Lilian Voinich. The Gadfly
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
safer than ours for that work? Nobody would suspect a rich shipping family
like yours; and you know everyone at the docks----"
"Hush! not so loud, dear! So it was in your house the books from
Marseilles were hidden?"
"Only for one day. Oh! perhaps I oughtn't to have told you."
"Why not? You know I belong to the society. Gemma, dear, there is
nothing in all the world that would make me so happy as for you to join us--
you and the Padre."
"Your Padre! Surely he----"
"No; he thinks differently. But I have sometimes fancied--that
is--hoped--I don't know----"
"But, Arthur! he's a priest."
"What of that? There are priests in the society --two of them write in
the paper. And why not? It is the mission of the priesthood to lead the
world to higher ideals and aims, and what else does the society try to do?
It is, after all, more a religious and moral question than a political one.
If people are fit to be free and responsible citizens, no one can keep them
enslaved."
Gemma knit her brows. "It seems to me, Arthur," she said, "that there's
a muddle somewhere in your logic. A priest teaches religious doctrine. I
don't see what that has to do with getting rid of the Austrians."
"A priest is a teacher of Christianity, and the greatest of all
revolutionists was Christ."
"Do you know, I was talking about priests to father the other day, and
he said----"
"Gemma, your father is a Protestant."
After a little pause she looked round at him frankly.
"Look here, we had better leave this subject alone. You are always
intolerant when you talk about Protestants."
"I didn't mean to be intolerant. But I think Protestants are generally
intolerant when they talk about priests."
"I dare say. Anyhow, we have so often quarreled over this subject that
it is not worth while to begin again. What did you think of the lecture?"
"I liked it very much--especially the last part. I was glad he spoke so
strongly about the need of living the Republic, not dreaming of it. It is as
Christ said: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.'"
"It was just that part that I didn't like. He talked so much of the
wonderful things we ought to think and feel and be, but he never told us
practically what we ought to do."
"When the time of crisis comes there will be plenty for us to do; but
we must be patient; these great changes are not made in a day."
"The longer a thing is to take doing, the more reason to begin at once.
You talk about being fit for freedom--did you ever know anyone so fit for it
as your mother? Wasn't she the most perfectly angelic woman you ever saw?
And what use was all her goodness? She was a slave till the day she
died--bullied and worried and insulted by your brother James and his wife.
It would have been much better for her if she had not been so sweet and
patient; they would never have treated her so. That's just the way with
Italy; it's not patience that's wanted--it's for somebody to get up and
defend themselves------"
"Jim, dear, if anger and passion could have saved Italy she would have
been free long ago; it is not hatred that she needs, it is love."
As he said the word a sudden flush went up to his forehead and died out
again. Gemma did not see it; she was looking straight before her with
knitted brows and set mouth.
"You think I am wrong, Arthur," she said after a pause; "but I am
right, and you will grow to see it some day. This is the house. Will you
come in?"
"No; it's late. Good-night, dear!"
He was standing on the doorstep, clasping her hand in both of his.
"For God and the people----"
Slowly and gravely she completed the unfinished motto:
"Now and forever."
Then she pulled away her hand and ran into the house. When the door had
closed behind her he stooped and picked up the spray of cypress which had
fallen from her breast.
ARTHUR went back to his lodgings feeling as though he had wings. He was
absolutely, cloudlessly happy. At the meeting there had been hints of
preparations for armed insurrection; and now Gemma was a comrade, and he
loved her. They could work together, possibly even die together, for the
Republic that was to be. The blossoming time of their hope was come, and the
Padre would see it and believe.
The next morning, however, he awoke in a soberer mood and remembered
that Gemma was going to Leghorn and the Padre to Rome. January, February,
March--three long months to Easter! And if Gemma should fall under
"Protestant" influences at home (in Arthur's vocabulary "Protestant" stood
for "Philistine")------ No, Gemma would never learn to flirt and simper and
captivate tourists and bald-headed shipowners, like the other English girls
in Leghorn; she was made of different stuff. But she might be very
miserable; she was so young, so friendless, so utterly alone among all those
wooden people. If only mother had lived----
In the evening he went to the seminary, where he found Montanelli
entertaining the new Director and looking both tired and bored. Instead of
lighting up, as usual, at the sight of Arthur, the Padre's face grew darker.
"This is the student I spoke to you about," he said, introducing Arthur
stiffly. "I shall be much obliged if you will allow him to continue using
the library."
Father Cardi, a benevolent-looking elderly priest, at once began
talking to Arthur about the Sapienza, with an ease and familiarity which
showed him to be well acquainted with college life. The conversation soon
drifted into a discussion of university regulations, a burning question of
that day. To Arthur's great delight, the new Director spoke strongly against
the custom adopted by the university authorities of constantly worrying the
students by senseless and vexatious restrictions.
"I have had a good deal of experience in guiding young people," he
said; "and I make it a rule never to prohibit anything without a good
reason. There are very few young men who will give much trouble if proper
consideration and respect for their personality are shown to them. But, of
course, the most docile horse will kick if you are always jerking at the
rein."
Arthur opened his eyes wide; he had not expected to hear the students'
cause pleaded by the new Director. Montanelli took no part in the
discussion; its subject, apparently, did not interest him. The expression of
his face was so unutterably hopeless and weary that Father Cardi broke off
suddenly.
"I am afraid I have overtired you, Canon. You must forgive my
talkativeness; I am hot upon this subject and forget that others may grow
weary of it."
"On the contrary, I was much interested." Montanelli was not given to
stereotyped politeness, and his tone jarred uncomfortably upon Arthur.
When Father Cardi went to his own room Montanelli turned to Arthur with
the intent and brooding look that his face had worn all the evening.
"Arthur, my dear boy," he began slowly; "I have something to tell you."
"He must have had bad news," flashed through Arthur's mind, as he
looked anxiously at the haggard face. There was a long pause.
"How do you like the new Director?" Montanelli asked suddenly.
The question was so unexpected that, for a moment, Arthur was at a loss
how to reply to it.
"I--I like him very much, I think--at least-- no, I am not quite sure
that I do. But it is difficult to say, after seeing a person once."
Montanelli sat beating his hand gently on the arm of his chair; a habit
with him when anxious or perplexed.
"About this journey to Rome," he began again; "if you think there is
any--well--if you wish it, Arthur, I will write and say I cannot go."
"Padre! But the Vatican------"
"The Vatican will find someone else. I can send apologies."
"But why? I can't understand."
Montanelli drew one hand across his forehead.
"I am anxious about you. Things keep coming into my head--and after
all, there is no need for me to go------"
"But the bishopric----"
"Oh, Arthur! what shall it profit me if I gain a bishopric and
lose----"
He broke off. Arthur had never seen him like this before, and was
greatly troubled.
"I can't understand," he said. "Padre, if you could explain to me
more--more definitely, what it is you think------"
"I think nothing; I am haunted with a horrible fear. Tell me, is there
any special danger?"
"He has heard something," Arthur thought, remembering the whispers of a
projected revolt. But the secret was not his to tell; and he merely
answered: "What special danger should there be?"
"Don't question me--answer me!" Montanelli's voice was almost harsh in
its eagerness. "Are you in danger? I don't want to know your secrets; only
tell me that!"
"We are all in God's hands, Padre; anything may always happen. But I
know of no reason why I should not be here alive and safe when you come
back."
"When I come back----Listen, carino; I will leave it in your hands. You
need give me no reason; only say to me, 'Stay,' and I will give up this
journey. There will be no injury to anyone, and I shall feel you are safer
if I have you beside me."
This kind of morbid fancifulness was so foreign to Montanelli's
character that Arthur looked at him with grave anxiety.
"Padre, I am sure you are not well. Of course you must go to Rome, and
try to have a thorough rest and get rid of your sleeplessness and
headaches."
"Very well," Montanelli interrupted, as if tired of the subject; "I
will start by the early coach to-morrow morning."
Arthur looked at him, wondering.
"You had something to tell me?" he said.
"No, no; nothing more--nothing of any consequence." There was a
startled, almost terrified look in his face.
A few days after Montanelli's departure Arthur went to fetch a book
from the seminary library, and met Father Cardi on the stairs.
"Ah, Mr. Burton!" exclaimed the Director; "the very person I wanted.
Please come in and help me out of a difficulty."
He opened the study door, and Arthur followed him into the room with a
foolish, secret sense of resentment. It seemed hard to see this dear study,
the Padre's own private sanctum, invaded by a stranger.
"I am a terrible book-worm," said the Director; "and my first act when
I got here was to examine the library. It seems very interesting, but I do
not understand the system by which it is catalogued."
"The catalogue is imperfect; many of the best books have been added to
the collection lately."
"Can you spare half an hour to explain the arrangement to me?"
They went into the library, and Arthur carefully explained the
catalogue. When he rose to take his hat, the Director interfered, laughing.
"No, no! I can't have you rushing off in that way. It is Saturday, and
quite time for you to leave off work till Monday morning. Stop and have
supper with me, now I have kept you so late. I am quite alone, and shall be
glad of company."
His manner was so bright and pleasant that Arthur felt at ease with him
at once. After some desultory conversation, the Director inquired how long
he had known Montanelli.
"For about seven years. He came back from China when I was twelve years
old."
"Ah, yes! It was there that he gained his reputation as a missionary
preacher. Have you been his pupil ever since?"
"He began teaching me a year later, about the time when I first
confessed to him. Since I have been at the Sapienza he has still gone on
helping me with anything I wanted to study that was not in the regular
course. He has been very kind to me--you can hardly imagine how kind."
"I can well believe it; he is a man whom no one can fail to admire--a
most noble and beautiful nature. I have met priests who were out in China
with him; and they had no words high enough to praise his energy and courage
under all hardships, and his unfailing devotion. You are fortunate to have
had in your youth the help and guidance of such a man. I understood from him
that you have lost both parents."
"Yes; my father died when I was a child, and my mother a year ago."
"Have you brothers and sisters?"
"No; I have step-brothers; but they were business men when I was in the
nursery."
"You must have had a lonely childhood; perhaps you value Canon
Montanelli's kindness the more for that. By the way, have you chosen a
confessor for the time of his absence?"
"I thought of going to one of the fathers of Santa Caterina, if they
have not too many penitents."
"Will you confess to me?"
Arthur opened his eyes in wonder.
"Reverend Father, of course I--should be glad; only----"
"Only the Director of a theological seminary does not usually receive
lay penitents? That is quite true. But I know Canon Montanelli takes a great
interest in you, and I fancy he is a little anxious on your behalf--just as
I should be if I were leaving a favourite pupil--and would like to know you
were under the spiritual guidance of his colleague. And, to be quite frank
with you, my son, I like you, and should be glad to give you any help I
can."
"If you put it that way, of course I shall be very grateful for your
guidance."
"Then you will come to me next month? That's right. And run in to see
me, my lad, when you have time any evening."
. . . . .
Shortly before Easter Montanelli's appointment to the little see of
Brisighella, in the Etruscan Apennines, was officially announced. He wrote
to Arthur from Rome in a cheerful and tranquil spirit; evidently his
depression was passing over. "You must come to see me every vacation," he
wrote; "and I shall often be coming to Pisa; so I hope to see a good deal of
you, if not so much as I should wish." Dr. Warren had invited Arthur to
spend the Easter holidays with him and his children, instead of in the
dreary, rat-ridden old place where Julia now reigned supreme. Enclosed in
the letter was a short note, scrawled in Gemma's childish, irregular
handwriting, begging him to come if possible, "as I want to talk to you
about something." Still more encouraging was the whispered communication
passing around from student to student in the university; everyone was to be
prepared for great things after Easter.
All this had put Arthur into a state of rapturous anticipation, in
which the wildest improbabilities hinted at among the students seemed to him
natural and likely to be realized within the next two months.
He arranged to go home on Thursday in Passion week, and to spend the
first days of the vacation there, that the pleasure of visiting the Warrens
and the delight of seeing Gemma might not unfit him for the solemn religious
meditation demanded by the Church from all her children at this season. He
wrote to Gemma, promising to come on Easter Monday; and went up to his
bedroom on Wednesday night with a soul at peace.
He knelt down before the crucifix. Father Cardi had promised to receive
him in the morning; and for this, his last confession before the Easter
communion, he must prepare himself by long and earnest prayer. Kneeling with
clasped hands and bent head, he looked back over the month, and reckoned up
the miniature sins of impatience, carelessness, hastiness of temper, which
had left their faint, small spots upon the whiteness of his soul. Beyond
these he could find nothing; in this month he had been too happy to sin
much. He crossed himself, and, rising, began to undress.
As he unfastened his shirt a scrap of paper slipped from it and
fluttered to the floor. It was Gemma's letter, which he had worn all day
upon his neck. He picked it up, unfolded it, and kissed the dear scribble;
then began folding the paper up again, with a dim consciousness of having
done something very ridiculous, when he noticed on the back of the sheet a
postscript which he had not read before. "Be sure and come as soon as
possible," it ran, "for I want you to meet Bolla. He has been staying here,
and we have read together every day."
The hot colour went up to Arthur's forehead as he read.
Always Bolla! What was he doing in Leghorn again? And why should Gemma
want to read with him? Had he bewitched her with his smuggling? It had been
quite easy to see at the meeting in January that he was in love with her;
that was why he had been so earnest over his propaganda. And now he was
close to her--reading with her every day.
Arthur suddenly threw the letter aside and knelt down again before the
crucifix. And this was the soul that was preparing for absolution, for the
Easter sacrament--the soul at peace with God and itself and all the world! A
soul capable of sordid jealousies and suspicions; of selfish animosities and
ungenerous hatred--and against a comrade! He covered his face with both
hands in bitter humiliation. Only five minutes ago he had been dreaming of
martyrdom; and now he had been guilty of a mean and petty thought like this!
When he entered the seminary chapel on Thursday morning he found Father
Cardi alone. After repeating the Confiteor, he plunged at once into the
subject of his last night's backsliding.
"My father, I accuse myself of the sins of jealousy and anger, and of
unworthy thoughts against one who has done me no wrong."
Farther Cardi knew quite well with what kind of penitent he had to
deal. He only said softly:
"You have not told me all, my son."
"Father, the man against whom I have thought an unchristian thought is
one whom I am especially bound to love and honour."
"One to whom you are bound by ties of blood?"
"By a still closer tie."
"By what tie, my son?"
"By that of comradeship."
"Comradeship in what?"
"In a great and holy work."
A little pause.
"And your anger against this--comrade, your jealousy of him, was called
forth by his success in that work being greater than yours?"
"I--yes, partly. I envied him his experience-- his usefulness. And
then--I thought--I feared-- that he would take from me the heart of the girl
I--love."
"And this girl that you love, is she a daughter of the Holy Church?"
"No; she is a Protestant."
"A heretic?"
Arthur clasped his hands in great distress. "Yes, a heretic," he
repeated. "We were brought up together; our mothers were friends--and I --
envied him, because I saw that he loves her, too, and because--because----"
"My son," said Father Cardi, speaking after a moment's silence, slowly
and gravely, "you have still not told me all; there is more than this upon
your soul."
"Father, I----" He faltered and broke off again.
The priest waited silently.
"I envied him because the society--the Young Italy--that I belong
to------"
"Yes?" Intrusted him with a work that I had hoped --would be given to
me, that I had thought myself --specially adapted for."
"What work?"
"The taking in of books--political books--from the steamers that bring
them--and finding a hiding place for them--in the town------"
"And this work was given by the party to your rival?"
"To Bolla--and I envied him."
"And he gave you no cause for this feeling? You do not accuse him of
having neglected the mission intrusted to him?"
"No, father; he has worked bravely and devotedly; he is a true patriot
and has deserved nothing but love and respect from me."
Father Cardi pondered.
"My son, if there is within you a new light, a dream of some great work
to be accomplished for your fellow-men, a hope that shall lighten the
burdens of the weary and oppressed, take heed how you deal with the most
precious blessing of God. All good things are of His giving; and of His
giving is the new birth. If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way
that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring
deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that your
soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where the
sacred fire burns eternally. Remember that this is a high and holy thing,
and that the heart which would receive it must be purified from every
selfish thought. This vocation is as the vocation of a priest; it is not for
the love of a woman, nor for the moment of a fleeting passion; it is FOR GOD
AND THE PEOPLE; it is NOW AND FOREVER."
"Ah!" Arthur started and clasped his hands; he had almost burst out
sobbing at the motto. "Father, you give us the sanction of the Church!
Christ is on our side----"
"My son," the priest answered solemnly, "Christ drove the moneychangers
out of the Temple, for His House shall be called a House of Prayer, and they
had made it a den of thieves."
After a long silence, Arthur whispered tremulously:
"And Italy shall be His Temple when they are driven out----"
He stopped; and the soft answer came back:
"'The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith the Lord.'"
THAT afternoon Arthur felt the need of a long walk. He intrusted his
luggage to a fellow-student and went to Leghorn on foot.
The day was damp and cloudy, but not cold; and the low, level country
seemed to him fairer than he had ever known it to look before. He had a
sense of delight in the soft elasticity of the wet grass under his feet and
in the shy, wondering eyes of the wild spring flowers by the roadside. In a
thorn-acacia bush at the edge of a little strip of wood a bird was building
a nest, and flew up as he passed with a startled cry and a quick fluttering
of brown wings.
He tried to keep his mind fixed upon the devout meditations proper to
the eve of Good Friday. But thoughts of Montanelli and Gemma got so much in
the way of this devotional exercise that at last he gave up the attempt and
allowed his fancy to drift away to the wonders and glories of the coming
insurrection, and to the part in it that he had allotted to his two idols.
The Padre was to be the leader, the apostle, the prophet before whose sacred
wrath the powers of darkness were to flee, and at whose feet the young
defenders of Liberty were to learn afresh the old doctrines, the old truths
in their new and unimagined significance.
And Gemma? Oh, Gemma would fight at the barricades. She was made of the
clay from which heroines are moulded; she would be the perfect comrade, the
maiden undefiled and unafraid, of whom so many poets have dreamed. She would
stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, rejoicing under the winged
death-storm; and they would die together, perhaps in the moment of
victory--without doubt there would be a victory. Of his love he would tell
her nothing; he would say no word that might disturb her peace or spoil her
tranquil sense of comradeship. She was to him a holy thing, a spotless
victim to be laid upon the altar as a burnt-offering for the deliverance of
the people; and who was he that he should enter into the white sanctuary of
a soul that knew no other love than God and Italy?
God and Italy----Then came a sudden drop from the clouds as he entered
the great, dreary house in the "Street of Palaces," and Julia's butler,
immaculate, calm, and politely disapproving as ever, confronted him upon the
stairs.
"Good-evening, Gibbons; are my brothers in?"
"Mr. Thomas is in, sir; and Mrs. Burton. They are in the drawing room."
Arthur went in with a dull sense of oppression. What a dismal house it
was! The flood of life seemed to roll past and leave it always just above
high-water mark. Nothing in it ever changed-- neither the people, nor the
family portraits, nor the heavy furniture and ugly plate, nor the vulgar
ostentation of riches, nor the lifeless aspect of everything. Even the
flowers on the brass stands looked like painted metal flowers that had never
known the stirring of young sap within them in the warm spring days. Julia,
dressed for dinner, and waiting for visitors in the drawing room which was
to her the centre of existence, might have sat for a fashion-plate just as
she was, with her wooden smile and flaxen ringlets, and the lap-dog on her
knee.
"How do you do, Arthur?" she said stiffly, giving him the tips of her
fingers for a moment, and then transferring them to the more congenial
contact of the lap-dog's silken coat. "I hope you are quite well and have
made satisfactory progress at college."
Arthur murmured the first commonplace that he could think of at the
moment, and relapsed into uncomfortable silence. The arrival of James, in
his most pompous mood and accompanied by a stiff, elderly shipping-agent,
did not improve matters; and when Gibbons announced that dinner was served,
Arthur rose with a little sigh of relief.
"I won't come to dinner, Julia. If you'll excuse me I will go to my
room."
"You're overdoing that fasting, my boy," said Thomas; "I am sure you'll
make yourself ill."
"Oh, no! Good-night."
In the corridor Arthur met the under housemaid and asked her to knock
at his door at six in the morning.
"The signorino is going to church?"
"Yes. Good-night, Teresa."
He went into his room. It had belonged to his mother, and the alcove
opposite the window had been fitted up during her long illness as an
oratory. A great crucifix on a black pedestal occupied the middle of the
altar; and before it hung a little Roman lamp. This was the room where she
had died. Her portrait was on the wall beside the bed; and on the table
stood a china bowl which had been hers, filled with a great bunch of her
favourite violets. It was just a year since her death; and the Italian
servants had not forgotten her.
He took out of his portmanteau a framed picture, carefully wrapped up.
It was a crayon portrait of Montanelli, which had come from Rome only a few
days before. He was unwrapping this precious treasure when Julia's page
brought in a supper-tray on which the old Italian cook, who had served
Gladys before the harsh, new mistress came, had placed such little
delicacies as she considered her dear signorino might permit himself to eat
without infringing the rules of the Church. Arthur refused everything but a
piece of bread; and the page, a nephew of Gibbons, lately arrived from
England, grinned significantly as he carried out the tray. He had already
joined the Protestant camp in the servants' hall.
Arthur went into the alcove and knelt down before the crucifix, trying
to compose his mind to the proper attitude for prayer and meditation. But
this he found difficult to accomplish. He had, as Thomas said, rather
overdone the Lenten privations, and they had gone to his head like strong
wine. Little quivers of excitement went down his back, and the crucifix swam
in a misty cloud before his eyes. It was only after a long litany,
mechanically repeated, that he succeeded in recalling his wandering
imagination to the mystery of the Atonement. At last sheer physical
weariness conquered the feverish agitation of his nerves, and he lay down to
sleep in a calm and peaceful mood, free from all unquiet or disturbing
thoughts.
He was fast asleep when a sharp, impatient knock came at his door. "Ah,
Teresa!" he thought, turning over lazily. The knock was repeated, and he
awoke with a violent start.
"Signorino! signorino!" cried a man's voice in Italian; "get up for the
love of God!"
Arthur jumped out of bed.
"What is the matter? Who is it?"
"It's I, Gian Battista. Get up, quick, for Our Lady's sake!"
Arthur hurriedly dressed and opened the door. As he stared in
perplexity at the coachman's pale, terrified face, the sound of tramping
feet and clanking metal came along the corridor, and he suddenly realized
the truth.
"For me?" he asked coolly.
"For you! Oh, signorino, make haste! What have you to hide? See, I can
put----"
"I have nothing to hide. Do my brothers know?"
The first uniform appeared at the turn of the passage.
"The signor has been called; all the house is awake. Alas! what a
misfortune--what a terrible misfortune! And on Good Friday! Holy Saints,
have pity!"
Gian Battista burst into tears. Arthur moved a few steps forward and
waited for the gendarmes, who came clattering along, followed by a shivering
crowd of servants in various impromptu costumes. As the soldiers surrounded
Arthur, the master and mistress of the house brought up the rear of this
strange procession; he in dressing gown and slippers, she in a long
peignoir, with her hair in curlpapers.
"There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming to
the ark! Here comes a pair of very strange beasts!"
The quotation flashed across Arthur's mind as he looked at the
grotesque figures. He checked a laugh with a sense of its jarring
incongruity--this was a time for worthier thoughts. "Ave Maria, Regina
Coeli!" he whispered, and turned his eyes away, that the bobbing of Julia's
curlpapers might not again tempt him to levity.
"Kindly explain to me," said Mr. Burton, approaching the officer of
gendarmerie, "what is the meaning of this violent intrusion into a private
house? I warn you that, unless you are prepared to furnish me with a
satisfactory explanation, I shall feel bound to complain to the English
Ambassador."
"I presume," replied the officer stiffly, "that you will recognize this
as a sufficient explanation; the English Ambassador certainly will." He
pulled out a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Burton, student of philosophy,
and, handing it to James, added coldly: "If you wish for any further
explanation, you had better apply in person to the chief of police."
Julia snatched the paper from her husband, glanced over it, and flew at
Arthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.
"So it's you that have disgraced the family!" she screamed; "setting
all the rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show?
So you have turned jail-bird, now, with all your piety! It's what we might
have expected from that Popish woman's child----"
"You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam," the
officer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under the
torrent of Julia's vociferous English.
"Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintly
meditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that would be
the end of it."
Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook had
upset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur's
teeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.
"There's no use in this kind of talk," he said. "You need not be afraid
of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite
innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have nothing
to hide." The gendarmes, meanwhile, had finished their search, and the
officer in charge requested Arthur to put on his outdoor clothes. He obeyed
at once and turned to leave the room; then stopped with sudden hesitation.
It seemed hard to take leave of his mother's oratory in the presence of
these officials.
"Have you any objection to leaving the room for a moment?" he asked.
"You see that I cannot escape and that there is nothing to conceal."
"I am sorry, but it is forbidden to leave a prisoner alone."
"Very well, it doesn't matter."
He went into the alcove, and, kneeling down, kissed the feet and
pedestal of the crucifix, whispering softly: "Lord, keep me faithful unto
death."
When he rose, the officer was standing by the table, examining
Montanelli's portrait. "Is this a relative of yours?" he asked.
"No; it is my confessor, the new Bishop of Brisighella."
On the staircase the Italian servants were waiting, anxious and
sorrowful. They all loved Arthur for his own sake and his mother's, and
crowded round him, kissing his hands and dress with passionate grief. Gian
Battista stood by, the tears dripping down his gray moustache. None of the
Burtons came out to take leave of him. Their coldness accentuated the
tenderness and sympathy of the servants, and Arthur was near to breaking
down as he pressed the hands held out to him.
"Good-bye, Gian Battista. Kiss the little ones for me. Good-bye,
Teresa. Pray for me, all of you; and God keep you! Good-bye, good-bye!"
He ran hastily downstairs to the front door. A moment later only a
little group of silent men and sobbing women stood on the doorstep watching
the carriage as it drove away.PART I: CHAPTER VI.
ARTHUR was taken to the huge mediaeval fortress at the harbour's mouth.
He found prison life fairly endurable. His cell was unpleasantly damp and
dark; but he had been brought up in a palace in the Via Borra, and neither
close air, rats, nor foul smells were novelties to him. The food, also, was
both bad and insufficient; but James soon obtained permission to send him
all the necessaries of life from home. He was kept in solitary confinement,
and, though the vigilance of the warders was less strict than he had
expected, he failed to obtain any explanation of the cause of his arrest.
Nevertheless, the tranquil frame of mind in which he had entered the
fortress did not change. Not being allowed books, he spent his time in
prayer and devout meditation, and waited without impatience or anxiety for
the further course of events.
One day a soldier unlocked the door of his cell and called to him:
"This way, please!" After two or three questions, to which he got no answer
but, "Talking is forbidden," Arthur resigned himself to the inevitable and
followed the soldier through a labyrinth of courtyards, corridors, and
stairs, all more or less musty-smelling, into a large, light room in which
three persons in military uniform sat at a long table covered with green
baize and littered with papers, chatting in a languid, desultory way. They
put on a stiff, business air as he came in, and the oldest of them, a
foppish-looking man with gray whiskers and a colonel's uniform, pointed to a
chair on the other side of the table and began the preliminary
interrogation.
Arthur had expected to be threatened, abused, and sworn at, and had
prepared himself to answer with dignity and patience; but he was pleasantly
disappointed. The colonel was stiff, cold and formal, but perfectly
courteous. The usual questions as to his name, age, nationality, and social
position were put and answered, and the replies written down in monotonous
succession. He was beginning to feel bored and impatient, when the colonel
asked:
"And now, Mr. Burton, what do you know about Young Italy?"
"I know that it is a society which publishes a newspaper in Marseilles
and circulates it in Italy, with the object of inducing people to revolt and
drive the Austrian army out of the country."
"You have read this paper, I think?"
"Yes; I am interested in the subject."
"When you read it you realized that you were committing an illegal
action?"
"Certainly."
"Where did you get the copies which were found in your room?"
"That I cannot tell you."
"Mr. Burton, you must not say 'I cannot tell' here; you are bound to
answer my questions."
"I will not, then, if you object to 'cannot.'"
"You will regret it if you permit yourself to use such expressions,"
remarked the colonel. As Arthur made no reply, he went on:
"I may as well tell you that evidence has come into our hands proving
your connection with this society to be much more intimate than is implied
by the mere reading of forbidden literature. It will be to your advantage to
confess frankly. In any case the truth will be sure to come out, and you
will find it useless to screen yourself behind evasion and denials."
"I have no desire to screen myself. What is it you want to know?"
"Firstly, how did you, a foreigner, come to be implicated in matters of
this kind?"
"I thought about the subject and read everything I could get hold of,
and formed my own conclusions."
"Who persuaded you to join this society?"
"No one; I wished to join it."
"You are shilly-shallying with me," said the colonel, sharply; his
patience was evidently beginning to give out. "No one can join a society by
himself. To whom did you communicate your wish to join it?"
Silence.
"Will you have the kindness to answer me?"
"Not when you ask questions of that kind."
Arthur spoke sullenly; a curious, nervous irritability was taking
possession of him. He knew by this time that many arrests had been made in
both Leghorn and Pisa; and, though still ignorant of the extent of the
calamity, he had already heard enough to put him into a fever of anxiety for
the safety of Gemma and his other friends. The studied politeness of the
officers, the dull game of fencing and parrying, of insidious questions and
evasive answers, worried and annoyed him, and the clumsy tramping backward
and forward of the sentinel outside the door jarred detestably upon his ear.
"Oh, by the bye, when did you last meet Giovanni Bolla?" asked the
colonel, after a little more bandying of words. "Just before you left Pisa,
was it?"
"I know no one of that name."
"What! Giovanni Bolla? Surely you know him --a tall young fellow,
closely shaven. Why, he is one of your fellow-students."
"There are many students in the university whom I don't know."
"Oh, but you must know Bolla, surely! Look, this is his handwriting.
You see, he knows you well enough."
The colonel carelessly handed him a paper headed: "Protocol," and
signed: "Giovanni Bolla." Glancing down it Arthur came upon his own name. He
looked up in surprise. "Am I to read it?"
"Yes, you may as well; it concerns you."
He began to read, while the officers sat silently watching his face.
The document appeared to consist of depositions in answer to a long string
of questions. Evidently Bolla, too, must have been arrested. The first
depositions were of the usual stereotyped character; then followed a short
account of Bolla's connection with the society, of the dissemination of
prohibited literature in Leghorn, and of the students' meetings. Next came
"Among those who joined us was a young Englishman, Arthur Burton, who
belongs to one of the rich shipowning families."
The blood rushed into Arthur's face. Bolla had betrayed him! Bolla, who
had taken upon himself the solemn duties of an initiator--Bolla, who had
converted Gemma--who was in love with her! He laid down the paper and stared
at the floor.
"I hope that little document has refreshed your memory?" hinted the
colonel politely.
Arthur shook his head. "I know no one of that name," he repeated in a
dull, hard voice. "There must be some mistake."
"Mistake? Oh, nonsense! Come, Mr. Burton, chivalry and quixotism are
very fine things in their way; but there's no use in overdoing them. It's an
error all you young people fall into at first. Come, think! What good is it
for you to compromise yourself and spoil your prospects in life over a
simple formality about a man that has betrayed you? You see yourself, he
wasn't so particular as to what he said about you."
A faint shade of something like mockery had crept into the colonel's
voice. Arthur looked up with a start; a sudden light flashed upon his mind.
"It's a lie!" he cried out. "It's a forgery! I can see it in your face,
you cowardly----You've got some prisoner there you want to compromise, or a
trap you want to drag me into. You are a forger, and a liar, and a
scoundrel----"
"Silence!" shouted the colonel, starting up in a rage; his two
colleagues were already on their feet. "Captain Tommasi," he went on,
turning to one of them, "ring for the guard, if you please, and have this
young gentleman put in the punishment cell for a few days. He wants a
lesson, I see, to bring him to reason."
The punishment cell was a dark, damp, filthy hole under ground. Instead
of bringing Arthur "to reason," it thoroughly exasperated him. His luxurious
home had rendered him daintily fastidious about personal cleanliness, and
the first effect of the slimy, vermin-covered walls, the floor heaped with
accumulations of filth and garbage, the fearful stench of fungi and sewage
and rotting wood, was strong enough to have satisfied the offended officer.
When he was pushed in and the door locked behind him he took three cautious
steps forward with outstretched hands, shuddering with disgust as his
fingers came into contact with the slippery wall, and groped in the dense
blackness for some spot less filthy than the rest in which to sit down.
The long day passed in unbroken blackness and silence, and the night
brought no change. In the utter void and absence of all external
impressions, he gradually lost the consciousness of time; and when, on the
following morning, a key was turned in the door lock, and the frightened
rats scurried past him squeaking, he started up in a sudden panic, his heart
throbbing furiously and a roaring noise in his ears, as though he had been
shut away from light and sound for months instead of hours.
The door opened, letting in a feeble lantern gleam--a flood of blinding
light, it seemed to him --and the head warder entered, carrying a piece of
bread and a mug of water. Arthur made a step forward; he was quite convinced
that the man had come to let him out. Before he had time to speak, the
warder put the bread and mug into his hands, turned round and went away
without a word, locking the door again.
Arthur stamped his foot upon the ground. For the first time in his life
he was savagely angry. But as the hours went by, the consciousness of time
and place gradually slipped further and further away. The blackness seemed
an illimitable thing, with no beginning and no end, and life had, as it
were, stopped for him. On the evening of the third day, when the door was
opened and the head warder appeared on the threshold with a soldier, he
looked up, dazed and bewildered, shading his eyes from the unaccustomed
light, and vaguely wondering how many hours or weeks he had been in this
grave.
"This way, please," said the cool business voice of the warder. Arthur
rose and moved forward mechanically, with a strange unsteadiness, swaying
and stumbling like a drunkard. He resented the warder's attempt to help him
up the steep, narrow steps leading to the courtyard; but as he reached the
highest step a sudden giddiness came over him, so that he staggered and
would have fallen backwards had the warder not caught him by the shoulder.
. . . . .
"There, he'll be all right now," said a cheerful voice; "they most of
them go off this way coming out into the air."
Arthur struggled desperately for breath as another handful of water was
dashed into his face. The blackness seemed to fall away from him in pieces
with a rushing noise; then he woke suddenly into full consciousness, and,
pushing aside the warder's arm, walked along the corridor and up the stairs
almost steadily. They stopped for a moment in front of a door; then it
opened, and before he realized where they were taking him he was in the
brightly lighted interrogation room, staring in confused wonder at the table
and the papers and the officers sitting in their accustomed places.
"Ah, it's Mr. Burton!" said the colonel. "I hope we shall be able to
talk more comfortably now. Well, and how do you like the dark cell? Not
quite so luxurious as your brother's drawing room, is it? eh?"
Arthur raised his eyes to the colonel's smiling face. He was seized by
a frantic desire to spring at the throat of this gray-whiskered fop and tear
it with his teeth. Probably something of this kind was visible in his face,
for the colonel added immediately, in a quite different tone:
"Sit down, Mr. Burton, and drink some water; you are excited."
Arthur pushed aside the glass of water held out to him; and, leaning
his arms on the table, rested his forehead on one hand and tried to collect
his thoughts. The colonel sat watching him keenly, noting with experienced
eyes the unsteady hands and lips, the hair dripping with water, the dim gaze
that told of physical prostration and disordered nerves.
"Now, Mr. Burton," he said after a few minutes; "we will start at the
point where we left off; and as there has been a certain amount of
unpleasantness between us, I may as well begin by saying that I, for my
part, have no desire to be anything but indulgent with you. If you will
behave properly and reasonably, I assure you that we shall not treat you
with any unnecessary harshness."
"What do you want me to do?"
Arthur spoke in a hard, sullen voice, quite different from his natural
tone.
"I only want you to tell us frankly, in a straightforward and
honourable manner, what you know of this society and its adherents. First of
all, how long have you known Bolla?"
"I never met him in my life. I know nothing whatever about him."
"Really? Well, we will return to that subject presently. I think you
know a young man named Carlo Bini?"
"I never heard of such a person."
"That is very extraordinary. What about Francesco Neri?"
"I never heard the name."
"But here is a letter in your handwriting, addressed to him. Look!"
Arthur glanced carelessly at the letter and laid it aside.
"Do you recognize that letter?"
"No."
"You deny that it is in your writing?"
"I deny nothing. I have no recollection of it."
"Perhaps you remember this one?"
A second letter was handed to him, and he saw that it was one which he
had written in the autumn to a fellow-student.
"No."
"Nor the person to whom it is addressed?"
"Nor the person."
"Your memory is singularly short."
"It is a defect from which I have always suffered."
"Indeed! And I heard the other day from a university professor that you
are considered by no means deficient; rather clever in fact."
"You probably judge of cleverness by the police-spy standard;
university professors use words in a different sense."
The note of rising irritation was plainly audible in Arthur's voice. He
was physically exhausted with hunger, foul air, and want of sleep; every
bone in his body seemed to ache separately; and the colonel's voice grated
on his exasperated nerves, setting his teeth on edge like the squeak of a
slate pencil.
"Mr. Burton," said the colonel, leaning back in his chair and speaking
gravely, "you are again forgetting yourself; and I warn you once more that
this kind of talk will do you no good. Surely you have had enough of the
dark cell not to want any more just for the present. I tell you plainly that
I shall use strong measures with you if you persist in repulsing gentle
ones. Mind, I have proof--positive proof--that some of these young men have
been engaged in smuggling prohibited literature into this port; and that you
have been in communication with them. Now, are you going to tell me, without
compulsion, what you know about this affair?"
Arthur bent his head lower. A blind, senseless, wild-beast fury was
beginning to stir within him like a live thing. The possibility of losing
command over himself was more appalling to him than any threats. For the
first time he began to realize what latent potentialities may lie hidden
beneath the culture of any gentleman and the piety of any Christian; and the
terror of himself was strong upon him.
"I am waiting for your answer," said the colonel.
"I have no answer to give."
"You positively refuse to answer?"
"I will tell you nothing at all."
"Then I must simply order you back into the punishment cell, and keep
you there till you change your mind. If there is much more trouble with you,
I shall put you in irons."
Arthur looked up, trembling from head to foot. "You will do as you
please," he said slowly; "and whether the English Ambassador will stand your
playing tricks of that kind with a British subject who has not been
convicted of any crime is for him to decide."
At last Arthur was conducted back to his own cell, where he flung
himself down upon the bed and slept till the next morning. He was not put in
irons, and saw no more of the dreaded dark cell; but the feud between him
and the colonel grew more inveterate with every interrogation. It was quite
useless for Arthur to pray in his cell for grace to conquer his evil
passions, or to meditate half the night long upon the patience and meekness
of Christ. No sooner was he brought again into the long, bare room with its
baize-covered table, and confronted with the colonel's waxed moustache, than
the unchristian spirit would take possession of him once more, suggesting
bitter repartees and contemptuous answers. Before he had been a month in the
prison the mutual irritation had reached such a height that he and the
colonel could not see each other's faces without losing their temper.
The continual strain of this petty warfare was beginning to tell
heavily upon his nerves. Knowing how closely he was watched, and remembering
certain dreadful rumours which he had heard of prisoners secretly drugged
with belladonna that notes might be taken of their ravings, he gradually
became afraid to sleep or eat; and if a mouse ran past him in the night,
would start up drenched with cold sweat and quivering with terror, fancying
that someone was hiding in the room to listen if he talked in his sleep. The
gendarmes were evidently trying to entrap him into making some admission
which might compromise Bolla; and so great was his fear of slipping, by any
inadvertency, into a pitfall, that he was really in danger of doing so
through sheer nervousness. Bolla's name rang in his ears night and day,
interfering even with his devotions, and forcing its way in among the beads
of the rosary instead of the name of Mary. But the worst thing of all was
that his religion, like the outer world, seemed to be slipping away from him
as the days went by. To this last foothold he clung with feverish tenacity,
spending several hours of each day in prayer and meditation; but his
thoughts wandered more and more often to Bolla, and the prayers were growing
terribly mechanical.
His greatest comfort was the head warder of the prison. This was a
little old man, fat and bald, who at first had tried his hardest to wear a
severe expression. Gradually the good nature which peeped out of every
dimple in his chubby face conquered his official scruples, and he began
carrying messages for the prisoners from cell to cell.
One afternoon in the middle of May this warder came into the cell with
a face so scowling and gloomy that Arthur looked at him in astonishment.
"Why, Enrico!" he exclaimed; "what on earth is wrong with you to-day?"
"Nothing," said Enrico snappishly; and, going up to the pallet, he
began pulling off the rug, which was Arthur's property.
"What do you want with my things? Am I to be moved into another cell?"
"No; you're to be let out."
"Let out? What--to-day? For altogether? Enrico!"
In his excitement Arthur had caught hold of the old man's arm. It was
angrily wrenched away.
"Enrico! What has come to you? Why don't you answer? Are we all going
to be let out?"
A contemptuous grunt was the only reply.
"Look here!" Arthur again took hold of the warder's arm, laughing. "It
is no use for you to be cross to me, because I'm not going to get offended.
I want to know about the others."
"Which others?" growled Enrico, suddenly laying down the shirt he was
folding. "Not Bolla, I suppose?"
"Bolla and all the rest, of course. Enrico, what is the matter with
you?"
"Well, he's not likely to be let out in a hurry, poor lad, when a
comrade has betrayed him. Ugh!" Enrico took up the shirt again in disgust.
"Betrayed him? A comrade? Oh, how dreadful!" Arthur's eyes dilated with
horror. Enrico turned quickly round.
"Why, wasn't it you?"
"I? Are you off your head, man? I?"
"Well, they told him so yesterday at interrogation, anyhow. I'm very
glad if it wasn't you, for I always thought you were rather a decent young
fellow. This way!" Enrico stepped out into the corridor and Arthur followed
him, a light breaking in upon the confusion of his mind.
"They told Bolla I'd betrayed him? Of course they did! Why, man, they
told me he had betrayed me. Surely Bolla isn't fool enough to believe that
sort of stuff?"
"Then it really isn't true?" Enrico stopped at the foot of the stairs
and looked searchingly at Arthur, who merely shrugged his shoulders.
"Of course it's a lie."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it, my lad, and I'll tell him you said so. But
you see what they told him was that you had denounced him out of--well, out
of jealousy, because of your both being sweet on the same girl."
"It's a lie!" Arthur repeated the words in a quick, breathless whisper.
A sudden, paralyzing fear had come over him. "The same girl--jealousy!" How
could they know--how could they know?
"Wait a minute, my lad." Enrico stopped in the corridor leading to the
interrogation room, and spoke softly. "I believe you; but just tell me one
thing. I know you're a Catholic; did you ever say anything in the
confessional------"
"It's a lie!" This time Arthur's voice had risen to a stifled cry.
Enrico shrugged his shoulders and moved on again. "You know best, of
course; but you wouldn't be the only young fool that's been taken in that
way. There's a tremendous ado just now about a priest in Pisa that some of
your friends have found out. They've printed a leaflet saying he's a spy."
He opened the door of the interrogation room, and, seeing that Arthur
stood motionless, staring blankly before him, pushed him gently across the
threshold.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Burton," said the colonel, smiling and showing his
teeth amiably. "I have great pleasure in congratulating you. An order for
your release has arrived from Florence. Will you kindly sign this paper?"
Arthur went up to him. "I want to know," he said in a dull voice, "who
it was that betrayed me."
The colonel raised his eyebrows with a smile.
"Can't you guess? Think a minute."
Arthur shook his head. The colonel put out both hands with a gesture of
polite surprise.
"Can't guess? Really? Why, you yourself, Mr. Burton. Who else could
know your private love affairs?"
Arthur turned away in silence. On the wall hung a large wooden
crucifix; and his eyes wandered slowly to its face; but with no appeal in
them, only a dim wonder at this supine and patient God that had no
thunderbolt for a priest who betrayed the confessional.
"Will you kindly sign this receipt for your papers?" said the colonel
blandly; "and then I need not keep you any longer. I am sure you must be in
a hurry to get home; and my time is very much taken up just now with the
affairs of that foolish young man, Bolla, who tried your Christian
forbearance so hard. I am afraid he will get a rather heavy sentence.
Good-afternoon!"
Arthur signed the receipt, took his papers, and went out in dead
silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of
farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to
take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the
street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him with
outstretched hands.
"Arthur! Oh, I'm so glad--I'm so glad!"
He drew his hands away, shivering.
"Jim!" he said at last, in a voice that did not seem to belong to him.
"Jim!"
"I've been waiting here for half an hour. They said you would come out
at four. Arthur, why do you look at me like that? Something has happened!
Arthur, what has come to you? Stop!"
He had turned away, and was walking slowly down the street, as if he
had forgotten her presence. Thoroughly frightened at his manner, she ran
after him and caught him by the arm.
"Arthur!"
He stopped and looked up with bewildered eyes. She slipped her arm
through his, and they walked on again for a moment in silence.
"Listen, dear," she began softly; "you mustn't get so upset over this
wretched business. I know it's dreadfully hard on you, but everybody
understands."
"What business?" he asked in the same dull voice.
"I mean, about Bolla's letter."
Arthur's face contracted painfully at the name.
"I thought you wouldn't have heard of it," Gemma went on; "but I
suppose they've told you. Bolla must be perfectly mad to have imagined such
a thing."
"Such a thing----?"
"You don't know about it, then? He has written a horrible letter,
saying that you have told about the steamers, and got him arrested. It's
perfectly absurd, of course; everyone that knows you sees that; it's only
the people who don't know you that have been upset by it. Really, that's
what I came here for--to tell you that no one in our group believes a word
of it."
"Gemma! But it's--it's true!"
She shrank slowly away from him, and stood quite still, her eyes wide
and dark with horror, her face as white as the kerchief at her neck. A great
icy wave of silence seemed to have swept round them both, shutting them out,
in a world apart, from the life and movement of the street.
"Yes," he whispered at last; "the steamers-- I spoke of that; and I
said his name--oh, my God! my God! What shall I do?"
He came to himself suddenly, realizing her presence and the mortal
terror in her face. Yes, of course, she must think------
"Gemma, you don't understand!" he burst out, moving nearer; but she
recoiled with a sharp cry:
"Don't touch me!"
Arthur seized her right hand with sudden violence.
"Listen, for God's sake! It was not my fault; I----"
"Let go; let my hand go! Let go!"
The next instant she wrenched her fingers away from his, and struck him
across the cheek with her open hand.
A kind of mist came over his eyes. For a little while he was conscious
of nothing but Gemma's white and desperate face, and the right hand which
she had fiercely rubbed on the skirt of her cotton dress. Then the daylight
crept back again, and he looked round and saw that he was alone.
IT had long been dark when Arthur rang at the front door of the great
house in the Via Borra. He remembered that he had been wandering about the
streets; but where, or why, or for how long, he had no idea. Julia's page
opened the door, yawning, and grinned significantly at the haggard, stony
face. It seemed to him a prodigious joke to have the young master come home
from jail like a "drunk and disorderly" beggar. Arthur went upstairs. On the
first floor he met Gibbons coming down with an air of lofty and solemn
disapproval. He tried to pass with a muttered "Good evening"; but Gibbons
was no easy person to get past against his will.
"The gentlemen are out, sir," he said, looking critically at Arthur's
rather neglected dress and hair. "They have gone with the mistress to an
evening party, and will not be back till nearly twelve."
Arthur looked at his watch; it was nine o'clock. Oh, yes! he would have
time--plenty of time------
"My mistress desired me to ask whether you would like any supper, sir;
and to say that she hopes you will sit up for her, as she particularly
wishes to speak to you this evening."
"I don't want anything, thank you; you can tell her I have not gone to
bed."
He went up to his room. Nothing in it had been changed since his
arrest; Montanelli's portrait was on the table where he had placed it, and
the crucifix stood in the alcove as before. He paused a moment on the
threshold, listening; but the house was quite still; evidently no one was
coming to disturb him. He stepped softly into the room and locked the door.
And so he had come to the end. There was nothing to think or trouble
about; an importunate and useless consciousness to get rid of--and nothing
more. It seemed a stupid, aimless kind of thing, somehow.
He had not formed any resolve to commit suicide, nor indeed had he
thought much about it; the thing was quite obvious and inevitable. He had
even no definite idea as to what manner of death to choose; all that
mattered was to be done with it quickly--to have it over and forget. He had
no weapon in the room, not even a pocketknife; but that was of no
consequence--a towel would do, or a sheet torn into strips.
There was a large nail just over the window. That would do; but it must
be firm to bear his weight. He got up on a chair to feel the nail; it was
not quite firm, and he stepped down again and took a hammer from a drawer.
He knocked in the nail, and was about to pull a sheet off his bed, when he
suddenly remembered that he had not said his prayers. Of course, one must
pray before dying; every Christian does that. There are even special prayers
for a departing soul.
He went into the alcove and knelt down before the crucifix. "Almighty
and merciful God----" he began aloud; and with that broke off and said no
more. Indeed, the world was grown so dull that there was nothing left to
pray for--or against. And then, what did Christ know about a trouble of this
kind--Christ, who had never suffered it? He had only been betrayed, like
Bolla; He had never been tricked into betraying.
Arthur rose, crossing himself from old habit. Approaching the table, he
saw lying upon it a letter addressed to him, in Montanelli's handwriting. It
was in pencil:
"My Dear Boy: It is a great disappointment to me that I cannot see you
on the day of your release; but I have been sent for to visit a dying man. I
shall not get back till late at night. Come to me early to-morrow morning.
In great haste,
"L. M."
He put down the letter with a sigh; it did seem hard on the Padre.
How the people had laughed and gossiped in the streets! Nothing was
altered since the days when he had been alive. Not the least little one of
all the daily trifles round him was changed because a human soul, a living
human soul, had been struck down dead. It was all just the same as before.
The water had plashed in the fountains; the sparrows had twittered under the
eaves; just as they had done yesterday, just as they would do to-morrow. And
as for him, he was dead--quite dead.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, crossed his arms along the
foot-rail, and rested his forehead upon them. There was plenty of time; and
his head ached so--the very middle of the brain seemed to ache; it was all
so dull and stupid--so utterly meaningless----
. . . . .
The front-door bell rang sharply, and he started up in a breathless
agony of terror, with both hands at his throat. They had come back--he had
sat there dreaming, and let the precious time slip away--and now he must see
their faces and hear their cruel tongues--their sneers and comments-- If
only he had a knife------
He looked desperately round the room. His mother's work-basket stood in
a little cupboard; surely there would be scissors; he might sever an artery.
No; the sheet and nail were safer, if he had timeHe dragged the counterpane
from his bed, and with frantic haste began tearing off a strip. The sound of
footsteps came up the stairs. No; the strip was too wide; it would not tie
firmly; and there must be a noose. He worked faster as the footsteps drew
nearer; and the blood throbbed in his temples and roared in his ears.
Quicker-- quicker! Oh, God! five minutes more!
There was a knock at the door. The strip of torn stuff dropped from his
hands, and he sat quite still, holding his breath to listen. The handle of
the door was tried; then Julia's voice called:
"Arthur!"
He stood up, panting.
"Arthur, open the door, please; we are waiting."
He gathered up the torn counterpane, threw it into a drawer, and
hastily smoothed down the bed.
"Arthur!" This time it was James who called, and the door-handle was
shaken impatiently. "Are you asleep?"
Arthur looked round the room, saw that everything was hidden, and
unlocked the door.
"I should think you might at least have obeyed my express request that
you should sit up for us, Arthur," said Julia, sweeping into the room in a
towering passion. "You appear to think it the proper thing for us to dance
attendance for half an hour at your door----"
"Four minutes, my dear," James mildly corrected, stepping into the room
at the end of his wife's pink satin train. "I certainly think, Arthur, that
it would have been more--becoming if----"
"What do you want?" Arthur interrupted. He was standing with his hand
upon the door, glancing furtively from one to the other like a trapped
animal. But James was too obtuse and Julia too angry to notice the look.
Mr. Burton placed a chair for his wife and sat down, carefully pulling
up his new trousers at the knees. "Julia and I," he began, "feel it to be
our duty to speak to you seriously about----"
"I can't listen to-night; I--I'm not well. My head aches--you must
wait."
Arthur spoke in a strange, indistinct voice, with a confused and
rambling manner. James looked round in surprise.
"Is there anything the matter with you?" he asked anxiously, suddenly
remembering that Arthur had come from a very hotbed of infection. "I hope
you're not sickening for anything. You look quite feverish."
"Nonsense!" Julia interrupted sharply. "It's only the usual
theatricals, because he's ashamed to face us. Come here and sit down,
Arthur." Arthur slowly crossed the room and sat down on the bed. "Yes?" he
said wearily.
Mr. Burton coughed, cleared his throat, smoothed his already immaculate
beard, and began the carefully prepared speech over again:
"I feel it to be my duty--my painful duty--to speak very seriously to
you about your extraordinary behaviour in connecting yourself with--a--
law-breakers and incendiaries and--a--persons of disreputable character. I
believe you to have been, perhaps, more foolish than depraved--a----"
He paused.
"Yes?" Arthur said again.
"Now, I do not wish to be hard on you," James went on, softening a
little in spite of himself before the weary hopelessness of Arthur's manner.
"I am quite willing to believe that you have been led away by bad
companions, and to take into account your youth and inexperience and
the--a-- a--imprudent and--a--impulsive character which you have, I fear,
inherited from your mother."
Arthur's eyes wandered slowly to his mother's portrait and back again,
but he did not speak.
"But you will, I feel sure, understand," James continued, "that it is
quite impossible for me to keep any longer in my house a person who has
brought public disgrace upon a name so highly respected as ours."
"Yes?" Arthur repeated once more.
"Well?" said Julia sharply, closing her fan with a snap and laying it
across her knee. "Are you going to have the goodness to say anything but
'Yes,' Arthur?"
"You will do as you think best, of course," he answered slowly, without
moving. "It doesn't matter much either way."
"Doesn't--matter?" James repeated, aghast; and his wife rose with a
laugh.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, doesn't it? Well, James, I hope you understand
now how much gratitude you may expect in that quarter. I told you what would
come of showing charity to Papist adventuresses and their----"
"Hush, hush! Never mind that, my dear!"
"It's all nonsense, James; we've had more than enough of this
sentimentality! A love-child setting himself up as a member of the
family--it's quite time he did know what his mother was! Why should we be
saddled with the child of a Popish priest's amourettes? There, then-- look!"
She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of her pocket and tossed it
across the table to Arthur. He opened it; the writing was in his mother's
hand, and was dated four months before his birth. It was a confession,
addressed to her husband, and with two signatures.
Arthur's eyes travelled slowly down the page, past the unsteady letters
in which her name was written, to the strong, familiar signature: "Lorenzo
Montanelli." For a moment he stared at the writing; then, without a word,
refolded the paper and laid it down. James rose and took his wife by the
arm.
"There, Julia, that will do. Just go downstairs now; it's late, and I
want to talk a little business with Arthur. It won't interest you."
She glanced up at her husband; then back at Arthur, who was silently
staring at the floor.
"He seems half stupid," she whispered.
When she had gathered up her train and left the room, James carefully
shut the door and went back to his chair beside the table. Arthur sat as
before, perfectly motionless and silent.
"Arthur," James began in a milder tone, now Julia was not there to
hear, "I am very sorry that this has come out. You might just as well not
have known it. However, all that's over; and I am pleased to see that you
can behave with such self-control. Julia is a--a little excited; ladies
often--anyhow, I don't want to be too hard on you."
He stopped to see what effect the kindly words had produced; but Arthur
was quite motionless.
"Of course, my dear boy," James went on after a moment, "this is a
distressing story altogether, and the best thing we can do is to hold our
tongues about it. My father was generous enough not to divorce your mother
when she confessed her fall to him; he only demanded that the man who had
led her astray should leave the country at once; and, as you know, he went
to China as a missionary. For my part, I was very much against your having
anything to do with him when he came back; but my father, just at the last,
consented to let him teach you, on condition that he never attempted to see
your mother. I must, in justice, acknowledge that I believe they both
observed that condition faithfully to the end. It is a very deplorable
business; but----"
Arthur looked up. All the life and expression had gone out of his face;
it was like a waxen mask.
"D-don't you think," he said softly, with a curious stammering
hesitation on the words, "th-that--all this--is--v-very--funny?"
"FUNNY?" James pushed his chair away from the table, and sat staring at
him, too much petrified for anger. "Funny! Arthur, are you mad?"
Arthur suddenly threw back his head, and burst into a frantic fit of
laughing.
"Arthur!" exclaimed the shipowner, rising with dignity, "I am amazed at
your levity!"
There was no answer but peal after peal of laughter, so loud and
boisterous that even James began to doubt whether there was not something
more the matter here than levity.
"Just like a hysterical woman," he muttered, turning, with a
contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, to tramp impatiently up and down the
room. "Really, Arthur, you're worse than Julia; there, stop laughing! I
can't wait about here all night."
He might as well have asked the crucifix to come down from its
pedestal. Arthur was past caring for remonstrances or exhortations; he only
laughed, and laughed, and laughed without end.
"This is absurd!" said James, stopping at last in his irritated pacing
to and fro. "You are evidently too much excited to be reasonable to-night. I
can't talk business with you if you're going on that way. Come to me
to-morrow morning after breakfast. And now you had better go to bed.
Good-night."
He went out, slamming the door. "Now for the hysterics downstairs," he
muttered as he tramped noisily away. "I suppose it'll be tears there!"
. . . . .
The frenzied laughter died on Arthur's lips. He snatched up the hammer
from the table and flung himself upon the crucifix.
With the crash that followed he came suddenly to his senses, standing
before the empty pedestal, the hammer still in his hand, and the fragments
of the broken image scattered on the floor about his feet.
He threw down the hammer. "So easy!" he said, and turned away. "And
what an idiot I am!"
He sat down by the table, panting heavily for breath, and rested his
forehead on both hands. Presently he rose, and, going to the wash-stand,
poured a jugful of cold water over his head and face. He came back quite
composed, and sat down to think.
And it was for such things as these--for these false and slavish
people, these dumb and soulless gods--that he had suffered all these
tortures of shame and passion and despair; had made a rope to hang himself,
forsooth, because one priest was a liar. As if they were not all liars!
Well, all that was done with; he was wiser now. He need only shake off these
vermin and begin life afresh.
There were plenty of goods vessels in the docks; it would be an easy
matter to stow himself away in one of them, and get across to Canada,
Australia, Cape Colony--anywhere. It was no matter for the country, if only
it was far enough; and, as for the life out there, he could see, and if it
did not suit him he could try some other place.
He took out his purse. Only thirty-three paoli; but his watch was a
good one. That would help him along a bit; and in any case it was of no
consequence--he should pull through somehow. But they would search for him,
all these people; they would be sure to make inquiries at the docks. No; he
must put them on a false scent--make them believe him dead; then he should
be quite free-- quite free. He laughed softly to himself at the thought of
the Burtons searching for his corpse. What a farce the whole thing was!
Taking a sheet of paper, he wrote the first words that occurred to him:
"I believed in you as I believed in God. God is a thing made of clay,
that I can smash with a hammer; and you have fooled me with a lie."
He folded up the paper, directed it to Montanelli, and, taking another
sheet, wrote across it: "Look for my body in Darsena." Then he put on his
hat and went out of the room. Passing his mother's portrait, he looked up
with a laugh and a shrug of his shoulders. She, too, had lied to him.
He crept softly along the corridor, and, slipping back the door-bolts,
went out on to the great, dark, echoing marble staircase. It seemed to yawn
beneath him like a black pit as he descended.
He crossed the courtyard, treading cautiously for fear of waking Gian
Battista, who slept on the ground floor. In the wood-cellar at the back was
a little grated window, opening on the canal and not more than four feet
from the ground. He remembered that the rusty grating had broken away on one
side; by pushing a little he could make an aperture wide enough to climb out
by.
The grating was strong, and he grazed his hands badly and tore the
sleeve of his coat; but that was no matter. He looked up and down the
street; there was no one in sight, and the canal lay black and silent, an
ugly trench between two straight and slimy walls. The untried universe might
prove a dismal hole, but it could hardly be more flat and sordid than the
corner which he was leaving behind him. There was nothing to regret; nothing
to look back upon. It had been a pestilent little stagnant world, full of
squalid lies and clumsy cheats and foul-smelling ditches that were not even
deep enough to drown a man.
He walked along the canal bank, and came out upon the tiny square by
the Medici palace. It was here that Gemma had run up to him with her vivid
face, her outstretched hands. Here was the little flight of wet stone steps
leading down to the moat; and there the fortress scowling across the strip
of dirty water. He had never noticed before how squat and mean it looked.
Passing through the narrow streets he reached the Darsena
shipping-basin, where he took off his hat and flung it into the water. It
would be found, of course, when they dragged for his body. Then he walked on
along the water's edge, considering perplexedly what to do next. He must
contrive to hide on some ship; but it was a difficult thing to do. His only
chance would be to get on to the huge old Medici breakwater and walk along
to the further end of it. There was a low-class tavern on the point;
probably he should find some sailor there who could be bribed.
But the dock gates were closed. How should he get past them, and past
the customs officials? His stock of money would not furnish the high bribe
that they would demand for letting him through at night and without a
passport. Besides they might recognize him.
As he passed the bronze statue of the "Four Moors," a man's figure
emerged from an old house on the opposite side of the shipping basin and
approached the bridge. Arthur slipped at once into the deep shadow behind
the group of statuary and crouched down in the darkness, peeping cautiously
round the corner of the pedestal.
It was a soft spring night, warm and starlit. The water lapped against
the stone walls of the basin and swirled in gentle eddies round the steps
with a sound as of low laughter. Somewhere near a chain creaked, swinging
slowly to and fro. A huge iron crane towered up, tall and melancholy in the
dimness. Black on a shimmering expanse of starry sky and pearly
cloud-wreaths, the figures of the fettered, struggling slaves stood out in
vain and vehement protest against a merciless doom.
The man approached unsteadily along the water side, shouting an English
street song. He was evidently a sailor returning from a carouse at some
tavern. No one else was within sight. As he drew near, Arthur stood up and
stepped into the middle of the roadway. The sailor broke off in his song
with an oath, and stopped short.
"I want to speak to you," Arthur said in Italian. "Do you understand
me?"
The man shook his head. "It's no use talking that patter to me," he
said; then, plunging into bad French, asked sullenly: "What do you want? Why
can't you let me pass?"
"Just come out of the light here a minute; I want to speak to you."
"Ah! wouldn't you like it? Out of the light! Got a knife anywhere about
you?"
"No, no, man! Can't you see I only want your help? I'll pay you for
it?" "Eh? What? And dressed like a swell, too------" The sailor had relapsed
into English. He now moved into the shadow and leaned against the railing of
the pedestal.
"Well," he said, returning to his atrocious French; "and what is it you
want?"
"I want to get away from here----"
"Aha! Stowaway! Want me to hide you? Been up to something, I suppose.
Stuck a knife into somebody, eh? Just like these foreigners! And where might
you be wanting to go? Not to the police station, I fancy?"
He laughed in his tipsy way, and winked one eye.
"What vessel do you belong to?"
"Carlotta--Leghorn to Buenos Ayres; shipping oil one way and hides the
other. She's over there"--pointing in the direction of the breakwater --
"beastly old hulk!"
"Buenos Ayres--yes! Can you hide me anywhere on board?"
"How much can you give?"
"Not very much; I have only a few paoli."
"No. Can't do it under fifty--and cheap at that, too--a swell like
you."
"What do you mean by a swell? If you like my clothes you may change
with me, but I can't give you more money than I have got."
"You have a watch there. Hand it over."
Arthur took out a lady's gold watch, delicately chased and enamelled,
with the initials "G. B." on the back. It had been his mother's--but what
did that matter now?
"Ah!" remarked the sailor with a quick glance at it. "Stolen, of
course! Let me look!"
Arthur drew his hand away. "No," he said. "I will give you the watch
when we are on board; not before."
"You're not such a fool as you look, after all! I'll bet it's your
first scrape, though, eh?"
"That is my business. Ah! there comes the watchman."
They crouched down behind the group of statuary and waited till the
watchman had passed. Then the sailor rose, and, telling Arthur to follow
him, walked on, laughing foolishly to himself. Arthur followed in silence.
The sailor led him back to the little irregular square by the Medici
palace; and, stopping in a dark corner, mumbled in what was intended for a
cautious whisper:
"Wait here; those soldier fellows will see you if you come further."
"What are you going to do?"
"Get you some clothes. I'm not going to take you on board with that
bloody coatsleeve."
Arthur glanced down at the sleeve which had been torn by the window
grating. A little blood from the grazed hand had fallen upon it. Evidently
the man thought him a murderer. Well, it was of no consequence what people
thought.
After some time the sailor came back, triumphant, with a bundle under
his arm.
"Change," he whispered; "and make haste about it. I must get back, and
t