Eleanor by Mrs. Humphry Ward (short novels to read txt) 📖

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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