Part 17

I could see well enough that her poor mouth was burning with thirst, and such anguish of pity was I enduring that I would have opened a vein to slake it. There was not a trace of water anywhere around. Nothing but the waters of the lake looking like molten lead at the bottom of the extinct crater. Rapid visions crossed my brain, as they do in the delirium of fever; the great, rosy river covered with water-lilies, Violante leaning over the edge of the boat, her face bending to breathe the moisture of the flowers, the hardness of a sharp glance from under her knitted brows....

But we both started, as a sudden wave of sound came rolling towards us, we knew not whence. The silence in these lofty solitudes was so intense as to seem inviolable, and the rough, sudden breaking of it struck us, in the confused state of our senses, as an extraordinary event. Anatolia clung to my arm, and questioned me with startled eyes.

“Secli,” I said, as I recognised the nature of the sound. “The bells of Secli.”

And we listened, side by side, leaning towards the echoing crater, in the shadow thrown over our heads by the boulder.

The empty crater, resonant as a gigantic drum, echoed back the waves of sound sent by the quivering bells, and mingled them into one long hollow rumble that repeated itself indefinitely through the solitudes of light. All through those solitudes, where primary matter, petrified into a thousand expressions of rage and sorrow, shone in its grandeur, down the tawny valley furrowed by the winding river, through the Alpine vegetation sloping away to the distant sea, everywhere the voice of bronze, modulated by the terrible fiery mouth, went proclaiming its mysterious message. Further and further it penetrated, and further still again, through limitless space, away to shores beyond the mountains and the sea, away to where my weary sight failed me, away to where my thoughts, still unformed and uncontrolled, but instinct with mysterious creative power, wandered like winds laden with pollen. A grand, vague feeling, in which innumerable things of sorrow and joy, past and future, of death and life, were mingled, troubled my consciousness, and seemed tossing it to and fro as the storm tosses the ocean.

Amazed, I looked down at the Tartarean lake, thick and stagnant like the blind eye of a subterranean world; and I looked at the greedy crater where the impetus of the primeval fire had been arrested, just as the contracted expression of the last agony sometimes lingers on the lips of corpses. And my gaze rested on the humble cottages of Secli, on that fragile nest, hardly distinguishable from the rock on which it hung. And I had a fantastic vision of that unconscious taciturn race, busied from time immemorial in turning the entrails of lambs into musical strings destined to express through the language of art the highest inspirations of life, and to intoxicate myriads of unknown souls in the world.

On and on rolled the sound, rumbling ceaselessly, monotonously, through the scorching air. And seeing my companion motionless at my side, I dared not speak, nor break the spell. But suddenly she turned round and broke into sobs, as if she had just witnessed the end of a death agony. Leaning against the rock with her face in her hands, she sobbed on despairingly.

“Anatolia, Anatolia, what is the matter with you? Answer me, Anatolia! Say one word to me.”

And unable to resist the pain, I was just going to take her wrists and uncover her face.

I heard close by the sound of a swift step on the stones, the sound of painful breathing; I saw a shadow.

“You, Violante?”

She came up the steep rock with something of the elastic stride of a wild animal, something hostile and malevolent expressed in her whole person. Her thick blue veil was wrapped round her head in such a way that her whole face was hidden down to the chin, as if by a mask, and her eyes glittered through the gauze.

She stopped near the boulder in a hostile attitude throwing back her head like one who is suffocating, yet she did not loosen her veil. The vehemence of her breathing made her bosom rise and fall, and the veil flutter; an uncontrollable tremor shook her hands within the torn gloves she wore, torn probably on the sharp rocks in some perilous fall.

“We waited for you,” she said at last in a broken voice that almost hissed; “we waited for you a long time.... As you did not seem to be coming back, I came up ... to meet you....”

I could trace the convulsive motion of her lips through her veil; I could guess at the change in her face behind that suffocating blue mask that she would not lift up. And I felt my inward emotion increase so violently every minute, that it was impossible for me to open my lips. But I felt that not on me alone the necessity for silence had fallen.

The rumble of the bronze bells reverberating in the crater passed ceaselessly over our heads.

Anatolia had stopped sobbing, but the traces of tears were still on her face, and the eyelids that she kept lowered were red. “Let us go,” she said softly, without looking either at me or at her sister.

And in silence, under the desolation of the sunshine, we began the descent, accompanied by the rumbling sound.

Miserable descent, which seemed as if it would never end! They walked on, or lingered behind, according to the necessities of the path; and I supported sometimes the one, and sometimes the other, when their steps faltered. Every now and then my heart failed me with the fear of seeing them succumb. When the bells of Secli ceased ringing we felt a momentary relief; but we discovered immediately that the oppressive irregularity of our breathing in the stillness of the air increased our suffering, and we felt as though we could hear only too distinctly the murmur of the blood in our veins.

With a savage pertinacity Violante persisted in braving suffocation under her blue mask. No doubt her throat must be parched with a horrible thirst, like mine, like her sister’s. When I took her hand to help her down, I saw a little blood where the skin had been grazed through the rents in her glove; and with deep emotion I remembered the hill-slope covered with flowers.

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Later on, when we reached the level ground, where my men were waiting with the mules, and where we rested awhile parched with thirst and exhausted by fatigue, I composed the beauty and the sorrow of the three princesses, for the last time, into a harmony of infinite beauty and pain.

They were not in their cloistered garden, yet a rocky cloister worthy of their souls and their fate was surrounding them, for strange and grand was the aspect of the scenery around. The rocks, standing round in a circle of varying height, made one think of some amphitheatre built by Cyclopean hands, worn away, indeed, by centuries and storms without number, yet still remaining like stupendous ruins. Fragments of unknown writing were traceable there, incomprehensible riddles of Life and Death; the twisted veins of the stone were channels for the essence of a divine thought; and the lines of the shapeless masses were as full of meaning as the attitudes of perfect statues.

There we rested, there I caught their final harmony.

A field labourer--very like the one who had cut the branches of almond blossom for us with his bill-hook--showed us the way to a spring hidden in the hollow of a rock. The clear, icy water spurted out with a gentle murmur, and on the pool beneath floated a rustic cup made of bark, cracked and bottomless, like the useless husk of some fruit.

I offered Anatolia another cup, which the man had brought with him. But Violante, without waiting, raised her veil, and bending over the sparkling spring, drank in long draughts like a wild animal.

I saw the drops glistening on her mouth and chin when she rose, but she turned away suddenly and drew down the edge of her veil. Thus veiled, she sat down on the stone nearest to the mountain spring, whose song was too gentle for her taste; and her attitude awakened in my soul all the magic spell of her own fountains. Even in fatigue she did not let her figure relax; for now she sat almost rigidly erect, sustained by her silent angry pride. Once again everything around her seemed to acknowledge the sovereignty of her presence; secret analogies bound up the surrounding mysteries with her mystery. Once again she seemed to drive back my spirit into the furthest distances of time, towards the ancient ideas of Beauty and Sorrow. She was present, and yet far away. And in the silence she seemed to be informing me, like the Princess Dejanira: “I possess an ancient gift from an old centaur, hidden in a vessel of bronze.”

Anatolia had sat down beside her pensive brother; she had thrown one arm round his neck, and her brow seemed gradually to clear as if some inner light were rising. Massimilla seemed to be listening to the faint, unquenchable voice of the spring; sitting with the fingers of her hands clasped together, holding within them the weary knee.

Over our heads the sky bore no traces of clouds, save a slight shadow like the ashes of a burnt-out funeral pyre. The sun was scorching the peaks all around, outlining their solemn features on the blue sky. A great sadness and a great sweetness fell from above into the lonely circle, like a magic draught into a rough goblet.

There the three sisters rested, there I caught their final harmony.

HERE ENDETH THE BOOK OF THE VIRGINS AND BEGINNETH THE BOOK OF GRACE.

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Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press