And across Eleanor's expression—unseen—there passed the slightest, subtlest flash of tenderness and pride. She knew and understood him—she alone!

* * * * *

At last the doors are passed. They are in the vast barricaded and partitioned space, already humming with the talk and tread of thousands,—the 'Tu es Petrus' overhead. Reggie Brooklyn would have hurried them on in the general rush for the tribunes. But Mrs. Burgoyne laid a restraining hand upon him. 'No—we mustn't separate,' she said, gently peremptory. And for a few minutes Mr. Reggie in an anguish must needs see the crowd flow past him, and the first seats of Tribune D filled. Then Manisty appeared, lifting his eyebrows in a frowning wonder at the young man's impatience;—and on they flew.

At last!—They are in the third row of Tribune D, close to the line by which the Pope must pass, and to the platform from which he will deliver the Apostolic Benediction. Reggie the unsatisfied, the idealist, grumbles that they ought to have been in the very front. But Eleanor and Aunt Pattie are well satisfied. They find their acquaintance all around them. It is a general flutter of fans, and murmur of talk. Already people are standing on their seats looking down on the rapidly filling church. In press the less favoured thousands from the Piazza, through the Atrium and the Eastern door—great sea of human life spreading over the illimitable nave behind the two lines of Swiss and Papal Guards, in quick never-ending waves that bewilder and dazzle the eye.

Lucy found the three hours' wait but a moment. The passing and re-passing of the splendid officials in their Tudor or Valois dress; the great names, 'Colonna,' 'Barberini,' 'Savelli,' 'Borghese' that sound about her, as Mrs. Burgoyne who knows everybody, at least by sight, laughs and points and chats with her neighbour, Mr. Neal; the constant welling up of processions from behind,—the Canons and Monsignori in their fur and lace tippets, the red Cardinals with their suites; the entry of the Guardia Nobile, splendid, incredible, in their winged Achillean helmets above their Empire uniforms—half Greek, half French, half gods, half dandies, the costliest foolishest plaything that any court can show; and finally as the time draws on, the sudden thrills and murmurs that run through the church, announcing the great moment which still, after all, delays: these things chase the minutes, blot out, the sense of time.

Meanwhile, again and again, Lucy, the sedate, the self-controlled, cannot prevent herself from obeying a common impulse with those about her—from leaping on her chair—straining her white throat—her eyes. Then a handsome chamberlain would come by, lifting a hand in gentle protest, motioning to the ladies—'De grace, mesdames—mesdames, de grace!—' Or angry murmurs would rise from those few who had not the courage or the agility to mount—'Giu! giu!—Descendez, mesdames!—qu'est-ce que c'est done que ces manieres?'—and Lucy, crimson and abashed, would descend in haste, only to find a kind Irish priest behind smiling at her,—prompting her,—'Never mind them!—take no notice!—who is it you're harmin'?'—And her excitement would take him at his word—for who should know if not a priest?

And from these risky heights she looked down sometimes on Manisty—wondering where was emotion, sympathy. Not a trace of them! Of all their party he alone was obviously and hideously bored by the long wait. He leant back in his chair, with folded arms, staring at the ceiling—yawning—fidgetting. At last he took out a small Greek book from his pocket, and hung over it in a moody absorption. Once only, when a procession of the inferior clergy went by, he looked at it closely, turning afterwards to Mrs. Burgoyne with the emphatic remark: 'Bad faces!—aren't they?—almost all of them?'

Yet Lucy could see that even here in this vast crowd, amid the hubbub and bustle, he still counted, was still remembered. Officials came to lean and chat across the rope; diplomats stopped to greet him on the way to the august seats beyond the Confession. His manner in return showed no particular cordiality; Lucy thought it languid, even cold. She was struck with the difference between his mood of the day, and that brilliant and eager homage he had lavished on the old Cardinal in the villa garden. What a man of change and fantasy! Here it was he qui tendait la joue. Cold, distant, dreamy—one would have thought him either indifferent or hostile to the whole great pageant and its meanings.

Only once did Lucy see him bestir himself—show a gleam of animation. A white-haired priest, all tremulous dignity and delicacy, stood for a moment beside the rope-barrier, waiting for a friend. Manisty bent over and touched him on the arm. The old man turned. The face was parchment, the cheeks cavernous. But in the blue eyes there was an exquisite innocence and youth.

Manisty smiled at him. His manner showed a peculiar almost a boyish deference. 'You join us afterwards—at lunch?'

'Yes, yes.' The old priest beamed and nodded; then his friend came up and he was carried on.

* * * * *

'A quarter to eleven,' said Manisty with a yawn, looking at his watch. 'Ah!—listen!'

He sprang to his feet. In an instant half the occupants of Tribune D were on their chairs, Lucy and Eleanor among them. A roar came up the church—passionate—indescribable. Lucy held her breath.

There—there he is,—the old man! Caught in a great shaft of sunlight striking from south to north, across the church, and just touching the chapel of the Holy Sacrament—the Pope emerges. The white figure, high above the crowd, sways from side to side; the hand upraised gives the benediction. Fragile, spiritual as is the apparition, the sunbeam refines, subtilises, spiritualises it still more. It hovers like a dream above the vast multitudes—surely no living man!—but thought, history, faith, taking shape; the passion of many hearts revealed. Up rushes the roar towards the Tribunes. 'Did you hear?' said Manisty to Mrs. Burgoyne, lifting a smiling brow, as a few Papalino cries—'Viva il Papa Re'—make themselves heard among the rest. Eleanor's thin face turns to him with responsive excitement. But she has seen these things before. Instinctively her eyes wander perpetually to Manisty's, taking their colour, their meaning from his. It is not the spectacle itself that matters to her—poor Eleanor! One heart-beat, one smile of the man beside her outweighs it all. And he, roused at last from his nonchalance, watching hawk-like every movement of the figure and the crowd, is going mentally through a certain page of his book, repeating certain phrases—correcting here—strengthening there.

Lucy alone—the alien and Puritan Lucy—Lucy surrenders herself completely. She betrays nothing, save by the slightly parted lips, and the flutter of the black veil fastened on her breast; but it is as though her whole inner being were dissolving, melting away, in the flame of the moment. It is her first contact with decisive central things, her first taste of the great world-play, as Europe has known it and taken part in it, at least since Charles the Great.

Yet, as she looks, within the visible scene, there opens another: the porch of a plain, shingled house, her uncle sitting within it, his pipe and his newspaper on his knee, sunning himself in the April morning. She passes behind him, looks into the stiff leaf-scented parlour—at the framed Declaration of Independence on the walls, the fresh boughs in the fire-place, the Bible on its table, the rag-carpet before the hearth. She breathes the atmosphere of the house; its stern independence and simplicities; the scorns and the denials, the sturdy freedoms both of body and soul that it implies—conscience the only master—vice-master for God, in this His house of the World. And beyond—as her lids sink for an instant on the pageant before her—she hears, as it were, the voices of her country, so young and raw and strong!—she feels within her the throb of its struggling self-assertive life; she is conscious too of the uglinesses and meannesses that belong to birth and newness, to growth and fermentation. Then, in a proud timidity—as one who feels herself an alien and on sufferance—she hangs again upon the incomparable scene. This is St. Peter's; there is the dome of Michael Angelo; and here, advancing towards her amid the red of the cardinals, the clatter of the guards, the tossing of the flabellae, as though looking at her alone—the two waxen fingers raised for her alone—is the white-robed triple-crowned Pope.

She threw herself upon the sight with passion, trying to penetrate and possess it; and it baffled her, passed her by. Some force of resistance within her cried out to it that she was not its subject—rather its enemy! And august, unheeding, the great pageant swept on. Close, close to her now! Down sink the crowd upon the chairs; the heads fall like corn before the wind. Lucy is bending too. The Papal chair borne on the shoulders of the guards is now but a few feet distant; vaguely she wonders that the old man keeps his balance, as he clings with one frail hand to the arm of the chair, rises incessantly—and blesses with the other. She catches the very look and meaning of the eyes—the sharp long line of the closed and toothless jaw. Spirit and spectre;—embodying the Past, bearing the clue to the Future.

'Yeux de police!'—laughed Reggie Brooklyn to Mrs. Burgoyne as the procession passed—'don't you know?—that's what they say.'

Manisty bent forward. The flush of excitement was still on his cheek, but he threw a little nod to Brooklyn, whose gibe amused him.

Lucy drew a long breath—and the spell was broken.

* * * * *

Nor was it again renewed, in the same way. The Pope and his cortege disappeared behind the Confession, behind the High Altar, and presently, Lucy, craning her neck to the right, could see dimly in the furthest distance, against the apse, and under the chair of St. Peter, the chair of Leo XIII. and the white shadow, motionless, erect, within it, amid a court of cardinals and diplomats. As for the mass that followed, it had its moments of beauty for the girl's wondering or shrinking curiosity, but also its moments of weariness and disillusion. From the latticed choir-gallery, placed against one of the great piers of the dome, came unaccompanied music—fine, pliant, expressive—like a single voice moving freely in the vast space; and at the High Altar, Cardinals and Bishops crossed and recrossed, knelt and rose, offered and put off the mitre; amid wreaths of incense, long silences, a few chanted words; sustained, enfolded all the while by the swelling tide of Gloria, or Sanctus.

At last—the elevation!—and at the bell the whole long double line of soldiers, from the Pope's chair at the western end to the eastern door, with a rattle of arms that ran from end to end of the church, dropped on one knee—saluted. Then, crac!—and as they had dropped, they rose, the stiff white breeches and towering helmets of the Guardia Nobile, the red and yellow of the Swiss, the red and blue of the Papal guards—all motionless as before. It was like the movement of some gigantic toy. And who or what else took any notice? Lucy looked round amazed. Even the Irish priest behind her had scarcely bowed his head. Nobody knelt. Most people were talking. Eleanor Burgoyne indeed had covered her face with her long delicate fingers. Manisty leaning back in his chair, looked up for an instant at the rattle of the soldiers, then went back sleepily to his Greek book. Yet Lucy felt her own heart throbbing. Through the candelabra of the High Altar beneath the dome, she can see the moving figures of the priests, the wreaths of incense ascending. The face of the celebrant Cardinal, which had dropped out of sight, reappears. Since it was last visible, according to Catholic faith, the great act of Catholic worship has been accomplished—the Body and Blood are there—God has descended, has mingled with a mortal frame. And who cares? Lucy looks round her at the good-humoured indifference, vacancy, curiosity, of the great multitude filling the nave; and her soul frees itself in a rush of protesting amazement.

* * * * *

One more 'moment' however there was,—very different from the great moment of the entry, yet beautiful. The mass is over, and a temporary platform has been erected between the Confession and the nave. The Pope has been placed upon it, and is about to chant the Apostolic Benediction.

The old man is within thirty feet of Manisty, who sits nearest to the barrier. The red Cardinal holding the service-book, the groups of guards, clergy and high officials, every detail of the Pope's gorgeous dress, nay every line of the wrinkled face, and fleshless hands, Lucy's eyes command them all. The quavering voice rises into the sudden silence of St. Peter's. Fifty thousand people hush every movement, strain their ears to listen.

Ah! how weak it is! Surely the effort is too great for a frame so enfeebled, so ancient. It should not have been exacted—allowed. Lucy's ears listen painfully for the inevitable break. But no!—The Pope draws a long sigh—the sigh of weakness,—('Ah! poveretto!' says a woman, close to Lucy, in a transport of pity),—then once more attempts the chant—sighs again—and sings. Lucy's face softens and glows; her eyes fill with tears. Nothing more touching, more triumphant, than this weakness and this perseverance. Fragile indomitable face beneath the Papal crown! Under the eyes of fifty thousand people the Pope sighs like a child, because he is weak and old, and the burden of his office is great; but in sighing, keeps a perfect simplicity, dignity, courage. Not a trace of stoical concealment; but also not a trace of flinching. He sings to the end, and St. Peter's listens in a tender hush.

Then there seems to be a moment of collapse. The long straight lips close as though with a snap, the upper jaw protruding; the eyelids drop; the emaciated form sinks upon itself.—

But his guards raise the chair, and the Pope's trance passes away. He opens his eyes, and braces himself for the last effort. Whiter than the gorgeous cope which falls about him, he raises himself, clinging to the chair; he lifts the skeleton fingers of his partially gloved hand; his look searches the crowd.

Lucy fell on her knees, a sob in her throat. When the Pope had passed, some influence made her look up. She met the eyes of Edward Manisty. They were instantly withdrawn, but not before the mingling of amusement and triumph in them had brought the quick red to the girl's cheek.

* * * * *

And outside, in the Piazza, amid the out-pouring thousands, as they were rushing for their carriage, Manisty's stride overtook her.

'Well—you were impressed?'—he said, looking at her sharply.

The girl's pride was somehow nettled by his tone.

'Yes—but by the old man—more than by the Pope,'—she said quickly.

'I hope not,' he said, with emphasis.—'Otherwise you would have missed the whole point.'

'Why?—Mayn't one feel it was pathetic, and touching—'

'No—not in the least!' he said, impatiently. 'What does the man himself matter, or his age?—That's all irrelevant,—foolish sentiment. What makes these ceremonies so tremendous is that there is no break between that man and Peter—or Linus, if you like—it comes to the same thing:—that the bones, if not of Peter, at any rate of men who might have known Peter, are there, mingled with the earth beneath his feet—that he stands there recognised by half the civilised world as Peter's successor—that five hundred, a thousand years hence, the vast probability is there will still be a Pope in St. Peter's to hand on the same traditions, and make the same claims.'

'But if you don't acknowledge the tradition or the claims!—why shouldn't you feel just the human interest?'

'Oh, of course, if you want to take the mere vulgar, parochial view—the halfpenny interviewer's view—why, you must take it!' he said, almost with violence, shrugging his shoulders.

Lucy's eyes sparkled. There was always something of the overgrown, provoking child in him, when he wanted to bear down an opinion or feeling that displeased him. She would have liked to go on walking and wrangling with him, for the great ceremony had excited her, and made it easier for her to talk. But at that moment Mrs. Burgoyne's voice was heard in front—'Joy! there is the carriage, and Reggie has picked up another.—Edward, take Aunt Pattie through—we'll look after ourselves.'

* * * * *

And soon the whole party were driving in two of the little Roman victorias through streets at the back of the Capitol, and round the base of the Palatine, to the Aventine, where it appeared they were to lunch at an open-air trattoria, recommended by Mr. Brooklyn.

Mrs. Burgoyne, Lucy and Mr. Vanbrugh Neal found themselves together. Mrs. Burgoyne and Mr. Neal talked of the function, and Lucy, after a few shy expressions of gratitude and pleasure, fell silent, and listened. But she noticed very soon that Mrs. Burgoyne was talking absently. Amid the black that fell about her slim tallness, she was more fragile, more pale than ever; and it seemed to Lucy that her eyes were dark with a fatigue that had not much to do with St. Peter's. Suddenly indeed, she bent forward and said in a lowered voice to Mr. Neal—

'You have read it?'

He too bent forward, with a smile not quite free from embarrassment—

'Yes, I have read it—I shall have some criticisms to make.—You won't mind?'

She threw up her hands—

'Must you?'

'I think I must—for the good of the book,'—he said reluctantly. 'Very likely I'm all wrong. I can only look at it as one of the public. But that's what he wants,'—what you both want—isn't it?'

She assented. Then she turned her head away, looked out of the carriage and said no more. But her face had drooped and dimmed, all in a moment; the lines graven in it long years before, by grief and delicacy, came out with a singular and sudden plainness.

The man sitting opposite to her was of an aspect little less distinguished than hers. He had a long face, with a high forehead, set in grizzled hair, and a mouth and chin of peculiar refinement. The shortness of the chin gave a first impression of weakness, which however was soon undone by the very subtle and decided lines in which, so to speak, the mouth, and indeed the face as a whole, were drawn. All that Lucy knew of him was that he was a Cambridge don, a man versed in classical archaeology who was an old friend and tutor of Mr. Manisty's. She had heard his name mentioned several times at the Villa, and always with an emphasis that marked it out from other names. And she understood from various signs that before finally passing his proofs for publication, Mr. Manisty had taken advantage of his old friend's coming to Rome to ask his opinion on them.

How brilliant was the April day on the high terrace of the Aventine trattoria! As Lucy and Aunt Pattie stood together beside the little parapet looking out through the sprays of banksia rose that were already making a white canopy above the restaurant tables, they had before them the steep sides and Imperial ruins of the Palatine; the wonderful group of churches on the Coelian; the low villa-covered ridges to the right melting into the Campagna; and far away, the blue, Sabine mountains—'suffused with sunny air'—that look down with equal kindness on the refuge of Horace, and the oratory of St. Benedict. What sharpness of wall and tree against the pearly sky—what radiance of blossom in the neighbouring gardens—what ruin everywhere, yet what indomitable life!

Beneath on a lower terrace, Manisty and Mr. Vanbrugh Neal were walking up and down.

'He's such a clever man,' sighed Aunt Pattie, as she looked down upon them. 'But I do hope he won't discourage Edward.'

Whereupon she glanced not at Manisty but at Eleanor, who was sitting near them, pretending to talk to Reggie Brooklyn—but in reality watching the conversation below.

Presently some other guests arrived, and amongst them the tall and fine-faced priest who had spoken to Manisty in St. Peter's. He came in very shyly. Eleanor Burgoyne received him, made him sit by her, and took charge of him till Manisty should appear. But he seemed to be ill at ease with ladies. He buried his hands in the sleeves of his soutane, and would answer little more than Yes and No.

'There'll be a great fuss about him soon,' whispered Aunt Pattie in Lucy's ear—'I don't quite understand—but he's written a book that's been condemned; and the question is, will he submit? They give you a year apparently to decide in. Edward says the book's quite right—and yet they were quite right to condemn him. It's very puzzling!'

When Manisty and Mr. Neal answered to the call of luncheon, Mr. Neal mounted the steps leading to the open-air restaurant, with the somewhat sheepish air of the man who has done his duty, and is inclined to feel himself a meddler for his pains. The luncheon itself passed without gaiety. Manisty was either moodily silent, or engaged in discussions with the strange priest, Father Benecke, as to certain incidents connected with a South German University, which had lately excited Catholic opinion. He scarcely spoke to any of the ladies—least of all to Eleanor Burgoyne. She and Aunt Pattie must needs make all the greater efforts to carry off the festa. Aunt Pattie chattered nervously like one in dread of a silence, while Eleanor was merry with young Brooklyn, and courteous to the other guests whom Manisty had invited—a distinguished French journalist for instance, an English member of Parliament and his daughter, and an Italian senator with an English wife.

Nevertheless when the party was breaking up, Reggie who had thrown her occasional glances of disquiet, approached Lucy Foster and said to her in a low voice, twirling an angry moustache—

'Mrs. Burgoyne is worn out. Can't you look after her?'

Lucy, a little scared by so much responsibility, did her best. She dissuaded Aunt Pattie from dragging Mrs. Burgoyne through an afternoon of visits. She secured an early train for the return to Marinata, and so earned a special and approving smile from Mr. Reggie, when at last he had settled the three ladies safely in their carriage, and was raising his hat to them on the platform. Manisty and Mr. Neal were to follow by a later train.

No sooner were they speeding through the Campagna than Eleanor sank back in her corner with a long involuntary sigh.

'My dear—you are very tired!'—exclaimed Miss Manisty.

'No.—'

Mrs. Burgoyne took off the hat which had by now replaced the black veil of the morning, and closed her eyes. Her attitude by its sad unresistingness appealed to Lucy as it had done once before. And it was borne in upon her that what she saw was not mere physical fatigue, but a deep discouragement of mind and heart. As to the true sources of it Lucy could only guess. She guessed at any rate that they were somehow connected with Mr. Manisty and his book; and she was indignant again—she hardly knew why. The situation suggested to her a great devotion ill-repaid, a friendship, of which the strong tyrannous man took advantage. Why should he behave as though all that happened ill with regard to his book was somehow Mrs. Burgoyne's fault? Claim all her time and strength—overstrain and overwork her—and then make her tacitly responsible if anything went amiss! It was like the petulant selfishness of his character. Miss Manisty ought to interfere!

* * * * *

Dreary days followed at the Villa.

It appeared that Mr. Vanbrugh Neal had indeed raised certain critical objections both to the facts and to the arguments of one whole section of the book, and that Manisty had been unable to resist them. The two men would walk up and down the ilex avenues of the garden for hours together, Mr. Neal gentle, conciliating, but immovable; Manisty violent and excited, but always submitting in the end. He would defend his point of view with obstinacy, with offensiveness even, for an afternoon, and then give way, with absolute suddenness. Lucy learnt with some astonishment that beneath his outward egotism he was really amazingly dependent on the opinions of two or three people, of whom Mr. Neal seemed to be one. This dependence turned out indeed to be even excessive. He would make a hard fight for his own way; but in the end he was determined that what he wrote should please his friends, and please a certain public. At bottom he was a rhetorician writing for this public—the slave of praise, and eager for fame, which made his complete indifference as to what people thought of his actions all the more remarkable. He lived to please himself; he wrote to be read; and he had found reason to trust the instinct of certain friends in this respect, Vanbrugh Neal among them.

To do him justice, indeed, along with his dependence on Vanbrugh Neal's opinion, there seemed to go a rather winning dependence on his affection.

Mr. Neal was apparently a devout Anglican, of a delicate and scrupulous type. His temper was academic, his life solitary; rhetoric left him unmoved, and violence of statement caused him to shiver. To make the State religious was his dearest wish. But he did not forget that to accomplish it you must keep the Church reasonable. A deep, though generally silent enthusiasm for the Anglican Via Media possessed him; and, like the Newman of Oriel, he was inclined to look upon the appearance of Antichrist as coincident with the Council of Trent. In England it seemed to him that persecution of the Church was gratuitous and inexcusable; for the Church had never wronged the State. In Italy, on the contrary, supposing the State had been violent, it could plead the earlier violences of the Church. He did not see how the ugly facts could be denied; nor did a candid unveiling of them displease his Anglican taste.

'You should have made a study—and you have written a pamphlet,' he would say, with that slow shake of the head which showed him inexorable. 'Why have you given yourself to the Jesuits? You were an Englishman and an outsider—enormous advantages! Why have you thrown them away?'

'One must have information!—I merely went to headquarters.'

'You have paid for it too dear. Your book is a plea for superstition!'

Whereupon a flame in Manisty's black eyes, and a burst in honour of superstition, which set the garden paths echoing.

But Neal pushed quietly on; untiring, unappeasable; pointing to a misstatement here, an exaggeration there, till Manisty was in a roar of argument, furious half with his friend, half with himself.

Meanwhile if the writer bore attack hardly, the man of piety found it still harder to endure the praise of piety. When Manisty denounced irresponsible science and free thought, as the enemies of the State, which must live, and can only live by religion; when he asked with disdain 'what reasonable man would nowadays weigh the membership of the Catholic church against an opinion in geology or exegesis'; when he dwelt on the easiness of faith,—which had nothing whatever to do with knowledge, and had, therefore, no quarrel with knowledge; or upon the incomparable social power of religion;—his friend grew restive. And while Manisty, intoxicated with his own phrases, and fluencies, was alternately smoking and declaiming, Neal with his grey hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is the gulf between a literary and a practical Christianity.

Nevertheless, from the whole wrestle two facts emerged:—the pleasure which these very dissimilar men took in each other's society; and that strange ultimate pliancy of Manisty which lay hidden somewhere under all the surge and froth of his vivacious rhetoric. Both were equally surprising to Lucy Foster. How had Manisty ever attached himself to Vanbrugh Neal? For Neal had a large share of the weaknesses of the student and recluse; the failings, that is to say, of a man who had lived much alone, and found himself driven to an old-maidish care of health and nerves, if a delicate physique was to do its work. He had fads; and his fads were often unexpected and disconcerting. One day he would not walk; another day he would not eat; driving was out of the question, and the sun must be avoided like the plague. Then again it was the turn of exercise, cold baths, and hearty fare. It was all done with a grace that made his whims more agreeable than other men's sense. But one might have supposed that such claims on a friend's part would have annoyed a man of Manisty's equally marked but very different peculiarities. Not at all. He was patience and good temper itself on these occasions.

'Isn't he bon enfant?' Mr. Neal said once to Mrs. Burgoyne in Lucy's presence, with a sudden accent of affection and emotion—on some occasion when Manisty had borne the upsetting of a cherished plan for the afternoon with quite remarkable patience.

'He has learnt how to spoil you!' said Eleanor, with a fluttering smile, and an immediate change of subject. Lucy looking up, felt a little pang.

For nothing could he more curious than the change in Manisty's manner towards the most constant of companions and secretaries. He had given up all continuous work at his book; he talked now of indefinite postponement; and it seemed as if with the change of plan Mrs. Burgoyne had dropped out of the matter altogether. He scarcely consulted her indeed; he consulted Mr. Neal. Mr. Neal often, moved by a secret chivalry, would insist upon bringing her in to their counsels; Manisty immediately became unmanageable, silent, and embarrassed. And how characteristic and significant was that embarrassment of his! It was as though he had a grievance against her; which however he could neither formulate for himself nor express to her.

On the other hand—perhaps inevitably—he began to take much more notice of Lucy Foster, and to find talking with her an escape. He presently found it amusing to 'draw' her; and subjects presented themselves in plenty. She was now much less shy; and her secret disapproval gave her tongue. His challenges and her replies became a feature of the day; Miss Manisty and Mr. Neal began to listen with half-checked smiles, to relish the girl's crisp frankness, and the quick sense of fun that dared to show itself now that she was more at home.

'And how improved she is! That's like all the Americans—they're so adaptable,'—Miss Manisty would think, as she watched her nephew in the evenings teasing, sparring, or arguing with Lucy Foster—she so adorably young and fresh, the new and graceful lines of the coiffure that Eleanor had forced upon her, defining the clear oval of the face and framing the large eyes and pure brow. Her hands, perhaps, would be lightly clasped on her white lap, their long fingers playing with some flower she had taken from her belt. The lines of the girlish figure would be full of dignity and strength. She might have been herself the young America, arguing, probing, deciding for herself—refusing to be overawed or brow-beaten by the old Europe.

Eleanor meanwhile was unfailingly gracious both to Lucy and the others, though perhaps the grace had in it sometimes a new note of distance, of that delicate hauteur, which every woman of the world has at command. She gave as much attention as ever—more than ever—to the fashioning of Lucy's dresses; the girl was constantly pricked with compunction and shame on the subject. Who was she, that Mrs. Burgoyne—so elegant and distinguished a person—should waste so much time and thought upon her? But sometimes she could not help seeing that Mrs. Burgoyne was glad of the occupation. Her days had been full to the brim; they were now empty. She said nothing; she took up the new books; she talked to and instructed the maids; but Lucy divined a secret suffering.

* * * * *

One evening, about a week after Mr. Neal's arrival at the Villa, Manisty was more depressed than usual. He had been making some attempts to rearrange a certain section of his book which had fallen especially under the ban of Neal's criticism. He had not been successful; and in the process his discontent with one chapter had spread to several. In talking about the matter to Vanbrugh Neal in the salon after dinner he broke out into some expression of disgust as to the waste of time involved in much of his work of the winter. The two friends were in a corner of the vast room; and Manisty spoke in an undertone. But his voice had the carrying and penetrating power of his personality.

Presently Eleanor Burgoyne rose, and softly approached Miss Manisty. 'Dear Aunt Pattie—don't move'—she said, bending over her—'I am tired and will go to bed.'

Manisty, who had turned at her movement, sprang up, and came to her.

'Eleanor! did we walk you too far this afternoon?'

She smiled, but hardly replied. He busied himself with gathering up her possessions, and lit her candle at the side-table.

As she passed by him to the door, he looked at her furtively for a moment,—hanging his head. Then he pressed her hand, and said so that only she could hear—

'I should have kept my regrets to myself!'

She shook her head, with faint mockery.

'It would be the first time.'

Her hand dropped from his, and she passed out of sight. Manisty walked back to his seat discomfited. He could not defend himself against the charges of secret tyranny and abominable ill-humour that his conscience was pricking him with. He was sorry—he would have liked to tell her so. And yet somehow her very weakness and sweetness, her delicate uncomplainingness seemed only to develope his own small egotisms and pugnacities.

* * * * *

That night—a night of rain and scirocco—Eleanor wrote in her journal—'Will he ever finish the book? Very possibly it has been all a mistake. Yet when he began it, he was in the depths. Whatever happens, it has been his salvation.

'—Surely he will finish it? He cannot forego the effect he is almost sure it will produce. But he will finish it with impatience and disgust; he is out of love with it and all its associations. All that he was talking of to-night represents what I had most share in,—the chapters which brought us most closely together. How happy we were over them! And now, how different!

'It is curious—the animation with which he has begun to talk to Lucy Foster. Pretty child! I like to feel that I have been the fairy god-mother, dressing her for the ball. How little she knows what it means to be talked to by him, to receive courtesies from him,—how many women would like to be in her place. Yet now she is not shy; she has no alarms; she treats him like an equal. If it were not ridiculous, one could be angry.

'She dislikes and criticises him, and he can have no possible understanding of or sympathy with her. But she is a way out of embarrassment. How fastidious and proud he is with women!—malicious too, and wilful. Often I have wished him more generous—more kind.

'... In three weeks the anniversary will be here—the ninth. Why am I still alive? How often have I asked myself that! Where is my place?—who needs me?—My babe, if he still exists, is alone—there. And I still here. If I had only had the courage to rejoin him! The doctors deceived me. They made me think it could not be long. And now I am better—much better. If I were happy I should be quite well.

'How weary seems this Italian spring!—the restlessness of this eternal wind—the hot clouds that roll up from the Campagna. "Que vivre est difficile, o mon coeur fatigue!"'



CHAPTER VII

'I think it's lovely,' said Lucy in an embarrassed voice. 'And I just don't know how to thank you—indeed I don't.'

She was standing inside the door of Mrs. Burgoyne's room, arrayed in the white crepe gown with the touches of pale green and vivid black that Eleanor had designed for her. Its flowing elegance made her positively a stranger to herself. The two maids moreover who had attired her had been intent upon a complete, an indisputable perfection. Her hat had been carried off and retrimmed, her white gloves, her dainty parasol, the bunch of roses at her belt—everything had been thought for; she had been allowed a voice in nothing. And the result was extraordinary. The day before she had been still a mere fresh-cheeked illustration of those 'moeurs de province' which are to be found all over the world, in Burgundy and Yorkshire no less and no more than in Vermont; to-day she had become what others copy, the best of its kind—the 'fleeting flower' that 'blooms for one day at the summit'—as the maids would no doubt have expressed themselves, had they been acquainted with the works of Mr. Clough.

And thanks to that pliancy of her race, which Miss Manisty had discovered, although she was shy in these new trappings, she was not awkward. She was assimilating her new frocks, as she had already assimilated so many other things, during her weeks at the villa—points of manner, of speech, of mental perspective. Unconsciously she copied Mrs. Burgoyne's movements and voice; she was learning to understand Manisty's paradoxes, and Aunt Pattie's small weaknesses. She was less raw, evidently; yet not less individual. Her provincialisms were dropping away; her character, perhaps, was only emerging.

'Are you pleased with it?' she said timidly, as Mrs. Burgoyne bade her come in, and she advanced towards that lady, who was putting on her own hat before the glass.

Eleanor, with uplifted arms, turned and smiled.—

'Charming! You do one credit!—Is Aunt Pattie better?'

Lucy was conscious of a momentary chill. Mrs. Burgoyne had been so kind and friendly during the whole planning and making of this dress, the girl, perhaps, had inevitably expected a keener interest in its completion.

She answered in some discomfort:—

'I am afraid Miss Manisty's not coming. I saw Benson just now. Her headache is still so bad.'

'Ah!'—said Eleanor, absently, rummaging among her gloves; 'this scirocco weather doesn't suit her.'

Lucy fidgetted a little as she stood by the dressing-table, took up one knick-knack after another and put it down. At last she said—

'Do you mind my asking you a question?'

Mrs. Burgoyne turned in surprise.

'By all means!—What can I do?'

'Do you mind telling me whether you think I ought to stay on here? Miss Manisty is so kind—she wants me to stay till you leave, and then go to Vallombrosa with you—next month. But—'

'Why "but"?'—said Mrs. Burgoyne, briskly, still in quest of rings, handkerchief, and fan,—'unless you are quite tired of us.'

The girl smiled. 'I couldn't be that. But—I think you'll be tired of me! And I've heard from the Porters of a quiet pension in Florence, where some friends of theirs will be staying till the middle of June. They would let me join them, till the Porters are ready for me.'

There was just a moment's pause before Eleanor said—

'Aunt Pattie would be very sorry. I know she counts on your going with her to Vallombrosa. I must go home by the beginning of June, and I believe Mr. Manisty goes to Paris.'

'And the book?' Lucy could not help saying, and then wished vehemently that she had left the question alone.

'I don't understand'—said Mrs. Burgoyne, stooping to look for her walking-shoes.

'I didn't—I didn't know whether it was still to be finished by the summer?'

'No one knows,—certainly not the author! But it doesn't concern me in the least.'

'How can it be finished without you?' said Lucy wondering. Again she could not restrain the spirit of eager championship which had arisen in her mind of late; though she was tremulously uncertain as to how far she might express it.

Certainly Mrs. Burgoyne showed a slight stiffening of manner.

'It will have to get finished without me, I'm afraid. Luckily I'm not wanted; but if I were, I shall have no time for anything but my father this summer.'

Lucy was silent. Mrs. Burgoyne finished tying her shoes, then rose, and said lightly—

'Besides—poor book! It wanted a change badly. So did I.—Now Mr. Neal will see it through.'

* * * * *

Lucy went to say good-bye to Aunt Pattie before starting. Eleanor, left alone, stood a moment, thoughtful, beside the dressing-table.

'She is sorry for me!' she said to herself, with a sudden, passionate movement.

This was the Nemi day—the day of festival, planned a fortnight before, to celebrate the end, the happy end of the book. It was to have been Eleanor's special day—the sign and seal of that good fortune she had brought her cousin and his work.

And now?—Why were they going? Eleanor hardly knew. She had tried to stop it. But Reggie Brooklyn had been asked, and the Ambassador's daughter. And Vanbrugh Neal had a fancy to see Nemi. Manisty, who had forgotten all that the day was once to signify, had resigned himself to the expedition—he who hated expeditions!—' because Neal wanted it.' There had not been a word said about it during the last few days that had not brought gall and wound to Eleanor. She, who thought she knew all that male selfishness was capable of, was yet surprised and pricked anew, hour after hour, by Manisty's casual sayings and assumptions.

It was like some gourd-growth in the night—the rise of this entangling barrier between herself and him. She knew that some of it came from those secret superstitions and fancies about himself and his work which she had often detected in him. If a companion or a place, even a particular table or pen had brought him luck, he would recur to them and repeat them with eagerness. But once prove to him the contrary, and she had seen him drop friend and pen with equal decision.

And as far as she could gather—as far as he would discuss the matter at all—it was precisely with regard to those portions of the book where her influence upon it had been strongest, that the difficulties put forward by Mr. Neal had arisen.

Her lip quivered. She had little or no personal conceit. Very likely Mr. Neal's criticisms were altogether just, and she had counselled wrongly. When she thought of the old days of happy consultation, of that vibrating sympathy of thought which had arisen between them, glorifying the winter days in Rome, of the thousand signs in him of a deep, personal gratitude and affection—

Vanished!—vanished! The soreness of heart she carried about with her, proudly concealed, had the gnawing constancy of physical pain. While he!—Nothing seemed to her more amazing than the lapses in mere gentlemanliness that Manisty could allow himself. He was capable on occasion of all that was most refined and tender in feeling. But once jar that central egotism of his, and he could behave incredibly! Through the small actions and omissions of every day, he could express, if he chose, a hardness of soul before which the woman shuddered.

Did he in truth mean her to understand, not only that she had been an intruder, and an unlucky one, upon his work and his intellectual life, but that any dearer hopes she might have based upon their comradeship were to be once for all abandoned? She stood there, lost in a sudden tumult of passionate pride and misery, which was crossed every now and then by a strange and bitter wonder.

Each of us carries about with him a certain mental image of himself—typical, characteristic—as we suppose; draped at any rate to our fancy; round which we group the incidents of life. Eleanor saw herself always as the proud woman; it is a guise in which we are none of us loth to masquerade. Haughtily dumb and patient during her married years; proud morally, socially, intellectually; finding in this stiffening of the self her only defence against the ugly realities of daily life. Proud too in her loneliness and grief—proud of her very grief, of her very capacity for suffering, of all the delicate shades of thought and sorrow which furnished the matter of her secret life, lived without a sign beside the old father whose coarser and commoner pride took such small account of hers!

And now—she seemed to herself to be already drinking humiliation, and foreseeing ever deeper draughts of it to come. She, who had never begged for anything, was in the mood to see her whole existence as a refused petition, a rejected gift. She had offered Edward Manisty her all of sympathy and intelligence, and he was throwing it back lightly, inexorably upon her hands. Her thin cheek burnt; but it was the truth. She annoyed and wearied him; and he had shaken her off; her, Eleanor Burgoyne! She did not know herself. Her inmost sense of identity was shaken.

She leant her head an instant against the frame of the open window, closing her tired eyes upon the great Campagna below her. A surge of rebellious will passed through her. Always submission, patience, silence,—till now! But there are moments when a woman must rouse herself, and fight—must not accept, but make, her fate.

Jealous! Was that last heat and ignominy of the soul to be hers too? She was to find it a threat and offence that he should spend some of the evenings that now went so heavily, talking with this girl,—this nice simple girl, whom she had herself bade him cultivate, whom she had herself brought into notice, rubbing off her angles,—drilling her into beauty? The very notion was madness and absurdity. It degraded her in her own eyes. It was the measure of her own self-ignorance. She—resign him at the first threat of another claim! The passionate life of her own heart amazed and stunned her.

The clock in the salon struck. She started, and went to straighten her veil at the glass. What would the afternoon bring her? Something it should bring her. The Nemi days of the winter were shrined in memory—each with its halo. Let her put out her full strength again, and now, before it was too late—before he had slipped too far away from her.

The poor heart beat hotly against the lace of her dress. What did she intend or hope for? She only knew that this might be one of her last chances with him—that the days were running out—and the moment of separation approached. Her whole nature was athirst, desperately athirst for she knew not what. Yet something told her that among these ups and downs of daily temper and fortune there lay strewn for her the last chances of her life.

* * * * *

'Please, ma'am, will you go in for a moment to Miss Manisty?'

The voice was Benson's, who had waylaid Mrs. Burgoyne in the salon.

Eleanor obeyed.

From the shadows of her dark room Aunt Pattie raised a wan face.

'Eleanor!—what do you think?'—

Eleanor ran to her. Miss Manisty handed her a telegram which read as follows—

'Your letter arrived too late to alter arrangements. Coming to-morrow—two or three nights—discuss plans.—ALICE.'

Eleanor let her hand drop, and the two ladies looked at each other in dismay.

'But you told her you couldn't receive her here?'

'Several times over. Edward will be in despair. How are we to have her here with Miss Foster? Her behaviour the last two months has been too extraordinary.'

Aunt Pattie fell back a languid little heap upon her pillows. Eleanor looked almost equally disconcerted.

'Have you told Edward?'

'No,' said Aunt Pattie miserably, raising a hand to her aching head, as though to excuse her lack of courage.

'Shall I tell him?'

'It's too bad to put such things on you.'

'No, not at all. But I won't tell him now. It would spoil the day. Some time before the evening.'

Aunt Pattie showed an aspect of relief.

'Do whatever you think best. It's very good of you—'

'Not at all. Dear Aunt Pattie!—lie still. By the way—has she anyone with her?'

'Only her maid—the one person who can manage her at all. That poor lady, you know, who tried to be companion, gave it up some time ago. Where shall we put her?'

'There are the two east rooms. Shall I tell Andreina to get them ready?'

Aunt Pattie acquiesced, with a sound rather like a groan.

'There is no chance still of stopping her?' said Eleanor, moving away.

'The telegram gives no address but Orte station,' said Aunt Pattie wearily; 'she must have sent it on her journey.'

'Then we must be prepared. Don't fret—dear Aunt Pattie!—we'll help you through.'

Eleanor stood a moment in the salon, thinking.

Unlucky! Manisty's eccentric and unmanageable sister had been for many years the secret burden of his life and Aunt Pattie's. Eleanor had been a witness of the annoyance and depression with which he had learnt during the winter that she was in Italy. She knew something of the efforts that had been made to keep her away from the villa.—

He would be furiously helpless and miserable under the infliction.—Somehow, her spirits rose.—

She went to the door of the salon, and heard the carriage drive up that was to take them to Nemi. Across Manisty's room, she saw himself on the balcony lounging and smoking till the ladies should appear. The blue lake with its green shores sparkled beyond him. The day was brightening. Certainly—let the bad news wait!

* * * * *

As they drove along the Galleria di Sotto, Manisty seemed to be preoccupied. The carriage had interrupted him in the midst of reading a long letter which he still held crumpled in his hand.

At last he said abruptly to Eleanor—'Benecke's last chance is up. He is summoned to submit next week at latest.'

'He tells you so?'

'Yes. He writes me a heart-broken letter.'

'Poor, poor fellow! It's all the Jesuits' doing. Mr. Neal told me the whole story.'

'Oh! it's tyranny of course. And the book's only a fraction of the truth,—a little Darwinian yeast leavening a lump of theology. But they're quite right. They can't help it.'

Eleanor looked at Lucy Foster and laughed.

'Dangerous to say those things before Miss Foster.'

'Does Miss Foster know anything about it?'—he said coolly.

Lucy hastily disclaimed any knowledge of Father Benecke and his affairs.

'They're very simple'—said Manisty. 'Father Benecke is a priest, but also a Professor. He published last year a rather Liberal book—very mildly liberal—some evolution—some Biblical criticism—just a touch! And a good deal of protest against the way in which the Jesuits are ruining Catholic University education in Germany. Lord! more than enough. They put his book on the Index within a month; he has had a year's grace to submit in; and now, if the submission is not made within a week or so, he will be first suspended, and then—excommunicated.'

'Who's "they"? 'said Lucy.

'Oh! the Congregation of the Index—or the people who set them on.'

'Is the book a bad book?'

'Quite the contrary.'

'And you're pleased?'

'I think the Papacy is keeping up discipline—and is not likely to go under just yet.'

He turned to her with his teasing laugh and was suddenly conscious of her new elegance. Where was the 'Sunday school teacher'? Transformed!—in five weeks—into this vision that was sitting opposite to him? Really, women were too wonderful! His male sense felt a kind of scorn for the plasticity of the sex.

'He has asked your opinion?' said Lucy, pursuing the subject.

'Yes. I told him the book was excellent—and his condemnation certain.'

Lucy bit her lip.

'Who did it?'

'The Jesuits—probably.'

'And you defend them?'

'Of course!—They're the only gentlemen in Europe who thoroughly understand their own business.'

'What a business!' said Lucy, breathing quick.—'To rush on every little bit of truth they see and stamp it out!'

'Like any other dangerous firework,—your simile is excellent.'

'Dangerous!' She threw back her head.—'To the blind and the cripples.'

'Who are the larger half of mankind. Precisely.'

She hesitated, then could not restrain herself.

'But you're not concerned?'

'I? Oh dear no. I can be trusted with fireworks. Besides I'm not a Catholic.'

'Is that fair?—to stand outside slavery—and praise it?'

'Why not?—if it suits my purpose?'

The girl was silent. Manisty glanced at Eleanor; she caught the mischievous laugh in his eyes, and lightly returned it. It was his old comrade's look, come back. A warmer, more vital life stirred suddenly through all her veins; the slight and languid figure drew itself erect; her senses told her, hurriedly, for the first time that the May sun, the rapidly freshening air, and the quick movement of the carriage were all physically delightful.

How fast, indeed, the spring was conquering the hills! As they passed over the great viaduct at Aricia, the thick Chigi woods to the left masked the deep ravine in torrents of lightest foamiest green; and over the vast plain to the right, stretching to Ardea, Lanuvium and the sea, the power of the reawakening earth, like a shuttle in the loom, was weaving day by day its web of colour and growth, the ever brightening pattern of crop, and grass and vine. The beggars tormented them on the approach to Genzano, as they tormented of old Horace and Maecenas; and presently the long falling street of the town, with its multitudes of short, wiry, brown-faced folk, its clatter of children and mules, its barbers and wine shops, brought them in sight again of the emerald-green Campagna, and the shiny hazes over the sea. In front rose the tower-topped hill of Monte Giove, marking the site of Corioli; and just as they turned towards Nemi the Appian Way ran across their path. Overhead, a marvellous sky with scudding veils of white cloud. The blur and blight of the scirocco had vanished without rain, under a change of wind. An all-blessing, all-penetrating sun poured upon the stirring earth. Everywhere fragments and ruins—ghosts of the great past—yet engulfed, as it were, and engarlanded by the active and fertile present.

And now they were to follow the high ridge above the deep-sunk lake, toward Nemi on its farther side—Nemi with its Orsini tower, grim and tall, rising on its fortress rock, high over the lake and what was once the thick grove or 'Nemus' of the Goddess, mantling the proud white of her inviolate temple.

'Look!'—slid Eleanor, touching Lucy's hand. 'There's the niched wall—and the platform of the temple.'

And Lucy, bending eager brows, saw across the lake a line of great recesses, overgrown and shadowy against the steep slopes or cliffs of the crater, and in front of them a flat space, with one farm-shed upon it.

In the crater-wall, just behind and above the temple-site, was a black vertical cleft. Eleanor pointed it out to Manisty.

'Do you remember we never explored it? But the spring must be there?—Egeria's spring?'

Manisty lazily said he didn't know.

'Don't imagine you will be let off,' said Eleanor, laughing. 'We have settled every other point at Nemi. This is left for to-day. It will make a scramble after tea.'

'You will find it further than you think,' said Manisty, measuring the distance.

'So it was somewhere on that terrace he died—poor priest!'—said Lucy, musing.

Manisty, who was walking beside the carriage, turned towards her. Her little speech flattered him. But he laughed.

'I wonder how much it was worth—that place—in hard cash,' he said, drily. 'No doubt that was the secret of it.'

Lucy smiled—unwillingly. They were mounting a charming road high above the lake. Stretching between them and the lake were steep olive gardens and vineyards; above them light half-fledged woods climbed to the sky. In the vineyards the fresh red-brown earth shone amid the endless regiments of vines, just breaking into leaf; daisies glittered under the olives; and below, on a mid-way crag, a great wild-cherry, sun-touched, flung its boughs and blossoms, a dazzling pearly glory, over the dark blue hollow of the lake.

And on the farther side, the high, scooped-out wall of the crater rose rich and dark above the temple-site. How white—white—it must have shone!—thought Lucy. Her imagination had been caught by the priest's story. She saw Nemi for the first time as one who had seen it before. Timidly she looked at the man walking beside the carriage. Strange! She no longer disliked him as she had done, no longer felt it impossible that he should have written the earlier book which had been so dear to her. Was it that she had seen him chastened and depressed of late—had realised the comparative harmlessness of his vanity, the kindness and docility he could show to a friend? Ah no!—if he had been kind for one friend, he had been difficult and ungrateful for another. The thinness of Eleanor's cheek, the hollowness of her blue eye accused him. But even here the girl's inner mind had begun to doubt and demur. After all did she know much—or anything—of their real relation?

Certainly this afternoon he was a delightful companion. That phrase which Vanbrugh Neal had applied to him in Lucy's hearing, which had seemed to her so absurd, began after all to fit. He was bon enfant both to Eleanor and to her on this golden afternoon. He remembered Eleanor's love for broom and brought her bunches of it from the steep banks; he made affectionate mock of Neal's old-maidish ways; he threw himself with ejaculations, joyous, paradoxical, violent, on the unfolding beauty of the lake and the spring; and throughout he made them feel his presence as something warmly strong and human, for all his provoking defects, and that element of the uncommunicated and unexplained which was always to be felt in him. Eleanor began to look happier and younger than she had looked for days. And Lucy wondered why the long ascent to Nemi was so delightful; why the scirocco seemed to have gone from the air, leaving so purpureal and divine a light on mountain and lake and distance.

* * * * *

When they arrived at Nemi, Manisty as usual showed that he knew nothing of the practical arrangements of the day, which were always made for him by other people.

'What am I to do with these?' he said, throwing his hands in despair towards the tea-baskets in the carriage.—'We can't drive beyond this—And how are we to meet the others?—when do they come?—why aren't they here?'

He turned with peremptory impatience to Eleanor. She laid a calming hand upon his arm, pointing to the crowd of peasant folk from the little town that had already gathered round the carriage.

'Get two of those boys to carry the baskets. We are to meet the others at the temple. They come by the path from Genzano.'

Manisty's brow cleared at once like a child's. He went into the crowd, chattering his easy Italian, and laid hands on two boys, one of whom was straight and lithe and handsome as a young Bacchus, and bore the noble name of Aristodemo. Then, followed by a horde of begging children which had to be shaken off by degrees, they began the descent of the steep cliff on which Nemi stands. The path zigzagged downwards, and as they followed it, they came upon files of peasant women ascending, all bearing on their kerchiefed heads great flat baskets of those small wood-strawberries, or fragole, which are the chief crop of Nemi and its fields.

The handsome women, the splendid red of the fruit and the scent which it shed along the path, the rich May light upon the fertile earth and its spray of leaf and blossom, the sense of growth and ferment and pushing life everywhere—these things made Lucy's spirits dance within her. She hung back with the two boys, shyly practising her Italian upon them, while Eleanor and Manisty walked ahead.

But Manisty did not forget her. Half-way down the path, he turned back to look at her, and saw that she was carrying a light waterproof, which aunt Pattie had forced upon her lest the scirocco should end in rain. He stopped and demanded it. Lucy resisted.

'I can carry that,' he urged impatiently; 'it isn't baskets.'

'You could carry those,' she said laughing.

'Not in a world that grows boys and sixpences. But I want that cloak. Please!'

The tone was imperious and she yielded. He hurried on to join Eleanor, carrying the cloak with his usual awkwardness, and often trailing it in the dust. Lucy, who was very neat and precise in all her personal ways, suffered at the sight, and wished she had stood firm. But to be waited on and remembered by him was not a disagreeable experience; perhaps because it was still such a new and surprising one.

Presently they were on the level of the lake, and their boys guided them through a narrow and stony by-path, to the site of the temple, or as the peasant calls it the 'Giardino del Lago.'

It is a flat oblong space, with a two-storied farm building—part of it showing brickwork of the early Empire—standing upon it. To north and east runs the niched wall in which, deep under accumulations of soil, Lord Savile found the great Tiberius, and those lost portrait busts which had been waiting there through the centuries till the pick and spade of an Englishman should release them. As to the temple walls which the English lord uncovered, the trenches that he dug, and the sacrificial altar that he laid bare—the land, their best guardian, has taken them back into itself. The strawberries grow all over them; only strange billows and depressions in the soil make the visitor pause and wonder. The earth seems to say to him—'Here indeed are secrets and treasures—but not for you! I have been robbed enough. The dead are mine. Leave them in my breast. And you!—go your ways in the sun!'

They made their way across the strawberry fields, looking for the friends who were to join them—Reggie Brooklyn, Mr. Neal, and the two ladies. There was no sign of them whatever. Yet, according to time and trains, they should have been on the spot, waiting.

'Annoying!' said Manisty, with his ready irritability. 'Reggie might really have managed better.—Who's this fellow?'

It was the padrone or tenant of the Giardino, who came up and parleyed with them. Yes, 'Vostra Eccellenza' might put down their baskets and make their tea. He pointed to a bench behind the shed. The forestieri came every day; he turned away in indifference.

Meanwhile the girls and women gathering among the strawberries, raised themselves to look at the party, flashing their white teeth at Aristodemo, who was evidently a wit among them. They flung him gibes as he passed, to which he replied disdainfully. A group of girls who had been singing together, turned round upon him, 'chaffing' him with shrill voices and outstretched necks, like a flock of young cackling geese, while he, holding himself erect, threw them back flinty words and glances, hitting at every stroke, striding past them with the port of a young king. Then they broke into a song which they could hardly sing for laughing—about a lover who had been jilted by his mistress. Aristodemo turned a deaf ear, but the mocking song, sung by the harsh Italian voices, seemed to fill the hollow of the lake and echoed from the steep side of the crater. The afternoon sun, striking from the ridge of Genzano, filled the rich tangled cup, and threw its shafts into the hollows of the temple wall. Lucy standing still under the heat and looking round her, felt herself steeped and bathed in Italy. Her New England reserve betrayed almost nothing; but underneath, there was a young passionate heart, thrilling to nature and the spring, conscious too of a sort of fate in these delicious hours, that were so much sharper and full of meaning than any her small experience had yet known.

She walked on to look at the niched wall, while Manisty and Eleanor parleyed with Aristodemo as to the guardianship of the tea. Presently she heard their steps behind her, and she turned back to them eagerly.

'The boy was in that tree!'—she said to Manisty, pointing to a great olive that flung its branches over a mass of ruin, which must once have formed part of an outer enclosure wall beyond the statued recesses.

'Was he?' said Manisty, surprised into a smile. 'You know best.—You are very kind to that nonsense.'

She hesitated.

'Perhaps—perhaps you don't know why I liked it so particularly. It reminded me of things in your other book.'

'The "Letters from Palestine"?' said Manisty, half amused, half astonished.

'I suppose you wonder I should have seen it? But we read a great deal in my country! All sorts of people read—men and women who do the roughest work with their hands, and never spend a cent on themselves they can help. Uncle Ben gave it me. There was a review of it in the "Springfield Republican"—I guess they will have sent it you. But'—her voice took a shy note—'do you remember that piece about the wedding feast at Cana—where you imagined the people going home afterwards over the hill paths—how they talked, and what they felt?'

'I remember something of the sort,' said Manisty—I wrote it at Nazareth—in the spring. I'm sure it was bad!'

'I don't know why you say that?' She knit her brows a little. 'If I shut my eyes, I seemed to be walking with them. And so with your goat-herd. I'm certain it was that tree!' she said, pointing to the tree, her bright smile breaking. 'And the grove was here.—And the people came running down from the village on the cliff,'—she turned her hand towards Nemi.

Manisty was flattered again, all the more because the girl had evidently no intention of flattery whatever, but was simply following the pleasure of her own thought. He strolled on beside her, poking into the niches, and talking, as the whim took him, pouring out upon her indeed some of the many thoughts and fancies which had been generated in him by those winter visits to Nemi that he and Eleanor had made together.

Eleanor loitered behind, looking at the strawberry gatherers.

'The next train should bring them here in about an hour,' she thought to herself in great flatness of spirit. 'How stupid of Reggie!'

Then as she lifted her eyes, they fell upon Manisty and Lucy, strolling along the wall together, he talking, she turning her brilliant young face towards him, her white dress shining in the sun.

A thought—a perception—thrust itself like a lance-point through Eleanor's mind.—She gave an inward cry—a cry of misery. The lake seemed to swim before her.



CHAPTER VIII

They made their tea under the shadow of the farm-building, which consisted of a loft above, and a large dark room on the ground floor, which was filled with the flat strawberry-baskets, full and ready for market.

Lucy found the little festa delightful, though all that the ladies had to do was to make an audience for Aristodemo and Manisty. The handsome dare-devil lad began to talk, drawn out by the Englishman, and lo! instead of a mere peasant they had got hold of an artist and a connoisseur! Did he know anything of the excavations and the ruins? Why, he knew everything! He chattered to them, with astonishing knowledge and shrewdness, for half an hour. Complete composure, complete good-humour, complete good manners—he possessed them all. Easy to see that he was the son of an old race, moulded by long centuries of urbane and civilised living!

A little boastful, perhaps. He too had found the head of a statue, digging in his father's orchard. Man or woman?—asked Mrs. Burgoyne. A woman. And handsome? The handsomest lady ever seen. And perfect? Quite perfect. Had she a nose, for instance? He shook his young head in scorn. Naturally she had a nose! Did the ladies suppose he would have picked up a creature without one?

Then he rose and beckoned smiling to Eleanor and Lucy. They followed him through the cool lower room, where the strawberries gleamed red through the dark, up the creaking stairs to the loft. And there on the ground was an old box and in the box, a few score of heads and other fragments—little terracottas, such as the peasants turn up every winter as they plough or dig among the olives.. Delicate little hooded women, heads of Artemis with the crown of Cybele, winged heads, or heads covered with the Phrygian cap, portrait-heads of girls or children, with their sharp profiles still perfect, and the last dab of the clay under the thumb of the artist, as clear and clean as when it was laid there some twenty-two centuries ago.

Lucy bent over them in a passion of pleasure, turning over the little things quite silently, but with sparkling looks.

'Would you like them?' said Manisty, who had followed them, and stood over her, cigarette in hand.

'Oh no!' said Lucy, rising in confusion. 'Don't get them for me.'

'Come away,' said Eleanor, laughing. 'Never interfere between a man and a bargain.'

The padrone indeed appeared at the moment. Manisty sent the ladies downstairs, and the bargaining began.

When he came downstairs ten minutes later a small basket was in his hand. He offered it to Lucy, while he held out his other hand to Eleanor. The hand contained two fragments only, but of exquisite quality, one a fine Artemis head with the Cybele crown, the other merely the mask or shell of a face, from brow to chin,—a gem of the purest and loveliest Greek work.

Eleanor took them with a critical delight. Her comments were the comments of taste and knowledge. They were lightly given, without the smallest pedantry, but Manisty hardly answered them. He walked eagerly to Lucy Foster, whose shy intense gratitude, covering an inward fear that he had spent far, far too much money upon her, and that she had indecorously provoked his bounty, was evidently attractive to him. He told her that he had got them for a mere nothing, and they sat down on the bench behind the house together, turning them over, he holding forth, and now and then discovering through her modest or eager replies, that she had been somehow remarkably well educated by that old Calvinist uncle of hers. The tincture of Greek and Latin, which had looked so repellent from a distance, presented itself differently now that it enabled him to give his talk rein, and was partly the source in her of these responsive grateful looks which became her so well. After all perhaps her Puritan stiffness was only on the surface. How much it had yielded already to Eleanor's lessons! He really felt inclined to continue them on his own account; to test for himself this far famed pliancy of the American woman.

Meanwhile Eleanor moved away, watching the path from Genzano which wound downwards from the Sforza Cesarini villa to the 'Giardino,' and was now visible, now hidden by the folds of the shore.

Presently Manisty and Lucy heard her exclamation.

'At last!—What has Reggie been about?'

'Coming?' said Manisty.

'Yes—thank goodness! Evidently they missed that first train. But now there are four people coming down the hill—two men and two ladies. I'm sure one's Reggie.'

'Well, for the practical man he hasn't distinguished himself,' said Manisty, taking out another cigarette.

'I can't see them now—they're hidden behind that bend. They'll be ten minutes more, I should think, before they arrive. Edward!'

'Yes?—Don't be energetic!'

'There's just time to explore that ravine—while they're having tea. Then we shall have seen it all—done the last, last thing! Who knows—dear Nemi!—if we shall ever see it again?'

Her tone was quite gay, yet, involuntarily, there was a touching note in it. Lucy looked down guiltily, wishing herself away. But Manisty resisted.

'You'll be very tired, Eleanor—it's much further than you think—and it's very hot.'

'Oh no, it's not far—and the sun's going down fast. You wouldn't be afraid? They'll be here directly,' she said, turning to Lucy. 'I'm sure it was they.'

'Don't mind me, please!' said Lucy. 'I shall be perfectly right. I'll boil the kettle again, and be ready for them. Aristodemo will look after me.'

Eleanor turned to Manisty.

'Come!' she said.

This time she rather commanded than entreated. There was a delicate stateliness in her attitude, her half-mourning dress of grey and black, her shadowy hat, the gesture of her hand, that spoke a hundred subtle things—all those points of age and breeding, of social distinction and experience, that marked her out from Lucy—from the girl's charming immaturity.

Manisty rose ungraciously. As he followed his cousin along the narrow path among the strawberry beds his expression was not agreeable. Eleanor's heart—if she had looked back—might have failed her. But she hurried on.

* * * * *

Lucy, left to herself, set the stove under the kettle alight and prepared some fresh tea, while Aristodemo and the other boy leant against the wall in the shade chattering to each other.

The voices of Eleanor and Manisty had vanished out of hearing in the wood behind the Giardino. But the voices from Genzano began to come nearer. A quarter to six.—There would be only a short time for them to rest and have their tea in, before they must all start home for the villa, where Miss Manisty was expecting the whole party for dinner at eight. Was that Mr. Brooklyn's voice? She could not see them, but she could hear them talking in the narrow overgrown lane leading from the lake to the ruins.

How very strange! The four persons approaching entered the Giardino still noisily laughing and talking—and Lucy knew none of them! The two men, of whom one certainly resembled Mr. Brooklyn in height and build, were quite strangers to her; and she felt certain that the two ladies, who were stout and elderly, had nothing to do either with Mrs. Elliott, Mr. Reggie's married sister, or with the Ambassador's daughter.

She watched them with astonishment. They were English, tourists apparently from Frascati, to judge from their conversation. And they were in a great hurry. The walk had taken them longer than they expected, and they had only a short time to stay. They looked carelessly at the niched wall, and the shed with the strawberry baskets, remarking that there was 'precious little to see, now you'd done it.' Then they walked past Lucy, throwing many curious glances at the solitary English girl with the tea-things before her, the gentlemen raising their hats. And finally they hurried away, and all sounds of them were soon lost in the quiet of the May evening.

Lucy was left, feeling a little forlorn and disconcerted. Presently she noticed that all the women working on the Giardino land were going home. Aristodemo and his companion ran after some of the girls, and their discordant shouts and laughs could be heard in the distance, mingled with the 'Ave Maria' sung by groups of woman and girls who were mounting the zigzag path towards Nemi, their arms linked together.

The evening stillness came flooding into the great hollow like a soft resistless wave. Every now and then the voices of peasants going home rippled up from unseen paths, then sank again into the earth. On the high windows of Nemi the sunset light from the Campagna struck and flamed, 'Ave Maria—gratia plena.' How softened now, how thinly, delicately far! The singers must be nearing their homes in the little hill town.

Lucy looked around her. No one on the Giardino, no one in the fields near, no one on the Genzano road. She seemed to be absolutely alone. Her two companions indeed could not be far away, and the boys no doubt would come back for the baskets. But meanwhile she could see and hear no one.

The sun disappeared behind the Genzano ridge, and it grew cold all in a moment. She felt the chill, together with a sudden consciousness of fatigue. Was there fever in this hollow of the lake? Certainly the dwellings were all placed on the heights, save for the fisherman's cottage half-way to Genzano. She got up and began to move about, wishing for her cloak. But Mr. Manisty had carried it off, absently, on his arm.

Then she packed up the tea-things. What had happened to the party from Rome?

Surely more than an hour had passed. Had it taken them longer to climb to the spring's source than they supposed? How fast the light was failing, the rich Italian light, impatient to be gone, claiming all or nothing!

The girl began to be a little shaken with vague discomforts and terrors. She had been accustomed to wander about the lake of Albano by herself, and to make friends with the peasants. But after all the roads would not be so closely patrolled by carabinieri if all was quite as safe as in Vermont or Middlesex; and there were plenty of disquieting stories current among the English visitors, even among the people themselves. Was it not only a month since a carriage containing some German royalties had been stopped and robbed by masked peasants on the Rocca di Papa road? Had not an old resident in Rome told her, only the day before, that when he walked about these lake paths he always filled his pockets with cigars and divested them of money, in order that the charcoal-burners might love him without robbing him? Had not friends of theirs going to Cori and Ninfa been followed by mounted police all the way?

These things weighed little with her as she wandered in broad daylight about the roads near the villa. But now she was quite alone, the night was coming, and the place seemed very desolate.

But of course they would be back directly! Why not walk to meet them? It was the heat and slackness of the day which had unnerved her. Perhaps, too, unknown to herself!—the stir of new emotions and excitements in a deep and steadfast nature.

She had marked the path they took, and she made her way to it. It proved to be very steep, dark, and stony under meeting trees. She climbed it laboriously, calling at intervals.

Presently—a sound of steps and hoofs. Looking up she could just distinguish a couple of led mules with two big lads picking their way down the rocky lane. There was no turning aside. She passed them with as much dispatch as possible.

They stopped, however, and stared at her,—the elegant lady in her white dress all alone. Then they passed, and she could not but be conscious of relief, especially as she had neither money nor cigars.

Suddenly there was a clatter of steps behind her, and she turned to see one of the boys, holding out his hand—

'Signora!—un soldino!'

She walked fast, shaking her head.

'Non ho niente—niente.'

He followed her, still begging, his whining note passing into something more insolent. She hurried on. Presently there was a silence; the steps ceased; she supposed he was tired of the pursuit, and had dropped back to the point where his companion was waiting with the mules.

But there was a sudden movement in the lane behind. She put up her hand with a little cry. Her cheek was struck,—again!—another stone struck her wrist. The blood flowed over her hand. She began to run, stumbling up the path, wondering how she could defend herself if the two lads came back and attacked her together.

Luckily the path turned; her white dress could no longer offer them a mark. She fled on, and presently found a gap in the low wall of the lane, and a group of fig-trees just beyond it, amid which she crouched. The shock, the loneliness, the pang of the boys' brutality, had brought a sob into her throat. Why had her companions left her?—it was not kind!—till they were sure that the people coming were their expected guests. Her cheek seemed to be merely grazed, but her wrist was deeply cut. She wrapped her handkerchief tightly round it, but it soon began to drip again upon her pretty dress. Then she tore off some of the large young fig-leaves beside her, not knowing what else to do, and held them to it.

* * * * *

A few minutes later, Manisty and Eleanor descended the same path in haste. They had found the ascent longer and more intricate than even he had expected, and had lost count of time in a conversation beside Egeria's spring—a conversation that brought them back to Lucy changed beings, in a changed relation. What was the meaning of Manisty's moody, embarrassed look? and of that white and smiling composure that made a still frailer ghost of Eleanor than before?

'Did you hear that call?' said Manisty, stopping.

It was repeated, and they both recognised Lucy Foster's voice, coming from somewhere close to them on the richly grown hillside. Manisty exclaimed, ran on—paused—listened again—shouted—and there, beside the path, propping herself against the stones of the wall, was a white and tremulous girl holding a swathed arm stiffly in front of her so that the blood dripping from it should not fall upon her dress.

Manisty came up to her in utter consternation. 'What has happened? How are you here? Where are the others?'

She answered dizzily, then said, faintly trying to smile, 'If you could provide me with—something to tie round it?'

'Eleanor!' Manisty's voice rang up the path. Then he searched his own pockets in despair—remembering that he had wrapped his handkerchief round Eleanor's precious terracottas just before they started, that the little parcel was on the top of the basket he had given to Miss Foster, and that both were probably waiting with the tea-things below.

Eleanor came up.

'Why did we leave her?' cried Manisty, turning vehemently upon his cousin—'That was not Reggie and his party! What a horrible mistake! She has been attacked by some of these peasant brutes. Just look at this bleeding!'

Something in his voice roused a generous discomfort in Lucy even through her faintness.

'It is nothing,' she said. 'How could you help it? It is so silly!—I am so strong—and yet any cut, or prick even, makes me feel faint. If only we could make it stop—I should be all right.'

Eleanor stooped and looked at the wound, so far as the light would serve, touching the wrist with her ice-cold fingers. Manisty watched her anxiously. He valued her skill in nursing matters.

'It will soon stop,' she said. 'We must bind it tightly.'

And with a spare handkerchief, and the long muslin scarf from her own neck, she presently made as good a bandage as was possible.

'My poor frock!' said Lucy, half laughing, half miserable,—'what will Benson say to me?'

Mrs. Burgoyne did not seem to hear.

'We must have a sling,' she was saying to herself, and she took off the light silk shawl she wore round her own shoulders.

'Oh no! Don't, please!' said Lucy. 'It has grown so cold.'

And then they both perceived that she was trembling from head to foot.

'Good Heavens!' cried Manisty, looking at something on his own arm. 'And I carried off her cloak! There it's been all the time! What a pretty sort of care to take of you!'

Eleanor meanwhile was turning her shawl into a sling in spite of Lucy's remonstrances. Manisty made none.

When the arm was safely supported, Lucy pulled herself together with a great effort of will, and declared that she could now walk quite well.

'But all that way round the lake to Genzano!'—said Manisty; 'or up that steep hill to Nemi? Eleanor! how can she possibly manage it?'

'Let her try,' said Eleanor quietly. 'It is the best. Now let her take your arm.'

Lucy looked up at Mrs. Burgoyne, smiling tremulously. 'Thank you!—thank you! What a trouble I am!'

She put out her free hand, but Mrs. Burgoyne seemed to have moved away. It was taken by Manisty, who drew it within his arm.

They descended slowly, and just as they were emerging from the heavy shadow of the lane into the mingled sunset and moonlight of the open 'Giardino, sounds reached them that made them pause in astonishment.

'Reggie!' said Manisty—'and Neal! Listen! Good gracious!—there they are!'

And sure enough, there in the dim light behind the farm-building, gathered in a group round the tea-baskets, laughing, and talking eagerly with each other, or with Aristodemo, was the whole lost party—the two ladies and the two men. And beside the group, held by another peasant, was a white horse with a side-saddle.

Manisty called. The new-comers turned, looked, then shouted exultant.

'Well!'—said Reggie, throwing up his arms at sight of Manisty, and skimming over the strawberry furrows towards them. 'Of all the muddles! I give you this blessed country. I'll never say a word for it again. Everything on this beastly line altered for May—no notice to anybody!—all the old trains printed as usual, and a wretched flyleaf tucked in somewhere that nobody saw or was likely to see. Station full of people for the 2.45. Train taken off—nothing till 4.45. Never saw such a confusion!—and the Capo-stazione as rude as he could be. I say!—what's the matter?'

He drew up sharp in front of them.

'We'll tell you presently, my dear fellow,' said Manisty peremptorily. 'But now just help us to get Miss Foster home. What a mercy you thought of bringing a horse!'

'Why!—I brought it for—for Mrs. Burgoyne,' said the young man, astonished, looking round for his cousin. 'We found the carriage waiting at the Sforza Cesarini gate, and the man told us you were an hour behind your time. So I thought Eleanor would be dead-tired, and I went to that man—you remember?—we got a horse from before—'

But Manisty had hurried Lucy on without listening to a word; and she herself was now too dizzy with fatigue and loss of blood to grasp what was being said around her.

Reggie fell back in despair on Mrs. Burgoyne.

'Eleanor!—what have you been doing to yourselves! What a nightmare of an afternoon! How on earth are you going to walk back all this way? What's wrong with Miss Foster?'

'Some rough boys threw stones at her, and her arm is badly cut. Edward will take her on to Genzano, find a doctor and then bring her home.—We'll go on first, and send back another carriage for them. You angel, Reggie, to think of that horse!'

'But I thought of it for you, Eleanor,' said the young man, looking in distress at the delicate woman for whom he had so frank and constant an affection. 'Miss Foster's as strong as Samson!—or ought to be. What follies has she been up to?'

'Please, Reggie—hold your tongue! You shall talk as much nonsense as you please when once we have started the poor child off.'

And Eleanor too ran forward. Manisty had just put together a rough mounting block from some timber in the farm-building. Meanwhile the other two ladies had been helpful and kind. Mrs. Elliott had wrapped a white Chudda shawl round Lucy's shivering frame. A flask containing some brandy had been extracted from Mr. Neal's pocket, more handkerchiefs and a better sling found for the arm. Finally Lucy, all her New England pride outraged by the fuss that was being made about her, must needs submit to be almost lifted on the horse by Manisty and Mr. Brooklyn. When she found herself in the saddle, she looked round bewildered. 'But this must have been meant for Mrs. Burgoyne! Oh how tired she will be!'

'Don't trouble yourself about me! I am as fresh as paint,' said Eleanor's laughing voice beside her.

'Eleanor! will you take them all on ahead?' said Manisty impatiently; 'we shall have to lead her carefully to avoid rough places.'

Eleanor carried off the rest of the party. Manisty established himself at Lucy's side. The man from Genzano led the horse.

After a quarter of an hour's walking, mixed with the give and take of explanations on both sides as to the confusion of the afternoon, Eleanor paused to recover breath an instant on a rising ground. Looking back, she saw through the blue hazes of the evening the two distant figures—the white form on the horse, the protecting nearness of the man.

She stifled a moan, drawn deep from founts of covetous and passionate agony. Then she turned and hurried up the stony path with an energy, a useless haste that evoked loud protests from Reggie Brooklyn. Eleanor did not answer him. There was beating within her veins a violence that appalled herself. Whither was she going? What change had already passed on all the gentle tendernesses and humanities of her being?

* * * * *

Meanwhile Lucy was reviving in the cool freshness of the evening air. She seemed to be travelling through a world of opal colour, arched by skies of pale green, melting into rose above, and daffodil gold below. All about her, blue and purple shadows were rising, like waves interfused with moonlight, flooding over the land. Where did the lake end and the shore begin? All was drowned in the same dim wash of blue—the olives and figs, the reddish earth, the white of the cherries, the pale pink of the almonds. In front the lights of Genzano gleamed upon the tall cliff. But in this lonely path all was silence and woody fragrance; the honeysuckles threw breaths across their path; tall orchises, white and stately, broke here and there from the darkness of the banks. In spite of pain and weakness her senses seemed to be flooded with beauty. A strange peace and docility overcame her.

'You are better?' said Manisty's voice beside her. The tones of it were grave and musical; they expressed an enwrapping kindness, a 'human softness' that still further moved her.

'So much better! The bleeding has almost stopped. I—I suppose it would have been better, if I had waited for you?—if I had not ventured on those paths alone?'

There was in her scrupulous mind a great penitence about the whole matter. How much trouble she was giving!—how her imprudence had spoilt the little festa! And poor Mrs. Burgoyne!—forced to walk up this long, long way.

'Yes—perhaps it would have been better'—said Manisty. 'One never quite knows about this population. After all, for an Italian lady to walk about some English country lanes alone, might not be quite safe—and one ruffian is enough. But the point is—we should not have left you.'

She was too feeble to protest. Manisty spoke to the man leading the horse, bidding him draw on one side, so as to avoid a stony bit of path. Then the reins fell from her stiff right hand, which seemed to be still trembling with cold. Instantly Manisty gathered them up, and replaced them in the chill fingers. As he did so he realised with a curious pleasure that the hand and wrist, though not small, were still beautiful, with a fine shapely strength.

Presently, as they mounted the steep ascent towards the Sforza Cesarini woods, he made her rest half way.

'How those stones must have jarred you!'—he said frowning, as he turned the horse, so that she sat easily, without strain.

'No! It was nothing. Oh—glorious!'

For she found herself looking towards the woods of the south-eastern ridge of the lake, over which the moon had now fully risen. The lake was half shade, half light; the fleecy forests on the breast of Monte Cavo rose soft as a cloud into the infinite blue of the night-heaven. Below, a silver shaft struck the fisherman's hut beside the shore, where, deep in the water's breast, lie the wrecked ships of Caligula,—the treasure ships—whereof for seventy generations the peasants of Nemi have gone dreaming.

As they passed the hut,—half an hour before—Manisty had drawn her attention, in the dim light, to the great beams from the side of the nearer ship, which had been recently recovered by the divers, and were lying at the water's edge. And he had told her,—with a kindling eye—how he himself, within the last few months, had seen fresh trophies recovered from the water,—a bronze Medusa above all, fiercely lovely, the work of a most noble and most passionate art, not Greek though taught by Greece, fresh, full-blooded, and strong, the art of the Empire in its eagle-youth.

'Who destroyed the ships, and why?' he said, as they paused, looking down upon the lake. 'There is not a shred of evidence. One can only dream. They were a madman's whim; incredibly rich in marble, and metal, and terra-cotta, paid for, no doubt, from the sweat and blood of this country-side. Then the young monster who built and furnished them was murdered on the Palatine. Can't you see the rush of an avenging mob down this steep lane?—the havoc and the blows—the peasants hacking at the statues and the bronzes—loading their ox-carts perhaps with the plunder—and finally letting in the lake upon the wreck! Well!—somehow like that it must have happened. The lake swallowed them; and, in spite of all the efforts of the Renaissance people, who sent down divers, the lake has kept them, substantially, till now. Not a line about them in any known document! History knows nothing. But the peasants handed down the story from father to son. Not a fisherman on this lake, for eighteen hundred years, but has tried to reach the ships. They all believed—they still believe—that they hold incredible treasures. But the lake is jealous—they lie deep!'

Lucy bent forward, peering into the blue darkness of the lake, trying to see with his eyes, to catch the same ghostly signals from the past. The romance of the story and the moment, Manisty's low, rushing speech, the sparkle of his poet's look—the girl's fancy yielded to the spell of them; her breath came quick and soft. Through all their outer difference, Manisty suddenly felt the response of her temperament to his. It was delightful to be there with her—delightful to be talking to her.

'I was on the shore,' he continued, 'watching the divers at work, on the day they drew up the Medusa. I helped the man who drew her up to clean the slime and mud from them, and the vixen glared at me all the time, as though she thirsted to take vengeance upon us all. She had had time to think about it,—for she sank perhaps ten years after the Crucifixion,—while Mary still lived in the house of John!'

His voice dropped to the note of reverie, and a thrill passed through Lucy. He turned the horse's head towards Genzano, and they journeyed on in silence. She indeed was too weak for many words; but enwrapped as it were by the influences around her,—of the place, the evening beauty, the personality of the man beside her,—she seemed to be passing through a many-coloured dream, of which the interest and the pleasure never ceased.

Presently they passed a little wayside shrine. Within its penthouse eave an oil-lamp flickered before the frescoed Madonna and Child; the shelf in front of the picture was heaped with flowers just beginning to fade. Manisty stayed the horse a moment; pointed first to the shrine, then to the bit of road beneath their feet.

'Do you see this travertine—these blocks? This is a bit of the old road to the temple. I was with the exploring party when they carried up the Medusa and some other of their finds along here past the shrine. It was nearly dark—they did not want to be observed. But I was an old friend of the man in command, and he and I were walking together. The bearers of the heavy bronze things got tired. They put down their load just here, and lounged away. My friend stepped up to the sort of wooden bier they were carrying, to see that all was right. He uncovered the Medusa, and turned her to the light of the lamp before the shrine. You never saw so strange and wild a thing!—the looks she threw at the Madonna and Child. "Ah! Madam," I said to her—"the world was yours when you went down—but now it's theirs! Tame your insolence!" And I thought of hanging her here, at night, just outside, under the lamp against the wall of the shrine—and how one might come in the dark upon the fierce head with the snakes—and watch her gazing at the Christ.'

Lucy shuddered and smiled.

'I'm glad she wasn't yours!'

'Why? The peasants would soon have made a saint of her, and invented a legend to fit. The snakes, for them, would have been the instruments of martyrdom—turned into a martyr's crown. Italy and Catholicism absorb—assimilate—everything. "Santa Medusa!"—I assure you, she would be quite in order.'

There was a pause. Then she heard him say under his breath—'Marvellous, marvellous Italy!'

She started and gave a slight cry—unsteady, involuntary.

'But you don't love her!—you are ungrateful to her!'

He looked up surprised—then laughed—a frank, pugnacious laugh.

'There is Italy—and Italy.'

'There is only one Italy!—Aristodemo's Italy—the Italy the peasants work in.'

She turned to him, breathing quicker, the colour returning to her pale cheek.

'The Italy that has just sent seven thousand of her sons to butchery in a wretched colony, because her hungry politicians must have glory and keep themselves in office? You expect me to love that Italy?'

Within the kind new sweetness of his tone—a sweetness no man could use more subtly—there had risen the fiery accustomed note. But so restrained, so tempered to her weakness, her momentary dependence upon him!

'You might be generous to her—just, at least!—for the sake of the old.'

She trembled a little from the mere exertion of speaking, and he saw it.

'No controversy to-night!' he said smiling. 'Wait till you are fit for it, and I will overwhelm you. Do you suppose I don't know all about the partisan literature you have been devouring?'

'One had to hear the other side.'

'Was I such a bore with the right side?'

They both laughed. Then he said, shrugging his shoulders with sudden emphasis:

'What a nation of revolutionists you are in America! What does it feel like, I wonder, to be a people without a past, without traditions?'

Lucy exclaimed: 'Why, we are made of traditions!'

'Traditions of revolt and self-will are no traditions,' he said provokingly. 'The submission of the individual to the whole—that's what you know nothing of.'

'We shall know it when we want it! But it will be a free submission—given willingly.'

'No priests allowed? Oh! you will get your priests. You are getting them. No modern nation can hold together without them.'

They sparred a little longer. Then Lucy's momentary spirit of fight departed. She looked wistfully to see how near they were to Genzano. Manisty approached her more closely.