Soon he began to neglect his work of a morning that he might wander out to meet the postman beyond the bridge. And when the man passed him by with a short 'Non c' è niente,' the priest would turn homeward, glad almost that for one day more he was not called upon to face the judgment in Lucy Foster's face on what he had done.
* * * * *
The middle of July was past. The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel had come and gone, bringing processions and music, with a Madonna under a gold baldacchino, to glorify the little deserted chapel on the height.
Eleanor had watched the crowds and banners, the red-robed Compagni di Gesù, the white priests, and veiled girls, with a cold averted eye. Lucy looked back with a pang to Marinata, and to the indulgent pleasure that Eleanor had once taken in all the many-coloured show of Catholicism. Now she was always weary, and often fretful. It struck Lucy too that she was more restless than ever. She seemed to take no notice of the present—to be always living in the future—expecting, listening, waiting. The gestures and sudden looks that expressed this attitude of mind were often of the weirdest effect. Lucy could have thought her haunted by some unseen presence. Physically she was not, perhaps, substantially worse. But her state was more appealing, and the girl's mind towards her more pitiful day by day.
One thing, however, she was determined on. They would not spend August at Torre Amiata. It would need stubbornness with Eleanor to bring her to the point of change. But stubbornness there should be.
One morning, a day or two after the festa, Lucy left Eleanor on the loggia, while she herself ran out for a turn before their midday meal. There had been fierce rain in the morning, and the sky was still thick with thunder clouds promising more.
She escaped into a washed and cooled world. But the thirsty earth had drunk the rain at a gulp. The hill which had been running with water was almost dry, the woods had ceased to patter; on all sides could be felt the fresh restoring impulse of the storm. Nature seemed to be breathing from a deeper chest—shaking her free locks in a wilder, keener air—to a long-silent music from the quickened river below.
Lucy almost ran down the hill, so great was the physical relief of the rain and the cloudy morning. She needed it. Her spirits, too, had been uneven, her cheek paler of late.
She wore a blue cotton dress, fitting simply and closely to the young rounded form. Round her shapely throat and the lace collar that showed Eleanor's fancy and seemed to herself a little too elaborate for the morning, she wore a child's coral necklace—a gleam of red between the abundant black of her hair and the soft blue of her dress. Her hat, a large Leghorn, with a rose in it, framed the sweet gravity of her face. She was more beautiful than when she had said good-bye to Uncle Ben on the Boston platform. But it was a beauty that for his adoring old heart would have given new meaning to 'that sad word, Joy.'
She turned into the Sassetto and pushed upwards through its tumbled rocks and trees to the seat commanding the river and the mountains.