THE GORGE
After her light supper was over, Agnes took her distaff, wound with
shining white flax, and went and seated herself in her favorite place,
on the low parapet that overlooked the gorge.
This ravine, with its dizzy depths, its waving foliage, its dripping
springs and the low murmur of the little stream that pursued its way
far down at the bottom, was one of those things which stimulated
her impressible imagination, and filled her with a solemn and vague
delight. The ancient Italian tradition made it the home of fauns and
dryads, wild woodland creatures, intermediate links between vegetable
life and that of sentiment and reasoning humanity. The more earnest
faith that came in with Christianity, if it had its brighter lights
in an immortality of blessedness, had also its deeper shadows in the
intenser perceptions it awakened of sin and evil, and of the mortal
struggle by which the human spirit must avoid endless woe and rise to
endless felicity. The myths with which the colored Italian air was
filled in mediæval ages no longer resembled those graceful, floating,
cloud-like figures one sees in the ancient chambers of Pompeii,--the
bubbles and rainbows of human fancy, rising aimless and buoyant,
with a mere freshness of animal life, against a black background of
utter and hopeless ignorance as to man's past or future. They were
rather expressed by solemn images of mournful, majestic angels and
of triumphant saints, or fearful, warning presentations of loathsome
fiends. Each lonesome gorge and sombre dell had tales no more of
tricky fauns and dryads, but of those restless, wandering demons
who, having lost their own immortality of blessedness, constantly
lie in wait to betray frail humanity, and cheat it of that glorious
inheritance bought by the Great Redemption.
The education of Agnes had been one which rendered her whole
system peculiarly sensitive and impressible to all influences from
the invisible and unseen. Of this education we shall speak more
particularly hereafter. At present we see her sitting in the twilight
on the moss-grown marble parapet, her distaff, with its silvery flax,
lying idly in her hands, and her widening dark eyes gazing intently
into the gloomy gorge below, from which arose the far-off complaining
babble of the brook at the bottom and the shiver and sigh of evening
winds through the trailing ivy. The white mist was slowly rising,
wavering, undulating, and creeping its slow way up the sides of the
gorge. Now it hid a tuft of foliage, and now it wreathed itself
around a horned clump of aloes, and, streaming far down below it
in the dimness, made it seem like the goblin robe of some strange,
supernatural being.
The evening light had almost burned out in the sky; only a band of
vivid red lay low in the horizon out to sea, and the round full moon
was just rising like a great silver lamp, while Vesuvius with its smoky
top began in the obscurity to show its faintly flickering fires. A
vague agitation seemed to oppress the child; for she sighed deeply, and
often repeated with fervor the Ave Maria.
At this moment there began to rise from the very depths of the gorge
below her the sound of a rich tenor voice, with a slow, sad modulation,
and seeming to pulsate upward through the filmy, shifting mists. It was
one of those voices which seem fit to be the outpouring of some spirit
denied all other gifts of expression, and rushing with passionate
fervor through this one gate of utterance. So distinctly were the
words spoken, that they seemed each one to rise as with a separate
intelligence out of the mist, and to knock at the door of the heart.
Sad is my life, and lonely!
No hope for me,
Save thou, my love, my only,
I see!
Where art thou, O my fairest?
Where art thou gone?
Dove of the rock, I languish
Alone!
They say thou art so saintly,
Who dare love thee?
Yet bend thine eyelids holy
On me!
Though heaven alone possess thee,
Thou dwell'st above,
Yet heaven, didst thou but know it,
Is love.
There was such an intense earnestness in these sounds, that large tears
gathered in the wide dark eyes, and fell one after another upon the
sweet alyssum and maiden's-hair that grew in the crevices of the marble
wall. She shivered and drew away from the parapet, and thought of
stories she had heard the nuns tell of wandering spirits who sometimes
in lonesome places pour forth such entrancing music as bewilders the
brain of the unwary listener, and leads him to some fearful destruction.
"Agnes!" said the sharp voice of old Elsie, appearing at the door,
"here! where are you?"
"Here, grandmamma."
"Who's that singing this time o' night?"
"I don't know, grandmamma."
Somehow the child felt as if that singing were strangely sacred to
her,--a _rapport_ between her and something vague and invisible which
might yet become dear.
"Is't down in the gorge?" said the old woman, coming with her heavy,
decided step to the parapet, and looking over, her keen black eyes
gleaming like dagger-blades into the mist. "If there's anybody there,"
she said, "let them go away, and not be troubling honest women with
any of their caterwauling. Come, Agnes," she said, pulling the girl by
the sleeve, "you must be tired, my lamb! and your evening prayers are
always so long, best be about them, girl, so that old grandmamma may
put you to bed. What ails the girl? Been crying! Your hand is cold as a
stone."
"Grandmamma, what if that might be a spirit?" she said. "Sister Rosa
told me stories of singing spirits that have been in this very gorge."
"Likely enough," said Dame Elsie; "but what's that to us? Let 'em
sing!--so long as we don't listen, where's the harm done? We will
sprinkle holy water all round the parapet, and say the office of Saint
Agnes, and let them sing till they are hoarse."
Such was the triumphant view which this energetic good woman took of
the power of the means of grace which her church placed at her disposal.
Nevertheless, while Agnes was kneeling at her evening prayers, the old
dame consoled herself with a soliloquy, as with a brush she vigorously
besprinkled the premises with holy water.
"Now, here's the plague of a girl! If she's handsome,--and nobody wants
one that isn't,--why, then, it's a purgatory to look after her. This
one is good enough,--none of your hussies, like Giulietta: but the
better they are, the more sure to have fellows after them. A murrain
on that cavalier,--king's brother, or what not!--it was he serenading,
I'll be bound. I must tell Antonio, and have the girl married, for
aught I see: and I don't want to give her to him either; he didn't
bring her up. There's no peace for us mothers. Maybe I'll tell Father
Francesco about it. That's the way poor little Isella was carried away.
Singing is of the Devil, I believe; it always bewitches girls. I'd like
to have poured some hot oil down the rocks: I'd have made him squeak in
another tone, I reckon. Well, well! I hope I shall come in for a good
seat in paradise for all the trouble I've had with her mother, and am
like to have with her,--that's all!"
In an hour more, the large, round, sober moon was shining fixedly on
the little mansion in the rocks, silvering the glossy darkness of the
orange-leaves, while the scent of the blossoms arose like clouds about
the cottage. The moonlight streamed through the unglazed casement, and
made a square of light on the little bed where Agnes was sleeping,
in which square her delicate face was framed, with its tremulous and
spiritual expression most resembling in its sweet plaintive purity some
of the Madonna faces of Fra Angelico,--those tender wild flowers of
Italian religion and poetry.
By her side lay her grandmother, with those sharp, hard, clearly cut
features, so worn and bronzed by time, so lined with labor and care, as
to resemble one of the Fates in the picture of Michel Angelo; and even
in her sleep she held the delicate lily hand of the child in her own
hard, brown one, with a strong and determined clasp.
While they sleep, we must tell something more of the story of the
little Agnes,--of what she is, and what are the causes which have made
her such.