Mrs. Spalding was all smiles when her guest reached her. "We did not mean to have such a crowd of people," she said, whispering; "but you know how one thing leads to another, and people here really like short invitations." Then the minister's wife bowed very low to an Italian lady, and for the moment wished herself in Beacon Street. It was a great trouble to her that she could not pluck up courage to speak a word in Italian. "I know more about it than some that are glib enough," she would say to her niece Livy, "but these Tuscans are so particular with their Bocca Toscana."

It was almost spiteful on the part of Miss Petrie,--the manner in which, on this evening, she remained close to her friend Caroline Spalding. It is hardly possible to believe that it came altogether from high principle,--from a determination to save her friend from an impending danger. One's friend has no right to decide for one what is, and what is not dangerous. Mr. Glasc.o.c.k after awhile found himself seated on a fixed couch, that ran along the wall, between Carry Spalding and Miss Petrie; but Miss Petrie was almost as bad to him as had been the minister himself. "I am afraid," she said, looking up into his face with some severity, and rushing upon her subject with audacity, "that the works of your Browning have not been received in your country with that veneration to which they are ent.i.tled."

"Do you mean Mr. or Mrs. Browning?" asked Mr. Glasc.o.c.k,--perhaps with some mistaken idea that the lady was out of her depth, and did not know the difference.

"Either;--both; for they are one, the same, and indivisible. The spirit and germ of each is so reflected in the outcome of the other, that one sees only the result of so perfect a combination, and one is tempted to acknowledge that here and there a marriage may have been arranged in Heaven. I don't think that in your country you have perceived this, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

"I am not quite sure that we have," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k.

"Yours is not altogether an inglorious mission," continued Miss Petrie.

"I've got no mission," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k,--"either from the Foreign Office, or from my own inner convictions."

Miss Petrie laughed with a scornful laugh. "I spoke, sir, of the mission of that small speck on the earth's broad surface, of which you think so much, and which we call Great Britain."

"I do think a good deal of it," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k.

"It has been more thought of than any other speck of the same size,"

said Carry Spalding.

"True," said Miss Petrie, sharply;--"because of its iron and coal.

But the mission I spoke of was this." And she put forth her hand with an artistic motion as she spoke. "It utters prophecies, though it cannot read them. It sends forth truth, though it cannot understand it. Though its own ears are deaf as adders', it is the nursery of poets, who sing not for their own countrymen, but for the higher sensibilities and newer intelligences of lands, in which philanthropy has made education as common as the air that is breathed."

"Wally," said Olivia, coming up to the poetess, in anger that was almost apparent, "I want to take you, and introduce you to the Marchesa Pulti."

But Miss Petrie no doubt knew that the eldest son of an English lord was at least as good as an Italian marchesa. "Let her come here,"

said the poetess, with her grandest smile.

CHAPTER LVI.

WITHERED GRa.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When Caroline Spalding perceived how direct an attempt had been made by her sister to take the poetess away, in order that she might thus be left alone with Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, her spirit revolted against the manoeuvre, and she took herself away amidst the crowd. If Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k should wish to find her again he could do so. And there came across her mind something of a half-formed idea that, perhaps after all her friend Wallachia was right. Were this man ready to take her and she ready to be taken, would such an arrangement be a happy one for both of them? His high-born, wealthy friends might very probably despise her, and it was quite possible that she also might despise them. To be Lady Peterborough, and have the spending of a large fortune, would not suffice for her happiness. She was sure of that.

It would be a leap in the dark, and all such leaps must needs be dangerous, and therefore should be avoided. But she did like the man.

Her friend was untrue to her and cruel in those allusions to tinkling cymbals. It might be well for her to get over her liking, and to think no more of one who was to her a foreigner and a stranger,--of whose ways of living in his own home she knew so little, whose people might be antipathetic to her, enemies instead of friends, among whom her life would be one long misery; but it was not on that ground that Miss Petrie had recommended her to start for Rome as soon as Mr. Glasc.o.c.k had reached Florence. "There is no reason," she said to herself, "why I should not marry a man if I like him, even though he be a lord. And of him I should not be the least afraid. It's the women that I fear." And then she called to mind all that she had ever heard of English countesses and d.u.c.h.esses. She thought that she knew that they were generally cold and proud, and very little given to receive outsiders graciously within their ranks. Mr. Glasc.o.c.k had an aunt who was a d.u.c.h.ess, and a sister who would be a Countess.

Caroline Spalding felt how her back would rise against these new relations, if it should come to pa.s.s that they should look unkindly upon her when she was taken to her own home;--how she would fight with them, giving them scorn for scorn; how unutterably miserable she would be; how she would long to be back among her own equals, in spite even of her love for her husband. "How grand a thing it is,"

she said, "to be equal with those whom you love!" And yet she was to some extent allured by the social position of the man. She could perceive that he had a charm of manner which her countrymen lacked.

He had read, perhaps, less than her uncle;--knew, perhaps, less than most of those men with whom she had been wont to a.s.sociate in her own city life at home;--was not braver, or more virtuous, or more self-denying than they; but there was a softness and an ease in his manner which was palatable to her, and an absence of that too visible effort of the intellect which is so apt to mark and mar the conversation of Americans. She almost wished that she had been English, in order that the man's home and friends might have suited her. She was thinking of all this as she stood pretending to talk to an American lady, who was very eloquent on the delights of Florence.

In the meantime Olivia and Mr. Glasc.o.c.k had moved away together, and Miss Petrie was left alone. This was no injury to Miss Petrie, as her mind at once set itself to work on a sonnet touching the frivolity of modern social gatherings; and when she complained afterwards to Caroline that it was the curse of their mode of life that no moment could be allowed for thought,--in which she referred specially to a few words that Mr. Gore had addressed to her at this moment of her meditations,--she was not wilfully a hypocrite. She was painfully turning her second set of rhymes, and really believed that she had been subjected to a hardship. In the meantime Olivia and Mr. Glasc.o.c.k were discussing her at a distance.

"You were being put through your facings, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k," Olivia had said.

"Well; yes; and your dear friend, Miss Petrie, is rather a stern examiner."

"She is Carry's ally, not mine," said Olivia. Then she remembered that by saying this she might be doing her sister an injury. Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k might object to such a bosom friend for his wife. "That is to say, of course we are all intimate with her, but just at this moment Carry is most in favour."

"She is very clever, I am quite sure," said he.

"Oh yes;--she's a genius. You must not doubt that on the peril of making every American in Italy your enemy."

"She is a poet,--is she not?"

"Mr. Glasc.o.c.k!"

"Have I said anything wrong?" he asked.

"Do you mean to look me in the face and tell me that you are not acquainted with her works,--that you don't know pages of them by heart, that you don't sleep with them under your pillow, don't travel about with them in your dressing-bag? I'm afraid we have mistaken you, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

"Is it so great a sin?"

"If you'll own up honestly, I'll tell you something,--in a whisper.

You have not read a word of her poems?"

"Not a word."

"Neither have I. Isn't it horrible? But, perhaps, if I heard Tennyson talking every day, I shouldn't read Tennyson. Familiarity does breed contempt;--doesn't it? And then poor dear Wallachia is such a bore. I sometimes wonder, when English people are listening to her, whether they think that American girls generally talk like that."

"Not all, perhaps, with that perfected eloquence."

"I dare say you do," continued Olivia, craftily. "That is just the way in which people form their opinions about foreigners. Some specially self-a.s.serting American speaks his mind louder than other people, and then you say that all Americans are self-a.s.serting."

"But you are a little that way given, Miss Spalding."

"Because we are always called upon to answer accusations against us, expressed or unexpressed. We don't think ourselves a bit better than you; or, if the truth were known, half as good. We are always struggling to be as polished and easy as the French, or as sensible and dignified as the English; but when our defects are thrown in our teeth--"

"Who throws them in your teeth, Miss Spalding?"

"You look it,--all of you,--if you do not speak it out. You do a.s.sume a superiority, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k; and that we cannot endure."

"I do not feel that I a.s.sume anything," said Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, meekly.

"If three gentlemen be together, an Englishman, a Frenchman, and an American, is not the American obliged to be on his mettle to prove that he is somebody among the three? I admit that he is always claiming to be the first; but he does so only that he may not be too evidently the last. If you knew us, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, you would find us to be very mild, and humble and nice, and good, and clever, and kind, and charitable, and beautiful,--in short, the finest people that have as yet been created on the broad face of G.o.d's smiling earth." These last words she p.r.o.nounced with a nasal tw.a.n.g, and in a tone of voice which almost seemed to him to be a direct mimicry of the American Minister. The upshot of the conversation, however, was that the disgust against Americans which, to a certain degree, had been excited in Mr. Glasc.o.c.k's mind by the united efforts of Mr. Spalding and the poetess, had been almost entirely dispelled. From all of which the reader ought to understand that Miss Olivia Spalding was a very clever young woman.

But nevertheless Mr. Glasc.o.c.k had not quite made up his mind to ask the elder sister to be his wife. He was one of those men to whom love-making does not come very easy, although he was never so much at his ease as when he was in company with ladies. He was sorely in want of a wife, but he was aware that at different periods during the last fifteen years he had been angled for as a fish. Mothers in England had tried to catch him, and of such mothers he had come to have the strongest possible detestation. He had seen the hooks,--or perhaps had fancied that he saw them when they were not there. Lady Janes and Lady Sarahs had been hard upon him, till he learned to buckle himself into triple armour when he went amongst them, and yet he wanted a wife;--no man more sorely wanted one. The reader will perhaps remember how he went down to Nuncombe Putney in quest of a wife, but all in vain. The lady in that case had been so explicit with him that he could not hope for a more favourable answer; and, indeed, he would not have cared to marry a girl who had told him that she preferred another man to himself, even if it had been possible for him to do so. Now he had met a lady very different from those with whom he had hitherto a.s.sociated,--but not the less manifestly a lady. Caroline Spalding was bright, pleasant, attractive, very easy to talk to, and yet quite able to hold her own. But the American Minister was--a bore; and Miss Petrie was--unbearable. He had often told himself that in this matter of marrying a wife he would please himself altogether, that he would allow himself to be tied down by no consideration of family pride,--that he would consult nothing but his own heart and feelings. As for rank, he could give that to his wife. As for money, he had plenty of that also. He wanted a woman that was not blasee with the world, that was not a fool, and who would respect him. The more he thought of it, the more sure he was that he had seen none who pleased him so well as Caroline Spalding; and yet he was a little afraid of taking a step that would be irrevocable. Perhaps the American Minister might express a wish to end his days at Monkhams, and might think it desirable to have Miss Petrie always with him as a private secretary in poetry!

"Between you and us, Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, the spark of sympathy does not pa.s.s with a strong flash," said a voice in his ear. As he turned round rapidly to face his foe, he was quite sure, for the moment, that under no possible circ.u.mstances would he ever take an American woman to his bosom as his wife.

"No," said he; "no, no. I rather think that I agree with you."