The Gadfly

CHAPTER III.

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.