'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 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?'