CHAPTER XLII
REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM
When Hilda and himself turned away from the unfinished bust, thesculptor's mind still dwelt upon the reminiscences which it suggested."You have not seen Donatello recently," he remarked, "and thereforecannot be aware how sadly he is changed."
"No wonder!" exclaimed Hilda, growing pale.
The terrible scene which she had witnessed, when Donatello's facegleamed out in so fierce a light, came back upon her memory, almostfor the first time since she knelt at the confessional. Hilda, as issometimes the case with persons whose delicate organization requiresa peculiar safeguard, had an elastic faculty of throwing off suchrecollections as would be too painful for endurance. The first shockof Donatello's and Miriam's crime had, indeed, broken through the fraildefence of this voluntary forgetfulness; but, once enabled to relieveherself of the ponderous anguish over which she had so long brooded, shehad practised a subtile watchfulness in preventing its return.
"No wonder, do you say?" repeated the sculptor, looking at her withinterest, but not exactly with surprise; for he had long suspected thatHilda had a painful knowledge of events which he himself little morethan surmised. "Then you know!--you have heard! But what can youpossibly have heard, and through what channel?"
"Nothing!" replied Hilda faintly. "Not one word has reached my ears fromthe lips of any human being. Let us never speak of it again! No, no!never again!"
"And Miriam!" said Kenyon, with irrepressible interest. "Is it alsoforbidden to speak of her?"
"Hush! do not even utter her name! Try not to think of it!" Hildawhispered. "It may bring terrible consequences!"
"My dear Hilda!" exclaimed Kenyon, regarding her with wonder and deepsympathy. "My sweet friend, have you had this secret hidden in yourdelicate, maidenly heart, through all these many months! No wonder thatyour life was withering out of you."
"It was so, indeed!" said Hilda, shuddering. "Even now, I sicken at therecollection."
"And how could it have come to your knowledge?" continued the sculptor."But no matter! Do not torture yourself with referring to the subject.Only, if at any time it should be a relief to you, remember that we canspeak freely together, for Miriam has herself suggested a confidencebetween us."
"Miriam has suggested this!" exclaimed Hilda. "Yes, I remember, now, heradvising that the secret should be shared with you. But I havesurvived the death struggle that it cost me, and need make no furtherrevelations. And Miriam has spoken to you! What manner of woman canshe be, who, after sharing in such a deed, can make it a topic ofconversation with her friends?"
"Ah, Hilda," replied Kenyon, "you do not know, for you could neverlearn it from your own heart, which is all purity and rectitude, whata mixture of good there may be in things evil; and how the greatestcriminal, if you look at his conduct from his own point of view, or fromany side point, may seem not so unquestionably guilty, after all. Sowith Miriam; so with Donatello. They are, perhaps, partners in what wemust call awful guilt; and yet, I will own to you,--when I think of theoriginal cause, the motives, the feelings, the sudden concurrence ofcircumstances thrusting them onward, the urgency of the moment, andthe sublime unselfishness on either part,--I know not well how todistinguish it from much that the world calls heroism. Might we notrender some such verdict as this?--'Worthy of Death, but not unworthy ofLove! '"
"Never!" answered Hilda, looking at the matter through the clear crystalmedium of her own integrity. "This thing, as regards its causes, is alla mystery to me, and must remain so. But there is, I believe, only oneright and one wrong; and I do not understand, and may God keep me fromever understanding, how two things so totally unlike can be mistaken forone another; nor how two mortal foes, as Right and Wrong surely are, canwork together in the same deed. This is my faith; and I should be ledastray, if you could persuade me to give it up."
"Alas for poor human nature, then!" said Kenyon sadly, and yet halfsmiling at Hilda's unworldly and impracticable theory. "I always feltyou, my dear friend, a terribly severe judge, and have been perplexed toconceive how such tender sympathy could coexist with the remorselessnessof a steel blade. You need no mercy, and therefore know not how to showany."
"That sounds like a bitter gibe," said Hilda, with the tears springinginto her eyes. "But I cannot help it. It does not alter my perception ofthe truth. If there be any such dreadful mixture of good and evil asyou affirm,--and which appears to me almost more shocking thanpure evil,--then the good is turned to poison, not the evil towholesomeness."
The sculptor seemed disposed to say something more, but yielded to thegentle steadfastness with which Hilda declined to listen. She grew verysad; for a reference to this one dismal topic had set, as it were, aprison door ajar, and allowed a throng of torturing recollections toescape from their dungeons into the pure air and white radiance ofher soul. She bade Kenyon a briefer farewell than ordinary, and wenthomeward to her tower.
In spite of her efforts to withdraw them to other subjects, her thoughtsdwelt upon Miriam; and, as had not heretofore happened, they broughtwith them a painful doubt whether a wrong had not been committed onHilda's part, towards the friend once so beloved. Something that Miriamhad said, in their final conversation, recurred to her memory, andseemed now to deserve more weight than Hilda had assigned to it, in herhorror at the crime just perpetrated. It was not that the deed lookedless wicked and terrible in the retrospect; but she asked herselfwhether there were not other questions to be considered, aside from thatsingle one of Miriam's guilt or innocence; as, for example, whether aclose bond of friendship, in which we once voluntarily engage, ought tobe severed on account of any unworthiness, which we subsequently detectin our friend. For, in these unions of hearts,--call them marriage,or whatever else,--we take each other for better for worse. Availingourselves of our friend's intimate affection, we pledge our own, asto be relied upon in every emergency. And what sadder, more desperateemergency could there be, than had befallen Miriam? Who more need thetender succor of the innocent, than wretches stained with guilt! Andmust a selfish care for the spotlessness of our own garments keep usfrom pressing the guilty ones close to our hearts, wherein, for the veryreason that we are innocent, lies their securest refuge from furtherill?
It was a sad thing for Hilda to find this moral enigma propounded to herconscience; and to feel that, whichever way she might settle it, therewould be a cry of wrong on the other side. Still, the idea stubbornlycame back, that the tie between Miriam and herself had been real, theaffection true, and that therefore the implied compact was not to beshaken off.
"Miriam loved me well," thought Hilda remorsefully, "and I failed her ather sorest need."
Miriam loved her well; and not less ardent had been the affection whichMiriam's warm, tender, and generous characteristics had excited inHilda's more reserved and quiet nature. It had never been extinguished;for, in part, the wretchedness which Hilda had since endured was butthe struggle and writhing of her sensibility, still yearning towardsher friend. And now, at the earliest encouragement, it awoke again, andcried out piteously, complaining of the violence that had been done it.
Recurring to the delinquencies of which she fancied (we say "fancied,"because we do not unhesitatingly adopt Hilda's present view, but rathersuppose her misled by her feelings)--of which she fancied herself guiltytowards her friend, she suddenly remembered a sealed packet thatMiriam had confided to her. It had been put into her hands with earnestinjunctions of secrecy and care, and if unclaimed after a certainperiod, was to be delivered according to its address. Hilda hadforgotten it; or, rather, she had kept the thought of this commission inthe background of her consciousness, with all other thoughts referringto Miriam.
But now the recollection of this packet, and the evident stress whichMiriam laid upon its delivery at the specified time, impelled Hilda tohurry up the staircase of her tower, dreading lest the period shouldalready have elapsed.
No; the hour had not gone by, but was on the very point of passing.Hilda read the brief
note of instruction, on a corner of the envelope,and discovered, that, in case of Miriam's absence from Rome, the packetwas to be taken to its destination that very day.
"How nearly I had violated my promise!" said Hilda. "And, since we areseparated forever, it has the sacredness of an injunction from a deadfriend. There is no time to be lost."
So Hilda set forth in the decline of the afternoon, and pursued her waytowards the quarter of the city in which stands the Palazzo Cenci. Herhabit of self-reliance was so simply strong, so natural, and now so wellestablished by long use, that the idea of peril seldom or never occurredto Hilda, in her lonely life.
She differed, in this particular, from the generality of her sex,--although the customs and character of her native land often producewomen who meet the world with gentle fearlessness, and discover that itsterrors have been absurdly exaggerated by the tradition of mankind. Inninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the apprehensiveness of women isquite gratuitous. Even as matters now stand, they are really safer inperilous situations and emergencies than men; and might be still moreso, if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry ofmanhood. In all her wanderings about Rome, Hilda had gone and returnedas securely as she had been accustomed to tread the familiar street ofher New England village, where every face wore a look of recognition.With respect to whatever was evil, foul, and ugly, in this populous andcorrupt city, she trod as if invisible, and not only so, but blind. Shewas altogether unconscious of anything wicked that went along the samepathway, but without jostling or impeding her, any more than grosssubstance hinders the wanderings of a spirit. Thus it is, that, bad asthe world is said to have grown, innocence continues to make a paradisearound itself, and keep it still unfallen.
Hilda's present expedition led her into what was--physically, atleast--the foulest and ugliest part of Rome. In that vicinity lies theGhetto, where thousands of Jews are crowded within a narrow compass,and lead a close, unclean, and multitudinous life, resembling that ofmaggots when they over-populate a decaying cheese.
Hilda passed on the borders of this region, but had no occasion tostep within it. Its neighborhood, however, naturally partook ofcharacteristics 'like its own. There was a confusion of black andhideous houses, piled massively out of the ruins of former ages; rudeand destitute of plan, as a pauper would build his hovel, and yetdisplaying here and there an arched gateway, a cornice, a pillar, ora broken arcade, that might have adorned a palace. Many of the houses,indeed, as they stood, might once have been palaces, and possessed stilla squalid kind of grandeur. Dirt was everywhere, strewing the narrowstreets, and incrusting the tall shabbiness of the edifices, from thefoundations to the roofs; it lay upon the thresholds, and looked out ofthe windows, and assumed the guise of human life in the children thatSeemed to be engendered out of it. Their father was the sun, and theirmother--a heap of Roman mud.
It is a question of speculative interest, whether the ancient Romanswere as unclean a people as we everywhere find those who have succeededthem. There appears to be a kind of malignant spell in the spots thathave been inhabited by these masters of the world, or made famous intheir history; an inherited and inalienable curse, impelling theirsuccessors to fling dirt and defilement upon whatever temple, column,mined palace, or triumphal arch may be nearest at hand, and on everymonument that the old Romans built. It is most probably a classic trait,regularly transmitted downward, and perhaps a little modified by thebetter civilization of Christianity; so that Caesar may have trodnarrower and filthier ways in his path to the Capitol, than even thoseof modern Rome.
As the paternal abode of Beatrice, the gloomy old palace of the Cencishad an interest for Hilda, although not sufficiently strong, hitherto,to overcome the disheartening effect of the exterior, and draw her overits threshold. The adjacent piazza, of poor aspect, contained only anold woman selling roasted chestnuts and baked squash-seeds; she lookedsharply at Hilda, and inquired whether she had lost her way.
"No," said Hilda; "I seek the Palazzo Cenci."
"Yonder it is, fair signorina," replied the Roman matron. "If you wishthat packet delivered, which I see in your hand, my grandson Pietroshall run with it for a baiocco. The Cenci palace is a spot of ill omenfor young maidens."
Hilda thanked the old dame, but alleged the necessity of doing hererrand in person. She approached the front of the palace, which, withall its immensity, had but a mean appearance, and seemed an abode whichthe lovely shade of Beatrice would not be apt to haunt, unless her doommade it inevitable. Some soldiers stood about the portal, and gazed atthe brown-haired, fair-cheeked Anglo-Saxon girl, with approving glances,but not indecorously. Hilda began to ascend the staircase, three loftyflights of which were to be surmounted, before reaching the door whithershe was bound.