“That is certainly the best way to forget her,”
said Merton. Glyndon seized his hat and sword,
and was gone.
CHAPTER VII.
She was seated outside her door, the young actress.
The sea, which in that heavenly bay literally seems
to sleep in the arms of the shore, bounded the view
in front; while to the right, not far off, rose the
dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day
is daily brought to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or
compare with the Cavern of Pausilippo the archway
of Highgate Hill. There were a few fishermen
loitering by the cliffs, on which their nets were
hung up to dry; and, at a distance, the sound of some
rustic pipe (more common at that day than in this),
mingled now and then with the bells of the lazy mules,
broke the voluptuous silence,—the silence
of declining noon on the shores of Naples. Never
till you have enjoyed it, never till you have felt
its enervating but delicious charm, believe that you
can comprehend all the meaning of the dolce far niente;
and when that luxury has been known, when you have
breathed the atmosphere of fairy land, then you will
no longer wonder why the heart ripens with so sudden
and wild a power beneath the rosy skies and amidst
the glorious foliage of the South.
The young actress was seated by the door of her house;
overhead a rude canvas awning sheltered her from the
sun; on her lap lay the manuscript of a new part in
which she was shortly to appear. By her side
was the guitar on which she had been practising the
airs that were to ravish the ears of the cognoscenti.
But the guitar had been thrown aside in despair;
her voice this morning did not obey her will.
The manuscript lay unheeded, and the eyes of the
actress were fixed on the broad, blue deep beyond.
In the unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced
the abstraction of her mind. Her beautiful hair
was gathered up loosely, and partially bandaged by
a kerchief, whose purple color seemed to deepen the
golden hue of the tresses. A stray curl escaped,
and fell down the graceful neck. A loose morning
robe, girded by a sash, left the breeze that came
ever and anon from the sea to die upon the bust half
disclosed, and the tiny slipper, that Cinderella might
have worn, seemed a world too wide for the tiny foot
which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat
of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks
and gave an unwonted languor to the large dark eyes.
In all the pomp of her stage attire, in all the flush
of excitement before the intoxicating lamps, never
had Isabel looked so lovely.
By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,
stood Gionetta, with her hands thrust up to the elbow
in two huge recesses on either side her gown,—pockets,
indeed, they might be called by courtesy; such pockets
as Beelzebub’s grandmother might have shaped
for herself, bottomless pits in miniature.
Copyrights
Zicci — Volume 01 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
