Eleanor Part 38

Lucy glanced across the table. Her eyes fell, and she said in the low full voice that delighted the old man's ears:

'I suppose you would send him home?'

The Amba.s.sador nodded.

'Tenants, turnips, and Petty Sessions! Persian's pleasanter--but those would serve.'

He paused a moment, then said seriously, under the cover of a loud buzz of talk, 'He's wasting his time, dear lady--there's no doubt of that.'

Lucy still looked down, but her att.i.tude changed imperceptibly. 'The subject interests her!' thought the old man. 'It's a thousand pities,' he resumed, with the caution, masked by the ease, of the diplomat, 'he came out here in a fit of pique. He saw false--and as far as I can hear, the book's a mistake. Yet it was not a bad subject. Italy _is_ just now an object lesson and a warning. But our friend there could not have taken it more perversely. He has chosen to attack not the violence of the Church--but the weakness of the State. And meanwhile--if I may be allowed to say so--his own position is something of an offence. Religion is too big a p.a.w.n for any man's personal game. Don't you agree? Often I feel inclined to apply to him the saying about Benjamin Constant and liberty--"Grand homme devant la religion--_s'il y croyait!_" I compare with him a poor old persecuted priest I know--Manisty knows too.--Ah! well, I hear the book is very brilliant--and venomous to a degree. It will be read of course. He has the power to be read. But it is a blunder--if not a crime. And meanwhile he is throwing away all his chances. I knew his father. I don't like to see him beating the air. If you have any influence with him'--the old man smiled--'send him home! Or Mrs. Burgoyne there. He used to listen to her.'

A great pang gripped Lucy's heart.

'I should think he always took his own way,' she said, with difficulty.

'Mr. Neal sometimes advises him.'

The Amba.s.sador's shrewd glance rested upon her for a moment. Then without another word he turned away. 'Reggie!' he said, addressing young Brooklyn, 'you seem to be ill-treating Madame Variani. Must I interpose?'

Reggie and his companion, who were in a full tide of 'chaff' and laughter, turned towards him.

'Sir,' said Brooklyn, 'Madame Variani is attacking my best friend.'

'Many of us find that agreeable,' said the Amba.s.sador.

'Ah! but she makes it so personal,' said Reggie, dallying with his banana.

'She abuses him because he's not married--and calls him a selfish fop.

Now _I'm_ not married--and I object to these wholesale cla.s.sifications.

Besides, my friend has the most conclusive answer.'

'I wait for it,' said Madame Variani.

Reggie delicately unsheathed his banana.

'Well, some of us once enquired what he meant by it, and he said: "My dear fellow, I've asked all the beautiful women I know to marry me, and they won't! Now!--I'd be content with cleanliness and conduct."'

There was a general laugh, in the midst of which Reggie remarked:

'I thought it the most touching situation. But Madame Variani has the heart of a stone.'

Madame Variani looked down upon him unmoved. She and the charming lad were fast friends.

'I will wager you he never asked,' she said quietly.

Reggie protested.

'No--he never asked. Englishmen don't ask ladies to marry them any more.'

'Let Madame Variani prove her point,' said the Amba.s.sador, raising one white hand above the hubbub, while he hollowed the other round his deaf ear. 'This is a most interesting discussion.'

'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 n.o.body marries them.'

'Well, there are no English young ladies present,' said the Amba.s.sador, 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 Amba.s.sador.

'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 Amba.s.sador'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 Amba.s.sador, 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 s.h.i.+rk if he could. But, thank Heaven, it was not possible for him to s.h.i.+rk it.

Again her eyes crossed those of Manisty. He was now discussing the strength of parties in the recent Roman munic.i.p.al 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 Amba.s.sador startled her.

After luncheon the Amba.s.sador's guests fell into groups on the large shady lawn of the Emba.s.sy garden.

The Amba.s.sador introduced Lucy to the blue-eyed Lombard, Fioravanti, while he, p.r.i.c.ked 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 Amba.s.sador examined her through his half-closed eyes, as he meekly offered to escort her indoors to see his pictures. She was an elegant and fas.h.i.+onable woman with very white and regular false teeth. Her looks were conventional and mild. In reality the Amba.s.sador 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?