Part 11

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--

“Here is a miracle for which you ought to thank Heaven. Think of the thousand legends contained in the silver network of this blossom, of the hidden relation between the number of petals and stamens, of the slender threads which support the lobes of the pistils, of this transparent robe, this web, these valves and membranes covered with almost invisible down, which enclose the mysterious agitation of the seed vessels. Think of all the divine art revealed in the structure of this living creation, gifted in its fragility with infinite powers of love and fertility. See the moving tracery of shadow which the trembling leaves cast on the earth, and the same tracery painted on the wall, to cheer your melancholy, in rays now blue and now golden; and the little, white fingers at the tips of the pine branches; and the drops of dew hanging from the beard of the oats; and the delicate veins in the wings of the bee; and the dazzling green of the dragon-fly; and the iridescent colours on the dove’s neck; and the strange shapes of lichen stains; and the holes in tree-trunks; and the composition of crystals.... Store away all these marvels under those eyelids of yours, which will have to be lowered for so long before Christ crucified. I don’t think there are any gardens in the old monastery of Queen Sancia, only stone cloisters.”

“Why do you tempt me?” she used to ask. “Why do you enjoy disturbing my weak will? Have you been sent by God to try me?”

“I don’t wish to disturb your will,” I replied, “but only to give you brotherly advice, which may help you to suffer less. I think that after you are buried, when you cannot look out of the grated windows without hurting your cheek against the bars--I think that you who have grown up in a garden will have to pass through a few weeks of furious impatience, when all the visions of the open air will pass before your memory. Then it will be inexpressible torture to you if you cannot recall the exact details of the tiny black and yellow speckles on the lizard’s back, or the tender downy leaf which buds on the branch of an apple-tree. I know the madness of such belated curiosity. Once I was passionately fond of a great Scotch deerhound my father had given me. He was a magnificent beast, very graceful, and extraordinarily well bred. When he died I was in the greatest misery; and it used to torment me strangely that I could not exactly recall the precise shape of the specks of gold in his brown eyes, and the grey marks in his beautiful rosy mouth when one caught a glimpse of it in a yawn or a bark. We ought, therefore, to look with attentive eyes at everything, especially at the creatures we love. Do you not love the things I was speaking to you about just now? and are you not about to leave them? Are you not about to place a kind of death between them and you?”

She sat, the fingers of her hands clasped together, holding within them the weary knee. Her delicate grace was a little disturbed by the trouble she felt at the ambiguity of my words, half serious and half playful, half deceptive and half sincere. And speaking in this way gave me the same pleasure as I should have felt in ruffling the smooth bands of that hair over which the silver scissors of the tonsure were hanging. “_Tondeantur in rotundum...._” Still clear in my memory was the fresh ring of the youthful laugh rippling from her mouth at the closing hour of that first day, and filling me with wonder. And it pleased my fancy to group the pictures of all these slight, many-coloured things around the novice, who, in that already far-away February afternoon, had showed me as a secret miracle the nightly blossoming of her white hawthorn.

* * * * *

I used to seek her as one seeks some good thing which one knows to be ephemeral. She attracted me like a pure figure of youth, turning to me with a tearful smile on the threshold of a gloomy door, through which she was about to pass, and be lost to sight. I should like to have said to her sisters: “Let me love her as long as she is of this world; let me pour spices over her little feet!” During my long visits it often happened that I was alone with her, and could enter into spiritual converse with her docile soul, ever anxious to obey. From time to time Anatolia would disappear, when one or other of the two grey maids came to summon her with a look. There were some days when Violante scarcely appeared at all. She seemed to avoid my society, to look upon me with indifference, to have fallen back into her usual apathy. The two brothers could not stand the full light of the open air for very long, and so I often found myself alone with the little novice, sitting on a marble seat beneath the statue of Summer in the outer court, or in the shadow of the already verdant trellises over the steps, or on the edge of the dried-up fish pond. I would say to her--

“Perhaps you may have deceived yourself in the choice of your Bridegroom, sweet sister. When you hear the bishop saying, '_Ecce sponsus venit_,’ you will tremble in your secret heart, and will expect a fair, strong hand to be stretched out to you, and to gather you up entirely, like water in the hollow of a palm; for this is the sweet, powerful attitude which you expect of your conqueror, and which is best suited to your flexibility, sweet sister. But perhaps you may be deluded at the very foot of the altar. And if you dare to lift your eyes, you will see, amid the burning candles, the promised Bridegroom motionless, with His pierced hands, and His head crowned with thorns. You will feel obliged, sweet sister, to draw out those cruel nails, driven in so deep. And terrible strength will seem to be required to fulfil such an action. And then the wounds will have to be dressed with infinite patience, and with balsams made of herbs only to be gathered on certain giddy heights, where the air is too rarefied to breathe. And the wounds once closed, the blood bursting from the veins will have to be forced back into its proper channels. And after the toilsome work has been completed, perhaps the newly-healed hands will withdraw altogether. To very few brides is it granted to see them perfectly restored again; and even among the elect there is scarcely one to whom on some mystic evening is vouchsafed the supreme joy of feeling herself altogether possessed, altogether folded within the constraining clasp, as you desire to be....”

The submissive maiden murmured--

“God grant that I may be that one!”

“Ah, sweet sister,” I said to her, “only think what immense strength that one must possess to revive a dead hand and to draw it so ardently to herself!”

“I have not any strength, but I will ask it of the Lord.”

“The Lord can only give you back the strength you have given to Him, Massimilla.”

“Be silent, please!” she implored. “I am afraid your words are impious.”

“They are not impious; you need not fear listening to them. Do you not remember the first lines of the Commentary of St. Theresa? She speaks there of a God imprisoned. Think what power is required to enchain the Lord! You see, Sister Water, what unceasing acts of strength are required of the Bride who is sung in the Antiphons and Responses. That is why, as I have a brotherly anxiety for you, I want at least to prepare your soul for the bitterness of disillusion. Do not lull it too much with the promises of the Psalms! There is, I think, some magnificent joyous promise in the verses you have learned, '_Veni, Electa mea...._’ 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo! the winter is past ... the voice of the turtle is heard in our land ... the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.’ Ah, the Latin of the Psalms is incomparable in producing a picture of the intoxication of love sinking under suffocating wealth. Some of the verses seem to drop with fragrant oil like the hair of slaves, or to be heavy and glittering as nuggets of gold. When the bishop places the crown of virginal merit on your head, your lips will have to pronounce wonderful words--words in which I see and feel some mysterious weight and splendour. '_Et immensis monilibus ornavit me._’ Wonderful words! Are they not?”

She was looking at me now with such passion that all her little soul trembled like a tear on her eyelashes, and by merely bending forward I could have drunk it.