Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/78

Rh That soft, young moonlight above the verdant, billowy fields with their groups of palm-trees, was indescribably beautiful.

I fancied that Jenny Lind was tired of her wandering life and her rôle of singer. She evidently wished for a life of quieter and profounder character. We talked of—marriage and domestic life.

Of a certainty a change of this kind is approaching for Jenny Lind. But will it satisfy her soul, and be enough for her? I doubt.

She left that evening for New Orleans, out of spirits, and not happy in her own mind. The vessel by which she sailed was crowded with Californian adventurers, four hundred it was said, who were returning to New Orleans; and Jenny Lind had just heard a rumour that Captain West, who had brought her over from England to America, had perished in a disastrous voyage at sea. All this depressed her mind, and neither my encouragement—I went on board the vessel to take leave of her, to give her my good wishes and a bouquet of roses—nor the captain's offer of his cabin and saloon where, above deck, she might have remained undisturbed by the Californians below, were able to cheer her. She was pale, and said little. She scarcely looked at my poor roses, although they were the most beautiful I could get in Havanna; when, however, I again was seated in my little gondola, and was already at some distance from the vessel, I saw Jenny Lind lean over the railing towards me.

And all the beautiful regular countenances of the West paled below the beaming, living beauty of expression in the countenance which I then saw, bathed in tears, kissing the roses, kissing her hands to me, glancing, beaming a whole summer of affluent, changing, enchanting, warm, inward life. She felt that she had been cold to me, and she would now make amends for it.