Eleanor Part 29

Through the c.h.i.n.k she saw a strange sight. On the step leading from the house to the terrace of the balcony sat Alice Manisty. Her head was thrown back against the wall of the villa, and her hands were clasped upon her knee. Her marvellous hair fell round her shoulders, and a strange illumination, in which a first gleam of dawn mingled with the moonlight, struck upon the white face and white hands emerging from the darkness of her hair and of her loose black dress.

Was she asleep? Lucy, holding back so as not to be seen, peered with held breath. No!--the large eyes were wide open, though it seemed to Lucy that they saw nothing. Minute after minute pa.s.sed. The figure on the terrace sat motionless. There were two statues on either side of her, a pair of battered round-limbed nymphs, glorified by the moonlight into a grace and poetry not theirs by day. They seemed to be looking down upon the woman at their feet in a soft bewilderment--wondering at a creature so little like themselves; while from the terrace came up the scent of the garden, heavy with roses and bedrenched with dew.

Suddenly it seemed to Lucy as though that white face, those intolerable eyes, awoke--turned towards herself, penetrated her room, pursued her. The figure moved, and there was a low sound of words. Her window was in truth inaccessible from the terrace; but in a panic fear, Lucy threw herself on the cas.e.m.e.nt and the shutters, closed them and drew the bolts; as noiselessly as: she could, still not without some noise. Then hurrying to her bed, she threw herself upon it, panting--in a terror she could neither explain nor compose.

CHAPTER X

'My dear lady--there's nothing to be done with her whatever. She will not yield one inch--and I cannot. But one thing at last is clear to me. The mischief has made progress--I fear, great progress.'

Manisty had drawn his cousin into the garden, and they were pacing the avenue. With his last words he turned upon her a grave significant look.

The cause of Alice Manisty's visit, indeed, had turned out to be precisely what Manisty supposed. The sister had come to Marinata in order to persuade her brother, as one of the trustees of her property, to co-operate with her in bestowing some of her money on the French artist, Monsieur Octave Vacherot, to whom, as she calmly avowed, her affections were indissolubly attached, though she did not ever intend to marry him, nor indeed to see much of him in the future. 'I shall never do him the disservice of becoming his wife'--she announced, with her melancholy eyes full upon her brother--'But money is of no use to me. He is young and can employ it.'

Manisty inquired whether the gentleman in question was aware of what she proposed. Alice replied that if money were finally settled upon him he would accept it; whereas his pride did not allow him to receive perpetual small sums at her hands. 'But if I settle a definite sum upon him, he will take it as an endowment of his genius. It would be giving to the public, not to him. His great ideas would get their chance.'

Manisty, in his way as excitable as she, had evidently found it difficult to restrain himself when M. Octave Vacherot's views as to his own value were thus explained to him. Nevertheless he seemed to have shown on the whole a creditable patience, to have argued with his sister, to have even offered her money of his own, for the temporary supply of M. Vacherot's necessities. But all to no avail; and in the end it had come of course to his flatly refusing any help of his to such a scheme, and without it the scheme fell. For their father had been perfectly well aware of his daughter's eccentricities, and had placed her portion, by his will, in the hands of two trustees, of whom her brother was one, without whose consent she could not touch the capital.

'It always seemed to her a monstrous arrangement,' said Manisty, 'and I can see now it galls her to the quick to have to apply to me, in this way. I don't wonder--but I can't help it. The duty's there--worse luck!--and I've got to face it, for my father's sake. Besides, if I were to consent, the other fellow--an old cousin of ours--would never dream of doing it. So what's the good? All the same, it makes me desperately anxious, to see the effect that this opposition of mine produces upon her.'

'I saw yesterday that she must have been crying in the night'--said Eleanor.

Her words evoked some emotion in Manisty.

'She cried in my presence, and I believe she cried most of the night afterwards,'--he said in hasty pain. 'That beast Vacherot!'

'Why doesn't she marry him?'

'For the n.o.blest of reasons!--She knows that her brain is clouded, and she won't let him run the risk.'

Their eyes met in a quick sympathy. She saw that his poetic susceptibility, the romantic and dramatic elements in him were all alive to his sister's case. How critically, sharply perceptive he was--or could be--with regard apparently to everybody in the world--save one! Often--as they talked--her heart stirred in this way, far out of sight, like a fluttering and wounded thing.

'It is the strangest madness'--said Manisty presently--'Many people would say it was only extravagance of imagination unless they knew--what I know.

She told me last night, that she was not one person but two--and the other self was a brother!--not the least like me--who constantly told her what to do, and what not to do. She calls him quite calmly "my brother John"--"my heavenly brother." She says that he often does strange things, things that she does not understand; but that he tells her the most wonderful secrets; and that he is a greater poet than any now living. She says that the first time she perceived him as separate from herself was one day in Venice, when a friend came for her to the hotel. She went out with the friend, or seemed to go out with her--and then suddenly she perceived that she was lying on her bed, and that the other Alice--had been John! He looks just like herself--but for the eyes. The weirdness of her look as she tells these things! But she expresses herself often with an extraordinary poetry. I envy her the words, and the phrases!--It seemed to me once or twice, that she had all sorts of things I wished to have. If one could only be a little mad--one might write good books!'

He turned upon his companion, with a wild brilliance in his own blue eyes, that, taken together with the subject of their conversation and his many points of physical likeness to his sister, sent an uncomfortable thrill through Eleanor. Nevertheless, as she knew well, at the very bottom of Manisty's being, there lay a remarkable fund of ordinary capacity, an invincible sanity in short, which had always so far rescued him in the long run from that element which was extravagance in him, and madness in his sister.

And certainly nothing could have been more reasonable, strong and kind, than his further talk about his sister. He confided to his cousin that his whole opinion of Alice's state had changed; that certain symptoms for which he had been warned to be on the watch had in his judgment appeared; that he had accordingly written to a specialist in Rome, asking him to come and see Alice, without warning, on the following day; and that he hoped to be able to persuade her without too much conflict to accept medical watching and treatment for a time.

'I feel that it is plotting against her,' he said, not without feeling, 'but it has gone too far--she is not safe for herself or others. One of the most anxious things is this night-wandering, which has taken possession of her. Did you hear her last night?'

'Last night?'--said Eleanor, startled.

'I had been warned by Dalgetty,' said Manisty. 'And between three and four I thought I heard sounds somewhere in the direction of the Albano balcony.

So I crept out through the salon into the library. And there, sitting on the step of the gla.s.s pa.s.sage--was Alice--looking as though she were turned to marble--and staring at Miss Foster's room! To my infinite relief I saw that Miss Foster's shutters and windows were fast closed. But I felt I could not leave Alice there. I made a little noise in the library to warn her, and then I came out upon her. She showed no surprise--nor did I. I asked her to come and look at the sunrise striking over the Campagna.

She made no objection, and I took her through my room and the salon to the salon balcony. The sight was marvellous; and first, it gave her pleasure--she said a few things about it with her old grace and power.

Then--in a minute--a veil seemed to fall over her eyes. The possessed, miserable look came back. She remembered that she hated me--that I had thwarted her. Yet I was able to persuade her to go back to her room. I promised that we would have more talk to-day. And when she had safely shut her own door--you know that tiled ante-room, that leads to her room?--I found the key of it, and locked it safely from outside. That's one access to her. The other is through the room in which Dalgetty was sleeping. I'd have given a good deal to warn Dalgetty, but I dared not risk it. She had not heard Alice go out by the ante-room, but she told me the other day the smallest sound in her own room woke her. So I felt tolerably safe, and I went to bed.--Eleanor! do you think that child saw or knew anything of it?'

'Lucy Foster? I noticed nothing.'

The name, even on her own lips, struck Eleanor's aching sense like a sound of fate. It seemed now as if through every conversation she foresaw it--that all talk led up to it.

'She looks unlike herself still, this morning--don't you think?' said Manisty, in disquiet.

'Very possibly she got some chill at Nemi--some slight poison--which will pa.s.s off.'

'Well, now'--he said, after a pause--'how shall we get through the day? I shall have another scene with Alice, I suppose. I don't see how it is to be avoided. Meanwhile--will you keep Miss Foster here?'--he pointed to the garden--'out of the way?'

'I must think of Aunt Pattie, remember,' said Eleanor quickly.

'Ah! dear Aunt Pattie!--but bring her too.--I see perfectly well that Alice has already marked Miss Foster. She has asked me many questions about her.

She feels her innocence and freshness like a magnet, drawing out her own sorrows and grievances. My poor Alice--what a wreck! Could I have done more?--could I?'

He walked on absently, his hands behind his back, his face working painfully.

Eleanor was touched. She did her best to help him throw off his misgivings; she defended him from himself; she promised him her help, not with the old effusion, but still with a cousinly kindness. And his mercurial nature soon pa.s.sed into another mood--a mood of hopefulness that the doctor would set everything right, that Alice would consent to place herself under proper care, that the crisis would end well--and in twenty-four hours.

'Meanwhile for this afternoon?' said Eleanor.

'Oh! we must be guided by circ.u.mstances. We understand each other.--Eleanor!--what a prop, what a help you are!'

She shrank into herself. It was true indeed that she had pa.s.sed through a good many disagreeable hours since Alice Manisty arrived, on her own account; for she had been left in charge several times; and she had a secret terror of madness. Manisty had not given her much thanks till now.

His facile grat.i.tude seemed to her a little tardy. She smiled and put it aside.

Manisty wrestled with his sister again that morning, while the other three ladies, all of them silent and perturbed, worked and read in the garden.

Lucy debated with herself whether she should describe what she had seen the night before. But her instinct was always to make no unnecessary fuss.

What harm was there in sitting out of doors, on an Italian night in May?

She would not add to the others' anxieties. Moreover she felt a curious slackness and shrinking from exertion--even the exertion of talking. As Eleanor had divined, she had caught a slight chill at Nemi, and the effects of it were malarious, in the Italian way. She was conscious of a little s.h.i.+veriness and languor, and of a wish to lie or sit quite still. But Aunt Pattie was administering quinine, and keeping a motherly eye upon her.

There was nothing, according to her, to be alarmed about.

At the end of a couple of hours, Manisty came out from his study much discomposed. Alice Manisty shut herself up in her room, and Manisty summoned Eleanor to walk up and down a distant path with him.

When luncheon came Alice Manisty did not appear. Dalgetty brought a message excusing her, to which Manisty listened in silence.

Aunt Pattie slipped out to see that the visitor had everything she required. But she returned almost instantly, her little parchment face quivering with nervousness.

'Alice would not see me,' she said to Manisty.

'We must leave her alone,' he said quickly. 'Dalgetty will look after her.'

The meal pa.s.sed under a cloud of anxiety. For once Manisty exerted himself to make talk, but not with much success.

As the ladies left the dining-room, he detained Lucy.

'Would it be too hot for you in the garden now? Would you mind returning there?'