CHAPTER XV
'Can you stand this heat?' said Lucy, anxiously.
'Oh, it will soon be cooler,' was Eleanor's languid reply.
She and Lucy sat side by side in a large and ancient landau; Mrs. Burgoyne's maid, Marie Véfour, was placed opposite to them, a little sulky and silent. On the box, beside the driver of the lean brown horses, was a bright-eyed, neatly-dressed youth who was going with the ladies to Torre Amiata.
They had just left the hill-town of Orvieto, had descended rapidly into the valley lying to the south-west of its crested heights, and were now mounting again on the further side. As they climbed higher and higher Lucy, whose attention had been for a time entirely absorbed by the weariness of the frail woman beside her, began to realise that they were passing through a scene of extraordinary beauty. Her eyes, which had been drawn and anxious, relaxed. She looked round her with a natural and rising joy.
To their left, as the road turned in zig-zag to the east, was the marvellous town which the traveller who has seen Palestine likens to Jerusalem, so steep and high and straight is the crest of warm brown and orange precipice on which it stands, so deep the valleys round it, so strange and complete the fusion between the city and the rock, so conspicuous the place of the great cathedral, which is Orvieto, as the Temple was Zion.
It was the sixth of June, and the day had been very hot. The road was deep in thick white dust. The fig-trees and vines above the growing crops were almost at a full leafiness; scarlet poppies grew thick among the corn; and at the dusty edges of the road, wild roses of a colour singularly vivid and deep, the blue flowers of love-in-a-mist, and some spikes of wine-coloured gladiolus struck strangely on a northern eye.
Then as the road turned back again—behold! a great valley, opening out westward, beyond Orvieto,—the valley of the Paglia; a valley with wooded hills on either side, of a bluish-green colour, chequered with hill-towns and slim campaniles and winding roads; and binding it all in one, the loops and reaches of a full brown river. Heat everywhere!—on the blinding walls of the buildings, on the young green of the vineyards, on the yellowing corn, on the beautiful ragged children running barefoot and bareheaded beside the carriage, on the peasants working among the vines, on the drooping heads of the horses, on the brick-red face of the driver.
'If Madame had only stayed at Orvieto!' murmured Marie the maid, looking back at the city and then at her mistress.
Eleanor smiled faintly and tapped the girl's hand.