Part 37 (1/2)

Fame has only the span of a day, they say. But to live in the hearts of the people--that is worth something.

Keep young. Keep innocent. Innocence does not come back: and repentance is a poor thing beside it.

The chimes of the monastery were ringing out for the first ma.s.s; deep bells of sweet tone, that came down the river like a benediction on the day. Signa kneeled down on the gra.s.s.

”Did you pray for the holy men?” Bruno asked him when they rose, and they went on under the tall green quivering trees.

”No,” said Signa under his breath. ”I prayed for the devil.”

”For him?” echoed Bruno aghast; ”what are you about, child? Are you possessed? Do you know what the good priests would say?”

”I prayed for him,” said Signa. ”It is he who wants it. To be wicked _there_ where G.o.d is, and the sun, and the bells”----

”But he is the foe of G.o.d. It is horrible to pray for him.”

”No,” said Signa, st.u.r.dily. ”G.o.d says we are to forgive our enemies, and help them. I only asked Him to begin with His.”

Bruno was silent.

_TRICOTRIN._

At every point where her eyes glanced there was a picture of exquisite colour, and light, and variety.

But the scene in its loveliness was so old to her, so familiar, that it was scarcely lovely, only monotonous. With all a child's usual ignorant impatience of the joys of the present--joys so little valued at the time, so futilely regretted in the after-years--she was heedless of the hour's pleasure, she was longing for what had not come.

On the whole, the Waif fared better, having fallen to the hands of a vagabond philosopher, than if she had drifted to those of a respected philanthropist. The latter would have had her glistening hair shorn short, as a crown with which that immortal and inconsistent socialist Nature had no justification in crowning a foundling, and, in his desire to make her fully expiate the lawless crime of entering the world without purse or pa.s.sport, would have left her no choice, as she grew into womanhood, save that between sinning and starving. The former bade the long fair tresses float on the air, sunny rebels against bondage, and saw no reason why the childhood of the castaway should not have its share of childish joyousness as well as the childhood prince-begotten and palace-cradled; holding that the fresh life just budded on earth was as free from all soil, no matter whence it came, as is the brook of pure rivulet water, no matter whether it spring from cla.s.sic lake or from darksome cavern.

The desire to be ”great” possessed her. When that insatiate pa.s.sion enters a living soul, be it the soul of a woman-child dreaming of a coquette's conquests, or a crowned hero craving for a new world, it becomes blind to all else. Moral death falls on it; and any sin looks sweet that takes it nearer to its goal. It is a pa.s.sion that generates at once all the loftiest and all the vilest things, which between them enn.o.ble and corrupt the world--even as heat generates at once the harvest and the maggot, the purpling vine and the lice that devour it.

It is a pa.s.sion without which the world would decay in darkness, as it would do without heat, yet to which, as to heat, all its filthiest corruption is due.

A woman's fair repute is like a blue harebell--a touch can wither it.