Eleanor’s face changed a little.
‘Oh! you foolish girl—we shall soon be gone. No, not that old frock. Look, please, at that head you’ve made me—and consider!
Noblesse oblige.
’
So presently, she stood before her table in a cream walking dress—perfect—but of the utmost simplicity; with her soft black hat tied round the ripples and clouds of her fair hair.
‘How it hangs on me!’ she said, gathering up the front of her dress in her delicate hand.
Marie made a little face of pity and concern.
‘
Mais oui, Madame. Il faudrait le cacher un peu.
’
‘Padding?
Tiens! j’en ai deja.
But if Mathilde were to put any more, there would be nothing else. One day, Marie, you see, there will be only my clothes left to walk about—by their little selves!’
She smiled. The maid said nothing. She was on her knees buttoning her mistress’s shoes.
‘Now then—_fini!_ Take all those books on to the
loggia
and arrange my chair. I shall be there directly.’
The maid departed. Eleanor sat down to rest from the fatigue of dressing.
‘How weak I am!—weaker than last month. And next month it will be a little more—and a little more—then pain perhaps—horrid pain—and one day it will be impossible to get up—and all one’s poor body will fail one like a broken vessel. And then—relief perhaps—if dying is as easy as it looks. No more pangs or regrets—and at the end, either a sudden puff that blows out the light—or a quiet drowning in deep waters—without pain….And to-day how little I fear it!’
A
prie-dieu
chair, old and battered like everything else in the convent, was beside her, and above it her child’s portrait. She dropped upon her knees, as she always did for a minute or two morning and evening, mostly out of childish habit.
But her thoughts fell into no articulate words. Her physical weakness rested against the chair; but the weakness of the soul seemed also to rest on some invisible support.
‘What is the matter with me to-day?’—she asked herself again, in bewilderment. ‘Is it an omen—a sign? All bonds seem loosened—the air lighter. What made me so miserable yesterday? I wanted him to come—and yet dreaded—dreaded it so! And now to-day I don’t care—I don’t care!’
She slipped into a sitting position and looked at the picture. A tiny garland of heath and myrtle was hung round it. The little fellow seemed to be tottering towards her, the eyes a little frightened, yet trusting, the gait unsteady.
‘Childie!’—she said in a whisper, smiling at him—‘Childie!’
Then with a long sigh, she rose, and feebly made her way to the
loggia
.
Her maid was waiting for her. But Eleanor refused her sofa. She would sit, looking out through the arches of the
loggia
, to the road, and the mountains.
‘Miss Foster is a long time,’ she said to Marie. ‘It is too hot for her to be out. And how odd! There is the Contessa’s carriage—and the Contessa herself—at this time of day. Run, Marie! Tell her I shall be delighted to see her. And bring another comfortable chair—there’s a dear.’
The Contessa mounted the stone stairs with the heavy masculine step that was characteristic of her.
‘
Vous permettez, madame!
‘—she said, standing in the doorway—‘at this unseasonable hour.’
Eleanor made her welcome. The portly Contessa seated herself with an involuntary gesture of fatigue.
‘What have you been doing?’ said Eleanor. ‘If you have been helping the harvesters,
je proteste
!’
She laid her hand laughingly on the Contessa’s knee. It seemed to her that the Contessa knew far more of the doings and affairs of her
contadini
than did the rather magnificent
fattore
of the estate. She was in and out among them perpetually. She quarrelled with them and hectored them; she had as good a command of the local dialect as they had; and an eye that pounced on cheating like an osprey on a fish. Nevertheless, as she threw in yet another evident trifle—that she cared more for them and their interests than for anything else in the world, now that her son was gone—they endured her rule, and were not actively ungrateful for her benefits. And, in her own view at any rate, there is no more that any rich person can ask of any poor one till another age of the world shall dawn.
She received Eleanor’s remark with an embarrassed air.
‘I have been doctoring an ox,’ she said, bluntly, as though apologising for herself. ‘It was taken ill last night, and they sent for me.’
‘But you are too, too wonderful!’ cried Eleanor in amusement. ‘Is it all grist that comes to your mill—sick oxen—or humans like me?’
The Contessa smiled, but she turned away her head.
‘It was Emilio’s craze,’ she said abruptly. ‘He knew every animal on the place. In his regiment they called him the “vet.,” because he was always patching up the sick and broken mules. One of his last messages to me was about an old horse. He taught me a few things—and sometimes I am of use—till the farrier comes.’
There was a little silence, which the Contessa broke abruptly.
‘I came, however, madame, to tell you something about myself. Teresa has made up her mind to leave me.’
‘Your daughter?’ cried Eleanor amazed. ‘
Fiancee?
’
The Contessa shook her head.
‘She is about to join the nuns of Santa Francesca. Her novitiate begins in October. Now she goes to stay with them for a few weeks.’
Eleanor was thunderstruck.
‘She leaves you alone?’
The Contessa mutely assented.
‘And you approve?’ said Eleanor hotly.
‘She has a vocation’—said the Contessa with a sigh.
‘She has a mother!’ cried Eleanor.
‘Ah! madame—you are a Protestant. These things are in our blood. When we are devout, like Teresa, we regard the convent as the gate of heaven. When we are Laodiceans—like me—we groan, and we submit.’
‘You will be absolutely alone,’ said Eleanor, in a low voice of emotion, ‘in this solitary place.’
The Contessa fidgetted. She was of the sort that takes pity hardly.
‘There is much to do,’—she said, shortly.
But then her fortitude a little broke down. ‘If I were ten years older, it would be all right,’ she said, in a voice that betrayed the mind’s fatigue with its own debate. ‘It’s the time it all lasts; when you are as strong as I am.’
Eleanor took her hand and kissed it.
‘Do you never take quite another line?’ she said, with sparkling eyes. ‘Do you never say—“This is my will, and I mean to have it! I have as much right to my way as other people?” Have you never tried it with Teresa?’
The Contessa opened her eyes.
‘But I am not a tyrant,’ she said, and there was just a touch of scorn in her reply.
Eleanor trembled.
‘We have so few years to live and be happy in,’ she said in a lower voice, a voice of self-defence.
‘That is not how it appears to me,’ said the Contessa slowly. ‘But then I believe in a future life.’
‘And you think it wrong ever to press—to
insist
upon—the personal, the selfish point of view?’
The Contessa smiled.
‘Not so much wrong, as futile. The world is not made so—_chere madame_.’
Eleanor sank back in her chair. The Contessa observed her emaciation, her pallor—and the pretty dress.
She remembered her friend’s letter, and the ‘Signor Manisty’ who should have married this sad, charming woman, and had not done so. It was easy to see that not only disease but grief was preying on Mrs. Burgoyne. The Contessa was old enough to be her mother. A daughter whom she had lost in infancy would have been Eleanor’s age, if she had lived.
‘Madame, let me give you a piece of advice’—she said suddenly, taking Eleanor’s hands in both her own—‘leave this place. It does not suit you. These rooms are too rough for you—or let me carry you off to the Palazzo, where I could look after you.’
Eleanor flushed.
‘This place is very good for me,’ she said with a wild fluttering breath. ‘To-day I feel so much better—so much lighter!’
The Contessa felt a pang. She had heard other invalids say such things before. The words rang like a dirge upon her ear. They talked a little longer. Then the Contessa rose, and Eleanor rose, too, in spite of her guest’s motion to restrain her.
As they stood together the elder woman in her strength suddenly felt herself irresistibly drawn towards the touching weakness of the other. Instead of merely pressing hands, she quickly threw her strong arms round Mrs. Burgoyne, gathered her for an instant to her broad breast, and kissed her.
Eleanor leant against her, sighing:
‘A vocation wouldn’t drag
me
away,’ she said gently.
And so they parted.
Eleanor hung over the
loggia
and watched the Contessa’s departure. As the small horses trotted away, with a jingling of bells and a fluttering of the furry tails that hung from their ears, the
padre parroco
passed. He took off his hat to the Contessa, then seeing Mrs. Burgoyne on the
loggia
, he gave her, too, a shy but smiling salutation.
His light figure, his young and dreamy air, suited well with the beautiful landscape through which it passed. Shepherd? or poet? Eleanor thought of David among the flocks.
‘He only wants the crook—the Scriptural crook. It would go quite well with the soutane.’
Then she became aware of another figure approaching on her right from the piece of open land that lay below the garden.
It was Father Benecke, and he emerged on the road just in front of the
padre parroco
.
The old priest took off his hat. Eleanor saw the sensitive look, the slow embarrassed gesture. The
padre parroco
passed without looking to the right or left. All the charming pliancy of the young figure had disappeared. It was drawn up to a steel rigidity.
Eleanor smiled and sighed.
‘David among the Philistines!—_Ce pauvre Goliath_! Ah! he is coming here?’
She withdrew to her sofa, and waited.
Marie, after instructions, and with that austerity of demeanour which she, too, never failed to display towards Father Benecke, introduced the visitor.
‘Entrez, mon pere, entrez,’ said Eleanor, holding out a friendly hand. ‘Are you, too, braving the sun? Did you pass Miss Foster? I wish she would come in—it is getting too hot for her to be out.’
‘Madame, I have not been on the road. I came around through the Sassetto. There I found no one.’
‘Pray sit down, Father. That chair has all its legs. It comes from Orvieto.’
But he did not accept her invitation—at least not at once. He remained hesitating—looking down upon her. And she, struck by his silence, struck by his expression, felt a sudden seizing of the breath. Her hand slid to her heart, with its fatal, accustomed gesture. She looked at him wildly, imploringly.
But the pause came to an end. He sat down beside her.
‘Madame, you have taken so kind an interest in my unhappy affairs that you will perhaps allow me to tell you of the letter that has reached me this morning. One of the heads of the Old Catholic community invites me to go and consult with them before deciding on the course of my future life. There are many difficulties. I am not altogether in sympathy with them. A married priesthood such as they have now adopted, is in my eyes a priesthood shorn of its strength. But the invitation is so kind, so brotherly, I must needs accept it.’
He bent forward, looking not at her, but at the brick floor of the
loggia
. Eleanor offered a few words of sympathy; but felt there was more to come.
‘I have also heard from my sister. She refuses to keep my house any longer. Her resentment at what I have done is very bitter—apparently insurmountable. She wishes to retire to a country place in Bavaria where we have some relations. She has a small
rente
, and will not be in any need.’
‘And you?’ said Eleanor quickly.
‘I must find work, madame. My book will bring me in a little, they say. That will give me time—and some liberty of decision. Otherwise of course I am destitute. I have lost everything. But my education will always bring me enough for bread. And I ask no more.’
Her compassion was in her eyes.
‘You too—old and alone—like the Contessa!’ she said under her breath.
He did not hear. He was pursuing his own train of thought, and presently he raised himself. Never had the apostolic dignity of his white head, his broad brow been more commanding. But what Eleanor saw, what perplexed her, was the subtle tremor of the lip, the doubt in the eyes.
‘So you see, madame, our pleasant hours are almost over. In a few days I must be gone. I will not attempt to express what I owe to your most kind, most indulgent sympathy. It seems to me that in the “dark wood” of my life it was your conversation—when my heart was so sorely cast down—which revived my intelligence—and so held me up, till—till I could see my way, and choose my path again. It has given me a great many new ideas—this companionship you have permitted me. I humbly confess that I shall always henceforward think differently of women, and of the relations that men and women may hold to one another. But then, madame—’
He paused. Eleanor could see his hand trembling on his knee.
She raised herself on her elbow.
‘Father Benecke! you have something to say to me!’
He hurried on.
‘The other day you allowed us to change the
roles
. You had been my support. You threw yourself on mine. Ah! Madame, have I been of any assistance to you—then, and in the interviews you have since permitted me? Have I strengthened your heart at all as you strengthened mine?’
His ardent, spiritual look compelled—and reassured her.
She sank back. A tear glittered on her brown lashes. She raised a hand to dash it away.
‘I don’t know, Father—I don’t know. But to-day—for some mysterious reason—I seem almost to be happy again. I woke up with the feeling of one who had been buried under mountains of rocks and found them rolled away; of one who had been passing through a delirium which was gone. I seem to care for nothing—to grieve for nothing. Sometimes you know that happens to people who are very ill. A numbness comes upon them.—But I am not numb. I feel everything. Perhaps, Father’—and she turned to him with her old sweet instinct—of one who loved to be loved—‘perhaps you have been praying for me?’