But sorrow is heavy and hard to bear in youth, when fullness of life throbs in every heart-beat, rebelling at every denial and refusing every pang; and there are moments when all that should console and soften suffering contributes to deepen and intensify it. As the graceful solitary figure walked wearily along the torrent bed in a network of shadows woven by the plane-tops, all the sunny beauty of gorge and peak, of lemon orchard and glowing pine-top and dream-soft olive haze, and all the purple splendour of sea and sky and blue bloom of distance wrought upon her with such power that every sense and faculty, uplifted and expanded, helped to put an edge on the anguish within her. The higher the rocky path turning from the level bed was, the greater the beauty grew, and the pain; every hanging wreath of geranium and scented myrtle, every blaze of cactus trailing down the rock walls, through which the steep, stair-like path climbed, impressed itself sharply upon her. She turned with a movement of impatience, and looked back, and every sunlit sail and turquoise shade on the purple sea and every shadow of the hills made itself acutely felt. And when the path led under the solemn shadow of olives, and the light misty foliage parted here and there to give glimpses of sea and red-roofed town and far headland, her heart was like to break; and yet the majesty of far-stretching mountains, the glory and beauty of land and sea, had never been more vividly sweet to her.
For this is a strange thing, that the whole weight and power, the whole magic and mystery of beauty in Nature and Art, can only be felt in supreme moments of gladness or sorrow, when the mind and heart are full and every faculty is tense. The beauty deepens the pain with the very balm it brings, it magnifies the gladness with the very awe that chastens it.
Now she knew what olive-trees meant; and they mean so much, in loveliness so subtle, so manifold in suggestion; they cannot be read through and taken in at a glance, except in emotional crises, when veils are lifted and faculties quickened.
Yet there was comfort in those endless steps, that were in reality vine-terraces made on south-fronting declivities, and in the thought of the human patience and long labour of centuries, that had carried up and enriched every strip of soil on these hand-hewn ledges, and buttressed them solidly with rock till they glowed with the gladness of purple vintage and glory of emerald leaves. And here, in the olive shade, and there, backed by a rock terrace tangled in myrtle and white-blooming heath and the goblin foliage of prickly pear, were little red-roofed shrines, with frescoes telling the Seven Sorrows, blotched and dim, with scanty votive flowers withering in coarse earthen pots. The pathos of these humble, deserted shrines touched her; they seemed friendly in their silent desolation. Yet Mrs. Allonby, in her wild ascent the day before, had hardly seen them.
But this tall, clear-eyed young woman was so drawn by the fascination of the forlorn shrines that she followed the path they lined, and it led her astray. She laid a spray of flowering rosemary on the Seventh—"for remembrance"—and sighed. For she who bore that sevenfold sword of sorrow in her heart could never have borne this of looking on, helpless, and baffled in every wild effort to save, at the gradual ruin and degradation of any she loved; that barren and bitter sorrow at least was spared her.
But what if she, whose pain had been so fruitful to man, could hear, and from her place of peace give balm to crushed and broken hearts? Human sympathy may not be confined to this brief passage through time and space, she mused.
The path led with a sudden turn through garden ground, unfenced, then past a pink house with a pergola, and ended at an abrupt fall of narrow vine terraces down the ravine. Thence was seen a fuller, broader prospect facing south, bounded by a sea of purple and gold shot with crimson. There she turned, and climbing a broad flight of steps leading to the low-walled summit of the ridge, became aware of a large wooden cross standing against the pure sky on the top, as if with open arms of welcome.
Above and around it were quivering spires of cypress and plumy tops of eucalyptus, and, between black cypress boughs, the white gleam of convent walls.
The weight of silent, secret grief grew to a physical burden on those weary steps; her heart sank and died when she reached the top, and stood in rich sunshine at the foot of the great bare cross, its arms uplifted in witness and welcome for many and many a mile round, and listlessly spelt out the words cut round the centre:
Ave, crux, spes unica!