Mrs General Talboys | Page 7

the while makes all these
things the sweeter; but the sentiment alone will not suffice for him. Mrs.
Talboys did, I believe, drink her glass of champagne, as do other ladies;
but with her it had no such pleasing effect. It loosened only her tongue,
but never her eye. Her arm, I think, never trembled, and her hand never
lingered. The General was always safe, and happy, perhaps, in his
solitary safety.
It so happened that we had unfortunately among us two artists who had
quarrelled with their wives. O'Brien, whom I have before mentioned,
was one of them. In his case, I believe him to have been almost as free
from blame as a man can be whose marriage was in itself a fault.
However, he had a wife in Ireland some ten years older than himself;
and though he might sometimes almost forget the fact, his friends and
neighbours were well aware of it. In the other case the whole fault
probably was with the husband. He was an ill-tempered, bad-hearted
man, clever enough, but without principle; and he was continually
guilty of the great sin of speaking evil of the woman whose name he
should have been anxious to protect. In both cases our friend Mrs.

Talboys took a warm interest, and in each of them she sympathised
with the present husband against the absent wife.
Of the consolation which she offered in the latter instance we used to
hear something from Mackinnon. He would repeat to his wife, and to
me and my wife, the conversations which she had with him. "Poor
Brown;" she would say, "I pity him, with my very heart's blood."
"You are aware that he has comforted himself in his desolation,"
Mackinnon replied.
"I know very well to what you allude. I think I may say that I am
conversant with all the circumstances of this heart-blighting sacrifice."
Mrs. Talboys was apt to boast of the thorough confidence reposed in
her by all those in whom she took an interest. "Yes, he has sought such
comfort in another love as the hard cruel world would allow him."
"Or perhaps something more than that," said Mackinnon. "He has a
family here in Rome, you know; two little babies."
"I know it, I know it," she said. "Cherub angels!" and as she spoke she
looked up into the ugly face of Marcus Aurelius; for they were standing
at the moment under the figure of the great horseman on the
Campidoglio. "I have seen them, and they are the children of innocence.
If all the blood of all the Howards ran in their veins it could not make
their birth more noble!"
"Not if the father and mother of all the Howards had never been
married," said Mackinnon.
"What; that from you, Mr. Mackinnon!" said Mrs. Talboys, turning her
back with energy upon the equestrian statue, and looking up into the
faces, first of Pollux and then of Castor, as though from them she might
gain some inspiration on the subject which Marcus Aurelius in his
coldness had denied to her. "From you, who have so nobly claimed for
mankind the divine attributes of free action! From you, who have
taught my mind to soar above the petty bonds which one man in his
littleness contrives for the subjection of his brother. Mackinnon! you
who are so great!" And she now looked up into his face. "Mackinnon,
unsay those words."
"They ARE illegitimate," said he; "and if there was any landed
property--"
"Landed property! and that from an American!"
"The children are English, you know."

"Landed property! The time will shortly come--ay, and I see it
coming--when that hateful word shall be expunged from the calendar;
when landed property shall be no more. What! shall the free soul of a
God-born man submit itself for ever to such trammels as that? Shall we
never escape from the clay which so long has manacled the subtler
particles of the divine spirit? Ay, yes, Mackinnon;" and then she took
him by the arm, and led him to the top of the huge steps which lead
down from the Campidoglio into the streets of modern Rome. "Look
down upon that countless multitude." Mackinnon looked down, and
saw three groups of French soldiers, with three or four little men in
each group; he saw, also, a couple of dirty friars, and three priests very
slowly beginning the side ascent to the church of the Ara Coeli. "Look
down upon that countless multitude," said Mrs. Talboys, and she
stretched her arms out over the half-deserted city. "They are escaping
now from these trammels,--now, now,--now that I am speaking."
"They have escaped long ago from all such trammels as that of landed
property," said Mackinnon.
"Ay, and from all terrestrial bonds," she continued,