Margaret Pollock Sherwood

“ Over the shallow tufa basin of the great fountain on the hill Daphne stood gazing into the water. She had sought the deep shadow of the ilex trees, for the afternoon was warm, an almost angry summer heat having followed yesterday's coolness. Her yellow gown gleamed like light against the dull brown of the stone and the dark moss-touched trunks of the trees. Whether she was looking at the tufts of fern and of grass that grew in the wet basin, or whether she was studying her own beauty reflected there, no one could tell, not even Apollo, who had been watching her for some time. ”

“ High, high up among the sloping hills Daphne sat on a great gray stone. Below her, out beyond olive orchards and lines of cypress, beyond the distant stone pines, stretched the Campagna, rolling in, like the sea that it used to be, wave upon wave of color, green here, but purple in the distance, and changing every moment with the shifting shadows of the floating clouds. Dome and tower there, near the line of shining sea, meant Rome.
Full sense of the enchantment of it all looked out of the girl's face. Wonder sat on her forehead, and on her parted lips. ”

“ She was wandering with a face like that of a sky across which thin clouds scud, in the grass about Hermes' grave. In her hand was the letter of yesterday, and in her eyes the memory of the days before.
"It is all too late," said Daphne, who had learned to talk aloud in this world where no one understood. "The Greeks were right in thinking that our lives are ruled by mocking fate. I wonder what angry goddess cast forgetfulness upon my mind, so that I forgot to tell Apollo what this letter says." ”

“ The ears kept that position in which any one who has ever loved a donkey recognizes scathing criticism. Daphne fingered one of them with her free hand.
"It is only on your back that I feel any strength of mind," she added. "When I am by myself something seems sweeping me away, as the tides sweep driftwood out to sea; but here, resolution crawls up through my body. We must be a new kind of centaur, San Pietro."
Suddenly her face went down between his ears.
"But if you and I united do drive him away, what shall we do,—afterwards?"
"Signorina!" called Bertuccio, running up behind them. ”

“ Macaroni? Roast chicken and salad.
Assunta. Niente! Macaroni!
Giacomo. Roast chicken! You are a pretty one to take the place of the cook!
Assunta. Roast chicken then! But what are you standing here for in the hall polishing spoons? If the Contessa could see you!
Assunta dragged her husband by the hem of his white apron through the great marble-paved dining-room out into the smoke-browned kitchen in the rear.
"Now where's Tommaso, and how am I going to get my chicken?" she demanded. "And why, in the name of all the saints, should an American signorina's illustrious name be Daphne?" ”

“ They usually came home in the splendor of sunset, tired, happy, the red of Daphne's felt hat, the gorgeousness of Bertuccio's blue trousers and yellow waistcoat lighting the gloom of the cool, green-shaded ways. Hermes always ran frisking to meet them, outstripping by his swiftness the slow plodding of the little ass. Perhaps the lambkin felt the shadow of a certain neglect through these long absences, but at least he was generous and loved his rival. ”

“ Some one was guarding them. With little streams dashing from the drooping felt hat to the sheepskin clad shoulders, the keeper stood, motionless in the pelting rain. The sheep ate greedily the wet, juicy grass, while the shepherd leaned on his staff and watched. Undoubtedly it was Antoli's peasant successor, Daphne thought, as she stood with her face to the dripping window pane. Then the shepherd turned, and she recognized, under the wet hat brim, the glowing color and undaunted smile of her masquerading god. ”

“ They are not Romans in America."
"My brother Giovanni is there," remarked Giacomo. "She could have learned of him."
"She is like the Contessa," said Assunta. "You would know they are sisters, only this one is younger and has something more sweet."
"This one is grave," objected Giacomo as he polished. "She does not smile so much. The Contessa is gay. She laughs and sings and her cheeks grow red when she drinks red wine, and her hair is more yellow."
"She makes it so!" snapped Assunta.
"I have heard they all do in Rome," said Giacomo. "Some day I would like to go to see." ”

“ The girl climbed steadily up the moist, steep path leading to the deep shadow of a group of ilex trees on the hill. At her side a stream of water trickled past drooping maidenhair fern and over immemorial moss. Here and there it fell in little cascades, making a sleepy murmur in the warm air of afternoon.
Halfway up the hill Daphne paused and looked back. Below the yellow walls of the Villa Accolanti, standing in a wide garden with encompassing poplars and cypresses, sketched great grassy slopes and gray-green olive orchards. ”

“ Giacomo seemed excited by what he heard, and Daphne, watching from a little distance, wondered if fever must not increase under the influence of tongues that wagged so fast. She strolled away, picking tiny, pink-tipped daisies and blue succory blossoms growing in the moist green grass. From high on a distant hillside, among his nibbling sheep, the shepherd watched.
Giacomo presently stopped talking and fed the invalid the soup and part of the wine he had brought. He knew too much, as a wise Italian, to give a sick man bread and beef. ”

“ There were scores of pickers wearing great gay-colored aprons in which they placed the olives as they gathered them from the trees. Ladders leaned against knotty tree trunks; baskets filled with the green fruit stood on the ground. Ladder and basket suggested the apple orchards of her native land, but the motley colors of kerchief and apron, yellow, magenta, turquoise, and green, and the gray of the eternal olive trees with the deep blue of the sky behind them, recalled her to the enchanted country where she was fast losing the landmarks of home. ”

“ She sat alone in the great dining-hall, with Giacomo moving swiftly about her on the marble floor. On the white linen and silver, on her face and crimson gown, gleamed the light of many candles, standing in old-fashioned branching candlesticks. She pushed away her soup; it seemed an intrusion. Not until she heard Giacomo's murmur of disappointment as she refused salad did she rouse herself to do justice to the dressing he had made. Her eyes were the eyes of one living in a dream. ”

“ You will want to live on Olympus, and you really ought, if you are going to wear gowns woven of my sunbeams like the one you had on yesterday. How shall I convince you that Rome must do part of the time? You will want me to make you immortal: that always happens when a maiden marries a god."
"I think you have done that already," said Daphne. ”

“ Assunta shrugged her shoulders.
"Young men?" inquired Daphne.
The peasant woman looked sharply at her, then smiled.
"I saw one man yesterday," said Daphne, her forehead puckered painfully in what Assunta mistook for a look of fear. Her carefully prepared phrases could get no nearer the problem she wished solved.
"Ma che! agnellina mia, my little lamb!" cried the peasant woman, grasping Daphne's hand in order to kiss her fingers, "you are safe, safe with us. No Americans nor English shall dare to look at the Signorina in the presence of Giacomo and me." ”

“ We wander, for the world has cast us out. Some day they will need us again, and will pluck the grass from our shrines, and then we shall come back to teach them."
"Teach them what?" asked the girl. She could make out nothing from the mystery of that face, and besides, she did not dare to look too closely.
"I should teach them joy," he answered simply.
They were so silent, looking at each other over the dark green hedge, that the lizards crept back in the sunshine close to their feet. Daphne's blue gown and smooth dark hair were outlined against the deep green of her cypress tree. ”

“ If Bertuccio had but shown any signs of having seen her companion of yesterday, Daphne's bewilderment would have been less; but to keep meeting a being who claimed to belong to another world, who came and went, invisible, it would seem, when he chose, to other eyes except her own, might well rouse strange thoughts in the mind of a girl cut off from her old life in the world of commonplace events. To be sure, the shepherd Antoli had seen him, but had spoken of him voluntarily as a mysterious creature, one of the blessed saints come down to aid the sick. ”

“ She rode on in silence, realizing, as she had not realized before, how far this peasant stock reached back into the elder days of the ancient world.
"Do you think that your story is true, Bertuccio?" she asked, as they came in sight of the grass-grown mounds of the buried watering-place toward which their steps were bent.
"Ma che!" answered Bertuccio, shrugging his shoulders, and snapping his fingers meaningly. "So much is true that one does not see, and one cannot believe all that one does see."
Daphne started. ”

“ If he lost himself in his wayward pursuit of his mistress, a plaintive bleat summoned her to his side. On the marble stairs of the villa, even in the sacred precincts of the salon, she heard the tinkle of his hard little hoofs, and she had no courage to turn him back. He bleated so piteously outside the door when his lady dined that at last he won the desire of his heart and lapped milk from a bowl on the floor at her side as she ate her salad or broke her grapes.
"What scandal!" muttered Giacomo every time he brought the bowl. The Contessa would discharge him if she knew! ”

“ Was it Bertuccio's story of yesterday that filled her with foreboding? Hardly. Rather it seemed a pleasant thought that he and she should feel the bark of one of these great trees closing round them, and should have so beautiful a screen of brown bark and green moss to hide their love from all the world. No, no fear could touch the thought of any destiny with him: she was afraid only of herself.
"You are putting a mere nothing between us," the voice went on. "You are pretending that there is an obstacle when there is none, really."
"Only another man's happiness," murmured the girl. ”

“ They were climbing the winding road again, leaving the olive pickers behind. Bertuccio walked near, holding the donkey's tail to steady his steps.
"It was long ago, ages and ages. Her father had the care of an olive orchard that was old, older than our Lord," said Bertuccio, devoutly crossing himself. "There was one tree in it that was enormously big, as large as this,—see the measure of my arms! It was open and hollow, but growing as olives will when there is every reason why they should be dead. ”

“ The Signorino wears his sheepskin coat and tends his sheep!"
Giacomo's voice was triumphant with delight as he pointed toward the distant flock with the motionless attendant. The girl's face shone, half in pleasure, half in fear. "Beautiful as a god" was more like the Italian she had read in her father's study in New York than were the phrases Giacomo and Assunta employed for every day. She had comprehended all of her companion's excitement, and many of his words, for much of the story was already hers.
"Giacomo," she said, speaking slowly, "are the gods here yet?" ”

“ So her old life and her old mood slipped away like a garment no longer needed: her days were set to melody, and her nights to pleasant dreams. The jangle of street cars and the twinges of conscience, the noises of her native city, and her heart searchings in the Little Church of All the Saints faded to the remoteness of a faint gray bar of cloud that makes the sunset brighter in the west. She went singing among the olives or past the fountain under the ilexes on the hill: duties and perplexities vanished in the clear sunshine and pleasant shadow of this golden world. ”

“ An anxious mother-sheep was sniffing eagerly at his pockets, remembering gifts of salt.
"Apollo was a shepherd," said Daphne slowly, with wonder in her face. "He kept the flocks of King Admetus."
"You seem to be well read in the classical dictionary," remarked the stranger, with twinkling eyes. "You have them in America then?"
He was examining her wrist with practiced fingers, touching it firmly here and there.
"We have everything in America," said the girl, eyeing him dubiously.
"But no gods except money, I have heard."
"Yes, gods, and impostors too," she answered significantly. ”

“ San Pietro thought that the words were meant for him, and indeed they were more appropriate here for donkey than for man.
"He sat with them and shared their polenta," continued Bertuccio, walking more rapidly to keep up with San Pietro's quickened step. "And he made them all afraid. It was not that he had any terrible look, or that he did anything strange, only, each glance, each motion told that he was more than merely man. And he looked at the maiden with eyes of love, and she at him," said Bertuccio, lacking art to keep his hearer in suspense. ”

“ His very way of cropping the grass had something ascetic in it, reminding his mistress of Eustace at a festive dinner.
"San Pietro, San Pietro," said Daphne one day, when Bertuccio was plodding far in the rear, whistling as he followed, "San Pietro, must I do it?"
There was a drooping forward of the ears, a slight bending of the head, as the little beast put forth more strength to meet the difficulty of rising ground.
"San Pietro, do you know what you are advising? Do you at all realize what it is to be a clergyman's wife?" ”