Four Phases of Love

by Paul Heyse

CHAPTER I.

It was late in January. The first snow hung upon the mountains, and the sun, shrouded by mists, had only melted away a narrow band around their feet. But the waste of the campagna bloomed like spring. Only the sombre boughs of the olive trees, that here and there followed in rows the gentle undulations of the plain, or surrounded some lonely cabin, and the frosted scrubby bushes that grew about the road, still showed the effects of winter. At this time of the year the scattered herds are collected within hurdles, near the huts of the campagnuoli, which are generally placed under the shelter of some hillock, and scantily enough protected from the weather by straw piled up from the ground; whilst those amongst the herdsmen who can sing or play the bagpipe have left, to wander about Rome as pifferari, to serve the artists as models, or to support their poor frozen existences by some similar industry.

The dogs are now the herds of the campagna, and sweep through the deserted waste in packs, maddened by hunger, and no longer restrained by the herdsmen, on whose poverty they are only a burden.

Towards evening, when the wind began to blow more strongly, a man emerged from the Porta Pia, and wandered along the carriage-road which runs between the country houses. His cloak hung carelessly from his sturdy shoulders, and his broad grey hat was pushed back from his forehead. He gazed towards the mountains till the road became more enclosed, and only permitted him a narrowed glance of the distance between the garden walls.

The confinement seemed to oppress him. He lost himself again dejectedly in the thoughts to escape which he had sought the free air. A stately cardinal tripped by with his suite without his observing or greeting him. The carriage following its master first reminded him of his omission. From Tivoli rolled carriages and light vehicles, full of strangers, who had taken a fancy to see the mountains and cascades under snow. He cast not a glance at the pretty faces of the young Englishwomen, with whose blue veils the tramontane played. Hastily he turned from the road, sideways to the left, along a field-path which first ran past mills and wine-shops, and then led out into the midst of the waste of the campagna.

And now he paused for a moment, breathing deeply, and enjoying the freedom of the broad wintry sky. The shrouded sun gleamed redly over all, lighted up the ruins of the aqueduct, and tinged with rose the snow on the Sabine hills.

Behind him lay the town. Not far from him a clock began to strike, but lightly, through the opposing wind. It made him restless; as though he wished to prevent the least sound of life from reaching him, and he strode onward. He soon left the narrow path, which swept up and down the waves of the plain, swung himself over the rails which had guarded the pasturing herds during the summer, and buried himself still deeper and deeper in the solitary darkness.

A stillness reigned there as deep as that on a sleeping sea. One could almost hear the rustle of the crows' wings as they floated over the waste. No cricket chirped, no ritornella of the home-returning market-woman reached his ear from the distant road. It pleased him. He struck his staff against the hard earth, and rejoiced in the sound with which she answered him. "She does not say much," he said, in the dialect of the lower class of Romans; "but she means honestly, and cares in silence for her babbling children who trample her under their feet. Would I never needed to hear their voices again, these windy rogues; my ears are sore with their smooth phrases! As if I were nothing--as if I knew not better on what those things depend, about which they love to chatter--because I only know how to create them!

"And yet I live on them, and must keep a good countenance when they sniff and sneer at my work. Accidenti!" He cursed on his beard--an echo answered him: he looked, startled around; no hut, no hillock was there within a circle of half a mile, and he could not believe in the neighbourhood of man. At last he stepped onward, and thought "A gust of wind mocked thee!" Then suddenly it sounded again, nearer and clearer. He stood and listened keenly. "Am I near a cabin, or a fold where the cattle are lowing? It cannot be--it sounded differently--it sounds differently; and now--now"--and a shudder shook his whole frame. "It is the dogs," he said slowly.

The cry came nearer and nearer, hoarse as that of wolves; no barking or yelping, but a snarling howl, which the voice of the wind swept together into one uninterrupted, terrible melody. A paralyzing power seemed to exist in it, for the traveller stood motionless, his mouth and eyes rigidly open, his face half turned towards the side from which the battle-cry of the raging brutes swelled towards him.

At last he shook himself with fierce determination. "It is too late! they have long had the scent; and in this twilight I should fall before the tenth step if I tried to fly. Well, like a dog have I lived! and now, to be destroyed by my fellows!--there is sense in it! If I had a knife I would make it easier for my guests; but this"--and he tried the strong iron spike of his staff--"if there be but few of them, who knows whether my hunger may not survive theirs?"

He threw his cloak around him, so as to have his right arm free, and to form with its many folds a sort of protection to his left, and grasped his staff. With cold-blooded determination he examined the ground on which he stood. He found it free from grass, stony, and hard. "They may come!" he said, planting himself firmly upon his feet. He saw them now, and counted them in the gloaming. Five he counted, and then a sixth. They rave like fiends from hell--long-limbed, skeleton brutes! "Wait!" and he raised a heavy stone; "we must declare war according to custom."

Therewith he hurled the stone at the nearest, twenty paces from him. A redoubled howling answered--the pack was checked for a moment. One of them lay struggling on the ground.

"Armistice!" said the man. His lips trembled, his heart throbbed heavily against his left arm, which grasped his cloak spasmodically; but the lids over the keen eyes winked not. He saw his enemies break forth again, and their eyes glared through the darkness. They came on in couples, the largest first. A second stone rebounded from the bony chest of one of the leaders, and the ravening brute sprang, hoarsely snarling, against the dark form. A thrust, and he fell backwards on the sward, and the staff, whirled quickly round, striking heavily on his open jaws.

A horseman galloped through the grey of the winter's night, some few hundred paces from the scene of the struggle, over the pathless campagna. He pierced through the darkness towards the spot from whence the howling reached him, at short intervals, and saw a man standing, tottering, giving way, and again standing firm, as his enemies relinquished the attack, and once more stormed on him from all sides.

The horseman shuddered; he plunged the spurs into his horse's flanks, and flew towards them. The sound of the horse's hoofs reached the ear of the struggling man, but it seemed as if the sudden terror of hope deprived him of his last remaining strength; his arm sank, his brain whirled, and he felt himself torn down from behind,--tottered, and fell to the ground. Through the mists of approaching unconsciousness he heard the sound of pistol-shots, and then fainted.

When he recovered, and opened his eyes, he saw the face of a young man bending over him, on whose knee his head was resting, and whose hand was rubbing his temples with fresh-plucked wet grass. The horse stood steaming near them, and at his feet lay two dogs, writhing in the agonies of death.

"Are you wounded?" he heard asked.

"I know not."

"You live in Rome?"

"Near the Tritone."

The other helped him to rise. He could not stand. His left foot was in great pain. He was bareheaded; his cloak in rags; the coat and arm, torn and bloody; his face pale and haggard. Without speaking, he permitted himself to be supported by his preserver, who rather bore than led him the few paces to the horse; at last he gained the saddle, the other took the bridle and led him slowly towards the town.

At the first osteria outside the walls they halted. The young man called to the hostess to bring wine: when the wounded man had drunk a glassful his face became more animated, and he said:--

"You have done me a service, sir. Possibly the time may come when I shall curse it, instead of thanking you for it. But I thank you for it now. One clings to life as to other bad habits. One knows that the air is full of fever and rottenness, and the worthless steam of mankind, and yet thinks that each breath one draws in is a good thing."

"You are inclined to speak ill of mankind."

"I never knew one who did not take me for a fool if I spoke well of them. Pardon me. You are not a Roman?"

"I am a German."

"Bless God for it."

They reached the gate in silence, and turned into the Piazza Barberini. The wounded man pointed to a small house in the corner of the place, ruinous and dark. When the horse stopped before the humble door, its rider let himself slide off before the other could assist him, but then sank helplessly down. "It is worse than I thought." he said; "do me one kindness more, and help me in,--here is the key." The young man supported him, called to a boy to hold the horse, and to a loiterer to open the door. It was quite dark within, the damp cold struck unpleasantly upon them. He bore him as directed, to the left, into a large bare room.

"Where is your bed?" asked the German.

"Where you will; but I would rather lie over there by the wall. This brave old Palazzo! They are going to pull it down in the spring; I fancy that it will not have the patience to wait for them."

"And you still remain here?"

"It is the cheapest way of getting buried," said the man, drily. "I can play the host here gratis."

In the mean time, the boy had struck fire, and lighted the little brass lamp that stood in the window. The young man helped the wounded one to a coverlid spread on some straw, and covered him scantily enough with his tattered cloak. With a deep sigh the powerful frame sank down, and the eyes closed. The German gave the boy money and directions, and then went out without leave-taking, sprang up on his horse, and rode hastily away.

In about a quarter of an hour he returned, bringing with him a surgeon. Whilst the latter examined and bound up the wounds on arm and leg, which the wounded man permitted him to do without a murmur escaping him, the young German looked around the room: it was bare, and the plaster had fallen in large masses from the walls. The joists of the ceiling stood naked and blackened, the wretched window let in the cutting night air, there was but little furniture. Meanwhile the boy brought in an armful of wood, and made a fire on the hearth. As it gleamed up redly some dusty clay figures and plaster casts became visible in the corner. A large dolphin which bore a dead boy on its back, a Medusa in relief, colossal, the hair, not yet vivified into serpents, curled wildly around the sorrow-laden brow. He could not remember that he had ever seen this rendering in an antique. Casts from the arms, bust, and feet of a young girl, amongst hasty sketches in clay, stood and lay in confusion. On a table were the different kinds of apparatus used by cameo-cutters, and some sticks with half-finished works, for the most part Medusa heads, resembling the great one, but with different degrees of passion and grandeur. Uncut shells, casts of gems, and casts in glass and plaster, lay in a box near them.

"I think there is no danger," said the surgeon, at last. "Let them get some ice, and make the boy sit up and keep the bandages cool during the night. They have treated you roughly, Senor Carlo! But what on earth induced you to wander about the campagna at this time of night, and this time of year?"

"This obstinate rascal, the chimney," answered the artist, "he refused to do his duty unless one stuffed his throat with faggots. I was out of temper with my old Palazzo, Señor Vottore, and felt inclined to give him a kick or two, to warm us both; and so I thought it better to run away before it came to blows between us."

"You are ill looked after here," said the good-natured little man, wiping his spectacles, which had become suddenly dimmed. "My wife shall send you another coverlid, and I will see you again tomorrow. Sleep will soon come, and he is the doctor who beats us all."

The young man accompanied him to the door, and spoke a few words with him in the passage.

"I only know him by name," said the doctor. "He goes his own strange misanthropical way. Prefers sitting in the wine-shop with the lowest faccini, and squanders what he earns. But there is not a man in Rome who is his equal at a cameo. He inherits it from his father, Giovanni Bianchi, who has long been dead."

"Are his wounds really not dangerous?"

"If he only spares himself and not the ice. He has limbs of iron, or he could not have made head so long against the brutes. Five, do you say? The fool-hardy man! But that is just one of his tricks. Well, well, he will sleep now. Dispel your anxiety, Señor Theodore."

He was already asleep, when Theodore returned to his room, although he had turned his face towards the blazing fire. Theodore studied him long. He was very handsome, though the nose was a little too thin; his hair here and there sprinkled with grey; his beard untended; from between the breathing, half-opened lips gleamed the white teeth. When Theodore raised the cloak to place fresh ice on the wounds, he perceived the great strength of his limbs.

He sent the boy away, after he had brought a fresh supply of wood and ice, and ordered him to return in the morning. He then drew a chair to the side of the hearth, and seated himself, wrapped in his cloak, to watch. It was about ten o'clock, the bright night reigned without over the deserted square, and the slender stream from the fountain plashed lightly into the Triton's shell. From a neighbouring house he heard a girl's voice, singing:--

"Chi sa se mai
Ti soverrai di me!"

The refrain of an old sorrowful song. Then it ceased, but hummed wordless within him still.

He fancied himself again at the edge of the abyss at Tivoli, on the footway opposite the cascades, which in wintry scantiness gushed down from their many mouths. They walked, but not arm in arm, near each other; he and that fair girl and her lively little companion, who hastened unweariedly along the narrow, toilsome path.

"We ought to have returned with your parents, Mary," she said more than once in English; "indeed, we ought to do so now. Look, child! there they are up above by the cascade, and will soon be sitting comfortably by the fire in the sibyl, and here the wind is cutting our very noses off; yours is quite red already; dear me! how cold you look, child! The wind blows so chilly across the water too. You said that it would, sir, and warned us fairly; but our pet must have her fancies. Bless me, we have seen the view in the autumn already, and in the summer too, and then rode safely and comfortably down the path that we are half stumbling, half sliding down now."

"It is not much farther, dear Miss Betsy," said the girl, laughing, "and the path will improve. Our friend offered you his arm; why did you refuse it?"

The little woman drew closer to her, and said softly, "My dear Mary, what a question to ask! you know that I have my reasons for declining to be helped down hills by unmarried young gentlemen! when one slips and holds him tight to save oneself from falling, he might take each pinch for a proof of affection; you quite shock me, child!"

Mary smiled almost imperceptibly; then she went calmly on her way. Her dark bonnet hid all her face from the young man except the waving brown curls.

"It was intended as no mere compliment, sir." she said, glancing unembarrassed towards him; "when my father confessed that your absence had caused him pain: if I remember rightly, you have only called on us four times since my poor brother's death."

"Four times!" he cried; "and have you counted them?"

"We must often hear the number from him. 'Since I lost Edward,' he says frequently, 'I care to talk to no one who has not known him; how can they ever learn to know me?' Then he always refers to you, and praises you, and misses you so much."

"I confess," said Theodore, "that the kindness and heartiness with which your parents greeted me when we met here, surprised and affected me very much; and I too have wanted companionship this winter more than formerly. In the one before, which was my first, I drew back from nothing which pressed itself forward and promised to be advantageous. I see now that I have only lost. The society here is in contradiction to the place. It feels it itself, and as it still desires to be something, it is obliged to overstrain itself: that is discordant and neutralizes the productive disposition of thoughtful men like myself; so now I live only for myself, or for some few who have fared no better than I have, and yet from my youth up I have been accustomed to find permanent happiness in pure family existence alone."

"You have been long away from your parents?"

"I have lost them." he said gently; "they both died in the same week; then I went over the Alps, and God knows whether I shall ever return!"

They passed beneath the light shadow of the olive plantation--the path was perfectly dry--over them, amongst the branches, the sun glanced from the fleeting snow, which it had thawed upon the leaves, till they had glimmered as from a soft spring shower. The little friend was in the best possible humour, and talked of her wanderings about Rome. People suspected that she was writing a book about Rome. However that might be, it was clearly proved that she had done such violence to her well-grounded opinions, as to permit it to be reported that she had explored the baths of Caracalla with an entirely unknown and youthful Italian, and had not even refused his offer of protection to her own house.

"Do you believe, Mary," she cried now, "that I could easily make up my mind never to see my dear old England again? You know that at first we did not intend to stop here a single month. For you must know, sir, that I come of an old family, and my first ancestor fell at Hastings, winning his bit of land for himself and his descendants. And so my little bit of England is as much mine as the big one of a great landowner; and who likes to leave his own behind him? And yet who knows whether I might not be induced to pass the rest of my life here, if it were not dishonourable to forget one's fatherland, even though it forgets us and the good service our forefathers have done it?"

"I do not know." answered Theodore, laughing, "you only do old England a service if you conquer a bit of Rome for yourself, and so tread in the footsteps of your forefathers."

"You are pleased to be witty!" she said, and gave him a light tap with her fan. "But even suppose that I were of an age which made your joke more appropriate, do you seriously think--supposing that there was any foundation for your innuendo, and any one should trouble himself about me,--do you think, I repeat, that English and Italian, or more properly Roman character, would in the long run, be able to get on together?"

"You know, my dear Miss Betsy, that love works wonders, fills up valleys and pulls down mountains. As far as mere character goes, I am not afraid. If the sentiments agree, what may the heart not do? I have seen more marriages rendered unhappy by difference of taste, than from difference of feeling. But what Roman would not share in your taste for everything Roman, for example?"

"You are right," she said; "at the bottom, love is a matter of taste." Then she drew her green veil over her face, and seemed to wish to be left to her own reflections.

The two young people went a little in advance, for they heard Miss Betsy beginning to talk half aloud to herself, as was often her custom, and they had no wish to overhear her dreamings. "Good creature!" said Mary, with her gentle voice; "the journey has quite unsettled her. She always used to have strange ideas, but in England they took an innocent political direction; but with her first step on the continent arose this strange fancy of inventing experiences, which has already indeed given us much anxiety on the journey, but which has perhaps as often afforded an excuse for a hearty laugh."

"This fantastic state of being must have suited her charmingly when she was younger," said Theodore; "older people generally discover that they have quite enough to do to meet adventures as they happen, and are by no means inclined to seek them. It is to be hoped that she will soon be as little in earnest with her new Roman friend, as he seems to have been with her from the beginning."

"I saw them both returning home. He was a good-looking man, with rather insolent, but still fine eyes, and much younger than she is."

"What restrained you from giving an opinion on the question which Miss Betsy proposed?" asked Theodore, after a pause.

"Which one?"

"Whether individuals of different nations are suited to each other?"

Mary was silent for a while. "The more people want from each other," she said, at last, "and the more they wish to give each other, the closer the connection between them ought to be--at least, I think so."

"And even, I once knew an Englishman who had married a creole, they both took life easily and gaily. He was happy at having a handsome wife, and she appeared satisfied because he could shower wealth upon her. And yet there was always something between them, something climatic, live where they would. They were never really happy with each other."

"They were from different zones. But if they both had had northern blood----"

"It may be so; and yet I can understand it by my own feelings. I was brought up amongst the mountains, and have only accustomed myself by slow degrees to the soft Roman air. Now it is winter; without there lies the fair pure snow. When we are seated this evening with my father and mother by the fire, and the kettle sings, and I see all that belong to my life around me, I could easily be entirely happy. And yet I confess that it is just at that moment that the home-longing might seize me for the old country-house in England, where the old oak-trees stand before the window, and the snowy field lies behind the garden, far less beautiful than the campagna beyond them, and the English sky shrouded with heavy mist, so unlike this clear horizon, which should cheer and refresh me. Yet it is foreign, and something foreign like this might exist between people."

They had hitherto carried on the conversation in English. He now began to talk German, which she too spoke perfectly, with the exception of a slight accent.

"Permit me," he said, "to speak to you in my own language. You made me share your feelings of home-longing when you talked of your winter quietness. You put me in mind of my old German winters, which now lie so far behind me, and can never be to me again what they were. I heard again the light sound of the raven brushing through the bare branches, and breaking the dry twigs, till a fine cloud of snow fell past the window like crystal dust. My mother lay there ill on her bed for months together. She could not, and would not, longer endure the noise and bustle of the town. Before that time the old country-house had only seen summer visitors, cheerful hunters, and gay promenaders. Then it became the winter retreat where my mother recovered from her wearying journeys to the baths."

"You were with her then?"

"For the first year or two, only for a week at a time. The last winter, however, she would not let me leave her. I sat the whole day by her, worked, and talked now and then, or played her favourite airs, those simple old ballads which are now quite out of fashion. The little room opened into the garden by several tall windows. I can see my father now pacing up and down on the terrace before it, with his bear-skin cap and short pipe. He could not bear the close air of the room for long at a time. But he seldom left his post, and whoever had business with him must seek him there. Now and then he came in to us for a quarter of an hour at a time. I can never forget the look with which my poor mother used to greet him then. She had beautiful bright blue eyes."

"And she died then?"

"In the spring. My father soon afterwards. He met with an accident in riding. After my mother left us he had no rest, mounted the wildest horses, and often remained away half the day, much as I used to entreat him to spare himself I understood him. I could never free myself from a secret terror. I was in the right."

They had arrived at the foot of the path, and stood still to wait for their companion; Mary paused some steps from him, so that when he turned and looked round over the country, he had her full face towards him. The fair, bright features were clouded with sadness, and there was a moist gleaming under the drooping eyelids. When she raised them, he saw the blue eyes resting full and seriously on the landscape before her. He knew this look already. He had avoided it hitherto, for he knew the power that lay in it. Now he surrendered himself wholly to it for the first time. "Mary!" he said. She moved not nor looked towards him. Then their meditative little friend rejoined them. The conversation was resumed as they mounted the ascent to Tivoli. But Mary took no part in it.

When they left Tivoli in the early twilight, gayer from the cheerful supper, and Theodore had helped the ladies into the carriage, the old man said confidentially to him, "I will not get in until I know when we are to meet you again, my dear sir. I have an affair to settle which interests me and mine deeply, and on which I wish much to consult you. It concerns our poor Edward, and I know that you will come the sooner when you learn that we reckon on your assistance."

"Come this evening," said the mother. He promised it. When they brought him his horse, he saw an anxious expression on Mary's face. He sprang into the saddle, and gently humouring the spirited animal, rode beside the carriage for some way. Then he lagged behind, rode more slowly, and let the evening slip away without observing it. The night surprised him. He gave his horse the spur, and rode across the waste with the intention of making a short cut, and thus it was that he arrived so opportunely in Bianchi's neighbourhood.

He shook himself now, threw fresh wood upon the fire, and fixed his dark eyes thoughtfully upon it.

"What will they think," he said to himself, "at my strange absence? What will she think? It is too late now to send a messenger, and where, indeed, could I get one? She will sit at home, and never dream of what this day may mean! Or,

"Chi sa se mai!"

Then he attended to the sick man, walked up and down, and studied the Medusa head, on which the firelight shone warmly--strangely like the tints of ebbing life when the reluctant blood struggles with the death-terror. It affected him powerfully. At last he was obliged to turn away his eyes; and now, for the first time, observed some loose figures, some of them of corroded Pompeian bronze, and others by a newer hand, as life-like and reckless as they. Near them lay a torn and dusty copy of "Ariosto." He seized it, and read it eagerly. It was the only book he was able to discover.

So passed the hours. Long after midnight the sleeping man groaned heavily, and struck out his arms in his dreams. As Theodore arranged his disordered couch, and spread the coverlid over him afresh, he awoke fully, and half arose. He felt around him, as if for a weapon, and asked, in a determined voice,--

"Who are you?"

"A friend!--do you not recognize me?" answered Theodore.

"It is false!--I have none." shouted the wounded man, striving to raise himself upon his feet. The pain of his wounds brought back recollection. He sank down again, and collected himself thoroughly. He lay still for awhile, and then said, more quietly,

"You are one. Now I recollect you. What are you doing here at this hour? Why are you not gone home? Are you different from the other sons of men, who only do good in order to sleep more soundly? Go!--you have earned your rest. Why do you watch my dreams?"

"The doctor insists upon having your wounds kept cool during the night. I could not trust to a stranger."

"Are you not one?"

"No; not for a couple of pauls; but for your own sake I do this."

The other lay silent awhile. Then he said, with a strange excitement, "You would do me a kindness by going. It makes me feel ill to have a man moving about me. When it comes to thanking, I am more clumsy than an old man courting a young girl."

"Do not trouble yourself about thanks. I stay because you want me. If you could manage without me, you should not have to complain of my being in your way."

"I cannot sleep when I know that you are sitting; and freezing there."

Theodore stirred the fire. "I hope that you feel, even over there, how warm I must be here."

After a pause, during which the sick man had lain with closed eyes, he asked--

"You are a Lutheran, sir?"----"Yes."

"I knew it," said Bianchi to himself; "he wishes to rob the church of a soul--he does it all for that! They are no better than we are."

"The fever makes you rave." said Theodore emphatically; "say what you will."

They were both silent for a long time. Theodore placed fresh ice upon the wounds, as before; and Bianchi lay with his face turned towards the wall, motionless, as though he slept. Suddenly, as Theodore was again busied about him, he turned round, and raised himself half up. With the wounded arm he clutched towards Theodore's hand, and grasped it with his burning one, and said, low and slowly--"You are good! you are good! you are a man!" His weakness overcame him; he fell back upon the straw, and burst into a convulsive fit of weeping. As the tears ceased to flow, he slept anew.