“Papa,” said Isabel, pointing to a plate before her, on which a small onion shone like silver, “do you recognize that vegetable?”
“I recognose it,” replied Mr. Vane, who would sometimes play upon words.
“Well, I propose that we agree to divide it in four parts, each a little larger than the last, the largest for you, the smallest for Bianca, and that we all eat our portions, and so find no fault with each other.”
Bianca instantly declined the invitation, and blushed deeply when they rallied her on her daintiness.
“These onions are very delicate and sweet,” the Signora said. “I used to avoid them, till one day I received a call from a personage of the most dignified position and unexceptionable manners, from whose breath I perceived, in the course of the conversation, that he had been eating these little onions. But the faint odor that reached me as he spoke was as though a rose and an onion had been grafted together. Since then I have eaten without scruple.”
But Bianca still declined, still blushing. Why? Was it that her affection for the friend ever tenderly remembered had so consecrated her to him that nothing but what was sweetest and purest must touch where his image was enshrined, whether he were present or absent? She was quite extreme enough in her sensitive delicacy for such a thought.
Supper over, they went out into a loggia attached to their sala and overhanging the steep mountainside, and watched the sun go down over the sea. The globe of fire had already touched the water-line, that by day showed only like a line of purple cloud, and kindled it to an intense lustre; and, as they looked, there was half a sun above the horizon, and another half visible as though seen through the transparent edge of the world over which it disappeared; then, without diminishing, it dropped out of sight, leaving an ineffable, silent glory over the scene. The fire of the sea faded to a faint gold, the rosy violet of the Campagna changed to a deep purple, and Earth, raising her shadowy hands, put aside the curtaining light of day, and looked out at the stars.
The sisters withdrew presently, and left the two elders to admire the beauties of nature at their leisure. Isabel, screened off in one corner of the sala, made voluminous notes of her experiences, and planned a wonderful story, into which they should all be woven. Seated on a footstool, with a brass lamp hanging to the back of a chair near her, and her writing on her knees, she saw one character after another emerge from the shades and take form and individuality before her eyes, as if they grew there independent of her will. They spoke and moved of themselves, and she only looked and listened. Now and then some trait, some feature, some word, was such as she had seen in real life, but these people were not portraits, though they might have such resemblances, and even might have been suggested by persons she had known. The shades grew more and more alive, gathering into substance. Stone walls built themselves up silently and with a
more than Aladdin-like celerity, and gardens burst into instantaneous bloom. If she willed the sea present, its waves rolled up to her feet in foam, or caught and tossed her in their strong arms; if she called for forests, swiftly their darkening branches shut her in, and her light feet trod their dry, crackling twigs and rich, disordered flowers. The very accidents of a great pine-cone to stumble over, or an unexpected lizard running across the path, were there. The dull walls of the room she sat in, the rough bricks under her feet, the crowded town about her, were as though they were not. She was free of the world.
O precious gift of the magical lamp! which, at a touch, calls about its possessor all that men wish, and work, and strive for of earthly good, without the pain or responsibilities of earthly possession; which gives the rose without its thorn, the wine without its lees, the friend without the doubt, the triumph without disappointment! Happy they who, when what we call real life presses too hard or becomes too dull, can put it aside for the time, and enter a world of their own, for ever beautiful and satisfying, who, walking the common street, see things unseen of common eyes, and for whom many a beauty smiles under an ugly mask.