The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

“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 stepbrother’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 churchyard⁠—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 awestruck 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 stepbrother; 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