"A pure Christianity, unstained by blood and perjury, by hypocrisy and verbose genuflection. Can I not worship and say my prayers among the clouds?" And she pointed to the lofty ceiling and the handsome chandelier. "But Ida goes to church," said Mrs. Mackinnon. Ida Talboys was her daughter. Now it may be observed that many who throw down the barriers of religion, so far as those barriers may affect themselves, still maintain them on behalf of their children. "Yes," said Mrs. Talboys; "dear Ida! her soft spirit is not yet adapted to receive the perfect truth. We are obliged to govern children by the strength of their prejudices." And then she moved away, for it was seldom that Mrs. Talboys remained long in conversationwith any lady.
Mackinnon, I believe, soon became tired of her. He liked her flattery, and at first declared that she was clever and nice, but her niceness was too purely celestial to satisfy his mundane tastes. Mackinnon himself can revel among the clouds in his own writings, and can leave us sometimes in doubt whether he ever means to come back to earth, but when his foot is on terra firma he loves to feel the earthy substratum which supports his weight. With women he likes a hand that can remain an unnecessary moment within his own, an eye that can glisten with the sparkle of champagne, a heart weak enough to make its owner's arm tremble within his own beneath the moonlight gloom of the Colosseum arches. A dash of sentiment the while makes all these things the sweeter, but the sentiment alone will not suffice for him. Mrs. Talboys did, I believe, drink her glassof champagne, as do other ladies, but with her it had no such pleasing effect. It loosened only her tongue, but never her eyes. 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 children of innocence. If all the blood of allthe 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 beenmarried," 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 those trammels--now, now--now that I am speaking.""They have escaped long ago from all such trammels as that of landed property," said Mackinnon.
