They were both silent. Lucy was thinking of the drive to Nemi, of Manisty's

words and looks; Eleanor recalled the priest's last visit to the villa

and that secret storm of feeling which had overtaken her as she bade him

good-bye.

But when Lucy speculated on what might have happened, Eleanor hardly

responded. She fell into a dreamy silence from which it was difficult to

rouse her. It was very evident to Lucy that Father Benecke's personal

plight interested her but little. Her mind could not give it room. What

absorbed her was the feverish question: Were they safe any longer at Torre

Amiata, or must they strike camp and go further?

CHAPTER XVII

The day grew very hot, and Eleanor suffered visibly, even though the

quality of the air remained throughout pure and fresh, and Lucy in the

shelter of the broad _loggia_ felt nothing but a keen physical enjoyment of

the glow and blaze that held the outer world.

After their midday meal Lucy was sitting idly on the outer wall of the

_loggia_ which commanded the bit of road just outside the convent, when she

perceived a figure mounting the hill.

'Father Benecke!' she said to Eleanor. 'What a climb for him in this heat!

Did you say he had gone to Selvapendente? Poor old man!--how hot and tired

he looks!--and with that heavy parcel too!'

And withdrawing herself a little out of sight she watched the priest. He

had just paused in a last patch of shade to take breath after the long

ascent. Depositing the bundle he had been carrying on a wayside stone, he

took out his large coloured handkerchief and mopped the perspiration from

his face with long sighs of exhaustion. Then with his hands on his sides he

looked round him. Opposite to him was a little shrine, with the usual rude

fresco and enthroned Madonna behind a grating. The priest walked over to

it, and knelt down.

In a few minutes he returned and took up his parcel. As he entered the

outer gate of the convent, Lucy could see him glancing nervously from side

to side. But it was the hour of siesta and of quiet. His tormentors of the

morning were all under cover.

The parcel that he carried had partly broken out of its wrappings during

the long walk, and Lucy could see that it contained clothes of some kind.

'Poor Father!' she said again to Eleanor. 'Couldn't he have got some boy to

carry that for him? How I should like to rest him and give him some coffee?

Shall I send Cecco to ask him to come here?'

Eleanor shook her head.

'Better not. He wouldn't come. We shall have to tame him like a bird.'

The hours passed on. At last the western sun began to creep round into

the _loggia_. The empty cells on the eastern side were now cool, but

they looked upon the inner cloistered court which was alive with playing

children, and all the farm life. Eleanor shrank both from noise and

spectators. Yet she grew visibly more tired and restless, and Lucy went out

to reconnoitre. She came back recommending a descent into the forest.

So they braved a few yards of sun-scorched road and plunged into a little

right-hand track, which led downward through a thick undergrowth of heath

and arbutus towards what seemed the cool heart of the woods.

Presently they came to a small gate, and beyond appeared a broad, well-kept

path, winding in zig-zags along the forest-covered side of the hill.

'This must be private,' said Eleanor, looking at the gate in some doubt.

'And there you see is the Palazzo Guerrini.'

She pointed. Above them through a gap in the trees showed the great yellow

pile on the edge of the plateau, the forest stretching steeply up to it and

enveloping it from below.

'There is nothing to stop us,' said Lucy. 'They won't turn us out, if it is

theirs. I can't have you go through that sun again.'

And she pressed on, looking for shade and rest.

But soon she stopped, with a little cry, and they both stood looking in

astonishment at the strange and lovely thing upon which they had stumbled

unawares.

'I know!' cried Lucy. 'The woman at the convent tried to tell me--and I

couldn't understand. She said we must see the "Sassetto"--that it was a

wonder--and all the strangers thought so. And it _is_ a wonder! And so

cool!'

Down from the very brow of the hill, in an age before man was born, the

giant force of some primeval convulsion had flung a lava torrent of

molten rock to the bed of the Paglia. And there still was the torrent--a

rock-stream composed of huge blocks of basalt--flowing in one vast steep

fall, a couple of hundred yards wide, through the forest from top to bottom

of the hill.

And very grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and

the powers of the Italian soil. But the forest and its lovely undergrowths,

its heaths and creepers, its ferns and periwinkles, its lichen and mosses

had thrown themselves on the frozen lava, had decked and softened its wild

shapes, had reared oaks and pines amid the clefts of basalt, and planted

all the crannies below with lighter, featherier green, till in the dim

forest light all that had once been terror had softened into grace, and

Nature herself had turned her freak to poetry.

And throughout the 'Sassetto' there reigned a peculiar and delicious

coolness--the blended breath of mountain and forest. The smooth path that

Eleanor and Lucy had been following wound in and out among the strange

rock-masses, bearing the signs of having been made at great cost and

difficulty. Soon, also, benches of grey stone began to mark the course of

it at frequent intervals.

'We must live here!' cried Lucy in enchantment. 'Let me spread the shawl

for you--there!--just in front of that glimpse of the river.'

They had turned a corner of the path. Lucy, whose gaze was fixed upon the

blue distance towards Orvieto, heard a hurried word from Eleanor, looked

round, and saw Father Benecke just rising from a seat in front.

A shock ran through her. The priest stood hesitating and miserable before

them, a hot colour suffusing his hollow cheeks. Lucy saw that he was no

longer in clerical dress. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and a hat of fine

Leghorn straw with a broad black ribbon. Both ladies almost feared to speak

to him.

Then Lucy ran forward, her cheeks too a bright red, her eyes wet and

sparkling. 'How do you do, Father Benecke? You won't remember me, but I was

just introduced to you that day at luncheon--don't you remember--on the

Aventine?'

The priest took her offered hand, and looked at her in astonishment.

'Yes--I remember--you were with Miss Manisty.'

'I wish you had asked me to come with you this morning,' cried the girl

suddenly. 'I'd have helped you carry that parcel up the hill. It was too

much for you in the heat.'

Her face expressed the sweetest, most passionate sympathy, the indignant

homage of youth to old age unjustly wounded and forsaken. Eleanor was no

less surprised than Father Benecke. Was this the stiff, the reticent Lucy?

The priest struggled for composure, and smiled as he withdrew his hand.

'You would have found it a long way, Signorina. I tried to get a boy at

Selvapendente, but no one would serve me.'

He paused a moment, then resumed speaking with a sort of passionate

reluctance, his eyes upon the ground.

'I am a suspended priest--and the Bishop of Orvieto has notified the fact

to his clergy. The news was soon known through the whole district. And now

it seems the people hate me. They will do nothing for me. Nay, if they

could, they would willingly do me an injury.'

The flush had died out of the old cheeks. He stood bareheaded before them,

the tonsure showing plainly amid his still thick white locks--the delicate

face and hair, like a study in ivory and silver, thrown out against the

deep shadows of the Sassetto.

'Father, won't you sit down and tell me about it all?' said Eleanor gently.

'You didn't send me away, you know--the other day--at the villa.'

The priest sighed and hesitated. 'I don't know, Madame, why I should

trouble you with my poor story.

'It would not trouble me. Besides, I know so much of it already.'

She pointed to the bench he had just left.

'And I,' said Lucy, 'will go and fetch a book I left in the _loggia_.

Father Benecke, Mrs. Burgoyne is not strong. She has walked more than

enough. Will you kindly make her rest while I am gone?'

She fixed upon him her kind beseeching eyes. The sympathy, the homage of

the two women enveloped the old man. His brow cleared a little.

She sped down the winding path, aglow with anger and pity. The priest's

crushed strength and humiliated age--what a testimony to the power of that

tradition for which Mr. Manisty was working--its unmerciful and tyrannous

power!

Why such a penalty for a 'mildly Liberal' book?--'a fraction of the truth'?

She could hear Manisty's ironic voice on that bygone drive to Nemi. If he

saw his friend now, would he still excuse--defend?--

Her thoughts wrestled with him hotly--then withdrew themselves in haste,

and fled the field.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Father Benecke's reserve had gradually yielded. He gave Eleanor a

long troubled look, and said at last, very simply--

'Madame, you see a man broken hearted--'

He stopped, staring desolately at the ground. Eleanor threw in a few gentle

words and phrases, and presently he again mustered courage to speak:

'You remember, Madame, that my letter was sent to the _Osservatore

Romano_ after a pledge had been given to me that only the bare fact of my

submission, the mere formula that attends the withdrawal of any book that

has been placed upon the Index, should be given to the public. Then my

letter appeared. And suddenly it all became clear to me. I cannot explain

it. It was with me as it was with St. Paul: "Placuit Domino ut revelaret

filium suum in me!" My heart rose up and said: "Thou hast betrayed the

truth"--"_Tradidisti Sanctum et Justum!_" After I left you that day I wrote

withdrawing my letter and my submission. And I sent a copy to one of the

Liberal papers. Then my heart smote me. One of the Cardinals of the Holy

Office had treated me with much kindness. I wrote to him--I tried to

explain what I had done. I wrote to several other persons at the Vatican,

complaining of the manner in which I had been dealt with. No answer--not

one. All were silent--as though I were already a dead man. Then I tried to

see one or two of my old friends. But no one would receive me; one and all

turned me from their doors. So then I left Rome. But I could not make up

my mind to go home till I knew the worst. You understand, Madame, that I

have been a Professor of Theology; that my Faculty can remove me--that my

Faculty obeys the Bishops, and the Bishops obey the Holy See. I remembered

this place--I left my address in Rome--and I came down here to wait. Ah! it

was not long!'

He drew himself up, smiling bitterly.

'Two days after I arrived here I received two letters simultaneously--one

from my Bishop, the other from the Council of my Faculty--suspending

me both from my priestly and my academical functions. By the next post

arrived a communication from the Bishop of this diocese, forbidding me the

Sacraments.'

He paused. The mere recital of his case had brought him again into the

bewilderment of that mental anguish he had gone through. Eleanor made a

murmur of sympathy. He faced her with a sudden ardour.

'I had expected it, Madame; but when it came I was stunned--I was bowed to

the earth. A few days later, I received an anonymous letter--from Orvieto,

I think--reminding me that a priest suspended _a divinis_ has no right

to the soutane. "Let the traitor," it said, "give up the uniform he has

disgraced--let him at least have the decency to do that." In my trouble I

had not thought of it. So I wrote to a friend in Rome to send me clothes.'

Eleanor's eyes filled with tears. She thought of the old man staggering

alone up the dusty hill under his unwelcome burden.

He himself was looking down at his new clothes in a kind of confusion.

Suddenly he said under his breath, 'And for what?--because I said what

every educated man in Europe knows to be true?'

'Father,' said Eleanor, longing to express some poor word of comfort and

respect, 'you have suffered greatly--you will suffer--but it is not for

yourself.'

He shook his head.

'Madame, you see a man dying of hunger and thirst! He cannot cheat himself

with fine words. He starves!'

She stared at him, startled--partly understanding.

'For forty-two years,' he said, in a low, pathetic voice, 'have I received

my Lord--day after day--without a break. And now "they have taken Him

away--and I know not where they have laid Him!"'

Nothing could be more desolate than tone and look. Eleanor understood. She

had seen this hunger before. She remembered a convent in Rome where on Good

Fridays some of the nuns were often ill with restlessness and longing,

because for twenty-four hours the Sacrament was not upon the altar.

Under the protection of her reverent and pitying silence he gradually

recovered himself. With great delicacy, with fine and chosen words, she

began to try and comfort him, dwelling on his comradeship with all the

martyrs of the world, on the help and support that would certainly gather

round him, on the new friends that would replace the old. And as she talked

there grew up in her mind an envy of him so passionate, so intense, that

she could have thrown herself at his feet there and then and opened her own

wretched heart to him.

He, tortured by the martyrdom of thought, by the loss of Christian

fellowship!--She, scorched and consumed by a passion that was perfectly

ready to feed itself on the pain and injury of the beloved, or the

innocent, as soon as its own selfish satisfaction was denied it! There was

a moment when she felt herself unworthy to breathe the same air with him.

She stared at him, frowning and pale, her hand clasping her breast, lest he

should hear the beating of her heart.

* * * * *

Then the hand dropped. The inner tumult passed. And at the same moment the

sound of steps was heard approaching.

Round the further corner of the path came two ladies, descending towards

them. They were both dressed in deep mourning. The first was an old woman,

powerfully and substantially built. Her grey hair, raised in a sort of

toupé under her plain black bonnet, framed a broad and noticeable brow,

black eyes, and other features that were both benevolent and strong. She

was very pale, and her face expressed a haunting and prevailing sorrow.

Eleanor noticed that she was walking alone, some distance ahead of her

companion, and that she had gathered up her black skirts in an ungloved

hand, with an absent disregard of appearances. Behind her came a younger

lady, a sallow and pinched woman of about thirty, very slight and tall.

As they passed Eleanor and her companion, the elder woman threw a lingering

glance at the strangers. The scrutiny of it was perhaps somewhat imperious.

The younger lady walked past stiffly with her eyes on the ground.

Eleanor and Father Benecke were naturally silent as they passed. Eleanor

had just begun to speak again when she heard herself suddenly addressed in

French.

She looked up in astonishment and saw that the old lady had returned and

was standing before her.

'Madame--you allow me to address you?'

Eleanor bowed.

'You are staying at Santa Trinità, I believe!'

'_Oui, Madame_. We arrived yesterday.'

The Contessa's examining eye, whereof the keenness was but just duly

chastened by courtesy, took note of that delicate and frail refinement

which belonged both to Eleanor's person and dress.

'I fear, Madame, you are but roughly housed at the Trinità. They are not

accustomed to English ladies. If my daughter and I, who are residents here,

can be of any service to you, I beg that you will command us.'

Eleanor felt nothing but an angry impatience. Could even this remote place

give them no privacy? She answered however with her usual grace.

'You are very good, Madame. I suppose that I am speaking to the Contessa

Guerrini?'

The other lady made a sign of assent.

'We brought a few things from Orvieto--my friend and I,' Eleanor continued.

'We shall only stay a few weeks. I think we have all that is necessary. But

I am very grateful to you for your courtesy.'

Her manner, however, expressed no effusion, hardly even adequate response.

The Contessa understood. She talked for a few moments, gave a few

directions as to paths and points of view, pointed out a drive beyond

Selvapendente on the mountain side, bowed and departed.

Her bow did not include the priest. But he was not conscious of it. While

the ladies talked, he had stood apart, holding the hat that seemed to burn

him, in his finger-tips, his eyes, with their vague and troubled intensity,

expressing only that inward vision which is at once the paradise and the

torment of the prophet.

* * * * *

Three weeks passed away. Eleanor had said no more of further travelling.

For some days she lived in terror, startled by the least sound upon the

road. Then, as it seemed to Lucy, she resigned herself to trust in Father

Benecke's discretion, influenced also no doubt by the sense of her own

physical weakness, and piteous need of rest.

And now--in these first days of July--their risk was no doubt much less

than it had been. Manisty had not remembered Torre Amiata--another thorn in

Eleanor's heart! He must have left Italy. As each fresh morning dawned, she

assured herself drearily that they were safe enough.

As for the heat, the sun indeed was lord and master of this central Italy.

Yet on the high tableland of Torre Amiata the temperature was seldom

oppressive. Lucy, indeed, soon found out from her friend the Carabiniere

that while malaria haunted the valley, and scourged the region of Bolsena

to the south, the characteristic disease of their upland was pneumonia,

caused by the daily ascent of the labourers from the hot slopes below to

the sharp coolness of the night.

No, the heat was not overwhelming. Yet Eleanor grew paler and feebler. Lucy

hovered round her in a constantly increasing anxiety. And presently she

began to urge retreat, and change of plan. It was madness to stay in the

south. Why not more at once to Switzerland, or the Tyrol?

Eleanor shook her head.

'But I can't have you stay here,' cried Lucy in distress.

And coming closer, she chose her favourite seat on the floor of the

_loggia_ and laid her head against Eleanor's arm.

'Oughtn't you to go home?' she said, in a low urgent voice, caressing

Eleanor's hand. 'Send me back to Uncle Ben. I can go home any time. But you

ought to be in Scotland. Let me write to Miss Manisty!'

Eleanor laid her hand on her mouth. 'You promised!' she said, with her

sweet stubborn smile.

'But it isn't right that I should let you run these risks. It--it--isn't

kind to me.'

'I don't run risks. I am as well here as anywhere. The Orvieto doctor saw

no objection to my being here--for a month, at any rate.'

'Send me home,' murmured Lucy again, softly kissing the hand she held. 'I

don't know why I ever came.'

Eleanor started. Her lips grew pinched and bitter. But she only said:

'Give me our six weeks. All I want is you--and quiet.'

She held out both her hands very piteously, and Lucy took them, conquered,

though not convinced.

'If anything went really wrong,' said Eleanor, 'I am sure you could appeal

to that old Contessa. She has the face of a mother in Israel.'

'The people here seem to be pretty much in her hand,' said Lucy, as

she rose. 'She manages most of their affairs for them. But poor, poor

thing!--did you see that account in the _Tribuna_ this morning?'

The girl's voice dropped, as though it had touched a subject almost too

horrible to be spoken of.

Eleanor looked up with a sign of shuddering assent. Her daily _Tribuna_,

which the postman brought her, had in fact contained that morning a letter

describing the burial--after three months!--of the remains of the army

slain in the carnage of Adowa on March 1. For three months had those

thousands of Italian dead lain a prey to the African sun and the African

vultures, before Italy could get leave from her victorious foe to pay the

last offices to her sons.

That fine young fellow of whom the neighbourhood talked, who seemed to have

left behind him such memories of energy and goodness, his mother's idol,

had his bones too lain bleaching on that field of horror? It did not bear

thinking of.

Lucy went downstairs to attend to some household matters. It was about

ten o'clock in the morning, and presently Eleanor heard the postman from

Selvapendente knock at the outer door. Marie brought up the letters.

There were four or five for Lucy, who had never concealed her address from

her uncle, though she had asked that it might be kept for a while from

other people. He had accordingly forwarded some home-letters, and Marie

laid them on the table. Beside them were some letters that Lucy had just

written and addressed. The postman went his round through the village; then

returned to pick them up.

Marie went away, and suddenly Eleanor sprang from the sofa. With a flush

and a wild look she went to examine Lucy's letters.

Was all quite safe? Was Lucy not tampering with her, betraying her in any

way? The letters were all for America, except one, addressed to Paris. No

doubt an order to a tradesman? But Lucy had said nothing about it--and the

letter filled Eleanor with a mad suspicion that her weakness could hardly

repress.

'Why! by now--I am not even a lady!' she said to herself at last with

set teeth, as she dragged herself from the table, and began to pace the

_loggia_.

But when Lucy returned, in one way or another Eleanor managed to inform

herself as to the destination of all the letters. And then she scourged and

humbled herself for her doubts, and became for the rest of the morning the

most winning and tender of companions.

As a rule they never spoke of Manisty. What Lucy's attitude implied was

that she had in some unwitting and unwilling way brought trouble on

Eleanor; that she was at Torre Amiata to repair it; and that in general she

was at Eleanor's orders.

Of herself she would not allow a word. Beyond and beneath her sweetness

Eleanor divined a just and indomitable pride. And beyond that Mrs. Burgoyne

could not penetrate.

CHAPTER XVIII

Meanwhile Eleanor found some distraction in Father Benecke.

The poor priest was gradually recovering a certain measure of serenity. The

two ladies were undoubtedly of great assistance to him. They became popular

in the village, where they and their wants set flowing a stream of _lire_,

more abundant by far than had hitherto attended the summer guests, even the

Sindaco of Selvapendente. They were the innocent causes, indeed, of some

evil. Eleanor had been ordered goats' milk by the Orvieto doctor, and the

gentleman who had secured the order from the _massaja_ went in fear of his

life at the hands of two other gentlemen who had not been equally happy.

But in general they brought prosperity, and the popular smile was granted

them.

So that when it was discovered that they were already acquainted with

the mysterious foreign priest, and stoutly disposed to befriend him,

the village showed the paralysing effect of a conflict of interests. At

the moment and for various reasons the clericals were masters. And the

clericals denounced Father Benecke as a traitor and a heretic. At the same

time the village could not openly assail the ladies' friend without running

the risk of driving the ladies themselves from Torre Amiata. And this

clearly would have been a mere wanton slight to a kind Providence. Even the

children understood the situation, and Father Benecke now took his walks

unmolested by anything sharper than sour looks and averted faces.

Meanwhile he was busy in revising a new edition of his book. This review

of his own position calmed him. Contact with all the mass of honest and

laborious knowledge of which it was a summary gave him back his dignity,

raised him from the pit of humiliation into which he seemed to have fallen,

and strengthened him to resist. The spiritual privations that his state

brought him could be sometimes forgotten. There were moments indeed when

the iron entered into his soul. When the bell of the little church rang at

half-past five in the morning, he was always there in his corner by the

door. The peasants brushed past him suspiciously as they went in and out.

He did not see them. He was absorbed in the function, or else in a bitter

envy of the officiating priest, and at such moments he suffered all that

any 'Vaticanist' could have wished him to suffer.

But when he was once more among his books, large gusts of a new and strange

freedom began, as it were, to blow about him. In writing the philosophical

book which had now brought him into conflict with the Church, he had

written in constraint and timidity. A perpetual dread, not only of

ecclesiastical censure but of the opinion of old and valued friends; a

perpetual uncertainty as to the limits of Catholic liberty; these things

had held him in bondage. What ought he say? What must he leave unsaid? He

understood perfectly that hypothesis must not be stated as truth. But the

vast accumulation of biological fact on the one hand, and of historical

criticism on the other, that has become the common property of the

scientific mind, how was it to be recapitulated--within Catholic limits? He

wrote in fear, like one walking on the burning ploughshares of the ordeal.

Religion was his life; but he had at once the keen intelligence and the

mystical temperament of the Suabian. He dreaded the collision which

ultimately came. Yet the mental process could not be stayed.

Now, with the final act of defiance, obscurely carried out, conditioned he

knew not how, there had arrived for him a marvellous liberation of soul.

Even at sixty-five he felt himself tragically new-born--naked and feeble

indeed, but still with unknown possibilities of growth and new life before

him.

His book, instead of being revised, must be re-written. No need now to

tremble for a phrase! Let the truth be told. He plunged into his old

studies again, and the world of thought met him with a friendlier and

franker welcome. On all sides there was a rush and sparkle of new light.

How far he must follow and submit, his trembling soul did not yet know. But

for the moment there was an extraordinary though painful exhilaration--the

excitement of leading-strings withdrawn and walls thrown down.

This enfranchisement brought him, however, into strange conflict with

his own character. His temperament was that of the ascetic and visionary

religious. His intelligence had much the same acuteness and pliancy as that

of another and more pronounced doubter--a South German also, like Father

Benecke,--the author of the 'Leben Jesu.' But his _character_ was the joint

product of his temperament and his habits, and was often difficult to

reconcile with the quick play of his intelligence.

For instance, he was, in daily habit, an austere and most devout priest,

living alone with his old sister, as silent and yet fervent as himself, and

knowing almost nothing of other women, except through the Confessional. To

his own astonishment he was in great request as a director. But socially he

knew very little of his penitents; they were to him only 'souls,' spiritual

cases which he studied with the ardour of a doctor. Otherwise the small

benefice which he held in a South German town, his university class, and

the travail of his own research absorbed him wholly.

Hence a great innocence and unworldliness; but also an underlying sternness

towards himself and others. His wants were small, and for many years the

desires of the senses had been dead within him. Towards women he felt, if

the truth were known, with that strange unconscious arrogance which is a

most real and very primitive element in Catholicism, notwithstanding the

worship of Mary and the glories of St. Teresa and St. Catharine. The Church

does not allow any woman, even a 'religious,' to wash the corporal and

other linen which has been used in the Mass. There is a strain of thought

implied in that prohibition which goes deep and far--back to the dim dawn

of human things. It influences the priest in a hundred ways; it affected

even the tender and spiritual mind of Father Benecke. As a director of

women he showed them all that impersonal sweetness which is of the essence

of Catholic tradition; but they often shrank nevertheless from what they

felt to be a fundamental inflexibility mingled with pity.

Thus when he found himself brought into forced contact with the two ladies

who had invaded his retreat, when Lucy in a hundred pretty ways began to

show him a young and filial homage, when Eleanor would ask him to coffee

with them, and talk to him about his book and the subjects it discussed,

the old priest was both amazed and embarrassed.

How in the world did she know anything about such things? He understood

that she had been of assistance to Mr. Manisty: but that it had been the

assistance of a comrade and an equal--that had never entered his head.

So that at first Mrs. Burgoyne's talk silenced and repelled him. He was

conscious of the male revolt of St. Paul!--'I suffer not a woman to teach';

and for a time he hung back.

On his visit to the villa, and on her first meeting with him at Torre

Amiata, he had been under the influence of a shock which had crushed the

child in him and broken down his reserve. Yet that reserve was naturally

strong, together with certain despotic instincts which Eleanor perceived

with surprise beneath his exquisite gentleness. She sometimes despaired of

taming him.

Nevertheless when Eleanor presently advised him to publish a statement of

his case in a German periodical; when the few quick things she said showed

a knowledge of the German situation and German current literature that

filled him with astonishment; when with a few smiles, hints, demurs, she

made plain to him that she perfectly understood where he had weakened his

book--which lay beside her--out of deference to authority, and where it

must be amended, if it was to produce any real influence upon European

cultivated opinion, the old priest was at first awkward or speechless.

Then slowly he rose to the bait. He began to talk; he became by degrees

combative, critical, argumentative. His intelligence took the field; his

character receded. Eleanor had won the day.

Presently, indeed, he began to haunt them. He brought to Eleanor each

article and letter as it arrived, consulting her on every phase of a

controversy, concerning him and his book, which was now sweeping through

certain Catholic circles and newspapers. He was eager, forgetful, exacting

even. Lucy began to dread the fatigue that he sometimes produced. While

for Lucy he was still the courteous and paternal priest, for Eleanor he

gradually became--like Manisty--the intellectual comrade, crossing swords

often in an equal contest, where he sometimes forgot the consideration due

to the woman in the provocation shown him by the critic.

And when she had tamed him, it was to Eleanor all ashes and emptiness!

'_This_ is the kind of thing I can always do,' she said to herself one day,

throwing out her hands in self-scorn, as he left her on the _loggia_, where

he had been taking coffee with herself and Lucy.

And meanwhile what attracted her was not in the least the controversialist

and the man of letters--it was the priest, the Christian, the ascetic.

Torn with passion and dread as she was, she divined in him the director;

she felt towards him as the woman so often feels towards that sexless

mystery, the priest. Other men are the potential lovers of herself or

other women; she knows herself their match. But in this man set apart, she

recognises the embodied conscience, the moral judge, who is indifferent

to her as a woman, observant of her as a soul. Round this attraction she

flutters, and has always fluttered since the beginning of things. It is

partly a yearning for guidance and submission; partly also a secret pride

that she who for other men is mere woman, is, for the priest, spirit, and

immortal. She prostrates herself; but at the same time she seems to herself

to enter through her submission upon a region of spiritual independence

where she is the slave, not of man but of God.

What she felt also, tortured as she was by jealousy and angry will, was the

sheer longing for human help that must always be felt by the lonely and the

weak. Confession, judgment, direction--it was on these tremendous things

that her inner mind was brooding all the time that she sat talking to

Father Benecke of the Jewish influence in Bavaria, or the last number of

the 'Civiltà Cattolica.'

* * * * *

One evening at the beginning of July Eleanor and Lucy were caught in the

woods by a thunder-shower. The temperature dropped suddenly, and as they

mounted the hill towards the convent Eleanor in her thin white dress met a

blast of cold wind that followed the rain.

The result was chill and fever. Lucy and Marie tended her as best they

could, but her strength appeared to fail her with great rapidity, and there

came an evening when Lucy fell into a panic of anxiety.

Should she summon the local doctor--a man who was paid 80_l._ a year by the

Municipio of Selvapendente, and tended the Commune of Torre Amiata?

She had discovered, however, that he was not liked by the peasants. His

appearance was not attractive, and she doubted whether she could persuade

Eleanor to see him.

An idea struck her. Without consulting Mrs. Burgoyne, she took her hat and

boldly walked up to the Palazzo on the hill. Here she inquired for the

Contessa Guerrini. The Contessa, however, was out; Lucy left a little note

in French asking for advice. Could they get a good doctor at Selvapendente,

or must she send to Orvieto?

She had hardly reached home before an answer followed her from the

Contessa, who regretted extremely that Mademoiselle Foster should not

have found her at home. There was a good doctor at Selvapendente, and the

Contessa would have great pleasure in sending a mounted messenger to fetch

him. She regretted the illness of Madame. There was a fair _farmacia_ in

the village. Otherwise she was afraid that in illness the ladies would not

find themselves very well placed at Torre Amiata. Would Mademoiselle kindly

have her directions for the doctor ready, and the messenger would call

immediately?

Lucy was sincerely grateful and perhaps a little astonished. She was

obliged to tell Eleanor, and Eleanor showed some restlessness, but was too

unwell to protest. The doctor came and proved to be competent. The fever

was subdued, and Eleanor was soon convalescent. Meanwhile flowers, fruit,

and delicacies were sent daily from the Palazzo, and twice did the Contessa

descend from her little victoria at the door of the convent courtyard, to

inquire for the patient.

On each occasion Lucy saw her, and received the impression of a dignified,

kind, and masterful woman, bowed by recent grief, but nevertheless

sensitively alive in a sort of old-fashioned stately way to the claims of

strangers on the protection of the local grandee. It seemed to attract her

that Lucy was American, and that Eleanor was English.

'I have twice visited England,' she said, in an English that was correct,

but a little rusty. 'My husband learnt many things from England--for the

estate. But I wonder, Mademoiselle, that you come to us at this time of

year?'

Lucy laughed and coloured. She said it was pleasant to see Italy without

the _forestieri_; that it was like surprising a bird on its nest. But

she stumbled a little, and the Contessa noticed both the blush and the

stumbling.

When Eleanor was able to go out, the little carriage was sent for her,

and neither she nor Lucy knew how to refuse it. They drove up and down

the miles of zig-zag road that Don Emilio had made through the forest on

either side of the river, connecting the Palazzo Guerrini with the _casa

di caccia_ on the mountain opposite. The roads were deserted; grass was

beginning to grow on them. The peasants scarcely ever used them. They clung

to the old steep paths and tracts that had been theirs for generations. But

the small smart horses, in their jingling harness, trotted briskly along;

and Eleanor beside her companion, more frail and languid than ever, looked

listlessly out upon a world of beauty that spoke to her no more.

And at last a note from the Contessa arrived, asking if the ladies would

honour her and her daughter by taking tea with them at the Palazzo. 'We are

in deep mourning and receiving no society,' said the note; 'but if Madame

and her friend will visit us in this quiet way it will give us pleasure,

and they will perhaps enjoy the high view from here over our beautiful

country.'

Eleanor winced and accepted.

* * * * *

The Palazzo, as they climbed up through the village towards it, showed

itself to be an imposing pile of the later seventeenth century, with

heavily-barred lower windows, and, above, a series of graceful _loggie_

on its northern and western fronts which gave it a delicate and habitable

air. On the north-eastern side the woods, broken by the stone-fall of the

Sassetto, sank sharply to the river; on the other the village and the

vineyards pressed upon its very doors. The great entrance gateway opened on

a squalid village street, alive with crawling babies and chatting mothers.

At this gateway, however--through which appeared a courtyard aglow with

oleanders and murmurous with running water--they were received with

some state. An old majordomo met them, accompanied by two footmen and a

carrying-chair. Eleanor was borne up a high flight of stone stairs, and

through a vast and bare 'apartment' of enormous rooms with tiled or brick

floors and wide stone _cheminées_, furnished with a few old chests and

cabinets, a collection of French engravings of the last century, and some

indifferent pictures. A few of the rooms were frescoed with scenes of

hunting or social life in a facile eighteenth-century style. Here and

there was a piece of old tapestry or a Persian carpet. But as a whole, the

Palazzo, in spite of its vastness, made very much the impression of an old

English manor house which has belonged to people of some taste and no great

wealth, and has grown threadbare and even ugly with age. Yet tradition and

the family remain. So here. A frugal and antique dignity, sure of itself

and needing no display, breathed in the great cool spaces.

The Contessa and her daughter were in a small and more modern _salone_

looking on the river and the woods. Eleanor was placed in a low chair

near the open window, and her hostess could not forbear a few curious and

pitying glances at the sharp, high-bred face of the Englishwoman, the

feverish lips, and the very evident emaciation, which the elegance of the

loose black dress tried in vain to hide.

'I understand, Madame,' she said, after Eleanor had expressed her thanks

with the pretty effusion that was natural to her, 'that you were at Torre

Amiata last autumn?'

Eleanor started. The _massaja_, she supposed, had been gossiping. It was

disagreeable, but good-breeding bade her be frank.

'Yes, I was here with some friends, and your agent gave us hospitality for

the night.'

The Contessa looked astonished.

'Ah!' she said, 'you were here with the D----'s?'

Eleanor assented.

'And you spent the winter in Rome?'

'Part of it. Madame, you have the most glorious view in the world!' And she

turned towards the great prospect at her feet.

The Contessa understood.

'How ill she is!' she thought; 'and how distinguished!'

And presently Eleanor on her side, while she was talking nervously and fast

on a good many disconnected subjects, found herself observing her hostess.

The Contessa's strong square face had been pale and grief-stricken when she

saw it first. But she noticed now that the eyelids were swollen and red, as

though from constant tears; and the little sallow daughter looked sadder

and shyer than ever. Eleanor presently gathered that they were living in

the strictest seclusion and saw no visitors. 'Then why'--she asked herself,

wondering--'did she speak to us in the Sassetto?--and why are we admitted

now? Ah! that is his portrait!'

For at the Contessa's elbow, on a table specially given up to it, she

perceived a large framed photograph draped in black. It represented a

tall young man in an Artillery uniform. The face was handsome, eager, and

yet melancholy. It seemed to express a character at once impatient and

despondent, but held in check by a strong will. With a shiver Eleanor again

recalled the ghastly incidents of the war; and the story they had heard

from the _massaja_ of the young man's wound and despair.

Her heart, in its natural lovingness, went out to his mother. She found

her tongue, and she and the Contessa talked till the twilight fell of the

country and the peasants, of the improvements in Italian farming, of the

old convent and its history.

Not a word of the war; and not a word, Eleanor noticed, of their

fellow-lodger, Father Benecke. From various indications she gathered that

the sallow daughter was _dévote_ and a 'black.' The mother, however, seemed

to be of a different stamp. She was at any rate a person of cultivation.

That, the books lying about were enough to prove. But she had also the

shrewdness and sobriety, the large pleasant homeliness, of a good man of

business. It was evident that she, rather than her _fattore_, managed her

property, and that she perfectly understood what she was doing.

In truth, a secret and strong sympathy had arisen between the two women.

During the days that followed they met often.

The Contessa asked no further questions as to the past history or future

plans of the visitors. But indirectly, and without betraying her new

friends, she made inquiries in Rome. One of the D---- family wrote to her:

'The English people we brought with us last year to your delicious Torre

Amiata were three--a gentleman and two ladies. The gentleman was a Mr.

Manisty, a former member of the English Parliament, and very conspicuous

in Rome last winter for a kind of Brunetière alliance with the Vatican and

hostility to the Italian _régime_. People mostly regarded it as a pose; and

as he and his aunt were rich and of old family, and Mr. Manisty was--when

he chose--a most brilliant talker, they were welcome everywhere, and Rome

certainly fêted them a good deal. The lady staying with them was a Mrs.

Burgoyne, a very graceful and charming woman whom everybody liked. It was

quite plain that there was some close relation between her and Mr. Manisty.

By which I mean nothing scandalous! Heavens! nobody ever thought of such

a thing. But I believe that many people who knew them well felt that it

would be a very natural and right thing that he should marry her. She was

evidently touchingly devoted to him--acting as his secretary, and hanging

on his talk. In the spring they went out to the hills, and a young American

girl--quite a beauty, they say, though rather raw--went to stay with them.

I heard so much of her beauty from Madame Variani that I was anxious to see

her. Miss Manisty promised to bring her here before they left in June. But

apparently the party broke up suddenly, and we saw no more of them.

'Now I think I have told you the chief facts about them. I wonder what

makes you ask? I often think of poor Mrs. Burgoyne, and hope she may be

happy some day. I can't say, however, that Mr. Manisty ever seemed to me a

very desirable husband! And yet I was very sorry you were not at home in

the autumn. You might have disliked him heartily, but you would have found

him _piquant_ and stimulating. And of all the glorious heads on man's

shoulders he possesses the most glorious--the head of a god attached to a

rather awkward and clumsy body.'

Happy! Well, whatever else might have happened, the English lady was not

yet happy. Of that the Contessa Guerrini was tolerably certain after a

first conversation with her. Amid the gnawing pressure of her own grief

there was a certain distraction in the observance of this sad and delicate

creature, and in the very natural speculations she aroused. Clearly Miss

Foster was the young American girl. Why were they here together, in this

heat, away from all their friends?

* * * * *

One day Eleanor was sitting with the Contessa on a _loggia_ in the Palazzo,

looking north-west towards Radicofani. It was a cool and rather cloudy

evening, after a day of gasping heat. The majordomo suddenly announced;

'His reverence, Don Teodoro.'

The young _padre parroco_ appeared--a slim, engaging figure, as he stood

for an instant amid the curtains of the doorway, glancing at the two ladies

with an expression at once shy and confiding.

He received the Contessa's greeting with effusion, bowing low over

her hand. When she introduced him to the English lady, he bowed again

ceremoniously. But his blue eyes lost their smile. The gesture was formal,

the look constrained. Eleanor, remembering Father Benecke, understood.

In conversation with the Contessa however he recovered a boyish charm and

spontaneity that seemed to be characteristic. Eleanor watched him with

admiration, noticing also the subtle discernment of the Italian, which

showed through all his simplicity of manner. It was impossible to mistake,

for instance, that he felt himself in a house of mourning. The movements

of body and voice were all at first subdued and sympathetic. Yet the

mourning had passed into a second stage, and ordinary topics might now be

introduced. He glided into them with the most perfect tact.

He had come for two reasons. First, to announce his appointment as Select

Preacher for the coming Advent at a well-known church in Rome; secondly, to

bring to the Contessa's notice a local poet--gifted, but needy--an Orvieto

man, whose Muse the clergy had their own reasons for cultivating.

The Contessa congratulated him, and he bowed profoundly in a silent

pleasure.

Then he took up the poet, repeating stanza after stanza with a perfect

_naïveté_, in his rich young voice, without a trace of display; ending at

last with a little sigh, and a sudden dropping of the eyes, like a child

craving pardon.

Eleanor was delighted with him, and the Contessa, who seemed more difficult

to please, also smiled upon him. Teresa, the pious daughter, was with Lucy

in the Sassetto. No doubt she was the little priest's particular friend. He

had observed at once that she was not there, and had inquired for her.

'One or two of those lines remind me of Carducci, and that reminds me

that I saw Carducci for the first time this spring,' said the Contessa,

turning to Eleanor. 'It was at a meeting of the Accademia in Rome. A

great affair--the King and Queen--and a paper on Science and Religion, by

Mazzoli. Perhaps you don't remember his name? He was our Minister of the

Interior a few years ago.'

Eleanor did not hear. Her attention was diverted by the sudden change in

the aspect of the _padre parroco_. It was the dove turned hawk. The fresh

face seemed to have lost its youth in a moment, to have grown old, sharp,

rancorous.

'Mazzoli!'--he said, as the Contessa paused--'_Eccellenza, è un Ebreo!_'

The Contessa frowned. Yes, Mazzoli was a Jew, but an honest man; and his

address had been of great interest, as bearing witness to the revival of

religious ideas in circles that had once been wholly outside religion.

The _parroco's_ lips quivered with scorn. He remembered the affair--a

scandalous business! The King and Queen present, and a _Jew_ daring before

them, to plead the need of 'a new religion'--in Italy, where Catholicism,

Apostolic and Roman, was guaranteed as the national religion--by the first

article of the _Statuto_. The Contessa replied with some dryness that

Mazzoli spoke as a philosopher. Whereupon the _parroco_ insisted with heat

that there could be no true philosophy outside the Church. The Contessa

laughed and turned upon the young man a flashing and formidable eye.

'Let the Church add a little patriotism to her philosophy, Father,--she

will find it better appreciated.'

Don Teodoro straightened to the blow. 'I am a Roman, _Eccellenza_--you

also--_Scusi_!'

'I am an Italian, Father--you also. But you hate your country.'

Both speakers had grown a little pale.

'I have nothing to do with the Italy of Venti Settembre,' said the priest,

twisting and untwisting his long fingers in a nervous passion. 'That Italy

has three marks of distinction before Europe--by which you may know her.'

'And those--?' said the Contessa, calm and challenging.

'Debt, _Eccellenza_--hunger!--crimes of blood! _Sono il suo

primato--l'unico!_'

He threw at her a look sparkling and venomous. All the grace of his

youth had vanished. As he sat there, Eleanor in a flash saw in him the

conspirator and the firebrand that a few more years would make of him.

'Ah!' said the Contessa, flushing. 'There were none of these things in the

old Papal States?--under the Bourbons?--the Austrians? Well--we understand

perfectly that you would destroy us if you could!'

'_Eccellenza_, Jesus Christ and his Vicar come before the House of Savoy!'

'Ruin us, and see what you will gain!'

'_Eccellenza_, the Lord rules.

'Well--well. Break the eggs--that's easy. But whether the omelet will be as

the Jesuits please--that's another affair.'

Each combatant smiled, and drew a long breath.

'These are our old battles,' said the Contessa, shaking her head. '_Scusi!_

I must go and give an order.'

And to Eleanor's alarm, she rose and left the room.

The young priest showed a momentary embarrassment at being left alone with

the strange lady. But it soon passed. He sat a moment, quieting down, with

his eyes dropped, his finger-tips lightly joined upon his knee. Then he

said sweetly:

'You are perhaps not acquainted with the pictures in the Palazzo, Madame.

May I offer you my services? I believe that I know the names of the

portraits.'

Eleanor was grateful to him, and they wandered through the bare rooms,

looking at the very doubtful works of art that they contained.

Presently, as they returned to the _salone_ from which they had started,

Eleanor caught sight of a fine old copy of the Raphael St. Cecilia at

Bologna. The original has been much injured, and the excellence of the copy

struck her. She was seized, too, with a stabbing memory of a day in the

Bologna Gallery with Manisty!

She hurried across the room to look at the picture. The priest followed

her.

'Ah! that, Madame,' he said with enthusiasm--that is a _capolavoro_. It is

by Michael Angelo.'

Eleanor looked at him in astonishment. 'This one? It is a copy, Padre, of

Raphael's St. Cecilia at Bologna--a very interesting and early copy.'

Don Teodoro frowned. He went up to look at it doubtfully, pushing out his

lower lip.

'Oh! no, Madame,' he said, returning to her, and speaking with a soft

yet obstinate complacency. 'Pardon me--but you are mistaken. That is an

original work of the great Michael Angelo.'

Eleanor said no more.

When the Contessa returned, Eleanor took up a volume of French translations

from the Greek Anthology that the Contessa had lent her the day before. She

restored the dainty little book to its mistress, pointing to some of her

favourites.

The _parroco's_ face fell as he listened.

'Ah!--these are from the Greek!' he said, looking down modestly, as the

Contessa handed him the book. 'I spent five years, _Eccellenza_, in

learning Greek, but--!' He shrugged his shoulders gently.

Then glancing from one lady to the other, he said with a deprecating smile:

'I could tell you some things. I could explain what some of the Greek words

in Italian come from--"mathematics," for instance.'

He gave the Greek word with a proud humility, emphasising each syllable.

'"Economy"--"theocracy"--"aristocracy."'

The Greek came out like a child's lesson. He was not always sure; he

corrected himself once or twice; and at the end he threw back his head with

a little natural pride.

But the ladies avoided looking either at him or each other.

Eleanor thought of Father Benecke; of the weight of learning on that silver

head. Yet Benecke was an outcast, and this youth was already on the ladder

of promotion.

When he departed the Contessa threw up her hands.

'And that man is just appointed Advent Preacher at one of the greatest

churches in Rome!'

Then she checked herself.

'At the same time, Madame,' she said, looking a little stiffly at Eleanor,

'we have learned priests--many of them.'

Eleanor hastened to assent. With what heat had Manisty schooled her

during the winter to the recognition of Catholic learning, within its own

self-chosen limits!

'It is this deplorable Seminary education!' sighed the Contessa. 'How

is one half of the nation ever to understand the other? They speak a

different language. Imagine all our scientific education on the one side,

and this--this dangerous innocent on the other! And yet we all want

religion--we all want some hope beyond this life.'

Her strong voice broke. She turned away, and Eleanor could only see the

massive outline of head and bust, and the coils of grey hair.

Mrs. Burgoyne drew her chair nearer to the Contessa. Silently and timidly

she laid a hand upon her knee.

'I can't understand,' she said in a low voice, 'how you have had the

patience to be kind to us, these last weeks!'

'Do you know why?' said the Contessa, turning round upon her, and no longer

attempting to conceal the tears upon her fine old face.

'No--tell me!'

'It was because Emilio loved the English. He once spent a very happy summer

in England. I--I don't know whether he was in love with anyone. But, at

any rate, he looked back to it with deep feeling. He always did everything

that he could for any English person--and especially in these wilds. I have

known him often take trouble that seemed to me extravagant or quixotic.

But he always would. And when I saw you in the _Sassetto_ that day, I knew

exactly what he would have done. You looked so delicate--and I remembered

how rough the convent was. I had hardly spoken to anybody but Teresa since

the news came, but I could not help speaking to you.'

Eleanor pressed her hand. After a pause she said gently:

'He was with General Da Bormida?'

'Yes--he was with Da Bormida. There were three columns, you remember.

He was with the column that seemed for a time to be successful. I only

got the full account last week from a brother-officer, who was a prisoner

till the end of June. Emilio, like all the rest, thought the position was

carried--that it was a victory. He raised his helmet and shouted, _Viva il

Re! Viva l'Italia!_ And then all in a moment the Scioans were on them like

a flood. They were all carried away. Emilio rallied his men again and again

under a hail of bullets. Several heard him say: "Courage, lads--courage!

Your Captain dies with you! _Avanti! avanti! Viva l'Italia!_" Then at

last he was frightfully wounded, and perhaps you may have heard in

the village'--again the mother turned her face away--' that he said

to a _caporale_ beside him, who came from this district, whom he knew

at home--"Federigo, take your gun and finish it." He was afraid--my

beloved!--of falling into the hands of the enemy. Already they had passed

some wounded, horribly mutilated. The _caporale_ refused. "I can't do that,

_Eccellenza_," he said; "but we will transport you or die with you!" Then

again there was a gleam of victory. He thought the enemy were repulsed. A

brother-officer saw him being carried along by two soldiers, and Emilio

beckoned to him. "You must be my Confessor!" he said, smiling. And he gave

him some messages for me and Teresa--some directions about his affairs.

Then he asked: "It is victory--isn't it? We have won, after all?" And the

other--who knew--couldn't bear to tell him the truth. He said, "Yes." And

Emilio said, "You swear it?" "I swear." And the boy made the sign of the

cross--said again, _Viva l'Italia!_--and died.... They buried him that

night under a little thicket. My God! I thank Thee that he did not lie on

that accursed plain!'

She raised her handkerchief to hide her trembling lips. Eleanor said

nothing. Her face was bowed upon her hands, which lay on the Contessa's

knee.

'His was not a very happy temperament,' said the poor mother presently.' He

was always anxious and scrupulous. I sometimes thought he had been too much

influenced by Leopardi; he was always quoting him. That is the way with

many of our young men. Yet Emilio was a Christian--a sincere believer. It

would have been better if he had married. But he gave all his affection

to me and Teresa--and to this place and the people. I was to carry on his

work--but I am an old woman--and very tired. Why should the young go before

their time?... Yet I have no bitterness about the war. It was a ghastly

mistake--and it has humiliated us as a nation. But nations are made by

their blunderings as much as by their successes. Emilio would not have

grudged his life. He always thought that Italy had been "made too quick,"

as they say--that our day of trial and weakness was not done.... But, _Gesù

mio!_--if he had not left me so much of life.'

Eleanor raised her head.

'I, too,' she said, almost in a whisper--'I, too, have lost a son. But he

was a little fellow.'

The Contessa looked at her in astonishment and burst into tears.

'Then we are two miserable women!' she said, wildly.

Eleanor clung to her--but with a sharp sense of unfitness and unworthiness.

She felt herself a hypocrite. In thought and imagination her boy now

was but a hovering shadow compared to Manisty. It was not this sacred

mother-love that was destroying her own life.

* * * * *

As they drove home through the evening freshness, Eleanor's mind pursued

its endless and solitary struggle.

Lucy sat beside her. Every now and then Eleanor's furtive guilty look

sought the girl's face. Sometimes a flying terror would grip her by the

heart. Was Lucy graver--paler? Were there some new lines round the sweet

eyes? That serene and virgin beauty--had it suffered the first withering

touch since Eleanor had known it first? And if so, whose hand? whose fault?

Once or twice her heart failed within her; foreseeing a remorse that was no

sooner imagined than it was denied, scouted, hurried out of sight.

That brave, large-brained woman with whom she had just been talking; there

was something in the atmosphere which the Contessa's personality shed round

it, that made Eleanor doubly conscious of the fever in her own blood. As in

Father Benecke's case, so here; she could only feel herself humiliated and

dumb before these highest griefs--the griefs that ennoble and enthrone.

That night she woke from a troubled sleep with a stifled cry of horror. In

her dreams she had been wrestling with Manisty, trying to thrust him back

with all the frenzied force of her weak hands. But he had wrenched himself

from her hold. She saw him striding past her--aglow, triumphant. And that

dim white form awaiting him--and the young arms outstretched!

'No, no! False! She doesn't--doesn't love him!' her heart cried, throwing

all its fiercest life into the cry. She sat up in bed trembling and

haggard. Then she stole into the next room. Lucy lay deeply, peacefully

asleep. Eleanor sank down beside her, hungrily watching her. 'How could

she sleep like that--if--if she cared?' asked her wild thoughts, and she

comforted herself, smiling at her own remorse. Once she touched the girl's

hand with her lips, feeling towards her a rush of tenderness that came like

dew on the heat of the soul. Then she crept back to bed, and cried, and

cried--through the golden mounting of the dawn.

CHAPTER XIX

The days passed on. Between Eleanor and Lucy there had grown up a close,

intense, and yet most painful affection. Neither gave the other her full

confidence, and on Eleanor's side the consciousness both of the futility

and the enormity of what she had done only increased with time, embittering

the resistance of a will which was still fierce and unbroken.

Meanwhile she often observed her companion with a quick and torturing

curiosity. What was it that Manisty had found so irresistible, when all her

own subtler arts had failed?

Lucy was in some ways very simple, primitive even, as Manisty had called

her. Eleanor knew that her type was no longer common in a modern America

that sends all its girls to college, and ransacks the world for an

experience. But at the same time the depth and force of her nature promised

rich developments in the future. She was still a daughter of New England,

with many traits now fast disappearing; but for her, too, there was

beginning that cosmopolitan transformation to which the women of her race

lend themselves so readily.

And it was Manisty's influence that was at work! Eleanor's miserable eyes

discerned it in a hundred ways. Half the interests and questions on which

Manisty's mind had been fixed for so long were becoming familiar to Lucy.

They got books regularly from Rome, and Eleanor had been often puzzled by

Lucy's selections--till one day the key to them flashed across her.

The girl indeed was making her way, fast and silently, into quite new

regions of thought and feeling. She read, and she thought. She observed the

people of the village; she even frequented their humble church, though she

would never go with Eleanor to Sunday Mass. There some deep, unconquerable

instinct held her back.

All through, indeed, her personal beliefs and habits--Evangelical,

unselfish, strong, and a little stern--seemed to be quite unchanged. But

they were differently tinged, and would be in time differently presented.

Nor would they ever, of themselves, divide her from Manisty. Eleanor saw

that clearly enough. Lucy could hold opinion passionately, unreasonably

even; but she was not of the sort that makes life depend upon opinion. Her

true nature was large, tolerant, patient. The deepest forces in it were

forces of feeling, and no intellectual difference would ever be able to

deny them their natural outlet.

Meanwhile Lucy seemed to herself the most hopelessly backward and ignorant

person, particularly in Eleanor's company.

'Oh! I am just a dunce,' she said one day to Eleanor, with a smile and

sigh, after some questions as to her childhood and bringing up. 'They ought

to have sent me to college. All the girls I knew went. But then Uncle Ben

would have been quite alone. So I just had to get along.'

'But you know what many girls don't know.'

Lucy gave a shrug.

'I know some Latin and Greek, and other things that Uncle Ben could teach

me. But oh! what a simpleton I used to feel in Boston!'

'You were behind the age?

Lucy laughed.

'I didn't seem to have anything to do with the age, or the age with me. You

see, I was slow, and everybody else was quick. But an American that isn't

quick's got no right to exist. You're bound to have heard the last thing,

and read the last book, or people just want to know why you're there!'

'Why should people call you slow?' said Eleanor, in that voice which Lucy

often found so difficult to understand, because of the strange note of

hostility which, for no reason at all, would sometimes penetrate through

the sweetness. 'It's absurd. How quickly you've picked up Italian--and

frocks!--and a hundred things.'

She smiled, and stroked the brown head beside her.

Lucy coloured, bent over her work, and did not reply.

Generally they passed their mornings in the _loggia_ reading and working.

Lucy was a dexterous needle-woman, and a fine piece of embroidery had made

much progress since their arrival at Torre Amiata. Secretly she wondered

whether she was to finish it there. Eleanor now shrank from the least

mention of change; and Lucy, having opened her generous arms to this

burden, did not know when she would be allowed to put it down. She carried

it, indeed, very tenderly--with a love that was half eager remorse. Still,

before long Uncle Ben must remonstrate in earnest. And the Porters, whom

she had treated so strangely? They were certainly going back to America in

September, if not before. And must she not go with them?

And would the heat at Torre Amiata be bearable for the sensitive Northerner

after July? Already they spent many hours of the day in their shuttered and

closed rooms, and Eleanor was whiter than the convolvulus which covered the

new-mown hayfields.

What a darling--what a kind and chivalrous darling was Uncle Ben! She had

asked him to trust her, and he had done it nobly, though it was evident

from his letters that he was anxious and disturbed. 'I cannot tell you

everything,' she had written, 'or I should be betraying a confidence; but

I am doing what I feel to be right--what I am sure you would consent to my

doing if you knew. Mrs. Burgoyne is _very_ frail--and she clings to me. I

can't explain to you how or why--but so it is. For the present I must look

after her. This place is beautiful; the heat not yet too great; and you

shall hear every week. Only, please, tell other people that I wish you to

forward letters, and cannot long be certain of my address.'

And he:

'Dear child, this is very mysterious. I don't like it. It would be absurd

to pretend that I did. But I haven't trusted my Lucy for fourteen years in

order to begin to persecute her now because she can't tell me a secret.

Only I give you warning that if you don't write to me every week, my

generosity, as you call it, will break down--and I shall be for sending out

a search party right away.... Do you want money? I must say that I hope

July will see the end of your adventure.'

Would it? Lucy found her mind full of anxious thoughts as Eleanor read

aloud to her.

Presently she discovered that a skein of silk she wanted for her work was

not in her basket. She turned to look also in her old inlaid workbox, which

stood on a small table beside her. But it was not there.

'Please wait a moment,' she said to her companion. 'I am afraid I must get

my silk.'

She stood up hastily, and her movement upset the rickety cane table. With a

crash her workbox fell to the ground, and its contents rolled all over the

_loggia_. She gave a cry of dismay.

'Oh! my terra-cottas!--my poor terra-cottas!'

Eleanor started, and rose too, involuntarily, to her feet. There on the

ground lay all the little Nemi fragments which Manisty had given to Lucy,

and which had been stowed away, each carefully wrapped in tissue paper, in

the well of her old workbox.

Eleanor assisted to pick them up, rather silently. The note of keen

distress in Lucy's voice rang in her ears.

'They are not much hurt, luckily,' she said.

And indeed, thanks to the tissue paper, there were only a few small chips

and bruises to bemoan when Lucy at last had gathered them all safely into

her lap. Still, chips and bruises in the case of delicate Græco-Roman

terra-cottas are more than enough to make their owner smart, and Lucy bent

over them with a very flushed and rueful face, examining and wrapping them

up again.

'Cotton-wool would be better,' she said anxiously. 'How have you put your

two away?'

Directly the words were out of her mouth she felt that they had been better

unspoken.

A deep flush stained Eleanor's thin face.

'I am afraid I haven't taken much care of them,' she said hurriedly.

They were both silent for a little. But while Lucy still had her lap full

of her treasures, Eleanor again stood up.

'I will go in and rest for an hour before _déjeuner_. I _think_ I might go

to sleep.'

She had passed a very broken night, and Lucy looked at her with tender

concern. She quickly but carefully laid aside her terra-cottas, that she

might go in with Eleanor and 'settle her' comfortably.

But when she was left to rest in her carefully darkened room, and Lucy had

gone back to the _loggia_, Eleanor got no wink of sleep. She lay in an

anguish of memory, living over again that last night at the villa--thinking

of Manisty in the dark garden and her own ungovernable impulse.

Presently a slight sound reached her from the _loggia_. She turned her head

quickly. A sob?--from Lucy?

Her heart stood still. Noiselessly she slipped to her feet. The door

between her and the _loggia_ had been left ajar for air. It was partially

glazed, with shutters of plain green wood outside, and inside a muslin

blind. Eleanor approached it.

Through the chink of the door she saw Lucy plainly. The girl had been

sitting almost with her back to the door, but she had turned so that her

profile and hands were visible.

How quiet she was! Yet never was there an attitude more eloquent. She held

in her hands, which lay upon her knee, one of the little terra-cottas.

Eleanor could see it perfectly. It was the head of a statuette, not unlike

her own which she had destroyed,--a smaller and ruder Artemis with the

Cybele crown. There flashed into her mind the memory of Manisty explaining

it to the girl, sitting on the bench behind the strawberry hut; his black

brows bent in the eagerness of his talk; her sweet eyes, her pure pleasure.

And now Lucy had no companion--but thought. Her face was raised, the eyes

were shut, the beautiful mouth quivered in the effort to be still. She was

mistress of herself, yet not for the moment wholly mistress of longing and

of sorrow. A quick struggle passed over the face. There was another slight

sob. Then Eleanor saw her raise the terra-cotta, bow her face upon it,

press it long and lingeringly to her lips. It was like a gesture of eternal

farewell; the gesture of a child expressing the heart of a woman.

Eleanor tottered back. She sat on the edge of her bed, motionless in the

darkness, till the sounds of Cecco bringing up the _pranzo_ in the corridor

outside warned her that her time of solitude was over.

* * * * *

In the evening Eleanor was sitting in the Sassetto. Lucy with her young

need of exercise had set off to walk down through the wood to the first

bridge over the Paglia. Eleanor had been very weary all day, and for the

first time irritable. It was almost with a secret relief that Lucy started,

and Eleanor saw her depart.

Mrs. Burgoyne was left stretched on her long canvas chair, in the green

shade of the Sassetto. All about her was a chaos of moss-grown rocks

crowned with trees young and old; a gap in the branches showed her a

distant peachy sky suffused with gold above the ethereal heights of the

Amiata range; a little wind crept through the trees; the birds were silent,

but the large green lizards slipped in and out, and made a friendly life in

the cool shadowed place.

The Contessa was to have joined Eleanor here at six o'clock. But a note had

arrived excusing her. The visit of some relations detained her.

Nevertheless a little after six a step was heard approaching along the

winding path which while it was still distant Eleanor knew to be Father

Benecke. For his sake, she was glad that the Contessa was not with her.

As for Donna Teresa, when she met the priest in the village or on the road

she shrank out of his path as though his mere shadow brought malediction.

Her pinched face, her thin figure seemed to contract still further under an

impulse of fear and repulsion. Eleanor had seen it, and wondered.

But even the Contessa would have nothing to say to him.

'_Non, Madame; c'est plus fort que moi!_' she had said to Eleanor one day

that she had come across Mrs. Burgoyne and Father Benecke together in the

Sassetto--in after-excuse for her behaviour to him. 'For you and me--_bien

entendu!_--we think what we please. Heaven knows I am not bigoted. Teresa

makes herself unhappy about me.' The stout, imperious woman stifled a

sigh that betrayed much. 'I take what I want from our religion--and I

don't trouble about the rest. Emilio was the same. But a priest that

disobeys--that deserts--! No! that is another matter. I can't argue; it

seizes me by the throat.' She made an expressive movement. 'It is an

instinct--an inheritance--call it what you like. But I feel like Teresa; I

could run at the sight of him.'

Certainly Father Benecke gave her no occasion to run. Since his recovery

from the first shock and agitation of his suspension he had moved about the

roads and tracks of Torre Amiata with the 'recollected' dignity of the pale

and meditative recluse. He asked nothing; he spoke to no one, except to

the ladies at the convent, and to the old woman who served him unwillingly

in the little tumble-down house by the river's edge to which he had now

transferred himself and his books, for greater solitude. Eleanor understood

that he shrank from facing his German life and friends again till he had

completed the revision of his book, and the evolution of his thought; and

she had some reason to believe that he regarded his isolation and the

enmity of this Italian neighbourhood as a necessary trial and testing, to

be borne without a murmur.

As his step came nearer, she sat up and threw off her languor. It might

have been divined, even, that she heard it with a secret excitement.

When he appeared he greeted her with the manner at once reticent and

cordial that was natural to him. He had brought her an article in a German

newspaper of the 'Centre' on himself and his case, the violence of which

had provoked him to a reply, whereof the manuscript was also in his pocket.

Eleanor took the article and turned it over. But some inward voice told her

that her _rôle_, of counsellor and critic was--again--played out. Suddenly

Father Benecke said:

'I have submitted my reply to Mr. Manisty. I would like to show you what he

says.'

Eleanor fell back in her chair. 'You know where he is?' she cried.

Her surprise was so great that she could not at once disguise her emotion.

Father Benecke was also taken aback. He lifted his eyes from the papers he

held.

'I wrote to him through his bankers the other day, Madame. I have always

found that letters so addressed to him are forwarded.'

Then he stopped in distress and perturbation. Mrs. Burgoyne was still

apparently struggling for breath and composure. His absent, seer's eyes at

last took note of her as a human being. He understood, all at once, that

he had before him a woman very ill, apparently very unhappy, and that what

he had just said had thrown her into an anguish with which her physical

weakness was hardly able to cope.

The colour rose in his own cheeks.

'Madame! let me hasten to say that I have done your bidding precisely.

You were so good as to tell me that you wished no information to be given

to anyone as to your stay here. I have not breathed a word of it to Mr.

Manisty or to any other of my correspondents. Let me show you his letter.'

He held it out to her. Eleanor took it with uncertain fingers.

'Your mention of him took me by surprise,' she said, after a moment. 'Miss

Foster and I--have been--so long--without hearing of our friends.'

Then she stooped over the letter. It seemed to her the ink was hardly dry

on it--that it was still warm from Manisty's hand. The date of it was only

three days old. And the place from which it came? Cosenza?--Cosenza in

Calabria? Then he was still in Italy?

She put the letter back into Father Benecke's hands.

'Would you read it for me? I have rather a headache to-day.'

He read it with a somewhat embarrassed voice. She lay listening, with her

eyes closed under her large hat, each hand trying to prevent the trembling

of the other.

A strange pride swelled in her. It was a kind and manly letter, expressing

far more personal sympathy with Benecke than Manisty had ever yet allowed

himself--a letter wholly creditable indeed to the writer, and marked with

a free and flowing beauty of phrase that brought home to Eleanor at every

turn his voice, his movements, the ideas and sympathies of the writer.

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

cælo 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

_naïveté_ 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.