Agnes of Sorrento
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PILGRIMAGE
The morning sun rose clear and lovely on the old red rocks of Sorrento,and danced in a thousand golden scales and ripples on the wideMediterranean. The shadows of the gorge were pierced by long goldenshafts of light, here falling on some moist bed of crimson cyclamen,there shining through a waving tuft of gladiolus, or making theabundant yellow fringes of the broom more vivid in their brightness.The velvet-mossy old bridge, in the far shadows at the bottom, was litup by a chance beam, and seemed as if it might be something belongingto fairy-land.
There had been a bustle and stir betimes in the little dove-cot, forto-morrow the inmates were to leave it for a long, adventurous journey.
To old Elsie, the journey back to Rome, the city of her former daysof prosperity, the place which had witnessed her ambitious hopes, herdisgrace and downfall, was full of painful ideas. There arose to hermemory, like a picture, those princely halls, with their slippery, coldmosaic floors, their long galleries of statues and paintings, theirenchanting gardens, musical with the voice of mossy fountains, fragrantwith the breath of roses and jasmines, where the mother of Agnes hadspent the hours of her youth and beauty. She seemed to see her flittinghither and thither down the stately ilex-avenues, like some gaysinging-bird, to whom were given gilded cages and a constant round ofcaresses and sweets, or like the flowers in the parterres, which livedand died only as the graceful accessories of the grandeur of an oldprincely family.
She compared, mentally, the shaded and secluded life which Agnes hadled with the specious and fatal brilliancy which had been the lot ofher mother,--her simple peasant garb with those remembered visions ofjewelry and silk and embroideries with which the partial patronage ofthe Duchess or the ephemeral passion of her son had decked out the poorIsella; and then came swelling at her heart a tumultuous thought, onewhich she had repressed and kept down for years with all the force ofpride and hatred. Agnes, peasant-girl though she seemed, had yet theblood of that proud old family in her veins; the marriage had been atrue one; she herself had witnessed it.
"Yes, indeed," she said to herself, "were justice done, she would nowbe a princess,--a fit mate for the nobles of the land; and here I askno more than to mate her to an honest smith,--I that have seen a princekneel to kiss her mother's hand,--yes, he did,--entreat her on hisknees to be his wife,--I saw it. But then, what came of it? Was thereever one of these nobles that kept oath or promise to us of the people,or that cared for us longer than the few moments we could serve hispleasure? Old Elsie, you have done wisely! keep your dove out of theeagle's nest: it is foul with the blood of poor innocents whom he hastorn to pieces in his cruel pride!"
These thoughts swelled in silence in the mind of Elsie, while she wasbusy sorting and arranging her household stores, and making thosethousand-and-one preparations known to every householder, whether ofmuch or little, who meditates a long journey.
To Agnes she seemed more than ever severe and hard; yet probably therenever was a time when every pulse of her heart was beating more warmlyfor the child, and every thought of the future was more entirelyregulated with reference to her welfare. It is no sinecure to have theentire devotion of a strong, enterprising, self-willed friend, as Agneshad all her life found. One cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs ofthistles, and the affection of thorny and thistly natures has oftenas sharp an acid and as long prickers as wild gooseberries; yet it istheir best, and must be so accepted.
Agnes tried several times to offer her help to her grandmother, butwas refused so roughly that she dared not offer again, and thereforewent to her favorite station by the parapet in the garden, whence shecould look up and down the gorge, and through the arches of the oldmossy Roman bridge that spanned it far down by the city-wall. All thesethings had become dear to her by years of familiar silent converse.The little garden, with its old sculptured basin and the ever-lullingdash of falling water; the tremulous draperies of maiden's-hair, alwaysbeaded with shining drops; the old shrine, with its picture, its lamp,and flower-vase; the tall, dusky orange-trees, so full of blossoms andfruit, so smooth and shining in their healthy bark,--all seemed toher as so many dear old friends whom she was about to leave, perhapsforever.
What this pilgrimage would be like, she scarcely knew: days and weeksof wandering,--over mountain-passes; in deep, solitary valleys,--asyears ago, when her grandmother brought her, a little child, from Rome.
In the last few weeks, Agnes seemed to herself to have become whollyanother being. Silently, insensibly, her feet had crossed the enchantedriver that divides childhood from womanhood, and all the sweet ignorantjoys of that first early paradise lay behind her. Up to this time herlife had seemed to her a charming dream, full of blessed visions andimages: legends of saints, and hymns, and prayers had blended withflower-gatherings in the gorge, and light daily toils.
Now a new, strange life had been born within her,--a life full ofpassions, contradictions, and conflicts. A love had sprung up in herheart, strange and wonderful, for one who till within these few weekshad been entirely unknown to her, who had never toiled for, or housed,or clothed, or cared for her as her grandmother had, and yet whom a fewshort interviews, a few looks, a few words, had made to seem nearerand dearer than the old, tried friends of her childhood. In vain sheconfessed it as a sin, in vain she strove against it; it came back toher in every hymn, in every prayer. Then she would press the sharpcross to her breast, till a thousand stings of pain would send theblood in momentary rushes to her pale cheek, and cause her delicatelips to contract with an expression of stern endurance, and pray thatby any penance and anguish she might secure his salvation.
To save one such glorious soul, she said to herself, was work enoughfor one little life. She was willing to spend it all in endurance,unseen by him, unknown to him, so that at last he should be receivedinto that Paradise which her ardent imagination conceived so vividly.Surely, there she should meet him, radiant as the angel of her dream;and then she would tell him that it was all for his sake that she hadrefused to listen to him here. And these sinful longings to see himonce more, these involuntary reachings of her soul after an earthlycompanionship, she should find strength to overcome in this pilgrimage.She should go to Rome,--the very city where the blessed Paul pouredout his blood for the Lord Jesus,--where Peter fed the flock, till histime, too, came to follow his Lord in the way of the cross. She shouldeven come near to her blessed Redeemer; she should go up, on her knees,those very steps to Pilate's hall where He stood bleeding, crowned withthorns,--His blood, perhaps, dropping on the very stones. Ah, couldany mortal love distract her there? Should she not there find hersoul made free of every earthly thrall to love her Lord alone,--as shehad loved Him in the artless and ignorant days of her childhood,--butbetter, a thousand times?
"Good-morning to you, pretty dove!" said a voice from without thegarden-wall; and Agnes, roused from her reverie, saw old Jocunda.
"I came down to help you off," she said, as she came into the littlegarden. "Why, my dear little saint! you are looking white as a sheet,and with those tears! What's it all for, baby?"
"Ah, Jocunda! grandmamma is angry with me all the time now. I wish Icould go once more to the convent and see my dear Mother Theresa. Sheis angry, if I but name it; and yet she will not let me do anythinghere to help her, and so I don't know _what_ to do."
"Well, at any rate, don't cry, pretty one! Your grandmamma is workedwith hard thoughts. We old folks are twisted and crabbed and full ofknots with disappointment and trouble, like the mulberry-trees thatthey keep for vines to run on. But I'll speak to her; I know her ways;she shall let you go; I'll bring her round."
"So-ho, sister!" said the old soul, hobbling to the door and lookingin at Elsie, who was sitting flat on the stone floor of her cottage,sorting a quantity of flax that lay around her. The severe Romanprofile was thrown out by the deep shadows of the interior,--and thepiercing black eyes, the silver-white hair, and the strong, compressedlines of the mouth, as she worked, and struggled with the
ghosts of herformer life, made her look like no unapt personification of one of theFates reviewing her flax before she commenced the spinning of some newweb of destiny.
"Good-morning to you, sister!" said Jocunda. "I heard you were offto-morrow, and I came to see what I could do to help you."
"There's nothing to be done for me, but to kill me," said Elsie. "I amweary of living."
"Oh, never say that! Shake the dice again, my old man used to say,--Godrest his soul! Please Saint Agnes, you'll have a brave pilgrimage."
"Saint Agnes be hanged!" said Elsie, gruffly. "I'm out with her.It was she put all these notions into my girl's head. Because shedidn't get married herself, she don't want any one else to. She hasno consideration. I've done with her: I told her so this morning. Thecandles I've burned and the prayers I've gone through with, that shemight prosper me in this one thing! and it's all gone against me. She'sa baggage, and shall never see another penny of mine,--that's flat!"
Such vituperation of saints and sacred images may be heard to this dayin Italy, and is a common feature of idol-worship in all lands; for,however the invocation of the saints could be vitalized in the heartsof the few spiritual, there is no doubt that in the mass of the commonpeople it had all the well-defined symptoms of the grossest idolatry,among which fits of passionate irreverence are one. The feeling whichtempts the enlightened Christian in sore disappointment and vexation torise in rebellion against a wise Providence, in the childish twilightof uncultured natures finds its full expression unawed by reverence orfear.
"Oh, hush, now!" said Jocunda. "What is the use of making her angryjust as you are going to Rome, where she has the most power? All sortsof ill-luck will befall you. Make up with her before you start, or youmay get the fever in the marshes and die, and then who will take careof poor Agnes?"
"Let Saint Agnes look after her; the girl loves her better than shedoes me, or anybody else," said Elsie. "If she cared anything about me,she'd marry and settle down, as I want her to."
"Oh, there you are wrong," said Jocunda. "Marrying is like your dinner:one is not always in stomach for it, and one's meat is another'spoison. Now who knows but this pilgrimage may be the very thing tobring the girl round? I've seen people cured of too much religion bygoing to Rome. You know things ain't there as our little saint fancies.Why, between you and me, the priests themselves have their jokes onthose who come so far to so little purpose. More shame for 'em, say I,too; but we common people mustn't look into such things too closely.Now take it cheerfully, and you'll see the girl will come back tiredof tramping and able to settle down in a good home with a likelyhusband. I have a brother in Naples who is turning a pretty penny inthe fisheries; I will give you directions to find him; his wife is awholesome Christian woman; and if the little one be tired by the timeyou get there, you might do worse than stop two or three days withthem. It's a brave city; seems made to have a good time in. Come, youlet her just run up to the convent to bid good-by to the Mother Theresaand the sisters."
"I don't care where she goes," said Elsie, ungraciously.
"There, now!" said Jocunda, coming out, "Agnes, your grandmother bidsyou go to the convent to say good-by to the sisters; so run along,there's a little dear. The Mother Theresa talks of nothing else but yousince she heard that you meditated this; and she has broken in two herown piece of the True Cross which she's carried in the gold and pearlreliquary that the Queen sent her, and means to give it to you. Onedoesn't halve such gifts, without one's whole heart goes with them."
"Dear mother!" said Agnes, her eyes filling with tears, "I will takeher some flowers and oranges for the last time. Do you know, Jocunda, Ifeel that I never shall come back here to this dear little home whereI have been so happy,--everything sounds so mournful and looks somournful!--I love everything here so much!"
"Oh, dear child, never give in to such fancies, but pluck up heart.You will be sure to have luck, wherever you go,--especially since themother will give you that holy relic. I myself had a piece of SaintJohn Baptist's thumbnail sewed up in a leather bag, which I wore dayand night all the years I was tramping up and down with my old man; butwhen he died, I had it buried with him to ease his soul. For you see,dear, he was a trooper, and led such a rackety up-and-down life, that Idoubt but his confessions were but slipshod, and he needed all the helphe could get, poor old soul! It's a comfort to think he has it."
"Ah, Jocunda, seems to me it were better to trust to the free love ofour dear Lord who died for us, and pray to Him, without ceasing, forhis soul."
"Like enough, dearie; but then, one can't be too sure, you know. Andthere isn't the least doubt in my mind that that was a true relic,for I got it in the sack of the city of Volterra, out of the privatecabinet of a noble lady, with a lot of jewels and other matters thatmade quite a little purse for us. Ah, that was a time, when that citywas sacked! It was hell upon earth for three days, and all our menacted like devils incarnate; but then they always will in such cases.But go your ways now, dearie, and I'll stay with your grandmamma; for,please God, you must be up and away with the sun to-morrow."
Agnes hastily arranged a little basket of fruit and flowers, andtook her way down through the gorge, under the Roman bridge, throughan orange-orchard, and finally came out upon the seashore, and soalong the sands below the cliffs on which the old town of Sorrento issituated.
So cheating and inconsistent is the human heart, especially in thefeminine subject, that she had more than once occasion to chideherself for the thrill with which she remembered passing the cavalieronce in this orange-garden, and the sort of vague hope which shedetected that somewhere along this road he might appear again.
"How perfectly wicked and depraved I must be," she said to herself, "tofind any pleasure in such a thought of one I should pray never to meetagain!"
And so the little soul went on condemning herself in those exaggeratedterms which the religious vocabulary of conventual life furnishedready-made for the use of penitents of every degree, till by the timeshe arrived at the convent she could scarcely have been more oppressedwith a sense of sin, if she had murdered her grandmother and elopedwith the cavalier.
On her arrival in the convent court, the peaceful and dreamy stillnesscontrasted strangely with the gorgeous brightness of the day outside.The splendid sunshine, the sparkling seas, the songs of the boatmen,the brisk passage of gliding sails, the bright hues of the flowers thatgarlanded the rocks, all seemed as if the earth had been arrayed forsome gala-day; but the moment she had passed the portal, the silent,mossy court, with its pale marble nymph, its lull of falling water, itsturf snow-dropt with daisies and fragrant with blue and white violets,and the surrounding cloistered walks, with their pictured figures ofpious history, all came with a sad and soothing influence on her nerves.
The nuns, who had heard the news of the projected pilgrimage, andregarded it as the commencement of that saintly career which they hadalways predicted for her, crowded around her, kissing her hands andher robe, and entreating her prayers at different shrines of especialsanctity that she might visit.
The Mother Theresa took her to her cell, and there hung round her neck,by a golden chain, the relic which she designed for her, and of whosegenuineness she appeared to possess no manner of doubt.
"But how pale you are, my sweet child!" she said. "What has happened toalter you so much? Your cheeks look so thin, and there are deep, darkcircles round your eyes."
"Ah, my mother, it is because of my sins."
"Your sins, dear little one! What sins can you be guilty of?"
"Ah, my dear mother, I have been false to my Lord, and let the love ofan earthly creature into my heart."
"What can you mean?" said the mother.
"Alas, dear mother, the cavalier who sent that ring!" said Agnes,covering her face with her hands.
Now the Mother Theresa had never left the walls of that convent sinceshe was ten years old,--had seen no men except her father and uncle,who once or twice made her a short call, and an old hunchback who tookcare of t
heir garden, safe in his armor of deformity. Her ideas on thesubject of masculine attractions were, therefore, as vague as might bethe conceptions of the eyeless fishes in the Mammoth Cave of Kentuckywith regard to the fruits and flowers above ground. All that portion ofher womanly nature which might have throbbed lay in a dead calm. Stillthere was a faint flutter of curiosity, as she pressed Agnes to tellher story, which she did with many pauses and sobs and blushes.
"And is he so very handsome, my little heart?" she said, afterlistening. "What makes you love him so much in so little time?"
"Yes,--he is beautiful as an angel."
"I never saw a young man, really," said the Mother Theresa. "UncleAngelo was lame, and had gray hair; and papa was very fat, and had ared face. Perhaps he looks like our picture of Saint Sebastian;--I haveoften thought that I might be in danger of loving a young man thatlooked like him."
"Oh, he is more beautiful than that picture or any picture!" saidAgnes, fervently; "and, mother, though he is excommunicated, I can'thelp feeling that he is as good as he is beautiful. My uncle had stronghopes that he should restore him to the True Church; and to pray forhis soul I am going on this pilgrimage. Father Francesco says, if Iwill tear away and overcome this love, I shall gain so much merit thatmy prayers will have power to save his soul. Promise me, dear mother,that you and all the sisters will help me with your prayers;--help meto work out this great salvation, and then I shall be so glad to comeback here and spend all my life in prayer!"