EPILOGUE.
"GEMMA, there's a man downstairs who wants to see you." Martini spoke inthe subdued tone which they had both unconsciously adopted during theselast ten days. That, and a certain slow evenness of speech and movement,were the sole expression which either of them gave to their grief.
Gemma, with bare arms and an apron over her dress, was standing at atable, putting up little packages of cartridges for distribution. Shehad stood over the work since early morning; and now, in the glaringafternoon, her face looked haggard with fatigue.
"A man, Cesare? What does he want?"
"I don't know, dear. He wouldn't tell me. He said he must speak to youalone."
"Very well." She took off her apron and pulled down the sleeves of herdress. "I must go to him, I suppose; but very likely it's only a spy."
"In any case, I shall be in the next room, within call. As soon asyou get rid of him you had better go and lie down a bit. You have beenstanding too long to-day."
"Oh, no! I would rather go on working."
She went slowly down the stairs, Martini following in silence. She hadgrown to look ten years older in these few days, and the gray streakacross her hair had widened into a broad band. She mostly kept her eyeslowered now; but when, by chance, she raised them, he shivered at thehorror in their shadows.
In the little parlour she found a clumsy-looking man standing with hisheels together in the middle of the floor. His whole figure and thehalf-frightened way he looked up when she came in, suggested to her thathe must be one of the Swiss guards. He wore a countryman's blouse,which evidently did not belong to him, and kept glancing round as thoughafraid of detection.
"Can you speak German?" he asked in the heavy Zurich patois.
"A little. I hear you want to see me."
"You are Signora Bolla? I've brought you a letter."
"A--letter?" She was beginning to tremble, and rested one hand on thetable to steady herself.
"I'm one of the guard over there." He pointed out of the window to thefortress on the hill. "It's from--the man that was shot last week. Hewrote it the night before. I promised him I'd give it into your own handmyself."
She bent her head down. So he had written after all.
"That's why I've been so long bringing it," the soldier went on. "Hesaid I was not to give it to anyone but you, and I couldn't get offbefore--they watched me so. I had to borrow these things to come in."
He was fumbling in the breast of his blouse. The weather was hot, andthe sheet of folded paper that he pulled out was not only dirty andcrumpled, but damp. He stood for a moment shuffling his feet uneasily;then put up one hand and scratched the back of his head.
"You won't say anything," he began again timidly, with a distrustfulglance at her. "It's as much as my life's worth to have come here."
"Of course I shall not say anything. No, wait a minute----"
As he turned to go, she stopped him, feeling for her purse; but he drewback, offended.
"I don't want your money," he said roughly. "I did it for him--becausehe asked me to. I'd have done more than that for him. He'd been good tome--God help me!"
The little catch in his voice made her look up. He was slowly rubbing agrimy sleeve across his eyes.
"We had to shoot," he went on under his breath; "my mates and I. A manmust obey orders. We bungled it, and had to fire again--and he laughedat us--he called us the awkward squad--and he'd been good to me----"
There was silence in the room. A moment later he straightened himselfup, made a clumsy military salute, and went away.
She stood still for a little while with the paper in her hand; thensat down by the open window to read. The letter was closely written inpencil, and in some parts hardly legible. But the first two words stoodout quite clear upon the page; and they were in English:
"Dear Jim."
The writing grew suddenly blurred and misty. And she had lost himagain--had lost him again! At the sight of the familiar childishnickname all the hopelessness of her bereavement came over her afresh,and she put out her hands in blind desperation, as though the weight ofthe earth-clods that lay above him were pressing on her heart.
Presently she took up the paper again and went on reading:
"I am to be shot at sunrise to-morrow. So if I am to keep at all mypromise to tell you everything, I must keep it now. But, after all,there is not much need of explanations between you and me. We alwaysunderstood each other without many words, even when we were littlethings.
"And so, you see, my dear, you had no need to break your heart overthat old story of the blow. It was a hard hit, of course; but I have hadplenty of others as hard, and yet I have managed to get over them,--evento pay back a few of them,--and here I am still, like the mackerel inour nursery-book (I forget its name), 'Alive and kicking, oh!' Thisis my last kick, though; and then, to-morrow morning, and--'Finita laCommedia!' You and I will translate that: 'The variety show is over';and will give thanks to the gods that they have had, at least, so muchmercy on us. It is not much, but it is something; and for this and allother blessings may we be truly thankful!
"About that same to-morrow morning, I want both you and Martini tounderstand clearly that I am quite happy and satisfied, and could ask nobetter thing of Fate. Tell that to Martini as a message from me; he is agood fellow and a good comrade, and he will understand. You see, dear,I know that the stick-in-the-mud people are doing us a good turn andthemselves a bad one by going back to secret trials and executions sosoon, and I know that if you who are left stand together steadily andhit hard, you will see great things. As for me, I shall go out intothe courtyard with as light a heart as any child starting home for theholidays. I have done my share of the work, and this death-sentence isthe proof that I have done it thoroughly. They kill me because they areafraid of me; and what more can any man's heart desire?
"It desires just one thing more, though. A man who is going to die hasa right to a personal fancy, and mine is that you should see why I havealways been such a sulky brute to you, and so slow to forget old scores.Of course, though, you understand why, and I tell you only for thepleasure of writing the words. I loved you, Gemma, when you were an uglylittle girl in a gingham frock, with a scratchy tucker and your hair ina pig-tail down your back; and I love you still. Do you remember thatday when I kissed your hand, and when you so piteously begged me 'neverto do that again'? It was a scoundrelly trick to play, I know; but youmust forgive that; and now I kiss the paper where I have written yourname. So I have kissed you twice, and both times without your consent.
"That is all. Good-bye, my dear."
There was no signature, but a verse which they had learned together aschildren was written under the letter:
"Then am I A happy fly, If I live Or if I die."
*****
Half an hour later Martini entered the room, and, startled out of thesilence of half a life-time, threw down the placard he was carrying andflung his arms about her.
"Gemma! What is it, for God's sake? Don't sob like that--you that nevercry! Gemma! Gemma, my darling!"
"Nothing, Cesare; I will tell you afterwards--I--can't talk about itjust now."
She hurriedly slipped the tear-stained letter into her pocket; and,rising, leaned out of the window to hide her face. Martini held histongue and bit his moustache. After all these years he had betrayedhimself like a schoolboy--and she had not even noticed it!
"The Cathedral bell is tolling," she said after a little while, lookinground with recovered self-command. "Someone must be dead."
"That is what I came to show you," Martini answered in his everydayvoice. He picked up the placard from the floor and handed it to her.Hastily printed in large type was a black-bordered announcement that:"Our dearly beloved Bishop, His Eminence the Cardinal, Monsignor LorenzoMontanelli," had died suddenly at Ravenna, "from the rupture of ananeurism of the heart."
She glanced up quickly from the paper, and Martini answer
ed the unspokensuggestion in her eyes with a shrug of his shoulders.
"What would you have, Madonna? Aneurism is as good a word as any other."
The Gadfly Page 27