The Marble Faun; Or, The Romance of Monte Beni - Volume 2

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  CHAPTER XXVII

  MYTHS

  After the sculptor's arrival, however, the young Count sometimescame down from his forlorn elevation, and rambled with him among theneighboring woods and hills. He led his friend to many enchanting nooks,with which he himself had been familiar in his childhood. But of late,as he remarked to Kenyon, a sort of strangeness had overgrown them,like clusters of dark shrubbery, so that he hardly recognized the placeswhich he had known and loved so well.

  To the sculptor's eye, nevertheless, they were still rich with beauty.They were picturesque in that sweetly impressive way where wildness, ina long lapse of years, has crept over scenes that have been once adornedwith the careful art and toil of man; and when man could do no more forthem, time and nature came, and wrought hand in hand to bring them to asoft and venerable perfection. There grew the fig-tree that had run wildand taken to wife the vine, which likewise had gone rampant out ofall human control; so that the two wild things had tangled andknotted themselves into a wild marriage bond, and hung their variousprogeny--the luscious figs, the grapes, oozy with the Southern juice,and both endowed with a wild flavor that added the final charm--on thesame bough together.

  In Kenyon's opinion, never was any other nook so lovely as a certainlittle dell which he and Donatello visited. It was hollowed in among thehills, and open to a glimpse of the broad, fertile valley. A fountainhad its birth here, and fell into a marble basin, which was all coveredwith moss and shaggy with water-weeds. Over the gush of the smallstream, with an urn in her arms, stood a marble nymph, whose nakednessthe moss had kindly clothed as with a garment; and the long trails andtresses of the maidenhair had done what they could in the poor thing'sbehalf, by hanging themselves about her waist, In former days--it mightbe a remote antiquity--this lady of the fountain had first received theinfant tide into her urn and poured it thence into the marble basin.But now the sculptured urn had a great crack from top to bottom; and thediscontented nymph was compelled to see the basin fill itself througha channel which she could not control, although with water long agoconsecrated to her.

  For this reason, or some other, she looked terribly forlorn; and youmight have fancied that the whole fountain was but the overflow of herlonely tears.

  "This was a place that I used greatly to delight in," remarkedDonatello, sighing. "As a child, and as a boy, I have been very happyhere."

  "And, as a man, I should ask no fitter place to be happy in," answeredKenyon. "But you, my friend, are of such a social nature, that I shouldhardly have thought these lonely haunts would take your fancy. It isa place for a poet to dream in, and people it with the beings of hisimagination."

  "I am no poet, that I know of," said Donatello, "but yet, as I tell you,I have been very happy here, in the company of this fountain and thisnymph. It is said that a Faun, my oldest forefather, brought home hitherto this very spot a human maiden, whom he loved and wedded. This springof delicious water was their household well."

  "It is a most enchanting fable!" exclaimed Kenyon; "that is, if it benot a fact."

  "And why not a fact?" said the simple Donatello. "There is, likewise,another sweet old story connected with this spot. But, now that Iremember it, it seems to me more sad than sweet, though formerly thesorrow, in which it closes, did not so much impress me. If I had thegift of tale-telling, this one would be sure to interest you mightily."

  "Pray tell it," said Kenyon; "no matter whether well or ill. These wildlegends have often the most powerful charm when least artfully told."

  So the young Count narrated a myth of one of his Progenitors,--he mighthave lived a century ago, or a thousand years, or before the Christianepoch, for anything that Donatello knew to the contrary,--who had madeacquaintance with a fair creature belonging to this fountain. Whetherwoman or sprite was a mystery, as was all else about her, except thather life and soul were somehow interfused throughout the gushing water.She was a fresh, cool, dewy thing, sunny and shadowy, full of pleasantlittle mischiefs, fitful and changeable with the whim of the moment, butyet as constant as her native stream, which kept the same gush and flowforever, while marble crumbled over and around it. The fountain womanloved the youth,--a knight, as Donatello called him,--for, accordingto the legend, his race was akin to hers. At least, whether kin or no,there had been friendship and sympathy of old betwixt an ancestor ofhis, with furry ears, and the long-lived lady of the fountain. And,after all those ages, she was still as young as a May morning, and asfrolicsome as a bird upon a tree, or a breeze that makes merry with theleaves.

  She taught him how to call her from her pebbly source, and they spentmany a happy hour together, more especially in the fervor of the summerdays. For often as he sat waiting for her by the margin of the spring,she would suddenly fall down around him in a shower of sunny raindrops,with a rainbow glancing through them, and forthwith gather herself upinto the likeness of a beautiful girl, laughing--or was it the warble ofthe rill over the pebbles?--to see the youth's amazement.

  Thus, kind maiden that she was, the hot atmosphere became deliciouslycool and fragrant for this favored knight; and, furthermore, when heknelt down to drink out of the spring, nothing was more common than fora pair of rosy lips to come up out of its little depths, and touch hismouth with the thrill of a sweet, cool, dewy kiss!

  "It is a delightful story for the hot noon of your Tuscan summer,"observed the sculptor, at this point. "But the deportment of the waterylady must have had a most chilling influence in midwinter. Her loverwould find it, very literally, a cold reception!"

  "I suppose," said Donatello rather sulkily, "you are making fun of thestory. But I see nothing laughable in the thing itself, nor in what yousay about it."

  He went on to relate, that for a long While the knight found infinitepleasure and comfort in the friendship of the fountain nymph. In hismerriest hours, she gladdened him with her sportive humor. If ever hewas annoyed with earthly trouble, she laid her moist hand upon his brow,and charmed the fret and fever quite away.

  But one day--one fatal noontide--the young knight came rushing withhasty and irregular steps to the accustomed fountain. He called thenymph; but--no doubt because there was something unusual and frightfulin his tone she did not appear, nor answer him. He flung himself down,and washed his hands and bathed his feverish brow in the cool, purewater. And then there was a sound of woe; it might have been a woman'svoice; it might have been only the sighing of the brook over thepebbles. The water shrank away from the youth's hands, and left his browas dry and feverish as before.

  Donatello here came to a dead pause.

  "Why did the water shrink from this unhappy knight?" inquired thesculptor.

  "Because he had tried to wash off a bloodstain!" said the young Count,in a horror-stricken whisper. "The guilty man had polluted the purewater. The nymph might have comforted him in sorrow, but could notcleanse his conscience of a crime."

  "And did he never behold her more?" asked Kenyon.

  "Never but once," replied his friend. "He never beheld her blessed facebut once again, and then there was a blood-stain on the poor nymph'sbrow; it was the stain his guilt had left in the fountain where he triedto wash it off. He mourned for her his whole life long, and employedthe best sculptor of the time to carve this statue of the nymph from hisdescription of her aspect. But, though my ancestor would fain have hadthe image wear her happiest look, the artist, unlike yourself, was soimpressed with the mournfulness of the story, that, in spite of his bestefforts, he made her forlorn, and forever weeping, as you see!"

  Kenyon found a certain charm in this simple legend. Whether so intendedor not, he understood it as an apologue, typifying the soothing andgenial effects of an habitual intercourse with nature in all ordinarycares and griefs; while, on the other hand, her mild influences fallshort in their effect upon the ruder passions, and are altogetherpowerless in the dread fever-fit or deadly chill of guilt.

  "Do you say," he asked, "that the nymph's race has never since beenshown to any mortal? Methinks you, by your nati
ve qualities, are as wellentitled to her favor as ever your progenitor could have been. Why haveyou not summoned her?"

  "I called her often when I was a silly child," answered Donatello; andhe added, in an inward voice, "Thank Heaven, she did not come!"

  "Then you never saw her?" said the sculptor.

  "Never in my life!" rejoined the Count. "No, my dear friend, I havenot seen the nymph; although here, by her fountain, I used to make manystrange acquaintances; for, from my earliest childhood, I was familiarwith whatever creatures haunt the woods. You would have laughed to seethe friends I had among them; yes, among the wild, nimble things, thatreckon man their deadliest enemy! How it was first taught me, I cannottell; but there was a charm--a voice, a murmur, a kind of chant--bywhich I called the woodland inhabitants, the furry people, and thefeathered people, in a language that they seemed to understand."

  "I have heard of such a gift," responded the sculptor gravely, "butnever before met with a person endowed with it. Pray try the charm;and lest I should frighten your friends away, I will withdraw into thisthicket, and merely peep at them."

  "I doubt," said Donatello, "whether they will remember my voice now. Itchanges, you know, as the boy grows towards manhood."

  Nevertheless, as the young Count's good-nature and easy persuadabilitywere among his best characteristics, he set about complying withKenyon's request. The latter, in his concealment among the shrubberies,heard him send forth a sort of modulated breath, wild, rude, yetharmonious. It struck the auditor as at once the strangest and themost natural utterance that had ever reached his ears. Any idle boy,it should seem, singing to himself and setting his wordless song tono other or more definite tune than the play of his own pulses,might produce a sound almost identical with this; and yet, it was asindividual as a murmur of the breeze. Donatello tried it, over and overagain, with many breaks, at first, and pauses of uncertainty; then withmore confidence, and a fuller swell, like a wayfarer groping outof obscurity into the light, and moving with freer footsteps as itbrightens around him.

  Anon, his voice appeared to fill the air, yet not with an obtrusiveclangor. The sound was of a murmurous character, soft, attractive,persuasive, friendly. The sculptor fancied that such might have beenthe original voice and utterance of the natural man, before thesophistication of the human intellect formed what we now call language.In this broad dialect--broad as the sympathies of nature--the humanbrother might have spoken to his inarticulate brotherhood that prowl thewoods, or soar upon the wing, and have been intelligible to such extentas to win their confidence.

  The sound had its pathos too. At some of its simple cadences, the tearscame quietly into Kenyon's eyes. They welled up slowly from his heart,which was thrilling with an emotion more delightful than he had oftenfelt before, but which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, itshould at once perish in his grasp.

  Donatello paused two or three times, and seemed to listen,--then,recommencing, he poured his spirit and life more earnestly into thestrain. And finally,--or else the sculptor's hope and imaginationdeceived him,--soft treads were audible upon the fallen leaves. Therewas a rustling among the shrubbery; a whir of wings, moreover, thathovered in the air. It may have been all an illusion; but Kenyon fanciedthat he could distinguish the stealthy, cat-like movement of some smallforest citizen, and that he could even see its doubtful shadow, if notreally its substance. But, all at once, whatever might be the reason,there ensued a hurried rush and scamper of little feet; and then thesculptor heard a wild, sorrowful cry, and through the crevices of thethicket beheld Donatello fling himself on the ground.

  Emerging from his hiding-place, he saw no living thing, save a brownlizard (it was of the tarantula species) rustling away through thesunshine. To all present appearance, this venomous reptile was the onlycreature that had responded to the young Count's efforts to renew hisintercourse with the lower orders of nature.

  "What has happened to you?" exclaimed Kenyon, stooping down over hisfriend, and wondering at the anguish which he betrayed.

  "Death, death!" sobbed Donatello. "They know it!"

  He grovelled beside the fountain, in a fit of such passionate sobbingand weeping, that it seemed as if his heart had broken, and spilt itswild sorrows upon the ground. His unrestrained grief and childish tearsmade Kenyon sensible in how small a degree the customs and restraints ofsociety had really acted upon this young man, in spite of the quietudeof his ordinary deportment. In response to his friend's efforts toconsole him, he murmured words hardly more articulate than the strangechant which he had so recently been breathing into the air.

  "They know it!" was all that Kenyon could yet distinguish,--"they knowit!"

  "Who know it?" asked the sculptor. "And what is it their know?" "Theyknow it!" repeated Donatello, trembling. "They shun me! All natureshrinks from me, and shudders at me! I live in the midst of a curse,that hems me round with a circle of fire! No innocent thing can comenear me."

  "Be comforted, my dear friend," said Kenyon, kneeling beside him. "Youlabor under some illusion, but no curse. As for this strange, naturalspell, which you have been exercising, and of which I have heard before,though I never believed in, nor expected to witness it, I am satisfiedthat you still possess it. It was my own half-concealed presence, nodoubt, and some involuntary little movement of mine, that scared awayyour forest friends."

  "They are friends of mine no longer," answered Donatello.

  "We all of us, as we grow older," rejoined Kenyon, "lose somewhat of ourproximity to nature. It is the price we pay for experience."

  "A heavy price, then!" said Donatello, rising from the ground. "But wewill speak no more of it. Forget this scene, my dear friend. In youreyes, it must look very absurd. It is a grief, I presume, to all men, tofind the pleasant privileges and properties of early life departing fromthem. That grief has now befallen me. Well; I shall waste no more tearsfor such a cause!"

  Nothing else made Kenyon so sensible of a change in Donatello, as hisnewly acquired power of dealing with his own emotions, and, after astruggle more or less fierce, thrusting them down into the prison cellswhere he usually kept them confined. The restraint, which he now putupon himself, and the mask of dull composure which he succeeded inclasping over his still beautiful, and once faun-like face, affected thesensitive sculptor more sadly than even the unrestrained passion of thepreceding scene. It is a very miserable epoch, when the evil necessitiesof life, in our tortuous world, first get the better of us so far as tocompel us to attempt throwing a cloud over our transparency. Simplicityincreases in value the longer we can keep it, and the further we carryit onward into life; the loss of a child's simplicity, in the inevitablelapse of years, causes but a natural sigh or two, because even hismother feared that he could not keep it always. But after a young manhas brought it through his childhood, and has still worn it inhis bosom, not as an early dewdrop, but as a diamond of pure whitelustre,--it is a pity to lose it, then. And thus, when Kenyon saw howmuch his friend had now to hide, and how well he hid it, he would havewept, although his tears would have been even idler than those whichDonatello had just shed.

  They parted on the lawn before the house, the Count to climb his tower,and the sculptor to read an antique edition of Dante, which he had foundamong some old volumes of Catholic devotion, in a seldom-visited room,Tomaso met him in the entrance hall, and showed a desire to speak.

  "Our poor signorino looks very sad to-day!" he said.

  "Even so, good Tomaso," replied the sculptor. "Would that we could raisehis spirits a little!"

  "There might be means, Signore," answered the old butler, "if one mightbut be sure that they were the right ones. We men are but rough nursesfor a sick body or a sick spirit."

  "Women, you would say, my good friend, are better," said the sculptor,struck by an intelligence in the butler's face. "That is possible! Butit depends."

  "Ah; we will wait a little longer," said Tomaso, with the customaryshake of his head.