Part 5

This great and dying race added a kind of funereal beauty to the rocky country for my soul, which was already seeking to absorb all the soul enclosed within that stony cloister. Already a mysterious presentiment had arisen from the depths of my being that my destiny was approaching and mingling with that lonely destiny. And the names of the three maiden princesses resounded in my memory with a faint magical music: Massimilla, Anatolia, Violante--names in which there seemed to me to be something vaguely visible, like a pale portrait behind a clouded glass; names expressive as faces full of light and shade, in which an infinity of grace, passion, and sorrow was already apparent to me.

II

“_Grandissima grazia d’ombre e di lumi s’aggiunge ai visi di quelli che seggono sulle porte di quelle abitazioni che sono oscure...._”

LEONARDO DA VINCI.

I was sincerely glad when I recognised on the road to Rebursa, Oddo and Antonello Montaga, who had found out the hour of my arrival and had come to meet me. Both of them embraced me with effusion, delivered messages of welcome from Trigento, and asked me a thousand questions at the same moment; they seemed delighted to see me, and still more delighted when I spoke of my intention of remaining some time in the country.

“You are going to stay with us!” exclaimed Antonello, as he pressed my hand almost beside himself with joy. “Then you are sent by God....” “You must come this very day to Trigento,” said Oddo, interrupting his brother. “They are all expecting you there. You must come to-day....”

They both seemed to me overcome by a strange, almost feverish agitation; their gestures were wild and convulsive, their speech rapid and anxious; they were like two feeble prisoners just set free from an imprisonment which seems like a terrible dream, whom the first contact with outward life has disturbed and confused, making them almost dizzy. The more I looked at them, the more clearly I noticed these strange signs about their persons; and I began to feel anxious and distressed about them.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “I don’t know if I can come to-day. I am weary after so many hours of travelling. But to-morrow....”

I felt a vague desire to be alone, to collect myself, to taste the quality of the strange melancholy that had suddenly fallen upon me. A flood of memories rolled towards me from the things around, and the presence of those two unfortunate beings prevented my receiving it.

“Then,” said Oddo, “you will come to luncheon with us to-morrow. Do you consent?”

“Yes, I will come.”

“You cannot imagine how eagerly they are expecting you over there.”

“Then you had not forgotten me?”

“Oh, no! It is you who had forgotten us.”

“You had forgotten us,” repeated Antonello with a somewhat distorted smile. “You were right. We are buried.”

The tone of his voice struck me more than his words. His tones, gestures, looks, and all his actions had a singular intensity, like those of a man stricken by a mysterious disease or tormented by a continual hallucination, living in the midst of apparitions invisible to the eyes of others. It did not escape my notice that he was making an effort to break through some atmosphere that surrounded him, and to communicate more directly with me. This effort imparted a contracted and convulsed look to his whole person. My anxiety and distress grew greater.

“You will see our house,” he added with the same smile.

Involuntarily I asked--

“How is Donna Aldoina?”

Both the brothers hung their heads and did not answer.

They were like each other; in fact, they were twins. Both were tall and thin, and a little bent. They had the same light-coloured eyes, the same small silky beards, the same pale, restless, nervous hands, the hands of hysterical subjects. But in Antonello these marks of weakness and disorder were deeper and more irreparable. He was doomed.

During the pause that followed, I vainly sought for words to express myself. I was in bondage to a kind of melancholy stupor; it seemed as if the whole weight of my weary body had fallen on my soul. The road skirted a line of cliffs, and the horses’ trot as it resounded on the hard ground awoke echoes in the lonely hollows. At a turn of the road the river came in sight in the valley, its innumerable windings shining in the sun. A mass of white ruins was visible, enclosed like an island within one of these curves.

“Is not that Linturno over there?” I asked, as I recognised the dead city.

“Yes, that is Linturno,” replied Oddo. “Do you remember? We once went there together....”

“I remember.”

“What a long time ago it is!”

“What a long time!”

“Now there is not much difference between Linturno and Trigento,” said Antonello, stroking his beard hesitatingly with slender fingers, while his eyes seemed to have lost consciousness of outward things. “You will see to-morrow.”

“You are disheartening him!” interrupted Oddo with some irritation. “He won’t come to-morrow.”

“Yes, yes, I will come,” I assured them, but I had to force myself to smile and shake off my own overpowering melancholy. “I will come, and shall find some way of cheering you up. You seem to me a little ill from loneliness, a little depressed.”

Antonello, who was sitting opposite me, laid his hand on my knee and leant forward to look into my eyes with an indefinable expression of fear and anxiety written in his face, as though he had perceived some terrible meaning in my words, and wished to question me about it. And once more his white face close to my own seemed even in the daylight to belong to a different world, where it existed alone; and brought to my mind those emaciated, spiritual faces that stand out from the mysterious backgrounds of sacred pictures darkened by time and the smoke of candles.

It was only for a moment. He drew back again without speaking.

“I have brought my horses with me,” I added, controlling my agitation; “we shall go for long rides every day. You must take exercise and shake off the idleness and ennui. How do you pass the hours?”

“In counting them,” said Oddo.

“And your sisters?”

“Oh, poor things!” murmured Oddo with tremulous tenderness in his voice. “Massimilla prays; Violante stifles herself with the perfumes sent her by the Queen; Anatolia--Anatolia is the one who keeps us alive, she is our soul, she lives entirely for us.”

“And the prince?”

“He has aged very much; he is quite white now.”

“And Don Ottavio?”

“He hardly ever leaves his rooms. We have almost forgotten the sound of his voice.”

“And Donna Aldoina?” I was just going to ask again, but I restrained myself and was silent.

We were now in the undulating valley of the Saurgo, in a warm hollow. “How early the spring is here!” I exclaimed, with a desire to console these wretched beings and myself as well. “In February the first flowers come out. Is not that in itself a privilege? You do not know how to enjoy the things life offers you. You convert a garden into a prison and torture yourselves within it.”

“Where are the flowers?” asked Antonello with his painful smile.

We all three began to look out for flowers. The ground was tawny and rugged as a lion’s skin; it seemed made to nourish this dry and harassed but in reality fruitful vegetation. “There they are!” I cried with a keen feeling of pleasure, as I pointed out a row of almond trees on a long billowy-looking mound.

“They are on your property,” said Oddo.

We had indeed reached the neighbourhood of Rebursa. The rocky chain of hills with its broken outlines and sharp peaks, and the winding Saurgo lapping at its foot, stretched out on the right, and rose step by step up to the highest summit, Mount Corace, which glittered in the sun like a helmet. To the left of the road the ground sloped away in undulations, like a wide stretch of sandy shore, and further away it rose into brown lumpy hills like the humps of camels in the desert.

“Look! look! There are some more up there!” I cried as I noticed another pale silvery cloud of blossom. “Don’t you see, Antonello?”

He looked less at the almond blossom than at me, a timorous smile of amazement hovering on his lips, wondering perhaps at the childish joy which the sight of the early flowers had awaked in me. “But what fairer welcome could the land beloved of my father have given me? What brighter festal decorations could this hardy country with its backbone of rock have worn?”

“If Anatolia, Violante, and Massimilla were only here!” exclaimed Oddo, who began to share my unexpected enthusiasm. “Ah, if they were only here!” and regret was expressed in his voice.

“We must bring them here among the flowers,” said Antonello softly.

“See what a quantity!” I continued, giving myself up to the novel pleasure with the more confidence that I felt able to transfer some share of it to these poor pent-up souls. “I am glad they belong to me, Oddo.”

“We must bring them here among the flowers,” repeated Antonello softly, as if in a dream.

It seemed to me that his feverish eyes were refreshed by the sight of these pure blossoms, and that in his gentle words they were fused with the vague outlines of his three sisters: “Massimilla prays; Violante stifles herself with perfumes; Anatolia is our life and soul.”

“Stop!” I rose and said to the coachman, for a sudden idea had struck me, and filled me with singular delight. “Let us get out; let us go into the fields. I want you to carry home some branches. It will be a treat for them down there.”

Oddo and Antonello looked at each other with rather a puzzled air, half smiling, half shy, as if the idea were something unforeseen and strange which at once scared them and gave them a delicious sensation. They had shown me their malady, they had revealed to me their sorrow, they had spoken to me of the gloomy prison from which they had come, and were now about to enter again; and here was I, on the high road, asking them to acknowledge and celebrate the feast of spring: of that spring which they had forgotten, and which they appeared to be seeing for the first time after long years, gazing on it with mingled fear and joy as if it were a miracle.

“Let us get out!”

I was tired no longer, for I felt within me the abundance of life, and that exaltation which spontaneous acts of generosity give to the spirit. I was liberal of myself to these two needy souls; I warmed them at my fire, I slaked their thirst with my wine. I read in their eyes (and they were continually looking at me) a kind of submission and faithful surrender. Already they both belonged to me; so I could exert my benevolence and my power over them without fear of failure. “What are you waiting for? Won’t you get out?” I asked Antonello, who was standing with his foot on the step, hesitating as if some danger threatened him.

The contracted smile was still on his face. He was making a visible effort as he put his foot to the ground; he staggered as though he had miscalculated the height, and his first steps were jerky and uncertain. I helped him up the path. As he felt the soft earth sink under his footsteps he paused; and with face turned towards the blossoming trees, he breathed hard, drank in the beautiful sight with his pale eyes, and appeared to be almost dazzled.

I touched his arm and said--

“You didn’t remember these things.”

Oddo, who had already entered the orchard, exclaimed in a kind of intoxication--

“Ah! if Violante were only here! This perfume is worth far more than the essences sent her by Maria Sophia.”

Antonello repeated softly--

“We must bring them here among the flowers.”

It seemed as though the sound of these words had fascinated his ear from the first, like a musical cadence. His voice kept the same inflections as he repeated them. And as I heard the words again I felt strangely disturbed, almost as if he had addressed them to me. Again the desire to cut some of the branches arose within me. It had died out at the sight of so much living beauty. And vaguely I pictured to myself the great gift of spring arriving at the gloomy palace in the twilight.

“Is there no one about?” I asked impatiently. A peasant came running up. Breathlessly he bent his head, and began to kiss my hand passionately.

“Cut some of the finest branches,” I ordered him.

He was a magnificent example of his species, a worthy inhabitant of this rugged flint-strewn land. He seemed to me like a survivor of Deucalion’s ancient race, sprung from the pebbles. He brandished his bill-hook, and with clean, rapid strokes began to mutilate the joyous vegetable creation. Each stroke sent down a shower of loose petals, which lay like snow on the ground.

“Look,” I said to Antonello, showing him a branch; “did you ever see anything so delicate and so fresh?”

He raised his weak, effeminate hand and touched a flower with the tips of his fingers. It was the gesture of the invalid or convalescent, who touches a living thing with the dim notion that the contact will leave some small part of its vitality with him, just as butterflies leave behind the ephemeral dust of their wings. He turned to his brother with almost tender melancholy in his painful smile.

“Do you see, Oddo? We had forgotten, we did not know ...”

“But don’t you live in a garden?” I asked, marvelling at the amazement and emotion caused by a simple branch of almond blossom, as though it were an unheard-of novelty. “Don’t you pass your whole time among leaves and flowers?”

“Yes, that is true,” answered Antonello; “but somehow I had ceased to notice them. Besides, these are, or seem to me, _quite different_. I can’t explain the impression they make on me. You would not understand.”

The ringing sound of the bill-hook went on, and he turned towards the almond tree, which was trembling under the blows. The man was sitting up in the tree, with the trunk in the grip of his muscular legs, and above his head, which was dark as a mulatto’s, hung the fresh silvery cloud, quivering at the glitter of the hooked steel.

“Tell him to stop,” begged Antonello. “We shall not be able to carry all those branches.”

“The carriage shall take you to Trigento with your burden.”

And I lingered on, picturing the arrival of the springlike gift at the gates of the park where the three sisters were waiting. Their faces came before me indistinctly, yet with some trace of the features associated with memories of childhood and youth. And the desire to see them again, to hear their voices, to recall those memories in their presence, to know their troubles, and to take part in their unknown life, grew stronger and stronger within me, till it began to take the acuteness of anxiety.

Following out my own line of thought and feeling (the carriage had already begun to roll towards Rebursa), I said--

“Long ago the park of Trigento used to be full of jonquils and violets.”

“So it is still,” said Oddo.

“There were great hedges of box.”

“So there are still.”

“I remember so well the year you came back from Monaco. Massimilla was very ill. I used to come over to Trigento nearly every day with my mother ...”

We were immersed in spring. The carriage was crammed with almond blossom; it was piled behind our backs and on our knees. Antonello’s white face looked more wasted than ever in the midst of that fragrant whiteness, and the melancholy of his feverish eyes, contrasted with that living expression of youth eternally renewed, went to my heart.

“What a pity you are not coming to Trigento to-day!” said Oddo, with deep regret in his voice. “I don’t like leaving you.”

“Yes, indeed,” added Antonello. “We have seen you to-day for the first time after years and years of silence and oblivion, and now it seems impossible to do without you.”

They spoke these affectionate words with that simplicity and candour which belong to solitary men, not accustomed to the affectations of ordinary life. I felt already that they cared for me and I for them; that the great gap made by the years was already bridged over; and that their fate was about to be bound up irrevocably with mine. Why did my soul incline so specially towards these two prostrate beings? why did it yearn with such infinite desire over graces and sorrows of which it had only caught a glimpse? why was it so impatient to pour out its riches over this poverty? Was it true, then, that the long and hard discipline I had undergone had not dried up the springs of emotion and imagination, but had made them deeper and more fervent? On that February afternoon, warmed by the breath of early spring, a vapour of poetry rose around me. The babbling flow of the Saurgo at the foot of rocks fashioned by fire; the dead city in the marshy river; the peak of Corace, glittering like a helmet on a threatening brow; the brown fields, strewn with flints full of dormant life; the vines and olives, contorted with the huge effort of producing such rich fruit from such meagre limbs; the whole aspect of the country around was symbolical of the power of thoughts nourished in secret, of the tragic mystery of destinies fulfilled, of painful energy, tyrannical constraint, proud passion, of every harsh and rigid virtue peculiar to lonely scenery or lonely man. And yet the softest of spring airs breathed over the austere land; silver almond blossom crowned the hills, as foam crowns the waves; under the slanting rays the slopes here and there wore the look of soft velvet; the rocky peaks were turned to rosy gold against a sky fading into delicate green. And so the influence of the season and the magic of the hour were able to soften the severe genius of the place, clothe its harshness with tenderness, temper its violence, and throw a gentle enchantment over that rocky basin, fashioned by fire at the terrible bidding of an ancient volcano; afterwards continually invaded and corroded by the greed, or enriched by the liberality, of an ancient river.

“We shall see each other very often,” I said, after a pause, in reply to their kind words. “From Rebursa to Trigento is a short distance; and I know that in you I have found two brothers----”

They both started as a mountain keeper passed us at a gallop, discharging his carbine in the air to give the signal for the salute of welcome and joy. Rebursa rose before me with its four towers of stone, still strong and fair, still bearing intact the impress of its former pride, casting the shadow of its power over a vigorous race, among whom obedience and fidelity were transmitted from father to son as a portion of their inheritance.

But anguish such as I had not felt for long came over my soul as I set foot on the threshold, strewn with myrtle and laurel, where there was no beloved voice to bid me welcome and call me by name. The figures of my dead appeared to me at the foot of the staircase, and fixed their colourless eyes on me without a movement, without a sign, without a smile.

A little later I followed the carriage with my eyes for a long, long way on the road to Trigento, as it bore away the two sad invalids, nearly buried under flowers. And my soul was there before them at the park gates, where the three sisters were waiting--Anatolia, Violante, Massimilla!--and I caught a glimpse of them as they received the fresh gift of spring in their outstretched arms; and I tried to recognise their noble faces through the fragrant thicket, and to discern the brow of her whom my soul would have elected for the desired union. The gathering twilight heightened this strange and sudden agitation caused by the desire for love. Blue shadows filled the valley of the Saurgo, hid the dead city, crept slowly up the steep terraces of rock; and when stars began to twinkle in the sky, down below festal bonfires were lit; they flared up, multiplied, formed large wreaths. Lonely and lofty, far apart from these signs of life below, the pinnacles of rock still shone, withdrawn almost into the remoteness of a myth, into the sphere of a supernatural atmosphere. And all of a sudden they blazed like fireworks with an extraordinary light, which only lasted a few moments; then they grew paler, turned violet, faded away, and went out. The lofty peak of Corace was the last to remain aflame; its point clove the sky sharply, like the cry of hopeless passion; then, with the rapidity of a lightning flash, it faded away also, and entered the universal night.

“If the severity of thy discipline should have no other reward than the divine emotion that has overwhelmed thee since yesterday, thou mightest still rejoice over the result of thy efforts,” said the _dæmon_ to me, as we rode slowly towards the walled garden. “Now at last thou hast reached maturity! Until yesterday thou knewest not what a degree of maturity and completeness thy soul had attained. The happy revelation comes to thee from the desire thou hast suddenly felt to pour out thy riches, to spread them, to spend them without stint. Thou dost feel thyself inexhaustible, capable of nourishing a thousand lives. This is indeed the prize of thy diligent efforts; thou possessest now the ready fertility of deeply cultivated land. Therefore enjoy thy spring; leave thyself open to all influences; welcome the unknown and unforeseen, and anything else that fate may bring thee; abolish all prohibitions. The first part of thy task is completed. Thou hast given integrity and intensity to thy nature; let it now be sacred to thee. Respect the slightest motions of thy thought and sentiment, because thy nature alone produces them. Since this nature is entirely thy own, thou mayest yield to it and enjoy it without limits. From henceforth everything is permitted to thee, even that which thou didst hate and despise in others, because everything becomes ennobled after passing through the ordeal of fire. Fear not to be merciful, thou who art strong and able to dominate and chastise. Be not ashamed of thy perplexity and thy languor, thou who hast made thyself a will tempered as hard as beaten swords. Repel not the tenderness which overwhelms thee, the illusion which enfolds thee, the melancholy which attracts thee, all the new indefinable feelings which now approach thy astonished soul. They are but the dim shapes of vapour which escape from the life fermenting in the depths of thy fertile nature. Therefore welcome them without suspicion, for they are not foreign to thee, nor will they diminish or corrupt thy nature. Perhaps on the morrow they will appear to thee as heralds of that new birth which is thy desire.”