They met this time as old acquaintances; and that glance of intellectual freemasonry which was interchanged between them, tended not a little to increase their feeling of intimacy.
“And you too are going into Italy?” she said. “But how is it that you select this route?”
“I made an excursion,” he replied, “last summer into Switzerland and the north of Italy, which accounts for my turning the Alps on this occasion.”
The vessel now weighed anchor. Departure—and a beautiful sunset—made the view delightful. But daylight soon deserted them. Mr. Bloomfield came to take the ladies down to the cabin, where a meal, which might be called either dinner or supper, was preparing. Mildred would rather have remained on deck; but as he had expressed his intention of doing so, she thought it better to descend with the rest.
Amongst the company in the cabin she immediately recognised one of her fellow-travellers of the previous day. There was the elderly gentleman with his black wooden shoes, and his short dry cough, gently but strenuously chiding the garçon for his delay. In these vessels the passage-money includes provisions, so that, eat or not, you pay; and our experienced traveller, having taken due precaution, as he soon afterwards informed all the company, not to dine, was very excusably somewhat impatient. Mildred was amused to find him supporting his character throughout with perfect consistency. Although every one but himself was suffering from heat, he—anxious only for the public good, and especially for the comfort of the ladies—maintained a strict watch upon both door and, window, and would have kept both, if possible, hermetically closed. And as the waiters handed round the soup, or any thing that was, fluid, he, with a mild solemnity of manner, warned them not to arroser his coat, not to sprinkle that excellent garment which was doubtless destined, under so considerate a master, to see many years of service.
Chapter V.
The next morning Mildred had risen with the dawn, leaving her aunt and the rest of the passengers locked in their slumbers. What a delightful sensation awaited her as she rose from the close cabin of the steamer, and, ascending upon deck, met the breeze, the sunrise, the dancing waters of the Mediterranean, and hailed at her side the mountain coast of Italy! It was the first time in her life she had seen the blue hill crested with the snowy summits of the more distant and lofty mountain,—a combination which the art of the painter is daily attempting to imitate, but the etherial effect of which it never can at all approach. What an enchantment is the first view of the greater beauties of nature! The first lake—the first mountain—the first time we behold the eternal snow, white as the summer cloud, but which passes not away—is an era in our existence,—a first love without its disappointment. The inhabitant of a mountainous country, though he may boast his greater intimacy with nature, though he may have linked all the feelings of home with her grandeur and sublimity, can never know what the dweller in the plain and the city has felt, who, with matured taste, with imagination cultivated by literature, stands, in all the vigour of his mind, for the first time before the mountain! It was but a distant view of the Alps that Mildred now obtained; but that snowy ridge against the blue sky—that moved not, that was not cloud—exercised an indescribable fascination over her.
Winston was also soon upon deck; but, observing how well she was employed, he was careful not to disturb her. He well knew how essential was solitude to the highest gratification which either art or nature afford. It is but a secondary or declining excitement that we feel when we are restless to communicate it to another. The heart is but half full of its object, that, to complete its pleasure, craves for sympathy.
It was not till they were within sight of Genoa that he ventured to approach the side of the vessel where she was sitting.
“Now,” said he, with a smile, “it is permissible to talk. We approach the shore too near for picturesque effect; and the town of Genoa, seen here from the bay, whatever tourists may assert, is neither more nor less than what a sea-port town may be expected to be.”