"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-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 chast.i.ty, 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 Pa.s.s. 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 a.s.sociating 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 sh.o.r.e.

"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."

CHAPTER III.

THE autumn and winter pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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."