Eleanor

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Produced by Jonathan Ingram, William Flis, and Distributed Proofreaders

ELEANOR

BY

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALBERT STERNER_

1900

TO ITALY THE BELOVED AND BEAUTIFUL,
INSTRUCTRESS OF OUR PAST,
DELIGHT OF OUR PRESENT,
COMRADE OF OUR FUTURE:--
THE HEART OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN
OFFERS THIS BOOK.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ELEANOR

THE VILLA

LUCY FOSTER

THE BEAUTIFYING OF LUCY

THE LOGGIA

FATHER BENECKE

PART I.

'I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? What the core
O' the wound, since wound must be?'

CHAPTER I

'Let us be quite clear, Aunt Pattie--when does this young woman arrive?'

'In about half an hour. But really, Edward, you need take no trouble! she
is coming to visit me, and I will see that she doesn't get in your way.
Neither you nor Eleanor need trouble your heads about her.'

Miss Manisty--a small elderly lady in a cap--looked at her nephew with
a mild and deprecating air. The slight tremor of the hands, which were
crossed over the knitting on her lap, betrayed a certain nervousness; but
for all that she had the air of managing a familiar difficulty in familiar
ways.

The gentleman addressed shook his head impatiently.

'One never prepares for these catastrophes till they actually arrive,'
he muttered, taking up a magazine that lay on the table near him, and
restlessly playing with the leaves.

'I warned you yesterday.'

'And I forgot--and was happy. Eleanor--what are we going to do with Miss
Foster?'

A lady, who had been sitting at some little distance, rose and came
forward.

'Well, I should have thought the answer was simple. Here we are fifteen
miles from Rome. The trains might be better--still there are trains. Miss
Foster has never been to Europe before. Either Aunt Pattie's maid or mine
can take her to all the proper things--or there are plenty of people in
Rome--the Westertons--the Borrows?--who at a word from Aunt Pattie would
fly to look after her and take her about. I really don't see that you need
be so miserable!'

Mrs. Burgoyne stood looking down in some amusement at the aunt and nephew.
Edward Manisty, however, was not apparently consoled by her remarks. He
began to pace up and down the salon in a disturbance out of all proportion
to its cause. And as he walked he threw out phrases of ill-humour, so
that at last Miss Manisty, driven to defend herself, put the irresistible
question--

'Then why--why--my dear Edward, did you make me invite her? For it was
really his doing--wasn't it, Eleanor?'

'Yes--I am witness!'

'One of those abominable flashes of conscience that have so much to
answer for!' said Manisty, throwing up his hand in annoyance.--'If she
had come to us in Rome, one could have provided for her. But here in this
solitude--just at the most critical moment of one's work--and it's all
very well--but one can't treat a young lady, when she is actually in one's
house, as if she were the tongs!'

He stood beside the window, with his hands on his sides, moodily looking
out. Thus strongly defined against the sunset light, he would have
impressed himself on a stranger as a man no longer in his first youth,
extraordinarily handsome so far as the head was concerned, but of a
somewhat irregular and stunted figure; stunted, however, only in comparison
with what it had to carry; for in fact he was of about middle height. But
the head, face and shoulders were all remarkably large and powerful; the
colouring--curly black hair, grey eyes, dark complexion--singularly vivid;
and the lines of the brow, the long nose, the energetic mouth, in their
mingled force and perfection, had made the stimulus of many an artist
before now. For Edward Manisty was one of those men of note whose portraits
the world likes to paint: and this 'Olympian head' of his was well known
in many a French and English studio, through a fine drawing of it made
by Legros when Manisty was still a youth at Oxford. 'Begun by David--and
finished by Rembrandt': so a young French painter had once described Edward
Manisty.

The final effect of this discord, however, was an effect of power--of
personality--of something that claimed and held attention. So at least it
was described by Manisty's friends. Manisty's enemies, of whom the world
contained no small number, had other words for it. But women in general
took the more complimentary view.

The two women now in his company were clearly much affected by the
force--wilfulness--extravagance--for one might call it by any of these
names--that breathed from the man before them. Miss Manisty, his aunt,
followed his movements with her small blinking eyes, timidly uneasy, but
yet visibly conscious all the time that she had done nothing that any
reasonable man could rationally complain of; while in the manner towards
him of his widowed cousin Mrs. Burgoyne, in the few words of banter or
remonstrance that she threw him on the subject of his aunt's expected
visitor, there was an indulgence, a deference even, that his irritation
scarcely deserved.

'At least, give me some account of this girl'--he said, breaking in upon
his aunt's explanations. 'I have really not given her a thought--and--good
heavens!--she will be here, you say, in half an hour. Is she
young--stupid--pretty? Has she any experience--any conversation?'

'I read you Adele's letter on Monday,' said Miss Manisty, in a tone of
patience--'and I told you then all I knew--but I noticed you didn't listen.
I only saw her myself for a few hours at Boston. I remember she was
rather good-looking--but very shy, and not a bit like all the other girls
one was seeing. Her clothes were odd, and dowdy, and too old for her
altogether,--which struck me as curious, for the American girls, even the
country ones, have such a natural turn for dressing themselves. Her Boston
cousins didn't like it, and they tried to buy her things--but she was
difficult to manage--and they had to give it up. Still they were very fond
of her, I remember. Only she didn't let them show it much. Her manners
were much stiffer than theirs. They said she was very countrified and
simple--that she had been brought up quite alone by their old uncle, in a
little country town--and hardly ever went away from home.'

'And Edward never saw her?' inquired Mrs. Burgoyne, with a motion of the
head towards Manisty.

'No. He was at Chicago just those days. But you never saw anything like the
kindness of the cousins! Luncheons and dinners!'--Miss Manisty raised her
little gouty hands--'my dear--when we left Boston I never wanted to eat
again. It would be simply indecent if we did nothing for this girl. English
people are so ungrateful this side of the water. It makes me hot when I
think of all they do for us.'

The small lady's blanched and wrinkled face reddened a little with a colour
which became her. Manisty, lost in irritable reflection, apparently took no
notice.

'But why did they send her out all alone?' said Mrs. Burgoyne. 'Couldn't
they have found some family for her to travel with?'

'Well, it was a series of accidents. She did come over with some Boston
people--the Porters--we knew very well. And they hadn't been three days in
London before one of the daughters developed meningitis, and was at the
point of death. And of course they could go nowhere and see nothing--and
poor Lucy Foster felt herself in the way. Then she was to have joined some
other people in Italy, and _they_ changed their plans. And at last I got a
letter from Mrs. Porter--in despair--asking me if I knew of anyone in Rome
who would take her in and chaperon her. And then--well, then you know the
rest.'

And the speaker nodded again, still more significantly, towards her nephew.

'No, not all,' said Mrs. Burgoyne, laughing. 'I remember he telegraphed.'

'Yes. He wouldn't even wait for me to write. No--"Of course we must have
the girl!" he said. "She can join us at the villa. And they'll want to
know, so I'll wire." And out he went. And then that evening I had to write
and ask her to stay as long as she wished--and--well, there it is!'

'And hence these tears,' said Mrs. Burgoyne. 'What possessed him?'

'Well, I think it was conscience,' said the little spinster, plucking up
spirit. 'I know it was with me. There had been some Americans calling on
us that day--you remember--those charming Harvard people? And somehow
it recalled to us both what a fuss they had made with us--and how kind
everybody was. At least I suppose that was how Edward felt. I know I did.'

Manisty paused in his walk. For the first time his dark whimsical face was
crossed by an unwilling smile--slight but agreeable.

'It is the old story,' he said. 'Life would be tolerable but for one's
virtues. All this time, I beg to point out, Aunt Pattie, that you have
still told us nothing about the young lady--except something about her
clothes, which doesn't matter.'

Mrs. Burgoyne's amused gesture showed the woman's view of this remark. Miss
Manisty looked puzzled.

'Well--I don't know. Yes--I have told you a great deal. The Lewinsons
apparently thought her rather strange. Adele said she couldn't tell what to
be at with her--you never knew what she would like or dislike. Tom Lewinson
seems to have liked her better than Adele did. He said "there was no
nonsense about her--and she never kept a fellow waiting." Adele says she
is the oddest mixture of knowledge and ignorance. She would ask the most
absurd elementary questions--and then one morning Tom found out that she
was quite a Latin scholar, and had read Horace and Virgil, and all the
rest.'

'Good God!' said Manisty under his breath, resuming his walk.

'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.'

'It still gives you so much pleasure?' he said, looking at her a little
askance.

Her face changed at once.

'And you?--you are beginning to be tired of it?'

'One gets a sort of indigestion.--Oh! I shall be all right to-morrow.'

Both were silent for a moment. Then he resumed.--

'I met General Fenton in the Borgia rooms this morning.'

She turned, with a quick look of curiosity.

'Well?'

'I hadn't seen him since I met him at Simla three years ago. I always
found him particularly agreeable then. We used to ride together and talk
together,--and he put me in the way of seeing a good many things. This
morning he received me with a change of manner--can't exactly describe it;
but it was not flattering! So I presently left him to his own devices and
went on into another room. Then he followed me, and seemed to wish to talk.
Perhaps he perceived that he had been unfriendly, and thought he would
make amends. But I was rather short with him. We had been real friends;
we hadn't met for three years; and I thought he might have behaved
differently. He asked me a number of questions, however, about last year,
about my resignation, and so forth; and I answered as little as I could. So
presently he looked at me and laughed--"You remind me," he said, "of what
somebody said of Peel--that he was bad to go up to in the stable!--But what
on earth are you in the stable for?--and not in the running?"'

Mrs. Burgoyne smiled.

'He was evidently bored with the pictures!' she said, dryly.

Manisty gave a shrug. 'Oh! I let him off. I wouldn't be drawn. I told him
I had expressed myself so much in public there was nothing more to say.
"H'm," he said, "they tell me at the Embassy you're writing a book!" You
should have seen the little old fellow's wizened face--and the scorn of
it! So I inquired whether there was any objection to the writing of books.
"Yes!"--he said--"when a man can do a d----d sight better for himself--as
you could! Everyone tells me that last year you had the ball at your feet."
"Well,"--I said--"and I kicked it--and am still kicking it--in my own
way. It mayn't be yours--or anybody else's--but wait and see." He shook
his head. "A man with what _were_ your prospects can't afford escapades.
It's all very well for a Frenchman; it don't pay in England." So then I
maintained that half the political reputations of the present day were
based on escapades. "Whom do you mean?"--he said--"Randolph Churchill?--But
Randolph's escapades were always just what the man in the street
understood. As for your escapade, the man in the street can't make head or
tail of it. That's just the, difference."'

Mrs. Burgoyne laughed--but rather impatiently.

'I should like to know when General Fenton ever considered the man in the
street!'

'Not at Simla certainly. There you may despise him.--But the old man is
right enough as to the part he plays in England.--I gathered that all my
old Indian friends thought I had done for myself. There was no sympathy for
me anywhere. Oh!--as to the cause I upheld--yes. But none as to the mode of
doing it.'

'Well--there is plenty of sympathy elsewhere! What does it matter what
dried-up officials like General Fenton choose to think about it?'

'Nothing--so long as there are no doubts inside to open the gates to the
General Fentons outside!'

He looked at her oddly--half smiling, half frowning.

'The doubts are traitors. Send them to execution!' He shook his head.

'Do you remember that sentence we came across yesterday in Chateaubriand's
letters "As to my career--I have gone from shipwreck to shipwreck." What if
I am merely bound on the same charming voyage?'

'I accept the comparison,' she said with vivacity. 'End as he did in
re-creating a church, and regenerating a literature--and see who will count
the shipwrecks!'

Her hand's disdainful gesture completed the sally.

Manisty's face dismissed its shadow.

As she stood beside him, in the rosy light--so proudly confident--Eleanor
Burgoyne was very delightful to see and hear. Manisty, one of the subtlest
and most fastidious of observers, was abundantly conscious of it. Yet she
was not beautiful, except in the judgment of a few exceptional people, to
whom a certain kind of grace--very rare, and very complex in origin--is of
more importance than other things. The eyes were, indeed, beautiful; so was
the forehead, and the hair of a soft ashy brown folded and piled round it
in a most skilful simplicity. But the rest of the face was too long; and
its pallor, the singularly dark circles round the eyes, the great thinness
of the temples and cheeks, together with the emaciation of the whole
delicate frame, made a rather painful impression on a stranger. It was
a face of experience, a face of grief; timid, yet with many strange
capacities and suggestions both of vehemence and pride. It could still
tremble into youth and delight. But in general it held the world aloof.
Mrs. Burgoyne was not very far from thirty, and either physical weakness,
or the presence of some enemy within more destructive still, had emphasised
the loss of youth. At the same time she had still a voice, a hand, a
carriage that lovelier women had often envied, discerning in them those
subtleties of race and personality which are not to be rivalled for the
asking.

To-night she brought all her charm to bear upon her companion's
despondency, and succeeded as she had often succeeded before. She divined
that he needed flattery, and she gave it; that he must be supported and
endorsed, and she had soon pushed General Fenton out of sight behind a
cloud of witness of another sort.

Manisty's mood yielded; and in a short time he was again no less ready to
admire the sunset than she was.

'Heavens!' she said at last, holding out her watch.--'Just look at the
time--and Miss Foster!'

Manisty struck his hand against the railing.

'How is one to be civil about this visit! Nothing could be more
unfortunate. These last critical weeks--and each of us so dependent on
the other--Really it is the most monstrous folly on all our parts that we
should have brought this girl upon us.'

'Poor Miss Foster!' said Mrs. Burgoyne, raising her eyebrows. 'But of
course you won't be civil!--Aunt Pattie and I know that. When I think of
what I went through that first fortnight--'

'Eleanor!'

'You are the only man I ever knew that could sit silent through a whole
meal. By to-morrow Miss Foster will have added that experience to her
collection. Well--I shall be prepared with my consolations--there's the
carriage--and the bell!'

They fled indoors, escaping through the side entrances of the salon, before
the visitor could be shown in.

* * * * *

'Must I change my dress?'

The voice that asked the question trembled with agitation and fatigue. But
the girl who owned the voice stood up stiffly, looking at Miss Manisty with
a frowning, almost a threatening shyness.

'Well, my dear,' said Miss Manisty, hesitating. 'Are you not rather dusty?
We can easily keep dinner a quarter of an hour.'

She looked at the grey alpaca dress before her, in some perplexity.

'Oh, very well'--said the girl hurriedly.--'Of course I'll change.
Only'--and the voice fluttered again evidently against her will--'I'm
afraid I haven't anything very nice. I must get something in Rome. Mrs.
Lewinson advised me. This is my afternoon dress,--I've been wearing it in
Florence. But of course--I'll put on my other.--Oh! please don't send for a
maid. I'd rather unpack for myself--so much rather!'

The speaker flushed crimson, as she saw Miss Manisty's maid enter the
room in answer to her mistress's ring. She stood up indeed with her hand
grasping her trunk, as though defending it from an assailant.

The maid looked at her mistress. 'Miss Foster will ring, Benson, if she
wants you'--said Miss Manisty; and the black-robed elderly maid, breathing
decorous fashion and the ways of 'the best people,' turned, gave a swift
look at Miss Foster, and left the room.

'Are you sure, my dear? You know she would make you tidy in no time. She
arranges hair beautifully.'

'Oh quite--quite sure!--thank you,' said the girl with the same eagerness.
'I will be ready,--right away.'

Then, left to herself, Miss Foster hastily opened her box and took out some
of its contents. She unfolded one dress after another,--and looked at them
unhappily.

'Perhaps I ought to have let cousin Izza give me those things in Boston,'
she thought. 'Perhaps I was too proud. And that money of Uncle Ben's--it
might have been kinder--after all he wanted me to look nice'--

She sat ruefully on the ground beside her trunk, turning the things over,
in a misery of annoyance and mortification; half inclined to laugh too
as she remembered the seamstress in the small New England country town,
who had helped her own hands to manufacture them. 'Well, Miss Lucy, your
uncle's done real handsome by you. I guess he's set you up, and no mistake.
There's no meanness about him!'

And she saw the dress on the stand--the little blonde withered head of the
dressmaker--the spectacled eyes dwelling proudly on the masterpiece before
them.--

Alack! There rose up the memory of little Mrs. Lewinson at Florence--of her
gently pursed lips--of the looks that were meant to be kind, and were in
reality so critical.

No matter. The choice had to be made; and she chose at last a blue and
white check that seemed to have borne its travels better than the rest. It
had looked so fresh and striking in the window of the shop whence she had
bought it. 'And you know, Miss Lucy, you're so tall, you can stand them
chancy things'--her little friend had said to her, when _she_ had wondered
whether the check might not be too large.

And yet only with a passing wonder. She could not honestly say that her
dress had cost her much thought then or at any other time. She had been
content to be very simple, to admire other girls' cleverness. There had
been influences upon her own childhood, however, that had somehow separated
her from the girls around her, had made it difficult for her to think and
plan as they did.

She rose with the dress in her hands, and as she did so, she caught the
glory of the sunset through the open window.

She ran to look, all her senses flooded with the sudden beauty,--when she
heard a man's voice as it seemed close beside her. Looking to the left, she
distinguished a balcony, and a dark figure that had just emerged upon it.

Mr. Manisty--no doubt! She closed her window hurriedly, and began her
dressing, trying at the time to collect her thoughts on the subject of
these people whom she had come to visit.

Yet neither the talk of her Boston cousins, nor the gossip of the Lewinsons
at Florence had left any very clear impression. She remembered well her
first and only sight of Miss Manisty at Boston. The little spinster, so
much a lady, so kind, cheerful and agreeable, had left a very favourable
impression in America. Mr. Manisty had left an impression too--that was
certain--for people talked of him perpetually. Not many persons, however,
had liked him, it seemed. She could remember, as it were, a whole track
of resentments, hostilities, left behind. 'He cares nothing about us'--an
irate Boston lady had said in her hearing--but he will exploit us! He
despises us,--but he'll make plenty of speeches and articles out of
us--you'll see!'

As for Major Lewinson, the husband of Mr. Manisty's first cousin,--she had
been conscious all the time of only half believing what he said, of holding
out against it. He must be so different from Mr. Manisty--the little smart,
quick-tempered soldier--with his contempt for the undisciplined civilian
way of doing things. She did not mean to remember his remarks. For after
all, she had her own ideas of what Mr. Manisty would be like. She had
secretly formed her own opinion. He had been a man of letters and a
traveller before he entered politics. She remembered--nay, she would never
forget--a volume of letters from Palestine, written by him, which had
reached her through the free library of the little town near her home.
She who read slowly, but, when she admired, with a silent and worshipping
ardour, had read this book, had hidden it under her pillow, had been
haunted for days by its pliant sonorous sentences, by the colour, the
perfume, the melancholy of pages that seemed to her dreaming youth
marvellous, inimitable. There were descriptions of a dawn at Bethlehem--a
night wandering at Jerusalem--a reverie by the sea of Galilee--the very
thought of which made her shiver a little, so deeply had they touched her
young and pure imagination.

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