Margaret Sherwood

“ 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. ”

“ One day as he stood there by the tree and was kissing the maiden on her mouth, her father came, very angry, and scolded her, and defied the god, telling him to go away and never show his face there again. And then, he never knew how it happened, for the stranger did not touch him, but he fell stunned to the ground, with a queer flash of light in his eyes. When he woke, the stars were shining over him, and he crawled home. But the maiden was gone, and they never saw her any more, Signorina. Whether it was for good or for ill, she had been carried away by the god. ”

“ Something in the man's face warned her, and her voice became grave.
"Why do you go?" she asked.
"It is the only thing to do," he answered. "Life has thrown me back into the old position, and I must face the same foes again. I always rush too eagerly to snatch my good; I always hit my head against some impassable wall. I thought I had won my battles and was safe, and then you came."
The life had gone out of his voice, the light from his face. Looking at him Daphne saw above his temples a touch of gray in the golden brown of his hair. ”

“ The lines of aloe, fig, and palm stood like shadows guarding a world of mystery. Daphne, wandering alone in the garden at midnight, half exultant, half afraid, stepped noiselessly along the pebbled walks with a feeling that that world was about to open for her. Ahead, through an arch where the thick foliage of the ilexes had been cut to leave the way clear for the passer-by, a single golden planet shone low in the west, and the garden path led to it. ”

“ 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. The water from the stream, gathered in a stone basin at the foot of the hill, flowed in a marble conduit through the open hall. As she looked she was aware of two old brown faces anxiously gazing after her. Giacomo and Assunta were chattering eagerly in the doorway, the black of his butler's dress and the white of his protecting apron making his wife's purple calico skirt and red shoulder shawl look more gay. ”

“ This vivid joy in the encompassing beauty had but one meaning: it was her sense of the glad presence of this new creature, man or god, who seemed continually with her, were he near or far.
"I'm as foolish as a sixteen-year-old girl," she murmured, fingering the grapes in the basket with their setting of green leaves, "and yet, and yet he isn't a man, really; he is only a state of mind!"
She sat, with the cool air of autumn on her cheeks, watching the pickers, who went with even motion up the great slope. ”

“ Bertuccio was sleeping on his flat rock; San Pietro lay down for a brief, ascetic slumber. The lovers sat side by side, with the mystery of beauty about them: the purple and gold of nearness and distance; bright color of green grass near, sombre tint of cypress and stone pine afar.
"I shall never really know whether you are a god or not," said Daphne dreamily.
"A very proper attitude for a woman to have toward her husband," he answered with a smile. "I must try hard to live up to the character. ”

“ The sun hung low above the encircling hills when the lover's last cry sounded in the green theatre, drowning grief in triumph as he chose death with his beloved before all other good. Then there was silence, while the round, golden sun seemed resting in a red-gold haze on the hilltop, and Daphne, sitting with closed eyes, felt the touch of two hands upon her own. ”

“ Quitting the kitchen and dining-room, he chose for his portion the pasture where the donkey grazed, in silence and in sadness, and frisked dangerously near his comrade's heels. For all his melancholy, the asinetto was not insensible to caresses, and at night, when the lamb cuddled close to him as the two lay in the grass in the darkness, would curl his nose round now and then protectingly to see how this small thing fared. ”

“ Drowsing there in the old theatre in the sun, Daphne presently saw, stepping daintily through one of the entrances at the side, an audience of white sheep. They overspread the stage, cropping as they went. They climbed the green encircling seats, leaping up or down, where a softer tuft of grass invited. They broke the dreamy silence with the muffled sound of their hoofs, and an occasional bleat.
The girl knew them now. She had seen before the brown-faced twins, both wearing tiny horns; they always kept together. ”

“ Assunta had carried a small tray out to the arbor in the garden, and Daphne was having her afternoon tea there alone. About her, on the frescoed walls of this little open-air pavilion, were grouped pink shepherds and shepherdesses, disporting themselves in airy garments of blue and green in a meadow that ended abruptly to make room for long windows. The girl leaned back and sipped her tea luxuriously. She was clad in a gown that any shepherdess among them might have envied, a pale yellow crêpy thing shot through with gleams of gold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Assunta was squatting on the ground in the garden below, digging with a blunt knife at the roots of a garden fern. There was a gray red cotton shawl over her head, and a lilac apron upon her knees.
"It's the vintage, Signorina," she answered, "the wine makes itself."
"Everything does itself in this most lazy country," remarked Daphne. "Dresses make themselves, boots repair themselves, food eats itself. There's just one idiom, si fa,"—
"What?" asked Assunta.
"Reflections," answered the girl, smiling down on her. "Assunta, may I go and help pick grapes?" ”

“ Cautiously above the top of the hill appeared a girl's head. She saw what she was looking for: the dreaded man was sitting on the stump of a felled birch tree, gazing down the valley, his cheeks resting on his hands. Daphne, stealing behind a giant ilex, studied him. He wore something that looked like a golf suit of brownish shade; a soft felt hat drooped over his face. The girl peered out from her hiding place cautiously, holding her skirts together to make herself slim and small. It was a choice of evils. On this side of the hill was a man; on that, the whole wide world, pathless. ”

“ The long ears were jerked hastily back to hear what was to come. "I know you disapprove of me, for you saw it all."
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." ”

“ You never saw such beauty of sky and grass and trees. These cypresses and poplars seem to have been standing against the blue sky from all eternity; time is annihilated, and the gods of Greece and Rome are wandering about the hills. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Then she took the lamp and searched in the deep thick grass for flowers, coming back with a mass of pink-tipped daisies gathered in her skirt. The sight of the brown earth set her to thinking: there ought to be some kind of shroud. Near the tool-house grew a laurel tree, she remembered, and from that she stripped a handful of green, glossy leaves, to spread upon the bottom of the grave. ”

“ Assunta muttered to herself as she lighted her way with her candle down the long hall.
"Molto intelligente, la Signorina! Only here three days, and already understands all."
"You don't need speech here," said Daphne, pulling aside the curtains of her tapestried bed a little later. "The Italians can infer all you mean from a single smile."
Down the road a peasant was merrily beating his donkey to the measure of the tune on his lips. Listening, and turning over many questions in her mind, Daphne fell asleep. ”

“ The donkey followed willingly, for he permitted himself to love his lady with a controlled but genuine affection; and together they searched by the light of the firefly lamp. At last Daphne halted by a diminutive cypress, perhaps two feet high, and announced that she was content.
The tool-house was not far away. Investigating, she found, as she had hoped, that the door was not locked. Arming herself with a hoe she came back, and, under the light of southern stars, dug a little grave in the soft, dark earth, easily loosened in its crumbling richness. ”

“ V
"A man is ill," observed Daphne, in the Roman tongue.
"What?" demanded Giacomo.
"A man is ill," repeated Daphne firmly. She had written it out, and she knew that it was right.
"Her mind wanders," Giacomo hinted to his wife.
"No, no, no! It's the Signorina herself," cried Assunta, whose wits were quicker than her husband's. "She is saying that she is ill. What is it, Signorina mia? Is it your head, or your back, or your stomach? Are you cold? Have you fever?"
"Si," answered Daphne calmly. The answer that usually quieted Assunta failed now. Then she tried the smile. That also failed. ”

“ The shadow of branching palms fell on the Signorina's hair and hands as she sat at work near the fountain in the garden weaving a great wreath of wild cyclamen and of fern gathered from the hillside. Assunta was watching her anxiously, her hands resting on her hips.
"It's a poor thing to offer the Madonna," she said at length, "just common things that grow." ”