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_ Between Hilda and the sculptor there had been a kind of half-expressed
understanding, that both were to visit the galleries of the Vatican
the day subsequent to their meeting at the studio. Kenyon,
accordingly, failed not to be there, and wandered through the vast
ranges of apartments, but saw nothing of his expected friend. The
marble faces, which stand innumerable along the walls, and have kept
themselves so calm through the vicissitudes of twenty centuries, had
no sympathy for his disappointment; and he, on the other hand, strode
past these treasures and marvels of antique art, with the indifference
which any preoccupation of the feelings is apt to produce, in
reference to objects of sculpture. Being of so cold and pure a
substance, and mostly deriving their vitality more from thought than
passion, they require to be seen through a perfectly transparent
medium.
And, moreover, Kenyon had counted so much upon Hilda's delicate
perceptions in enabling him to look at two or three of the statues,
about which they had talked together, that the entire purpose of his
visit was defeated by her absence. It is a delicious sort of mutual
aid, when the united power of two sympathetic, yet dissimilar,
intelligences is brought to bear upon a poem by reading it aloud, or
upon a picture or statue by viewing it in each other's company. Even
if not a word of criticism be uttered, the insight of either party is
wonderfully deepened, and the comprehension broadened; so that the
inner mystery of a work of genius, hidden from one, will often reveal
itself to two. Missing such help, Kenyon saw nothing at the Vatican
which he had not seen a thousand times before, and more perfectly than
now.
In the chili of his disappointment, he suspected that it was a very
cold art to which he had devoted himself. He questioned, at that
moment, whether sculpture really ever softens and warms the material
which it handles; whether carved marble is anything but limestone,
after all; and whether the Apollo Belvedere itself possesses any merit
above its physical beauty, or is beyond criticism even in that
generally acknowledged excellence. In flitting glances, heretofore,
he had seemed to behold this statue, as something ethereal and godlike,
but not now.
Nothing pleased him, unless it were the group of the Laocoon, which,
in its immortal agony, impressed Kenyon as a type of the long, fierce
struggle of man, involved in the knotted entanglements of Error and
Evil, those two snakes, which, if no divine help intervene, will be
sure to strangle him and his children in the end. What he most
admired was the strange calmness diffused through this bitter strife;
so that it resembled the rage of the sea made calm by its immensity,'
or the tumult of Niagara which ceases to be tumult because it lasts
forever. Thus, in the Laocoon, the horror of a moment grew to be the
fate of interminable ages. Kenyon looked upon the group as the one
triumph of sculpture, creating the repose, which is essential to it,
in the very acme of turbulent effort; but, in truth, it was his mood
of unwonted despondency that made him so sensitive to the terrible
magnificence, as well as to the sad moral, of this work. Hilda
herself could not have helped him to see it with nearly such
intelligence.
A good deal more depressed than the nature of the disappointment
warranted, Kenyon went to his studio, and took in hand a great lump of
clay. He soon found, however, that his plastic cunning had departed
from him for the time. So he wandered forth again into the uneasy
streets of Rome, and walked up and down the Corso, where, at that
period of the day, a throng of passers-by and loiterers choked up the
narrow sidewalk. A penitent was thus brought in contact with the
sculptor.
It was a figure in a white robe, with a kind of featureless mask over
the face, through the apertures of which the eyes threw an
unintelligible light. Such odd, questionable shapes are often seen
gliding through the streets of Italian cities, and are understood to
be usually persons of rank, who quit their palaces, their gayeties,
their pomp and pride, and assume the penitential garb for a season,
with a view of thus expiating some crime, or atoning for the aggregate
of petty sins that make up a worldly life. It is their custom to ask
alms, and perhaps to measure the duration of their penance by the time
requisite to accumulate a sum of money out of the little droppings of
individual charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent or
religious purpose; so that the benefit accruing to their own souls is,
in a manner, linked with a good done, or intended, to their fellow-men.
These figures have a ghastly and startling effect, not so much from
any very impressive peculiarity in the garb, as from the mystery which
they bear about with them, and the sense that there is an acknowledged
sinfulness as the nucleus of it.
In the present instance, however, the penitent asked no alms of Kenyon;
although, for the space of a minute or two, they stood face to face,
the hollow eyes of the mask encountering the sculptor's gaze. But,
just as the crowd was about to separate them, the former spoke, in a
voice not unfamiliar to Kenyon, though rendered remote and strange by
the guilty veil through which it penetrated.
"Is all well with you, Signore?" inquired the penitent, out of the
cloud in which he walked.
"All is well," answered Kenyon. "And with you?"
But the masked penitent returned no answer, being borne away by the
pressure of the throng.
The sculptor stood watching the figure, and was almost of a mind to
hurry after him and follow up the conversation that had been begun;
but it occurred to him that there is a sanctity (or, as we might
rather term it, an inviolable etiquette) which prohibits the
recognition of persons who choose to walk under the veil of penitence.
"How strange!" thought Kenyon to himself. "It was surely Donatello!
What can bring him to Rome, where his recollections must be so painful,
and his presence not without peril? And Miriam! Can she have
accompanied him?"
He walked on, thinking of the vast change in Donatello, since those
days of gayety and innocence, when the young Italian was new in Rome,
and was just beginning to be sensible of a more poignant felicity than
he had yet experienced, in the sunny warmth of Miriam's smile. The
growth of a soul, which the sculptor half imagined that he had
witnessed in his friend, seemed hardly worth the heavy price that it
had cost, in the sacrifice of those simple enjoyments that were gone
forever. A creature of antique healthfulness had vanished from the
earth; and, in his stead, there was only one other morbid and
remorseful man, among millions that were cast in the same
indistinguishable mould.
The accident of thus meeting Donatello the glad Faun of his
imagination and memory, now transformed into a gloomy
penitent--contributed to deepen the cloud that had fallen over
Kenyon's spirits. It caused him to fancy, as we generally do, in the
petty troubles which extend not a hand's-breadth beyond our own sphere,
that the whole world was saddening around him. It took the sinister
aspect of an omen, although he could not distinctly see what trouble
it might forebode.
If it had not been for a peculiar sort of pique, with which lovers are
much conversant, a preposterous kind of resentment which endeavors to
wreak itself on the beloved object, and on one's own heart, in
requital of mishaps for which neither are in fault, Kenyon might at
once have betaken himself to Hilda's studio, and asked why the
appointment was not kept. But the interview of to-day was to have
been so rich in present joy, and its results so important to his
future life, that the bleak failure was too much for his equanimity.
He was angry with poor Hilda, and censured her without a hearing;
angry with himself, too, and therefore inflicted on this latter
criminal the severest penalty in his power; angry with the day that
was passing over him, and would not permit its latter hours to redeem
the disappointment of the morning.
To confess the truth, it had been the sculptor's purpose to stake all
his hopes on that interview in the galleries of the Vatican. Straying
with Hilda through those long vistas of ideal beauty, he meant, at
last, to utter himself upon that theme which lovers are fain to
discuss in village lanes, in wood paths, on seaside sands, in crowded
streets; it little matters where, indeed, since roses are sure to
blush along the way, and daisies and violets to spring beneath the
feet, if the spoken word be graciously received. He was resolved to
make proof whether the kindness that Hilda evinced for him was the
precious token of an individual preference, or merely the sweet
fragrance of her disposition, which other friends might share as
largely as himself. He would try if it were possible to take this shy,
yet frank, and innocently fearless creature captive, and imprison her
in his heart, and make her sensible of a wider freedom there, than in
all the world besides.
It was hard, we must allow, to see the shadow of a wintry sunset
falling upon a day that was to have been so bright, and to find
himself just where yesterday had left him, only with a sense of being
drearily balked, and defeated without an opportunity for struggle. So
much had been anticipated from these now vanished hours, that it
seemed as if no other day could bring back the same golden hopes.
In a case like this, it is doubtful whether Kenyon could have done a
much better thing than he actually did, by going to dine at the Cafe
Nuovo, and drinking a flask of Montefiascone; longing, the while, for
a beaker or two of Donatello's Sunshine. It would have been just the
wine to cure a lover's melancholy, by illuminating his heart with
tender light and warmth, and suggestions of undefined hopes, too
ethereal for his morbid humor to examine and reject them.
No decided improvement resulting from the draught of Montefiascone, he
went to the Teatro Argentino, and sat gloomily to see an Italian
comedy, which ought to have cheered him somewhat, being full of
glancing merriment, and effective over everybody's disabilities except
his own. The sculptor came out, however, before the close of the
performance, as disconsolate as he went in.
As he made his way through the complication of narrow streets, which
perplex that portion of the city, a carriage passed him. It was
driven rapidly, but not too fast for the light of a gas-lamp to flare
upon a face within--especially as it was bent forward, appearing to
recognize him, while a beckoning hand was protruded from the window.
On his part, Kenyon at once knew the face, and hastened to the
carriage, which had now stopped.
"Miriam! you in Rome?" he exclaimed "And your friends know nothing of
it?"
"Is all well with you?" she asked.
This inquiry, in the identical words which Donatello had so recently
addressed to him from beneath the penitent's mask, startled the
sculptor. Either the previous disquietude of his mind, or some tone
in Miriam's voice, or the unaccountableness of beholding her there at
all, made it seem ominous.
"All is well, I believe," answered he doubtfully. "I am aware of no
misfortune. Have you any to announce'?"
He looked still more earnestly at Miriam, and felt a dreamy
uncertainty whether it was really herself to whom he spoke. True;
there were those beautiful features, the contour of which he had
studied too often, and with a sculptor's accuracy of perception, to be
in any doubt that it was Miriam's identical face. But he was
conscious of a change, the nature of which he could not satisfactorily
define; it might be merely her dress, which, imperfect as the light
was, he saw to be richer than the simple garb that she had usually
worn. The effect, he fancied, was partly owing to a gem which she had
on her bosom; not a diamond, but something that glimmered with a clear,
red lustre, like the stars in a southern sky. Somehow or other, this
colored light seemed an emanation of herself, as if all that was
passionate and glowing in her native disposition had crystallized upon
her breast, and were just now scintillating more brilliantly than ever,
in sympathy with some emotion of her heart.
Of course there could be no real doubt that it was Miriam, his artist
friend, with whom and Hilda he had spent so many pleasant and familiar
hours, and whom he had last seen at Perugia, bending with Donatello
beneath the bronze pope's benediction. It must be that selfsame
Miriam; but the sensitive sculptor felt a difference of manner, which
impressed him more than he conceived it possible to be affected by so
external a thing. He remembered the gossip so prevalent in Rome on
Miriam's first appearance; how that she was no real artist, but the
daughter of an illustrious or golden lineage, who was merely playing
at necessity; mingling with human struggle for her pastime; stepping
out of her native sphere only for an interlude, just as a princess
might alight from her gilded equipage to go on foot through a rustic
lane. And now, after a mask in which love and death had performed
their several parts, she had resumed her proper character.
"Have you anything to tell me?" cried he impatiently; for nothing
causes a more disagreeable vibration of the nerves than this
perception of ambiguousness in familiar persons or affairs. "Speak;
for my spirits and patience have been much tried to-day."
Miriam put her finger on her lips, and seemed desirous that Kenyon
should know of the presence of a third person. He now saw, indeed,
that, there was some one beside her in the carriage, hitherto
concealed by her attitude; a man, it appeared, with a sallow Italian
face, which the sculptor distinguished but imperfectly, and did not
recognize.
"I can tell you nothing," she replied; and leaning towards him, she
whispered,--appearing then more like the Miriam whom he knew than in
what had before passed,--"Only, when the lamp goes out do not despair."
The carriage drove on, leaving Kenyon to muse over this unsatisfactory
interview, which seemed to have served no better purpose than to fill
his mind with more ominous forebodings than before. Why were
Donatello and Miriam in Rome, where both, in all likelihood, might
have much to dread? And why had one and the other addressed him with
a question that seemed prompted by a knowledge of some calamity,
either already fallen on his unconscious head, or impending closely
over him?
"I am sluggish," muttered Kenyon, to himself; "a weak, nerveless fool,
devoid of energy and promptitude; or neither Donatello nor Miriam
could have escaped me thus! They are aware of some misfortune that
concerns me deeply. How soon am I to know it too?"
There seemed but a single calamity possible to happen within so narrow
a sphere as that with which the sculptor was connected; and even to
that one mode of evil he could assign no definite shape, but only felt
that it must have some reference to Hilda.
Flinging aside the morbid hesitation, and the dallyings with his own
wishes, which he had permitted to influence his mind throughout the
day, he now hastened to the Via Portoghese. Soon the old palace stood
before him, with its massive tower rising into the clouded night;
obscured from view at its midmost elevation, but revealed again,
higher upward, by the Virgin's lamp that twinkled on the summit.
Feeble as it was, in the broad, surrounding gloom, that little ray
made no inconsiderable illumination among Kenyon's sombre thoughts;
for; remembering Miriam's last words, a fantasy had seized him that he
should find the sacred lamp extinguished.
And even while he stood gazing, as a mariner at the star in which he
put his trust, the light quivered, sank, gleamed up again, and finally
went out, leaving the battlements of Hilda's tower in utter darkness.
For the first time in centuries, the consecrated and legendary flame
before the loftiest shrine in Rome had ceased to burn. _
Read next: VOLUME II: CHAPTER XLIV - THE DESERTED SHRINE
Read previous: VOLUME II: CHAPTER XLII - REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM
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