THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP
Between Hilda and the sculptor there had been a kind of half-expressed
understanding, that both were to visit the galleries of the Vatican
the day subsequent to their meeting at the studio. Kenyon, accordingly,
failed not to be there, and wandered through the vast ranges of
apartments, but saw nothing of his expected friend. The marble faces,
which stand innumerable along the walls, and have kept themselves so
calm through the vicissitudes of twenty centuries, had no sympathy
for his disappointment; and he, on the other hand, strode past these
treasures and marvels of antique art, with the indifference which any
preoccupation of the feelings is apt to produce, in reference to objects
of sculpture. Being of so cold and pure a substance, and mostly deriving
their vitality more from thought than passion, they require to be seen
through a perfectly transparent medium.
And, moreover, Kenyon had counted so much upon Hilda’s delicate
perceptions in enabling him to look at two or three of the statues,
about which they had talked together, that the entire purpose of his
visit was defeated by her absence. It is a delicious sort of mutual aid,
when the united power of two sympathetic, yet dissimilar, intelligences
is brought to bear upon a poem by reading it aloud, or upon a picture
or statue by viewing it in each other’s company. Even if not a word
of criticism be uttered, the insight of either party is wonderfully
deepened, and the comprehension broadened; so that the inner mystery
of a work of genius, hidden from one, will often reveal itself to two.
Missing such help, Kenyon saw nothing at the Vatican which he had not
seen a thousand times before, and more perfectly than now.
In the chili of his disappointment, he suspected that it was a very
cold art to which he had devoted himself. He questioned, at that moment,
whether sculpture really ever softens and warms the material which it
handles; whether carved marble is anything but limestone, after all;
and whether the Apollo Belvedere itself possesses any merit above
its physical beauty, or is beyond criticism even in that generally
acknowledged excellence. In flitting glances, heretofore, he had seemed
to behold this statue, as something ethereal and godlike, but not now.
Nothing pleased him, unless it were the group of the Laocoon, which,
in its immortal agony, impressed Kenyon as a type of the long, fierce
struggle of man, involved in the knotted entanglements of Error and
Evil, those two snakes, which, if no divine help intervene, will be sure
to strangle him and his children in the end. What he most admired was
the strange calmness diffused through this bitter strife; so that it
resembled the rage of the sea made calm by its immensity,’ or the tumult
of Niagara which ceases to be tumult because it lasts forever. Thus, in
the Laocoon, the horror of a moment grew to be the fate of interminable
ages. Kenyon looked upon the group as the one triumph of sculpture,
creating the repose, which is essential to it, in the very acme of
turbulent effort; but, in truth, it was his mood of unwonted despondency
that made him so sensitive to the terrible magnificence, as well as to
the sad moral, of this work. Hilda herself could not have helped him to
see it with nearly such intelligence.
A good deal more depressed than the nature of the disappointment
warranted, Kenyon went to his studio, and took in hand a great lump of
clay. He soon found, however, that his plastic cunning had departed from
him for the time. So he wandered forth again into the uneasy streets
of Rome, and walked up and down the Corso, where, at that period of the
day, a throng of passers-by and loiterers choked up the narrow sidewalk.
A penitent was thus brought in contact with the sculptor.
It was a figure in a white robe, with a kind of featureless mask
over the face, through the apertures of which the eyes threw an
unintelligible light. Such odd, questionable shapes are often seen
gliding through the streets of Italian cities, and are understood to be
usually persons of rank, who quit their palaces, their gayeties, their
pomp and pride, and assume the penitential garb for a season, with a
view of thus expiating some crime, or atoning for the aggregate of petty
sins that make up a worldly life. It is their custom to ask alms, and
perhaps to measure the duration of their penance by the time requisite
to accumulate a sum of money out of the little droppings of individual
charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent or religious purpose;
so that the benefit accruing to their own souls is, in a manner, linked
with a good done, or intended, to their fellow-men. These figures have
a ghastly and startling effect, not so much from any very impressive
peculiarity in the garb, as from the mystery which they bear about with
them, and the sense that there is an acknowledged sinfulness as the
nucleus of it.
In the present instance, however, the penitent asked no alms of Kenyon;
although, for the space of a minute or two, they stood face to face, the
hollow eyes of the mask encountering the sculptor’s gaze. But, just as
the crowd was about to separate them, the former spoke, in a voice not
unfamiliar to Kenyon, though rendered remote and strange by the guilty
veil through which it penetrated.
“Is all well with you, Signore?” inquired the penitent, out of the cloud
in which he walked.
“All is well,” answered Kenyon. “And with you?”
But the masked penitent returned no answer, being borne away by the
pressure of the throng.
The sculptor stood watching the figure, and was almost of a mind to
hurry after him and follow up the conversation that had been begun; but
it occurred to him that there is a sanctity (or, as we might rather term
it, an inviolable etiquette) which prohibits the recognition of persons
who choose to walk under the veil of penitence.
“How strange!” thought Kenyon to himself. “It was surely Donatello! What
can bring him to Rome, where his recollections must be so painful, and
his presence not without peril? And Miriam! Can she have accompanied
him?”
He walked on, thinking of the vast change in Donatello, since those days
of gayety and innocence, when the young Italian was new in Rome, and was
just beginning to be sensible of a more poignant felicity than he had
yet experienced, in the sunny warmth of Miriam’s smile. The growth of
a soul, which the sculptor half imagined that he had witnessed in his
friend, seemed hardly worth the heavy price that it had cost, in the
sacrifice of those simple enjoyments that were gone forever. A creature
of antique healthfulness had vanished from the earth; and, in his stead,
there was only one other morbid and remorseful man, among millions that
were cast in the same indistinguishable mould.
The accident of thus meeting Donatello the glad Faun of his imagination
and memory, now transformed into a gloomy penitent--contributed to
deepen the cloud that had fallen over Kenyon’s spirits. It caused him
to fancy, as we generally do, in the petty troubles which extend not a
hand’s-breadth beyond our own sphere, that the whole world was saddening
around him. It took the sinister aspect of an omen, although he could
not distinctly see what trouble it might forebode.
If it had not been for a peculiar sort of pique, with which lovers are
much conversant, a preposterous kind of resentment which endeavors to
wreak itself on the beloved object, and on one’s own heart, in requital
of mishaps for which neither are in fault, Kenyon might at once have
betaken himself to Hilda’s studio, and asked why the appointment was not
kept. But the interview of to-day was to have been so rich in present
joy, and its results so important to his future life, that the bleak
failure was too much for his equanimity. He was angry with poor Hilda,
and censured her without a hearing; angry with himself, too, and
therefore inflicted on this latter criminal the severest penalty in
his power; angry with the day that was passing over him, and would not
permit its latter hours to redeem the disappointment of the morning.
To confess the truth, it had been the sculptor’s purpose to stake all
his hopes on that interview in the galleries of the Vatican. Straying
with Hilda through those long vistas of ideal beauty, he meant, at last,
to utter himself upon that theme which lovers are fain to discuss in
village lanes, in wood paths, on seaside sands, in crowded streets; it
little matters where, indeed, since roses are sure to blush along the
way, and daisies and violets to spring beneath the feet, if the spoken
word be graciously received. He was resolved to make proof whether
the kindness that Hilda evinced for him was the precious token of an
individual preference, or merely the sweet fragrance of her disposition,
which other friends might share as largely as himself. He would try if
it were possible to take this shy, yet frank, and innocently fearless
creature captive, and imprison her in his heart, and make her sensible
of a wider freedom there, than in all the world besides.
It was hard, we must allow, to see the shadow of a wintry sunset falling
upon a day that was to have been so bright, and to find himself just
where yesterday had left him, only with a sense of being drearily
balked, and defeated without an opportunity for struggle. So much had
been anticipated from these now vanished hours, that it seemed as if no
other day could bring back the same golden hopes.
In a case like this, it is doubtful whether Kenyon could have done a
much better thing than he actually did, by going to dine at the Cafe
Nuovo, and drinking a flask of Montefiascone; longing, the while, for a
beaker or two of Donatello’s Sunshine. It would have been just the wine
to cure a lover’s melancholy, by illuminating his heart with tender
light and warmth, and suggestions of undefined hopes, too ethereal for
his morbid humor to examine and reject them.
No decided improvement resulting from the draught of Montefiascone, he
went to the Teatro Argentino, and sat gloomily to see an Italian
comedy, which ought to have cheered him somewhat, being full of glancing
merriment, and effective over everybody’s disabilities except his own.
The sculptor came out, however, before the close of the performance, as
disconsolate as he went in.
As he made his way through the complication of narrow streets, which
perplex that portion of the city, a carriage passed him. It was driven
rapidly, but not too fast for the light of a gas-lamp to flare upon a
face within--especially as it was bent forward, appearing to recognize
him, while a beckoning hand was protruded from the window. On his part,
Kenyon at once knew the face, and hastened to the carriage, which had
now stopped.
“Miriam! you in Rome?” he exclaimed “And your friends know nothing of
it?”
“Is all well with you?” she asked.
This inquiry, in the identical words which Donatello had so recently
addressed to him from beneath the penitent’s mask, startled the
sculptor. Either the previous disquietude of his mind, or some tone in
Miriam’s voice, or the unaccountableness of beholding her there at all,
made it seem ominous.
“All is well, I believe,” answered he doubtfully. “I am aware of no
misfortune. Have you any to announce’?”
He looked still more earnestly at Miriam, and felt a dreamy uncertainty
whether it was really herself to whom he spoke. True; there were those
beautiful features, the contour of which he had studied too often, and
with a sculptor’s accuracy of perception, to be in any doubt that it was
Miriam’s identical face. But he was conscious of a change, the nature of
which he could not satisfactorily define; it might be merely her dress,
which, imperfect as the light was, he saw to be richer than the simple
garb that she had usually worn. The effect, he fancied, was partly owing
to a gem which she had on her bosom; not a diamond, but something that
glimmered with a clear, red lustre, like the stars in a southern sky.
Somehow or other, this colored light seemed an emanation of herself,
as if all that was passionate and glowing in her native disposition
had crystallized upon her breast, and were just now scintillating more
brilliantly than ever, in sympathy with some emotion of her heart.
Of course there could be no real doubt that it was Miriam, his artist
friend, with whom and Hilda he had spent so many pleasant and familiar
hours, and whom he had last seen at Perugia, bending with Donatello
beneath the bronze pope’s benediction. It must be that selfsame Miriam;
but the sensitive sculptor felt a difference of manner, which impressed
him more than he conceived it possible to be affected by so external a
thing. He remembered the gossip so prevalent in Rome on Miriam’s first
appearance; how that she was no real artist, but the daughter of an
illustrious or golden lineage, who was merely playing at necessity;
mingling with human struggle for her pastime; stepping out of her native
sphere only for an interlude, just as a princess might alight from her
gilded equipage to go on foot through a rustic lane. And now, after a
mask in which love and death had performed their several parts, she had
resumed her proper character.
“Have you anything to tell me?” cried he impatiently; for nothing causes
a more disagreeable vibration of the nerves than this perception of
ambiguousness in familiar persons or affairs. “Speak; for my spirits and
patience have been much tried to-day.”
Miriam put her finger on her lips, and seemed desirous that Kenyon
should know of the presence of a third person. He now saw, indeed, that,
there was some one beside her in the carriage, hitherto concealed by
her attitude; a man, it appeared, with a sallow Italian face, which the
sculptor distinguished but imperfectly, and did not recognize.
“I can tell you nothing,” she replied; and leaning towards him, she
whispered,--appearing then more like the Miriam whom he knew than in
what had before passed,--“Only, when the lamp goes out do not despair.”
The carriage drove on, leaving Kenyon to muse over this unsatisfactory
interview, which seemed to have served no better purpose than to fill
his mind with more ominous forebodings than before. Why were Donatello
and Miriam in Rome, where both, in all likelihood, might have much to
dread? And why had one and the other addressed him with a question that
seemed prompted by a knowledge of some calamity, either already fallen
on his unconscious head, or impending closely over him?
“I am sluggish,” muttered Kenyon, to himself; “a weak, nerveless fool,
devoid of energy and promptitude; or neither Donatello nor Miriam could
have escaped me thus! They are aware of some misfortune that concerns me
deeply. How soon am I to know it too?”
There seemed but a single calamity possible to happen within so narrow
a sphere as that with which the sculptor was connected; and even to that
one mode of evil he could assign no definite shape, but only felt that
it must have some reference to Hilda.
Flinging aside the morbid hesitation, and the dallyings with his own
wishes, which he had permitted to influence his mind throughout the day,
he now hastened to the Via Portoghese. Soon the old palace stood before
him, with its massive tower rising into the clouded night; obscured from
view at its midmost elevation, but revealed again, higher upward, by
the Virgin’s lamp that twinkled on the summit. Feeble as it was, in
the broad, surrounding gloom, that little ray made no inconsiderable
illumination among Kenyon’s sombre thoughts; for; remembering Miriam’s
last words, a fantasy had seized him that he should find the sacred lamp
extinguished.
And even while he stood gazing, as a mariner at the star in which he put
his trust, the light quivered, sank, gleamed up again, and finally went
out, leaving the battlements of Hilda’s tower in utter darkness. For the
first time in centuries, the consecrated and legendary flame before the
loftiest shrine in Rome had ceased to burn.