Part 10

“The book I had with me this morning,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice as if she were revealing some intimate confidence, “was a volume of her letters.”

“I noticed that like a good Franciscan you put a blade of grass in your page for a mark. But that book contains another mark. The grass in it burns on the edge of a furnace. The essence of her soul is all in those words of hers: 'Fire and blood united by love!’ Do you remember them?”

“Oh, Massimilla,” interrupted Oddo, laughing, “you may dismiss your spiritual father. Now you have found the true guide to the way of perfection!”

We were sitting on the edge of an empty tank which had no doubt been an ancient fish-pond; now it was almost entirely filled with soil, and taken possession of by wild plants, among which violets were hidden--in great numbers, to judge by their great fragrance. Close by was the broken-down wall of box-wood, breathing out the same aroma from its depths as had met me on my first entrance into the garden. I could see the deserted alley with its mutilated statues and widowed urns through the thin parts of the shrubs and through the arches.

“Is the day yet fixed for you to enter the convent?” I asked Massimilla.

“Not yet,” she replied, “but it is almost sure to be before Easter.”

“Very soon then. Too soon!”

Antonello got up, suddenly seized by unbearable agitation. We all turned towards him. He looked at Anatolia with vague terror in his pale eyes. Then he sat down again. An indefinable anxiety crept over us; it seemed as if Antonello had imparted some of his distress to us.

“This time yesterday we were in the orchard among the almond blossom,” said Oddo, with a shade of regret for a past pleasure in his voice.

Antonello’s words rose spontaneously in my mind: “We must bring them here among the flowers.”

“We must all go back there some day,” I broke out cheerfully, to destroy that strange atmosphere of fear and anxiety which, for some unknown cause, was increasing over our minds. “We must make the most of this beautiful springtime. In a week the whole valley will be in flower. I propose to go all over it, up to Corace, to visit Scultro, Secli, Linturno.... How happy I should be if I might have your company! Would you not like to come? Won’t you set a good example, Donna Anatolia?”

“Certainly,” she said. “You offer us just what we wish.”

“And you too, Donna Massimilla, will be allowed the recreation. Saint Francis, as you know, composed the canticle of the Sun in the cell of boughs which Saint Clara had made for him in the monastery garden. According to the ancient rule, the woods, the rivers, the mountains, and the hills must be your brothers and sisters. Travelling among them is like making a votive pilgrimage.... And then in the deserted city at Linturno there is the nave of a church still standing; and a great Madonna in mosaic, standing solitary under the canopy of the apse.... I always remember it. It is a thing one cannot forget. Do you remember it, Antonello?”

Antonello started at the sound of his name.

“What did you say?” he stammered in a confused voice.

And his poor drawn face expressed such suffering that I could not speak.

“Yes, yes, let us go, let us go,” he added, pretending to have heard; and he rose, a prey to evident agitation. He had the air of a maniac, he was so pale and tottering. “Let us go away from here! Anatolia, get up....”

He spoke quite low, as if he feared to be overheard by some one in the neighbourhood. His tone filled us with dread.

“Get up, Claudio. Let us go.”

Anatolia ran to him and took his hands.

“Here she is, here she comes!” he stammered, quite beside himself, turning his pale eyes, diluted by the hallucination, towards the alley. “Here she is! Do you hear?”

Perplexed and troubled as I was, I thought at first that he was terrified by some phantom called up by his madness. But the sound of approaching steps reached my ears also; and all at once I understood as I saw the sedan chair appear between the walls of box.

There we stood, dumb, motionless, holding our breath as the strange convoy passed along. In the icy silence which had fallen on us, like that surrounding a bier, one could distinctly hear the poles carried by the two servants creaking slightly in their places.

Then through the open window of the chair, against the background of green velvet, I saw the face of the mad princess; it was unrecognisable, disfigured, and swollen and bloodless, like a mask of snow; the hair was piled on her brow like a diadem. Her great black eyes blazed out of the opaque whiteness of her skin from beneath the commanding arched eyebrows, their extraordinary splendour maintained perhaps by the continual hallucination of fantastic pomp and luxury. Her double chin hung down over the necklace round her throat. And this pale inert mass suggested to my imagination the dream-figure of some Byzantine empress of the time of a Nicephorus or a Basil, lying in her golden litter.

“There, she sees us; she is stopping, she is getting out, and coming towards us,” I fancied with growing uneasiness, half expecting some proof of the reality of what seemed to me an unreal apparition on the point of vanishing and of entering the void again like a dream when one wakes. “There, she is calling some one, speaking to them, asking who I am, questioning me....” In the silence I heard in imagination the sound of her voice, the dialogue between the children doomed to an inhuman sacrifice, and the mother whose madness had transported her into another world; a world into which she was inevitably drawing them all, one after the other. And in my horror I understood the deep shudder of instinctive repugnance that had passed over Antonello as she approached, something like the shudder which runs through the folded flock at the approach of the wild beast who is going to devour them.

But she passed by without noticing us, without moving an eyelid, and vanished among the ancient box-trees. Two maids, dressed in grey like Béguines, pale with weariness, silent and sad, walked close behind the sedan chair; their arms hung at their sides, and swung at every step like the rosaries hanging from their waists, cold and inanimate.

As I rode back to Rebursa alone, I could see before me the pale swollen face of the Princess Aldoina, and the gloomy fatigue of the servants, and the two grey shadows following the chair, and all the details of the strange procession. Some essential part of me had been left behind in the great cloister, but still I felt in my inmost being the joy of being alone again.

I recalled once more to my mind the gestures of farewell at the gate, the marvellous depth in the eyes of the prisoners, and the dreamlike view of the garden vanishing away behind the three beautiful forms. And at the same time all the other phantoms of the intense life I had lived in those few hours crowded into my soul like a store of varied and disordered riches, gathered up that they might be rearranged for the adornment of my secret kingdom.

“What opulence!” said the Dæmon, appearing to me, not without joy and pride. “What magnificence in a single day! Thou couldest not have better served thine end, which is to give life to everything, to extract life from the most barren things. Now, dost thou acknowledge the wisdom of my morning admonition? Dost thou not bless the sternness of thy long restraint, since it now yields thee this intoxicating fruit? Thy power of poetry, like thy will, has no limit. Everything that is born and exists around thee is born and exists by reason of the breath of thy will and thy poetry. And thou art nevertheless living in a very real order of things, because nothing is more true in the world than the things of poetry.”

The day was sinking over the undulating valley of the Saurgo, and the slanting rays turned the brown fields into gold, while the light clouds sat in a circle on peaks of rock resembling the highest seats in an amphitheatre. They sat there in feminine attitudes, waiting for the evening to robe them with purple.

“Now, thou couldest make even salt bear fruit,” said the Dæmon to me. “Wherever thy spirit turns, abundance springs up. But thou hast with thee also the favour of fortune; thou hast entered the unknown and unforeseen not as one feeling his way and exploring with hesitation, but as one who is expected and called to gather in the harvest on a field where the richest fruit awaits him--fruit still intact, and ready to fall into his hands whenever in sunshine or in shadow he pleases to stretch them out. Thou hast entered a cloistered garden, delicious and terrifying as the garden of the Hesperides. Happiness has smiled to thee in three shapes, standing between madness and death, like statues of pure white marble between two black columns. Is there not some meaning for thee in that symbol?”

“Oh despot,” I replied, “there is surely some hidden meaning in the symbol thou declarest to me, and I shall discover it. But since the perfection of that trinity attracts me, and since it is necessary for my purpose that I should choose, I am perplexed in spirit, and not without fear of being deluded like a common mortal.”

And the Dæmon: “Not thy fears of the morning alone, but those of the evening also are vain! Nor is that thy only error; for before now, in the presence of the blessed ones, after having composed beautiful music out of the beauty of their bare hands thou didst regret that thou couldest not carry them all away at once to thy home; thou didst rebel against the injuries of prejudice and custom. Now, in thus doing, thou didst humble thyself, not only to own the power of the laws of others, but also to disown the power of thy own ideal, which alone is sacred. Why dost thou aspire to the legitimate possession of the body when the ideal figures already adorn the house of thy dreams with their triple grace? Thou couldest not remove the three prisoners from their dungeon without breaking the enchantment which transfigures them. Countless mysterious waves of affinity flow between the depths of those lives and the silent places where they have suffered and awaited thee. Their grace, their desolation, and their pride draw the fascination which enthralled thee from the hidden virtue of innumerable elements. Even so, noble plants, with their long roots subdivided into myriads of fibres, absorb from the very bosom of the earth those immortal energies which are pressed towards the light by the rising force in the stalk, and are crowned in the miracle of the flower and the perfume. Canst thou, oh Poet, imagine Eglae, Arethusa, or Iperthusa chased from their garden? When Heracles, clothed with stars, penetrated into the western paradise to rob its golden apples, he forbore to carry away the daughters of Night, for even his brutal soul felt that he would have defaced, and perhaps destroyed, the heavenly mystery of their beauty.”

“Oh despot,” I said then, “I am thinking of Him who is to come.”

And the Dæmon: “It is well that this should be always the sum of thy thoughts. But once before, the necessity of choice appeared to thee as a cruel trial, a source of sorrow and inevitable sacrifice, and thy heart shrank from it. Reflect that there is no goddess so worthy of being called upon to preside at a birth as Sorrow. Nothing in the world is lost, and wonderful things may sometimes be born of tears. Reflect that the highest power of will does not manifest itself in the readiness to choose from many things offered, nor in the firmness which resists various impulses, but rather in the art of giving the clearness and dignity of acknowledged and directed powers to the instinctive motions of nature. Reflect that there is always some way of being equal to the event in all the chances of this most uncertain life. There was once a man who, beside a tyrant able by one sign of his hand to condemn him to death, wore such a look, that bystanders doubted which of the two was the master. Be thou like unto him, and handle the events of life in a royal spirit.”

The dome of heaven was tinged with pale hyacinthine blue, and the olive-trees reflected its calm on their silver locks, which concealed the painful contortions of their black trunks. The clouds on the rocky peaks were not yet clothed in purple, but in robes of more delicate hue, making them droop; yet one here and there raised a proud head among her companions and aspired to a crown of stars.

“In the meantime compose thy music,” pursued the Dæmon, “out of the wonderful things which are born of affinity, and of the relations between three perfect forms contemplated sincerely. In their unison and surroundings there is a wonderful language which is already as comprehensible to thee as if thou hadst created it. Out of any one of their outlines thou canst make the axis of a world. They seem to impart to thee the joy of continual creation and continual discovery, to help thee to complete thy harmony with a part of thyself unexpectedly revealed. They seem to pour into thee again the life which ages ago they received from thee. Hadst thou not enjoyed them even before they smiled on thee? As thou stoodest in silence beside them, was not thy soul within thee heavy as a cloud?”

“Oh despot,” I said, and felt my soul yearn with infinite desire towards the garden from which the harmonious twilight was bearing me away. “Oh despot, it is true; as I stood in silence beside them, I felt stronger emotion than if I had loosed their hair, or pressed my lips on their beautiful necks, and I am still full of it. Yet, as the shadows fall, I would fain return there secretly; and invisible to the eye, I would lean my head on those virginal bosoms and tarry there a long while, because I think that from those bosoms there would flow over me in the cool shadow a great sweetness and a great sorrow which I shall never know.”

III

“... _A sedere, con le dita delle mani insieme tessute, tenendovi dentro il ginocchio stanco._”

LEONARDO DA VINCI

“_Dov è più sentimento, li è più martirio._”

Ibid

And I led them among the flowers.

They listened with visible emotion to the infinite melodies of springtime, bending or turning sometimes towards their own shadows, which preceded or followed them like blue figures prostrated to kiss the earth. A confused feeling of the joy of liberty and hope shone at times in their dazzled eyes; a voiceless word at times unclosed their lips, and likened them to the brims of overflowing goblets. And when they paused, I thought with inward intoxication of the fulness of life which was suffocating them.

The things that we said to each other from time to time must have seemed futile to them also; but they were enough to make us feel the depth of our true life. A passing glance, a bend of the head, a short pause, sufficed to stir to their depths those abysses which the faint light of ordinary consciousness rarely penetrates, while that which we were saying seemed as far away to us as the deepest roots of trees are far from the murmur of the uppermost branches.

Nothing could have equalled the strange beauty of that stern country in full blossom. On the tawny ground, shaggy as a lion’s mane, the pink-and-white flowers suggested pictures of maidens lying trembling on the vast hairy bosoms of legendary giants. The rays of the sun played round the transparent petals and gave them the dancing splendour of precious stones. Here and there the polished ploughshares with which the land had been turned up glittered in dual radiance.

We realised the depth of our real life. And little by little, by common consent, we forbore to utter those empty words which had only served to break the solemnity of the silence, and to disperse the heavy cloud of dreams and thoughts which hung over us. We were united by a clearer and more intimate communion; an atmosphere of divination such as the mystics breathe sprang up around us, and without speaking we exchanged the profoundest secrets. Sometimes we were so steeped in delight that it surged from our eyes in a glance, and our slightest gestures expressed, without actual contact, all that is conveyed by the most lingering caress. The petals which fell at our feet from the almost motionless boughs, moved us strangely, like a confession of languor on the part of the trees, and of a delight in relieving themselves. The vines, all ready to bud, bending over the earth in contorted, struggling shapes, stimulated us with the example of a painful effort about to be changed into an intoxicating gift. And in the frail petal and slight tendril we felt the ideal virtue of the fragrant almond-oil and the flame of oblivion given by the grape.

A sudden agitation seized me one day when I saw a drop of blood on Violante’s hand, which had been pricked by a thorn among the flowers of a snowy hedge. Smiling, she withdrew the beautiful hand on which the drop was rising; and as we chanced to be at some distance from her sisters, and perhaps unobserved, I felt a wild desire to press my lips upon the blood and taste its sweetness. And the effort I made to restrain myself was so great that I trembled.

“Do you dislike the sight of blood?” she asked me in a voice which dissimulation was not able to steady or to make playful.

And as her eyes looked into mine I felt myself turning pale, for I had an indefinable feeling within me which can only be vaguely compared to an immense wheel revolving with lightning-like speed and suddenly brought to a standstill. Something great was being resolved upon in that moment by each of us; and although we preserved a composed attitude with regard to each other, our inward attitude was one of extreme tension preceding an irrepressible outburst. Our two lives yearned towards each other with their whole force.

Ah, shall I ever forget that burning silence trembling with the invisible flight of a messenger bearing the unspoken word? What power of oblivion will ever be able to efface from my memory that hand beaded with blood, and that hill slope covered with blossom?

Anatolia’s voice called to us in the distance, and we moved on side by side. A sudden bodily weariness and sadness had fallen upon us, as if we had just passed from a long night of pleasure.

But there were moments also when my soul inclined rather towards her who had called us, and towards her who was about to depart. I rejoiced in these changes of love, which did not dissipate my energies, but stimulated them as wind fans the flame. I seemed to have discovered a new set of perceptions; the strangest and most diverse ones seemed to combine spontaneously within me. Sometimes they gave birth to such novel and beautiful music that I felt on the point of being transfigured, and I thought that my desire to become like unto the gods was about to be realised.

I thought: “If ever there was a god who loved to sit in the springtime beneath the flowering trees and entice the hamadryads from their hiding-places to caress them in his arms, he certainly never experienced greater enjoyment than I feel in gathering up the essential beauty of these delicious beings, and mingling it together with the same ease with which he might weave the diverse obedient locks of his tree nymphs into a golden harmony.”

Thus at times I felt as though I were living in a myth which the youth of the human soul created under the skies of Hellas. The ancient spirit of deity was abroad upon the earth, as it was when the daughter of Rhea gave to Triptolemus the gift of ears of corn that he might sow them in the furrows, and that all men by him might enjoy the divine benefit. The immortal energies which flowed through visible things seemed always conscious of the old transfiguring spirit that used to convert them into great symbols of beauty for the enjoyment of men. Three in number, like the Graces, the Gorgons, and the Fates, were the maidens who moved with me through this mysterious springtime. And I loved to compare myself to the youth pictured on the vase of Ruvo, who is enticing a winged genius across the threshold of a myrtle grove. Over his head is written the name Happiness, and three maidens surround him; one bears in her hands a dish heaped up with fruit, another is wrapped in a starry mantle, and the third has the thread of Lachesis in her nimble fingers.

One day we came by chance on a piece of enclosed ground, which the peasant cultivators had, according to the old heathen custom, dedicated to an oak-tree struck by lightning.

“What a beautiful death!” exclaimed Violante, as she leant over the oblong wooden fence which protected it.

The lonely place was full of almost terrible solemnity. The aspect of the altar which the Latin priests consecrated with the sacrifice of a white lamb must have been something like this.

“You are committing sacrilege,” I said to Violante. “This sacred enclosure cannot be touched without profanation. Heaven punishes the transgressor with madness....”

“With madness?...” she said, and drew away with a kind of instinctive superstition; her action gave an unexpected seriousness to my allusion to the pagan belief.

In one flash I saw the pale, swollen face of her mad mother, and Antonello’s wandering eyes, and I heard again the tragic cry: “We are breathing her madness”; and an icy sensation of fatality ran through me.

“No, no, don’t be afraid!” I said involuntarily, only deepening the shadow, perhaps, by thus clearly expressing my regret for the remark which must have seemed like a gloomy omen or a cruel presentiment.

“I am not afraid,” she replied, without smiling, as she leant over the fence again.

Thus from an idle word was born a great shadow.

The stricken tree rose before us, hard and black as basalt, its stony trunk torn open to the roots by a rent which testified to the awfulness of vindictive force. Its torn side was bare of branches, but there were a few left at the top of the other side, flinging the implacable despair of their gestures up to the sun. At each corner of the enclosure was fixed a ram’s skull with curved horns, bleached by the sun and rain of numberless seasons. Everything was motionless, dead, and sacred, and primeval in appearance.

From time to time the cries of the hawks pierced the blue sky.

* * * * *

The days passed by rapidly; they were days of farewell to her who was about to depart.

“Gaze at the springtime with the whole strength of your eyes,” I used to say to her, “for you will never see it again, never again!”

I said also to her--

“Warm your hands in the sun, bathe them in the sun, poor hands, for soon you will have to keep them crossed on your breast, or hidden in the shade under the brown woollen habit.” I would say as I showed her a flower--