The evening stillness came flooding into the great hollow like a soft resistless wave. Every now and then the voices of peasants going home rippled up from unseen paths, then sank again into the earth. On the high windows of Nemi the sunset light from the Campagna struck and flamed, 'Ave Maria—gratia plena.' How softened now, how thinly, delicately far! The singers must be nearing their homes in the little hill town.
Lucy looked around her. No one on the Giardino, no one in the fields near, no one on the Genzano road. She seemed to be absolutely alone. Her two companions indeed could not be far away, and the boys no doubt would come back for the baskets. But meanwhile she could see and hear no one.
The sun disappeared behind the Genzano ridge, and it grew cold all in a moment. She felt the chill, together with a sudden consciousness of fatigue. Was there fever in this hollow of the lake? Certainly the dwellings were all placed on the heights, save for the fisherman's cottage half-way to Genzano. She got up and began to move about, wishing for her cloak. But Mr. Manisty had carried it off, absently, on his arm.
Then she packed up the tea-things. What had happened to the party from
Rome?
Surely more than an hour had passed. Had it taken them longer to climb to the spring's source than they supposed? How fast the light was failing, the rich Italian light, impatient to be gone, claiming all or nothing!
The girl began to be a little shaken with vague discomforts and terrors. She had been accustomed to wander about the lake of Albano by herself, and to make friends with the peasants. But after all the roads would not be so closely patrolled by carabinieri if all was quite as safe as in Vermont or Middlesex; and there were plenty of disquieting stories current among the English visitors, even among the people themselves. Was it not only a month since a carriage containing some German royalties had been stopped and robbed by masked peasants on the Rocca di Papa road? Had not an old resident in Rome told her, only the day before, that when he walked about these lake paths he always filled his pockets with cigars and divested them of money, in order that the charcoal-burners might love him without robbing him? Had not friends of theirs going to Cori and Ninfa been followed by mounted police all the way?
These things weighed little with her as she wandered in broad daylight about the roads near the villa. But now she was quite alone, the night was coming, and the place seemed very desolate.
But of course they would be back directly! Why not walk to meet them? It was the heat and slackness of the day which had unnerved her. Perhaps, too, unknown to herself!—the stir of new emotions and excitements in a deep and steadfast nature.
She had marked the path they took, and she made her way to it. It proved to be very steep, dark, and stony under meeting trees. She climbed it laboriously, calling at intervals.
Presently—a sound of steps and hoofs. Looking up she could just distinguish a couple of led mules with two big lads picking their way down the rocky lane. There was no turning aside. She passed them with as much dispatch as possible.