Eleanor Part 24

'No priests allowed? Oh! you will get your priests. You are getting them.

No modern nation can hold together without them.'

They sparred a little longer. Then Lucy's momentary spirit of fight departed. She looked wistfully to see how near they were to Genzano.

Manisty approached her more closely.

'Did my nonsense cheer you--or tire you?' he said in a different voice. 'I only meant it to amuse you, Hark!--did you hear that sound?'

They stopped. Above them, to the right, they saw through the dusk a small farm in a patch of vineyard. A dark figure suddenly hurled itself down a steep path towards them. Other figures followed it--seemed to wrestle with it; there was a confused wailing and crying--the piteous shrill lamenting of a woman's voice.

'Oh, what is it?' cried Lucy, clasping her hands.

Manisty spoke a few sharp words to the man leading the horse. The man stood still and checked his beast. Manisty ran towards the sounds and the dim struggle on the slope above them.

Such a cry! It rent and desolated the evening peace. It seemed to Lucy the voice of an old woman, crossed by other voices--rough, chiding voices of men. Oh, were they ill-treating her? The girl said hurriedly to the man beside her that she would dismount.

'No, no, signorina,' said the man, placidly, raising his hand. 'The signor will be here directly. It happens often, often.'

And almost at the same moment Manisty was beside her again, and the gruesome sounds above were dying away.

'Were you frightened?' he said, with anxiety. 'There was no need. How strange that it should have happened just now! It's a score that _your_ Italy must settle--_mine_ washes her hands of it!' and he explained that what she had heard were the cries of a poor hysterical woman, a small farmer's wife, who had lost both her sons in the Abyssinian war, in the frightful retreat of Adowa, and had never been in her right mind since the news arrived. With the smallest lapse in the vigilance of those about her, she would rush down to the road, and throw herself upon any pa.s.ser-by, imploring them to intercede for her with the Government--that they should give her back her sons--Nino, at least!--Nino, her youngest, and darling.

It was impossible that they should both be dead--impossible! The Holy Virgin would never have suffered it.

'Poor soul!--she tried to cling round my knees--wailing out the candles and prayers she had offered--shrieking something about the "Governo." I helped the sons to carry her in. They were quite gentle to her.'

Lucy turned away her head; and they resumed their march. She governed herself with all her power; but her normal self-control was weakened, and that cry of anguish still haunted her. Some quiet tears fell--she hoped, she believed that they were unseen.

But Manisty perceived them. He gave not the smallest direct sign; he began at once to talk of other things in a quite other vein. But underlying his characteristic whims and sallies she was presently conscious of a new and exquisite gentleness. It seemed to address itself both to her physical fatigue, and to the painful impression of the incident which had just pa.s.sed. Her sudden tears--the tears of a tired child--and his delicate feeling--there arose out of them, as out of their whole journey, a relation, a bond, of which both were conscious, to which she yielded herself in a kind of vague and timid pleasure.

For Manisty--as she sat there, high above him, yet leaning a little towards him--there was something in the general freshness and purity of her presence, both physical and moral, that began most singularly to steal upon his emotions. Certain barriers seemed to be falling, certain secret sympathies emerging, drawn from regions far below their differences of age and race, of national and intellectual habit. How was it she had liked his Palestine book so much? He almost felt as though in some mysterious way he had been talking to her, and she listening, for years,--since first, perhaps, her sweet crude youth began.

Then even his egotism felt the p.r.i.c.k of humour. Five weeks had she been with them at the villa?--and in a fortnight their party was to break up. How profitably indeed he had used his time with her! How civil--how kind--how discerning he had shown himself!

Yet soreness of this kind was soon lost in the surge of this new and unexpected impulse, which brought his youth exultantly back upon him.

A beautiful woman rode beside him, through the Italian evening. With impatience, with an inward and pa.s.sionate repudiation of all other bonds and claims, he threw himself into that mingled process--at once exploring and revealing--which makes the thrill of all the higher relations between men and women, and ends invariably either in love--or tragedy.

They found a carriage waiting for them near the Sforza-Cesarini gate, and in it Mrs. Elliott, Reggie Brooklyn's kind sister. Lucy was taken to a doctor, and the hurt was dressed. By nine o'clock she was once more under the villa-roof. Miss Manisty received her with lamentations and enquiries, that the tottering Lucy was too weary even to hear aright. Amid what seemed to her a babel of tongues and lights and kind concern, she was taken to bed and sleep.

Mrs. Burgoyne did not attend her. She waited in Manisty's library, and when Manisty entered the room she came forward--

'Edward, I have some disagreeable news'--

He stopped abruptly.

'Your sister Alice will be here to-morrow.'

'My sister--Alice?'--he repeated incredulously.

'She telegraphed this morning that she must see you. Aunt Pattie consulted me. The telegram gave no address--merely said that she would come to-morrow for two or three nights.'

Manisty first stared in dismay, then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, began to walk hurriedly to and fro.

'When did this news arrive?'

'This morning, before we started.'

'Eleanor!--_Why_ was I not told?'

'I wanted to save the day,'--the words were spoken in Eleanor's most charming, most musical voice. 'There was no address. You could not have stopped her.'

'I would have managed somehow,'--said Manisty striking his hand on the table beside him in his annoyance and impatience.

Eleanor did not defend herself. She tried to soothe him, to promise him as usual that the dreaded visit should be made easy to him. But he paid little heed. He sat moodily brooding in his chair; and when Eleanor's persuasions ceased, he broke out--

'That poor child!--After to-day's experiences,--to have Alice let loose upon her!--I would have given anything--anything!--that it should not have happened.'

'Miss Foster?' said Eleanor lightly--'oh! she will bear up.'

'There it is!'--said Manisty, in a sudden fury. 'We have all been misjudging her in the most extraordinary way! She is the most sensitive, tender-natured creature--I would not put an ounce more strain upon her for the world.'

His aunt called him, and he went stormily away. Eleanor's smile as she stood looking after him--how pale and strange it was!

CHAPTER IX

'Miss Foster is not getting up? How is she?'

'I believe Aunt Pattie only persuaded her to rest till after breakfast, and that was hard work. Aunt Pattie thought her rather shaken still.'

The speakers were Manisty and Mrs. Burgoyne. Eleanor was sitting in the deep shade of the avenue that ran along the outer edge of the garden.

Through the gnarled trunks to her right shone the blazing stretches of the Campagna, melting into the hot shimmer of the Mediterranean. A new volume of French memoirs, whereof not a page had yet been cut, was lying upon her knee.

Manisty, who had come out to consult with her, leant against the tree beside her. Presently he broke out impetuously:

'Eleanor! we must protect that girl. You know what I mean? You'll help me?'

'What are you afraid of?'

'Good heavens!--I hardly know. But we must keep Alice away from Miss Foster. She mustn't walk with her, or sit with her, or be allowed to worry her in any way. I should be beside myself with alarm if Alice were to take a fancy to her.'

Eleanor hesitated a moment. The slightest flush rose to her cheek, unnoticed in the shadow of her hat.

'You know--if you are in any real anxiety--Miss Foster could go to Florence. She told me yesterday that the Porters have friends there whom she could join.'