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Updated: May 8, 2025
At the foot of the stairs she paused. The wall of the garden divided them from the courtyard, and on the other side of it they could hear Lucy speaking to the massaja. 'Now! said Eleanor, 'quick I before she discovers us! And opening the garden door with the priest's help she passed into the field, and took a wide circuit to the right so as to be out of view of the loggia.
It represented a tall young man in an Artillery uniform. The face was handsome, eager, and yet melancholy. It seemed to express a character at once impatient and despondent, but held in check by a strong will. With a shiver Eleanor again recalled the ghastly incidents of the war; and the story they had heard from the massaja of the young man's wound and despair.
Meanwhile Eleanor had gossiped with the massaja, or farmer's wife, and had found out that there were a few habitable rooms in the convent still, roughly furnished, and that in summer, people of a humble sort came there sometimes from Orvieto for coolness and change the plateau being 3,000 feet above the sea. Eleanor had inquired if English people ever came.
The massaja told us they took in people for the summer. Ah! There are some lights, I see, in those upper windows. 'There are rooms in several parts of the building. Mine were in that further wing. They were hardly watertight, said the priest hastily, and in the same subdued voice. 'It is a place that one might easily rest in or hide in, said Manisty with a new accent on the last words.
'I understand, Madame, she said, after Eleanor had expressed her thanks with the pretty effusion that was natural to her, 'that you were at Torre Amiata last autumn? Eleanor started. The massaja, she supposed, had been gossiping. It was disagreeable, but good-breeding bade her be frank. 'Yes, I was here with some friends, and your agent gave us hospitality for the night.
Signorina! venga venga lei. And beckoning to Lucy she pulled open a door that had remained unnoticed in the corner of the room. Lucy and Eleanor followed. Even Eleanor joined her cry of delight to Lucy's. 'Ecco! said the massaja proudly, as though the whole landscape were her chattel, 'Monte Amiata!
She raised herself, and took up her gloves that were lying on the little table beside her sofa. 'You see' she said, talking very fast 'I am an Englishwoman, and my race is not a docile one. Here, in this village, I have noticed a good deal, and the massaja gossips to me. There was a fight in the street the other night. The men were knifing each other.
They were the innocent causes, indeed, of some evil. Eleanor had been ordered goats' milk by the Orvieto doctor, and the gentleman who had secured the order from the massaja went in fear of his life at the hands of two other gentlemen who had not been equally happy. But in general they brought prosperity, and the popular smile was granted them.
Yes! as the form came nearer to the window, seen from the back, Lucy perceived distinctly the tonsured head and the soutane. How strange! She had heard nothing from the massaja of any other tenant. And this tall gaunt figure had nothing in common with the little smiling parroco she had seen in the crowd. She moved on, wondering. Oh, those woods!
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