“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 mind
With 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?