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

conquest of the upper sky, which still above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the north-west wind and the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening fingers and long spinning veils of cloud across it--skirmishers that foretold the black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous masses behind. Below these wild tempest shapes, again,--in long spaces resting on the sea--the heaven was at peace, shining in delicate greens and yellows, infinitely translucent and serene, above the dazzling lines of water. Over Rome itself there was a strange massing and curving of the clouds. Between their blackness and the deep purple of the Campagna, rose the city--pale phantom--upholding one great dome, and one only, to the view of night and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the long flat arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The buildings of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity.--And between the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners of the night, stole over the Campagna towards the higher ground. But the hills themselves were still shining, still clad in rose and amethyst, caught in gentler repetition from the wildness of the west. Pale rose even the olive-gardens; rose the rich brown fallows, the emerging farms; while drawn across the Campagna from north to south, as though some mighty brush had just laid it there for sheer lust of colour, sheer joy in the mating it with the rose,--one long strip of sharpest, purest green.

Mrs. Burgoyne turned at last from the great spectacle to her companion.

'One has really no adjectives left,' she said. 'But I had used mine up within a week.'

'It still gives you so much pleasure?' he said, looking at her a little askance.

Her face changed at once.

'And you?--you are beginning to be tired of it?'

'One gets a sort of indigestion.--Oh! I shall be all right to-morrow.'

Both were silent for a moment. Then he resumed.--

'I met General Fenton in the Borgia rooms this morning.'

She turned, with a quick look of curiosity.

'Well?'

'I hadn't seen him since I met him at Simla three years ago. I always found him particularly agreeable then. We used to ride together and talk together,--and he put me in the way of seeing a good many things. This morning he received me with a change of manner--can't exactly describe it; but it was not flattering! So I presently left him to his own devices and went on into another room. Then he followed me, and seemed to wish to talk. Perhaps he perceived that he had been unfriendly, and thought he would make amends. But I was rather short with him. We had been real friends; we hadn't met for three years; and I thought he might have behaved differently. He asked me a number of questions, however, about last year, about my resignation, and so forth; and I answered as little as I could. So presently he looked at me and laughed--"You remind me," he said, "of what somebody said of Peel--that he was bad to go up to in the stable!--But what on earth are you in the stable for?--and not in the running?"'

Mrs. Burgoyne smiled.

'He was evidently bored with the pictures!' she said, dryly.

Manisty gave a shrug. 'Oh! I let him off. I wouldn't be drawn. I told him I had expressed myself so much in public there was nothing more to say. "H'm," he said, "they tell me at the Embassy you're writing a book!" You should have seen the little old fellow's wizened face--and the scorn of it! So I inquired whether there was any objection to the writing of books. "Yes!"--he said--"when a man can do a d----d sight better for himself--as you could! Everyone tells me that last year you had the ball at your feet." "Well,"--I said--"and I kicked it--and am still kicking it--in my own way. It mayn't be yours--or anybody else's--but wait and see." He shook his head. "A man with what _were_ your prospects can't afford escapades. It's all very well for a Frenchman; it don't pay in England." So then I maintained that half the political reputations of the present day were based on escapades. "Whom do you mean?"--he said--"Randolph Churchill?--But Randolph's escapades were always just what the man in the street understood. As for your escapade, the man in the street can't make head or tail of it. That's just the, difference."'

Mrs. Burgoyne laughed--but rather impatiently.

'I should like to know when General Fenton ever considered the man in the street!'

'Not at Simla certainly. There you may despise him.--But the old man is right enough as to the part he plays in England.--I gathered that all my old Indian friends thought I had done for myself. There was no sympathy for me anywhere. Oh!--as to the cause I upheld--yes. But none as to the mode of doing it.'

'Well--there is plenty of sympathy elsewhere! What does it matter what dried-up officials like General Fenton choose to think about it?'

'Nothing--so long as there are no doubts inside to open the gates to the General Fentons outside!'

He looked at her oddly--half smiling, half frowning.

'The doubts are traitors. Send them to execution!' He shook his head.

'Do you remember that sentence we came across yesterday in Chateaubriand's letters "As to my career--I have gone from shipwreck to shipwreck." What if I am merely bound on the same charming voyage?'

'I accept the comparison,' she said with vivacity. 'End as he did in re-creating a church, and regenerating a literature--and see who will count the shipwrecks!'

Her hand's disdainful gesture completed the sally.

Manisty's face dismissed its shadow.

As she stood beside him, in the rosy light--so proudly confident--Eleanor Burgoyne was very delightful to see and hear. Manisty, one of the subtlest and most fastidious of observers, was abundantly conscious of it. Yet she was not beautiful, except in the judgment of a few exceptional people, to whom a certain kind of grace--very rare, and very complex in origin--is of more importance than other things. The eyes were, indeed, beautiful; so was the forehead, and the hair of a soft ashy brown folded and piled round it in a most skilful simplicity. But the rest of the face was too long; and its pallor, the singularly dark circles round the eyes, the great thinness of the temples and cheeks, together with the emaciation of the whole delicate frame, made a rather painful impression on a stranger. It was a face of experience, a face of grief; timid, yet with many strange capacities and suggestions both of vehemence and pride. It could still tremble into youth and delight. But in general it held the world aloof. Mrs. Burgoyne was not very far from thirty, and either physical weakness, or the presence of some enemy within more destructive still, had emphasised the loss of youth. At the same time she had still a voice, a hand, a carriage that lovelier women had often envied, discerning in them those subtleties of race and personality which are not to be rivalled for the asking.

To-night she brought all her charm to bear upon her companion's despondency, and succeeded as she had often succeeded before. She divined that he needed flattery, and she gave it; that he must be supported and endorsed, and she had soon pushed General Fenton out of sight behind a cloud of witness of another sort.

Manisty's mood yielded; and in a short time he was again no less ready to admire the sunset than she was.

'Heavens!' she said at last, holding out her watch.--'Just look at the time--and Miss Foster!'

Manisty struck his hand against the railing.

'How is one to be civil about this visit! Nothing could be more unfortunate. These last critical weeks--and each of us so dependent on the other--Really it is the most monstrous folly on all our parts that we should have brought this girl upon us.'

'Poor Miss Foster!' said Mrs. Burgoyne, raising her eyebrows. 'But of course you won't be civil!--Aunt Pattie and I know that. When I think of what I went through that first fortnight--'

'Eleanor!'

'You are the only man I ever knew that could sit silent through a whole meal. By to-morrow Miss Foster will have added that experience to her collection. Well--I shall be prepared with my consolations--there's the carriage--and the bell!'

They fled indoors, escaping through the side entrances of the salon, before the visitor could be shown in.

* * * * *

'Must I change my dress?'

The voice that asked the question trembled with agitation and fatigue. But the girl who owned the voice stood up stiffly, looking at Miss Manisty with a frowning, almost a threatening shyness.

'Well, my dear,' said Miss Manisty, hesitating. 'Are you not rather dusty? We can easily keep dinner a quarter of an hour.'

She looked at the grey alpaca dress before her, in some perplexity.

'Oh, very well'--said the girl hurriedly.--'Of course I'll change. Only'--and the voice fluttered again evidently against her will--'I'm afraid I haven't anything very nice. I must get something in Rome. Mrs. Lewinson advised me. This is my afternoon dress,--I've been wearing it in Florence. But of course--I'll put on my other.--Oh! please don't send for a maid. I'd rather unpack for myself--so much rather!'

The speaker flushed crimson, as she saw Miss Manisty's maid enter the room in answer to her mistress's ring. She stood up indeed with her hand grasping her trunk, as though defending it from an assailant.

The maid looked at her mistress. 'Miss Foster will ring, Benson, if she wants you'--said Miss Manisty; and the black-robed elderly maid, breathing decorous fashion and the ways of 'the best people,' turned, gave a swift look at Miss Foster, and left the room.

'Are you sure, my dear? You know she would make you tidy in no time. She arranges hair beautifully.'

'Oh quite--quite sure!--thank you,' said the girl with the same eagerness. 'I will be ready,--right away.'

Then, left to herself, Miss Foster hastily opened her box and took out some of its contents. She unfolded one dress after another,--and looked at them unhappily.

'Perhaps I ought to have let cousin Izza give me those things in Boston,' she thought. 'Perhaps I was too proud. And that money of Uncle Ben's--it might have been kinder--after all he wanted me to look nice'--

She sat ruefully on the ground beside her trunk, turning the things over, in a misery of annoyance and mortification; half inclined to laugh too as she remembered the seamstress in the small New England country town, who had helped her own hands to manufacture them. 'Well, Miss Lucy, your uncle's done real handsome by you. I guess he's set you up, and no mistake. There's no meanness about him!'

And she saw the dress on the stand--the little blonde withered head of the dressmaker--the spectacled eyes dwelling proudly on the masterpiece before them.--

Alack! There rose up the memory of little Mrs. Lewinson at Florence--of her gently pursed lips--of the looks that were meant to be kind, and were in reality so critical.

No matter. The choice had to be made; and she chose at last a blue and white check that seemed