Prince Fortunatus by William Black (ebook reader with highlighter TXT) 📖

her--her spouse--they have great good-fortune--they get a grand prize in the lottery--then he says, 'Carmeluccia, we will go to Paris--we will go to Paris, Carmeluccia--and why not Nina also?' Very kind, was it not?--but Andrea is always kind, so also Carmela, to me. Then I am in Paris. I say, 'It is not far to London; I go to London; I go to London and see Leo.' Perhaps I get an engagement--oh, no, no, no, you shall not laugh!" she broke in--though it was she herself who was laughing, and not he at all. "I am improved--oh, yes, a little--a little improved--you remember old Pandiani he always say my voice not bad, but that agilita was for me very difficult."

He remembered very well; but he also remembered that when he left Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and fiorituri generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had met with its due reward. But when the young lady modestly hinted that she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear whether she had not acquired a good deal more of flexibility than her voice used to possess, and when he had fetched the music and taken it to the piano for her, he was not a little surprised to see her select Ambroise Thomas's "Io son Titania." And he was still more astonished when he found her singing this difficult piece of music with a brilliancy, an ease, a verve of execution that he had never dreamed of her being able to reach.

"Brava! Brava! Bravissima!--Well, you have improved, Nina!" he exclaimed. "And it isn't only in freedom of production, it is in quality, too, in timbre--my goodness, your voice has ever so much more volume and power! Come, now, try some big, dramatic thing--"

She shook her head.

"No, no, Leo, I know what I do," she said. "I shall never have the grand style--never--but you think I am improved? Yes. Well, now, I sing something else."

He forgot all about her lack of a chaperon; they were fellow-students again, as in the old days at Naples, when they worked hard (and also played a little), when they comforted each other, and strove to bear with equanimity the grumbling and querulousness of that always-dissatisfied old Pandiani. Signorina Rossi now sang the Shadow Song from "Dinorah;" then she sang the Jewel Song from "Faust;" she sang "Caro nome" from "Rigoletto," or anything else that he could suggest; and her runs and shakes and scale passages were delivered with a freedom and precision that again and again called forth his applause.

"And you have never sung in public, Nina?" he asked.

"At one concert, yes, in Naples," the young lady made answer. "And at two or three matinees" And then she turned to him, with a bright look. "You know this, Leo?--I am offered--no--I was offered--an engagement to sing in opera; oh, yes; it was the impresario from Malta--he comes to Naples--Pandiani makes us all sing to him--then will I go to Malta, to the opera there? No!"

"Why not, Nina? Surely that was a good opening," he said.

She turned away from him again, and her fingers wandered lightly over the keys of the piano.

"I always say to me, 'Some day I am in England; the English give much money at concerts; perhaps that is better.'"

"So you've come over to England to get a series of concert-room engagements; is that it, Nina?"

She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.

"Perhaps. One must wait and see. It is not my ambition. No. The light opera, that is--popular?--is it right?"

"Yes, yes."

"It is very popular in England," said the young Italian lady, with her eyes coming back from the music-sheets to seek those of her friend." Well, Leo, if I take a small part to begin, have I voice sufficient? What do you think? No; be frank; say to yourself, 'I am Pandiani; here is Antonia Rossi troubling me once more; it is useless; go away, Antonia Rossi, and not trouble me!' Well, Maestro Pandiani, what you say?"

"So you want to go on the stage, Nina?" said he; and again the dread of finding himself responsible for this solitary young stranger sent a qualm to his heart. It was an embarrassing position altogether; but at the same time the thought of shaking her off--of getting free from this responsibility by telling a white lie or two and persuading her to go back to Naples--that thought never even occurred to him. To shake off his old comrade Nina? He certainly would have preferred, for many reasons, that she should have taken to concert-room business; but if she were relying on him for an introduction to the lyric stage, why, he was bound to help her in every possible way. "You know you've got an excellent voice," he continued. "And a very little stage training would fit you for a small part in comedy-opera, if that is what you're thinking of, as a beginning. But I don't know that you would like it, Nina. You see, you would have to become under-study for the lady who has the part at present; and they'd probably want you to sing in the chorus; and you'd get a very small salary--at first, you know, until you were qualified to take one of the more important parts--and then you might get into a travelling company--"

"A small part?" said she, with much cheerfulness. "Oh, yes; why not? I must learn."

"But I don't know that you would like it," he said, still ruefully. "You see, Nina, you might have to dress in the same room with two or three of the chorus-girls--"

"And then?" she said, with a little dramatic gesture, and an elevation of her beautifully formed black eyebrows. "Leo, you never saw my lodgings with the family Debernardi--you have only mount the stairs--"

"My goodness, Nina, I could guess what the inside of the rooms was like, if they were anything like those interminable and horrid stairs!" he exclaimed, with a laugh. "And you who were always so fond of pretty things, and flowers, and always so particular when we went to a restaurant--to live with the Debernardis!"

"Ah, Leo, you imagine not why?" she said, also laughing, and when she laughed her milk-white teeth shone merrily. "Old Pietro Debernardi he lives in England some years; he speaks English, perhaps not very well, but he speaks; then he teach me as he knows; and when it is possible I go on the Risposta and sail over to Capri, and all the way, and all the return, I listen, and listen, and listen to the English people; and I remember, and I practise alone in my own room, and I say, 'Leo, he must not ridicule me, when I go to England.'"

"Ridicule you!" said he, indignantly. "I wish I could speak Italian as freely as you speak English, Nina!"

"Oh, you speak Italian very well," said she. "But why you speak still the Neapolitan dialetto--dialect, is it right?--that you hear in the shops and the streets? Ah, I remember you are so proud of it, and when I try to teach you proper Italian, you laugh--you wish to speak like Sabetta Debernardi, and Giacomo, and the others. That is the fault to learn by ear, instead of the books correctly. And you have not forgotten yet!"

"Well, Nina," he resumed, "I don't seem to have frightened you with the possibility of your having to dress in the same room with two or three chorus-girls whom you don't know; and in fact, if I happened to be acquainted with the theatre, I dare say I could get the manager to make sure you were to dress along with some nice girl, who would show you how to make-up, and all that. But you would get a very small salary to begin with, Nina; perhaps only thirty shillings a week--and an extra pound a week when you had to take up your under-study duties--however, that need not trouble you, because we are old comrades, Nina, and while you are in England my purse is yours--"

She looked at him doubtfully.

"Ah, you don't understand," he said, gently. "It's only this, Nina: I have plenty of money; if you are a good comrade and a good friend, you will take from me what you want--always--at any moment--"

The pretty, pale-olive face flushed quickly, and for a brief second she glanced at him with grateful eyes; but it was perhaps to cover her embarrassment that she now rose from the piano, and pretended to be tired of the music and of these professional schemes.

"It is enough of booziness," she said, lightly; "come, Leo, will you go for a small walk?--have you time?"

"Oh, yes, I have time," said he, "but you must not say booziness, Nina? it is bizness."

"Beezness!--beezness!" she said, smiling. "It is enough of beezness. You go for a walk with me--yes? How beautiful the weather!" she continued, in a suddenly altered tone, as she looked out at the sunlit foliage of the Green Park; and then she murmured, almost to herself, in those soft Italian vowel sounds:

"Ah, Leo mio, che sarei felice d'essere in campagna!"

It was a kind of sigh; perhaps that was the reason she had inadvertently relapsed into her own tongue. And as they went down the stairs, and he opened the door for her, the few words he addressed to her were also in Italian.

"The country!" he said. "We will just step across the street, Nina, and you will find yourself in what is quite as pretty as the country at this time of year. You may fancy yourself sitting in the Villa Reale, if you could only have a flash of blue sea underneath the branches of the trees."

But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was telling him about the people in Naples whom he used to know, and of their various fortunes and circumstances. Sometimes neither of them spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant--the fresh foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot light. It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under a fragrant hawthorn, Nina's lustrous dark eyes became wistful and absent, and she said,

"Yes, Leo, it is as you say in the house--it all appears a dream."

"What appears like a dream to you?" her companion asked.

"To be in London, sitting with you, Leo, and hearing you speak," she answered, in a low voice. "Often I think of it--often I think of London--wondering what it is like--and I ask myself, 'Will Leo be the same after his great renown? Are we friends as before?' and now I am here, and London is not dark and terrible with smoke, but we sit in gardens--oh, very beautiful!--and Leo