The Jewel in the Lotos. A novel, etc

Front matter

"Aurora turned and slung her arms wide, north and south, to all brisrlit horizon." the ( Frontispiece.) T.ige 79. THE JEWEL IN THE LOTOS. A NOVEL. BY MARY AGNES TI N C K E R, AUTHOR OF " SIGNOR MOXALDINl'S NIECE," BTC. WITH illustrations by THOMAS AND HELEN C. HOVENDEN. LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. S. W. 1884. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. — Aurora 5 II. — Sassovivo . . . . . . ... . 9 III. — Aurelia 12 IV. — Lost and Found 15 V. — Threescore and Ten, and Five .... 23 VI. — Relatives 29 VII. — Resignation 43 VIII. — Father Segneri 53 IX.— The Castle 61 X. — Morning Red fcND Morning Gold .... 69 XI. — Settling into Place 89 XII. — New Acquaintances 98 XIIL— Mariu's Lover 110 XIV.— A Tree of Paradise 129 XV.— The South Wind 150 XVI.— A Council of War 161 XVII. — Bounty and Bitterness 174 XVIII. — Out of Strength, Sweetness 187 XIX. — La Paura l'e faita d'Nen 197 XX. — Fortune's Largess 213 XXI.— Father Segneri 221 XXII. — Eppur si miiove 231 XXIII.— Coming Down 243 XXIV. — "One Man have I found among a Thousand" . 249 XXV.— La Speranza 259 XXVI.— Twelve Boxes of Figs 267 XXVII.— The Punto del Paradiso 280 XXVIII.— A Wedding 288 XXIX.— Separate Paths 301 XXX.— A Bugle-Song 307 XXXI.— Persecution 314 XXXII. — L'Esprit qui voyait l'Avenir .... 326 XXXIII.— Prosit

Chapter I. Aurora

The glorious darkness of a Southern night hung over the Apen nines, — a night of stars and shadows. Viewed from above, the land scape was like a vast chalice, so deep was the obscurity that prevailed between the heights ; while far above the mountain-rim stood clear against the sky. Darker shades in the darkness showed that forests were everywhere, and a silvery pallor here and there told where the mists lay sleeping on the bosom of the valley. It was midsummer, and the night was full of odors, and a soft sound of waters tinkling like little bells where the mouutain-streams ran downward to the plain; for the mountains were fringed about like Aaron's robe, — a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate. At intervals a bird sang as though it spoke, and another bird an swered, — two liquid voices full of sweetness and of melancholy.

There was nowhere either sight or sound of human kind, except low down on a mountain-side northward of the valley, where a red light had burned all through the night. It came from an eastern window of a house set apart on a rock at the edge of the town of Sasso vivo. The window stood wide open, and only a thin white curtain veiled the chamber within ; but nothing could have looked through that casement but the stars and the circling rocky peaks, for the house was turned away from the town, and the long road, the Serpentino, that led downward and wound around the mountain-base, lay fur beneath the rocks on which the town was built. Shadows passed across the curtain from time to time. The nightingales might have known, as they sat complaining on flowery boughs without, that those shadows spoke of fear and haste, and that one lay there in the pangs of mortal suffering who had sung sweeter songs than their soft throats had ever warbled ; and, listening, they might have heard a cry that followed their song through the silence, " Oh, my own nightingales !" tremble faintly through the casement.

Within, a bed was drawn into the centre of a large chamber, and the young mother of an unborn infant lay white and faint among the pillows, while two women hung anxiously over her and listened to her breathing. One was her maid, Chiara ; the other was Battista, the midwife. The invalid was the Countess Emilia Coronari. She had suiFered from sundown, till Battista, terrified, had sent for the surgeon, the only one in that small place, and had learned, to her still greater terror, that he had gone to a neighboring town to pass the night and would not return till late in the morning. From time to time in the intervals of that anxious watching the woman crept softly to the half-open door of a corridor having a southern window, and relieved her excited feelings by shaking her fist in the direction where the surgeon had gone, sending her anger after him in a whisper which might have scorched his ears : " Brutto briganle !

Thou goest to visit strangers, and leavest thine own to die ! Che il diavolo ti portil" Then, composing herself, she returned to the bed with a face all tenderness, and a voice softer than the first sigh of the south wind. The other woman was more stolid, and had less feeling of respon sibility to disturb her. She sat and stared, anxious and affectionate, but sleepy. And, meanwhile, the midnight was passed, and they were moving toward another day. There came a sigh from the pillows, and both women started. The invalid opened her eyes and glanced about her. " How are you, bella mia?" asked Battista tenderly. " I have slept. I am a little restored," replied the lady in a soft, faint voice. She glanced at the window, and saw that a pallid light from with out weakened the reflection of the lamp on the curtain.

" Draw back the curtain and put out the lamp," she said, " and then lie down to rest, both of you : you must be weary and sleepy." They obeyed her. The brass lamp was extinguished, leaving the AURORA. 7 room in darkness, save for the tiny flame floating in olive oil before a picture of Santa Maria del Parto, and the dim lustre from the eastern sky. They drew back the curtain, and left the casement quite free, with a delicate coolness stealing in. Then Battista lay down on a wide sofa in the room, and Chiara threw herself on the bed in her own little chamber near by. In five minutes both were sound asleep. They were the only persons in the house, these three. The lady lay and looked out through the casement. A sense of utter weakness had conquered her fears, and her spirit seemed to float, cold and calm, upon silent heights while she watched the coming in of another day over the earth, and contemplated the hovering visions of life and death which alternately presented themselves to her mind.

Not many hours had passed since her heart was in'a tempest of passion with the thought of her ruined hopes, of the husband of a few months whom she had left in disgust never to see again, and of the desolation of meeting her trial with only servants about her. Now she felt as dead to passion as if her soul had risen from the warm cur rents of her human blood and sailed upward into the cool, thin ether. Through that crystalline medium she looked calmly at the past and the present, nor cared to stir with a single prayerful breath the close hung curtain of the suture. Sweet, innocent pictures of her childhood rose and passed. They were to her as the tuning of a harp before singing. The early triumphs of the girl-poetess, when she had been caressed in many a gilded salon, and old men had listened, smiling, to her verses, waved her perfumed laurels before her unresponsive sense.

Fond and foolish love-passages stole into view, whispering of a time when she had believed each soul born on the earth to be but the broken half of a perfect sphere, and that he who found his mate among these lower shades should be a star ; and moments of anguish, that, when they passed, were as sharp as sword-blades, started out in her memory of those days when first she knew that she had wedded darkness and not light ; yet neither the one nor the other had power to melt one snow-flake of her coldness or wake a ripple on the calmness of her spirit. She saw and judged them all. They were a tuning of the chords. What melody was to follow ? she asked, yet did not listen for an answer, but only waited. Slowly the thin white light stole up among the stars. How many a time she had watched from that casement while the great constel lations passed by, and singled out their fairest jewels to make bright her songs, and searched the earth-stained horizon for the first dancing beams, red, blue, and silver, of that favorite of the nations, the Cyno sure, the lord of summer heat, the Stella Matutina of the people, Sirius, the splendid !

"He made the stars also," she murmured, as they grew fainter at the coming of light, the first-born ; and, lifted up, her soul seemed to sparkle as the frost sparkles, and she adored the One who makes and unmakes ; the multiform, the inevitable ; who breathes through the violet and flames through the thunderbolt ; who is moonlight and star light, and morning and evening, and all days ; who dwells iu thick darkness ; who waits, but swerves not ; who laughs to scorn the scorner, and mocks at resistance ; the hater of lies, and the lover of courage ; who crowns the brow that is uplifted to him, and leads the doubter in a dark labyrinth ; who is Osiris and Brahma, Prometheus and Jove, the Fire-God of the Parsee and the Jewel in the Lotos ; who turns creation in his hand as an hour-glass ; who looks on the rainbow and remembers.

Her thoughts floated about him as snow-flakes float about the hemi spheres, and floating fell, and falling melted. " I know Thou wilt not lose me," she whispered : " I am but little more than a sparrow ; but Thou wilt not lose me I" The mountain-outlines grew sharp against the brightening east, and all between that band of dusky orange and the violet zenith was a gleaming silver. " Yesterday the sun rose on the northern side of that tallest peak," said the poetess. " To-day 'twill rise just on the peak itself; and by to-morrow morning — Ah ! shall I live to see it burning through that splinter at the south, and touching the last bough of my tall pomegranate with its earliest ray ? To-day the flowering almond will catch the first." A faint tremor crept into her whispering voice, and the dark, brilliant eyes grew tearful.

" I wish that we might both live or both die," she said. " I would have my child with me whether I stay or go." A radiance grew around the tingling height. The mists were SASSOVIVO. 9 bleached to silver as they floated slowly upward, sleeping yet. The air was full of the songs of birds innumerable. Human life awoke. " 0 heavenly Father, let us both live !" The prayer of awakening passion was borne outward on a cry of pain ; the spirit, half exhaled, dropped back into the starting blood, and the struggle for life recommenced. The day grew to a steadfast glory, and when its first ray shot over the mountain-peak into the chamber, Battista, radiant with delight, and holding a bundle in her arms, leaned over the bed. " Signora contessa mia," she said, " it is a lovely little girl I" " Una bella fiemmina .'" repeated the maid in an ecstasy.

The mother lifted her drooping lids and smiled, all heaven in her soul. " A girl !" she whispered. " Then her name is Aurora." Battista gave the babe to its mother, then went out into the southern corridor and shook her fist toward a distant paese white against the sun. " Eh ! eh !" she cackled with triumphant mocking, " Signor chirurgo mio ! Eh ! eh !" A.

Chapter II. Sassovivo

The town of Sassovivo is built around the sides of a low mountain of the same name, the houses fitted in between ledges that push them selves out abruptly here and there, — built chiefly on the southern side, where there are fewer rocks. The principal highway descends on the eastern side between two of these ledges, curls around the base of the mountain, and moves off westward in search of Rome. This is the Serpentino ; and its first turn is underneath the Countess Emilia's windows. Other narrow roads and paths wriggle down as best they may in hidden crevices, unsavory for the most part. You were best to take the highway, where half the width of an old Romau road paved with large flat stones serves as a sidewalk. The other half lies under five feet of earth and a rich growth of flowering trees.

Northward from the town rises the great Monte Roccioso, a stern gray giant that holds the smaller heights between its feet and shields it from all the cold winds, the maestro, tramontana, and greco, and sends down through its fissures bright cool streams of crystalline water. An isthmus of verdant land connects the two mountains, forming a beautiful plateau even with the town, but separated from it by almost impassable rocks. This plateau is rough at the eastern extremity, but slopes smoothly to the western plain. On this isthmus is the villa of the feudal family of Sassovivo, the Dukes Cagliostro. Seen from the west, their lovely domain seemed to sit between the arms of an im mense throne, down from which the vines and olives swept like a gar ment and spread themselves into the plain. Through the midst of this sunny verdure a broad ilex avenue drew its smooth undulations of deep shade, and joined the Serpentino in the plain, and went off with it in search of Rome.

The ancient citadel of the Cagliostri had been on the summit of Monte Sassovivo, and there still remained the ruins of a square tower with one wall lifted and holding up an arched window. This fragment of masonry, with its open arch, was called the Cornice by the people on the plateau ; and many a bright sky-picture it framed. Now the sun looked through, and now the moon, and now it was the "paved work of a sapphire" fit for a heavenly vision to stand upon. In winter, when the sun hung low in the south, the shadow of this ruin travelled across the isthmus, till at noon it touched the central window of the palace, and at sunset faded off the eastern rock on which stood Casa Coronari. In summer the dusky gnomon with its heart of light only crept along the edge of the bright gardens of the Cagliostri.

A slender line of broken stones that had once been a wall ran down the mountain from the old citadel to a high rock on the western border of the town ; and here stood yet the remains of an old castle with its dark, frowning walls lifted against the sunset. Almost sixty years before, a Scotch painter had begged permission to make an apartment for himself among the uninhabited ruins of this old castle. Permission had readily been given, for he was a gentle man, and about to be married to the daughter of a man who stood well with the ducal family. The Cavaliere Lirici was well born, and though poor, had always maintained a certain dignity in the town ■ SASSOVIVO. 11 and his wife and her beautiful blonde daughter went frequently to the palace when the family was there. Moreover, the rambling cats and children who frequented the place were more picturesque than profit able, and the artist paid regularly a small but sufficient rent.

He took a lease so long as to make the ruins almost his own, and made it a condition that if they should ever be taken from him or his heirs with out their consent they should be paid the full sum for all the improve ments made. The duke, on his part, consented to the conditions for himself and his successor. While the rebuilding was in progress, the Scotchman bought certain narrow and arid terraces on the cliff-side below the castle, turned the broccoli and cabbages that grew there heads down for guano, had earth brought from the plain below and a thread of a stream from the hill above, and planted a choice little vigna and orchard in the warm crevices of the living rock that pushed its crimson white-streaked masses out and gave the mountain a name. Steps in the rock so steep and narrow as to be mere stone ladders led from terrace to terrace.

The last one stopped with its rough parapet on a level with the upper branches of the duke's olive-trees, that stood below in a multitude dull with their weight of honey-colored oil, dreaming of glittering tables and crystal bottles set in silver, and of dim incense-perfumed churches where they should illumine the gold and silver lamps with lambent flames and see what saints and angels did at night in the wide aisles and in the dusky splendor of the painted arches and around the jewelled shrines. The people stared wide-mouthed at the making of these terraces with earth brought from where nature had laid it to where man would have it. They would as soon have thought of robbing their shoulders to make round their cheeks. And they stared when they saw how stately chambers grew into perfection among those desolate walls, and comfort and beauty made its home within them.

And, lastly, they stared once more, for they were shut out forever from the old castle where all their lives they had hitherto wandered at their will. Four years the painter and his bride lived there, as happy as the* sun. A boy was born to them in the first year. Then the young mother died ; and after a short time the father took his child, shut up the house, and went to Rome. A brother artist came to occupy the apartment till the master could bear to return to it. He never could bear to return and live the prose of life where once its poetry had been. He took his child to England and put him to school there. When the boy was eight years old he brought him to see his birthplace, but left the new wife in Rome while they made this little pilgrimage. And still he kept his hold of the place, and sent occasional tenants to it.

The vigne were renewed at his order, the house repaired. Years passed, and once again he came, an old man now, and stayed there alone one silent autumn month, and took a final leave of his sweetest home. But before going he renewed the lease for his son with the young duke, and permitted the duke's administrator to live in the place, occupying half the rooms rent-free for the care of the whole. And he presented the young duchess with the fruit of his well-kept vigna for her own table, aud begged her to have a smile for his boy Angelo if ever he should come there. And he was sire to come some day, he said. And then he kissed the lady's hand, and went away forever. His name was Donald Glenlyon.

Chapter III

aurelia. Two years before this Italian mother brought forth her child in triumph and named it for the morning light, an English mother had died that her child might live, and, seeing with her fading eyes the sunny silken down on her little one's head, had named her Aurelia. That unconscious head thus crowned at its birth with a "olden name and an irreparable grief had yet another loss in store to make its sorrow perfect. Death entered again the English home on the same day that saw new life a guest in the Italian one. The father followed the mother, and the golden head was an orphan. This father, Mr. Winfield, had lived since his widowho id in a city of villas and gardens that in this July weather were in their greatest glory. He was a strict, even stern, member of the Church of Em*- AURELIA. 13 land, so grave in demeanor that strangers usually took him to be a clergyman.

He was highly respected by all who knew him, though scarcely popular. He had married late in life, congratulating himself on having found at last the perfect Christian lady whom he had so long and vainly sought. And scarcely had he found her when he lost her. But little more than two years had passed when he was called to follow her. His wife had no near relatives, and he had none to whom he was willing to intrust the child. His sickness was sudden and short, and the thought of her made death seem terrible to him. He had meant her to be such a perfect creature, had taken such pains with her early training. Already he could see that her character had begun to take form, and that she had received ineffaceable impressions. She was calculated to receive such impressions. There was something of the father's rock foundation underneath the little curls and dimples.

Who would carry out what he had begun, and save the girl from a life of vanity ? The only friend she had was her nurse and his faith ful housekeeper, Mrs. Gowan. Half he resolved to leave the child with her. And then, just before it was too late, a light broke in, and all his fears took flight. He recollected a man who at college had been one of his heroes, and whose subsequent life he had followed with an admiration which was ardent, if sometimes unwilling. In all his knowledge of men, no other had given him an example of a kindness so tender, an integrity so firm, and a courage so undaunted. This man, the son of a Scotch painter who might have been famous but that sudden wealth had changed him from an artist to a dilettante, and of an Italian girl who had left him motherless almost in his infancy, had led a notable and exceptional life.

He was a philan thropist whose sole prayer had seemed to be, — "Write me as one who loves his fellow-men. He had been worshipped and abused, as such men must be. By the few whose esteem was of value, he was revered ; and he was loved devotedly in many silent, scattered lives which knew not of each other. The dying man knew that his old friend was anything but orthodox, though he had said little or nothing of religions : he knew it by his 1! silence more than by his speech. On the other hand, if he had any prejudice in favor of any mode of worship, might it not be for the faith of his Italian mother ? Yet not for that did the father hesitate. Few people are perfectly orthodox at the hour of death. When that cry, " Lazarus, come forth I" is heard by the soul, the bands that have held it begin to loosen.

He dictated a letter, and Mrs. Gowan wrote it. He spoke of hours which they had passed together in their youth, of marks of affection which each had received from the other, and of differences which had tested, without destroying, their mutual esteem. And then he added, " I am dying, and I leave a little motherless girl to the mercy of the world." When the letter was written, he signed it with bis own hand, that was already cold, the signature slanting down the page and so nearly illegible that the housekeeper had added his name beneath in her own hand. It had not been necessary for him to ask any guardianship for his child. Well he knew the nobleness of that heart, and that even from a stranger such an appeal would not have been disregarded. He felt a peaceful assurance that Glenlyon would not refuse to come to him.

Had he not responded to every cry of grief that ever came to him, with a word of sympathy and encouragement, at least, if he could give no more ? Had wrong ever been done in his own land or in others but his voice had been raised to denounce it ? Had he not spent his life and his substance for the unfortunate, wherever they might be found ? Had he not beat upon his own heart as upon a fiery anvil till the flying sparks had kindled conflagrations where no fuel had seemed to exist? Had he not been pitiful to street-waifs, to fallen women, to discharged convicts, to outcasts of every sort, and yet, withal, a lover of order? Had he not guarded jealously the rights of the stranger ? and was he not the champion of the silent ? Oh, Glenlyon would surely come ! Though with his human eyes he might not see him coming, his spirit, if such power were permitted, would see that faithful Christian respond to his call.

For, whatever doubts this stern churchman might have had of the man to whom he appealed in the hour of his need, he knew him for a Christian. By his works he knew him. When the child was brought to receive her father's last blessing, a little, gray-eyed, laughing creature, and he felt with a new vividness how helpless she was, and what a white soul was there to make the world more fair or for the world to soil, he knew that a strong and generous friend had been raised up for her. Glenlyon would come ! She sat on his bed, her bright hair shining about her head and neck, her eyes dilating with wonder and even something of fear. She held up her toys, and her steady gaze seemed to ask if that were in deed her father who looked so white and who did not smile on her. " Let in the sun," he said. And they opened the curtains to the light that illuminated all the dusky room.

The child smiled and looked at her father. He spoke, laying his cold hand on her head : " May the God of the fatherless bless thee, my child ! May he be pitiful to thy youth and tenderness, and keep thee in the right way all the days of thy life ! May Christ Jesus forever bless thee, my fatherless child !" She sat there, silent and steadfastly gazing, the sunlight shining over them both. And then, even in that brightness, even her infant eyes saw a shadow in her father's face as he passed into the valley of the shadow of death. " He is coming," they heard him whisper, as they stood weeping around his bed ; and they thought that he meant Christ Jesus. He meant Glenlyon. The Lord had come already.

Chapter IV. Lost And Found

Glenlyon came. He came up from London by night, and reached the gate of the park where his friend lived at early morning. The gate was not yet open. Only the families living within went out by this gate : the servants passed by another way. The porter looked through the window of his ivy-wreathed cottage at the summons. It was not an imperative one, and therefore he did not respect it. He could not know that its gentleness was from awe in the presence of death. He saw a tall and rather dusty gentleman standing outside, — a very tall gentleman, with gray threads in his full dark hair and long beard. His eyes were of a pale blue, and looked out from a depth ; his strong yet regular features were serious, even solemn. There was something in his air which made the porter change his first intention not to hurry himself.

He went out, and touched his hat involuntarily as he waited, standing in the door-way. " Open the gate," said the stranger. The porter obeyed without asking any questions, and his impression of the stranger's consequence was increased when Glenlyon passed him by as if unconscious of his being and walked along the wide avenue, where half a score of blooming villas stood facing the park, with their backs to the high wall on the north. He looked anxiously at each one as he passed. The windows all stood open, and there were servants in sight, sweeping, dusting, or talking with each other from garden to garden, or gathering flowers for the vases. Surely there was no sorrow behind any of these fluttering curtains. The trees half hid the last of this row of houses. When he came near, he saw that, though the door stood open, the shutters were all closed, and there was no one in sight.

A thin wreath of smoke rose straight into the morning air : there was no other sign of life. Reaching the gate, Glenlyon uttered a low exclamation, and stopped. There was a crape scarf tied to the bell-handle. He rested his arms on the gate and dropped his face to them. All the words of sympathy and reassurance that he would have uttered had come too late. He could only stand there and water the threshold of the dead with his regretful tears. Presently a step came down from the door, and he raised his head. A man-servant came out to him. " He sent for me," said Glenlyon ; " and I am come too late." " Yes, sir ; he went yesterday. He said that you were sure to come. Will you come in, sir ?" The visitor hesitated. His disappointment was so sharp that he did not wish to face at once a new pain.