Eleanor (8 page)

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 brightest, most confiding manner, as though he had been the friend of her cradle.

‘Who?’—said Lucy, bewildered—‘the tall gentleman with the white hair?’

‘Yes,—that’s the ambassador. Oh! I’m glad you’ll see him. He’s a charmer, is our chief! And that’s his married daughter, who’s keeping house for him just now.—I’ll tell you something, if you’ll keep a secret’—he bent towards her,—‘He likes Mrs. Burgoyne of course,—everybody does—but he don’t take Manisty at his own valuation. I’ve heard him say some awfully good things to Manisty—you’d hardly think a man would get over them.—Who’s that on the other side?’

He put his hand over his eyes for a moment, then burst into a laugh.—

‘Why, it’s the other man of letters!—Bellasis. I should think you’ve read some of his poems—or plays? Rome has hardly been able to hold the two of them this winter. It’s worse than the archaeologists. Mrs. Burgoyne is always trying to be civil to him, so that he mayn’t make uncivil remarks about Manisty. I say—don’t you think she’s delightful?’

He lowered his voice as he looked round upon his companion, but his blue eyes shone.

‘Mrs. Burgoyne?’—said Lucy—‘Yes, indeed!—She’s so—so very kind.’

‘Oh! she’s a darling, is Eleanor Burgoyne. And I may call her that, you know, for I’m her cousin, just as Manisty is—only on the other side. I have been trying to look after her a bit this winter in Rome; she never looks after herself. And she’s not a bit strong.—You know her history of course?’

He lowered his voice with young importance, speaking almost in a whisper, though the advancing party were still far away. Lucy shook her head.

‘Well, it’s a ghastly tale, and I’ve only a minute.—Her husband, you see, had pneumonia—they were in Switzerland together, and he’d taken a chill after a walk—and one night he was raving mad, mad you understand with delirium and fever—and poor Eleanor was so ill, they had taken her away from her husband, and put her to bed on the other side of the hotel.—And there was a drunken nurse—it’s almost too horrible, isn’t it?—and while she was asleep Mr. Burgoyne got up, quite mad—and he went into the next room, where the baby was, without waking anybody, and he took the child out asleep in his arms, back to his own room where the windows were open, and there he threw himself and the boy out together—headlong! The hotel was high up,—built, one side of it, above a rock wall, with a stream below it.—There had been a great deal of rain, and the river was swollen. The bodies were not found for days.—When poor Eleanor woke up, she had lost everything.—Oh! I dare say, when the first shock was over, the husband didn’t so much matter—he hadn’t made her at all happy.—But the child!’—

He stopped, Mrs. Burgoyne’s gay voice could be heard as she approached. All the elegance of the dress was visible, the gleam of a diamond at the throat, the flowers at the waist. Lucy Foster’s eyes, dim with sudden tears, fastened themselves upon the slender, advancing form.

CHAPTER
IV

The party grouped themselves round the tea-tables. Mrs. Burgoyne laid a kind hand on Lucy Foster’s arm, and introduced one or two of the new-comers.

Then, while Miss Manisty, a little apart, lent her ear to the soft chat of the ambassador, who sat beside her, supporting a pair of old and very white hands upon a gold-headed stick, Mrs. Burgoyne busied herself with Mr. Bellasis and his tea. For he was anxious to catch a train, and had but a short time to spare.

He was a tall stiffly built man, with a heavy white face, and a shock of black hair combed into a high and bird-like crest. As to Mrs. Burgoyne’s attentions, he received them with a somewhat pinched but still smiling dignity. Manisty, meanwhile, a few feet away, was fidgetting on his chair, in one of his most unmanageable moods. Around him were two or three young men bearing the great names of Rome. They all belonged to the Guardia Nobile, and were all dressed by English tailors. Two of them, moreover, were the sons of English mothers. They were laughing and joking together, and every now and then they addressed their host. But he scarcely replied. He gathered stalk after stalk of grass from the ground beside him, nibbled it and threw it away—a constant habit of his when he was annoyed or out of spirits.

“So you have read my book?” said Mr. Bellasis pleasantly, addressing Mrs. Burgoyne, as she handed him a cup of tea. The book in question was long; it revived the narrative verse of our grandfathers; and in spite of the efforts of a ‘set’ the world was not disposed to take much notice of it.