Various - "Legend Land, Volume 2"

Laura Lee Hope - "The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point"

Robert Barr - "Jennie Baxter, Journalist"

Archibald Forbes - "Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor




But she drove them back. Standing on a little cleared space beside the road
that commanded the whole night scene, she threw herself into the emotion
and poetry which could be yielded to without remorse, without any unnerving
of the will. How far, far she was from Uncle Ben, and that shingled house
in Vermont! It was near midsummer, and all the English and Americans had
fled from this Southern Italy. Italy was at home, and at ease in her own
house, living her own rich immemorial life, knowing and thinking nothing of
the foreigner. Nor indeed on those uplands and in those woods had she ever
thought of him; though below in the valley ran the old coach road from
Florence to Rome, on which Goethe and Winckelmann had journeyed to the
Eternal City. Lucy felt as though, but yesterday a tourist and stranger,
she had now crept like a child into the family circle. Nay, she had raised
a corner of Italy's mantle, and drawn close to the warm breast of one of
the great mother-lands of the world.

Ah! but feeling sweeps fast and far, do what we will. Soon she was
struggling out of her depth. These weeks of rushing experience had been
loosening soul and tongue. To-night how she could have talked of these
things to one now parted from her, perhaps for ever! How he would have
listened to her--impatiently often! How he would have mocked and rent her!
But then the quick softening--and the beautiful kindling eye--the dogmatism
at once imperative and sweet--the tyranny that a woman might both fight and
love!

Yet how painful was the thought of Manisty! She was ashamed--humiliated.
Their flight assumed as a certainty what after all, let Eleanor say what
she would, he had never, never said to her--what she had no clear authority
to believe. Where was he? What was he thinking? For a moment, her heart
fluttered towards him like a homing bird.

Then in a sharp and stern reaction she rebuked, she chastened herself.
Standing there in the night, above the forests, looking over to the dim
white cliffs on the side of Monte Amiata, she felt herself, in this strange
and beautiful land, brought face to face with calls of the spirit, with
deep voices of admonition and pity that rose from her own inmost being.

With a long sigh, like one that lifts a weight she raised her young arms
above her head, and then brought her hands down slowly upon her eyes,
shutting out sight and sense. There was a murmur--

'Mother!--darling mother!--if you were just here--for one hour--'

She gathered up the forces of the soul.

'So help me God!' she said. And then she started, perceiving into what
formula she had slipped, unwittingly.

* * * * *

She moved on a few paces down the road, meaning just to peep into the woods
and their scented loneliness. The night was so lovely she was loth to leave
it.

Suddenly she became aware of a point of light in front, and the smell of
tobacco.

A man rose from the wayside. Lucy stayed her foot, and was about to retreat
swiftly when she heard a cheerful--

'Buona sera, Signorina!' She recognised a voice of the afternoon. It was
the handsome carabiniere. Lucy advanced with alacrity.

'I came out because it was so fine,' she said. 'Are you on duty still?
Where is your companion?'

He smiled, and pointed to the wood. 'We have a hut there. First Ruggieri
sleeps--then I sleep. We don't often come this way; but when there are
_forestieri_, then we must look out.'

'But there are no brigands here?'

He showed his white teeth. 'I shot two once with this gun,' he said,
producing it.

'But not here?' she said, startled.

'No--but beyond the mountains--over there--in Maremma.' He waved his
hand vaguely towards the west. Then he shook his head. 'Bad country--bad
people--in Maremma.'

'Oh yes, I know,' said Lucy, laughing. 'If there is anything bad here, you
say it comes from Maremma. When our harness broke this afternoon our driver
said, "_Che vuole?_ It was made in Maremma!"--Tell me--who lives in that
part of the convent--over there?'

And, turning back, she pointed to the distant window and the light.

The man spat upon the road without replying. After replenishing his pipe he
said slowly: 'That, Signorina, is a _forestiere_, too.'

'A priest--isn't it?'

'A priest--and not a priest,' said the man after another pause.

Then he laughed, with the sudden _insouciance_ of the Italian.

'A priest that doesn't say his Mass!--that's a queer sort of priest--isn't
it?'

'I don't understand,' said Lucy.

'_Per Dio!_ what does it matter?' said the man, laughing. 'The people here
wouldn't trouble their heads, only--But you understand, Signorina'--he
dropped his voice a little--'the priests have much power--_molto, molto_!
Don Teodoro, the _parroco_ there,--it was he founded the _cassa rurale_.
If a _contadino_ wants some money for his seed-corn--or to marry his
daughter--or to buy himself a new team of oxen--he must go to the
_parroco_. Since these new banks began, it is the priests that have the
money--_capisce?_ If you want it you must ask them! So you understand,
Signorina, it doesn't profit to fall out with them. You must love their
friends, and--' His grin and gesture finished the sentence.

'But what's the matter?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Has he committed any
crime?' And she looked curiously at the figure in the convent window.

'_E un prete spretato, Signorina._'

'_Spretato_?' (unpriested--unfrocked). The word was unfamiliar to her. She
frowned over it.

'_Scomunicato!_' said the _carabiniere_, with a laugh.

'Excommunicated?' She felt a thrill of pity, mingled with a vague horror.

'Why?--what has he done?'

The _carabiniere_ laughed again. The laugh was odious, but she was already
acquainted with that strange instinct of the lower-class Italian which
leads him to make mock of calamity. He has passion, but no sentiment; he
instinctively hates the pathetic.

'_Chi sa, Signorina?_ He seems a quiet old man. We keep a sharp eye on him;
he won't do any harm. He used to give the children _confetti_, but the
mothers have forbidden them to take them. Gianni there'--he pointed to the
convent, and Lucy understood that he referred to the _contadino_--'Gianni
went to Don Teodoro, and asked if he should turn him out. But Don Teodoro
wouldn't say Yes or No. He pays well, but the village want him to go. They
say he will bring them ill-luck with their harvest.'

'And the _Padre parroco_? Does he not speak to him?'

Antonio laughed.

'When Don Teodoro passes him on the road he doesn't see him--_capisce_,
Signorina? And so with all the other priests. When he comes by they have no
eyes. The Bishop sent the word.'

'And everybody here does what the priests tell them?'

Lucy's tone expressed that instinctive resentment which the Puritan feels
against a ruling and dominant Catholicism.

Antonio laughed again, but a little stupidly. It was the laugh of a man who
knows that it is not worth while even to begin to explain certain matters
to a stranger.

'They understand their business--_i preti!_'--was all he would say.
Then--'_Ma!_--they are rich--the priests! All these last years--so many
banks--so many _casse_--so many _societa_! That holds the people better
than prayers.'

* * * * *

When Lucy turned homewards she found herself watching the light in the far
window with an eager attention. A priest in disgrace?--and a foreigner?
What could he be hiding here for?--in this remote corner of a district
which, as they had been already told at Orvieto, was Catholic, _fino al
fanatismo_?

* * * * *

The morning rose, fresh and glorious, over mountain and forest.

Eleanor watched the streaks of light that penetrated through the wooden
sun-shutters grow brighter and brighter on the white-washed wall. She was
weary of herself, weary of the night. The old building was full of strange
sounds--of murmurs and resonances, of slight creepings and patterings, that
tried the nerves. Her room communicated with Lucy's, and their doors were
provided with bolts, the newness of which, perhaps, testified to the fears
of other summer tenants before them. Nevertheless, Eleanor had been a prey
to starts and terrors, and her night had passed in a bitter mingling of
moral strife and physical discomfort.

Seven o'clock striking from the village church. She slipped to her feet.
Ready to her hand lay one of the soft and elegant wrappers--fresh, not long
ago, from Paris--as to which Lucy had often silently wondered how anyone
could think it right to spend so much money on such things.

Eleanor, of course, was not conscious of the smallest reproach in the
matter. Dainty and costly dress was second nature to her; she never thought
about it. But this morning as she first took up the elaborate silken thing,
to which pale girls in hot Parisian workrooms had given so much labour
of hand and head, and then caught sight of her own face and shoulders
in the cracked glass upon the wall, she was seized with certain ghastly
perceptions that held her there motionless in the semi-darkness, shivering
amid the delicate lace and muslin which enwrapped her. Finished!--for
her--all the small feminine joys. Was there one of her dresses that did not
in some way speak to her of Manisty?--that had not been secretly planned
with a view to tastes and preferences she had come to know hardly less
intimately than her own?

She thought of the face of the Orvieto doctor, of certain words that she
had stopped on his lips because she was afraid to hear them. A sudden
terror of death,--of the desolate, desolate end swept upon her. To die,
with this cry of the heart unspent, untold for ever! Unloved, unsatisfied,
unrewarded--she whose whole nature gave itself--gave itself perpetually, as
a wave breaks upon a barren shore. How can any God send human beings into
the world for such a lot? There can be no God. But how is the riddle
easier, for thinking Him away?

When at last she rose, it was to make quietly for the door opening on the
_loggia_.

Still there, this radiant marvel of the world!--this pageant of rock and
stream and forest, this pomp of shining cloud, this silky shimmer of the
wheat, this sparkle of flowers in the grass; while human hearts break, and
human lives fail, and the graveyard on the hill yonder packs closer and
closer its rows of metal crosses and wreaths!

Suddenly, from a patch of hayfield on the further side of the road, she
heard a voice singing. A young man, tall and well made, was mowing in a
corner of the field. The swathes fell fast before him: every movement spoke
of an assured rejoicing strength. He sang with the sharp stridency which is
the rule in Italy--the words clear, the sounds nasal.

Gradually Eleanor made out that the song was the farewell of a maiden to
her lover who is going for winter work to the Maremma.

The labourers go to Maremma--
Oh! 'tis long till the days of June,
And my heart is all in a flutter
Alone here, under the moon.

O moon!--all this anguish and sorrow!
Thou know'st why I suffer so--
Oh! send him me back from Maremma,
Where he goes, and I must not go!

The man sang the little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of
the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe,
and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the
morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now
for a season, now for ever--which fills the world.

* * * * *

She was too restless to enjoy the _loggia_ and the view, too restless
to go back to bed. She pushed back the door between her and Lucy, only
to see that Lucy was still fast asleep. But there were voices and stops
downstairs. The farm-people had been abroad for hours.

She made a preliminary toilette, took her hat, and stole downstairs. As she
opened the outer door the children caught sight of her and came crowding
round, large-eyed, their fingers in their mouths. She turned towards the
chapel and the little cloister that she remembered. The children gave a
shout and swooped back into the convent. And when she reached the chapel
door, there they were on her skirts again, a big boy brandishing the key.

Eleanor took it and parleyed with them. They were to go away and leave
her alone--quite alone. Then when she came back they should have _soldi_.
The children nodded shrewdly, withdrew in a swarm to the corner of the
cloister, and watched events.

Eleanor entered. From some high lunette windows the cool early sunlight
came creeping and playing into the little whitewashed place. On either hand
two cinque-cento frescoes had been rescued from the whitewash. They shone
like delicate flowers on the rough, yellowish-white of the walls; on one
side a martyrdom of St. Catharine, on the other a Crucifixion. Their pale
blues and lilacs, their sharp pure greens and thin crimsons, made subtle
harmony with the general lightness and cleanness of the abandoned chapel.
A poor little altar with a few tawdry furnishings at the further end, a
confessional box falling to pieces with age, and a few chairs--these were
all that it contained besides.

Eleanor sank kneeling beside one of the chairs. As she looked round her,
physical weakness and the concentration of all thought on one subject and
one person made her for the moment the victim of an illusion so strong that
it was almost an 'apparition of the living.'

Manisty stood before her, in the rough tweed suit he had worn in November,
one hand, holding his hat, upon his hip, his curly head thrown back, his
eyes just turning from the picture to meet hers; eyes always eagerly
confident, whether their owner pronounced on the affinities of a picture or
the fate of a country.

'School of Pinturicchio certainly!--but local work. Same hand--don't
you think so?--as in that smaller chapel in the cathedral. Eleanor! you
remember?'

She gave a gasp, and hid her face, shaking. Was this haunting of eye and
ear to pursue her now henceforward? Was the passage of Manisty's being
through the world to be--for her--ineffaceable?--so that earth and air
retained the impress of his form and voice, and only her tortured heart and
sense were needed to make the phantom live and walk and speak again?

She began to pray--brokenly and desperately, as she had often prayed during
the last few weeks. It was a passionate throwing of the will against a
fate, cruel, unjust, intolerable; a means not to self-renunciation, but to
a self-assertion which was in her like madness, so foreign was it to all
the habits of the soul.

'That he should make use of me to the last moment, then fling me to the
winds--that I should just make room, and help him to his goal--and then die
meekly--out of the way--No! He too shall suffer!--and he shall know that it
is Eleanor who exacts it!--Eleanor who bars the way!'

And in the very depths of consciousness there emerged the strange and
bitter recognition that from the beginning she had allowed him to hold
her cheaply; that she had been content, far, far too content, with what
he chose to give; that if she had claimed more, been less delicate, less
exquisite in loving, he might have feared and regarded her more.

She heard the chapel door open. But at the same moment she became aware
that her face was bathed in tears, and she did not dare to look round. She
drew down her veil, and composed herself as she best could.

The person behind, apparently, also knelt down. The tread and movements
were those of a heavy man--some countryman, she supposed.

But his neighbourhood was unwelcome, and the chapel ceased to be a place
of refuge where feeling might have its way. In a few minutes she rose and
turned towards the door.

She gave a little cry. The man kneeling at the back of the chapel rose in
astonishment and came towards her.

'Madame!'

'Father Benecke! _you_ here,' said Eleanor, leaning against the wall for
support--so weak was she, and so startling was this sudden apparition of
the man whom she had last seen on the threshold of the glass passage at
Marinata, barely a fortnight before.

'I fear, Madame, that I intrude upon you,' said the old priest, staring at
her with embarrassment. 'I will retire.'

'No, no,' said Eleanor, putting out her hand, with some recovery of her
normal voice and smile. 'It was only so--surprising; so--unexpected. Who
could have thought of finding you here, Father?'

The priest did not reply. They left the chapel together. The knot of
waiting children in the cloister, as soon as they saw Eleanor, raised a
shout of glee, and began to run towards her. But the moment they perceived
her companion, they stopped dead.

Their little faces darkened, stiffened, their black eyes shone with malice.
Then suddenly the boys swooped on the pebbles of the courtyard, and with
cries of '_Bestia!--bestia!_' they flung them at the priest over their
shoulders, as they all fled helter-skelter, the brothers dragging off the
sisters, the big ones the little ones, out of sight.

'Horrid little imps!' cried Eleanor in indignation. 'What is the matter
with them? I promised them some _soldi_. Did they hit you, Father?'

She paused, arrested by the priest's face.

'They?' he said hoarsely. 'Did you mean the children? Oh! no, they did no
harm?'

What had happened to him since they met last at the villa? No doubt he
had been in conflict with his superiors and his Church. Was he already
suspended?--excommunicate? But he still wore the soutane?

Then panic for herself swept in upon and silenced all else. All was over
with their plans. Father Benecke either was, or might at any moment be, in
communication with Manisty. Alas, alas!--what ill-luck!

They walked together to the road--Eleanor first imagining, then rejecting
one sentence after another. At last she said, a little piteously:

'It is so strange, Father--that you should be here!'

The priest did not answer immediately. He walked with a curiously uncertain
gait. Eleanor noticed that his soutane was dusty and torn, and that he was
unshaven. The peculiar and touching charm that had once arisen from the
contrast between the large-limbed strength which he inherited from a race
of Suabian peasants, and an extraordinary delicacy of feature and skin, a
childish brightness and sweetness in the eyes, had suffered eclipse. He was
dulled and broken. One might have said almost that he had become a mere
ungainly, ill-kept old man, red-eyed for lack of sleep, and disorganised by
some bitter distress.

'You remember--what I told you and Mr. Manisty, at Marinata?' he said at
last, with difficulty.

'Perfectly. You withdrew your letter?'

'I withdrew it. Then I came down here. I have an old friend--a Canon of
Orvieto. He told me once of this place.'

Eleanor looked at him with a sudden return of all her natural kindness and
compassion.

'I am afraid you have gone through a great deal, Father,' she said,
gravely.

The priest stood still. His hand shook upon his stick.

'I must not detain you, Madame,' he said suddenly, with a kind of tremulous
formality. 'You will be wishing to return to your apartment I heard that
two English ladies were expected--but I never thought--'

'How could you?' said Eleanor hurriedly. 'I am not in any hurry. It is very
early still. Will you not tell me more of what has happened to you? You
would'--she turned away her head--'you would have told Mr. Manisty?'

'Ah! Mr. Manisty!' said the priest, with a long, startled sigh. 'I trust he
is well, Madame?'

Eleanor flushed.

'I believe so. He and Miss Manisty are still at Marinata. Father Benecke!'

'Madame?'

Eleanor turned aside, poking at the stones on the road with her parasol.

'You would do me a kindness if for the present you would not mention my
being here to any of your friends in Rome, to--to anybody, in fact. Last
autumn I happened to pass by this place, and thought it very beautiful. It
was a sudden determination on my part and Miss Foster's--you remember the
American lady who was staying with us?--to come here. The villa was getting
very hot, and--and there were other reasons. And now we wish to be quite
alone for a little while--to be in retirement even from our friends. You
will, I am sure, respect our wish?'

She looked up, breathing quickly. All her sudden colour had gone. Her
anxiety and discomposure were very evident. The priest bowed.

'I will be discreet, Madame,' he said, with the natural dignity of his
calling. 'May I ask you to excuse me? I have to walk into Selvapendente to
fetch a letter.'

He took off his flat beaver hat, bowed low and departed, swinging along
at a great pace. Eleanor felt herself repulsed. She hurried back to the
convent. The children were waiting for her at the door, and when they
saw that she was alone they took their _soldi_, though with a touch of
sulkiness.

And the door was opened to her by Lucy.

'Truant!' said the girl reproachfully, throwing her arm round Eleanor. 'As
if you ought to go out without your coffee! But it's all ready for you on
the _loggia_. Where have you been? And why!--what's the matter?'

Eleanor told the news as they mounted to their rooms.

'Ah! _that_ was the priest I saw last night!' cried Lucy. 'I was just going
to tell you of my adventure. Father Benecke! How very, very strange! And
how very tiresome! It's made you look so tired.'

And before she would hear a word more Lucy had put the elder woman into her
chair in the deep shade of the _loggia_, had brought coffee and bread and
fruit from the little table she herself had helped Cecco to arrange, and
had hovered round till Eleanor had taken at least a cup of coffee and a
fraction of roll. Then she brought her own coffee, and sat down on the rug
at Eleanor's feet.

'I know what you're thinking about!' she said, looking up with her sweet,
sudden smile. 'You want to go--right away!'

'Can we trust him?' said Eleanor, miserably. 'Edward doesn't know where he
is,--but he could write of course to Edward at any moment.'

She turned away her face from Lucy. Any mention of Manisty's name dyed it
with painful colour--the shame of the suppliant living on the mercy of the
conqueror.

'He might,' said Lucy, thinking. 'But if you asked him? No; I don't believe
he would. I am sure his soul is beautiful--like his face.'

'His poor face! You don't know how changed he is.'

'Ah! the _carabiniere_ told me last night. He is excommunicated,' said
Lucy, under her breath.

And she repeated her conversation with the handsome Antonio. Eleanor capped
it with the tale of the children.

'It's his book,' said Lucy, frowning. 'What a tyranny!'

They were both silent. Lucy was thinking of the drive to Nemi, of Manisty's
words and looks; Eleanor recalled the priest's last visit to the villa
and that secret storm of feeling which had overtaken her as she bade him
good-bye.

But when Lucy speculated on what might have happened, Eleanor hardly
responded. She fell into a dreamy silence from which it was difficult to
rouse her. It was very evident to Lucy that Father Benecke's personal
plight interested her but little. Her mind could not give it room. What
absorbed her was the feverish question: Were they safe any longer at Torre
Amiata, or must they strike camp and go further?




CHAPTER XVII


The day grew very hot, and Eleanor suffered visibly, even though the
quality of the air remained throughout pure and fresh, and Lucy in the
shelter of the broad _loggia_ felt nothing but a keen physical enjoyment of
the glow and blaze that held the outer world.

After their midday meal Lucy was sitting idly on the outer wall of the
_loggia_ which commanded the bit of road just outside the convent, when she
perceived a figure mounting the hill.

'Father Benecke!' she said to Eleanor. 'What a climb for him in this heat!
Did you say he had gone to Selvapendente? Poor old man!--how hot and tired
he looks!--and with that heavy parcel too!'

And withdrawing herself a little out of sight she watched the priest. He
had just paused in a last patch of shade to take breath after the long
ascent. Depositing the bundle he had been carrying on a wayside stone, he
took out his large coloured handkerchief and mopped the perspiration from
his face with long sighs of exhaustion. Then with his hands on his sides he
looked round him. Opposite to him was a little shrine, with the usual rude
fresco and enthroned Madonna behind a grating. The priest walked over to
it, and knelt down.

In a few minutes he returned and took up his parcel. As he entered the
outer gate of the convent, Lucy could see him glancing nervously from side
to side. But it was the hour of siesta and of quiet. His tormentors of the
morning were all under cover.

The parcel that he carried had partly broken out of its wrappings during
the long walk, and Lucy could see that it contained clothes of some kind.

'Poor Father!' she said again to Eleanor. 'Couldn't he have got some boy to
carry that for him? How I should like to rest him and give him some coffee?
Shall I send Cecco to ask him to come here?'

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