SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER VII.
AN UNEXPECTED PROPOSAL.
The next morning coffee was brought to the bed-rooms at the first peep of dawn, and when the little party went out for their walk the sun had only just begun to set the sea-line on fire.
They stepped for a moment into the Franciscan church next door, then went down the road leading past it to the Campagna. Fresh and sweet the morning air touched them as they sauntered along—not the morning breeze of New England, simple in associations as the breath of a newly-created being, but like the breath of one, immortally beautiful, about whom Calliope, Clio, and Erato have circled in their stately dance through the unfading centuries. Not only every spot of earth, but every waft of air, was haunted.
Mr. Vane stopped them presently with a silent gesture, and pointed to a near height, where a solitary cloud, softly resplendent in all its beautiful undulations, was slowly and loathly detaching itself to float upward and disappear in the sky, as if the door of a sapphire palace had opened to receive it. “Is it Diana?” he whispered.
“The Jew has touched nature with a pen of fire,” the Signora said as they walked on again; “but the pagan has dominated, and still in a certain sense possesses that beautiful realm. If, as Milton sings, ‘the parting genius was with sighing rent’ from tree and grove at the birth of Christ, its ghost still
haunts the spot, and Milton himself uses pagan language when he sings the beauties of nature. Why does not some Christian Job dislodge these ‘mythic fancies,’ and make nature live with a life that is something more than the rustling of a garment? Job made the lightnings go and return at the command of God, saying, ‘Here we are!’ and he speaks of the ‘store-houses of the snow.’ The Christian poet seems to fear his imagination, to find it tainted, and, instead of purifying it, and setting it flying, like a bird or a butterfly, through the garden of the earth, he puts it in a cage or under a glass along with the pagan images he only glances askance at. Now and then one meets with a saint whose heart overflows in that direction, like St. Francis of Assisi, calling the birds his sisters. Blessed Fra Egidio made the flowers bear witness, as when he proved the miraculous motherhood of the Virgin to the doubting Predicatore. At each of the three strokes of his staff in the road, following his three assertions of Our Lady’s purity, up sprang a beautiful lily. Our Lord set the example in his reference to the lilies of the field: they toiled not, neither did they spin, yet the Creator had arrayed them as Solomon in all his glory was never arrayed. Did he talk to his mother about the flowers, I wonder? When the boat was tossed by a tempest, he spoke to the waves, as to living
creatures, saying, ‘Peace, be still!’ Do spirits troublesome and troubled take shape, or, stretching their invisible hands, catch the shapes of nature as weapons, and lash with foam or strike with lightning? We cannot know, and we need not know; and we must not assert. It is not, however, forbidden to fancy. Nature may serve as the playground wherein our imagination and fancy shall exercise themselves and prepare our minds for the wonders of the spiritual life. Fancy and imagination are as really a part of ourselves, and as truly and wisely given by God, as reason and will. They are the sweet little enticements inviting us to fly off