“Anatolia is calling us,” she added. “Make haste!”
The Saurgo seemed to grow broader in the twilight, to vanish away
into infinite distance, then to regain the strength of its current,
to give promise of carrying us on into fairer lands. And that royal
creature, bending over the great soft, rosy stream in the eagerness of
her thirst, of her fierce desire for a liquid suited to her voluptuous
being, was full of such mystery, of beauty, and poetry that my soul
went out to her in the most fervent act of worship.
“Look!” then said the enchantress, pointing to the scene which she
seemed to have called up with a wave of her hand. “Look!”
All around us on the water, over which a slight shiver was passing, the
living calyxes were closing with a slow lip-like motion, hesitating a
few moments, withdrawing, sinking, disappearing under the leaves one by
one or in groups, as if some power of slumber were calling them below.
Wide spaces were left deserted, but here and there in the midst of them
a single belated lily would display the utmost of her grace in this
delay. A vague melancholy hovered over the water on each spot where one
of the lingerers disappeared. And then it seemed as if the dreams of
the submerged multitude rose up like a mist from the great soft rosy
stream.
* * * * *
But it was on the summit of Corace that the unexpected revelation took
place which finally decided our fate.
We had stopped at Scultro to visit the ancient abbey, where the remains
still exist of a sumptuous mausoleum, the work of Maestro Gualtiero of
Germany, built as a memorial of herself and her three sons by a lady of
the Cantelmo family--that magnificent _Domina Rita_, who as the wife of
Giovanni Antonio Caldora was mother of the great condottiere Jacopo.
And Anatolia and I had lingered behind in the mouldy chapel to gaze at
the recumbent figure of the young hero, clad to the throat in heavy
armour, with only the curly head uncovered, reposing so royally on the
marble pillow.
Then after a long climb on foot up a steep narrow path--for we had left
the mules behind on the level--we had reached the northern brow of
the extinct crater, now transformed into the lake to which Secli gives
its name. At our feet we had, on the one hand, the tawny valley of the
Saurgo; on the other, two high spurs sent out of the main range into
the plains below, beyond which lies the distant sea. Above our heads a
few clouds hung almost motionless in the vast expanse of crystalline
blue, and seemed compact and dazzling as heaps of snow.
Seated on some boulders, we gazed in silence. Violante and Massimilla
seemed tired, and Oddo had not yet succeeded in controlling his
nervousness. But Anatolia was moving about, gathering little flowers in
the crevices of the rocks.
A vague, confused restlessness stole over me, intensified at times to
the point of acute pain. I felt that at last the inevitable moment
of choice was hanging over me; that I dared linger no more among the
tormenting, delicious alternations of passion and perplexity, nor any
more strive to resolve the three noble rhythms into one harmony. That
day, for the last time, the three givers of happiness appeared to me in
unison beneath the light of the same heaven. How long a time had passed
since that first hour when, as I ascended the ancient steps, in the
voices and virginal shadows moving like forms of magic, surrounded by
the traces of neglect and decay, I had discovered the first music, and
wrought the first transformation? On the morrow the short-lived spell
would be broken, and for ever.
Now I felt compelled to say aloud to Anatolia the words I had already
silently addressed to the pure, mysterious shadow which had witnessed
my interview with her father. As we stood together shortly before
in the deserted chapel, looking on that tomb erected by the loyalty
of a brave woman, had we not both partaken of the same sentiment
and the same idea? Had I not said to her even then, without words:
“Thou too mightest become a mother of heroes, oh thou who sharest my
consciousness. I know that thou hast gathered up my wish, and hast laid
it within thy true heart, where it sparkles like a diamond. I know that
in a dream thou hast watched a whole night mysteriously over the sleep
of a child. While his body slept, breathing deeply, thou didst hold his
soul, tangible as a crystal ball, in thy hands, and thy bosom swelled
with marvellous intuitions.”
Now I felt the need of exchanging a binding promise with her before she
started off on her mournful journey with the novice and her brother.
But my anxiety was deepening into pain, as if some real danger were
hanging over me. And I could not fail to acknowledge the cause of the
emotion which Violante was perpetually stirring in me by her every
action.
The ruins of Linturno lay beneath us in the valley like a heap of white
stones, like a strip of dry shore, in the midst of the sweet dead
waters, where only yesterday by a double miracle she had cast a spell
over the water-lilies and over my soul. The spell was still upon me
whenever I looked at her. Seated on a boulder in the same attitude
as when seated that first day on the plinth, she looked like one of
the immortal statues. Once again I gazed at her, and noticed how,
although present, she was yet far away, as she had been that day; and
I thought again: “It is right she should remain untouched. Only by a
god could she be possessed without shame. Never shall her body bear the
disfiguring weight; never shall the flood of milk mar the pure outline
of her bosom....”
An inward impulse made me start to my feet as if to free myself from
a restraint, and turning to her who was gathering the little flowers
in the crevices of the rocks, I said: “As you are not tired, Anatolia,
will you come up to the top with me?”
“I am quite ready,” she assented in her clear cordial voice; and she
went up to Massimilla and laid the flowers in her lap.
Violante sat still in the same attitude, holding her veil between her
fingers--impassive as though she had not heard. But I felt that her
eyes were not looking at outward things, and I was troubled, as though
a ray of the fascination flowing from the mysterious depths on which
her gaze was fixed had penetrated me.
“Don’t be long in coming down!” Oddo begged in his imploring tones, his
pale face betraying the discomfort, the perpetual fear of giddiness
which he felt on those heights. “We shall wait for you.”
The peak of Corace rose up against the sky as bare and sharp as a
helmet, leaning over a little towards the west; and the path ascending
it ran along a steep rib as narrow as the edge of a precipice, dividing
the two slopes. The passage was so difficult and dangerous that I
offered Anatolia my hand for support, and, smiling, she laid hers
in mine as she stumbled over the rough rocks. We were out of sight
already, free and alone, monarchs of the vast space. Every breath
seemed to purify the blood in our veins and to lighten the weight of
the flesh. And the aromatic essences which the heat of the sun, like a
powerful chemical, pressed out of the rare Alpine plants, quickened the
rhythm of our life.
We stopped, both suddenly out of breath, and our hands, which had been
too tightly clasped, unloosed themselves. I looked in my companion’s
eyes, but she was no longer smiling. Her face became grave, almost sad,
as if overshadowed by a regret.
“Let us stop here,” she murmured, lowering her eyelids. “I cannot go
any further....”
“A little further,” I said, for a vehement desire to reach the summit
was spurring me on, “only a few steps more, and we shall be at the top!”
“I cannot go any further,” she repeated in an exhausted voice unlike
her own, and she passed her hands over her face as if to brush away
something that distressed her.
Then she tried to smile at me.
“What a strange illusion!” she added. “The top is a long way off yet.
We always seem about to reach it, and the higher one goes, the further
off it seems to be.”
Then after a pause, in which she seemed to be listening to her own deep
heart--
“And there are souls suffering down below!”
She turned her face, on which the shadow of some thought had fallen,
towards the place where her sisters were waiting.
“Let us go back, Claudio,” she added, in a tone that I cannot forget,
for never did human voice express so many wonderful things so briefly.
“Dear, dear Anatolia!” I broke out, seizing her hands, overcome by the
extraordinary feeling aroused in me by those simple words of hers,
which I took to be the unmistakable indication of an inward emotion
that was almost divine. “Let me first say to you what my silence has
told you more than once.... Where can I offer my love more worthily
than here on this height, to you who are the highest of created beings,
Anatolia?”
She turned very pale, not like one who hears tidings of joy long
waited and prayed for, but like one who receives an invisible blow
in a vital part; and though apparently motionless, in spirit she was
shaken towards me by some strange fearful shudder, by some instinctive
movement of horror; and this I saw, not with my eyes, but with one of
those unknown senses that sometimes manifest themselves in a momentary
vibration on the surface of the human nerves, and then disappear again
for ever, leaving the consciousness amazed.
She cast a look of indefinable anxiety around her.
“You speak as if we were alone,” she said vaguely, “as if I were alone
... as if I were alone....”
“Anatolia, what is the matter with you?” I asked, troubled by her
inexplicable distress, by the deep change in her face, the incoherence
of her words.
And a thought flashed across my uncertainty. Had she not been suddenly
assailed, she accustomed for so many years to her gloomy prison, she
the resigned martyr within the ancient walls, had she not perhaps been
suddenly assailed by that mysterious terror, that kind of panic which
reigns among the solitudes of stern and silent mountains? Yes; no doubt
she was a prey to this terrible fascination, and her spirit had gone
astray under it.
A savage scene lay at our feet on every side in the glaring light. The
chain of rocks, bare and clear in their desolate barrenness to their
remotest passes, stretched away like a mass of gigantic and monstrous
relics, left for the amazement of mankind as traces of some primeval
battle of the Titans. Ruined towers, broken walls, fallen citadels,
crumbled domes, tottering porches, mutilated colossi, prows of vessels,
backbones of monsters, bones of Titans, every kind of monstrosity was
simulated by the jutting peaks and dark ravines of this formidable
range. The distance was so transparent that I could distinguish every
outline as clearly as if my eyes were beholding, on an infinitely
larger scale, the rock which Violante had shown me from the window-sill
with that creative sweep of her hand. The most distant peaks were
engraved on the sky with the same precise sharpness of outline which
the sloping sides of the crater close at hand assumed in the reflected
rays of the sun. The vast mouth of the spherical crater gaped with a
kind of eddying vehemence in the expression of its curves; it was like
a whirlpool, although inert. In part grey like ashes, elsewhere red
like rust, it was crossed here and there by long white streaks that
sparkled like salt, and were reflected in the metallic calm of the
water which had gathered at the bottom. And opposite us, overhanging
the edge of the precipice like a petrified flock of sheep, was Secli,
the solitary hermit-like village, where from time immemorial a small
industrious population has busied itself in making strings for musical
instruments.
“You are tired,” I said to my dear companion, trying to draw her under
the shadow of a boulder, which I thought might screen her on one
side at least from the sight of the space below, and give her back a
sense of security. “You are tired, Anatolia; you are not used to such
fatigue, and perhaps this view is rather terrible.... Lean back here
and close your eyes for a little. I will stand beside you. Here is my
arm. I can take you back without any danger. Now close your eyes for a
little....”
Again she tried to smile at me.
“No, no,” she said; “don’t trouble, Claudio.”