The Golden Flame (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Signorina, I saw you dance to-night,’ he said.

  She started, and instinctively drew herself away, then, seeing that he was a poor man, she hesitated. ‘You?’ she said.

  ‘I am a waiter at the Golden Galleon.’

  She laughed a little, as though it amused her. ‘And I was afraid of you!’ she said.

  ‘You should not be afraid.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I should not be afraid.’ Then: ‘I could not sleep. I came out here to watch the sea; I have no people of my own, and I am alone. But a woman cannot be alone here, for the sea is always a friend.’

  ‘My father was a fisherman,’ he said.

  ‘Mine was rich, but he spent his money badly, and then he fell ill. It was consumption, you know. He was sailing away to the place where they said that they could cure him.’ She sighed deeply, in sympathy.

  ‘And you are alone?’

  ‘Yes, but I have my dancing.’

  ‘You dance very beautifully,’ he said, and he meant it, because he had thought it the loveliest dancing that he had ever seen.

  ‘It makes me very happy,’ she answered.

  ‘You will be coming again to the Galleon?’ he inquired.

  She nodded.

  If they asked her, she would come again; she had to live, and this was money! She was very poor. When they came to talk it over, it seemed that she was even poorer than Jan was, for he had money put by towards the restaurant which one day he would run, and he felt that his job here was a grand one, which had set him on his feet. He had been so very poor that now a few centecimi made him feel luxurious.

  ‘Perhaps one day I take you out?’ he suggested.

  ‘I would like it,’ she replied, quite gravely.

  She did not ask questions, but gave him her address, and he knew instantly that it was the poorest quarter of the little town. He decided that he would go to the Padrone, and try to use his influence to get him to book her to dance here at least twice a week. Naturally, she would attract people.

  He knew then how desperately he wanted to see more of her.

  They lingered together, saying nothing, because somehow there seemed to be no words that could express their feelings. Jan knew that it was quite different from the other night with Matina, when he had felt friendship, and sympathy, and kindliness. But for Josette he felt a burning, throbbing emotion, something that he could not hope to stay; he did not want to stay it either.

  They turned when the dawn was flushing the east, and had changed the dim horizon of the crystal clear sea into pale and lovely rose. They walked back towards the Golden Galleon, and it was not cobbles that they crossed, but rose quartz, made radiant by the east.

  This is love, he told himself.

  Madame had always said that he would recognize it when it came, and here it was, something burning within him, a golden flame which would never die down again. It had made him a man.

  He watched her as she went away.

  II

  Jan saw the Padrone the next day.

  He went to his office to speak to him. The Padrone was in an amiable mood, for he had made a great deal of money the previous night, when people had been generous; they had been in the mood of the festa, and were out to spend, not caring what it might cost them, as long as they were amused.

  The Padrone sat by his big desk, counting up assets and debits, very pleasantly with the amount on the right side, and therefore he greeted Jan cheerfully.

  Jan said: ‘Would it not be to the good, if the signorina came once or twice a week to dance? The patrons said that she was so lovely. They would come again to see her?’

  As it happened, the Padrone had thought of this himself, only not from quite the same angle. If he made a permanent contract with Josette, then, he reasoned, she would come here more cheaply, which would all be very advantageous.

  He said: ‘I am arranging that,’ and patted Jan on the shoulder, calling him a good fellow, and went off laughing a little to himself. Young love is so sweet, he thought, young love is so beautiful! Unhappily, it does not last. A pity, but it does not last.

  Jan went to the address she had given him, to see Josette, and to tell her the good news that the Padrone was sending her a contract. He was horrified to find that the place where she lived was very poor. She had one tiny room, pathetically small; there was a broken bed in the corner, and a cracked mirror swung over the single chest, where she kept her clothes. Jan was appalled to see so horrid a cage, wherein something young and lovely was imprisoned.

  He wanted to be rich himself, so that he could buy a palace and set her in it; marble steps that she could dance down, a fountain in whose silver spray she could pirouette. He wanted the world for her, and fired by his ambition, the dreams haunted him and were sweet with desire.

  ‘Twice every week?’ she asked. ‘Oh, but that is marvellous!’ And she began a little dance of her own, inspired by the sheer joy of living.

  ‘And I shall see you,’ he told her.

  ‘And you will see me.’

  He told the Maestro about it that evening, because he wanted to tell the world. The Maestro was not enthusiastic, his face had a frown on it.

  ‘Surely you liked her dancing?’ said Jan.

  ‘Surely,’ said the Maestro, ‘she dances most beautifully, but it does not end there! You are in love, my friend, and you should not be.’

  He did not deny the love.

  ‘Why should I not be?’ he asked.

  The Maestro was extremely serious. He said: ‘I watched her, that is how I know; she is so beautiful, but that beauty is only born to die. My own mother died the same way; that flush which is like a rose, those bright and tender eyes.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The Maestro said: ‘She is not meant for a long life, because she is too fragile and lovely. It is a cruel complaint, this decline, my friend, it will not let her be.’

  Then Jan remembered what she had said of her father, who had died of consumption, and for a moment he felt afraid; second to that fear came the feeling of extreme anger. He was furious that the Maestro could suggest such a thing; the fury mingled with fear, and it was a fear that he refused to admit.

  ‘She is made small that way,’ he said, ‘and some girls have faces like flowers, and eyes like stars. They are made that way too. It means nothing.’

  For a whole day he would not speak to the Maestro because of it, then the evening after Josette came again to dance, he felt that he could not be angry with anyone any longer. Josette came into the restaurant, which had filled up to greet her. Impertinently she tiptoed in, on those tiny satin shoes; she danced like water bubbling in a fountain, she danced like sunshine on a mountain, like daffodils in the March wind, born hardy to face the chill and warmth of spring which is always two-minded.

  Afterwards, when the great moment of her reception was over, Jan felt as though the sunshine had gone from his life. She had flitted away again. Lovely, responsive, warm with the delicate warmth of roman hyacinths in the garden, or of tulip trees in the sun.

  Much later he met her again, sitting wrapped in her shawl by the shore.

  He said: ‘You know I love you?’ and knew that it was forcing matters, but somehow he could not help it because emotion drove him hard, and he could bear no more. He could not keep this to himself, the secret was too profound.

  She said: ‘Yes, I know,’ and trembled.

  ‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘I am only a waiter. I am saving to get my own restaurant, but that may be years ahead. How do I know what is coming in the future, only that I would give the world to make you mine, because I love you so much.’

  ‘I knew. I love you too! From the first moment,’ she said, and put her hands tremblingly in his. They were hands unroughened by work, but soft like flowers. He knew that he would always think of them as being like flowers.

  ‘It is not right that a man should wait. We love now, we want one another now, now is the only time in our lives.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  ‘Supposing we married?’ he asked yearningly. ‘I earn good money, and have big tips. You earn too.’

  ‘We should be rich in love as well,’ she told him.

  ‘Oh, my dear!’

  He drew closer, putting his hands on either side of her waist, and it was small, and firm, making him feel as though he were giddy with too much wine. He held her gently. Then he put his lips to hers and knew that this was love, which his mother had talked about as being too precious an emotion to survive the drab background of that fetid little room. This was joy, and he trembled to think how it had been degraded for that mother by the eternal children which came, by the poverty, by the hunger and thirst, and the hard twisted path that she had been forced to tread.

  ‘We must keep it like this always,’ he said to Josette.

  ‘We can,’ she said, ‘we will.’

  Suddenly, slipping out of his arms, she began to dance for ecstasy in the moonlight on the shore. She seemed to be part of the waves, and her face was like the face of a pierette, silvered by the moon, and her arms were like white weed which is flung up on the shore by the tide. He had never seen her dance like that before. Driven by the urge of her love for him. She came back to him from the very edge of the water, her feet were wet and shining with spray; she came to put her arms round his neck, and for a moment he was ashamed that he should think of the Maestro’s absurd warning, and also that he would remember the song of the sirens which his mother had sung to him when he was a very little child clinging to her full skirts.

  ‘We will be married,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as we can. We will be married …’

  Arms around one another, they went home.

  III

  Circumstances connived to help them.

  The attic offered itself to them almost immediately. It was a big, wide attic, high up under the scarlet roof of a white house, and was left suddenly vacant because the artist who had rented it, and had paid a full season’s rent in advance, had gone off to Milan to some exhibition.

  ‘You shall have it, my brave boy,’ said he to Jan, that evening at the Galleon, where he heard of the coming marriage. ‘No, there is nothing to pay. It is yours, and God bless you.’

  They went to see it together, and admired the vine which grew high, clinging to its iron balconies, and skirting the window boxes where petunias and geraniums brimmed. The vine framed the two windows of the attic, wreathing them affectionately, and clinging to the soft jade-green shutters, turned back so that the sunshine might come streaming in. From those windows one could look out and see the pink Madonna who guarded the little harbour, and held out her hands in blessing on the sailors who came and went.

  They felt that the pink Madonna was lucky to them.

  The scrubbed floors of the attic were humpy like the deck of a ship, and they shone as whitely. The walls were splashed with whitewash, and there was a niche which went far back and was made for a divan.

  ‘How do we furnish it?’ she asked, when he brought her to see it, and she had exclaimed at its beauty, bewildered that it should be theirs for nothing.

  ‘Heaven will help us,’ he said, and, crossing himself devoutly, ‘also the pink Madonna.’

  Heaven did help them.

  The Padrone in his little restaurant mentioned amusedly the romance of the waiter and the girl who danced, and he told people about the attic which had been given to them.

  ‘Young love,’ said the Padrone, ‘is so fresh and new,’ and he purred his complacent approval.

  People contributed. ‘Let us send round the hat,’ they said, in that rich holiday mood; they would never miss what they gave, and they gave with a gay readiness of goodwill.

  There came a glorious day when Jan and Josette went shopping, and because they were so young and so deeply in love, and, perhaps more, because it had been a good season and there was no doubt that Amalia was a coming place where much money would be made, they spent readily.

  Second-hand furniture came to the attic. There was a round table, with a polish on it which was dazzling; a couple of chairs, and a chest nudged it. A mirror hung on the wall, before which Josette could dance; there was a bowl of flowers and a big bed with a lace mantel on it, almost like the bed of a rich aristocrat.

  ‘Look, Jan, it is lovely,’ she would cry.

  It was queer that all the time he should be thinking of his mother, as she had been that last night at Villefranche when they had sat together and had talked. He wrote to her.

  I am in love, and will be married, wish me well.

  Much later, she sent him her reply, the crabbed letter of a woman, soured by the dimming of her own love. He was so young, she said, too young to saddle himself with wife, and children, and he would regret it for ever! Madness, said she, oh, the folly of it! She had had another baby, a puny little thing, because she had had too many already, and Heaven only knew that she did not want this one! There had been a dreadful accident but a week later, when his father had lost a hand. The boat had capsized in a bad storm, and when going down, he had got caught in some rigging; now he was unable to earn. He sat at the street corner, exposing his stump to the pity of the passers-by.

  The letter made Jan sick.

  He felt that she looked to him as the eldest of the family, and felt that he ought to go to her aid. He knew that, underlying it, was her jealousy of his happiness, and her bitter regret that he had ever left the hotel, where, had he stayed, he might have been able to help her.

  I must not think of these things, he told himself. She has Roby! Roby is man enough to go out with the boats. Henri must be getting a big boy too. They are all there to help her.

  But he could not dismiss her case so easily, because he had a tender heart.

  He had set aside a special little sum so that he might buy flowers for Josette on the day that they were married. It was foolish to waste good lire on flowers, he knew, more especially when his mother was in want. So he did not buy Josette’s flowers, but wrapped the note up and sent it to Maman, and although one side of him grudged the gift, the other side knew that he would not be really happy unless he had helped her in this way.

  He never heard if she were thankful.

  But on the wedding morning, when he woke in the little cubby-hole beneath the hotel where he slept, Luis, the cook-boy was peering in at him.

  ‘Look, bridegroom,’ he said, giggling, ‘some lady sent you these for your bride.’

  He had a big box in his arms, already breaking because it was so full of carnations from Nice. They were pale pink carnations, big as a baby’s hand, rosettes of flowers, with their exquisite clove scent, pervading the whole of the dour little cubby-hole, which, when he had first come here, he had thought so lovely.

  ‘Who sent them?’ he asked.

  ‘The postman,’ said Luis, then he took the string away, it was loose and doing no good, and when he opened the box of flowers, there fell out a little card.

  It was from Madame at the hotel.

  She wrote: ‘For love, and for love’s sake,’ then her name, in a big sprawling writing, and finally the two words:

  ‘Be happy.’

  IV

  They were married at the little church round the corner, with its one cracked bell, and its gold vestments, and the priest to meet them.

  Jan wore his best suit, the smart new one that he had bought specially, and Josette had a frock that had been her grandmother’s, and was made of stiff satin, and topped by a headdress of white. It was old-fashioned, but so old that it had touched modern times again, and she looked marvellous.

  ‘She looks wonderful,’ said those who saw her.

  She walked into the little church like a queen. Jan knew that a fever burnt in him whenever he looked at her. Long ago he had been but a poor fisherboy, busy darning the nets which he hated, or out with the haul, and seeing the poor stupid fish gasping and dying in the hold; now he was the bridegroom of the loveliest
creature that he had ever seen.

  ‘You will be happy,’ said the Maestro.

  He had forgotten his warning, and was now all smiles. He came holding in his hand a parcel clumsily tied up in paper, with blue ribbons. He laid it on the polished top of the table in the little attic.

  ‘It is my gift,’ he said.

  It was a bowl for roses. It was round and symmetrical, and made of beaten metal, whilst round it was engraved: ‘Gather ye roses whilst ye may’.

  ‘But it is too good for me,’ said Jan, amazed at the lavishness of the gift.

  ‘Nothing is too good for love,’ said the old Maestro.

  There was a little party in the attic, which was now sweet with the scent of the carnations that Madame had sent. There was food and wine, and the bride, flushed with pride, for the room was a palace. Beyond the window was the sea, and the sky, and the pink Madonna with her blessing.

  Even the Padrone himself was here, and he had brought wine with him, his more expensive wine, so that toasts should be drunk and healths given. It must be a great wedding, said he.

  As he left, he said to Jan: ‘To-night you will not come to the Golden Galleon, because you are married, and your wife will want you here. To-night you make a holiday.’

  ‘Oh, but that is so good of you,’ said Jan, quite bewildered by it all.

  So the last guest went down the stairway with its curious twists and turns, and its funny little landings. So the sunlight died into dusk from the windows, and the moon came up and the stars came out, and the two who were so much in love sat together hand in hand, talking.

  ‘It was a happy wedding,’ said Josette simply, ‘all save Matina. I thought that Matina looked very sad.’

  ‘She has a sad face.’

  ‘She has a brave heart,’ said Josette softly, ‘she brought me a fine linen cloth which she had embroidered herself. It will be my best one.’

  ‘She likes me,’ said Jan.

  ‘Ah no,’ said Josette gently, and then, quite firmly as though she knew that she spoke the truth: ‘She loves you.’

  He laughed, for at the time he thought that it was just nonsense.