Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor

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Manisty made his farewells, and carried Lucy off. But as they walked
towards the house he said not a word, and Lucy, venturing a look at him,
saw the storm on his brow, the stiffness of the lips.

'We are going to the Villa Borghese, are we not?' she said timidly--'if
Mrs. Burgoyne ought to go?'

'We must go somewhere, I suppose,' he said, stalking on before her. 'We
can't sit in the street.'

CHAPTER XIV

The party returning to Marinata had two hours to spend in the gallery and
garden of the Villa Borghese. Of the pictures and statues of the palace, of
the green undulations, the stone pines, the _tempietti_ of the garden, Lucy
afterwards had no recollection. All that she remembered was flight on her
part, pursuit on Manisty's, and finally a man triumphant and a girl brought
to bay.

It was in a shady corner of the vast garden, where hedges of some fragrant
yellow shrub shut in the basin of a fountain, surrounded by a ring of
languid nymphs, that Lucy at last found herself face to face with Manisty,
and knew that she must submit.

'I do not understand how I have missed Mrs. Burgoyne,' she said hastily,
looking round for her companion Mrs. Elliot, who had just left her to
overtake her brother and go home; while Lucy was to meet Eleanor and Mr.
Neal at this rendezvous.

Manisty looked at her with his most sparkling, most determined air.

'You have missed her--because I have misled her.' Then, as Lucy drew back,
he hurried on,--'I cannot understand, Miss Foster, why it is that you
have constantly refused all yesterday evening--all to-day--to give me the
opportunity I desired! But I, too, have a will,--and it has been roused!

'I don't understand,' said Lucy, growing white.

'Let me explain, then,' said Manisty, coolly. 'Miss Foster, two nights ago
you were attacked,--in danger--under my roof, in my care. As your host, you
owe it to me, to let me account and apologise for such things--if I can.
But you avoid me. You give me no chance of telling you what I had done
to protect you--of expressing my infinite sorrow and regret. I can only
imagine that you resent our negligence too deeply even to speak of it--that
you cannot forgive us!'

'Forgive!' cried Lucy, fairly taken aback. 'What could I have to forgive,
Mr. Manisty?--what can you mean?'

'Explain to me then,' said he, unflinching, 'why you have never had a kind
word for me, or a kind look, since this happened. Please sit down, Miss
Foster'--he pointed to a marble bench close beside her--'I will stand here.
The others are far away. Ten minutes you owe me--ten minutes I claim.'

Lucy sat down, struggling to maintain her dignity and presence of mind.

'I am afraid I have given you very wrong ideas of me,' she said, throwing
him a timid smile. 'I of course have nothing to forgive anybody--far, far
the contrary. I know that you took all possible pains that no harm should
happen to me. And through you--no harm did happen to me.'

She turned away her head, speaking with difficulty. To both that moment
of frenzied struggle at the dining-room door was almost too horrible for
remembrance. And through both minds there swept once more the thrill of her
call to him--of his rush to her aid.

'You knew'--he said eagerly, coming closer.

'I knew--I was in danger--that but for you--perhaps--your poor sister--'

'Oh! don't speak of it,' he said, shuddering.

And leaning over the edge of one of the nymphs' pedestals, beside her, he
stared silently into the cool green water.

'There,' said Lucy tremulously, 'you don't want to speak of it. And that
was my feeling. Why should we speak of it any more? It must be such a
horrible grief to you. And I can't do anything to help you and Miss
Manisty. It would be so different if I could.'

'You can,--you must--let me tell you what I had done for your safety that
night,' he said firmly, interrupting her. 'I had made such arrangements
with Dalgetty--who is a strong woman physically--I had so imprisoned my
poor sister, that I could not imagine any harm coming to you or any other
of our party. When my aunt said to me that night before she went to bed
that she was afraid your door was unsafe, I laughed--"That doesn't matter!"
I said to her. I felt quite confident. I sat up all night,--but I was not
anxious,--and I suppose it was that which at last betrayed me into sleep.
Of course, the fatal thing was that we none of us knew of the chloroform
she had hidden away.'

Lucy fidgetted in distress.

'Please--please--don't talk as though anyone were to blame--as though there
were anything to make excuses for--'.

'How should there not be? You were disturbed--attacked--frightened. You
might--'

He drew in his breath. Then he bent over her.

'Tell me,' he said in a low voice, 'did she attack you in your room?'

Lucy hesitated. 'Why will you talk about it?' she said despairingly.

'I have a right to know.'

His urgent imperious look left her no choice. She felt his will, and
yielded. In very simple words, faltering yet restrained, she told the whole
story. Manisty followed every word with breathless attention.

'My God!' he said, when she paused, 'my God!' And he hid his eyes with his
hand a moment. Then--

'You knew she had a weapon?' he said.

'I supposed so,' she said quietly. 'All the time she was in my room, she
kept her poor hand closed on something.'

'Her poor hand!'--the little phrase seemed to Manisty extraordinarily
touching. There was a moment's pause--then he broke out:

'Upon my word, this has been a fine ending to the whole business. Miss
Foster, when you came out to stay with us, you imagined, I suppose, that
you were coming to stay with friends? You didn't know much of us; but after
the kindness my aunt and I had experienced from your friends and kinsfolk
in Boston--to put it in the crudest way--you might have expected at least
that we should welcome you warmly--do all we could for you--take you
everywhere--show you everything?'

Lucy coloured--then laughed.

'I don't know in the least what you mean, Mr. Manisty! I knew you would be
kind to me; and of course--of course--you have been!'

She looked in distress first at the little path leading from the fountain,
by which he barred her exit, and then at him. She seemed to implore, either
that he would let her go, or that he would talk of something else.

'Not I,' he said with decision. 'I admit that since Alice appeared on the
scene you have been my chief anxiety. But before that, I treated you, Miss
Foster, with a discourtesy, a forgetfulness, that you can't, that you
oughtn't to forget; I made no plans for your amusement; I gave you none of
my time. On your first visit to Rome, I let you mope away day after day
in that stifling garden, without taking a single thought for you. I even
grudged it when Mrs. Burgoyne looked after you. To be quite, quite frank,
I grudged your coming to us at all. Yet I was your host--you were in my
care--I had invited you. If there ever was an ungentlemanly boor, it was I.
There! Miss Foster, there is my confession. Can you forgive it? Will you
give me another chance?'

He stood over her, his broad chest heaving with an agitation that, do what
she would, communicated itself to her. She could not help it. She put out
her hand, with a sweet look, half smiling, half appealing--and he took it.
Then, as she hurriedly withdrew it, she repeated:

'There is nothing--nothing--to forgive. You have _all_ been good to me. And
as for Mrs. Burgoyne and Aunt Pattie, they have been just angels!'

Manisty laughed.

'I don't grudge them their wings. But I should like to grow a pair of my
own. You have a fortnight more with us--isn't it so?' Lucy started and
looked down. 'Well, in a fortnight, Miss Foster, I could yet redeem myself;
I could make your visit really worth while. It is hot, but we could get
round the heat. I have many opportunities here--friends who have the keys
of things not generally seen. Trust yourself to me. Take me for a guide, a
professor, a courier! At last I will give you a good time!'

He smiled upon her eagerly, impetuously. It was like him, this plan
for mending all past errors in a moment, for a summary and energetic
repentance. She could hardly help laughing; yet far within her heart made a
leap towards him--beaten back at once by its own sad knowledge.

She turned away from him--away from his handsome face, and that touch in
him of the 'imperishable child,' which moved and pleased her so. Playing
with some flowers on her lap, she said shyly--

'Shall I tell you what you ought to do with this fortnight?'

'Tell me,' said Manisty, stooping towards her. It was well for her that
she could not see his expression, as he took in with covetous delight her
maidenly simpleness and sweetness.

'Oughtn't you--to finish the book? You could--couldn't you? And Mrs.
Burgoyne has been so disappointed. It makes one sad to see her.'

Her words gave her courage. She looked at him again with a grave, friendly
air.

Manisty drew himself suddenly erect. After a pause, he said in another
voice: 'I thought I had explained to you before that the book and I had
reached a _cul de sac_--that I no longer saw my way with it.'

Lucy thought of the criticisms upon it she had heard at the Embassy, and
was uncomfortably silent.

'Miss Foster!' said Manisty suddenly, with determination.

Lucy's heart stood still.

'I believe I see the thought in your mind. Dismiss it! There have been
rumours in Rome--in which even perhaps my aunt has believed. They are
unjust--both to Eleanor and to me. She would be the first to tell you so.'

'Of course,' said Lucy hurriedly, 'of course,'--and then did not know what
to say, torn as she was between her Puritan dread of falsehood, her natural
woman's terror of betraying Eleanor, and her burning consciousness of the
man and the personality beside her.

'No!--you still doubt. You have heard some gossip and you believe it.'

He threw away the cigarette with which he had been playing, and came to sit
down on the curving marble bench beside her.

'I think you must listen to me,' he said, with a quiet and manly force that
became him. 'The friendship between my cousin and me has been unusual,
I know. It has been of a kind that French people, rather than English,
understand; because for French people literature and conversation are
serious matters, not trifles that don't count, as they are with us. She has
been all sweetness and kindness to me, and I suppose that she, like a good
many other people, has found me an unsatisfactory and disappointing person
to work with!'

'She is so ill and tired,' said Lucy, in a low voice.

'Is she?' said Manisty, concerned. 'But she never can stand heat. She
will pick up when she gets to England.--But now suppose we grant all my
enormities. Then please tell me what I am to do? How am I to appease
Eleanor?--and either transform the book, to satisfy Neal,--or else bury it
decently? Beastly thing!--as if it were worth one tithe of the trouble it
has cost her and me. Yet there are some uncommon good things in it too!' he
said, with a change of tone.

'Well, if you did bury it,' said Lucy, half laughing, yet trying to
pluck up courage to obey the Ambassador,--'what would you do? Go back to
England?--and--and to your property?'

'What! has that dear old man been talking to you?' he said with amusement.
'I thought as much. He has snubbed my views and me two or three times
lately. I don't mind. He is one of the privileged. So the Ambassador thinks
I should go home?'

He threw one arm over the back of the seat, and threw her a brilliant
hectoring look which led her on.

'Don't people in England think so too?'

'Yes--some of them,' he said considering. 'I have been bombarded with
letters lately as to politics, and the situation, and a possible new
constituency. A candid friend says to me this morning, "Hang the
Italians!--what do you know about them,--and what do they matter? English
people can only be frightened by their own bogies. Come home, for God's
sake! There's a glorious fight coming, and if you're not in it, you'll be a
precious fool."'

'I daren't be as candid as that!' said Lucy, her face quivering with
suppressed fun.

Their eyes met in a common flash of laughter. Then Manisty fell heavily
back against the seat.

'What have I got to go home for?' he said abruptly, his countenance
darkening.

Lucy's aspect changed too, instantly. She waited.

Manisty's lower jaw dropped a little. A sombre bitterness veiled the eyes
fixed upon the distant vistas of the garden.

'I hate my old house,' he said slowly. 'Its memories are intolerable.
My father was a very eminent person, and had many friends. His children
saw nothing of him, and had not much reason to love him. My mother died
there--of an illness it is appalling to think of. No, no--not Alice's
illness!--not that. And now, Alice,--I should see her ghost at every
corner!'

Lucy watched him with fascination. Every note of the singular voice, every
movement of the picturesque ungainly form, already spoke to her, poor
child, with a significance that bit these passing moments into memory, as
an etcher's acid bites upon his plate.

'Oh! she will recover!' she said, softly, leaning towards him
unconsciously.

'No!--she will never recover,--never! And if she did, she and I have long
ceased to be companions and friends. No, Miss Foster, there is nothing
to call me home,--except politics. I may set up a lodging in London, of
course. But as for playing the country squire--' He laughed, and shrugged
his shoulders. 'No,--I shall let the place as soon as I can. Anyway, I
shall never return to it--alone!'

He turned upon her suddenly. The tone in which the last word was spoken,
the steady ardent look with which it was accompanied, thrilled the hot May
air.

A sickening sense of peril, of swift intolerable remorse, rushed upon Lucy.
It gave her strength.

She changed her position, and spoke with perfect self-possession, gathering
up her parasol and gloves.

'We really must find the others, Mr. Manisty. They will wonder what has
become of us.'

She rose as she spoke. Manisty drew a long breath as he still sat
observing her. Her light, cool dignity showed him that he was either not
understood--or too well understood. In either case he was checked. He
took back his move; not without a secret pleasure that she was not too
yielding--too much of the _ingenue_!

'We shall soon discover them,' he said carelessly, relighting his
cigarette. 'By the way, I saw what company you were in after lunch! You
didn't hear any good of the book or me--there!'

'I liked them all,' she said with spirit. 'They love their country, and
they believe in her. Where, Mr. Manisty, did you leave Mr. Neal and Mrs.
Burgoyne?'

'I will show you,' he said, unwillingly. 'They are in a part of the garden
you don't know.'

Her eye was bright, a little hostile. She moved resolutely forward, and
Manisty followed her. Both were conscious of a hidden amazement. But a
minute, since he had spoken that word, looked that look? How strange a
thing is human life! He would not let himself think,--talked of he hardly
knew what.

'They love their country, you say? Well, I grant you that particular group
has pure hands, and isn't plundering their country's vitals like the
rest--as far as I know. A set of amiable dreamers, however, they appear to
me; fiddling at small reforms, while the foundations are sinking from under
them. However, you liked them,--that's enough. Now then, when and how shall
we begin our campaign? Where will you go?--what will you see? The crypt of
St. Peter's?--that wants a Cardinal's order. The Villa Albani?--closed to
the public since the Government laid hands on the Borghese pictures,--but
it shall open to you. The great function at the Austrian Embassy next week
with all the Cardinals? Give me your orders,--it will be hard if I can't
compass them!'

But she was silent, and he saw that she still hurried, that her look
sought the distance, that her cheek was flushed. Why? What new thing had
he said to press--to disturb her? A spark of emotion passed through him.
He approached her gently, persuasively, as one might approach a sweet,
resisting child--

You'll come? You'll let me make amends?'

'I thought,' said Lucy, uncertainly, 'that you were going home directly--at
the beginning of June. Oh! please, Mr. Manisty, will you look? Is that Mrs.
Burgoyne?'

Manisty frowned.

'They are not in that direction.--As to my going home, Miss Foster, I have
no engagements that I cannot break.'

The wounded feeling in the voice was unmistakable. It hurt her ear.

'I should love to see all those things,' she said vaguely, still trying, as
it seemed to him, to outstrip him, to search the figures in the distance;
'but--but--plans are so difficult. Oh! that is--that is Mr. Neal!'

She began to run towards the approaching figure, and presently Manisty
could hear her asking breathlessly for Mrs. Burgoyne.

Manisty stood still. Then as they approached him, he said--

'Neal!--well met! Will you take these ladies to the station, or, at any
rate, put them in their cab? It is time for their train. I dine in Rome.'

He raised his hat formally to Lucy, turned, and went his way.

* * * * *

It was night at the villa.

Eleanor was in her room, the western room overlooking the olive-ground
and the Campagna, which Lucy had occupied for a short time on her first
arrival.

It was about half an hour since Eleanor had heard Manisty's cab arrive, and
his voice in the library giving his orders to Alfredo. She and Lucy Foster
and Aunt Pattie had already dispersed to their rooms. It was strange that
he should have dined in town. It had been expressly arranged on their way
to Rome that he should bring them back.

Eleanor was sitting in a low chair beside a table that carried a paraffin
lamp. At her back was the window, which was open save for the sun-shutter
outside, and the curtains, both of which had been drawn close. A manuscript
diary lay on Eleanor's lap, and she was listlessly turning it over, with
eyes that saw nothing, and hands that hardly knew what they touched. Her
head, with its aureole of loosened hair, was thrown back against the chair,
and the crude lamplight revealed each sharpened feature with a merciless
plainness. She was a woman no longer young--ill--and alone.

By the help of the entries before her she had been living the winter over
again.

How near and vivid it was,--how incredibly, tangibly near!--and yet as dead
as the Caesars on the Palatine.

For instance:--

'November 22. To-day we worked well. Three hours this morning--nearly three
this afternoon. The survey of the financial history since 1870 is nearly
finished. I could not have held out so long, but for his eagerness, for my
head ached, and last night it seemed to me that Rome was all bells, and
that the clocks never ceased striking.

'But how his eagerness carries one through, and his frank and generous
recognition of all that one does for him! Sometimes I copy and arrange;
sometimes he dictates; sometimes I just let him talk till he has got a page
or section into shape. Even in this handling of finance, you feel the flame
that makes life with him so exciting. It is absurd to say, as his enemies
do, that he has no steadiness of purpose. I have seen him go through the
most tremendous drudgery the last few weeks,--and then throw it all into
shape with the most astonishing ease and rapidity. And he is delightful to
work with. He weighs all I say. But no false politeness! If he doesn't like
it, he frowns and bites his lip, and tears me to pieces. But very often I
prevail, and no one can yield with a better grace. People here talk of his
vanity. I don't deny it--perhaps I think it part of his charm.

'He thinks too much of me, far, far too much.

'December 16. A luncheon at the Marchesa's. The Fioravantis were there, and
some Liberal Catholics. Manisty was attacked on all sides. At first he was
silent and rather sulky--it is not always easy to draw him. Then he fired
up,--and it was wonderful how he met them all in an Italian almost as quick
as their own. I think they were amazed: certainly I was.

'Of course I sometimes wish that it were conviction with him and not
policy. My heart aches, hungers sometimes--for another note. If instead
of this praise from outside, this cool praise of religion as the great
policeman of the world, if only his voice, his dear voice, spoke for one
moment the language of faith!--all barren tension and grief and doubt would
be gone then for me, at a breath. But it never, never does. And I remind
myself--painfully--that his argument holds whether the arguer believe
or no. "Somehow or other you must get conduct out of the masses or
society goes to pieces. But you can only do this through religion. What
folly, then, for nations like Italy and France to quarrel with the only
organisation which can ever get conduct out of the ignorant!--in the way
they understand!"--It is all so true. I know it by heart--there is no
answering it. But if instead he once said to me--"Eleanor, there is a
God!--and it is He that has brought us together in this life and work,--He
that will comfort you, and open new ways for me"--Ah then--then!--

* * * * *

'Christmas Day. We went last night to the midnight mass at Santa Maria
Maggiore. Edward is always incalculable at these functions; sometimes bored
to death, sometimes all enthusiasm and sympathy. Last night the crowd
jarred him, and I wished we had not come. But as we walked home through the
moonlit streets, full of people hurrying in and out of the churches, of
the pifferari with their cloaks and pipes--black and white nuns--brown
monks--lines of scarlet seminarists, and the like, he suddenly broke out
with the prayer of the First Christmas Mass--I must give it in English, for
I have forgotten the Latin:

'"_O God, who didst cause this most holy Night to be illumined by the
rising of the true Light, we beseech Thee that we who know on earth the
secret shining of His splendour may win in Heaven His eternal joys_."

'We were passing through Monte Cavallo, beside the Two Divine Horsemen who
saved Rome of old. The light shone on the fountains--it seemed as if the
two godlike figures were just about to leap, in fierce young strength, upon
their horses.

'Edward stopped to look at them.

'"And we say that the world lives by Science! Fools! when has it lived by
anything else than Dreams--at Athens, at Rome, or Jerusalem?"

'We stayed by the fountains talking. And as we moved away, I said: "How
strange at my age to be enjoying Christmas for the first time!" And he
looked at me as though I had given him pleasure, and said with his most
delightful smile--"Who else should enjoy life if not you--kind, kind
Eleanor?"

'When I got home, and to my room, I opened my windows wide. Our apartment
is at the end of the Via Sistina, and has a marvellous view over Rome.
It was a gorgeous moon--St. Peter's, the hills, every dome and tower
radiantly clear. And at last it seemed to me that I was not a rebel and an
outlaw--that beauty and I were reconciled.

'Such peace in the night! It opened and took me in. Oh! my little, little
son!--I have had such strange visions of you all these last days. That
horror of the whirling river--and the tiny body--tossed and torn. Oh! my
God! my God!--has it not filled all my days and nights for eight years?
And now I see him so no more. I see him always carried in the arms of dim
majestic forms--wrapped close and warm. Sometimes the face that bends over
him is that of some great Giotto angel--sometimes, so dim and faint! the
pure Mother herself--sometimes the Hands that fold him in are marred. Is it
the associations of Rome--the images with which this work with Edward fills
my mind? Perhaps.

'But at least I am strangely comforted--some kind hand seems to be drawing
the smart from the deep deep wound. Little golden-head! you lie soft and
safe, but often you seem to me to turn your dear eyes--the baby-eyes that
still know all--to look out over the bar of heaven--to search for me--to
bid me be at peace, _at last_.

'February 20. How delicious is the first breath of the spring! The almond
trees are pink in the Campagna. The snow on the Sabine peaks is going. The
Piazza di Spagna is heaped with flowers--anemones and narcissus and roses.
And for the first time in my life I too feel the "Sehnsucht"--the longing
of the spring! At twenty-nine!'

'March 24, Easter week. I went to a wedding at the English church to-day.
Some barrier seems to have fallen between me and life. The bride--a dear
girl who has often been my little companion this winter--kissed me as she
was going up to take off her dress. And I threw my arms round her with such
a rush of joy. Other women have felt all these things ten years earlier
perhaps than I. But they are not less heavenly when they come late--into a
heart seared with grief.

'March 26. It is my birthday. From the window looking on the Piazza, I have
just seen Edward bargaining with the flower woman. Those lilacs and pinks
are for me--I know it! Already he has given me the little engraved emerald
I wear at my watch-chain. A little genius with a torch is cut upon it. He
said I was to take it as the genius of our friendship.

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