“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....”