Part 4 (1/2)
The girl's breath comes and goes swiftly; for a moment he fears she will faint.
The future dances before her swimming brain, the alluring prospect of money, position, pleasure, whisper like fiends in Eleanor's ears. Love is forgotten; she only remembers the vague unsatisfied ambitions of her young dreams. She lets him kiss her lips again and again, she is clasped in his arms, yet feels them not; her mind fixed on the dazzling picture of ”what is to be!”
”Your answer, Eleanor, darling--love!” he gasps, watching the glorious colour mount to her face, the marvellous radiance fill her eyes.
”Yes, Philip, your wife always!” Her head is on his shoulder, he has gathered her hands about his neck. The brief midday hours fly as she yields to the tender wooing.
”Soon,” he whispers, ”autumn's fingers of decay will creep over Copthorne, while leaves must fall damp and dead in the country lanes.
Marry me, Eleanor, now the summer is here.”
She starts back, a deadly fear knocking at her heart. She laughs, apparently frivolous and light-hearted.
”Yes, in the summer, sometime next year.”
”Next year!” his face falling. ”But when? Next year has three hundred and sixty-five long days!”
She smiles entrancingly, shrugging her shoulders.
”Oh! well--when the birds begin to sing.”
”No,” he cries, drawing her to him, ”before they are silent, Eleanor, before the light of summer goes out of the heavens, and the blue sky fades to grey!”
Her eyes droop, her cheek is pale.
CHAPTER III.
G.o.d MADE THE WOMAN FOR THE MAN.--_Tennyson_.
”Oh, do stop and take me to tea in that lovely confectioner's shop!”
cries a pleading voice, while an eager hand flourishes a parasol which pokes the driver in the back. ”Oh, I wish I could speak the horrid language.”
”But, my dear,” replies the man at her side, ”you have only just had your coffee and unlimited bon-bons. I want to show you Brussels thoroughly. It is a most interesting town.”
Eleanor Roche sighs. To her uncultivated mind the magnificent Hotel de Ville, the Roman Catholic Churches, galleries, picturesque towers, gables, and doorways of ancient buildings, hold but little charm.
She is madly excited about the bonnet and boot shops, the lace fans and collars, chocolates, and ice creams.
Philip is bent on enlarging his wife's mind, and hopes to awake in her his fervent love for art. Surely in time she will learn to appreciate it. At present she is decidedly slow of comprehension. Though looking lovelier than ever in her new Parisian toilettes, Eleanor disappoints him. She talks perpetually of her appearance, dresses three or four times a day, revels in admiring glances from male tourists, and displays strange apathy when sight-seeing.
”How ugly the foreign women are!” exclaims Eleanor, ”so short, plump, and round. Why, even our miller's daughters could lick them into fits.”
Her slang jars on him; but Eleanor is so sublimely unconscious of offence and childishly contented with herself, that he has not the heart to murmur.
Besides, even the touch of her small hand thrills him with the old pleasure.
She surveys her feet admiringly.
”Did you ever see such lovely shoes? The points are like needles. It would be wicked to walk in them. Oh, dear, where are we stopping now?”