Towards the end came the familiar Manisty-ism:

'All the same, their answer to you is still as good as ever. The system must either break up or go on. They naturally prefer that it should go on. But if it is worked by men like you, it cannot go on. Their instinct never wavers; and it is a true one.'

Then:

'I don't know how I have managed to write this letter—poor stuff as it is. My mind at this moment is busy neither with speculation nor politics. I am perched for the night on the side of a mountain thickly covered with beech woods, in a remote Calabrian hamlet, where however last year some pushing person built a small 'health resort,' to which a few visitors come from Naples and even from Rome. The woods are vast, the people savage. The brigands are gone, or going; of electric light there is plenty. I came this morning, and shall be gone to-morrow. I am a pilgrim on the face of Italy. For six weeks I have wandered like this, from the Northern Abruzzi downwards. Wherever holiday folk go to escape from the heat of the plains, I go. But my object is not theirs.... Nor is it yours, Padre. There are many quests in the world. Mine is one of the oldest that man knows. My heart pursues it, untired. And in the end I shall win to my goal.'

The old priest read the last paragraph in a hurried, unsteady voice. At every sentence he became aware of some electrical effect upon the delicate frame and face beside him; but he read on—not knowing how to save himself—lest she should think that he had omitted anything.

When he dropped the letter his hands, too, shook. There was a silence.

Slowly Eleanor dragged herself higher in her chair; she pushed her hat back from her forehead; she turned her white drawn face upon the priest.

'Father,' she said, bending towards him, 'you are a priest—and a confessor?'

His face changed. He waited an instant before replying.

'Yes, Madame—I am!' he said at last, with a firm and passionate dignity.

'Yet now you cannot act as a priest. And I am not a Catholic. Still, I am a human being—with a soul, I suppose—if there are such things!—and you are old enough to be my father, and have had great experience. I am in trouble—and probably dying. Will you hear my case—as though it were a confession—under the same seal?'

She fixed her eyes upon him. Insensibly the priest's expression had changed; the priestly caution, the priestly instinct had returned. He looked at her steadily and compassionately.

'Is there no one, Madame, to whom you might more profitably make this confession—no one who has more claim to it than I?'

'No one.'

'I cannot refuse,' he said, uneasily. 'I cannot refuse to hear anyone in trouble and—if I can—to help them. But let me remind you that this could not be in any sense a true confession. It could only be a conversation between friends.'

She drew her hand across her eyes.

'I must treat it as a confession, or I cannot speak. I shall not ask you to absolve me. That—that would do me no good,' she said, with a little wild laugh, 'What I want is direction—from some one accustomed to look at people as they are—and—and to speak the truth to them. Say "yes," Padre. You—you may have the fate of three lives in your hands.'

Her entreating eyes hung upon him. His consideration took a few moments longer. Then he dropped his own look upon the ground, and clasped his hands.

'Say, my daughter, all that you wish to say.'

The priestly phrase gave her courage.

She drew a long breath, and paused a little to collect her thoughts. When she began, it was in a low, dragging voice full of effort.

'What I want to know, Father, is—how far one may fight—how far one should fight—for oneself. The facts are these. I will not mention any names. Last winter, Father, I had reason to think that life had changed for me—after many years of unhappiness. I gave my whole, whole heart away.' The words came out in a gasp, as though a large part of the physical power of the speaker escaped with them. 'I thought that—in return—I was held in high value, in true affection—that—that my friend cared for me more than for anyone else—that in time he would be mine altogether. It was a great hope, you understand—I don't put it at more. But I had done much to deserve his kindness—he owed me a great deal. Not, I mean, for the miserable work I had done for him; but for all the love, the thought by day and night that I had given him.'

She bowed her head on her hands for a moment. The priest sat motionless and she resumed, torn and excited by her strange task.

'I was not alone in thinking and hoping—as I did. Other people thought it. It was not merely presumptuous or foolish on my part. But—ah! it is an old story, Padre. I don't know why I inflict it on you!'

She stopped, wringing her hands.

The priest did not raise his eyes, but sat quietly—in an attitude a little cold and stern, which seemed to rebuke her agitation. She composed herself, and resumed:

'There was of course some one else, Father—you understood that from the beginning—some one younger, and far more attractive than I. It took five weeks—hardly so much. There was no affinity of nature and mind to go upon—or I thought so. It seemed to me all done in a moment by a beautiful face. I could not be expected to bear it—to resign myself at once to the loss of everything that made life worth living—could I, Father?' she said passionately.

The priest still did not look up.

'You resisted?' he said.

'I resisted—successfully,' she said with fluttering breath. 'I separated them. The girl who supplanted me was most tender, dear, and good. She pitied me, and I worked upon her pity. I took her away from—from my friend. And why should I not? Why are we called upon perpetually to give up—give up? It seemed to me such a cruel, cold, un-human creed. I knew my own life was broken—beyond mending; but I couldn't bear the unkindness—I couldn't forgive the injury—I couldn't—couldn't! I took her away; and my power is still great enough, and will be always great enough, if I choose, to part these two from each other!'

Her hands were on her breast, as though she were trying to still the heart that threatened to silence her. When she spoke of giving up, her voice had taken a note of scorn, almost of hatred, that brought a momentary furrow to the priest's brow.

For a little while after she had ceased to speak he sat bowed, and apparently deep in thought. When he looked up she braced herself, as though she already felt the shock of judgment. But he only asked a question.

'Your girl-friend, Madame—her happiness was not involved?'

Eleanor shrank and turned away.

'I thought not—at first.' It was a mere murmur.

'But now?'

'I don't know—I suspect,' she said miserably. 'But, Father, if it were so she is young; she has all her powers and chances before her. What would kill me would only—anticipate—for her—a day that must come. She is born to be loved.'

Again she let him see her face, convulsed by the effort for composure, the eyes shining with large tears. It was like the pleading of a wilful child.

A veil descended also on the pure intense gaze of the priest, yet he bent it steadily upon her.

'Madame—God has done you a great honour.'

The words were just breathed, but they did not falter. Mutely, with parted lips, she seemed to search for his meaning.

'There are very few of whom God condescends to ask, as plainly, as generously, as He now asks of you. What does it matter, Madame, whether God speaks to us amid the thorns or the flowers? But I do not remember that He ever spoke among the flowers, but often—often, amongst deserts and wildernesses. And when He speaks—Madame! the condescension, the gift is that He should speak at all; that He, our Maker and Lord, should plead with, should as it were humble Himself to, our souls. Oh! how we should hasten to answer, how we should hurry to throw ourselves and all that we have into His hands!'

Eleanor turned away. Unconsciously she began to strip the moss from a tree beside her. The tears dropped upon her lap.

But the appeal was to religious emotion, not to the moral judgment, and she rallied her forces.

'You speak, Father, as a priest—as a Christian. I understand of course that that is the Christian language, the Christian point of view.'

'My daughter,' he said simply, 'I can speak no other language.'

There was a pause. Then he resumed: 'But consider it for a moment from another point of view. You say that for yourself you have renounced the expectation of happiness. What, then, do you desire? Merely the pain, the humiliation of others? But is that an end that any man or woman may lawfully pursue—Pagan or Christian? It was not a Christian who said, "Men exist for the sake of one another." Yet when two other human beings—your friends—have innocently—unwittingly—done you a wrong—'

She shook her head silently.

The priest observed her.

'One at least, you said, was kind and good—showed you a compassionate spirit—and intended you no harm. Yet you will punish her—for the sake of your own pride. And she is young. You who are older, and better able to control passion, ought you not to feel towards her as a tender elder sister—a mother—rather than a rival?'

He spoke with a calm and even power, the protesting force of his own soul mounting all the time like a tide.

Eleanor rose again in revolt.

'It is no use,' she said despairingly. 'Do you understand, Father, what I said to you at first?—that I have probably not many months—a year perhaps—to live? And that to give these two to each other would embitter all my last days and hours—would make it impossible for me to believe, to hope, anything?'

'No, no, poor soul!' he said, deeply moved. 'It would be with you as with St. John: "Now we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren."'

She shrugged her shoulders.

'I have no faith—and no hope.'

His look kindled, took a new aspect almost of command.

'You do yourself wrong. Could you have brought yourself to ask this counsel of me, if God had not been already at work in your soul—if your sin were not already half conquered?'

She recoiled as though from a blow. Her cheek burnt.

'Sin!' she repeated bitterly, with a kind of scorn, not able to bear the word.

But he did not quail.

'All selfish desire is sin—desire that defies God and wills the hurt of man. But you will cast it out. The travail is already begun in you that will form the Christ.'

'Father, creeds and dogmas mean nothing to me!'

'Perhaps,' he said calmly. 'Does religion also mean nothing to you?'

'Oh! I am a weak woman,' she said with a quivering lip. 'I throw myself on all that promises consolation. When I see the nuns from down below pass up and down this road, I often think that theirs is the only way out; that the Catholic Church and a convent are perhaps the solution to which I must come—for the little while that remains.'

'In other words,' he said after a pause, 'God offers you one discipline, and you would choose another. Well, the Lord gave the choice to David of what rod he would be scourged with; but it always has seemed to me that the choice was an added punishment. I would not have chosen. I would have left all to His Divine Majesty! This cross is not of your own making; it comes to you from God. Is it not the most signal proof of His love? He asks of you what only the strongest can bear; gives you just time to serve Him with the best. As I said before, is it not His way of honouring His creature?'

Eleanor sat without speaking, her delicate head drooping.

'And, Madame,' the priest continued with a changed voice, 'you say that creeds and dogmas mean nothing to you. How can I, who am now cast out from the Visible Church, uphold them to you—attempt to bind them on your conscience? But one thing I can do, whether as man or priest; I can bid you ask yourself whether in truth Christ means nothing to you—and Calvary nothing?'

He paused, staring at her with his bright and yet unseeing eyes, the wave of feeling rising within him to a force and power born of recent storm, of the personal wrestling with a personal anguish.

'Why is it'—he resumed, each word low and pleading,—'that this divine figure is enshrined, if not in all our affections—at least in all our imaginations? Why is it that at the heart of this modern world, with all its love of gold, its thirst for knowledge, its desire for pleasure, there still lives and burns '—

—He held out his two strong clenched hands, quivering, as though he held in them the vibrating heart of man—

—'this strange madness of sacrifice, this foolishness of the Cross? Why is it that in these polite and civilised races which lead the world, while creeds and Churches divide us, what still touches us most deeply, what still binds us together most surely, is this story of a hideous death, which the spectators said was voluntary—which the innocent Victim embraced with joy as the ransom of His brethren—from which those who saw it received in very truth the communication of a new life—a life, a Divine Mystery, renewed amongst us now, day after day, in thousands of human beings? What does it mean, Madame? Ask yourself! How has our world of lust and iron produced such a thing? How, except as the clue to the world's secret, is man to explain it to himself? Ah! my daughter, think what you will of the nature and dignity of the Crucified—but turn your eyes to the Cross! Trouble yourself with no creeds—I speak this to your weakness—but sink yourself in the story of the Passion and its work upon the world! Then bring it to bear upon your own case. There is in you a root of evil mind—an angry desire—a cupido which keeps you from God. Lay it down before the Crucified, and rejoice—rejoice!—that you have something to give to your God—before He gives you Himself!'

The old man's voice sank and trembled.

Eleanor made no reply. Her capacity for emotion was suddenly exhausted. Nerve and brain were tired out.

After a minute or two she rose to her feet and held out her hand.

'I thank you with all my heart. Your words touch me very much, but they seem to me somehow remote—impossible. Let me think of them. I am not strong enough to talk more now.'

She bade him good-night, and left him. With her feeble step she slowly mounted the Sassetto path, and it was some little time before her slender form and white dress disappeared among the trees.

Father Benecke remained alone—a prey to many conflicting currents of thought.

* * * * *

For him too the hour had been strangely troubling and revolutionary. On the recognised lines of Catholic confession and direction, all that had been asked of him would have been easy to give. As it was, he had been obliged to deal with the moral emergency as he best could; by methods which, now that the crisis was over, filled him with a sudden load of scrupulous anguish.

The support of a great system had been withdrawn from him. He still felt himself neither man nor priest—wavering in the dark.

This poor woman! He was conscious that her statement of her case had roused in him a kind of anger; so passionate and unblushing had been the egotism of her manner. Even after his long experience he felt in it something monstrous. Had he been tender, patient enough?

What troubled him was this consciousness of the woman, as apart from the penitent, which had overtaken him; the woman with her frail physical health, possibly her terror of death, her broken heart. New perplexities and compunctions, not to be felt within the strong dykes of Catholic practice, rushed upon him as he sat thinking under the falling night. The human fate became more bewildering, more torturing. The clear landscape of Catholic thought upon which he had once looked out was wrapping itself in clouds, falling into new aspects and relations. How marvellous are the chances of human history! The outward ministry had been withdrawn; in its stead this purely spiritual ministry had been offered to him. 'Domine, in caelo misericordia tua—judicia tua abyssus multa!'

* * * * *

Recalling what he knew of Mrs. Burgoyne's history and of Manisty's, his mind trained in the subtleties of moral divination soon reconstructed the whole story. Clearly the American lady now staying with Mrs. Burgoyne—who had showed towards himself such a young and graceful pity—was the other woman.

He felt instinctively that Mrs. Burgoyne would approach him again, coldly as she had parted from him. She had betrayed to him all the sick confusion of soul that existed beneath her intellectual competence and vigour. The situation between them, indeed, had radically changed. He laid aside deference and humility; he took up the natural mastery of the priest as the moral expert. She had no faith; and faith would save her. She was wandering in darkness, making shipwreck of herself and others. And she had appealed to him. With an extraordinary eagerness the old man threw himself into the task she had so strangely set him. He longed to conquer and heal her; to bring her to faith, to sacrifice, to God. The mingled innocence and despotism of his nature were both concerned. And was there something else?—the eagerness of the soldier who retrieves disobedience by some special and arduous service? To be allowed to attempt it is a grace; to succeed in it is pardon.

Was she dying—poor lady!—or was it a delusion on her part, one of the devices of self-pity? Yet he recalled the emaciated face and form, the cough, the trailing step, Miss Foster's anxiety, some comments overheard in the village.—

And if she died unreconciled, unhappy? Could nothing be done to help her, from outside,—to brace her to action—and in time?

He pondered the matter with all the keenness of the casuist, all the naivete of the recluse. In the tragical uprooting of established habit through which he was passing, even those ways of thinking and acting which become the second nature of the priest were somewhat shaken. Had Eleanor's confidence been given him in Catholic confession he might not even by word or look have ever reminded herself of what had passed between them; still less have acted upon it in any way. Nor under the weight of tradition which binds the Catholic priest, would he ever have been conscious of the remotest temptation to what his Church regards as one of the deadliest of sins.

And further. If as his penitent, yet outside confession,—in a letter or conversation—Eleanor had told him her story, his passionately scrupulous sense of the priestly function would have bound him precisely in the same way. Here, all Catholic opinion would not have agreed with him; but his own conviction would have been clear.

But now in the general shifting of his life from the standpoint of authority, to the standpoint of conscience, new aspects of the case appeared to him. He recalled certain questions of moral theology, with which as a student he was familiar. The modern discipline of the confessional 'seal' is generally more stringent than that of the middle ages. Benecke remembered that in the view of St. Thomas, it is sometimes lawful for a confessor to take account of what he hears in confession so far as to endeavour afterwards to remove some obstacle to the spiritual progress of his penitent, which has been revealed to him under the seal. The modern theologian denies altogether the legitimacy of such an act, which for him is a violation of the Sacrament.

But for Benecke, at this moment, the tender argument of St. Thomas suddenly attained a new beauty and compulsion.

He considered it long. He thought of Manisty, his friend, to whom his affectionate heart owed a debt of gratitude, wandering about Italy, in a blind quest of the girl who had been snatched away from him. He thought of the girl herself, and the love that not all Mrs. Burgoyne's jealous anguish had been able to deny. And then his mind returned to Mrs. Burgoyne, and the arid misery of her struggle.—

The darkness was falling. As he reached the last of the many windings of the road, he saw his tiny house by the riverside, with a light in the window.

He leant upon his stick, conscious of inward excitement, feeling suddenly on his old shoulders the burden of those three lives of which Mrs. Burgoyne had spoken.

'My God, give them to me!'—he cried, with a sudden leap of the heart that was at once humble and audacious. Not a word to Mr. Manisty, or to any other human being, clearly, as to Mrs. Burgoyne's presence at Torre Amiata. To that he was bound.

But—

'May I not entertain a wayfarer, a guest?'—he thought, trembling, 'like any other solitary?'



CHAPTER XX

The hot evening was passing into night. Eleanor and Lucy were on the loggia together.

Through the opening in the parapet wall made by the stairway to what had once been the enclosed monastery garden, Eleanor could see the fire-flies flashing against the distant trees; further, above the darkness of the forest, ethereal terraces of dimmest azure lost in the starlight; and where the mountains dropped to the south-west a heaven still fiery and streaked with threats of storm. Had she raised herself a little she could have traced far away, beyond the forest slopes, the course of those white mists that rise at night out of the wide bosom of Bolsena.

Outside, the country-folk were streaming home from their work; the men riding their donkeys or mules, the women walking, often with burdens on their heads, and children dragging at their hands; dim purplish figures, in the evening blue, charged with the eternal grace of the old Virgilian life of Italy, the life of corn and vine, of chestnut and olive. Lucy hung over the balcony, looking at the cavalcades, sometimes waving her hand to a child or a mother that she recognised through the gathering darkness. It was an evening spectacle of which she never tired. Her feeling clung to these labouring people, whom she idealised with the optimism of her clean youth. Secretly her young strength envied them their primal, necessary toils. She would not have shrunk from their hardships; their fare would have been no grievance to her. Sickness, old age, sin, cruelty, violence, death,—that these dark things entered into their lives, she knew vaguely. Her heart shrank from what her mind sometimes divined; all the more perhaps that there was in her the promise of a wide and rare human sympathy, which must some day find its appointed tasks and suffer much in the finding. Now, when she stumbled on the horrors of the world, she would cry to herself, 'God knows!'—with a catching breath, and the feeling of a child that runs from darkness to protecting arms; and so escape her pain.

Presently she came to sit by Eleanor again, trying to amuse her by the account of a talk on the roadside, with an old spaccapietre, or stone-breaker, who had fought at Mentana.

Eleanor listened vaguely, hardly replying. But she watched the girl in her simple white dress, her fine head, her grave and graceful movements; she noticed the voice, so expressive of an inner self-mastery through all its gaiety. And suddenly the thought flamed through her—

'If I told her!—if she knew that I had seen a letter from him this afternoon?—that he is in Italy?—that he is looking for her, day and night! If I just blurted it out—what would she say?—how would she take it?'

But not a word passed her lips. She began again to try and unravel the meaning of his letter. Why had he gone in search of them to the Abruzzi of all places?

Then, suddenly, she remembered.

One day at the villa, some Italian friends—a deputy and his wife—had described to them a summer spent in a wild nook of the Abruzzi. The young husband had possessed a fine gift of phrase. The mingled savagery and innocence of the people; the vast untrodden woods of chestnut and beech; the slowly advancing civilisation; the new railway line that seemed to the peasants a living and hostile thing, a kind of greedy fire-monster, carrying away their potatoes to market and their sons to the army; the contrasts of the old and new Italy; the joys of summer on the heights, of an unbroken Italian sunshine steeping a fresh and almost northern air: he had drawn it all, with the facility of the Italian, the broken, impressionist strokes of the modern. Why must Italians nowadays always rush north, to the lakes, or Switzerland or the Tyrol? Here in their own land, in the Abruzzi, and further south, in the Volscian and Calabrian mountains, were cool heights waiting to be explored, the savour of a primitive life, the traces of old cities, old strongholds, old faiths, a peasant world moreover, unknown to most Italians of the west and north, to be observed, to be made friends with.

They had all listened in fascination. Lucy especially. The thought of scenes so rarely seen, so little visited, existing so near to them, in this old old Italy, seemed to touch the girl's imagination—to mingle as it were a breath from her own New World with the land of the Caesars.

'One can ride everywhere?' she had asked, looking up at the traveller.

'Everywhere, mademoiselle.'

'I shall come,' she had said, drawing pencil circles on a bit of paper before her, with pleased intent eyes, like one planning.

And the Italian, amused by her enthusiasm, had given her a list of places where accommodation could be got, where hotels of a simple sort were beginning to develop, whence this new land that was so old could be explored by the stranger.

And Manisty had stood by, smoking and looking down at the girl's graceful head, and the charming hand that was writing down the names.

Another pang of the past recalled,—a fresh one added!

For Torre Amiata had been forgotten, while Lucy's momentary whim had furnished the clue which had sent him on his vain quest through the mountains.

* * * * *

'I do think '—said Lucy, presently, taking Eleanor's hand,—'you haven't coughed so much to-day?'

Her tone was full of anxiety, of tenderness.

Eleanor smiled. 'I am very well,' she said, dryly. But Lucy's frown did not relax. This cough was a new trouble. Eleanor made light of it. But Marie sometimes spoke of it to Lucy with expressions which terrified one who had never known illness except in her mother.

Meanwhile Eleanor was thinking—'Something will bring him here. He is writing to Father Benecke—Father Benecke to him. Some accident will happen—any day, any hour. Well—let him come!'

Her hands stiffened under her shawl that Lucy had thrown round her. A fierce consciousness of power thrilled through her weak frame. Lucy was hers! The pitiful spectacle of these six weeks had done its work. Let him come.

His letter was not unhappy!—far from it. She felt herself flooded with bitterness as she remembered the ardour that it breathed; the ardour of a lover to whom effort and pursuit are joys only second to the joys of possession.

But some day no doubt he would be unhappy—in earnest; if her will held. But it would hold.

After all, it was not much she asked. She might live till the winter; possibly a year. Not long, after all, in Lucy's life or Manisty's. Let them only wait a little.

Her hand burnt in Lucy's cool clasp. Restlessly, she asked the girl some further questions about her walk.

'I met the Sisters—the nuns—from Selvapendente, on the hill,' said Lucy. 'Such sweet faces some of them have.'

'I don't agree,' said Eleanor petulantly. 'I saw two of them yesterday. They smile at you, but they have the narrowest, stoniest eyes. Their pity would be very difficult to bear.'

A few minutes later Lucy left her for a moment, to give a message to Marie.

'These Christians are hard—hard!' thought Eleanor sharply, closing her tired lids.

Had Father Benecke ever truly weighed her case, her plea at all? Never! It had been the stereotyped answer of the priest and the preacher. Her secret sense resented the fact that he had been so little moved, apparently, by her physical state. It humiliated her that she should have brought so big a word as death into their debate—to no effect. Her thin cheek flushed with shame and anger.

The cracked bell which announced their meals tinkled from the sitting-room.

Eleanor dragged herself to her feet, and stood a moment by the parapet looking into the night.

'I cough less?' she thought. 'Why?—for I get worse every day. That I may make less noise in dying? Well! one would like to go without ugliness and fuss. I might as well be dead now, I am so broken—so full of suffering. How I hide it all from that child! And what is the use of it—of living a single day or hour more?'

* * * * *

She was angry with Father Benecke; but she took care to see him again.

By means of a little note about a point in the article he was just completing, she recalled him.

They met without the smallest reference to the scene which had passed between them. He asked for her literary opinion with the same simplicity, the same outward deference as before. She was once more the elegant and languid woman, no writer herself, but born to be the friend and muse of writers. She made him feel just as clearly as before the clumsiness of a phrase, the naivete of a point of view.

And yet in truth all was changed between them. Their talk ranged further, sank deeper. From the controversy of science with the Vatican, from the position of the Old Catholics, or the triumph of Ultramontanism in France, it would drop of a sudden, neither knew how, and light upon some small matter of conduct or feeling, some 'flower in the crannied wall,' charged with the profoundest things—things most intimate, most searching, concerned with the eternal passion and trouble of the human will, the 'body of this death,' the 'burden' of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

Then the priest's gentle insistent look would steal on hers; he would speak from his heart; he would reveal in a shrinking word or two the secrets of his own spiritual life, of that long inner discipline, which was now his only support in rebellion, the plank between him and the abyss.

She felt herself pursued; felt it with a mixture of fear and attraction. She had asked him to be her director; and then refused his advice. She had tried to persuade him that she was a sceptic and unbeliever. But he had not done with her. She divined the ardour of the Christian; perhaps the acuteness of the ecclesiastic. Often she was not strong enough to talk to him, and then he read to her—the books that she allowed him to choose. Through a number of indirect and gradual approaches he laid siege to her, and again and again did she feel her heart fluttering in his grasp, only to draw it back in fear, to stand once more on a bitter unspoken defence of herself that would not yield. Yet he recognised in her the approach of some crisis of feeling. She seemed herself to suspect it, and to be trying to ward it off, in a kind of blind anguish. Nothing meanwhile could be more touching than the love between her and Lucy. The old man looked on and wondered.

Day after day he hesitated. Then one evening, in Lucy's absence, he found her so pale, and racked with misery—so powerless either to ask help, or to help herself, so resolute not to speak again, so clearly tortured by her own coercing will, that his hesitation gave way.

He walked down the hill, in a trance of prayer. When he emerged from it his mind was made up.

* * * * *

In the days that followed he seemed to Eleanor often agitated and ill at ease. She was puzzled, too, by his manner towards Lucy. In truth, he watched Miss Foster with a timid anxiety, trying to penetrate her character, to divine how presently she might feel towards him. He was not afraid of Mrs. Burgoyne, but he was sometimes afraid of this girl with her clear, candid eyes. Her fresh youth, and many of her American ways and feelings were hard for him to understand. She showed him friendship in a hundred pretty ways; and he met her sometimes eagerly, sometimes with a kind of shame-facedness.

Soon he began to neglect his work of a morning that he might wander out to meet the postman beyond the bridge. And when the man passed him by with a short 'Non c' e niente,' the priest would turn homeward, glad almost that for one day more he was not called upon to face the judgment in Lucy Foster's face on what he had done.

* * * * *

The middle of July was past. The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel had come and gone, bringing processions and music, with a Madonna under a gold baldacchino, to glorify the little deserted chapel on the height.

Eleanor had watched the crowds and banners, the red-robed Compagni di Gesu, the white priests, and veiled girls, with a cold averted eye. Lucy looked back with a pang to Marinata, and to the indulgent pleasure that Eleanor had once taken in all the many-coloured show of Catholicism. Now she was always weary, and often fretful. It struck Lucy too that she was more restless than ever. She seemed to take no notice of the present—to be always living in the future—expecting, listening, waiting. The gestures and sudden looks that expressed this attitude of mind were often of the weirdest effect. Lucy could have thought her haunted by some unseen presence. Physically she was not, perhaps, substantially worse. But her state was more appealing, and the girl's mind towards her more pitiful day by day.

One thing, however, she was determined on. They would not spend August at Torre Amiata. It would need stubbornness with Eleanor to bring her to the point of change. But stubbornness there should be.

One morning, a day or two after the festa, Lucy left Eleanor on the loggia, while she herself ran out for a turn before their midday meal. There had been fierce rain in the morning, and the sky was still thick with thunder clouds promising more.

She escaped into a washed and cooled world. But the thirsty earth had drunk the rain at a gulp. The hill which had been running with water was almost dry, the woods had ceased to patter; on all sides could be felt the fresh restoring impulse of the storm. Nature seemed to be breathing from a deeper chest—shaking her free locks in a wilder, keener air—to a long-silent music from the quickened river below.

Lucy almost ran down the hill, so great was the physical relief of the rain and the cloudy morning. She needed it. Her spirits, too, had been uneven, her cheek paler of late.

She wore a blue cotton dress, fitting simply and closely to the young rounded form. Round her shapely throat and the lace collar that showed Eleanor's fancy and seemed to herself a little too elaborate for the morning, she wore a child's coral necklace—a gleam of red between the abundant black of her hair and the soft blue of her dress. Her hat, a large Leghorn, with a rose in it, framed the sweet gravity of her face. She was more beautiful than when she had said good-bye to Uncle Ben on the Boston platform. But it was a beauty that for his adoring old heart would have given new meaning to 'that sad word, Joy.'

She turned into the Sassetto and pushed upwards through its tumbled rocks and trees to the seat commanding the river and the mountains.

As she approached it, she was thinking of Eleanor and the future, and her eyes were absently bent on the ground.

But a scent familiar and yet strange distracted her. Suddenly, on the path in front of the seat, she saw a still burning cigarette, and on the seat a book lying.

She stopped short; then sank upon the seat, her eyes fixed upon the book.

It was a yellow-bound French novel, and on the outside was written in a hand she knew, a name that startled every pulse in her young body.

His book? And that cigarette? Father Benecke neither smoked nor did he read French novels.

Beyond the seat the path branched, upwards to the Palazzo, and downwards to the river. She rose and looked eagerly over its steep edge into the medley of rock and tree below. She saw nothing, but it seemed to her that in the distance she heard voices talking—receding.

They had left the seat only just in time to escape her. Mr. Manisty had forgotten his book! Careless and hasty—how well she knew the trait! But he would miss it—he would come back.

She stood up and tried to collect her thoughts. If he was here, he was with Father Benecke. So the priest had betrayed the secret he had promised Mrs. Burgoyne to keep?

No, no!—that was impossible! It was chance—unkind, unfriendly chance.

And yet?—as she bit her lip in fear or bewilderment, her heart was rising like the Paglia after the storm—swelling, thundering within her.

'What shall I—what shall I do?' she cried under her breath, pressing her hands to her eyes.

Then she turned and walked swiftly homewards. Eleanor must not know—must not see him. The girl was seized with panic terror at the thought of what might be the effect of any sudden shock upon Mrs. Burgoyne.

Halfway up the hill, she stopped involuntarily, wringing her hands in front of her. It was the thought of Manisty not half a mile away, of his warm, living self so close to her that had swept upon her, like a tempest wind on a young oak.

'Oh! I mustn't—mustn't—be glad!'—she cried, gulping down a sob, hating, despising herself.

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

Hark! She caught her breath.

Voices! Two men were descending the road. She hurried to hide her white dress, close, under the wall—she strained every sense.

The sputter of a match—the trail of its scent in the heavy air—an exclamation.

'Father!—wait a moment! Let me light up. These matches are damp. Besides I want to have another look at this old place—'

The steps diverged from the road; approached the lower wall of the garden. She pressed herself against its inner surface, trembling in every limb. Only the old door between her and them! She dared not move—but it was not only fear of discovery that held her. It was a mad uncontrollable joy, that like a wind on warm embers, kindled all her being into flame.

'One more crime—that!—of your Parliamentary Italy! What harm had the poor things done that they should be turned out? You heard what that carabiniere said?—that they farmed half the plateau. And now look at that! I feel as I do when I see a blackbird's nest on the ground, that some beastly boy has been robbing and destroying. I want to get at the boy.'

'The boy would plead perhaps that the blackbirds were too many—and the fruit too scant. Is it wise, my dear sir, to stand there in the damp?'

The voice was pitched low. Lucy detected the uneasiness of the speaker.

'One moment. You remember, I was here before in November. This summer night is a new impression. What a pure and exquisite air!'—Lucy could hear the long inhalation that followed the words. 'I recollect a vague notion of coming to read here. The massaja told us they took in people for the summer. Ah! There are some lights, I see, in those upper windows.'

'There are rooms in several parts of the building. Mine were in that further wing. They were hardly watertight,' said the priest hastily, and in the same subdued voice.

'It is a place that one might easily rest in—or hide in,' said Manisty with a new accent on the last words. 'To-morrow morning I will ask the woman to let me walk through it again.—And to-morrow midday, I must be off.'

'So soon? My old Francesca will owe you a grudge. She is almost reconciled to me because you eat—because you praised her omelet.'

'Ah! Francesca is an artist. But—as I told you—I am at present a wanderer and a pilgrim. We have had our talk—you and I—grasped hands, cheered each other, "passed the time of day," undweiter noch—noch weiter—mein treuer Wanderstab!'

The words fell from the deep voice with a rich significant note. Lucy heard the sigh, the impatient, despondent sigh, that followed.

They moved away. The whiffs of tobacco still came back to her on the light westerly wind; the sound of their voices still reached her covetous ear. Suddenly all was silent.

She spread her hands on the door in a wild groping gesture.

'Gone! gone!' she said under her breath. Then her hands dropped, and she stood motionless, with bent head, till the moment was over, and her blood tamed.



CHAPTER XXI

'Maso! look here!' said Lucy, addressing a small boy, who with his brother was driving some goats along the road.

She took from a basket on her arm, first some pasticceria, then a square of chocolate, lastly a handful of soldi.

'You know the casetta by the river where Mamma Brigitta lives?'

'Yes.' The boy looked at her with his sharp stealthy eyes.

'Take down this letter to Mamma Brigitta. If you wait a little, she'll give you another letter in exchange, and if you bring it up to me, you shall have all those!'

And she spread out her bribes.

The boys' faces were sulky. The house by the river was unpopular, owing to its tenant. But the temptation was of a devilish force. They took the letter and scampered down the hill driving their goats before them.

Lucy also walked down some three or four of the innumerable zig-zags of the road. Presently she found a rocky knoll to the left of it. A gap in the trees opened a vision of the Amiata range, radiantly blue under a superb sky, a few shreds of moving mist still wrapped about its topmost peaks. She took her seat upon a moss-covered stone facing the road which mounted towards her. But some bushes of tall heath and straggling arbutus made a light screen in front of her. She saw, but she could hardly be seen, till the passer-by coming from the river was close upon her.

She sat there with her hands lightly crossed upon her knees, holding herself a little stiffly—waiting.

The phrases of her letter ran in her head. It had been short and simple.—'Dear Father Benecke,—I have reason to know that Mr. Manisty is here—is indeed staying with you. Mrs. Burgoyne is not aware of it and I am anxious that she should not be told. She wishes—as I think she made clear to you—to be quite alone here, and if she desired to see her cousins she would of course have written to them herself. She is too ill to be startled or troubled in any way. Will you do us a great kindness? Will you persuade Mr. Manisty to go quietly away without letting Mrs. Burgoyne know that he has been here? Please ask him to tell Miss Manisty that we shall not be here much longer, that we have a good doctor, and that as Torre Amiata is on the hills the heat is not often oppressive.'

... The minutes passed away. Presently her thoughts began to escape the control she had put upon them; and she felt herself yielding to a sense of excitement. She resolutely took a book of Italian stories from the bottom of her basket, and began to read.

At last! the patter of the goats and the shouts of the boys.

They rushed upon her with the letter. She handed over their reward and broke the seal.

'Hochgeerhrtes Fraeulein,—

'It is true that Mr. Manisty is here. I too am most anxious that Mrs. Burgoyne should not be startled or disturbed. But I distrust my own diplomacy; nor have I yet mentioned your presence here to my guest. I am not at liberty to do so, having given my promise to Mrs. Burgoyne. Will you not see and speak to Mr. Manisty yourself? He talks of going up this morning to see the old convent. I cannot prevent him, without betraying what I have no right to betray. At present he is smoking in my garden. But his carriage is ordered from Selvapendente two hours hence. If he does go up the hill, it would surely be easy for you to intercept him. If not, you may he sure that he has left for Orvieto.'

Lucy read the letter with a flush and a frown. It struck her that it was not quite simple; that the priest knew more, and was more concerned in the new turn of events than he avowed.

She was well aware that he and Eleanor had had much conversation; that Eleanor was still possessed by the same morbid forces of grief and anger which, at the villa, had broken down all her natural reticence and self-control. Was it possible—?

Her cheek flamed. She felt none of that spell in the priestly office which affected Eleanor. The mere bare notion of being 'managed' by this kind old priest was enough to rouse all her young spirit and defiance.

But the danger was imminent. She saw what she must do, and prepared herself to do it—simply, without any further struggle.

The little goatherds left her, munching their cakes and looking back at her from time to time in a childish curiosity. The pretty blue lady had seated herself again as they had found her—a few paces from the roadside, under the thick shadow of an oak.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Manisty was rejoined by Father Benecke—who had left him for a few minutes to write his letter—beside the Paglia, which was rushing down in a brown flood, after the rain of the day before. Around and above them, on either side of the river, and far up the flanks of the mountains opposite, stretched the great oak woods, which are still to-day the lineal progeny of that vast Ciminian forest where lurked the earliest enemies of Rome.

'But for the sun, it might be Wales!' said Manisty, looking round him, as he took out another cigarette.

Father Benecke made no reply. He sat on a rock by the water's side, in what seemed to be a reverie. His fine white head was uncovered. His attitude was gentle, dignified, abstracted.

'It is a marvellous country this!' Manisty resumed. 'I thought I knew it pretty well. But the last five weeks have given one's mind a new hold upon it. The forests have been wasted—but by George!—what forests there are still!—and what a superb mountain region, half of which is only known to a few peasants and shepherds. What rivers—what fertility—what a climate! And the industry of the people. Catch a few English farmers and set them to do what the Italian peasant does, year in and year out, without a murmur! Look at all the coast south of Naples. There is not a yard of it, scarcely, that hasn't been made by human hands. Look at the hill-towns; and think of the human toil that has gone to the making and maintaining of them since the world began.'

And swaying backwards and forwards he fell into the golden lines:

Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem, Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis, Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.

'Congesta manu! Ecco!—there they are'—and he pointed down the river to the three or four distant towns, each on its mountain spur, that held the valley between them and Orvieto—pale jewels on the purple robe of rock and wood.

'So Virgil saw them. So the latest sons of time shall see them—the homes of a race that we chatter about without understanding—the most laborious race in the wide world.'

And again he rolled out under his breath, for the sheer joy of the verse:

Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, Magna virum.

The priest looked at him with a smile; preoccupied yet shrewd.

'I follow you with some astonishment. Surely—I remember other sentiments on your part?'

Manisty coloured a little, and shook his black head, protesting.

'I never said uncivil things, that I remember, about Italy or the Italians as such. My quarrel was with the men that run them, the governments that exploit them. My point was that Piedmont and the North had been too greedy, had laid hands too rapidly on the South and had risked this damnable quarrel with the Church, without knowing what they were running their heads into. And in consequence they found themselves—in spite of rivers of corrupt expenditure—without men, or money, or credit to work their big new machine with; while the Church was always there, stronger than ever for the grievance they had presented her with, and turned into an enemy with whom it was no longer possible to parley. Well!—that struck me as a good object lesson. I wanted to say to the secularising folk everywhere—England included—just come here, and look what your policy comes to, when it's carried out to the bitter end, and not in the gingerly, tinkering fashion you affect at home! Just understand what it means to separate Church from State, to dig a gulf between the religious and the civil life.—Here's a country where nobody can be at once a patriot and a good Christian—where the Catholics don't vote for Parliament, and the State schools teach no religion—where the nation is divided into two vast camps, hating and thrusting at each other with every weapon they can tear from life. Examine it! That's what the thing looks like when it's full grown. Is it profitable—does it make for good times? In your own small degree, are you going to drive England that way too?—You'll admit, Father—you always did admit—that it was a good theme.'

The priest smiled—a little sadly.

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

Manisty nodded, and laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His companion made a slow movement of assent.

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

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

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

Benecke started and shrank.

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

Manisty smoked in silence.

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

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

'A great recantation,' said the priest quickly.

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

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

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

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

'Naturally, something—lieber Herr.'

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

'For me! You talk in riddles.'

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

The priest was silent.

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

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

The priest made a sign of assent.

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

'And then?'

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

He drew a long breath.

'And you hope for success?'

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

The priest lifted his eyebrows.

'You are so certain?'

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

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

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

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

Manisty laughed. But the note was bitter.

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

'She is not alone?'

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

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

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

Manisty's look was vague and irresponsive.

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

'What makes you look for them in Italy?'

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

There was a short silence. Then Manisty sprang up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marie stared.

'It will tire you, madame.'

'No, it won't. Mais faites vite!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marie looked a little sullen.

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

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

Eleanor's face changed a little.

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

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

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

Marie made a little face of pity and concern.

'Mais oui, Madame. Il faudrait le cacher un peu.'

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

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

'Now then—fini! Take all those books on to the loggia and arrange my chair. I shall be there directly.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Vous permettez, madame!'—she said, standing in the doorway—'at this unseasonable hour.'

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

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

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

She received Eleanor's remark with an embarrassed air.

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

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

The Contessa smiled, but she turned away her head.

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

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

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

'Your daughter?' cried Eleanor amazed. 'Fiancee?'

The Contessa shook her head.

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

Eleanor was thunderstruck.

'She leaves you alone?'

The Contessa mutely assented.

'And you approve?' said Eleanor hotly.

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

'She has a mother!' cried Eleanor.

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

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

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

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

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

Eleanor took her hand and kissed it.

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

The Contessa opened her eyes.

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

Eleanor trembled.

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

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

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

The Contessa smiled.

'Not so much wrong, as futile. The world is not made so—chere madame.'

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

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

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

Eleanor flushed.

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

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

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

Eleanor leant against her, sighing:

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

And so they parted.

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eleanor smiled and sighed.

'David among the Philistines!—Ce pauvre Goliath! Ah! he is coming here?'

She withdrew to her sofa, and waited.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He bent forward, looking not at her, but at the brick floor of the loggia. Eleanor offered a few words of sympathy; but felt there was more to come.

'I have also heard from my sister. She refuses to keep my house any longer. Her resentment at what I have done is very bitter—apparently insurmountable. She wishes to retire to a country place in Bavaria where we have some relations. She has a small rente, and will not be in any need.'

'And you?' said Eleanor quickly.

'I must find work, madame. My book will bring me in a little, they say. That will give me time—and some liberty of decision. Otherwise of course I am destitute. I have lost everything. But my education will always bring me enough for bread. And I ask no more.'

Her compassion was in her eyes.

'You too—old and alone—like the Contessa!' she said under her breath.

He did not hear. He was pursuing his own train of thought, and presently he raised himself. Never had the apostolic dignity of his white head, his broad brow been more commanding. But what Eleanor saw, what perplexed her, was the subtle tremor of the lip, the doubt in the eyes.

'So you see, madame, our pleasant hours are almost over. In a few days I must be gone. I will not attempt to express what I owe to your most kind, most indulgent sympathy. It seems to me that in the "dark wood" of my life it was your conversation—when my heart was so sorely cast down—which revived my intelligence—and so held me up, till—till I could see my way, and choose my path again. It has given me a great many new ideas—this companionship you have permitted me. I humbly confess that I shall always henceforward think differently of women, and of the relations that men and women may hold to one another. But then, madame—'

He paused. Eleanor could see his hand trembling on his knee.

She raised herself on her elbow.

'Father Benecke! you have something to say to me!'

He hurried on.

'The other day you allowed us to change the roles. You had been my support. You threw yourself on mine. Ah! Madame, have I been of any assistance to you—then, and in the interviews you have since permitted me? Have I strengthened your heart at all as you strengthened mine?'

His ardent, spiritual look compelled—and reassured her.

She sank back. A tear glittered on her brown lashes. She raised a hand to dash it away.

'I don't know, Father—I don't know. But to-day—for some mysterious reason—I seem almost to be happy again. I woke up with the feeling of one who had been buried under mountains of rocks and found them rolled away; of one who had been passing through a delirium which was gone. I seem to care for nothing—to grieve for nothing. Sometimes you know that happens to people who are very ill. A numbness comes upon them.—But I am not numb. I feel everything. Perhaps, Father'—and she turned to him with her old sweet instinct—of one who loved to be loved—'perhaps you have been praying for me?'

She smiled at him half shyly. But he did not see it. His head bent lower and lower.

'Thank God!' he said, with the humblest emphasis. 'Then, madame—perhaps—you will find the force—to forgive me!'

The words were low—the voice steady.

Eleanor sprang up.

'Father Benecke!—what have you been doing? Is—is Mr. Manisty here?'

She clung to the loggia parapet for support. The priest looked at her pallor with alarm, with remorse, and spoke at once.

'He came to me last night.'

Their eyes met, as though in battle—expressed a hundred questions—a hundred answers. Then she broke the silence.

'Where is he?' she said imperiously.' Ah!—I see—I see!'

She sat down, fronting him, and panting a little.

'Miss Foster is not with me. Mr. Manisty is not with you. The inference is easy.—And you planned it! You took—you dared to take—as much as this—into your own hands!'

He made no reply. He bent like a reed in the storm.

'There is no boldness like a saint's'—she said bitterly,—'no hardness—like an angel's! What I would not have ventured to do with my closest friend, my nearest and dearest—you—a stranger—have done—with a light heart. Oh! it is monstrous!—monstrous!'

She moved her neck from side to side as though she was suffocating—throwing back the light ruffle that encircled it.

'A stranger?'—he said slowly. His intense yet gentle gaze confronted hers.

'You refer, I suppose, to that most sacred, most intimate confidence I made to you?—which no man of honour or of heart could have possibly betrayed,'—she said passionately. 'Ah! you did well to warn me that it was no true confession—under no true seal! You should have warned me further—more effectually.'

Her paleness was all gone. Her cheeks flamed. The priest felt that she was beside herself, and, traversed as his own mind was with the most poignant doubts and misgivings, he must needs wrestle with her, defend himself.

'Madame!—you do me some wrong,' he said hurriedly. 'At least in words I have told nothing—betrayed nothing. When I left him an hour ago Mr. Manisty had no conception that you were here. After my first letter to him, he tells me that he relinquished the idea of coming to Torre Amiata, since if you had been staying here, I must have mentioned it.'

Eleanor paused. 'Subterfuge!' she cried, under her breath. Then, aloud—'You asked him to come.'

'That, madame, is my crime,' he admitted, with a mild and painful humility. 'Your anger hits me hard. But—do you remember?—you placed three lives in my hands. I found you helpless; you asked for help. I saw you day by day, more troubled, yet, as it seemed to me, more full of instincts towards generosity, towards peace. I felt—oh! madame, I felt with all my heart, that there lay just one step between you and a happiness that would compensate you a thousand times for all you had gone through. You say that I prayed for you. I did—often—and earnestly. And it seemed to me that—in our later conversations—I saw such signs of grace in you—such exquisite dispositions of the heart—that were the chance of action once more given to you—you would find the strength to seize the blessing that God offered you. And one evening in particular, I found you in an anguish that seemed to be destroying you. And you had opened your heart to me; you had asked my help as a Christian priest. And so, madame, as you say—I dared. I said, in writing to Mr. Manisty, who had told me he was coming northward—"if Torre Amiata is not far out of your road—look in upon me." Neither your name nor Miss Foster's passed my lips. But since—I confess—I have lived in much disturbance of mind!'

Eleanor laughed.

'Are all priests as good casuists as you, Father?'

His eyes wavered a little as though her words stung. But he did not reply.

There was a pause. Eleanor turned towards the parapet and looked outward towards the road and the forest. Her face and eyes were full of an incredible animation; her lips were lightly parted to let the quick breath pass.