Eleanor (32 page)

He bowed low, smiling fatuously, with his hand on his heart. He was one of the most learned men in the world. But about that he cared nothing. The one reputation he desired was that of a ‘sad dog’—a terrible man with the ladies. That was the paradox of his existence.

Eleanor laughed mechanically; then she turned to Lucy.

‘Come!’ she said in the girl’s ear, and as they walked away she half closed her eyes against the sun, and Lucy thought she heard a gasp of fatigue. But she spoke lightly.

‘Dear, foolish, old man! he was telling me how he had gone back to the Hermitage Library at St. Petersburg the other day to read, after thirty years. And there in a book that had not been taken down since he had used it last he found a leaf of paper and some pencil words scribbled on it by him when he was a youth—“my own darling.” “And if I only knew now
vich
darling!” he said, looking at me and slapping his knee. “Vich darling”!’ Eleanor repeated, laughing extravagantly. Then suddenly she wavered. Lucy instinctively caught her by the arm, and Eleanor lent heavily upon her.

‘Dear Mrs. Burgoyne—you are not well,’ cried the girl, terrified. ‘Let us go to a hotel where you can rest till the train goes—or to some friend.’

Eleanor’s face set in the effort to control herself—she drew her hand across her eyes. ‘No, no, I am well,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘It is the sun—and I could not eat at luncheon. The Ambassador’s new cook did not tempt me. And besides’—she suddenly threw a look at Lucy before which Lucy shrank—‘I am out of love with myself. There is one hour yesterday which I wish to cancel—to take back. I give up everything—everything.’

They were advancing across a wide lawn. The Ambassador and Mrs. Swetenham were coming to meet them. The Ambassador, weary of his companion, was looking with pleasure at the two approaching figures, at the sweep of Eleanor’s white dress upon the grass, and the frame made by her black lace parasol for the delicacy of her head and neck.

Meanwhile Eleanor and Lucy saw only each other. The girl coloured proudly. She drew herself erect.

‘You cannot give up—what would not be taken—what is not desired,’ she said fiercely. Then, in another voice: ‘But please, please let me take care of you! Don’t let us go to the Villa Borghese!’

She felt her hand pressed passionately, then dropped.

‘I am all right,’ said Eleanor, almost in her usual voice. ‘
Eccellenza
! we must bid you good-bye—have you seen our gentleman?’

‘
Ecco
,’ said the Ambassador, pointing to Manisty, who, in company with the American Monsignore, was now approaching them. ‘Let him take you out of the sun at once—you look as though it were too much for you.’

Manisty, however, came up slowly, in talk with his companion. The frowning impatience of his aspect attracted the attention of the group round the Ambassador. As he reached them, he said to the priest beside him—

‘You know that he has withdrawn his recantation?’

‘Ah! yes’—said the Monsignore, raising his eyebrows, ‘poor fellow!’—

The mingled indifference and compassion of the tone made the words bite. Manisty flushed.

‘I hear he was promised consideration,’ he said quickly.

‘Then he got it,’ was the priest’s smiling reply.

‘He was told that his letter was not for publication. Next morning it appeared in the
Osservatore Romano
.’

‘Oh no
Your facts are incorrect.’

The Monsignore laughed, in unperturbed good humour. But after the laugh, the face reappeared, hard and a little menacing, like a rock that has been masked by a wave. He watched Manisty for a moment silently.

‘Where is he?’ said Manisty abruptly.

‘Are you talking of Father Benecke’?’ said the Ambassador. ‘I heard of him yesterday. He has gone into the country, but he gave me no address. He wished to be undisturbed.’

‘A wise resolve’—said the Monsignore, holding out his hand. ‘Your Excellency must excuse me. I have an audience of his Holiness at three o’clock.’

He made his farewells to the ladies with Irish effusion, and departed. The Ambassador looked curiously at Manisty. Then he fell back with Lucy.

‘It will be a column to-night,’ he said with depression. ‘Why didn’t you stand by me? I showed Mrs. Swetenham my pictures—my beauties—my ewe-lambs—that I have been gathering for twenty years—that the National Gallery shall have, when I’m gone, if it behaves itself. And she asked me if they were originals, and took my Luini for a Raphael! Yes! it will be a column,’ said the Ambassador pensively. Then, with a brisk change, he looked up and took the hand that Lucy offered him.

‘Good-bye—good-bye! You won’t forget my prescription?—nor me?’ said the old man, smiling and patting her hand kindly. ‘And remember!’—he bent towards her, dropping his voice with an air in which authority and sweetness mingled—‘send Mr. Manisty home!’

He felt the sudden start in the girl’s hand before he dropped it. Then he turned to Manisty himself.

‘Ah! Manisty, here you are. Your ladies want to leave us.’

Manisty made his farewells, and carried Lucy off. But as they walked towards the house he said not a word, and Lucy, venturing a look at him, saw the storm on his brow, the stiffness of the lips.

‘We are going to the Villa Borghese, are we not?’ she said timidly—‘if Mrs. Burgoyne ought to go?’

‘We must go somewhere, I suppose,’ he said, stalking on before her. ‘We can’t sit in the street.’

CHAPTER
XIV

The party returning to Marinata had two hours to spend in the gallery and garden of the Villa Borghese. Of the pictures and statues of the palace, of the green undulations, the stone pines, the
tempietti
of the garden, Lucy afterwards had no recollection. All that she remembered was flight on her part, pursuit on Manisty’s, and finally a man triumphant and a girl brought to bay.

It was in a shady corner of the vast garden, where hedges of some fragrant yellow shrub shut in the basin of a fountain, surrounded by a ring of languid nymphs, that Lucy at last found herself face to face with Manisty, and knew that she must submit.

‘I do not understand how I have missed Mrs. Burgoyne,’ she said hastily, looking round for her companion Mrs. Elliot, who had just left her to overtake her brother and go home; while Lucy was to meet Eleanor and Mr. Neal at this rendezvous.

Manisty looked at her with his most sparkling, most determined air.

‘You have missed her—because I have misled her.’ Then, as Lucy drew back, he hurried on,—‘I cannot understand, Miss Foster, why it is that you have constantly refused all yesterday evening—all to-day—to give me the opportunity I desired! But I, too, have a will,—and it has been roused!

‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucy, growing white.

‘Let me explain, then,’ said Manisty, coolly. ‘Miss Foster, two nights ago you were attacked,—in danger—under my roof, in my care. As your host, you owe it to me, to let me account and apologise for such things—if I can. But you avoid me. You give me no chance of telling you what I had done to protect you—of expressing my infinite sorrow and regret. I can only imagine that you resent our negligence too deeply even to speak of it—that you cannot forgive us!’

‘Forgive!’ cried Lucy, fairly taken aback. ‘What could I have to forgive, Mr. Manisty?—what can you mean?’

‘Explain to me then,’ said he, unflinching, ‘why you have never had a kind word for me, or a kind look, since this happened. Please sit down, Miss Foster’—he pointed to a marble bench close beside her—‘I will stand here. The others are far away. Ten minutes you owe me—ten minutes I claim.’

Lucy sat down, struggling to maintain her dignity and presence of mind.

‘I am afraid I have given you very wrong ideas of me,’ she said, throwing him a timid smile. ‘I of course have nothing to forgive anybody—far, far the contrary. I know that you took all possible pains that no harm should happen to me. And through you—no harm did happen to me.’

She turned away her head, speaking with difficulty. To both that moment of frenzied struggle at the dining-room door was almost too horrible for remembrance. And through both minds there swept once more the thrill of her call to him—of his rush to her aid.

‘You knew’—he said eagerly, coming closer.

‘I knew—I was in danger—that but for you—perhaps—your poor sister—’

‘Oh! don’t speak of it,’ he said, shuddering.

And leaning over the edge of one of the nymphs’ pedestals, beside her, he stared silently into the cool green water.

‘There,’ said Lucy tremulously, ‘you don’t want to speak of it. And that was my feeling. Why should we speak of it any more? It must be such a horrible grief to you. And I can’t do anything to help you and Miss Manisty. It would be so different if I could.’

‘You can,—you must—let me tell you what I had done for your safety that night,’ he said firmly, interrupting her. ‘I had made such arrangements with Dalgetty—who is a strong woman physically—I had so imprisoned my poor sister, that I could not imagine any harm coming to you or any other of our party. When my aunt said to me that night before she went to bed that she was afraid your door was unsafe, I laughed—“That doesn’t matter!” I said to her. I felt quite confident. I sat up all night,—but I was not anxious,—and I suppose it was that which at last betrayed me into sleep. Of course, the fatal thing was that we none of us knew of the chloroform she had hidden away.’

Lucy fidgetted in distress.

‘Please—please—don’t talk as though anyone were to blame—as though there were anything to make excuses for—’.

‘How should there not be? You were disturbed—attacked—frightened. You might—’

He drew in his breath. Then he bent over her.

‘Tell me,’ he said in a low voice, ‘did she attack you in your room?’

Lucy hesitated. ‘Why will you talk about it?’ she said despairingly.

‘I have a right to know.’

His urgent imperious look left her no choice. She felt his will, and yielded. In very simple words, faltering yet restrained, she told the whole story. Manisty followed every word with breathless attention.

‘My God!’ he said, when she paused, ‘my God!’ And he hid his eyes with his hand a moment. Then—

‘You knew she had a weapon?’ he said.

‘I supposed so,’ she said quietly. ‘All the time she was in my room, she kept her poor hand closed on something.’

‘Her poor hand!’—the little phrase seemed to Manisty extraordinarily touching. There was a moment’s pause—then he broke out:

‘Upon my word, this has been a fine ending to the whole business. Miss Foster, when you came out to stay with us, you imagined, I suppose, that you were coming to stay with friends? You didn’t know much of us; but after the kindness my aunt and I had experienced from your friends and kinsfolk in Boston—to put it in the crudest way—you might have expected at least that we should welcome you warmly—do all we could for you—take you everywhere—show you everything?’

Lucy coloured—then laughed.

‘I don’t know in the least what you mean, Mr. Manisty! I knew you would be kind to me; and of course—of course—you have been!’

She looked in distress first at the little path leading from the fountain, by which he barred her exit, and then at him. She seemed to implore, either that he would let her go, or that he would talk of something else.

‘Not I,’ he said with decision. ‘I admit that since Alice appeared on the scene you have been my chief anxiety. But before that, I treated you, Miss Foster, with a discourtesy, a forgetfulness, that you can’t, that you oughtn’t to forget; I made no plans for your amusement; I gave you none of my time. On your first visit to Rome, I let you mope away day after day in that stifling garden, without taking a single thought for you. I even grudged it when Mrs. Burgoyne looked after you. To be quite, quite frank, I grudged your coming to us at all. Yet I was your host—you were in my care—I had invited you. If there ever was an ungentlemanly boor, it was I. There! Miss Foster, there is my confession. Can you forgive it? Will you give me another chance?’

He stood over her, his broad chest heaving with an agitation that, do what she would, communicated itself to her. She could not help it. She put out her hand, with a sweet look, half smiling, half appealing—and he took it. Then, as she hurriedly withdrew it, she repeated:

‘There is nothing—nothing—to forgive. You have
all
been good to me. And as for Mrs. Burgoyne and Aunt Pattie, they have been just angels!’

Manisty laughed.

‘I don’t grudge them their wings. But I should like to grow a pair of my own. You have a fortnight more with us—isn’t it so?’ Lucy started and looked down. ‘Well, in a fortnight, Miss Foster, I could yet redeem myself; I could make your visit really worth while. It is hot, but we could get round the heat. I have many opportunities here—friends who have the keys of things not generally seen. Trust yourself to me. Take me for a guide, a professor, a courier! At last I will give you a good time!’

He smiled upon her eagerly, impetuously. It was like him, this plan for mending all past errors in a moment, for a summary and energetic repentance. She could hardly help laughing; yet far within her heart made a leap towards him—beaten back at once by its own sad knowledge.