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_ Mirian'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 cofivey 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 m 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!" _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER X - THE SYLVAN DANCE
Read previous: VOLUME I: CHAPTER VIII - THE SUBURBAN VILLA
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