Eleanor (37 page)

Her whole nature was one wound. At the moment when, standing spell-bound in the shadow, she had seen Manisty stooping over the unconscious Lucy, and had heard his tender breathless words, the sword had fallen, dividing the very roots of being.

And now—strange irony!—the only heart on which she leant, the only hand to which she clung, were the heart and the hand of Lucy!

‘Why, why are we here?’ she cried to herself with a sudden change of position and of anguish.

Was not their flight a mere absurdity?—humiliation for herself, since it revealed what no woman should reveal—but useless, ridiculous as any check on Manisty! Would he give up Lucy because she might succeed in hiding her for a few weeks? Was that passionate will likely to resign itself to the momentary defeat she had inflicted on it? Supposing she succeeded in despatching Lucy to America without any further interview between them; are there no steamers and trains to take impatient lovers to their goal? What childish folly was the whole proceeding!

And would she even succeed so far? Might he not even now be on their track? How possible that he should remember this place—its isolation—and her pleasure in it! She started in her chair. It seemed to her that she already heard his feet upon the road.

Then her thought rebounded in a fierce triumph, an exultation that shook the feeble frame. She was secure! She was entrenched, so to speak, in Lucy’s heart. Never would that nature grasp its own joy at the cost of another’s agony. No! no!—she is not in love with him!—the poor hurrying brain insisted. She has been interested, excited, touched. That, he can always achieve with any woman, if he pleases. But time and change soon wear down these first fancies of youth. There is no real congruity between them—there never, never could be.

But supposing it were not so—supposing Lucy could be reached and affected by Manisty’s pursuit, still Eleanor was safe. She knew well what had been the effect, what would now be the increasing effect of her weakness and misery on Lucy’s tender heart. By the mere living in Lucy’s sight she would gain her end. From the first she had realised the inmost quality of the girl’s strong and diffident personality. What Manisty feared she counted on.

Sometimes, just for a moment, as one may lean over the edge of a precipice, she imagined herself yielding, recalling Manisty, withdrawing her own claim, and the barrier raised by her own vindictive agony. The mind sped along the details that might follow—the girl’s loyal resistance—Manisty’s ardour—Manisty’s fascination—the homage and the seduction, the quarrels and the impatience with which he would surround her—the scenes in which Lucy’s reserve mingling with her beauty would but evoke on the man’s side all the ingenuity, all the delicacy of which he was capable—and the final softening of that sweet austerity which hid Lucy’s heart of gold.—

No!—Lucy had no passion!—she would tell herself with a feverish, an angry vehemence. How would she ever bear with Manisty, with the alternate excess and defect of his temperament?

And suddenly, amid the shadows of the past winter Eleanor would see herself writing, and Manisty stooping over her,—his hand taking her pen, his shoulder touching hers. His hand was strong, nervous, restless like himself. Her romantic imagination that was half natural, half literary, delighted to trace in it both caprice and power. When it touched her own slender fingers, it seemed to her they could but just restrain themselves from nestling into his. She would draw herself back in haste, lest some involuntary movement should betray her. But not before the lightning thought had burnt its way through her—‘What if one just fell back against his breast—and all was said—all ventured in a moment! Afterwards—ecstasy, or despair—what matter!’—

When would Lucy have dared even such a dream? Eleanor’s wild jealousy would secretly revenge itself on the girl’s maidenly coldness, on the young stiffness, Manisty had once mocked at. How incredible that she should have attracted him!—how, impossible that she should continue to attract him! All Lucy’s immaturities and defects passed through Eleanor’s analysing thought.

For a moment she saw her coldly, odiously, as an enemy might see her.

And then!—quick revulsion—a sudden loathing of herself—a sudden terror of these new meannesses and bitterness that were invading her, stealing from her her very self, robbing her of the character that unconsciously she had loved in herself, as other people loved it—knowing that in deed and truth she was what others thought her to be, kind, and gentle, and sweet-natured.

And last of all—poor soul!—an abject tenderness and repentance towards Lucy, which yet brought no relief, because it never affected for an instant the fierce tension of will beneath.

A silvery night stole upon the sunset, absorbed, transmuted all the golds and crimsons of the west into its own dimly shining blue.

Eleanor was in bed; Lucy’s clever hands had worked wonders with her room; and now Eleanor had been giving quick remorseful directions to Marie to concern herself a little with Miss Foster’s comfort and Miss Foster’s luggage.

Lucy escaped from the rooms littered with trunks and clothes. She took her hat and a light cape, and stole out into the broad passage, on either side of which opened the long series of small rooms which had once been Carmelite cells. Only the four or five rooms at the western end, the bare ‘apartment’ which they occupied, were still whole and water-tight. Half-way down the passage, as Lucy had already discovered, you came to rooms where the windows had no glass and the plaster had dropped from the walls, and the ceilings hung down in great gaps and rags of ruin. There was a bay window at the eastern end of the passage, which had been lately glazed for the summer tenants’ sake. The rising moon streamed through on the desolation of the damp-stained walls and floors. And a fresh upland wind was beginning to blow and whistle through the empty and windowless cells. Even Lucy shivered a little. It was perhaps not wonderful that the French maid should be in revolt.

Then she went softly down an old stone staircase to the lower floor. Here was the same long passage with rooms on either side, but in even worse condition. At the far end was a glow of light and a hum of voices, coming from the corner of the building occupied by the
contadino
, and their own kitchen. But between the heavy front door, that Lucy was about to open, and the distant light, was an earthen floor full of holes and gaps, and on either side—caverns of desolation—the old wine and oil stores, the kitchens and wood cellars of the convent, now black dens avoided by the cautious, and dark even at midday because of the rough boarding-up of the windows. There was a stable smell in the passage, and Lucy already knew that one of the further dens held the
contadino’s
donkey and mule.

‘
Can
we stay here?’ she said to herself, half laughing, half doubtful.

Then she lifted the heavy iron bar that closed the old double door, and stepped out into the courtyard that surrounded the convent, half of which was below the road as it rapidly descended from the village, and half above it.

She took a few steps to the right.

Exquisite!

There opened out before her a little cloister, with double shafts carrying Romanesque arches; and at the back of the court, the chapel, and a tiny bell-tower. The moon shone down on every line and moulding. Under its light, stucco and brick turned to ivory and silver. There was an absolute silence, an absolute purity of air; and over all the magic of beauty and of night. Lucy thought of the ruined frescoes in the disused chapel, of the faces of saints and angels looking out into the stillness.

Then she mounted some steps to the road, and turned downwards towards the forest that crept up round them on all sides.

Ah! was there yet another portion of the convent?—a wing running at right angles to the main building in which they were established, and containing some habitable rooms? In the furthest window of all was a light, and a figure moving across it. A tall black figure—surely a priest? Yes!—as the form came nearer to the window, seen from the back, Lucy perceived distinctly the tonsured head and the soutane.

How strange! She had heard nothing from the
massaja
of any other tenant. And this tall gaunt figure had nothing in common with the little smiling
parroco
she had seen in the crowd.

She moved on, wondering.

Oh, those woods! How they sank, like great resting clouds below her, to the shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north. Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to the ‘Saturnian land.’

And beyond all, the blue mountains, aetherially light, like dreams on the horizon; and above all, the radiant serenity of the sky.

Ah! there spoke the nightingales, and that same melancholy note of the little brown owl which used to haunt the olive grounds of Marinata. Lucy held her breath. The tears rushed into her eyes—tears of memory, tears of longing.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Mother!—darling mother!—if you were just here—for one hour—’

She gathered up the forces of the soul.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘But there are no brigands here?’

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

‘But not here?’ she said, startled.

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

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

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

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

‘A priest—isn’t it?’

‘A priest—and not a priest,’ said the man after another pause.

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

‘A priest that doesn’t say his Mass!—that’s a queer sort of priest—isn’t it?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucy.

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