The Gadfly by E. L. Voynich (latest novels to read .txt) 📖

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 afterglow.

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