Then he sighed and Beatrice sighed, and she said, very kindly, "In that
case, I pity you," and made again to leave him, and again the appeal in
his eyes stayed her.
"Can you do no more than pity me?" he asked.
Beatrice was smiling now, for all she strove to be serious. "Why, you
are for a greedy garner; you want flower, fruit, and all, in a breath."
I could see Messer Dante's face suddenly stiffen into solemnity; I could
hear Messer Dante's voice, for all its youthful freshness, take upon it
the gravity of age. "For nine years, day in and day out, I have thought
of you," he sighed. "Have you ever thought of me?"
He looked steadfastly at the girl as he spoke, and if there was much of
entreaty in his question there was something of command also, as if he
chose to compel her to tell him the very truth. And the girl answered,
indeed, as if she were compelled to speak and could not deny him, and
her cheeks were as pink as the earliest roses as she answered him:
"Sometimes."
Again Dante spoke and questioned her, and again in his carriage and in
his voice there was that same note of command. "With what thoughts?"
But I could plainly see that if our Dante would seek to give orders to
the girl with an authority that was beyond his years, the girl could
meet his assumption of domination with a composure that was partly grave
and partly humorous and wholly adorable.
She nodded very pleasantly at him as she answered, "Kind thoughts for
the gentle child who gave his rose to a little girl."
I knew very well, as I leaned and listened, that the mind of Dante
leaped back on that instant to the day he had told us of so little a
while before, the day nine years ago when, as the sweet lady said, he
gave his rose to a little girl. I knew, too, that the chance meeting
with Madonna Beatrice on this fair morning must in some mighty fashion
alter the life of my friend. The fantastic love which he, a child of
nine, felt or professed to feel for the little girl of a like age was
now, through this accident, setting his soul and body on fire and
forcing him to say wild words, as a little while back it had forced him
to do wild deeds, out of the very exhilaration of madness. And Dante
spoke as all lovers speak when they wish to touch the hearts of their
ladies, only making me who was listening not a little jealous, seeing
that he spoke better than most that I knew of.
"Madonna," he said, "Madonna, the lover-poets of our city are very
prodigal of protestations--what will they not do for their lady? They
offer her the sun, moon, and stars for her playthings--and in the end
she is fortunate if she gets so much as a farthing rushlight to burn at
her shrine."
Beatrice was listening to him with the bright smile upon her face which
for me was the best part of a beauty that, if I had been in Dante's
place, I should have found a thought too seraphic and unearthly for my
fancy.
"My heart," she assured him, "would never be touched by such sounding
phrases."
Now Dante's face glowed with the fire that was in him, and his words
seemed to glow as he spoke like gold coins dropping new-moulded from the
mint. "I am no god to give you a god's gifts," he protested. "But of
what a plain man may proffer from the heart of his heart and the soul of
his soul, say, is there any gift I can give you in sign of my service?"
The bright smile on the face of Beatrice changed to a gracious air of
thoughtfulness, and I think I should have been glad had I been wooing a
woman in such fashion to have seen such a look on the face of my fair.
"Messer Dante," she said, "you have some right to be familiar with me,
for you risked your life for my rose. So I will answer your frankness
frankly. Men have tried to please me and failed, for I think I am not
easy to please greatly."
Dante stretched out both his hands to her. "Let me try to please you!"
he cried.
The girl answered him, speaking very slowly, as if she were carefully
turning her thoughts into words and weighing her words while she uttered
them. "That is in your own hands. I do not cry for the sun and stars and
the shining impossibilities. But I am a woman, and if a man did brave
deeds (and by brave deeds I do not mean risking two souls for the sake
of a rose) or good deeds (and by good deeds I do not mean the rhyming of
pretty rhymes in my honor), and did them for love of me, why, I have so
much of my grandmother Eve in me that I believe I should be pleased."
I saw Dante draw himself up as a soldier might in the ranks when he saw
his general riding by and thought that the rider's eye was upon him.
"With God's help," he vowed, "you shall hear better things of me."
There was a look of such fine kindness on Beatrice's face while he spoke
thus as made even me, that am a man of common clay, and like love as I
like wine and victuals, thrill in my hiding-place. "I hope as much," she
said, softly--"almost believe as much. But I linger too long, and my
comrades wonder. Farewell."
She gave him an enchanting salutation, and Dante bowed his head.
"Farewell, most fair lady," he murmured.
Then Beatrice moved away from him, and ascended the steps where the two
girls stood and waited for her, and she laid her white finger on the
ring of brass that governed the lock of the little door, and the little
door opened and she passed into the gray palace, she and her maids, and
to me too, as I am very sure to Dante, the world seemed in a twinkling
robbed of its sweetness. For though, as I have said, Madonna Beatrice
was never a woman for me to love, I could well believe that to the man
who loved her there could be no woman else on the whole wide earth,
which, as I think, is an uncomfortable form of loving.
When she had gone Dante stood there very silent for a while, and it may
be that I, tired of watching him, drifted into a doze, and leaned there
for a while against my sheltering pillar with closed lids, as sometimes
happens to men that are weary of waiting. If this were so, it would
explain why I did not see what seems to have happened then--or perhaps
it was because I was of a temper and composition less fine than my
friend's that I was not permitted to see such sights. But it appears, as
I learned from his lips later, that as he stood there in all the ecstacy
of his sweet intercourse with the well-beloved, the painted image of the
God of Love that stood beside the bridge, above the fountain, came to
life again, and moved and came in front of Dante and looked upon him
very searchingly. The God of Love lifted the hand that carried his
fateful arrow and pointed with the dart toward the gray palace, and it
spoke to Dante in a voice of command, and said, "Behold thy heart." Then
Dante felt no fear such as he had felt at the first appearance of the
God of Love, but only an almost intolerable sense of joy at the glory
and the beauty and the divinity of true and noble love. And he said to
himself, as if he whispered a prayer, "O Blessed Beatrice," and
therewith the figure of the God of Love departed back to its familiar
place.
If I had, indeed, been dozing, my sleep lasted no longer than this, and
I was conscious again, and saw Dante, and I leaped from my hiding-place
and ran to where Dante stood alone in the square, with his hands against
his face. I called to him, as I came up, "Dante, are you drowned in a
wonder?" and at the sound of my voice Dante plucked the fingers from
his face and stared at me vacantly, as if he did not know me. This gaze
of ignorance lasted, it may be, for the better part of a minute.
Then Dante, seeming to recognize me, all of a sudden drew me toward him
and spoke as a man speaks that tells strange truths truly. "Friend," he
said, "you are well met, for you see me now as I am who will never see
me again as I was. I am become a man, for I love God's loveliest woman.
Enough of nobility in name; I mean to prove nobility in deed. Say to my
friends that Dante of the Alighieri, a Florentine, and a lover, devotes
himself for love's sake to the service of his city."
And when he had spoken he stood very still with his hands clasped before
him, and I, because it is my way to laugh at all things, laughed at him,
and cried out: "Holy Saint Plato, what a hot change of a cold heart!
Bring bell, book, and candle, for Jack Idle is dead and Adam Active is
his heir."
But Dante turned his face to me, and his eyes were shining very bright,
and he looked younger than his youth, and he spoke to me not as if he
were chiding my mirth, but as if he were telling me a piece of welcome
news, and he said, very gently, "Here beginneth the New Life."