Eleanor Part 60

And yet in truth all was changed between them. Their talk ranged further, sank deeper. From the controversy of science with the Vatican, from the position of the Old Catholics, or the triumph of Ultramontanism in France, it would drop of a sudden, neither knew how, and light upon some small matter of conduct or feeling, some 'flower in the crannied wall,' charged with the profoundest things--things most intimate, most searching, concerned with the eternal pa.s.sion and trouble of the human will, the 'body of this death,' the 'burden' of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

Then the priest's gentle insistent look would steal on hers; he would speak from his heart; he would reveal in a shrinking word or two the secrets of his own spiritual life, of that long inner discipline, which was now his only support in rebellion, the plank between him and the abyss.

She felt herself pursued; felt it with a mixture of fear and attraction.

She had asked him to be her director; and then refused his advice. She had tried to persuade him that she was a sceptic and unbeliever. But he had not done with her. She divined the ardour of the Christian; perhaps the acuteness of the ecclesiastic. Often she was not strong enough to talk to him, and then he read to her--the books that she allowed him to choose.

Through a number of indirect and gradual approaches he laid siege to her, and again and again did she feel her heart fluttering in his grasp, only to draw it back in fear, to stand once more on a bitter unspoken defence of herself that would not yield. Yet he recognised in her the approach of some crisis of feeling. She seemed herself to suspect it, and to be trying to ward it off, in a kind of blind anguish. Nothing meanwhile could be more touching than the love between her and Lucy. The old man looked on and wondered.

Day after day he hesitated. Then one evening, in Lucy's absence, he found her so pale, and racked with misery--so powerless either to ask help, or to help herself, so resolute not to speak again, so clearly tortured by her own coercing will, that his hesitation gave way.

He walked down the hill, in a trance of prayer. When he emerged from it his mind was made up.

In the days that followed he seemed to Eleanor often agitated and ill at ease. She was puzzled, too, by his manner towards Lucy. In truth, he watched Miss Foster with a timid anxiety, trying to penetrate her character, to divine how presently she might feel towards him. He was not afraid of Mrs. Burgoyne, but he was sometimes afraid of this girl with her clear, candid eyes. Her fresh youth, and many of her American ways and feelings were hard for him to understand. She showed him friendship in a hundred pretty ways; and he met her sometimes eagerly, sometimes with a kind of shame-facedness.

Soon he began to neglect his work of a morning that he might wander out to meet the postman beyond the bridge. And when the man pa.s.sed him by with a short 'Non c' e niente,' the priest would turn homeward, glad almost that for one day more he was not called upon to face the judgment in Lucy Foster's face on what he had done.

The middle of July was past. The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel had come and gone, bringing processions and music, with a Madonna under a gold baldacchino, to glorify the little deserted chapel on the height.

Eleanor had watched the crowds and banners, the red-robed Compagni di Gesu, the white priests, and veiled girls, with a cold averted eye. Lucy looked back with a pang to Marinata, and to the indulgent pleasure that Eleanor had once taken in all the many-coloured show of Catholicism. Now she was always weary, and often fretful. It struck Lucy too that she was more restless than ever. She seemed to take no notice of the present--to be always living in the future--expecting, listening, waiting. The gestures and sudden looks that expressed this att.i.tude of mind were often of the weirdest effect. Lucy could have thought her haunted by some unseen presence. Physically she was not, perhaps, substantially worse. But her state was more appealing, and the girl's mind towards her more pitiful day by day.

One thing, however, she was determined on. They would not spend August at Torre Amiata. It would need stubbornness with Eleanor to bring her to the point of change. But stubbornness there should be.

One morning, a day or two after the festa, Lucy left Eleanor on the _loggia_, while she herself ran out for a turn before their midday meal.

There had been fierce rain in the morning, and the sky was still thick with thunder clouds promising more.

She escaped into a washed and cooled world. But the thirsty earth had drunk the rain at a gulp. The hill which had been running with water was almost dry, the woods had ceased to patter; on all sides could be felt the fresh restoring impulse of the storm. Nature seemed to be breathing from a deeper chest--shaking her free locks in a wilder, keener air--to a long-silent music from the quickened river below.

Lucy almost ran down the hill, so great was the physical relief of the rain and the cloudy morning. She needed it. Her spirits, too, had been uneven, her cheek paler of late.

She wore a blue cotton dress, fitting simply and closely to the young rounded form. Round her shapely throat and the lace collar that showed Eleanor's fancy and seemed to herself a little too elaborate for the morning, she wore a child's coral necklace--a gleam of red between the abundant black of her hair and the soft blue of her dress. Her hat, a large Leghorn, with a rose in it, framed the sweet gravity of her face. She was more beautiful than when she had said good-bye to Uncle Ben on the Boston platform. But it was a beauty that for his adoring old heart would have given new meaning to 'that sad word, Joy.'

She turned into the Sa.s.setto and pushed upwards through its tumbled rocks and trees to the seat commanding the river and the mountains.

As she approached it, she was thinking of Eleanor and the future, and her eyes were absently bent on the ground.

But a scent familiar and yet strange distracted her. Suddenly, on the path in front of the seat, she saw a still burning cigarette, and on the seat a book lying.

She stopped short; then sank upon the seat, her eyes fixed upon the book.

It was a yellow-bound French novel, and on the outside was written in a hand she knew, a name that startled every pulse in her young body.

_His_ book? And that cigarette? Father Benecke neither smoked nor did he read French novels.

Beyond the seat the path branched, upwards to the Palazzo, and downwards to the river. She rose and looked eagerly over its steep edge into the medley of rock and tree below. She saw nothing, but it seemed to her that in the distance she heard voices talking--receding.

They had left the seat only just in time to escape her. Mr. Manisty had forgotten his book! Careless and hasty--how well she knew the trait! But he would miss it--he would come back.

She stood up and tried to collect her thoughts. If he was here, he was with Father Benecke. So the priest had betrayed the secret he had promised Mrs.

Burgoyne to keep?

No, no!--that was impossible! It was chance--unkind, unfriendly chance.

And yet?--as she bit her lip in fear or bewilderment, her heart was rising like the Paglia after the storm--swelling, thundering within her.

'What shall I--what shall I do?' she cried under her breath, pressing her hands to her eyes.

Then she turned and walked swiftly homewards. Eleanor must not know--must not see him. The girl was seized with panic terror at the thought of what might be the effect of any sudden shock upon Mrs. Burgoyne.

Halfway up the hill, she stopped involuntarily, wringing her hands in front of her. It was the thought of Manisty not half a mile away, of his warm, living self so close to her that had swept upon her, like a tempest wind on a young oak.

'Oh! I mustn't--_mustn't_--be glad!'--she cried, gulping down a sob, hating, despising herself.

Then she hurried on. With every step, she grew more angry with Father Benecke. At best, he must have been careless, inconsiderate. A man of true delicacy would have done more than keep his promise, would have actively protected him.

That he had kept the letter of his promise was almost proved by the fact that Mr. Manisty had not yet descended upon the convent. For what could it mean--his lingering in Italy--but a search, a pursuit? Her cheek flamed guiltily over the certainty thus borne in upon her. But if so, what could hold back his impetuous will--but ignorance? He could not know they were there. That was clear.

So there was time--a chance. Perhaps Father Benecke was taken by surprise too--puzzled to know what to do with him? Should she write to the priest; or simply keep Eleanor indoors and watch?

At thought of her, the girl lashed herself into an indignation, an anguish that sustained her. After devotion so boundless, service so measureless--so lightly, meagrely repaid--were Mrs. Burgoyne's peace and health to be again in peril at her cousin's hands?

Luckily Eleanor showed that day no wish to move from her sofa. The storm had shaken her, given her a headache, and she was inclined to shiver in the cooler air.

After luncheon Lucy coaxed her to stay in one of the inner rooms, where there was a fire-place; out of sight and sound of the road. Marie made a fire on the disused hearth of what had once been an infirmary cell. The logs crackled merrily; and presently the rain streamed down again across the open window.

Lucy sat sewing and reading through the afternoon in a secret anguish of listening. Every sound in the corridor, every sound from downstairs, excited the tumult in the blood. 'What is the matter with you?' Eleanor would say, reaching out first to pinch, then to kiss the girl's cheek. 'It is all very well that thunder should set a poor wretch like me on edge--but you! Anyway it has given you back your colour. You look superbly well this afternoon.'

And then she would fall to gazing at the girl under her eyebrows with that little trick of the bitten lip, and that piteous silent look, that Lucy could hardly bear.

The rain fell fast and furious. They dined by the fire, and the night fell.

'Clearing--at last,' said Eleanor, as they pushed back their little table, and she stood by the open window, while Cecco was taking away the meal; 'but too late and too wet for me.'

An hour later indeed the storm had rolled away, and a bright and rather cold starlight shone above the woods.

'Now I understand Aunt Pattie's tales of fires at Sorrento in August,' said Eleanor, crouching over the hearth. 'This blazing Italy can touch you when she likes with the chilliest fingers. Poor peasants!--are their hearts lighter to-night? The rain was fierce, but mercifully there was no hail.

Down below they say the harvest is over. Here they begin next week.

The storm has been rude--but not ruinous. Last year the hail-storms in September stripped the grape; destroyed half their receipts--and pinched their whole winter. They will think it all comes of their litanies and banners the other day. If the vintage goes well too, perhaps they will give the Madonna a new frock. How simple!--how satisfying!'

She hung over the blaze, with her little pensive smile, cheered physically by the warmth, more ready to talk, more at ease than she had been for days.

Lucy looked at her with a fast beating heart. How fragile she was, how lovely still, in the half light!

Suddenly Eleanor turned to her, and held out her arms. Lucy knelt down beside her, trembling lest any look or word should betray the secret in her heart. But Eleanor drew the girl to her, resting her cheek tenderly on the brown head.

'Do you miss your mother very much?' she said softly, turning her lips to kiss the girl's hair. 'I know you do. I see it in you, often.'