Part 2

Taking courage, the intruder pushed her way out from under the boughs of the fig-tree. The freshly sprinkled grass caressed her feet. The perfume of the roses and the magnolia blossoms, becoming more intense as the dew began to gather, surrounded her like an invisible presence, seeming to draw her on. She stole softly forward, her eyes alert for the least warning and alive with curiosity. The path led her through an arbor drifted deep with the perfumed snow of wistaria, and between banks of golden pansies set in mosaic borders. At the intersection of this gleaming streak with another a fountain played in a white basin, tossing high in the air a crystal ball. The crest of the plume of water caught a gleam of golden light, and the transparent ball glittered as it rose every instant from shadow. Fiora paused to watch it and to follow the arrowy glidings of the gold-fish in the basin. The short southern twilight was already ended. It was now dark--the hour at which the fathers took their evening meal. Yielding, therefore, to her fancy, she followed the windings of the paths, stopping recklessly to pluck now a scarlet pomegranate, which she ate with puckered lips; now a rose, crimson or yellow, or a long spray of white roses with pink hearts, set close together on the stem. Huge cacti, their gray, distorted bodies spotted with blood-colored blossoms, stood here and there in clumps. Banana trees waved softly their long, graceful fronds. The wind stirred with a dry rustle among palms with broad trunks and large fans, and others, slender and lofty, with crests like stacked swords, and among masses of pampas-grass tufted with great white plumes. Along the wall, to which now and then Fiora’s wanderings in the confined space brought her, grew apricot and peach trees heavy with ripe fruit. These perfect sweets also she tasted capriciously and threw away half-eaten. The place exerted a strange influence over her. The hour, the delicious thrill of danger, the heavy perfumes, intoxicated her. It seemed that the trees bent toward her to murmur something, that the pale faces of the flowers held some mysterious message. They looked friendly; they appeared to smile knowingly at her, to encourage her, to urge her on. Vaguely she felt all this breathing, eager life a part of her, belonging to her. She threw back her head, turning it from side to side with an air of satisfied possession, drawing in the cool air through her nostrils and parted lips with sensuous delight--this pale creature whose eyes showed a savage response to the cajoling beauty about her.

Convinced at last that the garden held no secret, save that of certain flowers and fruits cultivated to unknown perfection,--for she had explored it from the limiting wall to where the pallid outline of some building of the Mission gleamed through the trees,--she came back to the fountain and sat down on the wooden bench at the path’s edge, her flowers heaped in her lap. She gave herself a few moments more to watch the leaping ball, which now sparkled like silver in the midst of glittering spray. A shaft of moonlight, striking through the trees upon the jet of water, crept steadily downward. The girl, her eyes fixed on this trembling column of white fire and foam, fell in a vague, trance-like dream. The ripple of the fountain in her ears drowned the echo of slow footsteps advancing along the path.

It was Father Anselmo’s custom, while digesting his supper of meat pasty and chocolate, to pace the garden, whose beauty seldom failed to inspire him with poetical images, and to add each evening some dozen lines to his panegyric ode on Saint Francis. Anselmo was, in fact, a poet,--but a poet whose strictly regulated fancy never openly strayed beyond the confines of the cloister. His gentle muse sang consecrated themes alone. And if, surrounded by an indolent, veiled fervor of tropical nature, apt to long, arid trances, and to sudden outbursts of fierce luxuriance, his imagination was sometimes troubled, these secret vagaries were repressed or found no acknowledged utterance. In his black, shapeless robe, above which his placid face showed like a sickly moon, the father, whether meditating on the pasty or Saint Francis, seemed no prey to the poetic ardor; its afflatus left him undizzied and peaceful. Yet the mystery of the night, the garden’s magic, must have struck some responsive chord within him. For how else should his bodily eyes have beheld beneath the shadow of the acacia bushes a creature not human, surely not divine; no spiritual vision, but an apparition born of the earth and evil. It sat half-visible, buried to the chin in flowers, motionless, its face a mere pale shimmer, its great shadowy eyes fixed upon him. These eyes were terrifying.

Anselmo retreated some steps upon their discovery; then, after much hesitation, advanced again, extending the cross of his rosary and muttering with trembling lips certain words of proved potency. But neither holy symbol nor exorcism availed against the evil spirit. It refused to flee; sat dumb--it seemed to Anselmo disdainful. Suddenly, wrathful, he took another step forward; the creature drew in its breath sharply, with an audible sound; its lips parted, showing a row of gleaming teeth. Anselmo paused.

This was, he perceived, the spirit of the garden, and it was plainly hostile. Was he, then, the intruder? Vaguely a sense of helpless fright invaded his soul. Yes, the trees were in league with this being; they bent towards him threateningly! The air was full of veiled alarms. What of the rosebushes which even now reached out clutching hands to detain him? An overblown white rose broke and fell in a soft shower about his shoulders, and he started; a bat swooped down with swift, filmy wings, just grazing his head; he shrank back.

Could it be that he was in danger, that his wandering thoughts were known, that his sinful fancies had thus taken shape to confound him? Anselmo crossed himself. It was true--moved by the garden’s spell he had sometime in reverie invoked the animating principle of this beauty of earth, which he knew well was soulless and evil--and behold it incarnate!

Yet the apparition did not menace him overtly, perhaps it felt his spiritual armor proof. Nevertheless, it was his part to fly possible danger, to deliver over the unhallowed domain to its true possessor. What part had he in these caresses of the breeze, these wooings of flowers, these marriages of insects, this glamour of nocturnal magic?

Knowing, as he did, the evil power of the moon at its full, how had he been persuaded to walk in debatable ground where that demoniac glory, rising warm and wanton above the trees, could mock and threaten him? Under the branches of the acacia the shadow sat still in deeper shadow; save that the rays of the moon fell upon two slim, naked feet, which the short grass could not cover. It had taken, then, the form of a woman, that the garden and its tradition might be doubly desecrated! Anselmo’s indignation was not fierce enough to nerve his soul, weakened by mystic terrors. He turned to fly, but, instead, uttered an exclamation, calling in a trembling voice:

“Brother Emanuel!”

“I am coming,” was the answer.

Another black robe, another pale face, appeared beside him, and, like him, started back at perceiving the strange figure. After consultation in whispers the bolder monk approached the acacia.

“This is no spirit, Brother Anselmo--it is a woman!” he cried.

“A woman! How could a woman get into the garden?”

The first speaker cast a troubled glance in the direction of the high wall.

“True,” he said uncertainly. “Still it must be.”

But involuntarily he moved a step nearer his companion.

Both glanced down at the slender feet in the grass. These seemed to move, and the spirit, or woman, turned her head swiftly from side to side. Her breath came quicker, but the monks could not hear it, or they might have taken courage.

“It is astonishing,” murmured Brother Emanuel, uneasily.

While they stood undecided between the attack and the retreat, suddenly from the chapel near by the organ gave voice in a deep, swelling chord, which climbed by subtle and suave modulations and soared aloft into a tender melody.

“It is Brother Angelo,” whispered Anselmo.

“It is holy music!” said Emanuel, devoutly, and he made the sign of the cross in the air before him.

The tremulous notes, growing louder, drowned the rustle of the leaves, the plash of the fountain, the sigh of the wind. It seemed as though the garden hushed half-unwillingly to listen, when a voice, humanly deep and sweet, but spiritualized into something not less than divine, took up the melody and bore it higher and heavenward, pouring out into the night a flood of ecstasy and aspiration. The march of the music was solemn and splendid, and its soul was a joy unearthly and beyond utterance.

The black-robed brothers stood and listened, rebuked and dumb, turning their faces toward the glimmering wall of the chapel, and forgetting for a moment the fears which had agitated them, with their cause. What were all the potencies of the passionate earth, so easily diverted from good, against this royal dominion?

The evil-seeming spell was broken. A sudden movement, no sound but a stirring of the air, recalled their attention. The foliage of the acacia trembled as though a bird had taken wing. The bench was vacant, flowers strewed the ground before it, the presence had vanished. Her white feet or a breath of air had borne her away. The diapason of the organ drowned the sound her flight might have made; and the trees bent as though to bury in shadow her possible path. Emanuel made a long step forward.

“Woman or spirit, she is gone!” he cried, and stooped to see what trace of her those scattered roses might show. Anselmo grasped his companion’s sleeve.

“Do not touch them,” he entreated, glancing fearfully over his shoulder. “Who knows what spell is upon them?”

True, when found next morning, withered and scentless, these flowers appeared commonplace enough. Nor did there exist other proof that on this spot two brothers of the order had beheld a strange and dangerous vision. None the less was their sober account accepted implicitly by the brethren, of whom the wiser ever thereafter avoided to walk in the garden at the moon’s full; though certain of the more youthful were known to adventure themselves at that place and season.

It is not recorded that their daring and zeal met with any reward or recognition. Nor, perhaps, is this to be wondered at. For if any wandering spirit, coveting, yet not daring to enter the garden, had strayed near to the confining wall, it must have heard daily the solemn chant of the Church’s exorcism directed against all powers unholy; it must daily have beheld a slow procession of monks make the circuit of the shell-strewn paths, sprinkling the ground with holy-water to purify it from the contaminating touch of a woman’s foot. And if, spirit or woman, it were still undeterred, there was Angelo’s music at evening--like another flaming sword at the gate of this Eveless Eden!

ORESTE’S PATRON

By Grace Ellery Channing

THE Signore Americano, musing over his morning coffee on the Villa terrace, gazed intently into the distance where Florence lay invisible behind the hills.

“Buon’ giorno, Signore!” called Oreste, reining in Elisabetta and lifting his cap with a smile.

“Buon’ giorno!” returned the Signore, starting. “Ah, you are going to the city, and I wanted to go myself!”

Oreste looked troubled.

“Signore,--how much I am sorry! It displeases me, but I am already promised to my patron. When one is poor, one must think of the francs for the family,” he added apologetically.

The Signore, who knew no such necessity, frowned.

“This is the fifth time this Carnivale--and you just married! If I had a _sposina_--”

“The Signore’s _sposina_ would lack for nothing,” smiled Oreste. “We others,--we must do as we can. As for Gioja, she goes to pass the day with her _nonna_ at Vincigliata. I will bring the Signore’s mail as usual.”

The Signore waved his hand impatiently, and knocked the ashes from his cigarette, then, as the shabby cab, with Elisabetta pulling heroically back against the steepness, wound from sight, his glance softened. It was a piece of fortune surely for a Vignola cabman to have a city patron. Fortunes were not to be made up here where nobody but the _forestieri_, who came from time to time to make a _villegiatura_ in one or another of the villas, would think of wasting francs for the sole purpose of getting somewhere. The inhabitants stayed where they found themselves placed by Providence. To all intents, Vignola might be a hundred miles from Florence instead of a bare six. Besides, a stranger Signore passes with the season, but a city patron remains. Nuisance as it was to have his own plans conflicted with, the Signore forgave Oreste.

Fifteen minutes later this melting mood congealed again, as a slender figure stole quietly down the Way.

It was Gioja, walking with her usual listless grace.

Her small head, its crisply waved Tuscan hair bound with a kerchief of dull blue, was carried far back as no kerchiefed head has a right to be; and her eyes, blue as the kerchief but not dull, looked straight ahead, dilated and musing. She did not see the Signore,--a thing that could have befallen no other girl in the village, unless it were blind Chiara, and the Signore watched her go with a frown,--for this was not the direction of Vincigliata. And why was she starting so early, unless to defeat the glances with which all these closed doors would soon be alive?

Yet he continued to watch her. There were other girls in the village just as pretty. Many a strain of noble blood had gone to the making of these Vignolese peasants. This was not the first girl the Signore had seen who looked as if--change her gown and tie a bonnet over her hair--she might loll in her carriage of an afternoon at the Cascine with the best of the fine ladies in the city below. But there was no other whom the Signore ever leaned over the wall to look after. And as he leaned his frown deepened; he was sorry for Oreste; but--marry a girl like that and leave her alone, in Italy! Anybody might foresee the end. And he frowned again, not at Gioja this time, who had disappeared from view, but at a mental image, wearing, it is true, an air dangerously like that of Oreste’s _sposa_.

Yes, indeed, anybody might foretell the end. That was what the whole community, already buzzing with the scandal, said. And it was exactly what the Padre said when, five minutes later, he came up the path and sank upon the marble seat, mopping his brow beneath the beaver hat.

“I have been to Oreste’s,” he said apologetically, “and thought I would look in upon the Signore in passing. There was nobody there.”

The Signore, engaged in pouring red wine for his guest, made no response, and the priest stole a troubled glance at him as he took the glass from his hand.

“Perhaps, Signore, you may have seen them pass, and can tell me if that child went with her husband?”

“No,” said the Signore, after a minute’s deliberation, “I could not.”

His guest sighed as he sipped the wine. He had grown gray in the service of the village. He had known Gioja from her babyhood. His was the hand which had held and oiled and dipped her at the font, and had led her from then until her present estate; and he, if any one, had a right to borrow trouble, seeing that all troubles were brought to him in the end. His fine, thin lips shut above the wineglass in the sensitive line which marks the better of Rome’s two types. His soul was straight and simple. The one vanity it owned was to be on terms of companionship with the occupant of the big villa. The half hour on its terrace or in its salotto formed his social dissipation, and dearly did he prize the importance it gave him in the eyes of his flock. Nay, it gave importance to the whole community.

“Not every village has a priest like ours,” said the gossips, complacently, “that a so-educated stranger Signore would make so much of.”

Moreover, if his people were poor, God alone knows how poor their priest was, and the Signore possessed a fine taste in wines,--true Chianti, a very different thing from _vino rosso_ at eighty centesimi the flask,--while his lavishness was that of his country.

As for the Signore, he would pour the oil from a fresh flask any time to unseal the lips pressed together as now over the case of Oreste’s _sposa_.

“The truth is,” sighed the priest, “the end is too easy to foresee. The child is not like others; and there is nothing worse than that. That’s what Luigi’s _sposa_ said yesterday when I rebuked her for thinking evil, and recalled to her how Gioja helped nurse her three through the fever only last spring. ‘Oh, I’m not saying she has n’t a heart,’ said Luigi’s _sposa_; ‘but you can’t deny that all is not right when a girl is different from all the rest; it is better to have less heart and be more like one’s neighbors.’ And Luigi’s wife had reason. Nothing is worse than to be different from all the folk about you. When I had her safely married, I thought indeed there would be an end of trouble;--Heaven grant it do not prove a beginning!”

“Does she not love her husband?”

“Who can tell?” sighed the priest, impatiently. “Oreste is not one to set the Arno afire, but he is a good lad. But about her he is a mule,--a very mule. Would you believe, Signore, when I ventured a word,--I, whose duty it is,--he flared up like a Befana torch,--he whose manner to me ordinarily is a lesson to the community!”

The Signore smiled and reflected upon the strength of man.

“One would say I had spoken ill of the Saints,” continued the exasperated priest. “And the thing is becoming insufferable,--such a tale of scandal as some one whispers to me every day. One would think she has neither eyes nor ears, and cares not whether she has friends or foes for neighbors.” There is, in truth, no such broad and flowery path to unpopularity as this which Gioja undeviatingly pursued. Nobody who elects to be unlike his neighbors gets social good of it. Had not the Signore himself seen?

Bad enough it was to have her sitting wide-eyed and absolutely indifferent at her machine, and so pretty that one could see the youths looking at her when they pretended not to; or mooning over her straw work with never a word of gossip or a little story about a friend, more than if they were all stones: but what did these absences all by herself mean, which looked the worse now that she was a decent man’s wife? It was an absolute scandal--which is only another name for a godsend sometimes--to a sober community.

Oreste might pretend to shut his eyes,--he had always been a fool about her; but it could not be asked that all the village should do the same, especially those girls who would have made decent wives if any one had given _them_ the chance, and those lads who would have known how to keep a wife in order if they had taken one.

The priest, thinking of these things, sighed. He, too, might affect blindness; but he would need to be stone deaf as well to escape hearing what every tongue in the village felt it a duty and a privilege to confide to him daily.

“It must be admitted that the Signorina Americana has something to answer for,” the priest wound up, as he invariably did, and always with an indulgent accent which forgave while it accused.

The Signorina Americana!--how many times was she not levelled at the ears of the Signore Americano who had inherited her tradition with the villa of which he was the next lessee. If the contadini were to be believed, there was little for which she might not be held accountable. They spoke of her smilingly, Oreste tenderly, the priest indulgently (the Signorina also had possessed a generous taste in wines), and Gioja not at all. Yet apparently it was precisely Gioja who might have had most to say.

“Ah, yes; if I could have foreseen when I brought that child to her! But what harm could come to her from earning a few francs as the Signo-rina’s maid? I chose her for the very reason that she had more gentleness and was more educated than the others,--the Signorina, your countrywoman, was herself very educated and full of _gentilezza_. But she was too good to Gioja, and then she could never be made to see. She had a way with her,--when I began to remonstrate with her she would fill up my glass and ask about my poor, and, before I knew it--_altro!_ she was very generous, your countrywoman. But if there are many like her in your country it must be a terrible place; a man would not possess his own soul.”

The Signore laughed.

“She would sit here--precisely where I sit now--and smile a little smile she had, and twist this rose-vine about her fingers, and just so she twisted us all. Ah,” he concluded, lifting his glass, “she was truly terrible, that Signorina; but _simpatica, altro!_ never have I seen so _simpatica_ a signorina.”

_Simpatica!_ When you are that, there is nothing else you can be; and when you are not that, nothing that you can be is of any use. When everybody, down to the newsboys and cab-openers, loves you and doesn’t know why,--you are _simpatica_; when people would rather do things for you than not, and don’t care about the payment,--then you may be sure you are _simpatica_; when the expression of their eyes and the tones of their voices change insensibly when they look at and speak to you,--there is no room to doubt that you are _simpatica_. You may not be rich, nor beautiful, nor “educated” (such a very different thing from book-fed), but you do not need to be. _Simpatica_ is the comprehending sky of praise in which separate stars of admiration are swallowed up.

While the Signore figured rapidly the mischief possible of accomplishment by a dangerous Signorina possessing this attribute, the priest drank another glass of wine and returned to the trouble of his soul.

“I thought, indeed, with a wife’s work to do, she would settle down like others; but Oreste encourages her wilfulness.”

“Why do you not speak to Gioja herself?”

“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed the priest, crossing himself. “I have tried that once. She has a terrible nature,--that child! I have never told any one; but see if I have not reason to say so, Signore.” He sipped his wine agitatedly, and then began with feeling:--

“It was the Signorina to begin with; she saw that the child was pretty, and she put ideas in her head. And in fact, though Heaven forbid I should compare Gioja, who is only a little _contadina_. with a real Signorina, yet she has always seemed to me to have a little something about her which recalls the Signorina herself,--a way of walking and carrying her head. And the Signorina had not an idea of keeping her in her place. She was always giving her gowns and ribbons and trinkets and vanities of all kinds,--that was her way, always giving. The end of it was that one day I surprised that child with a hat of the Signorina’s on her unhappy head; yes, actually, Signore, if you will credit me, a hat,--a _cappello di signora_ on her head!” He spread his hands in deprecating despair.

The Signore looked blankly.