The Gadfly - E. L. Voynich (phonics readers .txt) 📗

class="calibre1">to the Romany folk.”

 

The Gadfly’s face remained as cold and steady

as before.

 

“Has she gone away with a gipsy camp, or

merely to live with your son?”

 

The woman burst out laughing.

 

“Do you think of following her and trying to

win her back? It’s too late, sir; you should have

thought of that before!”

 

“No; I only want to know the truth, if you will

tell it to me.”

 

She shrugged her shoulders; it was hardly

worth while to abuse a person who took it so

meekly.

 

“The truth, then, is that she met my son in the

road the day you left her, and spoke to him in the

Romany tongue; and when he saw she was one of

our folk, in spite of her fine clothes, he fell in love

with her bonny face, as OUR men fall in love, and

took her to our camp. She told us all her trouble,

and sat crying and sobbing, poor lassie, till our

hearts were sore for her. We comforted her as

best we could; and at last she took off her fine

clothes and put on the things our lasses wear, and

gave herself to my son, to be his woman and to

have him for her man. He won’t say to her: ‘I

don’t love you,’ and: ‘I’ve other things to do.’

When a woman is young, she wants a man; and

what sort of man are you, that you can’t even

kiss a handsome girl when she puts her arms round

your neck?”

 

“You said,” he interrupted, “that you had

brought me a message from her.”

 

“Yes; I stopped behind when the camp went

on, so as to give it. She told me to say that she

has had enough of your folk and their hair-splitting

and their sluggish blood; and that she wants

to get back to her own people and be free. ‘Tell

him,’ she said, ‘that I am a woman, and that I

loved him; and that is why I would not be his

harlot any longer.’ The lassie was right to come

away. There’s no harm in a girl getting a bit of

money out of her good looks if she can—that’s

what good looks are for; but a Romany lass has

nothing to do with LOVING a man of your race.”

 

The Gadfly stood up.

 

“Is that all the message?” he said. “Then tell

her, please, that I think she has done right, and

that I hope she will be happy. That is all I have

to say. Good-night!”

 

He stood perfectly still until the garden gate

closed behind her; then he sat down and covered

his face with both hands.

 

Another blow on the cheek! Was no rag of

pride to be left him—no shred of self-respect?

Surely he had suffered everything that man can

endure; his very heart had been dragged in the

mud and trampled under the feet of the passers-by;

there was no spot in his soul where someone’s contempt

was not branded in, where someone’s mockery

had not left its iron trace. And now this gipsy

girl, whom he had picked up by the wayside—

even she had the whip in her hand.

 

Shaitan whined at the door, and the Gadfly

rose to let him in. The dog rushed up to his master

with his usual frantic manifestations of delight,

but soon, understanding that something was

wrong, lay down on the rug beside him, and thrust

a cold nose into the listless hand.

 

An hour later Gemma came up to the front door.

No one appeared in answer to her knock; Bianca,

finding that the Gadfly did not want any dinner,

had slipped out to visit a neighbour’s cook. She

had left the door open, and a light burning in the

hall. Gemma, after waiting for some time, decided

to enter and try if she could find the Gadfly, as she

wished to speak to him about an important message

which had come from Bailey. She knocked

at the study door, and the Gadfly’s voice answered

from within: “You can go away, Bianca. I don’t

want anything.”

 

She softly opened the door. The room was

quite dark, but the passage lamp threw a long

stream of light across it as she entered, and she saw

the Gadfly sitting alone, his head sunk on his

breast, and the dog asleep at his feet.

 

“It is I,” she said.

 

He started up. “Gemma,–- Gemma! Oh,

I have wanted you so!”

 

Before she could speak he was kneeling on the

floor at her feet and hiding his face in the folds of

her dress. His whole body was shaken with a convulsive

tremor that was worse to see than tears.

 

She stood still. There was nothing she could

do to help him—nothing. This was the bitterest

thing of all. She must stand by and look on passively

—she who would have died to spare him

pain. Could she but dare to stoop and clasp her

arms about him, to hold him close against her

heart and shield him, were it with her own body,

from all further harm or wrong; surely then he

would be Arthur to her again; surely then the day

would break and the shadows flee away.

 

Ah, no, no! How could he ever forget? Was

it not she who had cast him into hell—she, with

her own right hand?

 

She had let the moment slip by. He rose

hastily and sat down by the table, covering his

eyes with one hand and biting his lip as if he would

bite it through.

 

Presently he looked up and said quietly:

 

“I am afraid I startled you.”

 

She held out both her hands to him. “Dear,”

she said, “are we not friends enough by now for

you to trust me a little bit? What is it?”

 

“Only a private trouble of my own. I don’t

see why you should be worried over it.”

 

“Listen a moment,” she went on, taking his

hand in both of hers to steady its convulsive

trembling. “I have not tried to lay hands on a

thing that is not mine to touch. But now that

you have given me, of your own free will, so much

of your confidence, will you not give me a little

more—as you would do if I were your sister.

Keep the mask on your face, if it is any consolation

to you, but don’t wear a mask on your soul,

for your own sake.”

 

He bent his head lower. “You must be patient

with me,” he said. “I am an unsatisfactory sort

of brother to have, I’m afraid; but if you only

knew–- I have been nearly mad this last week.

It has been like South America again. And somehow

the devil gets into me and–-” He broke off.

 

“May I not have my share in your trouble?”

she whispered at last.

 

His head sank down on her arm. “The hand of

the Lord is heavy.”

 

PART III.

–––-

CHAPTER I.

 

THE next five weeks were spent by Gemma and

the Gadfly in a whirl of excitement and overwork

which left them little time or energy for thinking

about their personal affairs. When the arms had

been safely smuggled into Papal territory there

remained a still more difficult and dangerous task:

that of conveying them unobserved from the secret

stores in the mountain caverns and ravines to the

various local centres and thence to the separate

villages. The whole district was swarming with

spies; and Domenichino, to whom the Gadfly had

intrusted the ammunition, sent into Florence a

messenger with an urgent appeal for either help

or extra time. The Gadfly had insisted that the

work should be finished by the middle of June;

and what with the difficulty of conveying heavy

transports over bad roads, and the endless hindrances

and delays caused by the necessity of continually

evading observation, Domenichino was

growing desperate. “I am between Scylla and

Charybdis,” he wrote. “I dare not work quickly,

for fear of detection, and I must not work slowly

if we are to be ready in time. Either send me

efficient help at once, or let the Venetians know

that we shall not be ready till the first week in

July.”

 

The Gadfly carried the letter to Gemma and,

while she read it, sat frowning at the floor and

stroking the cat’s fur the wrong way.

 

“This is bad,” she said. “We can hardly keep

the Venetians waiting for three weeks.”

 

“Of course we can’t; the thing is absurd.

Domenichino m-might unders-s-stand that. We

must follow the lead of the Venetians, not they

ours.”

 

“I don’t see that Domenichino is to blame; he

has evidently done his best, and he can’t do

impossibilities.”

 

“It’s not in Domenichino that the fault lies; it’s

in the fact of his being one person instead of two.

We ought to have at least one responsible man

to guard the store and another to see the transports

off. He is quite right; he must have efficient help.”

 

“But what help are we going to give him? We

have no one in Florence to send.”

 

“Then I m-must go myself.”

 

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him

with a little frown.

 

“No, that won’t do; it’s too risky.”

 

“It will have to do if we can’t f-f-find any other

way out of the difficulty.”

 

“Then we must find another way, that’s all.

It’s out of the question for you to go again just

now.”

 

An obstinate line appeared at the corners of his

under lip.

 

“I d-don’t see that it’s out of the question.”

 

“You will see if you think about the thing

calmly for a minute. It is only five weeks since

you got back; the police are on the scent about

that pilgrim business, and scouring the country

to find a clue. Yes, I know you are clever at disguises;

but remember what a lot of people saw you, both as

Diego and as the countryman; and you can’t disguise

your lameness or the scar on your face.”

 

“There are p-plenty of lame people in the world.”

 

“Yes, but there are not plenty of people in the

Romagna with a lame foot and a sabre-cut across

the cheek and a left arm injured like yours, and

the combination of blue eyes with such dark

colouring.”

 

“The eyes don’t matter; I can alter them with

belladonna.”

 

“You can’t alter the other things. No, it won’t

do. For you to go there just now, with all your

identification-marks, would be to walk into a trap

with your eyes open. You would certainly be

taken.”

 

“But s-s-someone must help Domenichino.”

 

“It will be no help to him to have you caught

at a critical moment like this. Your arrest would

mean the failure of the whole thing.”

 

But the Gadfly was difficult to convince, and

the discussion went on and on without coming

nearer to any settlement. Gemma was beginning

to realize how nearly inexhaustible was the fund

of quiet obstinacy in his character; and, had the

matter not been one about which she felt strongly,

she would probably have yielded for the sake of

peace. This, however, was a case in which she

could not conscientiously give way; the practical

advantage to be gained from the proposed journey

seemed to her not sufficiently important to be

worth the risk, and she could not help suspecting

that his desire to go was prompted less by a conviction

of grave political necessity than by a morbid

craving for the excitement of danger. He had

got into the habit