Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

And she led the priest by the hand to a stone bench by the door and seated herself at his side.

"Padre," she began, with a great earnestness in her manner, "is it true that the Holy Virgin hates heretics and that they can never go to heaven?"

The good padre was evidently not prepared for such a question. He gazed at Annunciata for a moment in helpless bewilderment, then coughed in his red bandanna handkerchief, took a deliberate pinch of snuff and began:

"The Holy Virgin is gracious, child, and she hates no one. But little girls should not trouble their heads with things that do not concern them."

"But this does concern me, padre," retorted the girl eagerly. "I went this morning with Signore Giovanni, the stranger who is lodging with us,—for he is a very good and kind man, padre; I went with him to the Aracoeli to see the blessed Bambino and the shepherds and the Holy Virgin. But he did not kneel, and when I told him of the wonderful things which the Bambino had done, he would not believe me, padre, and he even once laughed in my face."

"Then he is not a good man," said the padre emphatically, "and he will not go to heaven, unless he changes his faith and his conduct before God takes him away."

Cranbrook, who had made several vain attempts to call attention to his presence, now rose and through the window re-entered his room. The snatch of the conversation which he had overheard had made him uneasy and had spoiled his happy Homeric mood. He was only too willing to put the most flattering construction upon Annunciata's solicitude for his fate in the hereafter, but he had to admit to himself, that there was something in her tone and in the frank directness of her manner which precluded such an interpretation. He had floated along, as it were, in a state of delicious semi-consciousness during the six weeks since he first entered this house. He had established himself firmly, as he believed, in the favor of every member of the family, from Antonio himself to the two-year-old baby, Babetta, who spent her days contentedly in running from one end to the other of a large marble sarcophagus, situated under a tall stone pine, a dozen steps from the house. Monna Nina could then keep watch over her from the window while at work, and the high, sculptured sides of the sarcophagus prevented Babetta from indulging her propensity for running away. Pietro, a picturesque vagabond of twelve, who sold patriotic match-boxes with the portraits of Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele, had been bribed into the stanchest partisanship for the foreigner by a ticket to the monkey theatre in the Piazza delle Terme, and had excited his sister's curiosity to a painful pitch by his vivid descriptions of the wonderful performance he had witnessed. Antonio, who was a quiet and laborious man, listened with devout attention to Cranbrook's accounts of the foreign countries he had visited, while Monna Nina sometimes betrayed an invincible scepticism regarding facts which belonged to the A B C of transatlantic existence, and unhesitatingly acquiesced in statements which to an Italian mind might be supposed to border on the miraculous. She would not believe, for instance, that hot and cold water could be conducted through pipes to the fifth and sixth story of a house and drawn ad libitum by the turning of a crank; but her lodger's descriptions of the travelling palaces in which you slept and had your dinner prepared while speeding at a furious rate across the continent, were listened to with the liveliest interest and without the slightest misgiving. She had, moreover, well-settled convictions of her own concerning a number of things which lay beyond Cranbrook's horizon. She had a great dread of the evil eye and knew exactly what remedies to apply in order to counteract its direful effects; she wore around her neck a charm which had been blessed by the pope and which was a sure preventive of rheumatism; and under the ceiling of her kitchen were suspended bunches of medicinal herbs which had all been gathered during the new moon and which, in certain decoctions, were warranted to cure nearly all the ailments to which flesh is heir.

To Cranbrook the daily companionship with these kind-hearted, primitive people had been a most refreshing experience. As he wrote to a friend at home, he had shaken off the unwholesome dust which had accumulated upon his soul, and had for the first time in his life breathed the undiluted air of healthful human intercourse. Annunciata was to him a living poem, a simple and stately epic, whose continuation from day to day filled his life with sonorous echoes. She was a modern Nausicaa, with the same child-like grandeur and unconscious dignity as her Homeric prototype. It was not until to-day that he had become aware of the distance which separated him from her. They had visited together the church of Santa Maria in Aracœli, where a crude tableau of the Nativity of Christ is exhibited during Christmas week. Her devoutness in the presence of the jewelled doll, representing the infant Saviour, had made a painful impression upon him, and when, with the evident intention of compelling his reverence, she had told him of the miracles performed by the "Bambino," he had only responded with an incredulous smile. She had sent him a long, reproachful glance; then, as the tears rose to her eyes, she had hurried away and he had not dared to follow her.

While pursuing these sombre meditations, Cranbrook was seated—or rather buried—in a deep Roman easy-chair, whose faded tapestries would have been esteemed a precious find by a relic-hunter. Judging by the baroque style of its decorations, its tarnished gilding, and its general air à la Pompadour, it was evident that it had spent its youthful days in some princely palace of the last century, and had by slow and gradual stages descended to its present lowly condition. A curious sense of the evanescence of all earthly things stole over the young man's mind, as his thoughts wandered from his own fortunes to those of the venerable piece of furniture which was holding him in its ample embrace. What did it matter in the end, he reasoned, whether he married his Nausicaa or not? To marry a Nausicaa with grace was a feat for the performance of which exceptional qualities were required. The conjugal complement to a Nausicaa must be a man of ponderous presence and statuesque demeanor—not a shrill and nervous modern like himself, with second-rate physique, and a morbidly active intellect. No, it mattered little what he did or left undone. The world would be no better and no worse for anything he could do. Very likely, in the arms of this chair where he was now sitting, a dozen Roman Romeos, in powdered wigs and silk stockings, had pined for twice that number of Roman Juliets; and now they were all dust, and the world was moving on exactly as before. And yet in the depth of his being there was a voice which protested against this hollow reasoning; he felt to himself insincere and hypocritical; he dallied and played with his own emotions. Every mood carried in itself a sub-consciousness of its transitoriness.

The daylight had faded, and the first faint flush of the invisible moon was pervading the air. The undulating ridge of the Sabine mountains stood softly denned against the horizon, and here and there a great, flat-topped stone pine was seen looming up along the edges of the landscape. Cranbrook ate hurriedly the frugal dinner which was served him from a neighboring trattoria, then lighted a cigar, and walked out into the garden. He sat for a while on the balustrade of the terrace, looking out over the green campagna, over which the moon now rose large and red, while the towers and domes of the city stood, dark and solemn, in the foreground. The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore were tolling slowly and pensively, and the sound lingered with long vibrations in the still air. A mighty, shapeless longing, remotely aroused or intensified by the sound of the bells, shook his soul; and the glorious sight before him seemed to weigh upon him like an oppressive burden. "Annunciata," came in heavy, rhythmic pulses through the air; it was impossible not to hear it. The bells were tolling her name: "Annun-ciata, Annun-ciata." Even the water that was blown from the Triton's mouth whispered softly, as it fell, "Annunciata, Annunciata."