She moved on, wondering.
Oh, those woods! How they sank, like great resting clouds below her, to the shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north. Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to the 'Saturnian land.'
And beyond all, the blue mountains, ætherially light, like dreams on the horizon; and above all, the radiant serenity of the sky.
Ah! there spoke the nightingales, and that same melancholy note of the little brown owl which used to haunt the olive grounds of Marinata. Lucy held her breath. The tears rushed into her eyes—tears of memory, tears of longing.
But she drove them back. Standing on a little cleared space beside the road that commanded the whole night scene, she threw herself into the emotion and poetry which could be yielded to without remorse, without any unnerving of the will. How far, far she was from Uncle Ben, and that shingled house in Vermont! It was near midsummer, and all the English and Americans had fled from this Southern Italy. Italy was at home, and at ease in her own house, living her own rich immemorial life, knowing and thinking nothing of the foreigner. Nor indeed on those uplands and in those woods had she ever thought of him; though below in the valley ran the old coach road from Florence to Rome, on which Goethe and Winckelmann had journeyed to the Eternal City. Lucy felt as though, but yesterday a tourist and stranger, she had now crept like a child into the family circle. Nay, she had raised a corner of Italy's mantle, and drawn close to the warm breast of one of the great mother-lands of the world.
Ah! but feeling sweeps fast and far, do what we will. Soon she was struggling out of her depth. These weeks of rushing experience had been loosening soul and tongue. To-night how she could have talked of these things to one now parted from her, perhaps for ever! How he would have listened to her—impatiently often! How he would have mocked and rent her! But then the quick softening—and the beautiful kindling eye—the dogmatism at once imperative and sweet—the tyranny that a woman might both fight and love!
Yet how painful was the thought of Manisty! She was ashamed—humiliated. Their flight assumed as a certainty what after all, let Eleanor say what she would, he had never, never said to her—what she had no clear authority to believe. Where was he? What was he thinking? For a moment, her heart fluttered towards him like a homing bird.
Then in a sharp and stern reaction she rebuked, she chastened herself. Standing there in the night, above the forests, looking over to the dim white cliffs on the side of Monte Amiata, she felt herself, in this strange and beautiful land, brought face to face with calls of the spirit, with deep voices of admonition and pity that rose from her own inmost being.
With a long sigh, like one that lifts a weight she raised her young arms above her head, and then brought her hands down slowly upon her eyes, shutting out sight and sense. There was a murmur—
'Mother!—darling mother!—if you were just here—for one hour—'