Eleanor | Page 3

had to
write and ask her to stay as long as she wished--and--well, there it is!'
'And hence these tears,' said Mrs. Burgoyne. 'What possessed him?'
'Well, I think it was conscience,' said the little spinster, plucking up
spirit. 'I know it was with me. There had been some Americans calling
on us that day--you remember--those charming Harvard people? And
somehow it recalled to us both what a fuss they had made with us--and
how kind everybody was. At least I suppose that was how Edward felt.
I know I did.'
Manisty paused in his walk. For the first time his dark whimsical face
was crossed by an unwilling smile--slight but agreeable.
'It is the old story,' he said. 'Life would be tolerable but for one's virtues.
All this time, I beg to point out, Aunt Pattie, that you have still told us
nothing about the young lady--except something about her clothes,
which doesn't matter.'
Mrs. Burgoyne's amused gesture showed the woman's view of this
remark. Miss Manisty looked puzzled.

'Well--I don't know. Yes--I have told you a great deal. The Lewinsons
apparently thought her rather strange. Adèle said she couldn't tell what
to be at with her--you never knew what she would like or dislike. Tom
Lewinson seems to have liked her better than Adèle did. He said "there
was no nonsense about her--and she never kept a fellow waiting."
Adèle says she is the oddest mixture of knowledge and ignorance. She
would ask the most absurd elementary questions--and then one
morning Tom found out that she was quite a Latin scholar, and had
read Horace and Virgil, and all the rest.'
'Good God!' said Manisty under his breath, resuming his walk.
'And when they asked her to play, she played--quite respectably.'
'Of course:--two hours' practising in the morning,--I foresaw it,' said
Manisty, stopping short. 'Eleanor, we have been like children sporting
over the abyss!'
Mrs. Burgoyne rose with a laugh--a very soft and charming laugh--by
no means the least among the various gifts with which nature had
endowed her.
'Oh, civilisation has resources,' she said--'Aunt Pattie and I will take
care of you. Now we have got a quarter of an hour to dress in. Only
first--one must really pay one's respects to this sunset.'
And she stepped out through an open door upon a balcony beyond.
Then turning, with a face of delight, she beckoned to Manisty, who
followed.
'Every night more marvellous than the last'--she said, hanging over the
balustrade--'and one seems to be here in the high box of a theatre, with
the sun playing pageants for our particular benefit.'
Before them, beneath them indeed, stretched a scene, majestic,
incomparable. The old villa in which they stood was built high on the
ridge of the Alban Hills. Below it, olive-grounds and vineyards,
plough-lands and pine plantations sank, slope after slope, fold after fold,

to the Campagna. And beyond the Campagna, along the whole shining
line of the west, the sea met the sunset; while to the north, a dim and
scattered whiteness rising from the plain--was Rome.
The sunset was rushing to its height through every possible phase of
violence and splendour. From the Mediterranean, storm-clouds were
rising fast to the assault and conquest of the upper sky, which still
above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the north-west wind and
the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening fingers and
long spinning veils of cloud across it--skirmishers that foretold the
black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous masses behind. Below
these wild tempest shapes, again,--in long spaces resting on the sea--the
heaven was at peace, shining in delicate greens and yellows, infinitely
translucent and serene, above the dazzling lines of water. Over Rome
itself there was a strange massing and curving of the clouds. Between
their blackness and the deep purple of the Campagna, rose the
city--pale phantom--upholding one great dome, and one only, to the
view of night and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the
long flat arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The
buildings of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly
visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible
foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity.--And between
the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners of
the night, stole over the Campagna towards the higher ground. But the
hills themselves were still shining, still clad in rose and amethyst,
caught in gentler repetition from the wildness of the west. Pale rose
even the olive-gardens; rose the rich brown fallows, the emerging farms;
while drawn across the Campagna from north to south, as though some
mighty brush had just laid it there for sheer lust of colour, sheer joy in
the mating it