'Can you bear it? Can you be comfortable?' said Lucy, in some dismay.
They were in one of the four or five bare rooms that had been given up to them. A bed with a straw palliasse, one or two broken chairs, and bits of worm-eaten furniture filled what had formerly been one of a row of cells running along an upper corridor. The floor was of brick and very dirty. Against the wall a tattered canvas, a daub of St. Laurence and his gridiron, still recalled the former uses of the room.
They had given orders for a few comforts to be sent out from Orvieto, but the cart conveying them had not yet arrived. Meanwhile Marie was crying in the next room, and thecontadinawas looking on astonished and a little sulky. The people who came from Orvieto never complained. What was wrong with the ladies?
Eleanor looked round her with a faint smile.
'It doesn't matter,' she said under her breath. Then she looked at Lucy.
'What care we take of you! How well we look after you!'
And she dropped her head on her hands in a fit of hysterical laughter—very near to sobs.
'I!' cried Lucy. 'As if I couldn't sleep anywhere, and eat anything! But you—that's another business. When the cart comes, we can fix you up a little better—but to-night!'
She looked, frowning, round the empty room.
'There is nothing to do anything with—or I'd set to work right away.'
'Ecco, Signora!' said the farmer's wife. She carried triumphantly in her hands a shaky carpet-chair, the only article of luxury apparently that the convent provided.
Eleanor thanked her, and the woman stood with her hands on her hips, surveying them. She frowned, but only because she was thinking hard how she could somehow propitiate these strange beings, so well provided, as it seemed, with superfluouslire.
'Ah!' she cried suddenly; 'but the ladies have not seen ourbella vista!—ourloggia! Santa Madonna! but I have lost my senses! Signorina!venga—venga lei.'
And beckoning to Lucy she pulled open a door that had remained unnoticed in the corner of the room.
Lucy and Eleanor followed.
Even Eleanor joined her cry of delight to Lucy's.
'Ecco!' said themassajaproudly, as though the whole landscape were her chattel,—'Monte Amiata! Selvapendente—the Paglia—does the Signora see the bridge down there?—veda lei, under Selvapendente? Those forests on the mountain there—they belong all to the Casa Guerrini—tutto, tutto! as far as the Signorina can see! And that little house there, on the hill—thatcasa di caccia—that was poor Don Emilio's, that was killed in the war.'
And she chattered on, in apatoisnot always intelligible, even to Eleanor's trained ear, about the widowed Contessa, her daughter, and her son; about the new roads that Don Emilio had made through the woods; of the repairs and rebuilding at the Villa Guerrini—all stopped since his death; of the Sindaco of Selvapendente, who often came up to Torre Amiata for the summer; of the nuns in the new convent just built there under the hill, and theirfattore,—whose son was with Don Emilio after he was wounded, when the poor young man implored his own men to shoot him and put him out of his pain—who had stayed with him till he died, and had brought his watch and pocket-book back to the Contessa—
'Is the Contessa here?' said Eleanor, looking at the woman with the strained and startled air that was becoming habitual to her, as though each morsel of passing news only served somehow to make life's burden heavier.
But certainly the Contessa was here! She and Donna Teresa were always at the Villa. Once they used to go to Rome and Florence part of the year, but now—no more!
A sudden uproar arose from below—of crying children and barking dogs. The woman threw up her hands. 'What are they doing to me with the baby?' she cried, and disappeared.
Lucy went back to fetch the carpet-chair. She caught up also a couple of Florentine silk blankets that were among their wraps. She laid them on the bricks of theloggia, found a rickety table in Eleanor's room, her travelling-bag, and a shawl.
'Don't take such trouble about me!' said Eleanor, almost piteously, as Lucy established her comfortably in the chair, with a shawl over her knees and a book or two beside her.
Lucy with a soft little laugh stooped and kissed her.
'Now I must go and dry Marie's tears. Then I shall dive downstairs and discover the kitchen. They say they've got a cook, and the dinner'll soon be ready. Isn't that lovely? And I'm sure the cart'll be here directly. It's the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life!' said Lucy, clasping her hands a moment in a gesture familiar to her, and turning towards the great prospect of mountain, wood, and river. 'And it's so strange—so strange! It's like another Italy! Why, these woods—they might be just in a part of Maine I know. You can't see a vineyard—not one. And the air—isn't it fresh? Isn't it lovely? Wouldn't you guess you were three thousand feet up? I just know this—we're going to make you comfortable. I'm going right down now to send that cart back to Orvieto for a lot of things. And you're going to get ever, ever so much better, aren't you? Say you will!'
The girl fell on her knees beside Eleanor, and took the other's thin hands into her own. Her face, thrown back, had lost its gaiety; her mouth quivered.
Eleanor met the girl's tender movement dry-eyed. For the hundredth time that day she asked herself the feverish, torturing question—'Does she love him?'
'Of course I shall get better,' she said lightly, stroking the girl's hair; 'or if not—what matter?'
Lucy shook her head.
'You must get better,' she said in a low, determined voice. 'And it must all come right.'
Eleanor was silent. In her own heart she knew more finally, more irrevocably every hour that for her it would never come right. But how say to Lucy that her whole being hung now—not on any hope for herself, but on the fierce resolve that there should be none for Manisty?
Lucy gave a long sigh, rose to her feet, and went off to household duties.
Eleanor was left alone. Her eyes, bright with fever, fixed themselves, unseeing, on the sunset sky, and the blue, unfamiliar peaks beneath it.
Cheerful sounds of rioting children and loud-voiced housewives came from below. Presently there was a distant sound of wheels, and thecarrofrom Orvieto appeared, escorted by the whole village, who watched its unpacking with copious comment on each article, and a perpetual scuffling for places in the front line of observation. Even thepadre parrocoand the doctor paused as they passed along the road, and Lucy as she flitted about caught sight of the smiling young priest, in his flat broad-brimmed hat and caped soutane, side by side with the meditative and gloomy countenance of the doctor, who stood with his legs apart, smoking like a chimney.
But Lucy had no time to watch the crowd. She was directing the men with thecarrowhere to place the cooking-stove that had been brought from Orvieto, in the dark and half-ruinous kitchen on the lower floor of the convent; marvelling the while at therisottoand thepollothat the local artist, their new cook, the sister of the farmer's wife, was engaged in producing, out of apparently nothing in the way either of fire or tools. She was conferring with Cecco the little manservant, who, with less polish than Alfredo, but with a like good-will, was running hither and thither, intent only on pleasing his ladies, and on somehow finding enough spoons and forks to lay a dinner-table with; or she was alternately comforting and laughing at Marie, who was for the moment convinced that Italy was pure and simple Hades, and Torre Amiata the lowest gulf thereof.
Thus—under the soft, fresh evening—the whole forlorn and ruinous building was once more alive with noise and gaiety, with the tread of men carrying packages, with the fun of skirmishing children, with the cries of the cook and Cecco, with Lucy's stumbling yet sweet Italian.
Eleanor only was alone—but how terribly alone!
She sat where Lucy had left her—motionless—her hands hanging listlessly. She had been always thin, but in the last few weeks she had become a shadow. Her dress had lost its old perfection, though its carelessness was still the carelessness of instinctive grace, of a woman who could not throw on a shawl or a garden-hat without a natural trick of hand, that held even through despair and grief. The delicacy and emaciation of the face had now gone far beyond the bounds of beauty. It spoke of disease, and drew the pity of the passer-by.
Her loneliness grew upon her—penetrated and pursued her. She could not resign herself to it. She was always struggling with it, beating it away, as a frightened child might struggle with the wave that overwhelms it on the beach. A few weeks ago she had been so happy, so rich in friends—the world had been so warm and kind!
And now it seemed to her that she had no friends; no one to whom she could turn; no one she wished to see, except this girl—this girl she had known barely a couple of months—by whom she had been made desolate!
She thought of those winter gatherings in Rome which she had enjoyed with so keen a pleasure; the women she had liked, who had liked her in return, to whom her eager wish to love and be loved had made her delightful. But beneath her outward sweetness she carried a proud and often unsuspected reserve. She had made aconfidanteof no one. That her relation to Manisty was accepted and understood in Rome; that it was regarded as a romance, with which it was not so much ill-natured as ridiculous to associate a breath of scandal—a romance which all kind hearts hoped might end as most of such things should end—all this she knew. She had been proud of her place beside him, proud of Rome's tacit recognition of her claim upon him. But she had told her heart to nobody. Her wild scene with Lucy stood out unique, unparalleled in the story of her life.
And now there was no one she craved to see—not one. With the instinct of the stricken animal she turned from her kind. Her father? What had he ever been to her? Aunt Pattie? Her very sympathy and pity made Eleanor thankful to be parted from her. Other kith and kin? No! Happy, she could have loved them; miserable, she cared for none of them. Her unlucky marriage had numbed and silenced her for years. From that frost the waters of life had been loosened, only to fail now at their very source.
Her whole nature was one wound. At the moment when, standing spell-bound in the shadow, she had seen Manisty stooping over the unconscious Lucy, and had heard his tender breathless words, the sword had fallen, dividing the very roots of being.
And now—strange irony!—the only heart on which she leant, the only hand to which she clung, were the heart and the hand of Lucy!
'Why, why are we here?' she cried to herself with a sudden change of position and of anguish.
Was not their flight a mere absurdity?—humiliation for herself, since it revealed what no woman should reveal—but useless, ridiculous as any check on Manisty! Would he give up Lucy because she might succeed in hiding her for a few weeks? Was that passionate will likely to resign itself to the momentary defeat she had inflicted on it? Supposing she succeeded in despatching Lucy to America without any further interview between them; are there no steamers and trains to take impatient lovers to their goal? What childish folly was the whole proceeding!
And would she even succeed so far? Might he not even now be on their track? How possible that he should remember this place—its isolation—and her pleasure in it! She started in her chair. It seemed to her that she already heard his feet upon the road.
Then her thought rebounded in a fierce triumph, an exultation that shook the feeble frame. She was secure! She was entrenched, so to speak, in Lucy's heart. Never would that nature grasp its own joy at the cost of another's agony. No! no!—she is not in love with him!—the poor hurrying brain insisted. She has been interested, excited, touched. That, he can always achieve with any woman, if he pleases. But time and change soon wear down these first fancies of youth. There is no real congruity between them—there never, never could be.
But supposing it were not so—supposing Lucy could be reached and affected by Manisty's pursuit, still Eleanor was safe. She knew well what had been the effect, what would now be the increasing effect of her weakness and misery on Lucy's tender heart. By the mere living in Lucy's sight she would gain her end. From the first she had realised the inmost quality of the girl's strong and diffident personality. What Manisty feared she counted on.
Sometimes, just for a moment, as one may lean over the edge of a precipice, she imagined herself yielding, recalling Manisty, withdrawing her own claim, and the barrier raised by her own vindictive agony. The mind sped along the details that might follow—the girl's loyal resistance—Manisty's ardour—Manisty's fascination—the homage and the seduction, the quarrels and the impatience with which he would surround her—the scenes in which Lucy's reserve mingling with her beauty would but evoke on the man's side all the ingenuity, all the delicacy of which he was capable—and the final softening of that sweet austerity which hid Lucy's heart of gold.—
No!—Lucy had no passion!—she would tell herself with a feverish, an angry vehemence. How would she ever bear with Manisty, with the alternate excess and defect of his temperament?
And suddenly, amid the shadows of the past winter Eleanor would see herself writing, and Manisty stooping over her,—his hand taking her pen, his shoulder touching hers. His hand was strong, nervous, restless like himself. Her romantic imagination that was half natural, half literary, delighted to trace in it both caprice and power. When it touched her own slender fingers, it seemed to her they could but just restrain themselves from nestling into his. She would draw herself back in haste, lest some involuntary movement should betray her. But not before the lightning thought had burnt its way through her—'What if one just fell back against his breast—and all was said—all ventured in a moment! Afterwards—ecstasy, or despair—what matter!'—
When would Lucy have dared even such a dream? Eleanor's wild jealousy would secretly revenge itself on the girl's maidenly coldness, on the young stiffness, Manisty had once mocked at. How incredible that she should have attracted him!—how, impossible that she should continue to attract him! All Lucy's immaturities and defects passed through Eleanor's analysing thought.
For a moment she saw her coldly, odiously, as an enemy might see her.
And then!—quick revulsion—a sudden loathing of herself—a sudden terror of these new meannesses and bitterness that were invading her, stealing from her her very self, robbing her of the character that unconsciously she had loved in herself, as other people loved it—knowing that in deed and truth she was what others thought her to be, kind, and gentle, and sweet-natured.
And last of all—poor soul!—an abject tenderness and repentance towards Lucy, which yet brought no relief, because it never affected for an instant the fierce tension of will beneath.
A silvery night stole upon the sunset, absorbed, transmuted all the golds and crimsons of the west into its own dimly shining blue.
Eleanor was in bed; Lucy's clever hands had worked wonders with her room; and now Eleanor had been giving quick remorseful directions to Marie to concern herself a little with Miss Foster's comfort and Miss Foster's luggage.
Lucy escaped from the rooms littered with trunks and clothes. She took her hat and a light cape, and stole out into the broad passage, on either side of which opened the long series of small rooms which had once been Carmelite cells. Only the four or five rooms at the western end, the bare 'apartment' which they occupied, were still whole and water-tight. Half-way down the passage, as Lucy had already discovered, you came to rooms where the windows had no glass and the plaster had dropped from the walls, and the ceilings hung down in great gaps and rags of ruin. There was a bay window at the eastern end of the passage, which had been lately glazed for the summer tenants' sake. The rising moon streamed through on the desolation of the damp-stained walls and floors. And a fresh upland wind was beginning to blow and whistle through the empty and windowless cells. Even Lucy shivered a little. It was perhaps not wonderful that the French maid should be in revolt.
Then she went softly down an old stone staircase to the lower floor. Here was the same long passage with rooms on either side, but in even worse condition. At the far end was a glow of light and a hum of voices, coming from the corner of the building occupied by thecontadino, and their own kitchen. But between the heavy front door, that Lucy was about to open, and the distant light, was an earthen floor full of holes and gaps, and on either side—caverns of desolation—the old wine and oil stores, the kitchens and wood cellars of the convent, now black dens avoided by the cautious, and dark even at midday because of the rough boarding-up of the windows. There was a stable smell in the passage, and Lucy already knew that one of the further dens held thecontadino'sdonkey and mule.
'Canwe stay here?' she said to herself, half laughing, half doubtful.
Then she lifted the heavy iron bar that closed the old double door, and stepped out into the courtyard that surrounded the convent, half of which was below the road as it rapidly descended from the village, and half above it.
She took a few steps to the right.
Exquisite!
There opened out before her a little cloister, with double shafts carrying Romanesque arches; and at the back of the court, the chapel, and a tiny bell-tower. The moon shone down on every line and moulding. Under its light, stucco and brick turned to ivory and silver. There was an absolute silence, an absolute purity of air; and over all the magic of beauty and of night. Lucy thought of the ruined frescoes in the disused chapel, of the faces of saints and angels looking out into the stillness.
Then she mounted some steps to the road, and turned downwards towards the forest that crept up round them on all sides.
Ah! was there yet another portion of the convent?—a wing running at right angles to the main building in which they were established, and containing some habitable rooms? In the furthest window of all was a light, and a figure moving across it. A tall black figure—surely a priest? Yes!—as the form came nearer to the window, seen from the back, Lucy perceived distinctly the tonsured head and the soutane.
How strange! She had heard nothing from themassajaof any other tenant. And this tall gaunt figure had nothing in common with the little smilingparrocoshe had seen in the crowd.
She moved on, wondering.
Oh, those woods! How they sank, like great resting clouds below her, to the shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north. Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to the 'Saturnian land.'
And beyond all, the blue mountains, ætherially light, like dreams on the horizon; and above all, the radiant serenity of the sky.
Ah! there spoke the nightingales, and that same melancholy note of the little brown owl which used to haunt the olive grounds of Marinata. Lucy held her breath. The tears rushed into her eyes—tears of memory, tears of longing.
But she drove them back. Standing on a little cleared space beside the road that commanded the whole night scene, she threw herself into the emotion and poetry which could be yielded to without remorse, without any unnerving of the will. How far, far she was from Uncle Ben, and that shingled house in Vermont! It was near midsummer, and all the English and Americans had fled from this Southern Italy. Italy was at home, and at ease in her own house, living her own rich immemorial life, knowing and thinking nothing of the foreigner. Nor indeed on those uplands and in those woods had she ever thought of him; though below in the valley ran the old coach road from Florence to Rome, on which Goethe and Winckelmann had journeyed to the Eternal City. Lucy felt as though, but yesterday a tourist and stranger, she had now crept like a child into the family circle. Nay, she had raised a corner of Italy's mantle, and drawn close to the warm breast of one of the great mother-lands of the world.
Ah! but feeling sweeps fast and far, do what we will. Soon she was struggling out of her depth. These weeks of rushing experience had been loosening soul and tongue. To-night how she could have talked of these things to one now parted from her, perhaps for ever! How he would have listened to her—impatiently often! How he would have mocked and rent her! But then the quick softening—and the beautiful kindling eye—the dogmatism at once imperative and sweet—the tyranny that a woman might both fight and love!
Yet how painful was the thought of Manisty! She was ashamed—humiliated. Their flight assumed as a certainty what after all, let Eleanor say what she would, he had never, never said to her—what she had no clear authority to believe. Where was he? What was he thinking? For a moment, her heart fluttered towards him like a homing bird.
Then in a sharp and stern reaction she rebuked, she chastened herself. Standing there in the night, above the forests, looking over to the dim white cliffs on the side of Monte Amiata, she felt herself, in this strange and beautiful land, brought face to face with calls of the spirit, with deep voices of admonition and pity that rose from her own inmost being.
With a long sigh, like one that lifts a weight she raised her young arms above her head, and then brought her hands down slowly upon her eyes, shutting out sight and sense. There was a murmur—
'Mother!—darling mother!—if you were just here—for one hour—'
She gathered up the forces of the soul.
'So help me God!' she said. And then she started, perceiving into what formula she had slipped, unwittingly.
* * * * *
She moved on a few paces down the road, meaning just to peep into the woods and their scented loneliness. The night was so lovely she was loth to leave it.
Suddenly she became aware of a point of light in front, and the smell of tobacco.
A man rose from the wayside. Lucy stayed her foot, and was about to retreat swiftly when she heard a cheerful—
'Buona sera, Signorina!' She recognised a voice of the afternoon. It was the handsome carabiniere. Lucy advanced with alacrity.
'I came out because it was so fine,' she said. 'Are you on duty still?Where is your companion?'
He smiled, and pointed to the wood. 'We have a hut there. First Ruggieri sleeps—then I sleep. We don't often come this way; but when there areforestieri, then we must look out.'
'But there are no brigands here?'
He showed his white teeth. 'I shot two once with this gun,' he said, producing it.
'But not here?' she said, startled.
'No—but beyond the mountains—over there—in Maremma.' He waved his hand vaguely towards the west. Then he shook his head. 'Bad country—bad people—in Maremma.'
'Oh yes, I know,' said Lucy, laughing. 'If there is anything bad here, you say it comes from Maremma. When our harness broke this afternoon our driver said, "Che vuole?It was made in Maremma!"—Tell me—who lives in that part of the convent—over there?'
And, turning back, she pointed to the distant window and the light.
The man spat upon the road without replying. After replenishing his pipe he said slowly: 'That, Signorina, is aforestiere, too.'
'A priest—isn't it?'
'A priest—and not a priest,' said the man after another pause.
Then he laughed, with the suddeninsoucianceof the Italian.
'A priest that doesn't say his Mass!—that's a queer sort of priest—isn't it?'
'I don't understand,' said Lucy.
'Per Dio!what does it matter?' said the man, laughing. 'The people here wouldn't trouble their heads, only—But you understand, Signorina'—he dropped his voice a little—'the priests have much power—molto, molto! Don Teodoro, theparrocothere,—it was he founded thecassa rurale. If acontadinowants some money for his seed-corn—or to marry his daughter—or to buy himself a new team of oxen—he must go to theparroco. Since these new banks began, it is the priests that have the money—capisce?If you want it you must ask them! So you understand, Signorina, it doesn't profit to fall out with them. You must love their friends, and—' His grin and gesture finished the sentence.
'But what's the matter?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Has he committed any crime?' And she looked curiously at the figure in the convent window.
'È un prete spretato, Signorina.'
'Spretato?' (unpriested—unfrocked). The word was unfamiliar to her. She frowned over it.
'Scomunicato!' said thecarabiniere, with a laugh.
'Excommunicated?' She felt a thrill of pity, mingled with a vague horror.
'Why?—what has he done?'
Thecarabinierelaughed again. The laugh was odious, but she was already acquainted with that strange instinct of the lower-class Italian which leads him to make mock of calamity. He has passion, but no sentiment; he instinctively hates the pathetic.
'Chi sa, Signorina?He seems a quiet old man. We keep a sharp eye on him; he won't do any harm. He used to give the childrenconfetti, but the mothers have forbidden them to take them. Gianni there'—he pointed to the convent, and Lucy understood that he referred to thecontadino—'Gianni went to Don Teodoro, and asked if he should turn him out. But Don Teodoro wouldn't say Yes or No. He pays well, but the village want him to go. They say he will bring them ill-luck with their harvest.'
'And thePadre parroco? Does he not speak to him?'
Antonio laughed.
'When Don Teodoro passes him on the road he doesn't see him—capisce, Signorina? And so with all the other priests. When he comes by they have no eyes. The Bishop sent the word.'
'And everybody here does what the priests tell them?'
Lucy's tone expressed that instinctive resentment which the Puritan feels against a ruling and dominant Catholicism.
Antonio laughed again, but a little stupidly. It was the laugh of a man who knows that it is not worth while even to begin to explain certain matters to a stranger.
'They understand their business—i preti!'—was all he would say. Then—'Ma!—they are rich—the priests! All these last years—so many banks—so manycasse—so manysocietâ! That holds the people better than prayers.'
* * * * *
When Lucy turned homewards she found herself watching the light in the far window with an eager attention. A priest in disgrace?—and a foreigner? What could he be hiding here for?—in this remote corner of a district which, as they had been already told at Orvieto, was Catholic,fino al fanatismo?
* * * * *
The morning rose, fresh and glorious, over mountain and forest.
Eleanor watched the streaks of light that penetrated through the wooden sun-shutters grow brighter and brighter on the white-washed wall. She was weary of herself, weary of the night. The old building was full of strange sounds—of murmurs and resonances, of slight creepings and patterings, that tried the nerves. Her room communicated with Lucy's, and their doors were provided with bolts, the newness of which, perhaps, testified to the fears of other summer tenants before them. Nevertheless, Eleanor had been a prey to starts and terrors, and her night had passed in a bitter mingling of moral strife and physical discomfort.
Seven o'clock striking from the village church. She slipped to her feet. Ready to her hand lay one of the soft and elegant wrappers—fresh, not long ago, from Paris—as to which Lucy had often silently wondered how anyone could think it right to spend so much money on such things.
Eleanor, of course, was not conscious of the smallest reproach in the matter. Dainty and costly dress was second nature to her; she never thought about it. But this morning as she first took up the elaborate silken thing, to which pale girls in hot Parisian workrooms had given so much labour of hand and head, and then caught sight of her own face and shoulders in the cracked glass upon the wall, she was seized with certain ghastly perceptions that held her there motionless in the semi-darkness, shivering amid the delicate lace and muslin which enwrapped her. Finished!—for her—all the small feminine joys. Was there one of her dresses that did not in some way speak to her of Manisty?—that had not been secretly planned with a view to tastes and preferences she had come to know hardly less intimately than her own?
She thought of the face of the Orvieto doctor, of certain words that she had stopped on his lips because she was afraid to hear them. A sudden terror of death,—of the desolate, desolate end swept upon her. To die, with this cry of the heart unspent, untold for ever! Unloved, unsatisfied, unrewarded—she whose whole nature gave itself—gave itself perpetually, as a wave breaks upon a barren shore. How can any God send human beings into the world for such a lot? There can be no God. But how is the riddle easier, for thinking Him away?
When at last she rose, it was to make quietly for the door opening on theloggia.
Still there, this radiant marvel of the world!—this pageant of rock and stream and forest, this pomp of shining cloud, this silky shimmer of the wheat, this sparkle of flowers in the grass; while human hearts break, and human lives fail, and the graveyard on the hill yonder packs closer and closer its rows of metal crosses and wreaths!
Suddenly, from a patch of hayfield on the further side of the road, she heard a voice singing. A young man, tall and well made, was mowing in a corner of the field. The swathes fell fast before him: every movement spoke of an assured rejoicing strength. He sang with the sharp stridency which is the rule in Italy—the words clear, the sounds nasal.
Gradually Eleanor made out that the song was the farewell of a maiden to her lover who is going for winter work to the Maremma.
The labourers go to Maremma—Oh! 'tis long till the days of June,And my heart is all in a flutterAlone here, under the moon.
O moon!—all this anguish and sorrow!Thou know'st why I suffer so—Oh! send him me back from Maremma,Where he goes, and I must not go!
The man sang the little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe, and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now for a season, now for ever—which fills the world.
* * * * *
She was too restless to enjoy theloggiaand the view, too restless to go back to bed. She pushed back the door between her and Lucy, only to see that Lucy was still fast asleep. But there were voices and stops downstairs. The farm-people had been abroad for hours.
She made a preliminary toilette, took her hat, and stole downstairs. As she opened the outer door the children caught sight of her and came crowding round, large-eyed, their fingers in their mouths. She turned towards the chapel and the little cloister that she remembered. The children gave a shout and swooped back into the convent. And when she reached the chapel door, there they were on her skirts again, a big boy brandishing the key.
Eleanor took it and parleyed with them. They were to go away and leave her alone—quite alone. Then when she came back they should havesoldi. The children nodded shrewdly, withdrew in a swarm to the corner of the cloister, and watched events.
Eleanor entered. From some high lunette windows the cool early sunlight came creeping and playing into the little whitewashed place. On either hand two cinque-cento frescoes had been rescued from the whitewash. They shone like delicate flowers on the rough, yellowish-white of the walls; on one side a martyrdom of St. Catharine, on the other a Crucifixion. Their pale blues and lilacs, their sharp pure greens and thin crimsons, made subtle harmony with the general lightness and cleanness of the abandoned chapel. A poor little altar with a few tawdry furnishings at the further end, a confessional box falling to pieces with age, and a few chairs—these were all that it contained besides.
Eleanor sank kneeling beside one of the chairs. As she looked round her, physical weakness and the concentration of all thought on one subject and one person made her for the moment the victim of an illusion so strong that it was almost an 'apparition of the living.'
Manisty stood before her, in the rough tweed suit he had worn in November, one hand, holding his hat, upon his hip, his curly head thrown back, his eyes just turning from the picture to meet hers; eyes always eagerly confident, whether their owner pronounced on the affinities of a picture or the fate of a country.
'School of Pinturicchio certainly!—but local work. Same hand—don't you think so?—as in that smaller chapel in the cathedral. Eleanor! you remember?'
She gave a gasp, and hid her face, shaking. Was this haunting of eye and ear to pursue her now henceforward? Was the passage of Manisty's being through the world to be—for her—ineffaceable?—so that earth and air retained the impress of his form and voice, and only her tortured heart and sense were needed to make the phantom live and walk and speak again?
She began to pray—brokenly and desperately, as she had often prayed during the last few weeks. It was a passionate throwing of the will against a fate, cruel, unjust, intolerable; a means not to self-renunciation, but to a self-assertion which was in her like madness, so foreign was it to all the habits of the soul.
'That he should make use of me to the last moment, then fling me to the winds—that I should just make room, and help him to his goal—and then die meekly—out of the way—No! He too shall suffer!—and he shall know that it is Eleanor who exacts it!—Eleanor who bars the way!'
And in the very depths of consciousness there emerged the strange and bitter recognition that from the beginning she had allowed him to hold her cheaply; that she had been content, far, far too content, with what he chose to give; that if she had claimed more, been less delicate, less exquisite in loving, he might have feared and regarded her more.
She heard the chapel door open. But at the same moment she became aware that her face was bathed in tears, and she did not dare to look round. She drew down her veil, and composed herself as she best could.
The person behind, apparently, also knelt down. The tread and movements were those of a heavy man—some countryman, she supposed.
But his neighbourhood was unwelcome, and the chapel ceased to be a place of refuge where feeling might have its way. In a few minutes she rose and turned towards the door.
She gave a little cry. The man kneeling at the back of the chapel rose in astonishment and came towards her.
'Madame!'
'Father Benecke!youhere,' said Eleanor, leaning against the wall for support—so weak was she, and so startling was this sudden apparition of the man whom she had last seen on the threshold of the glass passage at Marinata, barely a fortnight before.
'I fear, Madame, that I intrude upon you,' said the old priest, staring at her with embarrassment. 'I will retire.'
'No, no,' said Eleanor, putting out her hand, with some recovery of her normal voice and smile. 'It was only so—surprising; so—unexpected. Who could have thought of finding you here, Father?'
The priest did not reply. They left the chapel together. The knot of waiting children in the cloister, as soon as they saw Eleanor, raised a shout of glee, and began to run towards her. But the moment they perceived her companion, they stopped dead.
Their little faces darkened, stiffened, their black eyes shone with malice. Then suddenly the boys swooped on the pebbles of the courtyard, and with cries of 'Bestia!—bestia!' they flung them at the priest over their shoulders, as they all fled helter-skelter, the brothers dragging off the sisters, the big ones the little ones, out of sight.
'Horrid little imps!' cried Eleanor in indignation. 'What is the matter with them? I promised them somesoldi. Did they hit you, Father?'
She paused, arrested by the priest's face.
'They?' he said hoarsely. 'Did you mean the children? Oh! no, they did no harm?'
What had happened to him since they met last at the villa? No doubt he had been in conflict with his superiors and his Church. Was he already suspended?—excommunicate? But he still wore the soutane?
Then panic for herself swept in upon and silenced all else. All was over with their plans. Father Benecke either was, or might at any moment be, in communication with Manisty. Alas, alas!—what ill-luck!
They walked together to the road—Eleanor first imagining, then rejecting one sentence after another. At last she said, a little piteously:
'It is so strange, Father—that you should be here!'
The priest did not answer immediately. He walked with a curiously uncertain gait. Eleanor noticed that his soutane was dusty and torn, and that he was unshaven. The peculiar and touching charm that had once arisen from the contrast between the large-limbed strength which he inherited from a race of Suabian peasants, and an extraordinary delicacy of feature and skin, a childish brightness and sweetness in the eyes, had suffered eclipse. He was dulled and broken. One might have said almost that he had become a mere ungainly, ill-kept old man, red-eyed for lack of sleep, and disorganised by some bitter distress.
'You remember—what I told you and Mr. Manisty, at Marinata?' he said at last, with difficulty.
'Perfectly. You withdrew your letter?'
'I withdrew it. Then I came down here. I have an old friend—a Canon ofOrvieto. He told me once of this place.'
Eleanor looked at him with a sudden return of all her natural kindness and compassion.
'I am afraid you have gone through a great deal, Father,' she said, gravely.
The priest stood still. His hand shook upon his stick.
'I must not detain you, Madame,' he said suddenly, with a kind of tremulous formality. 'You will be wishing to return to your apartment I heard that two English ladies were expected—but I never thought—'
'How could you?' said Eleanor hurriedly. 'I am not in any hurry. It is very early still. Will you not tell me more of what has happened to you? You would'—she turned away her head—'you would have told Mr. Manisty?'
'Ah! Mr. Manisty!' said the priest, with a long, startled sigh. 'I trust he is well, Madame?'
Eleanor flushed.
'I believe so. He and Miss Manisty are still at Marinata. Father Benecke!'
'Madame?'
Eleanor turned aside, poking at the stones on the road with her parasol.
'You would do me a kindness if for the present you would not mention my being here to any of your friends in Rome, to—to anybody, in fact. Last autumn I happened to pass by this place, and thought it very beautiful. It was a sudden determination on my part and Miss Foster's—you remember the American lady who was staying with us?—to come here. The villa was getting very hot, and—and there were other reasons. And now we wish to be quite alone for a little while—to be in retirement even from our friends. You will, I am sure, respect our wish?'
She looked up, breathing quickly. All her sudden colour had gone. Her anxiety and discomposure were very evident. The priest bowed.
'I will be discreet, Madame,' he said, with the natural dignity of his calling. 'May I ask you to excuse me? I have to walk into Selvapendente to fetch a letter.'
He took off his flat beaver hat, bowed low and departed, swinging along at a great pace. Eleanor felt herself repulsed. She hurried back to the convent. The children were waiting for her at the door, and when they saw that she was alone they took theirsoldi, though with a touch of sulkiness.
And the door was opened to her by Lucy.
'Truant!' said the girl reproachfully, throwing her arm round Eleanor. 'As if you ought to go out without your coffee! But it's all ready for you on theloggia. Where have you been? And why!—what's the matter?'
Eleanor told the news as they mounted to their rooms.
'Ah!thatwas the priest I saw last night!' cried Lucy. 'I was just going to tell you of my adventure. Father Benecke! How very, very strange! And how very tiresome! It's made you look so tired.'
And before she would hear a word more Lucy had put the elder woman into her chair in the deep shade of theloggia, had brought coffee and bread and fruit from the little table she herself had helped Cecco to arrange, and had hovered round till Eleanor had taken at least a cup of coffee and a fraction of roll. Then she brought her own coffee, and sat down on the rug at Eleanor's feet.
'I know what you're thinking about!' she said, looking up with her sweet, sudden smile. 'You want to go—right away!'
'Can we trust him?' said Eleanor, miserably. 'Edward doesn't know where he is,—but he could write of course to Edward at any moment.'
She turned away her face from Lucy. Any mention of Manisty's name dyed it with painful colour—the shame of the suppliant living on the mercy of the conqueror.
'He might,' said Lucy, thinking. 'But if you asked him? No; I don't believe he would. I am sure his soul is beautiful—like his face.'
'His poor face! You don't know how changed he is.'
'Ah! thecarabinieretold me last night. He is excommunicated,' saidLucy, under her breath.
And she repeated her conversation with the handsome Antonio. Eleanor capped it with the tale of the children.
'It's his book,' said Lucy, frowning. 'What a tyranny!'
They were both silent. Lucy was thinking of the drive to Nemi, of Manisty's words and looks; Eleanor recalled the priest's last visit to the villa and that secret storm of feeling which had overtaken her as she bade him good-bye.
But when Lucy speculated on what might have happened, Eleanor hardly responded. She fell into a dreamy silence from which it was difficult to rouse her. It was very evident to Lucy that Father Benecke's personal plight interested her but little. Her mind could not give it room. What absorbed her was the feverish question: Were they safe any longer at Torre Amiata, or must they strike camp and go further?
The day grew very hot, and Eleanor suffered visibly, even though the quality of the air remained throughout pure and fresh, and Lucy in the shelter of the broadloggiafelt nothing but a keen physical enjoyment of the glow and blaze that held the outer world.
After their midday meal Lucy was sitting idly on the outer wall of theloggiawhich commanded the bit of road just outside the convent, when she perceived a figure mounting the hill.
'Father Benecke!' she said to Eleanor. 'What a climb for him in this heat! Did you say he had gone to Selvapendente? Poor old man!—how hot and tired he looks!—and with that heavy parcel too!'
And withdrawing herself a little out of sight she watched the priest. He had just paused in a last patch of shade to take breath after the long ascent. Depositing the bundle he had been carrying on a wayside stone, he took out his large coloured handkerchief and mopped the perspiration from his face with long sighs of exhaustion. Then with his hands on his sides he looked round him. Opposite to him was a little shrine, with the usual rude fresco and enthroned Madonna behind a grating. The priest walked over to it, and knelt down.
In a few minutes he returned and took up his parcel. As he entered the outer gate of the convent, Lucy could see him glancing nervously from side to side. But it was the hour of siesta and of quiet. His tormentors of the morning were all under cover.
The parcel that he carried had partly broken out of its wrappings during the long walk, and Lucy could see that it contained clothes of some kind.
'Poor Father!' she said again to Eleanor. 'Couldn't he have got some boy to carry that for him? How I should like to rest him and give him some coffee? Shall I send Cecco to ask him to come here?'
Eleanor shook her head.
'Better not. He wouldn't come. We shall have to tame him like a bird.'
The hours passed on. At last the western sun began to creep round into theloggia. The empty cells on the eastern side were now cool, but they looked upon the inner cloistered court which was alive with playing children, and all the farm life. Eleanor shrank both from noise and spectators. Yet she grew visibly more tired and restless, and Lucy went out to reconnoitre. She came back recommending a descent into the forest.
So they braved a few yards of sun-scorched road and plunged into a little right-hand track, which led downward through a thick undergrowth of heath and arbutus towards what seemed the cool heart of the woods.
Presently they came to a small gate, and beyond appeared a broad, well-kept path, winding in zig-zags along the forest-covered side of the hill.
'This must be private,' said Eleanor, looking at the gate in some doubt.'And there you see is the Palazzo Guerrini.'
She pointed. Above them through a gap in the trees showed the great yellow pile on the edge of the plateau, the forest stretching steeply up to it and enveloping it from below.
'There is nothing to stop us,' said Lucy. 'They won't turn us out, if it is theirs. I can't have you go through that sun again.'
And she pressed on, looking for shade and rest.
But soon she stopped, with a little cry, and they both stood looking in astonishment at the strange and lovely thing upon which they had stumbled unawares.
'I know!' cried Lucy. 'The woman at the convent tried to tell me—and I couldn't understand. She said we must see the "Sassetto"—that it was a wonder—and all the strangers thought so. And itisa wonder! And so cool!'
Down from the very brow of the hill, in an age before man was born, the giant force of some primeval convulsion had flung a lava torrent of molten rock to the bed of the Paglia. And there still was the torrent—a rock-stream composed of huge blocks of basalt—flowing in one vast steep fall, a couple of hundred yards wide, through the forest from top to bottom of the hill.
And very grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and the powers of the Italian soil. But the forest and its lovely undergrowths, its heaths and creepers, its ferns and periwinkles, its lichen and mosses had thrown themselves on the frozen lava, had decked and softened its wild shapes, had reared oaks and pines amid the clefts of basalt, and planted all the crannies below with lighter, featherier green, till in the dim forest light all that had once been terror had softened into grace, and Nature herself had turned her freak to poetry.
And throughout the 'Sassetto' there reigned a peculiar and delicious coolness—the blended breath of mountain and forest. The smooth path that Eleanor and Lucy had been following wound in and out among the strange rock-masses, bearing the signs of having been made at great cost and difficulty. Soon, also, benches of grey stone began to mark the course of it at frequent intervals.
'We must live here!' cried Lucy in enchantment. 'Let me spread the shawl for you—there!—just in front of that glimpse of the river.'
They had turned a corner of the path. Lucy, whose gaze was fixed upon the blue distance towards Orvieto, heard a hurried word from Eleanor, looked round, and saw Father Benecke just rising from a seat in front.
A shock ran through her. The priest stood hesitating and miserable before them, a hot colour suffusing his hollow cheeks. Lucy saw that he was no longer in clerical dress. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and a hat of fine Leghorn straw with a broad black ribbon. Both ladies almost feared to speak to him.
Then Lucy ran forward, her cheeks too a bright red, her eyes wet and sparkling. 'How do you do, Father Benecke? You won't remember me, but I was just introduced to you that day at luncheon—don't you remember—on the Aventine?'
The priest took her offered hand, and looked at her in astonishment.
'Yes—I remember—you were with Miss Manisty.'
'I wish you had asked me to come with you this morning,' cried the girl suddenly. 'I'd have helped you carry that parcel up the hill. It was too much for you in the heat.'
Her face expressed the sweetest, most passionate sympathy, the indignant homage of youth to old age unjustly wounded and forsaken. Eleanor was no less surprised than Father Benecke. Was this the stiff, the reticent Lucy?
The priest struggled for composure, and smiled as he withdrew his hand.
'You would have found it a long way, Signorina. I tried to get a boy atSelvapendente, but no one would serve me.'
He paused a moment, then resumed speaking with a sort of passionate reluctance, his eyes upon the ground.
'I am a suspended priest—and the Bishop of Orvieto has notified the fact to his clergy. The news was soon known through the whole district. And now it seems the people hate me. They will do nothing for me. Nay, if they could, they would willingly do me an injury.'
The flush had died out of the old cheeks. He stood bareheaded before them, the tonsure showing plainly amid his still thick white locks—the delicate face and hair, like a study in ivory and silver, thrown out against the deep shadows of the Sassetto.
'Father, won't you sit down and tell me about it all?' said Eleanor gently.'You didn't send me away, you know—the other day—at the villa.'
The priest sighed and hesitated. 'I don't know, Madame, why I should trouble you with my poor story.
'It would not trouble me. Besides, I know so much of it already.'
She pointed to the bench he had just left.
'And I,' said Lucy, 'will go and fetch a book I left in theloggia. Father Benecke, Mrs. Burgoyne is not strong. She has walked more than enough. Will you kindly make her rest while I am gone?'
She fixed upon him her kind beseeching eyes. The sympathy, the homage of the two women enveloped the old man. His brow cleared a little.
She sped down the winding path, aglow with anger and pity. The priest's crushed strength and humiliated age—what a testimony to the power of that tradition for which Mr. Manisty was working—its unmerciful and tyrannous power!
Why such a penalty for a 'mildly Liberal' book?—'a fraction of the truth'? She could hear Manisty's ironic voice on that bygone drive to Nemi. If he saw his friend now, would he still excuse—defend?—
Her thoughts wrestled with him hotly—then withdrew themselves in haste, and fled the field.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Father Benecke's reserve had gradually yielded. He gave Eleanor a long troubled look, and said at last, very simply—
'Madame, you see a man broken hearted—'
He stopped, staring desolately at the ground. Eleanor threw in a few gentle words and phrases, and presently he again mustered courage to speak:
'You remember, Madame, that my letter was sent to theOsservatore Romanoafter a pledge had been given to me that only the bare fact of my submission, the mere formula that attends the withdrawal of any book that has been placed upon the Index, should be given to the public. Then my letter appeared. And suddenly it all became clear to me. I cannot explain it. It was with me as it was with St. Paul: "Placuit Domino ut revelaret filium suum in me!" My heart rose up and said: "Thou hast betrayed the truth"—"Tradidisti Sanctum et Justum!" After I left you that day I wrote withdrawing my letter and my submission. And I sent a copy to one of the Liberal papers. Then my heart smote me. One of the Cardinals of the Holy Office had treated me with much kindness. I wrote to him—I tried to explain what I had done. I wrote to several other persons at the Vatican, complaining of the manner in which I had been dealt with. No answer—not one. All were silent—as though I were already a dead man. Then I tried to see one or two of my old friends. But no one would receive me; one and all turned me from their doors. So then I left Rome. But I could not make up my mind to go home till I knew the worst. You understand, Madame, that I have been a Professor of Theology; that my Faculty can remove me—that my Faculty obeys the Bishops, and the Bishops obey the Holy See. I remembered this place—I left my address in Rome—and I came down here to wait. Ah! it was not long!'
He drew himself up, smiling bitterly.
'Two days after I arrived here I received two letters simultaneously—one from my Bishop, the other from the Council of my Faculty—suspending me both from my priestly and my academical functions. By the next post arrived a communication from the Bishop of this diocese, forbidding me the Sacraments.'
He paused. The mere recital of his case had brought him again into the bewilderment of that mental anguish he had gone through. Eleanor made a murmur of sympathy. He faced her with a sudden ardour.
'I had expected it, Madame; but when it came I was stunned—I was bowed to the earth. A few days later, I received an anonymous letter—from Orvieto, I think—reminding me that a priest suspendeda divinishas no right to the soutane. "Let the traitor," it said, "give up the uniform he has disgraced—let him at least have the decency to do that." In my trouble I had not thought of it. So I wrote to a friend in Rome to send me clothes.'
Eleanor's eyes filled with tears. She thought of the old man staggering alone up the dusty hill under his unwelcome burden.
He himself was looking down at his new clothes in a kind of confusion. Suddenly he said under his breath, 'And for what?—because I said what every educated man in Europe knows to be true?'
'Father,' said Eleanor, longing to express some poor word of comfort and respect, 'you have suffered greatly—you will suffer—but it is not for yourself.'
He shook his head.
'Madame, you see a man dying of hunger and thirst! He cannot cheat himself with fine words. He starves!'
She stared at him, startled—partly understanding.
'For forty-two years,' he said, in a low, pathetic voice, 'have I received my Lord—day after day—without a break. And now "they have taken Him away—and I know not where they have laid Him!"'
Nothing could be more desolate than tone and look. Eleanor understood. She had seen this hunger before. She remembered a convent in Rome where on Good Fridays some of the nuns were often ill with restlessness and longing, because for twenty-four hours the Sacrament was not upon the altar.
Under the protection of her reverent and pitying silence he gradually recovered himself. With great delicacy, with fine and chosen words, she began to try and comfort him, dwelling on his comradeship with all the martyrs of the world, on the help and support that would certainly gather round him, on the new friends that would replace the old. And as she talked there grew up in her mind an envy of him so passionate, so intense, that she could have thrown herself at his feet there and then and opened her own wretched heart to him.
He, tortured by the martyrdom of thought, by the loss of Christian fellowship!—She, scorched and consumed by a passion that was perfectly ready to feed itself on the pain and injury of the beloved, or the innocent, as soon as its own selfish satisfaction was denied it! There was a moment when she felt herself unworthy to breathe the same air with him.
She stared at him, frowning and pale, her hand clasping her breast, lest he should hear the beating of her heart.
* * * * *
Then the hand dropped. The inner tumult passed. And at the same moment the sound of steps was heard approaching.
Round the further corner of the path came two ladies, descending towards them. They were both dressed in deep mourning. The first was an old woman, powerfully and substantially built. Her grey hair, raised in a sort of toupé under her plain black bonnet, framed a broad and noticeable brow, black eyes, and other features that were both benevolent and strong. She was very pale, and her face expressed a haunting and prevailing sorrow. Eleanor noticed that she was walking alone, some distance ahead of her companion, and that she had gathered up her black skirts in an ungloved hand, with an absent disregard of appearances. Behind her came a younger lady, a sallow and pinched woman of about thirty, very slight and tall.
As they passed Eleanor and her companion, the elder woman threw a lingering glance at the strangers. The scrutiny of it was perhaps somewhat imperious. The younger lady walked past stiffly with her eyes on the ground.
Eleanor and Father Benecke were naturally silent as they passed. Eleanor had just begun to speak again when she heard herself suddenly addressed in French.
She looked up in astonishment and saw that the old lady had returned and was standing before her.
'Madame—you allow me to address you?'
Eleanor bowed.
'You are staying at Santa Trinità, I believe!'
'Oui, Madame. We arrived yesterday.'
The Contessa's examining eye, whereof the keenness was but just duly chastened by courtesy, took note of that delicate and frail refinement which belonged both to Eleanor's person and dress.
'I fear, Madame, you are but roughly housed at the Trinità. They are not accustomed to English ladies. If my daughter and I, who are residents here, can be of any service to you, I beg that you will command us.'
Eleanor felt nothing but an angry impatience. Could even this remote place give them no privacy? She answered however with her usual grace.
'You are very good, Madame. I suppose that I am speaking to the ContessaGuerrini?'
The other lady made a sign of assent.
'We brought a few things from Orvieto—my friend and I,' Eleanor continued.'We shall only stay a few weeks. I think we have all that is necessary. ButI am very grateful to you for your courtesy.'
Her manner, however, expressed no effusion, hardly even adequate response.The Contessa understood. She talked for a few moments, gave a fewdirections as to paths and points of view, pointed out a drive beyondSelvapendente on the mountain side, bowed and departed.
Her bow did not include the priest. But he was not conscious of it. While the ladies talked, he had stood apart, holding the hat that seemed to burn him, in his finger-tips, his eyes, with their vague and troubled intensity, expressing only that inward vision which is at once the paradise and the torment of the prophet.
* * * * *
Three weeks passed away. Eleanor had said no more of further travelling. For some days she lived in terror, startled by the least sound upon the road. Then, as it seemed to Lucy, she resigned herself to trust in Father Benecke's discretion, influenced also no doubt by the sense of her own physical weakness, and piteous need of rest.
And now—in these first days of July—their risk was no doubt much less than it had been. Manisty had not remembered Torre Amiata—another thorn in Eleanor's heart! He must have left Italy. As each fresh morning dawned, she assured herself drearily that they were safe enough.
As for the heat, the sun indeed was lord and master of this central Italy. Yet on the high tableland of Torre Amiata the temperature was seldom oppressive. Lucy, indeed, soon found out from her friend the Carabiniere that while malaria haunted the valley, and scourged the region of Bolsena to the south, the characteristic disease of their upland was pneumonia, caused by the daily ascent of the labourers from the hot slopes below to the sharp coolness of the night.
No, the heat was not overwhelming. Yet Eleanor grew paler and feebler. Lucy hovered round her in a constantly increasing anxiety. And presently she began to urge retreat, and change of plan. It was madness to stay in the south. Why not more at once to Switzerland, or the Tyrol?
Eleanor shook her head.
'But I can't have you stay here,' cried Lucy in distress.
And coming closer, she chose her favourite seat on the floor of theloggiaand laid her head against Eleanor's arm.
'Oughtn't you to go home?' she said, in a low urgent voice, caressing Eleanor's hand. 'Send me back to Uncle Ben. I can go home any time. But you ought to be in Scotland. Let me write to Miss Manisty!'
Eleanor laid her hand on her mouth. 'You promised!' she said, with her sweet stubborn smile.
'But it isn't right that I should let you run these risks. It—it—isn't kind to me.'
'I don't run risks. I am as well here as anywhere. The Orvieto doctor saw no objection to my being here—for a month, at any rate.'
'Send me home,' murmured Lucy again, softly kissing the hand she held. 'I don't know why I ever came.'
Eleanor started. Her lips grew pinched and bitter. But she only said:
'Give me our six weeks. All I want is you—and quiet.'
She held out both her hands very piteously, and Lucy took them, conquered, though not convinced.
'If anything went really wrong,' said Eleanor, 'I am sure you could appeal to that old Contessa. She has the face of a mother in Israel.'
'The people here seem to be pretty much in her hand,' said Lucy, as she rose. 'She manages most of their affairs for them. But poor, poor thing!—did you see that account in theTribunathis morning?'
The girl's voice dropped, as though it had touched a subject almost too horrible to be spoken of.
Eleanor looked up with a sign of shuddering assent. Her dailyTribuna, which the postman brought her, had in fact contained that morning a letter describing the burial—after three months!—of the remains of the army slain in the carnage of Adowa on March 1. For three months had those thousands of Italian dead lain a prey to the African sun and the African vultures, before Italy could get leave from her victorious foe to pay the last offices to her sons.
That fine young fellow of whom the neighbourhood talked, who seemed to have left behind him such memories of energy and goodness, his mother's idol, had his bones too lain bleaching on that field of horror? It did not bear thinking of.
Lucy went downstairs to attend to some household matters. It was about ten o'clock in the morning, and presently Eleanor heard the postman from Selvapendente knock at the outer door. Marie brought up the letters.
There were four or five for Lucy, who had never concealed her address from her uncle, though she had asked that it might be kept for a while from other people. He had accordingly forwarded some home-letters, and Marie laid them on the table. Beside them were some letters that Lucy had just written and addressed. The postman went his round through the village; then returned to pick them up.
Marie went away, and suddenly Eleanor sprang from the sofa. With a flush and a wild look she went to examine Lucy's letters.
Was all quite safe? Was Lucy not tampering with her, betraying her in any way? The letters were all for America, except one, addressed to Paris. No doubt an order to a tradesman? But Lucy had said nothing about it—and the letter filled Eleanor with a mad suspicion that her weakness could hardly repress.
'Why! by now—I am not even a lady!' she said to herself at last with set teeth, as she dragged herself from the table, and began to pace theloggia.