She was too feeble to protest. Manisty spoke to the man leading the horse, bidding him draw on one side, so as to avoid a stony bit of path. Then the reins fell from her stiff right hand, which seemed to be still trembling with cold. Instantly Manisty gathered them up, and replaced them in the chill fingers. As he did so he realised with a curious pleasure that the hand and wrist, though not small, were still beautiful, with a fine shapely strength.
Presently, as they mounted the steep ascent towards the Sforza Cesarini woods, he made her rest half way.
'How those stones must have jarred you!'—he said frowning, as he turned the horse, so that she sat easily, without strain.
'No! It was nothing. Oh—glorious!'
For she found herself looking towards the woods of the south-eastern ridge of the lake, over which the moon had now fully risen. The lake was half shade, half light; the fleecy forests on the breast of Monte Cavo rose soft as a cloud into the infinite blue of the night-heaven. Below, a silver shaft struck the fisherman's hut beside the shore, where, deep in the water's breast, lie the wrecked ships of Caligula,—the treasure ships—whereof for seventy generations the peasants of Nemi have gone dreaming.
As they passed the hut,—half an hour before—Manisty had drawn her attention, in the dim light, to the great beams from the side of the nearer ship, which had been recently recovered by the divers, and were lying at the water's edge. And he had told her,—with a kindling eye—how he himself, within the last few months, had seen fresh trophies recovered from the water,—a bronze Medusa above all, fiercely lovely, the work of a most noble and most passionate art, not Greek though taught by Greece, fresh, full-blooded, and strong, the art of the Empire in its eagle-youth.
'Who destroyed the ships, and why?' he said, as they paused, looking down upon the lake. 'There is not a shred of evidence. One can only dream. They were a madman's whim; incredibly rich in marble, and metal, and terra-cotta, paid for, no doubt, from the sweat and blood of this country-side. Then the young monster who built and furnished them was murdered on the Palatine. Can't you see the rush of an avenging mob down this steep lane?—the havoc and the blows—the peasants hacking at the statues and the bronzes—loading their ox-carts perhaps with the plunder—and finally letting in the lake upon the wreck! Well!—somehow like that it must have happened. The lake swallowed them; and, in spite of all the efforts of the Renaissance people, who sent down divers, the lake has kept them, substantially, till now. Not a line about them in any known document! History knows nothing. But the peasants handed down the story from father to son. Not a fisherman on this lake, for eighteen hundred years, but has tried to reach the ships. They all believed—they still believe—that they hold incredible treasures. But the lake is jealous—they lie deep!'
Lucy bent forward, peering into the blue darkness of the lake, trying to see with his eyes, to catch the same ghostly signals from the past. The romance of the story and the moment, Manisty's low, rushing speech, the sparkle of his poet's look—the girl's fancy yielded to the spell of them; her breath came quick and soft. Through all their outer difference, Manisty suddenly felt the response of her temperament to his. It was delightful to be there with her—delightful to be talking to her.
'I was on the shore,' he continued, 'watching the divers at work, on the day they drew up the Medusa. I helped the man who drew her up to clean the slime and mud from them, and the vixen glared at me all the time, as though she thirsted to take vengeance upon us all. She had had time to think about it,—for she sank perhaps ten years after the Crucifixion,—while Mary still lived in the house of John!'
His voice dropped to the note of reverie, and a thrill passed through Lucy. He turned the horse's head towards Genzano, and they journeyed on in silence. She indeed was too weak for many words; but enwrapped as it were by the influences around her,—of the place, the evening beauty, the personality of the man beside her,—she seemed to be passing through a many-coloured dream, of which the interest and the pleasure never ceased.