Lilian Voinich. The Gadfly
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... "He was a comrade," she went on; "and I believed a slander againsthim,--a common glaring lie that the police had invented. I struck him in the
face for a traitor; and he went away and drowned himself. Then, two days
later, I found out that he had been quite innocent. Perhaps that is a worse
memory than any of yours. I would cut off my right hand to undo what it has
done."
Something swift and dangerous--something that she had not seen
before,--flashed into his eyes. He bent his head down with a furtive, sudden
gesture and kissed the hand.
She drew back with a startled face. "Don't!" she cried out piteously.
"Please don't ever do that again! You hurt me!"
"Do you think you didn't hurt the man you killed?"
"The man I--killed---- Ah, there is Cesare at the gate at last! I--I
must go!"
. . . . .
When Martini came into the room he found the Gadfly lying alone with
the untouched coffee beside him, swearing softly to himself in a languid,
spiritless way, as though he got no satisfaction out of it
PART II: CHAPTER IX.
A FEW days later, the Gadfly, still rather pale and limping more than
usual, entered the reading room of the public library and asked for Cardinal
Montanelli's sermons. Riccardo, who was reading at a table near him, looked
up. He liked the Gadfly very much, but could not digest this one trait in
him--this curious personal maliciousness.
"Are you preparing another volley against that unlucky Cardinal?" he
asked half irritably.
"My dear fellow, why do you a-a-always attribute evil m-m-motives to
people? It's m-most unchristian. I am preparing an essay on contemporary
theology for the n-n-new paper."
"What new paper?" Riccardo frowned. It was perhaps an open secret that
a new press-law was expected and that the Opposition was preparing to
astonish the town with a radical newspaper; but still it was, formally, a
secret.
"The Swindlers' Gazette, of course, or the Church Calendar."
"Sh-sh! Rivarez, we are disturbing the other readers."
"Well then, stick to your surgery, if that's your subject, and
l-l-leave me to th-theology-- that's mine. I d-d-don't interfere with your
treatment of broken bones, though I know a p-p-precious lot more about them
than you do."
He sat down to his volume of sermons with an intent and preoccupied
face. One of the librarians came up to him.
"Signor Rivarez! I think you were in the Duprez expedition, exploring
the tributaries of the Amazon? Perhaps you will kindly help us in a
difficulty. A lady has been inquiring for the records of the expedition, and
they are at the binder's."
"What does she want to know?"
"Only in what year the expedition started and when it passed through
Ecuador."
"It started from Paris in the autumn of 1837, and passed through Quito
in April, 1838. We were three years in Brazil; then went down to Rio and got
back to Paris in the summer of 1841. Does the lady want the dates of the
separate discoveries?"
"No, thank you; only these. I have written them down. Beppo, take this
paper to Signora Bolla, please. Many thanks, Signor Rivarez. I am sorry to
have troubled you."
The Gadfly leaned back in his chair with a perplexed frown. What did
she want the dates for? When they passed through Ecuador----
Gemma went home with the slip of paper in her hand. April, 1838--and
Arthur had died in May, 1833. Five years--
She began pacing up and down her room. She had slept badly the last few
nights, and there were dark shadows under her eyes.
Five years;--and an "overluxurious home"-- and "someone he had trusted
had deceived him" --had deceived him--and he had found it out----
She stopped and put up both hands to her head. Oh, this was utterly
mad--it was not possible--it was absurd----
And yet, how they had dragged that harbour!
Five years--and he was "not twenty-one" when the Lascar---- Then he
must have been nineteen when he ran away from home. Had he not said: "A year
and a half----" Where did he get those blue eyes from, and that nervous
restlessness of the fingers? And why was he so bitter against Montanelli?
Five years--five years------
If she could but know that he was drowned--if she could but have seen
the body; some day, surely, the old wound would have left off aching, the
old memory would have lost its terrors. Perhaps in another twenty years she
would have learned to look back without shrinking.
All her youth had been poisoned by the thought of what she had done.
Resolutely, day after day and year after year, she had fought against the
demon of remorse. Always she had remembered that her work lay in the future;
always had shut her eyes and ears to the haunting spectre of the past. And
day after day, year after year, the image of the drowned body drifting out
to sea had never left her, and the bitter cry that she could not silence had
risen in her heart: "I have killed Arthur! Arthur is dead!" Sometimes it had
seemed to her that her burden was too heavy to be borne.
Now she would have given half her life to have that burden back again.
If she had killed him-- that was a familiar grief; she had endured it too
long to sink under it now. But if she had driven him, not into the water but
into------ She sat down, covering her eyes with both hands. And her life had
been darkened for his sake, because he was dead! If she had brought upon him
nothing worse than death----
Steadily, pitilessly she went back, step by step, through the hell of
his past life. It was as vivid to her as though she had seen and felt it
all; the helpless shivering of the naked soul, the mockery that was bitterer
than death, the horror of loneliness, the slow, grinding, relentless agony.
It was as vivid as if she had sat beside him in the filthy Indian hut; as if
she had suffered with him in the silver-mines, the coffee fields, the
horrible variety show--
The variety show---- No, she must shut out that image, at least; it was
enough to drive one mad to sit and think of it.
She opened a little drawer in her writing-desk. It contained the few
personal relics which she could not bring herself to destroy. She was not
given to the hoarding up of sentimental trifles; and the preservation of
these keepsakes was a concession to that weaker side of her nature which she
kept under with so steady a hand. She very seldom allowed herself to look at
them.
Now she took them out, one after another: Giovanni's first letter to
her, and the flowers that had lain in his dead hand; a lock of her baby's
hair and a withered leaf from her father's grave. At the back of the drawer
was a miniature portrait of Arthur at ten years old--the only existing
likeness of him.
She sat down with it in her hands and looked at the beautiful childish
head, till the face of the real Arthur rose up afresh before her. How clear
it was in every detail! The sensitive lines of the mouth, the wide, earnest
eyes, the seraphic purity of expression--they were graven in upon her
memory, as though he had died yesterday. Slowly the blinding tears welled up
and hid the portrait.
Oh, how could she have thought such a thing! It was like sacrilege even
to dream of this bright, far-off spirit, bound to the sordid miseries of
life. Surely the gods had loved him a little, and had let him die young!
Better a thousand times that he should pass into utter nothingness than that
he should live and be the Gadfly--the Gadfly, with his faultless neckties
and his doubtful witticisms, his bitter tongue and his ballet girl! No, no!
It was all a horrible, senseless fancy; and she had vexed her heart with
vain imaginings. Arthur was dead.
"May I come in?" asked a soft voice at the door.
She started so that the portrait fell from her hand, and the Gadfly,
limping across the room, picked it up and handed it to her.
"How you startled me!" she said.
"I am s-so sorry. Perhaps I am disturbing you?"
"No. I was only turning over some old things."
She hesitated for a moment; then handed him back the miniature.
"What do you think of that head?"
While he looked at it she watched his face as though her life depended
upon its expression; but it was merely negative and critical.
"You have set me a difficult task," he said. "The portrait is faded,
and a child's face is always hard to read. But I should think that child
would grow into an unlucky man, and the wisest thing he could do would be to
abstain from growing into a man at all."
"Why?"
"Look at the line of the under-lip. Th-th-that is the sort of nature
that feels pain as pain and wrong as wrong; and the world has no r-r-room
for such people; it needs people who feel nothing but their work."
"Is it at all like anyone you know?"
He looked at the portrait more closely.
"Yes. What a curious thing! Of course it is; very like."
"Like whom?"
"C-c-cardinal Montan-nelli. I wonder whether his irreproachable
Eminence has any nephews, by the way? Who is it, if I may ask?"
"It is a portrait, taken in childhood, of the friend I told you about
the other day----"
"Whom you killed?"
She winced in spite of herself. How lightly, how cruelly he used that
dreadful word!
"Yes, whom I killed--if he is really dead."
"If?"
She kept her eyes on his face.
"I have sometimes doubted," she said. "The body was never found. He may
have run away from home, like you, and gone to South America."
"Let us hope not. That would be a bad memory to carry about with you. I
have d-d-done some hard fighting in my t-time, and have sent m-more than one
man to Hades, perhaps; but if I had it on my conscience that I had sent any
l-living thing to South America, I should sleep badly----"
"Then do you believe," she interrupted, coming nearer to him with
clasped hands, "that if he were not drowned,--if he had been through your
experience instead,--he would never come back and let the past go? Do you
believe he would NEVER forget? Remember, it has cost me something, too.
Look!"
She pushed back the heavy waves of hair from her forehead. Through the
black locks ran a broad white streak.
There was a long silence.
"I think," the Gadfly said slowly, "that the dead are better dead.
Forgetting some things is a difficult matter. And if I were in the place of
your dead friend, I would s-s-stay dead. The REVENANT is an ugly spectre."
She put the portrait back into its drawer and locked the desk.
"That is hard doctrine," she said. "And now we will talk about
something else."
"I came to have a little business talk with you, if I may--a private
one, about a plan that I have in my head."
She drew a chair to the table and sat down. "What do you think of the
projected press-law?" he began, without a trace of his usual stammer.
"What I think of it? I think it will not be of much value, but half a
loaf is better than no bread."
"Undoubtedly. Then do you intend to work on one of the new papers these
good folk here are preparing to start?"
"I thought of doing so. There is always a great deal of practical work
to be done in starting any paper--printing and circulation arrangements
and----"
"How long are you going to waste your mental gifts in that fashion?"
"Why 'waste'?"
"Because it is waste. You know quite well that you have a far better
head than most of the men you are working with, and you let them make a
regular drudge and Johannes factotum of you. Intellectually you are as far
ahead of Grassini and Galli as if they were schoolboys; yet you sit
correcting their proofs like a printer's devil."
"In the first place, I don't spend all my time in correcting proofs;
and moreover it seems to me that you exaggerate my mental capacities. They
are by no means so brilliant as you think."
"I don't think them brilliant at all," he answered quietly; "but I do
think them sound and solid, which is of much more importance. At those
dreary committee meetings it is always you who put your finger on the weak
spot in everybody's logic."
"You are not fair to the others. Martini, for instance, has a very
logical head, and there is no doubt about the capacities of Fabrizi and
Lega. Then Grassini has a sounder knowledge of Italian economic statistics
than any official in the country, perhaps."
"Well, that's not saying much; but let us lay them and their capacities
aside. The fact remains that you, with such gifts as you possess, might do
more important work and fill a more responsible post than at present."
"I am quite satisfied with my position. The work I am doing is not of
very much value, perhaps, but we all do what we can."
"Signora Bolla, you and I have gone too far to play at compliments and
modest denials now. Tell me honestly, do you recognize that you are using up
your brain on work which persons inferior to you could do as well?"
"Since you press me for an answer--yes, to some extent."
"Then why do you let that go on?"
No answer.
"Why do you let it go on?"
"Because--I can't help it."
"Why?"
She looked up reproachfully. "That is unkind --it's not fair to press
me so."
"But all the same you are going to tell me why."
"If you must have it, then--because my life has been smashed into
pieces, and I have not the energy to start anything REAL, now. I am about
fit to be a revolutionary cab-horse, and do the party's drudge-work. At
least I do it conscientiously, and it must be done by somebody."
"Certainly it must be done by somebody; but not always by the same
person."
"It's about all I'm fit for."
He looked at her with half-shut eyes, inscrutably. Presently she raised
her head.
"We are returning to the old subject; and this was to be a business
talk. It is quite useless, I assure you, to tell me I might have done all
sorts of things. I shall never do them now. But I may be able to help you in
thinking out your plan. What is it?"
"You begin by telling me that it is useless for me to suggest anything,
and then ask what I want to suggest. My plan requires your help in action,
not only in thinking out."
"Let me hear it and then we will discuss."
"Tell me first whether you have heard anything about schemes for a
rising in Venetia."
"I have heard of nothing but schemes for risings and Sanfedist plots
ever since the amnesty, and I fear I am as sceptical about the one as about
the other."
"So am I, in most cases; but I am speaking of really serious
preparations for a rising of the whole province against the Austrians. A
good many young fellows in the Papal States--particularly in the Four
Legations--are secretly preparing to get across there and join as
volunteers. And I hear from my friends in the Romagna----"
"Tell me," she interrupted, "are you quite sure that these friends of
yours can be trusted?"
"Quite sure. I know them personally, and have worked with them."
"That is, they are members of the 'sect' to which you belong? Forgive
my scepticism, but I am always a little doubtful as to the accuracy of
information received from secret societies. It seems to me that the
habit----"
"Who told you I belonged to a 'sect'?" he interrupted sharply.
"No one; I guessed it."
"Ah!" He leaned back in his chair and looked at her, frowning. "Do you
always guess people's private affairs?" he said after a moment.
"Very often. I am rather observant, and have a habit of putting things
together. I tell you that so that you may be careful when you don't want me
to know a thing."
"I don't mind your knowing anything so long as it goes no further. I
suppose this has not----"
She lifted her head with a gesture of half-offended surprise. "Surely
that is an unnecessary question!" she said.
"Of course I know you would not speak of anything to outsiders; but I
thought that perhaps, to the members of your party----"
"The party's business is with facts, not with my personal conjectures
and fancies. Of course I have never mentioned the subject to anyone."
"Thank you. Do you happen to have guessed which sect I belong to?"
"I hope--you must not take offence at my frankness; it was you who
started this talk, you know---- I do hope it is not the 'Knifers.'"
"Why do you hope that?"
"Because you are fit for better things."
"We are all fit for better things than we ever do. There is your own
answer back again. However, it is not the 'Knifers' that I belong to, but
the 'Red Girdles.' They are a steadier lot, and take their work more
seriously."
"Do you mean the work of knifing?"
"That, among other things. Knives are very useful in their way; but
only when you have a good, organized propaganda behind them. That is what I
dislike in the other sect. They think a knife can settle all the world's
difficulties; and that's a mistake. It can settle a good many, but not all."
"Do you honestly believe that it settles any?"
He looked at her in surprise.
"Of course," she went on, "it eliminates, for the moment, the practical
difficulty caused by the presence of a clever spy or objectionable official;
but whether it does not create worse difficulties in place of the one
removed is another question. It seems to me like the parable of the swept
and garnished house and the seven devils. Every assassination only makes the
police more vicious and the people more accustomed to violence and
brutality, and the last state of the community may be worse than the first."
"What do you think will happen when the revolution comes? Do you
suppose the people won't have to get accustomed to violence then? War is
war."
"Yes, but open revolution is another matter. It is one moment in the
people's life, and it is the price we have to pay for all our progress. No
doubt fearful things will happen; they must in every revolution. But they
will be isolated facts--exceptional features of an exceptional moment. The
horrible thing about this promiscuous knifing is that it becomes a habit.
The people get to look upon it as an every-day occurrence, and their sense
of the sacredness of human life gets blunted. I have not been much in the
Romagna, but what little I have seen of the people has given me the
impression that they have got, or are getting, into a mechanical habit of
violence."
"Surely even that is better than a mechanical habit of obedience and
submission."
"I don't think so. All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this
one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the
revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the
government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best
weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if
you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in
itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform
is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work.
Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise
the value they put on human life."
"And the value they put on religion?"
"I don't understand."
He smiled.
"I think we differ as to where the root of the mischief lies. You place
it in a lack of appreciation of the value of human life."
"Rather of the sacredness of human personality."
"Put it as you like. To me the great cause of our muddles and mistakes
seems to lie in the mental disease called religion."
"Do you mean any religion in particular?"
"Oh, no! That is a mere question of external symptoms. The disease
itself is what is called a religious attitude of mind. It is the morbid
desire to set up a fetich and adore it, to fall down and worship something.
It makes little difference whether the something be Jesus or Buddha or a
tum-tum tree. You don't agree with me, of course. You may be atheist or
agnostic or anything you like, but I could feel the religious temperament in
you at five yards. However, it is of no use for us to discuss that. But you
are quite mistaken in thinking that I, for one, look upon the knifing as
merely a means of removing objectionable officials--it is, above all, a
means, and I think the best means, of undermining the prestige of the Church
and of accustoming people to look upon clerical agents as upon any other
vermin."
"And when you have accomplished that; when you have roused the wild
beast that sleeps in the people and set it on the Church; then----"
"Then I shall have done the work that makes it worth my while to live."
"Is THAT the work you spoke of the other day?"
"Yes, just that."
She shivered and turned away.
"You are disappointed in me?" he said, looking up with a smile.
"No; not exactly that. I am--I think--a little afraid of you." She
turned round after a moment and said in her ordinary business voice:
"This is an unprofitable discussion. Our standpoints are too different.
For my part, I believe in propaganda, propaganda, and propaganda; and when
you can get it, open insurrection."
"Then let us come back to the question of my plan; it has something to
do with propaganda and more with insurrection."
"Yes?"
"As I tell you, a good many volunteers are going from the Romagna to
join the Venetians. We do not know yet how soon the insurrection will break
out. It may not be till the autumn or winter; but the volunteers in the
Apennines must be armed and ready, so that they may be able to start for the
plains directly they are sent for. I have undertaken to smuggle the firearms
and ammunition on to Papal territory for them----"
"Wait a minute. How do you come to be working with that set? The
revolutionists in Lombardy and Venetia are all in favour of the new Pope.
They are going in for liberal reforms, hand in hand with the progressive
movement in the Church. How can a 'no-compromise' anti-clerical like you get
on with them?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "What is it to me if they like to amuse
themselves with a rag-doll, so long as they do their work? Of course they
will take the Pope for a figurehead. What have I to do with that, if only
the insurrection gets under way somehow? Any stick will do to beat a dog
with, I suppose, and any cry to set the people on the Austrians."
"What is it you want me to do?"
"Chiefly to help me get the firearms across."
"But how could I do that?"
"You are just the person who could do it best. I think of buying the
arms in England, and there is a good deal of difficulty about bringing them
over. It's impossible to get them through any of the Pontifical sea-ports;
they must come by Tuscany, and go across the Apennines."
"That makes two frontiers to cross instead of one."
"Yes; but the other way is hopeless; you can't smuggle a big transport
in at a harbour where there is no trade, and you know the whole shipping of
Civita Vecchia amounts to about three row-boats and a fishing smack. If we
once get the things across Tuscany, I can manage the Papal frontier; my men
know every path in the mountains, and we have plenty of hiding-places. The
transport must come by sea to Leghorn, and that is my great difficulty; I am
not in with the smugglers there, and I believe you are."
"Give me five minutes to think."
She leaned forward, resting one elbow on her knee, and supporting the
chin on the raised hand. After a few moments' silence she looked up.
"It is possible that I might be of some use in that part of the work,"
she said; "but before we go any further, I want to ask you a question. Can
you give me your word that this business is not connected with any stabbing
or secret violence of any kind?"
"Certainly. It goes without saying that I should not have asked you to
join in a thing of which I know you disapprove."
"When do you want a definite answer from me?"
"There is not much time to lose; but I can give you a few days to
decide in."
"Are you free next Saturday evening?"
"Let me see--to-day is Thursday; yes."
"Then come here. I will think the matter over and give you a final
answer."
. . . . .
On the following Sunday Gemma sent in to the committee of the
Florentine branch of the Mazzinian party a statement that she wished to
undertake a special work of a political nature, which would for a few months
prevent her from performing the functions for which she had up till now been
responsible to the party.
Some surprise was felt at this announcement, but the committee raised
no objection; she had been known in the party for several years as a person
whose judgment might be trusted; and the members agreed that if Signora
Bolla took an unexpected step, she probably had good reasons for it.
To Martini she said frankly that she had undertaken to help the Gadfly
with some "frontier work." She had stipulated for the right to tell her old
friend this much, in order that there might be no misunderstanding or
painful sense of doubt and mystery between them. It seemed to her that she
owed him this proof of confidence. He made no comment when she told him; but
she saw, without knowing why, that the news had wounded him deeply.
They were sitting on the terrace of her lodging, looking out over the
red roofs to Fiesole. After a long silence, Martini rose and began tramping
up and down with his hands in his pockets, whistling to himself--a sure sign
with him of mental agitation. She sat looking at him for a little while.
"Cesare, you are worried about this affair," she said at last. "I am
very sorry you feel so despondent over it; but I could decide only as seemed
right to me."
"It is not the affair," he answered, sullenly; "I know nothing about
it, and it probably is all right, once you have consented to go into it.
It's the MAN I distrust."
"I think you misunderstand him; I did till I got to know him better. He
is far from perfect, but there is much more good in him than you think."
"Very likely." For a moment he tramped to and fro in silence, then
suddenly stopped beside her.
"Gemma, give it up! Give it up before it is too late! Don't let that
man drag you into things you will repent afterwards."
"Cesare," she said gently, "you are not thinking what you are saying.
No one is dragging me into anything. I have made this decision of my own
will, after thinking the matter well over alone. You have a personal dislike
to Rivarez, I know; but we are talking of politics now, not of persons."
"Madonna! Give it up! That man is dangerous; he is secret, and cruel,
and unscrupulous-- and he is in love with you!"
She drew back.
"Cesare, how can you get such fancies into your head?"
"He is in love with you," Martini repeated. "Keep clear of him,
Madonna!"
"Dear Cesare, I can't keep clear of him; and I can't explain to you
why. We are tied together-- not by any wish or doing of our own."
"If you are tied, there is nothing more to say," Martini answered
wearily.
He went away, saying that he was busy, and tramped for hours up and
down the muddy streets. The world looked very black to him that evening. One
poor ewe-lamb--and this slippery creature had stepped in and stolen it away.
PART II: CHAPTER X.
TOWARDS the middle of February the Gadfly went to Leghorn. Gemma had
introduced him to a young Englishman there, a shipping-agent of liberal
views, whom she and her husband had known in England. He had on several
occasions performed little services for the Florentine radicals: had lent
money to meet an unforeseen emergency, had allowed his business address to
be used for the party's letters, etc.; but always through Gemma's
mediumship, and as a private friend of hers. She was, therefore, according
to party etiquette, free to make use of the connexion in any way that might
seem good to her. Whether any use could be got out of it was quite another
question. To ask a friendly sympathizer to lend his address for letters from
Sicily or to keep a few documents in a corner of his counting-house safe was
one thing; to ask him to smuggle over a transport of firearms for an
insurrection was another; and she had very little hope of his consenting.
"You can but try," she had said to the Gadfly; "but I don't think
anything will come of it. If you were to go to him with that recommendation
and ask for five hundred scudi, I dare say he'd give them to you at
once--he's exceedingly generous, --and perhaps at a pinch he would lend you
his passport or hide a fugitive in his cellar; but if you mention such a
thing as rifles he will stare at you and think we're both demented."
"Perhaps he may give me a few hints, though, or introduce me to a
friendly sailor or two," the Gadfly had answered. "Anyway, it's worth while
to try."
One day at the end of the month he came into her study less carefully
dressed than usual, and she saw at once from his face that he had good news
to tell.
"Ah, at last! I was beginning to think something must have happened to
you!"
"I thought it safer not to write, and I couldn't get back sooner."
"You have just arrived?"
"Yes; I am straight from the diligence; I looked in to tell you that
the affair is all settled."
"Do you mean that Bailey has really consented to help?"
"More than to help; he has undertaken the whole thing,--packing,
transports,--everything. The rifles will be hidden in bales of merchandise
and will come straight through from England. His partner, Williams, who is a
great friend of his, has consented to see the transport off from
Southampton, and Bailey will slip it through the custom house at Leghorn.
That is why I have been such a long time; Williams was just starting for
Southampton, and I went with him as far as Genoa."
"To talk over details on the way?"
"Yes, as long as I wasn't too sea-sick to talk about anything."
"Are you a bad sailor?" she asked quickly, remembering how Arthur had
suffered from sea-sickness one day when her father had taken them both for a
pleasure-trip.
"About as bad as is possible, in spite of having been at sea so much.
But we had a talk while they were loading at Genoa. You know Williams, I
think? He's a thoroughly good fellow, trustworthy and sensible; so is
Bailey, for that matter; and they both know how to hold their tongues."
"It seems to me, though, that Bailey is running a serious risk in doing
a thing like this."
"So I told him, and he only looked sulky and said: 'What business is
that of yours?' Just the sort of thing one would expect him to say. If I met
Bailey in Timbuctoo, I should go up to him and say: 'Good-morning,
Englishman.'"
"But I can't conceive how you managed to get their consent; Williams,
too; the last man I should have thought of."
"Yes, he objected strongly at first; not on the ground of danger,
though, but because the thing is 'so unbusiness-like.' But I managed to win
him over after a bit. And now we will go into details."
. . . . .
When the Gadfly reached his lodgings the sun had set, and the
blossoming pyrus japonica that hung over the garden wall looked dark in the
fading light. He gathered a few sprays and carried them into the house. As
he opened the study door, Zita started up from a chair in the corner and ran
towards him.
"Oh, Felice; I thought you were never coming!"
His first impulse was to ask her sharply what business she had in his
study; but, remembering that he had not seen her for three weeks, he held
out his hand and said, rather frigidly:
"Good-evening, Zita; how are you?"
She put up her face to be kissed, but he moved past as though he had
not seen the gesture, and took up a vase to put the pyrus in. The next
instant the door was flung wide open, and the collie, rushing into the room,
performed an ecstatic dance round him, barking and whining with delight. He
put down the flowers and stooped to pat the dog.
"Well, Shaitan, how are you, old man? Yes, it's really I. Shake hands,
like a good dog!"
The hard, sullen look came into Zita's face.
"Shall we go to dinner?" she asked coldly. "I ordered it for you at my
place, as you wrote that you were coming this evening."
He turned round quickly.
"I am v-v-very sorry; you sh-should not have waited for me! I will just
get a bit tidy and come round at once. P-perhaps you would not mind putting
these into water."
When he came into Zita's dining room she was standing before a mirror,
fastening one of the sprays into her dress. She had apparently made up her
mind to be good-humoured, and came up to him with a little cluster of
crimson buds tied together.
"Here is a buttonhole for you; let me put it in your coat."
All through dinner-time he did his best to be amiable, and kept up a
flow of small-talk, to which she responded with radiant smiles. Her evident
joy at his return somewhat embarrassed him; he had grown so accustomed to
the idea that she led her own life apart from his, among such friends and
companions as were congenial to her, that it had never occurred to him to
imagine her as missing him. And yet she must have felt dull to be so much
excited now.
"Let us have coffee up on the terrace," she said; "it is quite warm
this evening."
"Very well. Shall I take your guitar? Perhaps you will sing."
She flushed with delight; he was critical about music and did not often
ask her to sing.
On the terrace was a broad wooden bench running round the walls. The
Gadfly chose a corner with a good view of the hills, and Zita, seating
herself on the low wall with her feet on the bench, leaned back against a
pillar of the roof. She did not care much for scenery; she preferred to look
at the Gadfly.
"Give me a cigarette," she said. "I don't believe I have smoked once
since you went away."
"Happy thought! It's just s-s-smoke I want to complete my bliss."
She leaned forward and looked at him earnestly.
"Are you really happy?"
The Gadfly's mobile brows went up.
"Yes; why not? I have had a good dinner; I am looking at one of the
m-most beautiful views in Europe; and now I'm going to have coffee and hear
a Hungarian folk-song. There is nothing the matter with either my conscience
or my digestion; what more can man desire?"
"I know another thing you desire."
"What?"
"That!" She tossed a little cardboard box into his hand.
"B-burnt almonds! Why d-didn't you tell me before I began to s-smoke?"
he cried reproachfully.
"Why, you baby! you can eat them when you have done smoking. There
comes the coffee."
The Gadfly sipped his coffee and ate his burnt almonds with the grave
and concentrated enjoyment of a cat drinking cream.
"How nice it is to come back to d-decent coffee, after the s-s-stuff
one gets at Leghorn!" he said in his purring drawl.
"A very good reason for stopping at home now you are here."
"Not much stopping for me; I'm off again to-morrow."
The smile died on her face.
"To-morrow! What for? Where are you going to?"
"Oh! two or three p-p-places, on business."
It had been decided between him and Gemma that he must go in person
into the Apennines to make arrangements with the smugglers of the frontier
region about the transporting of the firearms. To cross the Papal frontier
was for him a matter of serious danger; but it had to be done if the work
was to succeed.
"Always business!" Zita sighed under her breath; and then asked aloud:
"Shall you be gone long?"
"No; only a fortnight or three weeks, p-p-probably."
"I suppose it's some of THAT business?" she asked abruptly.
"'That' business?"
"The business you're always trying to get your neck broken over--the
everlasting politics."
"It has something to do with p-p-politics."
Zita threw away her cigarette.
"You are fooling me," she said. "You are going into some danger or
other."
"I'm going s-s-straight into the inf-fernal regions," he answered
languidly. "D-do you happen to have any friends there you want to send that
ivy to? You n-needn't pull it all down, though."
She had fiercely torn off a handful of the climber from the pillar, and
now flung it down with vehement anger.
"You are going into danger," she repeated; "and you won't even say so
honestly! Do you think I am fit for nothing but to be fooled and joked with?
You will get yourself hanged one of these days, and never so much as say
good-bye. It's always politics and politics--I'm sick of politics!"
"S-so am I," said the Gadfly, yawning lazily; "and therefore we'll talk
about something else-- unless you will sing."
"Well, give me the guitar, then. What shall I sing?"
"The ballad of the lost horse; it suits your voice so well."
She began to sing the old Hungarian ballad of the man who loses first
his horse, then his home, and then his sweetheart, and consoles himself with
the reflection that "more was lost at Mohacz field." The song was one of the
Gadfly's especial favourites; its fierce and tragic melody and the bitter
stoicism of the refrain appealed to him as no softer music ever did.
Zita was in excellent voice; the notes came from her lips strong and
clear, full of the vehement desire of life. She would have sung Italian or
Slavonic music badly, and German still worse; but she sang the Magyar
folk-songs splendidly.
The Gadfly listened with wide-open eyes and parted lips; he had never
heard her sing like this before. As she came to the last line, her voice
began suddenly to shake.
"Ah, no matter! More was lost----"
She broke down with a sob and hid her face among the ivy leaves.
"Zita!" The Gadfly rose and took the guitar from her hand. "What is
it?"
She only sobbed convulsively, hiding her face in both hands. He touched
her on the arm.
"Tell me what is the matter," he said caressingly.
"Let me alone!" she sobbed, shrinking away. "Let me alone!"
He went quietly back to his seat and waited till the sobs died away.
Suddenly he felt her arms about his neck; she was kneeling on the floor
beside him.
"Felice--don't go! Don't go away!"
"We will talk about that afterwards," he said, gently extricating
himself from the clinging arms. "Tell me first what has upset you so. Has
anything been frightening you?"
She silently shook her head.
"Have I done anything to hurt you?"
"No." She put a hand up against his throat.
"What, then?"
"You will get killed," she whispered at last. "I heard one of those men
that come here say the other day that you will get into trouble--and when I
ask you about it you laugh at me!"
"My dear child," the Gadfly said, after a little pause of astonishment,
"you have got some exaggerated notion into your head. Very likely I shall
get killed some day--that is the natural consequence of being a
revolutionist. But there is no reason to suppose I am g-g-going to get
killed just now. I am running no more risk than other people."
"Other people--what are other people to me? If you loved me you
wouldn't go off this way and leave me to lie awake at night, wondering
whether you're arrested, or dream you are dead whenever I go to sleep. You
don't care as much for me as for that dog there!"
The Gadfly rose and walked slowly to the other end of the terrace. He
was quite unprepared for such a scene as this and at a loss how to answer
her. Yes, Gemma was right; he had got his life into a tangle that he would
have hard work to undo.
"Sit down and let us talk about it quietly," he said, coming back after
a moment. "I think we have misunderstood each other; of course I should not
have laughed if I had thought you were serious. Try to tell me plainly what
is troubling you; and then, if there is any misunderstanding, we may be able
to clear it up."
"There's nothing to clear up. I can see you don't care a brass farthing
for me."
"My dear child, we had better be quite frank with each other. I have
always tried to be honest about our relationship, and I think I have never
deceived you as to----"
"Oh, no! you have been honest enough; you have never even pretended to
think of me as anything else but a prostitute,--a trumpery bit of
second-hand finery that plenty of other men have had before you--"
"Hush, Zita! I have never thought that way about any living thing."
"You have never loved me," she insisted sullenly.
"No, I have never loved you. Listen to me, and try to think as little
harm of me as you can."
"Who said I thought any harm of you? I----"
"Wait a minute. This is what I want to say: I have no belief whatever
in conventional moral codes, and no respect for them. To me the relations
between men and women are simply questions of personal likes and
dislikes------"
"And of money," she interrupted with a harsh little laugh. He winced
and hesitated a moment.
"That, of course, is the ugly part of the matter. But believe me, if I
had thought that you disliked me, or felt any repulsion to the thing, I
would never have suggested it, or taken advantage of your position to
persuade you to it. I have never done that to any woman in my life, and I
have never told a woman a lie about my feeling for her. You may trust me
that I am speaking the truth----"
He paused a moment, but she did not answer.
"I thought," he went on; "that if a man is alone in the world and feels
the need of--of a woman's presence about him, and if he can find a woman who
is attractive to him and to whom he is not repulsive, he has a right to
accept, in a grateful and friendly spirit, such pleasure as that woman is
willing to give him, without entering into any closer bond. I saw no harm in
the thing, provided only there is no unfairness or insult or deceit on
either side. As for your having been in that relation with other men before
I met you, I did not think about that. I merely thought that the connexion
would be a pleasant and harmless one for both of us, and that either was
free to break it as soon as it became irksome. If I was mistaken --if you
have grown to look upon it differently-- then----"
He paused again.
"Then?" she whispered, without looking up.
"Then I have done you a wrong, and I am very sorry. But I did not mean
to do it."
"You 'did not mean' and you 'thought'---- Felice, are you made of cast
iron? Have you never been in love with a woman in your life that you can't
see I love you?"
A sudden thrill went through him; it was so long since anyone had said
to him: "I love you." Instantly she started up and flung her arms round him.
"Felice, come away with me! Come away from this dreadful country and
all these people and their politics! What have we got to do with them? Come
away, and we will be happy together. Let us go to South America, where you
used to live."
The physical horror of association startled him back into self-control;
he unclasped her hands from his neck and held them in a steady grasp.
"Zita! Try to understand what I am saying to you. I do not love you;
and if I did I would not come away with you. I have my work in Italy, and my
comrades----"
"And someone else that you love better than me!" she cried out
fiercely. "Oh, I could kill you! It is not your comrades you care about;
it's---- I know who it is!"
"Hush!" he said quietly. "You are excited and imagining things that are
not true."
"You suppose I am thinking of Signora Bolla? I'm not so easily duped!
You only talk politics with her; you care no more for her than you do for
me. It's that Cardinal!"
The Gadfly started as if he had been shot.
"Cardinal?" he repeated mechanically.
"Cardinal Montanelli, that came here preaching in the autumn. Do you
think I didn't see your face when his carriage passed? You were as white as
my pocket-handkerchief! Why, you're shaking like a leaf now because I
mentioned his name!"
He stood up.
"You don't know what you are talking about," he said very slowly and
softly. "I--hate the Cardinal. He is the worst enemy I have."
"Enemy or no, you love him better than you love anyone else in the
world. Look me in the face and say that is not true, if you can!"
He turned away, and looked out into the garden. She watched him
furtively, half-scared at what she had done; there was something terrifying
in his silence. At last she stole up to him, like a frightened child, and
timidly pulled his sleeve. He turned round.
"It is true," he
said.http://www.booksbtc.com/cgi/fhw.exe?BTCWeb&Title=Gadfly,+The&Section=PART+II&Chapter=PART+II:+CHAPTER+XI.
PART II: CHAPTER XI.
"BUT c-c-can't I meet him somewhere in the hills? Brisighella is a
risky place for me."
"Every inch of ground in the Romagna is risky for you; but just at this
moment Brisighella is safer for you than any other place."
"Why?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. Don't let that man with the blue jacket see
your face; he's dangerous. Yes; it was a terrible storm; I don't remember to
have seen the vines so bad for a long time."
The Gadfly spread his arms on the table, and laid his face upon them,
like a man overcome with fatigue or wine; and the dangerous new-comer in the
blue jacket, glancing swiftly round, saw only two farmers discussing their
crops over a flask of wine and a sleepy mountaineer with his head on the
table. It was the usual sort of thing to see in little places like Marradi;
and the owner of the blue jacket apparently made up his mind that nothing
could be gained by listening; for he drank his wine at a gulp and sauntered
into the outer room. There he stood leaning on the counter and gossiping
lazily with the landlord, glancing every now and then out of the corner of
one eye through the open door, beyond which sat the three figures at the
table. The two farmers went on sipping their wine and discussing the weather
in the local dialect, and the Gadfly snored like a man whose conscience is
sound.
At last the spy seemed to make up his mind that there was nothing in
the wine-shop worth further waste of his time. He paid his reckoning, and,
lounging out of the house, sauntered away down the narrow street. The
Gadfly, yawning and stretching, lifted himself up and sleepily rubbed the
sleeve of his linen blouse across his eyes.
"Pretty sharp practice that," he said, pulling a clasp-knife out of his
pocket and cutting off a chunk from the rye-loaf on the table. "Have they
been worrying you much lately, Michele?"
"They've been worse than mosquitos in August. There's no getting a
minute's peace; wherever one goes, there's always a spy hanging about. Even
right up in the hills, where they used to be so shy about venturing, they
have taken to coming in bands of three or four--haven't they, Gino? That's
why we arranged for you to meet Domenichino in the town."
"Yes; but why Brisighella? A frontier town is always full of spies."
"Brisighella just now is a capital place. It's swarming with pilgrims
from all parts of the country."
"But it's not on the way to anywhere."
"It's not far out of the way to Rome, and many of the Easter Pilgrims
are going round to hear Mass there."
"I d-d-didn't know there was anything special in Brisighella."
"There's the Cardinal. Don't you remember his going to Florence to
preach last December? It's that same Cardinal Montanelli. They say he made a
great sensation."
"I dare say; I don't go to hear sermons."
"Well, he has the reputation of being a saint, you see."
"How does he manage that?"
"I don't know. I suppose it's because he gives away all his income, and
lives like a parish priest with four or five hundred scudi a year."
"Ah!" interposed the man called Gino; "but it's more than that. He
doesn't only give away money; he spends his whole life in looking after the
poor, and seeing the sick are properly treated, and hearing complaints and
grievances from morning till night. I'm no fonder of priests than you are,
Michele, but Monsignor Montanelli is not like other Cardinals."
"Oh, I dare say he's more fool than knave!" said Michele. "Anyhow, the
people are mad after him, and the last new freak is for the pilgrims to go
round that way to ask his blessing. Domenichino thought of going as a
pedlar, with a basket of cheap crosses and rosaries. The people like to buy
those things and ask the Cardinal to touch them; then they put them round
their babies' necks to keep off the evil eye."
"Wait a minute. How am I to go--as a pilgrim? This make-up suits me
p-pretty well, I think; but it w-won't do for me to show myself in
Brisighella in the same character that I had here; it would be ev-v-vidence
against you if I get taken."
"You won't get taken; we have a splendid disguise for you, with a
passport and all complete."
"What is it?"
"An old Spanish pilgrim--a repentant brigand from the Sierras. He fell
ill in Ancona last year, and one of our friends took him on board a
trading-vessel out of charity, and set him down in Venice, where he had
friends, and he left his papers with us to show his gratitude. They will
just do for you."
"A repentant b-b-brigand? But w-what about the police?"
"Oh, that's all right! He finished his term of the galleys some years
ago, and has been going about to Jerusalem and all sorts of places saving
his soul ever since. He killed his son by mistake for ...
