Chapter 3 MORNING OTTIMA

In the shrub-house on the hill-side are Ottima, the wife of Luca, and her German lover, Sebald. He is wildly singing and drinking; to him it still seems night. But Ottima sees a "blood-red beam through the shutter's chink," which proves that morning is come.

Let him open the lattice and see! He goes to open it, and no movement can he make but vexes her, as he gropes his way where the "tall, naked geraniums straggle"; pushes the lattice, which is behind a frame, so awkwardly that a shower of dust falls on her; fumbles at the slide-bolt, till she exclaims that "of course it catches!" At last he succeeds in getting the window opened, and her only direct acknowledgment is to ask him if she "shall find him something else to spoil." But this imperious petulance, curiously as it contrasts with the patience which, a little later, she will display, is native to Ottima; she is not the victim of her nerves this morning, though now she passes without transition to a mood of sensuous cajolement-

"Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is't full morning?

Oh, don't speak, then!"

-but Sebald does speak, for in this aversion from the light of day he recognises a trait of hers which long has troubled him.

With his first words we perceive that "nerves" are uppermost, that the song and drink of the opening moment were bravado-that Sebald, in short, is close on a breakdown. He turns upon her with a gibe against her ever-shuttered windows. Though it is she who now has ordered the unwelcome light to be admitted, he overlooks this in his enervation, and says how, before ever they met, he had observed that her windows were always blind till noon. The rest of the little world of Asolo would be active in the day's employment; but her house "would ope no eye." "And wisely," he adds bitterly-

"And wisely; you were plotting one thing there,

Nature, another outside. I looked up-

Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,

Silent as death, blind in a flood of light;

Oh, I remember!-and the peasants laughed

And said, 'The old man sleeps with the young wife.'

This house was his, this chair, this window-his."

The last line gives us the earliest hint of what has been done: "This house was his. . . ." But Ottima, whether from scorn of Sebald's mental disarray, or from genuine callousness, answers this first moan of anguish not at all. She gazes from the open lattice: "How clear the morning is-she can see St. Mark's! Padua, blue Padua, is plain enough, but where lies Vicenza? They shall find it, by following her finger that points at Padua. . . ."

Sebald cannot emulate this detachment. Morning seems to him "a night with a sun added"; neither dew nor freshness can he feel; nothing is altered with this dawn-the plant he bruised in getting through the lattice last night droops as it did then, and still there shows his elbow's mark on the dusty sill.

She flashes out one instant. "Oh, shut the lattice, pray!"

No: he will lean forth-

". . . I cannot scent blood here,

Foul as the morn may be."

But his mood shifts quickly as her own-

". . . There, shut the world out!

How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse

The world and all outside!"

and at last he faces her, literally and figuratively, with a wild appeal to let the truth stand forth between them-

". . . Let us throw off

This mask: how do you bear yourself? Let's out

With all of it."

But no. Her instinct is never to speak of it, while his drives him to "speak again and yet again," for only so, he feels, will words "cease to be more than words." His blood, for instance-

". . . let those two words mean 'His blood';

And nothing more. Notice, I'll say them now:

'His blood.' . . ."

She answers with phrases, the things that madden him-she speaks of "the deed," and at once he breaks out again. The deed, and the event, and their passion's fruit-

". . . the devil take such cant!

Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol,

I am his cut-throat, you are . . ."

With extraordinary patience, though she there, wearily as it were, interrupts him, Ottima again puts the question by, and offers him wine. In doing this, she says something which sends a shiver down the reader's back-

". . . Here's wine!

I brought it when we left the house above,

And glasses too-wine of both sorts . . ."

He takes no notice; he reiterates-

"But am I not his cut-throat? What are you?"

Still with that amazing, that almost beautiful, patience-the quality of her defect of callousness-Ottima leaves this also without comment. She gazes now from the closed window, sees a Capuchin monk go by, and makes some trivial remarks on his immobility at church; then once more offers Sebald the flask-the "black" (or, as we should say, the "red") wine.

Melodramatic and obvious in all he does and says, Sebald refuses the red wine: "No, the white-the white!"-then drinks ironically to Ottima's black eyes. He reminds her how he had sworn that the new year should not rise on them "the ancient shameful way," nor does it.

"Do you remember last damned New Year's Day?"

* * * * *

The characters now are poised for us-in their national, as well as their individual, traits. Ottima, an Italian, has the racial matter-of-factness, callousness, and patience; Sebald, a German, the no less characteristic sentimentality and emotionalism. Her attitude remains unchanged until the critical moment; his shifts and sways with every word and action. No sooner has he drunk the white wine than he can brutally, for an instant, exult in the thought that Luca is not alive to fondle Ottima before his face; but with her instant answer (rejoicing as she does to retrieve the atmosphere which alone is native to her sense)-

". . . Do you

Fondle me, then! Who means to take your life?"

-a new mood seizes on him. They have "one thing to guard against." They must not make much of one another; there must be no more parade of love than there was yesterday; for then it would seem as if he supposed she needed proofs that he loves her-

". . . yes, still love you, love you,

In spite of Luca and what's come to him."

That would be a sure sign that Luca's "white sneering old reproachful face" was ever in their thoughts. Yes; they must even quarrel at times, as if they

". . . still could lose each other, were not tied

By this . . ."

but on her responding cry of "Love!" he shudders back again: Is he so surely for ever hers?

She, in her stubborn patience, answers by a reminiscence of their early days of love-

". . . That May morning we two stole

Under the green ascent of sycamores"

-and, thinking to reason with him, asks if, that morning, they had

". . . come upon a thing like that,

Suddenly-"

but he interrupts with his old demand for the true word: she shall not say "a thing" . . . and at last that marvellous patience gives way, and in a superb flash of ironic rage she answers him-

"Then, Venus' body! had we come upon

My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse

Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close"

-flinging him the "words" he has whimpered for in full measure, that so at last she may attain to asking if, that morning, he would have "pored upon it?" She knows he would not; then why pore upon it now? For him, it is here, as much as in the deserted house; it is everywhere.

". . . For me

(she goes on),

Now he is dead, I hate him worse: I hate . . .

Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold

His two dead hands, and say, 'I hate you worse,

Luca, than--'"

And in her frenzy of reminiscent hatred and loathing for the murdered man, she goes to Sebald and takes his hands, as if to feign that other taking.

With the hysteria that has all along been growing in him, Sebald flings her back-

". . . Take your hands off mine;

'Tis the hot evening-off! oh, morning, is it?"

-and she, restored to her cooler state by this repulse, and with a perhaps unconscious moving to some revenge for it, points out, with a profounder depth of callousness than she has yet displayed, that the body at the house will have to be taken away and buried-

"Come in and help to carry"-

and with ghastly glee she adds-

". . . We may sleep

Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night."

* * * * *

Now the dialogue sways between her deliberate sensuous allurement of the man and his deepening horror at what they have done. She winds and unwinds her hair-was it so that he once liked it? But he cannot look; he would give her neck and her splendid shoulders, "both those breasts of yours," if this thing could be undone. It is not the mere killing-though he would "kill the world so Luca lives again," even to fondle her as before-but the thought that he has eaten the dead man's bread, worn his clothes, "felt his money swell my purse." . . . This is the intolerable; "there's a recompense in guilt"-

"One must be venturous and fortunate:-

What is one young for else?"

and thus their passion is justified; but to have killed the man who rescued him from starvation by letting him teach music to his wife . . . why-

". . . He gave me

Life, nothing less"-

and if he did reproach the perfidy, "and threaten and do more," had he no right after all-what was there to wonder at?

"He sat by us at table quietly:

Why must you lean across till our cheeks touched?"

In that base blaming of her alone we get the measure of Sebald as at this hour he is. He turns upon her with a demand to know how she now "feels for him." Her answer, wherein the whole of her nature (as, again, at this hour it is) reveals itself-callous but courageous, proud and passionate, cruel in its utter sensuality, yet with the force and honesty which attend on all simplicity, good or evil-her answer strikes a truer note than does anything which Sebald yet has said, or is to say. She replies that she loves him better now than ever-

"And best (look at me while I speak to you)

Best for the crime."

She is glad that the "affectation of simplicity" has fallen off-

". . . this naked crime of ours

May not now be looked over: look it down."

And were not the joys worth it, great as it is? Would he give up the past?

"Give up that noon I owned my love for you?"

-and as, in her impassioned revocation of the sultry summer's day, she brings back to him the very sense of the sun-drenched garden, the man at last is conquered back to memory. The antiphon of sensual love begins, goes on-the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no less lustful, receptivity of his-and culminates in a chant to that "crowning night" in July (and "the day of it too, Sebald!") when all life seemed smothered up except their life, and, "buried in woods," while "heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat," they lay quiescent, till the storm came-

"Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;

And ever and anon some bright white shaft

Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,

As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen

Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,

Feeling for guilty thee and me; then broke

The thunder like a whole sea overhead . . ."

-while she, in a frenzy of passion-

". . . stretched myself upon you, hands

To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook

All my locks loose, and covered you with them-

You, Sebald, the same you!"

But the flame of her is scorching the feeble lover; feebly he pleads, resists, begs pardon for the harsh words he has given her, yields, struggles . . . yields again at last, for hers is all the force of body and of soul: it is his part to be consumed in her-

"I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!

This way? Will you forgive me-be once more

My great queen?"

Glorious in her victory, she demands that the hair which she had loosed in the moment of recalling their wild joys he now shall bind thrice about her brow-

"Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,

Magnificent in sin. Say that!"

So she bids him; so he crowns her-

"My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,

Magnificent . . ."

-but ere the exacted phrase is said, there sounds without the voice of a girl singing.

"The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn:

God's in his heaven-

All's right with the world!"

(Pippa passes.)

* * * * *

Like her own lark on the wing, she has dropped this song to earth, unknowing and unheeding where its beauty shall alight; it is the impulse of her glad sweet heart to carol out its joy-no more. She is passing the great house of the First Happy One, so soon rejected in her game of make-believe! If now she could know what part the dream-Pippa might have taken on herself. . . . But she does not know, and, lingering for a moment by the step, she bends to pick a pansy-blossom.

The pair in the shrub-house have been arrested in full tide of passion by her song. It strikes on Sebald with the force of a warning from above-

"God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?

You, you spoke!"-

but she, contemptuously-

". . . Oh, that little ragged girl!

She must have rested on the step: we give them

But this one holiday the whole year round.

Did you ever see our silk-mills-their inside?

There are ten silk-mills now belong to you!"

Enervated by the interruption, she calls sharply to the singer to be quiet-but Pippa does not hear, and Ottima then orders Sebald to call, for his voice will be sure to carry.

No: her hour is past. He is ruled now by that voice from heaven. Terribly he turns upon her-

"Go, get your clothes on-dress those shoulders!

. . . Wipe off that paint! I hate you"-

and as she flashes back her "Miserable!" his hideous repulse sinks to a yet more hideous contemplation of her-

"My God, and she is emptied of it now!

Outright now!-how miraculously gone

All of the grace-had she not strange grace once?

Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,

No purpose holds the features up together,

Only the cloven brow and puckered chin

Stay in their places: and the very hair

That seemed to have a sort of life in it,

Drops, a dead web!"

Poignant in its authenticity is her sole, piteous answer-

". . . Speak to me-not of me!"

But he relentlessly pursues the dread analysis of baffled passion's aspect-

"That round great full-orbed face, where not an angle

Broke the delicious indolence-all broken!"

Once more that cry breaks from her-

"To me-not of me!"

but soon the natural anger against his insolence possesses her; she whelms him with a torrent of recrimination. Coward and ingrate he is, beggar, her slave-

". . . a fawning, cringing lie,

A lie that walks and eats and drinks!"

-while he, as in some horrible trance, continues his cold dissection-

". . . My God!

Those morbid olive faultless shoulder-blades-

I should have known there was no blood beneath!"

For though the heaven-song have pierced him, not yet is Sebald reborn, not yet can aught of generosity involve him. Still he speaks "of her, not to her," deaf in the old selfishness and baseness. He can cry, amid his vivid recognition of another's guilt, that "the little peasant's voice has righted all again"-can be sure that he knows "which is better, vice or virtue, purity or lust, nature or trick," and in the high nobility of such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to her who had been for him all that she as yet knew how to be, in-

"I hate, hate-curse you! God's in his heaven!"

* * * * *

Now, at this crisis, we are fully shown what, in despite of other commentators,[49:1] I am convinced that Browning meant us to perceive from the first-that Ottima's is the nobler spirit of the two. Her lover has stabbed himself, but she, not yet realising it, flings herself upon him, wrests the dagger-

". . . Me!

Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself-kill me!

Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me-then

Yourself-then-presently-first hear me speak!

I always meant to kill myself-wait, you!

Lean on my breast-not as a breast; don't love me

The more because you lean on me, my own

Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently!"

* * * * *

Here at last is the whole woman. "Lean on my breast-not as a breast"; "Mine is the whole crime"; "I always meant to kill myself-wait, you!" She will relinquish even her sense of womanhood; no word of blame for him; she would die, that he might live forgetting her, but it is too late for that, so "There, there, both deaths presently." . . . And now let us read again the lamentable dying words of Sebald. It is even more than I have said: not only are we meant to understand that Ottima's is the nobler spirit, but (I think) that not alone the passing of Pippa with her song has drawn this wealth of beauty from the broken woman's soul. Always it was there; it needed but the loved one's need to pour itself before him. "There, there, both deaths presently"-and in the dying, each is again revealed. He, all self-

"My brain is drowned now-quite drowned: all I feel"

-and so on; while her sole utterance is-

"Not me-to him, O God, be merciful!"

Pippa's song has, doubtlessly, saved them both, but Sebald as by direct intervention, Ottima as by the revelation of her truest self. Again, and yet again and again, we shall find in Browning this passion for "the courage of the deed"; and we shall find that courage oftenest assigned to women. For him, it was wellnigh the cardinal virtue to be brave-not always, as in Ottima, by the help of a native callousness, but assuredly always, as in her and in the far dearer women, by the help of an instinctive love for truth-

"Truth is the strong thing-let man's life be true!"

Ottima's and Sebald's lives have not been "true"; but she, who can accept the retribution and feel no faintest impulse to blame and wound her lover-she can rise, must rise, to heights forbidden the lame wings of him who, in his anguish, can turn and strike the fellow-creature who has but partnered him in sin. Only Pippa, passing, could in that hour save Sebald; but by the tenderness which underlay her fierce and lustful passion, and which, in any later relation, some other need of the man must infallibly have called forth, Ottima would, I believe, without Pippa have saved herself. Direct intervention: not every soul needs that. And-whether it be intentional or not, I feel unable to decide, nor does it lose, but rather gain, in interest, if it be unintentional-one of the most remarkable things in this remarkable artistic experiment, this drama in which the scenes "have in common only the appearance of one figure," is that by each of the Four Passings of Pippa, a man's is the soul rescued.