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

/> Lucy, left alone, could hear the passage of feet through the glass passage, and the sound of strange voices, representing apparently two men, and neither of them Mr. Manisty.

She took a book from her table and tried not to listen. But she could not distract her mind from the whole scene which she imagined must be going on,--the consultation of the doctors, the attitude of the brother.

How had Mr. Manisty dealt with his sister the night before? What weapon was in Alice Manisty's hand? Lucy remembered no more after that moment at the door, when Manisty had rushed to her relief, bidding her go to Mrs. Burgoyne. He himself had not been hurt, or Mrs. Burgoyne would have told her. Ah!--he had surely been kind, though strong. Her eyes filled. She thought of the new light in which he had appeared to her during these terrible days with his sister; the curb put on his irritable, exacting temper; his care of Alice, his chivalry towards herself. In another man such conduct would have been a matter of course. In Manisty it touched and captured, because it could not have been reckoned on. She had done him injustice, and--unknowing--he had revenged himself.

The first carriage apparently drove away; and after an interval another replaced it. Nearly an hour passed:--then sudden sounds of trampling feet and opening doors broke the silence which had settled over the villa. Voices and steps approached, entered the glass passage. Lucy sprang up. Benson had flung the window looking on the balcony and the passage open, but had fastened across it the outside sun-shutters. Lucy, securely hidden herself, could see freely through the wooden strips of the shutter.

Ah!--sad procession! Manisty came first through the passage, the sides of which were open to the balcony. His sister was on his arm, veiled and in black. She moved feebly, sometimes hesitating and pausing, and Lucy distinguished the wild eyes, glancing from side to side. But Manisty bent his fine head to her; his left hand secured hers upon his arm; he spoke to her gently and cheerfully. Behind walked Aunt Pattie, very small and nervously pale, followed by a nurse. Then two men--Lucy recognised one as the Marinata doctor--and another nurse; then Alfredo, with luggage.

They passed rapidly out of her sight. But the front door was immediately below the balcony, and her ear could more or less follow the departure. And there was Mrs. Burgoyne, leaning over the balcony. Mr. Manisty spoke to her from below. Lucy fancied she caught her own name, and drew back indignant with herself for listening.

Then a sound of wheels--the opening of the iron gate--the driving up of another carriage--some shouting between Alfredo and Andreina--and it was all over. The villa was at peace again.

Lucy drew herself to her full height, in a fierce rigidity of self-contempt. What was she still listening for--still hungering for? What seemed to have gone suddenly out of heaven and earth, with the cessation of one voice?

She fell on her knees beside her bed. It was natural to her to pray, to throw herself on a sustaining and strengthening power. Such prayer in such a nature is not the specific asking of a definite boon. It is rather a wordless aspiration towards a Will not our own--a passionate longing, in the old phrase, to be 'right with God,' whatever happens, and through all the storms of personal impulse.

* * * * *

An hour later Lucy entered the salon just as Alfredo, coming up behind her, announced that the midday breakfast was ready. Mrs. Burgoyne was sitting near the western window with her sketching things about her. Some western clouds had come up from the sea to veil the scorching heat with which the day had opened. Eleanor had thrown the sun-shutters hack, and was finishing and correcting one of the Nemi sketches she had made during the winter.

She rose at sight of Lucy.

'Such a relief to throw oneself into a bit of drawing!' She looked down at her work. 'What hobby do you fly to?'

'I mend the house-linen, and I tie down the jam,' said Lucy, laughing. 'You have heard me play--so you know I don't do that well! And I can't draw a hay-stack.'

'You play very well,' said Eleanor embarrassed, as they moved towards the dining-room.

'Just well enough to send Uncle Ben to sleep when he's tired! I learnt it for that. Will you play to me afterwards?'

'With pleasure,' said Eleanor, a little formally.

How long the luncheon seemed! Eleanor, a white shadow in her black transparent dress, toyed with her food, eat nothing, and complained of the waits between the courses.

Lucy reminded her that there were fifty steps between the kitchen and their apartment. Eleanor did not seem to hear her; she had apparently forgotten her own remark, and was staring absently before her. When she spoke next it was about London, and the June season. She had promised to take a young cousin, just 'come out,' to some balls. Her talk about her plans was careless and languid, but it showed the woman naturally at home in the fashionable world, with connections in half the great families, and access to all doors. The effect of it was to make Lucy shrink into herself. Mrs. Burgoyne had spoken formerly of their meeting in London. She said nothing of it to-day, and Lucy felt that she could never venture to remind her.

From Eleanor's disjointed talk, also, there flowed another subtle impression. Lucy realised what kinship means to the English wealthy and well-born class--what a freemasonry it establishes, what opportunities it confers. The Manistys and Eleanor Burgoyne were part of a great clan with innumerable memories and traditions. They said nothing of them; they merely took them for granted with all that they implied, the social position, the 'consideration,' the effect on others.

The American girl is not easily overawed. The smallest touch of English assumption in her new acquaintances would have been enough, six weeks before, to make Lucy Foster open her dark eyes in astonishment or contempt. That is not the way in which women of her type understand life.

But to-day the frank forces of the girl's nature felt themselves harassed and crippled. She sat with downcast eyes, constrainedly listening and sometimes replying. No--it was very true. Mr. Manisty was not of her world. He had relations, friendships, affairs, infinitely remote from hers--none of which could mean anything to her. Whereas his cousin's links with him were the natural inevitable links of blood and class. He might be unsatisfactory or uncivil; but she had innumerable ways of recovering him, not to be understood even, by those outside.

When the two women returned to the salon, a kind of moral distance had established itself between them. Lucy was silent; Eleanor restless.

Alfredo brought the coffee. Mrs. Burgoyne looked at her watch as he retired.

'Half past one,' she said in a reflective voice. 'By now they have made all arrangements.'

'They will be back by tea-time?'

'Hardly,--but before dinner. Poor Aunt Pattie! She will be half dead.'

'Was she disturbed last night?' asked Lucy in a low voice.

'Just at the end. Mercifully she heard nothing till Alice was safe in her room.'

Then Eleanor's eyes dwelt broodingly on Lucy. She had never yet questioned the girl as to her experiences. Now she said with a certain abruptness--

'I suppose she forced your door?'

'I suppose so.--But I was asleep.'

'Were you terribly frightened when you found her there?'

As she spoke Eleanor said to herself that in all probability Lucy knew nothing of Manisty's discovery of the weapon in Alice's hand. While she was helping the girl to bed, Lucy, in her dazed and shivering submission, was true to her natural soberness and reserve. Instead of exaggerating, she had minimised what had happened. Miss Alice Manisty had come to her room,--had behaved strangely,--and Lucy, running to summon assistance, had roused Mr. Manisty in the library. No doubt she might have managed better, both then and in the afternoon. And so, with a resolute repression of all excited talk, she had turned her blanched face from the light, and set herself to go to sleep, as the only means of inducing Mrs. Burgoyne also to leave her and rest.

Eleanor's present question, however, set the girl's self-control fluttering, so sharply did it recall the horror of the night. She curbed herself visibly before replying.

'Yes,--I was frightened. But I don't think she could have hurt me. I should have been stronger when it came to the point.'

'Thank God Edward was there!' cried Eleanor.

'Where did he come to you?'

'At the dining-room door. I could not have held it much longer. Then he told me to go to you. And I tried to. But I only just managed to get to that chair in the library.'

'Mr. Manisty found you quite unconscious.'

A sudden red dyed Lucy's cheek.

'Mr. Manisty!--was he there? I hoped he knew nothing about it. I only saw you.'

Eleanor's thought drew certain inferences. But they gave her little comfort. She turned away abruptly, complaining of the heat, and went to the piano.

Lucy sat listening, with a book on her knee. Everything seemed to have grown strangely unreal in this hot silence of the villa--the high room with its painted walls--the marvellous prospect outside, just visible in sections through the half-closed shutters--herself and her companion. Mrs. Burgoyne played snatches of Brahms and Chopin; but her fingers stumbled more than usual. Her attention seemed to wander.

Inevitably the girl's memory went back to the wild things which Alice Manisty had said to her. In vain she rebuked herself. The fancies of a mad-woman were best forgotten,--so common-sense told her. But over the unrest of her own heart, over the electrical tension and dumb hostility that had somehow arisen between her and Eleanor Burgoyne, common-sense had small power. She could only say to herself with growing steadiness of purpose that it would be best for her not to go to Vallombrosa, but to make arrangements as soon as possible to join the Porters' friends at Florence, and go on with them to Switzerland.

To distract herself, she presently drew towards her the open portfolio of Eleanor's sketches, which was lying on the table. Most of them she had seen before, and Mrs. Burgoyne had often bade her turn them over as she pleased.

She looked at them, now listlessly, now with sudden stirs of feeling. Here was the niched wall of the Nemi temple; the arched recesses overgrown with ilex and fig and bramble; in front the strawberry pickers stooping to their work. Here, an impressionist study of the lake at evening, with the wooded height of Genzano breaking the sunset; here a sketch from memory of Aristodemo teasing the girls. Below this drawing, lay another drawing of figures. Lucy drew it out, and looked at it in bewilderment.

At the foot of it was written--'The Slayer and the Slain.' Her thoughts rushed back to her first evening at the villa--to the legend of the priest. The sketch indeed contained two figures--one erect and triumphant, the other crouching on the ground. The prostrate figure was wrapped in a cloak which was drawn over the head and face. The young victor, sword in hand, stood above his conquered enemy.

Or--Was it a man?

Lucy looked closer, her