She was seated outside her door, the young actress. The sea, which in
that heavenly bay literally seems to sleep in the arms of the shore,
bounded the view in front; while to the right, not far off, rose the
dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day is daily brought
to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or compare with the Cavern of Pausilippo
the archway of Highgate Hill. There were a few fishermen loitering by
the cliffs, on which their nets were hung up to dry; and, at a distance,
the sound of some rustic pipe (more common at that day than in this),
mingled now and then with the bells of the lazy mules, broke the
voluptuous silence,--the silence of declining noon on the shores of
Naples. Never till you have enjoyed it, never till you have felt its
enervating but delicious charm, believe that you can comprehend all the
meaning of the dolce far niente; and when that luxury has been known,
when you have breathed the atmosphere of fairy land, then you will
no longer wonder why the heart ripens with so sudden and wild a power
beneath the rosy skies and amidst the glorious foliage of the South.
The young actress was seated by the door of her house; overhead a rude
canvas awning sheltered her from the sun; on her lap lay the manuscript
of a new part in which she was shortly to appear. By her side was the
guitar on which she had been practising the airs that were to ravish
the ears of the cognoscenti. But the guitar had been thrown aside in
despair; her voice this morning did not obey her will. The manuscript
lay unheeded, and the eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad, blue
deep beyond. In the unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the
abstraction of her mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and
partially bandaged by a kerchief, whose purple color seemed to deepen
the golden hue of the tresses. A stray curl escaped, and fell down the
graceful neck. A loose morning robe, girded by a sash, left the
breeze that came ever and anon from the sea to die upon the bust half
disclosed, and the tiny slipper, that Cinderella might have worn, seemed
a world too wide for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered. It might
be the heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks and
gave an unwonted languor to the large dark eyes. In all the pomp of her
stage attire, in all the flush of excitement before the intoxicating
lamps, never had Isabel looked so lovely.
By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold, stood
Gionetta, with her hands thrust up to the elbow in two huge recesses
on either side her gown,--pockets, indeed, they might be called by
courtesy; such pockets as Beelzebub’s grandmother might have shaped for
herself, bottomless pits in miniature.
“But I assure you,” said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, earsplitting
tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
of the North,--“but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
am told that all the Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though they
have no trees in their country, poor people, and instead of twenty-four
they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear, cospetto! that they
shoe their horses with steak; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)
turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into
physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled
with the colic. But you don’t hear me! Little pupil of my eyes, you
don’t hear me!”
“Gionetta, is he not god-like?”
“Sancta Maria! he is handsome, bellissimo; and when you are his
wife,--for they say these English are never satisfied unless they
marry--”
“Wife! English! Whom are you talking of?”
“Why, the young English signor, to be sure.”
“Chut! I thought you spoke of Zicci.”
“Oh! Signor Zicci is very rich and very generous; but he wants to be
your cavalier, not your husband. I see that,--leave me alone. When you
are married, then you will see how amiable Signor Zicci will be. Oh, per
fede! but he will be as close to your husband as the yolk to the white;
that he will.
“Silence, Gionetta! How wretched I am to have no one else to speak
to--to advise me. Oh, beautiful sun!” and the girl pressed her hand to
her heart with wild energy, “why do you light every spot but this? Dark,
dark! And a little while ago I was so calm, so innocent, so gay. I did
not hate you then, Gionetta, hateful as your talk was; I hate you now.
Go in; leave me alone--leave me.”
“And indeed it is time I should leave you, for the polenta will be
spoiled, and you have eaten nothing all day. If you don’t eat you will
lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody
cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
old Gionetta, get some Isabel of your own to spoil. I’ll go and see to
the polenta.”
“Since I have known this man,” said the actress, half aloud, “since his
dark eyes have fascinated me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
something that is not of earth. Is it, indeed, that he is a sorcerer, as
I have heard? Phantoms float before me at night, and a fluttering
like the wing of a bird within my heart seems as if the spirit were
terrified, and would break its cage.”
While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.
“Isabella! carissima! Isabella!”
She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her
at once. She did not love him, yet his sight gave her pleasure. She had
for him a kind and grateful feeling. Ah, if she had never beheld Zicci!
“Isabel,” said the Englishman, drawing her again to the bench from
which she had risen, and seating himself beside her, “you know how
passionately I love thee. Hitherto thou hast played with my impatience
and my ardor, thou hast sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned away my
importunities for a reply to my suit; but this day--I know not how it
is--I feel a more sustained and settled courage to address thee, and
learn the happiest or the worst. I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are
more powerful than the poor artist. Are they also more favored?”
Isabel blushed faintly, but her countenance was grave and distressed.
Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with
the point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation and a vain
attempt to be gay, “Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actress
must submit to have rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred
even to ourselves.”
“But you have told me, Isabel, that you do not love this destiny,
glittering though it seem,--that your heart is not in the vocation which
your talents adorn.”
“Ah, no!” said the actress, her eyes filling with tears, “it is a
miserable lot to be slave to a multitude.”
“Fly then with me,” said the artist, passionately. “Quit forever the
calling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fate
now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my ideal! Thou shalt inspire my
canvas and my song, thy beauty shall be made at once holy and renowned.
In the galleries of princes crowds shall gather round the effigy of
a Venus or a saint, and a whisper shall break forth, ‘It is Isabel di
Pisani!’ Ah! Isabel, I adore thee: tell me that I do not worship in
vain.”
“Thou art good and fair,” said Isabel, gazing on her lover as he pressed
his cheek nearer to hers, and clasped her hand in his. “But what should
I give thee in return?”
“Love, love; only love!”
“A sister’s love?”
“Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!”
“It is all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor. When I look on your
face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps
over and lulls thoughts, oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou art gone,
the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. I miss thee
not, I think not of thee,--no, I love thee not; and I will give myself
only where I love.”
“But I would teach thee to love me,--fear it not. Nay, such love as thou
now describest in our tranquil climates is the love of innocence and
youth.”
“And it is the innocence he would destroy,” said Isabel, rather to
herself than to him.
Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
“No, it may not be!” she said, rising, and extricating her hand gently
from his grasp. “Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, you
could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From my
childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange
and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind. This feeling
(and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others
of the darkest gloom) deepens with me day by day. It is like the shadow
of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly round. My hour approaches; a
little while, and it will be night!”
As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
“Isabel!” he exclaimed, as she ceased, “your words more than ever
enchain me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted
with a chill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have
felt alone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning
voice has murmured in my ear, ‘Time has a dark mystery in store for thy
manhood.’ When you spoke it was as the voice of my own soul.”
Isabel gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white
as marble, and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might
have served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness when, from the
mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the
inspiring god. Gradually the rigor and tension of that wonderful face
relaxed, the color returned, the pulse beat, the heart animated the
frame.
“Tell me,” she said, turning partially aside, “tell me, have you seen,
do you know, a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild stories are
afloat?”
“You speak of Zicci. I have seen him; I know him! And you? Ah! he, too,
would be my rival,--he, too, would bear thee from me!”
“You err,” said Isabel, hastily and with a deep sigh,--“he pleads for
you; he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to reject it.”
“Strange being, incomprehensible enigma, why did you name him?”
“Why? Ah! I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke came on you more fearfully,
more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once repelled from
him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt [and the actress spoke
with hurried animation] that with Him was connected the secret of your
life!”
“All this I felt,” answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, “the first
time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,--music,
amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud
above,--my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood
curdled like ice; since then he has divided my thoughts with thee.”
“No more, no more,” said Isabel, in a stifled tone; “there must be the
hand of Fate in this. I can speak no more to you now; farewell.”
She sprang past him into the house and closed the door. Glyndon did not
dare to follow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The
thought and recollection of that moonlight hour in the gardens, of the
strange address of Zicci, froze up all human passion; Isabel herself,
if not forgotten, shrank back like a shadow into the recesses of his
breast. He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight, and musingly
retraced his steps into the more populous parts of that liveliest of
Italian cities.