Arthur sat in the library of the theological seminary at Pisa, looking
through a pile of manuscript sermons. It was a hot evening in June, and the
windows stood wide open, with the shutters half closed for coolness. The
Father Director, Canon Montanelli, paused a moment in his writing to glance
lovingly at the black head bent over the papers.
"Can't you find it, carino? Never mind; I must rewrite the passage.
Possibly it has got torn up, and I have kept you all this time for nothing."
Montanelli's voice was rather low, but full and resonant, with a
silvery purity of tone that gave to his speech a peculiar charm. It was the
voice of a born orator, rich in possible modulations. When he spoke to
Arthur its note was always that of a caress.
"No, Padre, I must find it; I'm sure you put it here. You will never
make it the same by rewriting."
Montanelli went on with his work. A sleepy cockchafer hummed drowsily
outside the window, and the long, melancholy call of a fruitseller echoed
down the street: "Fragola! fragola!"
"'On the Healing of the Leper'; here it is." Arthur came across the
room with the velvet tread that always exasperated the good folk at home. He
was a slender little creature, more like an Italian in a sixteenth-century
portrait than a middle-class English lad of the thirties. From the long
eyebrows and sensitive mouth to the small hands and feet, everything about
him was too much chiseled, overdelicate. Sitting still, he might have been
taken for a very pretty girl masquerading in male attire; but when he moved,
his lithe agility suggested a tame panther without the claws.
"Is that really it? What should I do without you, Arthur? I should
always be losing my things. No, I am not going to write any more now. Come
out into the garden, and I will help you with your work. What is the bit you
couldn't understand?"
They went out into the still, shadowy cloister garden. The seminary
occupied the buildings of an old Dominican monastery, and two hundred years
ago the square courtyard had been stiff and trim, and the rosemary and
lavender had grown in close-cut bushes between the straight box edgings. Now
the white-robed monks who had tended them were laid away and forgotten; but
the scented herbs flowered still in the gracious mid-summer evening, though
no man gathered their blossoms for simples any more. Tufts of wild parsley
and columbine filled the cracks between the flagged footways, and the well
in the middle of the courtyard was given up to ferns and matted stone-crop.
The roses had run wild, and their straggling suckers trailed across the
paths; in the box borders flared great red poppies; tall foxgloves drooped
above the tangled grasses; and the old vine, untrained and barren of fruit,
swayed from the branches of the neglected medlar-tree, shaking a leafy head
with slow and sad persistence.
In one corner stood a huge summer-flowering magnolia, a tower of dark
foliage, splashed here and there with milk-white blossoms. A rough wooden
bench had been placed against the trunk; and on this Montanelli sat down.
Arthur was studying philosophy at the university; and, coming to a
difficulty with a book, had applied to "the Padre" for an explanation of the
point. Montanelli was a universal encyclopaedia to him, though he had never
been a pupil of the seminary.
"I had better go now," he said when the passage had been cleared up;
"unless you want me for anything."
"I don't want to work any more, but I should like you to stay a bit if
you have time."
"Oh, yes!" He leaned back against the tree-trunk and looked up through
the dusky branches at the first faint stars glimmering in a quiet sky. The
dreamy, mystical eyes, deep blue under black lashes, were an inheritance
from his Cornish mother, and Montanelli turned his head away, that he might
not see them.
"You are looking tired, carino," he said.
"I can't help it." There was a weary sound in Arthur's voice, and the
Padre noticed it at once.
"You should not have gone up to college so soon; you were tired out
with sick-nursing and being up at night. I ought to have insisted on your
taking a thorough rest before you left Leghorn."
"Oh, Padre, what's the use of that? I couldn't stop in that miserable
house after mother died. Julia would have driven me mad!"
Julia was his eldest step-brother's wife, and a thorn in his side.
"I should not have wished you to stay with your relatives," Montanelli
answered gently. "I am sure it would have been the worst possible thing for
you. But I wish you could have accepted the invitation of your English
doctor friend; if you had spent a month in his house you would have been
more fit to study."
"No, Padre, I shouldn't indeed! The Warrens are very good and kind, but
they don't understand; and then they are sorry for me,--I can see it in all
their faces,--and they would try to console me, and talk about mother. Gemma
wouldn't, of course; she always knew what not to say, even when we were
babies; but the others would. And it isn't only that----"
"What is it then, my son?"
Arthur pulled off some blossoms from a drooping foxglove stem and
crushed them nervously in his hand.
"I can't bear the town," he began after a moment's pause. "There are
the shops where she used to buy me toys when I was a little thing, and the
walk along the shore where I used to take her until she got too ill.
Wherever I go it's the same thing; every market-girl comes up to me with
bunches of flowers--as if I wanted them now! And there's the church-yard--I
had to get away; it made me sick to see the place----"
He broke off and sat tearing the foxglove bells to pieces. The silence
was so long and deep that he looked up, wondering why the Padre did not
speak. It was growing dark under the branches of the magnolia, and
everything seemed dim and indistinct; but there was light enough to show the
ghastly paleness of Montanelli's face. He was bending his head down, his
right hand tightly clenched upon the edge of the bench. Arthur looked away
with a sense of awe-struck wonder. It was as though he had stepped
unwittingly on to holy ground.
"My God!" he thought; "how small and selfish I am beside him! If my
trouble were his own he couldn't feel it more."
Presently Montanelli raised his head and looked round. "I won't press
you to go back there; at all events, just now," he said in his most
caressing tone; "but you must promise me to take a thorough rest when your
vacation begins this summer. I think you had better get a holiday right away
from the neighborhood of Leghorn. I can't have you breaking down in health."
"Where shall you go when the seminary closes, Padre?"
"I shall have to take the pupils into the hills, as usual, and see them
settled there. But by the middle of August the subdirector will be back from
his holiday. I shall try to get up into the Alps for a little change. Will
you come with me? I could take you for some long mountain rambles, and you
would like to study the Alpine mosses and lichens. But perhaps it would be
rather dull for you alone with me?"
"Padre!" Arthur clasped his hands in what Julia called his
"demonstrative foreign way." "I would give anything on earth to go away with
you. Only--I am not sure----" He stopped.
"You don't think Mr. Burton would allow it?"
"He wouldn't like it, of course, but he could hardly interfere. I am
eighteen now and can do what I choose. After all, he's only my step-brother;
I don't see that I owe him obedience. He was always unkind to mother."
"But if he seriously objects, I think you had better not defy his
wishes; you may find your position at home made much harder if----"
"Not a bit harder!" Arthur broke in passionately. "They always did hate
me and always will--it doesn't matter what I do. Besides, how can James
seriously object to my going away with you--with my father confessor?"
"He is a Protestant, remember. However, you had better write to him,
and we will wait to hear what he thinks. But you must not be impatient, my
son; it matters just as much what you do, whether people hate you or love
you."
The rebuke was so gently given that Arthur hardly coloured under it.
"Yes, I know," he answered, sighing; "but it is so difficult----"
"I was sorry you could not come to me on Tuesday evening," Montanelli
said, abruptly introducing a new subject. "The Bishop of Arezzo was here,
and I should have liked you to meet him."
"I had promised one of the students to go to a meeting at his lodgings,
and they would have been expecting me."
"What sort of meeting?"
Arthur seemed embarrassed by the question. "It--it was n-not a
r-regular meeting," he said with a nervous little stammer. "A student had
come from Genoa, and he made a speech to us-- a-a sort of--lecture."
"What did he lecture about?"
Arthur hesitated. "You won't ask me his name, Padre, will you? Because
I promised----"
"I will ask you no questions at all, and if you have promised secrecy
of course you must not tell me; but I think you can almost trust me by this
time."
"Padre, of course I can. He spoke about--us and our duty to the
people--and to--our own selves; and about--what we might do to help----"
"To help whom?"
"The contadini--and----"
"And?"
"Italy."
There was a long silence.
"Tell me, Arthur," said Montanelli, turning to him and speaking very
gravely, "how long have you been thinking about this?"
"Since--last winter."
"Before your mother's death? And did she know of it?"
"N-no. I--I didn't care about it then."
"And now you--care about it?"
Arthur pulled another handful of bells off the foxglove.
"It was this way, Padre," he began, with his eyes on the ground. "When
I was preparing for the entrance examination last autumn, I got to know a
good many of the students; you remember? Well, some of them began to talk to
me about--all these things, and lent me books. But I didn't care much about
it; I always wanted to get home quick to mother. You see, she was quite
alone among them all in that dungeon of a house; and Julia's tongue was
enough to kill her. Then, in the winter, when she got so ill, I forgot all
about the students and their books; and then, you know, I left off coming to
Pisa altogether. I should have talked to mother if I had thought of it; but
it went right out of my head. Then I found out that she was going to
die----You know, I was almost constantly with her towards the end; often I
would sit up the night, and Gemma Warren would come in the day to let me get
to sleep. Well, it was in those long nights; I got thinking about the books
and about what the students had said--and wondering-- whether they were
right and--what-- Our Lord would have said about it all."
"Did you ask Him?" Montanelli's voice was not quite steady.
"Often, Padre. Sometimes I have prayed to Him to tell me what I must
do, or to let me die with mother. But I couldn't find any answer."
"And you never said a word to me. Arthur, I hoped you could have
trusted me."
"Padre, you know I trust you! But there are some things you can't talk
about to anyone. I--it seemed to me that no one could help me--not even you
or mother; I must have my own answer straight from God. You see, it is for
all my life and all my soul."
Montanelli turned away and stared into the dusky gloom of the magnolia
branches. The twilight was so dim that his figure had a shadowy look, like a
dark ghost among the darker boughs.
"And then?" he asked slowly.
"And then--she died. You know, I had been up the last three nights with
her----"
He broke off and paused a moment, but Montanelli did not move.
"All those two days before they buried her," Arthur went on in a lower
voice, "I couldn't think about anything. Then, after the funeral, I was ill;
you remember, I couldn't come to confession."
"Yes; I remember."
"Well, in the night I got up and went into mother's room. It was all
empty; there was only the great crucifix in the alcove. And I thought
perhaps God would help me. I knelt down and waited--all night. And in the
morning when I came to my senses--Padre, it isn't any use; I can't explain.
I can't tell you what I saw--I hardly know myself. But I know that God has
answered me, and that I dare not disobey Him."
For a moment they sat quite silent in the darkness. Then Montanelli
turned and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder.
"My son," he said, "God forbid that I should say He has not spoken to
your soul. But remember your condition when this thing happened, and do not
take the fancies of grief or illness for His solemn call. And if, indeed, it
has been His will to answer you out of the shadow of death, be sure that you
put no false construction on His word. What is this thing you have it in
your heart to do?"
Arthur stood up and answered slowly, as though repeating a catechism:
"To give up my life to Italy, to help in freeing her from all this
slavery and wretchedness, and in driving out the Austrians, that she may be
a free republic, with no king but Christ."
"Arthur, think a moment what you are saying! You are not even an
Italian."
"That makes no difference; I am myself. I have seen this thing, and I
belong to it."
There was silence again.
"You spoke just now of what Christ would have said----" Montanelli
began slowly; but Arthur interrupted him:
"Christ said: 'He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.'"
Montanelli leaned his arm against a branch, and shaded his eyes with
one hand.
"Sit down a moment, my son," he said at last.
Arthur sat down, and the Padre took both his hands in a strong and
steady clasp.
"I cannot argue with you to-night," he said; "this has come upon me so
suddenly--I had not thought--I must have time to think it over. Later on we
will talk more definitely. But, for just now, I want you to remember one
thing. If you get into trouble over this, if you--die, you will break my
heart."
"Padre----"
"No; let me finish what I have to say. I told you once that I have no
one in the world but you. I think you do not fully understand what that
means. It is difficult when one is so young; at your age I should not have
understood. Arthur, you are as my--as my--own son to me. Do you see? You are
the light of my eyes and the desire of my heart. I would die to keep you
from making a false step and ruining your life. But there is nothing I can
do. I don't ask you to make any promises to me; I only ask you to remember
this, and to be careful. Think well before you take an irrevocable step, for
my sake, if not for the sake of your mother in heaven."
"I will think--and--Padre, pray for me, and for Italy." He knelt down
in silence, and in silence Montanelli laid his hand on the bent head. A
moment later Arthur rose, kissed the hand, and went softly away across the
dewy grass. Montanelli sat alone under the magnolia tree, looking straight
before him into the blackness.
"It is the vengeance of God that has fallen upon me," he thought, "as
it fell upon David. I, that have defiled His sanctuary, and taken the Body
of the Lord into polluted hands,--He has been very patient with me, and now
it is come. 'For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all
Israel, and before the sun; THE CHILD THAT IS BORN UNTO THEE SHALL SURELY
DIE.'"
MR. JAMES BURTON did not at all like the idea of his young step-brother
"careering about Switzerland" with Montanelli. But positively to forbid a
harmless botanizing tour with an elderly professor of theology would seem to
Arthur, who knew nothing of the reason for the prohibition, absurdly
tyrannical. He would immediately attribute it to religious or racial
prejudice; and the Burtons prided themselves on their enlightened tolerance.
The whole family had been staunch Protestants and Conservatives ever since
Burton & Sons, ship-owners, of London and Leghorn, had first set up in
business, more than a century back. But they held that English gentlemen
must deal fairly, even with Papists; and when the head of the house, finding
it dull to remain a widower, had married the pretty Catholic governess of
his younger children, the two elder sons, James and Thomas, much as they
resented the presence of a step-mother hardly older than themselves, had
submitted with sulky resignation to the will of Providence. Since the
father's death the eldest brother's marriage had further complicated an
already difficult position; but both brothers had honestly tried to protect
Gladys, as long as she lived, from Julia's merciless tongue, and to do their
duty, as they understood it, by Arthur. They did not even pretend to like
the lad, and their generosity towards him showed itself chiefly in providing
him with lavish supplies of pocket money and allowing him to go his own way.
In answer to his letter, accordingly, Arthur received a cheque to cover
his expenses and a cold permission to do as he pleased about his holidays.
He expended half his spare cash on botanical books and pressing-cases, and
started off with the Padre for his first Alpine ramble.
Montanelli was in lighter spirits than Arthur had seen him in for a
long while. After the first shock of the conversation in the garden he had
gradually recovered his mental balance, and now looked upon the case more
calmly. Arthur was very young and inexperienced; his decision could hardly
be, as yet, irrevocable. Surely there was still time to win him back by
gentle persuasion and reasoning from the dangerous path upon which he had
barely entered.
They had intended to stay a few days at Geneva; but at the first sight
of the glaring white streets and dusty, tourist-crammed promenades, a little
frown appeared on Arthur's face. Montanelli watched him with quiet
amusement.
"You don't like it, carino?"
"I hardly know. It's so different from what I expected. Yes, the lake
is beautiful, and I like the shape of those hills." They were standing on
Rousseau's Island, and he pointed to the long, severe outlines of the Savoy
side. "But the town looks so stiff and tidy, somehow--so Protestant; it has
a self-satisfied air. No, I don't like it; it reminds me of Julia."
Montanelli laughed. "Poor boy, what a misfortune! Well, we are here for
our own amusement, so there is no reason why we should stop. Suppose we take
a sail on the lake to-day, and go up into the mountains to-morrow morning?"
"But, Padre, you wanted to stay here?"
"My dear boy, I have seen all these places a dozen times. My holiday is
to see your pleasure. Where would you like to go?"
"If it is really the same to you, I should like to follow the river
back to its source."
"The Rhone?"
"No, the Arve; it runs so fast."
"Then we will go to Chamonix."
They spent the afternoon drifting about in a little sailing boat. The
beautiful lake produced far less impression upon Arthur than the gray and
muddy Arve. He had grown up beside the Mediterranean, and was accustomed to
blue ripples; but he had a positive passion for swiftly moving water, and
the hurried rushing of the glacier stream delighted him beyond measure. "It
is so much in earnest," he said.
Early on the following morning they started for Chamonix. Arthur was in
very high spirits while driving through the fertile valley country; but when
they entered upon the winding road near Cluses, and the great, jagged hills
closed in around them, he became serious and silent. From St. Martin they
walked slowly up the valley, stopping to sleep at wayside chalets or tiny
mountain villages, and wandering on again as their fancy directed. Arthur
was peculiarly sensitive to the influence of scenery, and the first
waterfall that they passed threw him into an ecstacy which was delightful to
see; but as they drew nearer to the snow-peaks he passed out of this
rapturous mood into one of dreamy exaltation that Montanelli had not seen
before. There seemed to be a kind of mystical relationship between him and
the mountains. He would lie for hours motionless in the dark, secret,
echoing pine-forests, looking out between the straight, tall trunks into the
sunlit outer world of flashing peaks and barren cliffs. Montanelli watched
him with a kind of sad envy.
"I wish you could show me what you see, carino," he said one day as he
looked up from his book, and saw Arthur stretched beside him on the moss in
the same attitude as an hour before, gazing out with wide, dilated eyes into
the glittering expanse of blue and white. They had turned aside from the
high-road to sleep at a quiet village near the falls of the Diosaz, and, the
sun being already low in a cloudless sky, had mounted a point of pine-clad
rock to wait for the Alpine glow over the dome and needles of the Mont Blanc
chain. Arthur raised his head with eyes full of wonder and mystery.
"What I see, Padre? I see a great, white being in a blue void that has
no beginning and no end. I see it waiting, age after age, for the coming of
the Spirit of God. I see it through a glass darkly."
Montanelli sighed.
"I used to see those things once."
"Do you never see them now?"
"Never. I shall not see them any more. They are there, I know; but I
have not the eyes to see them. I see quite other things."
"What do you see?"
"I, carino? I see a blue sky and a snow-mountain --that is all when I
look up into the heights. But down there it is different."
He pointed to the valley below them. Arthur knelt down and bent over
the sheer edge of the precipice. The great pine trees, dusky in the
gathering shades of evening, stood like sentinels along the narrow banks
confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal, dipped behind
a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light deserted the face of
nature. Straightway there came upon the valley something dark and
threatening --sullen, terrible, full of spectral weapons. The perpendicular
cliffs of the barren western mountains seemed like the teeth of a monster
lurking to snatch a victim and drag him down into the maw of the deep
valley, black with its moaning forests. The pine trees were rows of
knife-blades whispering: "Fall upon us!" and in the gathering darkness the
torrent roared and howled, beating against its rocky prison walls with the
frenzy of an everlasting despair.
"Padre!" Arthur rose, shuddering, and drew back from the precipice. "It
is like hell."
"No, my son," Montanelli answered softly, "it is only like a human
soul."
"The souls of them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?"
"The souls of them that pass you day by day in the street."
Arthur shivered, looking down into the shadows. A dim white mist was
hovering among the pine trees, clinging faintly about the desperate agony of
the torrent, like a miserable ghost that had no consolation to give.
"Look!" Arthur said suddenly. "The people that walked in darkness have
seen a great light."
Eastwards the snow-peaks burned in the afterglow. When the red light
had faded from the summits Montanelli turned and roused Arthur with a touch
on the shoulder.
"Come in, carino; all the light is gone. We shall lose our way in the
dark if we stay any longer."
"It is like a corpse," Arthur said as he turned away from the spectral
face of the great snow-peak glimmering through the twilight.
They descended cautiously among the black trees to the chalet where
they were to sleep.
As Montanelli entered the room where Arthur was waiting for him at the
supper table, he saw that the lad seemed to have shaken off the ghostly
fancies of the dark, and to have changed into quite another creature.
"Oh, Padre, do come and look at this absurd dog! It can dance on its
hind legs."
He was as much absorbed in the dog and its accomplishments as he had
been in the after-glow. The woman of the chalet, red-faced and
white-aproned, with sturdy arms akimbo, stood by smiling, while he put the
animal through its tricks. "One can see there's not much on his mind if he
can carry on that way," she said in patois to her daughter. "And what a
handsome lad!"
Arthur coloured like a schoolgirl, and the woman, seeing that he had
understood, went away laughing at his confusion. At supper he talked of
nothing but plans for excursions, mountain ascents, and botanizing
expeditions. Evidently his dreamy fancies had not interfered with either his
spirits or his appetite.
When Montanelli awoke the next morning Arthur had disappeared. He had
started before daybreak for the higher pastures "to help Gaspard drive up
the goats."
Breakfast had not long been on the table, however, when he came tearing
into the room, hatless, with a tiny peasant girl of three years old perched
on his shoulder, and a great bunch of wild flowers in his hand.
Montanelli looked up, smiling. This was a curious contrast to the grave
and silent Arthur of Pisa or Leghorn.
"Where have you been, you madcap? Scampering all over the mountains
without any breakfast?"
"Oh, Padre, it was so jolly! The mountains look perfectly glorious at
sunrise; and the dew is so thick! Just look!"
He lifted for inspection a wet and muddy boot.
We took some bread and cheese with us, and got some goat's milk up
there on the pasture; oh, it was nasty! But I'm hungry again, now; and I
want something for this little person, too. Annette, won't you have some
honey?"
He had sat down with the child on his knee, and was helping her to put
the flowers in order.
"No, no!" Montanelli interposed. "I can't have you catching cold. Run
and change your wet things. Come to me, Annette. Where did you pick her up?"
"At the top of the village. She belongs to the man we saw
yesterday--the man that cobbles the commune's boots. Hasn't she lovely eyes?
She's got a tortoise in her pocket, and she calls it 'Caroline.'"
When Arthur had changed his wet socks and came down to breakfast he
found the child seated on the Padre's knee, chattering volubly to him about
her tortoise, which she was holding upside down in a chubby hand, that
"monsieur" might admire the wriggling legs.
"Look, monsieur!" she was saying gravely in her half-intelligible
patois: "Look at Caroline's boots!"
Montanelli sat playing with the child, stroking her hair, admiring her
darling tortoise, and telling her wonderful stories. The woman of the
chalet, coming in to clear the table, stared in amazement at the sight of
Annette turning out the pockets of the grave gentleman in clerical dress.
"God teaches the little ones to know a good man," she said. "Annette is
always afraid of strangers; and see, she is not shy with his reverence at
all. The wonderful thing! Kneel down, Annette, and ask the good monsieur's
blessing before he goes; it will bring thee luck."
"I didn't know you could play with children that way, Padre," Arthur
said an hour later, as they walked through the sunlit pasture-land. "That
child never took her eyes off you all the time. Do you know, I think----"
"Yes?"
"I was only going to say--it seems to me almost a pity that the Church
should forbid priests to marry. I cannot quite understand why. You see, the
training of children is such a serious thing, and it means so much to them
to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should
have thought the holier a man's vocation and the purer his life, the more
fit he is to be a father. I am sure, Padre, if you had not been under a
vow,--if you had married,--your children would have been the very----"
"Hush!"
The word was uttered in a hasty whisper that seemed to deepen the
ensuing silence.
"Padre," Arthur began again, distressed by the other's sombre look, "do
you think there is anything wrong in what I said? Of course I may be
mistaken; but I must think as it comes natural to me to think."
"Perhaps," Montanelli answered gently, "you do not quite realize the
meaning of what you just said. You will see differently in a few years.
Meanwhile we had better talk about something else."
It was the first break in the perfect ease and harmony that reigned
between them on this ideal holiday.
From Chamonix they went on by the Tete-Noire to Martigny, where they
stopped to rest, as the weather was stiflingly hot. After dinner they sat on
the terrace of the hotel, which was sheltered from the sun and commanded a
good view of the mountains. Arthur brought out his specimen box and plunged
into an earnest botanical discussion in Italian.
Two English artists were sitting on the terrace; one sketching, the
other lazily chatting. It did not seem to have occurred to him that the
strangers might understand English.
"Leave off daubing at the landscape, Willie," he said; "and draw that
glorious Italian boy going into ecstasies over those bits of ferns. Just
look at the line of his eyebrows! You only need to put a crucifix for the
magnifying-glass and a Roman toga for the jacket and knickerbockers, and
there's your Early Christian complete, expression and all."
"Early Christian be hanged! I sat beside that youth at dinner; he was
just as ecstatic over the roast fowl as over those grubby little weeds. He's
pretty enough; that olive colouring is beautiful; but he's not half so
picturesque as his father."
"His--who?"
"His father, sitting there straight in front of you. Do you mean to say
you've passed him over? It's a perfectly magnificent face."
"Why, you dunder-headed, go-to-meeting Methodist! Don't you know a
Catholic priest when you see one?"
"A priest? By Jove, so he is! Yes, I forgot; vow of chastity, and all
that sort of thing. Well then, we'll be charitable and suppose the boy's his
nephew."
"What idiotic people!" Arthur whispered, looking up with dancing eyes.
"Still, it is kind of them to think me like you; I wish I were really your
nephew----Padre, what is the matter? How white you are!"
Montanelli was standing up, pressing one hand to his forehead. "I am a
little giddy," he said in a curiously faint, dull tone. "Perhaps I was too
much in the sun this morning. I will go and lie down, carino; it's nothing
but the heat."
. . . . .
After a fortnight beside the Lake of Lucerne Arthur and Montanelli
returned to Italy by the St. Gothard Pass. They had been fortunate as to
weather and had made several very pleasant excursions; but the first charm
was gone out of their enjoyment. Montanelli was continually haunted by an
uneasy thought of the "more definite talk" for which this holiday was to
have been the opportunity. In the Arve valley he had purposely put off all
reference to the subject of which they had spoken under the magnolia tree;
it would be cruel, he thought, to spoil the first delights of Alpine scenery
for a nature so artistic as Arthur's by associating them with a conversation
which must necessarily be painful. Ever since the day at Martigny he had
said to himself each morning; "I will speak to-day," and each evening: "I
will speak to-morrow;" and now the holiday was over, and he still repeated
again and again: "To-morrow, to-morrow." A chill, indefinable sense of
something not quite the same as it had been, of an invisible veil falling
between himself and Arthur, kept him silent, until, on the last evening of
their holiday, he realized suddenly that he must speak now if he would speak
at all. They were stopping for the night at Lugano, and were to start for
Pisa next morning. He would at least find out how far his darling had been
drawn into the fatal quicksand of Italian politics.
"The rain has stopped, carino," he said after sunset; "and this is the
only chance we shall have to see the lake. Come out; I want to have a talk
with you."
They walked along the water's edge to a quiet spot and sat down on a
low stone wall. Close beside them grew a rose-bush, covered with scarlet
hips; one or two belated clusters of creamy blossom still hung from an upper
branch, swaying mournfully and heavy with raindrops. On the green surface of
the lake a little boat, with white wings faintly fluttering, rocked in the
dewy breeze. It looked as light and frail as a tuft of silvery dandelion
seed flung upon the water. High up on Monte Salvatore the window of some
shepherd's hut opened a golden eye. The roses hung their heads and dreamed
under the still September clouds, and the water plashed and murmured softly
among the pebbles of the shore.
"This will be my only chance of a quiet talk with you for a long time,"
Montanelli began. "You will go back to your college work and friends; and I,
too, shall be very busy this winter. I want to understand quite clearly what
our position as regards each other is to be; and so, if you----" He stopped
for a moment and then continued more slowly: "If you feel that you can still
trust me as you used to do, I want you to tell me more definitely than that
night in the seminary garden, how far you have gone."
Arthur looked out across the water, listened quietly, and said nothing.
"I want to know, if you will tell me," Montanelli went on; "whether you
have bound yourself by a vow, or--in any way."
"There is nothing to tell, dear Padre; I have not bound myself, but I
am bound."
"I don't understand------"
"What is the use of vows? They are not what binds people. If you feel
in a certain way about a thing, that binds you to it; if you don't feel that
way, nothing else can bind you."
"Do you mean, then, that this thing--this-- feeling is quite
irrevocable? Arthur, have you thought what you are saying?"
Arthur turned round and looked straight into Montanelli's eyes.
"Padre, you asked me if I could trust you. Can you not trust me, too?
Indeed, if there were anything to tell, I would tell it to you; but there is
no use in talking about these things. I have not forgotten what you said to
me that night; I shall never forget it. But I must go my way and follow the
light that I see."
Montanelli picked a rose from the bush, pulled off the petals one by
one, and tossed them into the water.
"You are right, carino. Yes, we will say no more about these things; it
seems there is indeed no help in many words----Well, well, let us go in."THE
autumn and winter passed uneventfully. Arthur was reading hard and had
little spare time. He contrived to get a glimpse of Montanelli once or
oftener in every week, if only for a few minutes. From time to time he would
come in to ask for help with some difficult book; but on these occasions the
subject of study was strictly adhered to. Montanelli, feeling, rather than
observing, the slight, impalpable barrier that had come between them, shrank
from everything which might seem like an attempt to retain the old close
relationship. Arthur's visits now caused him more distress than pleasure, so
trying was the constant effort to appear at ease and to behave as if nothing
were altered. Arthur, for his part, noticed, hardly understanding it, the
subtle change in the Padre's manner; and, vaguely feeling that it had some
connection with the vexed question of the "new ideas," avoided all mention
of the subject with which his thoughts were constantly filled. Yet he had
never loved Montanelli so deeply as now. The dim, persistent sense of
dissatisfaction, of spiritual emptiness, which he had tried so hard to
stifle under a load of theology and ritual, had vanished into nothing at the
touch of Young Italy. All the unhealthy fancies born of loneliness and
sick-room watching had passed away, and the doubts against which he used to
pray had gone without the need of exorcism. With the awakening of a new
enthusiasm, a clearer, fresher religious ideal (for it was more in this
light than in that of a political development that the students' movement
had appeared to him), had come a sense of rest and completeness, of peace on
earth and good will towards men; and in this mood of solemn and tender
exaltation all the world seemed to him full of light. He found a new element
of something lovable in the persons whom he had most disliked; and
Montanelli, who for five years had been his ideal hero, was now in his eyes
surrounded with an additional halo, as a potential prophet of the new faith.
He listened with passionate eagerness to the Padre's sermons, trying to find
in them some trace of inner kinship with the republican ideal; and pored
over the Gospels, rejoicing in the democratic tendencies of Christianity at
its origin.
One day in January he called at the seminary to return a book which he
had borrowed. Hearing that the Father Director was out, he went up to
Montanelli's private study, placed the volume on its shelf, and was about to
leave the room when the title of a book lying on the table caught his eyes.
It was Dante's "De Monarchia." He began to read it and soon became so
absorbed that when the door opened and shut he did not hear. He was aroused
from his preoccupation by Montanelli's voice behind him.
"I did not expect you to-day," said the Padre, glancing at the title of
the book. "I was just going to send and ask if you could come to me this
evening."
"Is it anything important? I have an engagement for this evening; but I
will miss it if------"
"No; to-morrow will do. I want to see you because I am going away on
Tuesday. I have been sent for to Rome."
"To Rome? For long?"
"The letter says, 'till after Easter.' It is from the Vatican. I would
have let you know at once, but have been very busy settling up things about
the seminary and making arrangements for the new Director."
"But, Padre, surely you are not giving up the seminary?"
"It will have to be so; but I shall probably come back to Pisa, for
some time at least."
"But why are you giving it up?"
"Well, it is not yet officially announced; but I am offered a
bishopric."
"Padre! Where?"
"That is the point about which I have to go to Rome. It is not yet
decided whether I am to take a see in the Apennines, or to remain here as
Suffragan."
"And is the new Director chosen yet?"
"Father Cardi has been nominated and arrives here to-morrow."
"Is not that rather sudden?"
"Yes; but----The decisions of the Vatican are sometimes not
communicated till the last moment."
"Do you know the new Director?"
"Not personally; but he is very highly spoken of. Monsignor Belloni,
who writes, says that he is a man of great erudition."
"The seminary will miss you terribly."
"I don't know about the seminary, but I am sure you will miss me,
carino; perhaps almost as much as I shall miss you."
"I shall indeed; but I am very glad, for all that."
"Are you? I don't know that I am." He sat down at the table with a
weary look on his face; not the look of a man who is expecting high
promotion.
"Are you busy this afternoon, Arthur?" he said after a moment. "If not,
I wish you would stay with me for a while, as you can't come to-night. I am
a little out of sorts, I think; and I want to see as much of you as possible
before leaving."
"Yes, I can stay a bit. I am due at six."
"One of your meetings?"
Arthur nodded; and Montanelli changed the subject hastily.
"I want to speak to you about yourself," he said. "You will need
another confessor in my absence."
"When you come back I may go on confessing to you, may I not?"
"My dear boy, how can you ask? Of course I am speaking only of the
three or four months that I shall be away. Will you go to one of the Fathers
of Santa Caterina?"
"Very well."
They talked of other matters for a little while; then Arthur rose.
"I must go, Padre; the students will be waiting for me."
The haggard look came back to Montanelli's face.
"Already? You had almost charmed away my black mood. Well, good-bye."
"Good-bye. I will be sure to come to-morrow."
"Try to come early, so that I may have time to see you alone. Father
Cardi will be here. Arthur, my dear boy, be careful while I am gone; don't
be led into doing anything rash, at least before I come back. You cannot
think how anxious I feel about leaving you."
"There is no need, Padre; everything is quite quiet. It will be a long
time yet."
"Good-bye," Montanelli said abruptly, and sat down to his writing.
The first person upon whom Arthur's eyes fell, as he entered the room
where the students' little gatherings were held, was his old playmate, Dr.
Warren's daughter. She was sitting in a corner by the window, listening with
an absorbed and earnest face to what one of the "initiators," a tall young
Lombard in a threadbare coat, was saying to her. During the last few months
she had changed and developed greatly, and now looked a grown-up young
woman, though the dense black plaits still hung down her back in school-girl
fashion. She was dressed all in black, and had thrown a black scarf over her
head, as the room was cold and draughty. At her breast was a spray of
cypress, the emblem of Young Italy. The initiator was passionately
describing to her the misery of the Calabrian peasantry; and she sat
listening silently, her chin resting on one hand and her eyes on the ground.
To Arthur she seemed a melancholy vision of Liberty mourning for the lost
Republic. (Julia would have seen in her only an overgrown hoyden, with a
sallow complexion, an irregular nose, and an old stuff frock that was too
short for her.)
"You here, Jim!" he said, coming up to her when the initiator had been
called to the other end of the room. "Jim" was a childish corruption of her
curious baptismal name: Jennifer. Her Italian schoolmates called her
"Gemma."
She raised her head with a start.
"Arthur! Oh, I didn't know you--belonged here!"
"And I had no idea about you. Jim, since when have you----?"
"You don't understand!" she interposed quickly. "I am not a member. It
is only that I have done one or two little things. You see, I met Bini--you
know Carlo Bini?"
"Yes, of course." Bini was the organizer of the Leghorn branch; and all
Young Italy knew him.
"Well, he began talking to me about these things; and I asked him to
let me go to a students' meeting. The other day he wrote to me to
Florence------Didn't you know I had been to Florence for the Christmas
holidays?"
"I don't often hear from home now."
"Ah, yes! Anyhow, I went to stay with the Wrights." (The Wrights were
old schoolfellows of hers who had moved to Florence.) "Then Bini wrote and
told me to pass through Pisa to-day on my way home, so that I could come
here. Ah! they're going to begin."
The lecture was upon the ideal Republic and the duty of the young to
fit themselves for it. The lecturer's comprehension of his subject was
somewhat vague; but Arthur listened with devout admiration. His mind at this
period was curiously uncritical; when he accepted a moral ideal he swallowed
it whole without stopping to think whether it was quite digestible. When the
lecture and the long discussion which followed it were finished and the
students began to disperse, he went up to Gemma, who was still sitting in
the corner of the room.
"Let me walk with you, Jim. Where are you staying?"
"With Marietta."
"Your father's old housekeeper?"
"Yes; she lives a good way from here."
They walked for some time in silence. Then Arthur said suddenly:
"You are seventeen, now, aren't you?"
"I was seventeen in October."
"I always knew you would not grow up like other girls and begin wanting
to go to balls and all that sort of thing. Jim, dear, I have so often
wondered whether you would ever come to be one of us."
"So have I."
"You said you had done things for Bini; I didn't know you even knew
him."
"It wasn't for Bini; it was for the other one"
"Which other one?"
"The one that was talking to me to-night-- Bolla."
"Do you know him well?" Arthur put in with a little touch of jealousy.
Bolla was a sore subject with him; there had been a rivalry between them
about some work which the committee of Young Italy had finally intrusted to
Bolla, declaring Arthur too young and inexperienced.
"I know him pretty well; and I like him very much. He has been staying
in Leghorn."
"I know; he went there in November------"
"Because of the steamers. Arthur, don't you think your house would be