The Marchese Vitellucci—a charming boy of two and twenty, tall, thin-faced and pensive,—laughed and bowed.
'The Pope, Madame, should establish somedames d'honneur. Then he would have all the ladies too on his side.
'O, mon Dieu!—he has enough of them,' cried Madame Variani. 'But here comes Mr. Manisty, I must drink my tea and hold my tongue. I am going out to dinner to-night, and if one gets hot and cross, that is not good for the complexion.'
Manisty advanced at his usual quick pace, his head sunk once more between his shoulders.
Young Vitellucci approached him. 'Ah! Carlo!' he said, looking up affectionately—'dear fellow!—Come for a stroll with me.'
And linking his arm in the young man's, he carried him off. Their peals of laughter could be heard coming back from the distance of the ilex-walk.
Madame Variani tilted back her chair to look after them.
'Ah! your nephew can be agreeable too, when he likes,' she said to Miss Manisty. 'I do not say no. But when he talks of these poor Italians, he isméchant—méchant!'
As for Lucy Foster, as Manisty passed out of sight, she felt her pulses still tingling with a wholly new sense of passionate hostility—dislike even. But none the less did the stage seem empty and meaningless when he had left it.
* * * * *
Manisty and Mrs. Burgoyne were closeted in the library for some time before dinner. Lucy in the salon could hear him pacing up and down, and the deep voice dictating.
Then Mrs. Burgoyne came into the salon, and not noticing the girl who was hidden behind a great pot of broom threw herself on the sofa with a long sigh of fatigue. Lucy could just see the pale face against the pillow and the closed eyes. Thus abandoned and at rest, there was something strangely pitiful in the whole figure, for all its grace.
A wave of feeling rose in the girl's breast. She slipped softly from her hiding-place, took a silk wrap that was lying on a chair, and approached Mrs. Burgoyne.
'Let me put this over you. Won't you sleep before dinner? And I will shut the window. It is getting cold.'
Mrs. Burgoyne opened her eyes in astonishment, and murmured a few words of thanks.
Lucy covered her up, closed the window, and was stealing away, when Mrs.Burgoyne put out a hand and touched her.
'It is very sweet of you to think of me.'
She drew the girl to her, enclosed the hand she had taken in both hers, pressed it and released it. Lucy went quietly out of the room.
Then till dinner she sat reading her New Testament, and trying rather piteously to remind herself that it was Sunday. Far away in a New England village, the bells were ringing for the evening meeting. Lucy, shutting her eyes, could smell the spring scents in the church lane, could hear the droning of the opening hymn. A vague mystical peace stole upon her, as she recalled the service; the great words of 'sin,' 'salvation,' 'righteousness,' as the Evangelical understands them, thrilled through her heart.
Then, as she rose to dress, there burst upon her through the open window the sunset blaze of the Campagna with the purple dome in its midst. And with that came the memory of the afternoon,—of the Cardinal—and Manisty.
Very often, in these first days, it was as though her mind ached, under the stress of new thinking, like something stretched and sore. In the New England house where she had grown up, a corner of the old-fashioned study was given up to the books of her grandfather, the divinity professor. They were a small collection, all gathered with one object,—the confuting and confronting of Rome. Like many another Protestant zealot, the old professor had brooded on the crimes and cruelties of persecuting Rome, till they became a madness in the blood. How well Lucy remembered his books—with their backs of faded grey or brown cloths, and their grim titles. Most of them she had never yet been allowed to read. When she looked for a book, she was wont to pass this shelf by in a vague horror. What Rome habitually did or permitted, what at any rate she had habitually done or permitted in the past, could not—it seemed—be known by a pure woman! And she would glance from the books to the engraving of her grandfather above them,—to the stern and yet delicate face of the old Calvinist, with its high-peaked brow, and white neckcloth supporting the sharp chin; lifting her heart to him in a passionate endorsement, a common fierce hatred of wrong and tyranny.
She had grown older since then, and her country with her. New England Puritanism was no longer what it had been; and the Catholic Church had spread in the land. But in Uncle Ben's quiet household, and in her own feeling, the changes had been but slight and subtle. Pity, perhaps, had insensibly taken the place of hatred. But those old words 'priest' and 'mass' still rung in her ears as symbols of all that man had devised to corrupt and deface the purity of Christ.
And of what that purity might be, she had such tender, such positive traditions! Her mother had been a Christian mystic—a 'sweet woman,' meek as a dove in household life, yet capable of the fiercest ardours as a preacher and missionary, gathering rough labourers into barns and by the wayside, and dying before her time, worn out by the imperious energies of religion. Lucy had always before her the eyes that seemed to be shining through a mist, the large tremulous mouth, the gently furrowed brow. Those strange forces—'grace'—and 'the spirit'—had been the realities, the deciding powers of her childhood, whether in what concerned the great emotions of faith, or the most trivial incidents of ordinary life—writing a letter—inviting a guest—taking a journey. The soul bare before God, depending on no fleshly aid, distracted by no outward rite; sternly defending its own freedom as a divine trust:—she had been reared on these main thoughts of Puritanism, and they were still through all insensible transformation, the guiding forces of her own being.
Already, in this Catholic country, she had been jarred and repelled on all sides. Yet she found herself living with two people for whom Catholicism was not indeed a personal faith—she could not think of that side of it without indignation—but a thing to be passionately admired and praised, like art, or music, or scenery. You might believe nothing, and yet write pages and pages in glorification of the Pope and the Mass, and in contempt of everything else!—in excuse too of every kind of tyranny so long as it served the Papacy and 'the Church.'
She leaned out to the sunset, remembering sentence after sentence from the talk on the terrace—hating or combating them all.
Yet all the time a new excitement invaded her. For the man who had spoken thus was, in a sense, not a mere stranger to her. Somewhere in his being must be the capacity for those thoughts and feelings that had touched her so deeply in his book—for that magical insight and sweetness—
Ah!—perhaps she had not understood his book—no more than she understood him now. The sense of her own ignorance oppressed her—and of all thatmightbe said, with regard apparently to anything whatever. Was there nothing quite true—quite certain—in the world?
So the girl's intense and simple nature entered like all its fellows, upon the old inevitable struggle. As she stood there, with locked hands and flushed cheeks, conscious through every vein of the inrush and shock of new perceptions, new comparisons, she was like a ship that leaves the harbour for the open, and feels for the first time on all her timbers the strain of the unplumbed sea.
And of this invasion, this excitement, the mind, in haunting debate and antagonism, made for itself one image, one symbol—the face of Edward Manisty.
While he was thus—unknowing—the cause of so many new attractions and repulsions in his guest's mind, Manisty, after the first shock of annoyance produced by her arrival was over, hardly remembered her existence. He was incessantly occupied by the completion of his book, working late and early, sometimes in high and even extravagant spirits, but, on the whole, more commonly depressed and discontented.
Eleanor Burgoyne worked with him or for him many hours in each day. Her thin pallor became more pronounced. She ate little, and Miss Manisty believed that she slept less. The elder lady indeed began to fidget and protest, to remonstrate now and then with Manisty himself, even to threaten a letter to 'the General.' Eleanor's smiling obstinacy, however, carried all before it. And Manisty, in spite of a few startled looks and perfunctory dissuasions, whenever his aunt attacked him, soon slipped back into his normal ways of depending on his cousin, and not being able to work without her. Lucy Foster thought him selfish and inconsiderate. It gave her one more cause of quarrel with him.
For she and Mrs. Burgoyne were slowly but surely making friends. The clearer it became that Manisty took no notice of Miss Foster, and refused to be held in any way responsible for her entertainment, the more anxious, it seemed, did Eleanor show herself to make life pleasant for the American girl. Her manner, which had always been kind, became more natural and gay. It was as though she had settled some question with herself, and settled it entirely to Lucy Foster's advantage.
Not much indeed could be done for the stranger while the stress of Manisty's work lasted. Aunt Pattie braced herself once or twice, got out the guide-books and took her visitor into Rome to see the sights. But the little lady was so frankly worn out by these expeditions, that Lucy, full of compunctions, could only beg to be left to herself in future. Were not the garden and the lake, the wood-paths to Rocca di Papa, and the roads to Albano good enough?
So presently it came to her spending many hours alone in the terraced garden on the hill-side, with all the golden Campagna at her feet. Her young fancy, however, soon learnt to look upon that garden as the very concentration and symbol of Italy. All the Italian elements, the Italian magics were there. Along its topmost edge ran a vast broken wall, built into the hill; and hanging from the brink of the wall like a long roof, great ilexes shut out the day from the path below. Within the thickness of the wall—in days when, in that dim Rome upon the plain, many still lived who could remember the voice and the face of Paul of Tarsus—Domitian had made niches and fountains; and he had thrown over the terrace, now darkened by the great ilex boughs, a long portico roof supported on capitals and shafts of gleaming marble. Then in the niches round the clear fountains, he had ranged the fine statues of a still admirable art; everywhere he had lavished marbles, rose and yellow and white, and under foot he had spread a mosaic floor, glistening beneath the shadow-play of leaf and water, in the rich reflected light from the garden and the Campagna outside; while at intervals, he had driven through the very crest of the hill long tunnelled passages, down which one might look from the garden and see the blue lake shining at their further end.
And still the niches and the recesses were there,—the huge wall too along the face of the hill; all broken and gashed and ruinous, showing the fine reticulated brickwork that had been once faced with marble; alternately supported and torn by the pushing roots of the ilex-trees. The tunnelled passages too were there, choked and fallen in; no flash of the lake now beyond their cool darkness! And into the crumbling surface of the wall, rude hands had built fragments of the goddesses and the Cæsars that had once reigned there, barbarously mingled with warm white morsels from the great cornice of the portico, acanthus blocks from the long buried capitals, or dolphins orphaned of Aphrodite.
The wreck was beautiful, like all wrecks in Italy where Nature has had her way. For it was masked in the gloom of the overhanging trees; or hidden behind dropping veils of ivy; or lit up by straggling patches of broom and cytisus that thrust themselves through the gaps in the Roman brickwork and shone golden in the dark. At the foot of the wall, along its whole length, ran a low marble conduit that held still the sweetest liveliest water. Lilies of the valley grew beside it, breathing scent into the shadowed air; while on the outer or garden side of the path, the grass was purple with long-stalked violets, or pink with the sharp heads of the cyclamen. And a little further, from the same grass, there shot up in a happy neglect, tall camellia-trees ragged and laden, strewing the ground red and white beneath them. And above the camellias again, the famous stone-pines of the villa climbed into the high air, overlooking the plain and the sea, peering at Rome and Soracte.
So old it was!—and yet so fresh with spring! In the mornings at least the spring was uppermost. It silenced the plaint of outraged beauty which the place seemed to be always making, under a flutter of growth and song. Water and flowers and nightingales, the shadow, the sunlight, and the heat, were all alike strong and living,—Italy untamed. It was only in the evenings that Lucy shunned the path. For then, from the soil below and the wall above, there crept out the old imprisoned forces of sadness, or of poison, and her heart flagged or her spirits sank as she sat or walked there. Marinata has no malaria; but on old soils, and as night approaches, there is always something in the shade of Italy that fights with human life. The poor ghosts rise from the earth—jealous of those that are still walking the warm ways of the world.
But in the evenings, when the Fountain Walk drove her forth, the central hot zone of the garden was divine, with its roses and lilacs, its birds, its exquisite grass alive with shining lizards, jewelled with every flower, breathing every scent; and at its edge the old terrace with its balustrade, set above the Campagna, commanding the plain and the sea, the sky and the sunsets.
Evening after evening Lucy might have been found perched on the stone coping of the balustrade, sometimes trying, through the warm silent hours, by the help of this book or that, to call up again the old Roman life; sometimes dreaming of what there might still be—what the archæologists indeed said must be—buried beneath her feet; of the marble limbs and faces pressed into the earth, and all the other ruined things, small and great, mean or lovely, that lay deep in a common grave below the rustling olives, and the still leafless vineyards; and sometimes the mere passive companion of the breeze and the sun, conscious only of the chirping of the crickets, or the loudness of the nightingales, or the flight of a hoopoe, like some strange bright bird of fairy-tale, flashing from one deep garden-shadow to another.
Yet the garden was not always given up to her and the birds. Peasant folk coming from Albano or the olive-grounds between it and the villa would take a short cut through the garden to Marinata; dark-faced gardeners, in blue linen suits, would doff their peaked hats to the strange lady; or a score or two of young black-frocked priestlings from a neighbouring seminary would suddenly throng its paths, playing mild girlish games, with infinite clamour and chatter, running races as far and fast as their black petticoats would allow, twisting their long overcoats and red sashes meanwhile round a battered old noseless bust that stood for Domitian at the end of a long ilex-avenue, and was the butt for all the slings and arrows of the day,—poor helpless State, blinded and buffeted by the Church!
Lucy would hide herself among the lilacs and the arbutus when the seminary invaded her; watching through the leaves the strapping Italian boys in their hindering womanish dress; scorning them for their state of supervision and dependence; pitying them for their destiny!
And sometimes Manisty, disturbed by the noise, would come out—pale and frowning. But at the sight of the seminarists and of the old priest in command of them, his irritable look would soften. He would stand indeed with his hands on his sides, laughing and chatting with the boys, his head uncovered, his black curls blown backward from the great furrowed brow; and in the end Lucy peering from her nook would see him pacing up and down the ilex-walk with the priest,—haranguing and gesticulating—the old man in a pleased wonder looking at the Englishman through his spectacles, and throwing in from time to time ejaculations of assent, now half puzzled, and now fanatically eager. "He is talking the book!"—Lucy would think to herself—and her mind would rise in revolt.
One day after parting with the lads he came unexpectedly past her hiding-place, and paused at sight of her. "Do the boys disturb you?" he said, glancing at her book, and speaking with the awkward abruptness which with him could in a moment take the place of ease and mirth.
"Oh no—not at all."
He fidgeted, stripping leaves from the arbutus tree under which she sat.
"That old priest who comes with them is a charming fellow!"
Her shyness gave way.
"Is he?—He looks after them like an old nurse. And they are such babies—those great boys!"
His eye kindled.
"So you would like them to be more independent—more brutal. You prefer a Harvard and Yale football match—with the dead and wounded left on the ground?"
She laughed, daring for the first time to assert herself.
"No. I don't want blood! But there is something between. However—"
She hesitated. He looked down upon her half irritable, half smiling.
"Please go on."
"It would do them no good, would it—to be independent?"
"Considering how soon they must be slaves for life? Is that what you mean?"
Her frank blue eyes raised themselves to his. He was instantly conscious of something cool and critical in her attitude towards him. Very possibly he had been conscious of it for some time, which accounted for his instinctive avoidance of her. In the crisis of thought and production through which he was passing he shrank from any touch of opposition or distrust. He distrusted himself enough. It was as though he carried about with him wounds that only Eleanor's soft touch could be allowed to approach. And from the first evening he had very naturally divined in this Yankee girl, with her mingled reserve and transparency, her sturdy Protestantisms of all sorts, elements antagonistic to himself.
She answered his question, however, by another—still referring to the seminarists.
'Isn't that the reason why they take and train them so young—that they may have no will left?'
'Well, is that the worst condition in the world—to give up your own will to an idea—a cause?'
She laughed shyly—a low musical sound that suddenly gave him, as it seemed, a new impression of her.
'You call the old priest an "idea"?'
Both had the same vision of the most portly and substantial of figures.Manisty smiled unwillingly.
'The old priest is merely the symbol.'
She shook her head obstinately.
'He is all they know anything about. He gives orders, and they obey. Soon it will be some one else's turn to give them the orders—'
'Till the time comes for them to give orders themselves?—Well, what is there to object to in that?' He scanned her severely. 'What does it mean but that they are parts of a great system, properly organised, to a great end? Show me anything better?'
She coloured.
'It is better, isn't it, that—sometimes—one should give oneself orders?' she said in a low voice.
Manisty laughed.
'Liberty to make a fool of oneself—in short. No doubt,—that's the great modern panacea.' He paused, staring at her without being conscious of it, with his absent brilliant eyes. Then he broke out—'Well! so you despise my little priests! Did you ever think of inquiring, however, which wears best—their notion of human life, which after all has weathered 1900 years, and is as strong and prevailing as it ever was—or the sort of notion that their enemies here go to work upon? Look into the history of this Abyssinian war—everybody free to make fools of themselves, in Rome or Africa—and doing it magnificently! Private judgment—private aims everywhere—from Crispi to the smallest lieutenant. Result—universal wreck and muddle—thousands of lives thrown away—a nation brought to shame. Then look about you at what's going on—here—this week—on these hills. It's Holy Week. They're all fasting—they're all going to mass—the people working in the fields, our servants, the bright little priests. To-morrow's Holy Thursday. From now till Sunday, nobody here will eat anything but a little bread and a few olives. The bells will cease to-morrow. If a single church-bell rang in Rome—over this plain, and these mountains—through the whole of Italy—from mass to-morrow till mass on Saturday—a whole nation would feel pain and outrage. Then on Saturday—marvellous symbol!—listen for the bells. You will hear them all loosed together, as soon as the Sanctus begins—all over Italy. And on Sunday—watch the churches. If it isn't Matthew Arnold's "One common wave of thought and joy—Lifting mankind amain,"—what is it? To me, it's what keeps the human machine running. Make the comparison!—it will repay you. My little muffs of priests with their silly obedience won't come so badly out of it.'
Unconsciously he had taken a seat beside her, and was looking at her with a sharp imperious air. She dimly understood that he was not talking to her but to a much larger audience, that he was still in fact in the grip of "the book." But that he should have anyway addressed so many consecutive sentences to her excited her after these many days of absolute neglect and indifference on his part; she felt a certain tremor of pulse. Instead, however, of diminishing self-command, it bestowed it.
'Well, if that's the only way of running the machine—the Catholic way I mean,'—her words came out a little hurried and breathless—'I don't see howweexist.'
'You? America?'
She nodded.
'Doyou exist?—in any sense that matters?'
He laughed as he spoke; but his tone provoked her. She threw up her head a little, suddenly grave.
'Of course we know that you dislike us.'
He showed a certain embarrassment.
'How do you know?'
'Oh!—we read what you said of us.'
'I was badly reported,' he said, smiling.
'No,'—she insisted. 'But you were mistaken in a great many things—very, very much mistaken. You judged much too quickly.'
He rose, a covert amusement playing round his lips. It was the indulgence of the politician and man of affairs towards the little backwoods girl who was setting him to rights.
'We must have it out,' he said, 'I see I shall have to defend myself. But now I fear Mrs. Burgoyne will be waiting for me.'
And lifting his hat with the somewhat stately and excessive manner, which he could always substitute at the shortest notice forbrusquerieor inattention, he went his way.
Lucy Foster was left with a red cheek. She watched him till he had passed into the shadow of the avenue leading to the house; then with an impetuous movement she took up a book which had been lying beside her on the bench, and began to read it with a peculiar ardour—almost passion. It was the life of one of the heroes of the Garibaldian expedition of 1860-61.
For of late she had been surrounding herself—by the help of a library in Rome to which the Manistys had access—with the books of the ItalianRisorgimento, that great movement, that heroic making of a nation, in which our fathers felt so passionate an interest, which has grown so dim and far away now, not only in the mind of a younger England, but even in that of a younger Italy.
But to Lucy—reading the story with the plain of Rome, and St. Peter's in sight, her wits quickened by the perpetual challenge of Manisty's talk with Mrs. Burgoyne, or any chance visitor,—Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini; all the striking figures and all the main stages in the great epic; the blind, mad, hopeless outbreaks of '48; the hangings and shootings and bottomless despairs of '49; the sullen calm of those waiting years from '49 to '58; the ecstasy of Magenta and Solferino, and the fierce disappointment of Villafranca; the wild golden days of Sicily in 1860; the plucking of Venice like a ripe fruit in '66; of Rome, in 1870; all the deliriums of freedom, vengeance, union—these immortal names and passions and actions, were thrilling through the girl's fresh poetic sense, and capturing all her sympathies. Had Italy indeed been 'made too quick'? Was all the vast struggle, and these martyred lives for nothing—all to end like a choked river in death and corruption? Well, if so, whose fault was it, but the priests'?—of that black, intriguing, traitorous Italy, headed by the Papacy, which except for one brief moment in the forties, had upheld every tyranny, and drenched every liberty in blood, had been the supporter of the Austrian and the Bourbon, and was now again tearing to pieces the Italy that so many brave men had died to make?
The priests!—the Church!—Why!—she wondered, as she read the story of Charles Albert, and Metternich and the Naples Bourbons, that Italy still dared to let the ignorant, persecuting brood live and thrive in her midst at all! Especially was it a marvel to her that any Jesuit might still walk Italian streets, that a nation could ever forgive or forget such crimes against her inmost life as had been the crimes of the Jesuits. She would stand at the end of the terrace, her hands behind her clasping her book, her eyes fixed on the distant dome amid the stone-pines. Her book opened with the experiences of a Neapolitan boy at school in Naples during the priest-ridden years of the twenties, when Austrian bayonets, after the rising of '21, had replaced Bourbons and Jesuits in power, and crushed the life out of the young striving liberty of '21, as a cruel boy may crush and strangle a fledgling bird. 'What did we learn,' cried the author of the memoir—'from that monkish education which dwarfed both our mind and body? How many have I seen in later life groaning over their own ignorance, and pouring maledictions on the seminary or the college, where they had wasted so many years and had learnt nothing!'
'That monkish education which dwarfed both our mind and body'—
Lucy would repeat the words to herself—throwing them out as a challenge to that great dome hovering amid the sunny haze. That old man there, among his Cardinals—she thought of him with a young horror and revolt; yet not without a certain tremor of the imagination. Well!—in a few days—Sunday week—she was to see him, and judge for herself.
* * * * *
Meanwhile visitors were almost shut out. The villa sank into a convent-like quiet; for in a week, ten days, the book was perhaps to be finished. Miss Manisty, as the crisis approached, kept a vigilant eye on Mrs. Burgoyne. She was in constant dread of a delicate woman's collapse; and after the sittings in the library had lasted a certain time she had now the courage to break in upon them, and drive Manisty's Egeria out of her cave to rest and to the garden.
So Lucy, as the shadows lengthened in the garden, would hear the sound of a light though languid step, and would look up to see a delicate white face smiling down upon her.
'Oh! how tired you must be!' she would say, springing up. 'Let me make a place for you here under the trees.'
'No, no. Let us move about. I am tired of sitting.'
And they would pace up and down the terrace and the olive-garden beyond, while Mrs. Burgoyne leant upon Lucy's arm, chatting and laughing with an evident relief from tension which only betrayed the mental and physical fatigue behind.
Lucy wondered to see how exquisite, how dainty, she would emerge from these wrestles with hard work. Her fresh white or pale dresses, the few jewels half-hidden at her wrists or throat, the curled or piled masses of the fair hair, were never less than perfection, it seemed to Lucy; she was never more the woman of fashion and the great world than when she came out from a morning's toil that would have left its disturbing mark on a strong man, her eyes shining under the stress and ardour of those 'ideas,' as to which it was good to talk with her.
But how eagerly she would throw off that stress, and turn to wooing and winning Lucy Foster! All hanging back in the matter was gone. Certain vague thoughts and terrors were laid to sleep, and she must needs allow herself the luxury of charming the quiet girl, like all the rest—the dogs, the servants or the village children. There was a perpetual hunger for love in Eleanor's nature which expressed itself in a thousand small and piteous ways. She could never help throwing out tendrils, and it was rarely that she ventured them in vain.
In the case of Lucy Foster, however, her fine tact soon discovered that caresses were best left alone. They were natural to herself, and once or twice as the April days went by, she ventured to kiss the girl's fresh cheek, or to slip an arm round her waist. But Lucy took it awkwardly. When she was kissed she flushed, and stood passive; and all her personal ways were a little stiff and austere. After one of these demonstrations indeed Mrs. Burgoyne generally found herself repaid in some other form, by some small thoughtfulness on Lucy's part—the placing of a stool, the fetching of a cloak—or merely perhaps by a new softness in the girl's open look. And Eleanor never once thought of resenting her lack of response. There was even a kind of charm in it. The prevailing American type in Rome that winter had been a demonstrative type.
Lucy's manner in comparison was like a cool and bracing air. 'And when she does kiss!' Eleanor would say to herself—'it will be with all her heart. One can see that.'
Meanwhile Mrs. Burgoyne took occasional note of the Mazzinian literature that lay about. She would turn the books over and read their titles, her eyes sparkling with a little gentle mischief, as she divined the girl's disapproval of her host and his views. But she never argued with Lucy. She was too tired of the subject, too eager to seek relief in talking of the birds and the view, of people andchiffons.
Too happy perhaps—also. She walked on air in these days before Easter. The book was prospering; Manisty was more content; and as agreeable in all daily ways and offices as only the hope of good fortune can make a man. 'The Priest of Nemi'—indeed, with several other prose poems of the same kind, had been cast out of the text; which now presented one firm and vigorous whole of social and political discussion. But the Nemi piece was to be specially bound for Eleanor, together with some drawings that she had made of the lake and the temple site earlier in the spring. And on the day the book was finished—somewhere within the next fortnight—there was to be a festal journey to Nemi—divine and blessed place!
So she felt no fatigue, and was always ready to chatter to Lucy of the most womanish things. Especially, as the girl's beauty grew upon her, was she anxious to carry out those plans of transforming her dress and hair,—her gowns and hats and shoes—the primness of her brown braids, which she and Miss Manisty had confided to each other.
But Lucy was shy—would not be drawn that way. There were fewer visitors at the villa than she had expected. For this quiet life in the garden, and on the country roads, it seemed to her that her dresses did very well. The sense of discomfort excited by the elegance of her Florentine acquaintance died away. And she would have thought it wrong and extravagant to spend unnecessary money.
So she had quietly ceased to think about her dress; and the blue and white check, to Eleanor's torment, had frequently to be borne with.
Even the promised invitation to the Embassy had not arrived. It was said that the Ambassador's daughter had gone to Florence. Only Lucy wished she had not written that letter to Uncle Ben from Florence:—that rather troubled and penitent letter on the subject of dress. He might misunderstand—might do something foolish.
* * * * *
And apparently Uncle Ben did do something foolish. For a certain letter arrived from Boston on the day after the seminarists' invasion of the garden. Lucy after an hour's qualms and hesitations, must needs reluctantly confide the contents of it to Miss Manisty. And that lady with smiles and evident pleasure called Mrs. Burgoyne—and Eleanor called her maid,—and the ball began to roll.
* * * * *
On Saturday morning early, Mrs. Burgoyne's room indeed was in a bustle—delightful to all but Lucy. Manisty was in Rome for the day, and Eleanor had holiday. She had never looked more frail—a rose-leaf pink in her cheek—nor more at ease. For she was at least as good to consult about a skirt as an idea.
'Marie!'—she said, giving her own maid a little peremptory push—'just run and fetch Benson—there's an angel. We must have all the brains possible. If we don't get the bodice right, it won't suit Miss Foster a bit.'
Marie went in all haste. Meanwhile in front of a large glass stood a rather red and troubled Lucy arrayed in a Paris gown belonging to Mrs. Burgoyne. Eleanor had played her with much tact, and now had her in her power.
'It is the crisis, my dear,' Miss Manisty had said in Eleanor's ear, as they rose from breakfast, with a twinkle of her small eyes. 'The question is; can we, or can we not, turn her into a beauty?Youcan!'
Eleanor at any rate was doing her best. She had brought out her newest gowns and Lucy was submissively putting them on one after the other. Eleanor was in pursuit first of all of some general conceptions. What was the girl's true style?—what were the possibilities?
'When I have got my lines and main ideas in my head,' she said pensively, 'then we will call in the maids. Of course youmighthave the things made in Rome. But as we have the models—and these two maids have nothing to do—why not give ourselves the pleasure of looking after it?'
Pleasure! Lucy Foster opened her eyes.
Still, here was this absurd, this most extravagant cheque from Uncle Ben, and these peremptory commands to get herself everything—everything—that other girls had. Why, it was demanded of her, had she been economical and scrupulous before starting? Folly and disobedience! He had been told of her silly hesitations, her detestable frugalities—he had ferretted it all out. And now she was at a disadvantage—was she? Let her provide herself at once, or old as he was, he would take train and steamer and come and see to it!
She was not submissive in general—far from it. But the reading of UncleBen's letter had left her very meek in spirit and rather inclined to cry.
Had Uncle Ben really considered whether it was right to spend so much money on oneself, to think so much about it? Their life together had been so simple, the question had hardly emerged. Of course it was right to be neat and fresh, and to please his taste in what she wore. But—
The net result of all this internal debate, however, was to give a peculiar charm, like the charm of rippled and sensitive water, to features that were generally too still and grave. She stood silently before the long glass while Mrs. Burgoyne and the maids talked and pinned. She walked to the end of the room and back, as she was bid; she tried to express a preference, when she was asked for one; and as she was arrayed in one delicious gown after another, she became more and more alive to the beauty of the soft stuffs, the invention and caprice with which they were combined, the daintiness of their pinks and blues, their greys and creams, their lilacs and ivories. At last Mrs. Burgoyne happened upon a dress of white crape, opening upon a vest of pale green, with thin edges of black here and there, disposed with the tact, the feeling of the artist; and when Lucy's tall form had been draped in this garment, her three attendants fell back with one simultaneous cry:
'Oh my dear!' said Mrs. Burgoyne drawing a long breath.—'Now you see, Marie—I told you!—that's the cut. And just look how simple that is, and how it falls! That's the green. Yes, when Mathilde is as good as that she's divine.—Now all you've got to do is just to copy that. And the materials are just nothing—you'll get them in the Corso in half-an-hour.'
'May I take it off?' said Lucy.
'Well yes, you may'—said Mrs. Burgoyne, reluctantly—'but it's a great pity. Well now, for the coat and skirt,'—she checked them off on her slim fingers—'for the afternoon gown, and one evening dress, I think I see my way—'
'Enough for one morning isn't it?' said Lucy half laughing, half imploring.
'Yes,'—said Mrs. Burgoyne absently, her mind already full of further developments.
The gowns were carried away, and Aunt Pattie's maid departed. Then as Lucy in her white cotton wrapper was retiring to her own room, Mrs. Burgoyne caught her by the arm.
'You remember,'—she said appealingly,—'how rude I was that evening you came—how I just altered your hair? You don't know how I long to do it properly! You know I shall have a little trouble with these dresses—trouble I like—but still I shall pretend it's trouble, that you may pay me for it. Pay me by letting me experiment! I just long to take all your hair down, and do it as it ought to be done. And you don't know how clever I am.Letme!'
And already, before the shamefaced girl could reply, she was gently pushed into the chair before Mrs. Burgoyne's dressing-table, and a pair of skilled hands went to work.
'I can't say you look as though you enjoyed it,' said Mrs. Burgoyne by the time she had covered the girl's shoulders with the long silky veil which she had released from the stiff plaits confining it. 'Do you think it's wrong to do your hair prettily?' Lucy laughed uneasily.
'I was never brought up to think much about it. My mother had very strict views.'
'Ah!'—said Eleanor, with a discreet intonation. 'But you see, at Rome it is really so much better for the character to do as Rome does. To be out of the way makes one self-conscious. Your mother didn't foresee that.'
Silence,—while the swift white fingers plaited and tied and laid foundations.
'It waves charmingly already'—murmured the artist—'but it must be just a little moreonduléin the right places—just a touch—here and there. Quick, Marie!—bring me the stove—and the tongs—and two or three of those finest hairpins.'
The maid flew, infected by the ardour of her mistress, and between them they worked to such purpose that when at last they released their victim, they had turned the dark head into that of a stately and fashionable beauty. The splendid hair was raised high in small silky ripples above the white brow. The little love-locks on the temples had been delicately arranged so as to complete the fine oval of the face, and at the back the black masses drawn lightly upwards from the neck, and held in place there by a pearl comb of Mrs. Burgoyne's, had been piled and twisted into a crown that would have made Artemis herself more queenly.
'Am I really to keep it like this?' cried Lucy, looking at herself in the glass.
'But of course you are!' and Mrs. Burgoyne instinctively held the girl's arms, lest any violence should be offered to her handiwork—'And you must put on youroldwhite frock—notthe check—the nice soft one that's been washed, with the pink sash—Goodness, how the time goes! Marie, run and tell Miss Manisty not to wait for me—I'll follow her to the village.'
The maid went. Lucy looked down upon her tyrant—
You are very kind to me'—she said with a lip that trembled slightly. Her blue eyes under the black brows showed a feeling that she did not know how to express. The subdued responsiveness, indeed, of Lucy's face was like that of Wordsworth's Highland girl struggling with English. You felt her 'beating up against the wind,'—in the current, yet resisting it. Or to take another comparison, her nature seemed to be at once stiff and rich—like some heavy church stuff, shot with gold.
'Oh! these things are my snare,' said Eleanor, laughing—'If I have any gift, it is forchiffons.'
'Any gift!' said Lucy wondering—'when you do so much for Mr. Manisty?'
Mrs. Burgoyne shrugged her shoulders.
'Ah! well—he wanted a secretary—and I happened to get the place,' she said, in a more constrained voice.
'Miss Manisty told me how you helped him in the winter. And she and Mr.Brooklyn—have—told me—other things—' said Lucy. She paused, colouringdeeply. But her eyes travelled timidly to the photographs on Mrs.Burgoyne's table.
Eleanor understood.
'Ah!—they told you that, did they?'—The speaker turned a little white. 'And you wonder—don't you?—that I can go on talking about frocks, and new ways of doing one's hair?'
She moved away from Lucy, a touch of cold defensive dignity effacing all her pliant sweetness.
Lucy followed and caught her hand.
'Oh no! no!'—she said—'it is only so brave and good of you—to be able still—to take an interest—'
'Do I take it?' said Eleanor, scornfully, raising her other hand and letting it fall.
Lucy was silenced. After a moment Eleanor looked round, calmly took the photograph of the child from the table, and held it towards Lucy.
'He was just two—his birthday was four days before this was taken. It's the picture I love best, because I last saw him like that—in his night-gown. I was very ill that night—they wouldn't let me stay with my husband—but after I left him, I came and rocked the baby and tucked him up—and leant my face against his. He was so warm and sweet always in his sleep. The touch of him—and the scent of him—his dear breath—and his curls—and the moist little hands—sometimes they used to intoxicate me—to give me life—like wine. They did me such good—that night.'
Her voice did not tremble. Tears softly found their way down Lucy's face.And suddenly she stooped, and put her lips, tenderly, clingingly, to Mrs.Burgoyne's hand.
Eleanor smiled. Then she herself bent forward and lightly kissed the girl's cheek.
'Oh! I am not worthy either to have had him—or lost him—' she said bitterly. There was a little pause, which Eleanor broke. 'Now really we must go to Aunt Pattie—mustn't we?'
'Ah! here you are! Don't kill yourselves. Plenty of time—for us!Listen—there's the bell—eight o'clock—now they open the doors.Goodness!—Look at the rush—and those little Italian chaps tackling thosestrapping priests. Go it, ye cripples!'
Lucy tamed her run to a quick walk, and Mr. Reggie took care of her, while Manisty disappeared ahead with Mrs. Burgoyne, and Aunt Pattie fell to the share of a certain Mr. Vanbrugh Neal, an elderly man tall and slim, and of a singular elegance of bearing, who had joined them at the Piazza, and seemed to be an old friend of Mr. Manisty's.
Lucy looked round her in bewilderment. Before the first stroke of the bell the Piazza of St. Peter's had been thickly covered with freely moving groups, all advancing in order upon the steps of the church. But as the bell began to speak, there was a sudden charge mostly of young priests and seminarists—black skirts flying, black legs leaping—across the open space and up the steps.
'Reminds me of nothing so much'—said Reggie laughing back over his shoulder at a friend behind—'as the charge of the Harrow boys at Lord's last year—when they stormed the pavilion—did you see it?—and that little Harrow chap saved the draw? I say!—they've broken the line!—and there'll be a bad squash somewhere.'
And indeed the attacking priests had for a moment borne down the Italian soldiers who were good-naturedly guarding and guiding the Pope's guests from the entrance of the Piazza to the very door of the church. But the little men—as they seemed to Lucy's eyes—recovered themselves in a twinkling, threw themselves stoutly on the black gentry, like sheep dogs on the sheep, worried them back into line, collared a few bold spirits here, formed a new cordon there, till all was once more in tolerable order, and a dangerous pressure on the central door was averted.
Meanwhile Lucy was hurried forward with the privileged crowd going to the tribunes, towards the sacristy door on the south.
'Let's catch up Mrs. Burgoyne'—said the young man, looking ahead with some anxiety—'Manisty's no use. He'll begin to moon and forget all about her. I say!—Look at the building—and the sky behind it! Isn't it stunning?'
And they threw up a hasty glance as they sped along at the superb walls and apses and cornices of the southern side—golden ivory or wax against the blue.—The pigeons flew in white eddies above their heads; the April wind flushed Lucy's cheek, and played with her black mantilla. All qualms were gone. After her days of seclusion in the villa garden, she was passionately conscious of this great Rome and its magic; and under her demure and rather stately air, her young spirits danced and throbbed with pleasure.
'How that black lace stuff does become all you women!'—said Reggie Brooklyn, throwing a lordly and approving glance at her and his cousin Eleanor, as they all met and paused amid the crowd that was concentrating itself on the sacristy door; and Lucy, instead of laughing at the lad's airs, only reddened a little more brightly and found it somehow sweet—April sweet—that a young man on this spring morning should admire her; though after all, she was hardly more inclined to fall in love with Reggie Brooklyn than with Manisty's dear collie puppy, that had been left behind, wailing, at the villa.
At the actual door the young man quietly possessed himself of Mrs.Burgoyne, while Manisty with an unconscious look of relief fell behind.
'And you, Miss Foster,—keep closer—my coat's all at your service—it'll stand a pull. Don't you be swept away—and I'll answer for Mrs. Burgoyne.'
So on they hurried, borne along with the human current through passages and corridors, part of a laughing, pushing, chatting crowd, containing all the types that throng the Roman streets—English and American tourists, Irish or German or English priests, monks white and brown, tall girls who wore their black veils with an evident delight in the new setting thus given to their fair hair and brilliant skins, beside older women to whom, on the contrary, the dress had given a kind of unwonted repose and quietness of look, as though for once they dared to be themselves in it, and gave up the struggle with the years.
Reggie Brooklyn maintained a lively chatter all the time, mostly at Manisty's expense. Eleanor Burgoyne first laughed at his sallies, then gently turned her head in a pause of the general advance and searched the crowd pressing at their heels. Lucy's eyes followed hers, and there far behind, carried forward passively in a brown study, losing ground slightly whenever it was possible, was Manisty. The fine significant face was turned a little upward; the eyes were full of thoughts; he was at once the slave of the crowd, and its master.
And across Eleanor's expression—unseen—there passed the slightest, subtlest flash of tenderness and pride. She knew and understood him—she alone!
* * * * *
At last the doors are passed. They are in the vast barricaded and partitioned space, already humming with the talk and tread of thousands,—the 'Tu es Petrus' overhead. Reggie Brooklyn would have hurried them on in the general rush for the tribunes. But Mrs. Burgoyne laid a restraining hand upon him. 'No—we mustn't separate,' she said, gently peremptory. And for a few minutes Mr. Reggie in an anguish must needs see the crowd flow past him, and the first seats of Tribune D filled. Then Manisty appeared, lifting his eyebrows in a frowning wonder at the young man's impatience;—and on they flew.
At last!—They are in the third row of Tribune D, close to the line by which the Pope must pass, and to the platform from which he will deliver the Apostolic Benediction. Reggie the unsatisfied, the idealist, grumbles that they ought to have been in the very front. But Eleanor and Aunt Pattie are well satisfied. They find their acquaintance all around them. It is a general flutter of fans, and murmur of talk. Already people are standing on their seats looking down on the rapidly filling church. In press the less favoured thousands from the Piazza, through the Atrium and the Eastern door—great sea of human life spreading over the illimitable nave behind the two lines of Swiss and Papal Guards, in quick never-ending waves that bewilder and dazzle the eye.
Lucy found the three hours' wait but a moment. The passing and re-passing of the splendid officials in their Tudor or Valois dress; the great names, 'Colonna,' 'Barberini,' 'Savelli,' 'Borghese' that sound about her, as Mrs. Burgoyne who knows everybody, at least by sight, laughs and points and chats with her neighbour, Mr. Neal; the constant welling up of processions from behind,—the Canons and Monsignori in their fur and lace tippets, the red Cardinals with their suites; the entry of the Guardia Nobile, splendid, incredible, in their winged Achillean helmets above their Empire uniforms—half Greek, half French, half gods, half dandies, the costliest foolishest plaything that any court can show; and finally as the time draws on, the sudden thrills and murmurs that run through the church, announcing the great moment which still, after all, delays: these things chase the minutes, blot out, the sense of time.
Meanwhile, again and again, Lucy, the sedate, the self-controlled, cannot prevent herself from obeying a common impulse with those about her—from leaping on her chair—straining her white throat—her eyes. Then a handsome chamberlain would come by, lifting a hand in gentle protest, motioning to the ladies—'De grâce, mesdames—mesdames, degrâce!—' Or angry murmurs would rise from those few who had not the courage or the agility to mount—'Giù! giù!—Descendez, mesdames!—qu'est-ce que c'est done que ces mánières?'—and Lucy, crimson and abashed, would descend in haste, only to find a kind Irish priest behind smiling at her,—prompting her,—'Never mind them!—take no notice!—who is it you're harmin'?'—And her excitement would take him at his word—for who should know if not a priest?
And from these risky heights she looked down sometimes on Manisty—wondering where was emotion, sympathy. Not a trace of them! Of all their party he alone was obviously and hideously bored by the long wait. He leant back in his chair, with folded arms, staring at the ceiling—yawning—fidgetting. At last he took out a small Greek book from his pocket, and hung over it in a moody absorption. Once only, when a procession of the inferior clergy went by, he looked at it closely, turning afterwards to Mrs. Burgoyne with the emphatic remark: 'Bad faces!—aren't they?—almost all of them?'
Yet Lucy could see that even here in this vast crowd, amid the hubbub and bustle, he still counted, was still remembered. Officials came to lean and chat across the rope; diplomats stopped to greet him on the way to the august seats beyond the Confession. His manner in return showed no particular cordiality; Lucy thought it languid, even cold. She was struck with the difference between his mood of the day, and that brilliant and eager homage he had lavished on the old Cardinal in the villa garden. What a man of change and fantasy! Here it was hequi tendait la joue. Cold, distant, dreamy—one would have thought him either indifferent or hostile to the whole great pageant and its meanings.
Only once did Lucy see him bestir himself—show a gleam of animation. A white-haired priest, all tremulous dignity and delicacy, stood for a moment beside the rope-barrier, waiting for a friend. Manisty bent over and touched him on the arm. The old man turned. The face was parchment, the cheeks cavernous. But in the blue eyes there was an exquisite innocence and youth.
Manisty smiled at him. His manner showed a peculiar almost a boyish deference. 'You join us afterwards—at lunch?'
'Yes, yes.' The old priest beamed and nodded; then his friend came up and he was carried on.
* * * * *
'A quarter to eleven,' said Manisty with a yawn, looking at his watch.'Ah!—listen!'
He sprang to his feet. In an instant half the occupants of Tribune D were on their chairs, Lucy and Eleanor among them. A roar came up the church—passionate—indescribable. Lucy held her breath.
There—there he is,—the old man! Caught in a great shaft of sunlight striking from south to north, across the church, and just touching the chapel of the Holy Sacrament—the Pope emerges. The white figure, high above the crowd, sways from side to side; the hand upraised gives the benediction. Fragile, spiritual as is the apparition, the sunbeam refines, subtilises, spiritualises it still more. It hovers like a dream above the vast multitudes—surely no living man!—but thought, history, faith, taking shape; the passion of many hearts revealed. Up rushes the roar towards the Tribunes. 'Did you hear?' said Manisty to Mrs. Burgoyne, lifting a smiling brow, as a few Papalino cries—'Viva il Papa Re'—make themselves heard among the rest. Eleanor's thin face turns to him with responsive excitement. But she has seen these things before. Instinctively her eyes wander perpetually to Manisty's, taking their colour, their meaning from his. It is not the spectacle itself that matters to her—poor Eleanor! One heart-beat, one smile of the man beside her outweighs it all. And he, roused at last from his nonchalance, watching hawk-like every movement of the figure and the crowd, is going mentally through a certain page of his book, repeating certain phrases—correcting here—strengthening there.
Lucy alone—the alien and Puritan Lucy—Lucy surrenders herself completely. She betrays nothing, save by the slightly parted lips, and the flutter of the black veil fastened on her breast; but it is as though her whole inner being were dissolving, melting away, in the flame of the moment. It is her first contact with decisive central things, her first taste of the great world-play, as Europe has known it and taken part in it, at least since Charles the Great.
Yet, as she looks, within the visible scene, there opens another: the porch of a plain, shingled house, her uncle sitting within it, his pipe and his newspaper on his knee, sunning himself in the April morning. She passes behind him, looks into the stiff leaf-scented parlour—at the framed Declaration of Independence on the walls, the fresh boughs in the fire-place, the Bible on its table, the rag-carpet before the hearth. She breathes the atmosphere of the house; its stern independence and simplicities; the scorns and the denials, the sturdy freedoms both of body and soul that it implies—conscience the only master—vice-master for God, in this His house of the World. And beyond—as her lids sink for an instant on the pageant before her—she hears, as it were, the voices of her country, so young and raw and strong!—she feels within her the throb of its struggling self-assertive life; she is conscious too of the uglinesses and meannesses that belong to birth and newness, to growth and fermentation. Then, in a proud timidity—as one who feels herself an alien and on sufferance—she hangs again upon the incomparable scene. This is St. Peter's; there is the dome of Michael Angelo; and here, advancing towards her amid the red of the cardinals, the clatter of the guards, the tossing of the flabellæ, as though looking at her alone—the two waxen fingers raised for her alone—is the white-robed triple-crowned Pope.
She threw herself upon the sight with passion, trying to penetrate and possess it; and it baffled her, passed her by. Some force of resistance within her cried out to it that she was not its subject—rather its enemy! And august, unheeding, the great pageant swept on. Close, close to her now! Down sink the crowd upon the chairs; the heads fall like corn before the wind. Lucy is bending too. The Papal chair borne on the shoulders of the guards is now but a few feet distant; vaguely she wonders that the old man keeps his balance, as he clings with one frail hand to the arm of the chair, rises incessantly—and blesses with the other. She catches the very look and meaning of the eyes—the sharp long line of the closed and toothless jaw. Spirit and spectre;—embodying the Past, bearing the clue to the Future.
'Yeux de police!'—laughed Reggie Brooklyn to Mrs. Burgoyne as the procession passed—'don't you know?—that's what they say.'
Manisty bent forward. The flush of excitement was still on his cheek, but he threw a little nod to Brooklyn, whose gibe amused him.
Lucy drew a long breath—and the spell was broken.
* * * * *
Nor was it again renewed, in the same way. The Pope and his cortège disappeared behind the Confession, behind the High Altar, and presently, Lucy, craning her neck to the right, could see dimly in the furthest distance, against the apse, and under the chair of St. Peter, the chair of Leo XIII. and the white shadow, motionless, erect, within it, amid a court of cardinals and diplomats. As for the mass that followed, it had its moments of beauty for the girl's wondering or shrinking curiosity, but also its moments of weariness and disillusion. From the latticed choir-gallery, placed against one of the great piers of the dome, came unaccompanied music—fine, pliant, expressive—like a single voice moving freely in the vast space; and at the High Altar, Cardinals and Bishops crossed and recrossed, knelt and rose, offered and put off the mitre; amid wreaths of incense, long silences, a few chanted words; sustained, enfolded all the while by the swelling tide ofGloria, orSanctus.
At last—the elevation!—and at the bell the whole long double line of soldiers, from the Pope's chair at the western end to the eastern door, with a rattle of arms that ran from end to end of the church, dropped on one knee—saluted. Then, crac!—and as they had dropped, they rose, the stiff white breeches and towering helmets of the Guardia Nobile, the red and yellow of the Swiss, the red and blue of the Papal guards—all motionless as before. It was like the movement of some gigantic toy. And who or what else took any notice? Lucy looked round amazed. Even the Irish priest behind her had scarcely bowed his head. Nobody knelt. Most people were talking. Eleanor Burgoyne indeed had covered her face with her long delicate fingers. Manisty leaning back in his chair, looked up for an instant at the rattle of the soldiers, then went back sleepily to his Greek book. Yet Lucy felt her own heart throbbing. Through the candelabra of the High Altar beneath the dome, she can see the moving figures of the priests, the wreaths of incense ascending. The face of the celebrant Cardinal, which had dropped out of sight, reappears. Since it was last visible, according to Catholic faith, the great act of Catholic worship has been accomplished—the Body and Blood are there—God has descended, has mingled with a mortal frame. And who cares? Lucy looks round her at the good-humoured indifference, vacancy, curiosity, of the great multitude filling the nave; and her soul frees itself in a rush of protesting amazement.
* * * * *
One more 'moment' however there was,—very different from the great moment of the entry, yet beautiful. The mass is over, and a temporary platform has been erected between the Confession and the nave. The Pope has been placed upon it, and is about to chant the Apostolic Benediction.
The old man is within thirty feet of Manisty, who sits nearest to the barrier. The red Cardinal holding the service-book, the groups of guards, clergy and high officials, every detail of the Pope's gorgeous dress, nay every line of the wrinkled face, and fleshless hands, Lucy's eyes command them all. The quavering voice rises into the sudden silence of St. Peter's. Fifty thousand people hush every movement, strain their ears to listen.
Ah! how weak it is! Surely the effort is too great for a frame so enfeebled, so ancient. It should not have been exacted—allowed. Lucy's ears listen painfully for the inevitable break. But no!—The Pope draws a long sigh—the sigh of weakness,—('Ah! poveretto!' says a woman, close to Lucy, in a transport of pity),—then once more attempts the chant—sighs again—and sings. Lucy's face softens and glows; her eyes fill with tears. Nothing more touching, more triumphant, than this weakness and this perseverance. Fragile indomitable face beneath the Papal crown! Under the eyes of fifty thousand people the Pope sighs like a child, because he is weak and old, and the burden of his office is great; but in sighing, keeps a perfect simplicity, dignity, courage. Not a trace of stoical concealment; but also not a trace of flinching. He sings to the end, and St. Peter's listens in a tender hush.
Then there seems to be a moment of collapse. The long straight lips close as though with a snap, the upper jaw protruding; the eyelids drop; the emaciated form sinks upon itself.—
But his guards raise the chair, and the Pope's trance passes away. He opens his eyes, and braces himself for the last effort. Whiter than the gorgeous cope which falls about him, he raises himself, clinging to the chair; he lifts the skeleton fingers of his partially gloved hand; his look searches the crowd.
Lucy fell on her knees, a sob in her throat. When the Pope had passed, some influence made her look up. She met the eyes of Edward Manisty. They were instantly withdrawn, but not before the mingling of amusement and triumph in them had brought the quick red to the girl's cheek.
* * * * *
And outside, in the Piazza, amid the out-pouring thousands, as they were rushing for their carriage, Manisty's stride overtook her.
'Well—you were impressed?'—he said, looking at her sharply.
The girl's pride was somehow nettled by his tone.
'Yes—but by the old man—more than by the Pope,'—she said quickly.
'I hope not,' he said, with emphasis.—'Otherwise you would have missed the whole point.'
'Why?—Mayn't one feel it was pathetic, and touching—'
'No—not in the least!' he said, impatiently. 'What does the man himself matter, or his age?—That's all irrelevant,—foolish sentiment. What makes these ceremonies so tremendous is that there is no break between that man and Peter—or Linus, if you like—it comes to the same thing:—that the bones, if not of Peter, at any rate of men who might have known Peter, are there, mingled with the earth beneath his feet—that he stands there recognised by half the civilised world as Peter's successor—that five hundred, a thousand years hence, the vast probability is there will still be a Pope in St. Peter's to hand on the same traditions, and make the same claims.'
'But if you don't acknowledge the tradition or the claims!—why shouldn't you feel just the human interest?'
'Oh, of course, if you want to take the mere vulgar, parochial view—the halfpenny interviewer's view—why, you must take it!' he said, almost with violence, shrugging his shoulders.
Lucy's eyes sparkled. There was always something of the overgrown, provoking child in him, when he wanted to bear down an opinion or feeling that displeased him. She would have liked to go on walking and wrangling with him, for the great ceremony had excited her, and made it easier for her to talk. But at that moment Mrs. Burgoyne's voice was heard in front—'Joy! there is the carriage, and Reggie has picked up another.—Edward, take Aunt Pattie through—we'll look after ourselves.'
* * * * *
And soon the whole party were driving in two of the little Roman victorias through streets at the back of the Capitol, and round the base of the Palatine, to the Aventine, where it appeared they were to lunch at an open-airtrattoria, recommended by Mr. Brooklyn.
Mrs. Burgoyne, Lucy and Mr. Vanbrugh Neal found themselves together. Mrs. Burgoyne and Mr. Neal talked of the function, and Lucy, after a few shy expressions of gratitude and pleasure, fell silent, and listened. But she noticed very soon that Mrs. Burgoyne was talking absently. Amid the black that fell about her slim tallness, she was more fragile, more pale than ever; and it seemed to Lucy that her eyes were dark with a fatigue that had not much to do with St. Peter's. Suddenly indeed, she bent forward and said in a lowered voice to Mr. Neal—
'You have read it?'
He too bent forward, with a smile not quite free from embarrassment—
'Yes, I have read it—I shall have some criticisms to make.—You won't mind?'
She threw up her hands—
'Must you?'
'I think I must—for the good of the book,'—he said reluctantly. 'Very likely I'm all wrong. I can only look at it as one of the public. But that's what he wants,'—what you both want—isn't it?'
She assented. Then she turned her head away, looked out of the carriage and said no more. But her face had drooped and dimmed, all in a moment; the lines graven in it long years before, by grief and delicacy, came out with a singular and sudden plainness.
The man sitting opposite to her was of an aspect little less distinguished than hers. He had a long face, with a high forehead, set in grizzled hair, and a mouth and chin of peculiar refinement. The shortness of the chin gave a first impression of weakness, which however was soon undone by the very subtle and decided lines in which, so to speak, the mouth, and indeed the face as a whole, were drawn. All that Lucy knew of him was that he was a Cambridge don, a man versed in classical archæology who was an old friend and tutor of Mr. Manisty's. She had heard his name mentioned several times at the Villa, and always with an emphasis that marked it out from other names. And she understood from various signs that before finally passing his proofs for publication, Mr. Manisty had taken advantage of his old friend's coming to Rome to ask his opinion on them.
How brilliant was the April day on the high terrace of the Aventinetrattoria! As Lucy and Aunt Pattie stood together beside the little parapet looking out through the sprays of banksia rose that were already making a white canopy above the restaurant tables, they had before them the steep sides and Imperial ruins of the Palatine; the wonderful group of churches on the Coelian; the low villa-covered ridges to the right melting into the Campagna; and far away, the blue, Sabine mountains—'suffused with sunny air'—that look down with equal kindness on the refuge of Horace, and the oratory of St. Benedict. What sharpness of wall and tree against the pearly sky—what radiance of blossom in the neighbouring gardens—what ruin everywhere, yet what indomitable life!
Beneath on a lower terrace, Manisty and Mr. Vanbrugh Neal were walking up and down.
'He's such a clever man,' sighed Aunt Pattie, as she looked down upon them.'But I do hope he won't discourage Edward.'
Whereupon she glanced not at Manisty but at Eleanor, who was sitting near them, pretending to talk to Reggie Brooklyn—but in reality watching the conversation below.
Presently some other guests arrived, and amongst them the tall and fine-faced priest who had spoken to Manisty in St. Peter's. He came in very shyly. Eleanor Burgoyne received him, made him sit by her, and took charge of him till Manisty should appear. But he seemed to be ill at ease with ladies. He buried his hands in the sleeves of his soutane, and would answer little more than Yes and No.
'There'll be a great fuss about him soon,' whispered Aunt Pattie in Lucy's ear—'I don't quite understand—but he's written a book that's been condemned; and the question is, will he submit? They give you a year apparently to decide in. Edward says the book's quite right—and yet they were quite right to condemn him. It's very puzzling!'