The Gadfly by E. L. Voynich (latest novels to read .txt) 📖

if I can, and if I can’t, to die.”

 

“Why ‘to die’?”

 

“Because if the Governor doesn’t succeed in

getting me shot, I shall be sent to the galleys, and

for me that c-c-comes to the same thing. I have

not got the health to live through it.”

 

Montanelli rested his arm on the table and

pondered silently. The Gadfly did not disturb

him. He was leaning back with half-shut eyes,

lazily enjoying the delicious physical sensation of

relief from the chains.

 

“Supposing,” Montanelli began again, “that

you were to succeed in escaping; what should you

do with your life?”

 

“I have already told Your Eminence; I should

k-k-kill rats.”

 

“You would kill rats. That is to say, that if I

were to let you escape from here now,—supposing

I had the power to do so,—you would use your

freedom to foster violence and bloodshed instead

of preventing them?”

 

The Gadfly raised his eyes to the crucifix on the

wall. “‘Not peace, but a sword’;—at l-least I

should be in good company. For my own part,

though, I prefer pistols.”

 

“Signor Rivarez,” said the Cardinal with unruffled

composure, “I have not insulted you as

yet, or spoken slightingly of your beliefs or friends.

May I not expect the same courtesy from you, or

do you wish me to suppose that an atheist cannot

be a gentleman?”

 

“Ah, I q-quite forgot. Your Eminence places

courtesy high among the Christian virtues. I remember

your sermon in Florence, on the occasion

of my c-controversy with your anonymous defender.”

 

“That is one of the subjects about which I

wished to speak to you. Would you mind

explaining to me the reason of the peculiar bitterness

you seem to feel against me? If you have

simply picked me out as a convenient target, that

is another matter. Your methods of political controversy

are your own affair, and we are not discussing politics

now. But I fancied at the time that there was some

personal animosity towards me; and if so, I should be

glad to know whether I have ever done you wrong or in

any way given you cause for such a feeling.”

 

Ever done him wrong! The Gadfly put up the

bandaged hand to his throat. “I must refer Your

Eminence to Shakspere,” he said with a little

laugh. “It’s as with the man who can’t endure

a harmless, necessary cat. My antipathy is a

priest. The sight of the cassock makes my

t-t-teeth ache.”

 

“Oh, if it is only that–-” Montanelli dismissed

the subject with an indifferent gesture.

 

“Still,” he added, “abuse is one thing and perversion

of fact is another. When you stated, in

answer to my sermon, that I knew the identity

of the anonymous writer, you made a mistake,—I

do not accuse you of wilful falsehood,—and stated

what was untrue. I am to this day quite ignorant

of his name.”

 

The Gadfly put his head on one side, like an

intelligent robin, looked at him for a moment

gravely, then suddenly threw himself back and

burst into a peal of laughter.

 

“S-s-sancta simplicitas! Oh, you, sweet, innocent,

Arcadian people—and you never guessed!

You n-never saw the cloven hoof?”

 

Montanelli stood up. “Am I to understand,

Signor Rivarez, that you wrote both sides of the

controversy yourself?”

 

“It was a shame, I know,” the Gadfly answered,

looking up with wide, innocent blue eyes. “And

you s-s-swallowed everything whole; just as if it

had been an oyster. It was very wrong; but oh,

it w-w-was so funny!”

 

Montanelli bit his lip and sat down again. He

had realized from the first that the Gadfly was trying

to make him lose his temper, and had resolved

to keep it whatever happened; but he was beginning

to find excuses for the Governor’s exasperation.

A man who had been spending two hours

a day for the last three weeks in interrogating the

Gadfly might be pardoned an occasional swear-word.

 

“We will drop that subject,” he said quietly.

“What I wanted to see you for particularly is this:

My position here as Cardinal gives me some voice,

if I choose to claim my privilege, in the question

of what is to be done with you. The only use to

which I should ever put such a privilege would be

to interfere in case of any violence to you which

was not necessary to prevent you from doing violence

to others. I sent for you, therefore, partly

in order to ask whether you have anything to

complain of,—I will see about the irons; but perhaps

there is something else,—and partly because

I felt it right, before giving my opinion, to see for

myself what sort of man you are.”

 

“I have nothing to complain of, Your Eminence.

‘A la guerre comme a la guerre.’ I am

not a schoolboy, to expect any government to pat

me on the head for s-s-smuggling firearms onto its

territory. It’s only natural that they should hit

as hard as they can. As for what sort of man I

am, you have had a romantic confession of my sins

once. Is not that enough; or w-w-would you like

me to begin again?”

 

“I don’t understand you,” Montanelli said

coldly, taking up a pencil and twisting it between

his fingers.

 

“Surely Your Eminence has not forgotten old Diego,

the pilgrim?” He suddenly changed his voice and began

to speak as Diego: “I am a miserable sinner––”

 

The pencil snapped in Montanelli’s hand.

“That is too much!” he said.

 

The Gadfly leaned his head back with a soft little

laugh, and sat watching while the Cardinal

paced silently up and down the room.

 

“Signor Rivarez,” said Montanelli, stopping at

last in front of him, “you have done a thing to me

that a man who was born of a woman should hesitate

to do to his worst enemy. You have stolen

in upon my private grief and have made for

yourself a mock and a jest out of the sorrow of a

fellow-man. I once more beg you to tell me:

Have I ever done you wrong? And if not, why

have you played this heartless trick on me?”

 

The Gadfly, leaning back against the chair-cushions,

looked up with his subtle, chilling, inscrutable smile

 

“It am-m-mused me, Your Eminence; you took

it all so much to heart, and it rem-m-minded me—

a little bit—of a variety show–-”

 

Montanelli, white to the very lips, turned away

and rang the bell.

 

“You can take back the prisoner,” he said when

the guards came in.

 

After they had gone he sat down at the table,

still trembling with unaccustomed indignation,

and took up a pile of reports which had been sent

in to him by the parish priests of his diocese.

 

Presently he pushed them away, and, leaning on

the table, hid his face in both hands. The Gadfly

seemed to have left some terrible shadow of himself,

some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt

the room; and Montanelli sat trembling and

cowering, not daring to look up lest he should see

the phantom presence that he knew was not there.

The spectre hardly amounted to a hallucination.

It was a mere fancy of overwrought nerves; but

he was seized with an unutterable dread of its

shadowy presence—of the wounded hand, the

smiling, cruel mouth, the mysterious eyes, like

deep sea water–-

 

He shook off the fancy and settled to his work.

All day long he had scarcely a free moment, and

the thing did not trouble him; but going into his

bedroom late at night, he stopped on the threshold

with a sudden shock of fear. What if he

should see it in a dream? He recovered himself

immediately and knelt down before the crucifix

to pray.

 

But he lay awake the whole night through.

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

MONTANELLI’S anger did not make him neglectful

of his promise. He protested so emphatically

against the manner in which the Gadfly had been

chained that the unfortunate Governor, who by

now was at his wit’s end, knocked off all the fetters

in the recklessness of despair. “How am I

to know,” he grumbled to the adjutant, “what

His Eminence will object to next? If he calls a

simple pair of handcuffs ‘cruelty,’ he’ll be exclaiming

against the window-bars presently, or wanting

me to feed Rivarez on oysters and truffles. In my

young days malefactors were malefactors and

were treated accordingly, and nobody thought a

traitor any better than a thief. But it’s the fashion

to be seditious nowadays; and His Eminence

seems inclined to encourage all the scoundrels in

the country.”

 

“I don’t see what business he has got to interfere

at all,” the adjutant remarked. “He is not

a Legate and has no authority in civil and military

affairs. By law––”

 

“What is the use of talking about law? You

can’t expect anyone to respect laws after the Holy

Father has opened the prisons and turned the

whole crew of Liberal scamps loose on us! It’s

a positive infatuation! Of course Monsignor

Montanelli will give himself airs; he was quiet

enough under His Holiness the late Pope, but he’s

cock of the walk now. He has jumped into

favour all at once and can do as he pleases. How

am I to oppose him? He may have secret authorization

from the Vatican, for all I know. Everything’s

topsy-turvy now; you can’t tell from day

to day what may happen next. In the good old

times one knew what to be at, but nowadays––”

 

The Governor shook his head ruefully. A

world in which Cardinals troubled themselves over

trifles of prison discipline and talked about the

“rights” of political offenders was a world that

was growing too complex for him.

 

The Gadfly, for his part, had returned to the fortress

in a state of nervous excitement bordering

on hysteria. The meeting with Montanelli had

strained his endurance almost to breaking-point;

and his final brutality about the variety show had

been uttered in sheer desperation, merely to cut

short an interview which, in another five minutes,

would have ended in tears.

 

Called up for interrogation in the afternoon of

the same day, he did nothing but go into convulsions

of laughter at every question put to him;

and when the Governor, worried out of all

patience, lost his temper and began to swear, he

only laughed more immoderately than ever. The

unlucky Governor fumed and stormed and threatened

his refractory prisoner with impossible punishments;

but finally came, as James Burton had

come long ago, to the conclusion that it was mere

waste of breath and temper to argue with a person

in so unreasonable a state of mind.

 

The Gadfly was once more taken back to his cell;

and there lay down upon the pallet, in the mood

of black and hopeless depression which always succeeded

to his boisterous fits. He lay till evening

without moving, without even thinking; he had

passed, after the vehement emotion of the morning,

into a strange, half-apathetic state, in which

his own misery was hardly more to him than a dull

and mechanical weight, pressing on some wooden

thing that had forgotten to be a soul. In truth,

it was of little consequence how all ended; the one

thing that mattered to any sentient being was to

be spared unbearable pain, and whether the relief

came from altered conditions or from the deadening

of the power to feel, was a question of no moment.

Perhaps he would succeed in escaping;

perhaps they would kill him; in any case he

should never see the Padre again, and it was all

vanity and vexation of spirit.

 

One of the warders brought in supper, and the

Gadfly looked up with heavy-eyed indifference.