He gathered a spray of oleander that grew near him, and laid it on her hand, like a caress. Eleanor"s emaciated fingers closed upon it gently. She looked up, smiling. The Contessa abruptly turned away.
"And besides--" said Manisty.
He puffed away steadily, with his gaze on the mountains.
"I wait," said the Contessa.
"Your Italy is a witch," he said, with a sudden lifting of eyes and voice, "and there are too many people that love her!"
Lucy bent a little lower over her work.
Presently the Contessa went away.
Eleanor lay with eyes closed and hands crossed, very white and still. They thought her asleep, for it was common with her now to fall into short sleeps of pure exhaustion. When they occurred, those near her kept tender and generally silent watch, joining hands of protection, as it were, round her growing feebleness.
After a few minutes, however, Manisty bent across towards Lucy.
"You urged me once to finish the book. But it was she who told me the other day she was thankful it had been dropped."
He looked at her with the half irritable, half sensitive expression that she knew so well.
"Of course," said Lucy, hurriedly. "It was much best."
She rose and stooped over Eleanor.
"Dear!--It is getting late. I think I ought to call the carriage."
"Let me," said Manisty, biting his lip.
"Thank you," said Lucy, formally. "The coachman understood we should want him at seven."
When he came back, Lucy went into the house to fetch some wraps.
Eleanor opened her eyes, which were singularly animated and smiling.
"Listen!"
He stooped.
"Be angry!" she said, laying a light grasp on his arm. "Be quite angry.
Now--you may! It will do no harm."
He sat beside her, his head bent; gloomily listening, till Lucy reappeared.
But he took the hint, calling to his aid all his pride, and all his singular power of playing any role in his own drama that he might desire to play. He played it with energy, with desperation, counting meanwhile each hour as it pa.s.sed, having in view always that approaching moment in London when Lucy would disappear within the doors of the Porters" house, leaving the butler to meet the demands of unwelcome visitors with such equivalents of "Not at home" as her Puritan scruples might allow; till the newspapers should announce the safe sailing of her steamer for New York.
He ceased to propitiate her; he dropped embarra.s.sment. He ignored her. He became the man of the world and of affairs, whose European interests and relations are not within the ken of raw young ladies from Vermont. He had never been more brilliant, more interesting, more agreeable, for Eleanor, for the Contessa, for Benecke; for all the world, save one. He described his wanderings among the Calabrian highlands. He drew the peasants, the priests, the great landowners of the south still surrounded with their semi-feudal state; he made Eleanor laugh or shudder with his tales of the brigandage of the sixties; he talked as the artist and the scholar may of the Greek memories and remains of the Tarentine coast. Then he turned to English politics, to his own chances, and the humours of his correspondence. The Contessa ceased to quarrel with him. The handsome Englishman with the colour of a t.i.tian, and the features of an antique, with his eloquence, his petulance, his conceit, his charm, filled the stage, quickened the dull hours whenever he appeared. Eleanor"s tragedy explained itself. The elder woman understood and pitied. As for Lucy Foster, the Contessa"s shrewd eyes watched her with a new respect. At what stage, in truth, was the play, and how would it end?
Meanwhile for Lucy Foster alone, Manisty was not agreeable. He rose formally when she appeared; he placed her chair; he paid her all necessary courtesies. But his conversation never included her. Her coming generally coincided--after she was ceremoniously provided for--with an outbreak of talk between him and Eleanor, or between him and Benecke, more eager, animated and interesting than before. But Lucy had no part in it. It was not the early neglect and incivility of the villa; it was something infinitely colder and more wounding; the frigidity of disillusion and resentment, of kindness rebuffed and withdrawn.
Lucy said nothing. She went about her day"s work as usual, making all arrangements for their departure, devoting herself to Eleanor. Every now and then she was forced to consult with Manisty as to arrangements for the journey. They spoke as mere acquaintances and no more than was necessary; while she, when she was alone, would spend much time in a silent abstraction, thinking of her uncle, of the duties to which she was returning, and the lines of her future life. Perhaps in the winter she might do some teaching. Several people in Greyridge had said they would employ her.
And, all the time, during the night hours when she was thus wrestling down her heart, Manisty was often pacing the forest paths, in an orgie of smoke and misery, cursing the incidents of the day, raging, doubting, suffering--as no woman had yet made him suffer. The more truly he despaired, the more he desired her. The strength of the moral life in her was a revelation, a challenge to all the forces of his own being. He was not accustomed to have to consider such things in women. It added to her a wealth, a rarity, which made the conquest of her the only object worth pursuing in a life swept bare for the moment of all other pa.s.sions and zests. She loved him! Eleanor knew it; Eleanor declared it. Yet in ten days" time she would say,--"Good bye, Mr. Manisty"--with that calm brow which he already foresaw as an outrage and offence to love. Ah! for some means to cloud those dear eyes--to make her weep, and let him see the tears!
CHAPTER XXV
"Hullo, Manisty!--is that you? Is this the place?"
The speaker was Reggie Brooklyn, who was dismounting from his bicycle at the door of the convent, followed by a clattering mob of village children, who had pursued him down the hill.
"I say, what a weird place!" said Reggie, looking about him,--"and at the other end of nowhere. What on earth made Eleanor come here?"
Ho looked at Manisty in perplexity, wiping the perspiration from his brow, which frowned beneath his fair curls.
"We were here last year," said Manisty, "on that little tour we made with the D."s. Eleanor liked it then. She came here when the heat began, she thought it would be cool."
"You didn"t know where she was ten days ago," said the boy, looking at him queerly. "And General Muir didn"t know, for I heard from some one who had seen him last week."
Manisty laughed.
"All the same, she is here now," he said drily.
"And Miss Foster is here too?"
Manisty nodded.
"And you say that Eleanor is ill?"
The young man had still the same hostile, suspicious air.
Manisty, who had been poking at the ground with his stick, looked up.
Brooklyn made a step backward.
"_Very_ ill," he said, with a face of consternation. "And n.o.body knew?"
"She would not let us know," said Manisty slowly. Then he added, with the authority of the older man, the man in charge--"now we are doing all we can. We start on Friday and pick up a nurse at Genoa. When we get home, of course she will have the best advice. Very often she is wonderfully bright and like herself. Oh! we shall pull her round. But you mustn"t tire her.
Don"t stay too long."
They walked into the convent together, Brooklyn all impatience, Manisty moody and ill at ease.
"Reggie!--well met!" It was Eleanor"s gayest voice, from the vine-leafed shadows of the _loggia_. Brooklyn sat down beside her, gazing at her with his troubled blue eyes. Manisty descended to the walled garden, and walked up and down there smoking, a prey to disagreeable thoughts.
After half an hour or so Reggie came down to the convent gate to look out for the ricketty diligence which had undertaken to bring his bag from Orvieto.
Here he was overtaken by Lucy Foster, who seemed to have hurried after him.