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

such flimsy things as the doors in all this place.'

And Benson examined the two flaps of the door, filled with that frank contempt for the foreigner's powers and intelligence which makes the English race so beloved of Europe.

'Why, the floor-bolts'll scarcely hold, neither of them; and the lock's that loose, it's a disgrace. But I shouldn't think the people that own this place had spent a shilling on it since I was born. When you go to lay hold on things they're just tumbling to bits.'

'Oh! never mind, Benson,' said Lucy--shrinking. 'I'm sure it'll be all right. Thank you--and good-night.'

She and Benson avoided looking at each other; and the maid was far too highly trained to betray any knowledge she was not asked for. But when she had taken her departure Lucy slipped out of bed, turned the key, and tightened the bolts herself. It was true that their sockets in the brick floor were almost worn away; and the lock-case seemed scarcely to hold upon the rotten wood. The wood-work, indeed, throughout the whole villa was not only old and worm-eaten, but it had been originally of the rudest description, meant for summer uses, and a villeggiatura existence in which privacy was of small account. The Malestrini who had reared the villa above the Campagna in the late seventeenth century had no money to waste on the superfluities of doors that fitted and windows that shut; he had spent all he had, and more, on the sprawling _putti_ and fruit wreaths of the ceilings, and the arabesques of the walls. And now doors, windows, and shutters alike, shrunken and scorched and blistered by the heat of two hundred summers, were dropping into ruin.

The handling of this rotten lock and its rickety accompaniments suddenly brought back a panic fear on Lucy. What if Alice Manisty and the wind, which was already rising, should burst in upon her together? She looked down upon her night-gown and her bare feet. Well, at least she would not be taken quite unawares! She opened her cupboard and brought from it a white wrapper of a thin woollen stuff which she put on. She thrust her feet into her slippers, and so stood a moment listening, her long hair dropping about her. Nothing! She lay down, and drew a shawl over her. 'I won't--won't--sleep,' she said to herself.

And the last sound she was conscious of was the cry of the little downy owl--so near that it seemed to be almost at her window.

* * * * *

'You are unhappy,' said a voice beside her.

Lucy started. The self in her seemed to wrestle its way upward from black and troubled depths of sleep. She opened her eyes. Someone was bending over her. She felt an ineffable horror, but not the smallest astonishment. Her dreams had prophesied; and she saw what she foreknew.

In the wavering light she perceived a stooping form, and again she noticed a whiteness of hands and face set in a black frame.

'Yes!' she said, lifting herself on her elbow. 'Yes!--what do you want?'

'You have been sobbing in your sleep,' said the voice. 'I know why you are unhappy. My brother is beginning to love you--you might love him. But there is some one between you--and there always will be. There is no hope for you--unless I show you the way out.'

'Miss Manisty!--you oughtn't to be here,' said Lucy, raising herself higher in bed and trying to speak with absolute self-command. 'Won't you go back to bed--won't you let me take you?'

And she made a movement. Instantly a hand was put out. It seized her arm first gently, then irresistibly.

'Don't, don't do that,' said the voice. 'It makes me angry--and--that hurts.'

Alice Manisty raised her other hand to her head, with a strange piteous gesture. Lucy was struck with the movement of the hand. It was shut over something that it concealed.

'I don't want to make you angry,' she said, trying to speak gently and keep down the physical tumult of the heart; 'but it is not good for you to be up like this. You are not strong--you ought to have rest.'

The grip upon her arm relaxed.

'I don't rest now'--a miserable sigh came out of the darkness. 'I sleep sometimes--but I don't rest. And it used all to be so happy once--whether I was awake or asleep. I was extraordinarily happy, all the winter, at Venice. One day Octave and I had a quarrel. He said I was mad--he seemed to be sorry for me--he held my arms and I saw him crying. But it was quite a mistake--I wasn't unhappy then. My brother John was always with me, and he told me the most wonderful things--secrets that no one else knows. Octave could never see him--and it was so strange--I saw him so plain. And my mother and father were there too--there was nothing between me and any dead person. I could see them and speak to them whenever I wished. People speak of separation from those who die. But there is none--they are always there. And when you talk to them, you know that you are immortal as they are--only you are not like them. You remember this world still--you know you have to go back to it. One night John took me--we seemed to go through the clouds--through little waves of white fire--and I saw a city of light, full of spirits--the most beautiful people, men and women--with their souls showing like flames through their frail bodies. They were quite kind--they smiled and talked to me. But I cried bitterly--because I knew I couldn't stay with them--in their dear strange world--I must come back--back to all I hated--all that strangled and hindered me.'

The voice paused a moment. Through Lucy's mind certain incredible words which it had spoken echoed and re-echoed. Consciousness did not master them; but they made a murmur within it through which other sounds hardly penetrated. Yet she struggled with herself--she remembered that only clearness of brain could save her.

She raised herself higher on her pillows that she might bring herself more on a level with her unbidden guest.

'And these ideas gave you pleasure?' she said, almost with calm.

'The intensest happiness,' said the low, dragging tones. 'Others pity me.--"Poor creature--she's mad"--I heard them say. And it made me smile. For I had powers they knew nothing of; I could pass from one world to another; one place to another. I could see in a living person the soul of another dead long ago. And everything spoke to me--the movement of leaves on a tree--the eyes of an animal--all kinds of numbers and arrangements that come across one in the day. Other people noticed nothing. To me it was all alive--everything was alive. Sometimes I was so happy, so ecstatic, I could hardly breathe. The people who pitied me seemed to me dull and crawling beings. If they had only known! But now--'

A long breath came from the darkness--a breath of pain. And again the figure raised its hand to its head.

'Now--somehow, it is all different. When John comes, he is cold and unkind--he won't open to me the old sights. He shows me things instead that shake me with misery--that kill me. My brain is darkening--its powers are dying out. That means that I must let this life go--I must pass into another. Some other soul must give me room. Do you understand?'

Closer came the form. Lucy perceived the white face and the dimly burning eyes, she felt herself suffocating, but she dared make no sudden move for fear of that closed hand and what it held.

'No--I don't understand,' she said faintly; 'but I am sure--no good can come to you--from another's harm.'

'What harm would it be? You are beginning to love--and your love will never make you happy. My brother is like me. He is not mad--but he has a being apart. If you cling to him, he puts you from him--if you love him he tires. He has never loved but for his own pleasure--to complete his life. How could you complete his life? What have you that he wants? His mind now is full of you--his senses, his feeling are touched--but in three weeks he would weary of and despise you. Besides--you know--you know well--that is not all. There is another woman--whose life you must trample on--and you are not made of stuff strong enough for that. No, there is no hope for you, in this existence--this body. But there is no death; death is only a change from one form of being to another. Give up your life, then--as I will give up mine. We will escape together. I can guide you--I know the way. We shall find endless joy--endless power! I shall be with Octave then, as and when I please--and you with Edward. Come!'

The face bent nearer, and the iron hold closed again stealthily on the girl's wrist. Lucy lay with her own face turned away and her eyes shut. She scarcely breathed. A word of prayer passed through her mind--an image of her white-haired uncle, her second father left alone and desolate.

Suddenly there was a quick movement beside her. Her heart fluttered wildly. Then she opened her eyes. Alice Manisty had sprung up, had gone to the window, and flung back the muslin curtains. Lucy could see her now quite plainly in the moonlight--the haggard energy of look and movement, the wild dishevelled hair.

'I knew the end was come--this afternoon,' said the hurrying voice. 'When I came out to you, as I walked along the terrace--the sun went out! I saw it turn black above the Campagna--all in a moment--and I said to myself, "What will the world do without the sun?--how will it live?" And now--do you see?'--she raised her arm, and Lucy saw it for an instant as a black bar against the window, caught the terrible dignity of gesture,--'there is not one moon--but many! Look at them! How they hurry through the clouds--one after the other! Do you understand what that means? Perhaps not--for your sight is not like mine. But I know. It means that the earth has left its orbit--that we are wandering--wandering in space--like a dismasted vessel! We are tossed this way and that, sometimes nearer to the stars--and sometimes further away. That is why they are first smaller--and then larger. But the crash must come at last--death for the world--death for us all--'

Her hands fell to her side, the left hand always tightly closed--her head drooped; her voice, which had been till now hoarse and parched as though it came from a throat burnt with fever, took a deep dirge-like note. Noiselessly Lucy raised herself--she measured the distance between herself and the door--between the mad woman and the door. Oh God!--was the door locked? Her eyes strained through the darkness. How deep her sleep must have been that she had heard no sound of its yielding! Her hand was ready to throw off the shawl that covered her, when she was startled by a laugh--a laugh vile and cruel that seemed to come from a new presence--another being. Alice Manisty rapidly came back to her, stood between her bed and the wall, and Lucy felt instinctively that some hideous change had passed.

'Dalgetty thought that all was safe, so did Edward. And indeed the locks were safe--the only doors that hold in all the villa--I tried _yours_ in the