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

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?'

She smiled at him half shyly. But he did not see it. His head bent lower and lower.

'Thank God!' he said, with the humblest emphasis. 'Then, madame--perhaps--you will find the force--to forgive me!'

The words were low--the voice steady.

Eleanor sprang up.

'Father Benecke!--what have you been doing? Is--is Mr. Manisty here?'

She clung to the _loggia_ parapet for support. The priest looked at her pallor with alarm, with remorse, and spoke at once.

'He came to me last night.'

Their eyes met, as though in battle--expressed a hundred questions--a hundred answers. Then she broke the silence.

'Where is he?' she said imperiously.' Ah!--I see--I see!'

She sat down, fronting him, and panting a little.

'Miss Foster is not with me. Mr. Manisty is not with you. The inference is easy.--And you planned it! You took--you _dared_ to take--as much as this--into your own hands!'

He made no reply. He bent like a reed in the storm.

'There is no boldness like a saint's'--she said bitterly,--'no hardness--like an angel's! What I would not have ventured to do with my closest friend, my nearest and dearest--you--a stranger--have done--with a light heart. Oh! it is monstrous!--monstrous!'

She moved her neck from side to side as though she was suffocating--throwing back the light ruffle that encircled it.

'A stranger?'--he said slowly. His intense yet gentle gaze confronted hers.

'You refer, I suppose, to that most sacred, most intimate confidence I made to you?--which no man of honour or of heart could have possibly betrayed,'--she said passionately. 'Ah! you did well to warn me that it was no true confession--under no true seal! You should have warned me further--more effectually.'

Her paleness was all gone. Her cheeks flamed. The priest felt that she was beside herself, and, traversed as his own mind was with the most poignant doubts and misgivings, he must needs wrestle with her, defend himself.

'Madame!--you do me some wrong,' he said hurriedly. 'At least in words I have told nothing--betrayed nothing. When I left him an hour ago Mr. Manisty had no conception that you were here. After my first letter to him, he tells me that he relinquished the idea of coming to Torre Amiata, since if you had been staying here, I must have mentioned it.'

Eleanor paused. 'Subterfuge!' she cried, under her breath. Then, aloud--'You asked him to come.'

'That, madame, is my crime,' he admitted, with a mild and painful humility. 'Your anger hits me hard. But--do you remember?--you placed three lives in my hands. I found you helpless; you asked for help. I saw you day by day, more troubled, yet, as it seemed to me, more full of instincts towards generosity, towards peace. I felt--oh! madame, I felt with all my heart, that there lay just one step between you and a happiness that would compensate you a thousand times for all you had gone through. You say that I prayed for you. I did--often--and earnestly. And it seemed to me that--in our later conversations--I saw such signs of grace in you--such exquisite dispositions of the heart--that were the chance of action once more given to you--you would find the strength to seize the blessing that God offered you. And one evening in particular, I found you in an anguish that seemed to be destroying you. And you had opened your heart to me; you had asked my help as a Christian priest. And so, madame, as you say--I dared. I said, in writing to Mr. Manisty, who had told me he was coming northward--"if Torre Amiata is not far out of your road--look in upon me." Neither your name nor Miss Foster's passed my lips. But since--I confess--I have lived in much disturbance of mind!'

Eleanor laughed.

'Are all priests as good casuists as you, Father?'

His eyes wavered a little as though her words stung. But he did not reply.

There was a pause. Eleanor turned towards the parapet and looked outward towards the road and the forest. Her face and eyes were full of an incredible animation; her lips were lightly parted to let the quick breath pass.

Then of a sudden she withdrew. Her eyes moved back to Father Benecke; she bent forward and held out both her hands.

'Father--I forgive you! Let us make peace.'

He took the small fingers into his large palms with a gratitude that was at once awkward and beautiful.

'I don't know yet'--he said, in a deep perplexity--'whether I absolve myself.'

'You will soon know,' she said almost with gaiety. 'Oh! it is quite possible'--she threw up one hand in a wild childish gesture--'it is quite possible that to-morrow I may be at your feet, asking you to give me penance for my rough words. On the other hand--Anyway, Father, you have not found me a very dutiful penitent?'

'I expected castigation,' he said meekly. 'If the castigation is done, I have come off better than I could have hoped.'

She raised herself, and took up her gloves that were lying on the little table beside her sofa.

'You see'--she said, talking very fast--'I am an Englishwoman, and my race is not a docile one. Here, in this village, I have noticed a good deal, and the _massaja_ gossips to me. There was a fight in the street the other night. The men were knifing each other. The _parroco_ sent them word that they should come at once to his house--_per pacificarli_. They went. There is a girl, living with her sister, whose husband has a bad reputation. The _parroco_ ordered her to leave--found another home for her. She left. There is a lad who made some blasphemous remarks in the street on the day of the Madonna's procession. The _parroco_ ordered him to do penance. He did it. But those things are not English. Perhaps they are Bavarian?'

He winced, but he had recovered his composure.

'Yes, madame, they are Bavarian also. But it seems that even an Englishwoman can sometimes feel the need of another judgment than her own?'

She smiled. All the time that she had made her little speech about the village, she had been casting quick glances along the road. It was evident that her mind was only half employed with what she was saying. The rose-flush in her cheeks, the dainty dress, the halo of fair hair gave her back youth and beauty; and the priest gazed at her in astonishment.

'Ah!'--she said, with a vivacity that was almost violence--'here she is. Father--please--!' And with a peremptory gesture, she signed to him to draw back, as she had done, into the shadow, out of sight of the road.

But the advancing figure was plain to both of them.

Lucy mounted the hill with a slow and tired step. Her eyes were on the ground. The whole young form drooped under the heat, and under a weight of thought still more oppressive. As it came nearer a wave of sadness seemed to come with it, dimming the sunshine and the green splendour of the woods.

As she passed momentarily out of sight behind some trees that sheltered the gate of the courtyard, Mrs. Burgoyne crossed the _loggia_, and called to her maid.

'Marie--be so good as to tell Miss Foster when she comes