Then she stooped over the letter. It seemed to her the ink was hardly dry on it—that it was still warm from Manisty's hand. The date of it was only three days old. And the place from which it came? Cosenza?—Cosenza in Calabria? Then he was still in Italy?
She put the letter back into Father Benecke's hands.
'Would you read it for me? I have rather a headache to-day.'
He read it with a somewhat embarrassed voice. She lay listening, with her eyes closed under her large hat, each hand trying to prevent the trembling of the other.
A strange pride swelled in her. It was a kind and manly letter, expressing far more personal sympathy with Benecke than Manisty had ever yet allowed himself—a letter wholly creditable indeed to the writer, and marked with a free and flowing beauty of phrase that brought home to Eleanor at every turn his voice, his movements, the ideas and sympathies of the writer.
Towards the end came the familiar Manisty-ism:
'All the same, their answer to you is still as good as ever. The system must either break up or go on. They naturally prefer that it should go on. But if it is worked by men like you, it cannot go on. Their instinct never wavers; and it is a true one.'
Then:
'I don't know how I have managed to write this letter—poor stuff as it is. My mind at this moment is busy neither with speculation nor politics. I am perched for the night on the side of a mountain thickly covered with beech woods, in a remote Calabrian hamlet, where however last year some pushing person built a small 'health resort,' to which a few visitors come from Naples and even from Rome. The woods are vast, the people savage. The brigands are gone, or going; of electric light there is plenty. I came this morning, and shall be gone to-morrow. I am a pilgrim on the face of Italy. For six weeks I have wandered like this, from the Northern Abruzzi downwards. Wherever holiday folk go to escape from the heat of the plains, I go. But my object is not theirs…. Nor is it yours, Padre. There are many quests in the world. Mine is one of the oldest that man knows. My heart pursues it, untired. And in the end I shall win to my goal.'
The old priest read the last paragraph in a hurried, unsteady voice. At every sentence he became aware of some electrical effect upon the delicate frame and face beside him; but he read on—not knowing how to save himself—lest she should think that he had omitted anything.