Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor

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'You should have made a study--and you have written a pamphlet,' he would
say, with that slow shake of the head which showed him inexorable. 'Why
have you given yourself to the Jesuits? You were an Englishman and an
outsider--enormous advantages! Why have you thrown them away?'

'One must have information!--I merely went to headquarters.'

'You have paid for it too dear. Your book is a plea for superstition!'

Whereupon a flame in Manisty's black eyes, and a burst in honour of
superstition, which set the garden paths echoing.

But Neal pushed quietly on; untiring, unappeasable; pointing to a
misstatement here, an exaggeration there, till Manisty was in a roar of
argument, furious half with his friend, half with himself.

Meanwhile if the writer bore attack hardly, the man of piety found it still
harder to endure the praise of piety. When Manisty denounced irresponsible
science and free thought, as the enemies of the State, which must live,
and can only live by religion; when he asked with disdain 'what reasonable
man would nowadays weigh the membership of the Catholic church against
an opinion in geology or exegesis'; when he dwelt on the _easiness_
of faith,--which had nothing whatever to do with knowledge, and had,
therefore, no quarrel with knowledge; or upon the incomparable social power
of religion;--his friend grew restive. And while Manisty, intoxicated with
his own phrases, and fluencies, was alternately smoking and declaiming,
Neal with his grey hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned
punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,--a
little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an
oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty
trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by
certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen
to show itself, how great is the gulf between a literary and a practical
Christianity.

Nevertheless, from the whole wrestle two facts emerged:--the pleasure which
these very dissimilar men took in each other's society; and that strange
ultimate pliancy of Manisty which lay hidden somewhere under all the surge
and froth of his vivacious rhetoric. Both were equally surprising to
Lucy Foster. How had Manisty ever attached himself to Vanbrugh Neal? For
Neal had a large share of the weaknesses of the student and recluse; the
failings, that is to say, of a man who had lived much alone, and found
himself driven to an old-maidish care of health and nerves, if a delicate
physique was to do its work. He had fads; and his fads were often
unexpected and disconcerting. One day he would not walk; another day he
would not eat; driving was out of the question, and the sun must be avoided
like the plague. Then again it was the turn of exercise, cold baths,
and hearty fare. It was all done with a grace that made his whims more
agreeable than other men's sense. But one might have supposed that such
claims on a friend's part would have annoyed a man of Manisty's equally
marked but very different peculiarities. Not at all. He was patience and
good temper itself on these occasions.

'Isn't he _bon enfant_?' Mr. Neal said once to Mrs. Burgoyne in Lucy's
presence, with a sudden accent of affection and emotion--on some occasion
when Manisty had borne the upsetting of a cherished plan for the afternoon
with quite remarkable patience.

'He has learnt how to spoil _you_!' said Eleanor, with a fluttering smile,
and an immediate change of subject. Lucy looking up, felt a little pang.

For nothing could he more curious than the change in Manisty's manner
towards the most constant of companions and secretaries. He had given up
all continuous work at his book; he talked now of indefinite postponement;
and it seemed as if with the change of plan Mrs. Burgoyne had dropped out
of the matter altogether. He scarcely consulted her indeed; he consulted
Mr. Neal. Mr. Neal often, moved by a secret chivalry, would insist upon
bringing her in to their counsels; Manisty immediately became unmanageable,
silent, and embarrassed. And how characteristic and significant was that
embarrassment of his! It was as though he had a grievance against her;
which however he could neither formulate for himself nor express to her.

On the other hand--perhaps inevitably--he began to take much more notice
of Lucy Foster, and to find talking with her an escape. He presently found
it amusing to 'draw' her; and subjects presented themselves in plenty. She
was now much less shy; and her secret disapproval gave her tongue. His
challenges and her replies became a feature of the day; Miss Manisty and
Mr. Neal began to listen with half-checked smiles, to relish the girl's
crisp frankness, and the quick sense of fun that dared to show itself now
that she was more at home.

'And how improved she is! That's like all the Americans--they're so
adaptable,'--Miss Manisty would think, as she watched her nephew in the
evenings teasing, sparring, or arguing with Lucy Foster--she so adorably
young and fresh, the new and graceful lines of the _coiffure_ that Eleanor
had forced upon her, defining the clear oval of the face and framing the
large eyes and pure brow. Her hands, perhaps, would be lightly clasped on
her white lap, their long fingers playing with some flower she had taken
from her belt. The lines of the girlish figure would be full of dignity and
strength. She might have been herself the young America, arguing, probing,
deciding for herself--refusing to be overawed or brow-beaten by the old
Europe.

Eleanor meanwhile was unfailingly gracious both to Lucy and the others,
though perhaps the grace had in it sometimes a new note of distance, of
that delicate _hauteur_, which every woman of the world has at command. She
gave as much attention as ever--more than ever--to the fashioning of Lucy's
dresses; the girl was constantly pricked with compunction and shame on the
subject. Who was she, that Mrs. Burgoyne--so elegant and distinguished a
person--should waste so much time and thought upon her? But sometimes she
could not help seeing that Mrs. Burgoyne was glad of the occupation. Her
days had been full to the brim; they were now empty. She said nothing; she
took up the new books; she talked to and instructed the maids; but Lucy
divined a secret suffering.

* * * * *

One evening, about a week after Mr. Neal's arrival at the Villa, Manisty
was more depressed than usual. He had been making some attempts to
rearrange a certain section of his book which had fallen especially under
the ban of Neal's criticism. He had not been successful; and in the process
his discontent with one chapter had spread to several. In talking about the
matter to Vanbrugh Neal in the salon after dinner he broke out into some
expression of disgust as to the waste of time involved in much of his
work of the winter. The two friends were in a corner of the vast room;
and Manisty spoke in an undertone. But his voice had the carrying and
penetrating power of his personality.

Presently Eleanor Burgoyne rose, and softly approached Miss Manisty. 'Dear
Aunt Pattie--don't move'--she said, bending over her--'I am tired and will
go to bed.'

Manisty, who had turned at her movement, sprang up, and came to her.

'Eleanor! did we walk you too far this afternoon?'

She smiled, but hardly replied. He busied himself with gathering up her
possessions, and lit her candle at the side-table.

As she passed by him to the door, he looked at her furtively for a
moment,--hanging his head. Then he pressed her hand, and said so that only
she could hear--

'I should have kept my regrets to myself!'

She shook her head, with faint mockery.

'It would be the first time.'

Her hand dropped from his, and she passed out of sight. Manisty walked back
to his seat discomfited. He could not defend himself against the charges of
secret tyranny and abominable ill-humour that his conscience was pricking
him with. He was sorry--he would have liked to tell her so. And yet somehow
her very weakness and sweetness, her delicate uncomplainingness seemed only
to develope his own small egotisms and pugnacities.

* * * * *

That night--a night of rain and scirocco--Eleanor wrote in her
journal--'Will he ever finish the book? Very possibly it has been all a
mistake. Yet when he began it, he was in the depths. Whatever happens, it
has been his salvation.

'--Surely he will finish it? He cannot forego the effect he is almost sure
it will produce. But he will finish it with impatience and disgust; he is
out of love with it and all its associations. All that he was talking of
to-night represents what I had most share in,--the chapters which brought
us most closely together. How happy we were over them! And now, how
different!

'It is curious--the animation with which he has begun to talk to Lucy
Foster. Pretty child! I like to feel that I have been the fairy god-mother,
dressing her for the ball. How little she knows what it means to be talked
to by him, to receive courtesies from him,--how many women would like to
be in her place. Yet now she is not shy; she has no alarms; she treats him
like an equal. If it were not ridiculous, one could be angry.

'She dislikes and criticises him, and he can have no possible understanding
of or sympathy with her. But she is a way out of embarrassment. How
fastidious and proud he is with women!--malicious too, and wilful. Often I
have wished him more generous--more kind.

'... In three weeks the anniversary will be here--the ninth. Why am I still
alive? How often have I asked myself that! Where is my place?--who needs
me?--My babe, if he still exists, is alone--there. And I still here. If I
had only had the courage to rejoin him! The doctors deceived me. They made
me think it could not be long. And now I am better--much better. If I were
happy I should be quite well.

'How weary seems this Italian spring!--the restlessness of this eternal
wind--the hot clouds that roll up from the Campagna. "Que vivre est
difficile, o mon coeur fatigue!"'

CHAPTER VII

'I think it's lovely,' said Lucy in an embarrassed voice. 'And I just don't
know how to thank you--indeed I don't.'

She was standing inside the door of Mrs. Burgoyne's room, arrayed in the
white crepe gown with the touches of pale green and vivid black that
Eleanor had designed for her. Its flowing elegance made her positively a
stranger to herself. The two maids moreover who had attired her had been
intent upon a complete, an indisputable perfection. Her hat had been
carried off and retrimmed, her white gloves, her dainty parasol, the bunch
of roses at her belt--everything had been thought for; she had been allowed
a voice in nothing. And the result was extraordinary. The day before
she had been still a mere fresh-cheeked illustration of those 'moeurs
de province' which are to be found all over the world, in Burgundy and
Yorkshire no less and no more than in Vermont; to-day she had become what
others copy, the best of its kind--the 'fleeting flower' that 'blooms
for one day at the summit'--as the maids would no doubt have expressed
themselves, had they been acquainted with the works of Mr. Clough.

And thanks to that pliancy of her race, which Miss Manisty had discovered,
although she was shy in these new trappings, she was not awkward. She was
assimilating her new frocks, as she had already assimilated so many other
things, during her weeks at the villa--points of manner, of speech, of
mental perspective. Unconsciously she copied Mrs. Burgoyne's movements
and voice; she was learning to understand Manisty's paradoxes, and Aunt
Pattie's small weaknesses. She was less raw, evidently; yet not less
individual. Her provincialisms were dropping away; her character, perhaps,
was only emerging.

'Are you pleased with it?' she said timidly, as Mrs. Burgoyne bade her come
in, and she advanced towards that lady, who was putting on her own hat
before the glass.

Eleanor, with uplifted arms, turned and smiled.--

'Charming! You do one credit!--Is Aunt Pattie better?'

Lucy was conscious of a momentary chill. Mrs. Burgoyne had been so kind
and friendly during the whole planning and making of this dress, the girl,
perhaps, had inevitably expected a keener interest in its completion.

She answered in some discomfort:--

'I am afraid Miss Manisty's not coming. I saw Benson just now. Her headache
is still so bad.'

'Ah!'--said Eleanor, absently, rummaging among her gloves; 'this scirocco
weather doesn't suit her.'

Lucy fidgetted a little as she stood by the dressing-table, took up one
knick-knack after another and put it down. At last she said--

'Do you mind my asking you a question?'

Mrs. Burgoyne turned in surprise.

'By all means!--What can I do?'

'Do you mind telling me whether you think I ought to stay on here? Miss
Manisty is so kind--she wants me to stay till you leave, and then go to
Vallombrosa with you--next month. But--'

'Why "but"?'--said Mrs. Burgoyne, briskly, still in quest of rings,
handkerchief, and fan,--'unless you are quite tired of us.'

The girl smiled. 'I couldn't be that. But--I think you'll be tired of me!
And I've heard from the Porters of a quiet pension in Florence, where some
friends of theirs will be staying till the middle of June. They would let
me join them, till the Porters are ready for me.'

There was just a moment's pause before Eleanor said--

'Aunt Pattie would be very sorry. I know she counts on your going with her
to Vallombrosa. I must go home by the beginning of June, and I believe Mr.
Manisty goes to Paris.'

'And the book?' Lucy could not help saying, and then wished vehemently that
she had left the question alone.

'I don't understand'--said Mrs. Burgoyne, stooping to look for her
walking-shoes.

'I didn't--I didn't know whether it was still to be finished by the
summer?'

'No one knows,--certainly not the author! But it doesn't concern me in the
least.'

'How can it be finished without you?' said Lucy wondering. Again she could
not restrain the spirit of eager championship which had arisen in her mind
of late; though she was tremulously uncertain as to how far she might
express it.

Certainly Mrs. Burgoyne showed a slight stiffening of manner.

'It will have to get finished without me, I'm afraid. Luckily I'm not
wanted; but if I were, I shall have no time for anything but my father this
summer.'

Lucy was silent. Mrs. Burgoyne finished tying her shoes, then rose, and
said lightly--

'Besides--poor book! It wanted a change badly. So did I.--Now Mr. Neal will
see it through.'

* * * * *

Lucy went to say good-bye to Aunt Pattie before starting. Eleanor, left
alone, stood a moment, thoughtful, beside the dressing-table.

'She is sorry for me!' she said to herself, with a sudden, passionate
movement.

This was the Nemi day--the day of festival, planned a fortnight before, to
celebrate the end, the happy end of the book. It was to have been Eleanor's
special day--the sign and seal of that good fortune she had brought her
cousin and his work.

And now?--Why were they going? Eleanor hardly knew. She had tried to stop
it. But Reggie Brooklyn had been asked, and the Ambassador's daughter. And
Vanbrugh Neal had a fancy to see Nemi. Manisty, who had forgotten all that
the day was once to signify, had resigned himself to the expedition--he who
hated expeditions!--' because Neal wanted it.' There had not been a word
said about it during the last few days that had not brought gall and wound
to Eleanor. She, who thought she knew all that male selfishness was capable
of, was yet surprised and pricked anew, hour after hour, by Manisty's
casual sayings and assumptions.

It was like some gourd-growth in the night--the rise of this entangling
barrier between herself and him. She knew that some of it came from those
secret superstitions and fancies about himself and his work which she had
often detected in him. If a companion or a place, even a particular table
or pen had brought him luck, he would recur to them and repeat them with
eagerness. But once prove to him the contrary, and she had seen him drop
friend and pen with equal decision.

And as far as she could gather--as far as he would discuss the matter at
all--it was precisely with regard to those portions of the book where her
influence upon it had been strongest, that the difficulties put forward by
Mr. Neal had arisen.

Her lip quivered. She had little or no personal conceit. Very likely Mr.
Neal's criticisms were altogether just, and she had counselled wrongly.
When she thought of the old days of happy consultation, of that vibrating
sympathy of thought which had arisen between them, glorifying the winter
days in Rome, of the thousand signs in him of a deep, personal gratitude
and affection--

Vanished!--vanished! The soreness of heart she carried about with
her, proudly concealed, had the gnawing constancy of physical pain.
While he!--Nothing seemed to her more amazing than the lapses in mere
gentlemanliness that Manisty could allow himself. He was capable on
occasion of all that was most refined and tender in feeling. But once jar
that central egotism of his, and he could behave incredibly! Through the
small actions and omissions of every day, he could express, if he chose, a
hardness of soul before which the woman shuddered.

Did he in truth mean her to understand, not only that she had been an
intruder, and an unlucky one, upon his work and his intellectual life, but
that any dearer hopes she might have based upon their comradeship were to
be once for all abandoned? She stood there, lost in a sudden tumult of
passionate pride and misery, which was crossed every now and then by a
strange and bitter wonder.

Each of us carries about with him a certain mental image of
himself--typical, characteristic--as we suppose; draped at any rate to our
fancy; round which we group the incidents of life. Eleanor saw herself
always as the proud woman; it is a guise in which we are none of us loth
to masquerade. Haughtily dumb and patient during her married years; proud
morally, socially, intellectually; finding in this stiffening of the self
her only defence against the ugly realities of daily life. Proud too in her
loneliness and grief--proud of her very grief, of her very capacity for
suffering, of all the delicate shades of thought and sorrow which furnished
the matter of her secret life, lived without a sign beside the old father
whose coarser and commoner pride took such small account of hers!

And now--she seemed to herself to be already drinking humiliation, and
foreseeing ever deeper draughts of it to come. She, who had never begged
for anything, was in the mood to see her whole existence as a refused
petition, a rejected gift. She had offered Edward Manisty her all of
sympathy and intelligence, and he was throwing it back lightly, inexorably
upon her hands. Her thin cheek burnt; but it was the truth. She annoyed and
wearied him; and he had shaken her off; her, Eleanor Burgoyne! She did not
know herself. Her inmost sense of identity was shaken.

She leant her head an instant against the frame of the open window, closing
her tired eyes upon the great Campagna below her. A surge of rebellious
will passed through her. Always submission, patience, silence,--till now!
But there are moments when a woman must rouse herself, and fight--must not
accept, but make, her fate.

Jealous! Was that last heat and ignominy of the soul to be hers too? She
was to find it a threat and offence that he should spend some of the
evenings that now went so heavily, talking with this girl,--this nice
simple girl, whom she had herself bade him cultivate, whom she had herself
brought into notice, rubbing off her angles,--drilling her into beauty? The
very notion was madness and absurdity. It degraded her in her own eyes. It
was the measure of her own self-ignorance. She--resign him at the first
threat of another claim! The passionate life of her own heart amazed and
stunned her.

The clock in the salon struck. She started, and went to straighten her veil
at the glass. What would the afternoon bring her? Something it should bring
her. The Nemi days of the winter were shrined in memory--each with its
halo. Let her put out her full strength again, and now, before it was too
late--before he had slipped too far away from her.

The poor heart beat hotly against the lace of her dress. What did she
intend or hope for? She only knew that this might be one of her last
chances with him--that the days were running out--and the moment of
separation approached. Her whole nature was athirst, desperately athirst
for she knew not what. Yet something told her that among these ups and
downs of daily temper and fortune there lay strewn for her the last chances
of her life.

* * * * *

'Please, ma'am, will you go in for a moment to Miss Manisty?'

The voice was Benson's, who had waylaid Mrs. Burgoyne in the salon.

Eleanor obeyed.

From the shadows of her dark room Aunt Pattie raised a wan face.

'Eleanor!--what do you think?'--

Eleanor ran to her. Miss Manisty handed her a telegram which read as
follows--

'Your letter arrived too late to alter arrangements. Coming to-morrow--two
or three nights--discuss plans.--ALICE.'

Eleanor let her hand drop, and the two ladies looked at each other in
dismay.

'But you told her you couldn't receive her here?'

'Several times over. Edward will be in despair. How are we to have her
here with Miss Foster? Her behaviour the last two months has been too
extraordinary.'

Aunt Pattie fell back a languid little heap upon her pillows. Eleanor
looked almost equally disconcerted.

'Have you told Edward?'

'No,' said Aunt Pattie miserably, raising a hand to her aching head, as
though to excuse her lack of courage.

'Shall I tell him?'

'It's too bad to put such things on you.'

'No, not at all. But I won't tell him now. It would spoil the day. Some
time before the evening.'

Aunt Pattie showed an aspect of relief.

'Do whatever you think best. It's very good of you--'

'Not at all. Dear Aunt Pattie!--lie still. By the way--has she anyone with
her?'

'Only her maid--the one person who can manage her at all. That poor lady,
you know, who tried to be companion, gave it up some time ago. Where shall
we put her?'

'There are the two east rooms. Shall I tell Andreina to get them ready?'

Aunt Pattie acquiesced, with a sound rather like a groan.

'There is no chance still of stopping her?' said Eleanor, moving away.

'The telegram gives no address but Orte station,' said Aunt Pattie wearily;
'she must have sent it on her journey.'

'Then we must be prepared. Don't fret--dear Aunt Pattie!--we'll help you
through.'

Eleanor stood a moment in the salon, thinking.

Unlucky! Manisty's eccentric and unmanageable sister had been for many
years the secret burden of his life and Aunt Pattie's. Eleanor had been a
witness of the annoyance and depression with which he had learnt during the
winter that she was in Italy. She knew something of the efforts that had
been made to keep her away from the villa.--

He would be furiously helpless and miserable under the
infliction.--Somehow, her spirits rose.--

She went to the door of the salon, and heard the carriage drive up that was
to take them to Nemi. Across Manisty's room, she saw himself on the balcony
lounging and smoking till the ladies should appear. The blue lake with its
green shores sparkled beyond him. The day was brightening. Certainly--let
the bad news wait!

* * * * *

As they drove along the Galleria di Sotto, Manisty seemed to be
preoccupied. The carriage had interrupted him in the midst of reading a
long letter which he still held crumpled in his hand.

At last he said abruptly to Eleanor--'Benecke's last chance is up. He is
summoned to submit next week at latest.'

'He tells you so?'

'Yes. He writes me a heart-broken letter.'

'Poor, poor fellow! It's all the Jesuits' doing. Mr. Neal told me the whole
story.'

'Oh! it's tyranny of course. And the book's only a fraction of the
truth,--a little Darwinian yeast leavening a lump of theology. But they're
quite right. They can't help it.'

Eleanor looked at Lucy Foster and laughed.

'Dangerous to say those things before Miss Foster.'

'Does Miss Foster know anything about it?'--he said coolly.

Lucy hastily disclaimed any knowledge of Father Benecke and his affairs.

'They're very simple'--said Manisty. 'Father Benecke is a priest, but also
a Professor. He published last year a rather Liberal book--very mildly
liberal--some evolution--some Biblical criticism--just a touch! And a good
deal of protest against the way in which the Jesuits are ruining Catholic
University education in Germany. Lord! more than enough. They put his book
on the Index within a month; he has had a year's grace to submit in; and
now, if the submission is not made within a week or so, he will be first
suspended, and then--excommunicated.'

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