THE FAUN AND NYMPH
Miriam’s sadder mood, it might be, had at first an effect on Donatello’s
spirits. It checked the joyous ebullition into which they would
otherwise have effervesced when he found himself in her society, not, as
heretofore, in the old gloom of Rome, but under that bright soft sky and
in those Arcadian woods. He was silent for a while; it being, indeed,
seldom Donatello’s impulse to express himself copiously in words. His
usual modes of demonstration were by the natural language of gesture,
the instinctive movement of his agile frame, and the unconscious play
of his features, which, within a limited range of thought and emotion,
would speak volumes in a moment.
By and by, his own mood seemed to brighten Miriam’s, and was reflected
back upon himself. He began inevitably, as it were, to dance along
the wood-path; flinging himself into attitudes of strange comic grace.
Often, too, he ran a little way in advance of his companion, and then
stood to watch her as she approached along the shadowy and sun-fleckered
path. With every step she took, he expressed his joy at her nearer
and nearer presence by what might be thought an extravagance of
gesticulation, but which doubtless was the language of the natural man,
though laid aside and forgotten by other men, now that words have been
feebly substituted in the place of signs and symbols. He gave Miriam the
idea of a being not precisely man, nor yet a child, but, in a high and
beautiful sense, an animal, a creature in a state of development less
than what mankind has attained, yet the more perfect within itself
for that very deficiency. This idea filled her mobile imagination with
agreeable fantasies, which, after smiling at them herself, she tried to
convey to the young man.
“What are you, my friend?” she exclaimed, always keeping in mind his
singular resemblance to the Faun of the Capitol. “If you are, in good
truth, that wild and pleasant creature whose face you wear, pray make me
known to your kindred. They will be found hereabouts, if anywhere. Knock
at the rough rind of this ilex-tree, and summon forth the Dryad! Ask the
water-nymph to rise dripping from yonder fountain, and exchange a moist
pressure of the hand with me! Do not fear that I shall shrink; even if
one of your rough cousins, a hairy Satyr, should come capering on his
goat-legs out of the haunts of far antiquity, and propose to dance with
me among these lawns! And will not Bacchus,--with whom you consorted so
familiarly of old, and who loved you so well,--will he not meet us here,
and squeeze rich grapes into his cup for you and me?”
Donatello smiled; he laughed heartily, indeed, in sympathy with the
mirth that gleamed out of Miriam’s deep, dark eyes. But he did not seem
quite to understand her mirthful talk, nor to be disposed to explain
what kind of creature he was, or to inquire with what divine or poetic
kindred his companion feigned to link him. He appeared only to know that
Miriam was beautiful, and that she smiled graciously upon him; that
the present moment was very sweet, and himself most happy, with the
sunshine, the sylvan scenery, and woman’s kindly charm, which it
enclosed within its small circumference. It was delightful to see the
trust which he reposed in Miriam, and his pure joy in her propinquity;
he asked nothing, sought nothing, save to be near the beloved object,
and brimmed over with ecstasy at that simple boon. A creature of the
happy tribes below us sometimes shows the capacity of this enjoyment; a
man, seldom or never.
“Donatello,” said Miriam, looking at him thoughtfully, but amused, yet
not without a shade of sorrow, “you seem very happy; what makes you so?”
“Because I love you!” answered Donatello.
He made this momentous confession as if it were the most natural
thing in the world; and on her part,--such was the contagion of his
simplicity,--Miriam heard it without anger or disturbance, though with
no responding emotion. It was as if they had strayed across the limits
of Arcadia; and come under a civil polity where young men might avow
their passion with as little restraint as a bird pipes its note to a
similar purpose.
“Why should you love me, foolish boy?” said she. “We have no points of
sympathy at all. There are not two creatures more unlike, in this wide
world, than you and I!”
“You are yourself, and I am Donatello,” replied he. “Therefore I love
you! There needs no other reason.”
Certainly, there was no better or more explicable reason. It might
have been imagined that Donatello’s unsophisticated heart would be more
readily attracted to a feminine nature of clear simplicity like his own,
than to one already turbid with grief or wrong, as Miriam’s seemed to
be. Perhaps, On the other hand, his character needed the dark element,
which it found in her. The force and energy of will, that sometimes
flashed through her eyes, may have taken him captive; or, not
improbably, the varying lights and shadows of her temper, now so
mirthful, and anon so sad with mysterious gloom, had bewitched the
youth. Analyze the matter as we may, the reason assigned by Donatello
himself was as satisfactory as we are likely to attain.
Miriam could not think seriously of the avowal that had passed. He held
out his love so freely, in his open palm, that she felt it could be
nothing but a toy, which she might play with for an instant, and give
back again. And yet Donatello’s heart was so fresh a fountain, that,
had Miriam been more world-worn than she was, she might have found
it exquisite to slake her thirst with the feelings that welled up and
brimmed over from it. She was far, very far, from the dusty mediaeval
epoch, when some women have a taste for such refreshment. Even for
her, however, there was an inexpressible charm in the simplicity that
prompted Donatello’s words and deeds; though, unless she caught them
in precisely the true light, they seemed but folly, the offspring of
a maimed or imperfectly developed intellect. Alternately, she almost
admired, or wholly scorned him, and knew not which estimate resulted
from the deeper appreciation. But it could not, she decided for herself,
be other than an innocent pastime, if they two--sure to be separated by
their different paths in life, to-morrow--were to gather up some of the
little pleasures that chanced to grow about their feet, like the violets
and wood-anemones, to-day.
Yet an impulse of rectitude impelled Miriam to give him what she still
held to be a needless warning against an imaginary peril.
“If you were wiser, Donatello, you would think me a dangerous person,”
said she, “If you follow my footsteps, they will lead you to no good.
You ought to be afraid of me.”
“I would as soon think of fearing the air we breathe,” he replied.
“And well you may, for it is full of malaria,” said Miriam; she went on,
hinting at an intangible confession, such as persons with overburdened
hearts often make to children or dumb animals, or to holes in the earth,
where they think their secrets may be at once revealed and buried.
“Those who come too near me are in danger of great mischiefs, I do
assure you. Take warning, therefore! It is a sad fatality that has
brought you from your home among the Apennines,--some rusty old castle,
I suppose, with a village at its foot, and an Arcadian environment of
vineyards, fig-trees, and olive orchards,--a sad mischance, I say, that
has transported you to my side. You have had a happy life hitherto, have
you not, Donatello?”
“O, yes,” answered the young man; and, though not of a retrospective
turn, he made the best effort he could to send his mind back into the
past. “I remember thinking it happiness to dance with the contadinas at
a village feast; to taste the new, sweet wine at vintage-time, and the
old, ripened wine, which our podere is famous for, in the cold winter
evenings; and to devour great, luscious figs, and apricots, peaches,
cherries, and melons. I was often happy in the woods, too, with hounds
and horses, and very happy in watching all sorts, of creatures and birds
that haunt the leafy solitudes. But never half so happy as now!”
“In these delightful groves?” she asked.
“Here, and with you,” answered Donatello. “Just as we are now.”
“What a fulness of content in him! How silly, and how delightful!” said
Miriam to herself. Then addressing him again: “But, Donatello, how long
will this happiness last?”
“How long!” he exclaimed; for it perplexed him even more to think of the
future than to remember the past. “Why should it have any end? How long!
Forever! forever! forever!”
“The child! the simpleton!” said Miriam, with sudden laughter, and
checking it as suddenly. “But is he a simpleton indeed? Here, in those
few natural words, he has expressed that deep sense, that profound
conviction of its own immortality, which genuine love never fails to
bring. He perplexes me,--yes, and bewitches me,--wild, gentle, beautiful
creature that he is! It is like playing with a young greyhound!”
Her eyes filled with tears, at the same time that a smile shone out of
them. Then first she became sensible of a delight and grief at once, in
feeling this zephyr of a new affection, with its untainted freshness,
blow over her weary, stifled heart, which had no right to be revived by
it. The very exquisiteness of the enjoyment made her know that it ought
to be a forbidden one.
“Donatello,” she hastily exclaimed, “for your own sake, leave me! It is
not such a happy thing as you imagine it, to wander in these woods with
me, a girl from another land, burdened with a doom that she tells to
none. I might make you dread me,--perhaps hate me,--if I chose; and I
must choose, if I find you loving me too well!”
“I fear nothing!” said Donatello, looking into her unfathomable eyes
with perfect trust. “I love always!”
“I speak in vain,” thought Miriam within herself.
“Well, then, for this one hour, let me be such as he imagines me.
To-morrow will be time enough to come back to my reality. My reality!
what is it? Is the past so indestructible? the future so immitigable?
Is the dark dream, in which I walk, of such solid, stony substance, that
there can be no escape out of its dungeon? Be it so! There is, at
least, that ethereal quality in my spirit, that it can make me as gay as
Donatello himself,--for this one hour!”
And immediately she brightened up, as if an inward flame, heretofore
stifled, were now permitted to fill her with its happy lustre, glowing
through her cheeks and dancing in her eye-beams.
Donatello, brisk and cheerful as he seemed before, showed a sensibility
to Miriam’s gladdened mood by breaking into still wilder and
ever-varying activity. He frisked around her, bubbling over with joy,
which clothed itself in words that had little individual meaning, and
in snatches of song that seemed as natural as bird notes. Then they both
laughed together, and heard their own laughter returning in the echoes,
and laughed again at the response, so that the ancient and solemn grove
became full of merriment for these two blithe spirits. A bird happening
to sing cheerily, Donatello gave a peculiar call, and the little
feathered creature came fluttering about his head, as if it had known
him through many summers.
“How close he stands to nature!” said Miriam, observing this pleasant
familiarity between her companion and the bird. “He shall make me as
natural as himself for this one hour.”
As they strayed through that sweet wilderness, she felt more and more
the influence of his elastic temperament. Miriam was an impressible
and impulsive creature, as unlike herself, in different moods, as if a
melancholy maiden and a glad one were both bound within the girdle about
her waist, and kept in magic thraldom by the brooch that clasped it.
Naturally, it is true, she was the more inclined to melancholy,
yet fully capable of that high frolic of the spirits which richly
compensates for many gloomy hours; if her soul was apt to lurk in the
darkness of a cavern, she could sport madly in the sunshine before
the cavern’s mouth. Except the freshest mirth of animal spirits, like
Donatello’s, there is no merriment, no wild exhilaration, comparable to
that of melancholy people escaping from the dark region in which it is
their custom to keep themselves imprisoned.
So the shadowy Miriam almost outdid Donatello on his own ground. They
ran races with each other, side by side, with shouts and laughter; they
pelted one another with early flowers, and gathering them up twined
them with green leaves into garlands for both their heads. They played
together like children, or creatures of immortal youth. So much had they
flung aside the sombre habitudes of daily life, that they seemed born
to be sportive forever, and endowed with eternal mirthfulness instead
of any deeper joy. It was a glimpse far backward into Arcadian life, or,
further still, into the Golden Age, before mankind was burdened with
sin and sorrow, and before pleasure had been darkened with those shadows
that bring it into high relief, and make it happiness.
“Hark!” cried Donatello, stopping short, as he was about to bind
Miriam’s fair hands with flowers, and lead her along in triumph, “there
is music somewhere in the grove!”
“It is your kinsman, Pan, most likely,” said Miriam, “playing on his
pipe. Let us go seek him, and make him puff out his rough cheeks and
pipe his merriest air! Come; the strain of music will guide us onward
like a gayly colored thread of silk.”
“Or like a chain of flowers,” responded Donatello, drawing her along by
that which he had twined. “This way!--Come!”