'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'—saidEleanor.
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 noblest 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 glass passage—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?' saidManisty, in disquiet.
'Very possibly she got some chill at Nemi—some slight poison—which will pass 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 passed 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 circumstances. We understand each other.—Eleanor!—what a prop, what a help you are!'
She shrank into herself. It was true indeed that she had passed 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 gratitude 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 shiveriness 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 passed 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?'
Lucy fetched her hat. There was only one short stretch of sun-beaten path to cross, and then, beyond, one entered upon the deep shade of the ilexes, already penetrated, at the turn of the day, by the first breaths of the sea-wind from the west. Manisty carried her books, and arranged a chair for her. Then he looked round to see if any one was near. Yes. Two gardeners were cutting the grass in the central zone of the garden—well within call.
'My aunt, or Mrs. Burgoyne will follow you very shortly,' he said 'You do not mind being alone?'
'Please, don't think of me!' cried Lucy. 'I am afraid I am in your way.'
'It will be all right to-morrow,' he said, following his own thoughts. 'MayI ask that you will stay here for the present?'
Lucy promised, and he went.
She was left to think first, to think many times, of the constant courtesy and kindness which had now wholly driven from her mind the memory of his first manner to her; then to ponder, with a growing fascination which her own state of slight fever and the sultry heat of the day seemed to make it impossible for her to throw off, on Alice Manisty, on the incident of the night before, and on the meaning of the poor lady's state and behaviour. She had taken Mrs. Burgoyne's word of 'mad' in a general sense, as meaning eccentricity and temper. But surely they were gravely anxious—and everything was most strange and mysterious. The memory of the white staring face under the moonlight appalled her. She tried not to think of it; but it haunted her.
Her nerves were not in their normal state; and as she sat there in the cool, dark, vague, paralysing fears swept across her, of which she was ashamed, One minute she longed to go back to them, and help them. The next, she recognised that the best help she could give was to stay where she was. She saw very well that she was a responsibility and a care to them.
'If it lasts, I must go away'—she said to herself firmly. 'Certainly I must go.'
But at the thought of going, the tears came into her eyes. At most, there was little more than a fortnight before the party broke up, and she went with Aunt Pattie to Vallombrosa.
She took up the book upon her knee. It was a fine poem in Roman dialect, on the immortal retreat of Garibaldi after '49. But after a few lines, she let it drop again, listlessly. One of the motives which had entered into her reading of these things—a constant heat of antagonism and of protest—seemed to have gone out of her.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Aunt Pattie, Eleanor and Manisty held conclave in Aunt Pattie's sitting-room, which was a little room at the south-western corner of the apartment. It opened out of the salon, and overlooked the Campagna.
On the north-eastern side, Dalgetty, Alice Manisty's maid, sat sewing in a passage-room, which commanded the entrance to the glass passage—her own door—the door of the ante-room that Manisty had spoken of to Eleanor, and close beside her a third door—which was half open—communicating with Manisty's library. The glass passage, or conservatory, led directly to the staircase and the garden, past the French windows of the library.
Dalgetty was a person of middle age, a strongly made Scotchwoman with a high forehead and fashionable rolls of sandy hair. Her face was thin and freckled, and one might have questioned whether its expression was shrewd, or self-important. She was clearly thinking of other matters than needlework. Her eyes travelled constantly to one or other of the doors in sight; and her lips had the pinched tension that shows preoccupation.
Her mind indeed harboured a good many disagreeable thoughts. In the first place she was pondering the qualities of a certain drug lately recommended as a sedative to her mistress. It seemed to Dalgetty that its effect had not been good, but evil; or rather that it acted capriciously, exciting as often as it soothed. Yet Miss Alice would take it. On coming to her room after her interview with her brother, she had fallen first into a long fit of weeping, and then, after much restless pacing to and fro, she had put her hands to her head in a kind of despair, and had bidden Dalgetty give her the new medicine. 'I must lie down and sleep—sleep!'—she had said, 'or—'
And then she had paused, looking at Dalgetty with an aspect so piteous and wild that the maid's heart had quaked within her. Nevertheless she had tried to keep the new medicine away from her mistress. But Miss Alice had shown such uncontrollable anger on being crossed, that there was nothing for it but to yield. And as all was quiet in her room, Dalgetty hoped that this time the medicine would prove to be a friend, and not a foe, and that the poor lady would wake up calmer and less distraught.
She was certainly worse—much worse. The maid guessed at Mr. Manisty's opinion; she divined the approach of some important step. Very likely she would soon be separated from her mistress; and the thought depressed her. Not only because she had an affection for her poor charge; but also because she was a rather lazy and self-indulgent woman. Miss Alice had been very trying certainly; but she was not exacting in the way of late hours and needlework; she had plenty of money, and she liked moving about. All these qualities suited the tastes of the maid, who knew that she would not easily obtain another post so much to her mind.
The electric bell on the outer landing rang. Alfredo admitted the caller, and Dalgetty presently perceived a tall priest standing in the library. He was an old man with beautiful blue eyes, and he seemed to Dalgetty to have a nervous timid air.
Alfredo had gone to ask Mr. Manisty whether he could receive this gentleman—and meanwhile the stranger stood there twisting his long bony hands, and glancing about him with the shyness of a bird.
Presently Alfredo came back, and conducted the priest to the salon.
He had not been gone five minutes before Mr. Manisty appeared. He came through the library, and stood in the doorway of the passage room where she sat.
'All right, Dalgetty?' he said, stooping to her, and speaking in a whisper.
'I think and hope she's asleep, sir,' said the maid, in his ear—'I have heard nothing this half-hour.'
Manisty looked relieved, repeated his injunctions to be watchful, and went back to the salon. Dalgetty presently heard his voice in the distance, mingling with those of the priest and Mrs. Burgoyne.
Now she had nothing left to amuse her but the view through the glass passage to the balcony and the lake. It was hot, and she was tired of her sewing. The balcony however was in deep shade, and a breath of cool air came up from the lake. Dalgetty could not resist it. She glanced at her mistress's door and listened a moment. All silence.
She put down her work and slipped through the glass passage on to the broad stone balcony.
There her ears were suddenly greeted with a sound of riotous shouting and singing on the road, and Alfredo ran out from the dining-room to join her.
'Festa!'—he said, nodding to her in a kindly patronage, and speaking as he might have spoken to a child—'Festa!'
And Dalgetty began to see a number of carts adorned with green boughs and filled with singing people, coming along the road. Each cart had a band of girls dressed alike—red, white, orange, blue, and so forth.
Alfredo endeavoured to explain that these were Romans who after visiting the church of the 'Madonna del Divino Amore' in the plain were now bound to an evening of merriment at Albano. According to him it was not so much a case of 'divino amore' as of 'amore di vino,' and he was very anxious that the English maid should understand his pun. She laughed—pretended—showed off her few words of Italian. She thought Alfredo a funny, handsome little man, a sort of toy wound up, of which she could not understand the works. But after all he was a man; and the time slipped by.
After ten minutes, she remembered her duties with a start, and hastily crossing the glass passage, she returned to her post. All was just as she had left it. She listened at Miss Alice's door. Not a sound was to be heard; and she resumed her sewing.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Manisty and Eleanor were busy with Father Benecke. The poor priest had come full of a painful emotion, which broke its bounds as soon as he had Manisty's hand in his.
'You got my letter?' he said. 'That told you my hopes were dead—that the sands for me were running out?—Ah! my kind friend—there is worse to tell you!'
He stood clinging unconsciously to Manisty's hand, his eyes fixed upon theEnglishman's face.
'I had submitted. The pressure upon me broke me down. I had given way. They brought me a message from the Holy Father which wrung my heart. Next week they were to publish the official withdrawal—"librum reprobavit, et se laudabiliter subjecit"—you know the formula? But meanwhile they asked more of me. His Eminence entreated of me a private letter that he might send it to the Holy Father. So I made a condition. I would write,—but they must promise, on their part, that nothing should be published beyond the formal submission,—that my letter should be for his eyes alone, and for the Pope. They promised,—oh! not in writing—I have nothing written!—so I wrote. I placed myself, like a son, in the hands of the Holy Father.—Now, this morning there is my letter—the whole of it—in theOsservatore Romano! To-morrow!—I came to tell you—I withdraw it. I withdraw my submission!'
He drew himself up, his blue eyes shining. Yet they were swollen with fatigue and sleeplessness, and over the whole man a blighting breath of age and pain had passed since the day in St. Peter's.
Manisty looked at him in silence a moment. Then he said—
'I'm sorry—heartily, heartily sorry!'
At this Eleanor, thinking that the two men would prefer to be alone, turned to leave the room. The priest perceived it.
'Don't leave us, madame, on my account. I have no secrets, and I know that you are acquainted with some at least of my poor history. But perhaps I am intruding; I am in your way?'
He looked round him in bewilderment. It was evident to Eleanor that he had come to Manisty in a condition almost as unconscious of outward surroundings as that of the sleep-walker. And she and Manisty, on their side, as they stood looking at him, lost the impression of the bodily man in the overwhelming impression of a wounded spirit, struggling with mortal hurt.
'Come and sit down,' she said to him gently, and she led him to a chair. Then she went into the next room, poured out and brought him a cup of coffee. He took it with an unsteady hand and put it down beside him untouched. Then he looked at Manisty and began in detail the story of all that had happened to him since the letter in which he had communicated to his English friend the certainty of his condemnation.
Nothing could have been more touching than his absorption in his own case; his entire unconsciousness of anything in Manisty's mind that could conflict with it. Eleanor turning from his tragic simplicity to Manisty's ill-concealed worry and impatience, pitied both. That poor Father Benecke should have brought his grief to Manisty, on this afternoon of all afternoons!
It had been impossible to refuse to see him. He had come a pilgrimage from Rome and could not be turned away. But she knew well that Manisty's ear was listening all the time for every sound in the direction of his sister's room; his anxieties indeed betrayed themselves in every restless movement as he sat with averted head—listening.
Presently he got up, and with a hurried 'Excuse me an instant'—he left the room.
Father Benecke ceased to speak, his lips trembling. To find himself alone with Mrs. Burgoyne embarrassed him. He sat, folding his soutane upon his knee, answering in monosyllables to the questions that she put him. But her sympathy perhaps did more to help him unpack his heart than he knew; for when Manisty returned, he began to talk rapidly and well, a natural eloquence returning to him. He was a South German, but he spoke a fine literary English, of which the very stumbles and occasional naïvetés had a peculiar charm; like the faults which reveal a pure spirit even more plainly than its virtues.
He reached his climax, in a flash of emotion—
'My submission, you see—the bare fact of it—left my cause intact. It was the soldier falling by the wall. But my letter must necessarily be misunderstood—my letter betrays the cause. And for that I have no right. You understand? I thought of the Pope—the old man. They told me he was distressed—that the Holy Father had suffered—had lost sleep—through me! So I wrote out of my heart—like a son. And the paper this morning!—See—I have brought it you—theOsservatore Romano. It is insolent—brutal—but not to me! No, it is all honey to me! But to the truth—to our ideas.—No!—I cannot suffer it. I take it back!—I bear the consequences.'
And with trembling fingers, he took a draft letter from his pocket, and handed it, with the newspaper, to Manisty.
Manisty read the letter, and returned it, frowning.
'Yes—you have been abominably treated—no doubt of that. But have you counted the cost? You know my point of view! It's one episode, for me, in a world-wide struggle. Intellectually I am all with you—strategically, all with them. They can't give way! The smallest breach lets in the flood. And then, chaos!'
'But the flood is truth!' said the old man, gazing at Manisty. There was a spot of red on each wasted cheek.
Manisty shrugged his shoulders, then dropped his eyes upon the ground, and sat pondering awhile in a moody silence. Eleanor looked at him in some astonishment. It was as though for the first time his habitual paradox hurt him in the wielding—or rather as though he shrank from using what was a conception of the intellect upon the flesh and blood before him. She had never yet seen him visited by a like compunction.
It was curious indeed to see that Father Benecke himself was not affected by Manisty's attitude. From the beginning he had always instinctively appealed from the pamphleteer to the man. Manisty had been frank, brutal even. But notwithstanding, the sensitive yet strong intelligence of the priest had gone straight for some core of thought in the Englishman that it seemed only he divined. And it was clear that his own utter selflessness—his poetic and passionate detachment from all the objects of sense and ambition—made him a marvel to Manisty's more turbid and ambiguous nature. There had been a mystical attraction between them from the first; so that Manisty, even when he was most pugnacious, had yet a filial air and way towards the old man.
Eleanor too had often felt the spell. Yet to-day there were both in herself and Manisty hidden forces of fever and unrest which made the pure idealism, the intellectual tragedy of the priest almost unbearable. Neither—for different and hidden reasons—could respond; and it was an infinite relief to both when the old man at last rose to take his leave.
They accompanied him through the library to the glass passage.
'Keep me informed,' said Manisty, wringing him by the hand; 'and tell me if there is anything I can do.'
Eleanor said some parting words of sympathy. The priest bowed to her with a grave courtesy in reply.
'It will be as God wills,' he said gently; and then went his way in a sad abstraction.
Eleanor was left a moment alone. She put her hands over her heart, and pressed them there. 'He suffers from such high things!'—she said to herself in a sudden passion of misery—'and I?'
* * * * *
Manisty came hurrying back from the staircase, and crossed the library to the passage-room beyond. When he saw Dalgetty there, still peacefully sewing, his look of anxiety cleared again.
'All right?' he said to her.
'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 theponentewith 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.
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 dowishI 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 andAlice 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.
She looked down at her bandaged wrist. The wound still ached and burned from the pressure of that wild grip which she had not been able to ward off from it. Lucy herself had the strength of healthy youth, but she had felt her strength as nothing in Alice Manisty's hands. And the tyranny of those black eyes!—so like her brother's, without the human placable spark—and the horror of those fierce possessing miseries that lived in them!
Perhaps after all Uncle Ben would not have thought her so cowardly! As she sat up in bed, her hands round her knees, a pitiful home-sickness invaded her. A May scent of roses coming from the wall below the open window recalled to her the spring scents at home—not these strong Italian scents, but thin northern perfumes of lilac and lavender, of pine-needles and fresh grass. It seemed to her that she was on the slope behind Uncle Ben's house, with the scattered farms below—and the maple green in the hollow—and the grassy hillsides folded one upon another—and the gleam of a lake among them—and on the furthest verge of the kind familiar scene, the blue and shrouded heads of mountain peaks. She dropped her head on her knees, and could hear the lowing of cattle and the clucking of hens; she saw the meeting-house roof among the trees, and groups scattered through the lanes on the way to the prayer meeting, the older women in their stuff dresses and straw bonnets, the lean, bronzed men.
Benson's knock dispelled the mirage. The maid brought lemonade and milk, brushed Lucy's long hair and made all straight and comfortable.
When her tendance was over she looked at the door and then at Lucy. 'Miss Manisty said, Miss, I was to see you had your key handy. It's there all right—but it is the door that's wrong. Never saw such flimsy things as the doors in all this place.'
And Benson examined the two flaps of the door, filled with that frank contempt for the foreigner's powers and intelligence which makes the English race so beloved of Europe.
'Why, the floor-bolts'll scarcely hold, neither of them; and the lock's that loose, it's a disgrace. But I shouldn't think the people that own this place had spent a shilling on it since I was born. When you go to lay hold on things they're just tumbling to bits.'
'Oh! never mind, Benson,' said Lucy—shrinking. 'I'm sure it'll be all right. Thank you—and good-night.'
She and Benson avoided looking at each other; and the maid was far too highly trained to betray any knowledge she was not asked for. But when she had taken her departure Lucy slipped out of bed, turned the key, and tightened the bolts herself. It was true that their sockets in the brick floor were almost worn away; and the lock-case seemed scarcely to hold upon the rotten wood. The wood-work, indeed, throughout the whole villa was not only old and worm-eaten, but it had been originally of the rudest description, meant for summer uses, and a villeggiatura existence in which privacy was of small account. The Malestrini who had reared the villa above the Campagna in the late seventeenth century had no money to waste on the superfluities of doors that fitted and windows that shut; he had spent all he had, and more, on the sprawlingputtiand fruit wreaths of the ceilings, and the arabesques of the walls. And now doors, windows, and shutters alike, shrunken and scorched and blistered by the heat of two hundred summers, were dropping into ruin.
The handling of this rotten lock and its rickety accompaniments suddenly brought back a panic fear on Lucy. What if Alice Manisty and the wind, which was already rising, should burst in upon her together? She looked down upon her night-gown and her bare feet. Well, at least she would not be taken quite unawares! She opened her cupboard and brought from it a white wrapper of a thin woollen stuff which she put on. She thrust her feet into her slippers, and so stood a moment listening, her long hair dropping about her. Nothing! She lay down, and drew a shawl over her. 'I won't—won't—sleep,' she said to herself.
And the last sound she was conscious of was the cry of the little downy owl—so near that it seemed to be almost at her window.
* * * * *
'You are unhappy,' said a voice beside her.
Lucy started. The self in her seemed to wrestle its way upward from black and troubled depths of sleep. She opened her eyes. Someone was bending over her. She felt an ineffable horror, but not the smallest astonishment. Her dreams had prophesied; and she saw what she foreknew.
In the wavering light she perceived a stooping form, and again she noticed a whiteness of hands and face set in a black frame.
'Yes!' she said, lifting herself on her elbow. 'Yes!—what do you want?'
'You have been sobbing in your sleep,' said the voice. 'I know why you are unhappy. My brother is beginning to love you—you might love him. But there is some one between you—and there always will be. There is no hope for you—unless I show you the way out.'
'Miss Manisty!—you oughtn't to be here,' said Lucy, raising herself higher in bed and trying to speak with absolute self-command. 'Won't you go back to bed—won't you let me take you?'
And she made a movement. Instantly a hand was put out. It seized her arm first gently, then irresistibly.
'Don't, don't do that,' said the voice. 'It makes me angry—and—that hurts.'
Alice Manisty raised her other hand to her head, with a strange piteous gesture. Lucy was struck with the movement of the hand. It was shut over something that it concealed.
'I don't want to make you angry,' she said, trying to speak gently and keep down the physical tumult of the heart; 'but it is not good for you to be up like this. You are not strong—you ought to have rest.'
The grip upon her arm relaxed.
'I don't rest now'—a miserable sigh came out of the darkness. 'I sleep sometimes—but I don't rest. And it used all to be so happy once—whether I was awake or asleep. I was extraordinarily happy, all the winter, at Venice. One day Octave and I had a quarrel. He said I was mad—he seemed to be sorry for me—he held my arms and I saw him crying. But it was quite a mistake—I wasn't unhappy then. My brother John was always with me, and he told me the most wonderful things—secrets that no one else knows. Octave could never see him—and it was so strange—I saw him so plain. And my mother and father were there too—there was nothing between me and any dead person. I could see them and speak to them whenever I wished. People speak of separation from those who die. But there is none—they are always there. And when you talk to them, you know that you are immortal as they are—only you are not like them. You remember this world still—you know you have to go back to it. One night John took me—we seemed to go through the clouds—through little waves of white fire—and I saw a city of light, full of spirits—the most beautiful people, men and women—with their souls showing like flames through their frail bodies. They were quite kind—they smiled and talked to me. But I cried bitterly—because I knew I couldn't stay with them—in their dear strange world—I must come back—back to all I hated—all that strangled and hindered me.'
The voice paused a moment. Through Lucy's mind certain incredible words which it had spoken echoed and re-echoed. Consciousness did not master them; but they made a murmur within it through which other sounds hardly penetrated. Yet she struggled with herself—she remembered that only clearness of brain could save her.
She raised herself higher on her pillows that she might bring herself more on a level with her unbidden guest.
'And these ideas gave you pleasure?' she said, almost with calm.
'The intensest happiness,' said the low, dragging tones. 'Others pity me.—"Poor creature—she's mad"—I heard them say. And it made me smile. For I had powers they knew nothing of; I could pass from one world to another; one place to another. I could see in a living person the soul of another dead long ago. And everything spoke to me—the movement of leaves on a tree—the eyes of an animal—all kinds of numbers and arrangements that come across one in the day. Other people noticed nothing. To me it was all alive—everything was alive. Sometimes I was so happy, so ecstatic, I could hardly breathe. The people who pitied me seemed to me dull and crawling beings. If they had only known! But now—'
A long breath came from the darkness—a breath of pain. And again the figure raised its hand to its head.
'Now—somehow, it is all different. When John comes, he is cold and unkind—he won't open to me the old sights. He shows me things instead that shake me with misery—that kill me. My brain is darkening—its powers are dying out. That means that I must let this life go—I must pass into another. Some other soul must give me room. Do you understand?'
Closer came the form. Lucy perceived the white face and the dimly burning eyes, she felt herself suffocating, but she dared make no sudden move for fear of that closed hand and what it held.
'No—I don't understand,' she said faintly; 'but I am sure—no good can come to you—from another's harm.'
'What harm would it be? You are beginning to love—and your love will never make you happy. My brother is like me. He is not mad—but he has a being apart. If you cling to him, he puts you from him—if you love him he tires. He has never loved but for his own pleasure—to complete his life. How could you complete his life? What have you that he wants? His mind now is full of you—his senses, his feeling are touched—but in three weeks he would weary of and despise you. Besides—you know—you know well—that is not all. There is another woman—whose life you must trample on—and you are not made of stuff strong enough for that. No, there is no hope for you, in this existence—this body. But there is no death; death is only a change from one form of being to another. Give up your life, then—as I will give up mine. We will escape together. I can guide you—I know the way. We shall find endless joy—endless power! I shall be with Octave then, as and when I please—and you with Edward. Come!'
The face bent nearer, and the iron hold closed again stealthily on the girl's wrist. Lucy lay with her own face turned away and her eyes shut. She scarcely breathed. A word of prayer passed through her mind—an image of her white-haired uncle, her second father left alone and desolate.
Suddenly there was a quick movement beside her. Her heart fluttered wildly. Then she opened her eyes. Alice Manisty had sprung up, had gone to the window, and flung back the muslin curtains. Lucy could see her now quite plainly in the moonlight—the haggard energy of look and movement, the wild dishevelled hair.
'I knew the end was come—this afternoon,' said the hurrying voice. 'When I came out to you, as I walked along the terrace—the sun went out! I saw it turn black above the Campagna—all in a moment—and I said to myself, "What will the world do without the sun?—how will it live?" And now—do you see?'—she raised her arm, and Lucy saw it for an instant as a black bar against the window, caught the terrible dignity of gesture,—'there is not one moon—but many! Look at them! How they hurry through the clouds—one after the other! Do you understand what that means? Perhaps not—for your sight is not like mine. But I know. It means that the earth has left its orbit—that we are wandering—wandering in space—like a dismasted vessel! We are tossed this way and that, sometimes nearer to the stars—and sometimes further away. That is why they are first smaller—and then larger. But the crash must come at last—death for the world—death for us all—'
Her hands fell to her side, the left hand always tightly closed—her head drooped; her voice, which had been till now hoarse and parched as though it came from a throat burnt with fever, took a deep dirge-like note. Noiselessly Lucy raised herself—she measured the distance between herself and the door—between the mad woman and the door. Oh God!—was the door locked? Her eyes strained through the darkness. How deep her sleep must have been that she had heard no sound of its yielding! Her hand was ready to throw off the shawl that covered her, when she was startled by a laugh—a laugh vile and cruel that seemed to come from a new presence—another being. Alice Manisty rapidly came back to her, stood between her bed and the wall, and Lucy felt instinctively that some hideous change had passed.
'Dalgetty thought that all was safe, so did Edward. And indeed the locks were safe—the only doors that hold in all the villa—I triedyoursin the afternoon while Manisty and the priest were talking! But mine held. So I had to deal with Dalgetty.' She stooped, and whispered:—'I got it in Venice one day—the chemist near the Rialto. She might have found it—but she never did—she is very stupid. I did her no harm—I think. But if it kills her, death is nothing!—nothing!—only the gate of life. Come!—come! prove it!'
A hand darted and fell, like a snake striking. Lucy just threw herself aside in time—she sprang up—she rushed—she tore at the door—pulling at it with a frantic strength. It yielded with a crash, for the lock was already broken. Should she turn left or right?—to the room of Mrs. Burgoyne's maid, or to Mr. Manisty's library? She chose the right and fled on. She had perhaps ten seconds start, since the bed had been between her enemy and the door. But if any other door interposed between her and succour, all was over!—for she heard a horrible cry behind her, and knew that she was pursued. On she dashed, across the landing at the head of the stairs. Ah! the dining-room door was open! She passed it, and then turned, holding it desperately against her pursuer.
'Mr. Manisty! help!'
The agonised voice rang through the silent rooms. Suddenly—a sound from the library—a chair overturned—a cry—a door flung open. Manisty stood in the light.
He bounded to her side. His strength released hers. The upper part of the door was glass, and that dark gasping form on the other side of it was visible to them both, in a pale dawn light from the glass passage.
'Go!'—he said—'Go through my room—find Eleanor!'
She fled. But as she entered the room, she tottered—she fell upon the chair that Manisty had just quitted,—and with a long shudder that relaxed all her young limbs, her senses left her.
Meanwhile the whole apartment was alarmed. The first to arrive upon the scene was the strong housemaid, who found Alice Manisty stretched upon the floor of the glass passage, and her brother kneeling beside her, his clothes and hands torn in the struggle with her delirious violence. Alfredo appeared immediately afterwards; and then Manisty was conscious of the flash of a hand-lamp, and the soft, hurrying step of Eleanor Burgoyne.
She stood in horror at the entrance of the glass passage. Manisty gave his sister into Alfredo's keeping as he rose and went towards her.
'For God's sake'—he said under his breath—'go and see what has happened to Dalgetty.'
He took for granted that Lucy had taken refuge with her, and Eleanor stayed to ask no questions, but fled on to Dalgetty's room. As she opened the door the fumes of chloroform assailed her, and there on the bed lay the unfortunate maid, just beginning to moan herself back to consciousness from beneath the chloroformed handkerchief that had reduced her to impotence.
Her state demanded every care. While Manisty and the housemaid Andreina conveyed Alice Manisty, now in a state of helpless exhaustion, to her room, and secured her there, Alfredo ran for the Marinata doctor. Eleanor and Aunt Pattie forced brandy through the maid's teeth, and did what they could to bring back warmth and circulation.
They were still busy with their task when the elderly Italian arrived who was the communal doctor and chemist of the village. The smell of the room, the sight of the woman, was enough. The man was efficient and discreet, and he threw himself into his work without more questions than were absolutely necessary. In the midst of their efforts Manisty reappeared, panting.
'Ought he not to see Miss Foster too?' he said anxiously to EleanorBurgoyne.
Eleanor looked at him in astonishment.
A smothered exclamation broke from him. He rushed away, back to the library which he had seen Lucy enter.
The cool clear light was mounting. It penetrated the wooden shutters of the library and mingled with the dying light of the lamp which had served him to read with through the night, beside which, in spite of his utmost efforts, he had fallen asleep at the approach of dawn. There, in the dream-like illumination, he saw Lucy lying within his deep arm-chair. Her face was turned away from him and hidden against the cushion; her black hair streamed over the white folds of her wrapper: one arm was beneath her, the other hung helplessly over her knee.
He went up to her and called her name in an agony.
She moved slightly, made an effort to rouse herself and raised her hand. But the hand fell again, and the word half-formed upon her lips died away. Nothing could be more piteous, more disarmed. Yet even her disarray and helplessness were lovely; she was noble in her defeat; her very abandonment breathed youth and purity; the man's wildly surging thoughts sank abashed.
But words escaped him—words giving irrevocable shape to feeling. For he saw that she could not hear.
'Lucy!—Lucy—dear, beautiful Lucy!'
He hung over her in an ardent silence, his eyes breathing a respect that was the very soul of passion, his hand not daring to touch even a fold of her dress. Meanwhile the door leading to the little passage-room opened noiselessly. Eleanor Burgoyne entered. Manisty was not aware of it. He bent above Lucy in a tender absorption speaking to her as he might have spoken to a child, calling to her, comforting and rousing her. His deep voice had an enchanter's sweetness; and gradually it wooed her back to life. She did not know what he was saying to her, but she responded. Her lids fluttered; she moved in her chair, a deep sigh lifted her breast.
At that moment the door in Eleanor's hand escaped her and swung to. Manisty started back and looked round him.
'Eleanor!—is that you?'
In the barred and ghostly light Eleanor came slowly forward. She looked first at Lucy—then at Manisty. Their eyes met.
Manisty was the first to move uneasily.
'Look at her, Eleanor!—poor child!—Alice must have attacked her in her room. She escaped by a marvel. When I wrestled with Alice, I found this in her hand. One second more, and she would have used it on Miss Foster.'
He took from his pocket a small surgical knife, and looked, shuddering, at its sharpness and its curved point.
Eleanor too shuddered. She laid her hand on Lucy's shoulder, while Manisty withdrew into the shadows of the room.
Lucy raised herself by a great effort. Her first half-conscious impulse was to throw herself into the arms of the woman standing by her. Then as she perceived Eleanor clearly, as her reason came back, and her gaze steadied, the impulse died.
'Will you help me?' she said, simply—holding out her hand and tottering to her feet.
A sudden gleam of natural feeling lit up the frozen whiteness of Eleanor's face. She threw her arm round Lucy's waist, guiding her. And so, closely entwined, the two passed from Manisty's sight.