turned her back (her round and wriggling back) upon Miss Gainsborough
and gone off to her pleasant game of tattle with Cooksey. For Miss
Gainsborough was as hard as a rock; she was one of the old guard,
possessing hereditary rights in Rome that had been bequeathed to her,
with the bone of her nose and the slash of her tongue, by I don’t know
how many stubborn generations of antiquity in the midland shires. You
could note them in the insolence of her eye, in the depth of her riotous
chuckle, in the coarse old provinciality of some of her tones. She stood
upon the pyramid of her fathers, a last survival--terribly out of date
in a world where there are fewer and fewer people to whom we may safely
be rude. Miss Gainsborough’s grandmother, perhaps, may have trodden upon
the necks of freeborn men and women to her heart’s content; and it must
be bitter to her granddaughter to reflect that at _her_ end of time she
is reduced to pounding an occasional old goose like Lady Mullinger. Such
a triumph is too easy--it is beneath her; and yet I suppose we can
hardly expect that Miss Gainsborough, with so much fighting bullying
blood in her clear cheek, should hold her hand and soften her tongue
when Lady Mullinger comes cringing to meet the attack. As a matter of
fact Miss Gainsborough didn’t bother her head about this question, or
indeed any other; she inherited her stinging hand and her few tough
stalwart opinions, and she gave you either or both in the face if you
showed a sign of weakness.
Bashford was horrified, but not weak; he received her rich old banter
with a smiling front in silence; and in large silence he still attended
when she presently dropped her sportive play and took up some subject of
the moment, some dire political portent that she had detected in the
newspaper of that morning--over which she was implacable in majestic
wrath. It mattered little to _her_, an old woman who would soon be safe
with her fathers, rest their souls!--but Bashford, a mere youth, would
live to see the fulfilment of her word; and her word, smartly rattling
among the tea-cups, was Damnation! Nobody listened to _her_, nobody
cared; and the mad infatuation of a crowd of sheep, of swine, of
serpents--oh you may laugh, but Miss Gainsborough will call them all the
bad names she can think of; and when the crash comes you will remember
that _she_ wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Afraid? Well, Miss
Gainsborough hadn’t after all a great deal to be afraid of, it occurred
to me; she sat pretty comfortably entrenched within her fortress,
hurling her defiance at a world which couldn’t touch her; and the shy
observer who was watching her from across the room was almost moved to a
desperate rejoinder, something to the effect that she hadn’t perhaps
considered an argument which the young observer could have expounded
with persuasive force, with reason invincible. Shyness saved me, I am
glad to think, from the fatuity of offering reason and persuasion to
Miss Gainsborough--as though she bothered her head about the why or the
wherefore of the opinions that she brandished. They were solid in the
hand, they had seen good service and hadn’t failed her; so she laid
about her vigorously, like her fathers before her. Lady Mullinger,
struck solemn by the thought of the world’s insanity, fervently breathed
her assent; and Bashford too was very grave--he feared, so he said, that
Miss Gainsborough was only too much in the right of it.
I sat as it chanced by a low window, and a turn of the head gave me a
view of half the long length of the Piazza Navona--the old circus or
race-course or whatever it was in ancient days. The oblong space with
its rounded end--it shows you the line where the Roman chariots traced
and raced; for when the games of imperial Rome were over, the track was
built about with houses, and now there is a palace on one side, and a
church, and three great splashing fountains down the middle; and still
the sweep of the track is marked by this open space in the midst of the
city, and Bashford’s apartment was like the royal box for the monarch
and his minions and his dames. Bashford could hardly sit for the
monarch, nor I for the minion; but his dames, one of them at least,
might look over the heads of the crowd, surveying the contest, and never
be known for an intruder from other lands and times. Miss Gainsborough
would have figured admirably upon the scene; and it seemed the waste of
a great opportunity that the empress should be here, and the
race-course--and yet no crowd, no chariots, only the Piazza Navona
sleepily resting and lounging in the hot afternoon. Miss Gainsborough
has come too late; the force that she wields has no meaning, no purchase
upon the madness of to-day--it has no terror for the Piazza Navona. A
few idlers were sprawling out there in the shade, easy-going children of
the generation that Miss Gainsborough had chastised and warned; but it
was impossible to think that a single knee would tremble if she were to
appear at the window and speak her mind. The world couldn’t touch
her--but then the world has no will to touch her; these Roman idlers
stretch their limbs in the softness of the year, smiling good-naturedly
when she orders them to instant execution.
It is too true--her vigour is wasted upon Rome. She may bully Lady
Mullinger; but upon Rome at large, the picture of indifference, her
ancestral authority produces no impression. She might surely, however,
betake herself to a country more capable of understanding her message.
At this moment she happened to be lifting her voice against “that
rascally feller,” and again, “those good-for-nothing louts”--and the
rascal was a puzzle-headed English statesman, and the louts were a
large proportion of the English race; and if Miss Gainsborough had their
infamy so much at heart it seemed unfortunate that only Bashford and
Lady Mullinger should have the benefit of her conviction. “True, true,”
said Bashford--“a bad business, I’m afraid”; and “If they could only be
_told_!”--Lady Mullinger despairingly sighed. I thought I saw Miss
Gainsborough seated upon the pedestal of all that had gone to produce
her--acres of English soil, dozens of big stout Warwickshire
land-owners, hundreds of other people’s labour and fidelity: an imposing
mass, not unworthily crowned by this handsome old image with the bright
cheeks and the floriferous bonnet. But what was such a magnificent pile
of British solidity doing in Rome, I should like to ask her--in Rome,
where its effect was lost in the alien air, and where there was nobody
to render it the tribute of admiration, of sacred terror, of fierce
exasperation (all three) which it plainly deserved. Her Roman
tea-parties could offer Miss Gainsborough no kind of justice. From Lady
Mullinger she might indeed receive admiration, and from Bashford terror,
and from me my little mite of silent rebellion; but I had to acknowledge
that we made an inadequate show, grouped about the base of this
remarkable monument. It ought to be set up in London, breasting the big
rude crowd of its countrymen--not in Rome, where to the loungers of the
Piazza Navona it must be meaningless.
But what far-fetched fancies to be teased with in the presence of Miss
Gainsborough--who certainly felt that she had plenty of good sound
meaning wherever she was. Perhaps her establishment in Rome was a
stately protest against the conduct of the louts and rascals at home;
perhaps she preferred the homage of a tea-party to the jostle of a
crowd; in any case she did as she chose and owed no account to
anybody--least of all to an obscure young observer, hitherto barely
noticed, on whom her eye now fell with a command to approach. Miss
Gainsborough, I must own, could be very gracious to the young, though
she was inclined to despise the shy. Youth pleased her, even awkward and
inarticulate youth, and the call of her friendly sarcasm was
encouraging. “Come and sit by me, you talkative young man, and don’t let
old Platt get near me. Bashford’s expecting old Platt, and he and I
always fight like the dooce. I shan’t quarrel with you, because you’re
straight from home--Lord, I can tell that! I only get to blows with old
monkeys who’ve forgotten _where_ they came from--if they ever came from
anywhere. Bashford was born in Rome, poor lamb, but he’s a good lump o’
home stuff for all that--look at him, with his great red face! Ho,
Bashford, you’re blushing at my pretty speeches, I’m sure, only it don’t
show on your manly bloom. When Platt comes I’m going to elope with this
young man; he’ll please to carry me off before I forget that I’m a
lady.” She tapped me impressively on the shoulder and bade me be ready
to snatch her up the moment she seemed likely to lower herself by
violent conduct. Lady Mullinger, who could learn nothing, crowed out on
this with a joyous titter; and the moment of my privilege seemed indeed
to have arrived--Miss Gainsborough’s fingers twitched and tingled.
But here was old Platt; before we had noticed his entry he was bending
over those very fingers, elegantly saluting Miss Gainsborough; and
before she had time to forget herself he had skilfully escaped, he was
out of her reach; and she sat very stiff and haughty, her head erect,
trying to pretend that she hadn’t submitted to his easy liberty with her
hand. She had, however--old Platt had been too quick for her; it looked
terribly as though Platt, the old monkey, had caught her by surprise and
compelled her to be polite to him. It was quite a humiliation for Miss
Gainsborough, and I was ashamed to be aware of it. For all her
magnificence a man like Platt had the advantage of her, because he was a
supple and deft and nimble old wretch, versed in ingratiating arts,
while she was accustomed to sit monumentally and to slash at her ease.
It is the penalty that is paid by the straight-backed daughter of
Warwickshire squires when she leaves her home, exposing herself to the
arts and tricks of the foreigner. These outsiders don’t know the rules
of the game, or they deliberately flout them with their underhand craft;
they won’t see that the rules were laid down by the forefathers of Miss
Gainsborough, and that it is not for any impertinent upstart from
nowhere to tamper with what he didn’t invent. So Miss Gainsborough fumed
in silence; and the devoted Lady Mullinger, pursued to the last by her
fatality, thought it a good opportunity to show that she too was of her
dear old friend’s opinion--give _her_ she said in emphatic undertones, a
_man_, a _real_ man, not an effeminate old thing only fit to dance
attendance in a drawing-room. “My good woman,” exclaimed Miss
Gainsborough coarsely, “it’s late for _you_ to be asking for a man, real
or sham. You and I must take what we can get, at our time o’ life.” Lady
Mullinger heaved and cracked with her mirth--“Isn’t she _hard_ on me?”
she gasped to the room. But Miss Gainsborough was still discomfited,
and she had to remain where she was; she couldn’t now elope to leave old
Platt with his advantage.
He was enjoying it very discreetly; nothing could be more graceful than
his unconsciousness of Miss Gainsborough’s glare. He hovered about the
room with little shrieks of admiration at its dingy adornments, he
clasped his hands and fell back in enchantment before a picture, he
seized upon Bashford and tenderly slapped him--“My dear boy, _don’t_
look so young and so buxom; it’s thoughtless and cruel of you--there!”
Bashford received the dainty slap with all his sturdiness, and Mr. Platt
made a pretty little face at him, pouting reproachfully; and then there
were more shrieks of delight and a tinkle of laughter, for Mr. Platt had
discovered a great row of briar-wood pipes, hanging in a rack on the
wall, and he vowed and declared that he had _never_ seen such a darling
old John Bull as Mr. Bashford--there, once more! “I ought to have
brought a bull-dog and a hunting-crop,” he trilled playfully, “only I
shouldn’t know which was which--fancy if I cropped the dog instead of
hunting the bull! Now go away and don’t make me laugh, because I’ve got
something dreadfully serious to say to Lady Mullinger, who’s a bad bad
woman--aren’t you, sweet lady?”--and he skipped to her side, shaking his
finger at her, and arranged himself very neatly on a stool at her feet.
“Now don’t listen, any of you,” he cried; “it’s a secret--only it isn’t,
for it’s the talk of the town; otherwise I’d hush it up, you poor dear
thing, for the sake of our past.” He soothed her, patting her hand; and
again he knew just how to disengage himself at the right instant, before
Lady Mullinger in the surge of her agitation had time to act. He shot a
glance of knowing intimacy at Miss Gainsborough in passing, and
precisely managed to evade the heart-felt oath that she barked after him
as he frisked away.
This elderly sprite had no call to envy the buxom freshness of anybody;
he was beautifully pink and buoyant and clear-eyed. Stout he was, but
trimly and compactly stout, and his gay little feet twinkled in agile
movement. He didn’t remain with us for long; he _had_ to tear himself
away, because he was expecting two professors and a doctor of divinity
under his own humble roof, and since Lady Mullinger had been untrue to
him--“not that I can wonder at _that_, with a dangerous youth like
Bashford”--he must trip round and beat up another pretty girl or two for
his party; and as for the faithless woman herself, “Oh, my dearest Bash,
be very gentle with her--she’s so impulsive”; and with the flutter of a
handkerchief, with chirruping cries, with pattering boots, Mr. Platt
scattered his leave-taking over the company and was gone. And when he
was safely outside, behind the closed door--ah, I should like to have
seen him then! Did he pause and turn, did he make an odious and vulgar
sign in the direction of the company? I can very well imagine that he
did so, and small blame to him. He had brought off a bright and engaging
little _scena_ without a hitch, in the teeth of his restive audience;
and I can’t believe that he wasn’t deliberately playing with his skill,
or that he didn’t smile to himself upon the staircase, tasting the
thought of Miss Gainsborough’s expression upon the closing of the door.
He knew what he was about.
“Huh!” said Miss Gainsborough--as nearly as I can represent her comment;
and she said no more upon that subject, she talked for a few minutes to
Bashford upon other matters, and then she made an exceedingly royal
departure. Lady Mullinger and I had the appearance of forming a “lane”;
Bashford armed her down it and escorted her to the staircase. When he
returned Lady Mullinger flounced at him with an outburst of volubility
that she was now able to let loose. She wasn’t afraid of old Bashford,
and she relapsed into her natural exuberance, as though with the removal
of a tightened belt; she fell to work with determination upon the diet
that she craved. She abounded upon the topic of Platt--his origin so
dubious, his history so mysterious, his connexions so questionable; Lady
Mullinger, as one who never listened to scandal, knew nothing _against_
the man, and of course one met him everywhere; but she had been told for
a _fact_ that he was involved in that horrid business of--well, you
remember it, and how he had suddenly left Rome, so strangely, just
before it all came out; and of course it’s no secret that he stays here
now because he _daren’t_ go home--yes, Lady Mullinger had had _that_ on
the best authority; and nobody hated to be censorious more than she, but
in our little friendly Roman circle one must be careful; and after all
what _did_ happen exactly in that other affair, the affair of the
sacristan and the suppressed pamphlet?--because if Bashford knew, Lady
Mullinger felt that she _ought_ to ask him to tell her plainly; and by
this time she had quite forgotten that there was a third person present,
and on the shock of accidentally meeting my interested gaze she gave a
lurch and a plunge, sheering heavily aside into the reflection that for
her part she liked to believe the best of everybody, and had always
maintained that Mr. Platt was a very good-natured amusing old person.
And now she really must fly, with a thousand thanks to dear Mr. Bashford
for his charming hospitality.
So she fled--it was a disorderly rout; and with the fall of repose and
silence upon the comfortable room I began to follow. But Bashford held
me; he was obscurely aware of a burden upon his mind that he wished to
throw off. “Give me time,” he seemed to say, detaining me with a firm
broad hand. There was plenty of time, and he laboured with his
difficulty unhurried. He couldn’t allow a young stranger to carry off
the impression that his tea-party hadn’t been quite--hadn’t been
exactly--hadn’t been what you might call--; but this line of attack led
nowhere, and with the silence still unbroken he cast around for another.
Every approach seemed blocked by his loyalty to his guests, but he
arrived at last. “A good soul, her ladyship,” said he; and then, drawing
a bolder breath--“Tongue runs away with her a bit, at times.” Oh, I
quite understood; it may happen to any of us. “It’s my belief,” said
Bashford, “that some people _must_ have their talk--keeps ’em alive, if
you see what I mean.” He looked up gravely for my effusive assent and
found his way now more freely. “That’s what I like about old Martha
Gainsborough,” he reflected; “she talks very fierce, but there’s no
mischief about her. It’s my belief that some people _will_ make
mischief--keeps ’em going, if you see what I mean. Now what I like about
old Martha--” The circle of his locution was narrow; he was surprised to
find himself at the same point again so soon. He broke away--“There’s
plenty of good stuff in old Martha; and that keeps _her_ alive; so she’s
no need to pull her friends to pieces.” He frowned approvingly on the
phrase, and it started a smile. “Except to their faces,” he added with
humour. He had brought me to the door, and he dismissed me warmly. “And
mind you,” he called after me, “she’s a very good soul, her ladyship.” I
knew who was, anyhow.
XII. CORSO
There was no doubt that I had climbed to good purpose when I reached
Miss Gainsborough’s _piano nobile_ in the Corso. Here was
grandeur!--such a pomp of high mirrors and gilded garlands and red
brocades, such a blaze of candlelight and crystal, as gave old Martha
the sumptuous background that became her. She stood on the hearth-rug,
upright as ever, her hand upon the crutch of an ebony wand; she stood in
all her panoply to receive the world. She was flanked by a pair of
supporters, two gentlemen already in attendance; and the world
approached her across a shining floor that was broad enough to make the
world feel very small and trifling, or very large and uncouth, before it
gained her presence. But she took my hand with kindness, though she
spoke with acerbity; and she seemed to hold me under her protection,
like a friend, while she presented me loftily to the gentlemen in
waiting. One of these I recognized at once; he had the bright dark eyes,
the musical voice, the sharp-lipped smile of Father Holt--who recalled
our meeting in the church and gracefully renewed our acquaintance. The
other was an old man with a great patriarchal head, snowily bearded--a
picturesque old figure, bedecked in careful negligence of black velvet
and creamy silk; he was very loud and deaf, and he accepted my
introduction with abounding heartiness.
Miss Gainsborough was holding a banquet; and Father Holt and Mr. Vickery
(the patriarch) had been retained for the occasion as a pair of faithful
henchmen, who would kindly be at hand to beat off the crowd when she
collapsed. She was giving them their directions to this effect when the
crowd began to gather, and I own there was some disillusionment again
for me in the sight of the trio who first appeared. Miss Gainsborough’s
drawing-room glowed and shone, prepared for all the brilliance of a
historic capital; and anybody might have felt that high expectations
sagged a trifle when there presently drifted through the curtained
portal the long plain faces of the Clarksons. They, poor creatures, had
perhaps the same reflection, discovering me upon the hearth-rug; when
for once you dine in the Corso it is flat to encounter the mere Briton
to whom you have been kind in your lodging. But other faces quickly
crowded upon us, and the room was filled with chatter and stir; the
party was a large one, and among the gathering of many strangers Miss
Agnes and I, trying to make conversation as we looked at the show, might
imagine that we beheld the flower of historic pride. I at least was
ready to make the most of it, for the honour of the Corso and of
ourselves; but Miss Agnes blinked more doubtfully with her short-sighted
eyes and appeared dissatisfied. Was it possible that old Martha was
putting us off with our own sort, a rabble of floating touristry--whom
she swept together and polished off from time to time with a perfunctory
banquet? Yes, when a few minutes later I was sent to dinner with Miss
Gadge it seemed all too probable.
How we do despise each other, we simple pilgrims! There is no meanness
to which we are ashamed of stooping if only we may so persuade the rest
of the herd that we are not as they, gaping in the rawness of innocent
wonder. Miss Gadge and I were quite capable, I believe, of deliberately
lying to each other about our condition and rank in the general
pilgrimage; there was instant rivalry between us, a competition into
which we dropped as a matter of course. Even after long years it might
make us both uncomfortably flush to recall the sound of our voices as we
plied one another with the well-known strokes--for they are all
well-known, the possibilities of the game have been ransacked a thousand
times over. Not one of us all, I suppose, ever really deceived another;
and yet we are unable to talk with candour and freedom--and Miss Gadge
is by no means a spiritless talker--until we have paid our debt to the
devouring snobbery which overtakes us in Rome. I try to smother some
degrading puffs and flourishes of my own that return to me; but I may
claim that no less vivid in memory are the struttings and bouncings of
Miss Gadge. The game was drawn when at last we abandoned it, and we have
never since had occasion to start it again. Years have flown, and if
Miss Gadge and I were to meet once more at a dinner-party in the Corso
we should meet as strangers; yet I can hear the insinuating tone in
which she would begin by asking me whether this was my first visit to
Rome. “Not quite!” I should answer, with a dangerous ironic smile; and I
should allow her to commit herself further before crushing her with the
load of my superiority. I should find, furthermore, that it isn’t easy
to crush a bouncer of such experience as Miss Gadge.
As for the particular crowd that old Martha had collected that evening,
the suspicion of Miss Agnes was confirmed. We were a fortuitous lot,
jetsam of the hotels and the boarding-houses, with only Father Holt and
Mr. Vickery to give us a stiffening of the real Rome. They toiled, I
have no doubt, manfully; but they were outside my range (Miss
Gainsborough kept them jealously near herself--not that she seemed
likely to collapse), and I was plump in the midst of the conversation,
everybody knows the kind, which we pilgrims make for ourselves when we
assemble together. It begins with the unseemly game I have described,
and when this has been played to a draw it goes on to an endless chant,
recurring points of admiration and exclamation, over the churches and
the ruins and the hill-towns that have stirred our gushing affections.
The dear sweet places, we name them in succession; and like Berta when
she grew so lyrical over Gower Street and the hansom-cabs, we hardly
need more than the sweet pretty names--they are conversation enough by
themselves. Hark to the swelling chorus!--our shrewd hostess knew she
could trust us, her body-guard was merely for her own protection against
a clack of ecstasy that bored her to death. She at her end of the table
was again declaiming, arraigning, denouncing in her grandest manner; the
rest of us left the world to its fate, and assured each other that
Assisi--that Perugia--that Siena--needed no more words to express what
we all agreed that they were. In half a dozen eager colloquies about the
table this truth was upheld.