LOVE, AND A GARDEN
Don Giovanni arrived on Tuesday, and Saturday found him out on the
terrace leaning over the balustrade beside Nina. His expression was
unusually animated, for he was making the most of his first chance to
talk to her without the presence of a third person. Not that they were
alone--the Princess Sansevero was too much of an Italian to leave a
young girl for a moment unchaperoned. But she was walking about with the
head gardener, discussing the possibilities of saving a grove of cypress
trees that showed signs of dying; and though she kept the young people
well in sight, she could not overhear their conversation. Giovanni's big
dog, St. Anthony, was lying outstretched in the sunshine.
In the full light, Nina had ample opportunity for observing that her
companion was quite as good-looking in detail as in general effect; and
the rhythmic inflection of his voice--he spoke in French--she thought
truly attuned to his surroundings. He was one of those who, like Italy
itself, give to strangers only the suggestion of their meaning, and he
interested Nina chiefly as a new unsolved problem.
Gradually the habitual sleepy expression had returned to his eyes, and
his voice grew dreamy. "We of Italy," he was saying, "live, endure, die,
if need be--always for the same reason--woman and love! Your men in
America"--his teeth glittered as he smiled--"tell me, Mademoiselle, do
you believe they know what it is to love? Do they hide it, perhaps, from
us Europeans?"
"I should think," answered Nina sagely, "that love means more to our men
than to you." (A remark that John Derby had made came into her mind as
she spoke: "You will find your own countrymen go in for the real thing,
where the foreigner spends all his time talking about it.")
Don Giovanni was too thoroughly a European to become argumentative. "You
see, I speak only from hearsay," he continued, with that air of agreeing
with her which only the Latin possesses. "I have always been led to
suppose that love plays a very small part in the lives of your
countrymen." He held the thread of the conversation, but his manner said
plainly that he only waited humbly to be enlightened. "I should have
said," he went on, "an illustration of love in my country as contrasted
with yours is shown in the gardens--just as our gardens bloom all the
year, so love blooms always in our hearts; flowers and love, they go
together; nowhere in the world are they so perfect as in Italy."
"So cultivated?" asked Nina.
He took no notice of the quip. "If to cultivate is to think of and to
nurture, to strive always for greater perfection, then, yes, let us say
cultivated."
There was a challenge; there was also a look of pity that annoyed her.
It was this that she resented. She felt that she was being enmeshed in
an invisible web, and she sought for a means of escape. Seeing none she
might be sure of, she dropped the figurative speech and took refuge in
platitudes.
"In America we admire a man for what he does--over here you do nothing.
Each day for you is the same. You spend your time as a woman might,
unless you go into the army, the church, or diplomacy. For instance,
you, yourself, what is your ambition? Is there anything you are trying
to do?"
Indolently he shrugged his shoulders, and with a half-lazy arrogance he
answered, "Why should I try to create a personal and trivial future,
when I can, without striving, merely survive from a far more glorious
past? Listen, Mademoiselle, do you think as much can be accomplished by
one short generation as by many? For instance, could a garden such as
this be produced in the lifetime of one man?" He waved his arm in a
circular motion. "It is not alone its plan and its fountains, and its
green shrubbery that make it what it is, but the history of human lives
that is planted in its every turn and corner. The gardens of America are
but newly born from the minds of your landscape architects; in most of
them the trees are but newly planted. This garden was already stately
with ilex and cypress when the first white men of North America were
sowing a little corn. How can you feel romance in a garden where there
is no tradition save of the hours a few laborers have spent in digging?"
Suddenly a look of real ardor came into his face, an animation into his
expression that gave a new charm to his words. "On this terrace where we
now stand, leaning upon the marble of this very railing, countless men
who were heroes, poets, philosophers, and fair women who were their
sweethearts, have looked, as we do, over the hills laden with blossoming
trees. Up that path yonder to the monastery have gone pilgrims, sinners,
martyrs, and many lovers to have their vows blessed, or to find a haven
for broken hearts. In the _allée_ of cypress trees have walked many of
the great lovers of Italy's romance. From this terrace end Beatrice
herself is said to have thrown a rose of that very bush's parent stem to
her immortal lover. Every corner of the garden holds its story of
meetings that made of it a paradise, of partings that made of it an
inferno. What is paradise, but love? Inferno, but the sorrow of love?
Down before us, and even up here on this terrace, scenes have been
enacted in feud and in peace, horrible scenes of bloodshed and cruelty,
and again scenes of splendor--gatherings of church, ceremonials of
state, but chiefly scenes of love--some beautiful and happy, others no
less beautiful because they were tragic. Shall I tell you some of the
stories?"
Nina nodded an eager assent; Giovanni's manner held her completely.
"Almost where you are standing, Cecilia Sansevero was stabbed by Guido
Corlone before he killed himself, so that they might be together in the
next world. Out of that window, the third from the end, another daughter
of our house descended by a silk ladder. They--she and her lover--took
the path directly below here; the guards saw them. This happened just
beside the statue yonder. He drew his sword and stood before her, but
the guards were too many, and he was killed. She had poison in a locket
that she wore, and almost before they could drag her arms from about her
lover's neck, she also was dead."
"Horrible!" cried Nina. Her face, mobile as Giovanni's own, had
unconsciously reflected, in changing expressions, the progress of his
narrative. "To think that in such a place as this such things really
happened." She shuddered, then added, "But, Don Giovanni, are there no
pleasant stories? Please think of some."
"Oh, any number. Once there was a small house in the valley--a lodge it
would be called now. A very pretty girl lived there. This time it was
the son of our house, a young, hot-headed fellow like all of us."
Giovanni let just enough fire gleam in his eyes to give Nina a glimpse
of another phase of him. "Well, this son--whose name was the same as
mine, Giovanni, a Prince Sansevero--he was mad about this girl. He
would marry her or he would take his life. She was the star of his
destiny, the crown of his life, and all the rest of it. They were going
to send her away--she was to go into a cloister; he was locked up in the
castle. But the old custodian, who adored the boy, let him escape by the
underground passage. He came out in the church. She had gone there to
pray, knowing nothing of the underground way--it was kept a profound
secret in those days. As the girl knelt, Giovanni appeared suddenly
beside the altar. Her duenna thought him an apparition, and the two fled
up to the monastery--that one you see from here."
"And then----?" said Nina breathlessly.
"The Father Abbot relented and married them."
Nina tried to discern the path to the monastery; in her imagination she
saw them hurrying along on the night of their escape.
"And then? In the end what became of them?"
"She bore him fifteen children; thirteen of them were girls."
Giovanni's manner was so casual as he said this that Nina laughed long
and deliciously. He swung himself lightly over the balustrade and
gathered her a long-stemmed rose from the bush whose early branches were
supposed to have known the touch of Beatrice. Perhaps the legend was
untrue, but his action, like the afternoon, held much that was alluring.
Something of this allure lay in Giovanni's having the same name as the
people he told about. Something, too, in the carelessness, and yet the
pride, of his telling, made his tales enchanting, and seemed in some way
to include his own personality in the chain of romance as its final
link. The garden was spread before her. The underground passage she
knew, and it wound directly beneath her feet. The chapel, the statue,
the ruins of the little temple, the monastery encircling like a low
crown the summit of the distant mountain, all were before her; and
beside her was a son of the same race, of the same blood. She wondered
vaguely why it was so much more apparent in Don Giovanni than in her
uncle the prince. Prince Sansevero seemed quite modern; the Marchese di
Valdo, though more modern actually than his brother, still seemed to
keep his touch on the age that was past.
"Do these old legends please you, Mademoiselle? Or are you too restless?
Too progressive? Americans, like the horse Pegasus, leap into the air
without any need of foundation to stand on. We, over here, build, like
the coral reefs, slowly perhaps, but always from the foundation up."
"I think," said Nina slowly; "it is the mystery of the past that makes
it so wonderful. We never can know quite enough about it. All legends
are like pictures seen through a fog; it lifts and shows a glimpse, then
as quickly closes in again. I always want to know what happened next."
As she said this, she realized that she was more or less making an
allegorical description of Giovanni himself. He was like his country and
its traditions, revealing himself only in glimpses. He attracted her
immensely through his subtle impersonality underlying all that was
seemingly personal. She could not fathom his depth, nor determine his
shallowness--she did not even guess which it might be. She was
irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking
down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over
which he leans. The parapet she clung to was her own good American
common sense. Yet she feared she did not know what. A little gleam in
Giovanni's dark eyes, a curious, deliberate, intentionally produced
expression of his smiling lips, swept over her sensibilities with a
feeling that was as terrifying as it was delicious--and both perhaps
because it was strange.
A little look--like triumph--flickered in his face; he laughed joyously.
"Mademoiselle, you are--adorable!" he said.