CHAPTER
IX
He came to her next through music, when the rain clouds had broken away. That divine whistle, mellow, mocking, irresistible, still was heard when morning lay on the hills. Often, when afternoon had touched all the air to gold, when the shadows of chestnut and cypress and gnarled olive lay long on the grass, other sounds floated down to Daphne, music from some instrument that she did not know. It was no harp, surely, yet certain clear, ranging notes seemed to come from the sweeping of harp strings; again, it had all the subtle, penetrating melody of the violin. Whatever instrument gave it forth, it drew the girl's heart after it to wander its own way. When it was gay it won her feet to some dance measure, and all alone in the great empty rooms she would move to it with head thrown back and her whole body swaying in a new sense of rhythm. When it was sad, it set her heart to beating in great throbs, for then it begged and pleaded. There was need in it, a human cry that surely was not the voice of a god. It spoke out of a great yearning that answered to her own. Whether it was swift or slow she loved it, and waited for it day by day, thinking of Apollo and his harping to the muses nine.
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.
And all this meant that she had forgotten about the mails. She had ceased to long for letters containing good news, or to fear that one full of bad tidings would come, and every one knows that such a state of mind as this is serious. Now, when Assunta found her one morning, pacing the long, frescoed hall, by the side of the running water, and put a whole sheaf of letters into her hand, Daphne looked at them cautiously, and started to open one, then lost her courage and held them for a while to get used to them. Finally she went upstairs and changed her dress, putting on her short skirt and red felt hat, and walked out into the highway with Hermes skipping after her. She walked rapidly up the even way, under the high stone walls green with overhanging ivy and wistaria vines, and the lamb kept pace with her with his gay gallop, broken now and then by a sidelong leap of sheer joy up into the air. Presently she found a turning that she had not known before, marked by a little wayside shrine, and taking it, followed a narrow grass-grown road that curled about the side of a hill.
She read her father's letter first, walking slowly and smiling. If he were only here to share this wide beauty! Then she read her sister's, which was full of woeful exclamations and bad news. The sick man was slowly dying, and they could not leave him. Meanwhile she was desolated by thinking of her little sister. Of course she was safe, for Giacomo and Assunta were more trustworthy than the Italian government, but it must be very stupid, and she had meant to give Daphne such a gay time at the villa. She would write at once to some English friends at Lake Scala, ten miles away, to see if they could not do something to relieve her sister's solitude.
"To relieve my solitude!" gasped Daphne. "Oh I am so afraid something will!"
There were several other letters, all from friends at home. One, in a great square envelope, addressed with an English scrawl, she dreaded, and she kept it for the last. When she did tear it open her face grew quite pale. There was much in it about duty and consecration, and much concerning two lives sacrificed to the same great ideal. It breathed thoughts of denial and of annihilation of self, and,—yes, Eustace took her at her word and was ready to welcome again the old relation. If she would permit him, he would send back the ring.
Hermes hid behind a stone and dashed out at his mistress to surprise her, expecting to be chased as usual, but Daphne could not run. With heavy feet and downcast eyes she walked along the green roadway, then, when her knees suddenly became weak, sat down on a stone and covered her face with her hands. She had not known until this moment how she had been hoping that two and two would not make four; she had not really believed that this could be the result of her letter of atonement. Her soul had traveled far since she wrote that letter, and it was hard to find the way back. Hiding the brown and purple distances of the Campagna came pictures of dim, candle-lighted spaces, of a thin face with a setting of black and white priestly garments, and in her ears was the sound of a voice endlessly intoning. It made up a vision of the impossible.
She sat there a long, long time, and when she wakened to a consciousness of where she was, it was a whining voice that roused her.
"Signorina, for the love of heaven, give me a few soldi, for I am starving."
Daphne looked up and was startled, and yet old beggar women were common enough sights here among the hills. This one had an evil look, with her cunning, half-shut eyes.
The girl shook her head.
"I have no money with me," she remarked.
"But Signorina, so young, so beautiful, surely she has money with her." A dirty brown hand came all too close to Daphne's face, and she sprang to her feet.
"I have spoken," she said severely, giving a little stamp. "I have none. Now go away."
The whining continued, unintermittent. The old woman came closer, and her hand touched the girl's skirt. Wrenching herself away, Daphne found herself in the grasp of two skinny arms, and an actual physical struggle began. The girl had no time for fear, and suddenly help came. A firm hand caught the woman's shoulder, and the victim was free.
"Are you hurt?" asked Apollo anxiously.
She shook her head, smiling.
"Frightened?"
"No. Don't you always rescue me?"
"But this is merest accident, my being here.
It really isn't safe for you alone on these roads."
"I knew you were near."
"And yet, I have just this minute come round the hill. You could not possibly have seen me."
"I have ways of knowing," said Daphne, smiling demurely.
A faint little bleat interrupted them.
"Oh, oh!" cried the girl, "she is running away with Hermes!"
Never did Apollo move more swiftly than he did then! Daphne followed, with flying feet. He reached the beggar woman, held her, took the lamb with one hand from her and handed it to Daphne. There followed a scene which the girl remembered afterward with a curious sense of misgiving and of question. The thief gave one glance at the beautiful, angry face of the man, then fell at his feet, groveling and beseeching. What she was saying the girl did not know, but her face and figure bore a look of more than mortal fear.
"What does she think him?" murmured the girl. Then she turned away with him, and, with the lamb at their heels, they walked together back along the grassy road.
"You look very serious," remarked her protector. "You are sure it is not fright?"
She shook her head, holding up her bundle of letters.
"Bad news?"
"No, good," she answered, smiling bravely.
"I hope good news will be infrequent," he answered. "You look like Iphigenia going to be sacrificed."
"I will admit that there is a problem," said the girl. "There's a question about my doing something."
"And you know it must be right to do it because you hate it?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Don't you think so, too? Now when you answer," she added triumphantly, "I shall know what kind of god you are."
They had reached the turning of the ways, and he stopped, as if intending to leave her.
"I cannot help you," he said sadly, "for I do not know the case. Only, I think it is best not to decide by any abstruse rule. Life is life's best teacher, and out of one's last experience comes insight for the next. But don't be too sure that duty and unhappiness are one."
She left him, standing by the little wayside shrine with a strange look on his face. A tortured Christ hung there, casting the shadow of pain upon the passers-by. The expression in the brown eyes of the heathen god haunted her all the way down the hill, and throughout the day: they seemed to understand, and yet be glad.