Eleanor Part 62

'But for the sun, it might be Wales!' said Manisty, looking round him, as he took out another cigarette.

Father Benecke made no reply. He sat on a rock by the water's side, in what seemed to be a reverie. His fine white head was uncovered. His att.i.tude was gentle, dignified, abstracted.

'It is a marvellous country this!' Manisty resumed. 'I thought I knew it pretty well. But the last five weeks have given one's mind a new hold upon it. The forests have been wasted--but by George!--what forests there are still!--and what a superb mountain region, half of which is only known to a few peasants and shepherds. What rivers--what fertility--what a climate!

And the industry of the people. Catch a few English farmers and set them to do what the Italian peasant does, year in and year out, without a murmur!

Look at all the coast south of Naples. There is not a yard of it, scarcely, that hasn't been _made_ by human hands. Look at the hill-towns; and think of the human toil that has gone to the making and maintaining of them since the world began.'

And swaying backwards and forwards he fell into the golden lines:

Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem, Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis, Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.

'_Congesta manu! Ecco!_--there they are'--and he pointed down the river to the three or four distant towns, each on its mountain spur, that held the valley between them and Orvieto--pale jewels on the purple robe of rock and wood.

'So Virgil saw them. So the latest sons of time shall see them--the homes of a race that we chatter about without understanding--the most laborious race in the wide world.'

And again he rolled out under his breath, for the sheer joy of the verse:

Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, Magna virum.

The priest looked at him with a smile; preoccupied yet shrewd.

'I follow you with some astonishment. Surely--I remember other sentiments on your part?'

Manisty coloured a little, and shook his black head, protesting.

'I never said uncivil things, that I remember, about Italy or the Italians as such. My quarrel was with the men that run them, the governments that exploit them. My point was that Piedmont and the North had been too greedy, had laid hands too rapidly on the South and had risked this d.a.m.nable quarrel with the Church, without knowing what they were running their heads into. And in consequence they found themselves--in spite of rivers of corrupt expenditure--without men, or money, or credit to work their big new machine with; while the Church was always there, stronger than ever for the grievance they had presented her with, and turned into an enemy with whom it was no longer possible to parley. Well!--that struck me as a good object lesson. I wanted to say to the secularising folk everywhere--England included--just come here, and look what your policy comes to, when it's carried out to the bitter end, and not in the gingerly, tinkering fas.h.i.+on you affect at home! Just understand what it means to separate Church from State, to dig a gulf between the religious and the civil life.--Here's a country where n.o.body can be at once a patriot and a good Christian--where the Catholics don't vote for Parliament, and the State schools teach no religion--where the nation is divided into two vast camps, hating and thrusting at each other with every weapon they can tear from life.

Examine it! That's what the thing looks like when it's full grown. Is it profitable--does it make for good times? In your own small degree, are you going to drive England that way too?--You'll admit, Father--you always did admit--that it was a good theme.'

The priest smiled--a little sadly.

'Excellent. Only--you seemed to me--a little irresponsible.'

Manisty nodded, and laughed.

'An outsider, with no stakes on? Well--that's true. But being a Romantic and an artist I sided with the Church. The new machine, and the men that were running it, seemed to me an ugly jerry-built affair, compared with the Papacy and all that it stood for. But then--'

--He leant back in his chair, one hand s.n.a.t.c.hing and tearing at the bushes round him, in his absent, destructive way.--

'Well then--as usual--facts began to play the mischief with one's ideas.

In the first place, as one lives on in Italy you discover the antiquity of this quarrel; that it is only the Guelf and Ghibelline quarrel over again, under new names. And in the next--presently one begins to divine an Italy behind the Italy we know, or history knows!--Voices come to one, as Goethe would say, from the caves where dwell "Die Mutter"--the creative generative forces of the country.'--

He turned his flas.h.i.+ng look on Benecke, pleased now as always with the mere task of speech.

'Anyway, as I have been going up and down their country, especially during the last six weeks; prating about their poverty, and their taxes, their corruption, the incompetence of their leaders, the folly of their quarrel with the Church; I have been finding myself caught in the grip of things older and deeper--incredibly, primevally old!--that still dominate everything, shape everything here. There are forces in Italy, forces of land and soil and race--only now fully let loose--that will remake Church no less than State, as the generations go by. Sometimes I have felt as though this country were the youngest in Europe; with a future as fresh and teeming as the future of America. And yet one thinks of it at other times as one vast graveyard; so thick it is with the ashes and the bones of men!

The Pope--and Crispi!--waves, both of them, on a sea of life that gave them birth, "with equal mind"; and that with equal mind will sweep them both to its own goal--not theirs.'

He smiled at his own eloquence, and returned to his cigarette.

The priest had listened to him all through with the same subtle embarra.s.sed look.

'This must have some cause,' he said slowly, when Manisty ceased to speak.

'Surely?--this change? I recall language so different--forecasts so gloomy.'

'Gracious!--I can give you books-full of them,' said Manisty, reddening, 'if you care to read them. I came out with a _parti-pris_--I don't deny it.

Catholicism had a great glamour for me; it has still, so long as you don't ask me to put my own neck under the yoke! But Rome itself is disenchanting.

And outside Rome!--During the last six weeks I have been talking to every priest I could come across in these remote country districts where I have been wandering. _Per Dio!_--Marcello used to talk--I didn't believe him. But upon my word, the young fellows whom the seminaries are now sending out in shoals represent a fact to give one pause!--Little black devils!--_Scusi!_ Father,--the word escaped me. Broadly speaking, they are a political militia,--little else. Their hatred of Italy is a venom in their bones, and they themselves are mad for a spiritual tyranny which no modern State could tolerate for a week. When one thinks of the older men--of Rosmini, of Gioberti, of the priests who died on the Milan barricades in '48!'

His companion made a slow movement of a.s.sent.

Manisty smoked on, till presently he launched the _mot_ for which he had been feeling. 'The truth of the matter seems to be that Italy is Catholic, because she hasn't faith enough to make a heresy; and anti-clerical, because it is her destiny to be a nation!'

The priest smiled, but with a certain languor, turning his head once or twice as though to listen for sounds behind him, and taking out his watch.

His eyes meanwhile--and their observation of Manisty--were not languid; seldom had the mild and spiritual face been so personal, so keen.

'Well, it is a great game,' said Manisty again--'and we shan't see the end.

Tell me--how have they treated _you_--the priests in these parts?'

Benecke started and shrank.

'I have no complaint to make,' he said mildly. 'They seem to me good men.'

Manisty smoked in silence.

Then he said, as though summing up his own thoughts,--

'No,--there are plenty of dangers ahead. This war has shaken the _Sabaudisti_--for the moment. Socialism is serious.--Sicily is serious.--The economic difficulties are serious.--The House of Savoy will have a rough task, perhaps, to ride the seas that may come.--But _Italy_ is safe. You can no more undo what has been done than you can replace the child in the womb. The birth is over. The organism is still weak, but it lives. And the forces behind it are indefinitely, mysteriously stronger than the Vatican thinks.'

'A great recantation,' said the priest quickly.

Manisty winced, but for a while said nothing. All at once he jerked away his cigarette.

'Do you suspect some other reason for it, than the force of evidence?'--he said, in another manner.

The priest, smiling, looked him full in the face without replying.

'You may,' said Manisty, coolly. 'I shan't play the hypocrite. Father, I told you that I had been wandering about Italy on a quest that was not health, nor piety, nor archaeology. How much did you guess?'

'Naturally, something--_lieber Herr_.'

'Do you know that I should have been at Torre Amiata weeks ago but for you?'

'For me! You talk in riddles.'

'Very simple. Your letters might have contained a piece of news--and did not. Yet if it had been there to give, you would have given it. So I crossed Torre Amiata off my list. No need to go _there_! I said to myself.'

The priest was silent.

Manisty looked up. His eyes sparkled; his lips trembled as though they could hardly bring themselves to launch the words behind them.