Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson - Part 3

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
O Lallah by Robert Louis Stevenson, Part three. A day
or two after I came in from a walk a
little before the point of noon, the Senora was lying
lapped in slumber on the threshold of the recess. The
pigeons dozed below the eaves like snow drifts. The house
was under a deep spell of noontide quiet, and only

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a wandering and gentle wind from the mountain stole round
the galleries, rustled among the pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows.
Something in the stillness moved me to imitation, and I
went very lightly across the court and up the marble staircase.
My foot was on the topmost round when a door opened,
and I found myself face to face with O Lala.

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Surprise transfixed me. Her loveliness struck to my heart. She
glowed in the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem
of color. Her eyes took hold upon mine and clung
there and bound us together like the joining of hands.
And the moments we thus stood face to face, drinking
each other in, were sacramental, and the wedding of souls.

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I know not how long it was before I awoke
out of a deep trance, and hastily bowing, passed on
into the upper stair. She did not move, but followed
me with her great, thirsting eyes, And as I passed
out of sight, it seemed to me as if she
paled and faded. In my own room, I opened the
window and looked out, and could not think what change

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had come upon that austere field of mountains, that it
should thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I
had seen her, oh Lallah, And the stone crags answered,
oh Lallah, And the dumb, unfathomable azure answered, oh Lallah.
The pale saint of my dreams had vanished forever, and

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in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God
had lavished the richest colors and the most exuberant energies
of life, whom he had made active as a deer,
slender as a reed, and in whose great eyes he
had lighted the torches of the soul. The thrill of
her young life, strung like a wild animal's, had entered
into me. The force of soul that had looked out

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from her eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my heart
and sprang to my lips. In singing, she passed through
my veins. She was one with me. I will not
say that this enthusiasm declined. Rather, my soul held out
in its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was
there besieged by cold and sorrowful considerations. I could not

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doubt but that I loved her at first sight, and
already with a quivering ardor that was strange to my
experience what then was to follow. She was the child
of an afflicted house, the Senora's daughter, the sister of Felipe.
She bore it. Even in her beauty. She had the
lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an arrow,
light as dew like the other she shone, and the

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pale background of the world with the brilliancy of flowers.
I could not call by the name of brother, that
half witted lad, nor by the name of mother, that
immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and
perpetual simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful.
And if I could not marry, what then she was?

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Helplessly unprotected. Her eyes in that single and long glance
which had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weakness
equal to my own. But in my heart I knew
her for the student of the cold Northern Chamber, and
the writer of the sorrowful lines. And this was a
knowledge to disarm a brute to flee was more than
I could find courage for. But I registered a vow

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of unsleeping circumspection. As I turned from the window, my
eyes alighted on the portrait. It had fallen dead like
a candle after sunrise. It followed me with eyes of paint.
I knew it to be like, and marveled at the
tenacity of type in that declining race. But the likeness
was swallowed up indifference. I remembered how it had seemed

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to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a creature
rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature.
And I marveled at the thought, and exalted in the
image of Ollalla. Beauty I had seen before had not
been charmed, and I had been often drawn to women
who were not beautiful except to me. But in Olalla,
all that I desired and had not dared to imagine,

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was united. I did not see her the next day,
and my heart ached, and my eyes longed for her
as men long for morning. But the day after, when
I returned about my usual hour, she was once more
on the gallery, and our looks once more met and embraced.
I would have spoken, I would have drawn near to her,
but strongly, as she plucked at my heart, drawing me

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like a magnet. Something yet more imperious withheld me, and
I could only bow and pass by, And she, leaving
my salutation unanswered, only followed me with her noble eyes.
I had now her image by rote, and as I
conned the traits and memory, it seemed as if I
read her very heart. She was dressed with something of

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her mother's coquetry and love of positive color. Her robe,
which I know she must have made with her own hands,
clung about her with a cunning grace, after the fashion
of that country. Besides, her bodice stood open in the
middle in a long slit, and here, in spite of
the poverty of the house, a gold coin hanging by
a ribbon, lay on her brown bosom. These were proofs,

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had any been needed, of her inborn delight in life
and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her
eyes that hung upon mine, I could read depth beyond
depth of passion and sadness, lights of poetry and hope,
blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that were above the earth.
It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul,

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was more than worthy of that lodging. Should I leave
this incomparable flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains?
Should I despise the great gift offered me in the
eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a soul amured.
Should I not burst its prison? All side considerations fell
off from me. Was she the child of Herod? I

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swore I should make her mine? And that very evening
I set myself with a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace,
to captivate the brother. Perhaps I read him with more
favorable eyes. Perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned
up the better qualities of that imperfect soul. But he
had never seemed to me so amiable, And his very
likeness to Olallah, while it annoyed, yet softened me. A

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third day passed in vain, an empty desert of hours.
I would not lose a chance, and loitered all afternoon
in the court, where to give myself a countenance, I
spoke more than usual with the Senora. God knows, it
was with a most tender and sincere inn that I
now studied her. And even as for Felipe, so now
for the Mother. I was conscious of a growing warmth

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of toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke
with her, she would doze off into a little sleep
and presently awake again without embarrassment. And this composure staggered me.
And again, as I marked her make infinitesimal changes in
her posture, savoring and lingering on the bodily pleasure of
the movement, I was driven to wonder at this depth

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of passive sensuality. She lived in her body, and her
consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her members,
where it luxuriously dwelt. Lastly, I could not grow accustomed
to her eyes each time she turned on me, these great,
beautiful and meaningless orbs, wide open to the day, but
closed against human inquiry. Each time I had occasion to

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observe the lively changes of her pupils, which expanded and
contracted in a breath. I know not what it was
came over me. I can find no name for them.
Mingled feeling, of disappointment, annoyance, and distaste that jarred along
my nerves. I tried her on a variety of subjects,
equally in vain, and at last led the talk to
her daughter. But even there she proved indifferent. Said she

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was pretty, which as with children, was her highest word
of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higher thought.
And when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned
in my face and replied that speech was of no
great use when you had nothing to say. People speak much,
very much, she added, looking at me with expanded pupils,

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and then again yawned, and again showed me a mouth
that was as dainty as a toy. This time I
took the hint, and, leaving her to her repose, went
up into my own chamber to sit by the open window,
looking on the hills and not beholding them. Sunk in
lustrous and deep dreams, and hearkening in fancy to the
note of a voice that I had never heard, I

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awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation
that seemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself,
light of heart and foot, and resolved to put my
love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. I should lie
no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing,
living by the eye only like the love of beasts,
but should now put on the spirit and enter upon

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the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of
it with wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado,
into that unknown and lovely country of her soul. I
no longer trembled to adventure. Yet when I did indeed
encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me,
and at once submerged my mind. Speech seemed to drop

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away from me like a childish habit, and I but
drew near to her, as the giddy man draws near
to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from
me a little as I came, but her eyes did
not waver from mine, and these llured me forward. At last,
when I was already within reach of her, I stopped.
Words were denied me. If I advanced, I could but

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clasp her to my heart in silence, And all that
was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted
against the thought of such an accost. So we stood
for a second, all our life in our eyes, exchanging
salvos of attraction, and yet each resisting, and then with
a great effort of the will and conscious, at the
same time of a sudden bitterness of disappointment, I turned

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and went away in the same silence. What power lay
upon me that I could not speak? And she? Why
was she also silent? Why did she draw away before
me dumbly with fascinated eyes? Was this love? Or was
it a mere brute attraction, mindless and inevitable like that
of the magnet for the steel. We had never spoken.

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We were wholly strangers, and yet an influence strong as
the grasp of a giant, swept us silently together. On
my side it filled me with impatience, And yet I
was sure that she was worthy. I had seen her books,
read her verses, and thus in a sense divined the
soul of my mistress. But on her side it struck

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me almost cold. Of me. She knew nothing but my
bodily favor. She was drawn to me as stones fall
to the earth. The laws that rule the earth conducted
her unconsenting to my arms. And I drew back with
the thought of such a bridle and began to be
jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired
to be loved. And then I began to fall into

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a great pity for the girl herself. I thought, how
sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the
recluse Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening
weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged
a word. And at the coming of pity, all other
thoughts were swallowed up, and I longed only to find

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and console and reassure her, to tell her how holy
her love was returned on my side, and how her choice,
even if blindly made, was not unworthy. The next day,
glorious weather, depth upon depth of blue over canopy the mountains,
The sun shone wide, and the wind in the trees,
and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the

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air with delicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated
with sadness. My heart wept for the sight of Ollalla,
as a child weeps for its mother. I sat down
on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs
that bound the plateau to the north. Thence I looked
down into the wooded valley of a stream, where no
foot came in the mood I was in. It was

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even touching to behold the place untenanted, it lacked Ollalla,
and I thought of the delight and glory of a
life passed wholly with her in that strong air and
among these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a
whimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy
that I seemed to grow in strength and stature like

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a samson. And then suddenly I was aware of Ollalla
drawing near. She appeared out of a grove of trees
and came straight towards me, and I stood up and waited.
She seemed, in her walking a creature of such life
and fire and lightness as amazed me. Yet she came
quietly and slowly. Her energy was in the slowness. But

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for inimitable strength, I felt she would have run, she
would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she
kept her eyes lower to the ground, and when she
had drawn quite near, it was without one glance that
she addressed me. At the first note of her voice,
I started. It was for this I had been waiting.
This was the last test of my love and lo

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Her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping and incomplete
like that of her family, and the voice, though deeper
than usual with women, was still both youthful and womanly.
She spoke in a rich chord golden contralto strains mingled
with hoarseness, as the red threads were mingled with the
brown among her tresses. It was not only a voice

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that spoke to my heart directly, but it spoke to
me of her. And yet her words immediately plunged me
back upon despair. You will go away, she said to day.
Her example broke the bonds of my speech. I felt
as lightened of a weight, or as if a spell
had been dissolved. I knew not in what words I answered,

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but standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out
the whole ardor of my love, telling her that I
lived upon the thought of her, slept only to dream
of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear my country, my language,
and my friends, to live forever by her side. And then,
strongly commanding myself, I changed the note. I reassured, I
comforted her. I told her I had divined in her

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a pious and heroic spirit with which I was worthy
to sympathize, and which I longed to share and lighten nature.
I told her, was the voice of God, which men
disobey at peril. And if we were thus humbly drawn
together I even as by a miracle of love, it
must imply a divine fitness in our souls. We must

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be made, I said, made for one another. We should
be mad rebels, I cried out, man, rebels against God.
Not to obey this instinct, she shook her head. You
will go to day, she repeated, And then with a gesture,
and in a sudden, sharp note, no, not to day,
she cried, tomorrow. But at this sign of relenting power

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came in upon me in a tide. I stretched out
my arms and called upon her name, and she leaped
to me and clung to me. The hills rocked about us,
the earth quailed. A shock as of a blow went
through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the
next moment she had thrust me back, broken rudely from
my arms, and fled with the speed of a deer

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among the cork trees. I stood and shouted to the mountains.
I turned and went back towards the residencia, waltzing upon air.
She sent me away, and yet I had but to
call upon her name, and she came to me. These
were but the weaknesses of girls, from which even she,
the strangest of her sex, was not exempted. Go not

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I oh llalla, oh not I oh lallah, my oh llallah.
A bird sang near by, and in that season birds
were rare. It bade me be of good cheer, And
once more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous
and stable mountains down to the lightest leaf and the
smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves, began

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to stir before me, and to put on the lineaments
of life, and wear a face of awful joy. The
sunshine struck upon the hills, strong as a hammer on
the anvil, and the hills shook. The earth under that
vigorous insolation yielded up heady scents. The woods smoldered in
the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight

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run through the earth, something elemental, something rude, violent and savage.
In the love that sang in my heart was like
a key to nature's secrets. And the very stones that
rattled under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Oh lalah.
Her touch had quickened and renewed, and strung me up
to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth,

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to a swelling of the soul that men learned to
forget in their polite assemblies. Love burned in me like rage,
tenderness waxed, fierce, I hated, I adored, I pitied, I
revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound
me in with dead things on the one hand, and
with our pure and pitying God upon the other, a

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thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the
innocence and to the unbridled forces of the earth. My
head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the Residencia,
and the sight of the Mother struck me like a revelation.
She sat there, all sloth and contentment, blinking under the
strong sunshine, branded with a passive enjoyment. A creature sat

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quite apart before whom my ardor fell away like a
thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding such shaken
tones as I was able, said a word or two.
She looked at me with her unfathomable kindness. Her voice
and reply sounded vaguely out of the realm of peace
in which she slumbered, And there fell on my mind
for the first time a sense of respect for one

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so uniformly innocent and happy. And I passed on in
a kind of wonder at myself that I should be
so much disquieted. On my table there lay a piece
of the same yellow paper I had seen in the
north room. It was written on with pencil in the
same hand Olalla's hand, and I picked it up with
a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, if you have

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any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for
a creature sorely wrought, go from here to day in pity,
in honor, for the sake of him who died. I
supplicate that you shall go. I looked at this a
while in mere stupidity. Then I began to awaken to
a weariness and horror of life. The sunshine darkened outside

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on the bare hills, and I began to shake like
a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened in
my life, unmanned me like a physical void. It was
not my heart, it was not my happiness. It was
life itself that was involved. I could not lose her.
I said so, and stood repeating it, And then, like

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one in a dream, I moved to the window, put
forth my hand to open the casement, and thrust it
through the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist, and
with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed
my thumb on the little leaping fountain and reflected what
to do in that empty room. There was nothing to
my purpose, I felt, besides that I required assistance. There

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shot into my mind a hope that Ollalla herself might
be my helper, and I turned and went downstairs, still
keeping my thumb upon the wound. There was no sign
of either Ollalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to
the recess, whither the Senora had now quite drawn back
and sat dozing close before the fire, for no degree
of heat appeared too much for her. Pardon me, said

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I if I disturb you, but I must apply to
you for help. She looked up sileepily and asked me
what it was, And with the very words I thought,
she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils.
And seemed to come suddenly and fully alive. I have
cut myself, I said, and rather badly see. And I

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held out my two hands, from which the blood was
oozing and dripping. Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils
shrank into points. A veil seemed to fall from her
face and leave it sharply expressive and yet inscrutable. And
as I still stood, marveling a little at her disturbance,
she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught

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me by the hand. And the next moment my hand
was at her mouth, and she had bitten me to
the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting
of blood, and the monstrous horror of the act flashed
through me all in one. And I beat her back,
and she sprang at me again and again with bestial cries,
cries that I recognized, such cries as had awakened me

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on the night of the high wind. Her strength was
like that of madness. Mine was rapidly ebbing with the
loss of blood. My mind, besides, was whirling with the
abhorren strangeness of the onslaught. And I was already forced
against the wall when Ollalla ran betwixt us and Felipe
following at a bound pinned down his mother on the floor.
A trance like weakness fell upon me. I saw, heard

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and felt, but I was incapable of movement. I heard
the struggle roll to and fro upon the floor, the
yells of that catamount ringing up to heaven. As she
strove to reach me, I felt ollallah clasp me in
her arms, her hair falling on my face, and with
the strength of a man, rays and half drag, half
carry me upstairs into my own room, where she cast

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me down upon the bed. Then I saw her hasten
to the door and lock it, and stand an instant
listening to the savage cries that shook the residenza, And then,
swift and light as a thought, she was again beside me,
binding up my hand, laying it in her bosom, moaning
and mourning over it with dove like sounds. They were
not words that came to her. They were sounds more

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beautiful than speech, infinitely touching, infinitely tender. And yet as
I lay there, a thought stung to my heart, A
thought wounded me like a sword, a thought like a worm,
and a flower profaned the holiness of my love. Yes,
they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness.

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But was their beauty human? End of Part three