The Mystery Unfolds to Howard.
We are in God's hand.
How strange now looks the life He makes us lead:
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel He laid the fetter: let it lie!
—Browning.
SAN MINIATO AL MONTE, FLORENCE.
The weeks sped rapidly on; midwinter had come and gone, and four months had been numbered since Mrs. Douglas had brought Malcom, Margery, Barbara, and Bettina to Italy.
Although social pleasures and duties had multiplied, yet study had never been given up. A steady advance had been made in knowledge of the history of Florence, and of her many legends and traditions. They had not forgotten or passed by the sculptured treasures of the city, but had learned something of Donatello, her first great sculptor; of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who wrought those exquisite gates of bronze for Dante's "Il mio bel San Giovanni" that Michael Angelo declared to be fit for the gates of Paradise; and of Brunelleschi, the architect of her great Duomo.
Through all had gone on their study of the Florentine painters. After much patient work given to pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they were now quite revelling in the beauty of those of the sixteenth century, or the High Renaissance. This was all the more interesting since they had seen how one after another the early difficulties had been overcome; how each great master succeeding Cimabue had added his contribution of thought and endeavor until artists knew all the laws that govern the art of representation; and how finally, the method of oil-painting having been introduced, they then had a fitting medium with which to express their knowledge and artistic endeavor.
They had read about Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest masters, so famous for his portrayal of subtile emotion, and were wonderfully interested in his life and work; had been to the Academy to see the Baptism of Christ, painted by his master, Andrea Verrocchio, and were very positive that the angel on the left, who holds Christ's garment, was painted by young Leonardo. They had studied his unfinished Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi—his only authentic work in Florence—and had wished much that they could see his other and greater pictures. Mr. Sumner had told them that in the early summer they would probably go to Milan, and there see the famous Last Supper and Study for the Head of Christ, and that perhaps later they might visit Paris and there find his Mona Lisa and other works.
They had been much interested in the many examples of Fra Bartolommeo's painting that are in San Marco—where he, as well as Fra Angelico, had been a monk;—in the Academy, and in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries; and had learned to recognize the peculiarities of his grouping of figures, and their abstract, devotional faces, his treatment of draperies, and the dear little angels, with their musical instruments, that are so often sitting at the feet of his madonnas.
They were fascinated by Andrea del Sarto, whom they followed all over the city wherever they could find either his frescoes or easel pictures. His color especially enchanted them, after they had looked at so many darkened and faded pictures. The story of his unquenchable love for his faithless wife, and how he painted her face into all his pictures, either as madonna or saint, played upon their romantic feelings. Margery learned Browning's poem about them, and often quoted from it. They were never tired of looking at his Holy Families and Madonnas in the galleries, but especially loved to go to the S.S. Annunziata and linger in the court, surrounded by glass colonnades, where are so many of his frescoes.
"Do you suppose it is true that his wife, Lucrezia, used to come here after he was dead and she was an old woman, to look at the pictures?" asked Margery one morning, when they had found their favorite place.
"I think it would be just like her vanity to point out her own likeness to people who were copying or looking at the frescoes, according to the old story," answered Bettina, with a disapproving shake of the head.
"Well," said Barbara, "the faces and figures and draperies are all lovely. But I suppose it is true, as Mr. Sumner says, that Andrea del Sarto did not try to make the faces show any holy feeling, or indeed any very noble expression, so that they are not so great pictures as they would have been had he been high-minded enough to do such things."
"It is a shame to have a man's life and work harmed by a woman, even though she was his wife," said Malcom, emphatically.
"All the more that she was his wife," said Barbara. "But I do not believe he could have done much better without Lucrezia. I think his very love for such a woman shows a weakness in his character. It would have been better if he had chosen other than sacred subjects, would it not, Howard?"
They were quite at home in their study of these more modern pictures, with photographs of which they were already somewhat familiar. Howard, especially, had always had a fine and critical taste regarding art matters, and now, among the works of artists of whom he knew something, was a valuable member of the little coterie, and often appealed to when Mr. Sumner was absent.
And thus they had talked over and over again the impressions which each artist and his work made on them, until even Mr. Sumner was astonished and delighted at the evident result of the interest he had awakened.
But the chief man and artist they were now considering, was Michael Angelo; and the more they learned of him the more true it was, they thought, that he "filled all Florence." They eagerly followed every step of his life from the time when, a young lad, he entered Ghirlandajo's studio, until he was brought to Florence—a dead old man, concealed in a bale of merchandise, because the authorities refused permission to his friends to take his body from Rome—and was buried at midnight in Santa Croce.
They tried to imagine his life during the four years which he spent in the Medici Palace, now Palazzo Riccardi, under the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent, while he was studying with the same tremendous energy that marked all his life, going almost daily to the Brancacci Chapel to learn from Masaccio's frescoes, and plunging into the subject of anatomy more like a devotee than a student.
They learned of his visit to Rome, where, before he was twenty-five years old, he sculptured the grand Pietá, or Dead Christ, which is still in St. Peter's; and of his return to Florence, where he foresaw his David in the shapeless block of marble, and gained permission of the commissioners to hew it out,—the David which stood so long under the shadow of old gray Palazzo Vecchio, but is now in the Academy.
Then came the beginnings of his painting; and they saw the Holy Family of the Uffizi Gallery—his only finished easel picture—which possesses more of the qualities of sculpture than painting; and read about his competition with Leonardo da Vinci when he prepared the famous Cartoon of Pisa, now known to the world only by fragmentary copies.
Then Pope Julius II. summoned him back to Rome to begin work on that vast monument conceived for the commemoration of his own greatness, and destined never to be finished; and afterward gave him the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican.
Returning to Florence in an interval of this work, he sculptured the magnificent Medici monuments, to see which they often visited the Chapel of the Medici. At the same time, since the prospect of war had come to the beautiful city, he built those famous fortifications on San Miniato through whose gateway they entered whenever they visited this lovely hill, crowned by a noble old church and a quiet city of the dead.
They drove out to Settignano to visit the villa where he lived when a child, and which he owned all his life; and went to Casa Buonarroti in Florence, where his descendants have gathered together what they could of the great master's sketches, early bas-reliefs, and manuscripts. Here they looked with reverence upon his handwriting, and little clay models moulded by his own fingers.
They talked of his affection for the noble Vittoria Colonna, and read the sonnets he wrote to her.
In short, they admired his great talents, loved his character, condoned his faults of temper, and felt the utmost sympathy with him in all the vicissitudes of his grand, inspiring life.
"It seems strange," said Mr. Sumner one day, as they returned from the Academy, where they had been looking at casts and photographs of his sculptured works, "that though Michael Angelo was undoubtedly greatest as a sculptor, yet his most important works in the world of art are his paintings. Those grand frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome alone afforded him sufficient scope for his wonderful creative genius. When we get to Rome I shall have much to tell you about them."
The question as to the best thing to do for the remainder of the year was often talked over by Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Sumner. Barbara, Bettina, Malcom, and Margery were so interested in their art study that it was finally thought best to travel in such a way that this could be continued to advantage, and they were now thinking of leaving Florence for Rome.
There had been one source of anxiety for some time, and that was the condition of Howard's health. Instead of gain there seemed to be a continual slow loss of strength that was perceptible especially to Mrs. Douglas. He had recently won her sincere respect by the manful way in which he had struggled to conceal his love for Barbara. So well did he succeed that Malcom thought he must have been mistaken in his conjecture, and the girls were as unconscious as ever. In Bettina's and Margery's thought, he was especially Barbara's friend, but in no other way than Malcom was Bettina's; while Barbara was happier than she had been in a long time, as he showed less and less frequently signs of nervous irritability and hurt feelings whenever she disappointed him in any way, as of course she often could not help doing.
"Howard ought not to have spent the winter here in the cold winds of Florence," Mrs. Douglas often had said to her brother. "But what could we do?"
They were thinking of hastening their departure for Rome on his account, when one morning his servant came to the house in great alarm, to beg Mrs. Douglas to go to his young master at once.
"He is very ill," he said, "and asks for you continually."
When Mrs. Douglas and her brother reached Howard's hotel, they found that already one of the most skilful physicians of the city was there, and that he wished to send for trained nurses.
"I fear pneumonia," he said, "and the poor young man is indeed illy prepared to endure such a disease."
"Spare no pains, no expense," urged Mr. Sumner; "let the utmost possible be done."
"I will stay with you," said Mrs. Douglas, as the hot hand eagerly clasped hers. "I will not leave you, my poor boy, while you are ill." And, sending for all she needed, she prepared to watch over him as if he were her own son.
But all endeavors to check the progress of the disease were futile. The enfeebled lungs could offer no resistance. One day, after having lain as if asleep for some time, Howard opened his eyes, to find Mrs. Douglas beside him. With a faint smile he whispered:—
"I have been thinking so much. I am glad now that Barbara does not love me, for it would only give her pain—sometime tell her of my love for her—"
Then by and by, with the tenderest look in his large eyes, he added, "May she come, to let me see her once more?—You will surely trust me now!"
"Oh, Howard! My noble Howard!" was all that Mrs. Douglas could answer; but at her words a look of wonderful happiness lighted his face.
When Mrs. Douglas asked the physician if a friend could be permitted to see Howard, he replied:—
"He cannot live; therefore let him have everything he desires."
And so, before consciousness left him, Barbara came with wondering, sorrowful eyes, and in answer to his pleading look and Mrs. Douglas's low word, bent her fair young head and kissed tenderly the brow of the dying young man who had loved her so much better than she knew. And Howard's life ebbed away.
It was almost as if one of the family were gone. They did not know how much a part of their life he had become until he came no more to the home he had enjoyed so much—to talk—to study—to bring tributes of love and gratitude—and to contribute all he could to their happiness.
Whatever they would do, wherever they would go, there was one missing, and their world was sadly changed.
Mr. Sumner sent the mournful tidings to the lonely grandmother over the ocean, and accompanied the faithful John as far as Genoa, on his way homeward with the remains of the young master he had carried in his arms as a child.
Then, as it was so difficult to take up even for a little time the old life in Florence, it was decided that they should go at once toward Rome.