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

end and the shore begin? All was drowned in the same dim wash of blue--the olives and figs, the reddish earth, the white of the cherries, the pale pink of the almonds. In front the lights of Genzano gleamed upon the tall cliff. But in this lonely path all was silence and woody fragrance; the honeysuckles threw breaths across their path; tall orchises, white and stately, broke here and there from the darkness of the banks. In spite of pain and weakness her senses seemed to be flooded with beauty. A strange peace and docility overcame her.

'You are better?' said Manisty's voice beside her. The tones of it were grave and musical; they expressed an enwrapping kindness, a 'human softness' that still further moved her.

'So much better! The bleeding has almost stopped. I--I suppose it would have been better, if I had waited for you?--if I had not ventured on those paths alone?'

There was in her scrupulous mind a great penitence about the whole matter. How much trouble she was giving!--how her imprudence had spoilt the little festa! And poor Mrs. Burgoyne!--forced to walk up this long, long way.

'Yes--perhaps it would have been better'--said Manisty. 'One never quite knows about this population. After all, for an Italian lady to walk about some English country lanes alone, might not be quite safe--and one ruffian is enough. But the point is--we should not have left you.'

She was too feeble to protest. Manisty spoke to the man leading the horse, bidding him draw on one side, so as to avoid a stony bit of path. Then the reins fell from her stiff right hand, which seemed to be still trembling with cold. Instantly Manisty gathered them up, and replaced them in the chill fingers. As he did so he realised with a curious pleasure that the hand and wrist, though not small, were still beautiful, with a fine shapely strength.

Presently, as they mounted the steep ascent towards the Sforza Cesarini woods, he made her rest half way.

'How those stones must have jarred you!'--he said frowning, as he turned the horse, so that she sat easily, without strain.

'No! It was nothing. Oh--glorious!'

For she found herself looking towards the woods of the south-eastern ridge of the lake, over which the moon had now fully risen. The lake was half shade, half light; the fleecy forests on the breast of Monte Cavo rose soft as a cloud into the infinite blue of the night-heaven. Below, a silver shaft struck the fisherman's hut beside the shore, where, deep in the water's breast, lie the wrecked ships of Caligula,--the treasure ships--whereof for seventy generations the peasants of Nemi have gone dreaming.

As they passed the hut,--half an hour before--Manisty had drawn her attention, in the dim light, to the great beams from the side of the nearer ship, which had been recently recovered by the divers, and were lying at the water's edge. And he had told her,--with a kindling eye--how he himself, within the last few months, had seen fresh trophies recovered from the water,--a bronze Medusa above all, fiercely lovely, the work of a most noble and most passionate art, not Greek though taught by Greece, fresh, full-blooded, and strong, the art of the Empire in its eagle-youth.

'Who destroyed the ships, and why?' he said, as they paused, looking down upon the lake. 'There is not a shred of evidence. One can only dream. They were a madman's whim; incredibly rich in marble, and metal, and terra-cotta, paid for, no doubt, from the sweat and blood of this country-side. Then the young monster who built and furnished them was murdered on the Palatine. Can't you see the rush of an avenging mob down this steep lane?--the havoc and the blows--the peasants hacking at the statues and the bronzes--loading their ox-carts perhaps with the plunder--and finally letting in the lake upon the wreck! Well!--somehow like that it must have happened. The lake swallowed them; and, in spite of all the efforts of the Renaissance people, who sent down divers, the lake has kept them, substantially, till now. Not a line about them in any known document! History knows nothing. But the peasants handed down the story from father to son. Not a fisherman on this lake, for eighteen hundred years, but has tried to reach the ships. They all believed--they still believe--that they hold incredible treasures. But the lake is jealous--they lie deep!'

Lucy bent forward, peering into the blue darkness of the lake, trying to see with his eyes, to catch the same ghostly signals from the past. The romance of the story and the moment, Manisty's low, rushing speech, the sparkle of his poet's look--the girl's fancy yielded to the spell of them; her breath came quick and soft. Through all their outer difference, Manisty suddenly felt the response of her temperament to his. It was delightful to be there with her--delightful to be talking to her.

'I was on the shore,' he continued, 'watching the divers at work, on the day they drew up the Medusa. I helped the man who drew her up to clean the slime and mud from them, and the vixen glared at me all the time, as though she thirsted to take vengeance upon us all. She had had time to think about it,--for she sank perhaps ten years after the Crucifixion,--while Mary still lived in the house of John!'

His voice dropped to the note of reverie, and a thrill passed through Lucy. He turned the horse's head towards Genzano, and they journeyed on in silence. She indeed was too weak for many words; but enwrapped as it were by the influences around her,--of the place, the evening beauty, the personality of the man beside her,--she seemed to be passing through a many-coloured dream, of which the interest and the pleasure never ceased.

Presently they passed a little wayside shrine. Within its penthouse eave an oil-lamp flickered before the frescoed Madonna and Child; the shelf in front of the picture was heaped with flowers just beginning to fade. Manisty stayed the horse a moment; pointed first to the shrine, then to the bit of road beneath their feet.

'Do you see this travertine--these blocks? This is a bit of the old road to the temple. I was with the exploring party when they carried up the Medusa and some other of their finds along here past the shrine. It was nearly dark--they did not want to be observed. But I was an old friend of the man in command, and he and I were walking together. The bearers of the heavy bronze things got tired. They put down their load just here, and lounged away. My friend stepped up to the sort of wooden bier they were carrying, to see that all was right. He uncovered the Medusa, and turned her to the light of the lamp before the shrine. You never saw so strange and wild a thing!--the looks she threw at the Madonna and Child. "Ah! Madam," I said to her--"the world was yours when you went down--but now it's theirs! Tame your insolence!" And I thought of hanging her here, at night, just outside, under the lamp against the wall of the shrine--and how one might come in the dark upon the fierce head with the snakes--and watch her gazing at the Christ.'

Lucy shuddered and smiled.

'I'm glad she wasn't yours!'

'Why? The peasants would soon have made a saint of her, and invented a legend to fit. The snakes, for them, would have been the instruments of martyrdom--turned into a martyr's crown. Italy and Catholicism absorb--assimilate--everything. "_Santa Medusa!_"--I assure you, she would be quite in order.'

There was a pause. Then she heard him say under his breath--'Marvellous, marvellous Italy!'

She started and gave a slight cry--unsteady, involuntary.

'But you don't love her!--you are ungrateful to her!'

He looked up surprised--then laughed--a frank, pugnacious laugh.

'There is Italy--and Italy.'

'There is only one Italy!--Aristodemo's Italy--the Italy the peasants work in.'

She turned to him, breathing quicker, the colour returning to her pale cheek.

'The Italy that has just sent seven thousand of her sons to butchery in a wretched colony, because her hungry politicians must have glory and keep themselves in office? You expect me to love that Italy?'

Within the kind new sweetness of his tone--a sweetness no man could use more subtly--there had risen the fiery accustomed note. But so restrained, so tempered to her weakness, her momentary dependence upon him!

'You might be generous to her--just, at least!--for the sake of the old.'

She trembled a little from the mere exertion of speaking, and he saw it.

'No controversy to-night!' he said smiling. 'Wait till you are fit for it, and I will overwhelm you. Do you suppose I don't know all about the partisan literature you have been devouring?'

'One had to hear the other side.'

'Was I such a bore with the right side?'

They both laughed. Then he said, shrugging his shoulders with sudden emphasis:

'What a nation of revolutionists you are in America! What does it feel like, I wonder, to be a people without a past, without traditions?'

Lucy exclaimed: 'Why, we are made of traditions!'

'Traditions of revolt and self-will are no traditions,' he said provokingly. 'The submission of the individual to the whole--that's what you know nothing of.'

'We shall know it when we want it! But it will be a free submission--given willingly.'

'No priests allowed? Oh! you will get your priests. You are getting them. No modern nation can hold together without them.'

They sparred a little longer. Then Lucy's momentary spirit of fight departed. She looked wistfully to see how near they were to Genzano. Manisty approached her more closely.

'Did my nonsense cheer you--or tire you?' he said in a different voice. 'I only meant it to amuse you, Hark!--did you hear that sound?'

They stopped. Above them, to the right, they saw through the dusk a small farm in a patch of vineyard. A dark figure suddenly hurled itself down a steep path towards them. Other figures followed it--seemed to wrestle with it; there was a confused wailing and crying--the piteous shrill lamenting of a woman's voice.

'Oh, what is it?' cried Lucy, clasping her hands.

Manisty spoke a few sharp words to the man leading the horse. The man stood still and checked his beast. Manisty ran towards the sounds and the dim struggle on the slope above them.

Such a cry! It rent and desolated the evening peace. It seemed to Lucy the voice of an old woman, crossed by other voices--rough, chiding voices of men. Oh, were they ill-treating her? The girl said hurriedly to the man beside her that she would dismount.

'No, no, signorina,' said the man, placidly, raising his hand. 'The signor will be here directly. It happens often, often.'

And almost at the same moment Manisty was beside her again, and the gruesome sounds above were dying away.

'Were you frightened?' he said, with anxiety. 'There was no need. How strange that it should have happened just now! It's a score that _your_ Italy must settle--_mine_ washes her hands of it!' and he explained that what she had heard were the cries of a poor hysterical woman, a small farmer's wife, who had lost both her sons in the Abyssinian war, in the frightful retreat of Adowa, and had never been in her right mind since the news arrived. With the smallest lapse in the vigilance of those about her, she would rush down to the road, and throw herself upon any passer-by,