THE GORGE.
After her light supper was over, Agnes took her distaff, wound with
shining white flax, and went and seated herself in her favorite place,
on the low parapet that overlooked the gorge.
This ravine, with its dizzy depths, its waving foliage, its dripping
springs, and the low murmur of the little stream that pursued its way
far down at the bottom, was one of those things which stimulated her
impressible imagination, and filled her with a solemn and vague delight.
The ancient Italian tradition made it the home of fauns and dryads, wild
woodland creatures, intermediate links between vegetable life and that
of sentient and reasoning humanity. The more earnest faith that came in
with Christianity, if it had its brighter lights in an immortality of
blessedness, had also its deeper shadows in the intenser perceptions it
awakened of sin and evil, and of the mortal struggle by which the human
spirit must avoid endless woe and rise to endless felicity. The myths
with which the colored Italian air was filled in mediaeval ages no
longer resembled those graceful, floating, cloud-like figures one sees
in the ancient chambers of Pompeii,--the bubbles and rainbows of human
fancy, rising aimless and buoyant, with a mere freshness of animal life,
against a black background of utter and hopeless ignorance as to man's
past or future. They were rather expressed by solemn images of
mournful, majestic angels and of triumphant saints, or fearful, warning
presentations of loathsome fiends. Each lonesome gorge and sombre dell
had tales no more of tricky fauns and dryads, but of those restless,
wandering demons who, having lost their own immortality of blessedness,
constantly lie in wait to betray frail humanity, and cheat it of that
glorious inheritance bought by the Great Redemption.
The education of Agnes had been one which rendered her whole system
peculiarly sensitive and impressible to all influences from the
invisible and unseen. Of this education we shall speak more particularly
hereafter. At present we see her sitting in the twilight on the
moss-grown marble parapet, her distaff, with its silvery flax, lying
idly in her hands, and her widening dark eyes gazing intently into the
gloomy gorge below, from which arose the far-off complaining babble of
the brook at the bottom and the shiver and sigh of evening winds
through the trailing ivy. The white mist was slowly rising, wavering,
undulating, and creeping its slow way up the sides of the gorge. Now it
hid a tuft of foliage, and now it wreathed itself around a horned clump
of aloes, and, streaming far down below it in the dimness, made it seem
like the goblin robe of some strange, supernatural being.
The evening light had almost burned out in the sky: only a band of vivid
red lay low in the horizon out to sea, and the round full moon was just
rising like a great silver lamp, while Vesuvius with its smoky top began
in the obscurity to show its faintly flickering fires. A vague agitation
seemed to oppress the child; for she sighed deeply, and often repeated
with fervor the Ave Maria.
At this moment there began to rise from the very depths of the gorge
below her the sound of a rich tenor voice, with a slow, sad modulation,
and seeming to pulsate upward through the filmy, shifting mists. It was
one of those voices which seem fit to be the outpouring of some spirit
denied all other gifts of expression, and rushing with passionate fervor
through this one gate of utterance. So distinctly were the words spoken,
that they seemed each one to rise as with a separate intelligence out of
the mist, and to knock at the door of the heart.
Sad is my life, and lonely!
No hope for me,
Save thou, my love, my only,
I see!
Where art then, O my fairest?
Where art thou gone?
Dove of the rock, I languish
Alone!
They say thou art so saintly,
Who dare love thee?
Yet bend thine eyelids holy
On me!
Though heaven alone possess thee,
Thou dwell'st above,
Yet heaven, didst thou but know it,
Is love.
There was such an intense earnestness in these sounds, that large tears
gathered in the wide, dark eyes, and fell one after another upon the
sweet alyssum and maiden's-hair that grew in the crevices of the marble
wall. She shivered and drew away from the parapet, and thought of
stories she had heard the nuns tell of wandering spirits who sometimes
in lonesome places pour forth such entrancing music as bewilders the
brain of the unwary listener, and leads him to some fearful destruction.
"Agnes!" said the sharp voice of old Elsie, appearing at the
door,--"here! where are you?"
"Here, grandmamma."
"Who's that singing this time o' night?"
"I don't know, grandmamma."
Somehow the child felt as if that singing were strangely sacred to
her,--a _rapport_ between her and something vague and invisible, which
might yet become dear.
"Is't down in the gorge?" said the old woman, coming with her heavy,
decided step to the parapet, and looking over, her keen black eyes
gleaming like dagger-blades info the mist. "If there's anybody there,"
she said, "let them go away, and not be troubling honest women with any
of their caterwauling. Come, Agnes," she said, pulling the girl by the
sleeve, "you must be tired, my lamb! and your evening-prayers are always
so long, best be about them, girl, so that old grandmamma may put you to
bed. What ails the girl? Been crying! Your hand is cold as a stone."
"Grandmamma, what if that might be a spirit?" she said. "Sister Rosa
told me stories of singing spirits that have been in this very gorge."
"Likely enough," said Dame Elsie; "but what's that to us? Let 'em sing!
--so long as we don't listen, where's the harm done? We will sprinkle
holy water all round the parapet, and say the office of Saint Agnes, and
let them sing till they are hoarse."
Such was the triumphant view which this energetic good woman took of the
power of the means of grace which her church placed at her disposal.
Nevertheless, while Agnes was kneeling at her evening-prayers, the old
dame consoled herself with a soliloquy, as with a brush she vigorously
besprinkled the premises with holy water.
"Now, here's the plague of a girl! If she's handsome,--and nobody wants
one that isn't,--why, then, it's a purgatory to look after her. This one
is good enough,--none of your hussies, like Giulietta: but the better
they are, the more sure to have fellows after them. A murrain on that
cavalier,--king's brother, or what not!--it was he serenading, I'll be
bound. I must tell Antonio, and have the girl married, for aught I see:
and I don't want to give her to him either; he didn't bring her up.
There's no peace for us mothers. Maybe I'll tell Father Francesco about
it. That's the way poor little Isella was carried away. Singing is of
the Devil, I believe; it always bewitches girls. I'd like to have poured
some hot oil down the rocks: I'd have made him squeak in another tone, I
reckon. Well, well! I hope I shall come in for a good seat in paradise
for all the trouble I've had with her mother, and am like to have with
her,--that's all!"
In an hour more, the large, round, sober moon was shining fixedly on
the little mansion in the rocks, silvering the glossy darkness of the
orange-leaves, while the scent of the blossoms arose like clouds about
the cottage. The moonlight streamed through the unglazed casement, and
made a square of light on the little bed where Agnes was sleeping,
in which square her delicate face was framed, with its tremulous and
spiritual expression most resembling in its sweet plaintive purity some
of the Madonna faces of Frà Angelico,--those tender wild-flowers of
Italian religion and poetry.
By her side lay her grandmother, with those sharp, hard, clearly cut
features, so worn and bronzed by time, so lined with labor and care, as
to resemble one of the Fates in the picture of Michel Angelo; and even
in her sleep she held the delicate lily hand of the child in her own
hard, brown one, with a strong and determined clasp.
While they sleep, we must tell something more of the story of the little
Agnes,--of what she is, and what are the causes which have made her
such.