Eleanor Part 17

Mrs. Burgoyne took off the hat which had by now replaced the black veil of the morning, and closed her eyes. Her att.i.tude by its sad unresistingness appealed to Lucy as it had done once before. And it was borne in upon her that what she saw was not mere physical fatigue, but a deep discouragement of mind and heart. As to the true sources of it Lucy could only guess. She guessed at any rate that they were somehow connected with Mr. Manisty and his book; and she was indignant again--she hardly knew why. The situation suggested to her a great devotion ill-repaid, a friendship, of which the strong tyrannous man took advantage. Why should he behave as though all that happened ill with regard to his book was somehow Mrs. Burgoyne's fault? Claim all her time and strength--overstrain and overwork her--and then make her tacitly responsible if anything went amiss! It was like the petulant selfishness of his character. Miss Manisty ought to interfere!

Dreary days followed at the Villa.

It appeared that Mr. Vanbrugh Neal had indeed raised certain critical objections both to the facts and to the arguments of one whole section of the book, and that Manisty had been unable to resist them. The two men would walk up and down the ilex avenues of the garden for hours together, Mr. Neal gentle, conciliating, but immovable; Manisty violent and excited, but always submitting in the end. He would defend his point of view with obstinacy, with offensiveness even, for an afternoon, and then give way, with absolute suddenness. Lucy learnt with some astonishment that beneath his outward egotism he was really amazingly dependent on the opinions of two or three people, of whom Mr. Neal seemed to be one. This dependence turned out indeed to be even excessive. He would make a hard fight for his own way; but in the end he was determined that what he wrote should please his friends, and please a certain public. At bottom he was a rhetorician writing for this public--the slave of praise, and eager for fame, which made his complete indifference as to what people thought of his actions all the more remarkable. He lived to please himself; he wrote to be read; and he had found reason to trust the instinct of certain friends in this respect, Vanbrugh Neal among them.

To do him justice, indeed, along with his dependence on Vanbrugh Neal's opinion, there seemed to go a rather winning dependence on his affection.

Mr. Neal was apparently a devout Anglican, of a delicate and scrupulous type. His temper was academic, his life solitary; rhetoric left him unmoved, and violence of statement caused him to shiver. To make the State religious was his dearest wish. But he did not forget that to accomplish it you must keep the Church reasonable. A deep, though generally silent enthusiasm for the Anglican _Via Media_ possessed him; and, like the Newman of Oriel, he was inclined to look upon the appearance of Antichrist as coincident with the Council of Trent. In England it seemed to him that persecution of the Church was gratuitous and inexcusable; for the Church had never wronged the State. In Italy, on the contrary, supposing the State had been violent, it could plead the earlier violences of the Church. He did not see how the ugly facts could be denied; nor did a candid unveiling of them displease his Anglican taste.

'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 superst.i.tion!'

Whereupon a flame in Manisty's black eyes, and a burst in honour of superst.i.tion, 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 embarra.s.sed. And how characteristic and significant was that embarra.s.sment 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.king 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 a.s.sociations. 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 G.o.d-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 embarra.s.sment. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.similating her new frocks, as she had already a.s.similated 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 gla.s.s.

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.'