“You are welcome.”
Her actions had a kind of manly frankness, and the contact of her hand
gave me an impression of generous strength and genuine kindness; it
seemed to inspire me suddenly with brotherly confidence.
It was a hand unadorned with rings, not too white nor too slim,
but robust in its pure shape, ready to clasp and to give support,
flexible and firm at the same time. There was an impress of pride on
its surface, varied as it was by the low relief of the joints and the
intricacy of the veins, and there were lines of softness in the hollow
warmth of the palm, where a radiant fire of feeling seemed to glow.
“You are welcome,” said the warm, cordial voice. “You have brought us
spring and sunshine from Rome----”
“Oh no!” I interrupted. “I found them both here. In Rome I left nothing
but mist and other gloomy things. I have just been saying how much I
regret having stayed away from here so long.”
“You must make amends to us for your forgetfulness,” said Antonello
with his painful smile.
“What do you think of Trigento?” asked Anatolia. “It is hardly changed
at all, is it? You used to come here with your mother. You remember,
don’t you? We have never forgotten her, nor ever shall. Among the
things which have remained unchanged here, you will find the memory of
that saintly soul and her wonderful kindness.”
A grave silence followed these words of recollection. For a few moments
the sense of death which fell upon my filial heart threw an aspect of
unreality on all the persons and things present. For a few moments
everything seemed to become as far away and empty as the sky whose
fading colour I could see through the bare vine branches of the trellis
as if through a ragged net. But as the brief illusion vanished, I felt
myself nearer to her who had produced it, and I could not waste time
again in idle words. I wanted to penetrate into the heart of their
sadness.
“And Donna Aldoina?” I asked in a low voice, turning to Anatolia, and
speaking now to her alone.
Was she not probably the real guardian of the gloomy dwelling? By
calling up the memory of death had she not herself raised the image of
the lunatic?
“She is still just the same,” she replied, also in a low voice. “It is
better you should not see her, to-day at least. It would be too painful
for you. And imagine what it is for us! It is a daily torture, a
torture that has lasted for years without pause, to the wearing of our
souls....” Her eyes cast a momentary furtive look towards Antonello,
and I read in them the secret terror that she felt for the poor
invalid who was trembling on the precipice.
“We have never had the courage to separate her from us, to send her
away,” she added, “for she is not violent; in fact, she is quite
gentle. Sometimes she seems cured; we almost believe that a miracle has
come to pass; she calls us by our names, remembers some little thing
that happened long ago, and smiles calmly. Although we know that it is
all an illusion, every time we tremble with hope, every time we choke
with anxiety. You understand....”
Her voice lost its tone in her sorrow, like a loose musical string.
“It is impossible to confine her to her rooms, to keep her shut up; it
is impossible. And we have not the heart to avoid her when she appears,
when she comes to meet us, when she speaks to us. So she is continually
at our side; she is mingled with our existence....”
“Some days,” interrupted Antonello suddenly, with a kind of
impetuosity, as if driven on by uncontrollable excitement, “some days
the whole house is full of her. We breathe her madness. One or other of
us stays by her for hours and hours while she talks on; sits opposite
her with hands imprisoned in those trembling hands of hers. Do you
understand?”
A new and still more oppressive silence fell upon us all. And every one
of us was suffering, as he acknowledged in his soul the reality of the
sorrow which the slender blue shadows of the trellis, mingled with the
gentle gold of the sun, seemed to wrap in a veil of dreams. Through
the silence the sound of a light footfall was heard coming up the lower
flight of steps. At regular intervals came a faint bubbling sound as
if a fountain was overflowing its basin. A mysterious quiver seemed to
shake the lonely garden below. And I understood how a gloomy and feeble
mind might construct an unreal life out of these phantoms, and nourish
it till overcome by it.
Thus the torture to which destiny had condemned these last survivors
of a fallen race was suddenly revealed to me in all its horrors; and
the vision called up by the words of one who was certainly to become
a victim appeared to me magnified by a tragic light. In imagination I
could see the mad old princess sitting in the shadow of her distant
apartment, and one of her children leaning over her, with hands
imprisoned in hers. The attitude of this mournful enchantress seemed to
me fatal and inexorable. I felt as if she were unconsciously drawing
all the children of her blood one after the other into the circle of
her madness, and as if not one of them would be able to escape that
blind and cruel force. Like an ancestral Erinnys, she was presiding
over the dissolution of her race.
Then through the bare branches of the trellis I gazed up at the silent
palace, which till that day had harboured in its grim depths such
desperate anguish, and hidden so many useless tears--tears falling from
pure and eager eyes, worthy of reflecting the most glorious sights of
the world, and of pouring joy into the soul of poets and rulers.
“Eyes of Beauty!” I thought, gazing again at the motionless Violante.
“What earthly misery can veil the splendour of the truth that shines
forth from you? What afflicted soul can fail to acknowledge the
consoling power that flows from you?” The pain I had been feeling
ceased suddenly, as if balm had been applied; the troublous images
faded away like a mournful vapour.
She was seated motionless on a stone plinth which had once supported an
urn. Her elbow rested on her knee, her chin in her hand; in this simple
attitude her whole figure expressed that succession of mute harmonies
which is the secret of supreme art. She seemed to be present with us,
and yet apart. Upon her low forehead was visible the reflection of the
ideal crown that she wore upon her thoughts; and her hair, gathered
up in a great knot on her neck, seemed to have obeyed the same rhythm
which regulates the repose of the sea.
“Massimilla,” said Oddo, introducing the third sister.
I turned, and found she was already close to us. She was ascending the
last steps with her light tread. Her face and her whole person bore
traces of the dream in which she had been plunged, of the intimate
poetry of the hour just past, spent with a faithful book in the
solitude of the nook known to her alone.
“Where have you been?” asked Oddo before she reached us.
She smiled shyly, and a faint colour tinged her thin cheeks.
“Down there,” she answered, “reading.”
Her voice sounded liquid and silvery as it came through the delicate
lips. There was a blade of grass as a marker in the pages of her book.
As I bowed she gave me her hand, still with the same shy smile. And
something of the tender compassion I used to feel long ago for the
little invalid my mother visited awoke again in my soul; for her hand
was so slight and soft, that it reminded me of those slender flowers
called day lilies, which bloom for one day only in the hot sand.
She did not speak, and neither could I find words delicate enough to be
appropriate to her timid grace.
“Shall we go up?” said Anatolia, turning to me, her clear voice at once
breaking through the kind of spell which the unutterable melancholy of
our thoughts had cast over us as we sat in the warmth under the trellis.
“Our father wants so much to see you again,” and we all began to ascend
the steps towards the palace.
The three sisters went first, a little apart from each other, Anatolia
first, Massimilla last. They said a few words now and then in turn,
for the silence of things around demanded the sound of their voices,
and perhaps they hoped to chase away the sadness of that silence from
over the head of their guest. Those short sonorous cadences flowing
from unseen lips grew fainter as I advanced; and I ascended with the
voices and the shadows of the maidens round me, feeling as amazed
and perplexed as if I were in enchantment. But though the three
rhythms alternated in my ear, to my sight they appeared simultaneous
and continuous, so that from time to time my spirit would listen
attentively to seize the difference, or would take a concave form, so
to speak, that therein they might melt into one deep harmony. And like
those episodes which in a fugue fill up the silence of the theme, the
aspect of the things we passed, or the peculiarities of the forms,
entered into me, and enriched my musical sense without ruffling it.
Marks of decay and neglect were strewn over the ancient steps, here and
there still encumbered with the spoils of the previous autumn. There
was the statue of a recumbent nymph, with the head bent in a painful
position, for the moss-stained brow was deprived of the support of the
arm. In a long vase of reddish clay, like a sarcophagus, common grass
was growing, and in the midst of this hostile invasion a single plant
of daffodils was flowering feebly and tremulously. Under a bit of
broken parapet thrown down by the penetrating roots of the ivy appeared
an inner channel like a broken artery; and one saw the sparkle and
heard the murmur of the water as it flowed to fill the heart of the
weeping fountain. Marks of decay and neglect were strewn on our path.
The statue, the flower, and the water spoke to me of the same truth.
And Violante, and Massimilla, and Anatolia were transfigured in my mind
by means of mysterious analogies.
“Oh, beautiful souls,” I thought, as I measured the rhythm of their
visible existence, “is not the perfection of human love perhaps to be
found in your trinity? You are the triple form which appeared to my
desire in the hour of the great harmony. In you all the highest needs
of my flesh and spirit might be satisfied; and you might become the
miraculous instruments of my will and of my fate in the fulfilment of
the work I have to do. Are you not such as I myself would have created
to adorn with sublime beauty and sorrow, the mysterious world of which
I am the creator? To-day, I know nothing of you beyond the outward
appearance and a few passing words; but I feel that ere long each one
of you in her entire being will correspond to the image which breathes
and throbs within me.”
Thus did the three sisters ascend in my aspirations and my prayers,
each one obedient to the secret music that was guiding her life towards
an unknown end. And their figures threw great shadows on the stone.
When I set foot on the threshold, the fantastic image of the mad woman
took hold of my mind so vividly and fiercely that I gave a secret
shudder. The whole place seemed to me to be under her sinister sway,
saddened and cast down by her perpetual presence. I thought I read
the same uneasiness in the faces of her children. And I felt as if we
should find her awaiting us at the top of the stairs.