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

the old terrace with its balustrade, set above the Campagna, commanding the plain and the sea, the sky and the sunsets.

Evening after evening Lucy might have been found perched on the stone coping of the balustrade, sometimes trying, through the warm silent hours, by the help of this book or that, to call up again the old Roman life; sometimes dreaming of what there might still be--what the archaeologists indeed said must be--buried beneath her feet; of the marble limbs and faces pressed into the earth, and all the other ruined things, small and great, mean or lovely, that lay deep in a common grave below the rustling olives, and the still leafless vineyards; and sometimes the mere passive companion of the breeze and the sun, conscious only of the chirping of the crickets, or the loudness of the nightingales, or the flight of a hoopoe, like some strange bright bird of fairy-tale, flashing from one deep garden-shadow to another.

Yet the garden was not always given up to her and the birds. Peasant folk coming from Albano or the olive-grounds between it and the villa would take a short cut through the garden to Marinata; dark-faced gardeners, in blue linen suits, would doff their peaked hats to the strange lady; or a score or two of young black-frocked priestlings from a neighbouring seminary would suddenly throng its paths, playing mild girlish games, with infinite clamour and chatter, running races as far and fast as their black petticoats would allow, twisting their long overcoats and red sashes meanwhile round a battered old noseless bust that stood for Domitian at the end of a long ilex-avenue, and was the butt for all the slings and arrows of the day,--poor helpless State, blinded and buffeted by the Church!

Lucy would hide herself among the lilacs and the arbutus when the seminary invaded her; watching through the leaves the strapping Italian boys in their hindering womanish dress; scorning them for their state of supervision and dependence; pitying them for their destiny!

And sometimes Manisty, disturbed by the noise, would come out--pale and frowning. But at the sight of the seminarists and of the old priest in command of them, his irritable look would soften. He would stand indeed with his hands on his sides, laughing and chatting with the boys, his head uncovered, his black curls blown backward from the great furrowed brow; and in the end Lucy peering from her nook would see him pacing up and down the ilex-walk with the priest,--haranguing and gesticulating--the old man in a pleased wonder looking at the Englishman through his spectacles, and throwing in from time to time ejaculations of assent, now half puzzled, and now fanatically eager. "He is talking the book!"--Lucy would think to herself--and her mind would rise in revolt.

One day after parting with the lads he came unexpectedly past her hiding-place, and paused at sight of her. "Do the boys disturb you?" he said, glancing at her book, and speaking with the awkward abruptness which with him could in a moment take the place of ease and mirth.

"Oh no--not at all."

He fidgeted, stripping leaves from the arbutus tree under which she sat.

"That old priest who comes with them is a charming fellow!"

Her shyness gave way.

"Is he?--He looks after them like an old nurse. And they are such babies--those great boys!"

His eye kindled.

"So you would like them to be more independent--more brutal. You prefer a Harvard and Yale football match--with the dead and wounded left on the ground?"

She laughed, daring for the first time to assert herself.

"No. I don't want blood! But there is something between. However--"

She hesitated. He looked down upon her half irritable, half smiling.

"Please go on."

"It would do them no good, would it--to be independent?"

"Considering how soon they must be slaves for life? Is that what you mean?"

Her frank blue eyes raised themselves to his. He was instantly conscious of something cool and critical in her attitude towards him. Very possibly he had been conscious of it for some time, which accounted for his instinctive avoidance of her. In the crisis of thought and production through which he was passing he shrank from any touch of opposition or distrust. He distrusted himself enough. It was as though he carried about with him wounds that only Eleanor's soft touch could be allowed to approach. And from the first evening he had very naturally divined in this Yankee girl, with her mingled reserve and transparency, her sturdy Protestantisms of all sorts, elements antagonistic to himself.

She answered his question, however, by another--still referring to the seminarists.

'Isn't that the reason why they take and train them so young--that they may have no will left?'

'Well, is that the worst condition in the world--to give up your own will to an idea--a cause?'

She laughed shyly--a low musical sound that suddenly gave him, as it seemed, a new impression of her.

'You call the old priest an "idea"?'

Both had the same vision of the most portly and substantial of figures. Manisty smiled unwillingly.

'The old priest is merely the symbol.'

She shook her head obstinately.

'He is all they know anything about. He gives orders, and they obey. Soon it will be some one else's turn to give them the orders--'

'Till the time comes for them to give orders themselves?--Well, what is there to object to in that?' He scanned her severely. 'What does it mean but that they are parts of a great system, properly organised, to a great end? Show me anything better?'

She coloured.

'It is better, isn't it, that--sometimes--one should give oneself orders?' she said in a low voice.

Manisty laughed.

'Liberty to make a fool of oneself--in short. No doubt,--that's the great modern panacea.' He paused, staring at her without being conscious of it, with his absent brilliant eyes. Then he broke out--'Well! so you despise my little priests! Did you ever think of inquiring, however, which wears best--their notion of human life, which after all has weathered 1900 years, and is as strong and prevailing as it ever was--or the sort of notion that their enemies here go to work upon? Look into the history of this Abyssinian war--everybody free to make fools of themselves, in Rome or Africa--and doing it magnificently! Private judgment--private aims everywhere--from Crispi to the smallest lieutenant. Result--universal wreck and muddle--thousands of lives thrown away--a nation brought to shame. Then look about you at what's going on--here--this week--on these hills. It's Holy Week. They're all fasting--they're a11 going to mass--the people working in the fields, our servants, the bright little priests. To-morrow's Holy Thursday. From now till Sunday, nobody here will eat anything but a little bread and a few olives. The bells will cease to-morrow. If a single church-bell rang in Rome--over this plain, and these mountains--through the whole of Italy--from mass to-morrow till mass on Saturday--a whole nation would feel pain and outrage. Then on Saturday--marvellous symbol!--listen for the bells. You will hear them all loosed together, as soon as the Sanctus begins--all over Italy. And on Sunday--watch the churches. If it isn't Matthew Arnold's "One common wave of thought and joy--Lifting mankind amain,"--what is it? To me, it's what keeps the human machine running. Make the comparison!--it will repay you. My little muffs of priests with their silly obedience won't come so badly out of it.'

Unconsciously he had taken a seat beside her, and was looking at her with a sharp imperious air. She dimly understood that he was not talking to her but to a much larger audience, that he was still in fact in the grip of "the book." But that he should have anyway addressed so many consecutive sentences to her excited her after these many days of absolute neglect and indifference on his part; she felt a certain tremor of pulse. Instead, however, of diminishing self-command, it bestowed it.

'Well, if that's the only way of running the machine--the Catholic way I mean,'--her words came out a little hurried and breathless--'I don't see how _we_ exist.'

'You? America?'

She nodded.

'_Do_ you exist?--in any sense that matters?'

He laughed as he spoke; but his tone provoked her. She threw up her head a little, suddenly grave.

'Of course we know that you dislike us.'

He showed a certain embarrassment.

'How do you know?'

'Oh!--we read what you said of us.'

'I was badly reported,' he said, smiling.

'No,'--she insisted. 'But you were mistaken in a great many things--very, very much mistaken. You judged much too quickly.'

He rose, a covert amusement playing round his lips. It was the indulgence of the politician and man of affairs towards the little backwoods girl who was setting him to rights.

'We must have it out,' he said, 'I see I shall have to defend myself. But now I fear Mrs. Burgoyne will be waiting for me.'

And lifting his hat with the somewhat stately and excessive manner, which he could always substitute at the shortest notice for _brusquerie_ or inattention, he went his way.

Lucy Foster was left with a red cheek. She watched him till he had passed into the shadow of the avenue leading to the house; then with an impetuous movement she took up a book which had been lying beside her on the bench, and began to read it with a peculiar ardour--almost passion. It was the life of one of the heroes of the Garibaldian expedition of 1860-61.

For of late she had been surrounding herself--by the help of a library in Rome to which the Manistys had access--with the books of the Italian _Risorgimento_, that great movement, that heroic making of a nation, in which our fathers felt so passionate an interest, which has grown so dim and far away now, not only in the mind of a younger England, but even in that of a younger Italy.

But to Lucy--reading the story with the plain of Rome, and St. Peter's in sight, her wits quickened by the perpetual challenge of Manisty's talk with Mrs. Burgoyne, or any chance visitor,--Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini; all the striking figures and all the main stages in the great epic; the blind, mad, hopeless outbreaks of '48; the hangings and shootings and bottomless despairs of '49; the sullen calm of those waiting years from '49 to '58; the ecstasy of Magenta and Solferino, and the fierce disappointment of Villafranca; the wild golden days of Sicily in 1860; the plucking of Venice like a ripe fruit in '66; of Rome, in 1870; all the deliriums of freedom, vengeance, union--these immortal names and passions and actions, were thrilling through the girl's fresh poetic sense, and capturing all her sympathies. Had Italy indeed been 'made too quick'? Was all the vast struggle, and these martyred lives for nothing--all to end like a choked river in death and corruption? Well, if so, whose fault was it, but the priests'?--of that black, intriguing, traitorous Italy, headed by the Papacy, which except for one brief moment in the forties, had upheld every tyranny, and drenched every liberty in blood, had been the supporter of the Austrian and the Bourbon, and was now again tearing to pieces the Italy that so many brave men had died to make?

The priests!--the Church!--Why!--she wondered, as she read the story of Charles Albert, and Metternich and the Naples Bourbons, that Italy still dared to let the ignorant, persecuting brood live and thrive in her midst at all! Especially was it a marvel to her that any Jesuit might still walk Italian streets, that a nation could