Eleanor Part 40

'Ought we not to be going?' Lucy whispered in her ear. 'I am sure you are tired.'

Eleanor rose. She took the girl's hand in a clinging grasp, while she turned smiling to her neighbour the Dane:

'We must be moving to the Villa Borghese--some friends will be meeting us there. Our train does not go for a long, long while.'

'Does any Roman train ever go?' said Doctor Jensen, stroking his straw-coloured beard. 'But why leave us, Madame? Is not one garden as good as another? What spell can we invent to chain you here?'

He bowed low, smiling fatuously, with his hand on his heart. He was one of the most learned men in the world. But about that he cared nothing. The one reputation he desired was that of a 'sad dog'--a terrible man with the ladies. That was the paradox of his existence.

Eleanor laughed mechanically; then she turned to Lucy.

'Come!' she said in the girl's ear, and as they walked away she half closed her eyes against the sun, and Lucy thought she heard a gasp of fatigue. But she spoke lightly.

'Dear, foolish, old man! he was telling me how he had gone back to the Hermitage Library at St. Petersburg the other day to read, after thirty years. And there in a book that had not been taken down since he had used it last he found a leaf of paper and some pencil words scribbled on it by him when he was a youth--"my own darling." "And if I only knew now _vich_ darling!" he said, looking at me and slapping his knee. "Vich darling"!'

Eleanor repeated, laughing extravagantly. Then suddenly she wavered. Lucy instinctively caught her by the arm, and Eleanor lent heavily upon her.

'Dear Mrs. Burgoyne--you are not well,' cried the girl, terrified. 'Let us go to a hotel where you can rest till the train goes--or to some friend.'

Eleanor's face set in the effort to control herself--she drew her hand across her eyes. 'No, no, I am well,' she said, hurriedly. 'It is the sun--and I could not eat at luncheon. The Amba.s.sador's new cook did not tempt me. And besides'--she suddenly threw a look at Lucy before which Lucy shrank--'I am out of love with myself. There is one hour yesterday which I wish to cancel--to take back. I give up everything--everything.'

They were advancing across a wide lawn. The Amba.s.sador and Mrs. Swetenham were coming to meet them. The Amba.s.sador, weary of his companion, was looking with pleasure at the two approaching figures, at the sweep of Eleanor's white dress upon the gra.s.s, and the frame made by her black lace parasol for the delicacy of her head and neck.

Meanwhile Eleanor and Lucy saw only each other. The girl coloured proudly.

She drew herself erect.

'You cannot give up--what would not be taken--what is not desired,' she said fiercely. Then, in another voice: 'But please, please let me take care of you! Don't let us go to the Villa Borghese!'

She felt her hand pressed pa.s.sionately, then dropped.

'I am all right,' said Eleanor, almost in her usual voice. '_Eccellenza_!

we must bid you good-bye--have you seen our gentleman?'

'_Ecco_,' said the Amba.s.sador, pointing to Manisty, who, in company with the American Monsignore, was now approaching them. 'Let him take you out of the sun at once--you look as though it were too much for you.'

Manisty, however, came up slowly, in talk with his companion. The frowning impatience of his aspect attracted the attention of the group round the Amba.s.sador. As he reached them, he said to the priest beside him--

'You know that he has withdrawn his recantation?'

'Ah! yes'--said the Monsignore, raising his eyebrows, 'poor fellow!'--

The mingled indifference and compa.s.sion of the tone made the words bite.

Manisty flushed.

'I hear he was promised consideration,' he said quickly.

'Then he got it,' was the priest's smiling reply.

'He was told that his letter was not for publication. Next morning it appeared in the _Osservatore Romano_.'

'Oh no!--impossible! Your facts are incorrect.'

The Monsignore laughed, in unperturbed good humour. But after the laugh, the face reappeared, hard and a little menacing, like a rock that has been masked by a wave. He watched Manisty for a moment silently.

'Where is he?' said Manisty abruptly.

'Are you talking of Father Benecke'?' said the Amba.s.sador. 'I heard of him yesterday. He has gone into the country, but he gave me no address. He wished to be undisturbed.'

'A wise resolve'--said the Monsignore, holding out his hand. 'Your Excellency must excuse me. I have an audience of his Holiness at three o'clock.'

He made his farewells to the ladies with Irish effusion, and departed. The Amba.s.sador looked curiously at Manisty. Then he fell back with Lucy.

'It will be a column to-night,' he said with depression. 'Why didn't you stand by me? I showed Mrs. Swetenham my pictures--my beauties--my ewe-lambs--that I have been gathering for twenty years--that the National Gallery shall have, when I'm gone, if it behaves itself. And she asked me if they were originals, and took my Luini for a Raphael! Yes! it will be a column,' said the Amba.s.sador pensively. Then, with a brisk change, he looked up and took the hand that Lucy offered him.

'Good-bye--good-bye! You won't forget my prescription?--nor me?' said the old man, smiling and patting her hand kindly. 'And remember!'--he bent towards her, dropping his voice with an air in which authority and sweetness mingled--'send Mr. Manisty home!'

He felt the sudden start in the girl's hand before he dropped it. Then he turned to Manisty himself.

'Ah! Manisty, here you are. Your ladies want to leave us.'

Manisty made his farewells, and carried Lucy off. But as they walked towards the house he said not a word, and Lucy, venturing a look at him, saw the storm on his brow, the stiffness of the lips.

'We are going to the Villa Borghese, are we not?' she said timidly--'if Mrs. Burgoyne ought to go?'

'We must go somewhere, I suppose,' he said, stalking on before her. 'We can't sit in the street.'

CHAPTER XIV

The party returning to Marinata had two hours to spend in the gallery and garden of the Villa Borghese. Of the pictures and statues of the palace, of the green undulations, the stone pines, the _tempietti_ of the garden, Lucy afterwards had no recollection. All that she remembered was flight on her part, pursuit on Manisty's, and finally a man triumphant and a girl brought to bay.

It was in a shady corner of the vast garden, where hedges of some fragrant yellow shrub shut in the basin of a fountain, surrounded by a ring of languid nymphs, that Lucy at last found herself face to face with Manisty, and knew that she must submit.

'I do not understand how I have missed Mrs. Burgoyne,' she said hastily, looking round for her companion Mrs. Elliot, who had just left her to overtake her brother and go home; while Lucy was to meet Eleanor and Mr.

Neal at this rendezvous.

Manisty looked at her with his most sparkling, most determined air.

'You have missed her--because I have misled her.' Then, as Lucy drew back, he hurried on,--'I cannot understand, Miss Foster, why it is that you have constantly refused all yesterday evening--all to-day--to give me the opportunity I desired! But I, too, have a will,--and it has been roused!

'I don't understand,' said Lucy, growing white.

'Let me explain, then,' said Manisty, coolly. 'Miss Foster, two nights ago you were attacked,--in danger--under my roof, in my care. As your host, you owe it to me, to let me account and apologise for such things--if I can.

But you avoid me. You give me no chance of telling you what I had done to protect you--of expressing my infinite sorrow and regret. I can only imagine that you resent our negligence too deeply even to speak of it--that you cannot forgive us!'

'Forgive!' cried Lucy, fairly taken aback. 'What could I have to forgive, Mr. Manisty?--what can you mean?'