University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
THE FLIGHT OF HILDA'S DOVES.

Along with the lamp on Hilda's tower, the sculptor
now felt that a light had gone out, or, at least, was ominously
obscured, to which he owed whatever cheerfulness
had heretofore illuminated his cold, artistic life. The
idea of this girl had been like a taper of virgin wax,
burning with a pure and steady flame, and chasing away
the evil spirits out of the magic circle of its beams. It
had darted its rays afar, and modified the whole sphere in
which Kenyon had his being. Beholding it no more, he
at once found himself in darkness and astray.

This was the time, perhaps, when Kenyon first became
sensible what a dreary city is Rome, and what a terrible
weight is there imposed on human life, when any gloom
within the heart corresponds to the spell of ruin, that has
been thrown over the site of ancient empire. He wandered,
as it were, and stumbled over the fallen columns,
and among the tombs, and groped his way into the sepulchral
darkness of the catacombs, and found no path
emerging from them. The happy may well enough
continue to be such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome.

But, if you go thither in melancholy mood — if you go
with a ruin in your heart, or with a vacant site there,
where once stood the airy fabric of happiness, now vanished
— all the ponderous gloom of the Roman Past will
pile itself upon that spot, and crush you down as with the
heaped-up marble and granite, the earth-mounds, and multitudinous
bricks, of its material decay.

It might be supposed that a melancholy man would
here make acquaintance with a grim philosophy. He
should learn to bear patiently his individual griefs, that
endure only for one little lifetime, when here are the
tokens of such infinite misfortune on an imperial scale,
and when so many far landmarks of time, all around him,
are bringing the remoteness of a thousand years ago into
the sphere of yesterday. But it is in vain that you seek
this shrub of bitter sweetness among the plants that root
themselves on the roughness of massive walls, or trail
downward from the capitals of pillars, or spring out of
the green turf in the palace of the Cæsars. It does not
grow in Rome; not even among the five hundred various
weeds which deck the grassy arches of the Coliseum.
You look through a vista of century beyond century —
through much shadow, and a little sunshine — through
barbarism and civilization, alternating with one another,
like actors that have pre-arranged their parts — through
a broad pathway of progressive generations bordered by
palaces and temples, and bestridden by old, triumphal
arches, until, in the distance, you behold the obelisks,
with their unintelligible inscriptions, hinting at a past
infinitely more remote than history can define. Your

own life is as nothing, when compared with that immeasurable
distance; but still you demand, none the less earnestly,
a gleam of sunshine, instead of a speck of shadow,
on the step or two that will bring you to your quiet
rest.

How exceedingly absurd! All men, from the date of
the earliest obelisk — and of the whole world, moreover,
since that far epoch, and before, have made a similar
demand, and seldom had their wish. If they had it, what
are they the better, now? But, even while you taunt
yourself with this sad lesson, your heart cries out obstreperously
for its small share of earthly happiness, and
will not be appeased by the myriads of dead hopes that
lie crushed into the soil of Rome. How wonderful that
this our narrow foothold of the Present should hold its
own so constantly, and, while every moment changing,
should still be like a rock betwixt the encountering tides
of the long Past, and the infinite To-come!

Man of marble though he was, the sculptor grieved for
the Irrevocable. Looking back upon Hilda's way of life,
he marvelled at his own blind stupidity, which had kept
him from remonstrating — as a friend, if with no stronger
right — against the risks that she continually encountered.
Being so innocent, she had no means of estimating those
risks, nor even a possibility of suspecting their existence.
But he — who had spent years in Rome, with a man's far
wider scope of observation and experience — knew things
that made him shudder. It seemed to Kenyon, looking
through the darkly-colored medium of his fears, that all
modes of crime were crowded into the close intricacy of

Roman streets, and that there was no redeeming element,
such as exists in other dissolute and wicked cities.

For here was a priesthood, pampered, sensual, with
red and bloated cheeks, and carnal eyes. With apparently
a grosser development of animal life than most
men, they were placed in an unnatural relation with
woman, and thereby lost the healthy, human conscience
that pertains to other human beings, who own the sweet
household ties connecting them with wife and daughter.
And here was an indolent nobility, with no high aims or
opportunities, but cultivating a vicious way of life, as if it
were an art, and the only one which they cared to learn.
Here was a population, high and low, that had no genuine
belief in virtue; and if they recognized any act as
criminal, they might throw off all care, remorse, and
memory of it, by kneeling a little while at the confessional,
and rising unburdened, active, elastic, and incited
by fresh appetite for the next ensuing sin. Here was a
soldiery, who felt Rome to be their conquered city, and
doubtless considered themselves the legal inheritors of the
foul license which Gaul, Goth, and Vandal have here
exercised in days gone by.

And what localities for new crime existed in those
guilty sites, where the crime of departed ages used to be
at home, and had its long, hereditary haunt! what street
in Rome, what ancient ruin, what one place where man
had standing-room, what fallen stone was there, unstained
with one or another kind of guilt! In some of the vicissitudes
of the city's pride, or its calamity, the dark tide
of human evil had swelled over it, far higher than the

Tiber ever rose against the acclivities of the seven hills.
To Kenyon's morbid view, there appeared to be a contagious
element, rising fog-like from the ancient depravity
of Rome, and brooding over the dread and half-rotten
city, as nowhere else on earth. It prolonged the tendency
to crime, and developed an instantaneous growth of it,
whenever an opportunity was found. And where could
it be found so readily as here! In those vast palaces,
there were a hundred remote nooks where Innocence
might shriek in vain. Beneath meaner houses there
were unsuspected dungeons that had once been princely
chambers, and open to the daylight; but, on account of
some wickedness there perpetrated, each passing age had
thrown its handful of dust upon the spot, and buried it
from sight. Only ruffians knew of its existence, and kept
it for murder, and worse crime.

Such was the city through which Hilda, for three years
past, had been wandering without a protector or a guide.
She had trodden lightly over the crumble of old crimes;
she had taken her way amid the grime and corruption
which Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity
had made more noisome; walking saint-like through
it all, with white, innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall
that lay right across her path, she had vanished out
of sight. It was terrible to imagine what hideous outrage
might have thrust her into that abyss!

Then the lover tried to comfort himself with the idea
that Hilda's sanctity was a sufficient safeguard. Ah, yes;
she was so pure! The angels, that were of the same
sisterhood, would never let Hilda come to harm. A

miracle would be wrought on her behalf, as naturally as
a father would stretch out his hand to save a best-beloved
child. Providence would keep a little area and atmosphere
about her, as safe and wholesome as heaven itself,
although the flood of perilous iniquity might hem her
round, and its black waves hang curling above her head!
But these reflections were of slight avail. No doubt they
were the religious truth. Yet the ways of Providence
are utterly inscrutable; and many a murder has been
done, and many an innocent virgin has lifted her white
arms, beseeching its aid in her extremity, and all in vain
so that, though Providence is infinitely good and wise,
— and perhaps for that very reason, — it may be half an
eternity before the great circle of its scheme shall bring
us the superabundant recompense for all these sorrows!
But what the lover asked was such prompt consolation
as might consist with the brief span of mortal life; the
assurance of Hilda's present safety, and her restoration
within that very hour.

An imaginative man, he suffered the penalty of his endowment
in the hundred-fold variety of gloomily tinted
scenes that it presented to him, in which Hilda was always
a central figure. The sculptor forgot his marble. Rome
ceased to be anything, for him, but a labyrinth of dismal
streets, in one or another of which the lost girl had disappeared.
He was haunted with the idea, that some circumstance,
most important to be known, and, perhaps, easily
discoverable, had hitherto been overlooked, and that, if
he could lay hold of this one clue, it would guide him
directly in the track of Hilda's footsteps. With this

purpose in view, he went, every morning, to the Via
Portoghese, and made it the starting point of fresh investigations.
After nightfall, too, he invariably returned
thither, with a faint hope fluttering at his heart, that the
lamp might again be shining on the summit of the tower,
and would dispel this ugly mystery out of the circle consecrated
by its rays. There being no point of which he
could take firm hold, his mind was filled with unsubstantial
hopes and fears. Once, Kenyon had seemed to cut
his life in marble; now he vaguely clutched at it, and
found it vapor.

In his unstrung and despondent mood, one trifling circumstance
affected him with an idle pang. The doves
had at first been faithful to their lost mistress. They
failed not to sit in a row upon her window-sill, or to alight
on the shrine, or the church-angels, and on the roofs and
portals of the neighboring houses, in evident expectation
of her reappearance. After the second week, however,
they began to take flight, and dropping off by pairs, betook
themselves to other dove-cotes. Only a single dove
remained, and brooded drearily beneath the shrine. The
flock, that had departed, were like the many hopes that
had vanished from Kenyon's heart; the one that still lingered,
and looked so wretched — was it a Hope, or
already a Despair?

In the street, one day, the sculptor met a priest of mild
and venerable aspect; and as his mind dwelt continually
upon Hilda, and was especially active in bringing up all
incidents that had ever been connected with her, it immediately
struck him that this was the very father with

whom he had seen her at the confessional. Such trust
did Hilda inspire in him, that Kenyon had never asked
what was the subject of the communication between herself
and this old priest. He had no reason for imagining
that it could have any relation with her disappearance, so
long subsequently; but, being thus brought face to face
with a personage, mysteriously associated, as he now
remembered, with her whom he had lost, an impulse
ran before his thoughts and led the sculptor to address
him.

It might be that the reverend kindliness of the old
man's expression took Kenyon's heart by surprise; at all
events, he spoke as if there were a recognized acquaintanceship,
and an object of mutual interest between them.

“She has gone from me, father,” said he.

“Of whom do you speak, my son?” inquired the
priest.

“Of that sweet girl,” answered Kenyon, “who knelt
to you at the confessional. Surely, you remember her,
among all the mortals to whose confessions you have
listened! For she alone could have had no sins to
reveal.”

“Yes; I remember,” said the priest, with a gleam of
recollection in his eyes. “She was made to bear a
miraculous testimony to the efficacy of the divine ordinances
of the Church, by seizing forcibly upon one of
them, and finding immediate relief from it, heretic though
she was. It is my purpose to publish a brief narrative
of this miracle, for the edification of mankind, in Latin,
Italian, and English, from the printing-press of the Propaganda.

Poor child! Setting apart her heresy, she was
spotless, as you say. And is she dead?”

“Heaven forbid, father!” exclaimed Kenyon, shrinking
back. “But she has gone from me, I know not
whither. It may be — yes, the idea seizes upon my mind
— that what she revealed to you will suggest some clue
to the mystery of her disappearance.”

“None, my son, none,” answered the priest, shaking his
head; “nevertheless, I bid you be of good cheer. That
young maiden is not doomed to die a heretic. Who knows
what the blessed Virgin may at this moment be doing for
her soul! Perhaps, when you next behold her, she will
be clad in the shining white robe of the true faith.”

This latter suggestion did not convey all the comfort
which the old priest possibly intended by it; but he imparted
it to the sculptor, along with his blessing, as the
two best things that he could bestow, and said nothing
further, except to bid him farewell.

When they had parted, however, the idea of Hilda's
conversion to Catholicism recurred to her lover's mind,
bringing with it certain reflections, that gave a new turn
to his surmises about the mystery into which she had
vanished. Not that he seriously apprehended — although
the superabundance of her religious sentiment might mislead
her for a moment — that the New England girl
would permanently succumb to the scarlet superstitions
which surrounded her in Italy. But the incident of the
confessional — if known, as probably it was, to the eager
propagandists who prowl about for souls, as cats to catch
a mouse — would surely inspire the most confident expectations

of bringing her over to the faith. With so
pious an end in view, would Jesuitical morality be shocked
at the thought of kidnapping the mortal body, for the sake
of the immortal spirit that might otherwise be lost forever.
Would not the kind old priest, himself, deem this
to be infinitely the kindest service that he could perform
for the stray lamb, who had so strangely sought his aid.

If these suppositions were well founded, Hilda was
most likely a prisoner in one of the religious establishments
that are so numerous in Rome. The idea, according
to the aspect in which it was viewed, brought now a
degree of comfort, and now an additional perplexity. On
the one hand, Hilda was safe from any but spiritual assaults;
on the other, where was the possibility of breaking
through all those barred portals, and searching a
thousand convent-cells, to set her free.

Kenyon, however, as it happened, was prevented from
endeavoring to follow out this surmise, which only the
state of hopeless uncertainty, that almost bewildered his
reason, could have led him for a moment to entertain. A
communication reached him by an unknown hand, in consequence
of which, and within an hour after receiving it,
he took his way through one of the gates of Rome.