Atuona

“ As Antonina beheld the brightened fields and the shadowed woods, here mingled, there succeeding each other, stretched far onward and onward until they joined the distant mountains, that eloquent voice of nature, whose audience is the human heart, and whose theme is eternal love, spoke inspiringly to her attentive senses. She stretched out her arms as she looked with steady and enraptured gaze upon the bright view before her, as if she longed to see its beauties resolved into a single and living form—into a spirit human enough to be addressed, and visible enough to be adored. ”

“ Hermanric's downcast eyes and melancholy, unchanging expressions betrayed the gloomy abstraction in which he was absorbed. With one hand clasped in his, and the other resting with her head on his shoulder, Antonina listened attentively to the alternate rising and falling of the wind. Her beauty had grown fresher and more woman-like during her sojourn at the farm-house. Cheerfulness and hope seemed to have gained at length all the share in her being assigned to them by nature at her birth. ”

“ My four remaining years then, at Eton, formed, indeed, a dream of happiness.
When not otherwise particularly engaged, it was my delight, on the instant of coming out of school, or church, to fix my eyes on some distant object, and to start off for it, merely, I suppose, because it was out of bounds. Being constantly in the habit of this, I became acquainted with the localities of the neighbourhood, perhaps more accurately than any other boy at Eton. The two most distant points I ever reached, were Staines and the race-course at Ascot Heath. These excursions I ever undertook in solitude. ”

“ You shall read no gloomy task-books; you shall never be separated from me more; you shall play sweet music on the lute; you shall be all garlanded with flowers which I will provide for you! We will find friends and glad companions; we will bring happiness with us wherever we are seen. God's blessing goes forth from children like you—it has fallen upon me—it has raised me from the dead! My Antonina shall teach me to worship, as I once taught her. ”

“ Atanta fell to his knees and his trembling hand etched out the sign of the cross in the snow. Surely this must be a sign. The god had come out of the sky and fallen in the path before him—forbidding him to go into the lowlands. He knew he must pray and ask forgiveness but for many moments he was too frightened to pray, and when the fear subsided, he was too proud. Why should he pray to a god who would let his people starve? ”

“ And yet, so wonderful was the ascendancy that she had acquired by the magic of her presence, the freshness of her beauty, and the novelty of her manner, over the heart of the young chieftain, that he, who would have spurned from him with contempt any other woman who might have addressed to him such a petition as Antonina's, looked down sorrowfully at the girl as she ceased speaking, and for an instant hesitated in his choice. ”

“ No sooner were her interviews with Numerian concluded than the promptings of that nature within us, which artifice may warp but can never destroy, lured her into a forgetfulness of all that she had heard and a longing for much that was forbidden. We live, in this existence, but by the companionship of some sympathy, aspiration, or pursuit, which serves us as our habitual refuge from the tribulations we inherit from the outer world. The same feeling which led Antonina in her childhood to beg for a flower-garden, in her girlhood induced her to gain possession of a lute. ”

“ How good it was to have Ántonia near us again; to see her every day and almost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was that she so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children. She would race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our hay-fights in the barn, or be the old bear that came down from the mountain and carried off Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by the time school began she could speak as well as any of us. ”

“ For his sake, to say nothing of my own feelings, I shall do well if I make it a custom to use the lock of my journal.
Our next occupation is to join the Scripture class for girls, and to help the teacher. This is a good discipline for Eunice’s temper, and—oh, I don’t deny it!—for my temper, too. I may long to box the ears of the whole class, but it is my duty to keep a smiling face and to be a model of patience. From the Scripture class we sometimes go to my father’s lecture. At other times, we may amuse ourselves as well as we can till the tea is ready. ”

“ It is true that our girls have too many accomplishments, and are little trained to serious work and thought; but that will come in good time, if it is for the best that it should. I like to see you at your work, you are so splendidly in earnest. I always come away from you feeling full of a new strength. You have been a living gospel of work to me, Atalanta. How the name suits you,—Atalanta from the North. ”

“ They were strong and loyal people, too, for if he ordered them up and back along the trail that they had come, each man would go without a word and hope that there was some magic Atanta had yet to use. ”

“ And one of the first matters that the goddess of love attended to was that of the wilful Atalanta who had caused so much sorrow among the heroes of Greece.
Atalanta was a princess, too boyish for a girl and too girlish for a boy. Many of the heroes had [Pg 59] claimed her hand in marriage but she liked her own free, wild ways too much to give them up for spinning and the household arts. To any prince or hero who asked for her hand Atalanta made the same reply,
"I will be the prize of him who shall conquer me in a race; but death shall be the penalty of all who try and fail!" ”

“ The social influence that sways the world; the fragile idol at whose shrine pride learns to bow, and insensibility to feel; the soft, grateful influence of yielding nature yet eternal rule—the influence of woman, source alike of virtues and crimes, of earthly glories and earthly disasters—had, in this moment of anguish and expectation, silenced in him every appeal of duty, and overthrown every obstacle of selfish doubt. He now spoke to Antonina as alluringly as a woman, as gently as a child. ”

“ But in truth I could never have paused to ask what in such a case oath or law permitted, "Listen, Eunané," I said, "and be calm. Not only Eveena, not only I, but hundreds, thousands, of the best and kindliest men and women of your world hold this faith as fast as we do. You feel what Eveena is. What she is and what others are not, she owes to this trust:—to the assurance of a Power unseen, that rules our lives and fortunes and watches our conduct, that will exact an account thereof, that holds us as His children, and will never part with us. ”

“ Is that you, Antonia? At this hour we are all your servants, I think. I, at least, have been waiting upon your pleasure”; then perceiving the traces of sorrow and emotion on her face, she added, with an unreasonable querulousness: “I bless God when I see how He has provided for women; giving them tears, when they have no other employment for their time.”
“Dearest mother, I am sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope that you have forgotten nothing. Where is your mantilla? And have you replenished your cigarito case? Is there water in the wagon?” ”

“ And Fidelia herself began to think this possible.
“I like it, Eunice. I feel that I can teach those things that I know well. And, when I have learned more, I hope I shall be successful in higher teaching.”
“If there is any teaching higher, in the best sense, than the teaching of the little children,” replied her sister. “Remember, it is easier to bend the twig than the tall sapling; and what you teach them out of their school-books makes but a small part of what they must learn from you.” ”

“ Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. Ántonia came in and stood before me; a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled. It was a shock, of course. It always is, to meet people after long years, especially if they have lived as much and as hard as this woman had. We stood looking at each other. The eyes that peered anxiously at me were—simply Ántonia's eyes. ”

“ I was thinking about Ántonia and her children; about Anna's solicitude for her, Ambrosch's grave affection, Leo's jealous, animal little love. That moment, when they all came tumbling out of the cave into the light, was a sight any man might have come far to see. Ántonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade—that grew stronger with time. ”

“ I accept your offer with all possible gratitude, and return you a thousand thanks for the generosity of your proposal. Antonia, why do not you speak, child? While the cavalier says all sorts of civil things to you, you sit like a statue, and never utter a syllable of thanks, either bad, good, or indifferent!—"
"My dear aunt, I am very sensible that—"
"Fye, niece! How often have I told you, that you never should interrupt a person who is speaking! ”

“ I gradually arose from my trance to be conscious of the truth; and now even concluding it to be my duty to combat against the weakness, though in a joyless mood, I descended the ladder.
"Time and tide tarry for no man," and I think even less for me. The day had now come that I was to take leave of Keate and of Eton, and return to my father's house—and for what! ”

“ Who does not know that the poets are prophets, and that nothing is hidden from them? Being a poet myself, and crowned with Apollo’s laurel, I will make known to all the last incarnation of Eunoia. The eternal Helen is close to us; she is looking at us, and we are looking at her. You see that woman reclining on the cushions of her couch—so beautiful and so contemplative—whose eyes shed tears, and whose lips abound with kisses! It is she! Lovely as in the time of Priam and the halcyon days of Asia, Eunoia is now called Thais. ”

“ Aunt Eunice would have been like the saying, 'Where ignorance is bliss,' and wouldn't have been worried so, and we shouldn't have been forbidden to tell things that I wouldn't have cared to tell, if I hadn't been forbidden. And, oh, dear! What a terrible hard world it is! and what a lovely old barn! I think—Do you suppose I could climb up that hay-mow? Susanna's sure there are hens' nests 'stolen' up there, and she needs the eggs. I wish we could find them. I wish we could do something—anything that is pleasant and so helps us to 'forget,' as Aunt Eunice wished us to [Pg 117] do. ”

“ All the hurried and imperfect pictures of happiness which she had drawn to allure him, now expanded and brightened, until his mind began to figure to him visions that had been hitherto unknown to faculties occupied by no other images than those of rivalry, turbulence, and strife. Scenes called into being by Antonina's lightest and hastiest expressions, now rose vague and shadowy before his brooding spirit. Lovely places of earth that he had visited and forgotten now returned to his recollection, idealised and refined as he thought of her. ”

“ Retracing some hours, we turn from the rifted wall to the suburbs and the country which its ramparts overlook; abandoning the footsteps of the maimed and darkly-plotting Ulpius, our attention now fixes itself on the fortunes of Hermanric, and the fate of Antonina. ”

“ The grisette charms of little tobacconists, milliners, flower-girls, lemonade-sellers, bonbon-sellers, and filles de joie flaunted themselves in the gaslight where the lustrous sorceress eyes of Antonina might have glanced over the Afric Sea, while her wanton's heart, so strangely filled with leonine courage and shameless license, heroism and brutality, cruelty and self-devotion, swelled under the purples of her delicate vest, at the glory of the man she at once dishonored and adored. ”

“ Catherine of Siena has it—Christ in His willing death is somehow performing the very object of life, in the name of the whole race. The true business of an atoner is a constructive one. He is called upon to heal a disharmony; bridge a gap between two things which, though separate, desire to be one. ”

“ While a gardener with a large salary, and two assistants, busily at work from morning till night, were not enough to keep his mother's garden sufficiently neat and gorgeous, while she worried over a rose bud that failed to bloom or an unsuccessful graft, Monsieur Antoine was happy in the proud savagery of his pupils, and in his eyes nothing was more fruitful and more generous than the will of nature. ”

“ And how folk worshipped Atalanta's hand.
"Fair would thy son's name look upon the roll
Wherein such noble deeds as this are told;
And great delight shall surely fill thy soul,
Thinking upon his deeds when thou art old,
And thy brave heart is waxen faint and cold:
Dost thou not know, O King, how men will strive
That they, when dead, still in their sons may live?"
He shuddered as they spoke, because he thought,
Most certainly a winning tale is this
To draw him from the net where he is caught,
For hearts of men grow weary of all bliss ”

“ The commerce with all the saints—that is to say, the eternal human society. And for his part, Oetinger considers eternal happiness not as the contemplation of God in His infinitude, but, taking the Epistle to the Ephesians as his authority, as the contemplation of God in the harmony of the creature with Christ. The commerce with all the saints was, according to him, essential to the content of eternal happiness. It was the realization of the kingdom of God, which thus comes to be the kingdom of Man. ”