He came to her next through music, when the rain clouds had broken
away. That divine whistle, mellow, mocking, irresistible, still was
heard when morning lay on the hills. Often, when afternoon had touched
all the air to gold, when the shadows of chestnut and cypress and
gnarled olive lay long on the grass, other sounds floated down to
Daphne, music from some instrument that she did not know. It was no
harp, surely, yet certain clear, ranging notes seemed to come from the
sweeping of harp strings; again, it had all the subtle, penetrating
melody of the violin. Whatever instrument gave it forth, it drew the
girl's heart after it to wander its own way. When it was gay it won
her feet to some dance measure, and all alone in the great empty rooms
she would move to it with head thrown back and her whole body swaying
in a new sense of rhythm. When it was sad, it set her heart to beating
in great throbs, for then it begged and pleaded. There was need in it,
a human cry that surely was not the voice of a god. It spoke out of a
great yearning that answered to her own. Whether it was swift or slow
she loved it, and waited for it day by day, thinking of Apollo and his
harping to the muses nine.
So her old life and her old mood slipped away like a garment no longer
needed: her days were set to melody, and her nights to pleasant
dreams. The jangle of street cars and the twinges of conscience, the
noises of her native city, and her heart searchings in the Little
Church of All the Saints faded to the remoteness of a faint gray bar of
cloud that makes the sunset brighter in the west. She went singing
among the olives or past the fountain under the ilexes on the hill:
duties and perplexities vanished in the clear sunshine and pleasant
shadow of this golden world.
And all this meant that she had forgotten about the mails. She had
ceased to long for letters containing good news, or to fear that one
full of bad tidings would come, and every one knows that such a state
of mind as this is serious. Now, when Assunta found her one morning,
pacing the long, frescoed hall, by the side of the running water, and
put a whole sheaf of letters into her hand, Daphne looked at them
cautiously, and started to open one, then lost her courage and held
them for a while to get used to them. Finally she went upstairs and
changed her dress, putting on her short skirt and red felt hat, and
walked out into the highway with Hermes skipping after her. She walked
rapidly up the even way, under the high stone walls green with
overhanging ivy and wistaria vines, and the lamb kept pace with her
with his gay gallop, broken now and then by a sidelong leap of sheer
joy up into the air. Presently she found a turning that she had not
known before, marked by a little wayside shrine, and taking it,
followed a narrow grass-grown road that curled about the side of a hill.
She read her father's letter first, walking slowly and smiling. If he
were only here to share this wide beauty! Then she read her sister's,
which was full of woeful exclamations and bad news. The sick man was
slowly dying, and they could not leave him. Meanwhile she was desolated
by thinking of her little sister. Of course she was safe, for Giacomo
and Assunta were more trustworthy than the Italian government, but it
must be very stupid, and she had meant to give Daphne such a gay time
at the villa. She would write at once to some English friends at Lake
Scala, ten miles away, to see if they could not do something to relieve
her sister's solitude.
"To relieve my solitude!" gasped Daphne. "Oh I am so afraid something
will!"
There were several other letters, all from friends at home. One, in a
great square envelope, addressed with an English scrawl, she dreaded,
and she kept it for the last. When she did tear it open her face grew
quite pale. There was much in it about duty and consecration, and much
concerning two lives sacrificed to the same great ideal. It breathed
thoughts of denial and of annihilation of self, and,--yes, Eustace took
her at her word and was ready to welcome again the old relation. If
she would permit him, he would send back the ring.
Hermes hid behind a stone and dashed out at his mistress to surprise
her, expecting to be chased as usual, but Daphne could not run. With
heavy feet and downcast eyes she walked along the green roadway, then,
when her knees suddenly became weak, sat down on a stone and covered
her face with her hands. She had not known until this moment how she
had been hoping that two and two would not make four; she had not
really believed that this could be the result of her letter of
atonement. Her soul had traveled far since she wrote that letter, and
it was hard to find the way back. Hiding the brown and purple distances
of the Campagna came pictures of dim, candle-lighted spaces, of a thin
face with a setting of black and white priestly garments, and in her
ears was the sound of a voice endlessly intoning. It made up a vision
of the impossible.
She sat there a long, long time, and when she wakened to a
consciousness of where she was, it was a whining voice that roused her.
"Signorina, for the love of heaven, give me a few soldi, for I am
starving."
Daphne looked up and was startled, and yet old beggar women were common
enough sights here among the hills. This one had an evil look, with
her cunning, half-shut eyes.
The girl shook her head.
"I have no money with me," she remarked.
"But Signorina, so young, so beautiful, surely she has money with her."
A dirty brown hand came all too close to Daphne's face, and she sprang
to her feet.
"I have spoken," she said severely, giving a little stamp. "I have
none. Now go away."
The whining continued, unintermittent. The old woman came closer, and
her hand touched the girl's skirt. Wrenching herself away, Daphne
found herself in the grasp of two skinny arms, and an actual physical
struggle began. The girl had no time for fear, and suddenly help came.
A firm hand caught the woman's shoulder, and the victim was free.
"Are you hurt?" asked Apollo anxiously.
She shook her head, smiling.
"Frightened?"
"No. Don't you always rescue me?"
"But this is merest accident, my being here. It really isn't safe for
you alone on these roads."
"I knew you were near."
"And yet, I have just this minute come round the hill. You could not
possibly have seen me."
"I have ways of knowing," said Daphne, smiling demurely.
A faint little bleat interrupted them.
"Oh, oh!" cried the girl, "she is running away with Hermes!"
Never did Apollo move more swiftly than he did then! Daphne followed,
with flying feet. He reached the beggar woman, held her, took the lamb
with one hand from her and handed it to Daphne. There followed a scene
which the girl remembered afterward with a curious sense of misgiving
and of question. The thief gave one glance at the beautiful, angry
face of the man, then fell at his feet, groveling and beseeching. What
she was saying the girl did not know, but her face and figure bore a
look of more than mortal fear.
"What does she think him?" murmured the girl. Then she turned away
with him, and, with the lamb at their heels, they walked together back
along the grassy road.
"You look very serious," remarked her protector. "You are sure it is
not fright?"
She shook her head, holding up her bundle of letters.
"Bad news?"
"No, good," she answered, smiling bravely.
"I hope good news will be infrequent," he answered. "You look like
Iphigenia going to be sacrificed."
"I will admit that there is a problem," said the girl. "There's a
question about my doing something."
"And you know it must be right to do it because you hate it?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Don't you think so, too? Now when you answer," she added triumphantly,
"I shall know what kind of god you are."
They had reached the turning of the ways, and he stopped, as if
intending to leave her. "I cannot help you," he said sadly, "for I do
not know the case. Only, I think it is best not to decide by any
abstruse rule. Life is life's best teacher, and out of one's last
experience comes insight for the next. But don't be too sure that duty
and unhappiness are one."
She left him, standing by the little wayside shrine with a strange look
on his face. A tortured Christ hung there, casting the shadow of pain
upon the passers-by. The expression in the brown eyes of the heathen
god haunted her all the way down the hill, and throughout the day:
they seemed to understand, and yet be glad.