Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor

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'But it is known to all that Englishmen don't get married any more!' cried
Madame Variani. 'I read in an English novel the other day that it is
spoiling your English society, that the charming girls wait and wait--and
nobody marries them.'

'Well, there are no English young ladies present,' said the Ambassador,
looking round the table; 'so we may proceed. How do you account for this
phenomenon, Madame?'

'Oh! you have now too many French cooks in England!' said Madame Variani,
shrugging her plump shoulders.

'What in the world has that got to do with it?' cried the Ambassador.

'Your young men are too comfortable,' said the lady, with a calm wave
of the hand towards Reggie Brooklyn. 'That's what I am told. I ask an
English lady, who knows both France and England--and she tells me--your
young men get now such good cooking at their clubs, and at the messes of
their regiments--and their sports amuse them so well, and cost so much
money--they don't want any wives!--they are not interested any more in the
girls. That is the difference between them and the Frenchman. The Frenchman
is still interested in the ladies. After dinner the Frenchman wants to go
and sit with the ladies--the Englishman, no! That is why the French are
still agreeable.'

The small black eyes of the speaker sparkled, but otherwise she looked
round with challenging serenity on the English and Americans around her.
Madame Variani--stout, clever, middle-aged, and disinterested--had a
position of her own in Rome. 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!' said a woman's voice.

They looked round to see the Marchesa Fazzoleni upon them. She stood
smiling, cigarette in hand, a tall woman, still young--though she was the
mother of five robust children. Her closely-fitting black dress somehow
resembled a riding-habit; her grey gauntletted gloves drawn to the elbow,
her Amazon's hat with its plume, the alertness and grace of the whole
attitude, the brilliancy of her clear black eye--all these carried with
them the same suggestions of open-air life, of health of body and mind--of
a joyous, noble, and powerful personality.

'Look well at her,' the Ambassador had said to Lucy as they stepped into
the garden after luncheon. 'She is one of the mothers of the new Italy.
She is doing things here--things for the future--that in England it would
take twenty women to do. She has all the practical sense of the north; and
all the subtlety of the south. She is one of the people who make me feel
that Italy and England have somehow mysterious affinities that will work
themselves out in history. It seems to me that I could understand all her
thoughts--and she mine--if it were worth her while. She is a modern of the
moderns; and yet there is in her some of the oldest stuff in the world. She
belongs, it is true, to a nation in the making--but that nation, in its
earlier forms, has already carried the whole weight of European history!'

And Lucy, looking up to the warm, kind face, felt vaguely comforted and
calmed by its mere presence. She made room for the Marchesa beside her.

But the Marchesa declared that she must go home and drag one of her
boys, who was studying for an examination, out for exercise. 'Oh! these
examinations--they are _horrors_!' she said, throwing up her hands.
'No--these poor boys!--and they have no games like the English boys. But
you were speaking about the war--about our poor Italy?'

She paused. She laid her hand on Lucy's shoulder and looked down into the
girl's face. Her eyes became for a moment veiled and misty, as though
ghosts passed before them--the grisly calamities and slaughters of the war.
Then they cleared and sparkled.

'I tell you, Mademoiselle,' she said slowly, in her difficult picturesque
English, 'that what Italy has done in forty years is colossal!--not to be
believed! You have taken a hundred years--you!--to make a nation, and you
have had a big civil war. Forty years--not quite!--since Cavour died. And
all that time Italy has been like that cauldron--you remember?--into which
they threw the members of that old man who was to become young. There has
been a bubbling, and a fermenting! And the scum has come up--and up. And it
comes up still--and the brewing goes on. But in the end the young strong
nation will step forth. Now Mr. Manisty--oh! I like Mr. Manisty very
well!--but he sees only the ugly gases and the tumult of the cauldron. He
has no idea--'

'Oh! Manisty,' said the young Count, flinging away his cigarette; 'he is a
_poseur_ of course. His Italian friends don't mind. He has his English fish
to fry. _Sans cela_--!'

He bent forward, staring at Lucy in a boyish absent-mindedness which was no
discourtesy, while his hat slipped further down the back of his curly head.
His attitude was all careless good-humour; yet one might have felt a touch
of southern passion not far off.

'No; his Italian friends don't mind,' said Madame Variani. 'But his English
friends should look after him. Everybody should be angry wid som-thin--it
is good for the character; but Mr. Manisty is angry wid too many things.
That is stupid--that is a waste of time.'

'His book is a blunder,' said Fioravanti with decision. 'By the time it is
out, it will look absurd. He says we have become atheists, because we don't
let the priests have it all their own way. Bah! we understand these gentry
better than he does. Why! my father was all for the advance on Rome--he was
a member of the first Government after 1870--he wouldn't give way to the
Clericals an inch in what he thought was for the good of the country. But
he was the most religious man I ever knew. He never missed any of the old
observances in which he had been brought up. He taught us the same. Every
Sunday after Mass he read the Gospel for the day to us in Italian, and
explained it. And when he was dying he sent for his old parish priest--who
used to denounce him from the pulpit and loved him all the same! "And don't
make any secret of it!" he said to me. "Bring him in openly--let all the
world see. _Non crubesco evangelium!_"'

The young man stopped--reddened and a little abashed by his own eloquence.

But Madame Variani murmured--still with the same aspect of a shrewd and
sleepy cat basking in the sun--

'It is the same with all you Anglo-Saxons. The North will never understand
the South--never! You can't understand our _a peu pres_. You think
Catholicism is a tyranny--and we must either let the priests oppress us, or
throw everything overboard. But it is nothing of the kind. We take what we
want of it, and leave the rest. But you!--if you come over to us, that is
another matter! You have to swallow it all. You must begin even with Adam
and Eve!'

'Ah! but what I can't understand,' said Fioravanti, 'is how Mrs. Burgoyne
allowed it. She ought to have given the book another direction--and she
could. She is an extremely clever woman! She knows that caricature is not
argument.'

'But what has happened to Mrs. Burgoyne?' said the Marchesa to Lucy,
throwing up her hands, 'Such a change! I was so distressed--'

'You think she looks ill?' said Lucy quickly.

Her troubled eyes sought those kind ones looking down upon her almost in
appeal. Instinctively the younger woman, far from home and conscious of a
hidden agony of feeling, threw herself upon the exquisite maternity that
breathed from the elder. 'Oh! if I could tell you!--if you could advise
me!' was the girl's unspoken cry.

'She looks terribly ill--to me,' said the Marchesa, gravely. 'And the
winter had done her so much good. We all loved her here. It is deplorable.
Perhaps the hill climate has been too cold for her, Mademoiselle?'

* * * * *

Lucy walked hurriedly back to the lawn to rejoin her companions. The flood
of misery within made movement the only relief. Some instinct of her own
came to the aid of the Marchesa's words, helped them to sting all the more
deeply. She felt herself a kind of murderer.

Suddenly as she issued blindly from the tangle of the rose-garden she came
upon Eleanor Burgoyne talking gaily, surrounded by a little knot of people,
mostly older men, who had found her to-day, as always, one of the most
charming and distinguished of companions.

Lucy approached her impetuously.

Oh! how white and stricken an aspect--through what a dark eclipse of pain
the eyes looked out!

'Ought we not to be going?' Lucy whispered in her ear. 'I am sure you are
tired.'

Eleanor rose. She took the girl's hand in a clinging grasp, while she
turned smiling to her neighbour the Dane:

'We must be moving to the Villa Borghese--some friends will be meeting us
there. Our train does not go for a long, long while.'

'Does any Roman train ever go?' said Doctor Jensen, stroking his
straw-coloured beard. 'But why leave us, Madame? Is not one garden as good
as another? What spell can we invent to chain you here?'

He bowed low, smiling fatuously, with his hand on his heart. He was one of
the most learned men in the world. But about that he cared nothing. The
one reputation he desired was that of a 'sad dog'--a terrible man with the
ladies. That was the paradox of his existence.

Eleanor laughed mechanically; then she turned to Lucy.

'Come!' she said in the girl's ear, and as they walked away she half closed
her eyes against the sun, and Lucy thought she heard a gasp of fatigue. But
she spoke lightly.

'Dear, foolish, old man! he was telling me how he had gone back to the
Hermitage Library at St. Petersburg the other day to read, after thirty
years. And there in a book that had not been taken down since he had used
it last he found a leaf of paper and some pencil words scribbled on it by
him when he was a youth--"my own darling." "And if I only knew now _vich_
darling!" he said, looking at me and slapping his knee. "Vich darling"!'
Eleanor repeated, laughing extravagantly. Then suddenly she wavered. Lucy
instinctively caught her by the arm, and Eleanor lent heavily upon her.

'Dear Mrs. Burgoyne--you are not well,' cried the girl, terrified. 'Let us
go to a hotel where you can rest till the train goes--or to some friend.'

Eleanor's face set in the effort to control herself--she drew her hand
across her eyes. 'No, no, I am well,' she said, hurriedly. 'It is the
sun--and I could not eat at luncheon. The Ambassador's new cook did not
tempt me. And besides'--she suddenly threw a look at Lucy before which Lucy
shrank--'I am out of love with myself. There is one hour yesterday which I
wish to cancel--to take back. I give up everything--everything.'

They were advancing across a wide lawn. The Ambassador and Mrs. Swetenham
were coming to meet them. The Ambassador, weary of his companion, was
looking with pleasure at the two approaching figures, at the sweep of
Eleanor's white dress upon the grass, and the frame made by her black lace
parasol for the delicacy of her head and neck.

Meanwhile Eleanor and Lucy saw only each other. The girl coloured proudly.
She drew herself erect.

'You cannot give up--what would not be taken--what is not desired,' she
said fiercely. Then, in another voice: 'But please, please let me take care
of you! Don't let us go to the Villa Borghese!'

She felt her hand pressed passionately, then dropped.

'I am all right,' said Eleanor, almost in her usual voice. '_Eccellenza_!
we must bid you good-bye--have you seen our gentleman?'

'_Ecco_,' said the Ambassador, pointing to Manisty, who, in company with
the American Monsignore, was now approaching them. 'Let him take you out of
the sun at once--you look as though it were too much for you.'

Manisty, however, came up slowly, in talk with his companion. The frowning
impatience of his aspect attracted the attention of the group round the
Ambassador. As he reached them, he said to the priest beside him--

'You know that he has withdrawn his recantation?'

'Ah! yes'--said the Monsignore, raising his eyebrows, 'poor fellow!'--

The mingled indifference and compassion of the tone made the words bite.
Manisty flushed.

'I hear he was promised consideration,' he said quickly.

'Then he got it,' was the priest's smiling reply.

'He was told that his letter was not for publication. Next morning it
appeared in the _Osservatore Romano_.'

'Oh no!--impossible! Your facts are incorrect.'

The Monsignore laughed, in unperturbed good humour. But after the laugh,
the face reappeared, hard and a little menacing, like a rock that has been
masked by a wave. He watched Manisty for a moment silently.

'Where is he?' said Manisty abruptly.

'Are you talking of Father Benecke'?' said the Ambassador. 'I heard of him
yesterday. He has gone into the country, but he gave me no address. He
wished to be undisturbed.'

'A wise resolve'--said the Monsignore, holding out his hand. 'Your
Excellency must excuse me. I have an audience of his Holiness at three
o'clock.'

He made his farewells to the ladies with Irish effusion, and departed. The
Ambassador looked curiously at Manisty. Then he fell back with Lucy.

'It will be a column to-night,' he said with depression. 'Why didn't
you stand by me? I showed Mrs. Swetenham my pictures--my beauties--my
ewe-lambs--that I have been gathering for twenty years--that the National
Gallery shall have, when I'm gone, if it behaves itself. And she asked me
if they were originals, and took my Luini for a Raphael! Yes! it will be
a column,' said the Ambassador pensively. Then, with a brisk change, he
looked up and took the hand that Lucy offered him.

'Good-bye--good-bye! You won't forget my prescription?--nor me?' said the
old man, smiling and patting her hand kindly. 'And remember!'--he bent
towards her, dropping his voice with an air in which authority and
sweetness mingled--'send Mr. Manisty home!'

He felt the sudden start in the girl's hand before he dropped it. Then he
turned to Manisty himself.

'Ah! Manisty, here you are. Your ladies want to leave us.'

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