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

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 suspended _a divinis_ has 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 toupe 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 Trinita, 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 Trinita. 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 Contessa Guerrini?'

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. But I 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 few directions as to paths and points of view, pointed out a drive beyond Selvapendente 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 the _loggia_ and 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 the _Tribuna_ this 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 daily _Tribuna_, 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