"And so 'the hobby-horse, the hobby-horse, was forgot'? But it was too kind of you even to propose this fag on my behalf, much less to try to carry it out. And yet—you are looking very tired, dear Miss Somers."
"I am not tired," she replied hastily; "I am exhausted. I—oh! these storms upset one's nerves."
"Which storms?" Ermengarde wondered, and came to the conclusion that nothing merely meteorological had caused this upset. Could it be remorse? or was it the connexion by marriage? How much easier, simpler, and sweeter life would be were there no men in the world, she reflected, though, like other Utopias and earthly paradises, she thought it might be just a trifle dull. And who knew that, not only man, but even the devil himself might have his uses in the economy of things? The latter supposition she prudently confided to the secrecy of her own breast, while murmuring sympathetic common-places to Agatha, until such time as it pleased the driver to brave the abating fury of the storm, and take them through the drenched town to the sheltered road under the plane-trees, and so to the foot of the ridge where there was nothing for it but to walk or ride up on donkeys and mules.
They chose the former alternative, the heavy rain having given place to a hailstorm by this time, and, before they had climbed in the shelter of vineyard-walls and steep rock-ledges to the first ridge, the hail gave over and the storm-beaten, indigo sea spread darkly, dashed with white foam-ridges, to their sight, when they stopped to take breath and shake out their skirts, whitened by hail.
Some fresh mimosa boughs in a jar of rough country pottery adorned one of the faded shrines of the Seven Sorrows. Who had placed it there, and in memory of what anguish? Agatha wondered, and Ermengarde told her of the phantom nuns Heinrich the porter had seen haunting the shrines at night.
"He must have believed that he saw them," she argued, "because nuns are improbable. If he had invented them, they would have had to be monks, since this was a male community—and still is—for the brothers come back occasionally now. How the people must miss them! They used to serve that church across the ravine. And look—this is how they got to their church."
She pointed to a long straight flight of narrow steps, hewn by hand-labour out of one steep and solid rock, making a long and giddy descent of slippery and uncertain footing where the narrow steep stairs were mossed and uneven; so steep and so long the flight was that the greater part of it was hidden from sight below.
Agatha looked with unseeing eyes, her heart too full of her grief to be interested in anything unconnected with it. She remembered well her first acquaintance with those pathetic shrines, deserted but still finding some humble hearts to honour them in their evil hour. She remembered her anguish and prayer—prayer she knew now ungranted—on the convent steps, in the very face of the consolation offered upon the cross planted there as if in welcome. All the earth had seemed full of silent prayer in the hush and glory of sunset, on that first evening; every hill and ridge had been an altar smoking with sacrificial incense, and the amphitheatre of mountains standing round the broad sweep of the bay a vast temple of adoration, in the centre of which the cross on the top of the steps spread out its welcoming, protecting arms.
She remembered, too, the sight that had afterwards met her gaze from the convent wall; and even now, as she walked wearily past the shrines, fancied the rank odours of musk and cigars tainting the purity of the sweet, still air. Even while she had been wrestling in prayer for him on that evening, Ivor had passed, laughing and fooling with that evil woman who had been his destruction.
Such agony overcame her at this thought that companionship of any kind was insupportable. She made some excuse for prolonging her walk in another direction, while Ermengarde took the most direct way home, under the steep on which the monastery garden spread its fertile terraces to the south, showering vine-trails, fig-branches and prickly pears down the walls to the very edge of the mule-path. But Agatha turned aside and climbed the slope where the cultivator's pink-walled house stood, or rather reclined, among fruit-trees and pergolas, and passed on and up to the convent steps, weariness of mind and body reacting upon each other to such a degree that she would fain have flung herself down on the wet herbage and risen no more. She had definitely asked the man who demanded and implored her love to renounce for her sake the vice that had brought him to ruin, and he had definitely refused to do so. He loved her; he besought, almost commanded her love, but would give up nothing for her. Even while proclaiming his own worthlessness he had claimed her entire devotion and self-sacrifice. What was such love worth? And what was such a man worth? Could he even be called a man and not rather a petulant, dissolute boy, heedless of all but his own comfort and enjoyment, unable to deny himself the gratification of any passion for any sake? And yet—he had shown some compunction in regard to his mother, had been really grieved to cause her pain and such privation as had been hitherto unknown to her. That is to say, he was not entirely without feeling for the woman who had loved and blessed him from his earliest breath, was not absolutely unnatural and unfilial. And yet Agatha loved him, in wild wonder that such as he should kindle love in any heart; and yet she felt that he had no real love for her, though he required and desired her whole heart's devotion.