Eleanor (47 page)

‘Oh! I mustn’t—_mustn’t_—be glad!’—she cried, gulping down a sob, hating, despising herself.

Then she hurried on. With every step, she grew more angry with Father Benecke. At best, he must have been careless, inconsiderate. A man of true delicacy would have done more than keep his promise, would have actively protected him.

That he had kept the letter of his promise was almost proved by the fact that Mr. Manisty had not yet descended upon the convent. For what could it mean—his lingering in Italy—but a search, a pursuit? Her cheek flamed guiltily over the certainty thus borne in upon her. But if so, what could hold back his impetuous will—but ignorance? He could not know they were there. That was clear.

So there was time—a chance. Perhaps Father Benecke was taken by surprise too—puzzled to know what to do with him? Should she write to the priest; or simply keep Eleanor indoors and watch?

At thought of her, the girl lashed herself into an indignation, an anguish that sustained her. After devotion so boundless, service so measureless—so lightly, meagrely repaid—were Mrs. Burgoyne’s peace and health to be again in peril at her cousin’s hands?

Luckily Eleanor showed that day no wish to move from her sofa. The storm had shaken her, given her a headache, and she was inclined to shiver in the cooler air.

After luncheon Lucy coaxed her to stay in one of the inner rooms, where there was a fire-place; out of sight and sound of the road. Marie made a fire on the disused hearth of what had once been an infirmary cell. The logs crackled merrily; and presently the rain streamed down again across the open window.

Lucy sat sewing and reading through the afternoon in a secret anguish of listening. Every sound in the corridor, every sound from downstairs, excited the tumult in the blood. ‘What is the matter with you?’ Eleanor would say, reaching out first to pinch, then to kiss the girl’s cheek. ‘It is all very well that thunder should set a poor wretch like me on edge—but you! Anyway it has given you back your colour. You look superbly well this afternoon.’

And then she would fall to gazing at the girl under her eyebrows with that little trick of the bitten lip, and that piteous silent look, that Lucy could hardly bear.

The rain fell fast and furious. They dined by the fire, and the night fell.

‘Clearing—at last,’ said Eleanor, as they pushed back their little table, and she stood by the open window, while Cecco was taking away the meal; ‘but too late and too wet for me.’

An hour later indeed the storm had rolled away, and a bright and rather cold starlight shone above the woods.

‘Now I understand Aunt Pattie’s tales of fires at Sorrento in August,’ said Eleanor, crouching over the hearth. ‘This blazing Italy can touch you when she likes with the chilliest fingers. Poor peasants!—are their hearts lighter to-night? The rain was fierce, but mercifully there was no hail. Down below they say the harvest is over. Here they begin next week. The storm has been rude—but not ruinous. Last year the hail-storms in September stripped the grape; destroyed half their receipts—and pinched their whole winter. They will think it all comes of their litanies and banners the other day. If the vintage goes well too, perhaps they will give the Madonna a new frock. How simple!—how satisfying!’

She hung over the blaze, with her little pensive smile, cheered physically by the warmth, more ready to talk, more at ease than she had been for days. Lucy looked at her with a fast beating heart. How fragile she was, how lovely still, in the half light!

Suddenly Eleanor turned to her, and held out her arms. Lucy knelt down beside her, trembling lest any look or word should betray the secret in her heart. But Eleanor drew the girl to her, resting her cheek tenderly on the brown head.

‘Do you miss your mother very much?’ she said softly, turning her lips to kiss the girl’s hair. ‘I know you do. I see it in you, often.’

Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. She pressed Eleanor’s hand without speaking. They clung together in silence each mind full of thoughts unknown to the other. But Eleanor’s features relaxed; for a little while she rested, body and mind. And as Lucy lingered in the clasp thrown round her, she seemed for the first time since the old days at the villa to be the cherished, and not the cherisher.

Eleanor went early to bed, and then Lucy took a warm shawl and paced up and down the
loggia
in a torment of indecision. Presently she was attracted by the little wooden stair which led down from the
loggia
to what had once been the small walled garden of the convent, where the monks of this austere order had taken their exercise in sickness, or rested in the sun, when extreme old age debarred them from the field labour of their comrades.

The garden was now a desolation, save for a tangle of oleanders and myrtle in its midst. But the high walls were still intact, and an old wooden door on the side nearest to the forest. Beneath the garden was a triangular piece of open grass land sloping down towards the entrance of the Sassetto and bounded on one side by the road.

Lucy wandered up and down, in a wild trance of feeling. Half a mile away was he sitting with Father Benecke?—winning perhaps their poor secret from the priest’s incautious lips’? With what eagle-quickness could he pounce on a sign, an indication! And then the flash of those triumphant eyes, and the onslaught of his will on theirs!

Hark! She caught her breath.

Voices! Two men were descending 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.’