THE GOOD WOMAN

Upon a hill that overlooks a western plain and is conspicuous at the approach of evening, there still stands a house of faded brick faced with cornerings of stone.  It is quite empty, but yet not deserted.  In each room some little furniture remains; all the pictures are upon the walls; the deep red damask of the panels is not faded, or if faded, shows no contrast of brighter patches, for nothing has been removed from the walls.  Here it is possible to linger for many hours alone, and to watch the slope of the hill under the level light as the sun descends.  Here passes a woman of such nobility that, though she is dead, the landscape and the vines are hers.

It was in September, during a silence of the air, that I first saw her as she moved among her possessions; she was smiling to herself as though at a memory, but her smile was so slight and so dignified, so genial, and yet so restrained, that you would have thought it part of everything around and married (as she was) to the land which was now her own.  She wandered down the garden paths ruling the flowers upon either side, and receiving as she went autumn and the fruition of her fields; plenitude and completion surrounded her; the benediction of Almighty God must have been upon her, for she was the fulfilment of her world.

Three fountains played in that garden—­two, next to the northern and the southern walls, were small and low; they rather flowed than rose.  Two cones of marble received their fall, and over these they spread in an even sheet with little noise, making (as it were) a sheath of water which covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with delicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant.  This one tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the garden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity—­though that in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded.  The birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us.  Very soon they went to their rest.

The slow transfiguration of the light by which the air became full of colours and every outline merged into the evening, made of all I saw, as I came up towards her, a soft and united vision wherein her advancing figure stood up central and gave a meaning to the whole.  I will not swear that she did not as she came bestow as well as receive an influence of the sunset.  It was said by the ancients that virtue is active, an agent, and has power to control created things; for, they said, it is in a direct relation with whatever orders and has ordained the general scheme.  Such power, perhaps, resided in her hands.  It would have awed me but hardly astonished if, as the twilight deepened, the inclination of the stems had obeyed her gesture and she had put the place to sleep.

As I came near I saw her plainly.  Her face was young although she was so wise, but its youth had the aspect of a divine survival.  Time adorned it.