THE FLIGHT OF HILDA’S DOVES
Along with the lamp on Hilda’s tower, the sculptor now felt that a light
had gone out, or, at least, was ominously obscured, to which he owed
whatever cheerfulness had heretofore illuminated his cold, artistic
life. The idea of this girl had been like a taper of virgin wax, burning
with a pure and steady flame, and chasing away the evil spirits out of
the magic circle of its beams. It had darted its rays afar, and modified
the whole sphere in which Kenyon had his being. Beholding it no more, he
at once found himself in darkness and astray.
This was the time, perhaps, when Kenyon first became sensible what a
dreary city is Rome, and what a terrible weight is there imposed on
human life, when any gloom within the heart corresponds to the spell of
ruin that has been thrown over the site of ancient empire. He wandered,
as it were, and stumbled over the fallen columns, and among the tombs,
and groped his way into the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs, and
found no path emerging from them. The happy may well enough continue to
be such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome. But, if you go thither in
melancholy mood, if you go with a ruin in your heart, or with a
vacant site there, where once stood the airy fabric of happiness, now
vanished,--all the ponderous gloom of the Roman Past will pile itself
upon that spot, and crush you down as with the heaped-up marble and
granite, the earth-mounds, and multitudinous bricks of its material
decay.
It might be supposed that a melancholy man would here make acquaintance
with a grim philosophy. He should learn to bear patiently his individual
griefs, that endure only for one little lifetime, when here are the
tokens of such infinite misfortune on an imperial scale, and when so
many far landmarks of time, all around him, are bringing the remoteness
of a thousand years ago into the sphere of yesterday. But it is in vain
that you seek this shrub of bitter sweetness among the plants that root
themselves on the roughness of massive walls, or trail downward from the
capitals of pillars, or spring out of the green turf in the palace of
the Caesars. It does not grow in Rome; not even among the five hundred
various weeds which deck the grassy arches of the Coliseum. You look
through a vista of century beyond century,--through much shadow, and a
little sunshine,--through barbarism and civilization, alternating with
one another like actors that have prearranged their parts: through
a broad pathway of progressive generations bordered by palaces and
temples, and bestridden by old, triumphal arches, until, in the
distance, you behold the obelisks, with their unintelligible
inscriptions, hinting at a past infinitely more remote than history
can define. Your own life is as nothing, when compared with that
immeasurable distance; but still you demand, none the less earnestly, a
gleam of sunshine, instead of a speck of shadow, on the step or two that
will bring you to your quiet rest.
How exceedingly absurd! All men, from the date of the earliest
obelisk,--and of the whole world, moreover, since that far epoch, and
before,--have made a similar demand, and seldom had their wish. If they
had it, what are they the better now? But, even while you taunt yourself
with this sad lesson, your heart cries out obstreperously for its small
share of earthly happiness, and will not be appeased by the myriads of
dead hopes that lie crushed into the soil of Rome. How wonderful
that this our narrow foothold of the Present should hold its own so
constantly, and, while every moment changing, should still be like a
rock betwixt the encountering tides of the long Past and the infinite
To-come!
Man of marble though he was, the sculptor grieved for the Irrevocable.
Looking back upon Hilda’s way of life, he marvelled at his own blind
stupidity, which had kept him from remonstrating as a friend, if with no
stronger right against the risks that she continually encountered. Being
so innocent, she had no means of estimating those risks, nor even a
possibility of suspecting their existence. But he--who had spent
years in Rome, with a man’s far wider scope of observation and
experience--knew things that made him shudder. It seemed to Kenyon,
looking through the darkly colored medium of his fears, that all modes
of crime were crowded into the close intricacy of Roman streets, and
that there was no redeeming element, such as exists in other dissolute
and wicked cities.
For here was a priesthood, pampered, sensual, with red and bloated
cheeks, and carnal eyes. With apparently a grosser development of animal
life than most men, they were placed in an unnatural relation with
woman, and thereby lost the healthy, human conscience that pertains to
other human beings, who own the sweet household ties connecting them
with wife and daughter. And here was an indolent nobility, with no high
aims or opportunities, but cultivating a vicious way of life, as if
it were an art, and the only one which they cared to learn. Here was a
population, high and low, that had no genuine belief in virtue; and
if they recognized any act as criminal, they might throw off all
care, remorse, and memory of it, by kneeling a little while at the
confessional, and rising unburdened, active, elastic, and incited by
fresh appetite for the next ensuing sin. Here was a soldiery who felt
Rome to be their conquered city, and doubtless considered themselves the
legal inheritors of the foul license which Gaul, Goth, and Vandal have
here exercised in days gone by.
And what localities for new crime existed in those guilty sites,
where the crime of departed ages used to be at home, and had its long,
hereditary haunt! What street in Rome, what ancient ruin, what one place
where man had standing-room, what fallen stone was there, unstained with
one or another kind of guilt! In some of the vicissitudes of the city’s
pride or its calamity, the dark tide of human evil had swelled over it,
far higher than the Tiber ever rose against the acclivities of the
seven hills. To Kenyon’s morbid view, there appeared to be a contagious
element, rising fog-like from the ancient depravity of Rome, and
brooding over the dead and half-rotten city, as nowhere else on earth.
It prolonged the tendency to crime, and developed an instantaneous
growth of it, whenever an opportunity was found; And where could it be
found so readily as here! In those vast palaces, there were a hundred
remote nooks where Innocence might shriek in vain. Beneath meaner houses
there were unsuspected dungeons that had once been princely chambers,
and open to the daylight; but, on account of some wickedness there
perpetrated, each passing age had thrown its handful of dust upon the
spot, and buried it from sight. Only ruffians knew of its existence, and
kept it for murder, and worse crime.
Such was the city through which Hilda, for three years past, had been
wandering without a protector or a guide. She had trodden lightly over
the crumble of old crimes; she had taken her way amid the grime and
corruption which Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity
had made more noisome; walking saint-like through it all, with white,
innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall that lay right across her
path, she had vanished out of sight. It was terrible to imagine what
hideous outrage might have thrust her into that abyss!
Then the lover tried to comfort himself with the idea that Hilda’s
sanctity was a sufficient safeguard. Ah, yes; she was so pure! The
angels, that were of the same sisterhood, would never let Hilda come to
harm. A miracle would be wrought on her behalf, as naturally as a father
would stretch out his hand to save a best-beloved child. Providence
would keep a little area and atmosphere about her as safe and wholesome
as heaven itself, although the flood of perilous iniquity might hem
her round, and its black waves hang curling above her head! But these
reflections were of slight avail. No doubt they were the religious
truth. Yet the ways of Providence are utterly inscrutable; and many a
murder has been done, and many an innocent virgin has lifted her white
arms, beseeching its aid in her extremity, and all in vain; so that,
though Providence is infinitely good and wise, and perhaps for that very
reason, it may be half an eternity before the great circle of its scheme
shall bring us the superabundant recompense for all these sorrows! But
what the lover asked was such prompt consolation as might consist with
the brief span of mortal life; the assurance of Hilda’s present safety,
and her restoration within that very hour.
An imaginative man, he suffered the penalty of his endowment in the
hundred-fold variety of gloomily tinted scenes that it presented to
him, in which Hilda was always a central figure. The sculptor forgot his
marble. Rome ceased to be anything, for him, but a labyrinth of dismal
streets, in one or another of which the lost girl had disappeared. He
was haunted with the idea that some circumstance, most important to be
known, and perhaps easily discoverable, had hitherto been overlooked,
and that, if he could lay hold of this one clew, it would guide him
directly in the track of Hilda’s footsteps. With this purpose in
view, he went, every morning, to the Via Portoghese, and made it
the starting-point of fresh investigations. After nightfall, too, he
invariably returned thither, with a faint hope fluttering at his heart
that the lamp might again be shining on the summit of the tower, and
would dispel this ugly mystery out of the circle consecrated by its
rays. There being no point of which he could take firm hold, his mind
was filled with unsubstantial hopes and fears. Once Kenyon had seemed
to cut his life in marble; now he vaguely clutched at it, and found it
vapor.
In his unstrung and despondent mood, one trifling circumstance affected
him with an idle pang. The doves had at first been faithful to their
lost mistress. They failed not to sit in a row upon her window-sill,
or to alight on the shrine, or the church-angels, and on the roofs
and portals of the neighboring houses, in evident expectation of her
reappearance. After the second week, however, they began to take flight,
and dropping off by pairs, betook themselves to other dove-cotes. Only a
single dove remained, and brooded drearily beneath the shrine. The
flock that had departed were like the many hopes that had vanished
from Kenyon’s heart; the one that still lingered, and looked so
wretched,--was it a Hope, or already a Despair?
In the street, one day, the sculptor met a priest of mild and venerable
aspect; and as his mind dwelt continually upon Hilda, and was especially
active in bringing up all incidents that had ever been connected with
her, it immediately struck him that this was the very father with whom
he had seen her at the confessional. Such trust did Hilda inspire
in him, that Kenyon had never asked what was the subject of the
communication between herself and this old priest. He had no reason for
imagining that it could have any relation with her disappearance,
so long subsequently; but, being thus brought face to face with a
personage, mysteriously associated, as he now remembered, with her whom
he had lost, an impulse ran before his thoughts and led the sculptor to
address him.
It might be that the reverend kindliness of the old man’s expression
took Kenyon’s heart by surprise; at all events, he spoke as if there
were a recognized acquaintanceship, and an object of mutual interest
between them.
“She has gone from me, father,” said he.
“Of whom do you speak, my son?” inquired the priest.
“Of that sweet girl,” answered Kenyon, “who knelt to you at the
confessional. Surely you remember her, among all the mortals to whose
confessions you have listened! For she alone could have had no sins to
reveal.”
“Yes; I remember,” said the priest, with a gleam of recollection in his
eyes. “She was made to bear a miraculous testimony to the efficacy of
the divine ordinances of the Church, by seizing forcibly upon one of
them, and finding immediate relief from it, heretic though she was.
It is my purpose to publish a brief narrative of this miracle, for
the edification of mankind, in Latin, Italian, and English, from the
printing press of the Propaganda. Poor child! Setting apart her heresy,
she was spotless, as you say. And is she dead?”
“Heaven forbid, father!” exclaimed Kenyon, shrinking back. “But she has
gone from me, I know not whither. It may be--yes, the idea seizes upon
my mind--that what she revealed to you will suggest some clew to the
mystery of her disappearance.’”
“None, my son, none,” answered the priest, shaking his head;
“nevertheless, I bid you be of good cheer. That young maiden is not
doomed to die a heretic. Who knows what the Blessed Virgin may at this
moment be doing for her soul! Perhaps, when you next behold her, she
will be clad in the shining white robe of the true faith.”
This latter suggestion did not convey all the comfort which the old
priest possibly intended by it; but he imparted it to the sculptor,
along with his blessing, as the two best things that he could bestow,
and said nothing further, except to bid him farewell.
When they had parted, however, the idea of Hilda’s conversion to
Catholicism recurred to her lover’s mind, bringing with it certain
reflections, that gave a new turn to his surmises about the mystery into
which she had vanished. Not that he seriously apprehended--although
the superabundance of her religious sentiment might mislead her for
a moment--that the New England girl would permanently succumb to the
scarlet superstitions which surrounded her in Italy. But the incident
of the confessional if known, as probably it was, to the eager
propagandists who prowl about for souls, as cats to catch a mouse--would
surely inspire the most confident expectations of bringing her over to
the faith. With so pious an end in view, would Jesuitical morality be
shocked at the thought of kidnapping the mortal body, for the sake of
the immortal spirit that might otherwise be lost forever? Would not the
kind old priest, himself, deem this to be infinitely the kindest service
that he could perform for the stray lamb, who had so strangely sought
his aid?
If these suppositions were well founded, Hilda was most likely a
prisoner in one of the religious establishments that are so numerous in
Rome. The idea, according to the aspect in which it was viewed, brought
now a degree of comfort, and now an additional perplexity. On the one
hand, Hilda was safe from any but spiritual assaults; on the other,
where was the possibility of breaking through all those barred portals,
and searching a thousand convent cells, to set her free?
Kenyon, however, as it happened, was prevented from endeavoring to
follow out this surmise, which only the state of hopeless uncertainty,
that almost bewildered his reason, could have led him for a moment
to entertain. A communication reached him by an unknown hand, in
consequence of which, and within an hour after receiving it, he took his
way through one of the gates of Rome.