"Ah! the _carabiniere_ told me last night. He is excommunicated," said Lucy, under her breath.
And she repeated her conversation with the handsome Antonio. Eleanor capped it with the tale of the children.
"It"s his book," said Lucy, frowning. "What a tyranny!"
They were both silent. Lucy was thinking of the drive to Nemi, of Manisty"s words and looks; Eleanor recalled the priest"s last visit to the villa and that secret storm of feeling which had overtaken her as she bade him good-bye.
But when Lucy speculated on what might have happened, Eleanor hardly responded. She fell into a dreamy silence from which it was difficult to rouse her. It was very evident to Lucy that Father Benecke"s personal plight interested her but little. Her mind could not give it room. What absorbed her was the feverish question: Were they safe any longer at Torre Amiata, or must they strike camp and go further?
CHAPTER XVII
The day grew very hot, and Eleanor suffered visibly, even though the quality of the air remained throughout pure and fresh, and Lucy in the shelter of the broad _loggia_ felt nothing but a keen physical enjoyment of the glow and blaze that held the outer world.
After their midday meal Lucy was sitting idly on the outer wall of the _loggia_ which commanded the bit of road just outside the convent, when she perceived a figure mounting the hill.
"Father Benecke!" she said to Eleanor. "What a climb for him in this heat!
Did you say he had gone to Selvapendente? Poor old man!--how hot and tired he looks!--and with that heavy parcel too!"
And withdrawing herself a little out of sight she watched the priest. He had just paused in a last patch of shade to take breath after the long ascent. Depositing the bundle he had been carrying on a wayside stone, he took out his large coloured handkerchief and mopped the perspiration from his face with long sighs of exhaustion. Then with his hands on his sides he looked round him. Opposite to him was a little shrine, with the usual rude fresco and enthroned Madonna behind a grating. The priest walked over to it, and knelt down.
In a few minutes he returned and took up his parcel. As he entered the outer gate of the convent, Lucy could see him glancing nervously from side to side. But it was the hour of siesta and of quiet. His tormentors of the morning were all under cover.
The parcel that he carried had partly broken out of its wrappings during the long walk, and Lucy could see that it contained clothes of some kind.
"Poor Father!" she said again to Eleanor. "Couldn"t he have got some boy to carry that for him? How I should like to rest him and give him some coffee?
Shall I send Cecco to ask him to come here?"
Eleanor shook her head.
"Better not. He wouldn"t come. We shall have to tame him like a bird."
The hours pa.s.sed on. At last the western sun began to creep round into the _loggia_. The empty cells on the eastern side were now cool, but they looked upon the inner cloistered court which was alive with playing children, and all the farm life. Eleanor shrank both from noise and spectators. Yet she grew visibly more tired and restless, and Lucy went out to reconnoitre. She came back recommending a descent into the forest.
So they braved a few yards of sun-scorched road and plunged into a little right-hand track, which led downward through a thick undergrowth of heath and arbutus towards what seemed the cool heart of the woods.
Presently they came to a small gate, and beyond appeared a broad, well-kept path, winding in zig-zags along the forest-covered side of the hill.
"This must be private," said Eleanor, looking at the gate in some doubt.
"And there you see is the Palazzo Guerrini."
She pointed. Above them through a gap in the trees showed the great yellow pile on the edge of the plateau, the forest stretching steeply up to it and enveloping it from below.
"There is nothing to stop us," said Lucy. "They won"t turn us out, if it is theirs. I can"t have you go through that sun again."
And she pressed on, looking for shade and rest.
But soon she stopped, with a little cry, and they both stood looking in astonishment at the strange and lovely thing upon which they had stumbled unawares.
"I know!" cried Lucy. "The woman at the convent tried to tell me--and I couldn"t understand. She said we must see the "Sa.s.setto"--that it was a wonder--and all the strangers thought so. And it _is_ a wonder! And so cool!"
Down from the very brow of the hill, in an age before man was born, the giant force of some primeval convulsion had flung a lava torrent of molten rock to the bed of the Paglia. And there still was the torrent--a rock-stream composed of huge blocks of basalt--flowing in one vast steep fall, a couple of hundred yards wide, through the forest from top to bottom of the hill.
And very grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and the powers of the Italian soil. But the forest and its lovely undergrowths, its heaths and creepers, its ferns and periwinkles, its lichen and mosses had thrown themselves on the frozen lava, had decked and softened its wild shapes, had reared oaks and pines amid the clefts of basalt, and planted all the crannies below with lighter, featherier green, till in the dim forest light all that had once been terror had softened into grace, and Nature herself had turned her freak to poetry.
And throughout the "Sa.s.setto" there reigned a peculiar and delicious coolness--the blended breath of mountain and forest. The smooth path that Eleanor and Lucy had been following wound in and out among the strange rock-ma.s.ses, bearing the signs of having been made at great cost and difficulty. Soon, also, benches of grey stone began to mark the course of it at frequent intervals.
"We must live here!" cried Lucy in enchantment. "Let me spread the shawl for you--there!--just in front of that glimpse of the river."
They had turned a corner of the path. Lucy, whose gaze was fixed upon the blue distance towards Orvieto, heard a hurried word from Eleanor, looked round, and saw Father Benecke just rising from a seat in front.
A shock ran through her. The priest stood hesitating and miserable before them, a hot colour suffusing his hollow cheeks. Lucy saw that he was no longer in clerical dress. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and a hat of fine Leghorn straw with a broad black ribbon. Both ladies almost feared to speak to him.
Then Lucy ran forward, her cheeks too a bright red, her eyes wet and sparkling. "How do you do, Father Benecke? You won"t remember me, but I was just introduced to you that day at luncheon--don"t you remember--on the Aventine?"
The priest took her offered hand, and looked at her in astonishment.
"Yes--I remember--you were with Miss Manisty."
"I wish you had asked me to come with you this morning," cried the girl suddenly. "I"d have helped you carry that parcel up the hill. It was too much for you in the heat."
Her face expressed the sweetest, most pa.s.sionate sympathy, the indignant homage of youth to old age unjustly wounded and forsaken. Eleanor was no less surprised than Father Benecke. Was this the stiff, the reticent Lucy?
The priest struggled for composure, and smiled as he withdrew his hand.
"You would have found it a long way, Signorina. I tried to get a boy at Selvapendente, but no one would serve me."
He paused a moment, then resumed speaking with a sort of pa.s.sionate reluctance, his eyes upon the ground.
"I am a suspended priest--and the Bishop of Orvieto has notified the fact to his clergy. The news was soon known through the whole district. And now it seems the people hate me. They will do nothing for me. Nay, if they could, they would willingly do me an injury."
The flush had died out of the old cheeks. He stood bareheaded before them, the tonsure showing plainly amid his still thick white locks--the delicate face and hair, like a study in ivory and silver, thrown out against the deep shadows of the Sa.s.setto.
"Father, won"t you sit down and tell me about it all?" said Eleanor gently.
"You didn"t send me away, you know--the other day--at the villa."
The priest sighed and hesitated. "I don"t know, Madame, why I should trouble you with my poor story.
"It would not trouble me. Besides, I know so much of it already."
She pointed to the bench he had just left.
"And I," said Lucy, "will go and fetch a book I left in the _loggia_.
Father Benecke, Mrs. Burgoyne is not strong. She has walked more than enough. Will you kindly make her rest while I am gone?"
She fixed upon him her kind beseeching eyes. The sympathy, the homage of the two women enveloped the old man. His brow cleared a little.