Eleanor Part 48

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

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

'A priest--isn't it?'

'A priest--and not a priest,' said the man after another pause.

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

'A priest that doesn't say his Ma.s.s!--that's a queer sort of priest--isn't it?'

'I don't understand,' said Lucy.

'_Per Dio!_ what does it matter?' said the man, laughing. 'The people here wouldn't trouble their heads, only--But you understand, Signorina'--he dropped his voice a little--'the priests have much power--_molto, molto_!

Don Teodoro, the _parroco_ there,--it was he founded the _ca.s.sa rurale_.

If a _contadino_ wants some money for his seed-corn--or to marry his daughter--or to buy himself a new team of oxen--he must go to the _parroco_. Since these new banks began, it is the priests that have the money--_capisce?_ If you want it you must ask them! So you understand, Signorina, it doesn't profit to fall out with them. You must love their friends, and--' His grin and gesture finished the sentence.

'But what's the matter?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Has he committed any crime?' And she looked curiously at the figure in the convent window.

'_e un prete spretato, Signorina._'

'_Spretato_?' (unpriested--unfrocked). The word was unfamiliar to her. She frowned over it.

'_Scomunicato!_' said the _carabiniere_, with a laugh.

'Excommunicated?' She felt a thrill of pity, mingled with a vague horror.

'Why?--what has he done?'

The _carabiniere_ laughed again. The laugh was odious, but she was already acquainted with that strange instinct of the lower-cla.s.s Italian which leads him to make mock of calamity. He has pa.s.sion, but no sentiment; he instinctively hates the pathetic.

'_Chi sa, Signorina?_ He seems a quiet old man. We keep a sharp eye on him; he won't do any harm. He used to give the children _confetti_, but the mothers have forbidden them to take them. Gianni there'--he pointed to the convent, and Lucy understood that he referred to the _contadino_--'Gianni went to Don Teodoro, and asked if he should turn him out. But Don Teodoro wouldn't say Yes or No. He pays well, but the village want him to go. They say he will bring them ill-luck with their harvest.'

'And the _Padre parroco_? Does he not speak to him?'

Antonio laughed.

'When Don Teodoro pa.s.ses him on the road he doesn't see him--_capisce_, Signorina? And so with all the other priests. When he comes by they have no eyes. The Bishop sent the word.'

'And everybody here does what the priests tell them?'

Lucy's tone expressed that instinctive resentment which the Puritan feels against a ruling and dominant Catholicism.

Antonio laughed again, but a little stupidly. It was the laugh of a man who knows that it is not worth while even to begin to explain certain matters to a stranger.

'They understand their business--_i preti!_'--was all he would say.

Then--'_Ma!_--they are rich--the priests! All these last years--so many banks--so many _ca.s.se_--so many _societa_! That holds the people better than prayers.'

When Lucy turned homewards she found herself watching the light in the far window with an eager attention. A priest in disgrace?--and a foreigner?

What could he be hiding here for?--in this remote corner of a district which, as they had been already told at Orvieto, was Catholic, _fino al fanatismo_?

The morning rose, fresh and glorious, over mountain and forest.

Eleanor watched the streaks of light that penetrated through the wooden sun-shutters grow brighter and brighter on the white-washed wall. She was weary of herself, weary of the night. The old building was full of strange sounds--of murmurs and resonances, of slight creepings and patterings, that tried the nerves. Her room communicated with Lucy's, and their doors were provided with bolts, the newness of which, perhaps, testified to the fears of other summer tenants before them. Nevertheless, Eleanor had been a prey to starts and terrors, and her night had pa.s.sed in a bitter mingling of moral strife and physical discomfort.

Seven o'clock striking from the village church. She slipped to her feet.

Ready to her hand lay one of the soft and elegant wrappers--fresh, not long ago, from Paris--as to which Lucy had often silently wondered how anyone could think it right to spend so much money on such things.

Eleanor, of course, was not conscious of the smallest reproach in the matter. Dainty and costly dress was second nature to her; she never thought about it. But this morning as she first took up the elaborate silken thing, to which pale girls in hot Parisian workrooms had given so much labour of hand and head, and then caught sight of her own face and shoulders in the cracked gla.s.s upon the wall, she was seized with certain ghastly perceptions that held her there motionless in the semi-darkness, shivering amid the delicate lace and muslin which enwrapped her. Finished!--for her--all the small feminine joys. Was there one of her dresses that did not in some way speak to her of Manisty?--that had not been secretly planned with a view to tastes and preferences she had come to know hardly less intimately than her own?

She thought of the face of the Orvieto doctor, of certain words that she had stopped on his lips because she was afraid to hear them. A sudden terror of death,--of the desolate, desolate end swept upon her. To die, with this cry of the heart unspent, untold for ever! Unloved, unsatisfied, unrewarded--she whose whole nature gave itself--gave itself perpetually, as a wave breaks upon a barren sh.o.r.e. How can any G.o.d send human beings into the world for such a lot? There can be no G.o.d. But how is the riddle easier, for thinking Him away?

When at last she rose, it was to make quietly for the door opening on the _loggia_.

Still there, this radiant marvel of the world!--this pageant of rock and stream and forest, this pomp of shining cloud, this silky shimmer of the wheat, this sparkle of flowers in the gra.s.s; while human hearts break, and human lives fail, and the graveyard on the hill yonder packs closer and closer its rows of metal crosses and wreaths!

Suddenly, from a patch of hayfield on the further side of the road, she heard a voice singing. A young man, tall and well made, was mowing in a corner of the field. The swathes fell fast before him: every movement spoke of an a.s.sured rejoicing strength. He sang with the sharp stridency which is the rule in Italy--the words clear, the sounds nasal.

Gradually Eleanor made out that the song was the farewell of a maiden to her lover who is going for winter work to the Maremma.

The labourers go to Maremma-- Oh! 'tis long till the days of June, And my heart is all in a flutter Alone here, under the moon.

O moon!--all this anguish and sorrow!

Thou know'st why I suffer so-- Oh! send him me back from Maremma, Where he goes, and I must not go!

The man sang the little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe, and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now for a season, now for ever--which fills the world.

She was too restless to enjoy the _loggia_ and the view, too restless to go back to bed. She pushed back the door between her and Lucy, only to see that Lucy was still fast asleep. But there were voices and stops downstairs. The farm-people had been abroad for hours.

She made a preliminary toilette, took her hat, and stole downstairs. As she opened the outer door the children caught sight of her and came crowding round, large-eyed, their fingers in their mouths. She turned towards the chapel and the little cloister that she remembered. The children gave a shout and swooped back into the convent. And when she reached the chapel door, there they were on her skirts again, a big boy brandishing the key.

Eleanor took it and parleyed with them. They were to go away and leave her alone--quite alone. Then when she came back they should have _soldi_.

The children nodded shrewdly, withdrew in a swarm to the corner of the cloister, and watched events.

Eleanor entered. From some high lunette windows the cool early sunlight came creeping and playing into the little whitewashed place. On either hand two cinque-cento frescoes had been rescued from the whitewash. They shone like delicate flowers on the rough, yellowish-white of the walls; on one side a martyrdom of St. Catharine, on the other a Crucifixion. Their pale blues and lilacs, their sharp pure greens and thin crimsons, made subtle harmony with the general lightness and cleanness of the abandoned chapel.

A poor little altar with a few tawdry furnishings at the further end, a confessional box falling to pieces with age, and a few chairs--these were all that it contained besides.

Eleanor sank kneeling beside one of the chairs. As she looked round her, physical weakness and the concentration of all thought on one subject and one person made her for the moment the victim of an illusion so strong that it was almost an 'apparition of the living.'

Manisty stood before her, in the rough tweed suit he had worn in November, one hand, holding his hat, upon his hip, his curly head thrown back, his eyes just turning from the picture to meet hers; eyes always eagerly confident, whether their owner p.r.o.nounced on the affinities of a picture or the fate of a country.

'School of Pinturicchio certainly!--but local work. Same hand--don't you think so?--as in that smaller chapel in the cathedral. Eleanor! you remember?'