The Last Days of Pompeii Part 24

'His motives are sufficiently obvious.'

'Talk not of him,' said Ione, covering her face with her hands, as if to shut out his very thought.

'Perhaps he may be already by the banks of the slow Styx,' resumed Glaucus; 'yet in that case we should probably have heard of his death.

Thy brother, methinks, hath felt the dark influence of his gloomy soul.

When we arrived last night at thy house he left me abruptly. Will he ever vouchsafe to be my friend?'

'He is consumed with some secret care,' answered Ione, tearfully.

'Would that we could lure him from himself! Let us join in that tender office.'

'He shall be my brother,' returned the Greek.

'How calmly,' said Ione, rousing herself from the gloom into which her thoughts of Apaecides had plunged her--'how calmly the clouds seem to repose in heaven; and yet you tell me, for I knew it not myself, that the earth shook beneath us last night.'

'It did, and more violently, they say, than it has done since the great convulsion sixteen years ago: the land we live in yet nurses mysterious terror; and the reign of Pluto, which spreads beneath our burning fields, seems rent with unseen commotion. Didst thou not feel the earth quake, Nydia, where thou wert seated last night? and was it not the fear that it occasioned thee that made thee weep?'

'I felt the soil creep and heave beneath me, like some monstrous serpent,' answered Nydia; 'but as I saw nothing, I did not fear: I imagined the convulsion to be a spell of the Egyptian's. They say he has power over the elements.'

'Thou art a Thessalian, my Nydia,' replied Glaucus, 'and hast a national right to believe in magic.

'Magic!--who doubts it?' answered Nydia, simply: 'dost thou?'

'Until last night (when a necromantic prodigy did indeed appal me), methinks I was not credulous in any other magic save that of love!' said Glaucus, in a tremulous voice, and fixing his eyes on Ione.

'Ah!' said Nydia, with a sort of s.h.i.+ver, and she awoke mechanically a few pleasing notes from her lyre; the sound suited well the tranquility of the waters, and the sunny stillness of the noon.

'Play to us, dear Nydia, said Glaucus--'play and give us one of thine old Thessalian songs: whether it be of magic or not, as thou wilt--let it, at least, be of love!'

'Of love!' repeated Nydia, raising her large, wandering eyes, that ever thrilled those who saw them with a mingled fear and pity; you could never familiarize yourself to their aspect: so strange did it seem that those dark wild orbs were ignorant of the day, and either so fixed was their deep mysterious gaze, or so restless and perturbed their glance, that you felt, when you encountered them, that same vague, and chilling, and half-preternatural impression, which comes over you in the presence of the insane--of those who, having a life outwardly like your own, have a life within life--dissimilar--unsearchable--unguessed!

'Will you that I should sing of love?' said she, fixing those eyes upon Glaucus.

'Yes,' replied he, looking down.

She moved a little way from the arm of Ione, still cast round her, as if that soft embrace embarra.s.sed; and placing her light and graceful instrument on her knee, after a short prelude, she sang the following strain:

NYDIA'S LOVE-SONG

I

The Wind and the Beam loved the Rose, And the Rose loved one; For who recks the wind where it blows?

Or loves not the sun?

II

None knew whence the humble Wind stole, Poor sport of the skies-- None dreamt that the Wind had a soul, In its mournful sighs!

III

Oh, happy Beam! how canst thou prove That bright love of thine?

In thy light is the proof of thy love.

Thou hast but--to s.h.i.+ne!

IV

How its love can the Wind reveal?

Unwelcome its sigh; Mute--mute to its Rose let it steal-- Its proof is--to die!

'Thou singest but sadly, sweet girl,' said Glaucus; 'thy youth only feels as yet the dark shadow of Love; far other inspiration doth he wake, when he himself bursts and brightens upon us.

'I sing as I was taught,' replied Nydia, sighing.

'Thy master was love-crossed, then--try thy hand at a gayer air. Nay, girl, give the instrument to me.' As Nydia obeyed, her hand touched his, and, with that slight touch, her breast heaved--her cheek flushed. Ione and Glaucus, occupied with each other, perceived not those signs of strange and premature emotions, which preyed upon a heart that, nourished by imagination, dispensed with hope.

And now, broad, blue, bright, before them, spread that halcyon sea, fair as at this moment, seventeen centuries from that date, I behold it rippling on the same divinest sh.o.r.es. Clime that yet enervates with a soft and Circean spell--that moulds us insensibly, mysteriously, into harmony with thyself, banis.h.i.+ng the thought of austerer labor, the voices of wild ambition, the contests and the roar of life; filling us with gentle and subduing dreams, making necessary to our nature that which is its least earthly portion, so that the very air inspires us with the yearning and thirst of love. Whoever visits thee seems to leave earth and its harsh cares behind--to enter by the Ivory gate into the Land of Dreams. The young and laughing Hours of the PRESENT--the Hours, those children of Saturn, which he hungers ever to devour, seem s.n.a.t.c.hed from his grasp. The past--the future--are forgotten; we enjoy but the breathing time. Flower of the world's garden--Fountain of Delight--Italy of Italy--beautiful, benign Campania!--vain were, indeed, the t.i.tans, if on this spot they yet struggled for another heaven! Here, if G.o.d meant this working-day life for a perpetual holiday, who would not sigh to dwell for ever--asking nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing, while thy skies s.h.i.+ne over him--while thy seas sparkle at his feet--while thine air brought him sweet messages from the violet and the orange--and while the heart, resigned to--beating with--but one emotion, could find the lips and the eyes, which flatter it (vanity of vanities!) that love can defy custom, and be eternal?

It was then in this clime--on those seas, that the Athenian gazed upon a face that might have suited the nymph, the spirit of the place: feeding his eyes on the changeful roses of that softest cheek, happy beyond the happiness of common life, loving, and knowing himself beloved.

In the tale of human pa.s.sion, in past ages, there is something of interest even in the remoteness of the time. We love to feel within us the bond which unites the most distant era--men, nations, customs perish; THE AFFECTIONS ARE IMMORTAL!--they are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations. The past lives again, when we look upon its emotions--it lives in our own! That which was, ever is! The magician's gift, that revives the dead--that animates the dust of forgotten graves, is not in the author's skill--it is in the heart of the reader!

Still vainly seeking the eyes of Ione, as, half downcast, half averted, they shunned his own, the Athenian, in a low and soft voice, thus expressed the feelings inspired by happier thoughts than those which had colored the song of Nydia.

THE SONG OF GLAUCUS

I As the bark floateth on o'er the summer-lit sea, Floats my heart o'er the deeps of its pa.s.sion for thee; All lost in the s.p.a.ce, without terror it glides, For bright with thy soul is the face of the tides.

Now heaving, now hush'd, is that pa.s.sionate ocean, As it catches thy smile or thy sighs; And the twin-stars that s.h.i.+ne on the wanderer's devotion Its guide and its G.o.d--are thine eyes!

II

The bark may go down, should the cloud sweep above, For its being is bound to the light of thy love.

As thy faith and thy smile are its life and its joy, So thy frown or thy change are the storms that destroy.

Ah! sweeter to sink while the sky is serene, If time hath a change for thy heart!

If to live be to weep over what thou hast been, Let me die while I know what thou art!

As the last words of the song trembled over the sea, Ione raised her looks--they met those of her lover. Happy Nydia!--happy in thy affliction, that thou couldst not see that fascinated and charmed gaze, that said so much--that made the eye the voice of the soul--that promised the impossibility of change!

But, though the Thessalian could not detect that gaze, she divined its meaning by their silence--by their sighs. She pressed her hands lightly across her breast, as if to keep down its bitter and jealous thoughts; and then she hastened to speak--for that silence was intolerable to her.

'After all, O Glaucus!' said she, 'there is nothing very mirthful in your strain!'

'Yet I meant it to be so, when I took up thy lyre, pretty one. Perhaps happiness will not permit us to be mirthful.'

'How strange is it,' said Ione, changing a conversation which oppressed her while it charmed--'that for the last several days yonder cloud has hung motionless over Vesuvius! Yet not indeed motionless, for sometimes it changes its form; and now methinks it looks like some vast giant, with an arm outstretched over the city. Dost thou see the likeness--or is it only to my fancy?'

'Fair Ione! I see it also. It is astonis.h.i.+ngly distinct. The giant seems seated on the brow of the mountain, the different shades of the cloud appear to form a white robe that sweeps over its vast breast and limbs; it seems to gaze with a steady face upon the city below, to point with one hand, as thou sayest, over its glittering streets, and to raise the other (dost thou note it?) towards the higher heaven. It is like the ghost of some huge t.i.tan brooding over the beautiful world he lost; sorrowful for the past--yet with something of menace for the future.'