Eleanor Part 42

'Is she?' said Manisty, concerned. 'But she never can stand heat. She will pick up when she gets to England.--But now suppose we grant all my enormities. Then please tell me what I am to do? How am I to appease Eleanor?--and either transform the book, to satisfy Neal,--or else bury it decently? Beastly thing!--as if it were worth one t.i.the of the trouble it has cost her and me. Yet there are some uncommon good things in it too!' he said, with a change of tone.

'Well, if you did bury it,' said Lucy, half laughing, yet trying to pluck up courage to obey the Amba.s.sador,--'what would you do? Go back to England?--and--and to your property?'

'What! has that dear old man been talking to you?' he said with amus.e.m.e.nt.

'I thought as much. He has snubbed my views and me two or three times lately. I don't mind. He is one of the privileged. So the Amba.s.sador thinks I should go home?'

He threw one arm over the back of the seat, and threw her a brilliant hectoring look which led her on.

'Don't people in England think so too?'

'Yes--some of them,' he said considering. 'I have been bombarded with letters lately as to politics, and the situation, and a possible new const.i.tuency. A candid friend says to me this morning, "Hang the Italians!--what do you know about them,--and what do they matter? English people can only be frightened by their own bogies. Come home, for G.o.d's sake! There's a glorious fight coming, and if you're not in it, you'll be a precious fool."'

'I daren't be as candid as that!' said Lucy, her face quivering with suppressed fun.

Their eyes met in a common flash of laughter. Then Manisty fell heavily back against the seat.

'What have I got to go home for?' he said abruptly, his countenance darkening.

Lucy's aspect changed too, instantly. She waited.

Manisty's lower jaw dropped a little. A sombre bitterness veiled the eyes fixed upon the distant vistas of the garden.

'I hate my old house,' he said slowly. 'Its memories are intolerable.

My father was a very eminent person, and had many friends. His children saw nothing of him, and had not much reason to love him. My mother died there--of an illness it is appalling to think of. No, no--not Alice's illness!--not that. And now, Alice,--I should see her ghost at every corner!'

Lucy watched him with fascination. Every note of the singular voice, every movement of the picturesque ungainly form, already spoke to her, poor child, with a significance that bit these pa.s.sing moments into memory, as an etcher's acid bites upon his plate.

'Oh! she will recover!' she said, softly, leaning towards him unconsciously.

'No!--she will never recover,--never! And if she did, she and I have long ceased to be companions and friends. No, Miss Foster, there is nothing to call me home,--except politics. I may set up a lodging in London, of course. But as for playing the country squire--' He laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. 'No,--I shall let the place as soon as I can. Anyway, I shall never return to it--alone!'

He turned upon her suddenly. The tone in which the last word was spoken, the steady ardent look with which it was accompanied, thrilled the hot May air.

A sickening sense of peril, of swift intolerable remorse, rushed upon Lucy.

It gave her strength.

She changed her position, and spoke with perfect self-possession, gathering up her parasol and gloves.

'We really must find the others, Mr. Manisty. They will wonder what has become of us.'

She rose as she spoke. Manisty drew a long breath as he still sat observing her. Her light, cool dignity showed him that he was either not understood--or too well understood. In either case he was checked. He took back his move; not without a secret pleasure that she was not too yielding--too much of the _ingenue_!

'We shall soon discover them,' he said carelessly, relighting his cigarette. 'By the way, I saw what company you were in after lunch! You didn't hear any good of the book or me--there!'

'I liked them all,' she said with spirit. 'They love their country, and they believe in her. Where, Mr. Manisty, did you leave Mr. Neal and Mrs.

Burgoyne?'

'I will show you,' he said, unwillingly. 'They are in a part of the garden you don't know.'

Her eye was bright, a little hostile. She moved resolutely forward, and Manisty followed her. Both were conscious of a hidden amazement. But a minute, since he had spoken that word, looked that look? How strange a thing is human life! He would not let himself think,--talked of he hardly knew what.

'They love their country, you say? Well, I grant you that particular group has pure hands, and isn't plundering their country's vitals like the rest--as far as I know. A set of amiable dreamers, however, they appear to me; fiddling at small reforms, while the foundations are sinking from under them. However, you liked them,--that's enough. Now then, when and how shall we begin our campaign? Where will you go?--what will you see? The crypt of St. Peter's?--that wants a Cardinal's order. The Villa Albani?--closed to the public since the Government laid hands on the Borghese pictures,--but it shall open to you. The great function at the Austrian Emba.s.sy next week with all the Cardinals? Give me your orders,--it will be hard if I can't compa.s.s them!'

But she was silent, and he saw that she still hurried, that her look sought the distance, that her cheek was flushed. Why? What new thing had he said to press--to disturb her? A spark of emotion pa.s.sed through him.

He approached her gently, persuasively, as one might approach a sweet, resisting child--

You'll come? You'll let me make amends?'

'I thought,' said Lucy, uncertainly, 'that you were going home directly--at the beginning of June. Oh! please, Mr. Manisty, will you look? Is that Mrs.

Burgoyne?'

Manisty frowned.

'They are not in that direction.--As to my going home, Miss Foster, I have no engagements that I cannot break.'

The wounded feeling in the voice was unmistakable. It hurt her ear.

'I should love to see all those things,' she said vaguely, still trying, as it seemed to him, to outstrip him, to search the figures in the distance; 'but--but--plans are so difficult. Oh! that is--that is Mr. Neal!'

She began to run towards the approaching figure, and presently Manisty could hear her asking breathlessly for Mrs. Burgoyne.

Manisty stood still. Then as they approached him, he said--

'Neal!--well met! Will you take these ladies to the station, or, at any rate, put them in their cab? It is time for their train. I dine in Rome.'

He raised his hat formally to Lucy, turned, and went his way.

It was night at the villa.

Eleanor was in her room, the western room overlooking the olive-ground and the Campagna, which Lucy had occupied for a short time on her first arrival.

It was about half an hour since Eleanor had heard Manisty's cab arrive, and his voice in the library giving his orders to Alfredo. She and Lucy Foster and Aunt Pattie had already dispersed to their rooms. It was strange that he should have dined in town. It had been expressly arranged on their way to Rome that he should bring them back.

Eleanor was sitting in a low chair beside a table that carried a paraffin lamp. At her back was the window, which was open save for the sun-shutter outside, and the curtains, both of which had been drawn close. A ma.n.u.script diary lay on Eleanor's lap, and she was listlessly turning it over, with eyes that saw nothing, and hands that hardly knew what they touched. Her head, with its aureole of loosened hair, was thrown back against the chair, and the crude lamplight revealed each sharpened feature with a merciless plainness. She was a woman no longer young--ill--and alone.

By the help of the entries before her she had been living the winter over again.

How near and vivid it was,--how incredibly, tangibly near!--and yet as dead as the Caesars on the Palatine.

For instance:--

'November 22. To-day we worked well. Three hours this morning--nearly three this afternoon. The survey of the financial history since 1870 is nearly finished. I could not have held out so long, but for his eagerness, for my head ached, and last night it seemed to me that Rome was all bells, and that the clocks never ceased striking.

'But how his eagerness carries one through, and his frank and generous recognition of all that one does for him! Sometimes I copy and arrange; sometimes he dictates; sometimes I just let him talk till he has got a page or section into shape. Even in this handling of finance, you feel the flame that makes life with him so exciting. It is absurd to say, as his enemies do, that he has no steadiness of purpose. I have seen him go through the most tremendous drudgery the last few weeks,--and then throw it all into shape with the most astonishing ease and rapidity. And he is delightful to work with. He weighs all I say. But no false politeness! If he doesn't like it, he frowns and bites his lip, and tears me to pieces. But very often I prevail, and no one can yield with a better grace. People here talk of his vanity. I don't deny it--perhaps I think it part of his charm.

'He thinks too much of me, far, far too much.