ENRICA
I hear her glancing feet the moment I have tinkled the bell; and there she is, with her brown hair gathered into braids, and her eyes full of joy and greeting. And as I walk with the mother to the window to look at some pageant that is passing, she steals up behind and passes her arm around me, with a quick electric motion and a gentle pressure of welcome that tells more than a thousand words.
It is a pageant of death that is passing below. Far down the street we see heads thrust out of the windows and standing in bold relief against the red torchlight of the moving train. Below dim figures are gathering on the narrow side ways to look at the solemn spectacle. A hoarse chant rises louder and louder, and half dies in the night air, and breaks out again with new and deep bitterness.
Now the first torchlight under us shines plainly on faces in the windows and on the kneeling women in the street. First come old retainers of the dead one, bearing long blazing flambeaux. Then comes a company of priests, two by two, bareheaded, and every second one with a lighted torch, and all are chanting.
Next is a brotherhood of friars in brown cloaks, with sandaled feet, and the red light streams full upon their grizzled heads. They add their heavy guttural voices to the chant and pass slowly on.
Then comes a company of priests in white muslin capes and black robes and black caps, bearing books in their hands, wide open, and lit up plainly by the torches of churchly servitors, who march beside them; and from the books the priests chant loud and solemnly. Now the music is loudest, and the friars take up the dismal notes from the white-capped priests, and the priests before catch them from the brown-robed friars, and mournfully the sound rises up between the tall buildings, into the blue night sky that lies between Heaven and Rome.
—“Vede—Vede!” says Cesare; and in a blaze of the red torch fire comes the bier, borne on the necks of stout friars; and on the bier is the body of a dead man, habited like a priest. Heavy plumes of black wave at each corner.
—“Hist,” says my landlady.
The body is just under us. Enrica crosses herself; her smile is for the moment gone. Cesare’s boy-face is grown suddenly earnest. We could see the pale youthful features of the dead man. The glaring flambeaux sent their flaunting streams of unearthly light over the wan visage of the sleeper. A thousand eyes were looking on him, but his face, careless of them all, was turned up, straight toward the stars.
Still the chant rises, and companies of priests follow the bier, like those who had gone before. Friars, in brown cloaks, and prelates and Carmelites come after—all with torches. Two by two—their voices growing hoarse—they tramp and chant.
For a while the voices cease, and you can hear the rustling of their robes, and their footfalls, as if your ear was to the earth. Then the chant rises again, as they glide on in a wavy shining line, and rolls back over the death-train, like the howling of a wind in winter.
As they pass the faces vanish from the windows. The kneeling women upon the pavement rise up, mindful of the paroxysm of Life once more. The groups in the door-ways scatter. But their low voices do not drown the voices of the host of mourners and their ghost-like music.
I look long upon the blazing bier, trailing under the deep shadows of the Roman palaces, and at the stream of torches, winding like a glittering, scaled serpent. It is a priest—say I to my landlady as she closes the window.
“No, signor—a young man never married, and so, by virtue of his condition, they put on him the priest-robes.”
“So I,” says the pretty Enrica—“if I should die, would be robed in white, as you saw me on a carnival night, and be followed by nuns for sisters.”
“A long way off may it be, Enrica.”
She took my hand in hers and pressed it. An Italian girl does not fear to talk of death, and we were talking of it still as we walked back to my little parlor—my hand all the time in hers—and sat down by the blaze of my fire.
It was holy week; never had Enrica looked more sweetly than in that black dress—under that long, dark veil of the days of Lent. Upon the broad pavement of St. Peter’s—where the people, flocking by thousands, made only side groups about the altars of the vast temple—I have watched her kneeling beside her mother, her eyes bent down, her lips moving earnestly, and her whole figure tremulous with deep emotion. Wandering around among the halberdiers of the pope, and the court coats of Austria, and the barefooted pilgrims with sandal, shell and staff, I would sidle back again to look upon that kneeling figure, and, leaning against the huge columns of the church, would dream—even as I am dreaming now.
At nightfall I urged my way into the Sistine Chapel; Enrica is beside me—looking with me upon the gaunt figures of the Judgment of Angelo. They are chanting the Miserere. The twelve candlesticks by the altar are put out one by one as the service continues. The sun has gone down, and only the red glow of twilight steals through the dusky windows. There is a pause, and a brief reading from a red-cloaked cardinal, and all kneel down. She kneels beside me, and the sweet, mournful flow of the Miserere begins again, growing in force and depth, till the whole chapel rings and the balcony of the choir trembles; then it subsides again into the low, soft wail of a single voice, so prolonged, so tremulous and so real that the heart aches and the tears start—for Christ is dead!
—Lingering yet, the wail dies not wholly, but just as it seemed expiring it is caught up by another and stronger voice that carries it on, plaintive as ever; nor does it stop with this, for just as you looked for silence three voices more begin the lament—sweet, touching, mournful voices—and bear it up to a full cry, when the whole choir catch its burden and make the lament change into the wailing of a multitude—wild, shrill, hoarse—with swift chants intervening, as if agony had given force to anguish. Then, sweetly, slowly, voice by voice, note by note, the wailings sink into the low, tender moan of a single singer—faltering, tremulous, as if tears checked the utterance, and swelling out, as if despair sustained it.
It was dark in the chapel when we went out; voices were low. Enrica said nothing—I could say nothing.
I was to leave Rome after Easter; I did not love to speak of it—nor to think of it. Rome—that old city, with all its misery, and its fallen state, and its broken palaces of the empire—grows upon one’s heart. The fringing shrubs of the coliseum, flaunting their blossoms at the tall beggar-men in cloaks who grub below—the sun glimmering over the mossy pile of the House of Nero—the sweet sunsets from the Pincian, that make the broad pine-tops of the Janiculan stand sharp and dark against a sky of gold, can not easily be left behind. And Enrica, with her silver-brown hair, and the silken fillet that bound it, and her deep hazel eyes, and her white, delicate fingers, and the blue veins chasing over her fair temples—ah, Easter is too near!
But it comes, and passes with the glory of St. Peter’s—lighted from top to bottom. With Enrica, I saw it from the Ripetta, as it loomed up in the distance, like a city on fire.
The next day I bring home my last bunch of flowers, and with it a little richly-chased Roman ring. No fire blazes on the hearth, but they are all there. Warm days have come, and the summer air, even now, hangs heavy with fever in the hollows of the plain.
I heard them stirring early on the morning of which I was to go away. I do not think I slept very well myself—nor very late. Never did Enrica look more beautiful—never. All her carnival robes and the sad drapery of the Friday of Crucifixion could not so adorn her beauty as that neat morning dress and that simple rosebud she wore upon her bosom. She gave it to me—the last—with a trembling hand. I did not, for I could not, thank her. She knew it; and her eyes were full.
The old man kissed my cheek—it was the Roman custom, but the custom did not extend to the Roman girls; at least not often. As I passed down the Corso I looked back at the balcony, where she stood in the time of Carnival in the brown sombrero with the white plume. I knew she would be there now; and there she was. My eyes dwelt upon the vision, very loth to leave it; and after my eyes had lost it, my heart clung to it—there, where my memory clings now.
At noon the carriage stopped upon the hills, toward Soracte, that overlooked Rome. There was a stunted pine tree grew a little way from the road, and I sat down under it—for I wished no dinner—and I looked back with strange tumult of feeling upon the sleeping city, with the gray, billowy sea of the Campagna lying around it.
I seemed to see Enrica, the Roman girl, in that morning dress, with her brown hair in its silken fillet; but the rosebud that was in her bosom was now in mine. Her silvery voice, too, seemed to float past me, bearing snatches of Roman songs; but the songs were sad and broken.
—After all, this is sad vanity! thought I; and yet if I had espied then some returning carriage going down toward Rome, I will not say—but that I should have hailed it, and taken a place, and gone back, and to this day, perhaps, have lived at Rome.
But the vetturino called me; the coach was ready; I gave one more look toward the dome that guarded the sleeping city, and then we galloped down the mountain, on the road that lay toward Perugia and Lake Thrasimene.
—Sweet Enrica! art thou living yet? Or hast thou passed away to that Silent Land where the good sleep, and the beautiful?
The visions of the past fade. The morning breeze has died upon the meadow; the Bob-o’-Lincoln sits swaying on the willow tufts—singing no longer. The trees lean to the brook; but the shadows fall straight and dense upon the silver stream.
Noon has broken into the middle sky, and Morning is gone.
II
NOON
The noon is short; the sun never loiters on the meridian, nor does the shadow on the old dial by the garden stay long at XII. The present, like the noon, is only a point, and a point so fine that it is not measurable by the grossness of action. Thought alone is delicate enough to tell the breadth of the present.
The past belongs to God; the present only is ours. And, short as it is, there is more in it, and of it, than we can well manage. That man who can grapple it, and measure it, and fill it with his purpose, is doing a man’s work; none can do more; but there are thousands who do less.
Short as it is, the present is great and strong—as much stronger than the past as fire than ashes, or as death than the grave. The noon sun will quicken vegetable life that in the morning was dead. It is hot and scorching; I feel it now upon my head; but it does not scorch and heat like the bewildering present. There are no oak leaves to interrupt the rays of the burning now. Its shadows do not fall east or west—like the noon, the shade it makes falls straight from sky to earth—straight from heaven to hell!
Memory presides over the past; Action presides over the present. The first lives in a rich temple hung with glorious trophies and lined with tombs; the other has no shrine but Duty, and it walks the earth like a spirit.
—I called my dog to me, and we shared together the meal that I had brought away at sunrise from the mansion under the elms; and now Carlo is gnawing at the bone that I have thrown to him, and I stroll dreamily in the quiet noon atmosphere upon that grassy knoll under the oaks.
Noon in the country is very still; the birds do not sing; the workmen are not in the field; the sheep lay their noses to the ground, and the herds stand in pools under shady trees, lashing their sides, but otherwise motionless. The mills upon the brook, far above, have ceased for an hour their labor; and the stream softens its rustle and sinks away from the sedgy banks. The heat plays upon the meadow in noiseless waves, and the beech leaves do not stir.
Thought, I said, was the only measure of the present; and the stillness of noon breeds thought; and my thought brings up the old companions and stations them in the domain of now. Thought ranges over the world, and brings up hopes, and fears, and resolves, to measure the burning now. Joy, and grief, and purpose, blending in my thought, give breadth to the Present.
—Where—thought I—is little Isabel now? Where is Lilly—where is Ben? Where is Leslie—where is my old teacher? Where is my chum, who played such rare tricks—where is the black-eyed Jane? Where is that sweet-faced girl whom I parted with upon that terrace looking down upon the old spire of Modbury church? Where are my hopes—where my purposes—where my sorrows?
I care not who you are—but if you bring such thought to measure the present, the present will seem broad; and it will be sultry at noon—and make a fever of Now.
EARLY FRIENDS
Where are they?
Where are they? I can not sit now, as once, upon the edge of the brook hour after hour, flinging off my line and hook to the nibbling roach, and reckon it great sport. There is no girl with auburn ringlets to sit beside me and to play upon the bank. The hours are shorter than they were then; and the little joys that furnished boyhood till the heart was full can fill it no longer. Poor Tray is dead long ago, and he can not swim into the pools for the floating sticks; nor can I sport with him hour after hour and think it happiness. The mound that covers his grave is sunken, and the trees that shaded it are broken and mossy.
Little Lilly is grown into a woman, and is married; and she has another little Lilly, with flaxen hair, she says—looking as she used to look. I dare say the child is pretty; but it is not my Lilly. She has a little boy, too, that she calls Paul—a chubby rogue, she writes, and as mischievous as ever I was. God bless the boy!
Ben—who would have liked to ride in the coach that carried me away to school—has had a great many rides since then—rough rides, and hard ones, over the road of life. He does not rake up the falling leaves for bonfires, as he did once; he is grown a man, and is fighting his way somewhere in our western world, to the short-lived honors of time. He was married not long ago; his wife I remembered as one of my playmates at my first school; she was beautiful, but fragile as a leaf. She died within a year of their marriage. Ben was but four years my senior; but this grief has made him ten years older. He does not say it, but his eye and his figure tell it.
The nurse who put the purse in my hand that dismal morning is grown a feeble old woman. She was over fifty then; she may well be seventy now. She did not know my voice when I went to see her the other day, nor did she know my face at all. She repeated the name when I told it to her—Paul, Paul—she did not remember any Paul, except a little boy, a long while ago.
—“To whom you gave a purse when he went away, and told him to say nothing to Lilly or to Ben?”
—“Yes, that Paul”—says the old woman exultingly—“do you know him?”
And when I told her—“She would not have believed it!” But she did, and took hold of my hand again (for she was blind), and then smoothed down the plaits of her apron, and jogged her cap strings, to look tidy in the presence of “the gentleman.” And she told me long stories about the old house and how other people came in afterward; and she called me “sir” sometimes, and sometimes “Paul.” But I asked her to say only Paul; she seemed glad for this, and talked easier, and went on to tell of my old playmates, and how we used to ride the pony—poor Jacko!—and how we gathered nuts—such heaping piles; and how we used to play at fox and geese through the long winter evenings; and how my poor mother would smile—but here I asked her to stop. She could not have gone on much longer, for I believe she loved our house and people better than she loved her own.
As for my uncle, the cold, silent man, who lived with his books in the house upon the hill, and who used to frighten me sometimes with his look, he grew very feeble after I had left, and almost crazed. The country people said that he was mad; and Isabel, with her sweet heart, clung to him, and would lead him out, when his step tottered, to the seat in the garden, and read to him out of the books he loved to hear. And sometimes, they told me, she would read to him some letters that I had written to Lilly or to Ben, and ask him if he remembered Paul, who saved her from drowning under the tree in the meadow? But he could only shake his head and mutter something about how old and feeble he had grown.
They wrote me afterward that he died, and was buried in a far-away place, where his wife once lived, and where he now sleeps beside her. Isabel was sick with grief, and came to live for a time with Lilly; but when they wrote me last she had gone back to her old home—where Tray was buried—where we had played together so often through the long days of summer.
I was glad I should find her there when I came back. Lilly and Ben were both living nearer to the city when I landed from my long journey over the seas; but still I went to find Isabel first. Perhaps I had heard so much oftener from the others that I felt less eager to see them; or perhaps I wanted to save my best visits to the last; or perhaps (I did think it), perhaps I loved Isabel better than them all.
So I went into the country, thinking all the way how she must have changed since I left. She must be now nineteen or twenty; and then her grief must have saddened her face somewhat; but I thought I should like her all the better for that. Then perhaps she would not laugh and tease me, but would be quieter, and wear a sweet smile—so calm and beautiful, I thought. Her figure, too, must have grown more elegant, and she would have more dignity in her air.
I shuddered a little at this, for, I thought, she will hardly think so much of me then; perhaps she will have seen those whom she likes a great deal better. Perhaps she will not like me at all; yet I knew very well that I should like her.
I had gone up almost to the house; I had passed the stream where we fished on that day, many years before; and I thought that now, since she was grown to womanhood, I should never sit with her there again, and surely never drag her as I did out of the water, and never chafe her little hands, and never, perhaps, kiss her, as I did when she sat upon my mother’s lap—oh, no—no—no!
I saw where we buried Tray, but the old slab was gone; there was no ribbon there now. I thought that at least Isabel would have replaced the slab, but it was a wrong thought. I trembled when I went up to the door, for it flashed upon me that perhaps Isabel was married. I could not tell why she should not; but I knew it would make me uncomfortable to hear that she had.
There was a tall woman who opened the door; she did not know me, but I recognized her as one of the old servants. I asked after the housekeeper first, thinking I would surprise Isabel. My heart fluttered somewhat, thinking that she might step in suddenly herself—or perhaps that she might have seen me coming up the hill. But even then I thought she would hardly know me.
Presently the housekeeper came in, looking very grave; she asked if the gentleman wished to see her.
The gentleman did wish it, and she sat down on one side of the fire—for it was autumn, and the leaves were falling, and the November winds were very chilly.
—Shall I tell her—thought I—who I am, or ask at once for Isabel? I tried to ask, but it was hard for me to call her name; it was very strange, but I could not pronounce it at all.
“Who, sir?” said the housekeeper, in a tone so earnest that I rose at once and crossed over and took her hand. “You know me,” said I—“you surely remember Paul?”
She started with surprise, but recovered herself and resumed the same grave manner. I thought I had committed some mistake, or been in some way cause of offense. I called her madame, and asked for—Isabel.
She turned pale, terribly pale. “Bella?” said she.
“Yes. Bella.”
“Sir—Bella is dead!”
I dropped into my chair. I said nothing. The housekeeper—bless her kind heart!—slipped noiselessly out. My hands were over my eyes. The winds were sighing outside, and the clock ticking mournfully within.
I did not sob, nor weep, nor utter any cry.
The clock ticked mournfully, and the winds were sighing; but I did not hear them any longer; there was a tempest raging within me that would have drowned the voice of thunder.
It broke at length in a long, deep sigh—“Oh, God!”—said I. It may have been a prayer—it was not an imprecation.
Bella—sweet Bella, was dead! It seemed as if with her half the world were dead—every bright face darkened—every sunshine blotted out—every flower withered—every hope extinguished!
I walked out into the air and stood under the trees where we had played together with poor Tray—where Tray lay buried. But it was not Tray I thought of, as I stood there, with the cold wind playing through my hair and my eyes filling with tears. How could she die? Why was she gone? Was it really true? Was Isabel indeed dead—in her coffin—buried? Then why should anybody live? What was there to live for, now that Bella was gone?
Ah, what a gap in the world is made by the death of those we love! It is no longer whole, but a poor half-world, that swings uneasy on its axis and makes you dizzy with the clatter of its wreck!
The housekeeper told me all—little by little, as I found calmness to listen. She had been dead a month; Lilly was with her through it all; she died sweetly, without pain, and without fear—what can angels fear? She had spoken often of “Cousin Paul;” she had left a little packet for him, but it was not there; she had given it into Lilly’s keeping.
Her grave, the housekeeper told me, was only a little way off from her home—beside the grave of a brother who died long years before. I went there that evening. The mound was high and fresh. The sods had not closed together, and the dry leaves caught in the crevices and gave a ragged and a terrible look to the grave. The next day I laid them all smooth—as we had once laid them on the grave of Tray; I clipped the long grass, and set a tuft of blue violets at the foot, and watered it all with—tears. The homestead, the trees, the fields, the meadows, in the windy November, looked dismally. I could not like them again—I liked nothing but the little mound that I had dressed over Bella’s grave. There she sleeps now—the sleep of death!
