Eleanor, Mrs. Humphry Ward [best books to read now .txt] 📗

imploring them to intercede for her with the Government--that they should give her back her sons--Nino, at least!--Nino, her youngest, and darling. It was impossible that they should both be dead--impossible! The Holy Virgin would never have suffered it.

'Poor soul!--she tried to cling round my knees--wailing out the candles and prayers she had offered--shrieking something about the "Governo." I helped the sons to carry her in. They were quite gentle to her.'

Lucy turned away her head; and they resumed their march. She governed herself with all her power; but her normal self-control was weakened, and that cry of anguish still haunted her. Some quiet tears fell--she hoped, she believed that they were unseen.

But Manisty perceived them. He gave not the smallest direct sign; he began at once to talk of other things in a quite other vein. But underlying his characteristic whims and sallies she was presently conscious of a new and exquisite gentleness. It seemed to address itself both to her physical fatigue, and to the painful impression of the incident which had just passed. Her sudden tears--the tears of a tired child--and his delicate feeling--there arose out of them, as out of their whole journey, a relation, a bond, of which both were conscious, to which she yielded herself in a kind of vague and timid pleasure.

For Manisty--as she sat there, high above him, yet leaning a little towards him--there was something in the general freshness and purity of her presence, both physical and moral, that began most singularly to steal upon his emotions. Certain barriers seemed to be falling, certain secret sympathies emerging, drawn from regions far below their differences of age and race, of national and intellectual habit. How was it she had liked his Palestine book so much? He almost felt as though in some mysterious way he had been talking to her, and she listening, for years,--since first, perhaps, her sweet crude youth began.

Then even his egotism felt the prick of humour. Five weeks had she been with them at the villa?--and in a fortnight their party was to break up. How profitably indeed he had used his time with her! How civil--how kind--how discerning he had shown himself!

Yet soreness of this kind was soon lost in the surge of this new and unexpected impulse, which brought his youth exultantly back upon him. A beautiful woman rode beside him, through the Italian evening. With impatience, with an inward and passionate repudiation of all other bonds and claims, he threw himself into that mingled process--at once exploring and revealing--which makes the thrill of all the higher relations between men and women, and ends invariably either in love--or tragedy.

* * * * *

They found a carriage waiting for them near the Sforza-Cesarini gate, and in it Mrs. Elliott, Reggie Brooklyn's kind sister. Lucy was taken to a doctor, and the hurt was dressed. By nine o'clock she was once more under the villa-roof. Miss Manisty received her with lamentations and enquiries, that the tottering Lucy was too weary even to hear aright. Amid what seemed to her a babel of tongues and lights and kind concern, she was taken to bed and sleep.

Mrs. Burgoyne did not attend her. She waited in Manisty's library, and when Manisty entered the room she came forward--

'Edward, I have some disagreeable news'--

He stopped abruptly.

'Your sister Alice will be here to-morrow.'

'My sister--Alice?'--he repeated incredulously.

'She telegraphed this morning that she must see you. Aunt Pattie consulted me. The telegram gave no address--merely said that she would come to-morrow for two or three nights.'

Manisty first stared in dismay, then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, began to walk hurriedly to and fro.

'When did this news arrive?'

'This morning, before we started.'

'Eleanor!--_Why_ was I not told?'

'I wanted to save the day,'--the words were spoken in Eleanor's most charming, most musical voice. 'There was no address. You could not have stopped her.'

'I would have managed somehow,'--said Manisty striking his hand on the table beside him in his annoyance and impatience.

Eleanor did not defend herself. She tried to soothe him, to promise him as usual that the dreaded visit should be made easy to him. But he paid little heed. He sat moodily brooding in his chair; and when Eleanor's persuasions ceased, he broke out--

'That poor child!--After to-day's experiences,--to have Alice let loose upon her!--I would have given anything--anything!--that it should not have happened.'

'Miss Foster?' said Eleanor lightly--'oh! she will bear up.'

'There it is!'--said Manisty, in a sudden fury. 'We have all been misjudging her in the most extraordinary way! She is the most sensitive, tender-natured creature--I would not put an ounce more strain upon her for the world.'

His aunt called him, and he went stormily away. Eleanor's smile as she stood looking after him--how pale and strange it was!


CHAPTER IX

'Miss Foster is not getting up? How is she?'

'I believe Aunt Pattie only persuaded her to rest till after breakfast, and that was hard work. Aunt Pattie thought her rather shaken still.'

The speakers were Manisty and Mrs. Burgoyne. Eleanor was sitting in the deep shade of the avenue that ran along the outer edge of the garden. Through the gnarled trunks to her right shone the blazing stretches of the Campagna, melting into the hot shimmer of the Mediterranean. A new volume of French memoirs, whereof not a page had yet been cut, was lying upon her knee.

Manisty, who had come out to consult with her, leant against the tree beside her. Presently he broke out impetuously:

'Eleanor! we must protect that girl. You know what I mean? You'll help me?'

'What are you afraid of?'

'Good heavens!--I hardly know. But we must keep Alice away from Miss Foster. She mustn't walk with her, or sit with her, or be allowed to worry her in any way. I should be beside myself with alarm if Alice were to take a fancy to her.'

Eleanor hesitated a moment. The slightest flush rose to her cheek, unnoticed in the shadow of her hat.

'You know--if you are in any real anxiety--Miss Foster could go to Florence. She told me yesterday that the Porters have friends there whom she could join.'

Manisty fidgeted.

'Well, I hardly think that's necessary. It's a great pity she should miss Vallombrosa. I hoped I might settle her and Aunt Pattie there by about the middle of June.'

Eleanor made so sudden a movement that her book fell to the ground.

'You are going to Vallombrosa? I thought you were due at home, the beginning of June?'

'That was when I thought the book was coming out before the end of the month. But now--

'Now that it isn't coming out at all, you feel there's no hurry?'

Manisty looked annoyed.

'I don't think that's a fair shot. Of course the book's coming out! But if it isn't June, it must be October. So there's no hurry.'

The little cold laugh with which Eleanor had spoken her last words subsided. But she gave him no sign of assent. He pulled a stalk of grass, and nibbled at it uncomfortably.

'You think I'm a person easily discouraged?' he said presently.

'You take advice so oddly,' she said, smiling; 'sometimes so ill--sometimes so desperately well.'

'I can't help it. I am made like that. When a man begins to criticise my work, I first hate him--then I'm all of his opinion--only more so.'

'I know,' said Eleanor impatiently. 'It's this dreadful modern humility--the abominable power we all have of seeing the other side. But an author is no good till he has thrown his critics out of window.'

'Poor Neal!' said Manisty, with his broad sudden smile, 'he would fall hard. However, to return to Miss Foster. There's no need to drive her away if we look after her. You'll help us, won't you, Eleanor?'

He sat down on a stone bench beside her. The momentary cloud had cleared away. He was his most charming, most handsome self. A shiver ran through Eleanor. Her thought flew to yesterday--compared the kind radiance of the face beside her, its look of brotherly confidence and appeal, with the look of yesterday, the hard evasiveness with which he had met all her poor woman's attempts to renew the old intimacy, reknit the old bond. She thought of the solitary, sleepless misery of the night she had just passed through. And here they were, sitting in cousinly talk, as though nothing else were between them but this polite anxiety for Miss Foster's peace of mind! What was behind that apparently frank brow--those sparkling grey-blue eyes? Manisty could always be a mystery when he chose, even to those who knew him best.

She drew a long inward breath, feeling the old inexorable compulsion that lies upon the decent woman, who can only play the game as the man chooses to set it.

'I don't know what I can do--' she said slowly. 'You think Alice is no better?'

Manisty shook his head. He looked at her sharply and doubtfully, as though measuring her--and then said, lowering his voice:

'I believe--I know I can trust you with this--I have some reason to suppose that there was an attempt at suicide at Venice. Her maid prevented it, and gave me the hint. I am in communication with the maid--though Alice has no idea of it.

'Ought she to come here at all?' said Eleanor after a pause.

'I have thought of that--of meeting all the trains and turning her back. But you know her obstinacy. As long as she is in Rome and we here, we can't protect ourselves and the villa. There are a thousand ways of invading us. Better let her come--find out what she wants--pacify her if possible--and send her away. I am not afraid for ourselves, you included, Eleanor! She would do us no harm. A short annoyance--and it would be over. But Miss Foster is the weak point.'

Eleanor looked at him inquiringly.

'It is one of the strongest signs of her unsound state,' said Manisty, frowning--'her wild fancies that she takes for girls much younger than herself. There have been all sorts of difficulties in hotels. She will be absolutely silent with older people--or with you and me, for instance--but if she can captivate any quite young creature, she will pour herself out to her, follow her, write to her, tease her.--Poor, poor Alice!'

Manisty's voice had become almost a groan. His look betrayed a true and manly feeling.

'One must always remember,' he resumed, 'that she has still the power to attract a stranger. Her mind is in ruins--but they are the ruins of what was once fine and noble. But it is all so wild, and strange, and desperate. A girl is first fascinated--and then terrified. She begins by listening, and pitying--then Alice pursues her, swears her to secrecy, talks to her of enemies and persecutors, of persons who wish her death, who open her letters, and dog her footsteps--till the girl can't sleep at nights, and her own nerve begins to fail her. There was a case of this at Florence last year. Dalgetty, that's the maid, had to carry Alice off by main force. The parents of the girl threatened to set the doctors in motion--to get Alice sent to an asylum.'