Hugh Crichton's Romance

It was a pretty scene in the hot, shady room: Rosa in her fantastic dress, her eyes bright, her face full of ardour, acting the part with a force and fervour that seemed marvellous to Violante; and the slender, delicate, white-robed girl, with her bird-like voice, and natural grace that yet lent itself so imperfectly to the gestures and smiles she was trying to copy, so little inspired by the fictitious character and feeling that Don. Giovanni’s vehement and characteristic wooing made her hang her head and blush, forgetful of the coquettish response intended.

Rosa, who had been utterly absorbed in her part, stopped, laughing, and sympathising with the great singer who could not act with Mademoiselle Mattei, while she owned the tribute to her skill.

“Look at me, dear; you are only pretending to be shy, you know. No, not that great innocent stare – through your eyelashes, so. Must I teach my little sister to ‘make eyes,’ as the English say?”

Violante laughed, and the laugh made the next attempt more successful; and in the midst of Rosa’s animated response an unexpected voice cried:

“Brava! bravissima! Why, Rosa, figlia mia, who would have thought it?”

“Oh, father, look at her, she acts so beautifully,” cried Violante, clasping her hands; while Rosa, in her turn confused, paused, colouring deeply.

“Ay, ay! go on, girls; let me see.”

“Courage, courage,” whispered Rosa, and, in the desire to show off her sister, Violante coquetted with praiseworthy archness.

“She can do it now, father, can’t she?”

“Ay, that is better; but you – oh, if the Saints had given you a voice! Again, Rosina mia, here – stand aside, child – play her part, Rosa. I am Don Giovanni.”

Signor Mattei was no contemptible actor, and through the chief parts of half-a-dozen operas he conducted Rosa, praising, encouraging, clapping his hands, as he found how she responded to his hints; while Rosa seemed unwearied. At last he exclaimed:

“It is excellent, most excellent! a real talent, and a face and figure that would make up well. She would be more effective than the child, after all. Now, Violante, you see what it is to have sense.”

“Oh, it is splendid!” said Violante, warmly. “If her voice was better – ”

“Ah, yes, if such a gift was not wasted on her sister. But this is talent, and my heart is warmed – it is on fire with delight! Brava, Rosina!” and Signor Mattei extended his arms and clasped Rosa in them, after a fashion not unsuitable to their recent performances. Violante, as he turned away, sprang to her sister’s side.

“Oh, Rosa, how pleased he is with you!”

“I wish he was as pleased with you, my darling,” said Rosa. “What a generous little thing you are to look so happy!”

“But I am so glad,” said Violante, while Rosa sat down and took up her work sedately, but presently let it fall and leant back with dreamy eyes and smiling lips. Years ago, when she was a very young girl, to be an actress had been the dream of her life. While she learnt and taught in England she had dreamt of hard work for a great object, of the excitement to be found in the use of conscious power, of success, of fame. Then had arisen in her life other, and yet sweeter hopes, which too soon were destined to be destroyed, and then came the obvious duty of returning to take charge of Violante. Since then her want of a voice had, in Italy, been an entire bar to her attempting to take to the stage as a mode of earning her living, and she had never till lately realised that Violante’s distaste was anything but shy childish fear. Now it did seem to her that such a career might offer some consolation even for Hugh Crichton’s desertion; now she felt how she would have valued what to Violante was utter misery. She looked at the girl who, wearied with the exertion of the morning, had dropped asleep on the cushioned window-seat, and a misgiving that had often occurred lately began to deepen in her mind.

Would not the question soon be decided for them – could so delicate a creature bear the strain of long uncongenial effort, added to the trial of wearing disappointment? – in short, would not health and strength go after spirits and energy? Violante’s daily-increasing languor and listlessness made this only too probable.

Part 4, Chapter XXVI

Lost

“Silence, beautiful voice!Be still, for you only trouble the mindWith a joy in which I cannot rejoice,A glory I shall not find!”

Rosa’s fears were fulfilled. For a few days, with the help of her sister’s teaching, Violante struggled on a little more bravely; but Rosa’s lessons, however carefully conned at home, were forgotten in the hot, glaring theatre, where fear and exhaustion seemed to stifle sense and memory. She was too much afraid of her father to tell him that she was too ill to sing, and she sang badly and incurred deserved rebuke. She was too imperfect a performer to have much ground of her own to stand upon; and her father did not save her in any way from the consequences of her shortcomings. She was far less beautiful now that her delicate bloom was gone, and her voice, her one possession, was growing harsh and strained. What wonder, when she not only cried herself asleep at night, but cried herself awake again in the morning – a far colder and drearier thing?

Rosa was at her wit’s end, but Signor Vasari’s patience was worn to its last thread, and her father was utterly impracticable. Violante ceased to complain, but her soft, tender eyes had a desperate look, and her sweet confiding ways had grown solitary and strange. What would be the end of it?

It hardly caused Rosa surprise when, one night, in the midst of a performance, Violante fainted. The representation was brought to an abrupt conclusion, and Mademoiselle Mattei declared to be too ill to appear again. The public of Civita Bella was sorry; somehow the soft, lovely girl had gained a hold on their affections; but through the days while she lay ill and unconscious there was much wrangling between her father and the manager as to the amount of her salary to be forfeited by her non-fulfilment of her engagement. All talk of any tenderer relation had been dropped, and the discussion was settled greatly to Signor Mattei’s dissatisfaction. He felt that he had been ill-treated. Violante’s further gains were gone for that season; his own hung on a thread; some of Rosa’s best pupils, like Emily Tollemache, had left the place. What was to become of them?

As he came in, with his head full of all these various annoyances, he encountered Rosa standing in the sitting-room, holding in her hand the soft, dusky lengths of Violante’s hair.

“You have not cut off her hair?” he exclaimed, wrathfully.

“It may save her life,” said Rosa, whose eyes were red with crying. “She – she may not die.”

Then Signor Mattei, realising for the first time that his child’s life was in danger, burst out with vehement lamentations.

She had been his hope and his pride, spite of all her wilfulness – should he never hear her angel’s voice again? – and he seized on the long, soft hair, and kissed it and cried over it.

“It is the singing that has killed her,” said Rosa, bitterly. “If you had listened to her entreaties – ” she checked herself, feeling the reproach to be cruel and undutiful; but, with a certain hard common-sense, developed by a life in which she had seen many illusions fade, revolting against the sentiment, coming, as it seemed, too late.

“No!” cried Signor Mattei. “It is not the singing. It is that young Englishman for whom she has pined away. And you – you permitted her to know and to see him, and encouraged her in her folly!”

“This is no time for quarrelling, father,” said Rosa, as she turned away, and went back to her sister, feeling as if, with Violante, every ray of sunshine would fade out of her life.

But Violante did not die. Either there was more power of resistance in her nature than they could have supposed, or Rosa’s tender nursing triumphed over fever and weakness; for after some weeks of illness she began slowly to recover. She was long in gaining strength. She seemed contented in a sort of passive fashion, was grateful and caressing to Rosa; but she never talked of anything but the matter in hand, never spoke of the opera or her singing, or of Hugh; never showed any feeling except that, when she came sufficiently to herself to know that her hair had been cut off, she had cried and seemed sorry. Rosa was ready to follow her lead; but a great anxiety, unacknowledged even, to himself, was growing up in Signor Mattei’s heart. Her voice – was it coming back?

He had not the heart or the courage to speak to her directly on the subject, but he hummed opera airs in her presence, and watched wistfully to see if she noticed them. Violante started and coloured.

“Rosa mia,” she whispered, “I do not want to hear them yet;” and her father tried to ascribe her reluctance to a share in his alarm.

“So,” he said one day, coming in from a rehearsal, “that Giulia Belloni has a fine voice, her Zerlina is effective – effective to the vulgar.”

“Oh, I am glad,” said Violante, “for now they will not miss me.”

“Violante, will you never cease to be a fool? Not miss you? I would have them miss you every night. And this woman can act, laugh, scream – has eyes that show their size ten times as far as yours. But her voice is of far commoner sort, at least.”

Violante had quivered at her father’s rough address.

“Father,” she said, “I have no voice now.”

“It will return – it will return soon. You must practise – ”

“She must not think of it,” interposed Rosa. “She is not nearly strong enough yet.”

“Ah, soon; but in good time – There comes il signor dottore.”

The doctor, whose visits to Violante had not yet ceased, would have given much to evade the question as to how soon Mdlle. Mattei would recover her voice; but it was sharply pressed on him by Signor Mattei. Violante lay still, her hands pressed together, her large eyes full of suspense and anxiety. The doctor thought most pitifully of her, the young, delicate girl, whose career had received so severe a check; but yet her feelings to those of her eager father were “but as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.”

“She will sing again,” said the father. “Mademoiselle Mattei must not attempt to sing in public for a long time to come. She is far too delicate for the exertion. Nothing but rest will give her a chance of recovering her voice.”

“But she will recover it?”

“That is impossible to say. To some degree, should her health return, it is possible that she may; but she must give it rest; she has overstrained it when too weak for the effort.”

“But the time – how long?” cried Signor Mattei, breathlessly.

“I cannot tell,” said the doctor, with a shrug; “but if she attempts to act now it will kill her.”

He spoke forcibly, somewhat irritated by the father’s persistence, and then glanced at his patient, anxious to see the effect of his words. Violante had turned very pale, her mouth trembled, she drew a long breath; but there was a light in her eyes as of one that lays a burden down. Her father turned pale also and was quite silent, not one passionate word rising to his lips. He looked at her; then, as the doctor left the room, he followed him. Rosa sat down in the window, trying to govern her tears sufficiently to speak to her sister. And Violante? She had just been told of the loss of her one gift, of the one thing that marked her out from other women, without which she was only a poor, ignorant, helpless girl, with nothing left but a sort of indefinite beauty; from which her illness had taken much of the charm. She leant back on her pillows, feeling very small and mean and foolish, like Cinderella when the clock struck twelve. She felt very good-for-nothing, and yet – and yet – no more of the weary rehearsals, the hateful companionship, the terror and fatigue, the glare of the gas, the jealousy or scorn of her rivals, the anger of her father. She was free! It was like being let out of a stifling prison into the chilly air. She shivered and was cold, but she drew long, deep breaths. It was over. She was not ambitious – perhaps she was not conscientious enough to grieve that her task in life was taken from her, though she belonged to too hard-working a family not to think at once that she had lost the power of earning her own living. She felt that she had failed; but it was failure versus freedom, and freedom won.

“Violante – oh, my poor child!” cried Rosa, as she came up and kissed her tenderly.

“Rosa mia, do not be sorry for me. I am sorry, but I am so tired of it all, and now I can rest,” said Violante, pleadingly.

“Rest!” exclaimed Rosa, with hot cheeks. “If I were you I should be half heart-broken, to lose that beautiful, glorious gift. But it is better that you should not care.”

Violante drooped her head in silence.

“When I did break my heart they blamed me,” she thought. “How can I care now?”

“You cried when I cut your hair off,” said Rosa, unable to repress her own disappointment.

Violante crimsoned to her finger tips. Had not Hugh stroked the long, soft hair? “He did not love me only for my voice,” she thought, somewhat unjustly, for Rosa’s love was true and tender, and she silenced her regrets, as she saw how they distressed her sister. Violante’s momentary flash of indignation passed; but she kept her thoughts to herself – she was learning to do so.

“There was no good in me but my voice,” she said meekly, “but I will try and help you, Rosa.”

“Oh, my darling, do not trouble, we shall do well enough,” said Rosa, repentant, when she thought how weak Violante still was, and how impossible any exertion would have been to her. “It is only of father I am thinking.”

“Father; oh, yes! Go to him! Rosa, I cannot help it.”

“Help it? No! But he will be very sorry. I will go to him. You must lie still and rest.”

Signor Mattei’s dream was over; he had lost his vision, as his daughter had lost her lover. Mademoiselle Mattei would never be a household word in any capital in Europe, never contest the palm with those who already bore it. It was a great present, a greater future, loss to him; but it was not the thought of this that made his heart sink within him. Rosa’s common-sense words jarred upon him.

“It is a grievous pity, father, but it cannot be helped.”

“She might as well have married the English signor – ”

“Indeed she might!”

“When she was a little girl, and used to sing about the house, I looked to her success. She had the power, but never the will – never the will! My sun has set, figlia mia. I may hide my head in obscurity, and she may be as idle and as happy as she can!”

Extravagant as was the language, there was real distress in his faltering voice and tearful eyes.

“My beloved art has lost an interpreter,” he sighed; “and I have lost a hope.”

“Father!” said an unexpected voice, and Violante, with her slow, feeble step, stood beside him. “Father, I am so sorry!” she said, timidly. “I shall be very little good; but I will help Rosa all I can. And when I am well I will teach.”

“Teach? As if that would repay me!” cried Signor Mattei, starting to his feet. “Oh, you unfortunate, foolish girl, you were born to be my grief and disappointment! You who might have been a queen of song, you pined and fretted for your lover till this has come on you. If you had obeyed me, and consented to Vasari’s offer, and been happy, this would not have been. But you care nothing, the loss is mine – all mine! And I? See how I love you, you ungrateful child; see the tears you cause to flow.”

Against such reproaches Violante had no defence, and she was so well used to them that she was more frightened than grieved.

“Father,” cried Rosa, “you have been mistaken, you cannot change her nature, nor make her what you wish. She is herself, take her for that. Violante mia! my child, my darling, as if it was not enough to have you safe. What matters your voice, or your success, or anything?” she continued, in high indignation. “Come away; this will make you ill again!”

So they vexed each other sorely; but Violante, forlorn and sorrowful as she was, could nestle in Rosa’s arms, and had Rosa’s pity, if not sympathy, in her grief; while her father, unkind and unreasonable as he might be, suffered alone a pang of disappointment all the keener because the baffled desire had been so vehement that to indulge it he had undertaken the one impossible task of life – to inspire an alien nature with his own ideal of happiness, his own loves, and his own ambitions.

He thought that it was love for Violante that made her misfortune so terrible to him, but in truth it was love of the ideal that he thought to see her fulfil. He grieved over what she might have been, but she was only a trouble and disappointment to him as she was. He did not intend to be unkind to her, but he could not forbear to reproach her; all the more because he instinctively knew that she did not regret her loss as he did. Violante did not resent this, but the worry and the depressing sense of inefficiency retarded her recovery. Rosa, meanwhile, set herself to consider the family fortunes. What could they do? Her father’s engagement to Signor Vasari was almost over and was not likely to be renewed. He often talked of trying new fields, and seeking employment in more important places than Civita Bella. And he was quite well enough known to be likely to find what he wanted. A wandering life would suit him well enough. But though he might have connections in half the towns of Italy, Rosa had none, and how could she afford to lose all her pupils? True, she and Violante might remain where they were, with Maddalena for a duenna but Rosa felt that a thorough change would do Violante more good than anything that could be proposed. She might then recover her strength, and, free from all present trials, would surely soon forget her ill-starred love story. For Rosa, with cool, clear judgment, reflected that Hugh Crichton, once set free from his entanglement, was very little likely ever to attempt to renew anything so undesirable. He had no means, so far as she knew, of tracing Violante’s future life, for the Tollemaches did not write to them after leaving Civita Bella; and of himself, beyond the fact of his profession, and that he lived with his mother at Redhurst, and was a man of some fortune, Rosa knew nothing. She had never even realised where Redhurst might be. As for Violante, unfamiliar with English names and images, she had imbibed no notions of her lover’s English home beyond a few descriptions of the garden and the river; of the great town, whose name even she forgot; and of various people whom she had hardly begun to think of as having any connection with herself – his own relations having been exceedingly uninteresting to Hugh at the period of his courtship. One day of actual betrothal and she would have known enough about them; as it was, Violante had no colours to paint her pictures of his present life, and Rosa felt that he had entirely gone out of theirs.

Under these circumstances she thought very favourably of various former invitations received from her uncle, Mr Grey, both to herself and Violante. She believed that she could find occupation of some sort in England; and perhaps an English home life for a time might prove beneficial to Violante. In the meantime old Madame Cellini came to the rescue, and offered to take the two girls to a little village called Caletto, some distance from Civita Bella, where she usually spent some weeks in the autumn. Here Violante would have both rest and change, and when she was fully recovered future plans would be more easily settled.

Part 4, Chapter XXVII

Caletto

“Grapes which swelled from hour to hour,And tossed their golden tendrils to the sunFor joy at their own richness.”

After that stormy summer, with its joy and its suffering, its excitement and hard work, there ensued for Violante a time of perfect peace. Golden autumn sunshine, beautiful places, entire freedom and rest, could not give back a lost career, or a lost lover, but they were very conducive to the revival of health and spirits; and the absence even of anything peculiarly delightful was welcome to the exhaustion of worn-out nerves and spirits. Never to be scolded, never to be frightened, never to be forced to do what she dreaded and disliked, made a sort of Elysium for her, though even Elysium seems to have been sometimes a little objectless and dreary. Still, it was peace; and all the little tastes and occupations which had been crushed down by over-work, or rendered futile by the one absorbing interest of the past summer, began to spring up again; and Violante knitted and worked, picked flowers and arranged them, and made sweetmeats, salads, and coffee, as she had done in the days when the stage was a distant terror, and when Hugh Crichton had never been heard of. For, though she was very easily overwhelmed by storms, she was a flower that opened readily to a little sunshine, and Rosa caught herself wondering whether so soft and childish a creature had really retained the impression that had seemed so powerful. It was hard to tell, for Violante never spoke of her past troubles; the truth, perhaps, being that she took her sensations very much as they came, and never speculated about herself, nor realised her situation further than she felt it. Rosa hoped that the love, having been very brief, scarcely acknowledged, and utterly crushed at one blow, might really die of want of encouragement; and this was possible, even if its dying hours were soothed by the anodyne of a little unconscious secret hope in the vague future. Since Hugh had been mistaken as to Vasari, some day he might find it out; and in the meantime the sun shone, the flowers were sweet, she was the object of much petting, she felt fresh and well, and Vasari, his theatre and his diamonds, had all passed away like a bad dream.

Caletto, with its vineyards, its little lake, its distant hills, its peaceful and yet animated life, was new to the town-bred girl, and very delightful. It attracted a few visitors, but lay somewhat out of the beat of tourists, though it possessed many charms for them; one of the chief being a garden belonging to the great house of the place, but which, in the dwindling of the fortunes of the great family, and in their frequent and long absences, was open freely to the scanty public of Caletto. Nay, tables and chairs, where grapes could be eaten and cheap wine drunk, had been placed on the marble terrace that overlooked the lake by the enterprising innkeeper; and here, within sound of the plash of fountains, under the shade of tall oleander and pomegranate trees, Madame Cellini and her two young charges were wont to establish themselves to see the sun set over the lake and to enjoy the evening air; and here, in search of the picturesque, or perhaps of that soothing and refreshment which novelty and natural beauty might be supposed to give, arrived one evening an English traveller.

Arthur Spencer’s journey to meet his friend had not turned out exactly as he had intended. He had hurried across France to Marseilles because there was a sort of relief to his misery in the rapid motion; and, besides, he was not quite certain when Captain Seton’s ship would arrive. He was prepared to do anything that his friend might fancy; returning to England or continuing his journey, as might be best for Captain Seton’s health, as to which he did not grow very anxious till he was preparing to enquire for him on board the ship; when the possibility of finding him worse, in danger, or not finding him at all, occurred to him. Then it seemed to poor Arthur as if the only comfort in his trouble would be the telling it to his land, warm-hearted friend who had left India too soon to receive even the letter announcing his engagement. Nevertheless, Arthur resolved that if Seton seemed ill and depressed he would prepare a cheerful countenance and keep silence on his own score for the present.

As he came on board and was looking anxiously round, he was greeted with a shout of delight; and Captain Seton, looking neither ill nor unhappy, seized him by the hands.

“So there you are, my dear good fellow! I’m heartily glad to see you. I knew you would come if you could; but I feel as if I’d brought you out on false pretences after all.”

“So much the better, if this is what being on sick-leave comes to,” said Arthur. “I was very glad to come.”