Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864




"Well, Eve," said one of her awaiting friends, "is the earth going up
and down with you? As for me, my head swims like a buoy. I feel as if I
had waltzed all day."

"Nympholeptic, then," said Eve,--

"'When you do dance, I wish you
A wave of the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that.'"

"I thought they threw out the anchor down there," said the other. "Are
they tying her up for the night, too? How long it takes them! Oh, for an
inquisition and a rack,--I am so cramped! Eve, here, is extinguished.
What a day it has been!"

"'Oh, sweet the flight, at dead of night,
When up the immeasurable height
The thin cloud wanders with the breeze
That shakes the splendor from the star,
That stoops and crisps the darkling seas,
And drives the daring keel afar
Where loneliness and silence are!
To cleave the crested wave, and mark
Drowned in its depth the shattered spark,
On airy swells to soar, and rise
Where nothing but the foam-bell flies,
O'er freest tracts of wild delight,
Oh, sweet the flight at dead of night!'"

sang Eve. "Ah, there they are! I am so tired that I could fall asleep
here, if there were but a reed to lean against!"

"_Appoggiatevi a me_" sighed a murmurous voice in her ear, with musical
monotone.

A little shiver ran over Eve, but no soul saw it; in an instant she knew
the sound that had all day haunted the sea-turn; yet she could neither
smile nor be angry at Luigi's simplicity; with a peremptory motion of
her hand, she only waved him away, and fortified herself among her
companions, who, thoroughly awakened, made the night ring as they wended
along. They rallied Eve, then grew vexed that she refused the sport, and
kept silence awhile, only to break it with gayer laughter, elate with
life while half the world was stretched in white repose. At length they
paused to rest in the lee of a cottage that seemed more like a hulk
drawn up on shore than any house, but matted from ground to chimney in a
smother of woodbine.

"A picturesque place," said one of the chevaliers.

"And a picturesque body lives in it," replied another. "The beauty of
the fisher-maidens. I have seen her out upon the flats at low tide
digging for clams, barefooted, the short petticoats fluttering, a
handkerchief across her ears,--and outline could do no more."

"I have seen her, too," said Eve. "Though she lives in the belt of
sunburn, she is white as snow,--milk-white, with hazel eyes. She has
hair like Sordello's Elys. She is a girl that dreams. Let us serenade
her till she sees visions."

And Eve's voice went warbling lightly up, till the others joined, as if
the oriole in his hanging nest not far away had stirred to sing out the
seasons of the dark.

"The hours that bear thy beauty prize
Star after star sinks numbering,--
The laden wind at thy lattice sighs
To find thee slumbering, slumbering!

"Ah, wantonly why waste these hours
That love would fain be borrowing?
Soon youth and joy must fall like flowers,
And leave thee sorrowing, sorrowing!

"Ye fleeting hours, ye sacred skies,
Sweet airs around her hovering,
Oh, open me the envied eyes
Your spells are covering, covering!

"Or only, while the dew's soft showers
Shake slowly into glistening,
Let her, O magic midnight hours,
In dreams be listening, listening!"

And their voices blended so together as they sang, and the plunge of the
sea came on the east-wind in such chiming chord, that they never heeded
the old mandolin whose strings in humble remoteness Luigi struck to
their tune. But mingling the sound of the sea and the sound of the
strings in her memory, it seemed to Eve that Luigi was fast becoming the
undertone of her life.

* * * * *

But Luigi was not to be abashed. Faint heart never won fair lady, he
said to himself, in some answering apophthegm. And thereat he summoned
his reserves.

At noon of the next day, Eve, having run down-stairs into the room where
her mother sat, stood before her during the inspection of the attire she
had proposed as possible for an approaching masquerade some weeks hence.
She wore a white robe of classic make, and over its trailing folds her
bright hair, all unbound from the heavy braids, streamed in a thousand
ripples of scattered lustre, the brown breaking into gold, the gloss
lurking in tremulous jacinth shadows, tresses like a cascade of ravelled
light falling to her feet, shrouding her in a long and luminous
veil,--such "sweet shaken hair" as was never seen since Spenser and
Ariosto put their heads together.

"_Come sta_?" said some one in the doorway. And there stood Luigi,
having deposited his tray of images on the steps, holding up a long
string of birds'-eggs blown, tiny varicolored globes plundered from the
thrushes, bobolinks, blue-jays, and cedar-birds, and trembling upon the
thread as if their concrete melody quivered to open into tune.

For an indignant instant Eve felt her seclusion unwarrantably violated;
she turned upon the invader with her blushes, and the venturesome Luigi
blenched before the gaze. Still, though he retreated, a part of him
remained: a slender brown hand, that stretched back in relief against
the white door-post, yet suspended the pretty rosary; and there it
caught Eve's eye.

Now it was Euterpe that Eve was to represent at the masquerade; and what
ornament so fit and fanciful as this amulet of spring-time, whose charm
commanded all that hour of freshness, fragrance, and dew, when the
burdened heart of the dawn bubbles over with music? Yet the enticement
was brief. Eve looked and longed, and then hurriedly turned her back
upon the tempting treasure, her two hands thrusting it off. "Behind me,
Satan!" cried she, tossing a laugh at her mother; and Paula, the stately
servant who had followed her down, signified to Luigi that the door
awaited his movements.

Then the hand quietly withdrew, and his footstep was heard upon the
threshold. It was arrested by a sound: Eve stood in the doorway,
gathering her locks in one hand, and blushing and smiling upon him like
sunshine, whether she would or no.

"You are very kind," said she, hesitating, and fluttering out the broad,
snowy love-ribbon that was to ornament her lute, "but, if you
please,--indeed"--

"Indeed, the Signorina cares not for such bawbles," said Luigi, sadly,
covering her with his gaze. Then he turned, mounted his tray again, and
went slowly down the street, forgetting to cry his wares.

Perhaps, after this, Luigi felt that his situation was desperate;
perhaps despair made him bold,--for, having already spoiled Eve's
pleasure for the day, that same evening found him in her mother's
garden, half hidden in the grape-vines, and watching the movements in
the lighted room opposite, through the long window, whose curtain was
seldom dropped.

It was a gay old town in those days, kind to its lads and lasses, and if
the streets were grass-grown, it seemed only that so they might give
softer footing to the young feet that trod them. Almost every night
there was a festival at one house or another, and this evening the
rendezvous was with Eve. The guests gathered and dallied, the dancers
floated round the room, the lovers uttered their weighty trifles in such
seclusion or shadow as they could secure, the voices melted in happy
unison. Eve, with snowy shoulders and faultless arms escaping from the
ruffle of her rosy gauzes, where skirt over skirt, like clinging petals,
made her seem the dryad of a wild rose-tree just rising and looking from
her blushing cup, Eve flitted to and fro among them, and, all the time,
Luigi's gaze brooded over the scene. Sometimes her shadow fell in the
lighted space of turf, and then Luigi went and laid his cheek upon it;
it passed, and he returned once more to his hiding-place, and the dark,
motionless countenance, with its wandering, glittering eyes, appeared to
hang upon the dense leafage that sheltered all the rest of him like a
vizard in whose cavities glowworms had gathered. And more than once, in
passing, Eve delayed a moment, and almost caught that gaze; she was
sensible of his presence there, felt it, as she might have felt an
apparition, as if the eyes were those of a basilisk and she were
fascinated to look and look again, till filled with a strange fear and
unrest. It grew late; by-and-by, before they separated, Eve sang. It
would have been impossible for her to say why she chose a luscious
little Italian air, one that many a time at home, perhaps, Luigi had
heard some midnight lover sing. Through it, as he listened now, he could
fancy the fountain's fall, the rustle of the bough, the half-checked
gurgle of the nightingale, upon the scented waft almost the slow
down-floating of the scattered corolla of the full-blown flower. The
tears sparkled over his face, first of delight, and then of anger.
Something was wanting in the song,--he missed the passionate utterance
of the lover standing by the gate and pouring his soul in his singing.

Suddenly the room was startled by the ring of a voice from the garden, a
voice that outbroke sweet and strong, that snatched the measure from
Eve's lips, flung a fervor into its flow, a depth into its burden, and
carried it on with impetuous fire, lingering with tenderness here, swift
with ardor there, till all hearts bounded in quicker palpitation when
the air again was still. For deep feeling has a potency of its own, and
all that careless group felt as if some deific cloud had passed by.

As for Eve, what coquetry there was in her nature was but the innocent
coruscation of happy spirits, the desire to see her power, the necessity
of being dear to all she touched. Far from pleasant was this vehemence
of devotion; the approach of it oppressed her; she comprehended Luigi as
a creature of another species, another race, than herself; she shrank
before him now with a kind of horror. That night in a nervous excitation
she did not close an eye, and in the morning she was wan as a flower
after rain.

This state of things found at least one observer, a personage of no less
authority in household matters than Paula, the tall and stately woman of
Nubian lineage who had been the nurse of Eve, and who every morning now
stood behind her chair at breakfast, familiarly joining in and gathering
what she chose of the conversation. Erect as a palm-tree, slender,
queenly, with her thin and clearly cut features, and her head like that
of some Circassian carved in black marble, she had a kinship of
picturesqueness with Luigi, and could meet him more nearly on his own
ground than another, for her voice was as sweet as his, and he was only
less dark than she. Breakfast over, she took her way into the garden,
set open the gate, and busied herself pinching the fresh shoots of the
grape-vine, too luxuriant in leaves. She did not wait long before Luigi
came up the side-street, his tray upon his head, his gait less elastic
than beseemed the fresh, fragrant morning. Paula stepped forward and
gave him pause, with a gesture.

"Sir!" said she, commandingly.

Luigi looked up at her inquiringly. Then a pleasant expectation overshot
his gloomy face; he smiled, and his teeth glittered, and his eyes.
Instantly he unslung his tray and set it upon the level gate-post.

"Sir," said Paula, "do you come here often?"

"_Tutti i giorni_," answered Luigi, scarcely considering her worth
wasting his sparse and precious English upon.

"You come here often," said Paula. "Will you come here no more?"

Luigi opened his eyes in amaze.

"You will come here no more," said Paula.

"_Chi lo_,--who wishes it?" stammered Luigi.

"My mistress," answered Paula, proudly, as if to be her servant were
more than enough distinction, and to mention her name were sovereign.

"Who commands?" he demanded, imperatively.

"Still my mistress."

"She said--Tell me that!"

"She said, 'Paula, if the boy disturbs us further, we must take
measures.'"

"The Signorina?"

"Her mother."

"Not the Signorina, then!" And Luigi's gloomy face grew radiant.

"She and her mother are one," replied Paula.

Luigi was silent for a moment. One could see the shadows falling over
him. Then he said, softly,--

"My Paula, you will befriend me?"

Paula bridled at the address; arrogant in family-place, she would have
assured him plainly that she was none of his, to begin with, had he been
an atom less disconsolate.

"Never more than now!" said she, loftily.

Luigi did not understand her; her tone was kind, but there was a "never"
in her words.

"I should be the most a friend," said Paula, unbending, "in urging you
to forget us."

"Ah, never!"

"Let me say. Can you read?"

"Some things," replied Luigi quickly, his brow brightening.

"Can you write?"

"It may be. Alas! I have not tried."

"You see."

There was no appeal from Paula's dictatorial demeanor.

"_Dio_! I am unfit! Ah, Jesu, I am unfit! But if she cared not--if I
learned"--and he paused, striving now for the purest, most intelligible
speech, while his face beamed with his smiling hope.

"Listen," interposed Paula, with the dignity of the headsman. "You have
no truer friend than me at this moment, as some day you will discover.
Come, now, will you do me a favor?"

"_Di tutto cuore_!"

"Then leave us to ourselves."

"Not possible!" cried Luigi, stung with disappointment.

"What would you do, then? Would you wear her life out? Would you keep
her in a terror? She has said to me that she must go away. It suffocates
one to be pursued in this manner. You are not pleasant to her. Hark. She
dislikes you!" And Paula bent toward him with uplifted finger, and,
having delivered her stroke, after watching its effect a moment, reared
herself and adjusted her gay turban with internal satisfaction.

Luigi cast his eyes slowly about him; they fell on the smooth
grass-plats rising with webs of shaking sparkle, the opening flowers
half-bowed beneath the weight of the shining spheres they held, the
brilliant garden bathed in dew, the waving boughs tossing off light
spray on every ravaging gust, the far fair sky bending over all. Then he
hid his face against the great gate-post, murmuring only in a dry and
broken sob,--

"_C' e sole_?"

Paula herself was touched. She put her hand on his shoulder.

"It is a silly thing," said she. "Do not take it so to heart. Put it out
of sight. There is many a pretty tambourine-tosser to smile upon you,
I'll warrant!"

But Luigi vouchsafed no response.

"Come," said she, "pluck up your courage. You will soon be better of
it."

"_Non saro meglio_!" answered Luigi. "I shall never be better."

He lifted his head and looked at her where she stood in the light,
black, but comely, transfixing her on the burning glances of his bold
eyes. "In your need," said he, "may you find just such friend as I have
found!" The words were of his native language, but the malediction was
universal. Paula half shivered, and fingered the amulet that her
princely Nubian ancestor had fingered before her, while he spoke. Then
he bowed his head to its burden, fastened the straps, and went bent and
stooping upon his way, repeating sadly to himself, "And does the sun
shine?"

* * * * *

A week passed. Part of another. Eve saw no more of Luigi, but was yet
all the time uncomfortably conscious of his espionage. He was hardly a
living being to her, but, as soon as night fell, the soft starry nights
now in which there was no moon, she felt him like a darker film of
spirit haunting the shadow. In the daytime, sunshine reassured her, and
she remained almost at peace.

She was sitting one warm afternoon at the open window up-stairs, looking
over a box of airy trifles, flowers and bows and laces, searching for a
parcel of sheer white love-ribbon, a slip of woven hoarfrost that was
not to be found. There was none like it to be procured; this was the
night of the little masquerade; it was indispensable; and immediately
she proceeded to raise the house. In answer to her descriptive inquiry,
Paula, who every noon nestled as near the sun as possible, responded in
a high key from the attic a descriptive negative; neither had her
mother, waking from a _siesta_ in the garden, seen any white gauze
folderols. The three voices made the air well acquainted with the
affair.

However, Eve was not to be baffled; she remembered distinctly having had
the love-ribbon in her hands on the day she first proposed the dress; it
must be found, and she sat down again at the open casement, intrenched
behind twenty boxes of like treasure, in any one of which the thing
might have hidden itself away, while her mother came up and established
herself with a fan at the other window, and Paula, descending from her
perch, rummaged the neighboring dressing-room.

On the opposite side of the street stretched a long strip of shaven
turf, known as the Parade, yet seldom used for anything but
summer-evening strolls, and below its velvet terraces, in a green
dimple, lay a pool, borrowing all manner of umberous stains from the
shore, and yet in its very heart contriving to reflect a part of heaven.
Languishing elm-trees lined its edge, and beneath the boughs, whose
heavily drooping masses seemed like the grapes of Eshcol, rude benches
offered rest to the weary.

On one of these benches now sat a person profoundly occupied in carving
something into its seat. If he could easily have heard the voices in the
dwelling opposite, he had not once glanced up. Now and then he paused
and leaned his head upon the arm that lay along the rail, then again he
pursued his task. Once, when his progress, perhaps, had exceeded
expectation, or the striking of a clock beneath some distant spire
announced no need of haste, he laid down his knife, left his occupation,
and came to lean against the low fence beneath Eve's window and gaze
daringly up. Eve did not see him. Her mother did, and held her breath
lest Eve should turn that way, and, having directed Eve's glance
elsewhere, shook her fan at the bold boy. But there was no insolence in
Luigi's gaze. He seemed merely wishing that his work should be marked;
and, having attracted fit attention, he returned quietly to the bench
and the carving once more.

At length the sun hung high over the west, preparing to fall into his
hidden resting-place that colored all the cloudless heaven with its
mounting tinge. Luigi rose and inspected his work. Then again he crossed
the street and stood below Eve's window. It was a long time that he
leaned with his arms folded on the bar of the low paling. Perhaps he
meant that she should look at him. She had closed the last of her
receptacles, and, dismissing the matter, for want of better employment,
her scissors were tinkering upon a tiny hand-glass with a setting
thickly crusted in crystals, a trifle that one clear day a sailor diving
from her father's ship had found upon the bottom of the sea,--a very
mermaid's glass dropped in some shallow place for Eve herself, a glass
that had reflected the rushing of the storm, the sliding of the keel
above, the face of many a drowning mariner. Careless of all that, at the
moment, she held it up now to the light to see if further furbishing
could brighten it, and as she did so was hastily checked. She had caught
sight of a dark face just framed and mirrored, the sad eyes raised and
resting on her own, luminous no more, but heavy, and longing, and dull
with a weight of woe. At the same moment, Paula, who had by no means
abandoned the lost love-ribbon, cried from within,--

"Well, Miss, the lutestring has been spirited away, and no less. I've
searched the house through, and nobody has it."

"_Qualcheduno l' ha_," breathed a sweet, melancholy tone from below; and
they turned and saw it in Luigi's hands, the frosty film of gossamer. He
held it up a moment, pressed it to his lips, folded it again into his
breast; and if it was plain that somebody had it, it was plainer still
that somebody meant to keep it. And then, as if twin stars were bending
over him out of the bluest deeps of heaven, Luigi kept Eve's eyes awhile
suspended on his despairing gaze, and without other word or gesture
turned and went away.

* * * * *

Many days afterward, when it was certain that the little foreign
image-vender had indeed departed, Eve stole over to the bench beneath
the lofty arches of the elm-tree, all checkered with flickering
sunlight, and endeavored to read the sentence carved thereon. It was at
first undecipherable, and then, the text conquered, not easy for her to
comprehend. But when she had made it hers, she rose, bathed with
blushes, and stole away home again, feeling only as if Luigi had laid a
chain upon her heart.

Years have fled. The little legend yet remains cut deep into the wood,
though he returns no more, and though, since then, her

"Part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills
Is that her grave is green."

Rain and snow have not effaced its _intaglio_, nor summer's dust, nor
winter's wind; and if you ever pass it, you yet may read,--

AMOR QUE A NULLO
AMATO
AMAR PERDONA.

* * * * *

COMMUNICATION.


_Whether virtue can be taught_ is a question over which Plato lingers
long. And it is a curious illustration of the different eyes with which
different men read, that some students of Plato are confident he answers
the question in the affirmative, while others are equally sure that he
gives it an unqualified negative. "Plato," says Schwegler, "holds fast
to the opinion that virtue is science, and therefore to be imparted by
instruction." "We are told," says Burgess, one of Bohn's translators,
"that, as virtue is not a science, it cannot, like a science, be made a
subject of teaching." Professor Blackie, again, an open-minded and
eloquent scholar, cannot doubt that virtue may be verbally imparted,
nor, therefore, that the great Athenian thinker so believed and
affirmed.

What is the voice of common sense and the teaching of history touching
this matter? Can a liberal and lofty nature be included in words, and so
passed over to another? Elevation of character, nobility of spirit,
wealth of soul,--is any method known, or probably ever to be known,
among men, whereby these can be got into a text-book, and then out of
the text-book into a bosom wherein they had no dwelling before? Alas, is
not the story of the world too full of cases in which the combined
eloquence of verbal instruction, vital influence, and lustrous example,
aided even by all the inspirations of the most majestic and moving
presence, have failed utterly to shape the character of disciples? Did
Alcibiades profit greatly by the conversation of Socrates? Was Judas
extremely ennobled by the companionship of Jesus? Was it to any
considerable purpose that the pure-minded, earnest, affluent Cicero
strewed the seeds of Stoic culture upon the wayside nature of his son?
Did Faustina learn much from Antoninus Pius, or Commodus from Marcus
Aurelius?

I think we must assume it as the judgment of common sense that there
neither is nor is likely to be any educational mortar wherein a fool may
be so brayed that he shall come forth a wise man. The broad, unequivocal
sentence of history seems to be that whoever is not noble by nature will
hardly be rendered so by art. Education can do much; it can foster
nobilities, it can discourage vices; but literal conveyance of lofty
qualities, can it effect that? Can it create opulence of soul in a
sterile nature? Can it cause a thin soil to do the work of a deep one?
We have seen harsh natures mellowed, violent natures chastened, rough
ones refined; but who has seen an essentially mean nature made
large-hearted, self-forgetful, fertile of grandest faiths and greatest
deeds? Who has beheld a Thersites transformed into an Achilles? Who a
Shylock, Iago, or Regan changed into an Antonio, Othello, or Cordelia,
or a Simon Magus into a Paul? What virtue of nature is in a man culture
may bring out; but to put nature into any man surpasses her competence.

Nay, it would even seem that in some cases the finest openings and
invitations for what is best in man must operate inversely, and elicit
only what is worst in him. Every profoundest truth, when uttered with
fresh power in history, polarizes men, accumulating atheism at one pole,
while collecting faith and resolve at the other. As the sun bleaches
some surfaces into whiteness, but tans and blackens others, so the sweet
shining of Truth illumines some countenances with belief, but some it
darkens into a scowl of hate and denial. The American Revolution gave us
George Washington; but it gave us also Benedict Arnold. One and the same
great spiritual emergency in Europe produced Luther's Protestantism and
Loyola's Jesuitism. Our national crisis has converted General Butler;
what has it done for Vallandigham?

It were easy to show that the deepest intelligence of the world concurs
with common sense in this judgment. Its declaration ever is, in effect,
that, though Paul plant and Apollos water, yet fruit can come only out
of divine and infinite Nature,--only, that is, out of the native,
incommunicable resources of the soul. "No man can come to me," said
Jesus, "except the Father draw him." "To him that hath shall be given."
The frequent formula, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," is a
confession that no power of speech, no wisdom of instruction, can
command results. The grandest teacher, like the humblest, can but utter
his word, sure that the wealthy and prepared spirits will receive it,
and equally sure that shallow, sterile, and inane natures will either
not receive it at all, or do so to extremely little purpose.

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