University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

While Flora was listlessly gazing at Monte Pincio
from the solitude of her room in the Via delle
Quattro Fontane, Rosabella was looking at the same object,
seen at a greater distance, over intervening houses, from
her high lodgings in the Corso. She could see the road
winding like a ribbon round the hill, with a medley of
bright colors continually moving over it. But she was absorbed
in revery, and they floated round and round before
her mental eye, like the revolving shadows of a magic
lantern.

She was announced to sing that night, as the new Spanish
prima donna, La Señorita Rosita Campaneo; and
though she had been applauded by manager and musicians
at the rehearsal that morning, her spirit shrank from the
task. Recent letters from America had caused deep melancholy;
and the idea of singing, not con amore, but as a
performer before an audience of entire strangers, filled her
with dismay. She remembered how many times she and
Flora and Gerald had sung together from Norma; and an
oppressive feeling of loneliness came over her. Returning
from rehearsal, a few hours before, she had seen a young
Italian girl, who strongly reminded her of her lost sister.
“Ah!” thought she, “if Flora and I had gone out into the
world together, to make our own way, as Madame first intended,
how much sorrow and suffering I might have been
spared!” She went to the piano, where the familiar music
of Norma lay open before her, and from the depths of her

saddened soul gushed forth, “Ah, bello a me Ritorno.” The
last tone passed sighingly away, and as her hands lingered
on the keys, she murmured, “Will my heart pass into it
there, before that crowd of strange faces, as it does here?”

“To be sure it will, dear,” responded Madame, who had
entered softly and stood listening to the last strains.

“Ah, if all would hear with your partial ears!” replied
Rosabella, with a glimmering smile. “But they
will not. And I may be so frightened that I shall lose my
voice.”

“What have you to be afraid of, darling?” rejoined Madame.
“It was more trying to sing at private parties of
accomplished musicians, as you did in Paris; and especially
at the palace, where there was such an élite company. Yet
you know that Queen Amelia was so much pleased with
your performance of airs from this same opera, that she
sent you the beautiful enamelled wreath you are to wear to-night.”

“What I was singing when you came in wept itself out
of the fulness of my heart,” responded Rosabella. “This
dreadful news of Tulee and the baby unfits me for anything.
Do you think there is no hope it may prove untrue?”

“You know the letter explicitly states that my cousin
and his wife, the negro woman, and the white baby, all died
of yellow-fever,” replied Madame. “But don't reproach
me for leaving them, darling. I feel badly enough about
it, already. I thought it would be healthy so far out of
the city; and it really seemed the best thing to do with the
poor little bambino, until we could get established somewhere.”

“I did not intend to reproach you, my kind friend,”

answered Rosa. “I know you meant it all for the best.
But I had a heavy presentiment of evil when you first told
me they were left. This news makes it hard for me to
keep up my heart for the efforts of the evening. You
know I was induced to enter upon this operatic career
mainly by the hope of educating that poor child, and providing
well for the old age of you and Papa Balbino, as I
have learned to call my good friend, the Signor. And
poor Tulee, too, — how much I intended to do for her! No
mortal can ever know what she was to me in the darkest
hours of my life.”

“Well, poor Tulee's troubles are all over,” rejoined
Madame, with a sigh; “and bambinos escape a great deal
of suffering by going out of this wicked world. For, between
you and I, dear, I don't believe one word about the
innocent little souls staying in purgatory on account of not
being baptized.”

“O, my friend, if you only knew!” exclaimed Rosa,
in a wild, despairing tone. But she instantly checked herself,
and said: “I will try not to think of it; for if I do, I
shall spoil my voice; and Papa Balbino would be dreadfully
mortified if I failed, after he had taken so much pains
to have me brought out.”

“That is right, darling,” rejoined Madame, patting her
on the shoulder. “I will go away, and leave you to rehearse.”

Again and again Rosa sang the familiar airs, trying to
put soul into them, by imagining how she would feel if she
were in Norma's position. Some of the emotions she
knew by her own experience, and those she sang with her
deepest feeling.

“If I could only keep the same visions before me that I

have here alone, I should sing well to-night,” she said to
herself; “for now, when I sing `Casta Diva,' I seem to be
sitting with my arm round dear little Flora, watching the
moon as it rises above the dark pines on that lonely
island.”

At last the dreaded hour came. Rosa appeared on the
stage with her train of priestesses. The orchestra and the
audience were before her; and she knew that Papa and
Mamma Balbino were watching her from the side with anxious
hearts. She was very pale, and her first notes were
a little tremulous. But her voice soon became clear and
strong; and when she fixed her eyes on the moon, and
sang “Casta Diva,” the fulness and richness of the tones
took everybody by surprise.

“Bis! Bis!” cried the audience; and the chorus was not
allowed to proceed till she had sung it a second and third
time. She courtesied her acknowledgments gracefully.
But as she retired, ghosts of the past went with her; and
with her heart full of memories, she seemed to weep in
music, while she sang in Italian, “Restore to mine affliction
one smile of love's protection.” Again the audience
shouted, “Bis! Bis!”

The duet with Adalgisa was more difficult; for she had
not yet learned to be an actress, and she was embarrassed
by the consciousness of being an object of jealousy to the
seconda donna, partly because she was prima, and partly
because the tenor preferred her. But when Adalgisa
sang in Italian the words, “Behold him!” she chanced to
raise her eyes to a box near the stage, and saw the faces
of Gerald Fitzgerald and his wife bending eagerly toward
her. She shuddered, and for an instant her voice failed
her. The audience were breathless. Her look, her attitude,

her silence, her tremor, all seemed inimitable acting.
A glance at the foot-lights and at the orchestra recalled
the recollection of where she was, and by a strong effort
she controlled herself; though there was still an agitation
in her voice, which the audience and the singers thought to
be the perfection of acting. Again she glanced at Fitzgerald,
and there was terrible power in the tones with
which she uttered, in Italian, “Tremble, perfidious one!
Thou knowest the cause is ample.”

Her eyes rested for a moment on Mrs. Fitzgerald, and
with a wonderful depth of pitying sadness, she sang, “O,
how his art deceived thee!”

The wish she had formed was realized. She was enabled
to give voice to her own emotions, forgetful of the
audience for the time being. And even in subsequent
scenes, when the recollection of being a performer returned
upon her, her inward excitation seemed to float her onward,
like a great wave.

Once again her own feelings took her up, like a tornado,
and made her seem a wonderful actress. In the scene
where Norma is tempted to kill her children, she fixed her
indignant gaze full upon Fitzgerald, and there was an indescribable
expression of stern resolution in her voice, and
of pride in the carriage of her queenly head, while she
sang: “Disgrace worse than death awaits them. Slavery?
No! never!”

Fitzgerald quailed before it. He grew pale, and slunk
back in the box. The audience had never seen the part
so conceived, and a few criticised it. But her beauty and
her voice and her overflowing feeling carried all before her;
and this, also, was accepted as a remarkable inspiration of
theatrical genius.

When the wave of her own excitement was subsiding,
the magnetism of an admiring audience began to affect her
strongly. With an outburst of fury, she sang, “War!
War!” The audience cried, “Bis! Bis!” and she sang
it as powerfully the second time.

What it was that had sustained and carried her through
that terrible ordeal, she could never understand.

When the curtain dropped, Fitzgerald was about to rush
after her; but his wife caught his arm, and he was obliged
to follow. It was an awful penance he underwent, submitting
to this necessary restraint; and while his soul was
seething like a boiling caldron, he was obliged to answer
evasively to Lily's frequent declaration that the superb
voice of this Spanish prima donna was exactly like the
wonderful voice that went wandering round the plantation,
like a restless ghost.

Papa and Mamma Balbino were waiting to receive the
triumphant cantatrice, as she left the stage. “Brava!
Brava!” shouted the Signor, in a great fever of excitement;
but seeing how pale she looked, he pressed her hand
in silence, while Madame wrapped her in shawls. They
lifted her into the carriage as quickly as possible, where
her head drooped almost fainting on Madame's shoulder.
It required them both to support her unsteady steps, as
they mounted the stairs to their lofty lodging. She told
them nothing that night of having seen Fitzgerald; and,
refusing all refreshment save a sip of wine, she sank on
the bed utterly exhausted.