The Immortal Lure Part 1

The Immortal Lure.

by Cale Young Rice.

GIORGIONE

SCENE: _A work-room of GIORGIONE on the edge of the Lagoon in which lie the Campo Santo and Murano. It is littered with brushes, canvases, casts, etc., and its walls are frescoed indiscriminately with saints and bacchantes, satyrs and Madonnas, on backgrounds religious or woodland. A door is on the right back; and foliate Gothic windows, in the rear, reveal the magic water with its gliding gondolas. On a support toward the centre of the room is a picture--covered, and not far from it, a couch._

_Late Afternoon._

_GIORGIONE, who has been sitting anguished on the couch, rises with determined bitterness. As he does so, BELLINI enters anxiously._

_Bellini._ Giorgione!

_Giorgione_ (_turning_). It is you?

_Bellini._ Your word came to me, In San Lazzario where I labored late, And shakes my troubled heart. You will not do this!

_Giorgione._ Yes!

_Bellini._ How my son! her picture! as a wanton's!

_Giorgione._ Tho it has been till now my adoration!

The fairest of my dreams and the most holy!

Yes, by the virtue of all honest women, If such there be in Venice, I swear it shall be borne by ribald hands Thro the very streets.

_Bellini._ My son!

_Giorgione._ A public thing!

[_Points to picture._

Fit for the most lascivious! who now Shall gaze on what I had beheld alone, On what was purer to me than the Virgin!

The very pimps and panders of the Piazza Shall if they will whet appet.i.te upon it, And smack their losel lips.

_Bellini._ And to what end?

_Giorgione._ Her shame!

_Bellini._ The deeds of wounded pride and love Work not so, but fall back upon the doer-- Or on some other.

_Giorgione._ I care not!

_Bellini._ Nor have, Ever, to heed me! as Aretino, Who turns your praise to t.i.tian, has told.

For your wild will runs ever without curb, And I who reared you, as my very own, Must pay the fall.

_Giorgione._ No!

_Bellini._ And the piety I would have won you to in the past days Is wasted. The Madonnas I painted with a heart inspired of Heaven You paint with pride.

_Giorgione._ But with all grat.i.tude!

Ah yes, believe me, And with a rich remembrance!

For scarce oblivion could wipe from me How as a wasted lad I came to Venice-- A miserable, patched and pallid waif, With but an eye to see and hand to shape!

You took me from the streets and taught me all The old can teach the young, until my name Is high in Venice-- Linked with that of Beauty-- "Giorgione! our Giorgione!" do they cry On the ca.n.a.ls, the very gondoliers.

And in a little while it should have glowed Immortal on the breast of Italy, As does Apelles on the page of Greece, For I was half-divine, until----

_Bellini._ Until A girl whom you had fixed your heart upon With boundless folly, you who should have lived With but one pa.s.sion--that of brain and brush-- Until she----

_Giorgione._ Say it!

_Bellini._ This Isotta----

_Giorgione._ Ai!

Whom I had chosen o'er a hundred others To soar with!

To soar and then in wedded peace to prize!

This false Isotta Whom in poverty I found, as you found me, and loved to madness.

This fair Isotta Whom I would have made All Venice to be a halo for--as were Cities of old for queens of sceptred love: Until she leaves, departs, forsakes me, goes Away, worthless away, from my true arms, With Luzzi, a lank boy.

_Bellini._ So. And most strange.

_Giorgione._ No, nothing a woman does is ever strange!

Will they not cloak a lie in innocence, A treachery in veiling soft caresses-- Tho to the Ma.s.s unceasingly they fare And say like her their aves night and noon?

Have they a want that wantons not with guile, A tear that is not turgid with deceit?

Are not their pa.s.sions blown by every wind?

Have they not all the straying heart of Helen?

Then why must I, Who had in me a hope That rivalled Raphael's or Leonardo's, Keep, cozened so, that I contemn her shame?

_Bellini._ Because she is a woman--whom you tempted, Tho with all trust to wed her--and you know not Whether her going was of shamelessness.

_Giorgione_ (_laughing bitterly_).

Or whether she may not yet return, today, And with a heart that is a nymph's, a soul That is a nun's, Beguile me back to doting?

Whether she may not-- With that body G.o.d Might once, deceived, have moulded angels after--?

Then flaunt her thralling of me to the world, Whose ready lips should laugh where'er we went And whisper, "Isotta, there! Giorgione's mistress!

Who makes a mocking of him?"

_Bellini._ Never! never!

Only your unrelenting brain would think it.

For this I know of her, that tho she has Deserted you for what must seem to be Only a new-found pa.s.sion-- Yet is she womanly, and did you give her, As now you mean, to avid l.u.s.ting eyes, Life would be smitten from her.

_Giorgione._ As it should!

_Bellini._ And then from you, repentant of her fate?

No, no, my son, I have not seen you rise, A planet from the sea, the world's first painter, To set in this: You owe my fathering more.

And listen, I have brought to you a way Of laurels for forgetting. I have come With a commission from the Signoria,

[_Takes it from his breast._