CHAPTER VIII.
AT dusk they hurriedly drank some of the thin yellow hotel‐tea; and then hastened to the theatre across the twilit street and square, where the garlands of Venetian lanterns were beginning to shine like jewels against the pale‐blue evening sky. Hamlin offered Anne Brown his arm, but she asked him to give it to Winnie Perry.
“Mildred shall take mine,” she said—“that’s the best way in case of a crowd.”
A crowd, alas! there was not; the liveried theatre servants (doubtless the same, in yellow striped waistcoats and drab gaiters, who carried out Semiramis’s throne, when the drop‐scene fell) made profuse bows to the little party, and handed them at least half‐a‐dozen play‐ page: 100 bills playbills , each as large as an ordinary flag. The children had never been in a theatre before, and were in a high state of delight at the lights, the gilding, the red plush, the scraping of fiddles; especially at being in a box, although the box on this occasion cost only about half as much as would a single seat in an English playhouse. Gradually the theatre filled; the boxes with people of quality from surrounding villas, gentlemen displaying an ampleness of shirt‐front, and ladies an ampleness of bosom conceivable only by the provincial mind; the pit with townsfolk and officers: the whole company staring with eyes and opera‐glasses, talking, singing, rapping with sticks and sabres till the overture began to roll out, when the audience immediately set up a kind of confused hum, supposed to be the melody of the piece, and which half drowned the meagre orchestra.
Then the opera began—an opera such as only the misery and genius of Italy could produce. There was a triumphal procession of six page: 101 ragamuffins in cotton trousers and with brass kettle‐covers on their heads, marching round and round the stage, bearing trophies of paper altar‐flowers and coffee‐biggins; there was a row of loathsome females, bloated or fleshless, in draggled robes too short or too long, shrieking out of tune in the queen’s chamber—and four rapscallions in nightgowns and Tam‐o’Shanters, and beards which would not stick on, standing round the little spirit‐lamp burning in front of Baal’s statue; there was the little black leathern portmanteau containing the Babylonian regalia, which a nigger with a black‐crape face carried after the Prince Arsaces; and there was the “magnificent apartment in the palace of Nineveh, disclosing a delicious view of the famous hanging gardens,” as described by the libretto, and furnished solely with a rush‐bottomed chair and a deal table, the table‐cloth of which was so short that Semiramis was obliged to lean her arm on it to prevent its slipping off, which, however, it finally did. Moreover, an incal‐ page: 102 culable incalculable amount of singing out of tune and pummelling one’s chest in moments of passion. No training, no dresses, no scenery, no orchestra. Still in this miserable performance there was an element of beauty and dignity, a something in harmony with the grand situation and glorious music: a splendidly made Semiramis, quite regal in her tawdry robes, who showered out volleys of roulades as a bird might shower out its trills; another young woman, plain, tall, and slight, playing the prince in corselet and helmet, with quite magnificent attitudes of defiance and command, with bare extended arm and supple wrist. The two girls who played the principal parts were sisters, and although they had certainly never sung much with a teacher, they must have sung a great deal together; and their voices and style melted into each other quite as if it were all a spontaneous effusion on their part. All the realities which money can get, dress, voice, training, accessories, scenery, utterly wanting; but instead, in the midst of pauperism, something which money page: 103 cannot always get, a certain ideal beauty and charm. Anne Brown was intensely interested in the performance; indeed, quite as much so, though in another way, as the children. During the intervals between the acts, she could speak of nothing but the story of Semiramis, and wonder what would happen next. Hamlin could scarcely help laughing at the concern which she manifested each time that the hero Arsace was bullied by the wicked Assur; but he could not laugh at the tragic way in which she conceived the whole situation. To him all that florid music of Rossini would already have destroyed any seriousness there might have been in the matter; but to Anne Brown it seemed as if all these splendid vocalisations took the place of the visible pomp and magnificence of Assyrian royalty: for her the heroes and heroines, the magi and satraps, were clad, not in the calico and tinsel of the theatre tailor, but in the musical splendours of Rossini. Hamlin, to say the truth, found the performance very wearisome; he had been page: 104 bored by Semiramide too often with Tietiens and Trebelli, to find it particularly interesting at the Teatro del Giglio of Lucca. He sat looking on listlessly, not so much at the stage as at the girl who was leaning out of the box before him, watching each movement of her hand and neck, as she devoured the performance with eyes and ears. But when at last there came the grand scene between Semiramis and her son, whatsoever was good in the performance suddenly burst forth; the two young women sang with a sort of spontaneous passion, a delight in the music and their own voices and themselves; and when, Semiramis having let down her back hair (as distressed heroines always do) from utter despair, Prince Arsaces, not to be outdone, pulled off his helmet, letting down his or her back hair also, and the two sank into each other’s arms and began the great duet, even Hamlin felt in a kind of way that this was passionate, and tragic, and grand. Anne Brown was seated sidewise in the front of the box, resting her mass page: 105 of iron‐black hair on her hand, her other hand lying loosely on her knees. Her chest heaved under her lace mantilla, and her parted lips quivered. It seemed to Hamlin as if this were the real Semiramis, the real mysterious king‐woman of antiquity—as if the music belonged in some sort of ideal way to her. When the curtain had fallen amid the yells of applause, she remained silent, letting Hamlin help her on with her shawl without turning her eyes from the stage. The lights were rapidly put out.
“We must go, Miss Brown,” cried Hamlin, “otherwise we shall be left in the dark.”
She turned, took little Winnie by the hand, and followed him, who led the elder Perry child, prattling loudly, to the stairs. There was a great crowd going down, whistling and humming tunes from the opera. From the force of habit Hamlin again offered Anne Brown his arm. But instead of accepting it, she, so to speak, rapidly plucked little Winnie from the ground, and raised her in her arms as if she were a feather.
page: 106“Please let me carry that child,” cried Hamlin.
“Oh no,” she answered quietly. “I don’t mind carrying her at all; but she’s too heavy for you, sir.”
Out in the square the carriage was awaiting them in the bright starlight, where the red and green lamps were already dying out among the plane‐trees. In a minute they were rattling through the narrow streets, and out of the town by the dark tree‐masses of the bastions. The bells of the horses jingled as they went; the melancholy shrilling of insects rose from the fields all round; the vine‐garlands creaked in the wind. The two children were speedily asleep—one with her head on Hamlin’s shoulder, the other wrapped in her nurse’s shawl. Anne Brown bent over the side of the waggonette, a dark outline, the damp night breeze catching her hair. Neither spoke. Hamlin felt a sense of guilt stealing over him; of guilt for nothing very definite; of guilt towards no one else, but towards himself. page: 107 The drive passed like a dream. Suddenly the wheels grated on the gravel of the villa garden; dogs barked; lights appeared; the children were lifted out of the carriage asleep; and the voice of Perry whispered to Hamlin—
“I caught it nicely when I came home—I don’t know why, upon my soul! I’m sure I wish I had remained and amused myself with you.”
“I wish you had,” said Hamlin quite seriously, always with the sense of vague guilt towards himself; then added,—
“By the way, old man, I fear I really must go on to Florence to‐morrow afternoon.”
