Eleanor

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

'No, no. Let us move about. I am tired of sitting.'

And they would pace up and down the terrace and the olive-garden beyond, while Mrs. Burgoyne leant upon Lucy's arm, chatting and laughing with an evident relief from tension which only betrayed the mental and physical fatigue behind.

Lucy wondered to see how exquisite, how dainty, she would emerge from these wrestles with hard work. Her fresh white or pale dresses, the few jewels half-hidden at her wrists or throat, the curled or piled masses of the fair hair, were never less than perfection, it seemed to Lucy; she was never more the woman of fashion and the great world than when she came out from a morning's toil that would have left its disturbing mark on a strong man, her eyes shining under the stress and ardour of those 'ideas,' as to which it was good to talk with her.

But how eagerly she would throw off that stress, and turn to wooing and winning Lucy Foster! All hanging back in the matter was gone. Certain vague thoughts and terrors were laid to sleep, and she must needs allow herself the luxury of charming the quiet girl, like all the rest—the dogs, the servants or the village children. There was a perpetual hunger for love in Eleanor's nature which expressed itself in a thousand small and piteous ways. She could never help throwing out tendrils, and it was rarely that she ventured them in vain.

In the case of Lucy Foster, however, her fine tact soon discovered that caresses were best left alone. They were natural to herself, and once or twice as the April days went by, she ventured to kiss the girl's fresh cheek, or to slip an arm round her waist. But Lucy took it awkwardly. When she was kissed she flushed, and stood passive; and all her personal ways were a little stiff and austere. After one of these demonstrations indeed Mrs. Burgoyne generally found herself repaid in some other form, by some small thoughtfulness on Lucy's part—the placing of a stool, the fetching of a cloak—or merely perhaps by a new softness in the girl's open look. And Eleanor never once thought of resenting her lack of response. There was even a kind of charm in it. The prevailing American type in Rome that winter had been a demonstrative type.

Lucy's manner in comparison was like a cool and bracing air. 'And when she does kiss!' Eleanor would say to herself—'it will be with all her heart. One can see that.'

Meanwhile Mrs. Burgoyne took occasional note of the Mazzinian literature that lay about. She would turn the books over and read their titles, her eyes sparkling with a little gentle mischief, as she divined the girl's disapproval of her host and his views. But she never argued with Lucy. She was too tired of the subject, too eager to seek relief in talking of the birds and the view, of people and chiffons.

Too happy perhaps—also. She walked on air in these days before Easter. The book was prospering; Manisty was more content; and as agreeable in all daily ways and offices as only the hope of good fortune can make a man. 'The Priest of Nemi'—indeed, with several other prose poems of the same kind, had been cast out of the text; which now presented one firm and vigorous whole of social and political discussion. But the Nemi piece was to be specially bound for Eleanor, together with some drawings that she had made of the lake and the temple site earlier in the spring. And on the day the book was finished—somewhere within the next fortnight—there was to be a festal journey to Nemi—divine and blessed place!

So she felt no fatigue, and was always ready to chatter to Lucy of the most womanish things. Especially, as the girl's beauty grew upon her, was she anxious to carry out those plans of transforming her dress and hair,—her gowns and hats and shoes—the primness of her brown braids, which she and Miss Manisty had confided to each other.

But Lucy was shy—would not be drawn that way. There were fewer visitors at the villa than she had expected. For this quiet life in the garden, and on the country roads, it seemed to her that her dresses did very well. The sense of discomfort excited by the elegance of her Florentine acquaintance died away. And she would have thought it wrong and extravagant to spend unnecessary money.