A Romance of the Republic Part 25

The promise was readily and earnestly given, and she proceeded to the lodgings of Mr. and Mrs. Percival in the next street. After she had related the experiences of the morning, she asked what they supposed had become of Rosabella.

"It is to be hoped she does not continue her relation with that base man if she knows of his marriage," said Mrs. Percival; "for that would involve a moral degradation painful for you to think of in Flora's sister."

"If she has ceased to interest his fancy, very likely he may have sold her," said Mr. Percival; "for a man who could entertain the idea of selling Flora, I think would sell his own Northern wife, if the law permitted it and circ.u.mstances tempted him to it."

"What do you think I ought to do in the premises?" inquired Mrs.

Delano.

"I would hardly presume to say what you ought to do," rejoined Mrs.

Percival; "but I know what I should do, if I were as rich as you, and as strongly attached to Flora."

"Let me hear what you would do," said Mrs. Delano.

The prompt reply was: "I would go in search of her. And if she was sold, I would buy her and bring her home, and be a mother to her."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Delano, warmly pressing her hand. "I thought you would advise what was kindest and n.o.blest. Money really seems to me of very little value, except as a means of promoting human happiness. And in this case I might perhaps prevent moral degradation, growing out of misfortune and despair."

After some conversation concerning vessels that were about to sail, the friends parted. On her way homeward, she wondered within herself whether they had any suspicion of the secret tie that bound her so closely to these unfortunate girls. "I ought to do the same for them without that motive," thought she; "but should I?"

Though her call had not been very long, it seemed so to Flora, who had latterly been little accustomed to solitude. She had no heart for books or drawing. She sat listlessly watching the crowd on Monte Pincio;--children chasing each other, or toddling about with nurses in bright-red jackets; carriages going round and round, ever and anon bringing into the sunshine gleams of gay Roman scarfs, or bright autumnal ribbons fluttering in the breeze. She had enjoyed few things more than joining that fashionable promenade to overlook the city in the changing glories of sunset. But now she cared not for it. Her thoughts were far away on the lonely island. As sunset quickly faded into twilight, carriages and pedestrians wound their way down the hill. The n.o.ble trees on its summit became solemn silhouettes against the darkening sky, and the monotonous trickling of the fountain in the court below sounded more distinct as the street noises subsided. She was growing a little anxious, when she heard soft footfalls on the stairs, which she at once recognized and hastened to meet. "O, you have been gone so long!" she exclaimed. Happy, as all human beings are, to have another heart so dependent on them, the gratified lady pa.s.sed her arm round the waist of the loving child, and they ascended to their rooms like two confidential school-girls.

After tea, Mrs. Delano said, "Now I will keep my promise of telling you all I have discovered." Flora ran to an ottoman by her side, and, leaning on her lap, looked up eagerly into her face. "You must try not to be excitable, my dear," said her friend; "for I have some unpleasant news to tell you."

The expressive eyes, that were gazing wistfully into hers while she spoke, at once a.s.sumed that startled, melancholy look, strangely in contrast with their laughing shape. Her friend was so much affected by it that she hardly knew how to proceed with her painful task. At last Flora murmured, "Is she dead?"

"I have heard no such tidings, darling," she replied. "But Mr.

Fitzgerald has married a Boston lady, and they were the visitors who came here this morning."

Flora sprung up and pressed her hand on her heart, as if a sharp arrow had hit her. But she immediately sank on the ottoman again, and said in tones of suppressed agitation: "Then he has left poor Rosa. How miserable she must be! She loved him so! O, how wrong it was for me to run away and leave her! And only to think how I have been enjoying myself, when she was there all alone, with her heart breaking! Can't we go to-morrow to look for her, dear Mamita?"

"In three days a vessel will sail for Ma.r.s.eilles," replied Mrs.

Delano. "Our pa.s.sage is taken; and Mr. and Mrs. Percival, who intended to return home soon, are kind enough to say they will go with us. I wish they could accompany us to the South; but he is so well known as an Abolitionist that his presence would probably cause unpleasant interruptions and delays, and perhaps endanger his life."

Flora seized her hand and kissed it, while tears were dropping fast upon it. And at every turn of the conversation, she kept repeating, "How wrong it was for me to run away and leave her!"

"No, my child," replied Mrs. Delano, "you did right in coming to me.

If you had stayed there, you would have made both her and yourself miserable, beside doing what was very wrong. I met Mr. Fitzgerald once on horseback, while I was visiting at Mr. Welby's plantation; but I never fairly saw him until to-day. He is so very handsome, that, when I looked at him, I could not but think it rather remarkable he did not gain a bad power over you by his insinuating flattery, when you were so very young and inexperienced."

The guileless little damsel looked up with an expression of surprise, and said: "How _could_ I bear to have him make love to _me_, when he was Rosa's husband? He is so handsome and fascinating, that, if he had loved me instead of Rosa, in the beginning, I dare say I should have been as much in love with him as she was. I did dearly love him while he was a kind brother; but I couldn't love him _so_. It would have killed Rosa if I had. Besides, he told falsehoods; and papa taught us to consider that as the meanest of faults. I have heard him tell Rosa he never loved anybody but her, when an hour before he had told me he loved me better than Rosa. What could I do but despise such a man?

Then, when he threatened to sell me, I became dreadfully afraid of him." She started up, as if struck by a sudden thought, and exclaimed wildly, "What if he has sold Rosa?"

Her friend brought forward every argument and every promise she could think of to pacify her; and when she had become quite calm, they sang a few hymns together, and before retiring to rest knelt down side by side and prayed for strength and guidance in these new troubles.

Flora remained a long time wakeful, thinking of Rosa deserted and alone. She had formed many projects concerning what was to be seen and heard and done in Rome; but she forgot them all. She did not even think of the much-antic.i.p.ated opera, until she heard from the street s.n.a.t.c.hes of Norma, whistled or sung by the dispersing audience. A tenor voice pa.s.sed the house singing, _Vieni_ _in Roma_. "Ah," thought she, "Gerald and I used to sing that duet together. And in those latter days how languishingly he used to look at me, behind her back, while he sang pa.s.sionately, '_Ah, deh cedi, cedi a me_!' And poor cheated Rosa would say, 'Dear Gerald, how much heart you put into your voice!' O shame, shame! What _could_ I do but run away? Poor Rosa! How I wish I could hear her sing 'Casta Diva,' as she used to do when we sat gazing at the moon shedding its soft light over the pines in that beautiful lonely island."

And so, tossed for a long while on a sea of memories, she finally drifted into dream-land.

CHAPTER XIX.

While Flora was listlessly gazing at Monte Pincio from the solitude of her room in the Via delle Quattro Fontane, Rosabella was looking at the same object, seen at a greater distance, over intervening houses, from her high lodgings in the Corso. She could see the road winding like a ribbon round the hill, with a medley of bright colors continually moving over it. But she was absorbed in revery, and they floated round and round before her mental eye, like the revolving shadows of a magic lantern.

She was announced to sing that night, as the new Spanish _prima donna_, La Senorita Rosita Campaneo; and though she had been applauded by manager and musicians at the rehearsal that morning, her spirit shrank from the task. Recent letters from America had caused deep melancholy; and the idea of singing, not _con amore_, but as a performer before an audience of entire strangers, filled her with dismay. She remembered how many times she and Flora and Gerald had sung together from Norma; and an oppressive feeling of loneliness came over her. Returning from rehearsal, a few hours before, she had seen a young Italian girl, who strongly reminded her of her lost sister.

"Ah!" thought she, "if Flora and I had gone out into the world together, to make our own way, as Madame first intended, how much sorrow and suffering I might have been spared!" She went to the piano, where the familiar music of Norma lay open before her, and from the depths of her saddened soul gushed forth, "_Ah, bello a me Ritorno_."

The last tone pa.s.sed sighingly away, and as her hands lingered on the keys, she murmured, "Will my heart pa.s.s into it there, before that crowd of strange faces, as it does here?"

"To be sure it will, dear," responded Madame, who had entered softly and stood listening to the last strains.

"Ah, if all would hear with _your_ partial ears!" replied Rosabella, with a glimmering smile. "But they will not. And I may be so frightened that I shall lose my voice."

"What have you to be afraid of, darling?" rejoined Madame. "It was more trying to sing at private parties of accomplished musicians, as you did in Paris; and especially at the palace, where there was such an _elite_ company. Yet you know that Queen Amelia was so much pleased with your performance of airs from this same opera, that she sent you the beautiful enamelled wreath you are to wear to-night."

"What I was singing when you came in wept itself out of the fulness of my heart," responded Rosabella. "This dreadful news of Tulee and the baby unfits me for anything. Do you think there is no hope it may prove untrue?"

"You know the letter explicitly states that my cousin and his wife, the negro woman, and the white baby, all died of yellow-fever,"

replied Madame. "But don't reproach me for leaving them, darling. I feel badly enough about it, already. I thought it would be healthy so far out of the city; and it really seemed the best thing to do with the poor little _bambino_, until we could get established somewhere."

"I did not intend to reproach you, my kind friend," answered Rosa. "I know you meant it all for the best. But I had a heavy presentiment of evil when you first told me they were left. This news makes it hard for me to keep up my heart for the efforts of the evening. You know I was induced to enter upon this operatic career mainly by the hope of educating that poor child, and providing well for the old age of you and Papa Balbino, as I have learned to call my good friend, the Signor. And poor Tulee, too,--how much I intended to do for her! No mortal can ever know what she was to me in the darkest hours of my life."

"Well, poor Tulee's troubles are all over," rejoined Madame, with a sigh; "and _bambinos_ escape a great deal of suffering by going out of this wicked world. For, between you and I, dear, I don't believe one word about the innocent little souls staying in purgatory on account of not being baptized."

"O, my friend, if you only _knew_!" exclaimed Rosa, in a wild, despairing tone. But she instantly checked herself, and said: "I will try not to think of it; for if I do, I shall spoil my voice; and Papa Balbino would be dreadfully mortified if I failed, after he had taken so much pains to have me brought out."

"That is right, darling," rejoined Madame, patting her on the shoulder. "I will go away, and leave you to rehea.r.s.e."

Again and again Rosa sang the familiar airs, trying to put soul into them, by imagining how she would feel if she were in Norma's position.

Some of the emotions she knew by her own experience, and those she sang with her deepest feeling.

"If I could only keep the same visions before me that I have here alone, I should sing well to-night," she said to herself; "for now, when I sing 'Casta Diva,' I seem to be sitting with my arm round dear little Flora, watching the moon as it rises above the dark pines on that lonely island."

At last the dreaded hour came. Rosa appeared on the stage with her train of priestesses. The orchestra and the audience were before her; and she knew that Papa and Mamma Balbino were watching her from the side with anxious hearts. She was very pale, and her first notes were a little tremulous. But her voice soon became clear and strong; and when she fixed her eyes on the moon, and sang "Casta Diva," the fulness and richness of the tones took everybody by surprise.

"_Bis! Bis_!" cried the audience; and the chorus was not allowed to proceed till she had sung it a second and third time. She courtesied her acknowledgments gracefully. But as she retired, ghosts of the past went with her; and with her heart full of memories, she seemed to weep in music, while she sang in Italian, "Restore to mine affliction one smile of love's protection." Again the audience shouted, "_Bis! Bis_!"

The duet with Adalgisa was more difficult; for she had not yet learned to be an actress, and she was embarra.s.sed by the consciousness of being an object of jealousy to the _seconda donna_, partly because she was _prima_, and partly because the tenor preferred her. But when Adalgisa sang in Italian the words, "Behold him!" she chanced to raise her eyes to a box near the stage, and saw the faces of Gerald Fitzgerald and his wife bending eagerly toward her. She shuddered, and for an instant her voice failed her. The audience were breathless. Her look, her att.i.tude, her silence, her tremor, all seemed inimitable acting. A glance at the foot-lights and at the orchestra recalled the recollection of where she was, and by a strong effort she controlled herself; though there was still an agitation in her voice, which the audience and the singers thought to be the perfection of acting. Again she glanced at Fitzgerald, and there was terrible power in the tones with which she uttered, in Italian, "Tremble, perfidious one! Thou knowest the cause is ample."

Her eyes rested for a moment on Mrs. Fitzgerald, and with a wonderful depth of pitying sadness, she sang, "O, how his art deceived thee!"

The wish she had formed was realized. She was enabled to give voice to her own emotions, forgetful of the audience for the time being. And even in subsequent scenes, when the recollection of being a performer returned upon her, her inward excitation seemed to float her onward, like a great wave.

Once again her own feelings took her up, like a tornado, and made her seem a wonderful actress. In the scene where Norma is tempted to kill her children, she fixed her indignant gaze full upon Fitzgerald, and there was an indescribable expression of stern resolution in her voice, and of pride in the carriage of her queenly head, while she sang: "Disgrace worse than death awaits them. Slavery? No! never!"

Fitzgerald quailed before it. He grew pale, and slunk back in the box. The audience had never seen the part so conceived, and a few criticised it. But her beauty and her voice and her overflowing feeling carried all before her; and this, also, was accepted as a remarkable inspiration of theatrical genius.

When the wave of her own excitement was subsiding, the magnetism of an admiring audience began to affect her strongly. With an outburst of fury, she sang, "War! War!" The audience cried, "_Bis! Bis_!" and she sang it as powerfully the second time.