'And when they asked her to play, she played—quite respectably.'
'Of course:—two hours' practising in the morning,—I foresaw it,' said Manisty, stopping short. 'Eleanor, we have been like children sporting over the abyss!'
Mrs. Burgoyne rose with a laugh—a very soft and charming laugh—by no means the least among the various gifts with which nature had endowed her.
'Oh, civilisation has resources,' she said—'Aunt Pattie and I will take care of you. Now we have got a quarter of an hour to dress in. Only first—one must really pay one's respects to this sunset.'
And she stepped out through an open door upon a balcony beyond. Then turning, with a face of delight, she beckoned to Manisty, who followed.
'Every night more marvellous than the last'—she said, hanging over the balustrade—'and one seems to be here in the high box of a theatre, with the sun playing pageants for our particular benefit.'
Before them, beneath them indeed, stretched a scene, majestic, incomparable. The old villa in which they stood was built high on the ridge of the Alban Hills. Below it, olive-grounds and vineyards, plough-lands and pine plantations sank, slope after slope, fold after fold, to the Campagna. And beyond the Campagna, along the whole shining line of the west, the sea met the sunset; while to the north, a dim and scattered whiteness rising from the plain—was Rome.
The sunset was rushing to its height through every possible phase of violence and splendour. From the Mediterranean, storm-clouds were rising fast to the assault and conquest of the upper sky, which still above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the north-west wind and the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening fingers and long spinning veils of cloud across it—skirmishers that foretold the black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous masses behind. Below these wild tempest shapes, again,—in long spaces resting on the sea—the heaven was at peace, shining in delicate greens and yellows, infinitely translucent and serene, above the dazzling lines of water. Over Rome itself there was a strange massing and curving of the clouds. Between their blackness and the deep purple of the Campagna, rose the city—pale phantom—upholding one great dome, and one only, to the view of night and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the long flat arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The buildings of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity.—And between the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners of the night, stole over the Campagna towards the higher ground. But the hills themselves were still shining, still clad in rose and amethyst, caught in gentler repetition from the wildness of the west. Pale rose even the olive-gardens; rose the rich brown fallows, the emerging farms; while drawn across the Campagna from north to south, as though some mighty brush had just laid it there for sheer lust of colour, sheer joy in the mating it with the rose,—one long strip of sharpest, purest green.
Mrs. Burgoyne turned at last from the great spectacle to her companion.
'One has really no adjectives left,' she said. 'But I had used mine up within a week.'