第15章

Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and filial love.Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and half-melancholy smile sank into her heart,--to live there, to be recalled with confused memories, half of pleasure, and half of pain.

Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on a subject of taste,--still more astonished at finding himself and all Naples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of admiration which buzzed in the singer's ear, as once more, in her modest veil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked up every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted Chiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to note the tears and ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother,--see them returned; see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own house.); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he rouses the barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened to the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother's merry, low, English laugh.Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaning on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space?

Up, rouse thee! Every dimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night.("Ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum." Catull."ad Sirm.Penin.")And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullus might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, and the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima a present from the good Cardinal.The barbiton, placed on a chair--a tall, high-backed chair--beside the musician, seemed to take a part in the festive meal.Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp; and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its master, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had forgotten to relate before.The good wife looked on affectionately, and could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on the artist's temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fond anticipation; and Viola, on the other side her brother, the barbiton, rearranged the chaplet, and, smoothing back her father's hair, whispered, "Caro Padre, you will not let HIM scold me again!"Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited both by the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive and grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank the most.You give me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee and myself.But he and I, poor fellow, have been so often unhappy together!"Viola's sleep was broken,--that was natural.The intoxication of vanity and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all this was better than sleep.But still from all this, again and again her thoughts flew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the memory of the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united.Her feelings, like her own character, were strange and peculiar.They were not those of a girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighs its natural and native language of first love.It was not so much admiration, though the face that reflected itself on every wave of her restless fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor a pleased and enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger had bequeathed: it was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed with something more mysterious, of fear and awe.Certainly she had seen before those features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts had sought to shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts to vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self.It was a something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again.She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms;and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.

"And why," she asked, when she descended to the room below,--"why, my father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of last night?""I know not, child.I meant to be merry, and compose an air in honour of thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he would have it so."