Stories By English Authors: Italy Part 14

"Somebody always is," said he.

"She's old enough to be his mother," said Mrs. Mackinnon.

"What does that matter to an Irishman?" said Mackinnon. "Besides, I doubt if there is more than five years' difference between them."

"There must be more than that," said my wife. "Ida Talboys is twelve, I know, and I am not quite sure that Ida is the eldest."

"If she had a son in the Guards it would make no difference," said Mackinnon. "There are men who consider themselves bound to make love to a woman under certain circ.u.mstances, let the age of the lady be what it may. O'Brien is such a one; and if she sympathises with him much oftener he will mistake the matter and go down on his knees. You ought to put him on his guard," he said, addressing himself to his wife.

"Indeed, I shall do no such thing," said she; "if they are two fools they must, like other fools, pay the price of their folly." As a rule there could be no softer creature than Mrs. Mackinnon, but it seemed to me that her tenderness never extended itself in the direction of Mrs.

Talboys.

Just at this time, toward the end, that is, of November, we made a party to visit the tombs which lie along the Appian Way beyond that most beautiful of all sepulchres, the tomb of Cecilia Metella. It was a delicious day, and we had driven along this road for a couple of miles beyond the walls of the city, enjoying the most lovely view which the neighborhood of Rome affords, looking over the wondrous ruins of the old aqueducts up toward Tivoli and Palestrina. Of all the environs of Rome this is, on a fair day, the most enchanting; and here perhaps, among a world of tombs, thoughts and almost memories of the old, old days come upon one with the greatest force. The grandeur of Rome is best seen and understood from beneath the walls of the Colosseum, and its beauty among the pillars of the Forum and the arches of the Sacred Way; but its history and fall become more palpable to the mind and more clearly realised out here among the tombs, where the eyes rest upon the mountains, whose shades were cool to the old Romans as to us, than anywhere within the walls of the city. Here we look out at the same Tivoli and the same Praeneste glittering in the sunshine, embowered among the far-off valleys, which were dear to them; and the blue mountains have not crumbled away into ruins. Within Rome itself we can see nothing as they saw it.

Our party consisted of some dozen or fifteen persons, and, as a hamper with luncheon in it had been left on the gra.s.sy slope at the base of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the expedition had in it something of the nature of a picnic. Mrs. Talboys was of course with us, and Ida Talboys.

O'Brien also was there. The hamper had been prepared in Mrs. Mackinnon's room under the immediate eye of Mackinnon himself, and they therefore were regarded as the dominant spirits of the party. My wife was leagued with Mrs. Mackinnon, as was usually the case; and there seemed to be a general opinion, among those who were closely in confidence together, that something would happen in the O'Brien-Talboys matter. The two had been inseparable on the previous evening, for Mrs. Talboys had been urging on the young Irishman her counsels respecting his domestic troubles. Sir Cresswell Cresswell, she had told him, was his refuge.

"Why should his soul submit to bonds which the world had now declared to be intolerable? Divorce was not now the privilege of the dissolute rich.

Spirits which were incompatible need no longer be compelled to fret beneath the same couples." In short, she had recommended him to go to England and get rid of his wife, as she would with a little encouragement have recommended any man to get rid of anything. I am sure that, had she been skilfully brought on to the subject, she might have been induced to p.r.o.nounce a verdict against such ligatures for the body as coats, waistcoats, and trousers. Her aspirations for freedom ignored all bounds, and in theory there were no barriers which she was not willing to demolish.

Poor O'Brien, as we all now began to see, had taken the matter amiss.

He had offered to make a bust of Mrs. Talboys, and she had consented, expressing a wish that it might find a place among those who had devoted themselves to the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of their fellow-creatures. I really think she had but little of a woman's customary personal vanity. I know she had an idea that her eye was lighted up in her warmer moments by some special fire, that sparks of liberty shone round her brow, and that her bosom heaved with glorious aspirations; but all these feelings had reference to her inner genius, not to any outward beauty. But O'Brien misunderstood the woman, and thought it necessary to gaze into her face and sigh as though his heart were breaking. Indeed, he declared to a young friend that Mrs. Talboys was perfect in her style of beauty, and began the bust with this idea. It was gradually becoming clear to us all that he would bring himself to grief; but in such a matter who can caution a man?

Mrs. Mackinnon had contrived to separate them in making the carriage arrangements on this day, but this only added fuel to the fire which was now burning within O'Brien's bosom. I believe that he really did love her in his easy, eager, susceptible Irish way. That he would get over the little episode without any serious injury to his heart no one doubted; but then what would occur when the declaration was made? How would Mrs. Talboys bear it?

"She deserves it," said Mrs. Mackinnon.

"And twice as much," my wife added. Why is it that women are so spiteful to one another?

Early in the day Mrs. Talboys clambered up to the top of a tomb, and made a little speech, holding a parasol over her head. Beneath her feet, she said, reposed the ashes of some bloated senator, some glutton of the empire, who had swallowed into his maw the provision necessary for a tribe. Old Rome had fallen through such selfishness as that, but new Rome would not forget the lesson. All this was very well, and then O'Brien helped her down; but after this there was no separating them.

For her own part, she would sooner have had Mackinnon at her elbow; but Mackinnon now had found some other elbow. "Enough of that was as good as a feast," he had said to his wife. And therefore Mrs. Talboys, quite unconscious of evil, allowed herself to be engrossed by O'Brien.

And then, about three o'clock, we returned to the hamper. Luncheon under such circ.u.mstances always means dinner, and we arranged ourselves for a very comfortable meal. To those who know the tomb of Cecilia Metella no description of the scene is necessary, and to those who do not no description will convey a fair idea of its reality. It is itself a large low tower of great diameter, but of beautiful proportion, standing far outside the city, close on to the side of the old Roman way. It has been embattled on the top by some latter-day baron in order that it might be used for protection to the castle which has been built on and attached to it. If I remember rightly, this was done by one of the Frangipani, and a very lovely ruin he has made of it. I know no castellated old tumble-down residence in Italy more picturesque than this baronial adjunct to the old Roman tomb, or which better tallies with the ideas engendered within our minds by Mrs. Radcliffe and "The Mysteries of Udolpho." It lies along the road, protected on the side of the city by the proud sepulchre of the Roman matron, and up to the long ruined walls of the back of the building stretches a gra.s.sy slope, at the bottom of which are the remains of an old Roman circus. Beyond that is the long, thin, graceful line of the Claudian aqueduct, with Soracte in the distance to the left, and Tivoli, Palestrina, and Frascati lying among the hills which bound the view. That Frangipani baron was in the right of it, and I hope he got the value of his money out of the residence which he built for himself. I doubt, however, that he did but little good to those who lived in his close neighbourhood.

We had a very comfortable little banquet seated on the broken lumps of stone which lie about under the walls of the tomb. I wonder whether the shade of Cecilia Metella was looking down upon us. We have heard much of her in these latter days, and yet we know nothing about her, nor can conceive why she was honoured with a bigger tomb than any other Roman matron. There were those then among our party who believed that she might still come back among us, and, with due a.s.sistance from some cognate susceptible spirit, explain to us the cause of her widowed husband's liberality. Alas, alas! if we may judge of the Romans by ourselves the true reason for such sepulchral grandeur would redound little to the credit of the lady Cecilia Metella herself or to that of Cra.s.sus, her bereaved and desolate lord.

She did not come among us on the occasion of this banquet, possibly because we had no tables there to turn in preparation for her presence; but had she done so, she could not have been more eloquent of things of the other world than was Mrs. Talboys. I have said that Mrs. Talboys's eye never glanced more brightly after a gla.s.s of champagne, but I am inclined to think that on this occasion it may have done so. O'Brien enacted Ganymede, and was perhaps more liberal than other latter-day Ganymedes to whose services Mrs. Talboys had been accustomed. Let it not, however, be suspected by any one that she exceeded the limits of a discreet joyousness. By no means! The generous wine penetrated, perhaps, to some inner cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an anch.o.r.et or to a vestal. A word or two she said or sung about the flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women, of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden time that was to come.

She called a toast and drank to the hopes of the latter historians of the nineteenth century. Then it was that she bade O'Brien "fill high the bowl with Samian wine." The Irishman took her at her word, and she raised the b.u.mper and waved it over her head before she put it to her lips. I am bound to declare that she did not spill a drop. "The true 'Falernian grape,'" she said, as she deposited the empty beaker on the gra.s.s beneath her elbow. Viler champagne I do not think I ever swallowed; but it was the theory of the wine, not its palpable body present there, as it were in the flesh, which inspired her. There was really something grand about her on that occasion, and her enthusiasm almost amounted to reality.

Mackinnon was amused, and encouraged her, as I must confess did I also.

Mrs. Mackinnon made useless little signs to her husband, really fearing that the Falernian would do its good offices too thoroughly. My wife, getting me apart as I walked round the circle distributing viands, remarked that "the woman was a fool and would disgrace herself." But I observed that after the disposal of that b.u.mper she worshipped the rosy G.o.d in theory only, and therefore saw no occasion to interfere. "Come, Bacchus," she said, "and come, Silenus, if thou wilt; I know that ye are hovering round the graves of your departed favourites. And ye, too, nymphs of Egeria," and she pointed to the cla.s.sic grove which was all but close to us as we sat there. "In olden days ye did not always despise the abodes of men. But why should we invoke the presence of the G.o.ds--we who can become G.o.dlike ourselves! We ourselves are the deities of the present age. For us shall the tables be spread with ambrosia, for us shall the nectar flow."

Upon the whole it was a very good fooling--for a while; and as soon as we were tired of it we arose from our seats and began to stroll about the place. It was beginning to be a little dusk and somewhat cool, but the evening air was pleasant, and the ladies, putting on their shawls, did not seem inclined at once to get into the carriages. At any rate, Mrs. Talboys was not so inclined, for she started down the hill toward the long low wall of the old Roman circus at the bottom, and O'Brien, close at her elbow, started with her.

"Ida, my dear, you had better remain here," she said to her daughter; "you will be tired if you come as far as we are going."

"Oh no, mamma, I shall not," said Ida; "you get tired much quicker than I do."

"Oh yes, you will; besides, I do not wish you to come." There was an end of it for Ida, and Mrs. Talboys and O'Brien walked off together, while we all looked into one another's faces.

"It would be a charity to go with them," said Mackinnon.

"Do you be charitable then," said his wife.

"It should be a lady," said he.

"It is a pity that the mother of the spotless cherubim is not here for the occasion," said she. "I hardly think that any one less gifted will undertake such a self-sacrifice." Any attempt of the kind would, however, now have been too late, for they were already at the bottom of the hill. O'Brien had certainly drunk freely of the pernicious contents of those long-necked bottles, and, though no one could fairly accuse him of being tipsy, nevertheless that which might have made others drunk had made him bold, and he dared to do perhaps more than might become a man.

If under any circ.u.mstances he could be fool enough to make an avowal of love to Mrs. Talboys he might be expected, as we all thought, to do it now.

We watched them as they made for a gap in the wall which led through into the large enclosed s.p.a.ce of the old circus. It had been an arena for chariot games, and they had gone down with the avowed purpose of searching where might have been the meta and ascertaining how the drivers could have turned when at their full speed. For a while we had heard their voices, or rather her voice especially. "The heart of a man, O'Brien, should suffice for all emergencies," we had heard her say. She had a.s.sumed a strange habit of calling men by their simple names, as men address one another. When she did this to Mackinnon, who was much older than herself, we had been all amused by it, and other ladies of our party had taken to call him "Mackinnon" when Mrs. Talboys was not by; but we had felt the comedy to be less safe with O'Brien, especially when on one occasion we heard him address her as Arabella. She did not seem to be in any way struck by his doing so, and we supposed therefore that it had become frequent between them. What reply he made at the moment about the heart of a man I do not know, and then in a few minutes they disappeared through the gap in the wall.

None of us followed them, although it would have seemed the most natural thing in the world to do so had nothing out of the way been expected. As it was, we remained there round the tomb quizzing the little foibles of our dear friend and hoping that O'Brien would be quick in what he was doing. That he would undoubtedly get a slap in the face, metaphorically, we all felt certain, for none of us doubted the rigid propriety of the lady's intentions. Some of us strolled into the buildings and some of us got out on to the road, but we all of us were thinking that O'Brien was very slow a considerable time before we saw Mrs. Talboys reappear through the gap.

At last, however, she was there, and we at once saw that she was alone.

She came on, breasting the hill with quick steps, and when she drew near we could see that there was a frown as of injured majesty on her brow.

Mackinnon and his wife went forward to meet her. If she were really in trouble it would be fitting in some way to a.s.sist her, and of all women Mrs. Mackinnon was the last to see another woman suffer from ill usage without attempting to aid her. "I certainly never liked her," Mrs.

Mackinnon said afterward, "but I was bound to go and hear her tale when she really had a tale to tell."

And Mrs. Talboys now had a tale to tell--if she chose to tell it. The ladies of our party declared afterward that she would have acted more wisely had she kept to herself both O'Brien's words to her and her answer. "She was well able to take care of herself," Mrs. Mackinnon said; "and after all the silly man had taken an answer when he got it."

Not, however, that O'Brien had taken his answer quite immediately, as far as I could understand from what we heard of the matter afterward.

At the present moment Mrs. Talboys came up the rising ground all alone and at a quick pace. "The man has insulted me," she said aloud, as well as her panting breath would allow her, and as soon as she was near enough to Mrs. Mackinnon to speak to her.

"I am sorry for that," said Mrs. Mackinnon. "I suppose he has taken a little too much wine."

"No; it was a premeditated insult. The base-hearted churl has failed to understand the meaning of true, honest sympathy."

"He will forget all about it when he is sober," said Mackinnon, meaning to comfort her.

"What care I what he remembers or what he forgets?" she said, turning upon poor Mackinnon indignantly. "You men grovel so in your ideas--"

("And yet," as Mackinnon said afterward, "she had been telling me that I was a fool for the last three weeks.") "You men grovel so in your ideas that you cannot understand the feelings of a true-hearted woman. What can his forgetfulness or his remembrance be to me? Must not I remember this insult? Is it possible that I should forget it?"

Mr. and Mrs. Mackinnon only had gone forward to meet her, but nevertheless she spoke so loud that all heard her who were still cl.u.s.tered round the spot on which we had dined.

"What has become of Mr. O'Brien?" a lady whispered to me.

I had a field-gla.s.s with me, and, looking round, I saw his hat as he was walking inside the walls of the circus in the direction toward the city.

"And very foolish he must feel," said the lady.

"No doubt he is used to it," said another.

"But considering her age, you know," said the first, who might have been perhaps three years younger than Mrs. Talboys, and who was not herself averse to the excitement of a moderate flirtation. But then why should she have been averse, seeing that she had not as yet become subject to the will of any imperial lord?

"He would have felt much more foolish," said the third, "if she had listened to what he said to her."

"Well, I don't know," said the second; "n.o.body would have known anything about it then, and in a few weeks they would have gradually become tired of each other in the ordinary way."

But in the meantime Mrs. Talboys was among us. There had been no attempt at secrecy, and she was still loudly inveighing against the grovelling propensities of men. "That's quite true, Mrs. Talboys," said one of the elder ladies; "but then women are not always so careful as they should be. Of course I do not mean to say that there has been any fault on your part."