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 toupe 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 Trinita, 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 Trinita. 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.