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

before the girl's terrified eyes. The skin was still white and delicate, otherwise they were the hands of a skeleton.

'You can look at _that_,' she said fiercely, under her breath--'and then insult me by refusing to marry the man you love, because you choose to remember that I was once in love with him! It is an outrage to associate such thoughts with me--as though one should make a rival of someone in her shroud. It hurts and tortures me every hour to know that you have such notions in your mind. It holds me back from peace--it chains me down to the flesh, and to earth.'

'Eleanor!' cried the girl in entreaty, catching at her hands. But Eleanor stood firm. 'Tell me,' she said peremptorily--'answer me truly, as one must answer people in my state--you do love him? If I had not been here--if I had not stood in your way--you would have allowed him his chance--you would have married him?

Lucy bent her head upon her knees, forcing herself to composure.

'How can I answer that? I can never think of him, except as having brought pain to you.'

'Yes, dear, you can,' cried Eleanor, throwing herself on her knees and folding the girl in her arms. 'You can! It is no fault of his that I am like this--none--none! The doctor told me this afternoon that the respite last year was only apparent. The mischief has always been there--the end quite certain. All my dreams and disappointments and foolish woman's notions have vanished from me like smoke. There isn't one of them left. What should a woman in my condition do with such things? But what _is_ left is love--for you and him. Oh! not the old love,' she said impatiently--persuading, haranguing herself no less than Lucy--'not an ounce of it! But a love that suffers so--in his suffering and yours! A love that won't let me rest; that is killing me before the time!'

She began to walk wildly up and down. Lucy sprang up, threw on some clothes, and gradually persuaded her to go back to her own room. When she was in bed again, utterly exhausted, Lucy's face--bathed in tears--approached hers:

'Tell me what to do. Have I ever refused you anything?'

* * * * *

The morning broke pure and radiant over the village and the forest. The great slopes of wood were in a deep and misty shadow; the river, shrunk to a thread again, scarcely chattered with its stones. A fresh wind wandered through the trees and over the new-reaped fields.

The Angelus had been rung long ago. There was the bell beginning for Mass. Lucy slipped out into a cool world, already alive with all the primal labours. The children and the mothers and the dogs were up; the peasants among the vines; the men with their peaked hats, the women shrouded from the sun under the heavy folds of their cotton head-gear; turned and smiled as she passed by. They liked the Signorina, and they were accustomed to her early walks.

On the hill she met Father Benecke coming up to Mass. Her cheek reddened, and she stopped to speak to him.

'You are out early, Mademoiselle?'

'It is the only time to walk.'

'Ah! yes--you are right.'

At which a sudden thought made the priest start. He looked down. But this time, he at least was innocent!

'You are coming in to tea with us this afternoon, Father?'

'If Mademoiselle does me the honour to invite me.'

The girl laughed.

'We shall expect you.'

Then she gave him her hand--a shy yet kind look from her beautiful eyes, and went her way. She had forgiven him, and the priest walked on with a cheered mind.

Meanwhile Lucy pushed her way into the fastnesses of the Sassetto. In its very heart she found a green-overgrown spot where the rocks made a sort of natural chair; one great block leaning forward overhead; a flat seat, and mossy arms on either side.

Here she seated herself. The winding path ran above her head. She could be perceived from it, but at this hour what fear of passers by?

She gave herself up to the rush of memory and fear.

She had travelled far in these four months!

'Is this what it always means?--coming to Europe?' she asked herself with a laugh that was not gay, while her fingers pulled at a tuft of hart's-tongue that grew in a crevice beside her.

And then in a flash she looked on into her destiny. She thought of Manisty with a yearning, passionate heart, and yet with a kind of terror; of the rich, incalculable, undisciplined nature, with all its capricious and self-willed power, its fastidious demands, its practical weakness; the man's brilliance and his folly. She envisaged herself laden with the responsibility of being his wife; and it seemed to her beyond her strength. One moment he appeared to her so much above and beyond her that it was ridiculous he should stoop to her. The next she felt, as it were, the weight of his life upon her hands, and told herself that she could not bear it.

And then--and then--it was all very well, but if she had not come--if Eleanor had never seen her--

Her head fell back into a mossy corner of the rock. Her eyes were blind with tears. From the hill came the rumble of an ox-waggon with the shouts of the drivers.

But another sound was nearer; the sound of a man's step upon the path. An exclamation--a leap--and before she could replace the hat she had taken off, or hide the traces of her tears, Manisty was beside her.

She sat up, staring at him in a bewildered silence. He too was silent,--only she saw the labouring of his breath.

But at last--

'I will not force myself upon you,' he said, in a voice haughty and self-restrained, that barely reached her ears. 'I will go at once if you bid me go.'

Then, as she still said nothing, he came nearer.

'You don't send me away?'

She made a little despairing gesture that said, 'I can't!'--but so sadly, that it did not encourage him.

'Lucy!'--he said, trembling--'are you going to take the seal off my lips--to give me my chance at last?'

To that, only the answer of her eyes,--so sweet, so full of sorrow.

He stooped above her, his whole nature torn between love and doubt.

'You hear me,' he said, in low, broken tones--'but you think yourself a traitor to listen?'

'And how could I not?' she cried, with a sudden sob. And then she found her speech; her heart unveiled itself.

'If I had never, never come!--It is my fault that she is dying--only, only my fault!'

And she turned away from him to hide her face and eyes against the rock, in such an agony of feeling that he almost despaired.

He controlled himself sharply, putting aside passion, collecting his thoughts for dear life.

'You are the most innocent, the most true of tender friends. It is in her name that I say to you--Lucy, be kind! Lucy, dare to love me!'

She raised her arm suddenly and pointed to the ground between them.

'There'--she said under her breath, 'I see her there!--lying dead between us!'

He was struck with horror, realising in what a grip this sane and simple nature must feel itself before it could break into such expression. What could he do or say?

He seated himself beside her, he took her hands by force.

'Lucy, I know what you mean. I won't pretend that I don't know. You think that I ought to have married my cousin--that if you had not been there, I should have married her. I might,--not yet, but after some time,--it is quite true that it might have happened. Would it have made Eleanor happy? You saw me at the villa--as I am. You know well, that even as a friend, I constantly disappointed her. There seemed to be a fate upon us which made me torment and wound her when I least intended it. I don't defend myself,--and Heaven knows I don't blame Eleanor! I have always believed that these things are mysterious, predestined--matters of temperament deeper than our will. I was deeply, sincerely attached to Eleanor--yet!--when you came--after those first few weeks--the falsity of the whole position flashed upon me. And there was the book. It seemed to me sometimes that the only way of extricating us all was to destroy the book, and--and--all that it implied--or might have been thought to imply,--' he added hurriedly. 'Oh! you needn't tell me that I was a blundering and selfish fool! We have all got into a horrible coil--and I can't pose before you if I would. But it isn't Eleanor that would hold you back from me, Lucy--it isn't Eleanor!--answer me!--you know that?'

He held her almost roughly, scanning her face in an agony that served him well.

Her lips moved piteously, in words that he could not hear. But her hands lay passive in his grasp; and he hastened on.

'Ever since that Nemi evening, Lucy, I have been a new creature. I will tell you no lies. I won't say that I never loved any woman before you. I will have no secrets from you--you shall know all, if you want to know. But I do say that every passion I ever knew in my first youth seems to me now a mere apprenticeship to loving you! You have become my life--my very heart. If anything is to be made of a fellow like me--it's you that'll give me a chance, Lucy. Oh! my dear--don't turn from me! It's Eleanor's voice speaks in mine--listen to us both!'

Her colour came and went. She swayed towards him, fascinated by his voice, conquered by the mere exhaustion of her long struggle, held in the grasp of that compulsion which Eleanor had laid upon her.

Manisty perceived her weakness; his eyes flamed; his arm closed round her.

'I had an instinct--a vision,' he said, almost in her ear, 'when I set out. The day dawned on me like a day of consecration. The sun was another sun--the earth reborn. I took up my pilgrimage again--looking for Lucy--as I have looked for her the last six weeks. And everything led me right--the breeze and the woods and the birds. They were all in league with me. They pitied me--they told me where Lucy was--'

The low, rushing words ceased a moment. Manisty looked at her, took both her hands again.

'But they couldn't tell me'--he murmured--'how to please her--how to make her kind to me--make her listen to me. Lucy, whom shall I go to for that?'

She turned away her face; her hands released themselves. Manisty hardly breathed till she said, with a trembling mouth, and a little sob now and then between the words--

'It is all so strange to me--so strange and so--so doubtful! If there were only someone here from my own people,--someone who could advise me! Is it wise for you--for us both? You know I'm so different from you--and you'll find it out perhaps, more and more. And if you did--and were discontented with me--I can't be sure that I could always fit myself to you. I was brought up so that--that--I can't always