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

She was the correspondent of a leading French paper; she had many English friends; and she and the Marchesa Fazzoleni, at the Ambassador's right hand, had just been doing wonders for the relief of the Italian sick and wounded after the miserable campaign of Adowa.

'Oh! I hide my diminished head!' said the old Ambassador, taking his white locks in both hands. 'All I know is, I have sent twenty wedding presents already this year--and that the state of my banking account is wholly inconsistent with these theories.'

'Ah! you are exceptional,' said the lady. 'Only this morning I get an account of an English gentleman of my acquaintance. He is nearly forty--he possesses a large estate--his mother and sisters are on their knees to him to marry--it will all go to a cousin, and the cousin has forged--or something. And he--not he! He don't care what happens to the estate. He has only got the one life, he says--and he won't spoil it. And of course it does your women harm! Women are always dull when the men don't court them!'

The table laughed. Lucy, looking down it, caught first the face of Eleanor Burgoyne, and in the distance Manisty's black head and absent smile. The girl's young mind was captured by a sudden ghastly sense of the human realities underlying the gay aspects and talk of the luncheon-table. It seemed to her she still heard that heart-rending voice of Mrs. Burgoyne: 'Oh! I never dreamed it could be the same for him as for me. I didn't ask much.'

She dreaded to let herself think. It seemed to her that Mrs. Burgoyne's suffering must reveal itself to all the world, and the girl had moments of hot shame, as though for herself. To her eyes, the change in aspect and expression, visible through all the elegance and care of dress, was already terrible.

Oh! why had she come to Rome? What had changed the world so? Some wounded writhing thing seemed to be struggling in her own breast--while she was holding it down, trying to thrust it out of sight and hearing.

She had written to Uncle Ben, and to the Porters. To-morrow she must break it to Aunt Pattie that she could not go to Vallombrosa, and must hurry back to England. The girl's pure conscience was tortured already by the thought of the excuses she would have to invent. And not a word, till Mr. Manisty was safely started on his way to that function at the Vatican which he was already grumbling over, which he would certainly shirk if he could. But, thank Heaven, it was not possible for him to shirk it.

Again her eyes crossed those of Manisty. He was now discussing the strength of parties in the recent Roman municipal elections with the American Monsignore, talking with all his usual vehemence. Nevertheless, through it all, it seemed to her, that she was watched, that in some continuous and subtle way he held her in sight.

How cold and ungrateful he must have thought her the night before! To-day, at breakfast, and in the train, he had hardly spoken to her.

Yet--mysteriously--Lucy felt herself threatened, hard pressed. Alice Manisty's talk in that wild night haunted her ear. Her hand, cold and tremulous, shook on her knee. Even the voice of the Ambassador startled her.

After luncheon the Ambassador's guests fell into groups on the large shady lawn of the Embassy garden.

The Ambassador introduced Lucy to the blue-eyed Lombard, Fioravanti, while he, pricked with a rueful sense of duty, devoted himself for a time to the wife of the English Admiral who had been Lady Mary's neighbour at luncheon. The Ambassador examined her through his half-closed eyes, as he meekly offered to escort her indoors to see his pictures. She was an elegant and fashionable woman with very white and regular false teeth. Her looks were conventional and mild. In reality the Ambassador knew her to be a Tartar. He walked languidly beside her; his hands were lightly crossed before him; his white head drooped under the old wideawake that he was accustomed to wear in the garden.

Meanwhile the gallant and be-whiskered Admiral would have liked to secure Manisty's attention. To get hold of a politician, or something near a politician, and explain to them a new method of fusing metals in which he believed, represented for him the main object of all social functions.

But Manisty peremptorily shook him off. Eleanor, the American Monsignore, and Reggie Brooklyn were strolling near. He retreated upon them. Eleanor addressed some question to him, but he scarcely answered her. He seemed to be in a brown study, and walked on beside her in silence.

Reggie fell back a few paces, and watched them.

'What a bear he can be when he chooses!' the boy said to himself indignantly. 'And how depressed Eleanor looks! Some fresh worry I suppose--and all his fault. Now look at that!'

For another group--Lucy, her new acquaintance the Count, and Madame Variani--had crossed the path of the first. And Manisty had left Eleanor's side to approach Miss Foster. All trace of abstraction was gone. He looked ill at ease, and yet excited; his eyes were fixed upon the girl. He stooped towards her, speaking in a low voice.

'There's something up'--thought Brooklyn. 'And if that girl's any hand in it she ought to be cut! I thought she was a nice girl.'

His blue eyes stared fiercely at the little scene. Since the day at Nemi, the boy had understood half at least of the situation. He had perceived then that Eleanor was miserably unhappy. No doubt Manisty was disappointing and tormenting her. What else could she expect?

But really--that she should be forsaken and neglected for this chit of a girl--this interloping American--it was too much! Reggie's wrath glowed within him.

Meanwhile Manisty addressed Lucy.

'I have something I very much wish to say to you. There is a seat by the fountain, quite in shade. Will you try it?'

She glanced hurriedly at her companions.

'Thank you--I think we were going to look at the rose-walk.'

Manisty gave an angry laugh, said something inaudible, and walked impetuously away; only to be captured however by the Danish Professor, Doctor Jensen, who took no account of bad manners in an Englishman, holding them as natural as daylight. The flaxen-haired savant therefore was soon happily engaged in pouring out upon his impatient companion the whole of the latest _Boletino_ of the Accademia.

Meanwhile Lucy, seeing nothing, it is to be feared, of the beauty of the Embassy garden, followed her two companions and soon found herself sitting with them on a stone seat beneath a spreading ilex. In front was a tangled mass of roses; beyond, an old bit of wall with Roman foundations; and in the hot blue sky above the wall, between two black cypresses, a slender brown Campanile--furthest of all a glimpse of Sabine mountains. The air was heavy with the scent of the roses, with the heat that announced the coming June, with that indefinable meaning and magic, which is Rome.

Lucy drooped and was silent. The young Count Fioravanti however was not the person either to divine oppression in another or to feel it for himself. He sat with his hat on the back of his head, smoking and twisting his cane, displaying to the fullest advantage those china-blue eyes, under the blackest of curls, which made him so popular in Rome. His irregular and most animated face was full of talent and wilfulness. He liked Madame Variani, and thought the American girl handsome. But it mattered very little to him with whom he talked; he could have chattered to a tree-stump. He was over-flowing with the mere interest and jollity of life.

'Have you known Mr. Manisty long?' he asked of Lucy, while his gay look followed the Professor and his captive.

'I have been staying with them for six weeks at Marinata.'

'What--to finish the book?' he said, laughing.

'Mr. Manisty hoped to finish it.'

The Count laughed again, more loudly and good-humouredly, and shook his head.

'Oh! he won't finish it. It's a folly! And I know, for I made him read some of it to me and my sister. No; it is a strange case--is Manisty's. Most Englishmen have two sides to their brain--while we Latins have only one. But Manisty is like a Latin--he has only one. He takes a whim, and then he must cut and carve the world to it. But the world is tough--_et ca ne marche pas_! We can't go to ruin to please him. Italy is not falling to pieces--not at all. This war has been a horror--but we shall get through. And there will be no revolution. The people in the streets won't cheer the King and Queen for a little bit--but next year, you will see, the House of Savoy will be there all the same. And he thinks that our priests will destroy us. Nothing of the sort. We can manage our priests!'

Madame Variani made a gesture of dissent. Her heavy, handsome face was turned upon him rather sleepily, as though the heat oppressed her. But her slight frown betrayed, to anyone who knew her, alert attention.

'We can, I say!' cried the Count, striking his knee. 'Besides, the battle is not ranged as Manisty sees it. There are priests, and priests. Up in my part of the world the older priests are all right. We landowners who go with the monarchy can get on with them perfectly. Our old Bishop is a dear: but it is the young priests, fresh from the seminaries--I grant you, they're a nuisance! They swarm over us like locusts, ready for any bit of mischief against the Government. But the Government will win!--Italy will win! Manisty first of all takes the thing too tragically. He doesn't see the farce in it. We do. We Italians understand each other. Why, the Vatican raves and scolds--and all the while, as the Prefect of Police told me only the other day, there is a whole code of signals ready between the police headquarters and a certain window of the Vatican; so that directly they want help against the populace they can call us in. And after that function the other day--where I saw you, Mademoiselle'--he bowed to Lucy--'one of the first things the Vatican did was to send their thanks to the Government for having protected and policed them so well. No; Manisty is in the clouds.' He laughed good-humouredly. 'We are half acting all the time. The Clericals must have their politics, like other people--only they call it religion.'

'But your poor starved peasants--and your corruption--and your war?' said Lucy.

She spoke with energy, frowning a little as though something had nettled her. 'She is like a beautiful nun,' thought the young man, looking with admiration at the austere yet charming face.

'Oh! we shall pull through,' he said, coolly. 'The war was an abomination--a misery. But we shall learn from it. It will no more ruin us than a winter storm can ruin the seed in the ground. Manisty is like all the other clever foreigners who write dirges about us--they don't feel the life-blood pulsing through the veins as we landowners do.' He flung out his clasped hand in a dramatic gesture. 'Come and live with us for a summer on one of our big farms near Mantua--and you shall see. My land brings me just double what it brought my father!--and our contadini are twice as well off. There! that's in our starving Italy--in the north of course, mind you!'

He threw himself back, smoking furiously.

'Optimist!'