Meanwhile the girls and women gathering among the strawberries, raised themselves to look at the party, flashing their white teeth at Aristodemo, who was evidently a wit among them. They flung him gibes as he passed, to which he replied disdainfully. A group of girls who had been singing together, turned round upon him, 'chaffing' him with shrill voices and outstretched necks, like a flock of young cackling geese, while he, holding himself erect, threw them back flinty words and glances, hitting at every stroke, striding past them with the port of a young king. Then they broke into a song which they could hardly sing for laughing—about a lover who had been jilted by his mistress. Aristodemo turned a deaf ear, but the mocking song, sung by the harsh Italian voices, seemed to fill the hollow of the lake and echoed from the steep side of the crater. The afternoon sun, striking from the ridge of Genzano, filled the rich tangled cup, and threw its shafts into the hollows of the temple wall. Lucy standing still under the heat and looking round her, felt herself steeped and bathed in Italy. Her New England reserve betrayed almost nothing; but underneath, there was a young passionate heart, thrilling to nature and the spring, conscious too of a sort of fate in these delicious hours, that were so much sharper and full of meaning than any her small experience had yet known.
She walked on to look at the niched wall, while Manisty and Eleanor parleyed with Aristodemo as to the guardianship of the tea. Presently she heard their steps behind her, and she turned back to them eagerly.
'The boy was in that tree!'—she said to Manisty, pointing to a great olive that flung its branches over a mass of ruin, which must once have formed part of an outer enclosure wall beyond the statued recesses.
'Was he?' said Manisty, surprised into a smile. 'You know best.—You are very kind to that nonsense.'
She hesitated.
'Perhaps—perhaps you don't know why I liked it so particularly. It reminded me of things in your other book.'
'The "Letters from Palestine"?' said Manisty, half amused, half astonished.
'I suppose you wonder I should have seen it? But we read a great deal in my country! All sorts of people read—men and women who do the roughest work with their hands, and never spend a cent on themselves they can help. Uncle Ben gave it me. There was a review of it in the "Springfield Republican"—I guess they will have sent it you. But'—her voice took a shy note—'do you remember that piece about the wedding feast at Cana—where you imagined the people going home afterwards over the hill paths—how they talked, and what they felt?'
'I remember something of the sort,' said Manisty—I wrote it at
Nazareth—in the spring. I'm sure it was bad!'
'I don't know why you say that?' She knit her brows a little. 'If I shut my eyes, I seemed to be walking with them. And so with your goat-herd. I'm certain it was that tree!' she said, pointing to the tree, her bright smile breaking. 'And the grove was here.—And the people came running down from the village on the cliff,'—she turned her hand towards Nemi.