +before he had declared that she had induced him to assassinate his +master by a promise of her love. Things became so hot for Medea da +Carpi that she fled to Urbania and threw herself at the feet of Duke +Guidalfonso II., declaring that she had caused the groom to be killed +merely to avenge her good fame, which he had slandered, and that she +was absolutely guiltless of the death of her husband. The marvelous +beauty of the widowed Duchess of Stimigliano, who was only nineteen, +entirely turned the head of the Duke of Urbania. He affected implicit +belief in her innocence, refused to give her up to the Orsinis, kinsmen +of her late husband, and assigned to her magnificent apartments in +the left wing of the palace, among which the room containing the +famous fireplace ornamented with marble Cupids on a blue ground. +Guidalfonso fell madly in love with his beautiful guest. Hitherto timid +and domestic in character, he began publicly to neglect his wife, +Maddalena Varano of Camerino, with whom, although childless, he had +hitherto lived on excellent terms; he not only treated with contempt +the admonitions of his advisers and of his suzerain the Pope, but went +so far as to take measures to repudiate his wife, on the score of quite +imaginary ill-conduct. The Duchess Maddalena, unable to bear this +treatment, fled to the convent of the barefooted sisters at Pesaro, +where she pined away, while Medea da Carpi reigned in her place at +Urbania, embroiling Duke Guidalfonso in quarrels both with the powerful +Orsinis, who continued to accuse her of Stimigliano’s murder, and with +the Varanos, kinsmen of the injured Duchess Maddalena; until at length, +in the year 1576, the Duke of Urbania, having become suddenly, and not +without suspicious circumstances, a widower, publicly married Medea da +Carpi two days after the decease of his unhappy wife. No child was born +of this marriage; but such was the infatuation of Duke Guidalfonso, +that the new Duchess induced him to settle the inheritance of the Duchy +(having, with great difficulty, obtained the consent of the Pope) on +the boy Bartolommeo, her son by Stimigliano, but whom the Orsinis +refused to acknowledge as such, declaring him to be the child of that +Giovanfrancesco Pico to whom Medea had been married by proxy, and whom, +in defense, as she had said, of her honor, she had assassinated; and +this investiture of the Duchy of Urbania on to a stranger and a bastard +was at the expense of the obvious rights of the Cardinal Robert, +Guidalfonso’s younger brother.</p> + +<p>In May 1579 Duke Guidalfonso died suddenly and mysteriously, Medea +having forbidden all access to his chamber, lest, on his deathbed, +he might repent and reinstate his brother in his rights. The Duchess +immediately caused her son, Bartolommeo Orsini, to be proclaimed Duke +of Urbania, and herself regent; and, with the help of two or three +unscrupulous young men, particularly a certain Captain Oliverotto da +Narni, who was rumored to be her lover, seized the reins of government +with extraordinary and terrible vigor, marching an army against the +Varanos and Orsinis, who were defeated at Sigillo, and ruthlessly +exterminating every person who dared question the lawfulness of the +succession; while, all the time, Cardinal Robert, who had flung aside +his priest’s garb and vows, went about in Rome, Tuscany, Venice—nay, +even to the Emperor and the King of Spain, imploring help against the +usurper. In a few months he had turned the tide of sympathy against +the Duchess-Regent; the Pope solemnly declared the investiture of +Bartolommeo Orsini worthless, and published the accession of Robert +II., Duke of Urbania and Count of Montemurlo; the Grand Duke of Tuscany +and the Venetians secretly promised assistance, but only if Robert were +able to assert his rights by main force. Little by little, one town +after the other of the Duchy went over to Robert, and Medea da Carpi +found herself surrounded in the mountain citadel of Urbania like a +scorpion surrounded by flames. (This simile is not mine, but belongs +to Raffaello Gualterio, historiographer to Robert II.) But, unlike the +scorpion, Medea refused to commit suicide. It is perfectly marvelous +how, without money or allies, she could so long keep her enemies at +bay; and Gualterio attributes this to those fatal fascinations which +had brought Pico and Stimigliano to their deaths, which had turned the +once honest Guidalfonso into a villain, and which were such that, of +all her lovers, not one but preferred dying for her, even after he had +been treated with ingratitude and ousted by a rival; a faculty which +Messer Raffaello Gualterio clearly attributed to hellish connivance.</p> + +<p>At last the ex-Cardinal Robert succeeded, and triumphantly entered +Urbania in November 1579. His accession was marked by moderation and +clemency. Not a man was put to death, save Oliverotto da Narni, who +threw himself on the new Duke, tried to stab him as he alighted at +the palace, and who was cut down by the Duke’s men, crying, “Orsini, +Orsini! Medea, Medea! Long live Duke Bartolommeo!” with his dying +breath, although it is said that the Duchess had treated him with +ignominy. The little Bartolommeo was sent to Rome to the Orsinis; the +Duchess, respectfully confined in the left wing of the palace.</p> + +<p>It is said that she haughtily requested to see the new Duke, but that +he shook his head, and, in his priest’s fashion, quoted a verse about +Ulysses and the Sirens; and it is remarkable that he persistently +refused to see her, abruptly leaving his chamber one day that she had +entered it by stealth. After a few months a conspiracy was discovered +to murder Duke Robert, which had obviously been set on foot by Medea. +But the young man, one Marcantonio Frangipani of Rome, denied, even +under the severest torture, any complicity of hers; so that Duke +Robert, who wished to do nothing violent, merely transferred the +Duchess from his villa at Sant’ Elmo to the convent of the Clarisse +in town, where she was guarded and watched in the closest manner. +It seemed impossible that Medea should intrigue any further, for +she certainly saw and could be seen by no one. Yet she contrived to +send a letter and her portrait to one Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi, a +youth, only nineteen years old, of noble Romagnole family, and who was +betrothed to one of the most beautiful girls of Urbania. He immediately +broke off his engagement, and, shortly afterwards, attempted to +shoot Duke Robert with a holster-pistol as he knelt at mass on the +festival of Easter Day. This time Duke Robert was determined to obtain +proofs against Medea. Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi was kept some days +without food, then submitted to the most violent tortures, and finally +condemned. When he was going to be flayed with red-hot pincers and +quartered by horses, he was told that he might obtain the grace of +immediate death by confessing the complicity of the Duchess; and +the confessor and nuns of the convent, which stood in the place of +execution outside Porta San Romano, pressed Medea to save the wretch, +whose screams reached her, by confessing her own guilt. Medea asked +permission to go to a balcony, where she could see Prinzivalle and be +seen by him. She looked on coldly, then threw down her embroidered +kerchief to the poor mangled creature. He asked the executioner to wipe +his mouth with it, kissed it, and cried out that Medea was innocent. +Then, after several hours of torments, he died. This was too much for +the patience even of Duke Robert. Seeing that as long as Medea lived +his life would be in perpetual danger, but unwilling to cause a scandal +(somewhat of the priest-nature remaining), he had Medea strangled in +the convent, and, what is remarkable, insisted that only women—two +infanticides to whom he remitted their sentence—should be employed for +the deed.</p> + +<p>“This clement prince,” writes Don Arcangelo Zappi in his life of him, +published in 1725, “can be blamed only for one act of cruelty, the +more odious as he had himself, until released from his vows by the +Pope, been in holy orders. It is said that when he caused the death of +the infamous Medea da Carpi, his fear lest her extraordinary charms +should seduce any man was such, that he not only employed women as +executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing +her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence +that may have lurked in her adamantine heart.”</p> + +<p>Such is the story of Medea da Carpi, Duchess of Stimigliano Orsini, and +then wife of Duke Guidalfonso II. of Urbania. She was put to death just +two hundred and ninety-seven years ago, December 1582, at the age of +barely seven-and twenty, and having, in the course of her short life, +brought to a violent end five of her lovers, from Giovanfrancesco Pico +to Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi.</p> + +<p><i>Sept. 20th.</i>—</p> + +<p>A grand illumination of the town in honor of the taking of Rome +fifteen years ago. Except Sor Asdrubale, my landlord, who shakes his +head at the Piedmontese, as he calls them, the people here are all +Italianissimi. The Popes kept them very much down since Urbania lapsed +to the Holy See in 1645.</p> + +<p><i>Sept. 28th.</i>—</p> + +<p>I have for some time been hunting for portraits of the Duchess Medea. +Most of them, I imagine, must have been destroyed, perhaps by Duke +Robert II.’s fear lest even after her death this terrible beauty should +play him a trick. Three or four I have, however, been able to find—one +a miniature in the Archives, said to be that which she sent to poor +Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi in order to turn his head; one a marble +bust in the palace lumber-room; one in a large composition, possibly by +Baroccio, representing Cleopatra at the feet of Augustus. Augustus is +the idealized portrait of Robert II., round cropped head, nose a little +awry, clipped beard and scar as usual, but in Roman dress. Cleopatra +seems to me, for all her Oriental dress, and although she wears a +black wig, to be meant for Medea da Carpi; she is kneeling, baring +her breast for the victor to strike, but in reality to captivate him, +and he turns away with an awkward gesture of loathing. None of these +portraits seem very good, save the miniature, but that is an exquisite +work, and with it, and the suggestions of the bust, it is easy to +reconstruct the beauty of this terrible being. The type is that most +admired by the late Renaissance, and, in some measure, immortalized by +Jean Goujon and the French. The face is a perfect oval, the forehead +somewhat over-round, with minute curls, like a fleece, of bright auburn +hair; the nose a trifle over-aquiline, and the cheek-bones a trifle +too low; the eyes grey, large, prominent, beneath exquisitely curved +brows and lids just a little too tight at the corners; the mouth also, +brilliantly red and most delicately designed, is a little too tight, +the lips strained a trifle over the teeth. Tight eyelids and tight lips +give a strange refinement, and, at the same time, an air of mystery, a +somewhat sinister seductiveness; they seem to take, but not to give. +The mouth with a kind of childish pout, looks as if it could bite or +suck like a leech. The complexion is dazzlingly fair, the perfect +transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair +elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, +sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like +neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort +of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the +more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady’s neck is a gold +chain with little gold lozenges at intervals, on which is engraved the +posy or pun (the fashion of French devices is common in those days), +“Amour Dure—Dure Amour.” The same posy is inscribed in the hollow of +the bust, and, thanks to it, I have been able to identify the latter +as Medea’s portrait. I often examine these tragic portraits, wondering +what this face, which led so many men to their death, may have been +like when it spoke or smiled, what at the moment when Medea da Carpi +fascinated her victims into love unto death—“Amour Dure—Dure Amour,” as +runs her device—love that lasts, cruel love—yes indeed, when one thinks +of the fidelity and fate of her lovers.</p> + +<p><i>Oct. 13th.</i>—</p> + +<p>I have literally not had time to write a line of my diary all these +days. My whole mornings have gone in those Archives, my afternoons +taking long walks in this lovely autumn weather (the highest hills +are just tipped with snow). My evenings go in writing that confounded +account of the Palace of Urbania which Government requires, merely to +keep me at work at something useless. Of my history I have not yet +been able to write a word…. By the way, I must note down a curious +circumstance mentioned in an anonymous MS. life of Duke Robert, which +I fell upon today. When this prince had the equestrian statue of +himself by Antonio Tassi, Gianbologna’s pupil, erected in the square +of the <i>Corte</i>, he secretly caused to be made, says my anonymous MS., +a silver statuette of his familiar genius or angel—“familiaris ejus +angelus seu genius, quod a vulgo dicitur <i>idolino</i>”—which statuette or +idol, after having been consecrated by the astrologers—“ab astrologis +quibusdam ritibus sacrato”—was placed in the cavity of the chest of +the effigy by Tassi, in order, says the MS., that his soul might rest +until the general Resurrection. This passage is curious, and to me +somewhat puzzling; how could the soul of Duke Robert await the general +Resurrection, when, as a Catholic, he ought to have believed that +it must, as soon as separated from his body, go to Purgatory? Or is +there some semi-pagan superstition of the Renaissance (most strange, +certainly, in a man who had been a Cardinal) connecting the soul with a +guardian genius, who could be compelled, by magic rites (“ab astrologis +sacrato,” the MS. says of the little idol), to remain fixed to earth, +so that the soul should sleep in the body until the Day of Judgment? +I confess this story baffles me. I wonder whether such an idol ever +existed, or exists nowadays, in the body of Tassi’s bronze effigy?</p> + +<p><i>Oct. 20th.—</i></p> + +<p>I have been seeing a good deal of late of the Vice-Prefect’s son: an +amiable young man with a love-sick face and a languid interest in +Urbanian history and archaeology, of which he is profoundly ignorant. +This young man, who has lived at Siena and Lucca before his father was +promoted here, wears extremely long and tight trousers, which almost +preclude his bending his knees, a stick-up collar and an eyeglass, and +a pair of fresh kid gloves stuck in the breast of his coat, speaks of +Urbania as Ovid might have spoken of Pontus, and complains (as well +he may) of the barbarism of the young men, the officials who dine +at my inn and howl and sing like madmen, and the nobles who drive +gigs, showing almost as much throat as a lady at a ball. This person +frequently entertains me with his <i>amori</i>, past, present, and future; +he evidently thinks me very odd for having none to entertain him with +in return; he points out to me the pretty (or ugly) servant-girls and +dressmakers as we walk in the street, sighs deeply or sings in falsetto +behind every tolerably young-looking woman, and has finally taken me to +the house of the lady of his heart, a great black-mustachioed countess, +with a voice like a fish-crier; here, he says, I shall meet all the +best company in Urbania and some beautiful women—ah, too beautiful, +alas! I find three huge half-furnished rooms, with bare brick floors, +petroleum lamps, and horribly bad pictures on bright washball-blue +and gamboge walls, and in the midst of it all, every evening, a dozen +ladies and gentlemen seated in a circle, vociferating at each other the +same news a year old; the younger ladies in bright yellows and greens, +fanning themselves while my teeth chatter, and having sweet things +whispered behind their fans by officers with hair brushed up like a +hedgehog. And these are the women my friend expects me to fall in love +with! I vainly wait for tea or supper which does not come, and rush +home, determined to leave alone the Urbanian <i>beau monde</i>.</p> + +<p>It is quite true that I have no <i>amori</i>, although my friend does not +believe it. When I came to Italy first, I looked out for romance; +I sighed, like Goethe in Rome, for a window to open and a wondrous +creature to appear, “welch mich versengend erquickt.” Perhaps it is +because Goethe was a German, accustomed to German <i>Fraus</i>, and I +am, after all, a Pole, accustomed to something very different from +<i>Fraus</i>; but anyhow, for all my efforts, in Rome, Florence, and Siena, +I never could find a woman to go mad about, either among the ladies, +chattering bad French, or among the lower classes, as ’cute and cold as +money-lenders; so I steer clear of Italian womankind, its shrill voice +and gaudy toilettes. I am wedded to history, to the Past, to women like +Lucrezia Borgia, Vittoria Accoramboni, or that Medea da Carpi, for the +present; some day I shall perhaps find a grand passion, a woman to +play the Don Quixote about, like the Pole that I am; a woman out of +whose slipper to drink, and for whose pleasure to die; but not here! +Few things strike me so much as the degeneracy of Italian women. What +has become of the race of Faustinas, Marozias, Bianca Cappellos? Where +discover nowadays (I confess she haunts me) another Medea da Carpi? +Were it only possible to meet a woman of that extreme distinction of +beauty, of that terribleness of nature, even if only potential, I +do believe I could love her, even to the Day of Judgment, like any +Oliverotto da Narni, or Frangipani or Prinzivalle.</p> + +<p><i>Oct. 27th.—</i></p> + +<p>Fine sentiments the above are for a professor, a learned man! I thought +the young artists of Rome childish because they played practical jokes +and yelled at night in the streets, returning from the Caffè Greco +or the cellar in the Via Palombella; but am I not as childish to the +full—I, melancholy wretch, whom they called Hamlet and the Knight of +the Doleful Countenance?</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 5th.—</i></p> + +<p>I can’t free myself from the thought of this Medea da Carpi. In my +walks, my mornings in the Archives, my solitary evenings, I catch +myself thinking over the woman. Am I turning novelist instead of +historian? And still it seems to me that I understand her so well; +so much better than my facts warrant. First, we must put aside all +pedantic modern ideas of right and wrong. Right and wrong in a century +of violence and treachery does not exist, least of all for creatures +like Medea. Go preach right and wrong to a tigress, my dear sir! Yet is +there in the world anything nobler than the huge creature, steel when +she springs, velvet when she treads, as she stretches her supple body, +or smooths her beautiful skin, or fastens her strong claws into her +victim?</p> + +<p>Yes; I can understand Medea. Fancy a woman of superlative beauty, +of the highest courage and calmness, a woman of many resources, of +genius, brought up by a petty princelet of a father, upon Tacitus and +Sallust, and the tales of the great Malatestas, of Caesar Borgia and +such-like!—a woman whose one passion is conquest and empire—fancy +her, on the eve of being wedded to a man of the power of the Duke of +Stimigliano, claimed, carried off by a small fry of a Pico, locked up +in his hereditary brigand’s castle, and having to receive the young +fool’s red-hot love as an honor and a necessity! The mere thought of +any violence to such a nature is an abominable outrage; and if Pico +chooses to embrace such a woman at the risk of meeting a sharp piece +of steel in her arms, why, it is a fair bargain. Young hound—or, if +you prefer, young hero—to think to treat a woman like this as if she +were any village wench! Medea marries her Orsini. A marriage, let +it be noted, between an old soldier of fifty and a girl of sixteen. +Reflect what that means: it means that this imperious woman is soon +treated like a chattel, made roughly to understand that her business +is to give the Duke an heir, not advice; that she must never ask +“wherefore this or that?” that she must courtesy before the Duke’s +counselors, his captains, his mistresses; that, at the least suspicion +of rebelliousness, she is subject to his foul words and blows; at the +least suspicion of infidelity, to be strangled or starved to death, +or thrown down an oubliette. Suppose that she knew that her husband +has taken it into his head that she has looked too hard at this man or +that, that one of his lieutenants or one of his women have whispered +that, after all, the boy Bartolommeo might as soon be a Pico as an +Orsini. Suppose she knew that she must strike or be struck? Why, she +strikes, or gets some one to strike for her. At what price? A promise +of love, of love to a groom, the son of a serf! Why, the dog must be +mad or drunk to believe such a thing possible; his very belief in +anything so monstrous makes him worthy of death. And then he dares to +blab! This is much worse than Pico. Medea is bound to defend her honor +a second time; if she could stab Pico, she can certainly stab this +fellow, or have him stabbed.</p> + +<p>Hounded by her husband’s kinsmen, she takes refuge at Urbania. The +Duke, like every other man, falls wildly in love with Medea, and +neglects his wife; let us even go so far as to say, breaks his wife’s +heart. Is this Medea’s fault? Is it her fault that every stone that +comes beneath her chariot-wheels is crushed? Certainly not. Do you +suppose that a woman like Medea feels the smallest ill-will against a +poor, craven Duchess Maddalena? Why, she ignores her very existence. To +suppose Medea a cruel woman is as grotesque as to call her an immoral +woman. Her fate is, sooner or later, to triumph over her enemies, at +all events to make their victory almost a defeat; her magic faculty is +to enslave all the men who come across her path; all those who see her, +love her, become her slaves; and it is the destiny of all her slaves to +perish. Her lovers, with the exception of Duke Guidalfonso, all come to +an untimely end; and in this there is nothing unjust. The possession +of a woman like Medea is a happiness too great for a mortal man; it +would turn his head, make him forget even what he owed her; no man must +survive long who conceives himself to have a right over her; it is a +kind of sacrilege. And only death, the willingness to pay for such +happiness by death, can at all make a man worthy of being her lover; he +must be willing to love and suffer and die. This is the meaning of her +device—“Amour Dure—Dure Amour.” The love of Medea da Carpi cannot fade, +but the lover can die; it is a constant and a cruel love.</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 11th.—</i></p> + +<p>I was right, quite right in my idea. I have found—Oh, joy! I treated +the Vice-Prefect’s son to a dinner of five courses at the Trattoria La +Stella d’Italia out of sheer jubilation—I have found in the Archives, +unknown, of course, to the Director, a heap of letters—letters of Duke +Robert about Medea da Carpi, letters of Medea herself! Yes, Medea’s own +handwriting—a round, scholarly character, full of abbreviations, with a +Greek look about it, as befits a learned princess who could read Plato +as well as Petrarch. The letters are of little importance, mere drafts +of business letters for her secretary to copy, during the time that she +governed the poor weak Guidalfonso. But they are her letters, and I can +imagine almost that there hangs about these moldering pieces of paper a +scent as of a woman’s hair.</p> + +<p>The few letters of Duke Robert show him in a new light. A cunning, +cold, but craven priest. He trembles at the bare thought of Medea—“la +pessima Medea”—worse than her namesake of Colchis, as he calls +her. His long clemency is a result of mere fear of laying violent +hands upon her. He fears her as something almost supernatural; he +would have enjoyed having had her burnt as a witch. After letter on +letter, telling his crony, Cardinal Sanseverino, at Rome his various +precautions during her lifetime—how he wears a jacket of mail under +his coat; how he drinks only milk from a cow which he has milked in +his presence; how he tries his dog with morsels of his food, lest it +be poisoned; how he suspects the wax-candles because of their peculiar +smell; how he fears riding out lest some one should frighten his horse +and cause him to break his neck—after all this, and when Medea has +been in her grave two years, he tells his correspondent of his fear +of meeting the soul of Medea after his own death, and chuckles over +the ingenious device (concocted by his astrologer and a certain Fra +Gaudenzio, a Capuchin) by which he shall secure the absolute peace +of his soul until that of the wicked Medea be finally “chained up in +hell among the lakes of boiling pitch and the ice of Caina described +by the immortal bard”—old pedant! Here, then, is the explanation of +that silver image—<i>quod vulgo dicitur idolino</i>—which he caused to be +soldered into his effigy by Tassi. As long as the image of his soul was +attached to the image of his body, he should sleep awaiting the Day +of Judgment, fully convinced that Medea’s soul will then be properly +tarred and feathered, while his—honest man!—will fly straight to +Paradise. And to think that, two weeks ago, I believed this man to be +a hero! Aha! my good Duke Robert, you shall be shown up in my history; +and no amount of silver idolinos shall save you from being heartily +laughed at!</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 15th.—</i></p> + +<p>Strange! That idiot of a Prefect’s son, who has heard me talk a hundred +times of Medea da Carpi, suddenly recollects that, when he was a child +at Urbania, his nurse used to threaten him with a visit from Madonna +Medea, who rode in the sky on a black he-goat. My Duchess Medea turned +into a bogey for naughty little boys!</p> + +<p><i>Nov. 20th.—</i></p> + +<p>I have been going about with a Bavarian Professor of mediaeval history, +showing him all over the country. Among other places we went to Rocca +Sant’Elmo, to see the former villa of the Dukes of Urbania, the villa +where Medea was confined between the accession of Duke Robert and the +conspiracy of Marcantonio Frangipani, which caused her removal to the +nunnery immediately outside the town. A long ride up the desolate +Apennine valleys, bleak beyond words just now with their thin fringe +of oak scrub turned russet, thin patches of grass seared by the frost, +the last few yellow leaves of the poplars by the torrents shaking +and fluttering about in the chill Tramontana; the mountaintops are +wrapped in thick grey cloud; tomorrow, if the wind continues, we shall +see them round masses of snow against the cold blue sky. Sant’ Elmo +is a wretched hamlet high on the Apennine ridge, where the Italian +vegetation is already replaced by that of the North. You ride for +miles through leafless chestnut woods, the scent of the soaking brown +leaves filling the air, the roar of the torrent, turbid with autumn +rains, rising from the precipice below; then suddenly the leafless +chestnut woods are replaced, as at Vallombrosa, by a belt of black, +dense fir plantations. Emerging from these, you come to an open space, +frozen blasted meadows, the rocks of snow clad peak, the newly fallen +snow, close above you; and in the midst, on a knoll, with a gnarled +larch on either side, the ducal villa of Sant’ Elmo, a big black stone +box with a stone escutcheon, grated windows, and a double flight of +steps in front. It is now let out to the proprietor of the neighboring +woods, who uses it for the storage of chestnuts, faggots, and charcoal +from the neighboring ovens. We tied our horses to the iron rings and +entered: an old woman, with disheveled hair, was alone in the house. +The villa is a mere hunting-lodge, built by Ottobuono IV., the father +of Dukes Guidalfonso and Robert, about 1530. Some of the rooms have +at one time been frescoed and paneled with oak carvings, but all +this has disappeared. Only, in one of the big rooms, there remains a +large marble fireplace, similar to those in the palace at Urbania, +beautifully carved with Cupids on a blue ground; a charming naked boy +sustains a jar on either side, one containing clove pinks, the other +roses. The room was filled with stacks of faggots.</p> + +<p>We returned home late, my companion in excessively bad humor at the +fruitlessness of the expedition. We were caught in the skirt of a +snowstorm as we got into the chestnut woods. The sight of the snow +falling gently, of the earth and bushes whitened all round, made me +feel back at Posen, once more a child. I sang and shouted, to my +companion’s horror. This will be a bad point against me if reported +at Berlin. A historian of twenty-four who shouts and sings, and that +when another historian is cursing at the snow and the bad roads! All +night I lay awake watching the embers of my wood fire, and thinking of +Medea da Carpi mewed up, in winter, in that solitude of Sant’ Elmo, the +firs groaning, the torrent roaring, the snow falling all round; miles +and miles away from human creatures. I fancied I saw it all, and that +I, somehow, was Marcantonio Frangipani come to liberate her—or was it +Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi? I suppose it was because of the long ride, +the unaccustomed pricking feeling of the snow in the air; or perhaps +the punch which my professor insisted on drinking after dinner.</p> + +<p>Nov. 23rd.—</p> + +<p>Thank goodness, that Bavarian professor has finally departed! Those +days he spent here drove me nearly crazy. Talking over my work, I told +him one day my views on Medea da Carpi; whereupon he condescended to +answer that those were the usual tales due to the mythopoeic (old +idiot!) tendency of the Renaissance; that research would disprove the +greater part of them, as it had disproved the stories current about +the Borgias, &c.; that, moreover, such a woman as I made out was +psychologically and physiologically impossible. Would that one could +say as much of such professors as he and his fellows!</p> + +<p>Nov. 24th.—</p> + +<p>I cannot get over my pleasure in being rid of that imbecile; I felt as +if I could have throttled him every time he spoke of the Lady of my +thoughts—for such she has become—<i>Metea</i>, as the animal called her!</p> + +<p>Nov. 30th.—</p> + +<p>I feel quite shaken at what has just happened; I am beginning to fear +that that old pedant was right in saying that it was bad for me to live +all alone in a strange country, that it would make me morbid. It is +ridiculous that I should be put into such a state of excitement merely +by the chance discovery of a portrait of a woman dead these three +hundred years. With the case of my uncle Ladislas, and other suspicions +of insanity in my family, I ought really to guard against such foolish +excitement.</p> + +<p>Yet the incident was really dramatic, uncanny. I could have sworn that +I knew every picture in the palace here; and particularly every picture +of Her. Anyhow, this morning, as I was leaving the Archives, I passed +through one of the many small rooms—irregular-shaped closets—which fill +up the ins and outs of this curious palace, turreted like a French +château. I must have passed through that closet before, for the view +was so familiar out of its window; just the particular bit of round +tower in front, the cypress on the other side of the ravine, the +belfry beyond, and the piece of the line of Monte Sant’ Agata and the +Leonessa, covered with snow, against the sky. I suppose there must be +twin rooms, and that I had got into the wrong one; or rather, perhaps +some shutter had been opened or curtain withdrawn. As I was passing, +my eye was caught by a very beautiful old mirror-frame let into the +brown and yellow inlaid wall. I approached, and looking at the frame, +looked also, mechanically, into the glass. I gave a great start, and +almost shrieked, I do believe—(it’s lucky the Munich professor is safe +out of Urbania!). Behind my own image stood another, a figure close to +my shoulder, a face close to mine; and that figure, that face, hers! +Medea da Carpi’s! I turned sharp round, as white, I think, as the +ghost I expected to see. On the wall opposite the mirror, just a pace +or two behind where I had been standing, hung a portrait. And such a +portrait!—Bronzino never painted a grander one. Against a background of +harsh, dark blue, there stands out the figure of the Duchess (for it +is Medea, the real Medea, a thousand times more real, individual, and +powerful than in the other portraits), seated stiffly in a high-backed +chair, sustained, as it were, almost rigid, by the stiff brocade of +skirts and stomacher, stiffer for plaques of embroidered silver flowers +and rows of seed pearl. The dress is, with its mixture of silver and +pearl, of a strange dull red, a wicked poppy-juice color, against which +the flesh of the long, narrow hands with fringe-like fingers; of the +long slender neck, and the face with bared forehead, looks white and +hard, like alabaster. The face is the same as in the other portraits: +the same rounded forehead, with the short fleece-like, yellowish-red +curls; the same beautifully curved eyebrows, just barely marked; the +same eyelids, a little tight across the eyes; the same lips, a little +tight across the mouth; but with a purity of line, a dazzling splendor +of skin, and intensity of look immeasurably superior to all the other +portraits.</p> + +<p>She looks out of the frame with a cold, level glance; yet the lips +smile. One hand holds a dull-red rose; the other, long, narrow, +tapering, plays with a thick rope of silk and gold and jewels hanging +from the waist; round the throat, white as marble, partially confined +in the tight dull-red bodice, hangs a gold collar, with the device on +alternate enameled medallions, “AMOUR DURE—DURE AMOUR.”</p> + +<p>On reflection, I see that I simply could never have been in that room +or closet before; I must have mistaken the door. But, although the +explanation is so simple, I still, after several hours, feel terribly +shaken in all my being. If I grow so excitable I shall have to go to +Rome at Christmas for a holiday. I feel as if some danger pursued me +here (can it be fever?); and yet, and yet, I don’t see how I shall ever +tear myself away.</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 10th</i>.—</p> + +<p>I have made an effort, and accepted the Vice-Prefect’s son’s invitation +to see the oil-making at a villa of theirs near the coast. The villa, +or farm, is an old fortified, towered place, standing on a hillside +among olive-trees and little osier-bushes, which look like a bright +orange flame. The olives are squeezed in a tremendous black cellar, +like a prison: you see, by the faint white daylight, and the smoky +yellow flare of resin burning in pans, great white bullocks moving +round a huge millstone; vague figures working at pulleys and handles: +it looks, to my fancy, like some scene of the Inquisition. The +Cavaliere regaled me with his best wine and rusks. I took some long +walks by the seaside; I had left Urbania wrapped in snow-clouds; down +on the coast there was a bright sun; the sunshine, the sea, the bustle +of the little port on the Adriatic seemed to do me good. I came back +to Urbania another man. Sor Asdrubale, my landlord, poking about in +slippers among the gilded chests, the Empire sofas, the old cups and +saucers and pictures which no one will buy, congratulated me upon the +improvement in my looks. “You work too much,” he says; “youth requires +amusement, theatres, promenades, <i>amori</i>—it is time enough to be +serious when one is bald”—and he took off his greasy red cap. Yes, I am +better! and, as a result, I take to my work with delight again. I will +cut them out still, those wiseacres at Berlin!</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 14th</i>.—</p> + +<p>I don’t think I have ever felt so happy about my work. I see it all +so well—that crafty, cowardly Duke Robert; that melancholy Duchess +Maddalena; that weak, showy, would-be chivalrous Duke Guidalfonso; +and above all, the splendid figure of Medea. I feel as if I were the +greatest historian of the age; and, at the same time, as if I were a +boy of twelve. It snowed yesterday for the first time in the city, +for two good hours. When it had done, I actually went into the square +and taught the ragamuffins to make a snowman; no, a snow-woman; and I +had the fancy to call her Medea. “La pessima Medea!” cried one of the +boys—“the one who used to ride through the air on a goat?” “No, no,” +I said; “she was a beautiful lady, the Duchess of Urbania, the most +beautiful woman that ever lived.” I made her a crown of tinsel, and +taught the boys to cry “Evviva, Medea!” But one of them said, “She is +a witch! She must be burnt!” At which they all rushed to fetch burning +faggots and tow; in a minute the yelling demons had melted her down.</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 15th</i>.—</p> + +<p>What a goose I am, and to think I am twenty-four, and known in +literature! In my long walks I have composed to a tune (I don’t know +what it is) which all the people are singing and whistling in the +street at present, a poem in frightful Italian, beginning “Medea, mia +dea,” calling on her in the name of her various lovers. I go about +humming between my teeth, “Why am I not Marcantonio? or Prinzivalle? +or he of Narni? or the good Duke Alfonso? that I might be beloved by +thee, Medea, mia dea,” &c. &c. Awful rubbish! My landlord, I think, +suspects that Medea must be some lady I met while I was staying by the +seaside. I am sure Sora Serafina, Sora Lodovica, and Sora Adalgisa—the +three Parcae or <i>Norns</i>, as I call them—have some such notion. This +afternoon, at dusk, while tidying my room, Sora Lodovica said to me, +“How beautifully the Signorino has taken to singing!” I was scarcely +aware that I had been vociferating, “Vieni, Medea, mia dea,” while the +old lady bobbed about making up my fire. I stopped; a nice reputation +I shall get! I thought, and all this will somehow get to Rome, and +thence to Berlin. Sora Lodovica was leaning out of the window, pulling +in the iron hook of the shrine-lamp which marks Sor Asdrubale’s house. +As she was trimming the lamp previous to swinging it out again, she +said in her odd, prudish little way, “You are wrong to stop singing, my +son” (she varies between calling me Signor Professore and such terms +of affection as “Nino,” “Viscere mie,” &c.); “you are wrong to stop +singing, for there is a young lady there in the street who has actually +stopped to listen to you.”</p> + +<p>I ran to the window. A woman, wrapped in a black shawl, was standing in +an archway, looking up to the window.</p> + +<p>“Eh, eh! the Signor Professore has admirers,” said Sora Lodovica.</p> + +<p>“Medea, mia dea!” I burst out as loud as I could, with a boy’s pleasure +in disconcerting the inquisitive passer-by. She turned suddenly round +to go away, waving her hand at me; at that moment Sora Lodovica swung +the shrine-lamp back into its place. A stream of light fell across the +street. I felt myself grow quite cold; the face of the woman outside +was that of Medea da Carpi!</p> + +<p>What a fool I am, to be sure!</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">Part II</h3> + +<p>Dec. 17th.—I fear that my craze about Medea da Carpi has become well +known, thanks to my silly talk and idiotic songs. That Vice-Prefect’s +son—or the assistant at the Archives, or perhaps some of the company +at the Contessa’s, is trying to play me a trick! But take care, my +good ladies and gentlemen, I shall pay you out in your own coin! +Imagine my feelings when, this morning, I found on my desk a folded +letter addressed to me in a curious handwriting which seemed strangely +familiar to me, and which, after a moment, I recognized as that of the +letters of Medea da Carpi at the Archives. It gave me a horrible shock. +My next idea was that it must be a present from some one who knew my +interest in Medea—a genuine letter of hers on which some idiot had +written my address instead of putting it into an envelope. But it was +addressed to me, written to me, no old letter; merely four lines, which +ran as follows:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“To Spiridion.—</p> + +<p>“A person who knows the interest you bear her will be at the Church +of San Giovanni Decollato this evening at nine. Look out, in the left +aisle, for a lady wearing a black mantle, and holding a rose.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>By this time I understood that I was the object of a conspiracy, +the victim of a hoax. I turned the letter round and round. It was +written on paper such as was made in the sixteenth century, and in an +extraordinarily precise imitation of Medea da Carpi’s characters. Who +had written it? I thought over all the possible people. On the whole, +it must be the Vice-Prefect’s son, perhaps in combination with his +lady-love, the Countess. They must have torn a blank page off some +old letter; but that either of them should have had the ingenuity of +inventing such a hoax, or the power of committing such a forgery, +astounds me beyond measure. There is more in these people than I should +have guessed. How pay them off? By taking no notice of the letter? +Dignified, but dull. No, I will go; perhaps some one will be there, and +I will mystify them in their turn. Or, if no one is there, how I shall +crow over them for their imperfectly carried out plot! Perhaps this +is some folly of the Cavalier Muzio’s to bring me into the presence +of some lady whom he destines to be the flame of my future <i>amori</i>. +That is likely enough. And it would be too idiotic and professorial to +refuse such an invitation; the lady must be worth knowing who can forge +sixteenth-century letters like this, for I am sure that languid swell +Muzio never could. I will go! By Heaven! I’ll pay them back in their +own coin! It is now five—how long these days are!</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 18th.</i>—</p> + +<p>Am I mad? Or are there really ghosts? That adventure of last night has +shaken me to the very depth of my soul.</p> + +<p>I went at nine, as the mysterious letter had bid me. It was bitterly +cold, and the air full of fog and sleet; not a shop open, not a +window unshuttered, not a creature visible; the narrow black streets, +precipitous between their high walls and under their lofty archways, +were only the blacker for the dull light of an oil-lamp here and there, +with its flickering yellow reflection on the wet flags. San Giovanni +Decollato is a little church, or rather oratory, which I have always +hitherto seen shut up (as so many churches here are shut up except +on great festivals); and situate behind the ducal palace, on a sharp +ascent, and forming the bifurcation of two steep paved lanes. I have +passed by the place a hundred times, and scarcely noticed the little +church, except for the marble high relief over the door, showing the +grizzly head of the Baptist in the charger, and for the iron cage +close by, in which were formerly exposed the heads of criminals; the +decapitated, or, as they call him here, decollated, John the Baptist, +being apparently the patron of axe and block.</p> + +<p>A few strides took me from my lodgings to San Giovanni Decollato. I +confess I was excited; one is not twenty-four and a Pole for nothing. +On getting to the kind of little platform at the bifurcation of the +two precipitous streets, I found, to my surprise, that the windows of +the church or oratory were not lighted, and that the door was locked! +So this was the precious joke that had been played upon me; to send +me on a bitter cold, sleety night, to a church which was shut up and +had perhaps been shut up for years! I don’t know what I couldn’t have +done in that moment of rage; I felt inclined to break open the church +door, or to go and pull the Vice-Prefect’s son out of bed (for I felt +sure that the joke was his). I determined upon the latter course; and +was walking towards his door, along the black alley to the left of the +church, when I was suddenly stopped by the sound as of an organ close +by, an organ, yes, quite plainly, and the voice of choristers and the +drone of a litany. So the church was not shut, after all! I retraced +my steps to the top of the lane. All was dark and in complete silence. +Suddenly there came again a faint gust of organ and voices. I listened; +it clearly came from the other lane, the one on the right-hand side. +Was there, perhaps, another door there? I passed beneath the archway, +and descended a little way in the direction whence the sounds seemed to +come. But no door, no light, only the black walls, the black wet flags, +with their faint yellow reflections of flickering oil-lamps; moreover, +complete silence. I stopped a minute, and then the chant rose again; +this time it seemed to me most certainly from the lane I had just left. +I went back—nothing. Thus backwards and forwards, the sounds always +beckoning, as it were, one way, only to beckon me back, vainly, to the +other.</p> + +<p>At last I lost patience; and I felt a sort of creeping terror, which +only a violent action could dispel. If the mysterious sounds came +neither from the street to the right, nor from the street to the left, +they could come only from the church. Half-maddened, I rushed up +the two or three steps, and prepared to wrench the door open with a +tremendous effort. To my amazement, it opened with the greatest ease. +I entered, and the sounds of the litany met me louder than before, +as I paused a moment between the outer door and the heavy leathern +curtain. I raised the latter and crept in. The altar was brilliantly +illuminated with tapers and garlands of chandeliers; this was evidently +some evening service connected with Christmas. The nave and aisles +were comparatively dark, and about half-full. I elbowed my way along +the right aisle towards the altar. When my eyes had got accustomed to +the unexpected light, I began to look round me, and with a beating +heart. The idea that all this was a hoax, that I should meet merely +some acquaintance of my friend the Cavaliere’s, had somehow departed: +I looked about. The people were all wrapped up, the men in big cloaks, +the women in woolen veils and mantles. The body of the church was +comparatively dark, and I could not make out anything very clearly, +but it seemed to me, somehow, as if, under the cloaks and veils, these +people were dressed in a rather extraordinary fashion. The man in front +of me, I remarked, showed yellow stockings beneath his cloak; a woman, +hard by, a red bodice, laced behind with gold tags. Could these be +peasants from some remote part come for the Christmas festivities, or +did the inhabitants of Urbania don some old-fashioned garb in honor of +Christmas?</p> + +<p>As I was wondering, my eye suddenly caught that of a woman standing in +the opposite aisle, close to the altar, and in the full blaze of its +lights. She was wrapped in black, but held, in a very conspicuous way, +a red rose, an unknown luxury at this time of the year in a place like +Urbania. She evidently saw me, and turning even more fully into the +light, she loosened her heavy black cloak, displaying a dress of deep +red, with gleams of silver and gold embroideries; she turned her face +towards me; the full blaze of the chandeliers and tapers fell upon it. +It was the face of Medea da Carpi! I dashed across the nave, pushing +people roughly aside, or rather, it seemed to me, passing through +impalpable bodies. But the lady turned and walked rapidly down the +aisle towards the door. I followed close upon her, but somehow I could +not get up with her. Once, at the curtain, she turned round again. +She was within a few paces of me. Yes, it was Medea. Medea herself, +no mistake, no delusion, no sham; the oval face, the lips tightened +over the mouth, the eyelids tight over the corner of the eyes, the +exquisite alabaster complexion! She raised the curtain and glided out. +I followed; the curtain alone separated me from her. I saw the wooden +door swing to behind her. One step ahead of me! I tore open the door; +she must be on the steps, within reach of my arm!</p> + +<p>I stood outside the church. All was empty, merely the wet pavement and +the yellow reflections in the pools: a sudden cold seized me; I could +not go on. I tried to re-enter the church; it was shut. I rushed home, +my hair standing on end, and trembling in all my limbs, and remained +for an hour like a maniac. Is it a delusion? Am I too going mad? O God, +God! am I going mad?</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 19th.—</i></p> + +<p>A brilliant, sunny day; all the black snow-slush has disappeared out +of the town, off the bushes and trees. The snow-clad mountains sparkle +against the bright blue sky. A Sunday, and Sunday weather; all the +bells are ringing for the approach of Christmas. They are preparing +for a kind of fair in the square with the colonnade, putting up +booths filled with colored cotton and woolen ware, bright shawls and +kerchiefs, mirrors, ribbons, brilliant pewter lamps; the whole turn-out +of the peddler in “Winter’s Tale.” The pork-shops are all garlanded +with green and with paper flowers, the hams and cheeses stuck full of +little flags and green twigs. I strolled out to see the cattle-fair +outside the gate; a forest of interlacing horns, an ocean of lowing +and stamping: hundreds of immense white bullocks, with horns a yard +long and red tassels, packed close together on the little piazza d’armi +under the city walls. Bah! Why do I write this trash? What’s the use of +it all? While I am forcing myself to write about bells, and Christmas +festivities, and cattle-fairs, one idea goes on like a bell within me: +Medea, Medea! Have I really seen her, or am I mad?</p> + +<p>Two hours later.—That Church of San Giovanni Decollato—so my landlord +informs me—has not been made use of within the memory of man. Could +it have been all a hallucination or a dream—perhaps a dream dreamed +that night? I have been out again to look at that church. There it is, +at the bifurcation of the two steep lanes, with its bas-relief of the +Baptist’s head over the door. The door does look as if it had not been +opened for years. I can see the cobwebs in the windowpanes; it does +look as if, as Sor Asdrubale says, only rats and spiders congregated +within it. And yet—and yet; I have so clear a remembrance, so distinct +a consciousness of it all. There was a picture of the daughter of +Herodias dancing, upon the altar; I remember her white turban with a +scarlet tuft of feathers, and Herod’s blue caftan; I remember the shape +of the central chandelier; it swung round slowly, and one of the wax +lights had got bent almost in two by the heat and draught.</p> + +<p>Things, all these, which I may have seen elsewhere, stored unawares +in my brain, and which may have come out, somehow, in a dream; I +have heard physiologists allude to such things. I will go again: if +the church be shut, why then it must have been a dream, a vision, +the result of over-excitement. I must leave at once for Rome and see +doctors, for I am afraid of going mad. If, on the other hand—pshaw! +there <i>is no other hand</i> in such a case. Yet if there were—why then, +I should really have seen Medea; I might see her again; speak to +her. The mere thought sets my blood in a whirl, not with horror, but +with… I know not what to call it. The feeling terrifies me, but it is +delicious. Idiot! There is some little coil of my brain, the twentieth +of a hair’s-breadth out of order—that’s all!</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 20th.—</i></p> + +<p>I have been again; I have heard the music; I have been inside the +church; I have seen Her! I can no longer doubt my senses. Why should I? +Those pedants say that the dead are dead, the past is past. For them, +yes; but why for me?—why for a man who loves, who is consumed with the +love of a woman?—a woman who, indeed—yes, let me finish the sentence. +Why should there not be ghosts to such as can see them? Why should she +not return to the earth, if she knows that it contains a man who thinks +of, desires, only her?</p> + +<p>A hallucination? Why, I saw her, as I see this paper that I write upon; +standing there, in the full blaze of the altar. Why, I heard the rustle +of her skirts, I smelt the scent of her hair, I raised the curtain +which was shaking from her touch. Again I missed her. But this time, +as I rushed out into the empty moonlit street, I found upon the church +steps a rose—the rose which I had seen in her hand the moment before—I +felt it, smelt it; a rose, a real, living rose, dark red and only just +plucked. I put it into water when I returned, after having kissed it, +who knows how many times? I placed it on the top of the cupboard; I +determined not to look at it for twenty-four hours lest it should be +a delusion. But I must see it again; I must…. Good Heavens! this is +horrible, horrible; if I had found a skeleton it could not have been +worse! The rose, which last night seemed freshly plucked, full of +color and perfume, is brown, dry—a thing kept for centuries between +the leaves of a book—it has crumbled into dust between my fingers. +Horrible, horrible! But why so, pray? Did I not know that I was in love +with a woman dead three hundred years? If I wanted fresh roses which +bloomed yesterday, the Countess Fiammetta or any little sempstress in +Urbania might have given them me. What if the rose has fallen to dust? +If only I could hold Medea in my arms as I held it in my fingers, kiss +her lips as I kissed its petals, should I not be satisfied if she too +were to fall to dust the next moment, if I were to fall to dust myself?</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 22nd, Eleven at night.—</i></p> + +<p>I have seen her once more!—almost spoken to her. I have been promised +her love! Ah, Spiridion! you were right when you felt that you were +not made for any earthly <i>amori</i>. At the usual hour I betook myself +this evening to San Giovanni Decollato. A bright winter night; the +high houses and belfries standing out against a deep blue heaven +luminous, shimmering like steel with myriads of stars; the moon has +not yet risen. There was no light in the windows; but, after a little +effort, the door opened and I entered the church, the altar, as usual, +brilliantly illuminated. It struck me suddenly that all this crowd of +men and women standing all round, these priests chanting and moving +about the altar, were dead—that they did not exist for any man save me. +I touched, as if by accident, the hand of my neighbor; it was cold, +like wet clay. He turned round, but did not seem to see me: his face +was ashy, and his eyes staring, fixed, like those of a blind man or a +corpse. I felt as if I must rush out. But at that moment my eye fell +upon Her, standing as usual by the altar steps, wrapped in a black +mantle, in the full blaze of the lights. She turned round; the light +fell straight upon her face, the face with the delicate features, the +eyelids and lips a little tight, the alabaster skin faintly tinged with +pale pink. Our eyes met.</p> + +<p>I pushed my way across the nave towards where she stood by the altar +steps; she turned quickly down the aisle, and I after her. Once or +twice she lingered, and I thought I should overtake her; but again, +when, not a second after the door had closed upon her, I stepped out +into the street, she had vanished. On the church step lay something +white. It was not a flower this time, but a letter. I rushed back to +the church to read it; but the church was fast shut, as if it had not +been opened for years. I could not see by the flickering shrine-lamps—I +rushed home, lit my lamp, pulled the letter from my breast. I have it +before me. The handwriting is hers; the same as in the Archives, the +same as in that first letter:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“To Spiridion.—</p> + +<p>“Let thy courage be equal to thy love, and thy love shall be rewarded. +On the night preceding Christmas, take a hatchet and saw; cut boldly +into the body of the bronze rider who stands in the Corte, on the left +side, near the waist. Saw open the body, and within it thou wilt find +the silver effigy of a winged genius. Take it out, hack it into a +hundred pieces, and fling them in all directions, so that the winds may +sweep them away. That night she whom thou lovest will come to reward +thy fidelity.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>On the brownish wax is the device—</p> + +<p class="center">“AMOUR DURE—DURE AMOUR.”</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 23rd.—</i></p> + +<p>So it is true! I was reserved for something wonderful in this world. +I have at last found that after which my soul has been straining. +Ambition, love of art, love of Italy, these things which have occupied +my spirit, and have yet left me continually unsatisfied, these were +none of them my real destiny. I have sought for life, thirsting for +it as a man in the desert thirsts for a well; but the life of the +senses of other youths, the life of the intellect of other men, have +never slaked that thirst. Shall life for me mean the love of a dead +woman? We smile at what we choose to call the superstition of the +past, forgetting that all our vaunted science of today may seem just +such another superstition to the men of the future; but why should the +present be right and the past wrong? The men who painted the pictures +and built the palaces of three hundred years ago were certainly of +as delicate fiber, of as keen reason, as ourselves, who merely print +calico and build locomotives. What makes me think this, is that I have +been calculating my nativity by help of an old book belonging to Sor +Asdrubale—and see, my horoscope tallies almost exactly with that of +Medea da Carpi, as given by a chronicler. May this explain? No, no; all +is explained by the fact that the first time I read of this woman’s +career, the first time I saw her portrait, I loved her, though I hid my +love to myself in the garb of historical interest. Historical interest +indeed!</p> + +<p>I have got the hatchet and the saw. I bought the saw of a poor joiner, +in a village some miles off; he did not understand at first what I +meant, and I think he thought me mad; perhaps I am. But if madness +means the happiness of one’s life, what of it? The hatchet I saw lying +in a timber-yard, where they prepare the great trunks of the fir-trees +which grow high on the Apennines of Sant’ Elmo. There was no one in +the yard, and I could not resist the temptation; I handled the thing, +tried its edge, and stole it. This is the first time in my life that I +have been a thief; why did I not go into a shop and buy a hatchet? I +don’t know; I seemed unable to resist the sight of the shining blade. +What I am going to do is, I suppose, an act of vandalism; and certainly +I have no right to spoil the property of this city of Urbania. But +I wish no harm either to the statue or the city, if I could plaster +up the bronze, I would do so willingly. But I must obey Her; I must +avenge Her; I must get at that silver image which Robert of Montemurlo +had made and consecrated in order that his cowardly soul might sleep +in peace, and not encounter that of the being whom he dreaded most in +the world. Aha! Duke Robert, you forced her to die unshriven, and you +stuck the image of your soul into the image of your body, thinking +thereby that, while she suffered the tortures of Hell, you would rest +in peace, until your well-scoured little soul might fly straight up to +Paradise;—you were afraid of Her when both of you should be dead, and +thought yourself very clever to have prepared for all emergencies! Not +so, Serene Highness. You too shall taste what it is to wander after +death, and to meet the dead whom one has injured.</p> + +<p>What an interminable day! But I shall see her again tonight.</p> + +<p>Eleven o’clock.—No; the church was fast closed; the spell had ceased. +Until tomorrow I shall not see her. But tomorrow! Ah, Medea! did any of +thy lovers love thee as I do?</p> + +<p>Twenty-four hours more till the moment of happiness—the moment for +which I seem to have been waiting all my life. And after that, what +next? Yes, I see it plainer every minute; after that, nothing more. +All those who loved Medea da Carpi, who loved and who served her, +died: Giovanfrancesco Pico, her first husband, whom she left stabbed +in the castle from which she fled; Stimigliano, who died of poison; +the groom who gave him the poison, cut down by her orders; Oliverotto +da Narni, Marcantonio Frangipani, and that poor boy of the Ordelaffi, +who had never even looked upon her face, and whose only reward was that +handkerchief with which the hangman wiped the sweat off his face, when +he was one mass of broken limbs and torn flesh: all had to die, and I +shall die also.</p> + +<p>The love of such a woman is enough, and is fatal—“Amour Dure,” as her +device says. I shall die also. But why not? Would it be possible to +live in order to love another woman? Nay, would it be possible to drag +on a life like this one after the happiness of tomorrow? Impossible; +the others died, and I must die. I always felt that I should not live +long; a gipsy in Poland told me once that I had in my hand the cut-line +which signifies a violent death. I might have ended in a duel with some +brother-student, or in a railway accident. No, no; my death will not be +of that sort! Death—and is not she also dead? What strange vistas does +such a thought not open! Then the others—Pico, the Groom, Stimigliano, +Oliverotto, Frangipani, Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi—will they all be +<i>there?</i> But she shall love me best—me by whom she has been loved after +she has been three hundred years in the grave!</p> + +<p><i>Dec. 24th.—</i></p> + +<p>I have made all my arrangements. Tonight at eleven I slip out; Sor +Asdrubale and his sisters will be sound asleep. I have questioned +them; their fear of rheumatism prevents their attending midnight mass. +Luckily there are no churches between this and the Corte; whatever +movement Christmas night may entail will be a good way off. The +Vice-Prefect’s rooms are on the other side of the palace; the rest of +the square is taken up with state-rooms, archives, and empty stables +and coach-houses of the palace. Besides, I shall be quick at my work.</p> + +<p>I have tried my saw on a stout bronze vase I bought of Sor Asdrubale; +and the bronze of the statue, hollow and worn away by rust (I have even +noticed holes), cannot resist very much, especially after a blow with +the sharp hatchet. I have put my papers in order, for the benefit of +the Government which has sent me hither. I am sorry to have defrauded +them of their “History of Urbania.” To pass the endless day and calm +the fever of impatience, I have just taken a long walk. This is the +coldest day we have had. The bright sun does not warm in the least, but +seems only to increase the impression of cold, to make the snow on the +mountains glitter, the blue air to sparkle like steel. The few people +who are out are muffled to the nose, and carry earthenware braziers +beneath their cloaks; long icicles hang from the fountain with the +figure of Mercury upon it; one can imagine the wolves trooping down +through the dry scrub and beleaguering this town. Somehow this cold +makes me feel wonderfully calm—it seems to bring back to me my boyhood.</p> + +<p>As I walked up the rough, steep, paved alleys, slippery with frost, +and with their vista of snow mountains against the sky, and passed +by the church steps strewn with box and laurel, with the faint smell +of incense coming out, there returned to me—I know not why—the +recollection, almost the sensation, of those Christmas Eves long ago +at Posen and Breslau, when I walked as a child along the wide streets, +peeping into the windows where they were beginning to light the tapers +of the Christmas-trees, and wondering whether I too, on returning +home, should be let into a wonderful room all blazing with lights and +gilded nuts and glass beads. They are hanging the last strings of +those blue and red metallic beads, fastening on the last gilded and +silvered walnuts on the trees out there at home in the North; they are +lighting the blue and red tapers; the wax is beginning to run on to the +beautiful spruce green branches; the children are waiting with beating +hearts behind the door, to be told that the Christ-Child has been. And +I, for what am I waiting? I don’t know; all seems a dream; everything +vague and unsubstantial about me, as if time had ceased, nothing could +happen, my own desires and hopes were all dead, myself absorbed into I +know not what passive dreamland. Do I long for tonight? Do I dread it? +Will tonight ever come? Do I feel anything, does anything exist all +round me?</p> + +<p>I sit and seem to see that street at Posen, the wide street with the +windows illuminated by the Christmas lights, the green fir-branches +grazing the window-panes.</p> + +<p><i>Christmas Eve, Midnight.—</i></p> + +<p>I have done it. I slipped out noiselessly. Sor Asdrubale and his +sisters were fast asleep. I feared I had waked them, for my hatchet +fell as I was passing through the principal room where my landlord +keeps his curiosities for sale; it struck against some old armor which +he has been piecing. I heard him exclaim, half in his sleep; and blew +out my light and hid in the stairs. He came out in his dressing-gown, +but finding no one, went back to bed again. “Some cat, no doubt!” he +said. I closed the house door softly behind me. The sky had become +stormy since the afternoon, luminous with the full moon, but strewn +with grey and buff-colored vapors; every now and then the moon +disappeared entirely. Not a creature abroad; the tall gaunt houses +staring in the moonlight.</p> + +<p>I know not why, I took a roundabout way to the Corte, past one or two +church doors, whence issued the faint flicker of midnight mass. For a +moment I felt a temptation to enter one of them; but something seemed +to restrain me. I caught snatches of the Christmas hymn. I felt myself +beginning to be unnerved, and hastened towards the Corte. As I passed +under the portico at San Francesco I heard steps behind me; it seemed +to me that I was followed. I stopped to let the other pass. As he +approached his pace flagged; he passed close by me and murmured, “Do +not go: I am Giovanfrancesco Pico.” I turned round; he was gone. A +coldness numbed me; but I hastened on.</p> + +<p>Behind the cathedral apse, in a narrow lane, I saw a man leaning +against a wall. The moonlight was full upon him; it seemed to me that +his face, with a thin pointed beard, was streaming with blood. I +quickened my pace; but as I grazed by him he whispered, “Do not obey +her; return home: I am Marcantonio Frangipani.” My teeth chattered, but +I hurried along the narrow lane, with the moonlight blue upon the white +walls. At last I saw the Corte before me: the square was flooded with +moonlight, the windows of the palace seemed brightly illuminated, and +the statue of Duke Robert, shimmering green, seemed advancing towards +me on its horse. I came into the shadow. I had to pass beneath an +archway. There started a figure as if out of the wall, and barred my +passage with his outstretched cloaked arm. I tried to pass. He seized +me by the arm, and his grasp was like a weight of ice. “You shall not +pass!” he cried, and, as the moon came out once more, I saw his face, +ghastly white and bound with an embroidered kerchief; he seemed almost +a child. “You shall not pass!” he cried; “you shall not have her! She +is mine, and mine alone! I am Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi.” I felt his +ice-cold clutch, but with my other arm I laid about me wildly with the +hatchet which I carried beneath my cloak. The hatchet struck the wall +and rang upon the stone. He had vanished.</p> + +<p>I hurried on. I did it. I cut open the bronze; I sawed it into a wider +gash. I tore out the silver image, and hacked it into innumerable +pieces. As I scattered the last fragments about, the moon was suddenly +veiled; a great wind arose, howling down the square; it seemed to me +that the earth shook. I threw down the hatchet and the saw, and fled +home. I felt pursued, as if by the tramp of hundreds of invisible +horsemen.</p> + +<p>Now I am calm. It is midnight; another moment and she will be here! +Patience, my heart! I hear it beating loud. I trust that no one will +accuse poor Sor Asdrubale. I will write a letter to the authorities +to declare his innocence should anything happen…. One! the clock in +the palace tower has just struck…. “I hereby certify that, should +anything happen this night to me, Spiridion Trepka, no one but myself +is to be held…” A step on the staircase! It is she! it is she! At +last, Medea, Medea! Ah! AMOUR DURE—DURE AMOUR!</p> + +<hr> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>NOTE.—Here ends the diary of the late Spiridion Trepka. The chief +newspapers of the province of Umbria informed the public that, on +Christmas morning of the year 1885, the bronze equestrian statue of +Robert II. had been found grievously mutilated; and that Professor +Spiridion Trepka of Posen, in the German Empire, had been discovered +dead of a stab in the region of the heart, given by an unknown hand.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<h2>Dionea</h2> + +<p class="center">From the Letters of Doctor Alessandro De Rosis to the<br>Lady Evelyn +Savelli, Princess of Sabina.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>Montemiro Ligure, June 29, 1873.</i></p> + +<p>I take immediate advantage of the generous offer of your Excellency +(allow an old Republican who has held you on his knees to address +you by that title sometimes, ’tis so appropriate) to help our poor +people. I never expected to come a-begging so soon. For the olive crop +has been unusually plenteous. We semi-Genoese don’t pick the olives +unripe, like our Tuscan neighbors, but let them grow big and black, +when the young fellows go into the trees with long reeds and shake +them down on the grass for the women to collect—a pretty sight which +your Excellency must see some day: the grey trees with the brown, +barefoot lads craning, balanced in the branches, and the turquoise sea +as background just beneath…. That sea of ours—it is all along of it +that I wish to ask for money. Looking up from my desk, I see the sea +through the window, deep below and beyond the olive woods, bluish-green +in the sunshine and veined with violet under the cloud-bars, like one +of your Ravenna mosaics spread out as pavement for the world: a wicked +sea, wicked in its loveliness, wickeder than your grey northern ones, +and from which must have arisen in times gone by (when Phoenicians or +Greeks built the temples at Lerici and Porto Venere) a baleful goddess +of beauty, a Venus Verticordia, but in the bad sense of the word, +overwhelming men’s lives in sudden darkness like that squall of last +week.</p> + +<p>To come to the point. I want you, dear Lady Evelyn, to promise me some +money, a great deal of money, as much as would buy you a little mannish +cloth frock—for the complete bringing-up, until years of discretion, of +a young stranger whom the sea has laid upon our shore. Our people, kind +as they are, are very poor, and overburdened with children; besides, +they have got a certain repugnance for this poor little waif, cast up +by that dreadful storm, and who is doubtless a heathen, for she had no +little crosses or scapulars on, like proper Christian children. So, +being unable to get any of our women to adopt the child, and having an +old bachelor’s terror of my housekeeper, I have bethought me of certain +nuns, holy women, who teach little girls to say their prayers and make +lace close by here; and of your dear Excellency to pay for the whole +business.</p> + +<p>Poor little brown mite! She was picked up after the storm (such a +set-out of ship-models and votive candles as that storm must have +brought the Madonna at Porto Venere!) on a strip of sand between the +rocks of our castle: the thing was really miraculous, for this coast is +like a shark’s jaw, and the bits of sand are tiny and far between. She +was lashed to a plank, swaddled up close in outlandish garments; and +when they brought her to me they thought she must certainly be dead: a +little girl of four or five, decidedly pretty, and as brown as a berry, +who, when she came to, shook her head to show she understood no kind +of Italian, and jabbered some half-intelligible Eastern jabber, a few +Greek words embedded in I know not what; the Superior of the College +De Propagandâ Fide would be puzzled to know. The child appears to be +the only survivor from a ship which must have gone down in the great +squall, and whose timbers have been strewing the bay for some days +past; no one at Spezia or in any of our ports knows anything about her, +but she was seen, apparently making for Porto Venere, by some of our +sardine-fishers: a big, lumbering craft, with eyes painted on each side +of the prow, which, as you know, is a peculiarity of Greek boats. She +was sighted for the last time off the island of Palmaria, entering, +with all sails spread, right into the thick of the storm-darkness. No +bodies, strangely enough, have been washed ashore.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 10.</i></p> + +<p>I have received the money, dear Donna Evelina. There was tremendous +excitement down at San Massimo when the carrier came in with a +registered letter, and I was sent for, in presence of all the village +authorities, to sign my name on the postal register.</p> + +<p>The child has already been settled some days with the nuns; such +dear little nuns (nuns always go straight to the heart of an old +priest-hater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed in +brown robes and close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hat +flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of +the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little +way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees. +Your <i>protégée</i> has already half set the convent, the village, the +Episcopal See, the Order of St. Francis, by the ears. First, because +nobody could make out whether or not she had been christened. The +question was a grave one, for it appears (as your uncle-in-law, the +Cardinal, will tell you) that it is almost equally undesirable to be +christened twice over as not to be christened at all. The first danger +was finally decided upon as the less terrible; but the child, they +say, had evidently been baptized before, and knew that the operation +ought not to be repeated, for she kicked and plunged and yelled like +twenty little devils, and positively would not let the holy water +touch her. The Mother Superior, who always took for granted that the +baptism had taken place before, says that the child was quite right, +and that Heaven was trying to prevent a sacrilege; but the priest and +the barber’s wife, who had to hold her, think the occurrence fearful, +and suspect the little girl of being a Protestant. Then the question +of the name. Pinned to her clothes—striped Eastern things, and that +kind of crinkled silk stuff they weave in Crete and Cyprus—was a piece +of parchment, a scapular we thought at first, but which was found to +contain only the name <i>Dionea</i>—Dionea, as they pronounce it here. The +question was, Could such a name be fitly borne by a young lady at +the Convent of the Stigmata? Half the population here have names as +unchristian quite—Norma, Odoacer, Archimedes—my housemaid is called +Themis—but Dionea seemed to scandalize every one, perhaps because +these good folk had a mysterious instinct that the name is derived +from Dione, one of the loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less +a lady than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called +Maria, although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas, +Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But the sister-bookkeeper, who +apparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first +in the Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellum-bound +book, printed at Venice in 1625, called “Flos Sanctorum, or Lives of +the Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition of such +Saints as have no assigned place in the Almanack, otherwise called the +Movable or Extravagant Saints.” The zeal of Sister Anna Maddalena has +been rewarded, for there, among the Extravagant Saints, sure enough, +with a border of palm-branches and hour-glasses, stands the name of +Saint Dionea, Virgin and Martyr, a lady of Antioch, put to death by +the Emperor Decius. I know your Excellency’s taste for historical +information, so I forward this item. But I fear, dear Lady Evelyn, I +fear that the heavenly patroness of your little sea-waif was a much +more extravagant saint than that.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>December 21, 1879.</i></p> + +<p>Many thanks, dear Donna Evelina, for the money for Dionea’s schooling. +Indeed, it was not wanted yet: the accomplishments of young ladies +are taught at a very moderate rate at Montemirto: and as to clothes, +which you mention, a pair of wooden clogs, with pretty red tips, +costs sixty-five centimes, and ought to last three years, if the +owner is careful to carry them on her head in a neat parcel when out +walking, and to put them on again only on entering the village. The +Mother Superior is greatly overcome by your Excellency’s munificence +towards the convent, and much perturbed at being unable to send you +a specimen of your <i>protégée’s</i> skill, exemplified in an embroidered +pocket-handkerchief or a pair of mittens; but the fact is that poor +Dionea <i>has</i> no skill. “We will pray to the Madonna and St. Francis to +make her more worthy,” remarked the Superior. Perhaps, however, your +Excellency, who is, I fear but a Pagan woman (for all the Savelli Popes +and St. Andrew Savelli’s miracles), and insufficiently appreciative +of embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs, will be quite as satisfied to +hear that Dionea, instead of skill, has got the prettiest face of any +little girl in Montemirto. She is tall, for her age (she is eleven) +quite wonderfully well proportioned and extremely strong: of all the +convent-full, she is the only one for whom I have never been called +in. The features are very regular, the hair black, and despite all the +good Sisters’ efforts to keep it smooth like a Chinaman’s, beautifully +curly. I am glad she should be pretty, for she will more easily find a +husband; and also because it seems fitting that your <i>protégée</i> should +be beautiful. Unfortunately her character is not so satisfactory: she +hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, all equally. I am sorry +to say she shows no natural piety. Her companions detest her, and the +nuns, although they admit that she is not exactly naughty, seem to feel +her as a dreadful thorn in the flesh. She spends hours and hours on the +terrace overlooking the sea (her great desire, she confided to me, is +to get to the sea—to get <i>back to the sea</i>, as she expressed it), and +lying in the garden, under the big myrtle-bushes, and, in spring and +summer, under the rose-hedge. The nuns say that rose-hedge and that +myrtle-bush are growing a great deal too big, one would think from +Dionea’s lying under them; the fact, I suppose, has drawn attention to +them. “That child makes all the useless weeds grow,” remarked Sister +Reparata. Another of Dionea’s amusements is playing with pigeons. The +number of pigeons she collects about her is quite amazing; you would +never have thought that San Massimo or the neighboring hills contained +as many. They flutter down like snowflakes, and strut and swell +themselves out, and furl and unfurl their tails, and peck with little +sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads and a little throb and +gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretched out full length in +the sun, putting out her lips, which they come to kiss, and uttering +strange, cooing sounds; or hopping about, flapping her arms slowly +like wings, and raising her little head with much the same odd gesture +as they;—’tis a lovely sight, a thing fit for one of your painters, +Burne Jones or Tadema, with the myrtle-bushes all round, the bright, +white-washed convent walls behind, the white marble chapel steps (all +steps are marble in this Carrara country) and the enamel blue sea +through the ilex-branches beyond. But the good Sisters abominate these +pigeons, who, it appears, are messy little creatures, and they complain +that, were it not that the Reverend Director likes a pigeon in his pot +on a holiday, they could not stand the bother of perpetually sweeping +the chapel steps and the kitchen threshold all along of those dirty +birds….</p> + +<p class="right"><i>August 6, 1882.</i></p> + +<p>Do not tempt me, dearest Excellency, with your invitations to Rome. I +should not be happy there, and do but little honor to your friendship. +My many years of exile, of wanderings in northern countries, have +made me a little bit into a northern man: I cannot quite get on +with my own fellow-countrymen, except with the good peasants and +fishermen all round. Besides—forgive the vanity of an old man, who +has learned to make triple acrostic sonnets to cheat the days and +months at Theresienstadt and Spielberg—I have suffered too much for +Italy to endure patiently the sight of little parliamentary cabals and +municipal wranglings, although they also are necessary in this day as +conspiracies and battles were in mine. I am not fit for your roomful +of ministers and learned men and pretty women: the former would think +me an ignoramus, and the latter—what would afflict me much more—a +pedant…. Rather, if your Excellency really wants to show yourself +and your children to your father’s old <i>protégé</i> of Mazzinian times, +find a few days to come here next spring. You shall have some very bare +rooms with brick floors and white curtains opening out on my terrace; +and a dinner of all manner of fish and milk (the white garlic flowers +shall be mown away from under the olives lest my cow should eat it) and +eggs cooked in herbs plucked in the hedges. Your boys can go and see +the big ironclads at Spezia; and you shall come with me up our lanes +fringed with delicate ferns and overhung by big olives, and into the +fields where the cherry-trees shed their blossoms on to the budding +vines, the fig-trees stretching out their little green gloves, where +the goats nibble perched on their hind legs, and the cows low in the +huts of reeds; and there rise from the ravines, with the gurgle of +the brooks, from the cliffs with the boom of the surf, the voices of +unseen boys and girls, singing about love and flowers and death, just +as in the days of Theocritus, whom your learned Excellency does well to +read. Has your Excellency ever read Longus, a Greek pastoral novelist? +He is a trifle free, a trifle nude for us readers of Zola; but the old +French of Amyot has a wonderful charm, and he gives one an idea, as no +one else does, how folk lived in such valleys, by such sea-boards, as +these in the days when daisy-chains and garlands of roses were still +hung on the olive-trees for the nymphs of the grove; when across the +bay, at the end of the narrow neck of blue sea, there clung to the +marble rocks not a church of Saint Laurence, with the sculptured martyr +on his gridiron, but the temple of Venus, protecting her harbor…. +Yes, dear Lady Evelyn, you have guessed aright. Your old friend has +returned to his sins, and is scribbling once more. But no longer at +verses or political pamphlets. I am enthralled by a tragic history, the +history of the fall of the Pagan Gods…. Have you ever read of their +wanderings and disguises, in my friend Heine’s little book?</p> + +<p>And if you come to Montemirto, you shall see also your <i>protégée</i>, +of whom you ask for news. It has just missed being disastrous. Poor +Dionea! I fear that early voyage tied to the spar did no good to her +wits, poor little waif! There has been a fearful row; and it has +required all my influence, and all the awfulness of your Excellency’s +name, and the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire, to prevent her +expulsion by the Sisters of the Stigmata. It appears that this mad +creature very nearly committed a sacrilege: she was discovered handling +in a suspicious manner the Madonna’s gala frock and her best veil of +<i>pizzo di Cantù</i>, a gift of the late Marchioness Violante Vigalcila +of Fornovo. One of the orphans, Zaira Barsanti, whom they call the +Rossaccia, even pretends to have surprised Dionea as she was about +to adorn her wicked little person with these sacred garments; and, +on another occasion, when Dionea had been sent to pass some oil and +sawdust over the chapel floor (it was the eve of Easter of the Roses), +to have discovered her seated on the edge of the altar, in the very +place of the Most Holy Sacrament. I was sent for in hot haste, and had +to assist at an ecclesiastical council in the convent parlor, where +Dionea appeared, rather out of place, an amazing little beauty, dark, +lithe, with an odd, ferocious gleam in her eyes, and a still odder +smile, tortuous, serpentine, like that of Leonardo da Vinci’s women, +among the plaster images of St. Francis, and the glazed and framed +samplers before the little statue of the Virgin, which wears in summer +a kind of mosquito-curtain to guard it from the flies, who, as you +know, are creatures of Satan.</p> + +<p>Speaking of Satan, does your Excellency know that on the inside of our +little convent door, just above the little perforated plate of metal +(like the rose of a watering-pot) through which the Sister-portress +peeps and talks, is pasted a printed form, an arrangement of holy names +and texts in triangles, and the stigmatized hands of St. Francis, and a +variety of other devices, for the purpose, as is explained in a special +notice, of baffling the Evil One, and preventing his entrance into +that building? Had you seen Dionea, and the stolid, contemptuous way +in which she took, without attempting to refute, the various shocking +allegations against her, your Excellency would have reflected, as I +did, that the door in question must have been accidentally absent +from the premises, perhaps at the joiner’s for repair, the day that +your <i>protégée</i> first penetrated into the convent. The ecclesiastical +tribunal, consisting of the Mother Superior, three Sisters, the +Capuchin Director, and your humble servant (who vainly attempted to be +Devil’s advocate), sentenced Dionea, among other things, to make the +sign of the cross twenty-six times on the bare floor with her tongue. +Poor little child! One might almost expect that, as happened when Dame +Venus scratched her hand on the thorn-bush, red roses should sprout up +between the fissures of the dirty old bricks.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>October 14, 1883</i>.</p> + +<p>You ask whether, now that the Sisters let Dionea go and do half a day’s +service now and then in the village, and that Dionea is a grown-up +creature, she does not set the place by the ears with her beauty. The +people here are quite aware of its existence. She is already dubbed +<i>La bella Dionea</i>; but that does not bring her any nearer getting a +husband, although your Excellency’s generous offer of a wedding-portion +is well known throughout the district of San Massimo and Montemirto. +None of our boys, peasants or fishermen, seem to hang on her steps; and +if they turn round to stare and whisper as she goes by straight and +dainty in her wooden clogs, with the pitcher of water or the basket +of linen on her beautiful crisp dark head, it is, I remark, with an +expression rather of fear than of love. The women, on their side, make +horns with their fingers as she passes, and as they sit by her side in +the convent chapel; but that seems natural. My housekeeper tells me +that down in the village she is regarded as possessing the evil eye +and bringing love misery. “You mean,” I said, “that a glance from her +is too much for our lads’ peace of mind.” Veneranda shook her head, +and explained, with the deference and contempt with which she always +mentions any of her country-folk’s superstitions to me, that the +matter is different: it’s not with her they are in love (they would +be afraid of her eye), but where-ever she goes the young people must +needs fall in love with each other, and usually where it is far from +desirable. “You know Sora Luisa, the blacksmith’s widow? Well, Dionea +did a <i>half-service</i> for her last month, to prepare for the wedding +of Luisa’s daughter. Well, now, the girl must say, forsooth! that she +won’t have Pieriho of Lerici any longer, but will have that raggamuffin +Wooden Pipe from Solaro, or go into a convent. And the girl changed her +mind the very day that Dionea had come into the house. Then there is +the wife of Pippo, the coffee-house keeper; they say she is carrying on +with one of the coastguards, and Dionea helped her to do her washing +six weeks ago. The son of Sor Temistocle has just cut off a finger to +avoid the conscription, because he is mad about his cousin and afraid +of being taken for a soldier; and it is a fact that some of the shirts +which were made for him at the Stigmata had been sewn by Dionea;” … +and thus a perfect string of love misfortunes, enough to make a little +“Decameron,” I assure you, and all laid to Dionea’s account. Certain it +is that the people of San Massimo are terribly afraid of Dionea….</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 17, 1884.</i></p> + +<p>Dionea’s strange influence seems to be extending in a terrible way. +I am almost beginning to think that our folk are correct in their +fear of the young witch. I used to think, as physician to a convent, +that nothing was more erroneous than all the romancings of Diderot +and Schubert (your Excellency sang me his “Young Nun” once: do you +recollect, just before your marriage?), and that no more humdrum +creature existed than one of our little nuns, with their pink baby +faces under their tight white caps. It appeared the romancing was +more correct than the prose. Unknown things have sprung up in these +good Sisters’ hearts, as unknown flowers have sprung up among the +myrtle-bushes and the rose-hedge which Dionea lies under. Did I ever +mention to you a certain little Sister Giuliana, who professed only +two years ago?—a funny rose and white little creature presiding over +the infirmary, as prosaic a little saint as ever kissed a crucifix or +scoured a saucepan. Well, Sister Giuliana has disappeared, and the same +day has disappeared also a sailor-boy from the port.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>August 20, 1884</i>.</p> + +<p>The case of Sister Giuliana seems to have been but the beginning of an +extraordinary love epidemic at the Convent of the Stigmata: the elder +schoolgirls have to be kept under lock and key lest they should talk +over the wall in the moonlight, or steal out to the little hunchback +who writes love-letters at a penny a-piece, beautiful flourishes and +all, under the portico by the Fishmarket. I wonder does that wicked +little Dionea, whom no one pays court to, smile (her lips like a +Cupid’s bow or a tiny snake’s curves) as she calls the pigeons down +around her, or lies fondling the cats under the myrtle-bush, when she +sees the pupils going about with swollen, red eyes; the poor little +nuns taking fresh penances on the cold chapel flags; and hears the +long-drawn guttural vowels, <i>amore</i> and <i>morte</i> and <i>mio bene</i>, which +rise up of an evening, with the boom of the surf and the scent of +the lemon-flowers, as the young men wander up and down, arm-in-arm, +twanging their guitars along the moonlit lanes under the olives?</p> + +<p class="right"><i>October 20, 1885.</i></p> + +<p>A terrible, terrible thing has happened! I write to your Excellency +with hands all a-tremble; and yet I <i>must</i> write, I must speak, or +else I shall cry out. Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico of +Casoria, the confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man, +tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monk +playing the virginal in Giorgione’s “Concert,” and under his brown +serge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One has +heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenico +had struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites recorded by St. Jerome, +and he had conquered. I never knew anything comparable to the angelic +serenity of gentleness of this victorious soul. I don’t like monks, +but I loved Father Domenico. I might have been his father, easily, +yet I always felt a certain shyness and awe of him; and yet men have +accounted me a clean-lived man in my generation; but I felt, whenever +I approached him, a poor worldly creature, debased by the knowledge of +so many mean and ugly things. Of late Father Domenico had seemed to +me less calm than usual: his eyes had grown strangely bright, and red +spots had formed on his salient cheekbones. One day last week, taking +his hand, I felt his pulse flutter, and all his strength as it were, +liquefy under my touch. “You are ill,” I said. “You have fever, Father +Domenico. You have been overdoing yourself—some new privation, some +new penance. Take care and do not tempt Heaven; remember the flesh is +weak.” Father Domenico withdrew his hand quickly. “Do not say that,” he +cried; “the flesh is strong!” and turned away his face. His eyes were +glistening and he shook all over. “Some quinine,” I ordered. But I felt +it was no case for quinine. Prayers might be more useful, and could I +have given them he should not have wanted. Last night I was suddenly +sent for to Father Domenico’s monastery above Montemirto: they told me +he was ill. I ran up through the dim twilight of moonbeams and olives +with a sinking heart. Something told me my monk was dead. He was lying +in a little low whitewashed room; they had carried him there from his +own cell in hopes he might still be alive. The windows were wide open; +they framed some olive-branches, glistening in the moonlight, and far +below, a strip of moonlit sea. When I told them that he was really +dead, they brought some tapers and lit them at his head and feet, and +placed a crucifix between his hands. “The Lord has been pleased to call +our poor brother to Him,” said the Superior. “A case of apoplexy, my +dear Doctor—a case of apoplexy. You will make out the certificate for +the authorities.” I made out the certificate. It was weak of me. But, +after all, why make a scandal? He certainly had no wish to injure the +poor monks.</p> + +<p>Next day I found the little nuns all in tears. They were gathering +flowers to send as a last gift to their confessor. In the convent +garden I found Dionea, standing by the side of a big basket of roses, +one of the white pigeons perched on her shoulder.</p> + +<p>“So,” she said, “he has killed himself with charcoal, poor Padre Domenico!”</p> + +<p>Something in her tone, her eyes, shocked me.</p> + +<p>“God has called to Himself one of His most faithful servants,” I said +gravely.</p> + +<p>Standing opposite this girl, magnificent, radiant in her beauty, before +the rose-hedge, with the white pigeons furling and unfurling, strutting +and pecking all round, I seemed to see suddenly the whitewashed room +of last night, the big crucifix, that poor thin face under the yellow +waxlight. I felt glad for Father Domenico; his battle was over.</p> + +<p>“Take this to Father Domenico from me,” said Dionea, breaking off +a twig of myrtle starred over with white blossom; and raising her +head with that smile like the twist of a young snake, she sang out +in a high guttural voice a strange chant, consisting of the word +<i>Amor—amor—amor</i>. I took the branch of myrtle and threw it in her face.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>January 3, 1886</i></p> + +<p>It will be difficult to find a place for Dionea, and in this +neighborhood well-nigh impossible. The people associate her somehow +with the death of Father Domenico, which has confirmed her reputation +of having the evil eye. She left the convent (being now seventeen) +some two months back, and is at present gaining her bread working with +the masons at our notary’s new house at Lerici: the work is hard, but +our women often do it, and it is magnificent to see Dionea, in her +short white skirt and tight white bodice, mixing the smoking lime with +her beautiful strong arms; or, an empty sack drawn over her head and +shoulders, walking majestically up the cliff, up the scaffoldings with +her load of bricks…. I am, however, very anxious to get Dionea out +of the neighborhood, because I cannot help dreading the annoyances +to which her reputation for the evil eye exposes her, and even some +explosion of rage if ever she should lose the indifferent contempt with +which she treats them. I hear that one of the rich men of our part of +the world, a certain Sor Agostino of Sarzana, who owns a whole flank +of marble mountain, is looking out for a maid for his daughter, who +is about to be married; kind people and patriarchal in their riches, +the old man still sitting down to table with all his servants; and his +nephew, who is going to be his son-in-law, a splendid young fellow, who +has worked like Jacob, in the quarry and at the saw-mill, for love of +his pretty cousin. That whole house is so good, simple, and peaceful, +that I hope it may tame down even Dionea. If I do not succeed in +getting Dionea this place (and all your Excellency’s illustriousness +and all my poor eloquence will be needed to counteract the sinister +reports attaching to our poor little waif), it will be best to accept +your suggestion of taking the girl into your household at Rome, since +you are curious to see what you call our baleful beauty. I am amused, +and a little indignant at what you say about your footmen being +handsome: Don Juan himself, my dear Lady Evelyn, would be cowed by +Dionea….</p> + +<p class="right"><i>May 29, 1886.</i></p> + +<p>Here is Dionea back upon our hands once more! but I cannot send +her to your Excellency. Is it from living among these peasants and +fishing-folk, or is it because, as people pretend, a skeptic is always +superstitious? I could not muster courage to send you Dionea, although +your boys are still in sailor-clothes and your uncle, the Cardinal, is +eighty-four; and as to the Prince, why, he bears the most potent amulet +against Dionea’s terrible powers in your own dear capricious person. +Seriously, there is something eerie in this coincidence. Poor Dionea! +I feel sorry for her, exposed to the passion of a once patriarchally +respectable old man. I feel even more abashed at the incredible +audacity, I should almost say sacrilegious madness, of the vile old +creature. But still the coincidence is strange and uncomfortable. Last +week the lightning struck a huge olive in the orchard of Sor Agostino’s +house above Sarzana. Under the olive was Sor Agostino himself, who was +killed on the spot; and opposite, not twenty paces off, drawing water +from the well, unhurt and calm, was Dionea. It was the end of a sultry +afternoon: I was on a terrace in one of those villages of ours, jammed, +like some hardy bush, in the gash of a hill-side. I saw the storm rush +down the valley, a sudden blackness, and then, like a curse, a flash, +a tremendous crash, re-echoed by a dozen hills. “I told him,” Dionea +said very quietly, when she came to stay with me the next day (for Sor +Agostino’s family would not have her for another half-minute), “that if +he did not leave me alone Heaven would send him an accident.”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 15, 1886</i>.</p> + +<p>My book? Oh, dear Donna Evelina, do not make me blush by talking of my +book! Do not make an old man, respectable, a Government functionary +(communal physician of the district of San Massimo and Montemirto +Ligure), confess that he is but a lazy unprofitable dreamer, collecting +materials as a child picks hips out of a hedge, only to throw them +away, liking them merely for the little occupation of scratching his +hands and standing on tiptoe, for their pretty redness…. You remember +what Balzac says about projecting any piece of work?—“<i>C’est fumier +des cigarettes enchantées</i>….” Well, well! The data obtainable about +the ancient gods in their days of adversity are few and far between: +a quotation here and there from the Fathers; two or three legends; +Venus reappearing; the persecutions of Apollo in Styria; Proserpina +going, in Chaucer, to reign over the fairies; a few obscure religious +persecutions in the Middle Ages on the score of Paganism; some strange +rites practiced till lately in the depths of a Breton forest near +Lannion…. As to Tannhäuser, he was a real knight, and a sorry one, +and a real Minnesinger not of the best. Your Excellency will find some +of his poems in Von der Hagen’s four immense volumes, but I recommend +you to take your notions of Ritter Tannhäuser’s poetry rather from +Wagner. Certain it is that the Pagan divinities lasted much longer +than we suspect, sometimes in their own nakedness, sometimes in the +stolen garb of the Madonna or the saints. Who knows whether they do not +exist to this day? And, indeed, is it possible they should not? For +the awfulness of the deep woods, with their filtered green light, the +creak of the swaying, solitary reeds, exists, and is Pan; and the blue, +starry May night exists, the sough of the waves, the warm wind carrying +the sweetness of the lemon-blossoms, the bitterness of the myrtle on +our rocks, the distant chant of the boys cleaning out their nets, of +the girls sickling the grass under the olives, <i>Amor—amor—amor,</i> and +all this is the great goddess Venus. And opposite to me, as I write, +between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea, streaked like +a Ravenna mosaic with purple and green, shimmer the white houses and +walls, the steeple and towers, an enchanted Fata Morgana city, of dim +Porto Venere; … and I mumble to myself the verse of Catullus, but +addressing a greater and more terrible goddess than he did:—</p> + +<p>“Procul a mea sit furor omnis, Hera, domo; alios; age incitatos, alios +age rabidos.”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>March 25, 1887.</i></p> + +<p>Yes; I will do everything in my power for your friends. Are you +well-bred folk as well bred as we, Republican <i>bourgeois,</i> with the +coarse hands (though you once told me mine were psychic hands when +the mania of palmistry had not yet been succeeded by that of the +Reconciliation between Church and State), I wonder, that you should +apologize, you whose father fed me and housed me and clothed me in my +exile, for giving me the horrid trouble of hunting for lodgings? It is +like you, dear Donna Evelina, to have sent me photographs of my future +friend Waldemar’s statue…. I have no love for modern sculpture, for +all the hours I have spent in Gibson’s and Dupré’s studio: ’tis a dead +art we should do better to bury. But your Waldemar has something of +the old spirit: he seems to feel the divineness of the mere body, the +spirituality of a limpid stream of mere physical life. But why among +these statues only men and boys, athletes and fauns? Why only the +bust of that thin, delicate-lipped little Madonna wife of his? Why no +wide-shouldered Amazon or broad-flanked Aphrodite?</p> + +<p class="right"><i>April 10, 1887.</i></p> + +<p>You ask me how poor Dionea is getting on. Not as your Excellency and I +ought to have expected when we placed her with the good Sisters of the +Stigmata: although I wager that, fantastic and capricious as you are, +you would be better pleased (hiding it carefully from that grave side +of you which bestows devout little books and carbolic acid upon the +indigent) that your <i>protégée</i> should be a witch than a serving-maid, +a maker of philters rather than a knitter of stockings and sewer of +shirts.</p> + +<p>A maker of philters. Roughly speaking, that is Dionea’s profession. +She lives upon the money which I dole out to her (with many useless +objurgations) on behalf of your Excellency, and her ostensible +employment is mending nets, collecting olives, carrying bricks, and +other miscellaneous jobs; but her real status is that of village +sorceress. You think our peasants are skeptical? Perhaps they do not +believe in thought-reading, mesmerism, and ghosts, like you, dear Lady +Evelyn. But they believe very firmly in the evil eye, in magic, and +in love-potions. Every one has his little story of this or that which +happened to his brother or cousin or neighbor. My stable-boy and male +factotum’s brother-in-law, living some years ago in Corsica, was seized +with a longing for a dance with his beloved at one of those balls which +our peasants give in the winter, when the snow makes leisure in the +mountains. A wizard anointed him for money, and straightway he turned +into a black cat, and in three bounds was over the seas, at the door of +his uncle’s cottage, and among the dancers. He caught his beloved by +the skirt to draw her attention; but she replied with a kick which sent +him squealing back to Corsica. When he returned in summer he refused to +marry the lady, and carried his left arm in a sling. “You broke it when +I came to the Veglia!” he said, and all seemed explained. Another lad, +returning from working in the vineyards near Marseilles, was walking up +to his native village, high in our hills, one moonlight night. He heard +sounds of fiddle and fife from a roadside barn, and saw yellow light +from its chinks; and then entering, he found many women dancing, old +and young, and among them his affianced. He tried to snatch her round +the waist for a waltz (they play <i>Mme. Angot</i> at our rustic balls), but +the girl was unclutchable, and whispered, “Go; for these are witches, +who will kill thee; and I am a witch also. Alas! I shall go to hell +when I die.”</p> + +<p>I could tell your Excellency dozens of such stories. But love-philters +are among the commonest things to sell and buy. Do you remember the sad +little story of Cervantes’ Licentiate, who, instead of a love-potion, +drank a philter which made him think he was made of glass, fit emblem +of a poor mad poet? … It is love-philters that Dionea prepares. No; +do not misunderstand; they do not give love of her, still less her love.</p> + +<p>Your seller of love-charms is as cold as ice, as pure as snow. The +priest has crusaded against her, and stones have flown at her as she +went by from dissatisfied lovers; and the very children, paddling in +the sea and making mud-pies in the sand, have put out forefinger and +little finger and screamed, “Witch, witch! ugly witch!” as she passed +with basket or brick load; but Dionea has only smiled, that snake-like, +amused smile, but more ominous than of yore. The other day I determined +to seek her and argue with her on the subject of her evil trade. Dionea +has a certain regard for me; not, I fancy, a result of gratitude, +but rather the recognition of a certain admiration and awe which she +inspires in your Excellency’s foolish old servant. She has taken up +her abode in a deserted hut, built of dried reeds and thatch, such as +they keep cows in, among the olives on the cliffs. She was not there, +but about the hut pecked some white pigeons, and from it, startling me +foolishly with its unexpected sound, came the eerie bleat of her pet +goat…. Among the olives it was twilight already, with streakings of +faded rose in the sky, and faded rose, like long trails of petals, on +the distant sea. I clambered down among the myrtle-bushes and came to +a little semicircle of yellow sand, between two high and jagged rocks, +the place where the sea had deposited Dionea after the wreck. She was +seated there on the sand, her bare foot dabbling in the waves; she had +twisted a wreath of myrtle and wild roses on her black, crisp hair. +Near her was one of our prettiest girls, the Lena of Sor Tullio the +blacksmith, with ashy, terrified face under her flowered kerchief. +I determined to speak to the child, but without startling her now, +for she is a nervous, hysteric little thing. So I sat on the rocks, +screened by the myrtle-bushes, waiting till the girl had gone. Dionea, +seated listless on the sands, leaned over the sea and took some of its +water in the hollow of her hand. “Here,” she said to the Lena of Sor +Tullio, “fill your bottle with this and give it to drink to Tommasino +the Rosebud.” Then she set to singing:—</p> + +<p>“Love is salt, like sea-water—I drink and I die of thirst…. Water! +water! Yet the more I drink, the more I burn. Love! thou art bitter as +the seaweed.”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>April 20, 1887.</i></p> + +<p>Your friends are settled here, dear Lady Evelyn. The house is built +in what was once a Genoese fort, growing like a grey spiked aloes out +of the marble rocks of our bay; rock and wall (the walls existed long +before Genoa was ever heard of) grown almost into a homogeneous mass, +delicate grey, stained with black and yellow lichen, and dotted here +and there with myrtle-shoots and crimson snapdragon. In what was once +the highest enclosure of the fort, where your friend Gertrude watches +the maids hanging out the fine white sheets and pillow-cases to dry (a +bit of the North, of Hermann and Dorothea transferred to the South), +a great twisted fig-tree juts out like an eccentric gargoyle over +the sea, and drops its ripe fruit into the deep blue pools. There is +but scant furniture in the house, but a great oleander overhangs it, +presently to burst into pink splendor; and on all the window-sills, +even that of the kitchen (such a background of shining brass saucepans +Waldemar’s wife has made of it!) are pipkins and tubs full of trailing +carnations, and tufts of sweet basil and thyme and mignonette. She +pleases me most, your Gertrude, although you foretold I should prefer +the husband; with her thin white face, a Memling Madonna finished by +some Tuscan sculptor, and her long, delicate white hands ever busy, +like those of a mediaeval lady, with some delicate piece of work; and +the strange blue, more limpid than the sky and deeper than the sea, of +her rarely lifted glance.</p> + +<p>It is in her company that I like Waldemar best; I prefer to the genius +that infinitely tender and respectful, I would not say <i>lover</i> —yet I +have no other word—of his pale wife. He seems to me, when with her, +like some fierce, generous, wild thing from the woods, like the lion +of Una, tame and submissive to this saint…. This tenderness is +really very beautiful on the part of that big lion Waldemar, with his +odd eyes, as of some wild animal—odd, and, your Excellency remarks, +not without a gleam of latent ferocity. I think that hereby hangs the +explanation of his never doing any but male figures: the female figure, +he says (and your Excellency must hold him responsible, not me, for +such profanity), is almost inevitably inferior in strength and beauty; +woman is not form, but expression, and therefore suits painting, but +not sculpture. The point of a woman is not her body, but (and here his +eyes rested very tenderly upon the thin white profile of his wife) her +soul. “Still,” I answered, “the ancients, who understood such matters, +did manufacture some tolerable female statues: the Fates of the +Parthenon, the Phidian Pallas, the Venus of Milo.”…</p> + +<p>“Ah! yes,” exclaimed Waldemar, smiling, with that savage gleam of his +eyes; “but those are not women, and the people who made them have left +as the tales of Endymion, Adonis, Anchises: a goddess might sit for +them.”…</p> + +<p class="right"><i>May 5, 1887.</i></p> + +<p>Has it ever struck your Excellency in one of your La Rochefoucauld +fits (in Lent say, after too many balls) that not merely maternal but +conjugal unselfishness may be a very selfish thing? There! you toss +your little head at my words; yet I wager I have heard you say that +<i>other</i> women may think it right to humor their husbands, but as to +you, the Prince must learn that a wife’s duty is as much to chasten +her husband’s whims as to satisfy them. I really do feel indignant +that such a snow-white saint should wish another woman to part with +all instincts of modesty merely because that other woman would be a +good model for her husband; really it is intolerable. “Leave the girl +alone,” Waldemar said, laughing. “What do I want with the unaesthetic +sex, as Schopenhauer calls it?” But Gertrude has set her heart on his +doing a female figure; it seems that folk have twitted him with never +having produced one. She has long been on the look-out for a model for +him. It is odd to see this pale, demure, diaphanous creature, not the +more earthly for approaching motherhood, scanning the girls of our +village with the eyes of a slave-dealer.</p> + +<p>“If you insist on speaking to Dionea,” I said, “I shall insist on +speaking to her at the same time, to urge her to refuse your proposal.” +But Waldemar’s pale wife was indifferent to all my speeches about +modesty being a poor girl’s only dowry. “She will do for a Venus,” she +merely answered.</p> + +<p>We went up to the cliffs together, after some sharp words, Waldemar’s +wife hanging on my arm as we slowly clambered up the stony path among +the olives. We found Dionea at the door of her hut, making faggots +of myrtle-branches. She listened sullenly to Gertrude’s offer and +explanations; indifferently to my admonitions not to accept. The +thought of stripping for the view of a man, which would send a shudder +through our most brazen village girls, seemed not to startle her, +immaculate and savage as she is accounted. She did not answer, but +sat under the olives, looking vaguely across the sea. At that moment +Waldemar came up to us; he had followed with the intention of putting +an end to these wranglings.</p> + +<p>“Gertrude,” he said, “do leave her alone. I have found a model—a +fisher-boy, whom I much prefer to any woman.”</p> + +<p>Dionea raised her head with that serpentine smile. “I will come,” she +said.</p> + +<p>Waldemar stood silent; his eyes were fixed on her, where she stood +under the olives, her white shift loose about her splendid throat, her +shining feet bare in the grass. Vaguely, as if not knowing what he +said, he asked her name. She answered that her name was Dionea; for the +rest, she was an Innocentina, that is to say, a foundling; then she +began to sing:—</p> + +<div style="margin: 1em 3em;">“Flower of the myrtle!<br>My father is the starry sky,<br>The mother that +made me is the sea.”</div> + +<p class="right"><i>June 22, 1887</i>.</p> + +<p>I confess I was an old fool to have grudged Waldemar his model. As I +watch him gradually building up his statue, watch the goddess gradually +emerging from the clay heap, I ask myself—and the case might trouble +a more subtle moralist than me—whether a village girl, an obscure, +useless life within the bounds of what we choose to call right and +wrong, can be weighed against the possession by mankind of a great work +of art, a Venus immortally beautiful? Still, I am glad that the two +alternatives need not be weighed against each other. Nothing can equal +the kindness of Gertrude, now that Dionea has consented to sit to her +husband; the girl is ostensibly merely a servant like any other; and, +lest any report of her real functions should get abroad and discredit +her at San Massimo or Montemirto, she is to be taken to Rome, where +no one will be the wiser, and where, by the way, your Excellency will +have an opportunity of comparing Waldemar’s goddess of love with our +little orphan of the Convent of the Stigmata. What reassures me still +more is the curious attitude of Waldemar towards the girl. I could +never have believed that an artist could regard a woman so utterly as +a mere inanimate thing, a form to copy, like a tree or flower. Truly +he carries out his theory that sculpture knows only the body, and the +body scarcely considered as human. The way in which he speaks to Dionea +after hours of the most rapt contemplation of her is almost brutal in +its coldness. And yet to hear him exclaim, “How beautiful she is! Good +God, how beautiful!” No love of mere woman was ever so violent as this +love of woman’s mere shape.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>June 27, 1887</i>.</p> + +<p>You asked me once, dearest Excellency, whether there survived among our +people (you had evidently added a volume on folk-lore to that heap of +half-cut, dog’s-eared books that litter about among the Chineseries and +mediaeval brocades of your rooms) any trace of Pagan myths. I explained +to you then that all our fairy mythology, classic gods, and demons +and heroes, teemed with fairies, ogres, and princes. Last night I had +a curious proof of this. Going to see the Waldemar, I found Dionea +seated under the oleander at the top of the old Genoese fort, telling +stories to the two little blonde children who were making the falling +pink blossoms into necklaces at her feet; the pigeons, Dionea’s white +pigeons, which never leave her, strutting and pecking among the basil +pots, and the white gulls flying round the rocks overhead. This is what +I heard… “And the three fairies said to the youngest son of the King, +to the one who had been brought up as a shepherd, ‘Take this apple, and +give it to her among us who is most beautiful.’ And the first fairy +said, ‘If thou give it to me thou shalt be Emperor of Rome, and have +purple clothes, and have a gold crown and gold armor, and horses and +courtiers;’ and the second said, ‘If thou give it to me thou shalt be +Pope, and wear a miter, and have the keys of heaven and hell;’ and the +third fairy said, ‘Give the apple to me, for I will give thee the most +beautiful lady to wife.’ And the youngest son of the King sat in the +green meadow and thought about it a little, and then said, ‘What use +is there in being Emperor or Pope? Give me the beautiful lady to wife, +since I am young myself.’ And he gave the apple to the third of the +three fairies.”…</p> + +<p>Dionea droned out the story in her half-Genoese dialect, her eyes +looking far away across the blue sea, dotted with sails like white +sea-gulls, that strange serpentine smile on her lips.</p> + +<p>“Who told thee that fable?” I asked.</p> + +<p>She took a handful of oleander-blossoms from the ground, and throwing +them in the air, answered listlessly, as she watched the little shower +of rosy petals descend on her black hair and pale breast—</p> + +<p>“Who knows?”</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 6, 1887</i>.</p> + +<p>How strange is the power of art! Has Waldemar’s statue shown me the +real Dionea, or has Dionea really grown more strangely beautiful than +before? Your Excellency will laugh; but when I meet her I cast down my +eyes after the first glimpse of her loveliness; not with the shyness +of a ridiculous old pursuer of the Eternal Feminine, but with a sort +of religious awe—the feeling with which, as a child kneeling by my +mother’s side, I looked down on the church flags when the Mass bell +told the elevation of the Host…. Do you remember the story of Zeuxis +and the ladies of Crotona, five of the fairest not being too much +for his Juno? Do you remember—you, who have read everything—all the +bosh of our writers about the Ideal in Art? Why, here is a girl who +disproves all this nonsense in a minute; she is far, far more beautiful +than Waldemar’s statue of her. He said so angrily, only yesterday, +when his wife took me into his studio (he has made a studio of the +long-desecrated chapel of the old Genoese fort, itself, they say, +occupying the site of the temple of Venus).</p> + +<p>As he spoke that odd spark of ferocity dilated in his eyes, and seizing +the largest of his modeling tools, he obliterated at one swoop the +whole exquisite face. Poor Gertrude turned ashy white, and a convulsion +passed over her face….</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 15</i>.</p> + +<p>I wish I could make Gertrude understand, and yet I could never, never +bring myself to say a word. As a matter of fact, what is there to be +said? Surely she knows best that her husband will never love any woman +but herself. Yet ill, nervous as she is, I quite understand that she +must loathe this unceasing talk of Dionea, of the superiority of the +model over the statue. Cursed statue! I wish it were finished, or else +that it had never been begun.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 20</i>.</p> + +<p>This morning Waldemar came to me. He seemed strangely agitated: I +guessed he had something to tell me, and yet I could never ask. Was +it cowardice on my part? He sat in my shuttered room, the sunshine +making pools on the red bricks and tremulous stars on the ceiling, +talking of many things at random, and mechanically turning over the +manuscript, the heap of notes of my poor, never-finished book on the +Exiled Gods. Then he rose, and walking nervously round my study, +talking disconnectedly about his work, his eye suddenly fell upon a +little altar, one of my few antiquities, a little block of marble +with a carved garland and rams’ heads, and a half-effaced inscription +dedicating it to Venus, the mother of Love.</p> + +<p>“It was found,” I explained, “in the ruins of the temple, somewhere on +the site of your studio: so, at least, the man said from whom I bought +it.”</p> + +<p>Waldemar looked at it long. “So,” he said, “this little cavity was to +burn the incense in; or rather, I suppose, since it has two little +gutters running into it, for collecting the blood of the victim? Well, +well! they were wiser in that day, to wring the neck of a pigeon or +burn a pinch of incense than to eat their own hearts out, as we do, +all along of Dame Venus;” and he laughed, and left me with that odd +ferocious lighting-up of his face. Presently there came a knock at my +door. It was Waldemar. “Doctor,” he said very quietly, “will you do +me a favor? Lend me your little Venus altar—only for a few days, only +till the day after tomorrow. I want to copy the design of it for the +pedestal of my statue: it is appropriate.” I sent the altar to him: +the lad who carried it told me that Waldemar had set it up in the +studio, and calling for a flask of wine, poured out two glasses. One +he had given to my messenger for his pains; of the other he had drunk +a mouthful, and thrown the rest over the altar, saying some unknown +words. “It must be some German habit,” said my servant. What odd +fancies this man has!</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 25</i>.</p> + +<p>You ask me, dearest Excellency, to send you some sheets of my book: you +want to know what I have discovered. Alas! dear Donna Evelina, I have +discovered, I fear, that there is nothing to discover; that Apollo was +never in Styria; that Chaucer, when he called the Queen of the Fairies +Proserpine, meant nothing more than an eighteenth century poet when he +called Dolly or Betty Cynthia or Amaryllis; that the lady who damned +poor Tannhäuser was not Venus, but a mere little Suabian mountain +sprite; in fact, that poetry is only the invention of poets, and that +that rogue, Heinrich Heine, is entirely responsible for the existence +of <i>Dieux en Exil</i>…. My poor manuscript can only tell you what St. +Augustine, Tertullian, and sundry morose old Bishops thought about the +loves of Father Zeus and the miracles of the Lady Isis, none of which +is much worth your attention…. Reality, my dear Lady Evelyn, is +always prosaic: at least when investigated into by bald old gentlemen +like me.</p> + +<p>And yet, it does not look so. The world, at times, seems to be playing +at being poetic, mysterious, full of wonder and romance. I am writing, +as usual, by my window, the moonlight brighter in its whiteness than +my mean little yellow-shining lamp. From the mysterious greyness, the +olive groves and lanes beneath my terrace, rises a confused quaver +of frogs, and buzz and whirr of insects: something, in sound, like +the vague trails of countless stars, the galaxies on galaxies blurred +into mere blue shimmer by the moon, which rides slowly across the +highest heaven. The olive twigs glisten in the rays: the flowers of +the pomegranate and oleander are only veiled as with bluish mist in +their scarlet and rose. In the sea is another sea, of molten, rippled +silver, or a magic causeway leading to the shining vague offing, the +luminous pale sky-line, where the islands of Palmaria and Tino float +like unsubstantial, shadowy dolphins. The roofs of Montemirto glimmer +among the black, pointing cypresses: farther below, at the end of that +half-moon of land, is San Massimo: the Genoese fort inhabited by our +friends is profiled black against the sky. All is dark: our fisher-folk +go to bed early; Gertrude and the little ones are asleep: they at least +are, for I can imagine Gertrude lying awake, the moonbeams on her thin +Madonna face, smiling as she thinks of the little ones around her, +of the other tiny thing that will soon lie on her breast…. There +is a light in the old desecrated chapel, the thing that was once the +temple of Venus, they say, and is now Waldemar’s workshop, its broken +roof mended with reeds and thatch. Waldemar has stolen in, no doubt +to see his statue again. But he will return, more peaceful for the +peacefulness of the night, to his sleeping wife and children. God bless +and watch over them! Good-night, dearest Excellency.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>July 26</i>.</p> + +<p>I have your Excellency’s telegram in answer to mine. Many thanks for +sending the Prince. I await his coming with feverish longing; it is +still something to look forward to. All does not seem over. And yet +what can he do?</p> + +<p>The children are safe: we fetched them out of their bed and brought +them up here. They are still a little shaken by the fire, the bustle, +and by finding themselves in a strange house; also, they want to know +where their mother is; but they have found a tame cat, and I hear them +chirping on the stairs.</p> + +<p>It was only the roof of the studio, the reeds and thatch, that burned, +and a few old pieces of timber. Waldemar must have set fire to it with +great care; he had brought armfuls of faggots of dry myrtle and heather +from the bakehouse close by, and thrown into the blaze quantities +of pine-cones, and of some resin, I know not what, that smelt like +incense. When we made our way, early this morning, through the +smoldering studio, we were stifled with a hot church-like perfume: my +brain swam, and I suddenly remembered going into St. Peter’s on Easter +Day as a child.</p> + +<p>It happened last night, while I was writing to you. Gertrude had gone +to bed, leaving her husband in the studio. About eleven the maids +heard him come out and call to Dionea to get up and come and sit to +him. He had had this craze once before, of seeing her and his statue +by an artificial light: you remember he had theories about the way in +which the ancients lit up the statues in their temples. Gertrude, the +servants say, was heard creeping downstairs a little later.</p> + +<p>Do you see it? I have seen nothing else these hours, which have seemed +weeks and months. He had placed Dionea on the big marble block behind +the altar, a great curtain of dull red brocade—you know that Venetian +brocade with the gold pomegranate pattern—behind her, like a Madonna of +Van Eyck’s. He showed her to me once before like this, the whiteness +of her neck and breast, the whiteness of the drapery round her flanks, +toned to the color of old marble by the light of the resin burning in +pans all round…. Before Dionea was the altar—the altar of Venus which +he had borrowed from me. He must have collected all the roses about it, +and thrown the incense upon the embers when Gertrude suddenly entered. +And then, and then…</p> + +<p>We found her lying across the altar, her pale hair among the ashes +of the incense, her blood—she had but little to give, poor white +ghost!—trickling among the carved garlands and rams’ heads, blackening +the heaped-up roses. The body of Waldemar was found at the foot of +the castle cliff. Had he hoped, by setting the place on fire, to bury +himself among its ruins, or had he not rather wished to complete in +this way the sacrifice, to make the whole temple an immense votive +pyre? It looked like one, as we hurried down the hills to San Massimo: +the whole hillside, dry grass, myrtle, and heather, all burning, the +pale short flames waving against the blue moonlit sky, and the old +fortress outlined black against the blaze.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>August 30.</i></p> + +<p>Of Dionea I can tell you nothing certain. We speak of her as little +as we can. Some say they have seen her, on stormy nights, wandering +among the cliffs: but a sailor-boy assures me, by all the holy things, +that the day after the burning of the Castle Chapel—we never call it +anything else—he met at dawn, off the island of Palmaria, beyond the +Strait of Porto Venere, a Greek boat, with eyes painted on the prow, +going full sail to sea, the men singing as she went. And against the +mast, a robe of purple and gold about her, and a myrtle-wreath on her +head, leaned Dionea, singing words in an unknown tongue, the white +pigeons circling around her.</p> + +<h2 style="margin-top: 4em"><i>Oke of Okehurst</i></h2> + +<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em">To COUNT PETER BOUTOURLINE,<br><i>AT TAGANTCHA</i>,<br>GOVERNMENT OF KIEW, RUSSIA.</p> + +<p>MY DEAR BOUTOURLINE,</p> + +<p>Do you remember my telling you, one afternoon that you sat upon the +hearthstool at Florence, the story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst?</p> + +<p>You thought it a fantastic tale, you lover of fantastic things, and +urged me to write it out at once, although I protested that, in such +matters, to write is to exorcise, to dispel the charm; and that +printers’ ink chases away the ghosts that may pleasantly haunt us, as +efficaciously as gallons of holy water.</p> + +<p>But if, as I suspect, you will now put down any charm that story may +have possessed to the way in which we had been working ourselves up, +that firelight evening, with all manner of fantastic stuff—if, as I +fear, the story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst will strike you as stale and +unprofitable—the sight of this little book will serve at least to +remind you, in the middle of your Russian summer, that there is such a +season as winter, such a place as Florence, and such a person as your +friend,</p> + +<p class="right">VERNON LEE</p> + +<p>Kensington, <i>July</i> 1886.</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">1</h3> + +<p>That sketch up there with the boy’s cap? Yes; that’s the same woman. +I wonder whether you could guess who she was. A singular being, is +she not? The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: +a wonderful elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poignant; an artificial +perverse sort of grace and research in every outline and movement and +arrangement of head and neck, and hands and fingers. Here are a lot of +pencil sketches I made while I was preparing to paint her portrait. +Yes; there’s nothing but her in the whole sketchbook. Mere scratches, +but they may give some idea of her marvellous, fantastic kind of grace. +Here she is leaning over the staircase, and here sitting in the swing. +Here she is walking quickly out of the room. That’s her head. You see +she isn’t really handsome; her forehead is too big, and her nose too +short. This gives no idea of her. It was altogether a question of +movement. Look at the strange cheeks, hollow and rather flat; well, +when she smiled she had the most marvellous dimples here. There was +something exquisite and uncanny about it. Yes; I began the picture, +but it was never finished. I did the husband first. I wonder who has +his likeness now? Help me to move these pictures away from the wall. +Thanks. This is her portrait; a huge wreck. I don’t suppose you can +make much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad. You see +my idea was to make her leaning against a wall—there was one hung with +yellow that seemed almost brown—so as to bring out the silhouette.</p> + +<p>It was very singular I should have chosen that particular wall. It +does look rather insane in this condition, but I like it; it has +something of her. I would frame it and hang it up, only people would +ask questions. Yes; you have guessed quite right—it is Mrs. Oke of +Okehurst. I forgot you had relations in that part of the country; +besides, I suppose the newspapers were full of it at the time. You +didn’t know that it all took place under my eyes? I can scarcely +believe now that it did: it all seems so distant, vivid but unreal, +like a thing of my own invention. It really was much stranger than +any one guessed. People could no more understand it than they could +understand her. I doubt whether any one ever understood Alice Oke +besides myself. You mustn’t think me unfeeling. She was a marvellous, +weird, exquisite creature, but one couldn’t feel sorry for her. I felt +much sorrier for the wretched creature of a husband. It seemed such +an appropriate end for her; I fancy she would have liked it could she +have known. Ah! I shall never have another chance of painting such +a portrait as I wanted. She seemed sent me from heaven or the other +place. You have never heard the story in detail? Well, I don’t usually +mention it, because people are so brutally stupid or sentimental; but +I’ll tell it you. Let me see. It’s too dark to paint any more today, so +I can tell it you now. Wait; I must turn her face to the wall. Ah, she +was a marvellous creature!</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">2</h3> + +<p>You remember, three years ago, my telling you I had let myself in for +painting a couple of Kentish squireen? I really could not understand +what had possessed me to say yes to that man. A friend of mine had +brought him one day to my studio—Mr. Oke of Okehurst, that was the name +on his card. He was a very tall, very well-made, very good-looking +young man, with a beautiful fair complexion, beautiful fair moustache, +and beautifully fitting clothes; absolutely like a hundred other young +men you can see any day in the Park, and absolutely uninteresting from +the crown of his head to the tip of his boots. Mr. Oke, who had been a +lieutenant in the Blues before his marriage, was evidently extremely +uncomfortable on finding himself in a studio. He felt misgivings about +a man who could wear a velvet coat in town, but at the same time he was +nervously anxious not to treat me in the very least like a tradesman. +He walked round my place, looked at everything with the most scrupulous +attention, stammered out a few complimentary phrases, and then, looking +at his friend for assistance, tried to come to the point, but failed. +The point, which the friend kindly explained, was that Mr. Oke was +desirous to know whether my engagements would allow of my painting +him and his wife, and what my terms would be. The poor man blushed +perfectly crimson during this explanation, as if he had come with the +most improper proposal; and I noticed—the only interesting thing about +him—a very odd nervous frown between his eyebrows, a perfect double +gash,—a thing which usually means something abnormal: a mad-doctor of +my acquaintance calls it the maniac-frown. When I had answered, he +suddenly burst out into rather confused explanations: his wife—Mrs. +Oke—had seen some of my—pictures—paintings—portraits—at the—the—what +d’you call it?—Academy. She had—in short, they had made a very great +impression upon her. Mrs. Oke had a great taste for art; she was, in +short, extremely desirous of having her portrait and his painted by me, +<i>etcetera</i>.</p> + +<p>“My wife,” he suddenly added, “is a remarkable woman. I don’t know +whether you will think her handsome,—she isn’t exactly, you know. But +she’s awfully strange,” and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little sigh and +frowned that curious frown, as if so long a speech and so decided an +expression of opinion had cost him a great deal.</p> + +<p>It was a rather unfortunate moment in my career. A very influential +sitter of mine—you remember the fat lady with the crimson curtain +behind her?—had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had +painted her old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique +had turned against me, the newspapers had taken up the matter, and for +the moment I was considered as a painter to whose brushes no woman +would trust her reputation. Things were going badly. So I snapped but +too gladly at Mr. Oke’s offer, and settled to go down to Okehurst +at the end of a fortnight. But the door had scarcely closed upon my +future sitter when I began to regret my rashness; and my disgust at +the thought of wasting a whole summer upon the portrait of a totally +uninteresting Kentish squire, and his doubtless equally uninteresting +wife, grew greater and greater as the time for execution approached. +I remember so well the frightful temper in which I got into the train +for Kent, and the even more frightful temper in which I got out of +it at the little station nearest to Okehurst. It was pouring floods. +I felt a comfortable fury at the thought that my canvases would get +nicely wetted before Mr. Oke’s coachman had packed them on the top of +the waggonette. It was just what served me right for coming to this +confounded place to paint these confounded people. We drove off in the +steady downpour. The roads were a mass of yellow mud; the endless flat +grazing-grounds under the oak-trees, after having been burnt to cinders +in a long drought, were turned into a hideous brown sop; the country +seemed intolerably monotonous.</p> + +<p>My spirits sank lower and lower. I began to meditate upon the modern +Gothic country-house, with the usual amount of Morris furniture, +Liberty rugs, and Mudie novels, to which I was doubtless being taken. +My fancy pictured very vividly the five or six little Okes—that +man certainly must have at least five children—the aunts, and +sisters-in-law, and cousins; the eternal routine of afternoon tea +and lawn-tennis; above all, it pictured Mrs. Oke, the bouncing, +well-informed, model housekeeper, electioneering, charity-organising +young lady, whom such an individual as Mr. Oke would regard in the +light of a remarkable woman. And my spirit sank within me, and I +cursed my avarice in accepting the commission, my spiritlessness in +not throwing it over while yet there was time. We had meanwhile driven +into a large park, or rather a long succession of grazing-grounds, +dotted about with large oaks, under which the sheep were huddled +together for shelter from the rain. In the distance, blurred by the +sheets of rain, was a line of low hills, with a jagged fringe of +bluish firs and a solitary windmill. It must be a good mile and a +half since we had passed a house, and there was none to be seen in +the distance—nothing but the undulation of sere grass, sopped brown +beneath the huge blackish oak-trees, and whence arose, from all sides, +a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a sudden bend, +and disclosed what was evidently the home of my sitter. It was not +what I had expected. In a dip in the ground a large red-brick house, +with the rounded gables and high chimney-stacks of the time of James +I.,—a forlorn, vast place, set in the midst of the pasture-land, with +no trace of garden before it, and only a few large trees indicating +the possibility of one to the back; no lawn either, but on the other +side of the sandy dip, which suggested a filled-up moat, a huge oak, +short, hollow, with wreathing, blasted, black branches, upon which only +a handful of leaves shook in the rain. It was not at all what I had +pictured to myself the home of Mr. Oke of Okehurst.</p> + +<p>My host received me in the hall, a large place, panelled and carved, +hung round with portraits up to its curious ceiling—vaulted and ribbed +like the inside of a ship’s hull. He looked even more blond and pink +and white, more absolutely mediocre in his tweed suit; and also, I +thought, even more good-natured and duller. He took me into his study, +a room hung round with whips and fishing-tackle in place of books, +while my things were being carried upstairs. It was very damp, and a +fire was smouldering. He gave the embers a nervous kick with his foot, +and said, as he offered me a cigar—</p> + +<p>“You must excuse my not introducing you at once to Mrs. Oke. My wife—in +short, I believe my wife is asleep.”</p> + +<p>“Is Mrs. Oke unwell?” I asked, a sudden hope flashing across me that I +might be off the whole matter.</p> + +<p>“Oh no! Alice is quite well; at least, quite as well as she usually +is. My wife,” he added, after a minute, and in a very decided tone, +“does not enjoy very good health—a nervous constitution. Oh no! not at +all ill, nothing at all serious, you know. Only nervous, the doctors +say; mustn’t be worried or excited, the doctors say; requires lots of +repose,—that sort of thing.”</p> + +<p>There was a dead pause. This man depressed me, I knew not why. He had +a listless, puzzled look, very much out of keeping with his evident +admirable health and strength.</p> + +<p>“I suppose you are a great sportsman?” I asked from sheer despair, +nodding in the direction of the whips and guns and fishing-rods.</p> + +<p>“Oh no! not now. I was once. I have given up all that,” he answered, +standing with his back to the fire, and staring at the polar bear +beneath his feet. “I—I have no time for all that now,” he added, as if +an explanation were due. “A married man—you know. Would you like to +come up to your rooms?” he suddenly interrupted himself. “I have had +one arranged for you to paint in. My wife said you would prefer a north +light. If that one doesn’t suit, you can have your choice of any other.”</p> + +<p>I followed him out of the study, through the vast entrance-hall. In +less than a minute I was no longer thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Oke and the +boredom of doing their likeness; I was simply overcome by the beauty of +this house, which I had pictured modern and philistine. It was, without +exception, the most perfect example of an old English manor-house that +I had ever seen; the most magnificent intrinsically, and the most +admirably preserved. Out of the huge hall, with its immense fireplace +of delicately carved and inlaid grey and black stone, and its rows of +family portraits, reaching from the wainscoting to the oaken ceiling, +vaulted and ribbed like a ship’s hull, opened the wide, flat-stepped +staircase, the parapet surmounted at intervals by heraldic monsters, +the wall covered with oak carvings of coats-of-arms, leafage, and +little mythological scenes, painted a faded red and blue, and picked +out with tarnished gold, which harmonised with the tarnished blue and +gold of the stamped leather that reached to the oak cornice, again +delicately tinted and gilded. The beautifully damascened suits of court +armour looked, without being at all rusty, as if no modern hand had +ever touched them; the very rugs under foot were of sixteenth-century +Persian make; the only things of to-day were the big bunches of flowers +and ferns, arranged in majolica dishes upon the landings. Everything +was perfectly silent; only from below came the chimes, silvery like an +Italian palace fountain, of an old-fashioned clock.</p> + +<p>It seemed to me that I was being led through the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.</p> + +<p>“What a magnificent house!” I exclaimed as I followed my host through +a long corridor, also hung with leather, wainscoted with carvings, and +furnished with big wedding coffers, and chairs that looked as if they +came out of some Vandyck portrait. In my mind was the strong impression +that all this was natural, spontaneous—that it had about it nothing +of the picturesqueness which swell studios have taught to rich and +aesthetic houses. Mr. Oke misunderstood me.</p> + +<p>“It is a nice old place,” he said, “but it’s too large for us. You see, +my wife’s health does not allow of our having many guests; and there +are no children.”</p> + +<p>I thought I noticed a vague complaint in his voice; and he evidently +was afraid there might have seemed something of the kind, for he added +immediately—</p> + +<p>“I don’t care for children one jackstraw, you know, myself; can’t +understand how any one can, for my part.”</p> + +<p>If ever a man went out of his way to tell a lie, I said to myself, Mr. +Oke of Okehurst was doing so at the present moment.</p> + +<p>When he had left me in one of the two enormous rooms that were allotted +to me, I threw myself into an arm-chair and tried to focus the +extraordinary imaginative impression which this house had given me.</p> + +<p>I am very susceptible to such impressions; and besides the sort +of spasm of imaginative interest sometimes given to me by certain +rare and eccentric personalities, I know nothing more subduing than +the charm, quieter and less analytic, of any sort of complete and +out-of-the-common-run sort of house. To sit in a room like the one +I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey +and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and +curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the +overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of +rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies +long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and +then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the room;—to +do this is a special kind of voluptuousness, peculiar and complex +and indescribable, like the half-drunkenness of opium or haschisch, +and which, to be conveyed to others in any sense as I feel it, would +require a genius, subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire.</p> + +<p>After I had dressed for dinner I resumed my place in the arm-chair, +and resumed also my reverie, letting all these impressions of the +past—which seemed faded like the figures in the arras, but still +warm like the embers in the fireplace, still sweet and subtle like +the perfume of the dead rose-leaves and broken spices in the china +bowls—permeate me and go to my head. Of Oke and Oke’s wife I did not +think; I seemed quite alone, isolated from the world, separated from it +in this exotic enjoyment.</p> + +<p>Gradually the embers grew paler; the figures in the tapestry more +shadowy; the columned and curtained bed loomed out vaguer; the room +seemed to fill with greyness; and my eyes wandered to the mullioned +bow-window, beyond whose panes, between whose heavy stonework, +stretched a greyish-brown expanse of sore and sodden park grass, dotted +with big oaks; while far off, behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch +firs, the wet sky was suffused with the blood-red of the sunset. +Between the falling of the raindrops from the ivy outside, there came, +fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of the lambs separated from +their mothers, a forlorn, quavering, eerie little cry.</p> + +<p>I started up at a sudden rap at my door.</p> + +<p>“Haven’t you heard the gong for dinner?” asked Mr. Oke’s voice.</p> + +<p>I had completely forgotten his existence.</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">3</h3> + +<p>I feel that I cannot possibly reconstruct my earliest impressions of +Mrs. Oke. My recollection of them would be entirely coloured by my +subsequent knowledge of her; whence I conclude that I could not at +first have experienced the strange interest and admiration which that +extraordinary woman very soon excited in me. Interest and admiration, +be it well understood, of a very unusual kind, as she was herself a +very unusual kind of woman; and I, if you choose, am a rather unusual +kind of man. But I can explain that better anon.</p> + +<p>This much is certain, that I must have been immeasurably surprised at +finding my hostess and future sitter so completely unlike everything +I had anticipated. Or no—now I come to think of it, I scarcely felt +surprised at all; or if I did, that shock of surprise could have lasted +but an infinitesimal part of a minute. The fact is, that, having once +seen Alice Oke in the reality, it was quite impossible to remember that +one could have fancied her at all different: there was something so +complete, so completely unlike every one else, in her personality, that +she seemed always to have been present in one’s consciousness, although +present, perhaps, as an enigma.</p> + +<p>Let me try and give you some notion of her: not that first impression, +whatever it may have been, but the absolute reality of her as I +gradually learned to see it. To begin with, I must repeat and reiterate +over and over again, that she was, beyond all comparison, the most +graceful and exquisite woman I have ever seen, but with a grace +and an exquisiteness that had nothing to do with any preconceived +notion or previous experience of what goes by these names: grace and +exquisiteness recognised at once as perfect, but which were seen in her +for the first, and probably, I do believe, for the last time. It is +conceivable, is it not, that once in a thousand years there may arise +a combination of lines, a system of movements, an outline, a gesture, +which is new, unprecedented, and yet hits off exactly our desires for +beauty and rareness? She was very tall; and I suppose people would +have called her thin. I don’t know, for I never thought about her as +a body—bones, flesh, that sort of thing; but merely as a wonderful +series of lines, and a wonderful strangeness of personality. Tall and +slender, certainly, and with not one item of what makes up our notion +of a well-built woman. She was as straight—I mean she had as little +of what people call figure—as a bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle +high, and she had a decided stoop; her arms and her shoulders she never +once wore uncovered. But this bamboo figure of hers had a suppleness +and a stateliness, a play of outline with every step she took, that +I can’t compare to anything else; there was in it something of the +peacock and something also of the stag; but, above all, it was her +own. I wish I could describe her. I wish, alas!—I wish, I wish, I have +wished a hundred thousand times—I could paint her, as I see her now, +if I shut my eyes—even if it were only a silhouette. There! I see her +so plainly, walking slowly up and down a room, the slight highness of +her shoulders; just completing the exquisite arrangement of lines made +by the straight supple back, the long exquisite neck, the head, with +the hair cropped in short pale curls, always drooping a little, except +when she would suddenly throw it back, and smile, not at me, nor at +any one, nor at anything that had been said, but as if she alone had +suddenly seen or heard something, with the strange dimple in her thin, +pale cheeks, and the strange whiteness in her full, wide-opened eyes: +the moment when she had something of the stag in her movement. But +where is the use of talking about her? I don’t believe, you know, that +even the greatest painter can show what is the real beauty of a very +beautiful woman in the ordinary sense: Titian’s and Tintoretto’s women +must have been miles handsomer than they have made them. Something—and +that the very essence—always escapes, perhaps because real beauty is as +much a thing in time—a thing like music, a succession, a series—as in +space. Mind you, I am speaking of a woman beautiful in the conventional +sense. Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman like +Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, +can’t succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with +mere wretched words—words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, +an impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs. +Oke of Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite +and strange,—an exotic creature, whose charm you can no more describe +than you could bring home the perfume of some newly discovered tropical +flower by comparing it with the scent of a cabbage-rose or a lily.</p> + +<p>That first dinner was gloomy enough. Mr. Oke—Oke of Okehurst, as the +people down there called him—was horribly shy, consumed with a fear +of making a fool of himself before me and his wife, I then thought. +But that sort of shyness did not wear off; and I soon discovered +that, although it was doubtless increased by the presence of a total +stranger, it was inspired in Oke, not by me, but by his wife. He +would look every now and then as if he were going to make a remark, +and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very +curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to +have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow +crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness +of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow +and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political +and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and desire to +attain certainty and truth which was rather touching. On the other +hand, Oke’s singular shyness was not, so far as I could see, the +result of any kind of bullying on his wife’s part. You can always +detect, if you have any observation, the husband or the wife who is +accustomed to be snubbed, to be corrected, by his or her better-half: +there is a self-consciousness in both parties, a habit of watching +and fault-finding, of being watched and found fault with. This was +clearly not the case at Okehurst. Mrs. Oke evidently did not trouble +herself about her husband in the very least; he might say or do any +amount of silly things without rebuke or even notice; and he might +have done so, had he chosen, ever since his wedding-day. You felt that +at once. Mrs. Oke simply passed over his existence. I cannot say she +paid much attention to any one’s, even to mine. At first I thought it +an affectation on her part—for there was something far-fetched in her +whole appearance, something suggesting study, which might lead one +to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a strange +way, not according to any established aesthetic eccentricity, but +individually, strangely, as if in the clothes of an ancestress of the +seventeenth century. Well, at first I thought it a kind of pose on +her part, this mixture of extreme graciousness and utter indifference +which she manifested towards me. She always seemed to be thinking of +something else; and although she talked quite sufficiently, and with +every sign of superior intelligence, she left the impression of having +been as taciturn as her husband.</p> + +<p>In the beginning, in the first few days of my stay at Okehurst, I +imagined that Mrs. Oke was a highly superior sort of flirt; and +that her absent manner, her look, while speaking to you, into an +invisible distance, her curious irrelevant smile, were so many means +of attracting and baffling adoration. I mistook it for the somewhat +similar manners of certain foreign women—it is beyond English +ones—which mean, to those who can understand, “pay court to me.” But I +soon found I was mistaken. Mrs. Oke had not the faintest desire that I +should pay court to her; indeed she did not honour me with sufficient +thought for that; and I, on my part, began to be too much interested +in her from another point of view to dream of such a thing. I became +aware, not merely that I had before me the most marvellously rare and +exquisite and baffling subject for a portrait, but also one of the +most peculiar and enigmatic of characters. Now that I look back upon +it, I am tempted to think that the psychological peculiarity of that +woman might be summed up in an exorbitant and absorbing interest in +herself—a Narcissus attitude—curiously complicated with a fantastic +imagination, a sort of morbid day-dreaming, all turned inwards, and +with no outer characteristic save a certain restlessness, a perverse +desire to surprise and shock, to surprise and shock more particularly +her husband, and thus be revenged for the intense boredom which his +want of appreciation inflicted upon her.</p> + +<p>I got to understand this much little by little, yet I did not seem +to have really penetrated the something mysterious about Mrs. Oke. +There was a waywardness, a strangeness, which I felt but could not +explain—a something as difficult to define as the peculiarity of her +outward appearance, and perhaps very closely connected therewith. +I became interested in Mrs. Oke as if I had been in love with her; +and I was not in the least in love. I neither dreaded parting from +her, nor felt any pleasure in her presence. I had not the smallest +wish to please or to gain her notice. But I had her on the brain. I +pursued her, her physical image, her psychological explanation, with +a kind of passion which filled my days, and prevented my ever feeling +dull. The Okes lived a remarkably solitary life. There were but few +neighbours, of whom they saw but little; and they rarely had a guest +in the house. Oke himself seemed every now and then seized with a +sense of responsibility towards me. He would remark vaguely, during +our walks and after-dinner chats, that I must find life at Okehurst +horribly dull; his wife’s health had accustomed him to solitude, and +then also his wife thought the neighbours a bore. He never questioned +his wife’s judgment in these matters. He merely stated the case as +if resignation were quite simple and inevitable; yet it seemed to +me, sometimes, that this monotonous life of solitude, by the side of +a woman who took no more heed of him than of a table or chair, was +producing a vague depression and irritation in this young man, so +evidently cut out for a cheerful, commonplace life. I often wondered +how he could endure it at all, not having, as I had, the interest of +a strange psychological riddle to solve, and of a great portrait to +paint. He was, I found, extremely good,—the type of the perfectly +conscientious young Englishman, the sort of man who ought to have +been the Christian soldier kind of thing; devout, pure-minded, brave, +incapable of any baseness, a little intellectually dense, and puzzled +by all manner of moral scruples. The condition of his tenants and of +his political party—he was a regular Kentish Tory—lay heavy on his +mind. He spent hours every day in his study, doing the work of a land +agent and a political whip, reading piles of reports and newspapers and +agricultural treatises; and emerging for lunch with piles of letters in +his hand, and that odd puzzled look in his good healthy face, that deep +gash between his eyebrows, which my friend the mad-doctor calls the +<i>maniac-frown</i>. It was with this expression of face that I should have +liked to paint him; but I felt that he would not have liked it, that it +was more fair to him to represent him in his mere wholesome pink and +white and blond conventionality. I was perhaps rather unconscientious +about the likeness of Mr. Oke; I felt satisfied to paint it no matter +how, I mean as regards character, for my whole mind was swallowed up +in thinking how I should paint Mrs. Oke, how I could best transport on +to canvas that singular and enigmatic personality. I began with her +husband, and told her frankly that I must have much longer to study +her. Mr. Oke couldn’t understand why it should be necessary to make a +hundred and one pencil-sketches of his wife before even determining in +what attitude to paint her; but I think he was rather pleased to have +an opportunity of keeping me at Okehurst; my presence evidently broke +the monotony of his life. Mrs. Oke seemed perfectly indifferent to +my staying, as she was perfectly indifferent to my presence. Without +being rude, I never saw a woman pay so little attention to a guest; +she would talk with me sometimes by the hour, or rather let me talk +to her, but she never seemed to be listening. She would lie back in a +big seventeenth-century armchair while I played the piano, with that +strange smile every now and then in her thin cheeks, that strange +whiteness in her eyes; but it seemed a matter of indifference whether +my music stopped or went on. In my portrait of her husband she did +not take, or pretend to take, the very faintest interest; but that +was nothing to me. I did not want Mrs. Oke to think me interesting; I +merely wished to go on studying her.</p> + +<p>The first time that Mrs. Oke seemed to become at all aware of my +presence as distinguished from that of the chairs and tables, the dogs +that lay in the porch, or the clergyman or lawyer or stray neighbour +who was occasionally asked to dinner, was one day—I might have been +there a week—when I chanced to remark to her upon the very singular +resemblance that existed between herself and the portrait of a lady +that hung in the hall with the ceiling like a ship’s hull. The picture +in question was a full length, neither very good nor very bad, probably +done by some stray Italian of the early seventeenth century. It hung +in a rather dark corner, facing the portrait, evidently painted to be +its companion, of a dark man, with a somewhat unpleasant expression +of resolution and efficiency, in a black Vandyck dress. The two were +evidently man and wife; and in the corner of the woman’s portrait +were the words, “Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, Esq., and +wife to Nicholas Oke of Okehurst,” and the date 1626—“Nicholas Oke” +being the name painted in the corner of the small portrait. The lady +was really wonderfully like the present Mrs. Oke, at least so far as +an indifferently painted portrait of the early days of Charles I, can +be like a living woman of the nineteenth century. There were the same +strange lines of figure and face, the same dimples in the thin cheeks, +the same wide-opened eyes, the same vague eccentricity of expression, +not destroyed even by the feeble painting and conventional manner of +the time. One could fancy that this woman had the same walk, the same +beautiful line of nape of the neck and stooping head as her descendant; +for I found that Mr. and Mrs. Oke, who were first cousins, were both +descended from that Nicholas Oke and that Alice, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret. But the resemblance was heightened by the fact that, as I soon +saw, the present Mrs. Oke distinctly made herself up to look like her +ancestress, dressing in garments that had a seventeenth-century look; +nay, that were sometimes absolutely copied from this portrait.</p> + +<p>“You think I am like her,” answered Mrs. Oke dreamily to my remark, and +her eyes wandered off to that unseen something, and the faint smile +dimpled her thin cheeks.</p> + +<p>“You are like her, and you know it. I may even say you wish to be like +her, Mrs. Oke,” I answered, laughing.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps I do.”</p> + +<p>And she looked in the direction of her husband. I noticed that he had +an expression of distinct annoyance besides that frown of his.</p> + +<p>“Isn’t it true that Mrs. Oke tries to look like that portrait?” I +asked, with a perverse curiosity.</p> + +<p>“Oh, fudge!” he exclaimed, rising from his chair and walking nervously +to the window. “It’s all nonsense, mere nonsense. I wish you wouldn’t, +Alice.”</p> + +<p>“Wouldn’t what?” asked Mrs. Oke, with a sort of contemptuous +indifference. “If I am like that Alice Oke, why I am; and I am very +pleased any one should think so. She and her husband are just about the +only two members of our family—our most flat, stale, and unprofitable +family—that ever were in the least degree interesting.”</p> + +<p>Oke grew crimson, and frowned as if in pain.</p> + +<p>“I don’t see why you should abuse our family, Alice,” he said. “Thank +God, our people have always been honourable and upright men and women!”</p> + +<p>“Excepting always Nicholas Oke and Alice his wife, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, Esq.,” she answered, laughing, as he strode out into the park.</p> + +<p>“How childish he is!” she exclaimed when we were alone. “He really +minds, really feels disgraced by what our ancestors did two centuries +and a half ago. I do believe William would have those two portraits +taken down and burned if he weren’t afraid of me and ashamed of the +neighbours. And as it is, these two people really are the only two +members of our family that ever were in the least interesting. I will +tell you the story some day.”</p> + +<p>As it was, the story was told to me by Oke himself. The next day, as we +were taking our morning walk, he suddenly broke a long silence, laying +about him all the time at the sere grasses with the hooked stick that +he carried, like the conscientious Kentishman he was, for the purpose +of cutting down his and other folk’s thistles.</p> + +<p>“I fear you must have thought me very ill-mannered towards my wife +yesterday,” he said shyly; “and indeed I know I was.”</p> + +<p>Oke was one of those chivalrous beings to whom every woman, every +wife—and his own most of all—appeared in the light of something holy. +“But—but—I have a prejudice which my wife does not enter into, about +raking up ugly things in one’s own family. I suppose Alice thinks that +it is so long ago that it has really got no connection with us; she +thinks of it merely as a picturesque story. I daresay many people feel +like that; in short, I am sure they do, otherwise there wouldn’t be +such lots of discreditable family traditions afloat. But I feel as if +it were all one whether it was long ago or not; when it’s a question of +one’s own people, I would rather have it forgotten. I can’t understand +how people can talk about murders in their families, and ghosts, and so +forth.”</p> + +<p>“Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by the way?” I asked. The place +seemed as if it required some to complete it.</p> + +<p>“I hope not,” answered Oke gravely.</p> + +<p>His gravity made me smile.</p> + +<p>“Why, would you dislike it if there were?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“If there are such things as ghosts,” he replied, “I don’t think they +should be taken lightly. God would not permit them to be, except as a +warning or a punishment.”</p> + +<p>We walked on some time in silence, I wondering at the strange type of +this commonplace young man, and half wishing I could put something into +my portrait that should be the equivalent of this curious unimaginative +earnestness. Then Oke told me the story of those two pictures—told it +me about as badly and hesitatingly as was possible for mortal man.</p> + +<p>He and his wife were, as I have said, cousins, and therefore descended +from the same old Kentish stock. The Okes of Okehurst could trace back +to Norman, almost to Saxon times, far longer than any of the titled or +better-known families of the neighbourhood. I saw that William Oke, in +his heart, thoroughly looked down upon all his neighbours. “We have +never done anything particular, or been anything particular—never held +any office,” he said; “but we have always been here, and apparently +always done our duty. An ancestor of ours was killed in the Scotch +wars, another at Agincourt—mere honest captains.” Well, early in the +seventeenth century, the family had dwindled to a single member, +Nicholas Oke, the same who had rebuilt Okehurst in its present shape. +This Nicholas appears to have been somewhat different from the usual +run of the family. He had, in his youth, sought adventures in America, +and seems, generally speaking, to have been less of a nonentity than +his ancestors. He married, when no longer very young, Alice, daughter +of Virgil Pomfret, a beautiful young heiress from a neighbouring +county. “It was the first time an Oke married a Pomfret,” my host +informed me, “and the last time. The Pomfrets were quite different sort +of people—restless, self-seeking; one of them had been a favourite +of Henry VIII.” It was clear that William Oke had no feeling of +having any Pomfret blood in his veins; he spoke of these people with +an evident family dislike—the dislike of an Oke, one of the old, +honourable, modest stock, which had quietly done its duty, for a family +of fortune-seekers and Court minions. Well, there had come to live +near Okehurst, in a little house recently inherited from an uncle, a +certain Christopher Lovelock, a young gallant and poet, who was in +momentary disgrace at Court for some love affair. This Lovelock had +struck up a great friendship with his neighbours of Okehurst—too great +a friendship, apparently, with the wife, either for her husband’s +taste or her own. Anyhow, one evening as he was riding home alone, +Lovelock had been attacked and murdered, ostensibly by highwaymen, but +as was afterwards rumoured, by Nicholas Oke, accompanied by his wife +dressed as a groom. No legal evidence had been got, but the tradition +had remained. “They used to tell it us when we were children,” said my +host, in a hoarse voice, “and to frighten my cousin—I mean my wife—and +me with stories about Lovelock. It is merely a tradition, which I hope +may die out, as I sincerely pray to heaven that it may be false.” +“Alice—Mrs. Oke—you see,” he went on after some time, “doesn’t feel +about it as I do. Perhaps I am morbid. But I do dislike having the old +story raked up.”</p> + +<p>And we said no more on the subject.</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">4</h3> + +<p>From that moment I began to assume a certain interest in the eyes of +Mrs. Oke; or rather, I began to perceive that I had a means of securing +her attention. Perhaps it was wrong of me to do so; and I have often +reproached myself very seriously later on. But after all, how was I to +guess that I was making mischief merely by chiming in, for the sake of +the portrait I had undertaken, and of a very harmless psychological +mania, with what was merely the fad, the little romantic affectation +or eccentricity, of a scatter-brained and eccentric young woman? How +in the world should I have dreamed that I was handling explosive +substances? A man is surely not responsible if the people with whom he +is forced to deal, and whom he deals with as with all the rest of the +world, are quite different from all other human creatures.</p> + +<p>So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot +blame myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for a +portrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, <i>bizarre</i> +personality. I could not possibly do my subject justice so long as I +was kept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character of +the woman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any +more innocent way of doing so could be found than talking to a woman, +and letting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of +ancestors of hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they had +murdered?—particularly as I studiously respected the prejudices of my +host, and refrained from mentioning the matter, and tried to restrain +Mrs. Oke from doing so, in the presence of William Oke himself.</p> + +<p>I had certainly guessed correctly. To resemble the Alice Oke of the +year 1626 was the caprice, the mania, the pose, the whatever you may +call it, of the Alice Oke of 1880; and to perceive this resemblance was +the sure way of gaining her good graces. It was the most extraordinary +craze, of all the extraordinary crazes of childless and idle women, +that I had ever met; but it was more than that, it was admirably +characteristic. It finished off the strange figure of Mrs. Oke, as +I saw it in my imagination—this <i>bizarre</i> creature of enigmatic, +far-fetched exquisiteness—that she should have no interest in the +present, but only an eccentric passion in the past. It seemed to give +the meaning to the absent look in her eyes, to her irrelevant and +far-off smile. It was like the words to a weird piece of gipsy music, +this that she, who was so different, so distant from all women of her +own time, should try and identify herself with a woman of the past—that +she should have a kind of flirtation—But of this anon.</p> + +<p>I told Mrs. Oke that I had learnt from her husband the outline of +the tragedy, or mystery, whichever it was, of Alice Oke, daughter of +Virgil Pomfret, and the poet Christopher Lovelock. That look of vague +contempt, of a desire to shock, which I had noticed before, came into +her beautiful, pale, diaphanous face.</p> + +<p>“I suppose my husband was very shocked at the whole matter,” she +said—“told it you with as little detail as possible, and assured you +very solemnly that he hoped the whole story might be a mere dreadful +calumny? Poor Willie! I remember already when we were children, and +I used to come with my mother to spend Christmas at Okehurst, and my +cousin was down here for his holidays, how I used to horrify him by +insisting upon dressing up in shawls and waterproofs, and playing the +story of the wicked Mrs. Oke; and he always piously refused to do the +part of Nicholas, when I wanted to have the scene on Cotes Common. I +didn’t know then that I was like the original Alice Oke; I found it out +only after our marriage. You really think that I am?”</p> + +<p>She certainly was, particularly at that moment, as she stood in a white +Vandyck dress, with the green of the park-land rising up behind her, +and the low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, +her exquisitely bowed head, with a pale-yellow halo. But I confess +I thought the original Alice Oke, siren and murderess though she +might be, very uninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite +creature whom I had rashly promised myself to send down to posterity in +all her unlikely wayward exquisiteness.</p> + +<p>One morning while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of +Conservative manifestoes and rural decisions—he was justice of the +peace in a most literal sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, +defending the weak and admonishing the ill-conducted—one morning while +I was making one of my many pencil-sketches (alas, they are all that +remain to me now!) of my future sitter, Mrs. Oke gave me her version of +the story of Alice Oke and Christopher Lovelock.</p> + +<p>“Do you suppose there was anything between them?” I asked—“that she +was ever in love with him? How do you explain the part which tradition +ascribes to her in the supposed murder? One has heard of women and +their lovers who have killed the husband; but a woman who combines with +her husband to kill her lover, or at least the man who is in love with +her—that is surely very singular.” I was absorbed in my drawing, and +really thinking very little of what I was saying.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know,” she answered pensively, with that distant look in her +eyes. “Alice Oke was very proud, I am sure. She may have loved the poet +very much, and yet been indignant with him, hated having to love him. +She may have felt that she had a right to rid herself of him, and to +call upon her husband to help her to do so.”</p> + +<p>“Good heavens! what a fearful idea!” I exclaimed, half laughing. +“Don’t you think, after all, that Mr. Oke may be right in saying that +it is easier and more comfortable to take the whole story as a pure +invention?”</p> + +<p>“I cannot take it as an invention,” answered Mrs. Oke contemptuously, +“because I happen to know that it is true.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed!” I answered, working away at my sketch, and enjoying putting +this strange creature, as I said to myself, through her paces; “how is +that?”</p> + +<p>“How does one know that anything is true in this world?” she replied +evasively; “because one does, because one feels it to be true, I +suppose.”</p> + +<p>And, with that far-off look in her light eyes, she relapsed into +silence.</p> + +<p>“Have you ever read any of Lovelock’s poetry?” she asked me suddenly +the next day.</p> + +<p>“Lovelock?” I answered, for I had forgotten the name. “Lovelock, +who”—But I stopped, remembering the prejudices of my host, who was +seated next to me at table.</p> + +<p>“Lovelock who was killed by Mr. Oke’s and my ancestors.”</p> + +<p>And she looked full at her husband, as if in perverse enjoyment of the +evident annoyance which it caused him.</p> + +<p>“Alice,” he entreated in a low voice, his whole face crimson, “for +mercy’s sake, don’t talk about such things before the servants.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke burst into a high, light, rather hysterical laugh, the laugh +of a naughty child.</p> + +<p>“The servants! Gracious heavens! do you suppose they haven’t heard the +story? Why, it’s as well known as Okehurst itself in the neighbourhood. +Don’t they believe that Lovelock has been seen about the house? Haven’t +they all heard his footsteps in the big corridor? Haven’t they, my dear +Willie, noticed a thousand times that you never will stay a minute +alone in the yellow drawing-room—that you run out of it, like a child, +if I happen to leave you there for a minute?”</p> + +<p>True! How was it I had not noticed that? or rather, that I only now +remembered having noticed it? The yellow drawing-room was one of the +most charming rooms in the house: a large, bright room, hung with +yellow damask and panelled with carvings, that opened straight out on +to the lawn, far superior to the room in which we habitually sat, which +was comparatively gloomy. This time Mr. Oke struck me as really too +childish. I felt an intense desire to badger him.</p> + +<p>“The yellow drawing-room!” I exclaimed. “Does this interesting literary +character haunt the yellow drawing-room? Do tell me about it. What +happened there?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Oke made a painful effort to laugh.</p> + +<p>“Nothing ever happened there, so far as I know,” he said, and rose from +the table.</p> + +<p>“Really?” I asked incredulously.</p> + +<p>“Nothing did happen there,” answered Mrs. Oke slowly, playing +mechanically with a fork, and picking out the pattern of the +tablecloth. “That is just the extraordinary circumstance, that, so far +as any one knows, nothing ever did happen there; and yet that room has +an evil reputation. No member of our family, they say, can bear to sit +there alone for more than a minute. You see, William evidently cannot.”</p> + +<p>“Have you ever seen or heard anything strange there?” I asked of my +host.</p> + +<p>He shook his head. “Nothing,” he answered curtly, and lit his cigar.</p> + +<p>“I presume you have not,” I asked, half laughing, of Mrs. Oke, “since +you don’t mind sitting in that room for hours alone? How do you explain +this uncanny reputation, since nothing ever happened there?”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps something is destined to happen there in the future,” she +answered, in her absent voice. And then she suddenly added, “Suppose +you paint my portrait in that room?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Oke suddenly turned round. He was very white, and looked as if he +were going to say something, but desisted.</p> + +<p>“Why do you worry Mr. Oke like that?” I asked, when he had gone into +his smoking-room with his usual bundle of papers. “It is very cruel +of you, Mrs. Oke. You ought to have more consideration for people who +believe in such things, although you may not be able to put yourself in +their frame of mind.”</p> + +<p>“Who tells you that I don’t believe in <i>such things</i>, as you call +them?” she answered abruptly.</p> + +<p>“Come,” she said, after a minute, “I want to show you why I believe in +Christopher Lovelock. Come with me into the yellow room.”</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">5</h3> + +<p>What Mrs. Oke showed me in the yellow room was a large bundle of +papers, some printed and some manuscript, but all of them brown with +age, which she took out of an old Italian ebony inlaid cabinet. It took +her some time to get them, as a complicated arrangement of double locks +and false drawers had to be put in play; and while she was doing so, +I looked round the room, in which I had been only three or four times +before. It was certainly the most beautiful room in this beautiful +house, and, as it seemed to me now, the most strange. It was long and +low, with something that made you think of the cabin of a ship, with a +great mullioned window that let in, as it were, a perspective of the +brownish green park-land, dotted with oaks, and sloping upwards to the +distant line of bluish firs against the horizon. The walls were hung +with flowered damask, whose yellow, faded to brown, united with the +reddish colour of the carved wainscoting and the carved oaken beams. +For the rest, it reminded me more of an Italian room than an English +one. The furniture was Tuscan of the early seventeenth century, inlaid +and carved; there were a couple of faded allegorical pictures, by some +Bolognese master, on the walls; and in a corner, among a stack of +dwarf orange-trees, a little Italian harpsichord of exquisite curve +and slenderness, with flowers and landscapes painted upon its cover. +In a recess was a shelf of old books, mainly English and Italian +poets of the Elizabethan time; and close by it, placed upon a carved +wedding-chest, a large and beautiful melon-shaped lute. The panes of +the mullioned window were open, and yet the air seemed heavy, with an +indescribable heady perfume, not that of any growing flower, but like +that of old stuff that should have lain for years among spices.</p> + +<p>“It is a beautiful room!” I exclaimed. “I should awfully like to paint +you in it”; but I had scarcely spoken the words when I felt I had done +wrong. This woman’s husband could not bear the room, and it seemed to +me vaguely as if he were right in detesting it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke took no notice of my exclamation, but beckoned me to the table +where she was standing sorting the papers.</p> + +<p>“Look!” she said, “these are all poems by Christopher Lovelock”; +and touching the yellow papers with delicate and reverent fingers, +she commenced reading some of them out loud in a slow, half-audible +voice. They were songs in the style of those of Herrick, Waller, and +Drayton, complaining for the most part of the cruelty of a lady called +Dryope, in whose name was evidently concealed a reference to that of +the mistress of Okehurst. The songs were graceful, and not without a +certain faded passion: but I was thinking not of them, but of the woman +who was reading them to me.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke was standing with the brownish yellow wall as a background to +her white brocade dress, which, in its stiff seventeenth-century make, +seemed but to bring out more clearly the slightness, the exquisite +suppleness, of her tall figure. She held the papers in one hand, and +leaned the other, as if for support, on the inlaid cabinet by her side. +Her voice, which was delicate, shadowy, like her person, had a curious +throbbing cadence, as if she were reading the words of a melody, and +restraining herself with difficulty from singing it; and as she read, +her long slender throat throbbed slightly, and a faint redness came +into her thin face. She evidently knew the verses by heart, and her +eyes were mostly fixed with that distant smile in them, with which +harmonised a constant tremulous little smile in her lips.</p> + +<p>“That is how I would wish to paint her!” I exclaimed within myself; and +scarcely noticed, what struck me on thinking over the scene, that this +strange being read these verses as one might fancy a woman would read +love-verses addressed to herself.</p> + +<p>“Those are all written for Alice Oke—Alice the daughter of Virgil +Pomfret,” she said slowly, folding up the papers. “I found them at the +bottom of this cabinet. Can you doubt of the reality of Christopher +Lovelock now?”</p> + +<p>The question was an illogical one, for to doubt of the existence of +Christopher Lovelock was one thing, and to doubt of the mode of his +death was another; but somehow I did feel convinced.</p> + +<p>“Look!” she said, when she had replaced the poems, “I will show you +something else.” Among the flowers that stood on the upper storey of +her writing-table—for I found that Mrs. Oke had a writing-table in the +yellow room—stood, as on an altar, a small black carved frame, with a +silk curtain drawn over it: the sort of thing behind which you would +have expected to find a head of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. She drew +the curtain and displayed a large-sized miniature, representing a young +man, with auburn curls and a peaked auburn beard, dressed in black, but +with lace about his neck, and large pear-shaped pearls in his ears: a +wistful, melancholy face. Mrs. Oke took the miniature religiously off +its stand, and showed me, written in faded characters upon the back, +the name “Christopher Lovelock,” and the date 1626.</p> + +<p>“I found this in the secret drawer of that cabinet, together with the +heap of poems,” she said, taking the miniature out of my hand.</p> + +<p>I was silent for a minute.</p> + +<p>“Does—does Mr. Oke know that you have got it here?” I asked; and then +wondered what in the world had impelled me to put such a question.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke smiled that smile of contemptuous indifference. “I have never +hidden it from any one. If my husband disliked my having it, he might +have taken it away, I suppose. It belongs to him, since it was found in +his house.”</p> + +<p>I did not answer, but walked mechanically towards the door. There was +something heady and oppressive in this beautiful room; something, I +thought, almost repulsive in this exquisite woman. She seemed to me, +suddenly, perverse and dangerous.</p> + +<p>I scarcely know why, but I neglected Mrs. Oke that afternoon. I went to +Mr. Oke’s study, and sat opposite to him smoking while he was engrossed +in his accounts, his reports, and electioneering papers. On the table, +above the heap of paper-bound volumes and pigeon-holed documents, was, +as sole ornament of his den, a little photograph of his wife, done some +years before. I don’t know why, but as I sat and watched him, with his +florid, honest, manly beauty, working away conscientiously, with that +little perplexed frown of his, I felt intensely sorry for this man.</p> + +<p>But this feeling did not last. There was no help for it: Oke was not as +interesting as Mrs. Oke; and it required too great an effort to pump +up sympathy for this normal, excellent, exemplary young squire, in the +presence of so wonderful a creature as his wife. So I let myself go to +the habit of allowing Mrs. Oke daily to talk over her strange craze, or +rather of drawing her out about it. I confess that I derived a morbid +and exquisite pleasure in doing so: it was so characteristic in her, so +appropriate to the house! It completed her personality so perfectly, +and made it so much easier to conceive a way of painting her. I made +up my mind little by little, while working at William Oke’s portrait +(he proved a less easy subject than I had anticipated, and, despite his +conscientious efforts, was a nervous, uncomfortable sitter, silent and +brooding)—I made up my mind that I would paint Mrs. Oke standing by +the cabinet in the yellow room, in the white Vandyck dress copied from +the portrait of her ancestress. Mr. Oke might resent it, Mrs. Oke even +might resent it; they might refuse to take the picture, to pay for it, +to allow me to exhibit; they might force me to run my umbrella through +the picture. No matter. That picture should be painted, if merely for +the sake of having painted it; for I felt it was the only thing I +could do, and that it would be far away my best work. I told neither +of my resolution, but prepared sketch after sketch of Mrs. Oke, while +continuing to paint her husband.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke was a silent person, more silent even than her husband, for +she did not feel bound, as he did, to attempt to entertain a guest or +to show any interest in him. She seemed to spend her life—a curious, +inactive, half-invalidish life, broken by sudden fits of childish +cheerfulness—in an eternal daydream, strolling about the house and +grounds, arranging the quantities of flowers that always filled all +the rooms, beginning to read and then throwing aside novels and books +of poetry, of which she always had a large number; and, I believe, +lying for hours, doing nothing, on a couch in that yellow drawing-room, +which, with her sole exception, no member of the Oke family had ever +been known to stay in alone. Little by little I began to suspect and to +verify another eccentricity of this eccentric being, and to understand +why there were stringent orders never to disturb her in that yellow +room.</p> + +<p>It had been a habit at Okehurst, as at one or two other English +manor-houses, to keep a certain amount of the clothes of each +generation, more particularly wedding dresses. A certain carved oaken +press, of which Mr. Oke once displayed the contents to me, was a +perfect museum of costumes, male and female, from the early years +of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century—a thing to +take away the breath of a <i>bric-a-brac</i> collector, an antiquary, or +a <i>genre</i> painter. Mr. Oke was none of these, and therefore took but +little interest in the collection, save in so far as it interested his +family feeling. Still he seemed well acquainted with the contents of +that press.</p> + +<p>He was turning over the clothes for my benefit, when suddenly I noticed +that he frowned. I know not what impelled me to say, “By the way, have +you any dresses of that Mrs. Oke whom your wife resembles so much? Have +you got that particular white dress she was painted in, perhaps?”</p> + +<p>Oke of Okehurst flushed very red.</p> + +<p>“We have it,” he answered hesitatingly, “but—it isn’t here at present—I +can’t find it. I suppose,” he blurted out with an effort, “that Alice +has got it. Mrs. Oke sometimes has the fancy of having some of these +old things down. I suppose she takes ideas from them.”</p> + +<p>A sudden light dawned in my mind. The white dress in which I had seen +Mrs. Oke in the yellow room, the day that she showed me Lovelock’s +verses, was not, as I had thought, a modern copy; it was the original +dress of Alice Oke, the daughter of Virgil Pomfret—the dress in which, +perhaps, Christopher Lovelock had seen her in that very room.</p> + +<p>The idea gave me a delightful picturesque shudder. I said nothing. But +I pictured to myself Mrs. Oke sitting in that yellow room—that room +which no Oke of Okehurst save herself ventured to remain in alone, +in the dress of her ancestress, confronting, as it were, that vague, +haunting something that seemed to fill the place—that vague presence, +it seemed to me, of the murdered cavalier poet.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke, as I have said, was extremely silent, as a result of being +extremely indifferent. She really did not care in the least about +anything except her own ideas and day-dreams, except when, every now +and then, she was seized with a sudden desire to shock the prejudices +or superstitions of her husband. Very soon she got into the way of +never talking to me at all, save about Alice and Nicholas Oke and +Christopher Lovelock; and then, when the fit seized her, she would go +on by the hour, never asking herself whether I was or was not equally +interested in the strange craze that fascinated her. It so happened +that I was. I loved to listen to her, going on discussing by the hour +the merits of Lovelock’s poems, and analysing her feelings and those +of her two ancestors. It was quite wonderful to watch the exquisite, +exotic creature in one of these moods, with the distant look in her +grey eyes and the absent-looking smile in her thin cheeks, talking as +if she had intimately known these people of the seventeenth century, +discussing every minute mood of theirs, detailing every scene between +them and their victim, talking of Alice, and Nicholas, and Lovelock +as she might of her most intimate friends. Of Alice particularly, and +of Lovelock. She seemed to know every word that Alice had spoken, +every idea that had crossed her mind. It sometimes struck me as if +she were telling me, speaking of herself in the third person, of her +own feelings—as if I were listening to a woman’s confidences, the +recital of her doubts, scruples, and agonies about a living lover. For +Mrs. Oke, who seemed the most self-absorbed of creatures in all other +matters, and utterly incapable of understanding or sympathising with +the feelings of other persons, entered completely and passionately into +the feelings of this woman, this Alice, who, at some moments, seemed to +be not another woman, but herself.</p> + +<p>“But how could she do it—how could she kill the man she cared for?” I +once asked her.</p> + +<p>“Because she loved him more than the whole world!” she exclaimed, and +rising suddenly from her chair, walked towards the window, covering her +face with her hands.</p> + +<p>I could see, from the movement of her neck, that she was sobbing. She +did not turn round, but motioned me to go away.</p> + +<p>“Don’t let us talk any more about it,” she said. “I am ill to-day, and +silly.”</p> + +<p>I closed the door gently behind me. What mystery was there in this +woman’s life? This listlessness, this strange self-engrossment and +stranger mania about people long dead, this indifference and desire +to annoy towards her husband—did it all mean that Alice Oke had loved +or still loved some one who was not the master of Okehurst? And his +melancholy, his preoccupation, the something about him that told of a +broken youth—did it mean that he knew it?</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">6</h3> + +<p>The following days Mrs. Oke was in a condition of quite unusual good +spirits. Some visitors—distant relatives—were expected, and although +she had expressed the utmost annoyance at the idea of their coming, she +was now seized with a fit of housekeeping activity, and was perpetually +about arranging things and giving orders, although all arrangements, as +usual, had been made, and all orders given, by her husband.</p> + +<p>William Oke was quite radiant.</p> + +<p>“If only Alice were always well like this!” he exclaimed; “if only she +would take, or could take, an interest in life, how different things +would be! But,” he added, as if fearful lest he should be supposed to +accuse her in any way, “how can she, usually, with her wretched health? +Still, it does make me awfully happy to see her like this.”</p> + +<p>I nodded. But I cannot say that I really acquiesced in his views. +It seemed to me, particularly with the recollection of yesterday’s +extraordinary scene, that Mrs. Oke’s high spirits were anything but +normal. There was something in her unusual activity and still more +unusual cheerfulness that was merely nervous and feverish; and I had, +the whole day, the impression of dealing with a woman who was ill and +who would very speedily collapse.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke spent her day wandering from one room to another, and from +the garden to the greenhouse, seeing whether all was in order, when, +as a matter of fact, all was always in order at Okehurst. She did +not give me any sitting, and not a word was spoken about Alice Oke +or Christopher Lovelock. Indeed, to a casual observer, it might have +seemed as if all that craze about Lovelock had completely departed, +or never existed. About five o’clock, as I was strolling among the +red-brick round-gabled outhouses—each with its armorial oak—and the +old-fashioned spalliered kitchen and fruit garden, I saw Mrs. Oke +standing, her hands full of York and Lancaster roses, upon the steps +facing the stables. A groom was currycombing a horse, and outside the +coach-house was Mr. Oke’s little high-wheeled cart.</p> + +<p>“Let us have a drive!” suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Oke, on seeing me. “Look +what a beautiful evening—and look at that dear little cart! It is so +long since I have driven, and I feel as if I must drive again. Come +with me. And you, harness Jim at once and come round to the door.”</p> + +<p>I was quite amazed; and still more so when the cart drove up before the +door, and Mrs. Oke called to me to accompany her. She sent away the +groom, and in a minute we were rolling along, at a tremendous pace, +along the yellow-sand road, with the sere pasture-lands, the big oaks, +on either side.</p> + +<p>I could scarcely believe my senses. This woman, in her mannish little +coat and hat, driving a powerful young horse with the utmost skill, and +chattering like a school-girl of sixteen, could not be the delicate, +morbid, exotic, hot-house creature, unable to walk or to do anything, +who spent her days lying about on couches in the heavy atmosphere, +redolent with strange scents and associations, of the yellow +drawing-room. The movement of the light carriage, the cool draught, the +very grind of the wheels upon the gravel, seemed to go to her head like +wine.</p> + +<p>“It is so long since I have done this sort of thing,” she kept +repeating; “so long, so long. Oh, don’t you think it delightful, going +at this pace, with the idea that any moment the horse may come down and +we two be killed?” and she laughed her childish laugh, and turned her +face, no longer pale, but flushed with the movement and the excitement, +towards me.</p> + +<p>The cart rolled on quicker and quicker, one gate after another swinging +to behind us, as we flew up and down the little hills, across the +pasture lands, through the little red-brick gabled villages, where the +people came out to see us pass, past the rows of willows along the +streams, and the dark-green compact hop-fields, with the blue and hazy +tree-tops of the horizon getting bluer and more hazy as the yellow +light began to graze the ground. At last we got to an open space, a +high-lying piece of common-land, such as is rare in that ruthlessly +utilised country of grazing-grounds and hop-gardens. Among the low +hills of the Weald, it seemed quite preternaturally high up, giving a +sense that its extent of flat heather and gorse, bound by distant firs, +was really on the top of the world. The sun was setting just opposite, +and its lights lay flat on the ground, staining it with the red and +black of the heather, or rather turning it into the surface of a purple +sea, canopied over by a bank of dark-purple clouds—the jet-like sparkle +of the dry ling and gorse tipping the purple like sunlit wavelets. A +cold wind swept in our faces.</p> + +<p>“What is the name of this place?” I asked. It was the only bit of +impressive scenery that I had met in the neighbourhood of Okehurst.</p> + +<p>“It is called Cotes Common,” answered Mrs. Oke, who had slackened the +pace of the horse, and let the reins hang loose about his neck. “It was +here that Christopher Lovelock was killed.”</p> + +<p>There was a moment’s pause; and then she proceeded, tickling the flies +from the horse’s ears with the end of her whip, and looking straight +into the sunset, which now rolled, a deep purple stream, across the +heath to our feet—</p> + +<p>“Lovelock was riding home one summer evening from Appledore, when, +as he had got half-way across Cotes Common, somewhere about here—for +I have always heard them mention the pond in the old gravel-pits as +about the place—he saw two men riding towards him, in whom he presently +recognised Nicholas Oke of Okehurst accompanied by a groom. Oke of +Okehurst hailed him; and Lovelock rode up to meet him. ‘I am glad +to have met you, Mr. Lovelock,’ said Nicholas, ‘because I have some +important news for you’; and so saying, he brought his horse close to +the one that Lovelock was riding, and suddenly turning round, fired +off a pistol at his head. Lovelock had time to move, and the bullet, +instead of striking him, went straight into the head of his horse, +which fell beneath him. Lovelock, however, had fallen in such a way +as to be able to extricate himself easily from his horse; and drawing +his sword, he rushed upon Oke, and seized his horse by the bridle. Oke +quickly jumped off and drew his sword; and in a minute, Lovelock, who +was much the better swordsman of the two, was having the better of +him. Lovelock had completely disarmed him, and got his sword at Oke’s +throat, crying out to him that if he would ask forgiveness he should be +spared for the sake of their old friendship, when the groom suddenly +rode up from behind and shot Lovelock through the back. Lovelock fell, +and Oke immediately tried to finish him with his sword, while the groom +drew up and held the bridle of Oke’s horse. At that moment the sunlight +fell upon the groom’s face, and Lovelock recognised Mrs. Oke. He cried +out, ‘Alice, Alice! it is you who have murdered me!’ and died. Then +Nicholas Oke sprang into his saddle and rode off with his wife, leaving +Lovelock dead by the side of his fallen horse. Nicholas Oke had taken +the precaution of removing Lovelock’s purse and throwing it into the +pond, so the murder was put down to certain highwaymen who were about +in that part of the country. Alice Oke died many years afterwards, +quite an old woman, in the reign of Charles II.; but Nicholas did not +live very long, and shortly before his death got into a very strange +condition, always brooding, and sometimes threatening to kill his wife. +They say that in one of these fits, just shortly before his death, he +told the whole story of the murder, and made a prophecy that when the +head of his house and master of Okehurst should marry another Alice Oke +descended from himself and his wife, there should be an end of the Okes +of Okehurst. You see, it seems to be coming true. We have no children, +and I don’t suppose we shall ever have any. I, at least, have never +wished for them.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke paused, and turned her face towards me with the absent smile +in her thin cheeks: her eyes no longer had that distant look; they +were strangely eager and fixed. I did not know what to answer; this +woman positively frightened me. We remained for a moment in that same +place, with the sunlight dying away in crimson ripples on the heather, +gilding the yellow banks, the black waters of the pond, surrounded by +thin rushes, and the yellow gravel-pits; while the wind blew in our +faces and bent the ragged warped bluish tops of the firs. Then Mrs. +Oke touched the horse, and off we went at a furious pace. We did not +exchange a single word, I think, on the way home. Mrs. Oke sat with +her eyes fixed on the reins, breaking the silence now and then only +by a word to the horse, urging him to an even more furious pace. The +people we met along the roads must have thought that the horse was +running away, unless they noticed Mrs. Oke’s calm manner and the look +of excited enjoyment in her face. To me it seemed that I was in the +hands of a madwoman, and I quietly prepared myself for being upset +or dashed against a cart. It had turned cold, and the draught was +icy in our faces when we got within sight of the red gables and high +chimney-stacks of Okehurst. Mr. Oke was standing before the door. On +our approach I saw a look of relieved suspense, of keen pleasure come +into his face.</p> + +<p>He lifted his wife out of the cart in his strong arms with a kind of +chivalrous tenderness.</p> + +<p>“I am so glad to have you back, darling,” he exclaimed—“so glad! I was +delighted to hear you had gone out with the cart, but as you have not +driven for so long, I was beginning to be frightfully anxious, dearest. +Where have you been all this time?”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke had quickly extricated herself from her husband, who had +remained holding her, as one might hold a delicate child who has been +causing anxiety. The gentleness and affection of the poor fellow had +evidently not touched her—she seemed almost to recoil from it.</p> + +<p>“I have taken him to Cotes Common,” she said, with that perverse look +which I had noticed before, as she pulled off her driving-gloves. “It +is such a splendid old place.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Oke flushed as if he had bitten upon a sore tooth, and the double +gash painted itself scarlet between his eyebrows.</p> + +<p>Outside, the mists were beginning to rise, veiling the park-land dotted +with big black oaks, and from which, in the watery moonlight, rose +on all sides the eerie little cry of the lambs separated from their +mothers. It was damp and cold, and I shivered.</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">7</h3> + +<p>The next day Okehurst was full of people, and Mrs. Oke, to my +amazement, was doing the honours of it as if a house full of +commonplace, noisy young creatures, bent upon flirting and tennis, were +her usual idea of felicity.</p> + +<p>The afternoon of the third day—they had come for an electioneering +ball, and stayed three nights—the weather changed; it turned suddenly +very cold and began to pour. Every one was sent indoors, and there was +a general gloom suddenly over the company. Mrs. Oke seemed to have got +sick of her guests, and was listlessly lying back on a couch, paying +not the slightest attention to the chattering and piano-strumming +in the room, when one of the guests suddenly proposed that they +should play charades. He was a distant cousin of the Okes, a sort of +fashionable artistic Bohemian, swelled out to intolerable conceit by +the amateur-actor vogue of a season.</p> + +<p>“It would be lovely in this marvellous old place,” he cried, “just to +dress up, and parade about, and feel as if we belonged to the past. I +have heard you have a marvellous collection of old costumes, more or +less ever since the days of Noah, somewhere, Cousin Bill.”</p> + +<p>The whole party exclaimed in joy at this proposal. William Oke looked +puzzled for a moment, and glanced at his wife, who continued to lie +listless on her sofa.</p> + +<p>“There is a press full of clothes belonging to the family,” he answered +dubiously, apparently overwhelmed by the desire to please his guests; +“but—but—I don’t know whether it’s quite respectful to dress up in the +clothes of dead people.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, fiddlestick!” cried the cousin. “What do the dead people know +about it? Besides,” he added, with mock seriousness, “I assure you we +shall behave in the most reverent way and feel quite solemn about it +all, if only you will give us the key, old man.”</p> + +<p>Again Mr. Oke looked towards his wife, and again met only her vague, +absent glance.</p> + +<p>“Very well,” he said, and led his guests upstairs.</p> + +<p>An hour later the house was filled with the strangest crew and the +strangest noises. I had entered, to a certain extent, into William +Oke’s feeling of unwillingness to let his ancestors’ clothes and +personality be taken in vain; but when the masquerade was complete, +I must say that the effect was quite magnificent. A dozen youngish +men and women—those who were staying in the house and some neighbours +who had come for lawn-tennis and dinner—were rigged out, under the +direction of the theatrical cousin, in the contents of that oaken +press: and I have never seen a more beautiful sight than the panelled +corridors, the carved and escutcheoned staircase, the dim drawing-rooms +with their faded tapestries, the great hall with its vaulted and +ribbed ceiling, dotted about with groups or single figures that seemed +to have come straight from the past. Even William Oke, who, besides +myself and a few elderly people, was the only man not masqueraded, +seemed delighted and fired by the sight. A certain schoolboy character +suddenly came out in him; and finding that there was no costume left +for him, he rushed upstairs and presently returned in the uniform he +had worn before his marriage. I thought I had really never seen so +magnificent a specimen of the handsome Englishman; he looked, despite +all the modern associations of his costume, more genuinely old-world +than all the rest, a knight for the Black Prince or Sidney, with his +admirably regular features and beautiful fair hair and complexion. +After a minute, even the elderly people had got costumes of some +sort—dominoes arranged at the moment, and hoods and all manner of +disguises made out of pieces of old embroidery and Oriental stuffs and +furs; and very soon this rabble of masquers had become, so to speak, +completely drunk with its own amusement—with the childishness, and, if +I may say so, the barbarism, the vulgarity underlying the majority even +of well-bred English men and women—Mr. Oke himself doing the mountebank +like a schoolboy at Christmas.</p> + +<p>“Where is Mrs. Oke? Where is Alice?” some one suddenly asked.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke had vanished. I could fully understand that to this eccentric +being, with her fantastic, imaginative, morbid passion for the past, +such a carnival as this must be positively revolting; and, absolutely +indifferent as she was to giving offence, I could imagine how she would +have retired, disgusted and outraged, to dream her strange day-dreams +in the yellow room.</p> + +<p>But a moment later, as we were all noisily preparing to go in to +dinner, the door opened and a strange figure entered, stranger than +any of these others who were profaning the clothes of the dead: a boy, +slight and tall, in a brown riding-coat, leathern belt, and big buff +boots, a little grey cloak over one shoulder, a large grey hat slouched +over the eyes, a dagger and pistol at the waist. It was Mrs. Oke, her +eyes preternaturally bright, and her whole face lit up with a bold, +perverse smile.</p> + +<p>Every one exclaimed, and stood aside. Then there was a moment’s +silence, broken by faint applause. Even to a crew of noisy boys and +girls playing the fool in the garments of men and women long dead and +buried, there is something questionable in the sudden appearance of a +young married woman, the mistress of the house, in a riding-coat and +jackboots; and Mrs. Oke’s expression did not make the jest seem any the +less questionable.</p> + +<p>“What is that costume?” asked the theatrical cousin, who, after a +second, had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Oke was merely a woman of +marvellous talent whom he must try and secure for his amateur troop +next season.</p> + +<p>“It is the dress in which an ancestress of ours, my namesake Alice Oke, +used to go out riding with her husband in the days of Charles I.,” she +answered, and took her seat at the head of the table. Involuntarily +my eyes sought those of Oke of Okehurst. He, who blushed as easily as +a girl of sixteen, was now as white as ashes, and I noticed that he +pressed his hand almost convulsively to his mouth.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you recognise my dress, William?” asked Mrs. Oke, fixing her +eyes upon him with a cruel smile.</p> + +<p>He did not answer, and there was a moment’s silence, which the +theatrical cousin had the happy thought of breaking by jumping upon his +seat and emptying off his glass with the exclamation—</p> + +<p>“To the health of the two Alice Okes, of the past and the present!”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke nodded, and with an expression I had never seen in her face +before, answered in a loud and aggressive tone—</p> + +<p>“To the health of the poet, Mr. Christopher Lovelock, if his ghost be +honouring this house with its presence!”</p> + +<p>I felt suddenly as if I were in a madhouse. Across the table, in +the midst of this room full of noisy wretches, tricked out red, +blue, purple, and parti-coloured, as men and women of the sixteenth, +seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, as improvised Turks and Eskimos, +and dominoes, and clowns, with faces painted and corked and floured +over, I seemed to see that sanguine sunset, washing like a sea of blood +over the heather, to where, by the black pond and the wind-warped firs, +there lay the body of Christopher Lovelock, with his dead horse near +him, the yellow gravel and lilac ling soaked crimson all around; and +above emerged, as out of the redness, the pale blond head covered with +the grey hat, the absent eyes, and strange smile of Mrs. Oke. It seemed +to me horrible, vulgar, abominable, as if I had got inside a madhouse.</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">8</h3> + +<p>From that moment I noticed a change in William Oke; or rather, a change +that had probably been coming on for some time got to the stage of +being noticeable.</p> + +<p>I don’t know whether he had any words with his wife about her +masquerade of that unlucky evening. On the whole I decidedly think +not. Oke was with every one a diffident and reserved man, and most of +all so with his wife; besides, I can fancy that he would experience +a positive impossibility of putting into words any strong feeling of +disapprobation towards her, that his disgust would necessarily be +silent. But be this as it may, I perceived very soon that the relations +between my host and hostess had become exceedingly strained. Mrs. Oke, +indeed, had never paid much attention to her husband, and seemed merely +a trifle more indifferent to his presence than she had been before. But +Oke himself, although he affected to address her at meals from a desire +to conceal his feeling, and a fear of making the position disagreeable +to me, very clearly could scarcely bear to speak to or even see his +wife. The poor fellow’s honest soul was quite brimful of pain, which +he was determined not to allow to overflow, and which seemed to filter +into his whole nature and poison it. This woman had shocked and pained +him more than was possible to say, and yet it was evident that he could +neither cease loving her nor commence comprehending her real nature. +I sometimes felt, as we took our long walks through the monotonous +country, across the oak-dotted grazing-grounds, and by the brink of +the dull-green, serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the +value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, +the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of +Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I +sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this +man about his wife’s character. I seemed to understand it so well, and +to understand it well seemed to imply such a comfortable acquiescence; +and it seemed so unfair that just he should be condemned to puzzle for +ever over this enigma, and wear out his soul trying to comprehend what +now seemed so plain to me. But how would it ever be possible to get +this serious, conscientious, slow-brained representative of English +simplicity and honesty and thoroughness to understand the mixture of +self-engrossed vanity, of shallowness, of poetic vision, of love of +morbid excitement, that walked this earth under the name of Alice Oke?</p> + +<p>So Oke of Okehurst was condemned never to understand; but he was +condemned also to suffer from his inability to do so. The poor +fellow was constantly straining after an explanation of his wife’s +peculiarities; and although the effort was probably unconscious, it +caused him a great deal of pain. The gash—the maniac-frown, as my +friend calls it—between his eyebrows, seemed to have grown a permanent +feature of his face.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke, on her side, was making the very worst of the situation. +Perhaps she resented her husband’s tacit reproval of that masquerade +night’s freak, and determined to make him swallow more of the same +stuff, for she clearly thought that one of William’s peculiarities, +and one for which she despised him, was that he could never be goaded +into an outspoken expression of disapprobation; that from her he would +swallow any amount of bitterness without complaining. At any rate +she now adopted a perfect policy of teasing and shocking her husband +about the murder of Lovelock. She was perpetually alluding to it in +her conversation, discussing in his presence what had or had not +been the feelings of the various actors in the tragedy of 1626, and +insisting upon her resemblance and almost identity with the original +Alice Oke. Something had suggested to her eccentric mind that it +would be delightful to perform in the garden at Okehurst, under the +huge ilexes and elms, a little masque which she had discovered among +Christopher Lovelock’s works; and she began to scour the country and +enter into vast correspondence for the purpose of effectuating this +scheme. Letters arrived every other day from the theatrical cousin, +whose only objection was that Okehurst was too remote a locality for an +entertainment in which he foresaw great glory to himself. And every now +and then there would arrive some young gentleman or lady, whom Alice +Oke had sent for to see whether they would do.</p> + +<p>I saw very plainly that the performance would never take place, and +that Mrs. Oke herself had no intention that it ever should. She was one +of those creatures to whom realisation of a project is nothing, and +who enjoy plan-making almost the more for knowing that all will stop +short at the plan. Meanwhile, this perpetual talk about the pastoral, +about Lovelock, this continual attitudinising as the wife of Nicholas +Oke, had the further attraction to Mrs. Oke of putting her husband +into a condition of frightful though suppressed irritation, which she +enjoyed with the enjoyment of a perverse child. You must not think that +I looked on indifferent, although I admit that this was a perfect treat +to an amateur student of character like myself. I really did feel most +sorry for poor Oke, and frequently quite indignant with his wife. I was +several times on the point of begging her to have more consideration +for him, even of suggesting that this kind of behavior, particularly +before a comparative stranger like me, was very poor taste. But there +was something elusive about Mrs. Oke, which made it next to impossible +to speak seriously with her; and besides, I was by no means sure that +any interference on my part would not merely animate her perversity.</p> + +<p>One evening a curious incident took place. We had just sat down to +dinner, the Okes, the theatrical cousin, who was down for a couple of +days, and three or four neighbours. It was dusk, and the yellow light +of the candles mingled charmingly with the greyness of the evening. +Mrs. Oke was not well, and had been remarkably quiet all day, more +diaphanous, strange, and far-away than ever; and her husband seemed to +have felt a sudden return of tenderness, almost of compassion, for this +delicate, fragile creature. We had been talking of quite indifferent +matters, when I saw Mr. Oke suddenly turn very white, and look fixedly +for a moment at the window opposite to his seat.</p> + +<p>“Who’s that fellow looking in at the window, and making signs to +you, Alice? Damn his impudence!” he cried, and jumping up, ran to +the window, opened it, and passed out into the twilight. We all +looked at each other in surprise; some of the party remarked upon the +carelessness of servants in letting nasty-looking fellows hang about +the kitchen, others told stories of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke did +not speak; but I noticed the curious, distant-looking smile in her thin +cheeks.</p> + +<p>After a minute William Oke came in, his napkin in his hand. He shut the +window behind him and silently resumed his place.</p> + +<p>“Well, who was it?” we all asked.</p> + +<p>“Nobody. I—I must have made a mistake,” he answered, and turned +crimson, while he busily peeled a pear.</p> + +<p>“It was probably Lovelock,” remarked Mrs. Oke, just as she might have +said, “It was probably the gardener,” but with that faint smile of +pleasure still in her face. Except the theatrical cousin, who burst +into a loud laugh, none of the company had ever heard Lovelock’s name, +and, doubtless imagining him to be some natural appanage of the Oke +family, groom or farmer, said nothing, so the subject dropped.</p> + +<p>From that evening onwards things began to assume a different aspect. +That incident was the beginning of a perfect system—a system of what? +I scarcely know how to call it. A system of grim jokes on the part +of Mrs. Oke, of superstitious fancies on the part of her husband—a +system of mysterious persecutions on the part of some less earthly +tenant of Okehurst. Well, yes, after all, why not? We have all heard +of ghosts, had uncles, cousins, grandmothers, nurses, who have seen +them; we are all a bit afraid of them at the bottom of our soul; so why +shouldn’t they be? I am too sceptical to believe in the impossibility +of anything, for my part!</p> + +<p>Besides, when a man has lived throughout a summer in the same house +with a woman like Mrs. Oke of Okehurst, he gets to believe in the +possibility of a great many improbable things, I assure you, as a mere +result of believing in her. And when you come to think of it, why not? +That a weird creature, visibly not of this earth, a reincarnation +of a woman who murdered her lover two centuries and a half ago, +that such a creature should have the power of attracting about her +(being altogether superior to earthly lovers) the man who loved her +in that previous existence, whose love for her was his death—what is +there astonishing in that? Mrs. Oke herself, I feel quite persuaded, +believed or half believed it; indeed she very seriously admitted the +possibility thereof, one day that I made the suggestion half in jest. +At all events, it rather pleased me to think so; it fitted in so well +with the woman’s whole personality; it explained those hours and hours +spent all alone in the yellow room, where the very air, with its scent +of heady flowers and old perfumed stuffs, seemed redolent of ghosts. +It explained that strange smile which was not for any of us, and yet +was not merely for herself—that strange, far-off look in the wide pale +eyes. I liked the idea, and I liked to tease, or rather to delight her +with it. How should I know that the wretched husband would take such +matters seriously?</p> + +<p>He became day by day more silent and perplexed-looking; and, as +a result, worked harder, and probably with less effect, at his +land-improving schemes and political canvassing. It seemed to me that +he was perpetually listening, watching, waiting for something to +happen: a word spoken suddenly, the sharp opening of a door, would +make him start, turn crimson, and almost tremble; the mention of +Lovelock brought a helpless look, half a convulsion, like that of a +man overcome by great heat, into his face. And his wife, so far from +taking any interest in his altered looks, went on irritating him more +and more. Every time that the poor fellow gave one of those starts of +his, or turned crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, Mrs. Oke +would ask him, with her contemptuous indifference, whether he had seen +Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was getting perfectly +ill. He would sit at meals never saying a word, with his eyes fixed +scrutinisingly on his wife, as if vainly trying to solve some dreadful +mystery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went on talking in her +listless way about the masque, about Lovelock, always about Lovelock. +During our walks and rides, which we continued pretty regularly, he +would start whenever in the roads or lanes surrounding Okehurst, or +in its grounds, we perceived a figure in the distance. I have seen +him tremble at what, on nearer approach, I could scarcely restrain my +laughter on discovering to be some well-known farmer or neighbour or +servant. Once, as we were returning home at dusk, he suddenly caught my +arm and pointed across the oak-dotted pastures in the direction of the +garden, then started off almost at a run, with his dog behind him, as +if in pursuit of some intruder.</p> + +<p>“Who was it?” I asked. And Mr. Oke merely shook his head mournfully. +Sometimes in the early autumn twilights, when the white mists rose from +the park-land, and the rooks formed long black lines on the palings, +I almost fancied I saw him start at the very trees and bushes, the +outlines of the distant oast-houses, with their conical roofs and +projecting vanes, like gibing fingers in the half light.</p> + +<p>“Your husband is ill,” I once ventured to remark to Mrs. Oke, as she +sat for the hundred-and-thirtieth of my preparatory sketches (I somehow +could never get beyond preparatory sketches with her). She raised her +beautiful, wide, pale eyes, making as she did so that exquisite curve +of shoulders and neck and delicate pale head that I so vainly longed to +reproduce.</p> + +<p>“I don’t see it,” she answered quietly. “If he is, why doesn’t he go up +to town and see the doctor? It’s merely one of his glum fits.”</p> + +<p>“You should not tease him about Lovelock,” I added, very seriously. “He +will get to believe in him.”</p> + +<p>“Why not? If he sees him, why he sees him. He would not be the only +person that has done so”; and she smiled faintly and half perversely, +as her eyes sought that usual distant indefinable something.</p> + +<p>But Oke got worse. He was growing perfectly unstrung, like a hysterical +woman. One evening that we were sitting alone in the smoking-room, he +began unexpectedly a rambling discourse about his wife; how he had +first known her when they were children, and they had gone to the same +dancing-school near Portland Place; how her mother, his aunt-in-law, +had brought her for Christmas to Okehurst while he was on his holidays; +how finally, thirteen years ago, when he was twenty-three and she was +eighteen, they had been married; how terribly he had suffered when they +had been disappointed of their baby, and she had nearly died of the +illness.</p> + +<p>“I did not mind about the child, you know,” he said in an excited +voice; “although there will be an end of us now, and Okehurst will +go to the Curtises. I minded only about Alice.” It was next to +inconceivable that this poor excited creature, speaking almost with +tears in his voice and in his eyes, was the quiet, well-got-up, +irreproachable young ex-Guardsman who had walked into my studio a +couple of months before.</p> + +<p>Oke was silent for a moment, looking fixedly at the rug at his feet, +when he suddenly burst out in a scarce audible voice—</p> + +<p>“If you knew how I cared for Alice—how I still care for her. I could +kiss the ground she walks upon. I would give anything—my life any +day—if only she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a +little—as if she didn’t utterly despise me”; and the poor fellow burst +into a hysterical laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he suddenly began +to laugh outright, exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation +which was extremely foreign to him—</p> + +<p>“Damn it, old fellow, this is a queer world we live in!” and rang for +more brandy and soda, which he was beginning, I noticed, to take pretty +freely now, although he had been almost a blue-ribbon man—as much so as +is possible for a hospitable country gentleman—when I first arrived.</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">9</h3> + +<p>It became clear to me now that, incredible as it might seem, the thing +that ailed William Oke was jealousy. He was simply madly in love with +his wife, and madly jealous of her. Jealous—but of whom? He himself +would probably have been quite unable to say. In the first place—to +clear off any possible suspicion—certainly not of me. Besides the fact +that Mrs. Oke took only just a very little more interest in me than in +the butler or the upper-housemaid, I think that Oke himself was the +sort of man whose imagination would recoil from realising any definite +object of jealousy, even though jealously might be killing him inch by +inch. It remained a vague, permeating, continuous feeling—the feeling +that he loved her, and she did not care a jackstraw about him, and +that everything with which she came into contact was receiving some of +that notice which was refused to him—every person, or thing, or tree, +or stone: it was the recognition of that strange far-off look in Mrs. +Oke’s eyes, of that strange absent smile on Mrs. Oke’s lips—eyes and +lips that had no look and no smile for him.</p> + +<p>Gradually his nervousness, his watchfulness, suspiciousness, tendency +to start, took a definite shape. Mr. Oke was for ever alluding to +steps or voices he had heard, to figures he had seen sneaking round +the house. The sudden bark of one of the dogs would make him jump up. +He cleaned and loaded very carefully all the guns and revolvers in his +study, and even some of the old fowling-pieces and holster-pistols +in the hall. The servants and tenants thought that Oke of Okehurst +had been seized with a terror of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke smiled +contemptuously at all these doings.</p> + +<p>“My dear William,” she said one day, “the persons who worry you have +just as good a right to walk up and down the passages and staircase, +and to hang about the house, as you or I. They were there, in all +probability, long before either of us was born, and are greatly amused +by your preposterous notions of privacy.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Oke laughed angrily. “I suppose you will tell me it is +Lovelock—your eternal Lovelock—whose steps I hear on the gravel every +night. I suppose he has as good a right to be here as you or I.” And he +strode out of the room.</p> + +<p>“Lovelock—Lovelock! Why will she always go on like that about +Lovelock?” Mr. Oke asked me that evening, suddenly staring me in the +face.</p> + +<p>I merely laughed.</p> + +<p>“It’s only because she has that play of his on the brain,” I answered; +“and because she thinks you superstitious, and likes to tease you.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t understand,” sighed Oke.</p> + +<p>How could he? And if I had tried to make him do so, he would merely +have thought I was insulting his wife, and have perhaps kicked me out +of the room. So I made no attempt to explain psychological problems +to him, and he asked me no more questions until once—But I must first +mention a curious incident that happened.</p> + +<p>The incident was simply this. Returning one afternoon from our usual +walk, Mr. Oke suddenly asked the servant whether any one had come. The +answer was in the negative; but Oke did not seem satisfied. We had +hardly sat down to dinner when he turned to his wife and asked, in a +strange voice which I scarcely recognised as his own, who had called +that afternoon.</p> + +<p>“No one,” answered Mrs. Oke; “at least to the best of my knowledge.”</p> + +<p>William Oke looked at her fixedly.</p> + +<p>“No one?” he repeated, in a scrutinising tone; “no one, Alice?”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke shook her head. “No one,” she replied.</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>“Who was it, then, that was walking with you near the pond, about five +o’clock?” asked Oke slowly.</p> + +<p>His wife lifted her eyes straight to his and answered contemptuously—</p> + +<p>“No one was walking with me near the pond, at five o’clock or any other +hour.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Oke turned purple, and made a curious hoarse noise like a man +choking.</p> + +<p>“I—I thought I saw you walking with a man this afternoon, Alice,” he +brought out with an effort; adding, for the sake of appearances before +me, “I thought it might have been the curate come with that report for +me.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke smiled.</p> + +<p>“I can only repeat that no living creature has been near me this +afternoon,” she said slowly. “If you saw any one with me, it must have +been Lovelock, for there certainly was no one else.”</p> + +<p>And she gave a little sigh, like a person trying to reproduce in her +mind some delightful but too evanescent impression.</p> + +<p>I looked at my host; from crimson his face had turned perfectly livid, +and he breathed as if some one were squeezing his windpipe.</p> + +<p>No more was said about the matter. I vaguely felt that a great danger +was threatening. To Oke or to Mrs. Oke? I could not tell which; but I +was aware of an imperious inner call to avert some dreadful evil, to +exert myself, to explain, to interpose. I determined to speak to Oke +the following day, for I trusted him to give me a quiet hearing, and I +did not trust Mrs. Oke. That woman would slip through my fingers like a +snake if I attempted to grasp her elusive character.</p> + +<p>I asked Oke whether he would take a walk with me the next afternoon, +and he accepted to do so with a curious eagerness. We started about +three o’clock. It was a stormy, chilly afternoon, with great balls of +white clouds rolling rapidly in the cold blue sky, and occasional lurid +gleams of sunlight, broad and yellow, which made the black ridge of the +storm, gathered on the horizon, look blue-black like ink.</p> + +<p>We walked quickly across the sere and sodden grass of the park, and +on to the highroad that led over the low hills, I don’t know why, in +the direction of Cotes Common. Both of us were silent, for both of us +had something to say, and did not know how to begin. For my part, I +recognised the impossibility of starting the subject: an uncalled-for +interference from me would merely indispose Mr. Oke, and make him +doubly dense of comprehension. So, if Oke had something to say, which +he evidently had, it was better to wait for him.</p> + +<p>Oke, however, broke the silence only by pointing out to me the +condition of the hops, as we passed one of his many hop-gardens. “It +will be a poor year,” he said, stopping short and looking intently +before him—“no hops at all. No hops this autumn.”</p> + +<p>I looked at him. It was clear that he had no notion what he was saying. +The dark-green bines were covered with fruit; and only yesterday he +himself had informed me that he had not seen such a profusion of hops +for many years.</p> + +<p>I did not answer, and we walked on. A cart met us in a dip of the road, +and the carter touched his hat and greeted Mr. Oke. But Oke took no +heed; he did not seem to be aware of the man’s presence.</p> + +<p>The clouds were collecting all round; black domes, among which coursed +the round grey masses of fleecy stuff.</p> + +<p>“I think we shall be caught in a tremendous storm,” I said; “hadn’t we +better be turning?” He nodded, and turned sharp round.</p> + +<p>The sunlight lay in yellow patches under the oaks of the pasture-lands, +and burnished the green hedges. The air was heavy and yet cold, and +everything seemed preparing for a great storm. The rooks whirled +in black clouds round the trees and the conical red caps of the +oast-houses which give that country the look of being studded with +turreted castles; then they descended—a black line—upon the fields, +with what seemed an unearthly loudness of caw. And all round there +arose a shrill quavering bleating of lambs and calling of sheep, while +the wind began to catch the topmost branches of the trees.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Mr. Oke broke the silence.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know you very well,” he began hurriedly, and without turning +his face towards me; “but I think you are honest, and you have seen +a good deal of the world—much more than I. I want you to tell me—but +truly, please—what do you think a man should do if”—and he stopped for +some minutes.</p> + +<p>“Imagine,” he went on quickly, “that a man cares a great deal—a very +great deal for his wife, and that he finds out that she—well, that—that +she is deceiving him. No—don’t misunderstand me; I mean—that she is +constantly surrounded by some one else and will not admit it—some one +whom she hides away. Do you understand? Perhaps she does not know all +the risk she is running, you know, but she will not draw back—she will +not avow it to her husband”—</p> + +<p>“My dear Oke,” I interrupted, attempting to take the matter lightly, +“these are questions that can’t be solved in the abstract, or by people +to whom the thing has not happened. And it certainly has not happened +to you or me.”</p> + +<p>Oke took no notice of my interruption. “You see,” he went on, “the man +doesn’t expect his wife to care much about him. It’s not that; he isn’t +merely jealous, you know. But he feels that she is on the brink of +dishonouring herself—because I don’t think a woman can really dishonour +her husband; dishonour is in our own hands, and depends only on our own +acts. He ought to save her, do you see? He must, must save her, in one +way or another. But if she will not listen to him, what can he do? Must +he seek out the other one, and try and get him out of the way? You see +it’s all the fault of the other—not hers, not hers. If only she would +trust in her husband, she would be safe. But that other one won’t let +her.”</p> + +<p>“Look here, Oke,” I said boldly, but feeling rather frightened; “I know +quite well what you are talking about. And I see you don’t understand +the matter in the very least. I do. I have watched you and watched Mrs. +Oke these six weeks, and I see what is the matter. Will you listen to +me?”</p> + +<p>And taking his arm, I tried to explain to him my view of the +situation—that his wife was merely eccentric, and a little theatrical +and imaginative, and that she took a pleasure in teasing him. That he, +on the other hand, was letting himself get into a morbid state; that he +was ill, and ought to see a good doctor. I even offered to take him to +town with me.</p> + +<p>I poured out volumes of psychological explanations. I dissected Mrs. +Oke’s character twenty times over, and tried to show him that there +was absolutely nothing at the bottom of his suspicions beyond an +imaginative <i>pose</i> and a garden-play on the brain. I adduced twenty +instances, mostly invented for the nonce, of ladies of my acquaintance +who had suffered from similar fads. I pointed out to him that his wife +ought to have an outlet for her imaginative and theatrical over-energy. +I advised him to take her to London and plunge her into some set where +every one should be more or less in a similar condition. I laughed at +the notion of there being any hidden individual about the house. I +explained to Oke that he was suffering from delusions, and called upon +so conscientious and religious a man to take every step to rid himself +of them, adding innumerable examples of people who had cured themselves +of seeing visions and of brooding over morbid fancies. I struggled and +wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, and I really hoped I had made some +impression. At first, indeed, I felt that not one of my words went into +the man’s brain—that, though silent, he was not listening. It seemed +almost hopeless to present my views in such a light that he could grasp +them. I felt as if I were expounding and arguing at a rock. But when +I got on to the tack of his duty towards his wife and himself, and +appealed to his moral and religious notions, I felt that I was making +an impression.</p> + +<p>“I daresay you are right,” he said, taking my hand as we came in sight +of the red gables of Okehurst, and speaking in a weak, tired, humble +voice. “I don’t understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is +true. I daresay it is all that I’m seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were +mad, and just fit to be locked up. But don’t think I don’t struggle +against it. I do, I do continually, only sometimes it seems too strong +for me. I pray God night and morning to give me the strength to +overcome my suspicions, or to remove these dreadful thoughts from me. +God knows, I know what a wretched creature I am, and how unfit to take +care of that poor girl.”</p> + +<p>And Oke again pressed my hand. As we entered the garden, he turned to +me once more.</p> + +<p>“I am very, very grateful to you,” he said, “and, indeed, I will do my +best to try and be stronger. If only,” he added, with a sigh, “if only +Alice would give me a moment’s breathing-time, and not go on day after +day mocking me with her Lovelock.”</p> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em">10</h3> + +<p>I had begun Mrs. Oke’s portrait, and she was giving me a sitting. +She was unusually quiet that morning; but, it seemed to me, with the +quietness of a woman who is expecting something, and she gave me the +impression of being extremely happy. She had been reading, at my +suggestion, the “Vita Nuova,” which she did not know before, and the +conversation came to roll upon that, and upon the question whether love +so abstract and so enduring was a possibility. Such a discussion, which +might have savoured of flirtation in the case of almost any other young +and beautiful woman, became in the case of Mrs. Oke something quite +different; it seemed distant, intangible, not of this earth, like her +smile and the look in her eyes.</p> + +<p>“Such love as that,” she said, looking into the far distance of the +oak-dotted park-land, “is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes a +person’s whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, +not merely of the beloved, but of the lover. It is unextinguishable, +and goes on in the spiritual world until it meet a reincarnation of +the beloved; and when this happens, it jets out and draws to it all +that may remain of that lover’s soul, and takes shape and surrounds the +beloved one once more.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to herself, and I had never, I +think, seen her look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff white dress +bringing out but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness +of her person.</p> + +<p>I did not know what to answer, so I said half in jest—</p> + +<p>“I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. +There is something dreadfully esoteric in all you say.”</p> + +<p>She smiled contemptuously.</p> + +<p>“I know people can’t understand such matters,” she replied, and was +silent for some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, +as it were, the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as +if I had been holding her pulse.</p> + +<p>Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in +consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded to +Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more +cheerful and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed +so worried; and once or twice I had caught in him a look of great +gentleness and loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young +and very frail thing, as he sat opposite his wife.</p> + +<p>But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained +of fatigue and retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some +business to the nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and +after having worked a little at a sketch I was making in the park, I +amused myself rambling about the house.</p> + +<p>It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that +brings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen +leaves, the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that +seems to bring on to the surface of one’s consciousness all manner of +vague recollections and expectations, a something half pleasurable, +half painful, that makes it impossible to do or to think. I was the +prey of this particular, not at all unpleasurable, restlessness. I +wandered up and down the corridors, stopping to look at the pictures, +which I knew already in every detail, to follow the pattern of the +carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers, arranged in +magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I took up +one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the piano +and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, although +I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that +my host had returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses—I +remember it perfectly well, it was Morris’s “Love is Enough”—in a +corner of the drawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William +Oke showed himself. He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to +him. There was something in his face that made me start up and follow +him at once. He was extremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his +face moving, but very pale.</p> + +<p>“I have something to show you,” he said, leading me through the vaulted +hall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space that +looked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its +twisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather +the piece of park-land that ran up to the house. We walked quickly, he +in front, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where +there jutted out the bow-window of the yellow drawing-room, and I felt +Oke’s hand tight upon my arm.</p> + +<p>“I have brought you here to see something,” he whispered hoarsely; and +he led me to the window.</p> + +<p>I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but +against the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in her +white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her +hand.</p> + +<p>“Do you believe now?” whispered Oke’s voice hot at my ear. “Do you +believe now? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have +locked the door inside, and, by God! he shan’t escape.”</p> + +<p>The words were not out of Oke’s mouth. I felt myself struggling with +him silently outside that window. But he broke loose, pulled open the +window, and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the +threshold, something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a +sharp cry, and the thud of a body on the ground.</p> + +<p>Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about +him; and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head +resting on its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white +dress. Her mouth was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her +wide-open white eyes seemed to smile vaguely and distantly.</p> + +<p>I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second +that lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed.</p> + +<p>“The damned rascal has given me the slip again!” he cried; and quickly +unlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries.</p> + +<p>That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, +but merely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving. There +were all sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a +dream; and whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit +of momentary madness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her +maid brought me a locket which was found round her neck, all stained +with blood. It contained some very dark auburn hair, not at all the +colour of William Oke’s. I am quite sure it was Lovelock’s.</p> + +<h2 style="margin-top: 4em"><i>A Wicked Voice</i></h2> + +<p class="center">To M.W.,<br>IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE LAST SONG AT PALAZZO BARBARO,<br><i>Chi ha +inteso, intenda.</i></p> + +<p style="margin-top: 2em">They have been congratulating me again today upon being the only +composer of our days—of these days of deafening orchestral effects and +poetical quackery—who has despised the new-fangled nonsense of Wagner, +and returned boldly to the traditions of Handel and Gluck and the +divine Mozart, to the supremacy of melody and the respect of the human +voice.</p> + +<p>O cursed human voice, violin of flesh and blood, fashioned with the +subtle tools, the cunning hands, of Satan! O execrable art of singing, +have you not wrought mischief enough in the past, degrading so much +noble genius, corrupting the purity of Mozart, reducing Handel to a +writer of high-class singing-exercises, and defrauding the world of the +only inspiration worthy of Sophocles and Euripides, the poetry of the +great poet Gluck? Is it not enough to have dishonored a whole century +in idolatry of that wicked and contemptible wretch the singer, without +persecuting an obscure young composer of our days, whose only wealth is +his love of nobility in art, and perhaps some few grains of genius?</p> + +<p>And then they compliment me upon the perfection with which I imitate +the style of the great dead masters; or ask me very seriously whether, +even if I could gain over the modern public to this bygone style of +music, I could hope to find singers to perform it. Sometimes, when +people talk as they have been talking today, and laugh when I declare +myself a follower of Wagner, I burst into a paroxysm of unintelligible, +childish rage, and exclaim, “We shall see that some day!”</p> + +<p>Yes; some day we shall see! For, after all, may I not recover from +this strangest of maladies? It is still possible that the day may come +when all these things shall seem but an incredible nightmare; the day +when <i>Ogier the Dane</i> shall be completed, and men shall know whether +I am a follower of the great master of the Future or the miserable +singing-masters of the Past. I am but half-bewitched, since I am +conscious of the spell that binds me. My old nurse, far off in Norway, +used to tell me that were-wolves are ordinary men and women half their +days, and that if, during that period, they become aware of their +horrid transformation they may find the means to forestall it. May +this not be the case with me? My reason, after all, is free, although +my artistic inspiration be enslaved; and I can despise and loathe the +music I am forced to compose, and the execrable power that forces me.</p> + +<p>Nay, is it not because I have studied with the doggedness of hatred +this corrupt and corrupting music of the Past, seeking for every little +peculiarity of style and every biographical trifle merely to display +its vileness, is it not for this presumptuous courage that I have been +overtaken by such mysterious, incredible vengeance?</p> + +<p>And meanwhile, my only relief consists in going over and over again in +my mind the tale of my miseries. This time I will write it, writing +only to tear up, to throw the manuscript unread into the fire. And yet, +who knows? As the last charred pages shall crackle and slowly sink into +the red embers, perhaps the spell may be broken, and I may possess once +more my long-lost liberty, my vanished genius.</p> + +<p>It was a breathless evening under the full moon, that implacable +full moon beneath which, even more than beneath the dreamy splendor +of noon-tide, Venice seemed to swelter in the midst of the waters, +exhaling, like some great lily, mysterious influences, which make +the brain swim and the heart faint—a moral malaria, distilled, as I +thought, from those languishing melodies, those cooing vocalizations +which I had found in the musty music-books of a century ago. I see that +moonlight evening as if it were present. I see my fellow-lodgers of +that little artists’ boarding-house. The table on which they lean after +supper is strewn with bits of bread, with napkins rolled in tapestry +rollers, spots of wine here and there, and at regular intervals +chipped pepper-pots, stands of toothpicks, and heaps of those huge +hard peaches which nature imitates from the marble-shops of Pisa. The +whole <i>pension</i>-full is assembled, and examining stupidly the engraving +which the American etcher has just brought for me, knowing me to be mad +about eighteenth century music and musicians, and having noticed, as he +turned over the heaps of penny prints in the square of San Polo, that +the portrait is that of a singer of those days.</p> + +<p>Singer, thing of evil, stupid and wicked slave of the voice, of that +instrument which was not invented by the human intellect, but begotten +of the body, and which, instead of moving the soul, merely stirs up +the dregs of our nature! For what is the voice but the Beast calling, +awakening that other Beast sleeping in the depths of mankind, the Beast +which all great art has ever sought to chain up, as the archangel +chains up, in old pictures, the demon with his woman’s face? How could +the creature attached to this voice, its owner and its victim, the +singer, the great, the real singer who once ruled over every heart, be +otherwise than wicked and contemptible? But let me try and get on with +my story.</p> + +<p>I can see all my fellow-boarders, leaning on the table, contemplating +the print, this effeminate beau, his hair curled into <i>ailes de +pigeon</i>, his sword passed through his embroidered pocket, seated under +a triumphal arch somewhere among the clouds, surrounded by puffy +Cupids and crowned with laurels by a bouncing goddess of fame. I hear +again all the insipid exclamations, the insipid questions about this +singer:—“When did he live? Was he very famous? Are you sure, Magnus, +that this is really a portrait,” &c. &c. And I hear my own voice, as if +in the far distance, giving them all sorts of information, biographical +and critical, out of a battered little volume called <i>The Theatre of +Musical Glory; or, Opinions upon the most Famous Chapel-masters and +Virtuosi of this Century</i>, by Father Prosdocimo Sabatelli, Barnalite, +Professor of Eloquence at the College of Modena, and Member of the +Arcadian Academy, under the pastoral name of Evander Lilybaean, Venice, +1785, with the approbation of the Superiors. I tell them all how this +singer, this Balthasar Cesari, was nick-named Zaffirino because of a +sapphire engraved with cabalistic signs presented to him one evening by +a masked stranger, in whom wise folk recognized that great cultivator +of the human voice, the devil; how much more wonderful had been this +Zaffirino’s vocal gifts than those of any singer of ancient or modern +times; how his brief life had been but a series of triumphs, petted by +the greatest kings, sung by the most famous poets, and finally, adds +Father Prosdocimo, “courted (if the grave Muse of history may incline +her ear to the gossip of gallantry) by the most charming nymphs, even +of the very highest quality.”</p> + +<p>My friends glance once more at the engraving; more insipid remarks +are made; I am requested—especially by the American young ladies—to +play or sing one of this Zaffirino’s favorite songs—“For of course you +know them, dear Maestro Magnus, you who have such a passion for all +old music. Do be good, and sit down to the piano.” I refuse, rudely +enough, rolling the print in my fingers. How fearfully this cursed +heat, these cursed moonlight nights, must have unstrung me! This Venice +would certainly kill me in the long-run! Why, the sight of this idiotic +engraving, the mere name of that coxcomb of a singer, have made my +heart beat and my limbs turn to water like a love-sick hobbledehoy.</p> + +<p>After my gruff refusal, the company begins to disperse; they prepare +to go out, some to have a row on the lagoon, others to saunter before +the <i>cafés</i> at St. Mark’s; family discussions arise, gruntings of +fathers, murmurs of mothers, peals of laughing from young girls and +young men. And the moon, pouring in by the wide-open windows, turns +this old palace ballroom, nowadays an inn dining-room, into a lagoon, +scintillating, undulating like the other lagoon, the real one, which +stretches out yonder furrowed by invisible gondolas betrayed by the red +prow-lights. At last the whole lot of them are on the move. I shall be +able to get some quiet in my room, and to work a little at my opera of +<i>Ogier the Dane</i>. But no! Conversation revives, and, of all things, +about that singer, that Zaffirino, whose absurd portrait I am crunching +in my fingers.</p> + +<p>The principal speaker is Count Alvise, an old Venetian with dyed +whiskers, a great check tie fastened with two pins and a chain; a +threadbare patrician who is dying to secure for his lanky son that +pretty American girl, whose mother is intoxicated by all his mooning +anecdotes about the past glories of Venice in general, and of his +illustrious family in particular. Why, in Heaven’s name, must he pitch +upon Zaffirino for his mooning, this old duffer of a patrician?</p> + +<p>“Zaffirino,—ah yes, to be sure! Balthasar Cesari, called Zaffirino,” +snuffles the voice of Count Alvise, who always repeats the last word +of every sentence at least three times. “Yes, Zaffirino, to be sure! A +famous singer of the days of my forefathers; yes, of my forefathers, +dear lady!” Then a lot of rubbish about the former greatness of Venice, +the glories of old music, the former Conservatoires, all mixed up with +anecdotes of Rossini and Donizetti, whom he pretends to have known +intimately. Finally, a story, of course containing plenty about his +illustrious family:—“My great grand-aunt, the Procuratessa Vendramin, +from whom we have inherited our estate of Mistrà, on the Brenta”—a +hopelessly muddled story, apparently, fully of digressions, but of +which that singer Zaffirino is the hero. The narrative, little by +little, becomes more intelligible, or perhaps it is I who am giving it +more attention.</p> + +<p>“It seems,” says the Count, “that there was one of his songs +in particular which was called the ‘Husbands’ Air’—<i>L’Aria dei +Marit</i>—because they didn’t enjoy it quite as much as their +better-halves…. My grand-aunt, Pisana Renier, married to the +Procuratore Vendramin, was a patrician of the old school, of the +style that was getting rare a hundred years ago. Her virtue and her +pride rendered her unapproachable. Zaffirino, on his part, was in +the habit of boasting that no woman had ever been able to resist his +singing, which, it appears, had its foundation in fact—the ideal +changes, my dear lady, the ideal changes a good deal from one century +to another!—and that his first song could make any woman turn pale and +lower her eyes, the second make her madly in love, while the third song +could kill her off on the spot, kill her for love, there under his very +eyes, if he only felt inclined. My grandaunt Vendramin laughed when +this story was told her, refused to go to hear this insolent dog, and +added that it might be quite possible by the aid of spells and infernal +pacts to kill a <i>gentildonna</i>, but as to making her fall in love with +a lackey—never! This answer was naturally reported to Zaffirino, who +piqued himself upon always getting the better of any one who was +wanting in deference to his voice. Like the ancient Romans, <i>parcere +subjectis et debellare superbos</i>. You American ladies, who are so +learned, will appreciate this little quotation from the divine Virgil. +While seeming to avoid the Procuratessa Vendramin, Zaffirino took the +opportunity, one evening at a large assembly, to sing in her presence. +He sang and sang and sang until the poor grand-aunt Pisana fell ill +for love. The most skilful physicians were kept unable to explain +the mysterious malady which was visibly killing the poor young lady; +and the Procuratore Vendramin applied in vain to the most venerated +Madonnas, and vainly promised an altar of silver, with massive gold +candlesticks, to Saints Cosmas and Damian, patrons of the art of +healing. At last the brother-in-law of the Procuratessa, Monsignor +Almorò Vendramin, Patriarch of Aquileia, a prelate famous for the +sanctity of his life, obtained in a vision of Saint Justina, for whom +he entertained a particular devotion, the information that the only +thing which could benefit the strange illness of his sister-in-law was +the voice of Zaffirino. Take notice that my poor grand-aunt had never +condescended to such a revelation.</p> + +<p>“The Procuratore was enchanted at this happy solution; and his lordship +the Patriarch went to seek Zaffirino in person, and carried him in his +own coach to the Villa of Mistrà, where the Procuratessa was residing.</p> + +<p>“On being told what was about to happen, my poor grand-aunt went into +fits of rage, which were succeeded immediately by equally violent +fits of joy. However, she never forgot what was due to her great +position. Although sick almost unto death, she had herself arrayed +with the greatest pomp, caused her face to be painted, and put on +all her diamonds: it would seem as if she were anxious to affirm her +full dignity before this singer. Accordingly she received Zaffirino +reclining on a sofa which had been placed in the great ballroom of the +Villa of Mistrà, and beneath the princely canopy; for the Vendramins, +who had intermarried with the house of Mantua, possessed imperial +fiefs and were princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Zaffirino saluted her +with the most profound respect, but not a word passed between them. +Only, the singer inquired from the Procuratore whether the illustrious +lady had received the Sacraments of the Church. Being told that the +Procuratessa had herself asked to be given extreme unction from the +hands of her brother-in-law, he declared his readiness to obey the +orders of His Excellency, and sat down at once to the harpsichord.</p> + +<p>“Never had he sung so divinely. At the end of the first song the +Procuratessa Vendramin had already revived most extraordinarily; by +the end of the second she appeared entirely cured and beaming with +beauty and happiness; but at the third air—the <i>Aria dei Mariti</i>, no +doubt—she began to change frightfully; she gave a dreadful cry, and +fell into the convulsions of death. In a quarter of an hour she was +dead! Zaffirino did not wait to see her die. Having finished his song, +he withdrew instantly, took post-horses, and traveled day and night +as far as Munich. People remarked that he had presented himself at +Mistrà dressed in mourning, although he had mentioned no death among +his relatives; also that he had prepared everything for his departure, +as if fearing the wrath of so powerful a family. Then there was also +the extraordinary question he had asked before beginning to sing, about +the Procuratessa having confessed and received extreme unction…. No, +thanks, my dear lady, no cigarettes for me. But if it does not distress +you or your charming daughter, may I humbly beg permission to smoke a +cigar?”</p> + +<p>And Count Alvise, enchanted with his talent for narrative, and sure +of having secured for his son the heart and the dollars of his fair +audience, proceeds to light a candle, and at the candle one of those +long black Italian cigars which require preliminary disinfection before +smoking.</p> + +<p>… If this state of things goes on I shall just have to ask the doctor +for a bottle; this ridiculous beating of my heart and disgusting cold +perspiration have increased steadily during Count Alvise’s narrative. +To keep myself in countenance among the various idiotic commentaries on +this cock-and-bull story of a vocal coxcomb and a vaporing great lady, +I begin to unroll the engraving, and to examine stupidly the portrait +of Zaffirino, once so renowned, now so forgotten. A ridiculous ass, +this singer, under his triumphal arch, with his stuffed Cupids and the +great fat winged kitchenmaid crowning him with laurels. How flat and +vapid and vulgar it is, to be sure, all this odious eighteenth century!</p> + +<p>But he, personally, is not so utterly vapid as I had thought. That +effeminate, fat face of his is almost beautiful, with an odd smile, +brazen and cruel. I have seen faces like this, if not in real life, +at least in my boyish romantic dreams, when I read Swinburne and +Baudelaire, the faces of wicked, vindictive women. Oh yes! he is +decidedly a beautiful creature, this Zaffirino, and his voice must have +had the same sort of beauty and the same expression of wickedness….</p> + +<p>“Come on, Magnus,” sound the voices of my fellow-boarders, “be a good +fellow and sing us one of the old chap’s songs; or at least something +or other of that day, and we’ll make believe it was the air with which +he killed that poor lady.”</p> + +<p>“Oh yes! the <i>Aria dei Mariti</i>, the ‘Husbands’ Air,’” mumbles old +Alvise, between the puffs at his impossible black cigar. “My poor +grand-aunt, Pisana Vendramin; he went and killed her with those songs +of his, with that <i>Aria dei Mariti</i>.”</p> + +<p>I feel senseless rage overcoming me. Is it that horrible palpitation +(by the way, there is a Norwegian doctor, my fellow-countryman, at +Venice just now) which is sending the blood to my brain and making me +mad? The people round the piano, the furniture, everything together +seems to get mixed and to turn into moving blobs of color. I set to +singing; the only thing which remains distinct before my eyes being +the portrait of Zaffirino, on the edge of that boarding-house piano; +the sensual, effeminate face, with its wicked, cynical smile, keeps +appearing and disappearing as the print wavers about in the draught +that makes the candles smoke and gutter. And I set to singing madly, +singing I don’t know what. Yes; I begin to identify it: ’tis the +<i>Biondina in Gondoleta</i>, the only song of the eighteenth century which +is still remembered by the Venetian people. I sing it, mimicking +every old-school grace; shakes, cadences, languishingly swelled +and diminished notes, and adding all manner of buffooneries, until +the audience, recovering from its surprise, begins to shake with +laughing; until I begin to laugh myself, madly, frantically, between +the phrases of the melody, my voice finally smothered in this dull, +brutal laughter…. And then, to crown it all, I shake my fist at this +long-dead singer, looking at me with his wicked woman’s face, with his +mocking, fatuous smile.</p> + +<p>“Ah! you would like to be revenged on me also!” I exclaim. “You would +like me to write you nice roulades and flourishes, another nice <i>Aria +dei Mariti</i>, my fine Zaffirino!”</p> + +<p>That night I dreamed a very strange dream. Even in the big +half-furnished room the heat and closeness were stifling. The air +seemed laden with the scent of all manner of white flowers, faint +and heavy in their intolerable sweetness: tuberoses, gardenias, and +jasmines drooping I know not where in neglected vases. The moonlight +had transformed the marble floor around me into a shallow, shining, +pool. On account of the heat I had exchanged my bed for a big +old-fashioned sofa of light wood, painted with little nosegays and +sprigs, like an old silk; and I lay there, not attempting to sleep, +and letting my thoughts go vaguely to my opera of <i>Ogier the Dane</i>, of +which I had long finished writing the words, and for whose music I had +hoped to find some inspiration in this strange Venice, floating, as it +were, in the stagnant lagoon of the past. But Venice had merely put +all my ideas into hopeless confusion; it was as if there arose out of +its shallow waters a miasma of long-dead melodies, which sickened but +intoxicated my soul. I lay on my sofa watching that pool of whitish +light, which rose higher and higher, little trickles of light meeting +it here and there, wherever the moon’s rays struck upon some polished +surface; while huge shadows waved to and fro in the draught of the open +balcony.</p> + +<p>I went over and over that old Norse story: how the Paladin, Ogier, +one of the knights of Charlemagne, was decoyed during his homeward +wanderings from the Holy Land by the arts of an enchantress, the same +who had once held in bondage the great Emperor Caesar and given him +King Oberon for a son; how Ogier had tarried in that island only one +day and one night, and yet, when he came home to his kingdom, he found +all changed, his friends dead, his family dethroned, and not a man who +knew his face; until at last, driven hither and thither like a beggar, +a poor minstrel had taken compassion of his sufferings and given him +all he could give—a song, the song of the prowess of a hero dead for +hundreds of years, the Paladin Ogier the Dane.</p> + +<p>The story of Ogier ran into a dream, as vivid as my waking thoughts had +been vague. I was looking no longer at the pool of moonlight spreading +round my couch, with its trickles of light and looming, waving shadows, +but the frescoed walls of a great saloon. It was not, as I recognized +in a second, the dining-room of that Venetian palace now turned into +a boarding-house. It was a far larger room, a real ballroom, almost +circular in its octagon shape, with eight huge white doors surrounded +by stucco moldings, and, high on the vault of the ceiling, eight little +galleries or recesses like boxes at a theatre, intended no doubt +for musicians and spectators. The place was imperfectly lighted by +only one of the eight chandeliers, which revolved slowly, like huge +spiders, each on its long cord. But the light struck upon the gilt +stuccoes opposite me, and on a large expanse of fresco, the sacrifice +of Iphigenia, with Agamemnon and Achilles in Roman helmets, lappets, +and knee-breeches. It discovered also one of the oil panels let into +the moldings of the roof, a goddess in lemon and lilac draperies, +foreshortened over a great green peacock. Round the room, where the +light reached, I could make out big yellow satin sofas and heavy gilded +consoles; in the shadow of a corner was what looked like a piano, and +farther in the shade one of those big canopies which decorate the +anterooms of Roman palaces. I looked about me, wondering where I was: a +heavy, sweet smell, reminding me of the flavor of a peach, filled the +place.</p> + +<p>Little by little I began to perceive sounds; little, sharp, metallic, +detached notes, like those of a mandolin; and there was united to them +a voice, very low and sweet, almost a whisper, which grew and grew and +grew, until the whole place was filled with that exquisite vibrating +note, of a strange, exotic, unique quality. The note went on, swelling +and swelling. Suddenly there was a horrible piercing shriek, and the +thud of a body on the floor, and all manner of smothered exclamations. +There, close by the canopy, a light suddenly appeared; and I could see, +among the dark figures moving to and fro in the room, a woman lying on +the ground, surrounded by other women. Her blond hair, tangled, full +of diamond-sparkles which cut through the half-darkness, was hanging +disheveled; the laces of her bodice had been cut, and her white breast +shone among the sheen of jeweled brocade; her face was bent forwards, +and a thin white arm trailed, like a broken limb, across the knees of +one of the women who were endeavoring to lift her. There was a sudden +splash of water against the floor, more confused exclamations, a +hoarse, broken moan, and a gurgling, dreadful sound…. I awoke with a +start and rushed to the window.</p> + +<p>Outside, in the blue haze of the moon, the church and belfry of St. +George loomed blue and hazy, with the black hull and rigging, the red +lights, of a large steamer moored before them. From the lagoon rose a +damp sea-breeze. What was it all? Ah! I began to understand: that story +of old Count Alvise’s, the death of his grand-aunt, Pisana Vendramin. +Yes, it was about that I had been dreaming.</p> + +<p>I returned to my room; I struck a light, and sat down to my +writing-table. Sleep had become impossible. I tried to work at my +opera. Once or twice I thought I had got hold of what I had looked for +so long…. But as soon as I tried to lay hold of my theme, there arose +in my mind the distant echo of that voice, of that long note swelled +slowly by insensible degrees, that long note whose tone was so strong +and so subtle.</p> + +<p>There are in the life of an artist moments when, still unable to seize +his own inspiration, or even clearly to discern it, he becomes aware of +the approach of that long-invoked idea. A mingled joy and terror warn +him that before another day, another hour have passed, the inspiration +shall have crossed the threshold of his soul and flooded it with its +rapture. All day I had felt the need of isolation and quiet, and at +nightfall I went for a row on the most solitary part of the lagoon. All +things seemed to tell that I was going to meet my inspiration, and I +awaited its coming as a lover awaits his beloved.</p> + +<p>I had stopped my gondola for a moment, and as I gently swayed to and +fro on the water, all paved with moonbeams, it seemed to me that I was +on the confines of an imaginary world. It lay close at hand, enveloped +in luminous, pale blue mist, through which the moon had cut a wide and +glistening path; out to sea, the little islands, like moored black +boats, only accentuated the solitude of this region of moonbeams and +wavelets; while the hum of the insects in orchards hard by merely added +to the impression of untroubled silence. On some such seas, I thought, +must the Paladin Ogier, have sailed when about to discover that during +that sleep at the enchantress’s knees centuries had elapsed and the +heroic world had set, and the kingdom of prose had come.</p> + +<p>While my gondola rocked stationary on that sea of moonbeams, I pondered +over that twilight of the heroic world. In the soft rattle of the water +on the hull I seemed to hear the rattle of all that armor, of all those +swords swinging rusty on the walls, neglected by the degenerate sons +of the great champions of old. I had long been in search of a theme +which I called the theme of the “Prowess of Ogier;” it was to appear +from time to time in the course of my opera, to develop at last into +that song of the Minstrel, which reveals to the hero that he is one of +a long-dead world. And at this moment I seemed to feel the presence of +that theme. Yet an instant, and my mind would be overwhelmed by that +savage music, heroic, funereal.</p> + +<p>Suddenly there came across the lagoon, cleaving, checkering, and +fretting the silence with a lacework of sound even as the moon was +fretting and cleaving the water, a ripple of music, a voice breaking +itself in a shower of little scales and cadences and trills.</p> + +<p>I sank back upon my cushions. The vision of heroic days had vanished, +and before my closed eyes there seemed to dance multitudes of little +stars of light, chasing and interlacing like those sudden vocalizations.</p> + +<p>“To shore! Quick!” I cried to the gondolier.</p> + +<p>But the sounds had ceased; and there came from the orchards, with their +mulberry-trees glistening in the moonlight, and their black swaying +cypress-plumes, nothing save the confused hum, the monotonous chirp, of +the crickets.</p> + +<p>I looked around me: on one side empty dunes, orchards, and meadows, +without house or steeple; on the other, the blue and misty sea, empty +to where distant islets were profiled black on the horizon.</p> + +<p>A faintness overcame me, and I felt myself dissolve. For all of a +sudden a second ripple of voice swept over the lagoon, a shower of +little notes, which seemed to form a little mocking laugh.</p> + +<p>Then again all was still. This silence lasted so long that I fell +once more to meditating on my opera. I lay in wait once more for the +half-caught theme. But no. It was not that theme for which I was +waiting and watching with baited breath. I realized my delusion when, +on rounding the point of the Giudecca, the murmur of a voice arose +from the midst of the waters, a thread of sound slender as a moonbeam, +scarce audible, but exquisite, which expanded slowly, insensibly, +taking volume and body, taking flesh almost and fire, an ineffable +quality, full, passionate, but veiled, as it were, in a subtle, downy +wrapper. The note grew stronger and stronger, and warmer and more +passionate, until it burst through that strange and charming veil, and +emerged beaming, to break itself in the luminous facets of a wonderful +shake, long, superb, triumphant.</p> + +<p>There was a dead silence.</p> + +<p>“Row to St. Mark’s!” I exclaimed. “Quick!”</p> + +<p>The gondola glided through the long, glittering track of moonbeams, and +rent the great band of yellow, reflected light, mirroring the cupolas +of St. Mark’s, the lace-like pinnacles of the palace, and the slender +pink belfry, which rose from the lit-up water to the pale and bluish +evening sky.</p> + +<p>In the larger of the two squares the military band was blaring +through the last spirals of a <i>crescendo</i> of Rossini. The crowd was +dispersing in this great open-air ballroom, and the sounds arose which +invariably follow upon out-of-door music. A clatter of spoons and +glasses, a rustle and grating of frocks and of chairs, and the click +of scabbards on the pavement. I pushed my way among the fashionable +youths contemplating the ladies while sucking the knob of their sticks; +through the serried ranks of respectable families, marching arm in arm +with their white frocked young ladies close in front. I took a seat +before Florian’s, among the customers stretching themselves before +departing, and the waiters hurrying to and fro, clattering their empty +cups and trays. Two imitation Neapolitans were slipping their guitar +and violin under their arm, ready to leave the place.</p> + +<p>“Stop!” I cried to them; “don’t go yet. Sing me something—sing <i>La +Camesella</i> or <i>Funiculì, funiculà</i>—no matter what, provided you make +a row;” and as they screamed and scraped their utmost, I added, “But +can’t you sing louder, d—n you!—sing louder, do you understand?”</p> + +<p>I felt the need of noise, of yells and false notes, of something vulgar +and hideous to drive away that ghost-voice which was haunting me.</p> + +<p>Again and again I told myself that it had been some silly prank of +a romantic amateur, hidden in the gardens of the shore or gliding +unperceived on the lagoon; and that the sorcery of moonlight and +sea-mist had transfigured for my excited brain mere humdrum roulades +out of exercises of Bordogni or Crescentini.</p> + +<p>But all the same I continued to be haunted by that voice. My work was +interrupted ever and anon by the attempt to catch its imaginary echo; +and the heroic harmonies of my Scandinavian legend were strangely +interwoven with voluptuous phrases and florid cadences in which I +seemed to hear again that same accursed voice.</p> + +<p>To be haunted by singing-exercises! It seemed too ridiculous for a man +who professedly despised the art of singing. And still, I preferred to +believe in that childish amateur, amusing himself with warbling to the +moon.</p> + +<p>One day, while making these reflections the hundredth time over, my +eyes chanced to light upon the portrait of Zaffirino, which my friend +had pinned against the wall. I pulled it down and tore it into half +a dozen shreds. Then, already ashamed of my folly, I watched the +torn pieces float down from the window, wafted hither and thither by +the sea-breeze. One scrap got caught in a yellow blind below me; the +others fell into the canal, and were speedily lost to sight in the dark +water. I was overcome with shame. My heart beat like bursting. What a +miserable, unnerved worm I had become in this cursed Venice, with its +languishing moonlights, its atmosphere as of some stuffy boudoir, long +unused, full of old stuffs and potpourri!</p> + +<p>That night, however, things seemed to be going better. I was able to +settle down to my opera, and even to work at it. In the intervals my +thoughts returned, not without a certain pleasure, to those scattered +fragments of the torn engraving fluttering down to the water. I +was disturbed at my piano by the hoarse voices and the scraping of +violins which rose from one of those music-boats that station at +night under the hotels of the Grand Canal. The moon had set. Under +my balcony the water stretched black into the distance, its darkness +cut by the still darker outlines of the flotilla of gondolas in +attendance on the music-boat, where the faces of the singers, and the +guitars and violins, gleamed reddish under the unsteady light of the +Chinese-lanterns.</p> + +<p>“<i>Jammo, jammo; jammo, jammo jà</i>,” sang the loud, hoarse voices; then +a tremendous scrape and twang, and the yelled-out burden, <i>“Funiculi, +funiculà; funiculi, funiculà; jammo, jammo, jammo, jammo, jammo jà</i>.”</p> + +<p>Then came a few cries of “<i>Bis, Bis</i>!” from a neighboring hotel, a +brief clapping of hands, the sound of a handful of coppers rattling +into the boat, and the oar-stroke of some gondolier making ready to +turn away.</p> + +<p>“Sing the <i>Camesella</i>,” ordered some voice with a foreign accent.</p> + +<p>“No, no! <i>Santa Lucia</i>.”</p> + +<p>“I want the <i>Camesella</i>.”</p> + +<p>“No! <i>Santa Lucia</i>. Hi! sing <i>Santa Lucia</i>—d’you hear?”</p> + +<p>The musicians, under their green and yellow and red lamps, held +a whispered consultation on the manner of conciliating these +contradictory demands. Then, after a minute’s hesitation, the violins +began the prelude of that once famous air, which has remained popular +in Venice—the words written, some hundred years ago, by the patrician +Gritti, the music by an unknown composer—<i>La Biondina in Gondoleta</i>.</p> + +<p>That cursed eighteenth century! It seemed a malignant fatality that +made these brutes choose just this piece to interrupt me.</p> + +<p>At last the long prelude came to an end; and above the cracked guitars +and squeaking fiddles there arose, not the expected nasal chorus, but a +single voice singing below its breath.</p> + +<p>My arteries throbbed. How well I knew that voice! It was singing, as I +have said, below its breath, yet none the less it sufficed to fill all +that reach of the canal with its strange quality of tone, exquisite, +far-fetched.</p> + +<p>They were long-drawn-out notes, of intense but peculiar sweetness, +a man’s voice which had much of a woman’s, but more even of a +chorister’s, but a chorister’s voice without its limpidity and +innocence; its youthfulness was veiled, muffled, as it were, in a sort +of downy vagueness, as if a passion of tears withheld.</p> + +<p>There was a burst of applause, and the old palaces re-echoed with the +clapping. “Bravo, bravo! Thank you, thank you! Sing again—please, sing +again. Who can it be?”</p> + +<p>And then a bumping of hulls, a splashing of oars, and the oaths of +gondoliers trying to push each other away, as the red prow-lamps of the +gondolas pressed round the gaily lit singing-boat.</p> + +<p>But no one stirred on board. It was to none of them that this applause +was due. And while every one pressed on, and clapped and vociferated, +one little red prow-lamp dropped away from the fleet; for a moment a +single gondola stood forth black upon the black water, and then was +lost in the night.</p> + +<p>For several days the mysterious singer was the universal topic. The +people of the music-boat swore that no one besides themselves had been +on board, and that they knew as little as ourselves about the owner of +that voice. The gondoliers, despite their descent from the spies of +the old Republic, were equally unable to furnish any clue. No musical +celebrity was known or suspected to be at Venice; and every one agreed +that such a singer must be a European celebrity. The strangest thing in +this strange business was, that even among those learned in music there +was no agreement on the subject of this voice: it was called by all +sorts of names and described by all manner of incongruous adjectives; +people went so far as to dispute whether the voice belonged to a man or +to a woman: every one had some new definition.</p> + +<p>In all these musical discussions I, alone, brought forward no opinion. +I felt a repugnance, an impossibility almost, of speaking about that +voice; and the more or less commonplace conjectures of my friend had +the invariable effect of sending me out of the room.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile my work was becoming daily more difficult, and I soon passed +from utter impotence to a state of inexplicable agitation. Every +morning I arose with fine resolutions and grand projects of work; only +to go to bed that night without having accomplished anything. I spent +hours leaning on my balcony, or wandering through the network of lanes +with their ribbon of blue sky, endeavoring vainly to expel the thought +of that voice, or endeavoring in reality to reproduce it in my memory; +for the more I tried to banish it from my thoughts, the more I grew +to thirst for that extraordinary tone, for those mysteriously downy, +veiled notes; and no sooner did I make an effort to work at my opera +than my head was full of scraps of forgotten eighteenth century airs, +of frivolous or languishing little phrases; and I fell to wondering +with a bitter-sweet longing how those songs would have sounded if sung +by that voice.</p> + +<p>At length it became necessary to see a doctor, from whom, however, I +carefully hid away all the stranger symptoms of my malady. The air of +the lagoons, the great heat, he answered cheerfully, had pulled me down +a little; a tonic and a month in the country, with plenty of riding +and no work, would make me myself again. That old idler, Count Alvise, +who had insisted on accompanying me to the physician’s, immediately +suggested that I should go and stay with his son, who was boring +himself to death superintending the maize harvest on the mainland: he +could promise me excellent air, plenty of horses, and all the peaceful +surroundings and the delightful occupations of a rural life—“Be +sensible, my dear Magnus, and just go quietly to Mistrà.”</p> + +<p>Mistrà—the name sent a shiver all down me. I was about to decline the +invitation, when a thought suddenly loomed vaguely in my mind.</p> + +<p>“Yes, dear Count,” I answered; “I accept your invitation with gratitude +and pleasure. I will start tomorrow for Mistrà.”</p> + +<p>The next day found me at Padua, on my way to the Villa of Mistrà. It +seemed as if I had left an intolerable burden behind me. I was, for +the first time since how long, quite light of heart. The tortuous, +rough-paved streets, with their empty, gloomy porticoes; the +ill-plastered palaces, with closed, discolored shutters; the little +rambling square, with meager trees and stubborn grass; the Venetian +garden-houses reflecting their crumbling graces in the muddy canal; +the gardens without gates and the gates without gardens, the avenues +leading nowhere; and the population of blind and legless beggars, +of whining sacristans, which issued as by magic from between the +flag-stones and dust-heaps and weeds under the fierce August sun, all +this dreariness merely amused and pleased me. My good spirits were +heightened by a musical mass which I had the good fortune to hear at +St. Anthony’s.</p> + +<p>Never in all my days had I heard anything comparable, although Italy +affords many strange things in the way of sacred music. Into the deep +nasal chanting of the priests there had suddenly burst a chorus of +children, singing absolutely independent of all time and tune; grunting +of priests answered by squealing of boys, slow Gregorian modulation +interrupted by jaunty barrel-organ pipings, an insane, insanely merry +jumble of bellowing and barking, mewing and cackling and braying, such +as would have enlivened a witches’ meeting, or rather some mediaeval +Feast of Fools. And, to make the grotesqueness of such music still more +fantastic and Hoffmannlike, there was, besides, the magnificence of the +piles of sculptured marbles and gilded bronzes, the tradition of the +musical splendor for which St. Anthony’s had been famous in days gone +by. I had read in old travelers, Lalande and Burney, that the Republic +of St. Mark had squandered immense sums not merely on the monuments and +decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral +of Terra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible +voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the +soprano for whom Gluck had written <i>Che faru senza Euridice</i>, and the +fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and +made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, +grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance in such +a place was heightened by a sense of profanation: such were the +successors of those wonderful musicians of that hated eighteenth +century!</p> + +<p>The whole thing had delighted me so much, so very much more than the +most faultless performance could have done, that I determined to enjoy +it once more; and towards vesper-time, after a cheerful dinner with two +bagmen at the inn of the Golden Star, and a pipe over the rough sketch +of a possible cantata upon the music which the devil made for Tartini, +I turned my steps once more towards St. Anthony’s.</p> + +<p>The bells were ringing for sunset, and a muffled sound of organs +seemed to issue from the huge, solitary church; I pushed my way under +the heavy leathern curtain, expecting to be greeted by the grotesque +performance of that morning.</p> + +<p>I proved mistaken. Vespers must long have been over. A smell of stale +incense, a crypt-like damp filled my mouth; it was already night in +that vast cathedral. Out of the darkness glimmered the votive-lamps of +the chapels, throwing wavering lights upon the red polished marble, the +gilded railing, and chandeliers, and plaqueing with yellow the muscles +of some sculptured figure. In a corner a burning taper put a halo about +the head of a priest, burnishing his shining bald skull, his white +surplice, and the open book before him. “Amen” he chanted; the book was +closed with a snap, the light moved up the apse, some dark figures of +women rose from their knees and passed quickly towards the door; a man +saying his prayers before a chapel also got up, making a great clatter +in dropping his stick.</p> + +<p>The church was empty, and I expected every minute to be turned out +by the sacristan making his evening round to close the doors. I was +leaning against a pillar, looking into the greyness of the great +arches, when the organ suddenly burst out into a series of chords, +rolling through the echoes of the church: it seemed to be the +conclusion of some service. And above the organ rose the notes of a +voice; high, soft, enveloped in a kind of downiness, like a cloud of +incense, and which ran through the mazes of a long cadence. The voice +dropped into silence; with two thundering chords the organ closed +in. All was silent. For a moment I stood leaning against one of the +pillars of the nave: my hair was clammy, my knees sank beneath me, +an enervating heat spread through my body; I tried to breathe more +largely, to suck in the sounds with the incense-laden air. I was +supremely happy, and yet as if I were dying; then suddenly a chill ran +through me, and with it a vague panic. I turned away and hurried out +into the open.</p> + +<p>The evening sky lay pure and blue along the jagged line of roofs; +the bats and swallows were wheeling about; and from the belfries all +around, half-drowned by the deep bell of St. Anthony’s, jangled the +peel of the <i>Ave Maria</i>.</p> + +<p>“You really don’t seem well,” young Count Alvise had said the previous +evening, as he welcomed me, in the light of a lantern held up by a +peasant, in the weedy back-garden of the Villa of Mistrà. Everything +had seemed to me like a dream: the jingle of the horse’s bells driving +in the dark from Padua, as the lantern swept the acacia-hedges with +their wide yellow light; the grating of the wheels on the gravel; +the supper-table, illumined by a single petroleum lamp for fear of +attracting mosquitoes, where a broken old lackey, in an old stable +jacket, handed round the dishes among the fumes of onion; Alvise’s +fat mother gabbling dialect in a shrill, benevolent voice behind +the bullfights on her fan; the unshaven village priest, perpetually +fidgeting with his glass and foot, and sticking one shoulder up above +the other. And now, in the afternoon, I felt as if I had been in this +long, rambling, tumble-down Villa of Mistrà—a villa three-quarters of +which was given up to the storage of grain and garden tools, or to +the exercise of rats, mice, scorpions, and centipedes—all my life; as +if I had always sat there, in Count Alvise’s study, among the pile of +undusted books on agriculture, the sheaves of accounts, the samples of +grain and silkworm seed, the ink-stains and the cigar-ends; as if I had +never heard of anything save the cereal basis of Italian agriculture, +the diseases of maize, the peronospora of the vine, the breeds of +bullocks, and the iniquities of farm laborers; with the blue cones of +the Euganean hills closing in the green shimmer of plain outside the +window.</p> + +<p>After an early dinner, again with the screaming gabble of the fat old +Countess, the fidgeting and shoulder-raising of the unshaven priest, +the smell of fried oil and stewed onions, Count Alvise made me get into +the cart beside him, and whirled me along among clouds of dust, between +the endless glister of poplars, acacias, and maples, to one of his +farms.</p> + +<p>In the burning sun some twenty or thirty girls, in colored skirts, +laced bodices, and big straw-hats, were threshing the maize on the big +red brick threshing-floor, while others were winnowing the grain in +great sieves. Young Alvise III. (the old one was Alvise II.: every one +is Alvise, that is to say, Lewis, in that family; the name is on the +house, the carts, the barrows, the very pails) picked up the maize, +touched it, tasted it, said something to the girls that made them +laugh, and something to the head farmer that made him look very glum; +and then led me into a huge stable, where some twenty or thirty white +bullocks were stamping, switching their tails, hitting their horns +against the mangers in the dark. Alvise III. patted each, called him by +his name, gave him some salt or a turnip, and explained which was the +Mantuan breed, which the Apulian, which the Romagnolo, and so on. Then +he bade me jump into the trap, and off we went again through the dust, +among the hedges and ditches, till we came to some more brick farm +buildings with pinkish roofs smoking against the blue sky. Here there +were more young women threshing and winnowing the maize, which made a +great golden Danaë cloud; more bullocks stamping and lowing in the cool +darkness; more joking, fault-finding, explaining; and thus through five +farms, until I seemed to see the rhythmical rising and falling of the +flails against the hot sky, the shower of golden grains, the yellow +dust from the winnowing-sieves on to the bricks, the switching of +innumerable tails and plunging of innumerable horns, the glistening of +huge white flanks and foreheads, whenever I closed my eyes.</p> + +<p>“A good day’s work!” cried Count Alvise, stretching out his long legs +with the tight trousers riding up over the Wellington boots. “Mamma, +give us some aniseed-syrup after dinner; it is an excellent restorative +and precaution against the fevers of this country.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! you’ve got fever in this part of the world, have you? Why, your +father said the air was so good!”</p> + +<p>“Nothing, nothing,” soothed the old Countess. “The only thing to be +dreaded are mosquitoes; take care to fasten your shutters before +lighting the candle.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” rejoined young Alvise, with an effort of conscience, “of course +there <i>are</i> fevers. But they needn’t hurt you. Only, don’ go out into +the garden at night, if you don’t want to catch them. Papa told me that +you have fancies for moonlight rambles. It won’t do in this climate, +my dear fellow; it won’t do. If you must stalk about at night, being +a genius, take a turn inside the house; you can get quite exercise +enough.”</p> + +<p>After dinner the aniseed-syrup was produced, together with brandy and +cigars, and they all sat in the long, narrow, half-furnished room on +the first floor; the old Countess knitting a garment of uncertain shape +and destination, the priest reading out the newspaper; Count Alvise +puffing at his long, crooked cigar, and pulling the ears of a long, +lean dog with a suspicion of mange and a stiff eye. From the dark +garden outside rose the hum and whirr of countless insects, and the +smell of the grapes which hung black against the starlit, blue sky, +on the trellis. I went to the balcony. The garden lay dark beneath; +against the twinkling horizon stood out the tall poplars. There was +the sharp cry of an owl; the barking of a dog; a sudden whiff of warm, +enervating perfume, a perfume that made me think of the taste of +certain peaches, and suggested white, thick, wax-like petals. I seemed +to have smelt that flower once before: it made me feel languid, almost +faint.</p> + +<p>“I am very tired,” I said to Count Alvise. “See how feeble we city folk +become!”</p> + +<p>But, despite my fatigue, I found it quite impossible to sleep. The +night seemed perfectly stifling. I had felt nothing like it at Venice. +Despite the injunctions of the Countess I opened the solid wooden +shutters, hermetically closed against mosquitoes, and looked out.</p> + +<p>The moon had risen; and beneath it lay the big lawns, the rounded +tree-tops, bathed in a blue, luminous mist, every leaf glistening and +trembling in what seemed a heaving sea of light. Beneath the window was +the long trellis, with the white shining piece of pavement under it. It +was so bright that I could distinguish the green of the vine-leaves, +the dull red of the catalpa-flowers. There was in the air a vague scent +of cut grass, of ripe American grapes, of that white flower (it must be +white) which made me think of the taste of peaches all melting into the +delicious freshness of falling dew. From the village church came the +stroke of one: Heaven knows how long I had been vainly attempting to +sleep. A shiver ran through me, and my head suddenly filled as with the +fumes of some subtle wine; I remembered all those weedy embankments, +those canals full of stagnant water, the yellow faces of the peasants; +the word malaria returned to my mind. No matter! I remained leaning +on the window, with a thirsty longing to plunge myself into this blue +moonmist, this dew and perfume and silence, which seemed to vibrate and +quiver like the stars that strewed the depths of heaven…. What music, +even Wagner’s, or of that great singer of starry nights, the divine +Schumann, what music could ever compare with this great silence, with +this great concert of voiceless things that sing within one’s soul?</p> + +<p>As I made this reflection, a note, high, vibrating, and sweet, rent +the silence, which immediately closed around it. I leaned out of the +window, my heart beating as though it must burst. After a brief space +the silence was cloven once more by that note, as the darkness is +cloven by a falling star or a firefly rising slowly like a rocket. But +this time it was plain that the voice did not come, as I had imagined, +from the garden, but from the house itself, from some corner of this +rambling old villa of Mistrà.</p> + +<p>Mistrà—Mistrà! The name rang in my ears, and I began at length to grasp +its significance, which seems to have escaped me till then. “Yes,” I +said to myself, “it is quite natural.” And with this odd impression of +naturalness was mixed a feverish, impatient pleasure. It was as if I +had come to Mistrà on purpose, and that I was about to meet the object +of my long and weary hopes.</p> + +<p>Grasping the lamp with its singed green shade, I gently opened the +door and made my way through a series of long passages and of big, +empty rooms, in which my steps re-echoed as in a church, and my light +disturbed whole swarms of bats. I wandered at random, farther and +farther from the inhabited part of the buildings.</p> + +<p>This silence made me feel sick; I gasped as under a sudden +disappointment.</p> + +<p>All of a sudden there came a sound—chords, metallic, sharp, rather +like the tone of a mandolin—close to my ear. Yes, quite close: I was +separated from the sounds only by a partition. I fumbled for a door; +the unsteady light of my lamp was insufficient for my eyes, which were +swimming like those of a drunkard. At last I found a latch, and, after +a moment’s hesitation, I lifted it and gently pushed open the door. +At first I could not understand what manner of place I was in. It was +dark all round me, but a brilliant light blinded me, a light coming +from below and striking the opposite wall. It was as if I had entered +a dark box in a half-lighted theatre. I was, in fact, in something of +the kind, a sort of dark hole with a high balustrade, half-hidden by +an up-drawn curtain. I remembered those little galleries or recesses +for the use of musicians or lookers-on—which exist under the ceiling of +the ballrooms in certain old Italian palaces. Yes; it must have been +one like that. Opposite me was a vaulted ceiling covered with gilt +moldings, which framed great time-blackened canvases; and lower down, +in the light thrown up from below, stretched a wall covered with faded +frescoes. Where had I seen that goddess in lilac and lemon draperies +foreshortened over a big, green peacock? For she was familiar to me, +and the stucco Tritons also who twisted their tails round her gilded +frame. And that fresco, with warriors in Roman cuirasses and green and +blue lappets, and knee-breeches—where could I have seen them before? +I asked myself these questions without experiencing any surprise. +Moreover, I was very calm, as one is calm sometimes in extraordinary +dreams—could I be dreaming?</p> + +<p>I advanced gently and leaned over the balustrade. My eyes were met at +first by the darkness above me, where, like gigantic spiders, the big +chandeliers rotated slowly, hanging from the ceiling. Only one of them +was lit, and its Murano-glass pendants, its carnations and roses, shone +opalescent in the light of the guttering wax. This chandelier lighted +up the opposite wall and that piece of ceiling with the goddess and +the green peacock; it illumined, but far less well, a corner of the +huge room, where, in the shadow of a kind of canopy, a little group +of people were crowding round a yellow satin sofa, of the same kind +as those that lined the walls. On the sofa, half-screened from me by +the surrounding persons, a woman was stretched out: the silver of her +embroidered dress and the rays of her diamonds gleamed and shot forth +as she moved uneasily. And immediately under the chandelier, in the +full light, a man stooped over a harpsichord, his head bent slightly, +as if collecting his thoughts before singing.</p> + +<p>He struck a few chords and sang. Yes, sure enough, it was the voice, +the voice that had so long been persecuting me! I recognized at once +that delicate, voluptuous quality, strange, exquisite, sweet beyond +words, but lacking all youth and clearness. That passion veiled in +tears which had troubled my brain that night on the lagoon, and again +on the Grand Canal singing the <i>Biondina</i>, and yet again, only two days +since, in the deserted cathedral of Padua. But I recognized now what +seemed to have been hidden from me till then, that this voice was what +I cared most for in all the wide world.</p> + +<p>The voice wound and unwound itself in long, languishing phrases, in +rich, voluptuous <i>rifiorituras</i>, all fretted with tiny scales and +exquisite, crisp shakes; it stopped ever and anon, swaying as if +panting in languid delight. And I felt my body melt even as wax in +the sunshine, and it seemed to me that I too was turning fluid and +vaporous, in order to mingle with these sounds as the moonbeams mingle +with the dew.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, from the dimly lighted corner by the canopy, came a little +piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer’s +voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the +singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive +little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with +a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly +into a long <i>cadenza</i>. At the same moment he threw his head backwards, +and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with its +ashy pallor and big, black brows, of the singer Zaffirino. At the +sight of that face, sensual and sullen, of that smile which was cruel +and mocking like a bad woman’s, I understood—I knew not why, by what +process—that his singing <i>must</i> be cut short, that the accursed phrase +<i>must</i> never be finished. I understood that I was before an assassin, +that he was killing this woman, and killing me also, with his wicked +voice.</p> + +<p>I rushed down the narrow stair which led down from the box, pursued, +as it were, by that exquisite voice, swelling, swelling by insensible +degrees. I flung myself on the door which must be that of the big +saloon. I could see its light between the panels. I bruised my hands +in trying to wrench the latch. The door was fastened tight, and while +I was struggling with that locked door I heard the voice swelling, +swelling, rending asunder that downy veil which wrapped it, leaping +forth clear, resplendent, like the sharp and glittering blade of a +knife that seemed to enter deep into my breast. Then, once more, a +wail, a death-groan, and that dreadful noise, that hideous gurgle of +breath strangled by a rush of blood. And then a long shake, acute, +brilliant, triumphant.</p> + +<p>The door gave way beneath my weight, one half crashed in. I entered. +I was blinded by a flood of blue moonlight. It poured in through four +great windows, peaceful and diaphanous, a pale blue mist of moonlight, +and turned the huge room into a kind of submarine cave, paved with +moonbeams, full of shimmers, of pools of moonlight. It was as bright as +at midday, but the brightness was cold, blue, vaporous, supernatural. +The room was completely empty, like a great hayloft. Only, there hung +from the ceiling the ropes which had once supported a chandelier; and +in a corner, among stacks of wood and heaps of Indian-corn, whence +spread a sickly smell of damp and mildew, there stood a long, thin +harpsichord, with spindle-legs, and its cover cracked from end to end.</p> + +<p>I felt, all of a sudden, very calm. The one thing that mattered +was the phrase that kept moving in my head, the phrase of that +unfinished cadence which I had heard but an instant before. I opened +the harpsichord, and my fingers came down boldly upon its keys. A +jingle-jangle of broken strings, laughable and dreadful, was the only +answer.</p> + +<p>Then an extraordinary fear overtook me. I clambered out of one of the +windows; I rushed up the garden and wandered through the fields, among +the canals and the embankments, until the moon had set and the dawn +began to shiver, followed, pursued for ever by that jangle of broken +strings.</p> + +<p>People expressed much satisfaction at my recovery.</p> + +<p>It seems that one dies of those fevers.</p> + +<p>Recovery? But have I recovered? I walk, and eat and drink and talk; I +can even sleep. I live the life of other living creatures. But I am +wasted by a strange and deadly disease. I can never lay hold of my own +inspiration. My head is filled with music which is certainly by me, +since I have never heard it before, but which still is not my own, +which I despise and abhor: little, tripping flourishes and languishing +phrases, and long-drawn, echoing cadences.</p> + +<p>O wicked, wicked voice, violin of flesh and blood made by the Evil +One’s hand, may I not even execrate thee in peace; but is it necessary +that, at the moment when I curse, the longing to hear thee again should +parch my soul like hell-thirst? And since I have satiated thy lust for +revenge, since thou hast withered my life and withered my genius, is it +not time for pity? May I not hear one note, only one note of thine, O +singer, O wicked and contemptible wretch?</p> + +<p class="center" style="margin-top: 4em"><i>Other books by Vernon Lee</i><br>Fiction<br><i>Miss Brown</i><br><i>Baldwin</i></p> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 9956 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + |