CHAPTER XXXVI
HILDA'S TOWER
When we have once known Rome, and left her where she lies, like along-decaying corpse, retaining a trace of the noble shape it was, butwith accumulated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its moreadmirable features, left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of hernarrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with littlesquares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage, soindescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so alley-like, into which the sunnever falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into ourlungs,--left her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied,yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is drearyin domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary of climbingthose staircases, which ascend from a ground-floor of cook shops,cobblers' stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle regionof princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists,just beneath the unattainable sky,--left her, worn out with shiveringat the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our ownsubstance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed at night,--lefther, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whateverfaith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomachof sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlesslybestowed on evil meats,--left her, disgusted with the pretence ofholiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipresent,--lefther, half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, the vital principleof which has been used up long ago, or corrupted by myriads ofslaughters,--left her, crushed down in spirit with the desolation of herruin, and the hopelessness of her future,--left her, in short, hatingher with all our might, and adding our individual curse to the infiniteanathema which her old crimes have unmistakably brought down,--when wehave left Rome in such mood as this, we are astonished by the discovery,by and by, that our heart-strings have mysteriously attached themselvesto the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it weremore familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where wewere born.
It is with a kindred sentiment, that we now follow the course of ourstory back through the Flaminian Gate, and, treading our way to the ViaPortoghese, climb the staircase to the upper chamber of the tower wherewe last saw Hilda.
Hilda all along intended to pass the summer in Rome; for she had laidout many high and delightful tasks, which she could the better completewhile her favorite haunts were deserted by the multitude that throngedthem throughout the winter and early spring. Nor did she dread thesummer atmosphere, although generally held to be so pestilential. Shehad already made trial of it, two years before, and found no worseeffect than a kind of dreamy languor, which was dissipated by the firstcool breezes that came with autumn. The thickly populated centre of thecity, indeed, is never affected by the feverish influence that lies inwait in the Campagna, like a besieging foe, and nightly haunts thosebeautiful lawns and woodlands, around the suburban villas, just at theseason when they most resemble Paradise. What the flaming sword was tothe first Eden, such is the malaria to these sweet gardens and grove. Wemay wander through them, of an afternoon, it is true, but they cannotbe made a home and a reality, and to sleep among them is death. They arebut illusions, therefore, like the show of gleaming waters and shadowyfoliage in a desert.
But Rome, within the walls, at this dreaded season, enjoys its festaldays, and makes itself merry with characteristic and hereditarypas-times, for which its broad piazzas afford abundant room. It leadsits own life with a freer spirit, now that the artists and foreignvisitors are scattered abroad. No bloom, perhaps, would be visible ina cheek that should be unvisited, throughout the summer, by moreinvigorating winds than any within fifty miles of the city; no bloom,but yet, if the mind kept its healthy energy, a subdued and colorlesswell-being. There was consequently little risk in Hilda's purpose topass the summer days in the galleries of Roman palaces, and her nightsin that aerial chamber, whither the heavy breath of the city and itssuburbs could not aspire. It would probably harm her no more than itdid the white doves, who sought the same high atmosphere at sunset, and,when morning came, flew down into the narrow streets, about their dailybusiness, as Hilda likewise did.
With the Virgin's aid and blessing, which might be hoped for even bya heretic, who so religiously lit the lamp before her shrine, the NewEngland girl would sleep securely in her old Roman tower, and go forthon her pictorial pilgrimages without dread or peril. In view of sucha summer, Hilda had anticipated many months of lonely, but unalloyedenjoyment. Not that she had a churlish disinclination to society, orneeded to be told that we taste one intellectual pleasure twice, andwith double the result, when we taste it with a friend. But, keeping amaiden heart within her bosom, she rejoiced in the freedom that enabledher still to choose her own sphere, and dwell in it, if she pleased,without another inmate.
Her expectation, however, of a delightful summer was woefullydisappointed. Even had she formed no previous plan of remaining there,it is improbable that Hilda would have gathered energy to stir fromRome. A torpor, heretofore unknown to her vivacious though quiettemperament, had possessed itself of the poor girl, like a half-deadserpent knotting its cold, inextricable wreaths about her limbs. Itwas that peculiar despair, that chill and heavy misery, which onlythe innocent can experience, although it possesses many of the gloomycharacteristics that mark a sense of guilt. It was that heartsickness,which, it is to be hoped, we may all of us have been pure enough tofeel, once in our lives, but the capacity for which is usually exhaustedearly, and perhaps with a single agony. It was that dismal certainty ofthe existence of evil in the world, which, though we may fancy ourselvesfully assured of the sad mystery long before, never becomes a portion ofour practical belief until it takes substance and reality from the sinof some guide, whom we have deeply trusted and revered, or some friendwhom we have dearly loved.
When that knowledge comes, it is as if a cloud had suddenly gatheredover the morning light; so dark a cloud, that there seems to beno longer any sunshine behind it or above it. The character of ourindividual beloved one having invested itself with all the attributesof right,--that one friend being to us the symbol and representative ofwhatever is good and true,--when he falls, the effect is almost as ifthe sky fell with him, bringing down in chaotic ruin the columnsthat upheld our faith. We struggle forth again, no doubt, bruised andbewildered. We stare wildly about us, and discover--or, it may be, wenever make the discovery--that it was not actually the sky that hastumbled down, but merely a frail structure of our own rearing, whichnever rose higher than the housetops, and has fallen because we foundedit on nothing. But the crash, and the affright and trouble, are asoverwhelming, for the time, as if the catastrophe involved the wholemoral world. Remembering these things, let them suggest one generousmotive for walking heedfully amid the defilement of earthly ways! Let usreflect, that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of thosewho look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look sohigh again.
Hilda's situation was made infinitely more wretched by the necessity ofConfining all her trouble within her own consciousness. To this innocentgirl, holding the knowledge of Miriam's crime within her tender anddelicate soul, the effect was almost the same as if she herself hadparticipated in the guilt. Indeed, partaking the human nature ofthose who could perpetrate such deeds, she felt her own spotlessnessimpugnent.
Had there been but a single friend,--or not a friend, since friends wereno longer to be confided in, after Miriam had betrayed her trust,--but,had there been any calm, wise mind, any sympathizing intelligence; or,if not these, any dull, half-listening ear into which she might haveflung the dreadful secret, as into an echoless cavern, what a reliefwould have ensued! But this awful loneliness! It enveloped herwhithersoever she went. It was a shadow in the sunshine of festal days;a mist between her eyes and the pictures at which she strove to look; achill dungeon, which kept her in its gray twilight and fed her with itsunwholesome air, fit only for a criminal to breathe and pine in! Shecould not
escape from it. In the effort to do so, straying farther intothe intricate passages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and again, overthis deadly idea of mortal guilt.
Poor sufferer for another's sin! Poor wellspring of a virgin's heart,into which a murdered corpse had casually fallen, and whence it couldnot be drawn forth again, but lay there, day after day, night afternight, tainting its sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and uglydeath!
The strange sorrow that had befallen Hilda did not fail to impressits mysterious seal upon her face, and to make itself perceptible tosensitive observers in her manner and carriage. A young Italian artist,who frequented the same galleries which Hilda haunted, grew deeplyinterested in her expression. One day, while she stood before Leonardoda Vinci's picture of Joanna of Aragon, but evidently without seeingit,--for, though it had attracted her eyes, a fancied resemblance toMiriam had immediately drawn away her thoughts,--this artist drew ahasty sketch which he afterwards elaborated into a finished portrait. Itrepresented Hilda as gazing with sad and earnest horror at a bloodspotwhich she seemed just then to have discovered on her white robe. Thepicture attracted considerable notice. Copies of an engraving fromit may still be found in the print shops along the Corso. By manyconnoisseurs, the idea of the face was supposed to have been suggestedby the portrait of Beatrice Cenci; and, in fact, there was a looksomewhat similar to poor Beatrice's forlorn gaze out of the drearyisolation and remoteness, in which a terrible doom had involved a tendersoul. But the modern artist strenuously upheld the originality of hisown picture, as well as the stainless purity its subject, and choseto call it--and was laughed at for his pains--"Innocence, dying of aBlood-stain!"
"Your picture, Signore Panini, does you credit," remarked the picturedealer, who had bought it of the young man for fifteen scudi, andafterwards sold it for ten times the sum; "but it would be worth abetter price if you had given it a more intelligible title. Looking atthe face and expression of this fair signorina, we seem to comprehendreadily enough, that she is undergoing one or another of those troublesof the heart to which young ladies are but too liable. But what is thisblood-stain? And what has innocence to do with it? Has she stabbed herperfidious lover with a bodkin?"
"She! she commit a crime!" cried the young artist. "Can you look at theinnocent anguish in her face, and ask that question? No; but, as Iread the mystery, a man has been slain in her presence, and the blood,spurting accidentally on her white robe, has made a stain which eatsinto her life."
"Then, in the name of her patron saint," exclaimed the picture dealer,"why don't she get the robe made white again at the expense of a fewbaiocchi to her washerwoman? No, no, my dear Panini. The picture beingnow my property, I shall call it 'The Signorina's Vengeance.' Shehas stabbed her lover overnight, and is repenting it betimes the nextmorning. So interpreted, the picture becomes an intelligible and verynatural representation of a not uncommon fact."
Thus coarsely does the world translate all finer griefs that meet itseye. It is more a coarse world than an unkind one.
But Hilda sought nothing either from the world's delicacy or its pity,and never dreamed of its misinterpretations. Her doves often flew inthrough the windows of the tower, winged messengers, bringing her whatsympathy they could, and uttering soft, tender, and complaining sounds,deep in their bosoms, which soothed the girl more than a distincterutterance might. And sometimes Hilda moaned quietly among the doves,teaching her voice to accord with theirs, and thus finding a temporaryrelief from the burden of her incommunicable sorrow, as if a littleportion of it, at least, had been told to these innocent friends, andbeen understood and pitied.
When she trimmed the lamp before the Virgin's shrine, Hilda gazed atthe sacred image, and, rude as was the workmanship, beheld, or fancied,expressed with the quaint, powerful simplicity which sculptors sometimeshad five hundred years ago, a woman's tenderness responding to hergaze. If she knelt, if she prayed, if her oppressed heart besought thesympathy of divine womanhood afar in bliss, but not remote, becauseforever humanized by the memory of mortal griefs, was Hilda to beblamed? It was not a Catholic kneeling at an idolatrous shrine, but achild lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a mother.