Eleanor | Page 4

right to-morrow.'
Both were silent for a moment. Then he resumed.--
'I met General Fenton in the Borgia rooms this morning.'
She turned, with a quick look of curiosity.
'Well?'
'I hadn't seen him since I met him at Simla three years ago. I always found him particularly agreeable then. We used to ride together and talk together,--and he put me in the way of seeing a good many things. This morning he received me with a change of manner--can't exactly describe it; but it was not flattering! So I presently left him to his own devices and went on into another room. Then he followed me, and seemed to wish to talk. Perhaps he perceived that he had been unfriendly, and thought he would make amends. But I was rather short with him. We had been real friends; we hadn't met for three years; and I thought he might have behaved differently. He asked me a number of questions, however, about last year, about my resignation, and so forth; and I answered as little as I could. So presently he looked at me and laughed--"You remind me," he said, "of what somebody said of Peel--that he was bad to go up to in the stable!--But what on earth are you in the stable for?--and not in the running?"'
Mrs. Burgoyne smiled.
'He was evidently bored with the pictures!' she said, dryly.
Manisty gave a shrug. 'Oh! I let him off. I wouldn't be drawn. I told him I had expressed myself so much in public there was nothing more to say. "H'm," he said, "they tell me at the Embassy you're writing a book!" You should have seen the little old fellow's wizened face--and the scorn of it! So I inquired whether there was any objection to the writing of books. "Yes!"--he said--"when a man can do a d----d sight better for himself--as you could! Everyone tells me that last year you had the ball at your feet." "Well,"--I said--"and I kicked it--and am still kicking it--in my own way. It mayn't be yours--or anybody else's--but wait and see." He shook his head. "A man with what were your prospects can't afford escapades. It's all very well for a Frenchman; it don't pay in England." So then I maintained that half the political reputations of the present day were based on escapades. "Whom do you mean?"--he said--"Randolph Churchill?--But Randolph's escapades were always just what the man in the street understood. As for your escapade, the man in the street can't make head or tail of it. That's just the, difference."'
Mrs. Burgoyne laughed--but rather impatiently.
'I should like to know when General Fenton ever considered the man in the street!'
'Not at Simla certainly. There you may despise him.--But the old man is right enough as to the part he plays in England.--I gathered that all my old Indian friends thought I had done for myself. There was no sympathy for me anywhere. Oh!--as to the cause I upheld--yes. But none as to the mode of doing it.'
'Well--there is plenty of sympathy elsewhere! What does it matter what dried-up officials like General Fenton choose to think about it?'
'Nothing--so long as there are no doubts inside to open the gates to the General Fentons outside!'
He looked at her oddly--half smiling, half frowning.
'The doubts are traitors. Send them to execution!' He shook his head.
'Do you remember that sentence we came across yesterday in Chateaubriand's letters "As to my career--I have gone from shipwreck to shipwreck." What if I am merely bound on the same charming voyage?'
'I accept the comparison,' she said with vivacity. 'End as he did in re-creating a church, and regenerating a literature--and see who will count the shipwrecks!'
Her hand's disdainful gesture completed the sally.
Manisty's face dismissed its shadow.
As she stood beside him, in the rosy light--so proudly confident--Eleanor Burgoyne was very delightful to see and hear. Manisty, one of the subtlest and most fastidious of observers, was abundantly conscious of it. Yet she was not beautiful, except in the judgment of a few exceptional people, to whom a certain kind of grace--very rare, and very complex in origin--is of more importance than other things. The eyes were, indeed, beautiful; so was the forehead, and the hair of a soft ashy brown folded and piled round it in a most skilful simplicity. But the rest of the face was too long; and its pallor, the singularly dark circles round the eyes, the great thinness of the temples and cheeks, together with the emaciation of the whole delicate frame, made a rather painful impression on a stranger. It was a face of experience, a face of grief; timid, yet with many strange capacities and suggestions both of vehemence and pride. It could still tremble into youth and delight. But in general it held the world aloof. Mrs. Burgoyne was not very