Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor

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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 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 to-day she coiled, crimped, curled with a will. When she had
finished, Eleanor surveyed herself and laughed.

'_Ah! mais vraiment, Marie, tu es merveilleuse!_ What is certain is that
neither that glass nor Torre Amiata is worthy of it. _N'importe._ One must
keep up standards.'

'Certainly, madame, you look better to-day.'

'I slept. Why did I sleep? I can't imagine. After all, Torre Amiata is not
such a bad place--is it Marie?'

And with a laugh, she lightly touched her maid's cheek.

Marie looked a little sullen.

'It seems that madame would like to live and die here.'

She had no sooner said the words than she could have bitten her tongue out.
She was genuinely attached to her mistress; and she knew well that Eleanor
was no _malade imaginaire_.

Eleanor's face changed a little.

'Oh! you foolish girl--we shall soon be gone. No, not that old frock. Look,
please, at that head you've made me--and consider! _Noblesse oblige._'

So presently, she stood before her table in a cream walking
dress--perfect--but of the utmost simplicity; with her soft black hat tied
round the ripples and clouds of her fair hair.

'How it hangs on me!' she said, gathering up the front of her dress in her
delicate hand.

Marie made a little face of pity and concern.

'_Mais oui, Madame. Il faudrait le cacher un peu._'

'Padding? _Tiens! j'en ai deja._ But if Mathilde were to put any more,
there would be nothing else. One day, Marie, you see, there will be only my
clothes left to walk about--by their little selves!'

She smiled. The maid said nothing. She was on her knees buttoning her
mistress's shoes.

'Now then--_fini!_ Take all those books on to the _loggia_ and arrange my
chair. I shall be there directly.'

The maid departed. Eleanor sat down to rest from the fatigue of dressing.

'How weak I am!--weaker than last month. And next month it will be a little
more--and a little more--then pain perhaps--horrid pain--and one day it
will be impossible to get up--and all one's poor body will fail one like a
broken vessel. And then--relief perhaps--if dying is as easy as it looks.
No more pangs or regrets--and at the end, either a sudden puff that blows
out the light--or a quiet drowning in deep waters--without pain....And
to-day how little I fear it!'

A _prie-dieu_ chair, old and battered like everything else in the convent,
was beside her, and above it her child's portrait. She dropped upon her
knees, as she always did for a minute or two morning and evening, mostly
out of childish habit.

But her thoughts fell into no articulate words. Her physical weakness
rested against the chair; but the weakness of the soul seemed also to rest
on some invisible support.

'What is the matter with me to-day?'--she asked herself again, in
bewilderment. 'Is it an omen--a sign? All bonds seem loosened--the air
lighter. What made me so miserable yesterday? I wanted him to come--and yet
dreaded--dreaded it so! And now to-day I don't care--I don't care!'

She slipped into a sitting position and looked at the picture. A tiny
garland of heath and myrtle was hung round it. The little fellow seemed to
be tottering towards her, the eyes a little frightened, yet trusting, the
gait unsteady.

'Childie!'--she said in a whisper, smiling at him--'Childie!'

Then with a long sigh, she rose, and feebly made her way to the _loggia_.

Her maid was waiting for her. But Eleanor refused her sofa. She would
sit, looking out through the arches of the _loggia_, to the road, and the
mountains.

'Miss Foster is a long time,' she said to Marie. 'It is too hot for her to
be out. And how odd! There is the Contessa's carriage--and the Contessa
herself--at this time of day. Run, Marie! Tell her I shall be delighted to
see her. And bring another comfortable chair--there's a dear.'

The Contessa mounted the stone stairs with the heavy masculine step that
was characteristic of her.

'_Vous permettez, madame!_'--she said, standing in the doorway--'at this
unseasonable hour.'

Eleanor made her welcome. The portly Contessa seated herself with an
involuntary gesture of fatigue.

'What have you been doing?' said Eleanor. 'If you have been helping the
harvesters, _je proteste_!'

She laid her hand laughingly on the Contessa's knee. It seemed to her that
the Contessa knew far more of the doings and affairs of her _contadini_
than did the rather magnificent _fattore_ of the estate. She was in and out
among them perpetually. She quarrelled with them and hectored them; she had
as good a command of the local dialect as they had; and an eye that pounced
on cheating like an osprey on a fish. Nevertheless, as she threw in yet
another evident trifle--that she cared more for them and their interests
than for anything else in the world, now that her son was gone--they
endured her rule, and were not actively ungrateful for her benefits. And,
in her own view at any rate, there is no more that any rich person can ask
of any poor one till another age of the world shall dawn.

She received Eleanor's remark with an embarrassed air.

'I have been doctoring an ox,' she said, bluntly, as though apologising for
herself. 'It was taken ill last night, and they sent for me.'

'But you are too, too wonderful!' cried Eleanor in amusement. 'Is it all
grist that comes to your mill--sick oxen--or humans like me?'

The Contessa smiled, but she turned away her head.

'It was Emilio's craze,' she said abruptly. 'He knew every animal on the
place. In his regiment they called him the "vet.," because he was always
patching up the sick and broken mules. One of his last messages to me
was about an old horse. He taught me a few things--and sometimes I am of
use--till the farrier comes.'

There was a little silence, which the Contessa broke abruptly.

'I came, however, madame, to tell you something about myself. Teresa has
made up her mind to leave me.'

'Your daughter?' cried Eleanor amazed. '_Fiancee?_'

The Contessa shook her head.

'She is about to join the nuns of Santa Francesca. Her novitiate begins in
October. Now she goes to stay with them for a few weeks.'

Eleanor was thunderstruck.

'She leaves you alone?'

The Contessa mutely assented.

'And you approve?' said Eleanor hotly.

'She has a vocation'--said the Contessa with a sigh.

'She has a mother!' cried Eleanor.

'Ah! madame--you are a Protestant. These things are in our blood. When we
are devout, like Teresa, we regard the convent as the gate of heaven. When
we are Laodiceans--like me--we groan, and we submit.'

'You will be absolutely alone,' said Eleanor, in a low voice of emotion,
'in this solitary place.'

The Contessa fidgetted. She was of the sort that takes pity hardly.

'There is much to do,'--she said, shortly.

But then her fortitude a little broke down. 'If I were ten years older, it
would be all right,' she said, in a voice that betrayed the mind's fatigue
with its own debate. 'It's the time it all lasts; when you are as strong as
I am.'

Eleanor took her hand and kissed it.

'Do you never take quite another line?' she said, with sparkling eyes. 'Do
you never say--"This is my will, and I mean to have it! I have as much
right to my way as other people?" Have you never tried it with Teresa?'

The Contessa opened her eyes.

'But I am not a tyrant,' she said, and there was just a touch of scorn in
her reply.

Eleanor trembled.

'We have so few years to live and be happy in,' she said in a lower voice,
a voice of self-defence.

'That is not how it appears to me,' said the Contessa slowly. 'But then I
believe in a future life.'

'And you think it wrong ever to press--to _insist_ upon--the personal, the
selfish point of view?'

The Contessa smiled.

'Not so much wrong, as futile. The world is not made so--_chere madame_.'

Eleanor sank back in her chair. The Contessa observed her emaciation, her
pallor--and the pretty dress.

She remembered her friend's letter, and the 'Signor Manisty' who should
have married this sad, charming woman, and had not done so. It was easy
to see that not only disease but grief was preying on Mrs. Burgoyne. The
Contessa was old enough to be her mother. A daughter whom she had lost in
infancy would have been Eleanor's age, if she had lived.

'Madame, let me give you a piece of advice'--she said suddenly, taking
Eleanor's hands in both her own--'leave this place. It does not suit you.
These rooms are too rough for you--or let me carry you off to the Palazzo,
where I could look after you.'

Eleanor flushed.

'This place is very good for me,' she said with a wild fluttering breath.
'To-day I feel so much better--so much lighter!'

The Contessa felt a pang. She had heard other invalids say such things
before. The words rang like a dirge upon her ear. They talked a little
longer. Then the Contessa rose, and Eleanor rose, too, in spite of her
guest's motion to restrain her.

As they stood together the elder woman in her strength suddenly felt
herself irresistibly drawn towards the touching weakness of the other.
Instead of merely pressing hands, she quickly threw her strong arms round
Mrs. Burgoyne, gathered her for an instant to her broad breast, and kissed
her.

Eleanor leant against her, sighing:

'A vocation wouldn't drag _me_ away,' she said gently.

And so they parted.

* * * * *

Eleanor hung over the _loggia_ and watched the Contessa's departure. As the
small horses trotted away, with a jingling of bells and a fluttering of the
furry tails that hung from their ears, the _padre parroco_ passed. He took
off his hat to the Contessa, then seeing Mrs. Burgoyne on the _loggia_, he
gave her, too, a shy but smiling salutation.

His light figure, his young and dreamy air, suited well with the beautiful
landscape through which it passed. Shepherd? or poet? Eleanor thought of
David among the flocks.

'He only wants the crook--the Scriptural crook. It would go quite well with
the soutane.'

Then she became aware of another figure approaching on her right from the
piece of open land that lay below the garden.

It was Father Benecke, and he emerged on the road just in front of the
_padre parroco_.

The old priest took off his hat. Eleanor saw the sensitive look, the
slow embarrassed gesture. The _padre parroco_ passed without looking
to the right or left. All the charming pliancy of the young figure had
disappeared. It was drawn up to a steel rigidity.

Eleanor smiled and sighed.

'David among the Philistines!--_Ce pauvre Goliath_! Ah! he is coming here?'

She withdrew to her sofa, and waited.

Marie, after instructions, and with that austerity of demeanour which
she, too, never failed to display towards Father Benecke, introduced the
visitor.

'Entrez, mon pere, entrez,' said Eleanor, holding out a friendly hand. 'Are
you, too, braving the sun? Did you pass Miss Foster? I wish she would come
in--it is getting too hot for her to be out.'

'Madame, I have not been on the road. I came around through the Sassetto.
There I found no one.'

'Pray sit down, Father. That chair has all its legs. It comes from
Orvieto.'

But he did not accept her invitation--at least not at once. He remained
hesitating--looking down upon her. And she, struck by his silence, struck
by his expression, felt a sudden seizing of the breath. Her hand slid to
her heart, with its fatal, accustomed gesture. She looked at him wildly,
imploringly.

But the pause came to an end. He sat down beside her.

'Madame, you have taken so kind an interest in my unhappy affairs that you
will perhaps allow me to tell you of the letter that has reached me this
morning. One of the heads of the Old Catholic community invites me to go
and consult with them before deciding on the course of my future life.
There are many difficulties. I am not altogether in sympathy with them.
A married priesthood such as they have now adopted, is in my eyes a
priesthood shorn of its strength. But the invitation is so kind, so
brotherly, I must needs accept it.'

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