‘She hasn’t moved, sir. Miss Manisty’s just been to ask, but I told her it’s the best sleep Miss Alice has had this many a day. After all, that stuff do seem to have done her good.’
‘Well, Eleanor—shall we go and look after Miss Foster?’—he said, returning to her.
They entered the garden with cheered countenances. The secret terror of immediate and violent outbreak which had possessed Manisty since the morning subsided; and he drew in the
ponente
with delight.
Suddenly, however, as they turned into the avenue adorned by the battered bust of Domitian, Manisty’s hand went up to his eyes. He stopped; he gave a cry.
‘Good God!’—he said—‘She is there!’
And halfway down the shadowy space, Eleanor saw two figures, one white, the other dark, close together.
She caught Manisty by the arm.
‘Don’t hurry!—don’t excite her!’
As they came nearer, they saw that Lucy was still in the same low chair where Manisty had left her. Her head was thrown back against the cushions, and her face shone deathly white from the rich sun-warmed darkness shed by the over-arching trees. And kneeling beside her, holding both her helpless wrists, bending over her in a kind of passionate, triumphant possession, was Alice Manisty.
At the sound of the steps on the gravel she looked round; and at the sight of her brother, she slowly let fall the hands she held—she slowly rose to her feet. Her tall emaciated form held itself defiantly erect; her eyes flashed hatred.
‘Alice!’—said Manisty, approaching her—‘I have something important to say to you. I have reconsidered our conversation of this morning, and I came to tell you so. Come back with me to the library—and let us go into matters again.’
He spoke with gentleness, controlling her with a kind look. She shivered and hesitated; her eyes wavered. Then she began to say a number of rapid, incoherent things, in an under-voice. Manisty drew her hand within his arm.
‘Come,’ he said, and turned to the house.
She pulled herself angrily away.
‘You are deceiving me,’ she said. ‘I won’t go with you.’
But Manisty captured her again.
‘Yes—we must have our talk,’ he said, with firm cheerfulness; ‘there will be no time to-night.’
She broke into some passionate reproach, speaking in a thick low voice almost inaudible.
He answered it, and she replied. It was a quick dialogue, soothing on his side, wild on hers. Lucy, who had dragged herself from her attitude of mortal languor, sat with both hands grasping her chair, staring at the brother and sister. Eleanor had eyes for none but Manisty. Never had she seen him so adequate, so finely master of himself.
He conquered. Alice dropped her head sullenly, and let herself be led away. Then Eleanor turned to Lucy, and the girl, with a great sob, leant against her dress, and burst into uncontrollable tears.
‘Has she been long here?’ said Eleanor, caressing the black hair.
‘Very nearly an hour, I think. It seemed interminable. She has been telling me of her enemies—her unhappiness—how all her letters are opened—how everybody hates her—especially Mr. Manisty. She was followed at Venice by people who wished to kill her. One night, she says, she got into her gondola, in a dark canal, and found there a man with a dagger who attacked her. She only just escaped. There were many other things,—so—so—horrible!’—said Lucy, covering her eyes. But the next moment she raised them. ‘Surely,’ she said imploringly, ‘surely she is insane?’
Eleanor looked down upon her, mutely nodding.
‘There is a doctor coming to-morrow,’ she said, almost in a whisper.
Lucy shuddered.
‘But we have to get through the night,’ said Eleanor.
‘Oh! at night’—said Lucy—‘if one found her there—beside one—one would die of it! I tried to shake her off just now, several times; but it was impossible.’
She tried to control herself, to complain no more, but she trembled from head to foot. It was evident that she was under some overmastering impression, some overthrow of her own will-power which had unnerved and disorganised her. Eleanor comforted her as best she could.
‘Dalgetty and Edward will take care of her to-night,’—she said. ‘And to-morrow, she will be sent to some special care. How she escaped from her room this afternoon I cannot imagine. We were all three on the watch.’
Lucy said nothing. She clung to Eleanor’s hand, while long shuddering breaths, gradually subsiding, passed through her; like the slow departure of some invading force.
CHAPTER
XI
After Manisty had carried off his sister, Eleanor and Lucy sat together in the garden, talking sometimes, but more often silent, till the sun began to drop towards Ostia and the Mediterranean.
‘You must come in,’ said Eleanor, laying her hand on the girl’s. ‘The chill is beginning.’
Lucy rose, conscious again of the slight giddiness of fever, and they walked towards the house. Half way, Lucy said with sudden, shy energy—
‘I do
wish
I were quite myself! It is I who ought to be helping you through this—and I am just nothing but a worry!’
Eleanor smiled.
‘You distract our thoughts,’ she said. ‘Nothing could have made this visit of Alice’s other than a trial.’
She spoke kindly, but with that subtle lack of response to Lucy’s sympathy which had seemed to spring first into existence on the day of Nemi. Lucy had never felt at ease with her since then, and her heart, in truth, was a little sore. She only knew that something intangible and dividing had arisen between them; and that she felt herself once more the awkward, ignorant girl beside this delicate and high-bred woman, on whose confidence and friendship she had of course no claim whatever. Already she was conscious of a certain touch of shame when she thought of her new dresses and of Mrs. Burgoyne’s share in them. Had she been after all the mere troublesome intruder? Her swimming head and languid spirits left her the prey of these misgivings.
Aunt Pattie met them at the head of the long flight of stone stairs which led from the garden to the first floor. Her finger was on her lip.
‘Will you come through my room?’ she said under her breath. ‘Edward and Alice are in the library.’
So they made a round—every room almost in the apartment communicating with every other—and thus reached Aunt Pattie’s sitting-room and the salon. Lucy sat shivering beside the wood-fire in Aunt Pattie’s room, which Miss Manisty had lit as soon as she set eyes upon her; while the two other ladies murmured to each other in the salon.
The rich wild light from the Campagna flooded the room; the day sank rapidly and a strange hush crept through the apartment. The women working among the olives below had gone home; there were no sounds from the Marinata road; and the crackling of the fire alone broke upon the stillness—except for a sound which emerged steadily as the silence grew. It seemed to be a man’s voice reading. Once it was interrupted by a laugh out of all scale—an ugly, miserable laugh—and Lucy shuddered afresh.
Meanwhile Aunt Pattie was whispering to Eleanor.
‘He was wonderful—quite wonderful! I did not think he could—’
‘He can do anything he pleases. He seems to be reading aloud?’
‘He is reading some poems, my dear, that she wrote at Venice. She gave them to him to look at the day she came. I daresay they’re quite mad, but he’s reading and discussing them as though they were the most important things, and it pleases her,—poor, poor Alice! First, you know, he quieted her very much about the money. I listened at the door sometimes, before you came in. She seems quite reconciled to him.’
‘All the same, I wish this night were over and the doctor here!’ said Eleanor, and Miss Manisty, lifting her hands, assented with all the energy her small person could throw into the gesture.
Lucy, in the course of dressing for dinner, decided that to sit through a meal was beyond her powers, and that she would be least in the way if she went to bed. So she sent a message to Miss Manisty, and was soon lying at ease, with the window opposite her bed opened wide to Monte Cavo and the moonlit lake. The window on her left hand, which looked on the balcony, she herself had closed and fastened with all possible care. And she had satisfied herself that her key was in her door. As soon as Miss Manisty and Eleanor had paid her their good-night visit, she meant to secure herself.
And presently Aunt Pattie came in, to see that she had her soup and had taken her quinine. The little old lady did not talk to Lucy of her niece, nor of the adventure of the afternoon, though she had heard all from Eleanor. Her family pride, as secret as it was intense, could hardly endure this revelation of the family trouble and difficulty to a comparative stranger, much as she liked the stranger. Nevertheless her compunctions on the subject showed visibly. No cares and attentions could be too much for the girl in her charge, who had suffered annoyance at the hands of a Manisty, while her own natural protectors were far away.
‘Benson, my dear, will come and look after you the last thing,’ said the old lady, not without a certain stateliness. ‘You will lock your door—and I hope you will have a very good night.’
Half an hour later came Mrs. Burgoyne. Lucy’s candle was out. A wick floating on oil gave a faint light in one corner of the room. Across the open window a muslin curtain had been drawn, to keep out bats and moths. But the moonlight streamed through, and lay in patches on the brick floor. And in this uncertain illumination Lucy could just see the dark pits of Eleanor’s eyes, the sharp slightness of her form, the dim wreath of hair.
‘You may be quite happy,’ said Eleanor bending over her, and speaking almost in a whisper. ‘She is much quieter. They have given her a stronger sleeping draught and locked all the doors—except the door into Dalgetty’s room. And that is safe, for Dalgetty has drawn her bed right across it. If Alice tries to come through, she must wake her, and Dalgetty is quite strong enough to control her. Besides, Manisty would be there in a moment. So you may be quite, quite at ease.’
Lucy thanked her.
‘And you?’ she said wistfully, feeling for Eleanor’s hand.
Eleanor yielded it for an instant, then withdrew it, and herself.—‘Oh, thank you—I shall sleep excellently. Alice takes no interest, alas! in me! You are sure there is nothing else we can do for you?’ She spoke in a light, guarded voice, that seemed to Lucy to come from a person miles away.
‘Thank you—I have everything.’
‘Benson will bring you milk and lemonade. I shall send Marie the first thing for news of you. You know she sleeps just beyond you, and you have only to cross the dining room to find me. Good-night. Sleep well.’
As Eleanor closed the door behind her, Lucy was conscious of a peculiar sinking of heart. Mrs. Burgoyne had once made all the advances in their friendship. Lucy thought of two or three kisses that formerly had greeted her cheek, to which she had been too shy and startled to respond. Now it seemed to her difficult to imagine that Mrs. Burgoyne had ever caressed her, had ever shown herself so sweet and gay and friendly as in those first weeks when all Lucy’s pleasure at the villa depended upon her. What was wrong?—what had she done?
She lay drooping, her hot face pressed upon her hands, pondering the last few weeks, thoughts and images passing through her brain with a rapidity and an occasional incoherence that was the result of her feverish state. How much she had seen and learnt in these flying days!—it often seemed to her as though her old self had been put off along with her old clothes. She was carried back to the early time when she had just patiently adapted herself to Mr. Manisty’s indifference and neglect, as she might have adapted herself to any other condition of life at the villa. She had made no efforts. It had seemed to her mere good manners to assume that he did not want the trouble of her acquaintance, and be done with it. To her natural American feeling indeed, as the girl of the party, it was strange and disconcerting that her host should not make much of her. But she had soon reconciled herself. After all, what was he to her or she to him?
Then, of a sudden, a whole swarm of incidents and impressions rushed upon memory. The semi-darkness of her room was broken by images, brilliant or tormenting—Mr. Manisty’s mocking look in the Piazza of St. Peter’s—his unkindness to his cousin—his sweetness to his friend—the aspect, now petulant, even childish, and now gracious and commanding beyond any other she had ever known, which he had worn at Nemi. His face, upturned beside her, as she and her horse climbed the steep path; the extraordinary significance, fulness, warmth of the nature behind it; the gradual unveiling of the man’s personality, most human, faulty, self-willed, yet perpetually interesting and challenging, whether to the love or hate of the bystander:—these feelings or judgments about her host pulsed through the girl’s mind with an energy that she was powerless to arrest. They did not make her happy, but they seemed to quicken and intensify all the acts of thinking and living.
At last, however, she succeeded in recapturing herself, in beating back the thoughts which, like troops over-rash on a doubtful field, appeared to be carrying her into the ambushes and strongholds of an enemy. She was impatient and scornful of them. For, crossing all these memories of things, new or exciting, there was a constant sense of something untoward, something infinitely tragic, accompanying them, developing beside them. In this feverish silence it became a nightmare presence filling the room.
What was the truth about Mr. Manisty and his cousin? Lucy searched her own innocent mind and all its new awakening perceptions in vain. The intimacy of the friendship, as she had first seen it; the tone used by Mr. Manisty that afternoon in speaking of Mrs. Burgoyne; the hundred small signs of a deep distress in her, of a new detachment in him—Lucy wandered in darkness as she thought of them, and yet with vague pangs and jarring vibrations of the heart.
Her troubled dream was suddenly broken by a sound. She sprang up trembling. Was it an angry, distant voice? Did it come from the room across the balcony? No!—it was the loud talking of a group of men on the road outside. She shook all over, unable to restrain herself. ‘What would Uncle Ben think of me?’ she said to herself in despair. For Uncle Ben loved calm and self-control in women, and had often praised her for not being flighty and foolish, as he in his bachelor solitude conceived most other young women to be.