CHAPTER X
THE SYLVAN DANCE
As the music came fresher on their ears, they danced to its cadence,extemporizing new steps and attitudes. Each varying movement had a gracewhich might have been worth putting into marble, for the long delight ofdays to come, but vanished with the movement that gave it birth, and waseffaced from memory by another. In Miriam's motion, freely as she flungherself into the frolic of the hour, there was still an artful beauty;in Donatello's, there was a charm of indescribable grotesqueness handin hand with grace; sweet, bewitching, most provocative of laughter,and yet akin to pathos, so deeply did it touch the heart. This was theultimate peculiarity, the final touch, distinguishing between the sylvancreature and the beautiful companion at his side. Setting apart onlythis, Miriam resembled a Nymph, as much as Donatello did a Faun.
There were flitting moments, indeed, when she played the sylvancharacter as perfectly as he. Catching glimpses of her, then, you wouldhave fancied that an oak had sundered its rough bark to let her dancefreely forth, endowed with the same spirit in her human form as thatwhich rustles in the leaves; or that she had emerged through thepebbly bottom of a fountain, a water-nymph, to play and sparkle inthe sunshine, flinging a quivering light around her, and suddenlydisappearing in a shower of rainbow drops.
As the fountain sometimes subsides into its basin, so in Miriam therewere symptoms that the frolic of her spirits would at last tire itselfout.
"Ah! Donatello," cried she, laughing, as she stopped to take a breath;"you have an unfair advantage over me! I am no true creature of thewoods; while you are a real Faun, I do believe. When your curls shookjust now, methought I had a peep at the pointed ears."
Donatello snapped his fingers above his head, as fauns and satyrs taughtus first to do, and seemed to radiate jollity out of his whole nimbleperson. Nevertheless, there was a kind of dim apprehension in his face,as if he dreaded that a moment's pause might break the spell, and snatchaway the sportive companion whom he had waited for through so manydreary months.
"Dance! dance!" cried he joyously. "If we take breath, we shall be aswe were yesterday. There, now, is the music, just beyond this clump oftrees. Dance, Miriam, dance!"
They had now reached an open, grassy glade (of which there are many inthat artfully constructed wilderness), set round with stone seats,on which the aged moss had kindly essayed to spread itself instead ofcushions. On one of the stone benches sat the musicians, whose strainshad enticed our wild couple thitherward. They proved to be a vagrantband, such as Rome, and all Italy, abounds with; comprising a harp,a flute, and a violin, which, though greatly the worse for wear,the performers had skill enough to provoke and modulate into tolerableharmony. It chanced to be a feast-day; and, instead of playing inthe sun-scorched piazzas of the city, or beneath the windows of someunresponsive palace, they had bethought themselves to try the echoesof these woods; for, on the festas of the Church, Rome scatters itsmerrymakers all abroad, ripe for the dance or any other pastime.
As Miriam and Donatello emerged from among the trees, the musiciansscraped, tinkled, or blew, each according to his various kind ofinstrument, more inspiringly than ever. A darkchecked little girl,with bright black eyes, stood by, shaking a tambourine set roundwith tinkling bells, and thumping it on its parchment head. Withoutinterrupting his brisk, though measured movement, Donatello snatchedaway this unmelodious contrivance, and, flourishing it above his head,produced music of indescribable potency, still dancing with frisky step,and striking the tambourine, and ringing its little bells, all in onejovial act.
It might be that there was magic in the sound, or contagion, at least,in the spirit which had got possession of Miriam and himself, for verysoon a number of festal people were drawn to the spot, and struckinto the dance, singly or in pairs, as if they were all gone mad withjollity. Among them were some of the plebeian damsels whom we meetbareheaded in the Roman streets, with silver stilettos thrust throughtheir glossy hair; the contadinas, too, from the Campagna and thevillages, with their rich and picturesque costumes of scarlet and allbright hues, such as fairer maidens might not venture to put on. Thencame the modern Roman from Trastevere, perchance, with his old cloakdrawn about him like a toga, which anon, as his active motion heatedhim, he flung aside. Three French soldiers capered freely into thethrong, in wide scarlet trousers, their short swords dangling at theirsides; and three German artists in gray flaccid hats and flauntingbeards; and one of the Pope's Swiss guardsmen in the strange motley garbwhich Michael Angelo contrived for them. Two young English tourists (oneof them a lord) took contadine partners and dashed in, as did also ashaggy man in goat-skin breeches, who looked like rustic Pan in person,and footed it as merrily as he. Besides the above there was a herdsmanor two from the Campagna, and a few peasants in sky-blue jackets, andsmall-clothes tied with ribbons at the knees; haggard and sallow werethese last, poor serfs, having little to eat and nothing but the malariato breathe; but still they plucked up a momentary spirit and joinedhands in Donatello's dance.
Here, as it seemed, had the Golden Age come back again within thePrecincts of this sunny glade, thawing mankind out of their coldformalities, releasing them from irksome restraint, mingling themtogether in such childlike gayety that new flowers (of which the oldbosom of the earth is full) sprang up beneath their footsteps. The soleexception to the geniality of the moment, as we have understood, wasseen in a countryman of our own, who sneered at the spectacle, anddeclined to compromise his dignity by making part of it.
The harper thrummed with rapid fingers; the violin player flashed hisbow back and forth across the strings; the flautist poured his breath inquick puffs of jollity, while Donatello shook the tambourine above hishead, and led the merry throng with unweariable steps. As they followedone another in a wild ring of mirth, it seemed the realization of oneof those bas-reliefs where a dance of nymphs, satyrs, or bacchanalsis twined around the circle of an antique vase; or it was like thesculptured scene on the front and sides of a sarcophagus, where, asoften as any other device, a festive procession mocks the ashes andwhite bones that are treasured up within. You might take it for amarriage pageant; but after a while, if you look at these merry-makers,following them from end to end of the marble coffin, you doubt whethertheir gay movement is leading them to a happy close. A youth hassuddenly fallen in the dance; a chariot is overturned and broken,flinging the charioteer headlong to the ground; a maiden seems to havegrown faint or weary, and is drooping on the bosom of a friend. Alwayssome tragic incident is shadowed forth or thrust sidelong into thespectacle; and when once it has caught your eye you can look no moreat the festal portions of the scene, except with reference to this oneslightly suggested doom and sorrow.
As in its mirth, so in the darker characteristic here alluded to, therewas an analogy between the sculptured scene on the sarcophagus and thewild dance which we have been describing. In the midst of its madnessand riot Miriam found herself suddenly confronted by a strange figurethat shook its fantastic garments in the air, and pranced before her onits tiptoes, almost vying with the agility of Donatello himself. It wasthe model.
A moment afterwards Donatello was aware that she had retired from thedance. He hastened towards her, and flung himself on the grass besidethe stone bench on which Miriam was sitting. But a strange distance andunapproachableness had all at once enveloped her; and though he saw herwithin reach of his arm, yet the light of her eyes seemed as far off asthat of a star, nor was there any warmth in the melancholy smile withwhich she regarded him.
"Come back!" cried he. "Why should this happy hour end so soon?"
"It must end here, Donatello," said she, in answer to his words andoutstretched hand; "and such hours, I believe, do not often repeatthemselves in a lifetime. Let me go, my friend; let me vanish from youquietly among the shadows of these trees. See, the companions of ourpastime are vanishing already!"
Whether it was that the harp-strings were broken, the violin out oftune, or the flautist out of breath, so it chanced that the music hadceas
ed, and the dancers come abruptly to a pause. All that motley throngof rioters was dissolved as suddenly as it had been drawn together. InMiriam's remembrance the scene had a character of fantasy. It was as ifa company of satyrs, fauns, and nymphs, with Pan in the midst of them,had been disporting themselves in these venerable woods only a momentago; and now in another moment, because some profane eye had looked atthem too closely, or some intruder had cast a shadow on their mirth,the sylvan pageant had utterly disappeared. If a few of the merry-makerslingered among the trees, they had hidden their racy peculiarities underthe garb and aspect of ordinary people, and sheltered themselves in theweary commonplace of daily life. Just an instant before it was Arcadiaand the Golden Age. The spell being broken, it was now only that oldtract of pleasure ground, close by the people's gate of Rome,--atract where the crimes and calamities of ages, the many battles, bloodrecklessly poured out, and deaths of myriads, have corrupted all thesoil, creating an influence that makes the air deadly to human lungs.
"You must leave me," said Miriam to Donatello more imperatively thanbefore; "have I not said it? Go; and look not behind you."
"Miriam," whispered Donatello, grasping her hand forcibly, "who is itthat stands in the shadow yonder, beckoning you to follow him?"
"Hush; leave me!" repeated Miriam. "Your hour is past; his hour hascome."
Donatello still gazed in the direction which he had indicated, andthe expression of his face was fearfully changed, being so disordered,perhaps with terror,--at all events with anger and invinciblerepugnance,--that Miriam hardly knew him. His lips were drawn apart soas to disclose his set teeth, thus giving him a look of animal rage,which we seldom see except in persons of the simplest and rudestnatures. A shudder seemed to pass through his very bones.
"I hate him!" muttered he.
"Be satisfied; I hate him too!" said Miriam.
She had no thought of making this avowal, but was irresistibly drawn toit by the sympathy of the dark emotion in her own breast with that sostrongly expressed by Donatello. Two drops of water or of blood do notmore naturally flow into each other than did her hatred into his.
"Shall I clutch him by the throat?" whispered Donatello, with a savagescowl. "Bid me do so, and we are rid of him forever."
"In Heaven's name, no violence!" exclaimed Miriam, affrighted out of thescornful control which she had hitherto held over her companion, bythe fierceness that he so suddenly developed. "O, have pity onme, Donatello, if for nothing else, yet because in the midst of mywretchedness I let myself be your playmate for this one wildhour! Follow me no farther. Henceforth leave me to my doom. Dearfriend,--kind, simple, loving friend,--make me not more wretched by theremembrance of having thrown fierce hates or loves into the wellspringof your happy life!"
"Not follow you!" repeated Donatello, soothed from anger into sorrow,less by the purport of what she said, than by the melancholy sweetnessof her voice,--"not follow you! What other path have I?"
"We will talk of it once again," said Miriam still soothingly;"soon--to-morrow when you will; only leave me now."