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. Glascock 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 entitled.”
“Do you mean Mr. or Mrs. Browning?” asked Mr. Glascock—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. Glascock.”
“I am not quite sure that we have,” said Mr. Glascock.
“Yours is not altogether an inglorious mission,” continued Miss Petrie.
“I’ve got no mission,” said Mr. Glascock—“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. Glascock.
“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.
LVI
Withered Grass
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. Glascock, her spirit revolted against the manoeuvre, and she took herself away amidst the crowd. If Mr. Glascock 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 highborn, 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. Glascock 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 duchesses. She thought that she knew that they were generally cold and proud, and very little given to receive outsiders graciously within their ranks. Mr. Glascock had an aunt who was a Duchess, 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 pass 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
