Eleanor, Mrs. Humphry Ward [best books to read now .txt] 📗

of the English political party to which ancestrally he belonged, in whose interests he had entered Parliament and taken office. He had broken with his party on the ground that it had become a party of revolution, especially in matters connected with Religion and Education; and having come abroad to escape for a time from the personal frictions and agitations which his conduct had brought upon him, he had thrown himself into a passionate and most hostile study of Italy--Italy, the new country, made by revolution, fashioned, so far as laws and government can do it, by the lay modern spirit--as an object-lesson to England and the world. The book was in reality a party pamphlet, written by a man whose history and antecedents, independently of his literary ability, made his work certain of readers and of vogue.

That, however, was not what Mrs. Burgoyne was thinking of.--She was anxiously debating with herself certain points of detail, points of form.

These fragments of poetical prose which Manisty had interspersed amid a serious political argument--were they really an adornment of the book, or a blur upon it? He had a natural tendency towards colour and exuberance in writing; he loved to be leisurely, and a little sonorous; there was something old-fashioned and Byronic in his style and taste. His sentences, perhaps, were short; but his manner was not brief. The elliptical fashion of the day was not his. He liked to wander through his subject, dreaming, poetising, discussing at his will. It was like a return to _vetturino_ after the summary haste of the railway. And so far the public had welcomed this manner of his. His earlier book (the 'Letters from Palestine'), with its warm, over-laden pages, had found many readers and much fame.

But here--in a strenuous political study, furnished with all the facts and figures that the student and the debater require--representing, too, another side of the man, just as vigorous and as real, were these intrusions of poetry wise or desirable? Were they in place? Was the note of them quite right? Was it not a little turbid--uncertain?

That prose poem of 'The Priest of Nemi,' for example?

Ah! Nemi!--the mere thought of it sent a thrill of pleasure through her. That blue lake in its green cup on the edge of the Campagna, with its ruins and its legends--what golden hours had she and Manisty spent there! It had caught their fancy from the beginning--the site of the great temple, the wild strawberry fields, the great cliffs of Nemi and Genzano, the bright-faced dark-eyed peasants with their classical names--Aristodemo, Oreste, Evandro.

And that strange legend of the murdered priest--

'The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain'--

--what modern could not find something in that--some stimulus to fancy--some hint for dreaming?

Yes--it had been very natural--very tempting. But!--

... So she pondered,--a number of acute, critical instincts coming into play. And presently her thoughts spread and became a vague reverie, covering a multitude of ideas and images that she and Manisty now had in common. How strange that she and he should be engaged in this work together!--this impassioned defence of tradition, of Catholicism and the Papacy, as the imperishable, indestructible things--'chastened and not killed--dying, and behold they live'--let the puny sons of modern Italy rage and struggle as they may. He--one of the most thorough sceptics of his day, as she had good reason to know--she, a woman who had at one time ceased to believe because of an intolerable anguish, and was now only creeping slowly back to faith, to hope, because--because--

Ah!--with a little shiver, she recalled her thought, as a falconer might his bird, before it struck. Oh! this old, old Europe, with its complexities, its manifold currents and impulses, every human being an embodied contradiction--no simplicity, no wholeness anywhere--none possible!

She opened her eyes languidly, and they rested on Lucy Foster's head and profile bent over her book. Mrs. Burgoyne's mind filled with a sudden amused pity for the girl's rawness and ignorance. She seemed the fitting type of a young crude race with all its lessons to learn; that saw nothing absurd in its Methodists and Universalists and the rest--confident, as a child is, in its cries and whims and prejudices. The American girl, fresh from her wilds, and doubtful whether she would go to see the Pope in St. Peter's, lest she should have to bow the knee to Antichrist--the image delighted the mind of the elder woman. She played with it, finding fresh mock at every turn.

* * * * *

'Eleanor!--now I have rewritten it. Tell me how it runs.'

Lucy Poster looked up. She saw that Mr. Manisty, carrying a sheaf of papers in his hand, had thrown himself into a chair behind Mrs. Burgoyne. His look was strenuous and absorbed, his tumbling black hair had fallen forward as though in a stress of composition; he spoke in a low, imperative voice, like one accustomed to command the time and the attention of those about him.

'Read!' said Mrs. Burgoyne, turning her slender neck that she might look at him and hear. He began to read at once in a deep, tremulous voice, and as though he were quite unconscious of any other presence in the room than hers. Miss Foster, who was sitting at a little distance, supposed she ought not to listen. She was about to close her book and rise, when Miss Manisty touched her on the arm.

'It disturbs him if we move about!' said the little spinster in a smiling whisper, her finger on her lip. And suddenly the girl was conscious of a lightning flash from lifted eyes--a look threatening and peremptory. She settled herself into her chair again as quietly as possible, and sat with head bent, a smile she could not repress playing round her lips. It was all she could do indeed not to laugh, so startling and passionate had been the monition conveyed in Mr. Manisty's signal. That the great man should take little notice of his aunt's guest was natural enough. But to be frowned upon the first evening, as though she were a troublesome child!--she did not resent it at all, but it tickled her sense of humour. She thought happily of her next letter to Uncle Ben; how she would describe these rather strange people.

And at first she hardly listened to what was being read. The voice displeased her. It was too emphatic--she disliked its tremolo, its deep bass vibrations. Surely one should read more simply!

Then the first impression passed away altogether. She looked up--her eyes fastened themselves on the reader--her lips parted--the smile changed.

* * * * *

What the full over-rich voice was calling up before her was a little morning scene, as Virgil might have described it, passing in the hut of a Latian peasant farmer, under Tiberius.

It opened with the waking at dawn of the herdsman Caeculus and his little son, in their round thatched cottage on the ridge of Aricia, beneath the Alban Mount. It showed the countryman stepping out of his bed into the darkness, groping for the embers on the hearth, re-lighting his lamp, and calling first to his boy asleep on his bed of leaves, then to their African servant, the negro slave-girl with her wide mouth, her tight woolly hair. One by one the rustic facts emerged, so old, so ever new:--Caeculus grinding his corn, and singing at his work--the baking of the flat wheaten cakes on the hot embers--the gathering of herbs from the garden--the kneading them with a little cheese and oil to make a relish for the day--the harnessing of the white steers under the thonged yoke--the man going forth to his ploughing, under the mounting dawn, clad in his goatskin tunic and his leathern hat,--the boy loosening the goats from their pen beside the hut, and sleepily driving them past the furrows where his father was at work, to the misty woods beyond.

With every touch, the earlier world revived, grew plainer in the sun, till the listener found herself walking with Manisty through paths that cut the Alban Hills in the days of Rome's first imperial glory, listening to his tale of the little goatherd, and of Nemi.

* * * * *

'So the boy--Quintus--left the ploughed lands, and climbed a hill above the sleeping town. And when he reached the summit, he paused and turned him to the west.

'The Latian plain spreads beneath him in the climbing sun; at its edge is the sea in a light of pearl; the white fishing-boats sparkle along the shore. Close at his feet runs a straight road high upon the hill. He can see the country folk on their laden mules and donkeys journeying along it, journeying northwards to the city in the plain that the spurs of the mountain hide from him. His fancy goes with them, along the Appian Way, trotting with the mules. When will his father take him again to Rome to see the shops, and the Forum, and the new white temples, and Caesar's great palace on the hill?

'Then carelessly his eyes pass southward, and there beneath him in its hollow is the lake--the round blue lake that Diana loves, where are her temple and her shadowy grove. The morning mists lie wreathed above it; the just-leafing trees stand close in the great cup; only a few patches of roof and column reveal the shrine.

'On he moves. His wheaten cake is done. He takes his pipe from his girdle, touches it, and sings.

'His bare feet as he moves tread down the wet flowers. Bound him throng the goats; suddenly he throws down his pipe; he runs to a goat heavy with milk; he presses the teats with his quick hands; the milk flows foaming into the wooden cup he has placed below; he drinks, his brown curls sweeping the cup; then he picks up his pipe and walks on proudly before his goats, his lithe body swaying from side to side as he moves, dancing to the music that he makes. The notes float up into the morning air; the echo of them runs round the shadowy hollow of the lake.

'Down trips the boy, parting the dewy branches with his brown shoulders. Around him the mountain side is golden with the broom; at his feet the white cistus covers the rock. The shrubs of the scattered wood send out their scents; and the goats browse upon their shoots.

'But the path sinks gently downward--winding along the basin of the lake. And now the boy emerges from the wood; he stands upon a knoll to rest.

'Ah! sudden and fierce comes the sun!--and there below him in the rich hollow it strikes the temple--Diana's temple and her grove. Out flame the white columns, the bronze roof, the white enclosing walls. Piercingly white the holy and famous place shines among the olives and the fallows; the sun burns upon the marble; Phoebus salutes his great sister. And in the waters of the lake reappear the white columns; the blue waves dance around