Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor

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CHAPTER XXIV

On the following morning when Lucy entered Eleanor's room she found her
giving some directions to Marie.

'Tell Mamma Doni that we give up the rooms next week--Friday in next week.
Make her understand.'

'_Parfaitement_, Madame.' And Marie left the room. Lucy advanced with a
face of dismay.

'Ten days more!--Eleanor.

Eleanor tapped her lightly on the cheek, then kissed her, laughing.

'Are you too hot?'

'Dear!--don't talk about me! But you promised me to be gone before August.'

She knelt down by Eleanor's bedside, holding her hands, imploring her with
her deep blue eyes.

'Well, it's only a few days more,' said Eleanor, guiltily. 'Do let's take
it leisurely! It's so horrid to be hurried in one's packing. Look at all
these things!'

She waved her hand desperately round the little room, choked up with
miscellaneous boxes; then laid both hands on Lucy's shoulders, coaxing and
smiling at her like a child.

Lucy soon convinced herself that it was of no use to argue. She must just
submit, unless she were prepared to go to lengths of self-assertion which
might excite Eleanor and bring on a heart attack.

So, setting her teeth, she yielded.

'Friday week, then--for the last, last day!--And Mr. Manisty?'

She had risen from her knees and stood looking down at Eleanor. Her cheek
had reddened, but Eleanor admired her stateliness.

'Oh, we must keep Edward. We want him for courier. I gave you trouble
enough, on the journey here.'

Lucy said nothing. Her heart swelled a little. It seemed to her that under
all this sweetness she was being treated with a certain violence. She went
to the balcony, where the breakfast had just been laid, that she might
bring Eleanor's coffee.

'It _is_ just a little crude,' Eleanor thought, uneasily. 'Dear bird!--the
net is sadly visible. But what can one do?--with so little time--so few
chances! Once part them, and the game is up!'

So she used her weakness once more as a tyranny, this time for different
ends.

The situation that she dictated was certainly difficult enough. Manisty
appeared, by her summons, in the afternoon, and found them on the _loggia_.
Lucy greeted him with a cold self-possession. Of all that had happened on
the previous day, naturally, not a word. So far indeed as allusions to the
past were concerned, the three might just have travelled together from
Marinata. Eleanor very flushed, and dressed in her elegant white dress and
French hat, talked fast and well, of the country folk, the _padre parroco_,
the Contessa. Lucy looked at her with alarm, dreading the after fatigue.
But Eleanor would not be managed; would have her way.

Manisty, however, was no longer deceived. Lucy was aware of some of the
glances that he threw his cousin. The trouble which they betrayed gave the
girl a bitter satisfaction.

Presently she left them alone. After her disappearance Eleanor turned to
Manisty with a smile.

'On your peril--not another word to her!--till I give you leave. That would
finish it.'

He lifted hands and shoulders in a despairing gesture; but said nothing.
In Lucy's absence, however, then and later, he did not attempt to control
his depression, and Eleanor was soon distracting and comforting him in
the familiar ways of the past. Before forty-eight hours had elapsed the
relations between them indeed had resumed, to all appearance, the old and
close intimacy. On his arm she crept down the road, to the Sassetto, while
Lucy drove with the Contessa. Or Manisty read aloud to her on the _loggia_,
while Lucy in the courtyard below sat chatting fast to a swarm of village
children who would always henceforward associate her white dress and the
pure oval of her face with their dreams of the Madonna.

In their _tete-a-tetes_, the talk of Manisty and Eleanor was always either
of Lucy or of Manisty's own future. He had been at first embarrassed or
reluctant. But she had insisted, and he had at length revealed himself
as in truth he had never revealed himself in the days of their early
friendship. With him at least, Eleanor through all anguish had remained
mistress of herself, and she had her reward. No irreparable word had passed
between them. In silence the old life ceased to be, and a new bond arose.
The stifled reproaches, the secret impatiences, the _ennuis_, the hidden
anguish of those last weeks at Marinata were gone. Manisty, freed from
the pressure of an unspoken claim which his conscience half acknowledged
and his will repulsed, was for his cousin a new creature. He began to
treat her as he had treated his friend Neal, with the same affectionate
consideration, the same easy sweetness; even through all the torments that
Lucy made him suffer. 'His restlessness as a lover,--his excellence as a
friend,'--so a man who knew him well had written of him in earlier days.
As for the lover, discipline and penance had overtaken him. But now that
Eleanor's claim of another kind was dead, the friend in him had scope.
Eleanor possessed him as the lover of Lucy more truly than she had ever yet
done in the days when she ruled alone.

One evening finding her more feeble than usual, he implored her to let him
summon a doctor from Rome before she risked the fatigue of the Mont Cenis
journey.

But she refused. 'If necessary,' she said, 'I will go to Orvieto. There is
a good man there. But there is some one else you shall write to, if you
like:--Reggie! Didn't you see him last week?'

'Certainly. Reggie and the first secretary left in charge, sitting in their
shirt-sleeves, with no tempers to speak of, and the thermometer at 96. But
Reggie was to get his holiday directly.'

'Write and catch him.'

'Tell him to come not later than Tuesday, please,' said Lucy, quietly, who
was standing by.

'Despot!' said Eleanor, looking up. 'Are we really tied and bound to
Friday?'

Lucy smiled and nodded. When she went away Manisty sat in a black silence,
staring at the ground. Eleanor bit her lip, grew a little restless, and at
last said:

'She gives you no openings?'

Manisty laughed.

'Except for rebuffs!' he said, bitterly.

'Don't provoke them!'

'How can I behave as though that--that scene had never passed between us?
In ordinary circumstances my staying on here would be an offence, of which
she might justly complain. I told her last night I would have gone--but for
your health.'

'When did you tell her?'

'I found her alone here for a moment before dinner.'

'Well?'

Manisty moved impatiently.

'Oh! she was very calm. Nothing I say puts her out. She thought I might be
useful!--And she hopes Aunt Pattie will meet us in London, that she may be
free to start for New York by the 10th, if her friends go then. She has
written to them.'

Eleanor was silent.

'I must have it out with her!' said Manisty presently under his breath. In
his unrest he rose, that he might move about. His face had grown pale.

'No--wait till I give you leave,' said Eleanor again, imploring. 'I never
forget--for a moment. Leave it to me.'

He came and stood beside her. She put out her hand, which he took.

'Do you still believe--what you said?' he asked her, huskily.

Eleanor looked up smiling.

'A thousand times more!' she said, under her breath. 'A thousand times
more.'

But here the conversation reached an _impasse_. Manisty could not
say--'Then why?--in Heaven's name!'--for he knew why. Only it was not
a _why_ that he and Eleanor could discuss. Every hour he realised more
plainly with what completeness Eleanor held him in her hands. The situation
was galling. But her sweetness and his own remorse disarmed him. To be
helpless--and to be kind!--nothing else apparently remained to him. The
only gracious look Lucy had vouchsafed him these two days had been in
reward for some new arrangement of Eleanor's sofa which had given the
invalid greater ease.

He returned to his seat, smiling queerly.

'Well, I am not the only person in disgrace. Do you notice how Benecke is
treated?'

'She avoids him?'

'She never speaks to him if she can help it. I know that he feels it.'

'He risked his penalty,' said Eleanor laughing. 'I think he must bear it.'
Then in another tone, and very softly, she added--

'Poor child!'

Manisty thought the words particularly inappropriate. In all his experience
of women he never remembered a more queenly and less childish composure
than Lucy had been able to show him since their scene on the hill. It
had enlarged all his conceptions of her. His passion for her was thereby
stimulated and tormented, yet at the same time glorified in his own eyes.
He saw in her already the _grande dame_ of the future--that his labour, his
ambitions, and his gifts should make of her.

If only Eleanor spoke the truth!

* * * * *

The following day Manisty, returning from a late walk with Father Benecke,
parted from the priest on the hill, and mounted the garden stairway to the
_loggia_.

Lucy was sitting there alone, her embroidery in her hands.

She had not heard him in the garden; and when he suddenly appeared she was
not able to hide a certain agitation. She got up and began vaguely to put
away her silks and thimble.

'I won't disturb you,' he said formally. 'Has Eleanor not come back?'

For Eleanor had been driving with the Contessa.

'Yes. But she has been resting since.'

'Don't let me interrupt you,' he said again.

Then he looked at her fingers and their uncertain movements among the
silks; at the face bent over the workbasket.

'I want if I can to keep some bad news from my cousin,' he said abruptly.

Lucy started and looked up. He had her face full now, and the lovely
entreating eyes.

'My sister is very ill. There has been another crisis. I might be summoned
at any time.'

'Oh!'--she said, faltering. Unconsciously she moved a step nearer to him.
In a moment she was all enquiry, and deep, shy sympathy--the old docile
Lucy. 'Have you had a letter?' she asked.

'Yes, this morning. I saw her the other day when I passed through Rome. She
knew me, but she is a wreck. The whole constitution is affected. Sometimes
there are intervals, but they get rarer. And each acute attack weakens her
seriously.'

'It is terrible--terrible!'

As she stood there before him in her white dress under the twilight, he
had a vision of her lying with shut eyes in his chair at Marinata; he
remembered the first wild impulse that had bade him gather her, unconscious
and helpless, in his arms.

He moved away from her. For something to do, or say, he stooped down to
look into her open workbasket.

'Isn't that one of the Nemi terra-cottas!'

He blundered into the question from sheer nervousness, wishing it unspoken
the instant it was out.

Lucy started. She had forgotten. How could she have forgotten! There in a
soft bed of many-coloured silks, wrapped tenderly about, yet so as to show
the face and crown, was the little Artemis. The others were beneath the
tray of the box. But this for greater safety lay by itself, a thin fold
of cotton-wool across its face. In that moment of confusion when he had
appeared on the _loggia_ she had somehow displaced the cotton-wool without
knowing it, and uncovered the head.

'Yes, it is the Artemis,' she said, trying to keep herself from trembling.

Manisty bent without speaking, and took the little thing into his hand. He
thought of that other lovelier head--her likeness?--whereof the fragments
were at that moment in a corner of his dressing-case, after journeying with
him through the mountains.

As for Lucy it was to her as though the little head nestling in his hand
must somehow carry there the warmth of her kisses upon it, must somehow
betray her. He seemed to hold a fragment of her heart.

'Please let me put it away,' she said hurriedly. 'I must go to Eleanor. It
is nearly time for dinner.'

He gave it up silently. She replaced it, smoothed down her silks and her
work, and shut the box. His presence, his sombre look, and watching eye,
affected her all the time electrically. She had never yet been so near the
loss of self-command.

The thought of Eleanor calmed her. As she finished her little task, she
paused and spoke again.

'You won't alarm her about poor Miss Manisty, without--without consulting
with me?' she said timidly.

He bowed.

'Would you rather I did not tell her at all? But if I have to go?'

'Yes then--then you must.'

An instant--and she added hastily in a voice that wavered,' I am so very,
very sorry--'

'Thank you. She often asks about you.'

He spoke with a formal courtesy, in his 'grand manner.' Her gleam
of feeling had made him sensible, of advantage, given him back
self-confidence.

The soft flutter of her dress disappeared, and he was left to pace up and
down the _loggia_ in alternations of hope and despair. He, too, felt with
Eleanor that these days were fatal. If he lost her now, he lost her for
ever. She was of those natures in which a scruple only deepens with time.

She would not take what should have been Eleanor's. There was the case in
a nutshell. And how insist in these circumstances, as he would have done
vehemently in any other, that Eleanor had no lawful grievance?

He felt himself bound and pricked by a thousand delicate lilliputian bonds.
The 'regiment of women' was complete. He could do nothing. Only Eleanor
could help.

* * * * *

The following day, just outside the convent gate, he met Lucy, returning
from the village, whither she had been in quest of some fresh figs for
Eleanor's breakfast. It was barely eight o'clock, but the sun was already
fierce. After their formal greeting, Lucy lingered a moment.

'It's going to be frightfully hot to-day,' she said, looking round her with
a troubled face at the glaring road, at the dusty patch of vines beyond
it, at the burnt grass below the garden wall. 'Mr. Manisty!--you will make
Eleanor go next Friday?--you won't let her put it off--for anything?'

She turned to him, in entreaty, the colour dyeing her pure cheek and
throat.

'I will do what I can. I understand your anxiety,' he said stiffly.

She opened the old door of the courtyard and passed in before him. As he
rejoined her, she asked him in a low voice--

'Have you any more news?'

'Yes. I found a letter at Selvapendente last night. The state of things is
better. There will be no need I hope to alarm Eleanor--for the present.'

'I am so glad!'--The voice hurried and then paused. 'And of course, for you
too,' she added, with difficulty.

He said nothing, and they walked up to the inner door in silence. Then as
they paused on the threshold, he said suddenly, with a bitter accent--

'You are very devoted!'

She looked at him in surprise. Her young figure drew itself erect. 'That
isn't wonderful--is it?--with her?'

Her tone pierced him.

'Oh! nothing's wonderful in women. You set the standard so high--the men
can't follow.'

He stared at her, pale and frowning. She laughed artificially, but he could
see the breath hurrying under the blue cotton dress.

'Not at all! When it comes to the serious difficulties we must, it seems,
apply to you. Eleanor is thankful that you will take her home.

'Oh! I can be a decent courier--when I put my mind into it,' he said
angrily. 'That, I dare say, you'll admit.'

'Of course I shall,' she said, with a lip that smiled unsteadily. 'I know
it'll be invaluable. Please, Mr. Manisty, let me pass. I must get Eleanor
her breakfast.'

But he still stood there, barring the way.

'Then, Miss Foster, admit something else!--that I am not the mere
intruder--the mere burden--that you took me for.'

The man's soreness expressed itself in every word, every movement.

Lucy grew white.

'For Eleanor's sake, I am glad you came,' she said struggling for
composure. But the dignity, the pride behind the agitation were so evident
that he dared not go a step further. He bowed, and let her pass.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the Contessa was useful. After a very little observation, based
on the suggestions of her letter from Home, she divined the situation
exactly. Her affection and pity for Mrs. Burgoyne grew apace. Lucy she
both admired and acquitted; while she half liked, half hated Manisty. He
provoked her perpetually to judgment, intellectual and moral; and they
fell into many a sparring which passed the time and made a shelter for
the others. Her daughter had just left her; and the more she smarted,
the more she bustled in and out of the village, the more she drove about
the country, attending to the claims, the sicknesses, and the animals of
distant _contadini_, the more she read her newspapers, and the more nimbly
did her mind move.

Like the Marchesa Fazzoleni, she would have no pessimism about Italy,
though she saw things in a less poetic, more practical way.

'I dare say the taxes are heavy--and that our officials and bankers and
_impiegali_ are not on as good terms as they might be with the Eighth
Commandment. Well! was ever a nation made in a night before? When your
Queen came to the throne, were you English so immaculate? You talk
about our Socialists--have we any disturbances, pray, worse than your
disturbances in the twenties and thirties? The _parroco_ says to me day
after day: "The African campaign has been the ruin of Italy!" That's only
because he wants it to be so. The machine marches, and the people pay
their taxes, and the farming improves every year, all the same. A month or
two ago, the newspapers were full of the mobbing of trains starting with
soldiers for Erythrea. Yet all that time, if you went down into the Campo
de' Fiori you could find poems sold for a _soldo_, that only the people
wrote and the people read, that were as patriotic as the poor King
himself.'

'Ah! I know,' said Manisty. 'I have seen some of them. The oddest, naivest
things!--the metre of Tasso, the thoughts of a child--and every now and
then the cry a poet.'

And he repeated a stanza or two from these broad-sheets of the war, in a
rolling and musical Italian.

The Contessa looked at him with cool admiration; and then aside, at Lucy.
Certainly, when this Englishman was taking pains, his good-looks deserved
all that could be said of them. That he was one of the temperaments to
which other lives minister without large return--that she had divined at
once. But, like Lucy, she was not damped by that. The Contessa had known
few illusions, and only one romance; her love for her dead son. Otherwise
she took the world as it came, and quarrelled with very few of its marked
and persistent phenomena.

They were sitting on a terrace beneath the north-western front of the
Palazzo. The terrace was laid out in a formal garden. Fountains played;
statues stood in rows; and at the edge cypresses, black against the evening
blue and rose, threw back the delicate dimness of the mountains, made
their farness more far, and the gay foreground--oleanders, geraniums,
nasturtiums--more gay.

Eleanor was lying on a deck-chair, smiling often, and at ease. Lucy sat a
little apart, busy with her embroidery. She very seldom talked, but Eleanor
could not make a movement or feel a want without her being aware of it.

'But, Madame, I cannot allow you to make an enemy out of me!'--said Manisty
to the Contessa, resuming the conversation. 'When you talk to me of this
Country and its future, _vous prechez un converti_.'

'I thought you were the Jonah of our day,' she said, with her abrupt and
rather disdainful smile.

Manisty laughed.

'A Jonah who needn't complain anyway that his Nineveh is too ready to hear
him.'

'Where is the preaching?' she asked.

'In the waste-paper basket,' said Manisty, throwing away his cigarette.
'Nowadays, apparently it is the prophets who repent.'

Involuntarily his eye wandered, sought for Lucy withdrew. She was hidden
behind her work.

'Oh! preach away,' cried the Contessa. 'Take up your book again. Publish
it. We can bear it.'

Manisty searched with both hands for his matches; his new cigarette between
his lips.

'My book, Madame'--he said coolly--' outlived the pleasure its author took
in writing it. My cousin was its good angel; but not even she could bring a
blunder to port. Eleanor!--_n'est-ce pas?_'

He gathered a spray of oleander that grew near him, and laid it on her
hand, like a caress. Eleanor's emaciated fingers closed upon it gently. She
looked up, smiling. The Contessa abruptly turned away.

'And besides--' said Manisty.

He puffed away steadily, with his gaze on the mountains.

'I wait,' said the Contessa.

'Your Italy is a witch,' he said, with a sudden lifting of eyes and voice,
'and there are too many people that love her!'

Lucy bent a little lower over her work.

Presently the Contessa went away.

Eleanor lay with eyes closed and hands crossed, very white and still. They
thought her asleep, for it was common with her now to fall into short
sleeps of pure exhaustion. When they occurred, those near her kept tender
and generally silent watch, joining hands of protection, as it were, round
her growing feebleness.

After a few minutes, however, Manisty bent across towards Lucy.

'You urged me once to finish the book. But it was she who told me the other
day she was thankful it had been dropped.'

He looked at her with the half irritable, half sensitive expression that
she knew so well.

'Of course,' said Lucy, hurriedly. 'It was much best.'

She rose and stooped over Eleanor.

'Dear!--It is getting late. I think I ought to call the carriage.'

'Let me,' said Manisty, biting his lip.

'Thank you,' said Lucy, formally. 'The coachman understood we should want
him at seven.'

When he came back, Lucy went into the house to fetch some wraps.

Eleanor opened her eyes, which were singularly animated and smiling.

'Listen!'

He stooped.

'Be angry!' she said, laying a light grasp on his arm. 'Be quite angry.
Now--you may! It will do no harm.'

He sat beside her, his head bent; gloomily listening, till Lucy reappeared.

But he took the hint, calling to his aid all his pride, and all his
singular power of playing any role in his own drama that he might desire to
play. He played it with energy, with desperation, counting meanwhile each
hour as it passed, having in view always that approaching moment in London
when Lucy would disappear within the doors of the Porters' house, leaving
the butler to meet the demands of unwelcome visitors with such equivalents
of 'Not at home' as her Puritan scruples might allow; till the newspapers
should announce the safe sailing of her steamer for New York.

He ceased to propitiate her; he dropped embarrassment. He ignored her. He
became the man of the world and of affairs, whose European interests and
relations are not within the ken of raw young ladies from Vermont. He had
never been more brilliant, more interesting, more agreeable, for Eleanor,
for the Contessa, for Benecke; for all the world, save one. He described
his wanderings among the Calabrian highlands. He drew the peasants, the
priests, the great landowners of the south still surrounded with their
semi-feudal state; he made Eleanor laugh or shudder with his tales of
the brigandage of the sixties; he talked as the artist and the scholar
may of the Greek memories and remains of the Tarentine coast. Then he
turned to English politics, to his own chances, and the humours of his
correspondence. The Contessa ceased to quarrel with him. The handsome
Englishman with the colour of a Titian, and the features of an antique,
with his eloquence, his petulance, his conceit, his charm, filled the
stage, quickened the dull hours whenever he appeared. Eleanor's tragedy
explained itself. The elder woman understood and pitied. As for Lucy
Foster, the Contessa's shrewd eyes watched her with a new respect. At what
stage, in truth, was the play, and how would it end?

Meanwhile for Lucy Foster alone, Manisty was not agreeable. He rose
formally when she appeared; he placed her chair; he paid her all necessary
courtesies. But his conversation never included her. Her coming generally
coincided--after she was ceremoniously provided for--with an outbreak of
talk between him and Eleanor, or between him and Benecke, more eager,
animated and interesting than before. But Lucy had no part in it. It
was not the early neglect and incivility of the villa; it was something
infinitely colder and more wounding; the frigidity of disillusion and
resentment, of kindness rebuffed and withdrawn.

Lucy said nothing. She went about her day's work as usual, making all
arrangements for their departure, devoting herself to Eleanor. Every now
and then she was forced to consult with Manisty as to arrangements for the
journey. They spoke as mere acquaintances and no more than was necessary;
while she, when she was alone, would spend much time in a silent
abstraction, thinking of her uncle, of the duties to which she was
returning, and the lines of her future life. Perhaps in the winter she
might do some teaching. Several people in Greyridge had said they would
employ her.

And, all the time, during the night hours when she was thus wrestling
down her heart, Manisty was often pacing the forest paths, in an orgie
of smoke and misery, cursing the incidents of the day, raging, doubting,
suffering--as no woman had yet made him suffer. The more truly he
despaired, the more he desired her. The strength of the moral life in her
was a revelation, a challenge to all the forces of his own being. He was
not accustomed to have to consider such things in women. It added to her
a wealth, a rarity, which made the conquest of her the only object worth
pursuing in a life swept bare for the moment of all other passions and
zests. She loved him! Eleanor knew it; Eleanor declared it. Yet in ten
days' time she would say,--'Good bye, Mr. Manisty'--with that calm brow
which he already foresaw as an outrage and offence to love. Ah! for some
means to cloud those dear eyes--to make her weep, and let him see the
tears!

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