With every touch, the earlier world revived, grew plainer in the sun, till the listener found herself walking with Manisty through paths that cut the Alban Hills in the days of Rome's first imperial glory, listening to his tale of the little goatherd, and of Nemi.
* * * * *
'So the boy—Quintus—left the ploughed lands, and climbed a hill above the sleeping town. And when he reached the summit, he paused and turned him to the west.
'The Latian plain spreads beneath him in the climbing sun; at its edge is the sea in a light of pearl; the white fishing-boats sparkle along the shore. Close at his feet runs a straight road high upon the hill. He can see the country folk on their laden mules and donkeys journeying along it, journeying northwards to the city in the plain that the spurs of the mountain hide from him. His fancy goes with them, along the Appian Way, trotting with the mules. When will his father take him again to Rome to see the shops, and the Forum, and the new white temples, and Cæsar's great palace on the hill?
'Then carelessly his eyes pass southward, and there beneath him in its hollow is the lake—the round blue lake that Diana loves, where are her temple and her shadowy grove. The morning mists lie wreathed above it; the just-leafing trees stand close in the great cup; only a few patches of roof and column reveal the shrine.
'On he moves. His wheaten cake is done. He takes his pipe from his girdle, touches it, and sings.
'His bare feet as he moves tread down the wet flowers. Round him throng the goats; suddenly he throws down his pipe; he runs to a goat heavy with milk; he presses the teats with his quick hands; the milk flows foaming into the wooden cup he has placed below; he drinks, his brown curls sweeping the cup; then he picks up his pipe and walks on proudly before his goats, his lithe body swaying from side to side as he moves, dancing to the music that he makes. The notes float up into the morning air; the echo of them runs round the shadowy hollow of the lake.
'Down trips the boy, parting the dewy branches with his brown shoulders. Around him the mountain side is golden with the broom; at his feet the white cistus covers the rock. The shrubs of the scattered wood send out their scents; and the goats browse upon their shoots.
'But the path sinks gently downward—winding along the basin of the lake.And now the boy emerges from the wood; he stands upon a knoll to rest.
'Ah! sudden and fierce comes the sun!—and there below him in the rich hollow it strikes the temple—Diana's temple and her grove. Out flame the white columns, the bronze roof, the white enclosing walls. Piercingly white the holy and famous place shines among the olives and the fallows; the sun burns upon the marble; Phoebus salutes his great sister. And in the waters of the lake reappear the white columns; the blue waves dance around the shimmering lines; the mists part above them; they rise from the lake, lingering awhile upon the woods.
'The boy lays his hands to his eyes and looks eagerly towards the temple.Nothing. No living creature stirs.
'Often has he been warned by his father not to venture alone within the grove of the goddess. Twice, indeed, on the great June festivals has he witnessed the solemn sacrifices, and the crowds of worshippers, and the torches mirrored in the lake. But without his father, fear has hitherto stayed his steps far from the temple.
'To-day, however, as the sun mounts, and the fresh breeze breaks from the sea, his youth and the wildness of it dance within his blood. He and his goats pass into an olive garden. The red-brown earth has been freshly turned amid the twisted trunks; the goats scatter, searching for the patches of daisied grass still left by the plough. Guiltily the boy looks round him—peers through the olives and their silvery foam of leaves, as they fall past him down the steep. Then like one of his own kids he lowers his head and runs; he leaves his flock under the olives; he slips into a dense ilex-wood, still chill with the morning; he presses towards its edge; panting he climbs a huge and ancient tree that flings its boughs forward above the temple wall; he creeps along a branch among the thick small leaves,—he lifts his head.
'The temple is before him, and the sacred grove. He sees the great terrace, stretching to the lake; he hears the little waves plashing on its buttressed wall.
'Close beneath him, towards the rising and the midday sun there stretches a great niched wall girdling the temple on two sides, each niche a shrine, and in each shrine a cold white form that waits the sun—Apollo the Far-Darter, and the spear-bearing Pallas, and among them that golden Cæsar, of whom the country talks, who has given great gifts to the temple—he and his grandson, the young Gaius.
'The boy strains his eye to see, and as the light strikes into the niche, flames on the gleaming breastplate, and the uplifted hand, he trembles on his branch for fear. Hurriedly he turns his look on the dwellings of the priestesses, where all still sleeps; on the rows of shining pillars that stand round about the temple; on the close-set trees of the grove that stands between it and the lake.
'Hark!—a clanging of metal—of great doors upon their hinges. From the inner temple—from the shrine of the goddess, there comes a man. His head is bound with the priest's fillet; sharply the sun touches his white pointed cap; in his hand he carries a sword.
'Between the temple and the grove there is a space of dazzling light. The man passes into it, turns himself to the east, and raises his hand to his mouth; drawing his robe over his head, he sinks upon the ground, and prostrate there, adores the coming god.
'His prayer lasts but an instant. Rising in haste, he stands looking around him, his sword gathered in his hand. He is a man still young; his stature is more than the ordinary height of men; his limbs are strong and supple. His rich dress, moreover, shows him to be both priest and king. But again the boy among his leaves draws his trembling body close, hiding, like a lizard, when some passing step has startled it from the sun. For on this haggard face the gods have written strange and terrible things; the priest's eyes deep sunk under his shaggy hair dart from side to side in a horrible unrest; he seems a creature separate from his kind—possessed of evil—dedicate to fear.
'In the midst of the temple grove stands one vast ilex,—the tree of trees, sacred to Trivia. The other trees fall back from it in homage; and round it paces the priest, alone in the morning light.
'But his is no holy meditation. His head is thrown back; his ear listens for every sound; the bared sword glitters as he moves …
'There is a rustle among the further trees. Quickly the boy stretches his brown neck; for at the sound the priest crouches on himself; he throws the robe from his right arm; and so waits, ready to strike. The light falls on his pale features, the torment of his brow, the anguish of his drawn lips. Beside the lapping lake, and under the golden morning, he stands as Terror in the midst of Peace.
'Silence again:—only the questing birds call from the olive-woods. Panting, the priest moves onward, racked with sick tremors, prescient of doom.
'But hark! a cry!—and yet another answering—a dark form bursting from the grove—a fierce locked struggle under the sacred tree. The boy crawls to the furthest end of the branch, his eyes starting from his head.
'From the temple enclosure, from the further trees, from the hill around, a crowd comes running; men and white-robed priestesses, women, children even—gathering in haste. But they pause afar off. Not a living soul approaches the place of combat; not a hand gives aid. The boy can see the faces of the virgins who serve the temple. They are pale, but very still. Not a sound of pity escapes their white lips; their ambiguous eyes watch calmly for the issue of the strife.
'And on the further side, at the edge of the grove stand country folk, men in goatskin tunics and leathern hats like the boy's father. And the little goatherd, not knowing what he does, calls to them for help in his shrill voice. But no one heeds; and the priest himself calls no one, entreats no one.
'Ah! The priest wavers—he falls—his white robes are in the dust. The bright steel rises—descends:—the last groan speeds to heaven.
* * * * *
'The victor raised himself from the dead, all stained with the blood and soil of the battle. Quintus gazed upon him astonished. For here was no rude soldier, nor swollen boxer, but a youth merely—a youth, slender and beautiful, fair-haired, and of a fair complexion. His loins were girt with a slave's tunic. Pallid were his young features; his limbs wasted with hunger and toil; his eyes blood-streaked as those of the deer when the dogs close upon its tender life.
'And looking down upon the huddled priest, fallen in his blood upon the dust, he peered long into the dead face, as though he beheld it for the first time. Shudders ran through him; Quintus listened to hear him weep or moan. But at the last, he lifted his head, fiercely straightening his limbs like one who reminds himself of black fate, and things not to be undone. And turning to the multitude, he made a sign. With shouting and wild cries they came upon him; they snatched the purple-striped robe from the murdered priest, and with it they clothed his murderer. They put on him the priest's fillet, and the priest's cap; they hung garlands upon his neck; and with rejoicing and obeisance they led him to the sacred temple….
'And for many hours more the boy remained hidden in the tree, held there by the spell of his terror. He saw the temple ministers take up the body of the dead, and carelessly drag it from the grove. All day long was there crowd and festival within the sacred precinct. But when the shadows began to fall from the ridge of Aricia across the lake; when the new-made priest had offered on Trivia's altar a white steer, nourished on the Alban grass; when he had fed the fire of Vesta; and poured offerings to Virbius the immortal, whom in ancient days great Diana had snatched from the gods' wrath, and hidden here, safe within the Arician wood,—when these were done, the crowd departed and the Grove-King came forth alone from the temple.
'The boy watched what he would do. In his hand he carried the sword, which at the sunrise he had taken from the dead. And he came to the sacred tree that was in the middle of the grove, and he too began to pace about it, glancing from side to side, as that other had done before him. And once when he was near the place where the caked blood still lay upon the ground, the sword fell clashing from his hand, and he flung his two arms to heaven with a hoarse and piercing cry—the cry of him who accuses and arraigns the gods.
'And the boy, shivering, slipped from the tree, with that cry in his ear, and hastily sought for his goats. And when he had found them he drove them home, not staying even to quench his thirst from their swollen udders. And in the shepherd's hut he found his father Cæculus; and sinking down beside him with tears and sobs he told his tale.
'And Cæculus pondered long. And without chiding, he laid his hand upon the boy's head and bade him be comforted. "For," said he, as though he spake with himself—"such is the will of the goddess. And from the furthest times it has happened thus, before the Roman fathers journeyed from the Alban Mount and made them dwellings on the seven hills—before Romulus gave laws,—or any white-robed priest had climbed the Capitol. From blood springs up the sacred office; and to blood it goes! No natural death must waste the priest of Trivia's tree. The earth is hungry for the blood in its strength—nor shall it be withheld! Thus only do the trees bear, and the fields bring forth."
'Astonished, the boy looked at his father, and saw upon his face, as he turned it upon the ploughed lands and the vineyards, a secret and a savage joy. And the little goatherd's mind was filled with terror—nor would his father tell him further what the mystery meant. But when he went to his bed of dried leaves at night, and the moon rose upon the lake, and the great woods murmured in the hollow far beneath him, he tossed restlessly from side to side, thinking of the new priest who kept watch there—of his young limbs and miserable eyes—of that voice which he had flung to heaven. And the child tried to believe that he might yet escape.—But already in his dreams he saw the grove part once more and the slayer leap forth. He saw the watching crowd—and their fierce, steady eyes, waiting thirstily for the spilt blood. And it was as though a mighty hand crushed the boy's heart, and for the first time he shrank from the gods, and from his father,—so that the joy of his youth was darkened within him.'
* * * * *
As he read the last word, Manisty flung the sheets down upon the table beside him, and rising, he began to pace the room with his hands upon his sides, frowning and downcast. When he came to Mrs. Burgoyne's chair he paused beside her—
'I don't see what it has to do with the book. It is time lost'—he said to her abruptly, almost angrily.
'I think not,' she said, smiling at him. But her tone wavered a little, and his look grew still more irritable.
'I shall destroy it!'—he said, with energy—'nothing more intolerable than ornament out of place!'
'Oh don't!—don't alter it at all!' said a quick imploring voice.
Manisty turned in astonishment.
Lucy Foster was looking at him steadily. A glow of pleasure was on her cheek, her beautiful eyes were warm and eager. Manisty for the first time observed her, took note also of the loosened hair and Eleanor's cloak.
'You liked it?' he said with some embarrassment. He had entirely forgotten that she was in the room.
She drew a long breath.
'Yes!'—she said softly, looking down.
He thought that she was too shy to express herself. In reality her feeling was divided between her old enthusiasm and her new disillusion. She would have liked to tell him that his reading had reminded her of the book she loved. But the man, standing beside her, chilled her. She wished she had not spoken. It began to seem to her a piece of forwardness.
'Well, you're very kind'—he said, rather formally—'But I'm afraid it won't do. That lady there won't pass it.'
'What have I said?'—cried Mrs. Burgoyne, protesting.
Manisty laughed. 'Nothing. But you'll agree with me.' Then he gathered up his papers under his arm in a ruthless confusion, and walked away into his study, leaving discomfort behind him.
Mrs. Burgoyne sat silent, a little tired and pale. She too would have liked to praise and to give pleasure. It was not wonderful indeed that the child's fancy had been touched. That thrilling, passionate voice—her own difficulty always was to resist it—to try and see straight in spite of it.
* * * * *
Later that evening, when Miss Foster had withdrawn, Manisty and Mrs. Burgoyne were lingering and talking on a stone balcony that ran along the eastern front of the villa. The Campagna and the sea were behind them. Here, beyond a stretch of formal garden, rose a curved front of wall with statues and plashing water showing dimly in the moonlight; and beyond the wall there was a space of blue and silver lake; and girdling the lake the forest-covered Monte Cavo rose towering into the moonlit sky, just showing on its topmost peak that white speck which once was the temple of the Latian Jupiter, and is now, alas! only the monument of an Englishman's crime against history, art, and Rome. The air was soft, and perfumed with scent from the roses in the side-alleys below. A monotonous bird-note came from the ilex darkness, like the note of a thin passing bell. It was the cry of a small owl, which, in its plaintiveness and changelessness, had often seemed to Manisty and Eleanor the very voice of the Roman night.
Suddenly Mrs. Burgoyne said—'I have a different version of your Nemi story running in my head!—more tragic than yours. My priest is no murderer. He found his predecessor dead under the tree; the place was empty; he took it. He won't escape his own doom, of course, but he has not deserved it. There is no blood on his hand—his heart is pure. There!—I imagine it so.'
There was a curious tremor in her voice, which Manisty, lost in his own thoughts, did not detect. He smiled.
'Well!—you'll compete with Renan. He made a satire out of it. His priest is a moral gentleman who won't kill anybody. But the populace soon settle that. They knock him on the head, as a disturber of religion.'
'I had forgotten—' said Mrs. Burgoyne absently.
'But you didn't like it, Eleanor—my little piece!' said Manisty, after a pause. 'So don't pretend!'
She roused herself at once, and began to talk with her usual eagerness and sympathy. It was a repetition of the scene before dinner. Only this time her effect was not so great. Manisty's depression did not yield.
Presently, however, he looked down upon her. In the kind, concealing moonlight she was all grace and charm. The man's easy tenderness awoke.
'Eleanor—this air is too keen for that thin dress.'
And stooping over her he took her cloak from her arm, and wrapped it about her.
'You lent it to Miss Foster'—he said, surveying her. 'It became her—but it knows its mistress!'
The colour mounted an instant in her cheek. Then she moved further away from him.
'Have you discovered yet'—she said—'that that girl is extraordinarily handsome?'
'Oh yes'—he said carelessly—'with a handsomeness that doesn't matter.'
She laughed.
'Wait till Aunt Pattie and I have dressed her and put her to rights.'
'Well, you can do most things no doubt—both with bad books, and raw girls,'—he said, with a shrug and a sigh.
They bade each other good-night, and Mrs. Burgoyne disappeared through the glass door behind them.
* * * * *
The moon was sailing gloriously above the stone-pines of the garden. Mrs. Burgoyne, half-undressed, sat dreaming in a corner room, with a high painted ceiling, and both its windows open to the night.
She had entered her room in a glow of something which had been half torment, half happiness. Now, after an hour's dreaming, she suddenly bent forward and, parting the cloud of fair hair that fell about her, she looked in the glass before her, at the worn, delicate face haloed within it—thinking all the time with a vague misery of Lucy Foster's untouched bloom.
Then her eyes fell upon two photographs that stood upon her table. One represented a man in yeomanry uniform; the other a tottering child of two.
'Oh! my boy—my darling!'—she cried in a stifled agony, and snatching up the picture, she bowed her head upon it, kissing it. The touch of it calmed her. But she could not part from it. She put it in her breast, and when she slept, it was still there.
'Eleanor—where are you off to?'
'Just to my house of Simmon,' said that lady, smiling. She was standing on the eastern balcony, buttoning a dainty grey glove, while Manisty a few paces from her was lounging in a deck-chair, with the English newspapers.
'What?—to mass? I protest. Look at the lake—look at the sky—look at that patch of broom on the lake side. Come and walk there beforedéjeuner—and make a round home by Aricia.'
Mrs. Burgoyne shook her head.
'No—I like my little idolatries,' she said, with decision. It was Sunday morning. The bells in Marinata were ringing merrily. Women and girls with black lace scarves upon their heads, handsome young men in short coats and soft peaked hats, were passing along the road between the villa and the lake, on their way to mass. It was a warm April day. The clouds of yellow banksia, hanging over the statued wall that girdled the fountain-basin, were breaking into bloom; and the nightingales were singing with a prodigality that was hardly worthy of their rank and dignity. Nature in truth is too lavish of nightingales on the Alban Hills in spring! She forgets, as it were, her own sweet arts, and all that rareness adds to beauty. One may hear a nightingale and not mark him; which is alèse majesté.
Mrs. Burgoyne's toilette matched the morning. The grey dress, so fresh and elegant, the broad black hat above the fair hair, the violets dewy from the garden that were fastened at her slender waist, and again at her throat beneath the pallor of the face,—these things were of a perfection quite evident to the critical sense of Edward Manisty. It was the perfection that was characteristic. So too was the faded fairness of hair and skin, the frail distinguished look. So, above all, was the contrast between the minute care for personal adornment implied in the finish of the dress, and the melancholy shrinking of the dark-rimmed eyes.
He watched her, through the smoke wreaths of his cigarette,—pleasantly and lazily conscious both of her charm and her inconsistencies.
'Are you going to take Miss Foster?' he asked her.
Mrs. Burgoyne laughed.
'I made the suggestion. She looked at me with amazement, coloured crimson, and went away. I have lost all my chances with her.'
'Then she must be an ungrateful minx'—said Manisty, lowering his voice and looking round him towards the villa, 'considering the pains you take.'
'Someof us must take pains,' said Mrs. Burgoyne, significantly.
'Some of us do'—he said, laughing. 'The others profit.—One goes on praying for the primitive,—but when it comes—No!—it is not permitted to be as typical as Miss Foster.'
'Typical of what?'
'The dissidence of Dissent, apparently—and the Protestantism of theProtestant religion. Confess:—it was an odd caprice on the part of highJove to send her here?'
'I am sure she has a noble character—and an excellent intelligence!'
Manisty shrugged his shoulders.
'—Her grandfather'—continued the lady—'was a divinity professor and wrote a book on the Inquisition!'—
Manisty repeated his gesture.
'—And as I told you last night, she is almost as handsome as your Greek head—and very like her.'
'My dear lady—you have the wildest notions!'
Mrs. Burgoyne picked up her parasol.
'Quite true.—Your aunt tells me she was so disappointed, poor child, that there was no church of her own sort for her to go to this morning.'
'What!'—cried Manisty—'Did she expect a conventicle in the Pope's own town!'
For Marinata owned a Papal villa and had once been a favourite summer residence of the Popes.
'No—but she thought she might have gone into Rome, and she missed the trains. I found her wandering about the salon looking quite starved and restless.'
'Those are hungers that pass!—My heart is hard.—There—your bell is stopping. Eleanor!—I wonder why you go to these functions?'
He turned to look at her, his fine eye sharp and a little mocking.
'Because I like it.'
'You like the thought of it. But when you get there, the reality won't please you at all. There will be the dirty floor, and the bad music,—and the little priest intoning through his nose—and the scuffling boys,—and the abominable pictures—and the tawdry altars. Much better stay at home—and help me praise the Holy Roman Church from a safe distance!'
'What a hypocrite people would think you, if they could hear you talk like that!' she said, flushing.
'Then they would think it unjustly.—I don't mean to be my own dupe, that's all.'
'The dupes are the happiest,' she said in a low voice. 'There is something between them, and—Ah! well, never mind!'—
She stood still a moment, looking across the lake, her hands resting lightly on the stone balustrade of the terrace. Manisty watched her in silence, occasionally puffing at his cigarette.
'Well, I shall be back very soon,' she said, gathering up her prayer-book and her parasol. 'Will it then be our duty to take Miss Foster for a walk?'
'Why not leave her to my aunt?'
She passed him with a little nod of farewell. Presently, through the openings of the balustrade, Manisty could watch her climbing the village street with her dress held high above her daintily shod feet, a crowd of children asking for a halfpenny following at her heels. Presently he saw her stop irresolutely, open a little velvet bag that hung from her waist and throw a shower ofsoldiamong the children. They swooped upon it, fighting and shrieking.
Mrs. Burgoyne looked at them half smiling, half repentant, shook her head and walked on.
'Eleanor—you coward!' said Manisty, throwing himself back in his chair with a silent laugh.
Under his protection, or his aunt's, as he knew well, Mrs. Burgoyne could walk past those little pests of children, even the poor armless and legless horrors on the way to Albano, and give a firm adhesion to Miss Manisty's Scotch doctrines on the subject of begging. But by herself, she could not refuse—she could not bear to be scowled on—even for a moment. She must yield—must give herself the luxury of being liked. It was all of a piece with her weakness towards servants and porters and cabmen—her absurdities in the way of tips and gifts—the kindnesses she had been showing during the last three days to the American girl. Too kind! Insipidity lay that way.
Manisty returned to his newspapers. When he had finished them he got up and began to pace the stone terrace, his great head bent forward as usual, as though the weight of it were too much for the shoulders. The newspapers had made him restless again, had dissipated the good humour of the morning, born perhaps of the mere April warmth andbien être.
'Idling in a villa—with two women'—he said to himself, bitterly—'while all these things are happening.'
For the papers were full of news—of battles lost and won, on questions with which he had been at one time intimately concerned. Once or twice in the course of these many columns he had found his own name, his own opinion quoted, but only as belonging to a man who had left the field—a man of the past—politically dead.
As he stood there with his hands upon his sides, looking out over the Alban Lake, and its broom-clad sides, a great hunger for London swept suddenly upon him, for the hot scent of its streets, for its English crowd, for the look of its shops and clubs and parks. He had a vision of the club writing-room—of well-known men coming in and going out—discussing the news of the morning, the gossip of the House—he saw himself accosted as one of the inner circle,—he was sensible again of those short-lived pleasures of power and office. Not that he had cared half as much for these pleasures, when he had them, as other men. To affirm with him meant to be already half way on the road to doubt; contradiction was his character. Nevertheless, now that he was out of it, alone and forgotten—now that the game was well beyond his reach—it had a way of appearing to him at moments intolerably attractive!
Nothing before him now, in these long days at the villa, but the hours of work with Eleanor, the walks with Eleanor, the meals with his aunt and Eleanor—and now, for a stimulating change, Miss Foster! The male in him was restless. He had been eager to come to the villa, and the quiet of the hills, so as to push this long delaying book to its final end. And, behold, day by day, in the absence of the talk and distractions of Rome, a thousand discontents and misgivings were creeping upon him. In Rome he was still a power. In spite of his strange detached position, it was known that he was the defender of the Roman system, the panegyrist of Leo XIII., the apologist of the Papal position in Italy. And this had been more than enough to open to him all but the very inmost heart of Catholic life. Their apartments in Rome, to the scandal of Miss Manisty's Scotch instincts, had been haunted by ecclesiastics of every rank and kind. Cardinals, Italian and foreign, had taken their afternoon tea from Mrs. Burgoyne's hands; the black and white of the Dominicans, the brown of the Franciscans, the black of the Jesuits,—the staircase in the Via Sistina had been well acquainted with them all. Information not usually available had been placed lavishly at Manisty's disposal; he had felt the stir and thrill of the great Catholic organisation as all its nerve-threads gather to its brain and centre in the Vatican. Nay, on two occasions, he had conversed freely with Leo XIII. himself.
All this he had put aside, impatiently, that he might hurry on his book, and accomplish hiscoup. And in the tranquillity of the hills, was he beginning to lose faith in the book, and the compensation it was to bring him? Unless this book, with its scathing analysis of the dangers and difficulties of the secularist State, were not only a book, butan event, of what use would it be to him? He was capable both of extravagant conceit, and of the most boundless temporary disgust with his own doings and ideas. Such a disgust seemed to be mounting now through all his veins, taking all the savour out of life and work. No doubt it would be the same to the end,—the politician in him just strong enough to ruin the man of letters—the man of letters always ready to distract and paralyse the politician. And as for the book, there also he had been the victim of a double mind. He had endeavoured to make it popular, as Chateaubriand made the great argument of theGénie du Christianismepopular, by the introduction of an element of poetry and romance. For the moment he was totally out of love with the result. What was the plain man to make of it? And nowadays the plain man settles everything.
Well!—if the book came to grief, it was not only he that would suffer.—Poor Eleanor!—poor, kind, devoted Eleanor!
Yet as the thought of her passed through his meditations, a certain annoyance mingled with it. What if she had been helping to keep him, all this time, in a fool's paradise—hiding the truth from him by this soft enveloping sympathy of hers?
His mind started these questions freely. Yet only to brush them away with a sense of shame. Beneath his outer controlling egotism there were large and generous elements in his mixed nature. And nothing could stand finally against the memory of that sweet all-sacrificing devotion which had been lavished upon himself and his work all the winter!
What right had he to accept it? What did it mean? Where was it leading?
He guessed pretty shrewdly what had been the speculations of the friends and acquaintances who had seen them together in Rome. Eleanor Burgoyne was but just thirty, very attractive, and his distant kinswoman. As for himself, he knew very well that according to the general opinion of the world, beginning with his aunt, it was his duty to marry and marry soon. He was in the prime of life; he had a property that cried out for an heir; and a rambling Georgian house that would be the better for a mistress. He was tolerably sure that Aunt Pattie had already had glimpses of Eleanor Burgoyne in that position.
Well—if so, Aunt Pattie was less shrewd than usual. Marriage! The notion of its fetters and burdens was no less odious to him now than it had been at twenty. What did he want with a wife—still more, with a son? The thought of his own life continued in another's filled him with a shock of repulsion. Where was the sense of infusing into another being the black drop of discontent that poisoned his own? A daughter perhaps—with the eyes of his mad sister Alice? Or a son—with the contradictions and weaknesses, without the gifts, of his father? Men have different ways of challenging the future. But that particular way called paternity had never in his most optimistic moments appealed to Manisty.
And of course Eleanor understood him! He had not been ungrateful. No!—he knew well enough that he had the power to make a woman's hours pass pleasantly. Eleanor's winter had been a happy one; her health and spirits had alike revived. Friendship, as they had known it, was a very rare and exquisite thing. No doubt when the book was done with, their relations must change somewhat. He confessed that he might have been imprudent; that he might have been appropriating the energies and sympathies of a delightful woman, as a man is hardly justified in doing, unless—. But, after all, a few weeks more would see the end of it; and friends, dear, close friends, they must always be.
For now there was plenty of room and leisure in his life for these subtler bonds. The day of great passions was gone by. There were one or two incidents in his earlier manhood on which he could look back with the half-triumphant consciousness that no man had dived deeper to the heart of feeling, had drunk more wildly, more inventively, of passion than he, in more than one country of Europe, in the East as in the West. These events had occurred in those wander-years between twenty and thirty, which he had spent in travelling, hunting and writing, in the pursuit, alternately eager and fastidious, of as wide an experience as possible. But all that was over. These things concerned another man, in another world. Politics and ambition had possessed him since, and women now appealed to other instincts in him—instincts rather of the diplomatist and intriguer than of the lover. Of late years they had been his friends and instruments. And by no unworthy arts. They were delightful to him; and his power with them was based on natural sympathies and divinations that were perhaps his birthright. His father had had the same gift. Why deny that both his father and he had owed much to women? What was there to be ashamed of? His father had been one of the ablest and most respected men of his day and so far as English society was concerned, the son had no scandal, nor the shadow of one, upon his conscience.
How far did Eleanor divine him? He raised his shoulder with a smile. Probably she knew him better than he knew himself. Besides, she was no mere girl, brimful of illusions and dreaming of love-affairs. What a history!—Good heavens! Why had he not known and seen something of her in the days when she was still under the tyranny of that intolerable husband? He might have eased the weight a little—protected her—as a kinsman may. Ah well—better not! They were both younger then.—
As for the present,—let him only extricate himself from this coil in which he stood, find his way back to activity and his rightful place, and many things might look differently. Perhaps—who could say?—in the future, when youth was still further forgotten by both of them, he and Eleanor might after all take each other by the hand—sit down on either side of the same hearth—their present friendship pass into one of another kind? It was quite possible, only—
The sudden crash of a glass door made him look round. It was Miss Foster who was hastening along the enclosed passage leading to the outer stair. She had miscalculated the strength of the wind on the north side of the house, and the glass door communicating with the library had slipped from her hand. She passed Manisty with a rather scared penitent look, quickly opened the outer door, and ran downstairs.
Manisty watched her as she turned into the garden. The shadows of the ilex-avenue chequered her straw bonnet, her prim black cape, her white skirt. There had been no meddling of freakish hands with her dark hair this morning. It was tightly plaited at the back of her head. Her plain sun-shade, her black kid gloves were neatness itself—middle-class, sabbatical neatness.
Manisty recalled his thoughts of the last half-hour with a touch of amusement. He had been meditating on 'women'—the delightfulness of 'women,' his own natural inclination to their society. But how narrow is everybody's world!
His collective noun of course had referred merely to that small, high-bred, cosmopolitan class which presents types like Eleanor Burgoyne. And here came this girl, walking through his dream, to remind him of what 'woman,' average virtuous woman of the New or the Old World, is really like.
All the same, she walked well,—carried her head remarkably well. There was a free and springing youth in all her movements that he could not but follow with eyes that noticed all such things as she passed through the old trees, and the fragments of Græco-Roman sculpture placed among them.
* * * * *
That afternoon Lucy Foster was sitting by herself in the garden of the villa. She had a volume of sermons by a famous Boston preacher in her hand, and was alternately reading—and looking. Miss Manisty had told her that some visitors from Rome would probably arrive between four and five o'clock, and close to her indeed the little butler, running hither and thither with an anxiety, an effusion that no English servant would have deigned to show, was placing chairs and tea-tables and putting out tea-things.
Presently indeed Alfredo approached the silent lady sitting under the trees, on tip-toe.
Would the signorina be so very kind as to come and look at the tables? The signora—so all the household called Miss Manisty—had given directions—but he, Alfredo, was not sure—and it would be so sad if when she came out she were not satisfied!
Lucy rose and went to look. She discovered some sugar-tongs missing. Alfredo started like the wind in search of them, running down the avenue with short, scudding steps, his coat-tails streaming behind him.
What a child-like eagerness to please! Yet he had been five years in the cavalry; he was admirably educated; he wrote a better hand than Manisty's own, and when his engagement at the villa came to an end he was already, thanks to a very fair scientific knowledge, engaged as manager in a firework factory in Rome.
Lucy's look pursued the short flying figure of the butler with a smiling kindness. What was wrong with this clever and loveable people that Mr. Manisty should never have a good word for their institutions, or their history, or their public men? Unjust! Nor was he even consistent with his own creed. He, so moody and silent with Mrs. Burgoyne and Miss Manisty, could always find a smile and a phrase for the natives. The servants adored him, and all the long street of Marinata welcomed him with friendly eyes. His Italian was fluency itself; and his handsome looks perhaps, his keen commanding air gave him a natural kingship among a susceptible race.
But to laugh and live with a people, merely that you might gibbet it before Europe, that you might show it as the Helot among nations—there was a kind of treachery in it! Lucy Foster remembered some of the talk and feeling in America after the Manistys' visit there had borne fruit in certain hostile lectures and addresses on the English side of the water. She had shared the feeling. She was angry still. And her young ignorance and sympathy were up in arms so far on behalf of Italy. Who and what was this critic that he should blame so freely, praise so little?
Not that Mr. Manisty had so far confided any of his views to her! It seemed to her that she had hardly spoken with him since that first evening of her arrival. But she had heard further portions of his book read aloud; taken from the main fabric this time and not from the embroideries. The whole villa indeed was occupied, and pre-occupied by the book. Mrs. Burgoyne was looking pale and worn with the stress of it.
Mrs. Burgoyne! The girl fell into a wondering reverie. She was Mr. Manisty's second cousin—she had lost her husband and child in some frightful accident—she was not going to marry Mr. Manisty—at least nobody said so—and though she went to mass, she was not a Catholic, but on the contrary a Scotch Presbyterian, by birth, being the daughter of a Scotch laird of old family—one General Delafield Muir—?
'She is very kind to me,' thought Lucy Foster in a rush of gratitude mixed with some perplexity.—'I don't know why she takes so much trouble about me. She is so different—so—so fashionable—so experienced. She can't care a bit about me. Yet she is very sweet to me—to everybody, indeed. But—'
And again she lost herself in ponderings on the relation of Mr. Manisty to his cousin. She had never seen anything like it. The mere neighbourhood of it thrilled her, she could not have told why. Was it the intimacy that it implied—the intimacy of mind and thought? It was like marriage—but married people were more reserved, more secret. Yet of course it was only friendship. Miss Manisty had said that her nephew and Mrs. Burgoyne were 'very great friends.' Well—One read of such things—one did not often see them.
* * * * *
The sound of steps approaching made her lift her eyes.
It was not Alfredo, but a young man, a young Englishman apparently, who was coming towards her. He was fair-haired and smiling; he carried his hat under his arm; and he wore a light suit and a rose in his button-hole—this was all she had time to see before he was at her side.
'May I introduce myself? I must!—Miss Manisty told me to come and find you. I'm Reggie Brooklyn—Mrs. Burgoyne's friend. Haven't you heard of me? I look after her when Manisty ought to, and doesn't; I'm going to take you all to St. Peter's next week.'
Lucy looked up to see a charming face, lit by the bluest of blue eyes, adorned moreover by a fair moustache, and an expression at once confident and appealing.
Was this the 'delightful boy' from the Embassy Mrs. Burgoyne had announced to her? No doubt. The colour rose softly in her cheek. She was not accustomed to young gentlemen with such a manner and such asavoir faire.
'Won't you sit down?' She moved sedately to one side of the bench.
He settled himself at once, fanning himself with his hat, and looking at her discreetly.
'You're American, aren't you? You don't mind my asking you?'
'Not in the least. Yes; it's my first time in Europe.'
'Well, Italy's not bad; is it? Nice place, Rome, anyway. Aren't you rather knocked over by it? I was when I first came.'
'I've only been here four days.
'And of course nobody here has time to take you about. I can guess that!How's the book getting on?'
'I don't know,' she said, opening her eyes wide in a smile that would not be repressed, a smile that broke like light in her grave face.
Her companion looked at her with approval.
'My word! she's dowdy'—he thought—'like a Sunday-school teacher. But she's handsome.'
The real point was, however, that Mrs. Burgoyne had told him to go out and make himself agreeable, and he was accustomed to obey orders from that quarter.
'Doesn't he read it to you all day and all night?' he asked. 'That's his way.'
'I have heard some of it. It's very interesting.'
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
'It's a queer business that book. My chief here is awfully sick about it. So are a good many other English. Why should an Englishman come out here and write a book to run down Italy?—And an Englishman that's been in the Government, too—so of course what he says'll have authority. Why, we're friends with Italy—we've always stuck up for Italy! When I think what he's writing—and what a row it'll make—I declare I'm ashamed to look one's Italian friends in the face!—And just now, too, when they're so down on their luck.'
For it was the year of the Abyssinian disasters; and the carnage of Adowa was not yet two months old.
Lucy's expression showed her sympathy.
'What makes him—'
'Take such a twisted sort of a line? O goodness! what makes Manisty do anything? Of course, I oughtn't to talk. I'm just an understrapper—and he's a man of genius,—more or less—we all know that. But what made him do what he did last year? I say it was because his chief—he was in the Education Office you know—was a Dissenter, and a jam manufacturer, and had mutton-chop whisker. Manisty just couldn't do what he was told by a man like that. He's as proud as Lucifer. I once heard him tell a friend of mine that he didn't know how to obey anybody—he'd never learnt. That's because they didn't send him to a public school—worse luck; that was his mother's doing, I believe. She thought him so clever—he must be treated differently to other people. Don't you think that's a great mistake?'
'What?'
'Why—to prefer the cross-cuts, when you might stick to the high road?'
The American girl considered. Then she flashed into a smile.—
'I think I'm for the cross-cuts!'
'Ah—that's because you're American. I might have known you'd say that. All your people want to go one better than anybody else. But I can tell you it doesn't do for Englishmen. They want their noses kept to the grindstone. That's my experience! Of course it was a great pity Manisty ever went into Parliament at all. He'd been abroad for seven or eight years, living with all the big-wigs and reactionaries everywhere. The last thing in the world he knew anything about was English politics.—But then his father had been a Liberal, and a Minister for ever so long. And when Manisty came home, and the member for his father's division died, I don't deny it was very natural they should put him in. And he's such a queer mixture, I dare say he didn't know himself where he was.—But I'll tell you one thing—'
He shook his head slowly,—with all the airs of the budding statesman.
'When you've joined a party,—you mustdinewith 'em:—It don't sound much—but I declare it's the root of everything. Now Manisty was always dining with the other side. All the great Tory ladies,—and the charming High Churchwomen, and the delightful High Churchmen—and theyarenice fellows, I can tell you!—got hold of him. And then it came to some question about these beastly schools—don't you wish they were all at the bottom of the sea?—and I suppose his chief was more annoying than usual—(oh, but he had a number of other coolnesses on his hands by that time—he wasn't meant to be a Liberal!) and his friends talked to him—and so—Ah! there they are!
And lifting his hat, the young man waved it towards Mrs. Burgoyne who with Manisty and three or four other companions had just become visible at the further end of the ilex-avenue which stretched from their stone bench to the villa.
'Why, that's my chief,'—he cried—'I didn't think he was to be here this afternoon. I say, do you know my chief?'
And he turned to her with the brightest, most confiding manner, as though he had been the friend of her cradle.
'Who?'—said Lucy, bewildered—'the tall gentleman with the white hair?'
'Yes,—that's the ambassador. Oh! I'm glad you'll see him. He's a charmer, is our chief! And that's his married daughter, who's keeping house for him just now.—I'll tell you something, if you'll keep a secret'—he bent towards her,—'He likes Mrs. Burgoyne of course,—everybody does—but he don't take Manisty at his own valuation. I've heard him say some awfully good things to Manisty—you'd hardly think a man would get over them.—Who's that on the other side?'
He put his hand over his eyes for a moment, then burst into a laugh.—
'Why, it's the other man of letters!—Bellasis. I should think you've read some of his poems—or plays? Rome has hardly been able to hold the two of them this winter. It's worse than the archæologists. Mrs. Burgoyne is always trying to be civil to him, so that he mayn't make uncivil remarks about Manisty. I say—don't you think she's delightful?'
He lowered his voice as he looked round upon his companion, but his blue eyes shone.
'Mrs. Burgoyne?'—said Lucy—'Yes, indeed!—She's so—so very kind.'
'Oh! she's a darling, is Eleanor Burgoyne. And I may call her that, you know, for I'm her cousin, just as Manisty is—only on the other side. I have been trying to look after her a bit this winter in Rome; she never looks after herself. And she's not a bit strong.—You know her history of course?'
He lowered his voice with young importance, speaking almost in a whisper, though the advancing party were still far away. Lucy shook her head.
'Well, it's a ghastly tale, and I've only a minute.—Her husband, you see, had pneumonia—they were in Switzerland together, and he'd taken a chill after a walk—and one night he was raving mad, mad you understand with delirium and fever—and poor Eleanor was so ill, they had taken her away from her husband, and put her to bed on the other side of the hotel.—And there was a drunken nurse—it's almost too horrible, isn't it?—and while she was asleep Mr. Burgoyne got up, quite mad—and he went into the next room, where the baby was, without waking anybody, and he took the child out asleep in his arms, back to his own room where the windows were open, and there he threw himself and the boy out together—headlong! The hotel was high up,—built, one side of it, above a rock wall, with a stream below it.—There had been a great deal of rain, and the river was swollen. The bodies were not found for days.—When poor Eleanor woke up, she had lost everything.—Oh! I dare say, when the first shock was over, the husband didn't so much matter—he hadn't made her at all happy.—But the child!'—
He stopped, Mrs. Burgoyne's gay voice could be heard as she approached. All the elegance of the dress was visible, the gleam of a diamond at the throat, the flowers at the waist. Lucy Foster's eyes, dim with sudden tears, fastened themselves upon the slender, advancing form.
The party grouped themselves round the tea-tables. Mrs. Burgoyne laid a kind hand on Lucy Foster's arm, and introduced one or two of the new-comers.
Then, while Miss Manisty, a little apart, lent her ear to the soft chat of the ambassador, who sat beside her, supporting a pair of old and very white hands upon a gold-headed stick, Mrs. Burgoyne busied herself with Mr. Bellasis and his tea. For he was anxious to catch a train, and had but a short time to spare.
He was a tall stiffly built man, with a heavy white face, and a shock of black hair combed into a high and bird-like crest. As to Mrs. Burgoyne's attentions, he received them with a somewhat pinched but still smiling dignity. Manisty, meanwhile, a few feet away, was fidgetting on his chair, in one of his most unmanageable moods. Around him were two or three young men bearing the great names of Rome. They all belonged to the Guardia Nobile, and were all dressed by English tailors. Two of them, moreover, were the sons of English mothers. They were laughing and joking together, and every now and then they addressed their host. But he scarcely replied. He gathered stalk after stalk of grass from the ground beside him, nibbled it and threw it away—a constant habit of his when he was annoyed or out of spirits.
"So you have read my book?" said Mr. Bellasis pleasantly, addressing Mrs. Burgoyne, as she handed him a cup of tea. The book in question was long; it revived the narrative verse of our grandfathers; and in spite of the efforts of a 'set' the world was not disposed to take much notice of it.
'Yes, indeed! We liked it so much.—But I think when I wrote to you I told you what we thought about it?'
And she glanced towards Manisty for support. He, however, did not apparently hear what she said. Mr. Bellasis also looked round in his direction; but in vain. The poet's face clouded.
'May I ask what reading you are at?' he said, returning to his tea.
'What reading?'—Mrs. Burgoyne looked puzzled.
'Have you read it more than once?'
She coloured.
'No—I'm afraid—'
'Ah!—my friends tell me in Rome that the book cannot be really appreciated except at a second or third reading—'
Mrs. Burgoyne looked up in dismay, as a shower of gravel descended on the tea-table. Manisty has just beckoned in haste to his great Newfoundland who was lying stretched on the gravel path, and the dog bounding towards him, seemed to have brought the path with him.
Mr. Bellasis impatiently shook some fragments of gravel from his coat, and resumed:—
'I have just got a batch of the first reviews. Really criticism has become an absurdity! Did you look at the "Sentinel"?'
Mrs. Burgoyne hesitated.
'Yes—I saw there was something about the style—'
'The style!'—Mr. Bellasis threw himself back in his chair and laughed loud—'Why the style is done with a magnifying-glass!—There's not a phrase,—not a word that I don't stand by.'
'Mr. Bellasis'—said the courteous voice of the ambassador—'are you going by this train?'
The great man held out his watch.
'Yes indeed—and I must catch it!' cried the man of letters. He started to his feet, and bending over Mrs. Burgoyne, he said in an aside perfectly audible to all the world—'I read my new play to-night—just finished—at Madame Salvi's!'
Eleanor smiled and congratulated him. He took his leave, and Manisty in an embarrassed silence accompanied him half way down the avenue.
Then returning, he threw himself into a chair near Lucy Foster and youngBrooklyn, with a sigh of relief.
'Intolerable ass!'—he said under his breath, as though quite unconscious of any bystander.
The young man looked at Lucy with eyes that danced.
* * * * *
'Who is your young lady?' said the ambassador.
Miss Manisty explained.
'An American? Really? I was quite off the scent. But now—I see—I see! Let me guess. She is a New Englander—not from Boston, but from the country. I remember the type exactly. The year I was at Washington I spent some weeks in the summer convalescing at a village up in the hills of Maine.—The women there seemed to me the salt of the earth. May I go and talk to her?'
Miss Manisty led him across the circle to Lucy, and introduced him.
'Will you take me to the terrace and show me St. Peter's? I know one can see it from here,' said the suave polished voice.
Lucy rose in a shy pleasure that became her. The thought flashed happily through her, as she walked beside the old man, that Uncle Ben would like to hear of it! She had that 'respect of persons' which comes not from snobbishness, but from imagination and sympathy. The man's office thrilled her, not his title.
The ambassador's shrewd eyes ran over her face and bearing, taking note of all the signs of character. Then he began to talk, exerting himself as he had not exerted himself that morning for a princess who had lunched at his table. And as he was one of the enchanters of his day, known for such in half a dozen courts, and two hemispheres, Lucy Foster's walk was a walk of delight. There was only one drawback. She had heard some member of the party say 'Your Excellency'—and somehow her lips would not pronounce it! Yet so kind and kingly was the old man, there was no sign of homage she would not have gladly paid him, if she had known how.
They emerged at last upon the stone terrace at the edge of the garden looking out upon the Campagna.
'Ah! there it is!'—said the ambassador, and, walking to the corner of the terrace, he pointed northwards.
And there—just caught between two stone pines—in the dim blue distance rose the great dome.
'Doesn't it give you an emotion?' he said, smiling down upon her.—'When I first stayed on these hills I wrote a poem about it—a very bad poem. There's a kind of miracle in it, you know. Go where you will, that dome follows you. Again and again, storm and mist may blot out the rest—that remains. The peasants on these hills have a superstition about it. They look for that dome as they look for the sun. When they can't see it, they are unhappy—they expect some calamity.—It's a symbol, isn't it, an idea?—and those are the things that touch us. I have a notion'—he turned to her smiling, 'that it will come into Mr. Manisty's book?'
Their eyes met in a smiling assent.
"Well, there are symbols—and symbols. That dome makes my old heart beat because it speaks of so much—half the history of our race. But looking back—I remember another symbol—I was at Harvard in '69; and I remember the first time I ever saw those tablets—you recollect—in the Memorial Hall—to the Harvard men that fell in the war?"
The colour leapt into her cheek. Her eyes filled.
"Oh yes! yes!"—she said, half eager, half timid—"My father lost two brothers—both their names are there."
The ambassador looked at her kindly.—"Well—be proud of it!—be proud of it! That wall, those names, that youth, and death—they remain with me, as the symbol of the other great majesty in the world! There's one,"—he pointed to the dome,—"that's Religion. And the other's Country. It's country that Mr. Manisty forgets—isn't it?"
The old man shook his head, and fell silent, looking out over the cloud-flecked Campagna.
"Ah, well"—he said, rousing himself—"I must go. Will you come and see me?My daughter shall write to you."
And five minutes later the ambassador was driving swiftly towards Rome, in a good humour with himself and the day. He had that morning sent off what he knew to be a masterly despatch, and in the afternoon, as he was also quite conscious, he had made a young thing happy.
* * * * *
Manisty could not attend the ambassador to his carriage. He was absorbed by another guest. Mrs. Burgoyne, young Brooklyn, and Lucy, paid the necessary civilities.
When they returned, they found a fresh group gathered on the terrace. Two persons made the centre of it—a grey-haired cardinal—and Manisty.
Lucy looked at her host in amazement. What a transformation! The man who had been lounging and listless all the afternoon—barely civil to his guests—making no effort indeed for anyone, was now another being. An hour before he had been in middle age; now he was young, handsome, courteous, animating, and guiding the conversation around him with the practised ease of one who knew himself a master.
Where was the spell? The Cardinal?
The Cardinal sat to Manisty's right, one wrinkled hand resting on the neck of the Newfoundland. It was a typical Italian face, large-cheeked and large-jawed, with good eyes,—a little sleepy, but not unspiritual. His red-edged cassock allowed a glimpse of red stockings to be seen, and his finely worked cross and chain, his red sash, and the bright ribbon that lit up his broad-brimmed hat, made spots of cheerful colour in the shadow of the trees.
He was a Cardinal of the Curia, belonging indeed to the Congregation of theIndex. The vulgar believed that he was staying on the hills for his health.
The initiated, however, knew that he had come to these heights, bringing with him the works of a certain German Catholic professor threatened with the thunders of the Church. It was a matter that demanded leisure and a quiet mind.
As he sat sipping Miss Manisty's tea, however, nothing could be divined of those scathing Latin sheets on which he had left his secretary employed. He had the air of one at peace with all the world—hardly stirred indeed by the brilliance of his host.
'Italy again!'—said Reggie Brooklyn in Lucy's ear—poor old Italy!—one might be sure of that, when one sees one of these black gentlemen about.'
The Cardinal indeed had given Manisty his text. He had brought an account of some fresh vandalism of the Government—the buildings of an old Umbrian convent turned to Government uses—the disappearance of some famous pictures in the process, supposed to have passed into the bands of a Paris dealer by the connivance of a corrupt official.
The story had roused Manisty to a white heat. This maltreatment of religious buildings and the wasting of their treasures was a subject on which he was inexhaustible. Encouraged by the slow smile of the Cardinal, the laughter and applause of the young men, he took the history of a monastery in the mountains of Spoleto, which had long been intimately known to him, and told it,—with a variety, a passion, an irony, that only he could achieve—that at last revealed indeed to Lucy Foster, as she sat quivering with antagonism beside Miss Manisty, all the secret of the man's fame and power in the world.
For gradually—from the story of this monastery, and its suppression at the hands of a few Italian officials—he built up a figure, typical, representative, according to him, of the New Italy, small, insolent, venal,—insulting and despoiling the Old Italy, venerable, beautiful and defenceless. And then a natural turn of thought, or a suggestion from one of the group surrounding him, brought him to the scandals connected with the Abyssinian campaign—to the charges of incompetence and corruption which every Radical paper was now hurling against the Crispi government. He gave the latest gossip, handling it lightly, inexorably, as one more symptom of an inveterate disease, linking the men of the past with the men of the present, spattering all with the same mud, till Italian Liberalism, from Cavour to Crispi, sat shivering and ugly—stripped of all those pleas and glories wherewith she had once stepped forth adorned upon the page of history.
Finally—with the art of the accomplished talker—a transition! Back to the mountains, and the lonely convent on the heights—to the handful of monks left in the old sanctuary, handing on the past, waiting for the future, heirs of a society which would destroy and outlive the New Italy, as it had destroyed and outlived the Old Rome,—offering the daily sacrifice amid the murmur and solitude of the woods,—confident, peaceful, unstained; while the new men in the valleys below peculated and bribed, swarmed and sweated, in the mire of a profitless and purposeless corruption.
And all this in no set harangue—but in vivid broken sentences; in snatches of paradox and mockery; of emotion touched and left; interrupted, moreover, by the lively give and take of conversation with the young Italians, by the quiet comments of the Cardinal. None the less, the whole final image emerged, as Manisty meant it to emerge; till the fascinated hearers felt, as it were, a breath of hot bitterness and hate pass between them and the spring day, enveloping the grim phantom of a ruined and a doomed State.
The Cardinal said little. Every now and then he put in a fact of his own knowledge—a stroke of character—a phrase of compassion that bit more sharply even than Manisty's scorns—a smile—a shake of the head. And sometimes, as Manisty talked with the young men, the sharp wrinkled eyes rested upon the Englishman with a scrutiny, instantly withdrawn. All the caution of the Roman ecclesiastic,—the inheritance of centuries—spoke in the glance.
It was perceived by no one, however, but a certain dark elderly lady, who was sitting restlessly silent beside Miss Manisty. Lucy Foster had noticed her as a new-comer, and believed that her name was Madame Variani.
As for Eleanor Burgoyne, she sat on Manisty's left while he talked—it was curious to notice how a place was always made for her beside him!—her head raised a little towards him, her eyes bright and fixed. The force that breathed from him passed through her frail being, quickening every pulse of life. She neither criticised nor accepted what he said. It was the man's splendid vitality that subdued and mastered her.
Yet she alone knew what no one else suspected. At the beginning of the conversation Manisty had placed himself behind an old stone table of oblong shape and thick base, of which there were several in the garden. Round it grew up grasses and tall vetches which had sown themselves among the gaping stones of the terrace. Nothing, therefore, could be seen of the talker as he leant carelessly across the table but the magnificent head, and the shoulders on which it was so freely and proudly carried.
Anybody noticing the effect—for it was an effect—would have thought it a mere happy accident. Eleanor Burgoyne alone knew that it was conscious. She had seen the same pose, the same concealment practised too often to be mistaken. But it made no difference whatever to the spell that held her. The small vanities and miseries of Manisty's nature were all known to her—and alas! she would not have altered one of them!
* * * * *
When the Cardinal rose to go, two Italian girls, who had come with their brother, the Count Casaleschi, ran forward, and curtseying kissed the Cardinal's ring. And as he walked away, escorted by Manisty, a gardener crossed the avenue, who also at sight of the tall red-sashed figure fell on his knees and did the same. The Cardinal gave him an absent nod and smile, and passed on.
'Ah!j'étouffe!'—cried Madame Variani, throwing herself down by Miss Manisty. 'Give me another cup,chère Madame. Your nephew is too bad. Let him show us another nation born in forty years—that has had to make itself in a generation—let him show it us! Ah! you English—with all your advantages—and your proud hearts.—Perhaps we too could pick some holes in you!'
She fanned herself with angry vigour. The young men came to stand round her arguing and laughing. She was a favourite in Rome, and as a French woman, and the widow of a Florentine man of letters, occupied a somewhat independent position, and was the friend of many different groups.
'And you—young lady, what do you think?'—she said suddenly, laying a large hand on Lucy Foster's knee.
Lucy, startled, looked into the sparkling black eyes brought thus close to her own.
'But I justlong'—she said, catching her breath—'to hear the other side.'
'Ah, and you shall hear it, my dear—you shall!' cried Madame Variani. 'N'est-ce pas, Madame?' she said, addressing Miss Manisty—'We will get rid of all those priests—and then we will speak our mind? Oh, and you too,'—she waved her hand with a motherly roughness towards the young men,—'What do you know about it, Signor Marchese? If there were no Guardia Nobile, you would not wear those fine uniforms.—That is why you like the Pope.'