“I’ll tell you what, Fanny,” Mackinnon said to his wife one day—to his wife and to mine, for we were all together—“we shall have a row in the house if we don’t take care. O’Brien will be making love to Mrs. Talboys.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Mackinnon; “you are always thinking that somebody is going to make love to some one.”
“Somebody always is,” said he.
“She’s old enough to be his mother,” said Mrs. Mackinnon.
“What does that matter to an Irishman?” said Mackinnon. “Besides, I doubt if there is more than five years’ difference between them.”
“There must be more than that,” said my wife. “Ida Talboys is twelve, I know, and I am not quite sure that Ida is the eldest.”
“If she had a son in the Guards it would make no difference,” said Mackinnon. “There are men who consider themselves bound to make love to a woman under certain circumstances, let the age of the lady be what it may. O’Brien is such a one; and if she sympathises with him much oftener he will mistake the matter and go down on his knees. You ought to put him on his guard,” he said, addressing himself to his wife.
“Indeed, I shall do no such thing,” said she; “if they are two fools they must, like other fools, pay the price of their folly.” As a rule there could be no softer creature than Mrs. Mackinnon, but it seemed to me that her tenderness never extended itself in the direction of Mrs. Talboys.
Just at this time, toward the end, that is, of November, we made a party to visit the tombs which lie along the Appian Way beyond that most beautiful of all sepulchres, the tomb of Cecilia Metella. It was a delicious day, and we had driven along this road for a couple of miles beyond the walls of the city, enjoying the most lovely view which the neighborhood of Rome affords, looking over the wondrous ruins of the old aqueducts up toward Tivoli and Palestrina. Of all the environs of Rome this is, on a fair day, the most enchanting; and here perhaps, among a world of tombs, thoughts and almost memories of the old, old days come upon one with the greatest force. The grandeur of Rome is best seen and understood from beneath the walls of the Colosseum, and its beauty among the pillars of the Forum and the arches of the Sacred Way; but its history and fall become more palpable to the mind and more clearly realised out here among the tombs, where the eyes rest upon the mountains, whose shades were cool to the old Romans as to us, than anywhere within the walls of the city. Here we look out at the same Tivoli and the same Praeneste glittering in the sunshine, embowered among the far-off valleys, which were dear to them; and the blue mountains have not crumbled away into ruins. Within Rome itself we can see nothing as they saw it.
Our party consisted of some dozen or fifteen persons, and, as a hamper with luncheon in it had been left on the grassy slope at the base of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the expedition had in it something of the nature of a picnic. Mrs. Talboys was of course with us, and Ida Talboys. O’Brien also was there. The hamper had been prepared in Mrs. Mackinnon’s room under the immediate eye of Mackinnon himself, and they therefore were regarded as the dominant spirits of the party. My wife was leagued with Mrs. Mackinnon, as was usually the case; and there seemed to be a general opinion, among those who were closely in confidence together, that something would happen in the O’Brien-Talboys matter. The two had been inseparable on the previous evening, for Mrs. Talboys had been urging on the young Irishman her counsels respecting his domestic troubles. Sir Cresswell Cresswell, she had told him, was his refuge. “Why should his soul submit to bonds which the world had now declared to be intolerable? Divorce was not now the privilege of the dissolute rich. Spirits which were incompatible need no longer be compelled to fret beneath the same couples.” In short, she had recommended him to go to England and get rid of his wife, as she would with a little encouragement have recommended any man to get rid of anything. I am sure that, had she been skilfully brought on to the subject, she might have been induced to pronounce a verdict against such ligatures for the body as coats, waistcoats, and trousers. Her aspirations for freedom ignored all bounds, and in theory there were no barriers which she was not willing to demolish.