Within the shadow of the sail”—
and the tinkle of the floating bells that guide the fisherman by night to his spread net.
I believe Como disappoints nobody. Claude Melnotte’s description of his ideal castle upon its banks reads like a fairy-story. Recalled at Cadenabbia or Bellaggio, it may be aptly likened to a cleverly-painted drop-curtain.
I had been shut up in the darkened room all day; was weary of body, and if not actually anxious, sympathized so earnestly with the little sufferer that my heart was as sore as my nerves were worn. The view—the perfumed air; the on-coming of an evening fairer than the day; the home-comfortableness of the garden-party; the feeling and music of the voice rendering the poem,—perhaps, most of all the poem itself, loved and familiar as it was—were soothing and cordial for sleeplessness, fatigue and the mother’s heart pain. I know no other ache that so surely and soon drains dry the fountain of life and strength as the nameless, terrible “goneness” and sinking I have thus characterized.
The moon arose before the Iris hues faded out from the water. The young people filled two boats and floated away upon the silvery track laid smoothly and broadly from shore to shore. A band was playing at the Hotel Bellevue, half-a-mile away, and the lake lay still, as listening. In the pauses of the music the tinkling of the tiny bells on the nets; the far-off murmur of happy voices, and the yet fainter song of nightingales in the chestnut-grove behind the house filled up the silence. From the richly-wooded hills and clustering villas at the lower end of the lake, my eyes roved along the loftier crests of the opposite heights to the snow-line of the Bernese Alps filling the horizon to my left. We had meant to give but one week to Como, tempting as it was. These seven days were to have been a breathing space after Milanese heats before we essayed the St. Gothard Pass—the gate of Switzerland. A mighty gate and a magnificent, and, up to June 10th, locked fast against us. The band of white radiance, gleaming in the moonlight, like the highway of the blessed ones from earth to heaven, had been a stern “non é possibile!” to our progress before Boy fell ill. A party had passed the barrier on the 7th, but at the cost of great suffering and peril to the invalid of their company,—a report duly conveyed to us, coupled with a warning against similar temerity. Now—upon the 20th—we were a fixed fact, for three weeks, at the least, and had taken our measures accordingly. Matters might have been far worse. For instance, had the civil padrone surmised the character of Boy’s “feverish attack,” or the dear babies B—— caught it from him. We were granted time to write up note-books, arrange photographs and herbarium-albums, and bring up long arrears of correspondence. Had we pressed on over the mountain-wall at the appointed date we should have missed the reunion with the party of eight from lower Italy from whose companionship we were drawing refreshment and sincerest pleasure.
In the center of one leaf of my floral album—right opposite a view of Bellagio and Villa Serbelloni, with the rampart of snow-capped hills rising back of it into the clouds, the shining mirror before it repeating white walls and dark woods, olive-terraces and rose-gardens,—is a single pressed blossom. It is five-petaled, gold-colored; the pistil of deepest orange protected by a thicket of amber floss. The leaves are long, stiff, and were glossy, set in pairs, the one against the other on a brown, woody stem. It grew in the grounds of the Villa Carlotta. The spray of many fountains kept the foliage green, when Bellaggio blazed most fiercely in the June suns, and the lime-walks on the Cadenabbia side were deserted. Boscages of myrtle, of lemon-trees and citron-aloe, honeysuckles, jasmine and magnolias shadowed the alleys. Calla lilies, tall and pure, gave back the moonlight from the fountain-rims, and musk-roses were wooed by the nightingales from moonrise to day-dawn.
This is what my yellow-haired princess says to me, as I unclose the book, and a waft of the perfume she brought from the enchanted regions steals forth. She was bright as the sun, clear as the day, sweeter than the magnolias, when Caput came with her, into Boy’s room the day after my moonlight reverie at the window, and gave her into my hand:
“Mr. R—— S——’s compliments and regrets that you could not join the walking-party.”
She has a page to herself,—the peerless beauty! as the episode of the four days’ visit of our transatlantic friends glows out from the pale level of our social life during our as many weeks’ lingering at Cadenabbia.
We made excursions when Boy was well enough to leave his bed, by boat, by carriage and on foot. We bought in Bellaggio more olive-wood thimble-cases, ink-stands, silk-winders, darning-eggs and paper-cutters than we shall ever get rid of on Christmases and birth-days. We visited silk-factories; penetrated the malodorous recesses of stone cottages to see the loathsome worms gorging themselves with mulberry-leaves; going into silken retirement and enforced fasting after their gluttony, and boiling by the million in a big pot, dirty peasant women catching at the loosened threads and winding them on bobbins until the dead nakedness of the spinner was exposed. We read, studied and wrote in the scorching noons and passed the evenings in walking and sailing. We did not tire of lake or country, but July was late for Italy, and my system may have absorbed poison from the Lombardy marshes. When, on the morning of July 4th, the diligence we had engaged for the journey to Porlezza drove to the door, I was supported down the stairs after a week of pain and debility, and lifted into my place in the coupé, or deep front seat, facing the horses.