The Gadfly

by E. L. Voynich

  CHAPTER V.

  THAT afternoon Arthur felt the need of a long walk. He intrusted hisluggage to a fellow-student and went to Leghorn on foot.

  The day was damp and cloudy, but not cold; and the low, level countryseemed to him fairer than he had ever known it to look before. He had asense of delight in the soft elasticity of the wet grass under hisfeet and in the shy, wondering eyes of the wild spring flowers by theroadside. In a thorn-acacia bush at the edge of a little strip of wooda bird was building a nest, and flew up as he passed with a startled cryand a quick fluttering of brown wings.

  He tried to keep his mind fixed upon the devout meditations proper tothe eve of Good Friday. But thoughts of Montanelli and Gemma got somuch in the way of this devotional exercise that at last he gave up theattempt and allowed his fancy to drift away to the wonders and gloriesof the coming insurrection, and to the part in it that he had allottedto his two idols. The Padre was to be the leader, the apostle, theprophet before whose sacred wrath the powers of darkness were to flee,and at whose feet the young defenders of Liberty were to learnafresh the old doctrines, the old truths in their new and unimaginedsignificance.

  And Gemma? Oh, Gemma would fight at the barricades. She was made of theclay from which heroines are moulded; she would be the perfect comrade,the maiden undefiled and unafraid, of whom so many poets have dreamed.She would stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, rejoicing under thewinged death-storm; and they would die together, perhaps in the momentof victory--without doubt there would be a victory. Of his love he wouldtell her nothing; he would say no word that might disturb her peace orspoil her tranquil sense of comradeship. She was to him a holy thing,a spotless victim to be laid upon the altar as a burnt-offering for thedeliverance of the people; and who was he that he should enter into thewhite sanctuary of a soul that knew no other love than God and Italy?

  God and Italy----Then came a sudden drop from the clouds as he enteredthe great, dreary house in the "Street of Palaces," and Julia's butler,immaculate, calm, and politely disapproving as ever, confronted him uponthe stairs.

  "Good-evening, Gibbons; are my brothers in?"

  "Mr. Thomas is in, sir; and Mrs. Burton. They are in the drawing room."

  Arthur went in with a dull sense of oppression. What a dismal houseit was! The flood of life seemed to roll past and leave it always justabove high-water mark. Nothing in it ever changed--neither the people,nor the family portraits, nor the heavy furniture and ugly plate, northe vulgar ostentation of riches, nor the lifeless aspect of everything.Even the flowers on the brass stands looked like painted metal flowersthat had never known the stirring of young sap within them in the warmspring days. Julia, dressed for dinner, and waiting for visitors in thedrawing room which was to her the centre of existence, might have satfor a fashion-plate just as she was, with her wooden smile and flaxenringlets, and the lap-dog on her knee.

  "How do you do, Arthur?" she said stiffly, giving him the tips of herfingers for a moment, and then transferring them to the more congenialcontact of the lap-dog's silken coat. "I hope you are quite well andhave made satisfactory progress at college."

  Arthur murmured the first commonplace that he could think of at themoment, and relapsed into uncomfortable silence. The arrival ofJames, in his most pompous mood and accompanied by a stiff, elderlyshipping-agent, did not improve matters; and when Gibbons announced thatdinner was served, Arthur rose with a little sigh of relief.

  "I won't come to dinner, Julia. If you'll excuse me I will go to myroom."

  "You're overdoing that fasting, my boy," said Thomas; "I am sure you'llmake yourself ill."

  "Oh, no! Good-night."

  In the corridor Arthur met the under housemaid and asked her to knock athis door at six in the morning.

  "The signorino is going to church?"

  "Yes. Good-night, Teresa."

  He went into his room. It had belonged to his mother, and the alcoveopposite the window had been fitted up during her long illness as anoratory. A great crucifix on a black pedestal occupied the middle of thealtar; and before it hung a little Roman lamp. This was the room whereshe had died. Her portrait was on the wall beside the bed; and on thetable stood a china bowl which had been hers, filled with a great bunchof her favourite violets. It was just a year since her death; and theItalian servants had not forgotten her.

  He took out of his portmanteau a framed picture, carefully wrapped up.It was a crayon portrait of Montanelli, which had come from Rome only afew days before. He was unwrapping this precious treasure when Julia'spage brought in a supper-tray on which the old Italian cook, who hadserved Gladys before the harsh, new mistress came, had placed suchlittle delicacies as she considered her dear signorino might permithimself to eat without infringing the rules of the Church. Arthurrefused everything but a piece of bread; and the page, a nephew ofGibbons, lately arrived from England, grinned significantly as hecarried out the tray. He had already joined the Protestant camp in theservants' hall.

  Arthur went into the alcove and knelt down before the crucifix, tryingto compose his mind to the proper attitude for prayer and meditation.But this he found difficult to accomplish. He had, as Thomas said,rather overdone the Lenten privations, and they had gone to his headlike strong wine. Little quivers of excitement went down his back, andthe crucifix swam in a misty cloud before his eyes. It was only after along litany, mechanically repeated, that he succeeded in recalling hiswandering imagination to the mystery of the Atonement. At last sheerphysical weariness conquered the feverish agitation of his nerves, andhe lay down to sleep in a calm and peaceful mood, free from all unquietor disturbing thoughts.

  He was fast asleep when a sharp, impatient knock came at his door. "Ah,Teresa!" he thought, turning over lazily. The knock was repeated, and heawoke with a violent start.

  "Signorino! signorino!" cried a man's voice in Italian; "get up for thelove of God!"

  Arthur jumped out of bed.

  "What is the matter? Who is it?"

  "It's I, Gian Battista. Get up, quick, for Our Lady's sake!"

  Arthur hurriedly dressed and opened the door. As he stared in perplexityat the coachman's pale, terrified face, the sound of tramping feet andclanking metal came along the corridor, and he suddenly realized thetruth.

  "For me?" he asked coolly.

  "For you! Oh, signorino, make haste! What have you to hide? See, I canput----"

  "I have nothing to hide. Do my brothers know?"

  The first uniform appeared at the turn of the passage.

  "The signor has been called; all the house is awake. Alas! what amisfortune--what a terrible misfortune! And on Good Friday! Holy Saints,have pity!"

  Gian Battista burst into tears. Arthur moved a few steps forward andwaited for the gendarmes, who came clattering along, followed by ashivering crowd of servants in various impromptu costumes. As thesoldiers surrounded Arthur, the master and mistress of the housebrought up the rear of this strange procession; he in dressing gown andslippers, she in a long peignoir, with her hair in curlpapers.

  "There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming tothe ark! Here comes a pair of very strange beasts!"

  The quotation flashed across Arthur's mind as he looked at thegrotesque figures. He checked a laugh with a sense of its jarringincongruity--this was a time for worthier thoughts. "Ave Maria, ReginaCoeli!" he whispered, and turned his eyes away, that the bobbing ofJulia's curlpapers might not again tempt him to levity.

  "Kindly explain to me," said Mr. Burton, approaching the officer ofgendarmerie, "what is the meaning of this violent intrusion into aprivate house? I warn you that, unless you are prepared to furnish mewith a satisfactory explanation, I shall feel bound to complain to theEnglish Ambassador."

  "I presume," replied the officer stiffly, "that you will recognize thisas a sufficient explanation; the English Ambassador certainly will."He pulled out a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Burton, student ofphilosophy, and, handing it to James, added coldly: "If you wish forany further ex
planation, you had better apply in person to the chief ofpolice."

  Julia snatched the paper from her husband, glanced over it, and flew atArthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.

  "So it's you that have disgraced the family!" she screamed; "setting allthe rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show?So you have turned jail-bird, now, with all your piety! It's what wemight have expected from that Popish woman's child----"

  "You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam," theofficer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under thetorrent of Julia's vociferous English.

  "Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintlymeditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that wouldbe the end of it."

  Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook hadupset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur'steeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.

  "There's no use in this kind of talk," he said. "You need not be afraidof any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quiteinnocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I havenothing to hide."

  While the gendarmes ransacked the room, reading his letters, examininghis college papers, and turning out drawers and boxes, he sat waitingon the edge of the bed, a little flushed with excitement, but in noway distressed. The search did not disquiet him. He had always burnedletters which could possibly compromise anyone, and beyond a fewmanuscript verses, half revolutionary, half mystical, and two or threenumbers of Young Italy, the gendarmes found nothing to repay them fortheir trouble. Julia, after a long resistance, yielded to the entreatiesof her brother-in-law and went back to bed, sweeping past Arthur withmagnificent disdain, James meekly following.

  When they had left the room, Thomas, who all this while had beentramping up and down, trying to look indifferent, approached the officerand asked permission to speak to the prisoner. Receiving a nod inanswer, he went up to Arthur and muttered in a rather husky voice:

  "I say; this is an infernally awkward business. I'm very sorry aboutit."

  Arthur looked up with a face as serene as a summer morning. "You havealways been good to me," he said. "There's nothing to be sorry about. Ishall be safe enough."

  "Look here, Arthur!" Thomas gave his moustache a hard pull and plungedhead first into the awkward question. "Is--all this anything to dowith--money? Because, if it is, I----"

  "With money! Why, no! What could it have to do----"

  "Then it's some political tomfoolery? I thought so. Well, don't you getdown in the mouth--and never mind all the stuff Julia talks. It's onlyher spiteful tongue; and if you want help,--cash, or anything,--let meknow, will you?"

  Arthur held out his hand in silence, and Thomas left the room with acarefully made-up expression of unconcern that rendered his face morestolid than ever.

  The gendarmes, meanwhile, had finished their search, and the officer incharge requested Arthur to put on his outdoor clothes. He obeyed at onceand turned to leave the room; then stopped with sudden hesitation. Itseemed hard to take leave of his mother's oratory in the presence ofthese officials.

  "Have you any objection to leaving the room for a moment?" he asked."You see that I cannot escape and that there is nothing to conceal."

  "I am sorry, but it is forbidden to leave a prisoner alone."

  "Very well, it doesn't matter."

  He went into the alcove, and, kneeling down, kissed the feet andpedestal of the crucifix, whispering softly: "Lord, keep me faithfulunto death."

  When he rose, the officer was standing by the table, examiningMontanelli's portrait. "Is this a relative of yours?" he asked.

  "No; it is my confessor, the new Bishop of Brisighella."

  On the staircase the Italian servants were waiting, anxious andsorrowful. They all loved Arthur for his own sake and his mother's, andcrowded round him, kissing his hands and dress with passionate grief.Gian Battista stood by, the tears dripping down his gray moustache. Noneof the Burtons came out to take leave of him. Their coldness accentuatedthe tenderness and sympathy of the servants, and Arthur was near tobreaking down as he pressed the hands held out to him.

  "Good-bye, Gian Battista. Kiss the little ones for me. Good-bye, Teresa.Pray for me, all of you; and God keep you! Good-bye, good-bye!"

  He ran hastily downstairs to the front door. A moment later only alittle group of silent men and sobbing women stood on the doorstepwatching the carriage as it drove away.