Eleanor Part 67

Lucy mounted the hill with a slow and tired step. Her eyes were on the ground. The whole young form drooped under the heat, and under a weight of thought still more oppressive. As it came nearer a wave of sadness seemed to come with it, dimming the suns.h.i.+ne and the green splendour of the woods.

As she pa.s.sed momentarily out of sight behind some trees that sheltered the gate of the courtyard, Mrs. Burgoyne crossed the _loggia_, and called to her maid.

'Marie--be so good as to tell Miss Foster when she comes in that I have gone out; that she is not to trouble about me, as I shall soon return; and tell her also that I felt unusually well and strong.'

Then she turned and beckoned to Father Benecke.

'This way, Father, please!'

And she led him down the little stair that had taken Lucy to the garden the night before. At the foot of the stairs she paused. The wall of the garden divided them from the courtyard, and on the other side of it they could hear Lucy speaking to the _ma.s.saja_.

'Now!' said Eleanor, 'quick I--before she discovers us!'

And opening the garden door with the priest's help she pa.s.sed into the field, and took a wide circuit to the right so as to be out of view of the _loggia_.

'Dear madame, where are you going?' said the priest in some alarm. 'This is too fatiguing for you.'

Eleanor took no notice. She, who for days had scarcely dragged one languid foot after another, sped through the heat and over the broken ground like one of the goldfinches in the convent garden. The old priest followed her with difficulty. Nor did she pause till they were in the middle of the Sa.s.setto.

'Explain what we are doing!' he implored her, as she allowed him to press his old limbs for a moment on his stick, and take breath.

She, too, leant against a tree panting.

'You said, Father, that Mr. Manisty was to leave you at midday.'

'And you wish to see him?' he cried.

'I am determined to see him,' she said in a low voice, biting her lip.

And again she was off, a gleam of whiteness gliding down, down, through the cool green heart of the Sa.s.setto, towards the Paglia.

They emerged upon the fringe of the wood, where amid scrub and sapling trees stood the little sun-baked house.

From the distance came a sound of wheels--a carriage from Selvapendente crossing the bridge over the Paglia?

Mrs. Burgoyne looked at the house for a moment in silence. Then, sheltered under her large white parasol, she pa.s.sed round to the side that fronted the river.

There, in the shade, sat Manisty, his arms upon his knees, his head buried in his hands.

He did not at first hear Mrs. Burgoyne's step, and she paused a little way off. She was alone. The priest had not followed her.

At last, as she moved, either the sound of her dress or the noise of the approaching wheels roused him. He looked up--started--sprang to his feet.

'Eleanor!--'

They met. Their eyes crossed. She s.h.i.+vered, for there were tears in his.

But through that dimness there shone the fierce unspoken question that had leapt to them at the sight of his cousin--

'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?'

CHAPTER XXIII

Eleanor was the first to break the silence.

'You have had a long pilgrimage to find us,' she said quietly. 'Yet perhaps Torre Amiata might have occurred to you. It was you that praised it--that proposed to find quarters at the convent.'

He stared at her in amazement.

'Eleanor--in G.o.d's name!' he broke out violently, 'tell me what this all means! What has been the meaning of this mad--this extraordinary behaviour?'

She tottered a little and leant against the wall of the house.

'Find me a chair, please, before we begin to talk. And--is that your fly?

Send it away--to wait under the trees. It can take me up the hill, when we have finished.'

He controlled himself with difficulty and went round the house.

She pressed her hands upon her eyes to shut out the memory of his face.

'She has refused him!' she said to herself; 'and--what is more--she has made him believe it!'

Very soon his step was heard returning. The woman he had left in the shade listened for it, as though in all this landscape of rus.h.i.+ng river and murmuring wood it the one audible, significant sound. But when he came back to her again, he saw nothing but a composed, expectant Eleanor; dressed, in these wilds, with a dainty care which would have done honour to London or Paris, with a bright colour in her cheeks, and the quiver of a smile on her lips. Ill! He thought he had seldom seen her look so well. Had she not always been of a thistle-down lightness? 'Exaggeration!--absurdity!' he said to himself fiercely, carrying his mind back to certain sayings in a girl's voice that were still ringing in his ears.

He, however, was in no mood to smile. Eleanor had thrown herself sideways on the chair he had brought her; her arms resting on the back of it, her delicate hands hanging down. It was a graceful and characteristic att.i.tude, and it seemed to him affectation--a piece of her fine-ladyism.

She instantly perceived that he was in a state of such profound and pa.s.sionate excitement that it was difficult for him to speak.

So she began, with a calmness which exasperated him:

'You asked me, Edward, to explain our escapade?'

He raised his burning eyes.

'What can you explain?--how can you explain?' he said roughly. 'Are you going to tell me why my cousin and comrade hates me and plots against me?--why she has inflicted this slight and outrage upon me--why, finally, she has poisoned against me the heart of the woman I love?'

He saw her shrink. Did a cruel and secret instinct in him rejoice? He was mad with rage and misery, and he was incapable of concealing it.

She knew it. As he dropped his head again in an angry stare at the gra.s.s between them, she was conscious of a sudden childish instinct to put out her hand and stroke the black curls and the great broad shoulders. He was not for her; but, in the old days, who had known so well as she how to soothe, manage, control him?

'I can't tell you those things--certainly,' she said, after a pause. 'I can't describe what doesn't exist.'

And to herself she cried: 'Oh! I shall lie--lie--lie--like a fiend, if I must!'

'What doesn't exist'?' he repeated scornfully. 'Will you listen to my version of what has happened--the barest, unadorned tale? I was your host and Miss Foster's. I had begun to show the attraction that Miss Foster had for me, to offer her the most trifling, the most ordinary attention. From the moment I was first conscious of my own feeling, I knew that you were against me--that you were influencing--Lucy'--the name dropped from his lips in a mingled anguish and adoration--'against me. And just as I was beginning to understand my own heart--to look forward to two or three last precious weeks in which to make, if I could, a better impression upon her, after my abominable rudeness at the beginning--_you_ interfered--you, my best friend! Without a word our party is broken up; my chance is s.n.a.t.c.hed from me; Miss Foster is spirited away. You and she disappear, and you leave me to bear my affront--the outrage done me--as best I may. You alarm, you distress all your friends. Your father takes things calmly, I admit. But even he has been anxious. Aunt Pattie has been miserable. As for me--'