Читать книгу For the Blood Is the Life - Francis Marion Crawford - Страница 25

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The little party sat by the open window of the hall on the next evening. Since the extraordinary events of the preceding day they had talked of nothing else. Augustus was endeavouring to explain his theory that by a gigantic experiment upon nature he had accidentally upset some fundamental but wholly unknown law, and he promised that if his mother-in-law would not be frightened he would cause another electric storm and produce even more extraordinary results.

"But I am quite sure it was all a dream," objected Lady Brenda. " Only when I think of that man's hand, I really shiver. Anything more awfully clammy!"

"I am sure they will come back to-night," said Gwendoline, in a tone of profound conviction. " It was all very odd, but I know it was quite real."

Diana was seated at the piano, running her fingers over the keys in an idle fashion, striking melancholy and disconnected chords and then pausing to listen to the conversation.

"Yes," she said presently, "I am sure they will come back."

"The question," remarked Augustus, " is whether such a disturbance is likely to outlast a day unless the forces which produced it are —" he stopped, starting slightly. Lady Brenda dropped her fan, Gwendoline rose swiftly from her chair and drew back, while Diana's fingers fell upon the keys and made a ringing discord. In the dusky gloom of the long window stood two men. The one was Caesar; the other a man taller than he, with a long white beard and wrapped in a cloak. Caesar came forward, followed at a few steps by his companion.

"I have come back," said the dead man, quietly. " You do not grudge us poor ghosts an hour's conversation? It is so pleasant to seem to be alive again, and in such company. We left you too soon last night, but it was late."

"But where are the rest?" asked Gwendoline, disappointed at not seeing Chopin, and glancing curiously at the old man who stood by Caesar's side.

"Chopin is at Bayreuth to-night. There is a musical festival and he could not stay away. Heine is sitting by the shores of the North Sea talking to the stars and the sea-foam. But I have brought you another friend—one perhaps greater than they when he lived, though we are all alike here."

Caesar led his companion forward, and in the short silence that followed all eyes were turned upon the new-comer.

He was a man of tall and graceful figure. The noble features were set off by a snowy beard and long white locks that flowed down upon his shoulders and contrasted with the rich material of his mantle. The wide folds of the latter as he gathered them in one hand did not altogether conceal the dress he wore beneath, the doublet of dark green and trunk hose of scarlet, the tight sleeve, slashed at the elbows where the fine linen showed in symmetrical puffs, the black shoes and the gold chain which hung about his neck. He was old, indeed, but his walk had a matchless grace and his erect form still showed the remains of the giant's strength. His dark eyes were brilliant still and emitted a lustre that illuminated the pale, regular features, too deathlike to convey any impression of life without that glance of the sparkling soul within.

He paused before the group and courteously bent his head. All rose to greet him, and if there was less of awe in the action there was perhaps more of reverence, than any had felt when the greater guest had entered.

"I am Lionardo," he said in a low and musical voice. " Lionardo, the artist —' from Vinci' they call me, because I was born there. I have joined you and the rest — these dear friends of mine who have made me one of them, and you who have conferred on us the privilege of once more exchanging thoughts and grasping hands with the living."

"There is none whom we will more gladly honour," said Augustus, gravely. " The privilege is ours, not yours. Be seated— be one of us if you will, as well as one of these — whom you have known so long."

"Long — yes — it seems long to me, very, very long. But I have not forgotten what it was to live. I loved life well. Men have said of me that I wasted much time — I have been laughed at as a blower of soap-bubbles, as a foolish fellow who spent his time in trying to teach lizards to fly. Perhaps it is true. I have learned the secret now, and I have learned that I could not have attained to it then. But it was sweet to seek after it."

"I have read those foolish stories," said Diana, whose eyes rested in rapt admiration on the grand features of the artist. " No one believes them — "

" Here in Italy," said Caesar, in his placid yet dominating tones, " people may say of you as the English said of their architect — si monumentum quceris, circumspice."

"They would have needed to bury my body by the sluices of the Lecco canal, to give the same force to the epitaph," answered Lionardo, with a soft laugh. Then with the courtesy natural to him he turned to Diana who had been speaking when interrupted by Caesar's quotation.

"I appreciate the kindly thought that makes you say that, Lady Diana — your name is Diana? Yes, it suits your face. I used to think I could guess people's names from their faces. Another of my foolish fancies. However, I am obliged to say that there is some truth in the report concerning the soap-bubbles. I had a theory that they were like drops of liquid — that each drop had a skin and that I could make drops of air and find out how they would act, by giving them artificial skins like those of other liquids. Something has been produced from the idea by modern students. The mistake I made was in attempting to work out my theory before proclaiming it. That is impossible. Modern students make a fat living by proclaiming their theories first and omitting to demonstrate them afterwards, taking for granted that no one will deny what persons of such importance as themselves choose to suggest."

"I have never heard that you were so cynical," said Lady Brenda.

"Nor in your presence could I be so long," rejoined the old artist, with a smile. " But I was not cynical in my time. I am cynical in yours. Save for such company as these gentlewomen, I would not choose to be alive to-day."

Caesar sighed and looked away from the rest, his nervous white hand tightening upon the carved arm of his deep-seated chair. It was a long, deep breath, drawn in with sudden and overwhelming thought of returning vitality and possibility, swelling the breast with the old imperial courage, the mighty grandeur of heart which had ruled the world; then relinquished and breathed out again in despair, deep, inconsolable and heart-rending, in the despair which the dead man whose deeds are all done and whose life-book is closed for ever feels when he gazes on the living whose race is not yet begun.

" Yes," said Lionardo, looking kindly at the conqueror's averted face, "you are right — for yourself. We are not all such as Caius. If I were to live again I should waste more time in disproving theories today than I ever wasted in trying to prove them four hundred years ago. We were all for progress under Ludovico Sforza. Borgia understood progress in his own way — but it was progress, too, for all that. He could have given lessons in more than one thing to many of your moderns. Even Pope Leo understood what progress meant, in spite of his ideas about my methods of painting. But nowadays everything goes backwards. A bag of money is paraded through the world bound on an ass's back, and everybody worships the ass, and men lie down and let him walk over them, thinking perchance that the beast may stumble, and the sack burst open, and that haply they may scrape up some of the coin in the filth of the road. We were more simple than the moderns. We had less money, but we knew better how to spend it."

"Is it true, I wonder," put in Augustus, " that the amount of money in circulation indicates progress while the way in which men spend it indicates civilisation?"

"No," said Caesar, answering for the rest. " The nation which has the greater wealth may not have progressed further than others, save in power. Power is not progress — it depends on other things. It is the result of a combination of strength and discipline under an intelligent leader. The highest power is generally reached by a people when the spirit of organisation has attained its greatest development in military matters but has not yet spread to the civil professions. The army is then held in the highest esteem and is the favourite profession. When the passion for order has extended to mercantile affairs, the nation's actual power as compared with other nations begins to decline. Interests of all kinds become vested in the maintenance of peace, and the warlike element falls into disrepute. It becomes the nation's business to lend money to other nations who are still in the military stage, herself meanwhile giving and receiving guarantees of peace. But though a people may be rich by commerce they may not have progressed; and again whole nations may be made fabulously wealthy by seizing the wealth of others. We Romans did that. We did not pretend to the culture of the Greeks; we certainly did not possess their skill in making money—but we possessed them and their country, and gold flowed in our streets. It did us very little good. We got it without progress, by force, and we spent it recklessly in paying men to tear each other to pieces. No — a large amount of money in circulation does not indicate progress, though it may be the result of it."

"Money is very uninteresting," said Gwendoline. "It always seems to me that the world would be much nicer without it."

"When you are as old as I am, you will appreciate your advantages, my dear," said Lady Brenda. " It is good to be rich, and I fancy it must be very disagreeable to be poor."

"But I know quite well how it feels to have money," objected Gwendoline. "I would like to know how it feels to have power — power such as you had," she added, looking at Caesar.

"Not many have known what it is," he answered, with a curious smile. " Each one who has possessed it has probably felt it in a different way. For my part, though I was accused of not being serious in my youth, like Lionardo here, I think I grew more than serious under the responsibility. Perhaps, however, it made less difference to me than it has to others. I was born to wealth, if not to power, and I resolved to make the most of my money. I made use of it by spending it all and then borrowing largely on the security of what I had squandered. They said I was not serious — but they made me leave the country nevertheless."

"I imagine," said Gwendoline, "that to have boundless power suddenly put into one's hands must make one feel as though one were to live for ever."

"Living for ever is a sad pastime without it," returned Caesar. "I am not of Lionardo's mind. I would live again."

"To die again as you died ?" asked Diana in a low voice.

" Yes," answered the dead conqueror, " to die again as I died, if need be, but to have power once 'more. And I know what I say—you cannot know. For death was horrible to me. Not the physical pain of it, though they were clumsy fellows; they were long in killing me — I thought it would never end. I could have done it better myself, and indeed I was more merciful to them than they to me. Not one of them died a natural death, for I pursued them one by one when I was dead. I have never seen them since ; they are not here. But none of them suffered as I did. I knew that my hour was come when I got that first wound in the throat, and as I struggled, the horror of it overcame me. Visions rose before my eyes of the things I had not yet accomplished, but of which the accomplishment was certain if I lived. It was such a disappointment — more that than anything else. Such a heart-rending despair at being cut down before my work was half finished, before the world was half civilised. People forget that I invented civilisation — I, the dead man who am speaking to you. But it is true. And in that moment I felt that I was young without having realised in practice the theory, which was to change the world. That handful of low assassins cost the world fifteen centuries of darkness, and I knew it even then. Had I lived, I would have kneaded the earth as a baker kneads dough, and the leaven I had put into it would not have rotted and fermented for lack of stirring. As I felt one wound after another, I felt that my murderers were not only killing Caesar, they were killing civilisation; every thrust was struck at the heart of the world, making deep wounds in the future of man kind and letting out the breath of life from the body of law. That was my worst suffering, worse even than the death of my ambition. I had done enough already to be remembered, and I knew it. I was satisfied for myself to die. But I had conceived great thoughts which had grown to be a new self apart from the old, vain, ambitious Caesar, having a separate and better life — and that they slew also. Augustus did much, but he could not do what I would and could have done."

"No," said Lionardo, thoughtfully, " you were the greatest man who ever lived."

"That is saying too much," answered Caesar in quiet tones. " I meant to be. That is all. My fortune deserted me too soon. The greatest men, after all, are poets. They are also the most justly judged, for what they leave is their own. They leave themselves to mankind in their own words. We statesmen and soldiers are at the mercy of historians. I meant to have written the history of my whole life in the form of annual reports such as I made upon my wars in Gaul."

"Could you not do it now ? " asked Lady Brenda. " We know so little of the history of your youth, and I am sure it must have been most interesting."

Caesar smiled. "If I were able to write at all," he said, " I would not choose my youth as a subject upon which to make a report. My youth was a trifle over-full of movement, besides being very ostentatious. My first object in life was to become popular, for I knew that popularity was the surest way to power. I led the popular party for eighteen years before I ever attempted to lead an army, and when I turned soldier I was already a finished statesman. That is the reason why I knew what to do so soon as I had got the whole power into my hands. I had conquered the most important part of my world by art before I found it necessary to subdue the remainder by force. I was beginning to amalgamate a new world out of my two conquests when I was murdered."

"Do the dead forgive ? " The words were spoken by Gwendoline in a low tone and as though no response could be expected to such a question. But there were those present who could answer it. Lionardo da Vinci turned his soft eyes upon the questioner.

"Yes," he said, "we do forgive, and very freely too."

"Yes — and no," said Caesar.

"Both ? " asked the artist. " How can we both forgive and not forgive, illustrious friend? There must be caprice in that — there must be an uncertain vacillation between two thoughts. You never vacillated, nor stood long choosing between two paths, nor, having chosen, looked back and regretted."

"The sum of man's works," replied the greater spirit, " is composed of his intentions taken together with his deeds in such a way as the Greek geometer would have expressed it. The sum of his life is largest when the deeds are as great as the intentions which prompted them, for of four-sided figures the square, with equal lines, encloses the greatest space. But if the intentions be ever so great and the deeds few, the figure is long indeed, but narrow and of small area; and again if the deeds are numerous though the intentions small, then the deeds are the result of accident and must not all be imputed to man for good. My intentions were my own. I forgive them that said they were unworthy, or little or bad, for I know what they were. But my deeds were the world's, and those I left undone should have been the world's also. Wherefore I forgive not those men who cut them short, who clipped the sum of my life and made my square smaller than it should have been. For my life was the world's health, and though my nephew was a cunning physician, all his medicines could not cure the gangrene in the wounds my slayers made in the world's skin, nor could all his cleansing arrest the deepening darkness of the stain that spread from my blood over the body of the nation I sought to make clean and great. For my life was not sacrificed boldly for good in a great cause. I did not fall in the front of the fight at Pharsalus. I did not sink when the skiff overturned at Alexandria; I was not caught by the enemy in Germany when I slipped through their lines in a Gallic dress; I did not lose heart when my soldiers lost their way in the trenches at Dyrrachium, though I lost the place itself. I risked my life often enough to have deserved to lose it finally in some nobler way than by the hands of such butchers as made an end of me — fellows who knew not where to strike to kill—who in three and twenty thrusts could strike but one mortal blow. I stabbed Cassius in the arm with my writing point, but what could I do against so many ? I saw a sea of faces around me, cowardly pale faces of men who got courage cheaply from their numbers. I saw myself hemmed in by a hedge of steel knives and I knew that my hour was come. I saw their faces, but I would not let them see mine in death. I covered my head and my body with my garments and I died decently, since there was nothing left but to die. But I saw each one of those faces once more and in the instant of death, within three years, and I heard the lips of each dying man curse the hour in which he had slain Caesar. Even then I could not forgive them, for the sake of the world that might have been. I can pardon them for murdering me as a man. I will never pardon them for murdering my unborn deeds. Therefore I say we dead men both forgive and forgive not."

The conqueror's calm voice ceased and his dark, thoughtful eyes fixed themselves as though staring back through the mist of nineteen centuries to that morning when he had entered the curia, laughing at Spurinna's prophecies and unconsciously grasping in his hand the unread note which might have saved him from his fate. The look was sad, but the sadness had long passed from the stage of present despair to regret for the past, and again to a melancholy curiosity to see what should yet become of the world.

The gentle Lionardo bowed his head gravely, as though admitting his companion spirit to be right.

" I understand that," he said. " We should not forget that you, the dictator, have not only to pardon the injuries done you in your person, but you have to forgive also the injuries done in your person to the world, or as we should say, to history. In my little way, had I been foully murdered I could more easily have forgiven my murderers than I could forgive one who should wantonly destroy my painting of the Last Supper. It is but an artist's vanity — that is to say, it is the satisfaction of the artist in his work. I cannot say what I might have felt had I been violently prevented from finishing that picture. It is unfinished still — it would be so had I lived until to-day. I think it is a part of the temperament of some artists not to finish, though they work for ever. They search after that which never was nor ever can be; or, at all events, we searched in our day. I think it was better. We pursued the ideal. Modern painters pursue the real. I was not a realist because I painted grinning peasants for a study, and modelled ' heads of laughing women for my pleasure. We did not know what realism meant in those days, though people call us the founders of the realist school. We sought to represent nature's meaning; men now try to copy what nature is. You, Caesar, tried to make of men what heaven meant them to be, orderly, happy, prosperous within reasonable limits. Napoleon, like Alexander, ruined himself in attempting to create an unlimited empire out of unreasoning and often unwilling elements, believing that to command men's bodies was to command men's souls. You succeeded in spite of failure, for though you were killed at the most critical moment of your existence your work survived you; Napoleon failed in spite of success and survived to see the destruction of the greater part of his work, which followed almost immediately after he was conquered and taken prisoner."

"It was not his fault," said Caesar. " Any more than my poor young general Gains Curio was to blame when he was defeated by Juba. Napoleon's plans were admirably laid. He did not admire me. I admire him. If his work did not survive long, that is due to the fact that he was brought up as a soldier and had a soldier's instincts. I was trained as a statesman and attached more importance to the stability of the State than to extending its boundaries. I am called a conqueror; had I lived I should have been called a civiliser, and I would have earned the name. People do not reflect that Napoleon conquered a great extent of territory and rose to be emperor, with what at first were very inadequate means, and from the humblest beginnings. Charlemagne's conquests were more extended than mine, far wider than Napoleon's, and yet he is not called a conqueror. He is called the Great. He accomplished his work, which on the whole was a work of civilisation, and much of it remains to this day; at least his influence remains. The resuscitation of the German Empire is largely due to the imperial traditions which he founded; but the invention of a French Empire was not due to his influence. It was the spontaneous invention of an astounding individuality, tremendous in its immediate effects, formidable so long as a personality could be found worthy to be invested with the halo and attributes of Bonaparte, and bearing his name; but, on the whole it was not a circumstance in the world's history to which any great mass of popular or national tradition will ever be attached, for the Napoleonic supremacy was the impression of an individual upon nations; it was never the expression of the nations by the individual. The title, German Emperor, was sometimes in the Middle Ages a very empty word as regards the man who so designated himself. I have sometimes laughed to think that a dignity expressed by my own name should degenerate to such a mockery. But the thing meant by Caesarism — Imperialism— was never to be despised. There was always present in the minds of the chief nations a consciousness of the force of a mighty tradition and of a mass of traditions which they sought to embody in the person of a leader, chosen for his qualities and invested with the supreme power in virtue of them. If he failed to make good his rights he was despised, but it was long before the belief was extinguished that at any moment, if he so chose and so laboured and fought, the German Emperor might again rule the world, even as Charlemagne had done. There was nothing dynastic in my conception of the Imperator, but the circumstances of the times made the institution a military one. I never meant that it should be that. I would not submit to a council of generals or a mob of guards, though when I could not persuade the people I was willing to submit to them. The empire which my nephew founded began to go to pieces when the soldiers outgrew the people in strength, and outranked them in social consequence — it fell because it was a military institution. The empire of the Germans — the Holy Roman Empire — was shattered on the death of Charlemagne, because it was intended to be dynastic, and his sons tore each other to pieces. It revived temporarily when some strong individuality rose to the surface; it alternately decayed and revived with the decadence of each old imperial family and the investiture of each new one. My empire — I never used the word in the modern sense — my command, was intended to be that of a democratic monarch, an expression now used emptily to flatter a king who is at the mercy of his rabble."

Caesar laughed softly, as he had laughed many times in the nineteen centuries which had elapsed since his death, and there was something in the mirth of the great spirit that froze the conversation. Lady Brenda wished she were quite sure that it was Csesar who had been talking and who sat there by her side with the golden laurels on his broad brow, his nervous white fingers playing constantly with the border of his purple mantle. Augustus was pondering on the words he had heard, while Gwendoline half wished to put another question. Diana leaned back in her deep chair and gazed at Lionardo's beautiful face from beneath her drooping lids, and she wondered inwardly whether it would not be better to be the quiet spirit of a great artist than the regretful ghost of a murdered conqueror.