Eleanor Part 69

'What makes you want to marry her? What possible congruity is there between her and you?'

He laughed uneasily.

'What's the good of asking those things? One's feeling itself is the answer.'

'But I'm the spectator--the friend.'--The word came out slowly, with a strange emphasis. 'I want to know what Lucy's chances are.'

'Chances of what?'

'Chances of happiness.'

'Good G.o.d!'--he said, with an impatient groan.--'You talk as though she were going to give herself any opportunity to find out.'

'Well, let us talk so, for argument. You're not exactly a novice, you know, in these things. How is one to be sure that you're not playing with Lucy--as you played with the book--till you can go back to the play you really like best?'

'What do you mean?' he cried, starting with indignation--'the play of politics?'

'Politics--ambition--what you will. Suppose Lucy finds herself taken up and thrown down--like the book?--when the interest's done?'

She uncovered her eyes, and looked at him steadily, coldly. It was an Eleanor he did not know.

He sprang up in his anger and discomfort, and began to pace again in front of her.

'Oh well--if you think as badly of me as that'--he said fiercely,--'I don't see what good can come of this conversation.'

There was a pause. At the end of it, Eleanor said in another voice:

'Did you ever give her any indication of what you felt--before to-day?'

'I came near--in the Borghese gardens,' he said reluctantly. 'If she had held out the tip of her little finger--But she didn't. And I should have been a fool. It was too soon--too hasty. Anyway, she would not give me the smallest opening. And afterwards--' He paused. His mind pa.s.sed to his night-wandering in the garden, to the strange breaking of the terra-cotta.

Furtively his gaze examined Eleanor's face. But what he saw of it told him nothing, and again his instinct warned him to let sleeping dogs lie.

'Afterwards I thought things over, naturally. And I determined, that night, as I have already said, to come to you and take counsel with you. I saw you were out of charity with me. And, goodness knows, there was not much to be said for me! But at any rate I thought that we, who had been such old friends, had better understand each other; that you'd help me if I asked you. You'd never yet refused, anyway.'

His voice changed. She said nothing for a little, and her hands still made a penthouse for her face.

At last she threw him a question.

'Just now--what happened?'

'Good Heavens, as if I knew!' he said, with a cry of distress. 'I tried to tell her how I had gone up and down Italy, seeking for her, hungering for any shred of news of you. And she?--she treated me like a troublesome intruder, like a dog that follows you unasked and has to be beaten back with your stick!'

Eleanor smiled a little. His heart and his vanity had been stabbed alike.

Certainly he had something to complain of.

She dropped her hands, and drew herself erect.

'Well, yes,' she said in a meditative voice, 'we must think--we must see.'

As she sat there, rapt in a sudden intensity of reflection, the fatal transformation in her was still more plainly visible; Manisty could hardly keep his eyes from her. Was it his fault? His poor, kind Eleanor! He felt the ghastly tribute of it, felt it with impatience, and repulsion. Must a man always measure his words and actions by a foot-rule--lest a woman take him too seriously? He repented; and in the same breath told himself that his penalty was more than his due.

At last Eleanor spoke.

'I must return a moment to what we said before. Lucy Foster's ways, habits, antecedents are wholly different from yours. Suppose there were a chance for you. You would take her to London--expect her to play her part there--in your world. Suppose she failed. How would you get on?'

'Eleanor--really!--am I a "three-tailed bashaw"?'

'No. But you are absorbing--despotic--fastidious. You might break that girl's heart in a thousand ways--before you knew you'd done it. You don't give; you take.'

'And you--hit hard!' he said, under his breath, resuming his walk.

She sat white and motionless, her eyes sparkling. Presently he stood still before her, his features working with emotion.

'If I am incapable of love--and unworthy of hers,' he said in a stifled voice,--'if that's your verdict--if that's what you tell her--I'd better go. I know your power--don't dispute your right to form a judgment--I'll go. The carriage is there. Good-bye.'

She lifted her face to his with a quick gesture.

'She loves you!'--she said, simply.

Manisty fell back, with a cry.

There was a silence. Eleanor's being was flooded with the strangest, most ecstatic sense of deliverance. She had been her own executioner; and this was not death--but life!

She rose. And speaking in her natural voice, with her old smile, she said--'I must go back to her--she will have missed me. Now then--what shall we do next?'

He walked beside her bewildered.

'You have taken my breath away--lifted me from h.e.l.l to Purgatory anyway,'

he said, at last, trying for composure. 'I have no plans for myself--no particular hope--you didn't see and hear her just now! But I leave it all in your hands. What else can I do?'

'No,' she said calmly. 'There is nothing else for you to do.'

He felt a tremor of revolt, so quick and strange was her a.s.sumption of power over both his destiny and Lucy's. But he suppressed it; made no reply.

They turned the corner of the house. 'Your carriage can take me up the hill,' said Eleanor. 'You must ask Father Benecke's hospitality a little longer; and you shall hear from me to-night.'

They walked towards the carriage, which was waiting a hundred yards away. On the way Manisty suddenly said, plunging back into some of the perplexities which had a.s.sailed him before Eleanor's appearance:

'What on earth does Father Benecke know about it all? Why did he never mention that you were here; and then ask me to pay him a visit? Why did he send me up the hill this morning? I had forgotten all about the convent. He made me go.'

Eleanor started; coloured; and pondered a moment.

'We pledged him to secrecy as to his letters. But all priests are Jesuits, aren't they?--even the good ones. I suppose he thought we had quarrelled, and he would force us for our good to make it up. He is very kind--and--rather romantic.'

Manisty said no more. Here, too, he divined mysteries that were best avoided.

They stood beside the carriage. The coachman was on the ground remedying something wrong with the harness.

Suddenly Manisty put out his hand and seized his companion's.