Part 36 (2/2)
”Oh, no! you cannot be,” said Miss Fane: ”pray come! I know you only want to go to that terrible New House. I wonder what Albert can find to amuse him there; I fear no good. Men never congregate together for any beneficial purpose. I am sure, with all his gastronomical affectations, he would not, if all were right, prefer the most exquisite dinner in the world to our society. As it is, we scarcely see him a moment. I think that, you are the only one who has not deserted the saloon. For once, give up the New House.”
Vivian smiled at Miss Fane's warmth, and could not persist in his refusal, although she did dilate most provokingly on the absence of her cousin. He therefore soon joined them.
”Lady Madeleine is a.s.sisting me in a most important work, Mr. Grey. I am making drawings of the Valley of the Rhine. I know that you are acquainted with the scenery; you can, perhaps, a.s.sist me with your advice about this view of old Hatto's Castle.”
Vivian was so completely master of every spot in the Rhineland that he had no difficulty in suggesting the necessary alterations. The drawings were vivid representations of the scenery which they professed to depict, and Vivian forgot his melancholy as he attracted the attention of the fair artist to points of interest unknown or unnoticed by the guide-books and the diaries.
”You must look forward to Italy with great interest, Miss Fane?”
”The greatest! I shall not, however, forget the Rhine, even among the Apennines.”
”Our intended fellow-travellers, Lord Mounteney and his family, are already at Milan,” said Lady Madeleine to Vivian; ”we were to have joined their party. Lady Mounteney is a Trevor.”
”I have had the pleasure of meeting Lord Mounteney in England, at Sir Berdmore Scrope's: do you know him?”
”Slightly. The Mounteneys pa.s.s the winter at Rome, where I hope we shall join them. Do you know the family intimately?”
”Mr. Ernest Clay, a nephew of his Lords.h.i.+p's, I have seen a great deal of; I suppose, according to the adopted phraseology, I ought to describe him as my friend, although I am ignorant where he is at present; and although, unless he is himself extremely altered, there scarcely can be two persons who now more differ in their pursuits and tempers than ourselves.”
”Ernest Clay! is he a friend of yours? He is at Munich, attached to the Legation. I see you smile at the idea of Ernest Clay drawing up a protocol!”
”Madeleine, you have never read me Caroline Mounteney's letter, as you promised,” said Miss Fane; ”I suppose full of raptures; 'the Alps and Apennines, the Pyrenaean and the River Po?'”
”By no means; the whole letter is filled with an account of the ballet at La Scala, which, according to Caroline, is a thousand times more interesting than Mont Blanc or the Simplon.”
”One of the immortal works of Vigano, I suppose,” said Vivian; ”he has raised the ballet of action to an equality with tragedy. I have heard my father mention the splendid effect of his Vestale and his Otello.”
”And yet,” said Violet, ”I do not like Oth.e.l.lo to be profaned. It is not for operas and ballets. We require the thrilling words.”
”It is very true; yet Pasta's acting in the opera was a grand performance; and I have myself seldom witnessed a more masterly effect produced by any actor in the world than I did a fortnight ago, at the Opera at Darmstadt, by Wild in Oth.e.l.lo.”
”I think the history of Desdemona is the most affecting of all tales,”
said Miss Fane.
”The violent death of a woman, young, lovely, and innocent, is a.s.suredly the most terrible of tragedies,” observed Vivian.
”I have often asked myself,” said Miss Fane, ”which is the most terrible destiny for the young to endure: to meet death after a life of anxiety and suffering, or suddenly to be cut off in the enjoyment of all things that make life delightful.”
”For my part,” said Vivian, ”in the last instance, I think that death can scarcely be considered an evil. How infinitely is such a destiny to be preferred to that long apprentices.h.i.+p of sorrow, at the end of which we are generally as unwilling to die as at the commencement!”
”And yet,” said Miss Fane, ”there is something fearful in the idea of sudden death.”
”Very fearful,” muttered Vivian, ”in some cases;” for he thought of one whom he had sent to his great account before his time.
”Violet, my dear!” said Lady Madeleine, ”have you finished your drawing of the Bingenloch?” But Miss Fane would not leave the subject.
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