Browning's Heroines Part 9

"That, having lived thus long, there seemed No need the king should ever die."

Her clear note penetrates to the spot where Luigi and his mother are talking, as so often before. He is bound this night for Vienna, there to kill the hated Emperor of Austria, who holds his Italy in thrall; for Luigi is a Carbonarist, and has been chosen for this "lesser task" by his leaders. His mother is urging him not to go. First she had tried the direct appeal, but this had failed; then argument, but this failed too; and as she stood at end of her own resources, the one hope that remained was her son's delight in living--that sense of the beauty and glory of the world which was so strong in him that he felt

"G.o.d must be glad one loves his world so much."

This joy breaks out at each turn of the mother's discourse. While Luigi is striving to make plain to her the "grounds for killing," he thinks to hear the cuckoo, and forgets all his array of facts; for April and June are coming! The mother seizes at once on this, and joins to it a still more powerful persuasion. In June, not only summer's loveliness, but Chiara, the girl he is to marry, is coming: she who gazes at the stars as he does--and how her blue eyes lift to them

"As if life were one long and sweet surprise!"

In June she comes--and with the reiteration, Luigi falters, for he recollects that in this June they were to see together "the t.i.tian at Treviso." . . . His mother has almost won, when a "low noise" outside, which Luigi has first mistaken for the cuckoo, next for the renowned echo in the turret . . . that low noise is heard again--"the voice of Pippa, singing."

And, listening to the song which tells what kings were in the morning of the world, Luigi cries--

"No need that sort of king should ever die!"

And she begins again--

"Among the rocks his city was: Before his palace, in the sun, He sat to see his people pa.s.s, And judge them every one"

--and as she tells the manner of his judging, Luigi again exclaims:

"That king should still judge, sitting in the sun!"

But the song goes on--

"His councillors, to left and right, Looked anxious up--but no surprise Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes, Where the very blue had turned to white";

and those eyes kept their tranquillity even when, as legend tells, a Python one day "scared the breathless city," but coming, "with forked tongue and eyes on flame," to where the king sat, and seeing the sweet venerable goodness of him, did not dare

"Approach that threshold in the sun, a.s.sault the old king smiling there . . .

Such grace had kings when the world begun!"

"And such grace have they, now that the world ends!"

cries Luigi bitterly, for at Vienna the Python _is_ the king, and brave men lurk in corners "lest they fall his prey." . . . He hesitates no more--

"'Tis G.o.d's voice calls: how could I stay? Farewell!"

and rushes from the turret, resolute for Vienna.

By going he escapes the police, for it had been decided that if he stayed at Asolo that night he should be arrested at once. He still may lose his life, for he will try to kill the Emperor; but he will then have been true to his deepest convictions--and thus Pippa's pa.s.sing, Pippa's song, have for the third time helped a soul to know itself.

Unwitting as before, she goes on to the house near the Duomo Santa Maria, where the Fourth Happiest One, the Monsignor of her final choice, "that holy and beloved priest," is to stay to-night. And now, for the first time, we are to see her, though only for the barest instant, come into actual contact with some fellow-creatures.

Four "poor girls" are sitting on the steps of the Santa Maria. We hear them talk with one another before Pippa reaches them: they are playing a "wis.h.i.+ng game," originated by one who, watching the swallows fly towards Venice, yearns for their wings. She is not long from the country; her dreams are still of new milk and apples, and

". . . the farm among The cherry-orchards, and how April snowed White blossom on her as she ran."

So says one of her comrades scornfully, and tells her how of course the home-folk have been careful to blot out all memories of one who has come to the town to lead the life _she_ leads. She may be sure the old people have rubbed out the mark showing how tall she was on the door, and have

"Twisted her starling's neck, broken his cage, Made a dung-hill of her garden!"

She acquiesces mournfully, but loses herself again in memories: of her fig-tree that curled out of the cottage wall--

"They called it mine, I have forgotten why"

--and the noise the wasps made, eating the long papers that were strung there to keep off birds in fruit-time. . . . As she murmurs thus to herself, her mouth twitches, and the same girl who had laughed before, laughs now again: "Would I be such a fool!"--and tells _her_ wish. The country-goose wants milk and apples, and another girl could think of nothing better than to wish "the sunset would finish"; but Zanze has a real desire, something worth talking about! It is that somebody she knows, somebody "greyer and older than her grandfather," would give her the same treat he gave last week--

"Feeding me on his knee with fig-p.e.c.k.e.rs, Lampreys and red Breganze wine;"

while she had stained her fingers red by

"Dipping them in the wine to write bad words with On the bright table: how he laughed!"

And as she recalls that night, she sees a burnished beetle on the ground before her, sparkling along the dust as it makes its slow way to a tuft of maize, and puts out her foot and kills it. The country girl recalls a superst.i.tion connected with these bright beetles--that if one was killed, the sun, "his friend up there," would not s.h.i.+ne for two days.

They said it in her country "when she was young"; and one of the others scoffs at the phrase, but looking at her, exclaims that indeed she _is_ no longer young: how thin her plump arms have got--does Cecco beat her still? But Cecco doesn't matter, nor the loss of her young freshness, so long as she keeps her "curious hair"--

"I wish they'd find a way to dye our hair Your colour . . .

. . . The men say they are sick of black."

A girl who now speaks for the first and last time retorts upon this one that very likely "the men" are sick of _her_ hair, and does she pretend that _she_ has tasted lampreys and ortolans . . . but in the midst of this new speaker's railing, the girl with wine-stained fingers exclaims--

"Why there! Is not that Pippa We are to talk to, under the window--quick-- . . ."

The country girl thinks that if it were Pippa, she would be singing, as they had been told.

"Oh, you sing first," retorts the other--

"Then if she listens and comes close . . . I'll tell you, Sing that song the young English n.o.ble made Who took you for the purest of the pure, And meant to leave the world for you--what fun!"

So, not the country girl, but she whose black hair discontents her, sings, and Pippa "listens and comes close," for the song has words as sweet as any of her own . . . and the red-fingered one calls to her to come closer still, they won't eat her--why, she seems to be "the very person the great rich handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in love with." She shall hear all about it; and on the steps of the church Pippa is told by this creature, Zanze, how a foreigner, "with blue eyes and thick rings of raw silk-coloured hair," had gone to the mills at Asolo a month ago and fallen in love with Pippa. Pippa, however, will not keep him in love with her, unless she takes more care of her personal appearance--she must "pare her nails pearlwise," and buy shoes "less like canoes" for her small feet; _then_ she may hope to feast upon lampreys and drink Breganze, as Zanze does. . . . And now Pippa sings one of her songs, and it might have been chosen expressly to please the country girl. It begins--

"Overhead the tree-tops meet, Flowers and gra.s.s spring 'neath our feet; There was nought above me, and nought below My childhood had not learned to know"

--a little story of an innocent girl's way of making out for herself only the sweetness of the world, the majesty of the heavens . . . and just when all seemed on the verge of growing clear, and out of the "soft fifty changes" of the moon, "no unfamiliar face" could look, the sweet life was cut short--

"Suddenly G.o.d took me . . ."

As Pippa sang those words, she pa.s.sed on. She had heard enough of the four girls' talk, even were they not now interrupted by a sudden clatter inside Monsignor's house--a sound of calling, of quick heavy feet, of cries and the flinging down of a man, and then a noise as of dragging a bound prisoner out. . . . Monsignor appeared for an instant at the window as she, coming from the Duomo, pa.s.sed his house. His aspect disappointed her--

"No mere mortal has a right To carry that exalted air; Best people are not angels quite . . ."

and with that one look at him, she pa.s.sed on to Asolo.

What was the noise that broke out as Pippa finished her song? The loud call which came first was Monsignor's, summoning his guards from an outer chamber to gag and bind his steward. This steward had been supping alone with the Bishop, who had come not only (as Pippa said in the morning, choosing him as the ideal person for her pretending) "to bless the home of his dead brother," but also to take possession of that brother's estate. . . . He knows the steward to be a rascal; but he himself, the "holy and beloved priest," is a good deal of a rascal too; he has connived at his brother's death, and had connived at his mode of life. Now the steward is preparing to blackmail the Bishop, as he had blackmailed the Bishop's brother. Both are aware that the dead man had a child; Monsignor believes that this child was murdered by the steward at the instigation of a younger brother, who wished to succeed to the estates. He urges the man to confess; otherwise he shall be arrested by Monsignor's people who are in the outer room. "Did you throttle or stab my brother's infant--come now?"[77:1]