“Oh, I am so much better. I don’t think it will hurt me. You know I never feel strong in the heat.”
“Well,” said Rosa, “I shall like to see the girls again very much.”
“You used to talk of Beatrice and Lucy.”
“Yes, Lucy is married, you know. Then there are Mary and Kitty, my pupils, a little older than you; and Charlie divides the two pairs of girls. Ned is the youngest. Yes—I shall like to see them all. How strange to be in England again!”
Rosa sat silent and thoughtful. After all, it was not four years since that English life of hers had ended abruptly with her mother’s death; and four years is not a very long time in which to lose vivid impressions. She had grown up almost ignorant of her parents and little sister; and when she was a bright, handsome girl of twenty, full of ardour and enthusiasm, she made, in the course of a set of private theatricals, the discovery that she had a taste and talent for acting of no ordinary kind. She did not love teaching, and reversed Violante’s subsequent history by trying with all her might and main to gain her uncle’s consent to earn her living on the stage. She was in the full tide of an enthusiasm which was only increased by opposition, and which no one expected in the good sedate girl who was her aunt’s right hand, when—a new acquaintance, a few weeks’ intercourse, a few opposing hints, and Rosa’s persistency drooped and faded, and her hot Italian nature took another turn.
He could not marry an actress. Poor Rosa! either circumstances were irresistible or she was deceived altogether; but she sacrificed ambition to love, for it was a sacrifice, and the love failed her too. She never knew what separated them; but it was well for her that the summons home took her right away from both disappointments, and gave her an object in life in Violante.
She was a brave, strong girl, and she had won the battle. How she had mistrusted and hated Hugh Crichton none could say! How she had dreaded her own fate for Violante! Now, when she thought of returning to England, that first ambition returned in a more moderate form to her mind. She felt fairly certain of her own powers, and the attraction of the life was undiminished; but she felt that it would be almost impossible to fix herself permanently in England, and that, now that Violante was useless, she would probably be obliged to take a larger share in earning the family living. She had expected that Violante would regard the idea of a visit to England with horror, and was relieved, though surprised, to find how easily she resigned herself to it.
Violante had a very clear picture in her mind of what it would be to go back to Civita Bella, idle and useless; freed, indeed, from the burden of her profession, but exposed to her father’s regrets and reproaches. Life had been very hard before, it would be very dreary and objectless now. The ghosts of happy and unhappy hours would alike haunt the familiar places; and England, over the thought of which a soft sweet halo rested, seemed like a refuge.
Mr Grey’s letter had been received on a Saturday, and on the Sunday morning Violante was sitting by herself on the terrace, doing what she called, with a reminiscence of her mother’s early training, “reading her chapter,” this being one of the few religious observances which had survived their unsettled life. Violante had a sort of half-superstitious reverence for the English Bible, her English mother’s gift. She always said her prayers in English, and dutifully read a chapter on Sunday. She was not very particular which; but since she had known Hugh Crichton she had indulged in some self-congratulation that her religion as well as her blood was English. Rosa had bestowed a small amount of technical instruction on her, but it fitted on to nothing; and as the elder sister had never thought it her duty to make Violante unhappy about the Sunday operas, which she could not have possibly avoided, and as Signor Mattei was nearly equally indifferent to his own religion and to theirs, Violante’s faith was chiefly negative. On this Sunday morning she sat, with her Bible in her hand, looking at the groups of peasants who were making their way to the little church, and listening to the bell tinkling softly through the murmur of the trees, and the sharper sound of the gay Italian voices. By-and-by they would dance under the trees. Violante began to wonder what Sunday would be like in England. She was surprised at herself for not having asked Rosa more questions about it; but her mind had been absorbed in its difficult present, and she had been first too passive for curiosity, and then too deeply-interested to express it.
As she mused Arthur Spencer came up the steps towards her, with that air of neatness and respectability that generally distinguishes an English traveller on Sunday. Violante perceived for the first time that he was in mourning, and was sufficiently interested to wonder why.