CHAPTER 13.
THE HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS.
Retracing some hours, we turn from the rifted wall to the suburbs andthe country which its ramparts overlook; abandoning the footsteps ofthe maimed and darkly-plotting Ulpius, our attention now fixes itselfon the fortunes of Hermanric, and the fate of Antonina.
Although the evening had as yet scarcely closed, the Goth had allottedto the warriors under his command their different stations for thenight in the lonely suburbs of the city. This duty performed, he wasleft to the unbroken solitude of the deserted tenement which now servedhim as a temporary abode.
The house he occupied was the last of the wide and irregular street inwhich it stood; it looked towards the wall beneath the Pincian Mount,from which it was separated by a public garden about half a mile inextent. This once well-thronged place of recreation was now totallyunoccupied. Its dull groves were brightened by no human forms; thechambers of its gay summer houses were dark and desolate; the booths ofits fruit and flower-sellers stood vacant on its untrodden lawns.Melancholy and forsaken, it stretched forth as a fertile solitude underthe very walls of a crowded city.
And yet there was a charm inexpressibly solemn and soothing in theprospect of loneliness that it presented, as its flower-beds and treeswere now gradually obscured to the eye in the shadows of the advancingnight. It gained in its present refinement as much as it had lost ofits former gaiety; it had its own simple attraction still, though itfailed to sparkle to the eye with its accustomed illuminations, or toplease the ear by the music and laughter, which rose from it in timesof peace. As he looked forth over the view from the terrace of his newabode, the remembrance of the employments of his past and busy hoursdeserted the memory of the young Goth, leaving his faculties free towelcome the reflections which night began insensibly to awaken andcreate.
Employed under such auspices, whither would the thoughts of Hermanricnaturally stray?
From the moonlight that already began to ripple over the topmosttrembling leaves of the trees beyond him, to the delicate and shadowyflowers that twined up the pillars of the deserted terrace where he nowstood, every object he beheld connected itself, to his vivid anduncultured imagination, with the one being of whom all that wasbeautiful in nature, seemed to him the eloquent and befitting type. Hethought of Antonina whom he had once protected; of Antonina whom he hadafterwards abandoned; of Antonina whom he had now lost!
Strong in the imaginative and weak in the reasoning faculties; giftedwith large moral perception and little moral firmness; too easy to beinfluenced and too difficult to be resolved, Hermanric had deserted thegirl's interests from an infirmity of disposition, rather than from adetermination of will. Now, therefore, when the employments of the dayhad ceased to absorb his attention; now when silence and solitude ledhis memory back to his morning's abandonment of his helpless charge,that act of fatal impatience and irresolution inspired him with thestrongest emotions of sorrow and remorse. If during her sojourn underhis care, Antonina had insensibly influenced his heart, her image, nowthat he reflected on his guilty share in their parting scene, filledall his thoughts, at once saddening and shaming him, as he rememberedher banishment from the shelter of his tent.
Every feeling which had animated his reflections on Antonina on theprevious night, was doubled in intensity as he thought on her now.Again he recalled her eloquent words, and remembered the charm of hergentle and innocent manner; again he dwelt on the beauties of heroutward form. Each warm expression; each varying intonation of voicethat had accompanied her petition to him for safety and companionship;every persuasion that she had used to melt him, now revived in hismemory and moved in his heart with steady influence and increasingpower. All the hurried and imperfect pictures of happiness which shehad drawn to allure him, now expanded and brightened, until his mindbegan to figure to him visions that had been hitherto unknown tofaculties occupied by no other images than those of rivalry,turbulence, and strife. Scenes called into being by Antonina'slightest and hastiest expressions, now rose vague and shadowy beforehis brooding spirit. Lovely places of earth that he had visited andforgotten now returned to his recollection, idealised and refined as hethought of her. She appeared to his mind in every allurement ofaction, fulfilling all the duties and enjoying all the pleasures thatshe had proposed to him. He imagined her happy and healthful,journeying gaily by his side in the fresh morning, with rosy cheek andelastic step; he imagined her delighting him by her promised songs,enlivening him by her eloquent words, in the mellow stillness ofevening; he imagined her sleeping, soft and warm and still, in hisprotecting arms--ever happy and ever gentle; girl in years, and womanin capacities; at once lover and companion, teacher and pupil, followerand guide!
Such she might have been once! What was she now?
Was she sinking under her loneliness, perishing from exposure andfatigue, repulsed by the cruel, or mocked by the unthinking? To allthese perils and miseries had he exposed her; and to what end? Tomaintain the uncertain favour, to preserve the unwelcome friendship, ofa woman abandoned even by the most common and intuitive virtues of hersex; whose frantic craving for revenge, confounded justice withtreachery, innocence with guilt, helplessness with tyranny; whoseclaims of nation and relationship should have been forfeited in hisestimation, by the openly-confessed malignity of her designs, at thefatal moment when she had communicated them to him in all theiratrocity, before the walls of Rome. He groaned in despair, as hethought on this, the most unworthy of the necessities, to which theforsaken girl had been sacrificed.
Soon, however, his mind reverted from such reflections as these, to hisown duties and his own renown; and here his remorse became partiallylightened, though his sorrow remained unchanged.
Wonderful as had been the influence of Antonina's presence andAntonina's words over the Goth, they had not yet acquired power enoughto smother in him entirely the warlike instincts of his sex and nation,or to vanquish the strong and hostile promptings of education andcustom. She had gifted him with new emotions, and awakened him to newthought; she had aroused all the dormant gentleness of his dispositionto war against the rugged indifference, the reckless energy, thatteaching and example had hitherto made a second nature to his heart.She had wound her way into his mind, brightening its dark places,enlarging its narrow recesses, beautifying its unpolished treasures.She had created, she had refined, during her short hours ofcommunication with him, but she had not lured his disposition entirelyfrom its old habits and its old attachments; she had not yet strippedoff the false glitter from barbarian strife, or the pomp from martialrenown; she had not elevated the inferior intellectual, to the heightof the superior moral faculties, in his inward composition. Submittedalmost impartially to the alternate and conflicting dominion of the twomasters, Love and Duty, he at once regretted Antonina, and yet clungmechanically to his old obedience to those tyrannic requirements ofnation and name, which had occasioned her loss.
Oppressed by his varying emotions, destitute alike of consolation andadvice, the very inaction of his present position sensibly depressedhim. He rose impatiently, and buckling on his weapons, sought toescape from his thoughts, by abandoning the scene under the influenceof which they had been first aroused. Turning his back upon the city,he directed his steps at random, through the complicated labyrinth ofstreets, composing the extent of the deserted suburbs.
After he had passed through the dwellings comprised in the occupationof the Gothic lines, and had gained those situated nearer to thedesolate country beyond, the scene around him became impressive enoughto have absorbed the attention of any man not wholly occupied by otherand more important objects of contemplation.
The loneliness he now beheld on all sides, was not the loneliness ofruin--the buildings near him were in perfect repair; it was not theloneliness of pestilence--there were no corpses strewn over theuntrodden pavements of the streets; it was not the loneliness ofseclusion--there were no barred windows, and few closed doors; it was asolitude of human annihilation. The
open halls were unapproached; thebenches before the wine-shops were unoccupied; remains of gaudyhousehold wares still stood on the counters of the street booths,watched by none, bought by none; particles of bread and meat(treasures, fated to become soon of greater value than silver and gold,to beleaguered Rome) rotted here in the open air, like garbage upondunghills; children's toys, women's ornaments, purses, money,love-tokens, precious manuscripts, lay scattered hither and thither inthe public ways, dropped and abandoned by their different owners, inthe hurry of their sudden and universal flight. Every deserted streetwas eloquent of darling projects desperately resigned, of valuedlabours miserably deserted, of delighting enjoyments irretrievablylost. The place was forsaken even by those household gods of rich andpoor, its domestic animals. They had either followed their owners intothe city, or strayed, unhindered and unwatched, into the countrybeyond. Mansion, bath, and circus, displayed their gaudy pomp andluxurious comfort in vain; not even a wandering Goth was to be seennear their empty halls. For, with such a prospect before them as thesubjugation of Rome, the army had caught the infection of its leader'senthusiasm for his exalted task, and willingly obeyed his commands forsuspending the pillage of the suburbs, disdaining the comparativelyworthless treasures around them, attainable at any time, when they feltthat the rich coffers of Rome herself were now fast opening to theireager hands. Voiceless and noiseless, unpeopled and unravaged, lay thefar-famed suburbs of the greatest city of the universe, sunk alike inthe night of Nature, the night of Fortune, and the night of Glory!
Saddening and impressive as was the prospect thus presented to the eyesof the young Goth, it failed to weaken the powerful influence that hisevening's meditations yet held over his mind. As, during the hoursthat were passed, the image of the forsaken girl had dissipated theremembrance of the duties he had performed, and opposed thecontemplation of the commands he was yet to fulfil, so it now denied tohis faculties any impressions from the lonely scene, beheld, yetunnoticed, which spread around him. Still, as he passed through thegloomy streets, his vain regrets and self-accusations, his naturalpredilections and acquired attachments, ruled over him and contendedwithin him, as sternly and as unceasingly as in the first moments whenthey had arisen with the evening, during his sojourn in the terrace ofthe deserted house.
He had now arrived at the extremest boundary of the buildings in thesuburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shiningfields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him weresome vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house,the outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark andcheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanicalattention of a man more occupied in thought thanobservation,--gradually advancing towards it in the moody abstractionof his reflections, until he unconsciously paused before the low rangeof irregular steps which led to its entrance door.
Startled from its meditations by his sudden propinquity to the objectthat he had unwittingly approached, he now, for the first time,examined the lonely abode before him with real attention.
There was nothing remarkable about the house, save the extremedesolateness of its appearance, which seemed to arise partly from itsisolated position, and partly from the unusual absence of alldecoration on its external front. It was too extensive to have beenthe dwelling of a poor man, too void of pomp and ornament to have beena mansion of the rich. It might, perhaps, have belonged to somecitizen, or foreigner, or the middle class--some moody Northman, somesolitary Egyptian, some scheming Jew. Yet, though it was notpossessed, in itself, of any remarkable or decided character, the Gothexperienced a mysterious, almost an eager curiosity to examine itsinterior. He could assign no cause, discover no excuse for the act, ashe slowly mounted the steps before him. Some invisible andincomprehensible magnet attracted him to the dwelling. If his returnhad been suddenly commanded by Alaric himself; if evidences ofindubitable treachery had lurked about the solitary place, at themoment when he thrust open its unbarred door, he felt that he muststill have proceeded upon his onward course. The next instant heentered the house. The light streamed through the open entrance intothe gloomy hall; the night-wind, rushing upon its track, blew shrilland dreary among the stone pillars, and in the hidden crevices anduntenanted chambers above. Not a sign of life appeared, not a sound ofa footstep was audible, not even an article of household use was to beseen. The deserted suburbs rose without, like a wilderness; and thisempty house looked within, like a sepulchre--void of corpses, and yeteloquent of death!
There was an inexplicable fascination to the eyes of the Goth aboutthis vault-like, solitary hall. He stood motionless at its entrance,gazing dreamily at the gloomy prospect before him, until a strong gustof wind suddenly forced the outer door further backwards, and at thesame moment admitted a larger stream of light.
The place was not empty. In a corner of the hall, hitherto sunk indarkness, crouched a shadowy form. It was enveloped in a dark garment,and huddled up into an indefinable and unfamiliar shape. Nothingappeared on it, as a denoting sign of humanity, but one pale hand,holding the black drapery together, and relieved against it in almostghastly contrast under the cold light of the moon.
Vague remembrances of the awful superstitions of his nation's ancientworship, hurried over the memory of the young Goth, at the first momentof his discovery of the ghost-like occupant of the hall. As he stoodin fixed attention before the motionless figure, it soon began to beendowed with the same strange influence over his will, that the lonelyhouse had already exerted. He advanced slowly towards the crouchingform.
It never stirred at the noise of his approach. The pale hand stillheld the mantle over the compressed figure, with the same rigidimmobility of grasp. Brave as he was, Hermanric shuddered as he bentdown and touched the bloodless, icy fingers. At that action, as ifendowed with instant vitality from contact with a living being, thefigure suddenly started up.
Then, the folds of the dark mantle fell back, disclosing a face as palein hue as the stone pillars around it; and the voice of the solitarybeing became audible, uttering in faint, monotonous accents, thesewords:--
'He has forgotten and abandoned me!--slay me if you will!--I am readyto die!'
Broken, untuned as it was, there yet lurked in that voice a tone of itsold music, there beamed in that vacant and heavy eye a ray of itsnative gentleness. With a sudden exclamation of compassion andsurprise, the Goth stepped forward, raised the trembling outcast in hisarms; and, in the impulse of the moment quitting the solitary house,stood the next instant on the firm earth, and under the starry sky,once more united to the charge that he had abandoned--to Antonina whomhe had lost.
He spoke to her, caressed her, entreated her pardon, assured her of hisfuture care; but she neither answered nor recognised him. She neverlooked in his face, never moved in his arms, never petitioned formercy. She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned atregular intervals in piteous accents:--'He has forgotten and abandonedme!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, heracknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge for herexpected death.
The Goth's countenance whitened to his very lips. He began to fearthat her faculties had sunk under her trials. He hurried on with herwith trembling steps towards the open country, for he nourished adreamy, intuitive hope, that the sight of those woods and fields andmountains which she had extolled to him, in her morning's entreaty forprotection, might aid in restoring her suspended consciousness, if shenow looked on them.
He ran forward, until he had left the suburbs at least half a milebehind him, and had reached an eminence, bounded on each side by highgrass banks and clustering woods, and commanding a narrow, yet variousprospect, of the valley ground beneath, and the fertile plains thatextended beyond.
Here the warrior paused with his burden; and, seating himself on thebank, once more attempted to calm the girl's continued bewilderment andterror. He thought not on his sentinels, whom he had abandoned--on hisabsence from the suburbs,
which might be perceived and punished by anunexpected visit, at his deserted quarters, from his superiors in thecamp. The social influence that sways the world; the fragile idol atwhose shrine pride learns to bow, and insensibility to feel; the soft,grateful influence of yielding nature yet eternal rule--the influenceof woman, source alike of virtues and crimes, of earthly glories andearthly disasters--had, in this moment of anguish and expectation,silenced in him every appeal of duty, and overthrown every obstacle ofselfish doubt. He now spoke to Antonina as alluringly as a woman, asgently as a child. He caressed her as warmly as a lover, as cheerfullyas a brother, as kindly as a father. He--the rough, northern warrior,whose education had been of arms, and whose youthful aspirations hadbeen taught to point towards strife and bloodshed and glory--even hewas now endowed with the tender eloquence of pity and love--withuntiring, skilful care--with calm, enduring patience.
Gently and unceasingly he plied his soothing task; and soon, to his joyand triumph, he beheld the approaching reward of his efforts, in theslow changes that became gradually perceptible in the girl's face andmanner. She raised herself in his arms, looked up fixedly and vacantlyinto his face, then round upon the bright, quiet landscape, then backagain more stedfastly upon her companion; and at length, tremblingviolently, she whispered softly and several times the young Goth'sname, glancing at him anxiously and apprehensively, as if she fearedand doubted while she recognised him.
'You are bearing me to my death,'--said she suddenly. 'You, who onceprotected me--you, who forsook me!--You are luring me into the power ofthe woman who thirsts for my blood!--Oh, it is horrible--horrible!'
She paused, averted her face, and shuddering violently, disengagedherself from his arms. After an interval, she continued:--
'Through the long day, and in the beginning of the cold night, I havewaited in one solitary place for the death that is in store for me! Ihave suffered all the loneliness of my hours of expectation, withoutcomplaint; I have listened with little dread, and no grief, for theapproach of my enemy who has sworn that she will shed my blood! Havingnone to love me, and being a stranger in the land of my own nation, Ihave nothing to live for! But it is a bitter misery to me to behold inyou the fulfiller of my doom; to be snatched by the hand of Hermanricfrom the heritage of life that I have so long struggled to preserve!'
Her voice had altered, as she pronounced these words, to an impressivelowness and mournfulness of tone. Its quiet, saddened accents wereexpressive of an almost divine resignation and sorrow; they seemed tobe attuned to a mysterious and untraceable harmony with the melancholystillness of the night-landscape. As she now stood looking up withpale, calm countenance, and gentle, tearless eyes, into the sky whosemoonlight brightness shone softly over her form, the Virgin watchingthe approach of her angel messenger could hardly have been adorned witha more pure and simple loveliness, than now dwelt over the features ofNumerian's forsaken child.
No longer master of his agitation; filled with awe, grief, and despair,as he looked on the victim of his heartless impatience; Hermanric bowedhimself at the girl's feet, and, in the passionate utterance of realremorse, offered up his supplications for pardon and his assurances ofprotection and love. All that the reader has already learned--thebitter self-upbraidings of his evening, the sorrowful wanderings of hisnight, the mysterious attraction that led him to the solitary house,his joy at once more discovering his lost charge--all these confessionshe now poured forth in the simple yet powerful eloquence of strongemotion and true regret.
Gradually and amazedly, as she listened to his words, Antonina awokefrom her abstraction. Even the expression of his countenance and theearnestness of his manner, viewed by the intuitive penetration of hersex, wrought with kind and healing influence on her mind. She startedsuddenly, a bright flush flew over her colourless cheeks; she bentdown, and looked earnestly and wistfully into the Goth's face. Herlips moved, but her quick convulsive breathing stifled the words thatshe vainly endeavoured to form.
'Yes,' continued Hermanric, rising and drawing her towards him again,'you shall never mourn, never fear, never weep more! Though you havelost your father, and the people of your nation are as strangers toyou, though you have been threatened and forsaken, you shall still bebeautiful--still be happy; for I will watch you, and you shall never beharmed; I will labour for you, and you shall never want! People andkindred--fame and duty, I will abandon them all to make atonement toyou!'
Its youthful freshness and hope returned to the girl's heart, as waterto the long-parched spring, when the young warrior ceased. The tearsstood in her eyes, but she neither sighed nor spoke. Her frame trembledall over with the excess of her astonishment and delight, as she stillsteadfastly looked on him and still listened intently as he proceeded:--
'Fear, then, no longer for your safety--Goisvintha, whom you dread, isfar from us; she knows not that we are here; she cannot track ourfootsteps now, to threaten or to harm you! Remember no more how youhave suffered and I have sinned! Think only how bitterly I haverepented our morning's separation, and how gladly I welcome our meetingof to-night! Oh, Antonina! you are beautiful with a wondrousloveliness, you are young with a perfected and unchildlike youth, yourwords fall upon my ear with the music of a song of the olden time; itis like a dream of the spirits that my fathers worshipped, when I lookup and behold you at my side!'
An expression of mingled confusion, pleasure, and surprise, flushed thegirl's half-averted countenance as she listened to the Goth. She rosewith a smile of ineffable gratitude and delight, and pointed to theprospect beyond, as she softly rejoined:--
'Let us go a little further onward, where the moonlight shines over themeadow below. My heart is bursting in this shadowy place! Let us seekthe light that is yonder; it seems happy like me!'
They walked forward; and as they went, she told him again of thesorrows of her past day; of her lonely and despairing progress from histent to the solitary house where he had found her in the night, andwhere she had resigned herself from the first to meet a death that hadlittle horror for her then. There was no thought of reproach, noutterance of complaint, in this renewal of her melancholy narration.It was solely that she might luxuriate afresh in those delightingexpressions of repentance and devotion, which she knew that it wouldcall forth from the lips of Hermanric, that she now thought ofaddressing him once more with the tale of her grief.
As they still went onward; as she listened to the rude ferventeloquence of the language of the Goth; as she looked on the deep reposeof the landscape, and the soft transparency of the night sky; her mind,ever elastic under the shock of the most violent emotions, ever readyto regain its wonted healthfulness and hope--now recovered its oldtone, and re-assumed its accustomed balance. Again her memory began tostore itself with its beloved remembrances, and her heart to rejoice inits artless longings and visionary thoughts. In spite of all her fearsand all her sufferings, she now walked on blest in a disposition thatwoe had no shadow to darken long, and neglect no influence to warp;still as happy in herself; even yet as forgetful of her past, ashopeful for her future, as on that first evening when we beheld her inher father's garden, singing to the music of her lute.
Insensibly as they proceeded, they had diverged from the road, hadentered a bye-path, and now stood before a gate which led to a smallfarm house, surrounded by its gardens and vineyards, and, like thesuburbs that they had quitted, deserted by its inhabitants on theapproach of the Goths. They passed through the gate, and arriving atthe plot of ground in front of the house, paused for a moment to lookaround them.
The meadows had been already stripped of their grass, and the youngtrees of their branches by the foragers of the invading army, but herethe destruction of the little property had been stayed. The house withits neat thatched roof and shutters of variegated wood, the garden withits small stock of fruit and its carefully tended beds of rare flowers,designed probably to grace the feast of a nobleman or the statue of amartyr, had presented no allurements to the rough tastes of Alaric'ssoldi
ery. Not a mark of a footstep appeared on the turf before thehouse door; the ivy crept in its wonted luxuriance about the pillars ofthe lowly porch; and as Hermanric and Antonina walked towards thefish-pond at the extremity of the garden, the few water-fowl placedthere by the owners of the cottage, came swimming towards the bank, asif to welcome in their solitude the appearance of a human form.
Far from being melancholy, there was something soothing and attractiveabout the loneliness of the deserted farm. Its ravaged outhouses andplundered meadows, which might have appeared desolate by day, were sodistanced, softened, and obscured, by the atmosphere of night, thatthey presented no harsh contrast to the prevailing smoothness andluxuriance of the landscape around. As Antonina beheld the brightenedfields and the shadowed woods, here mingled, there succeeding eachother, stretched far onward and onward until they joined the distantmountains, that eloquent voice of nature, whose audience is the humanheart, and whose theme is eternal love, spoke inspiringly to herattentive senses. She stretched out her arms as she looked with steadyand enraptured gaze upon the bright view before her, as if she longedto see its beauties resolved into a single and living form--into aspirit human enough to be addressed, and visible enough to be adored.
'Beautiful earth!' she murmured softly to herself, 'Thy mountains arethe watch-towers of angels, thy moonlight is the shadow of God!'
Her eyes filled with bright, happy tears; she turned to Hermanric, whostood watching her, and continued:--
'Have you never thought that light, and air, and the perfume offlowers, might contain some relics of the beauties of Eden that escapedwith Eve, when she wandered into the lonely world? They glowed andbreathed for her, and she lived and was beautiful in them! They wereunited to one another, as the sunbeam is united to the earth that itwarms; and could the sword of the cherubim have sundered them at once?When Eve went forth, did the closed gates shut back in the emptyParadise, all the beauty that had clung, and grown, and shone roundher? Did no ray of her native light steal forth after her into thedesolateness of the world? Did no print of her lost flowers remain onthe bosom they must once have pressed? It cannot be! A part of herpossessions of Eden must have been spared to her with a part of herlife. She must have refined the void air of the earth when she enteredit, with a breath of the fragrant breezes, and gleam of the truantsunshine of her lost Paradise! They must have strengthened andbrightened, and must now be strengthening and brightening with the slowlapse of mortal years, until, in the time when earth itself will be anEden, they shall be made one again with the hidden world of perfection,from which they are yet separated. So that, even now, as I look forthover the landscape, the light that I behold has in it a glow ofParadise, and this flower that I gather a breath of the fragrance thatonce stole over the senses of my first mother, Eve!'
Though she paused here, as if in expectation of an answer, the Gothpreserved an unbroken silence. Neither by nature nor position was hecapable of partaking the wild fancies and aspiring thoughts, drawn bythe influences of the external world from their concealment inAntonina's heart.
The mystery of his present situation; his vague remembrance of theduties he had abandoned; the uncertainty of his future fortunes andfuture fate; the presence of the lonely being so inseparably connectedwith his past emotions and his existence to come, so strangelyattractive by her sex, her age, her person, her misfortunes, and herendowments; all contributed to bewilder his faculties. Goisvintha, thearmy, the besieged city, the abandoned suburbs, seemed to hem him inlike a circle of shadowy and threatening judgments; and in the midst ofthem stood the young denizen of Rome, with her eloquent countenance andher inspiring words, ready to hurry him, he knew not whither, and ableto influence him, he felt not how.
Unconsciously interpreting her companion's silence into a wish tochange the scene and the discourse, Antonina, after lingering over theview from the garden for a moment longer, led the way back towards theuntenanted house. They removed the wooden padlock from the door of thedwelling, and guided by the brilliant moonlight, entered its principalapartment.
The homely adornments of the little room had remained undisturbed, anddimly distinguishable though they now were, gave it to the eyes of thetwo strangers, the same aspect of humble comfort which had probablyonce endeared it to its exiled occupants. As Hermanric seated himselfby Antonina's side on the simple couch which made the principal pieceof furniture in the place, and looked forth from the window over thesame view that they had beheld in the garden, the magic stillness andnovelty of the scene now began to affect his slow perceptions, as theyhad already influenced the finer and more sensitive faculties of thethoughtful girl. New hopes and tranquil ideas arose in his young mind,and communicated an unusual gentleness to his expression, an unusualsoftness to his voice, as he thus addressed his silent companion:--
'With such a home as this, with this garden, with that country beyond,with no warfare, no stern teachers, no enemy to threaten you; withcompanions and occupations that you loved--tell me, Antonina, would notyour happiness be complete?'
As he looked round at the girl to listen to her reply, he saw that hercountenance had changed. Their past expression of deep grief had againreturned to her features. Her eyes were fixed on the short dagger thathung over the Goth's breast, which seemed to have suddenly aroused inher a train of melancholy and unwelcome thoughts. When she at lengthspoke, it was in a mournful and altered voice, and with a mingledexpression of resignation and despair.
'You must leave me--we must be parted again,' said she; 'the sight ofyour weapons has reminded me of all that until now I had forgotten, ofall that I have left in Rome, of all that you have abandoned before thecity walls. Once I thought we might have escaped together from theturmoil and the danger around us, but now I know that it is better thatyou should depart! Alas! for my hopes and my happiness, I must be leftalone once more!'
She paused for an instant, struggling to retain her self-possession,and then continued:--
'Yes, you must quit me, and return to your post before the city; for inthe day of assault there will be none to care for my father but you!Until I know that he is safe, until I can see him once more, and askhim for pardon, and entreat him for love, I dare not remove from theperilous precincts of Rome! Return, then, to your duties, and yourcompanions, and your occupations of martial renown; and do not forgetNumerian when the city is assailed, nor Antonina, who is left to thinkon you in the solitary plains!'
She rose from her place, as if to set the example of departing; but herstrength and resolution both failed her, and she sank down again on thecouch, incapable of making another movement, or uttering another word.
Strong and conflicting emotions passed over the heart of the Goth. Thelanguage of the girl had quickened the remembrance of hishalf-forgotten duties, and strengthened the failing influence of hisold predilections of education and race. Both conscience andinclination now opposed his disputing her urgent and unselfish request.For a few minutes he remained in deep reflection; then he rose andlooked earnestly from the window; then back again upon Antonina and theroom they occupied. At length, as if animated by a suddendetermination, he again approached his companion, and thus addressedher:--
'It is right that I should return. I will do your bidding, and departfor the camp (but not till the break of day), while you, Antonina,remain in concealment and in safety here. None can come hither todisturb you. The Goths will not revisit the fields they have alreadystripped; the husbandman who owns this dwelling is imprisoned in thebeleaguered city; the peasants from the country beyond dare notapproach so near to the invading hosts; and Goisvintha, whom you dread,knows not even of the existence of such a refuge as this. Here, thoughlonely, you will be secure; here you can await my return, when eachsucceeding night gives me the opportunity of departing from the camp;and here I will warn you beforehand, if the city is devoted to anassault. Though solitary, you will not be abandoned--we shall not beparted one from the other. Often and often I shall return to look onyou, and to lis
ten to you, and to love you! You will be happier here,even in this lonely place, than in the former home that you have lostthrough your father's wrath!'
'Oh! I will willingly remain--I will joyfully await you!' cried thegirl, raising her beaming eyes to Hermanric's face. 'I will neverspeak mournfully to you again; I will never remind you more of all thatI have suffered, and all that I have lost! How merciful you were tome, when I first saw you in your tent--how doubly merciful you are tome here! I am proud when I look on your stature, and your strength,and your heavy weapons, and know that you are happy in remaining withme; that you will succour my father; that you will return from yourglittering encampments to this farm-house, where I am left to awaityou! Already I have forgotten all that has happened to me of woe;already I am more joyful than ever I was in my life before! See, I amno longer weeping in sorrow! If there are any tears still on mycheeks, they are the tears of gladness that every one welcomes--tearsto sing and rejoice in!'
She ceased abruptly, as if words failed to give expression to her newdelight. All the gloomy emotions that had oppressed her but a shorttime before had now completely vanished; and the young, fresh heart,superior still to despair and woe, basked as happily again in itsnative atmosphere of joy as a bird in the sunlight of morning andspring.
Then, when after an interval of delay their former tranquility hadreturned to them, how softly and lightly the quiet hours of theremaining night flowed onward to the two watchers in the lonely house!How gladly the delighted girl disclosed her hidden thoughts, and pouredforth her innocent confessions, to the dweller among other nations andthe child of other impressions than her own! All the variousreflections aroused in her mind by the natural objects she had secretlystudied, by the mighty imagery of her Bible lore, by the gloomyhistories of saints' visions and martyrs' sufferings, which she hadlearnt and pondered over by her father's side, were now drawn fromtheir treasured places in her memory, and addressed to the ear of theGoth. As the child flies to the nurse with the story of its first toy;as the girl resorts to the sister with the confession of her firstlove; as the poet hurries to the friend with the plan of his firstcomposition; so did Antonina seek the attention of Hermanric with thefirst outward revealings enjoyed by her faculties and the firstacknowledgment of her emotions liberated from her heart.
The longer the Goth listened to her, the more perfect became theenchantment of her words, half struggling into poetry, and her voicehalf gliding into music. As her low, still, varying tones woundsmoothly into his ear, his thoughts suddenly and intuitively revertedto her formerly expressed remembrances of her lost lute, inciting himto ask her, with new interest and animation, of the manner of heracquisition of that knowledge of song, which she had already assuredhim that she possessed.
'I have learned many odes of many poets,' said she, quickly andconfusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer toHermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember noneperfectly, save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds,and of the invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see. Of thefew that I know of these, there is one that I first learned and lovedmost. I will sing it, that you may be assured I will not fail to youin my promised art.'
She hesitated for a moment. Sorrowful remembrances of the events thathad followed the utterance of the last notes she sang in her father'sgarden, swelled within her, and held her speechless. Soon, however,after a short interval of silence, she recovered her self-possession,and began to sing, in low tremulous tones, that harmonised well withthe character of the words and the strain of the melody which she hadchosen.
THE MISSION OF THE TEAR
I.
The skies were its birth-place--the TEAR was the child Of the dark maiden SORROW, by young JOY beguil'd; It was born in convulsion; 'twas nurtur'd in woe; And the world was yet young when it wander'd below.
II.
No angel-bright guardians watch'd over its birth, Ere yet it was suffer'd to roam upon earth; No spirits of gladness its soft form caress'd; SIGHS mourned round its cradle, and hush'd it to rest.
III.
Though JOY might endeavour, with kisses and wiles, To lure it away to his household of smiles: From the daylight he lived in it turn'd in affright, To nestle with SORROW in climates of night.
IV.
When it came upon earth, 'twas to choose a career, The brightest and best that is left to a TEAR; To hallow delight, and bestow the relief Denied by despair to the fulness of grief.
V.
Few repell'd it--some bless'd it--wherever it came; Whether soft'ning their sorrow, or soothing their shame; And the joyful themselves, though its name they might fear, Oft welcom'd the calming approach of the TEAR!
VI.
Years on years have worn onward, as--watch'd from above-- Speeds that meek spirit yet on its labour of love; Still the exile of Heav'n, it ne'er shall away, Every heart has a home for it, roam where it may!
For the first few minutes after she had concluded the ode, Hermanricwas hardly conscious that she had ceased; and when at length she lookedup at him, her mute petition for approval had an eloquence which wouldhave been marred to the Goth at that moment, by the utterance of singleword. A rapture, an inspiration, a new life moved within him. The hourand the scene completed what the magic of the song had begun. Hisexpression now glowed with a southern warmth; his words assumed a Romanfervour. Gradually, as they discoursed, the voice of the girl was lessfrequently audible. A change was passing over her spirit; from theteacher, she was now becoming the pupil.
As she still listened to the Goth, as she felt the birth of newfeelings within her while he spoke, her cheeks glowed, her featureslightened up, her very form seemed to freshen and expand. No intrudingthought or awakening remembrance disturbed her rapt attention. No colddoubt, no gloomy hesitation, appeared in her companion's words. Theone listened, the other spoke, with the whole heart, the undividedsoul. While a world-wide revolution was concentrating its hurricaneforces around them; while the city of an Empire tottered already to itstremendous fall; while Goisvintha plotted new revenge; while Ulpiustoiled for his revolution of bloodshed and ruin; while all these darkmaterials of public misery and private strife seethed and strengthenedaround them, they could as completely forget the stormy outward world,in themselves; they could think as serenely of tranquil love; the kisscould be given as passionately and returned as tenderly, as if the lotof their existence had been cast in the pastoral days of the shepherdpoets, and the future of their duties and enjoyments was securelyawaiting them in a land of eternal peace!