CHAPTER V—LA FIESOLE

It was ridiculous this curiosity, but I knew how to explain it—it grew out of my life’s great emptiness since I had listened to Ruthita’s confession. She had made me realize as never before how I had muddled my chances of happiness. I had heard nothing from Vi in all these years and now I had learnt that, without knowing it, I might have had Ruthita. My interests had lost their charm; I wanted an excuse to leave my work. This matter of Fiesole had cropped up, so here I was on my way to Paris, more for the sake of something to do than anything else.

I had not the remotest intention of renewing her acquaintance. Unseen by her, I would watch her from some corner of the theatre, and then slip back to London. There would be piquancy in the thought that I had gone to see her for old time’s sake, and that she would never know about it. As for speaking to her, that would be an insult after what had happened at Venice. Probably she hated me. She ought to, if she did not.

Though I smiled at myself, truth to tell, I was rather pleased to find I could still be so impulsive; romance in me was not dead after all these years of uneventful waiting. This journey was the folly of a sentimental boy—not the cynical act of a man of the world.

La Fiesole! La Fiesole! Since she had stared out at me from the printed page I was continually coming across her. Everyone was discussing her; she had sprung out of nowhere into notoriety. Greater than Bernhardt, men said of her: a spontaneous emotional actress of the first rank—the sensation of the moment.

France took her seriously; England quoted French eulogies in italics. Fantastic legends were woven about her name, made plausible by an occasional touch of accuracy.

Antoine Georges had written the play—it was based on the amours of Lucrezia Borgia. It was said that he was La Fiesole’s lover, that she had given him the plot—that she had even helped him write it; some went so far as to say that it was founded on an incident in her own past life, transposed into a fifteenth century setting. Antoine Georges denied that he was her lover; but the world smiled skeptically—it liked to believe he was. One story asserted that she had been a fille de joie when he came across her; another, with that French instinct for the theatric, that he had reclaimed her from a low café in Cherbourg in which she danced. Nothing was too incredible in the face of her incredible success. One fact alone was undisputed—that she was the daughter of the famous Italian actor, many years dead, Signore Cortona.

This confirmed what I already knew about her. I remembered how she had told me in Oxford of her early stage career, which she had abandoned to go traveling. I recalled how she had said, “I’m an amateur at living—always chopping and changing. I’ll find what I want some day.”—— So she had found it!

In the English press she was made a peg on which to hang a whole wardrobe of side-issue and prejudice. The decency of the French stage was discussed. The question was introduced as to whether such a play would be allowed to be performed in London. The superiority of English morals was the topic of some articles; of others, the brutal prudery by which British art was stifled. A fine opportunity was afforded and welcomed for slinging mud at the censor. The discussion was given academic sanction when Andrew Lang patted it on the head in an ingeniously discursive monologue on the anachronisms of playwrights, in which he made clear that Monsieur Georges’s tragedy was riddled with historic falsity.

It was nearing five when we steamed into the Gare du Nord. My first journey to Paris had been prompted by Fiesole. Then I was escaping from her; now I was going to her. For old time’s sake I made my headquarters at the hotel at which I had then stayed in the Rue St. Honoré. After diner I set out through thronged streets to book a seat at the theatre. Upon making my request at the office, the man shrugged his shoulders and turned away with the inimitable insolence of French manners. It was as though he had said, “You must be mad, or extremely bourgeois.” I had affronted him personally, the theatre-management, La Fiesole and last, but not least, the infallible intelligence of Paris. Did Monsieur not know that La Fiesole was the rage, the fashion? Every seat was taken—taken weeks ahead.

My second request was apologetic and explanatory: I honored La Fiesole so much that I had journeyed from London on purpose to see her. What was the earliest date at which he could make it possible? He directed me to an agency which had bought up all the best seats in the house; here I secured a box at an extortionate price for five nights later.

In the intervening days I was frequently tempted to abandon my project and return. It seemed the height of foolishness to squander five days in order that I might court disappointment. She must have altered—might have deteriorated. It was just possible there was a grain of truth in the wild stories that circulated about her. And yet—— There were memories that came to me full of nobility and gentleness: windswept days at Oxford; a night at Ferrara; days and nights on the lapping lagoons of Venice. I wanted to see her again—and I did not. I blew hot and cold. And while I hesitated, spring raced through the streets of Paris with tossing arms and reckless laughter.

When I entered the theatre it was already packed. The audience seemed conscious that it had assembled for a great occasion; it had dressed for its share in the undertaking. Gowns of marvelous cut and audacity were in evidence. The atmosphere was heavy with the perfume of exotic femininity and flowers.

My box was on the right-hand side, just above and next to the stage. Below me was a nodding sea of plumed head-dresses, naked shoulders, and gleaming bosoms; rising tier on tier to the gold-domed roof, was a wall of eyes and fluttering white faces. Everything was provocative of expectancy. Gods and goddesses, carved on the columns and painted on the curtain, alone were immobile.

A quick succession of taps sounded, followed by three long raps. The theatre was plunged in shadow. As though a crowd drew away into the distance, the last murmur spent itself. The curtain quivered, then rose reluctantly on the illusion which had brought the unrelated lives of so vast an audience together.

We saw an Italian garden, basking in sunlight and languorous with summer. Beneath the black shade of cypress-trees stretched marble terraces, mounting up a hillside, up and up, till they hung gleaming like white birds halfhidden in the velvet foliage. In the foreground a fountain splashed. A little way distant the Pope Alexander lolled, toying with his mistress, Giulia. Up and down pathways lined with statues, groups of courtiers wandered: youths in parti-colored hose and slashed doublets; girls, vividly attired, exquisitely young, engaged in the game of love. Guitars tinkled and masses of bloom flared stridently in the sun. Sitting by the fountain was the Madonna Lu-crezia and the young Lord of Pesaro. Her face was turned from us; we could only see her vase-like figure and the way she shook her head in answer to all he offered.

The envoy from Naples enters and with him the Duke of Biseglia; he urges the Pope for a last time to make an alliance with his country by betrothing the Madonna Lucrezia to the Duke. But the Pope does not want the alliance; he is joining with Ludovico of Milan against Naples and war will result.’ While the Pope is refusing, for the first time Lucrezia looks up and her face is turned towards us—the face I had known in my boyhood, innocently girlish, fresh as a flower, so ardent and beautiful with longing that the theatre caught its breath at sight of it and a muffled “Ah!” swept through the audience.

As though attracted by a power which is outside herself, she rises, hesitating between shyness and daring, and steals to where the young Duke is sullenly standing. She takes his hand and presses it against her breast. He snatches it from her. She commences to speak, at first haltingly, but with gathering passion. Her voice is hoarse and sultry, like that of a Jewess; it is a voice shaken with emotion, which now caresses and now tears at the heart. The drone of merriment in the garden and the tinkling of the guitars is hushed. Listless lovers come out from the shadows and gather about her, amused by her earnestness. She pleads with the Pope, her father, to give her the Duke—not to send him away from her. Biseglia interrupts haughtily, asserting that he only desired her for State reasons and that since the Pope refuses Naples’ friendship, he would not marry the Madonna Lucrezia though her father were to allow it.

Alexander laughs boisterously at this quarrel of children and like a huge Silenus wanders off into the garden, leaning on his mistress, Giulia, followed by his train of minstrels and dilettantes. Their singing grows more faint as they mount the terraces towards the palace.

Lucrezia watches them depart with a face frozen with despair. As Biseglia turns to go, she darts after him and drags him back, fawning on him, abasing herself, offering herself to him, telling him that whatever comes of it she cannot live without him. He regards her in silence; then falls to smiling and flings her from him, reminding her that she is the Pope’s bastard. At that the boy Lord of Pesaro, who has watched everything from the fountain, runs with drawn sword to her defense. But she springs between them, saying that when the time comes to kill Biseglia, she will take revenge in her own way like a Borgia. The great Pope, looking back, has seen her awakened savagery and laughs uproariously. The scene ends with the garden empty and Lucrezia stretched out on the ground, kissing the spot which Biseglia’s feet have touched and weeping in a frenzy of abandon, while the Lord of Pesaro looks on impotent and broken-hearted.

Between the first act and the second the French have invaded Italy, so the Pope and the King of Naples have found a common enemy and a common need for alliance. The Duke of Biseglia has again been sent to Rome to sue for the hand of Lucrezia. But in the meanwhile she has been betrothed to the Lord of Pesaro, and, to prevent him from joining with the French when Lucrezia is taken from him, his removal has been planned.

The curtain goes up on a night of bacchanalian riot in the Papal gardens. Beneath trees a costly table has been spread, at which sit men and women attired in every kind of extravagance, as animals, pagan deities, and mythological monstrosities. In the branches overhead are set sconces and blazing torches. Distantly over white terraces and pathways the moon is rising. In the foreground are mummers and tumblers. The servitors who pass up and down the company are humpbacks, dwarfs, Ethiopians, and dancing-girls.

In the center of the table sits the Pope, and next to him Lucrezia, and next to her Biseglia. Opposite to Biseglia is seated the Lord of Pesaro, and next to him a woman in a mask. With the heat of the wine and the lateness of the hour the women lie back in their lovers’ arms—all except the masked woman and the Madonna Lucrezia. Lucrezia sits erect like a frightened child, the one pure thing in the freedom that surrounds her. Biseglia pays her no attention, and from across the table the Lord of Pesaro watches.

The Pope twits Biseglia on his coldness, saying, “Think you that my daughter hath a deformity?” And Biseglia gives the irritable answer, “Can a man love a woman while that young spit-fire glowers green envy at him opposite?”

Pesaro leaps to his feet, but the Pope, as though to pacify him, pledges him and hands the goblet to the masked woman to offer to him. Still standing uncertain, Pesaro receives it from her. Raising it slowly, his lips touch the brim; he clutches at his throat, upsetting the cup so that the red stain flows towards Lucrezia. He leans out, gazes in her eyes, and crashes across the table, twisting as he falls, still looking up at her.

The silence that follows is broken by a low rippling laugh. The company gaze in astonishment; it is Lucrezia who is laughing. The child in her face is dead; her expression is inscrutable, wicked and sirenish. She sways towards Biseglia, bending back her head and twining her arms about him. “Hath the Pope’s daughter a deformity that thou canst not love her? Behold, thou shalt judge. She will dance and dance, till she dances thee into rapture and thy soul is poured out upon her.”

From the hand of a servitor she snatches a torch and steps into the open. She commences to dance and, as she dances, unbuckles her girdle so that her gown slips from her. As the beat of the music grows more furious she unbinds her hair, so that it writhes like snakes about her firm white arms and bust. Dwarfs clamber into trees and slide out along their branches, raining rose-leaves on her as she passes. The strangely attired company forget their jaded decadence and sprawl across the table, digging their elbows into its scattered magnificence, following the gleam of her young, white body as it twists and turns beneath the whirling torch.

But her gaze is bent always on Biseglia; her eyes are aslant and beckoning. Her bosom rises and falls more fiercely with the wrenching in-take of the breath. Will he never go to her?

She flings back her hair from her shoulders; her body flashes like an unsheathed sword. Nearer and nearer to him she dances. His eyes rest on her moodily, half-closed. Does he make a movement, quickly she withdraws.

She has flung away her torch and is spinning madly with her hands clasped behind her head. The grass is hidden with rose-leaves; she floats—her feet scarcely stir them. Suddenly she stops; stands erect for an ecstatic moment; sways dizzily; her strength is gone. Her hands, small and pitiful, fly up to cover her eyes. She shakes her hair free to hide her. Her body crumples. She is broken with her shame and futility. Biseglia leaps the table and has her in his arms as she falls, pressing his hot lips against hers. With clenched fists she smites him from her, slips from his embrace, and runs shimmering like a white doe through the forest of blackness.

With a shout the revelers shatter the banquet and pour in pursuit of her. Biseglia leads them, darting ahead into the shadows. Dancing and singing, the disheveled bacchanalians stagger across the dark, trouping along dusky terraces with twining arms, following the fleeing dryad.

Torches are burnt out and smolder in their sockets. Night is tattered by the dawn. Amid the havoc of trampled chalices and glass sprawls the wine-stained figure of the dead Lord of Pesaro—the man who, could she have loved him, would have given her all.

La Fiesole! La Fiesole! We rose as one man as the curtain dropped. We did not care to think whether this was wrong—it was lovely. She had danced our souls out of their prejudices, out of their walls of restraint into chaos. The rapture of her beauty ran through our veins like wine. Our imaginations pursued her along pale terraces. The fragrance of crushed rose-leaves was in our nostrils and the coolness of night. Our breath came short, as though we had been running. Our senses were reeling and our eyes dazzled. We stood up in our places clutching at the air, calling and calling, hungry for the sight of her.

For myself, I was smitten with blindness. My eyes saw the striving throng through a mist and probed into the beyond, where she ran on and on palely, forever from me. I shouted to her, but she grew more distant; never once did she look back or stay her footsteps.

I was aware of a deep stillness—a hoarse peal of laughter: thousands of eyes glared up at me and down on me, and mouths gaped mockery. The mist cleared; Fiesole was standing before the curtain. The audience had grown hushed at sight of her while I had continued calling. From the stage, twenty feet away, she was smiling at me, insolent and charming, her body still shuddering with exertion beneath the velvet cloak which lay across her shoulders. What did I care, though to-morrow the whole of Paris should laugh? She had danced my soul into ecstasy. I placed my hands on the edge of the box and leant out drunkenly, shouting her name, “Fiesole! Fiesole!”

She kissed her hand at me derisively, bowed to the audience, and was gone.

I sank in my place, a sickening nostalgia for her upon me. I did not reason; I only knew I wanted her—wanted her as she had once wanted me, with her hands and eyes and body. In a dim way I felt angry with myself for having lost her. She had made me disgusted with my coldness at Venice as I had watched my counterpart, the Duke of Biseglia. From the theatric torture in her face I had learnt something of how brutal a man may be when he fancies that he is righteously moral. She, whom I saw now so remotely, might have been mine; through these chilly years La Fiesole might have been my companion, had I had the faith to take what was offered. I had sought the things that were impossible. I had made a god of my scruples. I had sinned weakly, following Vi who did not belong to me. I had sat down to wait for her, and all the while Life was tapping at the door. I tasted Life to-night—— And who knows? Perhaps I had broken this woman’s heart. I would no longer be niggardly. I would go to her; accuse myself to her; beat down her hatred of me; carry her off.

While these thoughts trooped across my mind, the crooked sphinx-like smile of Paris wandered over me, examined me, hinted at tragedy with laughter, and widened its painted lips at my absurdity.

The curtain rustled. The warning raps sounded. Lights sank, and heads bent forward.

In a dim-lit room, chilly to the point of austerity, sat Lucrezia. Tall candles shone upon her face—a face purged of emotion, nunlike and wooden with an expression of distant contemplation. Behind her head was an open window through which floated in the sound of music. She heeded it not at all. In the far corner stood a bed with the curtains drawn back. At an altar a lamp burnt before a shining crucifix. Her women were unrobing her for the bridal night. They spoke to her, but she did not answer. They blamed her for her indifference to Biseglia: she had never kissed him, never caressed him since the night when she had won him. Did she not know that he hungered for her kindness?

She gave them no answer. They lifted her this way and that as though she were a doll; she seemed to have forgotten her body. She might have been in a trance, leading a life separate, dreaming of things innocent and holy.

One by one the candles were extinguished; only the lamp burnt before the altar. When her women were gone; she slipped from the bed and knelt with her head bowed before the cross.

The music dies; silence falls. Along the passage comes a creeping footstep. The door opens; Biseglia enters, blinking his eyes at the room’s dimness. He whispers her name. At last she hears him and rises, standing before the altar. He crosses the room reverently. He halts, gazing at her. He rushes forward, masters her, crushes her to him, and cries that she torments him—starves him.

When she makes no response, but lies pulseless in his arms, he carries her to the bed, incoherently claiming as his right the fondness she does not give him. Then he grows gentle and kneels before her, kissing her feet and calling her his god.

She speaks. Her voice is small. “Biseglia, thou didst love me only when I had made myself worthless that I might win thy fondness.”

He yearns up to her with his arms, disowning his former coldness, protesting that he adores her. She leans over him sadly; he raises his lips to hers. As she kisses him, her expression kindles to triumph. She withdraws her hand from her breast; the Borgian dagger sinks into his heart.

She gazes stonily on the man who had once refused her. The lamp before the altar flickers and goes out. The room is plunged in darkness.