Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 by Various
V >>
Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. VII.--MAY, 1861.--NO. XLIII.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD TOWN.
The setting sunbeams slant over the antique gateway of Sorrento, fusing
into a golden bronze the brown freestone vestments of old Saint Antonio,
who with his heavy stone mitre and upraised hands has for centuries kept
watch thereupon.
A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian air, in
petrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green mosses from
year to year embroider quaint patterns on the seams of his sacerdotal
vestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the folds
of his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some more
hardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch and
chitter and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his nose
and now on the point of his mitre, while the world below goes on its way
pretty much as it did when the good saint was alive, and, in despair of
the human brotherhood, took to preaching to the birds and the fishes.
Whoever passed beneath this old arched gateway, thus saint-guarded,
in the year of our Lord's grace--, might have seen under its shadow,
sitting opposite to a stand of golden oranges, the little Agnes.
A very pretty picture was she, reader.--with such a face as you
sometimes see painted in those wayside shrines of sunny Italy, where the
lamp burns pale at evening, and gillyflower and cyclamen are renewed
with every morning.
She might have been fifteen or thereabouts, but was so small of stature
that she seemed yet a child. Her black hair was parted in a white
unbroken seam down to the high forehead, whose serious arch, like that
of a cathedral-door, spoke of thought and prayer. Beneath the shadows of
this brow lay brown, translucent eyes, into whose thoughtful depths one
might look as pilgrims gaze into the waters of some saintly well, cool
and pure down to the unblemished sand at the bottom. The small lips had
a gentle compression which indicated a repressed strength of feeling;
while the straight line of the nose, and the flexible, delicate nostril,
were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the antique which the
soil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from the sepulchres of the
past. The habitual pose of the head and face had the shy uplooking grace
of a violet; and yet there was a grave tranquillity of expression, which
gave a peculiar degree of character to the whole figure.
At the moment at which we have called your attention, the fair head is
bent, the long eyelashes lie softly down on the pale, smooth cheek; for
the Ave Maria bell is sounding from the Cathedral of Sorrento, and the
child is busy with her beads.
By her side sits a woman of some threescore years, tall, stately, and
squarely formed, with ample breadth of back and size of chest, like the
robust dames of Sorrento. Her strong Roman nose, the firm, determined
outline of her mouth, and a certain energy in every motion, speak the
woman of will and purpose. There is a degree of vigor in the decision
with which she lays down her spindle and bows her head, as a good
Christian of those days would, at the swinging of the evening bell.
But while the soul of the child in its morning freshness, free from
pressure or conscience of earthly care, rose like an illuminated mist
to heaven, the words the white-haired woman repeated were twined with
threads of worldly prudence,--thoughts of how many oranges she had
sold, with a rough guess at the probable amount for the day,--and her
fingers wandered from her beads a moment to see if the last coin had
been swept from the stand into her capacious pocket, and her eyes
wandering after them suddenly made her aware of the fact that a handsome
cavalier was standing in the gate, regarding her pretty grandchild with
looks of undisguised admiration.
"Let him look!" she said to herself, with a grim clasp on her
rosary;--"a fair face draws buyers, and our oranges must be turned into
money; but he who does more than look has an affair with me;--so gaze
away, my master, and take it out in buying oranges!--_Ave, Maria! ora
pro nobis, nunc et,_" etc., etc.
A few moments, and the wave of prayer which had flowed down the quaint
old shadowy street, bowing all heads as the wind bowed the scarlet
tassels of neighboring clover-fields, was passed, and all the world
resumed the work of earth just where they left off when the bell began.
"Good even to you, pretty maiden!" said the cavalier, approaching the
stall of the orange-woman with the easy, confident air of one secure
of a ready welcome, and bending down on the yet prayerful maiden the
glances of a pair of piercing hazel eyes that looked out on each side of
his aquiline nose with the keenness of a falcon's.
"Good even to you, pretty one! We shall take you for a saint, and
worship you in right earnest, if you raise not those eyelashes soon."
"Sir! my lord!" said the girl,--a bright color flushing into her smooth
brown cheeks, and her large dreamy eyes suddenly upraised with a
flutter, as of a bird about to take flight.
"Agnes, bethink yourself!" said the white-haired dame;--"the gentleman
asks the price of your oranges;--be alive, child!"
"Ah, my lord," said the young girl, "here are a dozen fine ones."
"Well, you shall give them me, pretty one," said the young man, throwing
a gold piece down on the stand with a careless ring.
"Here, Agnes, run to the stall of Raphael the poulterer for change,"
said the adroit dame, picking up the gold.
"Nay, good mother, by your leave," said the unabashed cavalier; "I make
my change with youth and beauty thus!" And with the word he stooped down
and kissed the fair forehead between the eyes.
"For shame, Sir!" said the elderly woman, raising her distaff,--her
great glittering eyes flashing beneath her silver hair like tongues of
lightning from a white cloud, "Have a care!--this child is named for
blessed Saint Agnes, and is under her protection."
"The saints must pray for us, when their beauty makes us forget
ourselves," said the young cavalier, with a smile. "Look me in the face,
little one," he added;--"say, wilt thou pray for me?"
The maiden raised her large serious eyes, and surveyed the haughty,
handsome face with that look of sober inquiry which one sometimes sees
in young children, and the blush slowly faded from, her cheek, as a
cloud fades after sunset.
"Yes, my lord," she answered, with a grave simplicity,--"I will pray for
you."
"And hang this upon the shrine of Saint Agnes for my sake," he added,
drawing from his finger a diamond ring, which he dropped into her hand;
and before mother or daughter could add another word or recover from
their surprise, he had thrown the corner of his mantle over his shoulder
and was off down the narrow street, humming the refrain of a gay song.
"You have struck a pretty dove with that bolt," said another cavalier,
who appeared to have been observing the proceeding, and now, stepping
forward, joined him.
"Like enough," said the first, carelessly.
"The old woman keeps her mewed up like a singing-bird," said the second;
"and if a fellow wants speech of her, it's as much as his crown is
worth; for Dame Elsie has a strong arm, and her distaff is known to be
heavy."
"Upon my word," said the first cavalier, stopping and throwing a glance
backward,--"where do they keep her?"
"Oh, in a sort of pigeon's nest up above the Gorge; but one never sees
her, except under the fire of her grandmother's eyes. The little one
is brought up for a saint, they say, and goes nowhere but to mass,
confession, and the sacrament."
"Humph!" said the other, "she looks like some choice old picture of Our
Lady,--not a drop of human blood in her. When I kissed her forehead, she
looked into my face as grave and innocent as a babe. One is tempted to
try what one can do in such a case."
"Beware the grandmother's distaff!" said the other, laughing.
"I've seen old women before," said the cavalier, as they turned down the
street and were lost to view.
Meanwhile the grandmother and granddaughter were roused from the mute
astonishment in which they were gazing after the young cavalier by a
tittering behind them; and a pair of bright eyes looked out upon, them
from beneath a bundle of long, crimson-headed clover, whose rich carmine
tints were touched to brighter life by setting sunbeams.
There stood Giulietta, the head coquette of the Sorrento girls, with her
broad shoulders, full chest, and great black eyes, rich and heavy as
those of the silver-haired ox for whose benefit she had been cutting
clover. Her bronzed cheek was smooth as that of any statue, and showed a
color like that of an open pomegranate; and the opulent, lazy abundance
of her ample form, with her leisurely movements, spoke an easy and
comfortable nature,--that is to say, when Giulietta was pleased; for it
is to be remarked that there lurked certain sparkles deep down in her
great eyes, which might, on occasion, blaze out into sheet-lightning,
like her own beautiful skies, which, lovely as they are, can thunder
and sulk with terrible earnestness when the fit takes them. At present,
however, her face was running over with mischievous merriment, as she
slyly pinched little Agnes by the ear.
"So you know not yon gay cavalier, little sister?" she said, looking
askance at her from under her long lashes.
"No, indeed! What has an honest girl to do with knowing gay cavaliers?"
said Dame Elsie, bestirring herself with packing the remaining oranges
into a basket, which she covered trimly with a heavy linen towel of her
own weaving. "Girls never come to good who let their eyes go walking
through the earth, and have the names of all the wild gallants on
their tongues. Agnes knows no such nonsense,--blessed be her gracious
patroness, with Our Lady and Saint Michael!"
"I hope there is no harm in knowing what is right before one's eyes,"
said Giulietta. "Anybody must be blind and deaf not to know the Lord
Adrian. All the girls in Sorrento know him. They say he is even greater
than he appears,--that he is brother to the King himself; at any rate, a
handsomer and more gallant gentleman never wore spurs."
"Let him keep to his own kind," said Elsie. "Eagles make bad work in
dovecots. No good comes of such gallants for us."
"Nor any harm, that I ever heard of," said Giulietta. "But let me see,
pretty one,--what did he give you? Holy Mother! what a handsome ring!"
"It is to hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes," said the younger girl,
looking up with simplicity.
A loud laugh was the first answer to this communication. The scarlet
clover-tops shook and quivered with the merriment.
"To hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes!" Giulietta repeated. "That is a
little too good!"
"Go, go, you baggage!" said Elsie, wrathfully brandishing her spindle.
"If ever you get a husband, I hope he'll give you a good beating! You
need it, I warrant! Always stopping on the bridge there, to have cracks
with the young men! Little enough you know of saints, I dare say! So
keep away from my child!--Come, Agnes," she said, as she lifted the
orange-basket on to her head; and, straightening her tall form, she
seized the girl by the hand to lead her away.
CHAPTER II.
THE DOVE-COT.
The old town of Sorrento is situated on an elevated plateau, which
stretches into the sunny waters of the Mediterranean, guarded on all
sides by a barrier of mountains which defend it from bleak winds and
serve to it the purpose of walls to a garden. Here, groves of oranges
and lemons,--with their almost fabulous coincidence of fruitage with
flowers, fill the air with perfume, which blends with that of roses and
jessamines; and the fields are so starred and enamelled with flowers
that they might have served as the type for those Elysian realms sung by
ancient poets. The fervid air is fanned by continual sea-breezes, which
give a delightful elasticity to the otherwise languid climate. Under
all these cherishing influences, the human being develops a wealth and
luxuriance of physical beauty unknown in less favored regions. In the
region about Sorrento one may be said to have found the land where
beauty is the rule and not the exception. The singularity there is not
to see handsome points of physical proportion, but rather to see those
who are without them. Scarce a man, woman, or child you meet who has not
some personal advantage to be commended, while even striking beauty is
common. Also, under these kindly skies, a native courtesy and gentleness
of manner make themselves felt. It would seem as if humanity, rocked
in this flowery cradle, and soothed by so many daily caresses and
appliances of nursing Nature, grew up with all that is kindliest on the
outward,--not repressed and beat in, as under the inclement atmosphere
and stormy skies of the North.
The town of Sorrento itself overhangs the sea, skirting along rocky
shores, which, hollowed here and there into picturesque grottoes, and
fledged with a wild plumage of brilliant flowers and trailing vines,
descend in steep precipices to the water. Along the shelly beach, at
the bottom, one can wander to look out on the loveliest prospect in the
world. Vesuvius rises with its two peaks softly clouded in blue and
purple mists, which blend with its ascending vapors,--Naples and the
adjoining villages at its base gleaming in the distance like a fringe
of pearls on a regal mantle. Nearer by, the picturesque rocky shores of
the island of Capri seem to pulsate through the dreamy, shifting mists
that veil its sides; and the sea shimmers and glitters like the neck
of a peacock with an iridescent mingling of colors: the whole air is a
glorifying medium, rich in prismatic hues of enchantment.
The town on three sides is severed from the main land by a gorge two
hundred feet in depth and forty or fifty in breadth, crossed by a bridge
resting on double arches, the construction of which dates back to
the time of the ancient Romans. This bridge affords a favorite
lounging-place for the inhabitants, and at evening a motley assemblage
may be seen lolling over its moss-grown sides,--men with their
picturesque knit caps of scarlet or brown falling gracefully on one
shoulder, and women with their shining black hair and the enormous pearl
earrings which are the pride and heirlooms of every family. The present
traveller at Sorrento may remember standing on this bridge and looking
down the gloomy depths of the gorge, to where a fair villa, with its
groves of orange-trees and gardens, overhangs the tremendous depths
below.
Hundreds of years since, where this villa now stands was the simple
dwelling of the two women whose history we have begun to tell you. There
you might have seen a small stone cottage with a two-arched arcade
in front, gleaming brilliantly white out of the dusky foliage of an
orange-orchard. The dwelling was wedged like a bird-box between two
fragments of rock, and behind it the land rose rocky, high, and steep,
so as to form a natural wall. A small ledge or terrace of cultivated
land here hung in air,--below it, a precipice of two hundred feet down
into the Gorge of Sorrento. A couple of dozen orange-trees, straight
and tall, with healthy, shining bark, here shot up from the fine black
volcanic soil, and made with their foliage a twilight shadow on the
ground, so deep that no vegetation, save a fine velvet moss, could
dispute their claim to its entire nutritious offices. These trees were
the sole wealth of the women and the sole ornament of the garden; but,
as they stood there, not only laden with golden fruit, but fragrant with
pearly blossoms, they made the little rocky platform seem a perfect
Garden of the Hesperides. The stone cottage, as we have said, had an
open, whitewashed arcade in front, from which one could look down into
the gloomy depths of the gorge, as into some mysterious underworld.
Strange and weird it seemed, with its fathomless shadows and its wild
grottoes, over which hung, silently waving, long pendants of ivy, while
dusky gray aloes uplifted their horned heads from great rock-rifts, like
elfin spirits struggling upward out of the shade. Nor was wanting the
usual gentle poetry of flowers; for white iris leaned its fairy pavilion
over the black void like a pale-cheeked princess from the window of some
dark enchanted castle, and scarlet geranium and golden broom and crimson
gladiolus waved and glowed in the shifting beams of the sunlight. Also
there was in this little spot what forms the charm of Italian gardens
always,--the sweet song and prattle of waters. A clear mountain-spring
burst through the rock on one side of the little cottage, and fell with
a lulling noise into a quaint moss-grown water-trough, which had been in
former times the sarcophagus of some old Roman sepulchre. Its sides were
richly sculptured with figures and leafy scrolls and arabesques, into
which the sly-footed lichens with quiet growth had so insinuated
themselves as in some places almost to obliterate the original design;
while, round the place where the water fell, a veil of ferns and
maiden's-hair, studded with tremulous silver drops, vibrated to its
soothing murmur. The superfluous waters, drained off by a little channel
on one side, were conducted through the rocky parapet of the garden,
whence they trickled and tinkled from rock to rock, falling with a
continual drip among the swaying ferns and pendent ivy-wreaths, till
they reached the little stream at the bottom of the gorge. This parapet
or garden-wall was formed of blocks or fragments of what had once been
white marble, the probable remains of the ancient tomb from which the
sarcophagus was taken. Here and there a marble acanthus-leaf, or the
capital of an old column, or a fragment of sculpture jutted from under
the mosses, ferns, and grasses with which prodigal Nature had filled
every interstice and carpeted the whole. These sculptured fragments
everywhere in Italy seem to whisper from the dust, of past life and
death, of a cycle of human existence forever gone, over whose tomb the
life of to-day is built.
"Sit down and rest, my dove," said Dame Elsie to her little charge, as
they entered their little inclosure.
Here she saw for the first time, what she had not noticed in the heat
and hurry of her ascent, that the girl was panting and her gentle bosom
rising and falling in thick heart-beats, occasioned by the haste with
which she had drawn her onward.
"Sit down, dearie, and I will get you a bit of supper."
"Yes, grandmother, I will. I must tell my beads once for the soul of the
handsome gentleman that kissed my forehead to-night."
"How did you know that he was handsome, child?" said the old dame, with
some sharpness in her voice.
"He bade me look on him, grandmother, and I saw it."
"You must put such thoughts away, child," said the old dame.
"Why must I?" said the girl, looking up with an eye as clear and
unconscious as that of a three-year old child.
"If she does not think, why should I tell her?" said Dame Elsie, as she
turned to go into the house, and left the child sitting on the mossy
parapet that overlooked the gorge. Thence she could see far off, not
only down the dim, sombre abyss, but out to the blue Mediterranean
beyond, now calmly lying in swathing-bands of purple, gold, and orange,
while the smoky cloud that overhung Vesuvius became silver and rose in
the evening light.
There is always something of elevation and parity that seems to come
over one from being in an elevated region. One feels morally as well as
physically above the world, and from that clearer air able to look down
on it calmly with disengaged freedom. Our little maiden, sat for a few
moments gazing, her large brown eyes dilating with a tremulous lustre,
as if tears were half of a mind to start in them, and her lips apart
with a delicate earnestness, like one who is pursuing some pleasing
inner thought. Suddenly rousing herself, she began by breaking the
freshest orange-blossoms from the golden-fruited trees, and, kissing and
pressing them to her bosom, she proceeded to remove the faded flowers of
the morning from before a little rude shrine in the rock, where, in a
sculptured niche, was a picture of the Madonna and Child, with a locked
glass door in front of it. The picture was a happy transcript of one of
the fairest creations of the religious school of Florence, done by one
of those rustic copyists of whom Italy is full, who appear to possess
the instinct of painting, and to whom we owe many of those sweet
faces which sometimes look down on us by the way-side from rudest and
homeliest shrines.
The poor fellow by whom it had been painted was one to whom years before
Dame Elsie had given food and shelter for many months during a lingering
illness; and he had painted so much of his dying heart and hopes into it
that it had a peculiar and vital vividness in its power of affecting the
feelings. Agnes had been familiar with this picture from early infancy.
No day of her life had the flowers failed to be freshly placed before
it. It had seemed to smile down sympathy on her childish joys, and to
cloud over with her childish sorrows. It was less a picture to her than
a presence; and the whole air of the little orange-garden seemed to be
made sacred by it. When she had arranged her flowers, she kneeled down
and began to say prayers for the soul of the young gallant.
"Holy Jesus," she said, "he is young, rich, handsome, and a king's
brother; and for all these things the Fiend may tempt him to forget his
God and throw away his soul. Holy Mother, give him good counsel!"
"Come, child, to your supper," said Dame Elsie. "I have milked the
goats, and everything is ready."
CHAPTER III.
THE GORGE.
After her light supper was over, Agnes took her distaff, wound with
shining white flax, and went and seated herself in her favorite place,
on the low parapet that overlooked the gorge.
This ravine, with its dizzy depths, its waving foliage, its dripping
springs, and the low murmur of the little stream that pursued its way
far down at the bottom, was one of those things which stimulated her
impressible imagination, and filled her with a solemn and vague delight.
The ancient Italian tradition made it the home of fauns and dryads, wild
woodland creatures, intermediate links between vegetable life and that
of sentient and reasoning humanity. The more earnest faith that came in
with Christianity, if it had its brighter lights in an immortality of
blessedness, had also its deeper shadows in the intenser perceptions it
awakened of sin and evil, and of the mortal struggle by which the human
spirit must avoid endless woe and rise to endless felicity. The myths
with which the colored Italian air was filled in mediaeval ages no
longer resembled those graceful, floating, cloud-like figures one sees
in the ancient chambers of Pompeii,--the bubbles and rainbows of human
fancy, rising aimless and buoyant, with a mere freshness of animal life,
against a black background of utter and hopeless ignorance as to man's
past or future. They were rather expressed by solemn images of
mournful, majestic angels and of triumphant saints, or fearful, warning
presentations of loathsome fiends. Each lonesome gorge and sombre dell
had tales no more of tricky fauns and dryads, but of those restless,
wandering demons who, having lost their own immortality of blessedness,
constantly lie in wait to betray frail humanity, and cheat it of that
glorious inheritance bought by the Great Redemption.
The education of Agnes had been one which rendered her whole system
peculiarly sensitive and impressible to all influences from the
invisible and unseen. Of this education we shall speak more particularly
hereafter. At present we see her sitting in the twilight on the
moss-grown marble parapet, her distaff, with its silvery flax, lying
idly in her hands, and her widening dark eyes gazing intently into the
gloomy gorge below, from which arose the far-off complaining babble of
the brook at the bottom and the shiver and sigh of evening winds
through the trailing ivy. The white mist was slowly rising, wavering,
undulating, and creeping its slow way up the sides of the gorge. Now it
hid a tuft of foliage, and now it wreathed itself around a horned clump
of aloes, and, streaming far down below it in the dimness, made it seem
like the goblin robe of some strange, supernatural being.
The evening light had almost burned out in the sky: only a band of vivid
red lay low in the horizon out to sea, and the round full moon was just
rising like a great silver lamp, while Vesuvius with its smoky top began
in the obscurity to show its faintly flickering fires. A vague agitation
seemed to oppress the child; for she sighed deeply, and often repeated
with fervor the Ave Maria.
At this moment there began to rise from the very depths of the gorge
below her the sound of a rich tenor voice, with a slow, sad modulation,
and seeming to pulsate upward through the filmy, shifting mists. It was
one of those voices which seem fit to be the outpouring of some spirit
denied all other gifts of expression, and rushing with passionate fervor
through this one gate of utterance. So distinctly were the words spoken,
that they seemed each one to rise as with a separate intelligence out of
the mist, and to knock at the door of the heart.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20