Eleanor by Mrs. Humphry Ward (short novels to read txt) 📖

furtively for a moment,--hanging his head. Then he pressed her hand, and said so that only she could hear--

'I should have kept my regrets to myself!'

She shook her head, with faint mockery.

'It would be the first time.'

Her hand dropped from his, and she passed out of sight. Manisty walked back to his seat discomfited. He could not defend himself against the charges of secret tyranny and abominable ill-humour that his conscience was pricking him with. He was sorry--he would have liked to tell her so. And yet somehow her very weakness and sweetness, her delicate uncomplainingness seemed only to develope his own small egotisms and pugnacities.

* * * * *

That night--a night of rain and scirocco--Eleanor wrote in her journal--'Will he ever finish the book? Very possibly it has been all a mistake. Yet when he began it, he was in the depths. Whatever happens, it has been his salvation.

'--Surely he will finish it? He cannot forego the effect he is almost sure it will produce. But he will finish it with impatience and disgust; he is out of love with it and all its associations. All that he was talking of to-night represents what I had most share in,--the chapters which brought us most closely together. How happy we were over them! And now, how different!

'It is curious--the animation with which he has begun to talk to Lucy Foster. Pretty child! I like to feel that I have been the fairy god-mother, dressing her for the ball. How little she knows what it means to be talked to by him, to receive courtesies from him,--how many women would like to be in her place. Yet now she is not shy; she has no alarms; she treats him like an equal. If it were not ridiculous, one could be angry.

'She dislikes and criticises him, and he can have no possible understanding of or sympathy with her. But she is a way out of embarrassment. How fastidious and proud he is with women!--malicious too, and wilful. Often I have wished him more generous--more kind.

'... In three weeks the anniversary will be here--the ninth. Why am I still alive? How often have I asked myself that! Where is my place?--who needs me?--My babe, if he still exists, is alone--there. And I still here. If I had only had the courage to rejoin him! The doctors deceived me. They made me think it could not be long. And now I am better--much better. If I were happy I should be quite well.

'How weary seems this Italian spring!--the restlessness of this eternal wind--the hot clouds that roll up from the Campagna. "Que vivre est difficile, o mon coeur fatigue!"'


CHAPTER VII

'I think it's lovely,' said Lucy in an embarrassed voice. 'And I just don't know how to thank you--indeed I don't.'

She was standing inside the door of Mrs. Burgoyne's room, arrayed in the white crepe gown with the touches of pale green and vivid black that Eleanor had designed for her. Its flowing elegance made her positively a stranger to herself. The two maids moreover who had attired her had been intent upon a complete, an indisputable perfection. Her hat had been carried off and retrimmed, her white gloves, her dainty parasol, the bunch of roses at her belt--everything had been thought for; she had been allowed a voice in nothing. And the result was extraordinary. The day before she had been still a mere fresh-cheeked illustration of those 'moeurs de province' which are to be found all over the world, in Burgundy and Yorkshire no less and no more than in Vermont; to-day she had become what others copy, the best of its kind--the 'fleeting flower' that 'blooms for one day at the summit'--as the maids would no doubt have expressed themselves, had they been acquainted with the works of Mr. Clough.

And thanks to that pliancy of her race, which Miss Manisty had discovered, although she was shy in these new trappings, she was not awkward. She was assimilating her new frocks, as she had already assimilated so many other things, during her weeks at the villa--points of manner, of speech, of mental perspective. Unconsciously she copied Mrs. Burgoyne's movements and voice; she was learning to understand Manisty's paradoxes, and Aunt Pattie's small weaknesses. She was less raw, evidently; yet not less individual. Her provincialisms were dropping away; her character, perhaps, was only emerging.

'Are you pleased with it?' she said timidly, as Mrs. Burgoyne bade her come in, and she advanced towards that lady, who was putting on her own hat before the glass.

Eleanor, with uplifted arms, turned and smiled.--

'Charming! You do one credit!--Is Aunt Pattie better?'

Lucy was conscious of a momentary chill. Mrs. Burgoyne had been so kind and friendly during the whole planning and making of this dress, the girl, perhaps, had inevitably expected a keener interest in its completion.

She answered in some discomfort:--

'I am afraid Miss Manisty's not coming. I saw Benson just now. Her headache is still so bad.'

'Ah!'--said Eleanor, absently, rummaging among her gloves; 'this scirocco weather doesn't suit her.'

Lucy fidgetted a little as she stood by the dressing-table, took up one knick-knack after another and put it down. At last she said--

'Do you mind my asking you a question?'

Mrs. Burgoyne turned in surprise.

'By all means!--What can I do?'

'Do you mind telling me whether you think I ought to stay on here? Miss Manisty is so kind--she wants me to stay till you leave, and then go to Vallombrosa with you--next month. But--'

'Why "but"?'--said Mrs. Burgoyne, briskly, still in quest of rings, handkerchief, and fan,--'unless you are quite tired of us.'

The girl smiled. 'I couldn't be that. But--I think you'll be tired of me! And I've heard from the Porters of a quiet pension in Florence, where some friends of theirs will be staying till the middle of June. They would let me join them, till the Porters are ready for me.'

There was just a moment's pause before Eleanor said--

'Aunt Pattie would be very sorry. I know she counts on your going with her to Vallombrosa. I must go home by the beginning of June, and I believe Mr. Manisty goes to Paris.'

'And the book?' Lucy could not help saying, and then wished vehemently that she had left the question alone.

'I don't understand'--said Mrs. Burgoyne, stooping to look for her walking-shoes.

'I didn't--I didn't know whether it was still to be finished by the summer?'

'No one knows,--certainly not the author! But it doesn't concern me in the least.'

'How can it be finished without you?' said Lucy wondering. Again she could not restrain the spirit of eager championship which had arisen in her mind of late; though she was tremulously uncertain as to how far she might express it.

Certainly Mrs. Burgoyne showed a slight stiffening of manner.

'It will have to get finished without me, I'm afraid. Luckily I'm not wanted; but if I were, I shall have no time for anything but my father this summer.'

Lucy was silent. Mrs. Burgoyne finished tying her shoes, then rose, and said lightly--

'Besides--poor book! It wanted a change badly. So did I.--Now Mr. Neal will see it through.'

* * * * *

Lucy went to say good-bye to Aunt Pattie before starting. Eleanor, left alone, stood a moment, thoughtful, beside the dressing-table.

'She is sorry for me!' she said to herself, with a sudden, passionate movement.

This was the Nemi day--the day of festival, planned a fortnight before, to celebrate the end, the happy end of the book. It was to have been Eleanor's special day--the sign and seal of that good fortune she had brought her cousin and his work.

And now?--Why were they going? Eleanor hardly knew. She had tried to stop it. But Reggie Brooklyn had been asked, and the Ambassador's daughter. And Vanbrugh Neal had a fancy to see Nemi. Manisty, who had forgotten all that the day was once to signify, had resigned himself to the expedition--he who hated expeditions!--' because Neal wanted it.' There had not been a word said about it during the last few days that had not brought gall and wound to Eleanor. She, who thought she knew all that male selfishness was capable of, was yet surprised and pricked anew, hour after hour, by Manisty's casual sayings and assumptions.

It was like some gourd-growth in the night--the rise of this entangling barrier between herself and him. She knew that some of it came from those secret superstitions and fancies about himself and his work which she had often detected in him. If a companion or a place, even a particular table or pen had brought him luck, he would recur to them and repeat them with eagerness. But once prove to him the contrary, and she had seen him drop friend and pen with equal decision.

And as far as she could gather--as far as he would discuss the matter at all--it was precisely with regard to those portions of the book where her influence upon it had been strongest, that the difficulties put forward by Mr. Neal had arisen.

Her lip quivered. She had little or no personal conceit. Very likely Mr. Neal's criticisms were altogether just, and she had counselled wrongly. When she thought of the old days of happy consultation, of that vibrating sympathy of thought which had arisen between them, glorifying the winter days in Rome, of the thousand signs in him of a deep, personal gratitude and affection--

Vanished!--vanished! The soreness of heart she carried about with her, proudly concealed, had the gnawing constancy of physical pain. While he!--Nothing seemed to her more amazing than the lapses in mere gentlemanliness that Manisty could allow himself. He was capable on occasion of all that was most refined and tender in feeling. But once jar that central egotism of his, and he could behave incredibly! Through the small actions and omissions of every day, he could express, if he chose, a hardness of soul before which the woman shuddered.

Did he in truth mean her to understand, not only that she had been an intruder, and an unlucky one, upon his work and his intellectual life, but that any dearer hopes she might have based upon their comradeship were to be once for all abandoned? She stood there, lost in a sudden tumult of passionate pride and misery, which was crossed every now and then by a strange and bitter wonder.

Each of us carries about with him a certain mental image of himself--typical, characteristic--as we suppose; draped at any rate to our fancy; round which we group the incidents of life. Eleanor saw herself always as the proud woman; it is a guise in which we are none of us loth to masquerade. Haughtily dumb and patient during her married years; proud morally, socially, intellectually; finding in this stiffening of the self her only defence against the ugly realities of daily life. Proud too in her loneliness and grief--proud of her very grief, of her very capacity for suffering, of all the delicate shades of thought and sorrow which furnished the matter of her