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 dÉjÀ. 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. 'FiancÉe?'
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—chÈre 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 pÈre, 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 rÔles. 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.
Then of a sudden she withdrew. Her eyes moved back to Father Benecke; she bent forward and held out both her hands.
'Father—I forgive you! Let us make peace.'
He took the small fingers into his large palms with a gratitude that was at once awkward and beautiful.
'I don't know yet'—he said, in a deep perplexity—'whether I absolve myself.'
'You will soon know,' she said almost with gaiety. 'Oh! it is quite possible'—she threw up one hand in a wild childish gesture—'it is quite possible that to-morrow I may be at your feet, asking you to give me penance for my rough words. On the other hand—Anyway, Father, you have not found me a very dutiful penitent?'
'I expected castigation,' he said meekly. 'If the castigation is done, I have come off better than I could have hoped.'
She raised herself, and took up her gloves that were lying on the little table beside her sofa.
'You see'—she said, talking very fast—'I am an Englishwoman, and my race is not a docile one. Here, in this village, I have noticed a good deal, and the massaja gossips to me. There was a fight in the street the other night. The men were knifing each other. The parroco sent them word that they should come at once to his house—per pacificarli. They went. There is a girl, living with her sister, whose husband has a bad reputation. The parroco ordered her to leave—found another home for her. She left. There is a lad who made some blasphemous remarks in the street on the day of the Madonna's procession. The parroco ordered him to do penance. He did it. But those things are not English. Perhaps they are Bavarian?'
He winced, but he had recovered his composure.
'Yes, madame, they are Bavarian also. But it seems that even an Englishwoman can sometimes feel the need of another judgment than her own?'
She smiled. All the time that she had made her little speech about the village, she had been casting quick glances along the road. It was evident that her mind was only half employed with what she was saying. The rose-flush in her cheeks, the dainty dress, the halo of fair hair gave her back youth and beauty; and the priest gazed at her in astonishment.
'Ah!'—she said, with a vivacity that was almost violence—'here she is. Father—please—!' And with a peremptory gesture, she signed to him to draw back, as she had done, into the shadow, out of sight of the road.
But the advancing figure was plain to both of them.
Lucy mounted the hill with a slow and tired step. Her eyes were on the ground. The whole young form drooped under the heat, and under a weight of thought still more oppressive. As it came nearer a wave of sadness seemed to come with it, dimming the sunshine and the green splendour of the woods.
As she passed momentarily out of sight behind some trees that sheltered the gate of the courtyard, Mrs. Burgoyne crossed the loggia, and called to her maid.
'Marie—be so good as to tell Miss Foster when she comes in that I have gone out; that she is not to trouble about me, as I shall soon return; and tell her also that I felt unusually well and strong.'
Then she turned and beckoned to Father Benecke.
'This way, Father, please!'
And she led him down the little stair that had taken Lucy to the garden the night before. At the foot of the stairs she paused. The wall of the garden divided them from the courtyard, and on the other side of it they could hear Lucy speaking to the massaja.
'Now!' said Eleanor, 'quick I—before she discovers us!'
And opening the garden door with the priest's help she passed into the field, and took a wide circuit to the right so as to be out of view of the loggia.
'Dear madame, where are you going?' said the priest in some alarm. 'This is too fatiguing for you.'
Eleanor took no notice. She, who for days had scarcely dragged one languid foot after another, sped through the heat and over the broken ground like one of the goldfinches in the convent garden. The old priest followed her with difficulty. Nor did she pause till they were in the middle of the Sassetto.
'Explain what we are doing!' he implored her, as she allowed him to press his old limbs for a moment on his stick, and take breath.
She, too, leant against a tree panting.
'You said, Father, that Mr. Manisty was to leave you at midday.'
'And you wish to see him?' he cried.
'I am determined to see him,' she said in a low voice, biting her lip.
And again she was off, a gleam of whiteness gliding down, down, through the cool green heart of the Sassetto, towards the Paglia.
They emerged upon the fringe of the wood, where amid scrub and sapling trees stood the little sun-baked house.
From the distance came a sound of wheels—a carriage from Selvapendente crossing the bridge over the Paglia?
Mrs. Burgoyne looked at the house for a moment in silence. Then, sheltered under her large white parasol, she passed round to the side that fronted the river.
There, in the shade, sat Manisty, his arms upon his knees, his head buried in his hands.
He did not at first hear Mrs. Burgoyne's step, and she paused a little way off. She was alone. The priest had not followed her.
At last, as she moved, either the sound of her dress or the noise of the approaching wheels roused him. He looked up—started—sprang to his feet.
'Eleanor!—'
They met. Their eyes crossed. She shivered, for there were tears in his. But through that dimness there shone the fierce unspoken question that had leapt to them at the sight of his cousin—
