SUNSHINE
“Come,” said the Count, “I see you already find the old house dismal.
So do I, indeed! And yet it was a cheerful place in my boyhood. But, you
see, in my father’s days (and the same was true of all my endless line
of grandfathers, as I have heard), there used to be uncles, aunts, and
all manner of kindred, dwelling together as one family. They were
a merry and kindly race of people, for the most part, and kept one
another’s hearts warm.”
“Two hearts might be enough for warmth,” observed the sculptor, “even in
so large a house as this. One solitary heart, it is true, may be apt to
shiver a little. But, I trust, my friend, that the genial blood of your
race still flows in many veins besides your own?”
“I am the last,” said Donatello gloomily. “They have all vanished from
me, since my childhood. Old Tomaso will tell you that the air of Monte
Beni is not so favorable to length of days as it used to be. But that is
not the secret of the quick extinction of my kindred.”
“Then you are aware of a more satisfactory reason?” suggested Kenyon.
“I thought of one, the other night, while I was gazing at the stars,”
answered Donatello; “but, pardon me, I do not mean to tell it. One
cause, however, of the longer and healthier life of my forefathers was,
that they had many pleasant customs, and means of making themselves
glad, and their guests and friends along with them. Nowadays we have but
one!”
“And what is that?” asked the sculptor.
“You shall see!” said his young host.
By this time, he had ushered the sculptor into one of the numberless
saloons; and, calling for refreshment, old Stella placed a cold fowl
upon the table, and quickly followed it with a savory omelet, which
Girolamo had lost no time in preparing. She also brought some cherries,
plums, and apricots, and a plate full of particularly delicate figs, of
last year’s growth. The butler showing his white head at the door, his
master beckoned to him. “Tomaso, bring some Sunshine!” said he. The
readiest method of obeying this order, one might suppose, would have
been to fling wide the green window-blinds, and let the glow of the
summer noon into the carefully shaded room. But, at Monte Beni, with
provident caution against the wintry days, when there is little
sunshine, and the rainy ones, when there is none, it was the hereditary
custom to keep their Sunshine stored away in the cellar. Old Tomaso
quickly produced some of it in a small, straw-covered flask, out of
which he extracted the cork, and inserted a little cotton wool, to
absorb the olive oil that kept the precious liquid from the air.
“This is a wine,” observed the Count, “the secret of making which has
been kept in our family for centuries upon centuries; nor would it avail
any man to steal the secret, unless he could also steal the vineyard, in
which alone the Monte Beni grape can be produced. There is little else
left me, save that patch of vines. Taste some of their juice, and tell
me whether it is worthy to be called Sunshine! for that is its name.”
“A glorious name, too!” cried the sculptor. “Taste it,” said Donatello,
filling his friend’s glass, and pouring likewise a little into his own.
“But first smell its fragrance; for the wine is very lavish of it, and
will scatter it all abroad.”
“Ah, how exquisite!” said Kenyon. “No other wine has a bouquet like
this. The flavor must be rare, indeed, if it fulfill the promise of this
fragrance, which is like the airy sweetness of youthful hopes, that no
realities will ever satisfy!”
This invaluable liquor was of a pale golden hue, like other of the
rarest Italian wines, and, if carelessly and irreligiously quaffed,
might have been mistaken for a very fine sort of champagne. It was not,
however, an effervescing wine, although its delicate piquancy produced
a somewhat similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed
to sip again; but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause, in order to
detect the hidden peculiarities and subtile exquisiteness of its flavor,
that to drink it was really more a moral than a physical enjoyment.
There was a deliciousness in it that eluded analysis, and--like whatever
else is superlatively good--was perhaps better appreciated in the memory
than by present consciousness.
One of its most ethereal charms lay in the transitory life of the wine’s
richest qualities; for, while it required a certain leisure and delay,
yet, if you lingered too long upon the draught, it became disenchanted
both of its fragrance and its flavor.
The lustre should not be forgotten, among the other admirable endowments
of the Monte Beni wine; for, as it stood in Kenyon’s glass, a little
circle of light glowed on the table round about it, as if it were really
so much golden sunshine.
“I feel myself a better man for that ethereal potation,” observed the
sculptor. “The finest Orvieto, or that famous wine, the Est Est Est of
Montefiascone, is vulgar in comparison. This is surely the wine of the
Golden Age, such as Bacchus himself first taught mankind to press from
the choicest of his grapes. My dear Count, why is it not illustrious?
The pale, liquid gold, in every such flask as that, might be solidified
into golden scudi, and would quickly make you a millionaire!”
Tomaso, the old butler, who was standing by the table, and enjoying
the praises of the wine quite as much as if bestowed upon himself, made
answer,--“We have a tradition, Signore,” said he, “that this rare wine
of our vineyard would lose all its wonderful qualities, if any of it
were sent to market. The Counts of Monte Beni have never parted with a
single flask of it for gold. At their banquets, in the olden time, they
have entertained princes, cardinals, and once an emperor and once a
pope, with this delicious wine, and always, even to this day, it has
been their custom to let it flow freely, when those whom they love and
honor sit at the board. But the grand duke himself could not drink that
wine, except it were under this very roof!”
“What you tell me, my good friend,” replied Kenyon, “makes me venerate
the Sunshine of Monte Beni even more abundantly than before. As I
understand you, it is a sort of consecrated juice, and symbolizes the
holy virtues of hospitality and social kindness?”
“Why, partly so, Signore,” said the old butler, with a shrewd twinkle
in his eye; “but, to speak out all the truth, there is another excellent
reason why neither a cask nor a flask of our precious vintage should
ever be sent to market. The wine, Signore, is so fond of its native
home, that a transportation of even a few miles turns it quite sour. And
yet it is a wine that keeps well in the cellar, underneath this floor,
and gathers fragrance, flavor, and brightness, in its dark dungeon. That
very flask of Sunshine, now, has kept itself for you, sir guest (as a
maid reserves her sweetness till her lover comes for it), ever since a
merry vintage-time, when the Signore Count here was a boy!”
“You must not wait for Tomaso to end his discourse about the wine,
before drinking off your glass,” observed Donatello. “When once the
flask is uncorked, its finest qualities lose little time in making their
escape. I doubt whether your last sip will be quite so delicious as you
found the first.”
And, in truth, the sculptor fancied that the Sunshine became almost
imperceptibly clouded, as he approached the bottom of the flask. The
effect of the wine, however, was a gentle exhilaration, which did not so
speedily pass away.
Being thus refreshed, Kenyon looked around him at the antique saloon
in which they sat. It was constructed in a most ponderous style, with
a stone floor, on which heavy pilasters were planted against the wall,
supporting arches that crossed one another in the vaulted ceiling. The
upright walls, as well as the compartments of the roof, were completely
Covered with frescos, which doubtless had been brilliant when first
executed, and perhaps for generations afterwards. The designs were of
a festive and joyous character, representing Arcadian scenes, where
nymphs, fauns, and satyrs disported themselves among mortal youths and
maidens; and Pan, and the god of wine, and he of sunshine and music,
disdained not to brighten some sylvan merry-making with the scarcely
veiled glory of their presence. A wreath of dancing figures, in
admirable variety of shape and motion, was festooned quite round the
cornice of the room.
In its first splendor, the saloon must have presented an aspect both
gorgeous and enlivening; for it invested some of the cheerfullest ideas
and emotions of which the human mind is susceptible with the external
reality of beautiful form, and rich, harmonious glow and variety of
color. But the frescos were now very ancient. They had been rubbed and
scrubbed by old Stein and many a predecessor, and had been defaced in
one spot, and retouched in another, and had peeled from the wall in
patches, and had hidden some of their brightest portions under dreary
dust, till the joyousness had quite vanished out of them all. It was
often difficult to puzzle out the design; and even where it was more
readily intelligible, the figures showed like the ghosts of dead and
buried joys,--the closer their resemblance to the happy past, the
gloomier now. For it is thus, that with only an inconsiderable change,
the gladdest objects and existences become the saddest; hope fading
into disappointment; joy darkening into grief, and festal splendor into
funereal duskiness; and all evolving, as their moral, a grim identity
between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only give them a little time, and
they turn out to be just alike!
“There has been much festivity in this saloon, if I may judge by the
character of its frescos,” remarked Kenyon, whose spirits were still
upheld by the mild potency of the Monte Beni wine. “Your forefathers,
my dear Count, must have been joyous fellows, keeping up the vintage
merriment throughout the year. It does me good to think of them
gladdening the hearts of men and women, with their wine of Sunshine,
even in the Iron Age, as Pan and Bacchus, whom we see yonder, did in the
Golden one!”
“Yes; there have been merry times in the banquet hall of Monte Beni,
even within my own remembrance,” replied Donatello, looking gravely
at the painted walls. “It was meant for mirth, as you see; and when
I brought my own cheerfulness into the saloon, these frescos looked
cheerful too. But, methinks, they have all faded since I saw them last.”
“It would be a good idea,” said the sculptor, falling into his
companion’s vein, and helping him out with an illustration which
Donatello himself could not have put into shape, “to convert this saloon
into a chapel; and when the priest tells his hearers of the instability
of earthly joys, and would show how drearily they vanish, he may point
to these pictures, that were so joyous and are so dismal. He could not
illustrate his theme so aptly in any other way.”
“True, indeed,” answered the Count, his former simplicity strangely
mixing itself up with ah experience that had changed him; “and yonder,
where the minstrels used to stand, the altar shall be placed. A sinful
man might do all the more effective penance in this old banquet hall.”
“But I should regret to have suggested so ungenial a transformation in
your hospitable saloon,” continued Kenyon, duly noting the change in
Donatello’s characteristics. “You startle me, my friend, by so ascetic a
design! It would hardly have entered your head, when we first met. Pray
do not,--if I may take the freedom of a somewhat elder man to advise
you,” added he, smiling,--“pray do not, under a notion of improvement,
take upon yourself to be sombre, thoughtful, and penitential, like all
the rest of us.”
Donatello made no answer, but sat awhile, appearing to follow with
his eyes one of the figures, which was repeated many times over in the
groups upon the walls and ceiling. It formed the principal link of an
allegory, by which (as is often the case in such pictorial designs)
the whole series of frescos were bound together, but which it would be
impossible, or, at least, very wearisome, to unravel. The sculptor’s
eyes took a similar direction, and soon began to trace through the
vicissitudes,--once gay, now sombre,--in which the old artist had
involved it, the same individual figure. He fancied a resemblance in it
to Donatello himself; and it put him in mind of one of the purposes with
which he had come to Monte Beni.
“My dear Count,” said he, “I have a proposal to make. You must let me
employ a little of my leisure in modelling your bust. You remember what
a striking resemblance we all of us--Hilda, Miriam, and I--found between
your features and those of the Faun of Praxiteles. Then, it seemed an
identity; but now that I know your face better, the likeness is far less
apparent. Your head in marble would be a treasure to me. Shall I have
it?”
“I have a weakness which I fear I cannot overcome,” replied the Count,
turning away his face. “It troubles me to be looked at steadfastly.”
“I have observed it since we have been sitting here, though never
before,” rejoined the sculptor. “It is a kind of nervousness, I
apprehend, which, you caught in the Roman air, and which grows upon you,
in your solitary life. It need be no hindrance to my taking your bust;
for I will catch the likeness and expression by side glimpses, which
(if portrait painters and bust makers did but know it) always bring home
richer results than a broad stare.”
“You may take me if you have the power,” said Donatello; but, even as he
spoke, he turned away his face; “and if you can see what makes me shrink
from you, you are welcome to put it in the bust. It is not my will, but
my necessity, to avoid men’s eyes. Only,” he added, with a smile which
made Kenyon doubt whether he might not as well copy the Faun as model a
new bust,--“only, you know, you must not insist on my uncovering these
ears of mine!”
“Nay; I never should dream of such a thing,” answered the sculptor,
laughing, as the young Count shook his clustering curls. “I could not
hope to persuade you, remembering how Miriam once failed!”
Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a
spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind, so distinctly that
no utterance could make it more so; and two minds may be conscious of
the same thought, in which one or both take the profoundest interest;
but as long as it remains unspoken, their familiar talk flows quietly
over the hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle and dimple over something
sunken in its bed. But speak the word, and it is like bringing up a
drowned body out of the deepest pool of the rivulet, which has been
aware of the horrible secret all along, in spite of its smiling surface.
And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a distinct reference to
Donatello’s relations with Miriam (though the subject was already in
both their minds), a ghastly emotion rose up out of the depths of the
young Count’s heart. He trembled either with anger or terror, and
glared at the sculptor with wild eyes, like a wolf that meets you in
the forest, and hesitates whether to flee or turn to bay. But, as Kenyon
still looked calmly at him, his aspect gradually became less disturbed,
though far from resuming its former quietude.
“You have spoken her name,” said he, at last, in an altered and
tremulous tone; “tell me, now, all that you know of her.”
“I scarcely think that I have any later intelligence than yourself,”
answered Kenyon; “Miriam left Rome at about the time of your own
departure. Within a day or two after our last meeting at the Church of
the Capuchins, I called at her studio and found it vacant. Whither she
has gone, I cannot tell.”
Donatello asked no further questions.
They rose from table, and strolled together about the premises, whiling
away the afternoon with brief intervals of unsatisfactory conversation,
and many shadowy silences. The sculptor had a perception of change in
his companion,--possibly of growth and development, but certainly of
change,--which saddened him, because it took away much of the simple
grace that was the best of Donatello’s peculiarities.
Kenyon betook himself to repose that night in a grim, old, vaulted
apartment, which, in the lapse of five or six centuries, had probably
been the birth, bridal, and death chamber of a great many generations
of the Monte Beni family. He was aroused, soon after daylight, by the
clamor of a tribe of beggars who had taken their stand in a little
rustic lane that crept beside that portion of the villa, and were
addressing their petitions to the open windows. By and by they appeared
to have received alms, and took their departure.
“Some charitable Christian has sent those vagabonds away,” thought the
sculptor, as he resumed his interrupted nap; “who could it be? Donatello
has his own rooms in the tower; Stella, Tomaso, and the cook are a
world’s width off; and I fancied myself the only inhabitant in this part
of the house.”
In the breadth and space which so delightfully characterize an Italian
villa, a dozen guests might have had each his suite of apartments
without infringing upon one another’s ample precincts. But, so far as
Kenyon knew, he was the only visitor beneath Donatello’s widely extended
roof.