Eleanor (28 page)

‘Just well enough to send Uncle Ben to sleep when he’s tired! I learnt it for that. Will you play to me afterwards?’

‘With pleasure,’ said Eleanor, a little formally.

How long the luncheon seemed! Eleanor, a white shadow in her black transparent dress, toyed with her food, eat nothing, and complained of the waits between the courses.

Lucy reminded her that there were fifty steps between the kitchen and their apartment. Eleanor did not seem to hear her; she had apparently forgotten her own remark, and was staring absently before her. When she spoke next it was about London, and the June season. She had promised to take a young cousin, just ‘come out,’ to some balls. Her talk about her plans was careless and languid, but it showed the woman naturally at home in the fashionable world, with connections in half the great families, and access to all doors. The effect of it was to make Lucy shrink into herself. Mrs. Burgoyne had spoken formerly of their meeting in London. She said nothing of it to-day, and Lucy felt that she could never venture to remind her.

From Eleanor’s disjointed talk, also, there flowed another subtle impression. Lucy realised what kinship means to the English wealthy and well-born class—what a freemasonry it establishes, what opportunities it confers. The Manistys and Eleanor Burgoyne were part of a great clan with innumerable memories and traditions. They said nothing of them; they merely took them for granted with all that they implied, the social position, the ‘consideration,’ the effect on others.

The American girl is not easily overawed. The smallest touch of English assumption in her new acquaintances would have been enough, six weeks before, to make Lucy Foster open her dark eyes in astonishment or contempt. That is not the way in which women of her type understand life.

But to-day the frank forces of the girl’s nature felt themselves harassed and crippled. She sat with downcast eyes, constrainedly listening and sometimes replying. No—it was very true. Mr. Manisty was not of her world. He had relations, friendships, affairs, infinitely remote from hers—none of which could mean anything to her. Whereas his cousin’s links with him were the natural inevitable links of blood and class. He might be unsatisfactory or uncivil; but she had innumerable ways of recovering him, not to be understood even, by those outside.

When the two women returned to the salon, a kind of moral distance had established itself between them. Lucy was silent; Eleanor restless.

Alfredo brought the coffee. Mrs. Burgoyne looked at her watch as he retired.

‘Half past one,’ she said in a reflective voice. ‘By now they have made all arrangements.’

‘They will be back by tea-time?’

‘Hardly,—but before dinner. Poor Aunt Pattie! She will be half dead.’

‘Was she disturbed last night?’ asked Lucy in a low voice.

‘Just at the end. Mercifully she heard nothing till Alice was safe in her room.’

Then Eleanor’s eyes dwelt broodingly on Lucy. She had never yet questioned the girl as to her experiences. Now she said with a certain abruptness—

‘I suppose she forced your door?’

‘I suppose so.—But I was asleep.’

‘Were you terribly frightened when you found her there?’

As she spoke Eleanor said to herself that in all probability Lucy knew nothing of Manisty’s discovery of the weapon in Alice’s hand. While she was helping the girl to bed, Lucy, in her dazed and shivering submission, was true to her natural soberness and reserve. Instead of exaggerating, she had minimised what had happened. Miss Alice Manisty had come to her room,—had behaved strangely,—and Lucy, running to summon assistance, had roused Mr. Manisty in the library. No doubt she might have managed better, both then and in the afternoon. And so, with a resolute repression of all excited talk, she had turned her blanched face from the light, and set herself to go to sleep, as the only means of inducing Mrs. Burgoyne also to leave her and rest.

Eleanor’s present question, however, set the girl’s self-control fluttering, so sharply did it recall the horror of the night. She curbed herself visibly before replying.

‘Yes,—I was frightened. But I don’t think she could have hurt me. I should have been stronger when it came to the point.’

‘Thank God Edward was there!’ cried Eleanor.

‘Where did he come to you?’

‘At the dining-room door. I could not have held it much longer. Then he told me to go to you. And I tried to. But I only just managed to get to that chair in the library.’

‘Mr. Manisty found you quite unconscious.’

A sudden red dyed Lucy’s cheek.

‘Mr. Manisty!—was he there? I hoped he knew nothing about it. I only saw you.’

Eleanor’s thought drew certain inferences. But they gave her little comfort. She turned away abruptly, complaining of the heat, and went to the piano.

Lucy sat listening, with a book on her knee. Everything seemed to have grown strangely unreal in this hot silence of the villa—the high room with its painted walls—the marvellous prospect outside, just visible in sections through the half-closed shutters—herself and her companion. Mrs. Burgoyne played snatches of Brahms and Chopin; but her fingers stumbled more than usual. Her attention seemed to wander.

Inevitably the girl’s memory went back to the wild things which Alice Manisty had said to her. In vain she rebuked herself. The fancies of a mad-woman were best forgotten,—so common-sense told her. But over the unrest of her own heart, over the electrical tension and dumb hostility that had somehow arisen between her and Eleanor Burgoyne, common-sense had small power. She could only say to herself with growing steadiness of purpose that it would be best for her not to go to Vallombrosa, but to make arrangements as soon as possible to join the Porters’ friends at Florence, and go on with them to Switzerland.

To distract herself, she presently drew towards her the open portfolio of Eleanor’s sketches, which was lying on the table. Most of them she had seen before, and Mrs. Burgoyne had often bade her turn them over as she pleased.

She looked at them, now listlessly, now with sudden stirs of feeling. Here was the niched wall of the Nemi temple; the arched recesses overgrown with ilex and fig and bramble; in front the strawberry pickers stooping to their work. Here, an impressionist study of the lake at evening, with the wooded height of Genzano breaking the sunset; here a sketch from memory of Aristodemo teasing the girls. Below this drawing, lay another drawing of figures. Lucy drew it out, and looked at it in bewilderment.

At the foot of it was written—‘The Slayer and the Slain.’ Her thoughts rushed back to her first evening at the villa—to the legend of the priest. The sketch indeed contained two figures—one erect and triumphant, the other crouching on the ground. The prostrate figure was wrapped in a cloak which was drawn over the head and face. The young victor, sword in hand, stood above his conquered enemy.

Or—Was it a man?

Lucy looked closer, her cold hand shaking on the paper. The vague classical dress told nothing. But the face—whose was it?—and the long black hair? She raised her eyes towards an old mirror on the wall in front, then dropped them to the drawing again, in a sudden horror of recognition. And the piteous figure on the ground, with the delicate woman’s hand?—Lucy caught her breath. It was as though the blow at her heart, which Manisty had averted the night before, had fallen.

Then she became aware that Eleanor had turned round upon her seat at the piano, and was watching her.

‘I was looking at this strange drawing,’ she said. Her face had turned a sudden crimson. She pushed the drawing from her and tried to smile.

Eleanor rose and came towards her.

‘I thought you would see it,’ she said. ‘I wished you to see it.’

Her voice was hoarse and shaking. She stood opposite to Lucy, supporting herself by a marble table that stood near.

Lucy’s colour disappeared, she became as pale as Eleanor.

‘Is this meant for me?’

She pointed to the figure of the victorious priest. Eleanor nodded.

‘I drew it the night after our Nemi walk,’ she said with a fluttering breath. ‘A vision came to me so—of you—and me.’

Lucy started. Then she put her arms on the table and dropped her face into her arms. Her voice became a low and thrilling murmur that just reached Eleanor’s ears.

‘I wish—oh! how I wish—that I had never come here!’

Eleanor wavered a moment, then she said with gentleness, even with sweetness:

‘You have nothing to blame yourself for. Nor has anyone. That picture accuses no one. It draws the future—which no one can stop or change—but you.’

‘In the first place,’ said Lucy, still hiding her eyes and the bitter tears that dimmed them—‘what does it mean? Why am I the slayer?—and—and—you the slain? What have I done? How have I deserved such a thing?’

Her voice failed her. Eleanor drew a little nearer.

‘It is not you—but fate. You have taken from me—or you are about to take from me—the last thing left to me on this earth! I have had one chance of happiness, and only one, in all my life, till now. My boy is dead—he has been dead eight years. And at last I had found another chance—and after seven weeks, you—you—are dashing it from me!’

Lucy drew back from the table, like one that shrinks from an enemy.

‘Mrs. Burgoyne!’

‘You don’t know it!’ said Eleanor calmly. ‘Oh! I understand that. You are too good—too loyal. That’s why I am talking like this. One could only dare it with some one whose heart one knew. Oh! I have had such gusts of feeling towards you—such mean, poor feeling. And then, as I sat playing there, I said to myself, “I’ll tell her! She will find that drawing, and—I’ll tell her! She has a great, true nature—she’ll understand. Why shouldn’t one try to save oneself? It’s the natural law. There’s only the one life.”’

She covered her eyes with her hand an instant, choking down the sob which interrupted her. Then she moved a little nearer to Lucy.

‘You see,’ she said, appealing,—‘you were very sweet and tender to me one day. It’s very easy to pretend to mourn with other people—because one thinks one ought—or because it makes one liked. I am always pretending in that way—I can’t help it. But you—no: you don’t say what you don’t feel, and you’ve the gift to feel. It’s so rare—and you’ll suffer from it. You’ll find other people doing what I’m doing now—throwing themselves upon you—taking advantage—trusting to you. You pitied mo because I had lost my boy. But you didn’t know—you couldn’t guess how bare my life has been always—but for him. And then—this winter—’ her voice changed and broke—‘the sun rose again for me. I have been hungry and starving for years, and it seemed as though I—even I!—might still feast and be satisfied.

‘It would not have taken much to satisfy me. I am not young, like you—I don’t ask much. Just to be his friend, his secretary, his companion—in time—perhaps—his wife—when he began to feel the need of home, and peace—and to realise that no one else was so dear or so familiar to him as I. I understood him—he me—our minds touched. There was no need for “falling in love.” One had only to go on from day to day—entering into each other’s lives—I ministering to him and he growing accustomed to the atmosphere I could surround him with, and the sympathy I could give him—till the habit had grown so deep into heart and flesh that it could not be wrenched away. His hand would have dropped into mine, almost without his willing or knowing it…. And I should have made him happy. I could have lessened his faults—stimulated his powers. That was my dream all these later months—and every week it seemed to grow more reasonable, more possible. Then you came—’

She dropped into a chair beside Lucy, resting her delicate hands on the back of it. In the mingled abandonment and energy of her attitude, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human emotion, made frankly visible and active. All her plaintive clinging charm had disappeared. It was the fierceness of the dove—the egotism of the weak. Every line and nerve of the fragile form betrayed the exasperation of suffering and a tension of the will, unnatural and irresistible. Lucy bowed to the storm. She lay with her eyes hidden, conscious only of this accusing voice close to her,—and of the song of two nightingales without, rivalling each other among the chestnut trees above the lower road. Eleanor resumed after a momentary pause—a momentary closing of the tired eyes, as though in search of calm and recollection.

‘You came. He took no notice of you. He was rude and careless—he complained that our work would be interrupted. It teased him that you should be here—and that you represented something so different from his thoughts and theories. That is like him. He has no real tolerance. He wants to fight, to overbear, to crush, directly he feels opposition. Among women especially, he is accustomed to be the centre—to be the master always. And you resisted—silently. That provoked and attracted him. Then came the difficulties with the book—and Mr. Neal’s visit. He has the strangest superstitions. It was ill-luck, and I was mixed up with it. He began to cool to me—to avoid me. You were here; you didn’t remind him of failure. He found relief in talking to you. His ill-humour would all have passed away like a child’s sulkiness, but that—Ah! well!—’

She raised her hand with a long, painful sigh, and let it drop.

‘Don’t imagine I blame anyone. You were so fresh and young—it was all so natural. Yet somehow I never really feared—after the first evening I felt quite at ease. I found myself drawn to like—to love—you. And what could you and he have in common? Then on the Nemi day I dared to reproach him—to appeal to the old times—to show him the depth of my own wound—to make him explain himself. Oh! but all those words are far, far too strong for what I did? Who could ever suppose it to their advantage to make a scene with him—to weary or disgust him? It was only a word—a phrase or two here and there. But he understood,—and he gave me my answer. Oh! what humiliations we women can suffer from a sentence—a smile—and show nothing—nothing!’

Her face had begun to burn. She lifted her handkerchief to brush away two slow tears that had forced their way. Lucy’s eyes had been drawn to her from their hiding-place. The girl’s brow was furrowed, her lips parted; there was a touch of fear—unconscious, yet visible—in her silence.