They made their tea under the shadow of the farm-building, which consisted
of a loft above, and a large dark room on the ground floor, which was
filled with the flat strawberry-baskets, full and ready for market.
Lucy found the little festa delightful, though all that the ladies had
to do was to make an audience for Aristodemo and Manisty. The handsome
dare-devil lad began to talk, drawn out by the Englishman, and lo! instead
of a mere peasant they had got hold of an artist and a connoisseur! Did he
know anything of the excavations and the ruins? Why, he knew everything! He
chattered to them, with astonishing knowledge and shrewdness, for half an
hour. Complete composure, complete good-humour, complete good manners--he
possessed them all. Easy to see that he was the son of an old race, moulded
by long centuries of urbane and civilised living!
A little boastful, perhaps. He too had found the head of a statue, digging
in his father's orchard. Man or woman?--asked Mrs. Burgoyne. A woman. And
handsome? The handsomest lady ever seen. And perfect? Quite perfect. Had
she a nose, for instance? He shook his young head in scorn. Naturally she
had a nose! Did the ladies suppose he would have picked up a creature
without one?
Then he rose and beckoned smiling to Eleanor and Lucy. They followed him
through the cool lower room, where the strawberries gleamed red through the
dark, up the creaking stairs to the loft. And there on the ground was an
old box and in the box, a few score of heads and other fragments--little
terracottas, such as the peasants turn up every winter as they plough or
dig among the olives.. Delicate little hooded women, heads of Artemis with
the crown of Cybele, winged heads, or heads covered with the Phrygian
cap, portrait-heads of girls or children, with their sharp profiles still
perfect, and the last dab of the clay under the thumb of the artist, as
clear and clean as when it was laid there some twenty-two centuries ago.
Lucy bent over them in a passion of pleasure, turning over the little
things quite silently, but with sparkling looks.
'Would you like them?' said Manisty, who had followed them, and stood over
her, cigarette in hand.
'Oh no!' said Lucy, rising in confusion. 'Don't get them for me.'
'Come away,' said Eleanor, laughing. 'Never interfere between a man and a
bargain.'
The _padrone_ indeed appeared at the moment. Manisty sent the ladies
downstairs, and the bargaining began.
When he came downstairs ten minutes later a small basket was in his hand.
He offered it to Lucy, while he held out his other hand to Eleanor. The
hand contained two fragments only, but of exquisite quality, one a fine
Artemis head with the Cybele crown, the other merely the mask or shell of a
face, from brow to chin,--a gem of the purest and loveliest Greek work.
Eleanor took them with a critical delight. Her comments were the comments
of taste and knowledge. They were lightly given, without the smallest
pedantry, but Manisty hardly answered them. He walked eagerly to Lucy
Foster, whose shy intense gratitude, covering an inward fear that he had
spent far, far too much money upon her, and that she had indecorously
provoked his bounty, was evidently attractive to him. He told her that he
had got them for a mere nothing, and they sat down on the bench behind
the house together, turning them over, he holding forth, and now and then
discovering through her modest or eager replies, that she had been somehow
remarkably well educated by that old Calvinist uncle of hers. The tincture
of Greek and Latin, which had looked so repellent from a distance,
presented itself differently now that it enabled him to give his talk rein,
and was partly the source in her of these responsive grateful looks which
became her so well. After all perhaps her Puritan stiffness was only on the
surface. How much it had yielded already to Eleanor's lessons! He really
felt inclined to continue them on his own account; to test for himself this
far famed pliancy of the American woman.
Meanwhile Eleanor moved away, watching the path from Genzano which wound
downwards from the Sforza Cesarini villa to the 'Giardino,' and was now
visible, now hidden by the folds of the shore.
Presently Manisty and Lucy heard her exclamation.
'At last!--What has Reggie been about?'
'Coming?' said Manisty.
'Yes--thank goodness! Evidently they missed that first train. But now there
are four people coming down the hill--two men and two ladies. I'm sure
one's Reggie.'
'Well, for the practical man he hasn't distinguished himself,' said
Manisty, taking out another cigarette.
'I can't see them now--they're hidden behind that bend. They'll be ten
minutes more, I should think, before they arrive. Edward!'
'Yes?--Don't be energetic!'
'There's just time to explore that ravine--while they're having tea. Then
we shall have seen it all--done the last, last thing! Who knows--dear
Nemi!--if we shall ever see it again?'
Her tone was quite gay, yet, involuntarily, there was a touching note in
it. Lucy looked down guiltily, wishing herself away. But Manisty resisted.
'You'll be very tired, Eleanor--it's much further than you think--and it's
very hot.'
'Oh no, it's not far--and the sun's going down fast. You wouldn't be
afraid? They'll be here directly,' she said, turning to Lucy. 'I'm sure it
was they.'
'Don't mind me, please!' said Lucy. 'I shall be perfectly right. I'll boil
the kettle again, and be ready for them. Aristodemo will look after me.'
Eleanor turned to Manisty.
'Come!' she said.
This time she rather commanded than entreated. There was a delicate
stateliness in her attitude, her half-mourning dress of grey and black,
her shadowy hat, the gesture of her hand, that spoke a hundred subtle
things--all those points of age and breeding, of social distinction and
experience, that marked her out from Lucy--from the girl's charming
immaturity.
Manisty rose ungraciously. As he followed his cousin along the narrow path
among the strawberry beds his expression was not agreeable. Eleanor's
heart--if she had looked back--might have failed her. But she hurried on.
* * * * *
Lucy, left to herself, set the stove under the kettle alight and prepared
some fresh tea, while Aristodemo and the other boy leant against the wall
in the shade chattering to each other.
The voices of Eleanor and Manisty had vanished out of hearing in the wood
behind the Giardino. But the voices from Genzano began to come nearer. A
quarter to six.--There would be only a short time for them to rest and have
their tea in, before they must all start home for the villa, where Miss
Manisty was expecting the whole party for dinner at eight. Was that Mr.
Brooklyn's voice? She could not see them, but she could hear them talking
in the narrow overgrown lane leading from the lake to the ruins.
How _very_ strange! The four persons approaching entered the Giardino still
noisily laughing and talking--and Lucy knew none of them! The two men, of
whom one certainly resembled Mr. Brooklyn in height and build, were quite
strangers to her; and she felt certain that the two ladies, who were stout
and elderly, had nothing to do either with Mrs. Elliott, Mr. Reggie's
married sister, or with the Ambassador's daughter.
She watched them with astonishment. They were English, tourists apparently
from Frascati, to judge from their conversation. And they were in a great
hurry. The walk had taken them longer than they expected, and they had only
a short time to stay. They looked carelessly at the niched wall, and the
shed with the strawberry baskets, remarking that there was 'precious little
to see, now you'd done it.' Then they walked past Lucy, throwing many
curious glances at the solitary English girl with the tea-things before
her, the gentlemen raising their hats. And finally they hurried away, and
all sounds of them were soon lost in the quiet of the May evening.
Lucy was left, feeling a little forlorn and disconcerted. Presently she
noticed that all the women working on the Giardino land were going home.
Aristodemo and his companion ran after some of the girls, and their
discordant shouts and laughs could be heard in the distance, mingled with
the 'Ave Maria' sung by groups of woman and girls who were mounting the
zigzag path towards Nemi, their arms linked together.
The evening stillness came flooding into the great hollow like a soft
resistless wave. Every now and then the voices of peasants going home
rippled up from unseen paths, then sank again into the earth. On the high
windows of Nemi the sunset light from the Campagna struck and flamed, '_Ave
Maria--gratia plena._' How softened now, how thinly, delicately far! The
singers must be nearing their homes in the little hill town.
Lucy looked around her. No one on the Giardino, no one in the fields near,
no one on the Genzano road. She seemed to be absolutely alone. Her two
companions indeed could not be far away, and the boys no doubt would come
back for the baskets. But meanwhile she could see and hear no one.
The sun disappeared behind the Genzano ridge, and it grew cold all in
a moment. She felt the chill, together with a sudden consciousness of
fatigue. Was there fever in this hollow of the lake? Certainly the
dwellings were all placed on the heights, save for the fisherman's cottage
half-way to Genzano. She got up and began to move about, wishing for her
cloak. But Mr. Manisty had carried it off, absently, on his arm.
Then she packed up the tea-things. What had happened to the party from
Rome?
Surely more than an hour had passed. Had it taken them longer to climb to
the spring's source than they supposed? How fast the light was failing, the
rich Italian light, impatient to be gone, claiming all or nothing!
The girl began to be a little shaken with vague discomforts and terrors.
She had been accustomed to wander about the lake of Albano by herself, and
to make friends with the peasants. But after all the roads would not be so
closely patrolled by _carabinieri_ if all was quite as safe as in Vermont
or Middlesex; and there were plenty of disquieting stories current among
the English visitors, even among the people themselves. Was it not only a
month since a carriage containing some German royalties had been stopped
and robbed by masked peasants on the Rocca di Papa road? Had not an old
resident in Rome told her, only the day before, that when he walked about
these lake paths he always filled his pockets with cigars and divested them
of money, in order that the charcoal-burners might love him without robbing
him? Had not friends of theirs going to Cori and Ninfa been followed by
mounted police all the way?
These things weighed little with her as she wandered in broad daylight
about the roads near the villa. But now she was quite alone, the night was
coming, and the place seemed very desolate.
But of course they would be back directly! Why not walk to meet them? It
was the heat and slackness of the day which had unnerved her. Perhaps, too,
unknown to herself!--the stir of new emotions and excitements in a deep and
steadfast nature.
She had marked the path they took, and she made her way to it. It proved
to be very steep, dark, and stony under meeting trees. She climbed it
laboriously, calling at intervals.
Presently--a sound of steps and hoofs. Looking up she could just
distinguish a couple of led mules with two big lads picking their way down
the rocky lane. There was no turning aside. She passed them with as much
dispatch as possible.
They stopped, however, and stared at her,--the elegant lady in her white
dress all alone. Then they passed, and she could not but be conscious of
relief, especially as she had neither money nor cigars.
Suddenly there was a clatter of steps behind her, and she turned to see one
of the boys, holding out his hand--
'Signora!--un soldino!'
She walked fast, shaking her head.
'Non ho niente--niente.'
He followed her, still begging, his whining note passing into something
more insolent. She hurried on. Presently there was a silence; the steps
ceased; she supposed he was tired of the pursuit, and had dropped back to
the point where his companion was waiting with the mules.
But there was a sudden movement in the lane behind. She put up her hand
with a little cry. Her cheek was struck,--again!--another stone struck her
wrist. The blood flowed over her hand. She began to run, stumbling up the
path, wondering how she could defend herself if the two lads came back and
attacked her together.
Luckily the path turned; her white dress could no longer offer them a mark.
She fled on, and presently found a gap in the low wall of the lane, and
a group of fig-trees just beyond it, amid which she crouched. The shock,
the loneliness, the pang of the boys' brutality, had brought a sob into
her throat. Why had her companions left her?--it was not kind!--till they
were sure that the people coming were their expected guests. Her cheek
seemed to be merely grazed, but her wrist was deeply cut. She wrapped her
handkerchief tightly round it, but it soon began to drip again upon her
pretty dress. Then she tore off some of the large young fig-leaves beside
her, not knowing what else to do, and held them to it.
* * * * *
A few minutes later, Manisty and Eleanor descended the same path in haste.
They had found the ascent longer and more intricate than even he had
expected, and had lost count of time in a conversation beside Egeria's
spring--a conversation that brought them back to Lucy changed beings, in
a changed relation. What was the meaning of Manisty's moody, embarrassed
look? and of that white and smiling composure that made a still frailer
ghost of Eleanor than before?
'Did you hear that call?' said Manisty, stopping.
It was repeated, and they both recognised Lucy Foster's voice, coming from
somewhere close to them on the richly grown hillside. Manisty exclaimed,
ran on--paused--listened again--shouted--and there, beside the path,
propping herself against the stones of the wall, was a white and tremulous
girl holding a swathed arm stiffly in front of her so that the blood
dripping from it should not fall upon her dress.
Manisty came up to her in utter consternation. 'What has happened? How are
you here? Where are the others?'
She answered dizzily, then said, faintly trying to smile, 'If you could
provide me with--something to tie round it?'
'Eleanor!' Manisty's voice rang up the path. Then he searched his own
pockets in despair--remembering that he had wrapped his handkerchief round
Eleanor's precious terracottas just before they started, that the little
parcel was on the top of the basket he had given to Miss Foster, and that
both were probably waiting with the tea-things below.
Eleanor came up.
'Why did we leave her?' cried Manisty, turning vehemently upon his
cousin--'That was _not_ Reggie and his party! What a horrible mistake!
She has been attacked by some of these peasant brutes. Just look at this
bleeding!'
Something in his voice roused a generous discomfort in Lucy even through
her faintness.
'It is nothing,' she said. 'How could you help it? It is so silly!--I am
so strong--and yet any cut, or prick even, makes me feel faint. If only we
could make it stop--I should be all right.'
Eleanor stooped and looked at the wound, so far as the light would
serve, touching the wrist with her ice-cold fingers. Manisty watched her
anxiously. He valued her skill in nursing matters.
'It will soon stop,' she said. 'We must bind it tightly.'
And with a spare handkerchief, and the long muslin scarf from her own neck,
she presently made as good a bandage as was possible.
'My poor frock!' said Lucy, half laughing, half miserable,--'what will
Benson say to me?'
Mrs. Burgoyne did not seem to hear.
'We must have a sling,' she was saying to herself, and she took off the
light silk shawl she wore round her own shoulders.
'Oh no! Don't, please!' said Lucy. 'It has grown so cold.'
And then they both perceived that she was trembling from head to foot.
'Good Heavens!' cried Manisty, looking at something on his own arm. 'And I
carried off her cloak! There it's been all the time! What a pretty sort of
care to take of you!'
Eleanor meanwhile was turning her shawl into a sling in spite of Lucy's
remonstrances. Manisty made none.
When the arm was safely supported, Lucy pulled herself together with a
great effort of will, and declared that she could now walk quite well.
'But all that way round the lake to Genzano!'--said Manisty; 'or up that
steep hill to Nemi? Eleanor! how can she possibly manage it?'
'Let her try,' said Eleanor quietly. 'It is the best. Now let her take your
arm.'
Lucy looked up at Mrs. Burgoyne, smiling tremulously. 'Thank you!--thank
you! What a trouble I am!'
She put out her free hand, but Mrs. Burgoyne seemed to have moved away. It
was taken by Manisty, who drew it within his arm.
They descended slowly, and just as they were emerging from the heavy shadow
of the lane into the mingled sunset and moonlight of the open 'Giardino,
sounds reached them that made them pause in astonishment.
'Reggie!' said Manisty--'and Neal! Listen! Good gracious!--there they are!'
And sure enough, there in the dim light behind the farm-building, gathered
in a group round the tea-baskets, laughing, and talking eagerly with each
other, or with Aristodemo, was the whole lost party--the two ladies and the
two men. And beside the group, held by another peasant, was a white horse
with a side-saddle.
Manisty called. The new-comers turned, looked, then shouted exultant.
'Well!'--said Reggie, throwing up his arms at sight of Manisty, and
skimming over the strawberry furrows towards them. 'Of all the muddles!
I give you this blessed country. I'll never say a word for it again.
Everything on this beastly line altered for May--no notice to anybody!--all
the old trains printed as usual, and a wretched flyleaf tucked in somewhere
that nobody saw or was likely to see. Station full of people for the 2.45.
Train taken off--nothing till 4.45. Never saw such a confusion!--and the
_Capo-stazione_ as rude as he could be. I _say_!--what's the matter?'
He drew up sharp in front of them.
'We'll tell you presently, my dear fellow,' said Manisty peremptorily.
'But now just help us to get Miss Foster home. What a mercy you thought of
bringing a horse!'
'Why!--I brought it for--for Mrs. Burgoyne,' said the young man,
astonished, looking round for his cousin. 'We found the carriage waiting at
the Sforza Cesarini gate, and the man told us you were an hour behind your
time. So I thought Eleanor would be dead-tired, and I went to that man--you
remember?--we got a horse from before--'
But Manisty had hurried Lucy on without listening to a word; and she
herself was now too dizzy with fatigue and loss of blood to grasp what was
being said around her.
Reggie fell back in despair on Mrs. Burgoyne.
'Eleanor!--what have you been doing to yourselves! What a nightmare of an
afternoon! How on earth are you going to walk back all this way? What's
wrong with Miss Foster?'
'Some rough boys threw stones at her, and her arm is badly cut. Edward will
take her on to Genzano, find a doctor and then bring her home.--We'll go on
first, and send back another carriage for them. You angel, Reggie, to think
of that horse!'
'But I thought of it for you, Eleanor,' said the young man, looking in
distress at the delicate woman for whom he had so frank and constant an
affection. 'Miss Foster's as strong as Samson!--or ought to be. What
follies has she been up to?'
'_Please_, Reggie--hold your tongue! You shall talk as much nonsense as you
please when once we have started the poor child off.'
And Eleanor too ran forward. Manisty had just put together a rough mounting
block from some timber in the farm-building. Meanwhile the other two ladies
had been helpful and kind. Mrs. Elliott had wrapped a white Chudda shawl
round Lucy's shivering frame. A flask containing some brandy had been
extracted from Mr. Neal's pocket, more handkerchiefs and a better sling
found for the arm. Finally Lucy, all her New England pride outraged by the
fuss that was being made about her, must needs submit to be almost lifted
on the horse by Manisty and Mr. Brooklyn. When she found herself in the
saddle, she looked round bewildered. 'But this must have been meant for
Mrs. Burgoyne! Oh how tired she will be!'
'Don't trouble yourself about me! I am as fresh as paint,' said Eleanor's
laughing voice beside her.
'Eleanor! will you take them all on ahead?' said Manisty impatiently; 'we
shall have to lead her carefully to avoid rough places.'
Eleanor carried off the rest of the party. Manisty established himself at
Lucy's side. The man from Genzano led the horse.
After a quarter of an hour's walking, mixed with the give and take of
explanations on both sides as to the confusion of the afternoon, Eleanor
paused to recover breath an instant on a rising ground. Looking back, she
saw through the blue hazes of the evening the two distant figures--the
white form on the horse, the protecting nearness of the man.
She stifled a moan, drawn deep from founts of covetous and passionate
agony. Then she turned and hurried up the stony path with an energy, a
useless haste that evoked loud protests from Reggie Brooklyn. Eleanor did
not answer him. There was beating within her veins a violence that appalled
herself. Whither was she going? What change had already passed on all the
gentle tendernesses and humanities of her being?
* * * * *
Meanwhile Lucy was reviving in the cool freshness of the evening air. She
seemed to be travelling through a world of opal colour, arched by skies
of pale green, melting into rose above, and daffodil gold below. All about
her, blue and purple shadows were rising, like waves interfused with
moonlight, flooding over the land. Where did the lake end and the shore
begin? All was drowned in the same dim wash of blue--the olives and figs,
the reddish earth, the white of the cherries, the pale pink of the almonds.
In front the lights of Genzano gleamed upon the tall cliff. But in this
lonely path all was silence and woody fragrance; the honeysuckles threw
breaths across their path; tall orchises, white and stately, broke here
and there from the darkness of the banks. In spite of pain and weakness
her senses seemed to be flooded with beauty. A strange peace and docility
overcame her.
'You are better?' said Manisty's voice beside her. The tones of it were
grave and musical; they expressed an enwrapping kindness, a 'human
softness' that still further moved her.
'So much better! The bleeding has almost stopped. I--I suppose it would
have been better, if I had waited for you?--if I had not ventured on those
paths alone?'
There was in her scrupulous mind a great penitence about the whole matter.
How much trouble she was giving!--how her imprudence had spoilt the little
festa! And poor Mrs. Burgoyne!--forced to walk up this long, long way.
'Yes--perhaps it would have been better'--said Manisty. 'One never quite
knows about this population. After all, for an Italian lady to walk about
some English country lanes alone, might not be quite safe--and one ruffian
is enough. But the point is--we should not have left you.'
She was too feeble to protest. Manisty spoke to the man leading the horse,
bidding him draw on one side, so as to avoid a stony bit of path. Then the
reins fell from her stiff right hand, which seemed to be still trembling
with cold. Instantly Manisty gathered them up, and replaced them in the
chill fingers. As he did so he realised with a curious pleasure that the
hand and wrist, though not small, were still beautiful, with a fine shapely
strength.
Presently, as they mounted the steep ascent towards the Sforza Cesarini
woods, he made her rest half way.
'How those stones must have jarred you!'--he said frowning, as he turned
the horse, so that she sat easily, without strain.
'No! It was nothing. Oh--glorious!'
For she found herself looking towards the woods of the south-eastern ridge
of the lake, over which the moon had now fully risen. The lake was half
shade, half light; the fleecy forests on the breast of Monte Cavo rose
soft as a cloud into the infinite blue of the night-heaven. Below, a
silver shaft struck the fisherman's hut beside the shore, where, deep
in the water's breast, lie the wrecked ships of Caligula,--the treasure
ships--whereof for seventy generations the peasants of Nemi have gone
dreaming.
As they passed the hut,--half an hour before--Manisty had drawn her
attention, in the dim light, to the great beams from the side of the nearer
ship, which had been recently recovered by the divers, and were lying
at the water's edge. And he had told her,--with a kindling eye--how he
himself, within the last few months, had seen fresh trophies recovered from
the water,--a bronze Medusa above all, fiercely lovely, the work of a most
noble and most passionate art, not Greek though taught by Greece, fresh,
full-blooded, and strong, the art of the Empire in its eagle-youth.
'Who destroyed the ships, and why?' he said, as they paused, looking
down upon the lake. 'There is not a shred of evidence. One can only
dream. They were a madman's whim; incredibly rich in marble, and metal,
and terra-cotta, paid for, no doubt, from the sweat and blood of this
country-side. Then the young monster who built and furnished them was
murdered on the Palatine. Can't you see the rush of an avenging mob
down this steep lane?--the havoc and the blows--the peasants hacking at
the statues and the bronzes--loading their ox-carts perhaps with the
plunder--and finally letting in the lake upon the wreck! Well!--somehow
like that it must have happened. The lake swallowed them; and, in spite of
all the efforts of the Renaissance people, who sent down divers, the lake
has kept them, substantially, till now. Not a line about them in any known
document! History knows nothing. But the peasants handed down the story
from father to son. Not a fisherman on this lake, for eighteen hundred
years, but has tried to reach the ships. They all believed--they still
believe--that they hold incredible treasures. But the lake is jealous--they
lie deep!'
Lucy bent forward, peering into the blue darkness of the lake, trying to
see with his eyes, to catch the same ghostly signals from the past. The
romance of the story and the moment, Manisty's low, rushing speech, the
sparkle of his poet's look--the girl's fancy yielded to the spell of them;
her breath came quick and soft. Through all their outer difference, Manisty
suddenly felt the response of her temperament to his. It was delightful to
be there with her--delightful to be talking to her.
'I was on the shore,' he continued, 'watching the divers at work, on the
day they drew up the Medusa. I helped the man who drew her up to clean the
slime and mud from them, and the vixen glared at me all the time, as though
she thirsted to take vengeance upon us all. She had had time to think about
it,--for she sank perhaps ten years after the Crucifixion,--while Mary
still lived in the house of John!'
His voice dropped to the note of reverie, and a thrill passed through
Lucy. He turned the horse's head towards Genzano, and they journeyed on
in silence. She indeed was too weak for many words; but enwrapped as it
were by the influences around her,--of the place, the evening beauty, the
personality of the man beside her,--she seemed to be passing through a
many-coloured dream, of which the interest and the pleasure never ceased.
Presently they passed a little wayside shrine. Within its penthouse eave
an oil-lamp flickered before the frescoed Madonna and Child; the shelf
in front of the picture was heaped with flowers just beginning to fade.
Manisty stayed the horse a moment; pointed first to the shrine, then to the
bit of road beneath their feet.
'Do you see this travertine--these blocks? This is a bit of the old road to
the temple. I was with the exploring party when they carried up the Medusa
and some other of their finds along here past the shrine. It was nearly
dark--they did not want to be observed. But I was an old friend of the man
in command, and he and I were walking together. The bearers of the heavy
bronze things got tired. They put down their load just here, and lounged
away. My friend stepped up to the sort of wooden bier they were carrying,
to see that all was right. He uncovered the Medusa, and turned her to the
light of the lamp before the shrine. You never saw so strange and wild a
thing!--the looks she threw at the Madonna and Child. "Ah! Madam," I said
to her--"the world was yours when you went down--but now it's theirs! Tame
your insolence!" And I thought of hanging her here, at night, just outside,
under the lamp against the wall of the shrine--and how one might come in
the dark upon the fierce head with the snakes--and watch her gazing at the
Christ.'
Lucy shuddered and smiled.
'I'm glad she wasn't yours!'
'Why? The peasants would soon have made a saint of her, and invented a
legend to fit. The snakes, for them, would have been the instruments
of martyrdom--turned into a martyr's crown. Italy and Catholicism
absorb--assimilate--everything. "_Santa Medusa!_"--I assure you, she would
be quite in order.'
There was a pause. Then she heard him say under his breath--'Marvellous,
marvellous Italy!'
She started and gave a slight cry--unsteady, involuntary.
'But you don't love her!--you are ungrateful to her!'
He looked up surprised--then laughed--a frank, pugnacious laugh.
'There is Italy--and Italy.'
'There is only one Italy!--Aristodemo's Italy--the Italy the peasants work
in.'
She turned to him, breathing quicker, the colour returning to her pale
cheek.
'The Italy that has just sent seven thousand of her sons to butchery in a
wretched colony, because her hungry politicians must have glory and keep
themselves in office? You expect me to love that Italy?'
Within the kind new sweetness of his tone--a sweetness no man could use
more subtly--there had risen the fiery accustomed note. But so restrained,
so tempered to her weakness, her momentary dependence upon him!
'You might be generous to her--just, at least!--for the sake of the old.'
She trembled a little from the mere exertion of speaking, and he saw it.
'No controversy to-night!' he said smiling. 'Wait till you are fit for
it, and I will overwhelm you. Do you suppose I don't know all about the
partisan literature you have been devouring?'
'One had to hear the other side.'
'Was I such a bore with the right side?'
They both laughed. Then he said, shrugging his shoulders with sudden
emphasis:
'What a nation of revolutionists you are in America! What does it feel
like, I wonder, to be a people without a past, without traditions?'
Lucy exclaimed: 'Why, we are made of traditions!'
'Traditions of revolt and self-will are no traditions,' he said
provokingly. 'The submission of the individual to the whole--that's what
you know nothing of.'
'We shall know it when we want it! But it will be a free submission--given
willingly.'
'No priests allowed? Oh! you will get your priests. You are getting them.
No modern nation can hold together without them.'
They sparred a little longer. Then Lucy's momentary spirit of fight
departed. She looked wistfully to see how near they were to Genzano.
Manisty approached her more closely.
'Did my nonsense cheer you--or tire you?' he said in a different voice. 'I
only meant it to amuse you, Hark!--did you hear that sound?'
They stopped. Above them, to the right, they saw through the dusk a small
farm in a patch of vineyard. A dark figure suddenly hurled itself down a
steep path towards them. Other figures followed it--seemed to wrestle with
it; there was a confused wailing and crying--the piteous shrill lamenting
of a woman's voice.
'Oh, what is it?' cried Lucy, clasping her hands.
Manisty spoke a few sharp words to the man leading the horse. The man stood
still and checked his beast. Manisty ran towards the sounds and the dim
struggle on the slope above them.
Such a cry! It rent and desolated the evening peace. It seemed to Lucy the
voice of an old woman, crossed by other voices--rough, chiding voices of
men. Oh, were they ill-treating her? The girl said hurriedly to the man
beside her that she would dismount.
'No, no, signorina,' said the man, placidly, raising his hand. 'The signor
will be here directly. It happens often, often.'
And almost at the same moment Manisty was beside her again, and the
gruesome sounds above were dying away.
'Were you frightened?' he said, with anxiety. 'There was no need. How
strange that it should have happened just now! It's a score that _your_
Italy must settle--_mine_ washes her hands of it!' and he explained that
what she had heard were the cries of a poor hysterical woman, a small
farmer's wife, who had lost both her sons in the Abyssinian war, in the
frightful retreat of Adowa, and had never been in her right mind since the
news arrived. With the smallest lapse in the vigilance of those about her,
she would rush down to the road, and throw herself upon any passer-by,
imploring them to intercede for her with the Government--that they should
give her back her sons--Nino, at least!--Nino, her youngest, and darling.
It was impossible that they should both be dead--impossible! The Holy
Virgin would never have suffered it.
'Poor soul!--she tried to cling round my knees--wailing out the candles and
prayers she had offered--shrieking something about the "Governo." I helped
the sons to carry her in. They were quite gentle to her.'
Lucy turned away her head; and they resumed their march. She governed
herself with all her power; but her normal self-control was weakened, and
that cry of anguish still haunted her. Some quiet tears fell--she hoped,
she believed that they were unseen.
But Manisty perceived them. He gave not the smallest direct sign; he began
at once to talk of other things in a quite other vein. But underlying his
characteristic whims and sallies she was presently conscious of a new and
exquisite gentleness. It seemed to address itself both to her physical
fatigue, and to the painful impression of the incident which had just
passed. Her sudden tears--the tears of a tired child--and his delicate
feeling--there arose out of them, as out of their whole journey, a
relation, a bond, of which both were conscious, to which she yielded
herself in a kind of vague and timid pleasure.
For Manisty--as she sat there, high above him, yet leaning a little
towards him--there was something in the general freshness and purity of
her presence, both physical and moral, that began most singularly to steal
upon his emotions. Certain barriers seemed to be falling, certain secret
sympathies emerging, drawn from regions far below their differences of age
and race, of national and intellectual habit. How was it she had liked his
Palestine book so much? He almost felt as though in some mysterious way
he had been talking to her, and she listening, for years,--since first,
perhaps, her sweet crude youth began.
Then even his egotism felt the prick of humour. Five weeks had she been
with them at the villa?--and in a fortnight their party was to break
up. How profitably indeed he had used his time with her! How civil--how
kind--how discerning he had shown himself!
Yet soreness of this kind was soon lost in the surge of this new and
unexpected impulse, which brought his youth exultantly back upon him.
A beautiful woman rode beside him, through the Italian evening. With
impatience, with an inward and passionate repudiation of all other bonds
and claims, he threw himself into that mingled process--at once exploring
and revealing--which makes the thrill of all the higher relations between
men and women, and ends invariably either in love--or tragedy.
* * * * *
They found a carriage waiting for them near the Sforza-Cesarini gate, and
in it Mrs. Elliott, Reggie Brooklyn's kind sister. Lucy was taken to a
doctor, and the hurt was dressed. By nine o'clock she was once more under
the villa-roof. Miss Manisty received her with lamentations and enquiries,
that the tottering Lucy was too weary even to hear aright. Amid what seemed
to her a babel of tongues and lights and kind concern, she was taken to bed
and sleep.
Mrs. Burgoyne did not attend her. She waited in Manisty's library, and when
Manisty entered the room she came forward--
'Edward, I have some disagreeable news'--
He stopped abruptly.
'Your sister Alice will be here to-morrow.'
'My sister--Alice?'--he repeated incredulously.
'She telegraphed this morning that she must see you. Aunt Pattie consulted
me. The telegram gave no address--merely said that she would come to-morrow
for two or three nights.'
Manisty first stared in dismay, then, thrusting his hands into his pockets,
began to walk hurriedly to and fro.
'When did this news arrive?'
'This morning, before we started.'
'Eleanor!--_Why_ was I not told?'
'I wanted to save the day,'--the words were spoken in Eleanor's most
charming, most musical voice. 'There was no address. You could not have
stopped her.'
'I would have managed somehow,'--said Manisty striking his hand on the
table beside him in his annoyance and impatience.
Eleanor did not defend herself. She tried to soothe him, to promise him as
usual that the dreaded visit should be made easy to him. But he paid little
heed. He sat moodily brooding in his chair; and when Eleanor's persuasions
ceased, he broke out--
'That poor child!--After to-day's experiences,--to have Alice let loose
upon her!--I would have given anything--anything!--that it should not have
happened.'
'Miss Foster?' said Eleanor lightly--'oh! she will bear up.'
'There it is!'--said Manisty, in a sudden fury. 'We have all been
misjudging her in the most extraordinary way! She is the most sensitive,
tender-natured creature--I would not put an ounce more strain upon her for
the world.'
His aunt called him, and he went stormily away. Eleanor's smile as she
stood looking after him--how pale and strange it was!