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

bitter end, and not in the gingerly, tinkering fashion you affect at home! Just understand what it means to separate Church from State, to dig a gulf between the religious and the civil life.--Here's a country where nobody can be at once a patriot and a good Christian--where the Catholics don't vote for Parliament, and the State schools teach no religion--where the nation is divided into two vast camps, hating and thrusting at each other with every weapon they can tear from life. Examine it! That's what the thing looks like when it's full grown. Is it profitable--does it make for good times? In your own small degree, are you going to drive England that way too?--You'll admit, Father--you always did admit--that it was a good theme.'

The priest smiled--a little sadly.

'Excellent. Only--you seemed to me--a little irresponsible.'

Manisty nodded, and laughed.

'An outsider, with no stakes on? Well--that's true. But being a Romantic and an artist I sided with the Church. The new machine, and the men that were running it, seemed to me an ugly jerry-built affair, compared with the Papacy and all that it stood for. But then--'

--He leant back in his chair, one hand snatching and tearing at the bushes round him, in his absent, destructive way.--

'Well then--as usual--facts began to play the mischief with one's ideas. In the first place, as one lives on in Italy you discover the antiquity of this quarrel; that it is only the Guelf and Ghibelline quarrel over again, under new names. And in the next--presently one begins to divine an Italy behind the Italy we know, or history knows!--Voices come to one, as Goethe would say, from the caves where dwell "Die Muetter"--the creative generative forces of the country.'--

He turned his flashing look on Benecke, pleased now as always with the mere task of speech.

'Anyway, as I have been going up and down their country, especially during the last six weeks; prating about their poverty, and their taxes, their corruption, the incompetence of their leaders, the folly of their quarrel with the Church; I have been finding myself caught in the grip of things older and deeper--incredibly, primevally old!--that still dominate everything, shape everything here. There are forces in Italy, forces of land and soil and race--only now fully let loose--that will remake Church no less than State, as the generations go by. Sometimes I have felt as though this country were the youngest in Europe; with a future as fresh and teeming as the future of America. And yet one thinks of it at other times as one vast graveyard; so thick it is with the ashes and the bones of men! The Pope--and Crispi!--waves, both of them, on a sea of life that gave them birth, "with equal mind"; and that with equal mind will sweep them both to its own goal--not theirs.'

He smiled at his own eloquence, and returned to his cigarette.

The priest had listened to him all through with the same subtle embarrassed look.

'This must have some cause,' he said slowly, when Manisty ceased to speak. 'Surely?--this change? I recall language so different--forecasts so gloomy.'

'Gracious!--I can give you books-full of them,' said Manisty, reddening, 'if you care to read them. I came out with a _parti-pris_--I don't deny it. Catholicism had a great glamour for me; it has still, so long as you don't ask me to put my own neck under the yoke! But Rome itself is disenchanting. And outside Rome!--During the last six weeks I have been talking to every priest I could come across in these remote country districts where I have been wandering. _Per Dio!_--Marcello used to talk--I didn't believe him. But upon my word, the young fellows whom the seminaries are now sending out in shoals represent a fact to give one pause!--Little black devils!--_Scusi!_ Father,--the word escaped me. Broadly speaking, they are a political militia,--little else. Their hatred of Italy is a venom in their bones, and they themselves are mad for a spiritual tyranny which no modern State could tolerate for a week. When one thinks of the older men--of Rosmini, of Gioberti, of the priests who died on the Milan barricades in '48!'

His companion made a slow movement of assent.

Manisty smoked on, till presently he launched the _mot_ for which he had been feeling. 'The truth of the matter seems to be that Italy is Catholic, because she hasn't faith enough to make a heresy; and anti-clerical, because it is her destiny to be a nation!'

The priest smiled, but with a certain languor, turning his head once or twice as though to listen for sounds behind him, and taking out his watch. His eyes meanwhile--and their observation of Manisty--were not languid; seldom had the mild and spiritual face been so personal, so keen.

'Well, it is a great game,' said Manisty again--'and we shan't see the end. Tell me--how have they treated _you_--the priests in these parts?'

Benecke started and shrank.

'I have no complaint to make,' he said mildly. 'They seem to me good men.'

Manisty smoked in silence.

Then he said, as though summing up his own thoughts,--

'No,--there are plenty of dangers ahead. This war has shaken the _Sabaudisti_--for the moment. Socialism is serious.--Sicily is serious.--The economic difficulties are serious.--The House of Savoy will have a rough task, perhaps, to ride the seas that may come.--But _Italy_ is safe. You can no more undo what has been done than you can replace the child in the womb. The birth is over. The organism is still weak, but it lives. And the forces behind it are indefinitely, mysteriously stronger than the Vatican thinks.'

'A great recantation,' said the priest quickly.

Manisty winced, but for a while said nothing. All at once he jerked away his cigarette.

'Do you suspect some other reason for it, than the force of evidence?'--he said, in another manner.

The priest, smiling, looked him full in the face without replying.

'You may,' said Manisty, coolly. 'I shan't play the hypocrite. Father, I told you that I had been wandering about Italy on a quest that was not health, nor piety, nor archaeology. How much did you guess?'

'Naturally, something--_lieber Herr_.'

'Do you know that I should have been at Torre Amiata weeks ago but for you?'

'For me! You talk in riddles.'

'Very simple. Your letters might have contained a piece of news--and did not. Yet if it had been there to give, you would have given it. So I crossed Torre Amiata off my list. No need to go _there_! I said to myself.'

The priest was silent.

Manisty looked up. His eyes sparkled; his lips trembled as though they could hardly bring themselves to launch the words behind them.

'Father--you remember a girl--at the Villa?'

The priest made a sign of assent.

'Well--I have been through Italy--with that girl's voice in my ears--and, as it were, her eyes rather than my own. I have been searching for her for weeks. She has hidden herself from me. But I shall find her!--now or later--here or elsewhere.'

'And then?'

'Well, then,--I shall know some "eventful living"!'

He drew a long breath.

'And you hope for success?'

'Hope?' said Manisty, passionately. 'I live on something more nourishing than that!'

The priest lifted his eyebrows.

'You are so certain?'

'I must be certain'--said Manisty, in a low voice,--'or in torment! I prefer the certainty.'

His face darkened. In its frowning disorganisation his companion saw for the first time a man hitherto unknown to him, a man who spoke with the dignity, the concentration, the simplicity of true passion.

Dignity! The priest recalled the voice, the looks of Eleanor Burgoyne. Not a word for her--not a thought! His old heart began to shrink from his visitor, from his own scheme.

'Then how do you explain the young lady's disappearance?' he asked, after a pause.

Manisty laughed. But the note was bitter.

'Father!--I shall make her explain it herself.'

'She is not alone?'

'No--my cousin Mrs. Burgoyne is with her.'

Benecke observed him, appreciated the stiffening of the massive shoulders.

'I heard from some friends in Rome,' said the priest, after a moment--'distressing accounts of Mrs. Burgoyne's health.'

Manisty's look was vague and irresponsive.

'She was always delicate,' he said abruptly,--not kindly.

'What makes you look for them in Italy?'

'Various causes. They would think themselves better hidden from their English friends, in Italy than elsewhere, at this time of year. Beside, I remember one or two indications--'

There was a short silence. Then Manisty sprang up.

'How long, did you say, before the trap came? An hour and a half?'

'Hardly,' said the priest, unwillingly, as he drew out his watch.--'And you must give yourself three hours to Orvieto--'

'Time enough. I'll go and have a look at those frescoes again--and a chat with the woman. Don't interrupt yourself. I shall be back in half an hour.'

'Unfortunately I must write a letter,' said the priest.

And he stood at the door of his little bandbox of a house, watching the departure of his guest.

Manisty breasted the hill, humming as he walked. The irregular vigorous form, the nobility and animation of his carriage drew the gaze of the priest after him.

'At what point'--he said to himself,--'will he find her?'


CHAPTER XXII

Eleanor did not rise now, as a rule, till half way through the morning. Lucy had left her in bed.

It was barely nine o'clock. Every eastern or southern window was already fast closed and shuttered, but her door stood open to the _loggia_ into which no sun penetrated till the afternoon.

A fresh breeze, which seemed the legacy of the storm, blew through the doorway. Framed in the yellow arches of the _loggia_ she saw two cypresses glowing black upon the azure blaze of the sky. And in front of them, springing from a pot on the _loggia_, the straggly stem and rosy bunches of an oleander. From a distance the songs of harvesters at their work; and close by, the green nose of a lizard peeping round the edge of the door.

Eleanor seemed to herself to have just awakened from sleep; yet not from unconsciousness. She had a confused memory of things which had passed in sleep--of emotions and experiences. Her heart was beating fast, and as she sat up, she caught her own reflection in the cracked glass on the dressing-table. Startled, she put up her hand to her flushed cheek. It was wet.

'Crying!' she said, in wonder--'what have I been dreaming about? And why do I feel like this? What is the matter with me?'

After a minute or two, she rang a handbell beside her, and her maid appeared.

'Marie, I am so well--so strong! It is extraordinary! Bring everything. I should like to get up.'

The maid, in fear of Lucy, remonstrated. But her mistress prevailed.

'Do my hair as usual to-day,' she said, as soon as that stage of her toilette was reached, and she was sitting in her white wrapper before the cracked glass.

Marie stared.

'It will tire you, madame.'

'No, it won't. _Mais faites vite!_'

Ever since their arrival at Torre Amiata Eleanor had abandoned the various elaborate _coiffures_ in which she had been wont to appear at the villa. She would allow nothing but the simplest and rapidest methods; and Marie had been secretly alarmed lest her hand should lose her cunning.

So that