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."
