AGAIN I am upon the sea; but not alone. She whom I first met upon the
wastes of ocean is there beside me. Again I steady her tottering step
upon the deck; once it was a drifting, careless pleasure; now the
pleasure is holy.
Once the fear I felt, as the storms gathered, and night came, and the
ship tossed madly, and great waves gathering swift and high, came down
like slipping mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering
vessel, was a selfish fear. But it is so no longer. Indeed, I hardly
know fear; for how can the tempests harm _her_? Is she not too good to
suffer any of the wrath of heaven?
And in nights of calm—holy nights, we lean over the ship’s side, looking
down, as once before, into the dark depths, and murmur again snatches of
ocean song, and talk of those we love; and we peer among the stars,
which seem neighborly, and as if they were the homes of friends. And as
the great ocean swells come rocking under us, and carry us up and down
along the valleys and the hills of water, they seem like deep pulsations
of the great heart of nature, heaving us forward toward the goal of
life, and to the gates of heaven.
We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon, and sweep toward us,
like false friends, with the sun glittering on their sails; and then
shift their course, and bear away—with their bright sails, turned to
spots of shadow. We watch the long-winged birds skimming the waves hour
after hour—like pleasant thoughts—now dashing before our bows, and then
sweeping behind, until they are lost in the hollows of the water.
Again life lies open, as it did once before; but the regrets,
disappointments, and fruitless resolves do not come to trouble me now.
It is the future, which has become as level as the sea; and _she_ is
beside me—the sharer in that future—to look out with me upon the joyous
sparkle of water, and to count with me the dazzling ripples that lie
between us and the shore. A thousand pleasant plans come up, and are
abandoned, like the waves we leave behind us; a thousand other joyous
plans dawn upon our fancy, like the waves that glitter before us. We
talk of Laurence and his bride, whom we are to meet; we talk of her
mother, who is even now watching the winds that waft her child over the
ocean; we talk of the kindly old man, her god-father, who gave her a
father’s blessing; we talk low, and in the twilight hours, of Isabel—who
sleeps.
At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night, over the western
waters which we have passed, we see before us the low blue line of the
shores of Cornwall and Devon. In the night shadowy ships glide past us
with gleaming lanterns; and in the morning we see the yellow cliffs of
the Isle of Wight; and standing out from the land is the dingy sail of
our pilot. London with its fog, roar, and crowds, has not the same
charms that it once had; that roar and crowd is good to make a man
forget his griefs—forget himself, and stupefy him with amazement. We are
in no need of such forgetfulness.
We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that glides by Hampton
Court; and we toil up Richmond Hill, to look together upon that scene of
water and meadow—of leafy copses and glistening villas, of brown
cottages and clustered hamlets—of solitary oaks and loitering herds—all
spread like a veil of beauty upon the bosom of the Thames. But we can
not linger here, nor even under the glorious old boles of Windsor
Forest; but we hurry on to that sweet county of Devon, made green with
its white skeins of water.
Again we loiter under the oaks, where we have loitered before; and the
sleek deer gaze on us with their liquid eyes as they gazed before. The
squirrels sport among the boughs as fearless as ever; and some wandering
puss pricks her long ears at our steps and bounds off along the
hedgerows to her burrow. Again I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap,
with the white plume; and I meet, as I met her before, under the
princely trees that skirt the northern avenue. I recall the evening when
I sauntered out at the park gates, and gained a blessing from the
porter’s wife, and dreamed that strange dream—now, the dream seems more
real than my life. “God bless you!” said the woman again.
—“Ay, old lady, God has blessed me!”—and I fling her a guinea, not as a
gift, but as a debt.
The bland farmer lives yet; he scarce knows me, until I tell him of my
bout around his oat field at the tail of his long stilted plow. I find
the old pew in the parish church. Other holly sprigs are hung now; and I
do not doze, for Carry is beside me. The curate drawls the service; but
it is pleasant to listen; and I make the responses with an emphasis that
tells more, I fear, for my joy than for my religion. The old groom at
the mansion in the park has not forgotten the hard riding of other days,
and tells long stories (to which I love to listen) of the old visit of
Mistress Carry, when she followed the hounds with the best of the
English lasses.
—“Yer honor may well be proud; for not a prettier face, or a kinder
heart, has been in Devon since Mistress Carry left us.”
But pleasant as are the old woods, full of memories, and pleasant as are
the twilight evenings upon the terrace—we must pass over to the
mountains of Switzerland. There we are to meet Laurence.
Carry has never seen the magnificence of the Juras; and as we journey
over the hills between Dole and the border line, looking upon the
rolling heights shrouded with pine trees, and down thousands of feet, at
the very roadside, upon the cottage roofs and emerald valleys, where the
dun herds are feeding quietly, she is lost in admiration. At length we
come to that point above the little town of Gex, from which you see
spread out before you the meadows that skirt Geneva, the placid surface
of Lake Leman, and the rough, shaggy mountains of Savoy—and far behind
them, breaking the horizon with snowy cap, and with dark pinnacles—Mont
Blanc, and the Needles of Chamouni.
I point out to her in the valley below the little town of Ferney, where
stands the deserted château of Voltaire; and beyond, upon the shores of
the lake, the old home of De Staël; and across, with its white walls
reflected upon the bosom of the water, the house where Byron wrote _The
Prisoner of Chillon_. Among the grouping roofs of Geneva we trace the
dark cathedral and the tall hotels shining on the edge of the lake. And
I tell of the time when I tramped down through yonder valley, with my
future all visionary and broken, and drank the splendor of the scene,
only as a quick relief to the monotony of my solitary life.
—“And now, Carry, with your hand locked in mine, and your heart
mine—yonder lake sleeping in the sun, and the snowy mountains with their
rosy hue seem like the smile of nature, bidding us be glad!”
Laurence is at Geneva; he welcomes Carry, as he would welcome a sister.
He is a noble fellow, and tells me much of his sweet Italian wife; and
presents me to the smiling, blushing—Enrica! She has learned English
now; she has found, she says, a better teacher, than ever I was. Yet she
welcomes me warmly, as a sister might; and we talk of those old evenings
by the blazing fire, and of the one-eyed _maestro_, as children long
separated might talk of their school tasks and of their teachers. She
can not tell me enough of her praises of Laurence, and of his noble
heart. “You were good,” she says, “but Laurence is better.”
Carry admires her soft brown hair, and her deep liquid eye, and wonders
how I could ever have left Rome?
—Do you indeed wonder—Carry?
And together we go down into Savoy, to that marvelous valley, which lies
under the shoulder of Mont Blanc; and we wander over the _Mer De Glace_,
and pick alpine roses from the edge of the frowning glacier. We toil at
nightfall up to the monastery of the Great St. Bernard, where the new
forming ice crackles in the narrow foot-way, and the cold moon glistens
over wastes of snow, and upon the windows of the dark Hospice. Again, we
are among the granite heights, whose ledges are filled with ice, upon
the Grimsel. The pond is dark and cold; the paths are slippery; the
great glacier of the Aar sends down icy breezes, and the echoes ring
from rock to rock, as if the ice-god answered. And yet we neither suffer
nor fear.
In the sweet valley of Meyringen, we part from Laurence: he goes
northward, by Grindenwald, and Thun—thence to journey westward, and to
make for the Roman girl a home beyond the ocean. Enrica bids me go on to
Rome: she knows that Carry will love its soft warm air, its ruins, its
pictures and temples, better than these cold valleys of Switzerland. And
she gives me kind messages for her mother, and for Cesare; and should we
be in Rome at the Easter season, she bids us remember her, when we
listen to the _Miserere_, and when we see the great _Chiesa_ on fire,
and when we saunter upon the Pincian hill—and remember, that it is her
home.
We follow them with our eyes, as they go up the steep height over which
falls the white foam of the clattering Reichenbach; and they wave their
hands toward us and disappear upon the little plateau which stretches
toward the crystal Rosenlaui and the tall, still Engel-Horner.
May the mountain angels guard them.
As we journey on toward that wonderful pass of Splugen I recall, by the
way, upon the heights and in the valleys, the spots where I lingered
years before—here, I plucked a flower; there, I drank from that cold,
yellow, glacier water; and here, upon some rock overlooking a stretch of
broken mountains, hoary with their eternal frosts, I sat musing upon
that very Future, which is with me now. But never, even when the
ice-genii were most prodigal of their fancies to the wanderer, did I
look for more joy, or a better angel.
Afterward, when all our trembling upon the Alpine paths has gone by, we
are rolling along under the chestnuts and lindens that skirt the banks
of Como. We recall that sweet story of Manzoni, and I point out, as well
as I may, the loitering place of the _bravi_, and the track of poor Don
Abbondio. We follow in the path of the discomfited Rienzi, to where the
dainty spire, and pinnacles of the Duomo of Milan, glisten against the
violet sky.
Carry longs to see Venice; its water-streets, and palaces have long
floated in her visions. In the bustling activity of our own country, and
in the quiet fields of England, that strange, half-deserted capital
lying in the Adriatic, has taken the strongest hold upon her fancy.
So we leave Padua and Verona behind us, and find ourselves, upon a soft
spring noon, upon the end of the iron road which stretches across the
lagoon toward Venice. With the hissing of steam in the ear it is hard to
think of the wonderful city we are approaching. But as we escape from
the carriage, and set our feet down into one of those strange,
hearse-like, ancient boats, with its sharp iron prow, and listen to the
melodious rolling tongue of the Venetian gondolier; as we see rising
over the watery plain before us, all glittering in the sun, tall square
towers with pyramidal tops, and clustered domes, and minarets; and
sparkling roofs lifting from marble walls—all so like the old
paintings—and as we glide nearer and nearer to the floating wonder,
under the silent working oar of our now silent gondolier—as we ride up
swiftly under the deep, broad shadows of palaces and see plainly the
play of the sea water in the crevices of the masonry—and turn into
narrow rivers shaded darkly by overhanging walls, hearing no sound, but
of voices, or the swaying of the water against the houses—we feel the
presence of the place. And the mistic fingers of the Past, grappling our
spirits, lead them away—willing and rejoicing captives, through the long
vista of the ages that are gone.
Carry is in a trance—rapt by the witchery of the scene, into dream. This
is her Venice, nor have all the visions that played upon her fancy been
equal to the enchanting presence of this hour of approach.
Afterward it becomes a living thing—stealing upon the affections, and
upon the imagination by a thousand coy advances. We wander under the
warm Italian sunlight to the steps from which rolled the white head of
poor Marino Faliero. The gentle Carry can now thrust her ungloved hand
into the terrible lion’s mouth. We enter the salon of the fearful Ten,
and peep through the half-opened door into the cabinet of the more
fearful Three. We go through the deep dungeons of Carmagnola and of
Carrara; and we instruct the willing gondolier to push his dark boat
under the Bridge of Sighs; and with Rogers’ poem in our hand, glide up
to the prison door and read of—
——that fearful closet at the foot
Lurking for prey, which, when a victim came,
Grew less and less; contracting to a span
An iron door, urged onward by a screw,
Forcing out life!
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I sail, listening to nothing but the dip of the gondolier’s oar, or to
_her_ gentle words, fast under the palace door, which closed that
fearful morning on the guilt and shame of Bianca Capello. Or, with souls
lit up by the scene, into a buoyancy that can scarce distinguish between
what is real and what is merely written—we chase the anxious step of the
forsaken Corinna; or seek among the veteran palaces the casement of the
old Brabantio—the chamber of Desdemona—the house of Jessica, and trace
among the strange Jew money-changers, who yet haunt the Rialto, the
likeness of the bearded Shylock. We wander into stately churches,
brushing over grass, or tell-tale flowers that grow in the court, and
find them damp and cheerless; the incense rises murkily and rests in a
thick cloud over the altars, and over the paintings; the music, if so be
that the organ notes are swelling under the roof, is mournfully
plaintive.
Of an afternoon we sail over to the Lido, to gladden our eyes with a
sight of land and green things, and we pass none upon the way, save
silent oarsmen, with barges piled high with the produce of their
gardens—pushing their way down toward the floating city. And upon the
narrow island, we find Jewish graves, half covered by drifted sand; and
from among them, watch the sunset glimmering over a desolate level of
water. As we glide back, lights lift over the lagoon, and double along
the Guideca and the Grand Canal. The little neighbor isles will have
their company of lights dancing in the water; and from among them will
rise up against the mellow evening sky of Italy gaunt, unlighted houses.
After the nightfall, which brings no harmful dew with it, I stroll, with
her hand within my arm—as once upon the sea, and in the English park,
and in the home-land—over that great square which lies before the palace
of St. Marks. The white moon is riding in the middle heaven, like a
globe of silver; the gondoliers stride over the echoing stones; and
their long black shadows, stretching over the pavement, or shaking upon
the moving water, seem like great funereal plumes, waving over the bier
of Venice.
Carrying thence whole treasures of thought and fancy, to feed upon in
the after years, we wander to Rome.
I find the old one-eyed _maestro_, and am met with cordial welcome by
the mother of the pretty Enrica. The count has gone to the marshes of
Ancona. Lame Pietro still shuffles around the boards at the Leprè, and
the flower sellers at the corner bind me a more brilliant bouquet than
ever for a new beauty at Rome. As we ramble under the broken arches of
the great aqueduct stretching toward Frascati, I tell Carry the story of
my trip in the Appenines, and we search for the pretty Carlotta. But she
is married, they tell us, to a Neapolitan guardsman. In the spring
twilight we wander upon those heights which lie between Frascati and
Albano, and looking westward, see that glorious view of the Campagna,
which can never be forgotten. But beyond the Campagna, and beyond the
huge hulk of St. Peter’s, heaving into the sky from the middle waste, we
see, or fancy we see, a glimpse of the sea, which stretches out and on
to the land we love, better than Rome. And in fancy we build up that
home, which shall belong to us on the return—a home that has slumbered
long in the future, and which, now that the future has come, lies fairly
before me.
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