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?