IV.
The little ones were doing their gymnastics in the garden, laughing and screaming. Attenuated by the distance, their voices floated up to the terrace, where the big girls were taking their recreation. In the serene violet sunset, the young ladies walked slowly to and fro, in groups of twos, and threes, and fours; white figures, on which the black aprons stood out clearly defined, as they lingered near the terrace wall. Three or four teachers moved about with crochet or tatting in their hands. Their eyes bent on their work, and their faces expressionless, none the less they heard and took heed of everything. That hour of recess was the most longed for and yet the most melancholy of the whole day. The fresh, calm air—the vast horizon opening out before and around the line of houses that appeared to flow like a stream into the sea, from Capo-di-monte, where the College stood—the atmosphere of liberty—all lent a saddening influence to temperaments that were either oppressed by exuberance or impoverished by anæmia. The mystic melancholy, the yearning tenderness, the effusion of anguish, the vague aspirations, all those impulses of tears and sighs, which the dawn of womanhood brings in its train, breathed in that hour.
The fair collegians mounted the terrace steps, longing for the open air, and uttering little cries of joy at their deliverance. Merry words ran from one to the other, and rippling laughter. They chased each other as if they were but ten years old, those great girls of fifteen and eighteen; they all but played at hide-and-seek. Here they could forget the unedifying subjects upon which their precocious minds were prone to dwell. They did not even think of murmuring against the Directress or the teachers, an eternal theme on which to embroider the most malicious variations. Up here they once more became frank, light-hearted children. One day, Artemisia Minichini had in a fit of gaiety forced Cherubina Friscia to waltz round the terrace with her; and it had seemed to every one, natural and amusing.
But after the first quarter of an hour, the excitement abated, until it gradually died out. The laughter was silenced; the voices lowered, as if in fear; the race abandoned for a slow solemn walk; separate groups of twos and threes formed where there had been a compact crowd. And the words came languidly and far between to their lips. All the suppressed sadness of the full young life with which their pulses throbbed, made their heads hang listlessly in that summer sunset. Lucia Altimare, drawn to her full height, stood gazing across at Naples, as if she did not see it. Her slight figure stood out clearly against the paling sky, and in that light the fine lines of her profile acquired the purity and refinement of an antique statue. Indeed, that dark hair coiled up high, looked not unlike a classic helmet. Next to her stood Caterina Spaccapietra, her clear grey eyes bent upon Naples. She seemed absent and dreamy; but the moment Lucia looked down the precipice, she started forward as if to hold her back.
“Don’t be afraid, I won’t throw myself over,” said Lucia Altimare, in her low, weak voice, her face breaking into the shadow of a smile. “Last week, I was mad, but you have made me sane. That is to say, not you, but God. Through your lips, by your hands, has the Lord saved me from eternal perdition.”
She drew her blue rosary from her pocket, and kissed the silver crucifix and the medal of the Madonna. “Yes, Caterina, it was madness. But here”—she bent down to whisper—“no one understands me, no one but you! You are good, and you understand me; oh! if I could but tell you all! They cannot understand me here. That day, the Directress was so cold and cruel to me. She said that I had written things that were unworthy of a gentleman’s daughter, that I appeared to know of things which it is unmaidenly even to think of; that the Professor, the teacher, and my companions were scandalised; that she should be obliged to send the composition to my father, with a severe letter. I held my tongue, Caterina; what could I say? I held my tongue, I did not weep; neither did I entreat her. I returned to the hall in an agony of grief and shame. You spoke to me, but I did not hear you. Death passed like lightning through my soul, and my soul fell in love with it. God ... disappeared.”
She left off speaking, tired in voice and body. Caterina, who had listened spell-bound by her sentimental talk, replied: “Cheer up, Lucia; September will soon be here. We shall leave then.”
“What does that matter?” said the other, shrugging her shoulders. “I shall but exchange one sorrow for another. Do you see a little tower yonder, under the Vomero hill? I was christened in that church. In that little church there is a Madonna, all robed in black; her gown is embroidered with gold. She holds a little white handkerchief in her hand; she can turn her eyes in anguish, and in her divine heart of woman and mother, are seven swords of pain. Caterina, they christened me in the church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. The Madonna Addolorata is my patron saint; I shall suffer for ever.”
Caterina listened to her with a pained expression on her face.
“You exaggerate; what do you know of life?”
“I know it,” said the other, shaking her head. “I feel as if I had lived enough, suffered enough—I feel as I had grown so old. I feel as if I had found dust and ashes everywhere. I am sick at heart. We are only born to sorrow.”
“That’s Leopardi again, Lucia; you promised me not to read Leopardi again.”
“I will not read him again. But listen; we are blind, miserable beings, destined to pain and death. Do you see beautiful Naples, smiling, voluptuous, nestling between her fruitful hills and her divine sea, in the magic of her radiant colouring? Do you really love Naples?”
“Yes, for I was born there,” said the other in a low voice.
“I hate her, with her odour of flowers, of humanity, of sparkling wines; her starred and seductive nights. I hate her; for she is the embodiment of sin and sorrow. There, where the tall lightning conductors shoot into the air, is the aristocratic quarter; the home of corruption and sorrow. Here below us, where the houses are closer together and look darker, are the people’s dwellings; but here, too, are corruption and sorrow. She is a sinner, like the city of Sodom, like the city of Gomorrah; she is a sinful woman, like the Magdalen. But she writhes in her sin, she inundates her bed with her tears, she weeps in the fatal night of Gethsemane. Oh! triumphant city, accursed and agonising!”
Her gesture cut the air like an anathema; but immediately her excitement calmed down, and the flush died out of her cheeks.
“It is bad for you to stand here, Lucia; shall we walk?”
“No, let me speak; I think too much, and thought ploughs too deep a furrow, when I cannot put it into words. Have I saddened you, Caterina?”
“A little; I fear for your health.”
“I beg your pardon. I ought not to talk to you of these things. You don’t like to hear them.”
“I assure you....”
“You are right, dear. But really, without exaggeration, life is not beautiful. Have you ever thought of the future; of the vague, dread future, that is so close upon us?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you have not feared?”
“I don’t know.”
“The future is all fear, Caterina.... Do you know what you will do with your life?”
“I know.”
“Who has told it you, thoughtless child? Who has read the riddle of the future?”
“My aunt intends me to marry Andrea Lieti.”
“Shall you obey?”
“Yes.”
“Without regret?”
“Without regret.”
“Oh! poor child, poor child! Does this Andrea love you?”
“I think so.”
“Do you love him?”
“I think I do.”
“Love is sorrow; marriage is an abomination, Caterina.”
“I hope not,” replied the other, with clasped hands and bowed head.
“I shall never marry, no, never,” added Lucia, drawing herself up and raising her eyes to heaven, in the pride of her mysticism.
The violet twilight deepened. The collegians stood still in the grounds, near the parapet, looking at some of the windows that reflected the sun’s last rays, at the distant sea that was turning to iron grey, at the swallows that shot like arrows across the roofs with the shrill cry that is their evensong.
Giovanna Casacalenda confessed to Maria Vitali that the hour of twilight made her long to die a sudden death, so that they might embalm her, dress her in a white satin gown, and loosen her long hair under a wreath of roses ... and after a hundred years a poet might fall in love with her. Artemisia Minichini assumed her most lugubrious air, her fists were doubled up in her apron pockets, there was a deep furrow across her forehead, and her lips were pursed up. Carolina Pentasuglia, the blonde, romantic, little sentimentalist, told Ginevra Avigliana that she wished herself far away in Denmark, on the shore of the Northern Sea, on a deserted strand, where the north wind howls through the fir-trees. Even Cherubina Friscia forgot her part of eavesdropper, and with vague eyes and listless hands meditated upon a whole life to be passed within College walls, without friends or relations, a poor old maid, hated by the girls.
“I think,” said Lucia to Caterina, “that my father intends marrying again. He has not dared to before, but human patience is so fragile a thing! My father is worldly, he does not understand me. My presence saddens him. He would like to have a merry, thoughtless girl in the house, who would enliven it. I am not the one for that.”
“But what will you do? Something will have to be done, Lucia.”
“Yes, something I will do, not for myself, but for others. Great undertakings call for great sacrifices. If I were a man, I would go to Africa and explore unknown regions. If I were a man, I would be a monk, a missionary to China or Japan, far, far away. But I am a woman, a weak, useless woman.”
“You could stay with your father, meanwhile.”
“No, his is a tardy youth, and mine a precocious old age. My presence in his house would be a continual reproach. Well, listen, I shall try to come upon a good, noble, holy idea, to which I can consecrate my mind and my energy. I will seek for a plague to lessen, an injustice to remove, a wrong to right, everywhere I will search for the ideal of humanity, to which I may sacrifice my life. I know not what I shall do, as yet I know not. But either as a Sister of the Red Cross on the battlefield, or as a Sister of Charity in the hospitals, or as a visitor in prisons, or as founder and teacher in some orphan asylum, I shall dedicate the strength and the courage of a wasted existence to the alleviation of human suffering.”
Caterina did not answer. Lucia contemplated her friend with the faintest shade of disdain on her lips.
“Will it not be a beautiful life, Caterina?”
“Very beautiful. Will your people give their consent?”
“I should like to know how they could prevent it. It would be cruel tyranny.”
“And your health?”
“I shall struggle against it ... or if I die, death will be the more welcome to me, worn with toil, with the consciousness of accomplished duty.”
“I am not capable of such great things,” murmured Caterina, after a short silence. “Mine is not a great soul.”
“Never mind, dear,” said the other, stroking her hair as if she were a child, “the ideal of humanity is not for every one.”
Evening had closed in, recreation was over, the collegians re-entered the dormitory, passed thence to the corridor, and descending the stair, approached the chapel, for evening prayer. On they went, without looking at each other, in silence, prey to a melancholy so intense that it isolated them. They walked two and two, but not arm in arm. Two of them took each other by the hand, but with so languid a pressure that they scarcely held together. Behind them, the lights of Naples glimmered like evening stars; they entered into the garnered peace of the College, and did not turn to look back. The oppression of that long hour of twilight weighed upon their spirits, and there was something funereal in the long, unsmiling march to the chapel. The window, hastily closed by the last comer, Cherubina Friscia, grated on its rusty hinge with a noise like a laugh of irony.