Eleanor
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Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor
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CHAPTER XXV
'Hullo, Manisty!--is that you? Is this the place?'
The speaker was Reggie Brooklyn, who was dismounting from his bicycle at
the door of the convent, followed by a clattering mob of village children,
who had pursued him down the hill.
'I say, what a weird place!' said Reggie, looking about him,--'and at the
other end of nowhere. What on earth made Eleanor come here?'
Ho looked at Manisty in perplexity, wiping the perspiration from his brow,
which frowned beneath his fair curls.
'We were hero last year,' said Manisty, 'on that little tour we made with
the D.'s. Eleanor liked it then. She came here when the heat began, she
thought it would be cool.'
'You didn't know where she was ten days ago,' said the boy, looking at him
queerly. 'And General Muir didn't know, for I heard from some one who had
seen him last week.'
Manisty laughed.
'All the same, she is here now,' he said drily.
'And Miss Foster is here too?'
Manisty nodded.
'And you say that Eleanor is ill?'
The young man had still the same hostile, suspicious air.
Manisty, who had been poking at the ground with his stick, looked up.
Brooklyn made a step backward.
'_Very_ ill,' he said, with a face of consternation. 'And nobody knew?'
'She would not let us know,' said Manisty slowly. Then he added, with the
authority of the older man, the man in charge--'now we are doing all we
can. We start on Friday and pick up a nurse at Genoa. When we get home, of
course she will have the best advice. Very often she is wonderfully bright
and like herself. Oh! we shall pull her round. But you mustn't tire her.
Don't stay too long.'
They walked into the convent together, Brooklyn all impatience, Manisty
moody and ill at ease.
'Reggie!--well met!' It was Eleanor's gayest voice, from the vine-leafed
shadows of the _loggia_. Brooklyn sat down beside her, gazing at her with
his troubled blue eyes. Manisty descended to the walled garden, and walked
up and down there smoking, a prey to disagreeable thoughts.
After half an hour or so Reggie came down to the convent gate to look out
for the ricketty diligence which had undertaken to bring his bag from
Orvieto.
Here he was overtaken by Lucy Foster, who seemed to have hurried after him.
'How do you do, Mr. Brooklyn?' He turned sharply, and let her see a
countenance singularly discomposed.
They looked at each other a moment in silence. He noted with amazement her
growth in beauty, in expression. But the sadness of the mouth and eyes
tortured him afresh.
'What is the matter with her?' he said abruptly, dropping her timidly
offered hand.
'An old illness--mostly the heart,' she said, with difficulty. 'But I think
the lungs are wrong too.'
'Why did she come here--why did you let her?'
The roughness of his tone, the burning of his eyes made her draw back.
'It seemed the best thing to do,' she said, after a pause. 'Of course, it
was only done because she wished it.'
'Her people disapproved strongly!'
'She would not consider that.'
'And here in this rough place--in this heat--how have you been able to look
after her?' said the young man passionately.
'We have done what we could,' said the girl humbly. 'The Contessa Guerrini
has been very kind. We constantly tried to persuade her to let us take her
home; but she couldn't bring herself to move.'
'It was madness,' he said, between his teeth. 'And now--she looks as though
she were going to die!'
He gave a groan of angry grief. Lucy turned aside, leaning her arm against
the convent gateway, and her face upon it. The attitude was very touching;
but Brooklyn only stared at her in a blind wrath. 'What did you ever come
for?'--was his thought--'making mischief!--and robbing Eleanor of her
due!--It was a bad bargain she wanted,--but she might have been allowed to
have him in peace. What did you come meddling for?'
At that moment the door of the walled garden opened. Manisty came out into
the courtyard. Brooklyn looked from him to Lucy with a tight lip, a fierce
and flashing eye.
He watched them meet. He saw Lucy's quick change of attitude, the return
of hardness and composure. Manisty approached her. They discussed some
arrangement for the journey, in the cold tones of mere acquaintance. Not a
sign of intimacy in manner or words; beyond the forced intimacy of those
who have for the moment a common task.
When the short dialogue was over, Manisty mumbled something to Brooklyn
to the effect that Father Benecke had some dinner for him at the house at
the foot of the hill. But he did not wait for the young man's company. He
hurried off with the slouching and yet swinging gait characteristic of him,
his shoulders bent as it were under the weight of his great head. The young
man and the girl looked after him. Then Reggie turned impulsively.
'I suppose it was that beastly book--partly--that knocked her up. What's he
done with it?'
'He has given it up, I believe. I heard him say so to Eleanor.'
'And now I suppose he will condescend to go back to politics?'
'I know nothing of Mr. Manisty's affairs.'
The young man threw her a glance first of distrust--then of something
milder and more friendly. They turned back to the convent together, Lucy
answering his questions as to the place, the people, the Contessa, and so
forth.
A step, quick and gentle, overtook them.
It was Father Benecke who stopped and greeted them; a venerable figure, as
he bared his white head, and stood for a moment talking to Brooklyn under
the great sycamore of the courtyard. He had now resumed his clerical dress;
not, indeed, the soutane; but the common round collar, and long black coat
of the non-Catholic countries. The little fact, perhaps, was typical of a
general steadying and settling of his fortunes after the anguish of his
great catastrophe.
Lucy hardly spoke to him. His manner was soft and deprecating. And Miss
Foster stood apart as though she liked neither it nor him. When he left
them, to enter, the Convent, Reggie broke out:--
And how does _he_ come to be here? I declare it's the most extraordinary
tangle! What's he doing in there?'
He nodded towards the building, which seemed to be still holding the
sunlight of the day, so golden-white it shone under the evening sky, and
against the engirdling forest.
'Every night--almost--he comes to read with Eleanor.'
The young man stared.
'I say--is she--is she going to become a Catholic?'
Lucy smiled.
'You forget--don't you? They've excommunicated Father Benecke.'
'My word!--Yes!--I forgot. My chief was awfully excited about it. Well, I'm
sure he's well quit of them!'--said the young man fervently. 'They're doing
their level best to pull this country about everybody's ears. And they'll
be the first to suffer--thank heaven!--if they do upset the coach. And so
it was Benecke that brought Manisty here?'
Lucy's movement rebuked him; made him feel himself an impertinent.
'I believe so,' she said coldly. 'Good-night, Mr. Brooklyn. I must go in.
There!--that's the stage coming down hill.'
He went to tell the driver to set down his bag at the house by the bridge,
and then he walked down the hill after the little rumbling carriage, his
hands thrust into the pockets of his blue flannel coat.
'She's not going to marry him!--I'll bet anything she's not! She's a
girl of the right sort--she's a brick, she is!'--he said to himself in a
miserable, a savage exultation, kicking the stones of the road furiously
down hill, after the disappearing diligence. 'So that's how a woman looks
when her heart's broken!--Oh! my God--Eleanor!--my poor, poor Eleanor!'
And before he knew what had happened to him, the young fellow found himself
sitting in the darkness by the roadside, grappling with honest tears, that
astonished and scandalised himself.
* * * * *
Next day he was still more bewildered by the position of affairs. Eleanor
was apparently so much better that he was disposed to throw scorn on his
own burst of grief under the starlight. That was the first impression. Then
she was apparently in Manisty's charge. Manisty sat with her, strolled with
her, read to her from morning till night. Never had their relations been
more intimate, more affectionate. That was the second impression.
Nevertheless, that some great change had taken place--above all in
Eleanor--became abundantly evident to the young man's quickened perception,
before another twenty-four hours had passed away. And with this new sense
returned the sense of irreparable tragedy. Eleanor stood alone--aloof from
them all. The more unremitting, the more delicate was Manisty's care, the
more tender was Lucy's devotion, the more plainly was Brooklyn aware of a
pathetic, a mysterious isolation which seemed already to bring the chill of
death into their little company.
The boy's pain flowed back upon him, ten-fold augmented. For seven or
eight years he had seen in Eleanor Burgoyne the woman of ideal distinction
by whom he judged all other women. The notion of falling in love with
her would have seemed to him ridiculous. But his wife, whenever he could
indulge himself in such a luxury, must be like her. Meanwhile he was most
naively, most boyishly devoted to her.
The sight of her now, environed as it were by the new and awful
possibilities which her state suggested, was a touch upon the young
man's nature, which seemed to throw all its energies into a fiery
fusion,--concentrating them upon a changed and poignant affection, which
rapidly absorbed his whole being. His pity for her was almost intolerable,
his bitterness towards Manisty almost beyond his control. All very well
for him now to be the guardian of her decline! Whatever might be the truth
about the American girl, it was plain enough that while she could still
reckon on the hopes and chances of the living, Eleanor had wasted her heart
and powers on an egotist, only to reap ingratitude, and the deadly fruit of
'benefits forgot.'
What chafed him most was that he had so little time with her; that Manisty
was always there. At last, two days after his arrival, he got an hour to
himself while Manisty and Father Benecke were walking, and Lucy was with
the Contessa.
He began to question her eagerly as to the future. With whom was she to
pass the remainder of the year--and where?
'With my father and Aunt Pattie of course,' said Eleanor, smiling. 'It will
be Scotland I suppose till November--then London.'
He was silent for a few moments, the colour flooding his smooth fair face.
Then he took her hand firmly, and with words and gestures that became him
well, he solemnly asked her to marry him. He was not fit to tie her shoes;
but he could take care of her; he could be her courier, her travelling
companion, her nurse, her slave. He implored her to listen to him. What
was her father to her--he asked her plainly--when had he ever considered
her, as she should be considered? Let her only trust herself to him. Never,
never should she repent that she had done him such an inconceivable honour.
Hang the diplomatic service! He had some money; with her own it would be
enough. He would take her to Egypt or the Cape. That would revive her.
Eleanor heard him very calmly.
'You dear, dear boy!' she said, when he paused for lack of breath. 'You
remind me of that pretty story--don't you remember?--only it was the other
way about--of Lord Giffard and Lady Dufferin. He was dying--and she married
him--that she might be with him to the end. That's right--for the woman.
It's her natural part to be the nurse. Do you think I'm going to let _you_
ruin your career to come and nurse me? Oh! you foolish Reggie!'
But he implored her; and after a while she grew restless.
'There's only one thing in the world you can do for me!--' she said at
last, pushing him away from her in her agitation.
Then reaching out from her sofa, she opened a drawer in a little table
beside her, and took out a double photograph-case, folded together. She
opened it and held it out to him.
'There!--help me bring those two together, Reggie--and I'll give you even
more of my heart than I do now!'
He stared, open-mouthed and silent, at the portraits, at the delicate,
illumined face.
'Come here'--she said, drawing him back towards her. 'Come and let us
talk.'
* * * * *
Meanwhile Manisty and Father Benecke were climbing the long hill, on the
return from their walk. There had been no full confidence between these
two. Manisty's pride would not allow it. There was too sharp humiliation
at present in the thought of that assurance with which he had spoken to
Benecke by the river-side.
He chose, therefore, when they were alone, rather to talk to the priest
of his own affairs, of his probable acceptance of the Old Catholic offers
which had been made him. Benecke did not resent the perfunctory manner of
his talk, the half-mind that he gave to it. The priest's shrewd humility
made no claims. He understood perfectly that the catastrophe of his own
life could have no vital interest for a man absorbed as Manisty was then
absorbed. He submitted to its being made a topic, a _passe-temps_.
Moreover, he forgave, he had always forgiven Manisty's dominant attitude
towards the forces which had trampled on himself. Often he had felt himself
the shipwrecked sailor sinking in the waves, while Manisty as the cool
spectator was hobnobbing with the wreckers on the shore. But nothing of
this affected his love for the man. He loved him as Vanbrugh Neal had
loved him; because of a certain charm, a certain indestructible youth and
irresponsibility at the very heart of him, which redeemed half his errors.
'Ah! my dear friend,' Manisty was saying as they neared the top of the
hill--with his largest and easiest gesture; 'of course you must go to Bonn;
you must do what they want you to do. The Old Catholics will make a great
deal of you. It might have been much worse.'
'They are very kind. But one transplants badly at sixty-six,' said the
priest mildly, thinking perhaps of his little home in the street of his
Bavarian town, of the pupils he should see no more, of the old sister who
had deserted him.
'_Your_ book has been the success,' said Manisty, impatiently. 'For you
said what you meant to say--you hit your mark. As for me--well, never mind!
I came out in too hot a temper; the men I saw first were too plausible; the
facts have been too many for me. No matter. It was an adventure like any
other. I don't regret it! In itself, it gave one some exciting moments,
and,--if I mistook the battle here--I shall still fight the English battle
all the better for the experience! _Allons donc_!--"To-morrow to fresh
woods and pastures new!"'
The priest looked at his handsome reckless air, with a mixture of
indulgence and repulsion. Manisty was 'an honourable man,' of many gifts.
If certain incalculable elements in his character could be controlled,
place and fame were probably before him. Compared with him, the priest
realised profoundly his own meaner, obscurer destiny. The humble servant
of a heavenly _patria_, of an unfathomable truth, is no match for these
intellectual soldiers of fortune. He does not judge them; he often feels
towards them a strange forbearance. But he would sooner die than change
parts!
* * * * *
As the convent came in sight, Manisty paused.
'You are going in to see her?'
The priest assented.
'Then I will come up later.'
They parted, and Father Benecke entered the convent alone.
Five days more! Would anything happen--or nothing? Manisty's wounded vanity
held him at arm's length; Miss Foster could not forgive him. But the
priest knew Eleanor's heart; and what else he did not know he divined. All
rested with the American girl, with the wounded tenderness, the upright
independence of a nature, which, as the priest frankly confessed to
himself, he did not understand.
He was not, indeed, without pricks of conscience with regard to her.
Supposing that she ultimately yielded? It was he who would have
precipitated the solution; he who would in truth have given her to Manisty.
Might he not, in so doing, have succoured the one life only to risk the
other? Were Manisty's the hands in which to place a personality so noble
and so trusting as that of the young girl?
But these qualms did not last long. As we have seen he had an invincible
tenderness for Manisty. And in his priestly view women were the adjuncts
and helpers of men. Woman is born to trouble; and the risks that she must
take grow with her. Why fret about the less or more? His own spiritual
courage would not have shrunk from any burden that love might lay upon it.
In his Christian stoicism--the man of the world might have called it a
Christian insensibility--he answered for Lucy.
Why suppose that she would shrink, or ought to shrink? Eve's burden is
anyway enormous; and the generous heart scorns a grudging foresight.
As to Mrs. Burgoyne--ah! there at least he might be sure that he had not
dared in vain. While Lucy was steel to him, Eleanor not only forgave him,
but was grateful to him with a frankness that only natures so pliant and so
sweet have the gift to show. In a few hours, as it seemed to him, she had
passed from fevered anguish into a state which held him often spellbound
before her, so consonant was it to the mystical instincts of his own life.
He thought of her with the tenderest reverence, the most sacred rejoicing.
Through his intercourse with her, moreover, while he guided and sustained
her, he had been fighting his own way back to the sure ground of spiritual
hope and confidence. God had not withdrawn from him the divine message! He
was about to step forth into the wilderness; but this light went with him.
On the stairs leading to Mrs. Burgoyne's rooms he met Reggie Brooklyn
coming down. The young man's face was pale and strained. The priest asked
him a question, but he ran past without an answer.
Eleanor was alone on the _loggia_. It was past eight o'clock, and the trees
in the courtyard and along the road were alive with fire-flies. Overhead
was the clear incomparable sky, faintly pricked with the first stars.
Someone was singing 'Santa Lucia' in the distance; and there was the
twanging of a guitar.
'Shall I go away?' he said, standing beside her. 'You wished me to come.
But you are fatigued.'
She gave him her hand languidly.
'Don't go, Father. But let me rest a little.'
'Pay me no attention,' he said. 'I have my office.'
He took out his breviary, and there was silence.
After a while, when he could no longer see even the red letters of his
little book and was trusting entirely to memory, Eleanor said, with a
sudden clearness of voice,--
A strange thing happened to me to-day, Father. I thought I would tell you.
For many many years I have been haunted by a kind of recurrent vision.
I think it must have come, to begin with, from the influence of a
clergyman--a very stern, imaginative, exacting man--who prepared me for
confirmation. Suddenly I see the procession of the Cross; the Lord in
front, with the Crown of Thorns dripping with blood; the thieves following;
the crowd, the daughters of Jerusalem. Nothing but that--but always very
vivid, the colours as bright as the colours of a Van Eyck--and bringing
with it an extraordinary sense of misery and anguish--of everything
that one wants to forget and refuse in life. The man to whom I trace it
was a saint, but a forbidding one. He made me afraid of him; afraid of
Christianity. I believed, but I never loved. And when his influence was
withdrawn, I threw it all behind me, in a great hurry. But this impression
remained--like a nightmare. I remember the day I was presented; there, in
the midst of all the feathers and veils and coronets, was the vision,--and
the tumult of ghastly and crushing thoughts that spread from it. I remember
hating Christianity that day; and its influence in the world.
'Last night, just before the dawn, I looked out; and there was the vision
again, sweeping over the forests, and up into the clouds that hung over
Monte Amiata. And I hated it no more. There was no accompanying horror.
It seemed to me as natural as the woods; as the just-kindling light. And
my own soul seemed to be rapt into the procession--the dim and endless
procession of all times and nations--and to pass away with it,--I knew not
where....
Her voice fell softly, to a note of dream.
'That was an omen,' he said, after a pause, 'an omen of peace.'
'I don't know,--but it soothed! As to what may be _true_, Father,--you
can't be certain any more than I! But at least our dreams are true--to
_us_.'... 'We make the heaven we hope indeed our home! All to the good if
we wake up in it after all! If not, the dream will have had its own use
here. Why should we fight so with our ignorance? The point is, as to the
_quality_ of our dreams! The quality of mine was once all dark--all misery.
Now, there is a change,--like the change from London drizzle and rain to
the clearness of this sky, which gives beauty to everything beneath it.
But, for me, it is not the first time--no, not the first--'
The words were no longer audible, her hands pressed against each other, and
he traced that sudden rigidity in her dim face which meant that she was
defending herself against emotion.
'It is all true, my friend,' he said, bending over her,--'the gospel of
Christ. You would be happier if you could accept it simply.'
She opened her eyes, smiling, but she did not reply. She was always eager
that he should read and talk to her, and she rarely argued. But he never
felt that intellectually he had much hold upon her. Her mind seemed to
him to be moving elusively in a sphere remote and characteristic, where
he could seldom follow. _Anima naturaliter Christiana_; yet with a most
stoic readiness to face the great uncertainties, the least flattering
possibilities of existence: so she often appeared to him.
Presently she dragged herself higher in her chair to look at the moon
rising above the eastern mass of the convent.
'It all gives me such extraordinary pleasure!' she said, as though
in wonder--'The moon--the fire-flies--those beautiful woods--your
kindness--Lucy in her white dress, when I see her there at the door. I know
how short it must be; and a few weeks ago I enjoyed nothing. What mystery
are we part of?--that moves and changes without our will. I was much
touched, Father, by all you said to me that great, great day; but I was not
conscious of yielding to you; nor afterwards. Then, one night, I went to
sleep in one mind; I woke up in another. The "grace of God," you think?--or
the natural welling back of the river, little by little, to its natural
bed? After all I never wilfully hurt or defied anybody before--that I can
remember. But what are "grace" and "nature" more than words? There is a
Life,--which our life perpetually touches and guesses at--like a child
fingering a closed room in the dark. What else do we know?'
'We know a great deal more,' he said firmly. 'But I don't want to weary you
by talking.'
'You don't weary me. Ah!'--her voice leapt--'what _is_ true--is the "dying
to live" of Christianity. One moment, you have the weight of the world
upon you; the next, as it were, you dispose of the world and all in it.
Just an act of the will!--and the thing verifies itself like any chemical
experiment. Let me go on--go on!' she said, with mystical intensity. 'If
the clue is anywhere it is there,--so far my mind goes with you. Other
races perceive it through other forms. But Christ offered it to us.'
'My dear friend,' said the priest tenderly--'He offers us _Himself_.'
She smiled, most brightly.
'Don't quarrel with me--with my poor words. He is there--_there!_'--she
said under her breath.
And he saw the motion of her white fingers towards her breast.
Afterwards he sat beside her for some time in silence, thinking of the
great world of Rome, and of his long conflict there.
Form after form appeared to him of those men, stupid or acute, holy or
worldly, learned or ignorant, who at the heart of Catholicism are engaged
in that amazing struggle with knowledge which perhaps represents the only
condition under which knowledge--the awful and irresistible--can in the
long run safely incorporate itself with the dense mass of human life. He
thought of scholar after scholar crushed by the most incompetent of judges;
this man silenced by a great post, that man by exile, one through the best
of his nature, another through the worst. He saw himself sitting side
by side with one of the most-eminent theologians of the Roman Church;
he recalled the little man, black-haired, lively, corpulent, a trifle
underhung, with a pleasant lisp and a merry eye; he remembered the
incredible conversation, the sense of difficulty and shame under which he
had argued some of the common-places of biology and primitive history, as
educated Europe understands them; the half patronising, half impatient
glibness of the other.--
'Oh! you know better, my son, than I how to argue these things; you are
more learned, of course. But it is only a matter for the Catechism after
all. Obey, my friend, obey!--there is no more to be said.'
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