Our prolonged journey permitted my turning the conversation, occasionally, on Colonel Melville. I learned from Evelyn, that her acquaintance with him commenced in rather a romantic manner. He was hunting in their neighborhood, and in taking a leap, his horse fell with him, and he had the misfortune to break his leg. Captain Travers, who witnessed the accident, ordered Melville to be carried to Woodlands, where, unable to be moved without risk, he remained for six weeks confined to his bed. Evelyn tended him through his illness, and a strong sympathy springing up between them, he became a constant and welcome guest at the Abbey, until old Mrs. Travers, lynx-eyed as are most dowagers, perceiving a growing attachment between the parties, persuaded her son to be rude to Melville, and to suspect the prudence of his wife. Provoked at her mother-in-law’s ill-nature, and angry at the unjust aspersions of her husband, Evelyn confessed that she had kept up a clandestine correspondence with the young man, by letter, and also had occasionally met him alone in the park. She added, that, aware of her unhappiness, Melville had presumed even to speak to her of marriage, should she ever regain her freedom. Since her widowhood, however, she told me she had forbidden him ever to allude to the subject of their future union till a decent time should have elapsed since the death of her husband.
I was glad to receive her confidence, but thought it my duty to chide her imprudence, in permitting herself, as a married woman, clandestine meetings with an avowed lover. I showed her, that however innocent her feelings and intentions, her husband would have had a right to suspect the worst, adding that even to Col. Melville she had given but too much occasion to think lightly of her discretion, but that I trusted having proved that she loved him to the very verge of imprudence, she would later become to him the most faithful and modest of wives. Whatever reply Evelyn might have made, was cut short by Ella’s exclamation—
“See, mama! how lovely!”
We looked—and there lay the beauteous Como, with her waters of sapphire, sparkling as if gemmed with a thousand diamonds, in the beams of the mid-day sun, her banks studded with innumerable villas, white as Parian marble. We reached Colico in time to take the steamer to the foot of the lake. At the small town of Como we found the train waiting to convey us to Milan.
I will not here detain my readers to describe the fine Cathedral, with its lofty dome, filled with that “dim religious light,” which insensibly recalls us from the multiform distractions of daily life, and disposes the mind to devotion. I pity the man who could enter such an edifice without breathing a prayer, however short, to the Author of all good. I do not envy him, if he could leave that sacred building, and not feel, at least momentarily, the desire to become “a wiser and a better man.”
We remained but one day in Milan—just glanced at Padua, Mantua, Verona—all interesting cities in themselves, but still more so from the association of their names in the divine comedies of the “sweet swan of Avon,” our own immortal Shakespeare.—These fair cities were powerless to arrest our steps. A fever was upon our spirits, which brooked not delay—and wherefore? Beautiful city of my dreams! thou “sea Cybele,” rising from the blue waters of the Adriatic, with thy numerous palaces and thy countless spires, gleaming so white in the pure Italian moonlight—was it not to look upon thy loveliness as in a vision, that we pressed onward, and still onward, as the young lover to greet his beloved. The stormy ocean kisses thy marble feet in homage—wert thou not his bride of old?—Thou most silent Queen, dost thou mourn in voiceless grief the decay of thy sculptured halls, once so brilliant in the festive scene, ere yet untrodden by the armed heel of the ruthless Saxon? Or dost thou weep in thy desolation for thy dark-eyed sons, whose godlike brows are bowed down, and whose cheeks pale beneath the yoke of the stranger? Oh, Garibaldi! hero of the lion heart, how long wilt thou leave her in her anguish, a slave amid slaves!
Fairy-like and unreal appeared that city to us, and yet so like my young imaginings, that I sometimes doubted whether I actually beheld fair Venice with my waking eyes. Those hearse-like gondolas, how silently do they thread the streets; only the ceaseless plash of the water is heard on the steps of the palaces—now, alas! crumbling into ruins. Looking on the Piazza di San Marco, I could not divest myself of the idea that I beheld a scene at the opera—there was the Basilico, the costumes, the moonlight—all that I had seen so frequently portrayed at Covent Garden, and her Majesty’s theatre. Nor was music wanting to complete the illusion. Airs from Marino Faliero, Othello, and other familiar strains, were played by the Austrian band; and as we sipped our coffee, or ate our ices, seated under the trees in this beautiful piazza, Evelyn would declare that it was not possible to live at Venice without an Amoroso, and even my old maidhood confessed that the softly voluptuous breezes, the dream-like beauty of the city, the seclusion of the gondolas—all spake to the fancy, of love, mystery, and romance.
