Eleanor (3 page)

‘You have been very quick, my dear, and I am sure you must be hungry.—This is an old friend of ours—Mrs. Burgoyne—my nephew—Edward Manisty. He knows all your Boston cousins, if not you. Edward, will you take Miss Foster?—she’s the stranger.’

Mrs. Burgoyne pressed the girl’s hand with a friendly effusion. Beyond her was a dark-haired man, who bowed in silence. Lucy Foster took his arm, and he led her through a large intervening room, in which were many tables and many books, to the dining-room.

On the way he muttered a few embarrassed words as to the weather and the lateness of dinner, walking meanwhile so fast that she had to hurry after him. ‘Good heavens, why she is a perfect chess-board!’ he thought to himself, looking askance at her dress, in a sudden and passionate dislike—‘one could play draughts upon her. What has my Aunt been about?’

The girl looked round her in bewilderment as they sat down. What a strange place! The salon in her momentary glance round it had seemed to her all splendour. She had been dimly aware of pictures, fine hangings, luxurious carpets. Here on the other hand all was rude and bare. The stained walls were covered with a series of tattered daubs, that seemed to be meant for family portraits—of the Malestrini family perhaps, to whom the villa belonged? And between the portraits there were rough modern doors everywhere of the commonest wood and manufacture which let in all the draughts, and made the room not a room, but a passage. The uneven brick floor was covered in the centre with some thin and torn matting; many of the chairs ranged against the wall were broken; and the old lamp that swung above the table gave hardly any light.

Miss Manisty watched her guest’s face with a look of amusement.

‘Well, what do you think of our dining-room, my dear? I wanted to clean it and put it in order. But my nephew there wouldn’t have a thing touched.’

She looked at Manisty, with a movement of the lips and head that seemed to implore him to make some efforts.

Manisty frowned a little, lifted his great brow and looked, not at Miss Foster, but at Mrs. Burgoyne—

‘The room, as it happens, gives me more pleasure than any other in the villa.’

Mrs. Burgoyne laughed.

‘Because it’s hideous?’

‘If you like. I should only call it the natural, untouched thing.’

Then while his Aunt and Mrs. Burgoyne made mock of him, he fell silent again, nervously crumbling his bread with a large wasteful hand. Lucy Foster stole a look at him, at the strong curls of black hair piled above the brow, the moody embarrassment of the eyes, the energy of the lips and chin.

Then she turned to her companions. Suddenly the girl’s clear brown skin flushed rosily, and she abruptly took her eyes from Mrs. Burgoyne.

Miss Manisty, however—in despair of her nephew—was bent upon doing her own duty. She asked all the proper questions about the girl’s journey, about the cousins at Florence, about her last letters from home. Miss Foster answered quickly, a little breathlessly, as though each question were an ordeal that had to be got through. And once or twice, in the course of the conversation, she looked again at Mrs. Burgoyne, more lingeringly each time. That lady wore a thin dress gleaming with jet. The long white arms showed under the transparent stuff. The slender neck and delicate bosom were bare,—too bare surely,—that was the trouble. To look at her filled the girl’s shrinking Puritan sense with discomfort. But what small and graceful hands!—and how she used them!—how she turned her neck!—how delicious her voice was! It made the new-comer think of some sweet plashing stream in her own Vermont valleys. And then, every now and again, how subtle and startling was the change of look!—the gaiety passing in a moment, with the drooping of eye and mouth, into something sad and harsh, like a cloud dropping round a goddess. In her elegance and self-possession indeed, she seemed to the girl a kind of goddess—heathenishly divine, because of that mixture of unseemliness, but still divine.

Several times Mrs. Burgoyne addressed her—with a gentle courtesy—and Miss Foster answered. She was shy, but not at all awkward or conscious. Her manner had the essential self-possession which is the birthright of the American woman. But it suggested reserve, and a curious absence of any young desire to make an effect.

As for Mrs. Burgoyne, long before dinner was over, she had divined a great many things about the new-comer, and amongst them the girl’s disapproval of herself. ‘After all’—she thought—‘if she only knew it, she is a beauty. What a trouble it must have been first to find, and then to make that dress!—Ill luck!—And her hair! Who on earth taught her to drag it back like that? If one could only loosen it, how beautiful it would be! What is it? Is it Puritanism? Has she been brought up to go to meetings and sit under a minister? Were her forbears married in drawing-rooms and under trees? The Fates were certainly frolicking when they brought her here! How am I to keep Edward in order?’

And suddenly, with a little signalling of eye and brow, she too conveyed to Manisty, who was looking listlessly towards her, that he was behaving as badly as even she could have expected. He made a little face that only she saw, but he turned to Miss Foster and began to talk,—all the time adding to the mountain of crumbs beside him, and scarcely waiting to listen to the girl’s answers.

‘You came by Pisa?’

‘Yes. Mrs. Lewinson found me an escort—’

‘It was a mistake—’ he said, hurrying his words like a schoolboy. ‘You should have come by Perugia and Spoleto. Do you know Spello?’

Miss Foster stared.

‘Edward!’ said Miss Manisty, ‘how could she have heard of Spello? It is the first time she has ever been in Italy.’

‘No matter!’ he said, and in a moment his moroseness was lit up, chased away by the little pleasure of his own whim—‘Some day Miss Foster must hear of Spello. May I not be the first person to tell her that she should see Spello?’

‘Really, Edward!’ cried Miss Manisty, looking at him in a mild exasperation.

‘But there was so much to see at Florence!’ said Lucy Foster, wondering.

‘No—pardon me!—there is nothing to be seen at Florence—or nothing that one ought to wish to see—till the destroyers of the town have been hung in their own new Piazza!’

‘Oh yes!—that is a real disfigurement!’ said the girl eagerly. ‘And yet—can’t one understand?—they must use their towns for themselves. They can’t always be thinking of them as museums—as we do.’

‘The argument would be good if the towns were theirs,’ he said, flashing round upon her. ‘One can stand a great deal from lawful owners.’

Miss Foster looked in bewilderment at Mrs. Burgoyne. That lady laughed and bent across the table.

‘Let me warn you, Miss Foster, this gentleman here must be taken with a grain of salt when he talks about poor Italy—and the Italians.’

‘But I thought’—said Lucy Foster, staring at her host—

‘You thought he was writing a book on Italy? That doesn’t matter. It’s the new Italy of course that he hates—the poor King and Queen—the Government and the officials.’

‘He wants the old times back?’—said Miss Foster, wondering—‘when the priests tyrannised over everybody? when the Italians had no country—and no unity?’

She spoke slowly, at last looking her host in the face. Her frown of nervousness had disappeared. Manisty laughed.

‘Pio Nono pulled down nothing—not a brick—or scarcely. And it is a most excellent thing, Miss Foster, to be tyrannised over by priests.’

His great eyes shone—one might even say, glared upon her. His manner was not agreeable; and Miss Foster coloured.

‘I don’t think so’—she said, and then was too shy to say any more.

‘Oh, but you will think so,’—he said, obstinately—‘only you must stay long enough in the country. What people are pleased to call Papal tyranny puts a few people in prison—and tells them what books to read. Well!—what matter? Who knows what books they ought to read?’

‘But all their long struggle!—and their heroes! They had to make themselves a nation—’

The words stumbled on the girl’s tongue, but her effort, the hot feeling in her young face became her.—Miss Manisty thought to herself, ‘Oh, we shall dress, and improve her—We shall see!’—

‘One has first to settle whether it was worth while. What does a new nation matter? Theirs, anyway, was made too quick,’ said Manisty, rising in answer to his aunt’s signal.

‘But liberty matters!’ said the girl. She stood an instant with her hand on the back of her chair, unconsciously defiant.

‘Ah! Liberty!’ said Manisty—‘Liberty!’ He lifted his shoulders contemptuously.

Then backing to the wall, he made room for her to pass. The girl felt almost as though she had been struck. She moved hurriedly, appealingly towards Miss Manisty, who took her arm kindly as they left the room.

‘Don’t let my nephew frighten you, my dear’—she said—‘He never thinks like anybody else.’

‘I read so much at Florence—and on the journey’—said Lucy, while her hand trembled in Miss Manisty’s—‘Mrs. Browning—Mazzini—many things. I could not put that time out of my head!’

CHAPTER
II

On the way back to the salon the ladies passed once more through the large book-room or library which lay between it and the dining-room. Lucy Foster looked round it, a little piteously, as though she were seeking for something to undo the impression—the disappointment—she had just received.

‘Oh! my dear, you never saw such a place as it was when we arrived in March’—said Miss Manisty. ‘It was the billiard-room—a ridiculous table—and ridiculous balls—and a tiled floor without a scrap of carpet—and the
cold
! In the whole apartment there were just two bedrooms with fireplaces. Eleanor went to bed in one; I went to bed in the other. No carpets—no stoves—no proper beds even. Edward of course said it was all charming, and the climate balmy. Ah, well!—now we are really quite comfortable—except in that odious dining-room, which Edward will have left in its sins.’

Miss Manisty surveyed her work with a mild satisfaction. The table indeed had been carried away. The floor was covered with soft carpets. The rough uneven walls painted everywhere with the interlaced M’s of the Malestrini were almost hidden by well-filled bookcases; and, in addition, a profusion of new books, mostly French and Italian, was heaped on all the tables. On the mantelpiece a large recent photograph stood propped against a marble head. It represented a soldier in a striking dress; and Lucy stopped to look at it.

‘One of the Swiss Guards—at the Vatican’—said Mrs. Burgoyne kindly. ‘You know the famous uniform—it was designed by Michael Angelo.’

‘No—I didn’t know’—said the girl, flushing again.—‘And this head?’

‘Ah, that is a treasure! Mr. Manisty bought it a few months ago from a Roman noble who has come to grief. He sold this and a few bits of furniture first of all. Then he tried to sell his pictures. But the Government came down upon him—you know your pictures are not your own in Italy. So the poor man must keep his pictures and go bankrupt. But isn’t she beautiful? She is far finer than most of the things in the Vatican—real primitive Greek—not a copy. Do you know’—Mrs. Burgoyne stepped back, looked first at the bust, then at Miss Poster—‘do you know you are really very like her—curiously like her!’

‘Oh!’—cried Miss Foster in confusion—‘I wish—’

‘But it is quite true. Except for the hair. And that’s only arrangement. Do you think—would you let me?—would you forgive me?—It’s just this band of hair here, yours waves precisely in the same way. Would you really allow me—I won’t make you untidy?’

And before Miss Poster could resist, Mrs. Burgoyne had put up her deft hands, and in a moment, with a pull here, and the alteration of a hairpin there, she had loosened the girl’s black and silky hair, till it showed the beautiful waves above the ear in which it did indeed resemble the marble head with a curious closeness.

‘I can put it back in a moment. But oh—that is so charming! Aunt Pattie!’

Miss Manisty looked up from a newspaper which had just arrived.

‘My dear!—that was bold of you I But indeed it
is
charming! I think I would forgive you if I were Miss Foster.

The girl felt herself gently turned towards the mirror that rose behind the Greek head. With pink cheeks she too looked at herself for a moment. Then in a shyness beyond speech, she lifted her hands.

‘Must you’—said Mrs. Burgoyne appealingly. ‘I know one doesn’t like to be untidy. But it isn’t really the least untidy—It is only delightful—perfectly delightful!’

Her voice, her manner charmed the girl’s annoyance.

‘If you like it’—she said, hesitating—‘But it will come down!’

‘I like it terribly—and it will not think of coming down! Let me show you Mr. Manisty’s latest purchase.’

And, slipping her arm inside Miss Foster’s, Mrs. Burgoyne dexterously turned her away from the glass, and brought her to the large central table, where a vivid charcoal sketch, supported on a small easel, rose among the litter of books.

It represented an old old man carried in a chair on the shoulders of a crowd of attendants and guards. Soldiers in curved helmets, courtiers in short velvet cloaks and ruffs, priests in floating vestments pressed about him—a dim vast multitude stretched into the distance. The old man wore a high cap with three lines about it; his thin and shrunken form was enveloped in a gorgeous robe. The face, infinitely old, was concentrated in the sharply smiling eyes, the long, straight, secret mouth. His arm, supporting with difficulty the weight of the robe, was raised,—the hand blessed. On either side of him rose great fans of white ostrich feathers, and the old man among them was whiter than they, spectrally white from head to foot, save for the triple cap, and the devices on his robe. But into his emaciation, his weakness, the artist had thrown a triumph, a force that thrilled the spectator. The small figure, hovering above the crowd, seemed in truth to have nothing to do with it, to be alone with the huge spaces—arch on arch—dome on dome—of the vast church through which it was being borne.—

‘Do you know who it is?’ asked Mrs. Burgoyne, smiling.

‘The—the Pope?’ said Miss Foster, wondering.

‘Isn’t it clever? It is by one of your compatriots, an American artist in Rome. Isn’t it wonderful too, the way in which it shows you, not the Pope—but the Papacy—not the man but the Church?’