Eleanor, Mrs. Humphry Ward [best books to read now .txt] 📗

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 Graeco-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 a _savoir 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 must _dine_ with '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 they _are_ nice 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