Sections: General Index Present Section: Index Present Work: Index Previous: Chapter 40 Next: Chapter 42

CHAPTER 41.

A DRIVE to Posilippo, Baiæ, and Ayernus in the morning. In the afternoon, a visit to the galleries of the Capodimonte, to see the face that Noel reckoned the most lovely of all faces painted on canvas, that of Iphigenia. Margaret owned it to be lovely indeed, but Noel was disappointed on this his second view, and rejoiced in his disappointment, inasmuch as he could hold it a tribute to the ideal that the interval had revealed to him.

(p. 388)

And in the early evening the whole party moved to Resina for the night, in light travelling order, leaving the bulk of their baggage to be sent direct to Capri.

A little later Noel and Margaret started to ride up the mountain to see the eruption that was then taking place. Not a violent eruption, with fierce rendings of the mountain, and cannon-like discharges of fire and rocks; but one that derived its grandeur and impressiveness from the steady, ceaseless oozing from the volcano’s vast pores of a broad, deep stream of red liquid lava, which proceeded ever slowly and silently on its downward path, as if with a consciousness of its resistless might.

The surface of this flowing stream had sufficiently cooled and hardened in places to be passable by those who were well enough shod; and having taken care, before starting, to see that Margaret fulfilled this condition, Noel proffered to conduct her to a sort of rocky island which projected from the midst of the molten current, whence the view promised to be most magnificent. The guides, on being appealed to, said it could be done, provided the signor and signora would each take one of their hands during the passage between the glowing cracks of the lava. Noel would not confess such inferiority of his own perceptions and nerves to those of the guides by accepting such a condition; and he felt that he was mistaken in Margaret if she hesitated to entrust herself entirely to him in any such physical danger, after the experience she had had of his steadfastness in the critical position of their moral relations. He knew of no other woman to whom he would have proposed such a trial of courage as that which he was now proposing to Margaret.

Motioning the guides aside he offered her his hand, gazing keenly the while into her face. Without an instant’s hesitation, but calmly as if unconscious of any risk, she placed one hand in his, and with the other so disposed of her dress as to allow her to step freely out. They then stepped boldly upon the semi-molten pavement, and proceeded rapidly towards the desired point, yet with such perfect presence of mind and skill in avoiding the dangerous chasms as to elicit cries of astonishment from the guides, who stood for a moment aghast at the courage of the signora Inglese, and then hastened to place themselves one in advance and the other in the rear of the bold adventurers. The path lay through fire and sulphurous smoke, but not a false

(p. 389)

or hesitating step betrayed doubt or fear, and when at length the whole party stood together on the island, the guides could not fast enough pour out their expressions of admiration, ‘and for a donna so pale and fair, too!’ – they thought courage always went with dark complexions.

There was no need to return by the same track, as the wind had shifted and cleared one that was higher up and above the lava stream from the smoke which had otherwise hidden it. So Resina was regained without further risk, and Margaret and Noel passed the interval before the time for sleep in conversing on the various beauties of which he had given her a glimpse, and in lamenting the brief period left to them.

‘We must make up for shortness of time by intensity of sensation,’ said Noel, ‘and discuss events hereafter as opportunity may offer. To-morrow we leave the domain of art for that of nature. After a peep at Pompeii and its treasures, we trust for all beauty to earth and sea and sky.’

‘What better can we have?’ asked Margaret. ‘Surely they comprise all that we can hope for or wish.’

‘Or, at least, they suggest it all. It ever seems to me as a sort of blasphemy against one’s mother to undervalue and abuse this world as so many people deemed good are given to doing. But they have not the same revelations of its possibilities that have been vouchsafed to us. For them God is banished, or postponed to another state of existence.’

And so that day came to an end, and Margaret sought to know nothing concerning Noel’s plans for the morrow, for she trusted all to him, even as she had done in the midst of the fire and the smoke and the flowing lava of the mountain, whose terrors they had, in mutual reliance, together dared.

Noel and Margaret met next morning in the breakfast-room of their hotel, while the dame was yet preparing the children. It was a glorious morning without, yet the entrance of Margaret seemed to Noel to shed a splendour over the room which the sun had failed to impart.

‘My morning glory!’ he exclaimed, advancing to greet her, and, in his enthusiasm, adding to his usual salutation a kiss upon the fair forehead that inclined timidly towards him.

She was in a light summer morning-dress, elegant by its perfect and girlish simplicity, devoid of all prevailing fashionable uglinesses, and showing off her lithe figure to admiration.

(p. 390)

‘Our last day,’ she said, ‘and so I must make an allowance for you. Do you know that I almost think it is fortunate that the end is so near? I feel that this daily growing climax of loveliness and grandeur and enjoyment could not continue to increase much longer. The strain would become too great, and a reaction and collapse set in which would be doubly painful from the comparison. I should not like you to get tired of having me for a travelling companion.’

And so we are to snap our career of bliss short off, – to quench the sun of happiness in its zenith, – in order to deprive it of the possibility of sinking or waning; on the principle of the crazy miser, who deliberately starved himself to death, for fear of being left, in his old age, without the means to buy food!’

‘I do not hold,’ said Margaret, with Francesca,

“Nessun maggiore dolore,

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Nella miseria,”

unless the decline has been accompanied by a loss of faith, and a sense of wrong-doing. Let this life of joy be cut short at its intensest point, and methinks I could pass a glad eternity dreaming over it. I have, however, duties and occupations which I dearly love, in tending my little darlings, to console me. But what will you turn to? After such a holiday, you will turn to some real work, something useful and worthy of you, will you not?’

‘Ah, Margaret, if I have to leave you, as seems to be inevitable, I can only foresee myself as occupied by one idea. I shall return to Florence, and give no rest to clay or marble until I have fixed for ever the form that I love so dearly. I shall thus be giving to the world the best that I know; and that is what I take to be the whole duty of man. But there is one obstacle; one difficulty that I may never overcome. My memory will never lose that which it knows of you. I need no model for features or expression; but how am I to render the rest? Whether it be under the guise of an Eve, a Venus, or a Psyche, the figure must be divested of anything conventional or accidental, and correspond in its pure perfection with the aspect of the face. The attitude, too, must be carefully considered and studied. I have resolved that my statue be a standing one, but I have not been able to determine the pose. I want her to indicate so many things; or, at least, a capacity

(p. 391)

for so many: love, tenderness, innocence, nobleness, strength, self-devotion; in short, all qualities that go to make up the perfection which you have taught me to look for in woman. You see, I hold to the old theory, that all parts of the physical form are in such harmony with the individual character, that it is impossible to make one person stand as a model for another. However perfect in its own proportions each model may be, a figure compounded of parts from each would be only an inharmonious monstrosity, devoid of all individuality. So I sometimes think that I shall have to follow the example of the German student, and cultivate systematic dreaming, until I obtain a vision that shall fulfil all my requirements. Will you aid me so far, and promise to appear to me in my dreams when I want a model? I could not bear to go hunting among professional sitters for the semblance of graces which belong to you only.’

This last suggestion made Margaret shudder.

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘anything must be better than that. How curious it is that the world to which we belong should be so constituted as to put any difficulty in the way of a thing that seems so natural and simple. Surely the great sculptors and painters of old had no such hindrance to contend with? Any woman must have thought it an honour to be chosen as a model for the beauty of her form, and to be transmitted to posterity as the highest type of the race.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ responded Edmund. ‘Could we but restore to the world the idea of a beautiful humanity, of which Greece seems to have had the exclusive perception, we should do much towards achieving a new renaissance, and displace the theology that sees only a demon in man, by the more Christian notion of a divine humanity. The first and last of blasphemies I take to be that which insists on a separation between the divine and the human.’

‘How like James! Do you know, that although you are so different from him, yet I am often startled by a resemblance. He, too, prefers the Greek to the Hebrew idea as an element of civilisation.’

‘I can only account for the likeness,’ returned Noel, ‘by supposing that he adopted the idea on principle, while I was born to it. We were both at Oxford, so that the University may be partly responsible for it. I know no more powerful agent in producing the higher morality than the love of beauty. If all people believed that only in proportion as they cultivated

(p. 392)

the internal beauty, which is of the sentiments, they would attain to external beauty, heaven would cease to offer any special attractions to the pious!’

Noel’s plan for the day included so long a drive, that not only an early start from Resina was indispensable, but the visit to Pompeii must be of the shortest. It ended by the latter being abandoned, for, as Margaret suggested, the idea of a visit to the city of the dead accorded but ill with the bright teeming scenes of life and beauty through which they were passing, and it would be well to leave something for an excursion from Capri. So the vetturino was ordered to drive on by Castellamare and La Cava, to that which Noel considered the climax and acme of all possible terrestrial beauty, the Riviera d’Amalfi.

It wanted an hour or more of sunset when the turn was taken that leads from the main road along the famous promontory, on the opposite sides of which lie the two most exquisitely situated of all towns, Sorrento and Amalfi. Here and there the air was heavy with the scent of orange-groves, and, during the whole twelve or fourteen miles were headland reaching beyond headland, and mountain rising over mountain, on the one hand; and on the other, innumerable bays with all exquisite curves; and now near, now far below, as the road rose and sank, lay the deep blue of the still Salernian Gulf; and over and above all, the sky glowing, as sunset approached, with thin clouds of crimson and gold, and long gleams of amber light athwart the ridges; and Art came in, with its never superfluous aid, to crown each jutting rock with many a tower, quaint, bold, and Saracenic, to whose picturesqueness Time has added the finishing touch of ruin.

Margaret lay back in the carriage faint with the emotion of so much beauty, and for some time, while all gazed, none spoke. Another turn in the winding road would disclose Amalfi, and just as its picturesque buildings were revealed, the moon rose over the gulf, and over Pæstum, and over the Calabrian wilds far away, and transmuted the glowing hills into silvery moon light.

As in to complete and crown the day with an appropriate termination, quarters were engaged for the night in the romantically placed ‘Hotel della Luna,’ once a convent, and still retaining its characteristic cloisters and court of cypresses.

Sections: General Index Present Section: Index Present Work: Index Previous: Chapter 40 Next: Chapter 42