Lilian Voinich. The Gadfly

        PART I: CHAPTER I.
     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.'"
        PART I: CHAPTER II.
     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,