Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches

M >> Maurice Baring >> Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches


Then the King walked into the temple and led the Queen back to the
palace without saying a word; but the whole avenue was full of dark
men bearing torches and armed with swords, who were searching the
undergrowth. And presently they found Pierrot who, ignorant of all that
had happened, had been listening all night to the song of the night-jar.
He was dragged to the palace and cast into a dungeon, and the King
was told. But the revel did not cease, and the dancing and the music
continued softly as before. The King sent for Columbine and told her she
should have speech with Pierrot in his prison, for haply he might
have something to confess to her. And Columbine was taken to Pierrot's
dungeon, and the King followed her without her knowing it, and concealed
himself behind the door, which he set ajar.

Columbine upbraided Pierrot and said: "All this was my work. I have
always known that you loved the Queen. And yet for the sake of past
days, tell me the truth. Was it love or a joke, such as those you love
to play?"

Pierrot laughed inanely. "It was a joke," he said. "It is my trade to
make jokes. What else can I do?"

"You love the Queen nevertheless," said Columbine, "of that I am sure,
and for that I have had my revenge."

"It was a joke," said Pierrot, and he laughed again.

And though she talked and raved and wept, she could get no other answer
from him. Then she left him, and the King entered the dungeon.

"I have heard what you said," said the King, "but to me you must tell
the truth. I do not believe it was you who met the Queen in the temple;
tell me the truth, and your life shall be spared."

"It was a joke," said Pierrot, and he laughed. Then the King grew fierce
and stormed and threatened. But his rage and threats were in vain! for
Pierrot only laughed. Then the King appealed to him as man to man and
implored him to tell him the truth; for he would have given his kingdom
to believe that it was the real Pierrot who had met the Queen and that
the adventure had been a joke. Pierrot only repeated what he had said,
and laughed and giggled inanely.

At dawn the prison door was opened and three masked men led Pierrot out
through the courtyard into the garden. The revellers had gone home, but
here and there lights still twinkled and flickered and a stray note or
two of music was still heard. Some of the latest of the revellers were
going home. The dawn was grey and chilly; they led Pierrot through the
alleys to the grass amphitheatre, and they hanged him on the horizontal
beam which formed part of the primitive proscenium where he and
Columbine had danced so wildly in the night. They hanged him and his
white figure dangled from the beam as though he were still dancing;
and the new Pierrot, who was appointed the next day, was told that such
would be the fate of all mummers who went too far, and whose jokes and
pranks overstepped the limits of decency and good breeding.




THE GARLAND

The _Referendarius_ had three junior clerks to carry on the business of
his department, and they in their turn were assisted by two scribes, who
did most of the copying and kept the records. The work of the Department
consisted in filing and annotating the petitions and cases which
were referred from the lower Courts, through the channel of the
_Referendarius_, to the Emperor.

The three clerks and their two scribes occupied a high marble room in
the spacious office. It was as yet early in April, but, nevertheless,
the sun out of doors was almost fierce. The high marble rooms of the
office were cool and stuffy at the same time, and the spring sunshine
without, the soft breeze from the sea, the call of the flower-sellers in
the street, and the lazy murmur of the town had, in these shaded, musty,
and parchment-smelling halls, diffused an atmosphere of laziness which
inspired the clerks in question with an overwhelming desire to do
nothing.

There was, indeed, no pressing work on hand. Only from time to time the
_Referendarius_, who occupied a room to himself next door to theirs,
would communicate with them through a hole in the wall, demanding
information on some point or asking to be supplied with certain
documents. Then the clerks would make a momentary pretence of being
busy, and ultimately the scribes would find either the documents or the
information which were required.

As it was, the clerks were all of them engaged in occupations which were
remote from official work. The eldest of them, Cephalus by name--a man
who was distinguished from the others by a certain refined sobriety both
in his dark dress and in his quiet demeanour--was reading a treatise on
algebra; the second, Theophilus, a musician, whose tunic was as bright
as his flaming hair, was mending a small organ; and the third, Rufinus,
a rather pale, short-sighted, and untidy youth, was scribbling on a
tablet. The scribes were busy sorting old records and putting them away
in their permanent places.

Presently an official strolled in from another department. He was a
middle-aged, corpulent, and cheerful-looking man, dressed in gaudy
coloured tissue, on which all manner of strange birds were depicted. He
was bursting with news.

"Phocas is going to win," he said. "It is certain."

Cephalus looked vaguely up from his book and said: "Oh!"

Theophilus and Rufinus paid no attention to the remark.

"Well," continued the new-comer cheerfully, "Who will come to the races
with me?"

As soon as he heard the word races, Rufinus looked up from his
scribbling. "I will come," he said, "if I can get leave."

"I did not know you cared for that sort of thing," said Cephalus.

Rufinus blushed and murmured something about going every now and then.
He walked out of the room, and sought the _Referendarius_ in the next
room. This official was reading a document. He did not look up when
Rufinus entered, but went on with his reading. At last, after a
prolonged interval, he turned round and said: "What is it?"

"May I go to the races?" asked Rufinus.

"Well," said the high official, "what about your work?"

"We've finished everything," said the clerk.

The Head of the Department assumed an air of mystery and coughed.

"I don't think I can very well see my way to letting you go," he said.
"I am very sorry," he added quickly, "and if it depended on me you
should go at once. But He," he added--he always alluded to the Head of
the Office as He--"does not like it. He may come in at any moment and
find you gone. No; I'm afraid I can't let you go to-day. Now, if it had
been yesterday you could have gone."

"I should only be away an hour," said Rufinus, tentatively.

"He might choose just that hour to come round. If it depended only on me
you should go at once," and he laughed and slapped Rufinus on the back,
jocularly.

The clerk did not press the point further.

"You'd better get on with that index," said the high official as Rufinus
withdrew.

He told the result of his interview to his sporting friend, who started
out by himself to the Hippodrome.

Rufinus settled down to his index. But he soon fell into a mood of
abstraction. The races and the games did not interest him in the least.
It was something else which attracted him. And, as he sat musing, the
vision of the Hippodrome as he had last seen it rose clearly before him.
He saw the seaweed-coloured marble; the glistening porticoes,
adorned with the masterpieces of Greece, crowded with women in gemmed
embroideries and men in white tunics hemmed with broad purple; he saw
the Generals with their barbaric officers--Bulgarians, Persians, Arabs,
Slavs--the long line of savage-looking prisoners in their chains, and
the golden breastplates of the standard-bearers. He saw the immense silk
_velum_ floating in the azure air over that rippling sea of men, those
hundreds of thousands who swarmed on the marble steps of the Hippodrome.
He saw the Emperor in his high-pillared box, on his circular throne of
dull gold, surrounded by slaves fanning him with jewel-coloured plumes,
and fenced round with golden swords.

And opposite him, on the other side of the Stadium, the Empress, mantled
in a stiff pontifical robe, laden with heavy embroidered stuffs,
her little head framed like a portrait in a square crown of gold and
diamonds, whence chains of emeralds hung down to her breast; motionless
as an idol, impassive as a gilded mummy.

He saw the crowd of gorgeous women, grouped like Eastern flowers around
her: he saw one woman. He saw one form as fresh as a lily of the valley,
all white amidst that hard metallic splendour; frail as a dewy anemone,
slender as the moist narcissus. He saw one face like the chalice of a
rose, and amidst all those fiery jewels two large eyes as soft as dark
violets. And the sumptuous Court, the plumes, the swords, the standards,
the hot, vari-coloured crowd melted away and disappeared, so that when
the Emperor rose and made the sign of the Cross over his people, first
to the right, and then to the left, and thirdly over the half-circle
behind him, and the singers of Saint Sofia and the Church of the Holy
Apostles mingled their bass chant with the shrill trebles of the chorus
of the Hippodrome, to the sound of silver organs, he thought that the
great hymn of praise was rising to her and to her alone; and that men
had come from the uttermost parts of the earth to pay homage to her,
to sing her praise, to kneel to her--to her, the wondrous, the very
beautiful: peerless, radiant, perfect.

A voice, followed by a cough, called from the hole in the wall; but
Rufinus paid no heed, so deeply sunk was he in his vision.

"Rufinus, the Chief is calling you," said Cephalus.

Rufinus started, and hurried to the hole in the wall. The Head of the
Department gave him a message for an official in another department.

Rufinus hurried with the message downstairs and delivered it. On his way
back he passed the main portico on the ground floor. He walked out into
the street: it was empty. Everybody was at the games.

A dark-skinned country girl passed him singing a song about the swallow
and the spring. She was bearing a basket full of anemones, violets,
narcissi, wild roses, and lilies of the valley.

"Will you sell me your flowers?" he asked, and he held out a silver
coin.

"You are welcome to them," said the girl. "I do not need your money."

He took the flowers and returned to the room upstairs. The flowers
filled the stuffy place with an unwonted and wonderful fragrance.

Then he sat down and appeared to be once more busily engrossed in his
index. But side by side with the index he had a small tablet, and on
this, every now and then, he added or erased a word to a short poem. The
sense of it was something like this:--

Rhodocleia, flowers of spring
I have woven in a ring;
Take this wreath, my offering, Rhodocleia.

Here's the lily, here the rose
Her full chalice shall disclose;
Here's narcissus wet with dew,
Windflower and the violet blue.
Wear the garland I have made;
Crowned with it, put pride away;
For the wreath that blooms must fade;
Thou thyself must fade some day, Rhodocleia.




THE SPIDER'S WEB

To K. L.

He heard the bell of the Badia sound hour after hour, and still sleep
refused its solace. He got up and looked through the narrow window. The
sky in the East was soft with that luminous intensity, as of a melted
sapphire, that comes just before the dawn. One large star was shining
next to the paling moon. He watched the sky as it grew more and more
transparent, and a fresh breeze blew from the hills. It was the second
night that he had spent without sleeping, but the weariness of his body
was as nothing compared with the aching emptiness which possessed his
spirit. Only three days ago the world had seemed to him starred and
gemmed like the Celestial City--an enchanted kingdom, waiting like a
sleeping Princess for the kiss of the adventurous conqueror; and now the
colours had faded, the dream had vanished, the sun seemed to be deprived
of his glory, and the summer had lost its sweetness.

His eye fell upon some papers which were lying loose upon his table.
There was an unfinished sonnet which he had begun three days ago. The
octet was finished and the first two lines of the sestet. He would never
finish it now. It had no longer any reason to be; for it was a cry
to ears which were now deaf, a question, an appeal, which demanded an
answering smile, a consenting echo; and the lips, the only lips which
could frame that answer, were dumb. He remembered that Casella, the
musician, had asked him a week ago for the text of a _canzone_ which
he had repeated to him one day. He had promised to let him have it.
The promise had entirely gone out of his mind. Then he reflected that
because the ship of his hopes and dreams had been wrecked there was no
reason why he should neglect his obligations to his fellow-travellers on
the uncertain sea.

He sat down and transcribed by the light of the dawn in his exquisite
handwriting the stanzas which had been the fruit of a brighter day. And
the memory of this dead joy was exceedingly bitter to him, so that he
sat musing for some time on the unutterable sadness which the ghosts of
perished joys bring to man in his misery, and a line of Virgil buzzed
in his brain; but not, as of yore, did it afford him the luxury of
causeless melancholy, but like a cruel finger it touched his open wound.
The ancients, he thought, knew how to bear misfortune.

Levius fit patientia
Quidquid corrigere est nefas.

As the words occurred to him he thought how much better equipped he was
for the bitter trial, since had he not the certain hope of another life,
and of meeting his beloved in the spaces of endless felicity? Surely
then he should be able to bear his sorrow with as great a fortitude as
the pagan poets, who looked forward to nothing but the dust; to whom the
fabled dim country beyond the Styx was a cheerless dream, and to whom a
living dog upon the earth was more worthy of envy than the King of all
Elysium. He must learn of the ancients.

The magic of the lemon-coloured dawn had vanished now before the swift
daylight. Many bells were ringing in the city, and the first signs of
life were stirring in the streets. He searched for a little book,
and read of the consolation which Cicero gave to Laelius in the _De
Amicitia_. But he had not read many lines before he closed the book. His
wound was too fresh for the balm of reason and philosophy.

"Later," he thought, "this will strengthen and help me, but not
to-day; to-day my wound must bleed and be allowed to bleed, for all the
philosophy in the world cannot lessen the fact that yesterday she was
and to-day she is not."

He felt a desire to escape from his room, which had been the chapel of
such holy prayers, the shrine where so many fervent tapers of hope had
burnt, where so sweet an incense of dream had risen. He left his room
and hurried down the narrow stone stairs into the street. As he left
the house he turned to his right and walked on till he reached Or San
Michele; there he turned to his right again and walked straight on till
he reached the churches of Santa Reparata and San Giovanni. He entered
San Giovanni and said a brief prayer; then he took the nearest street,
east of Santa Reparata, to the Porta a ballo, and found himself beyond
the walls of the city. He walked towards Fiesole.

The glory of the sunrise was still in the sky, the fragrance of the
dawning summer (it was the 11th of June) was in the air. He walked
towards the East. The corn on the hills was green, and pink wild roses
fringed every plot of wheat. The grass was wet with dew. The city
glittered in the plain beneath, clean and fresh in the dazzling air;
it seemed a part of the pageant of summer, an unreal piece of imagery,
distinct and clear-cut, yet miraculous, like a mirage seen in mid-ocean.
"Truly," he thought, "this is the city of the flower, and the lily is
its fitting emblem."

But while his heart went out towards his native town he felt a sharp
pang as he remembered that the flower of flowers, the queen of the
lilies, had been mowed down by the scythe, and the city which to him had
heretofore been an altar was now a tomb. The lovely Virgilian dirge,

Manibus date lilia plenis . . .
His saltem accumulem donis et fungar inani
Munere,

rang in his ears, and he thought that he too must bring a gift and
scatter lilies on her grave; handfuls of lilies; but they must be
unfading flowers, wet with immortal tears. He pondered on this gift.
It must be a gift of song, a temple built in verse. But he was still
unsatisfied. No dirge, however tender and solemn; no elegy, however soft
and majestic; no song, however piteous, could be a sufficient offering
for the glorious being who had died in her youth and beauty. But what
could he fashion or build? He thought with envy of Arnolfo and of
Giotto: the one with his bricks could have built a tomb which would
prove to be one of the wonders of the world, and the other with his
brush could have fixed her features for ever, for the wonder of future
generations. And yet was not his instrument the most potent of all, his
vehicle the most enduring? Stones decayed, and colours faded, but verse
remained, outliving bronze and marble. Yes, his monument should be more
lasting than all the masterpieces of Giotto, than all the proud designs
of Arnolfo; but how should it be?

He had reached a narrow lane at the foot of a steep hill covered with
corn and dotted with olives. He lay down under a hedge in the shade.
The sun was shining on two large bramble bushes which grew on the hedge
opposite him. Above him, on his right, was a tall cypress tree standing
by itself, and the corn plots stretched up behind him till they reached
the rocky summits tufted with firs. Between the two bramble bushes
a spider had spun a large web, and he was sitting in the midst of it
awaiting his prey. But the bramble and the web were still wet with the
morning dew, whose little drops glistened in the sunshine like diamonds.
Every tiny thread and filament of the web was dewy and lit by the
newly-awakened sun. He lay on his back in the shade and pondered on the
shape and nature of his gift of song, and on the deathless flowers that
he must grow and gather and lay upon her tomb.

The spider's web caught his eye, and from where he lay the sight was
marvellous. The spider seemed like a small globe of fire in the midst of
a number of concentric silvery lines studded with dewy gems; it was like
a miniature sun in the midst of a system of gleaming stars. The delicate
web with its shining films and dewdrops seemed to him as he lay there
to be a vision of the whole universe, with all its worlds and stars
revolving around the central orb of light. It was as though a veil had
been torn away and he were looking on the naked glory of the spheres,
the heart of Heaven, the very home of God.

He looked and looked, his whole spirit filled with ineffable awe and
breathless humility. He lay gazing on the chance miracle of nature till
a passing cloud obscured the sun, and the spider's web wore once more
its ordinary appearance. Then he arose with tears in his eyes and gave a
great sigh of thankfulness.

"I have found it," he thought, "I will say of her what has never yet
been said of any woman. I will paint all Hell, all Purgatory, and all
that is in them, to make more glorious the glory of her abode, and I
will reveal to man that glory. I will show her in the circle of spotless
flame, among the rivers and rings of eternal light, which revolve around
the inmost heart, the fiery rose, and move obedient to the Love which
moves the sun." And his thought shaped itself into verse and he murmured
to himself:

L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle.





EDWARD II. AT BERKELEY CASTLE BY AN EYE-WITNESS (With apologies to Mr.
H. Belloc)

The King had not slept for three nights. He looked at his face in the
muddy pool of water which had settled in the worn flagstones of his
prison floor, and noticed that his beard was of a week's growth. Beads
of sweat stood on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. In the room
next door, which was the canteen, the soldiers were playing on a drum.
Over the tall hills the dawn was ruffling the clouds. There was a faint
glimmer on the waters of the river. The footsteps of the gaolers were
heard on the outer rampart. At seven o'clock they brought the King a
good dinner: they allowed him burgundy from France, and yellow mead, and
white bread baked in the ovens of the Abbey, although he was constrained
to drink out of pewter, and plates were forbidden him. Eustace, his
page, timidly offered him music. The King bade him sing the "Lay of the
Sussex Lass," which begins thus:

Triumphant, oh! triumphant now she stands,
Above my Sussex, and above my sea!
She stretches out her thin ulterior hands
Across the morning . . .

But the King, to whom memories were portentous, called for another song
and Eustace sang a stave of that ballad which was made on the Pyrenees,
and which is still unfinished (for the modern world has no need of
these things), telling of how Lord Raymond drank in a little tent with
Charlemagne:

Enormous through the morning the tall battalions run:
The men who fought with Charlemagne are very dearly done;
The wine is dark beneath the night, the stars are in the sky,
The hammer's in the blacksmith's hand in case he wants to try.
We'll ride to Fontarabia, we'll storm the stubborn wall,
And I call.

And Uriel and his Seraphim are hammering a shield;
And twice along the valley has the horn of Roland pealed;
And Cleopatra on the Nile, Iseult in Brittany,
And Lancelot in Camelot, and Drake upon the sea;
And behind the young Republic are the fellows with the flag,
And I brag!

The King listlessly opened his eyes and said that he had no stomach for
such song, and from the next door came the mutter of the drums. For on
that night--which was Candlemas--Thursday, or as we should now call it
"Friday"--the gaolers were keeping holiday, and drinking English beer
brewed in Sussex; for the beer of West England was not to their liking,
as any one who has walked down the old Roman Road through Daglingworth,
Brimpsfield, and Birdlip towards Cardigan on a warm summer's day can
know. For a man may tramp that road and stop and ask for drink at an
inn, and receive nothing but Imperialist whisky, and drinks that annoy
rather than satisfy the great thirst of a Christian.

Outside, a little breeze had crept out of the West. The morning star was
paling over the Quantock Hills, and the King was mortally weary. "This
day three years ago," he thought, "I was spurred and harnessed for the
lists in a tunic of mail, with an emerald on my shoulder-strap, and I
was tilting with my lord of Cleremont before Queen Isabella of France.
The birds were singing in Touraine, and the sun was beating on the
lists; and the minstrels of Val-es-Dunes were chanting the song of the
men who died for the Faith when they stormed Jerusalem. What is the lilt
of that song," said the King, "which the singers of Val-es-Dunes sang?"
And Eustace pondered, for his memory was weak and he was overwrought by
nights of watching and days of vigilance; but presently he touched his
strings and sang:

The captains came from Normandy
In clamorous ships across the sea;
And from the trees in Gascony
The masts were cloven, tall and free.
And Turpin swung the helm and sang;
And stars like all the bells at Brie
From cloudy steeples rang.

The rotten leaves are whirling down
Dishevelled from September's crown;
The Emperors have left the town;
The Weald of Sussex, burnt and brown,
Is trampled by the kings.
And Harmuth gallops up the Down,
And, as he rides, he sings.

He sings of battles and of wine,
Of boats that leap the bellowing brine,
Of April eyes that smile and shine,
Of Raymond and Lord Catiline
And Carthage by the sea,
Of saints, and of the Muses Nine
That dwell in Gascony.

And to the King, as he heard this stave, came visions of his youth; of
how he had galloped from Woodstock to Stonesfield on a night of June
within eleven hours, with a company of minstrels, and of how during that
long feast at Arundel he made a song in the vernacular in praise of St.
Anselm. And he remembered that he owed a candle to that saint. For
he had vowed that if the wife of Westermain should meet him after the
tournament he would burn a tall candle at Canterbury before Michaelmas.
But this had escaped his mind, for it had been tossed hither and thither
during days of conflict which had come later, and he was not loth to
believe that the neglect of this service and the idle vow had been
corner-stone of his misfortunes, and had helped to bring about his
miserable plight.

While these threads of memory glimmered in his mind the small tallow
rush-light which lit the dungeon flickered and went out. The chapel
clock struck six. The King made a gesture which meant that the time of
music was over, and Eustace went back to the canteen, where the men of
the guard were playing at dice by the light of smoky rush-lights. The
King lay down on his wooden pallet, whose linen was delicate and of
lawn, embroidered with his own cipher and crown. The pillow, which was
stuffed with scented rushes, was delicious to the cheek, and yielding.