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

the road. She hurried to hide her white dress, close, under the wall--she strained every sense.

The sputter of a match--the trail of its scent in the heavy air--an exclamation.

'Father!--wait a moment! Let me light up. These matches are damp. Besides I want to have another look at this old place--'

The steps diverged from the road; approached the lower wall of the garden. She pressed herself against its inner surface, trembling in every limb. Only the old door between her and them! She dared not move--but it was not only fear of discovery that held her. It was a mad uncontrollable joy, that like a wind on warm embers, kindled all her being into flame.

'One more crime--that!--of your Parliamentary Italy! What harm had the poor things done that they should be turned out? You heard what that carabiniere said?--that they farmed half the plateau. And now look at that! I feel as I do when I see a blackbird's nest on the ground, that some beastly boy has been robbing and destroying. I want to get at the boy.'

'The boy would plead perhaps that the blackbirds were too many--and the fruit too scant. Is it wise, my dear sir, to stand there in the damp?'

The voice was pitched low. Lucy detected the uneasiness of the speaker.

'One moment. You remember, I was here before in November. This summer night is a new impression. What a pure and exquisite air!'--Lucy could hear the long inhalation that followed the words. 'I recollect a vague notion of coming to read here. The _massaja_ told us they took in people for the summer. Ah! There are some lights, I see, in those upper windows.'

'There are rooms in several parts of the building. Mine were in that further wing. They were hardly watertight,' said the priest hastily, and in the same subdued voice.

'It is a place that one might easily rest in--or hide in,' said Manisty with a new accent on the last words. 'To-morrow morning I will ask the woman to let me walk through it again.--And to-morrow midday, I must be off.'

'So soon? My old Francesca will owe you a grudge. She is almost reconciled to me because you eat--because you praised her omelet.' 'Ah! Francesca is an artist. But--as I told you--I am at present a wanderer and a pilgrim. We have had our talk--you and I--grasped hands, cheered each other, "passed the time of day," _undweiter noch--noch weiter--mein treuer Wanderstab_!'

The words fell from the deep voice with a rich significant note. Lucy heard the sigh, the impatient, despondent sigh, that followed.

They moved away. The whiffs of tobacco still came back to her on the light westerly wind; the sound of their voices still reached her covetous ear. Suddenly all was silent.

She spread her hands on the door in a wild groping gesture.

'Gone! gone!' she said under her breath. Then her hands dropped, and she stood motionless, with bent head, till the moment was over, and her blood tamed.


CHAPTER XXI

'Maso! look here!' said Lucy, addressing a small boy, who with his brother was driving some goats along the road.

She took from a basket on her arm, first some _pasticceria_, then a square of chocolate, lastly a handful of _soldi_.

'You know the _casetta_ by the river where Mamma Brigitta lives?'

'Yes.' The boy looked at her with his sharp stealthy eyes.

'Take down this letter to Mamma Brigitta. If you wait a little, she'll give you another letter in exchange, and if you bring it up to me, you shall have all those!'

And she spread out her bribes.

The boys' faces were sulky. The house by the river was unpopular, owing to its tenant. But the temptation was of a devilish force. They took the letter and scampered down the hill driving their goats before them.

Lucy also walked down some three or four of the innumerable zig-zags of the road. Presently she found a rocky knoll to the left of it. A gap in the trees opened a vision of the Amiata range, radiantly blue under a superb sky, a few shreds of moving mist still wrapped about its topmost peaks. She took her seat upon a moss-covered stone facing the road which mounted towards her. But some bushes of tall heath and straggling arbutus made a light screen in front of her. She saw, but she could hardly be seen, till the passer-by coming from the river was close upon her.

She sat there with her hands lightly crossed upon her knees, holding herself a little stiffly--waiting.

The phrases of her letter ran in her head. It had been short and simple.--'Dear Father Benecke,--I have reason to know that Mr. Manisty is here--is indeed staying with you. Mrs. Burgoyne is not aware of it and I am anxious that she should not be told. She wishes--as I think she made clear to you--to be quite alone here, and if she desired to see her cousins she would of course have written to them herself. She is too ill to be startled or troubled in any way. Will you do us a great kindness? Will you persuade Mr. Manisty to go quietly away without letting Mrs. Burgoyne know that he has been here? Please ask him to tell Miss Manisty that we shall not be here much longer, that we have a good doctor, and that as Torre Amiata is on the hills the heat is not often oppressive.'

... The minutes passed away. Presently her thoughts began to escape the control she had put upon them; and she felt herself yielding to a sense of excitement. She resolutely took a book of Italian stories from the bottom of her basket, and began to read.

At last! the patter of the goats and the shouts of the boys.

They rushed upon her with the letter. She handed over their reward and broke the seal.

'Hochgeerhrtes Fraeulein,--

'It is true that Mr. Manisty is here. I too am most anxious that Mrs. Burgoyne should not be startled or disturbed. But I distrust my own diplomacy; nor have I yet mentioned your presence here to my guest. I am not at liberty to do so, having given my promise to Mrs. Burgoyne. Will you not see and speak to Mr. Manisty yourself? He talks of going up this morning to see the old convent. I cannot prevent him, without betraying what I have no right to betray. At present he is smoking in my garden. But his carriage is ordered from Selvapendente two hours hence. If he does go up the hill, it would surely be easy for you to intercept him. If not, you may he sure that he has left for Orvieto.'

Lucy read the letter with a flush and a frown. It struck her that it was not quite simple; that the priest knew more, and was more concerned in the new turn of events than he avowed.

She was well aware that he and Eleanor had had much conversation; that Eleanor was still possessed by the same morbid forces of grief and anger which, at the villa, had broken down all her natural reticence and self-control. Was it possible--?

Her cheek flamed. She felt none of that spell in the priestly office which affected Eleanor. The mere bare notion of being 'managed' by this kind old priest was enough to rouse all her young spirit and defiance.

But the danger was imminent. She saw what she must do, and prepared herself to do it--simply, without any further struggle.

The little goatherds left her, munching their cakes and looking back at her from time to time in a childish curiosity. The pretty blue lady had seated herself again as they had found her--a few paces from the roadside, under the thick shadow of an oak.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Manisty was rejoined by Father Benecke--who had left him for a few minutes to write his letter--beside the Paglia, which was rushing down in a brown flood, after the rain of the day before. Around and above them, on either side of the river, and far up the flanks of the mountains opposite, stretched the great oak woods, which are still to-day the lineal progeny of that vast Ciminian forest where lurked the earliest enemies of Rome.

'But for the sun, it might be Wales!' said Manisty, looking round him, as he took out another cigarette.

Father Benecke made no reply. He sat on a rock by the water's side, in what seemed to be a reverie. His fine white head was uncovered. His attitude was gentle, dignified, abstracted.

'It is a marvellous country this!' Manisty resumed. 'I thought I knew it pretty well. But the last five weeks have given one's mind a new hold upon it. The forests have been wasted--but by George!--what forests there are still!--and what a superb mountain region, half of which is only known to a few peasants and shepherds. What rivers--what fertility--what a climate! And the industry of the people. Catch a few English farmers and set them to do what the Italian peasant does, year in and year out, without a murmur! Look at all the coast south of Naples. There is not a yard of it, scarcely, that hasn't been _made_ by human hands. Look at the hill-towns; and think of the human toil that has gone to the making and maintaining of them since the world began.'

And swaying backwards and forwards he fell into the golden lines:

Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem,
Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis,
Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.

'_Congesta manu! Ecco!_--there they are'--and he pointed down the river to the three or four distant towns, each on its mountain spur, that held the valley between them and Orvieto--pale jewels on the purple robe of rock and wood.

'So Virgil saw them. So the latest sons of time shall see them--the homes of a race that we chatter about without understanding--the most laborious race in the wide world.'

And again he rolled out under his breath, for the sheer joy of the verse:

Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virum.

The priest looked at him with a smile; preoccupied yet shrewd.

'I follow you with some astonishment. Surely--I remember other sentiments on your part?'

Manisty coloured a little, and shook his black head, protesting.

'I never said uncivil things, that I remember, about Italy or the Italians as such. My quarrel was with the men that run them, the governments that exploit them. My point was that Piedmont and the North had been too greedy, had laid hands too rapidly on the South and had risked this damnable quarrel with the Church, without knowing what they were running their heads into. And in consequence they found themselves--in spite of rivers of corrupt expenditure--without men, or money, or credit to work their big new machine with; while the Church was always there, stronger than ever for the grievance they had presented her with, and turned into an enemy with whom it was no longer possible to parley. Well!--that struck me as a good object lesson. I wanted to say to the secularising folk everywhere--England included--just come here, and look what your policy comes to, when it's carried out to the